Mystery: Family Ties: Mystery and Suspense (13 page)

“Come on, Asa, it is time to talk to them,” Gibson spoke from behind her and startled her a little.

“Yeah,” she agreed, took a deep breath and walked closer to the two arrested men.

Gibson and Asa sat down in front of Gabriel and Grandpa Joe and the woman tried to catch Gabriel’s eyes. She expected him to look away, but the young man looked straight at her and even smiled a little. “I am sorry for what happened to your colleagues,” he said to her, looking sincere and Asa believed him.

“Thank you,” she answered, but Gibson cleared his throat and took the lead.

“Mr. Kimble I suppose, you know why you are here?” He went right to the point.

“Yes,” Gabriel answered without any anger in his voice. “You think that I and my family are responsible for what happened to the FBI agents.”

“And do you?” Gibson didn’t let the other man to make him feel sorry for him.

“No,” Gabriel answered calmly again. “I know nothing about the bombing.”

“What about your brother?” Asa joined the interrogation. “Can he be involved?”

“No,” this time Gabriel sounded worried. “My brother is up in the mountain. He is taking care of the cattle. He would never do something like that.”

Asa noticed that only in his last sentence Gabriel said that his brother was incapable of killing someone. It looked as if he was trying to convince himself that his brother was away, so it would be physically impossible for him to be in two places at once. Clark could tell that Gibson had noticed that too and was like a dog with a bone.

“Do you know if your brother has problems with the government?” Asa asked. “I have heard him talk about his fear of the government and how he wanted to be left free to live his life without anyone telling him how to do so.”

“Yes, my brother had some anti-government
views, but I cannot imagine him doing something like that,” Gabriel answered. “He is like many of the men around here. They are all afraid that
someday the government will come down here and take everything from them.”

“Have you ever heard anything about some terrorist organization in the area?” Gibson changed the subject. “We have reasons to believe that there is an organization here, working against the government.”

“I don’t know, I really know nothing about this,” Gabriel said again. “If I knew, I would have told you already. You have to believe me, Asa.”

The interrogation of Gabriel and Grandpa Joe continued for another long hour, but either they really didn’t know anything or they were very good liars. Asa wanted to believe that the man she had fallen in love with, was innocent, but was afraid that her feelings were going to make it difficult to make a correct analysis of the situation.

After the interview, Gibson took her aside and asked to talk to her. “Listen to me, Asa,” Gibson said gravely. “We should put our differences aside and work together to solve the case.”

“Yes, I agree,” she nodded. “We really should work hard to solve this mess. What do we have now?”

“Actually, we might have something very important. The analysis of the soil samples matches the dirt we recovered from the Kimble ranch.” Gibson said, looking almost happy. “You know what that means, right? Combined with all the rest, we can say that Smith and Holliday were killed on the premises.”

“What is all the rest?” Asa asked him.

“According to the autopsy report the two field agents were killed around the time, they visited the Kimble ranch. The old man didn’t give us much, but we were able to determine that they were at the ranch about three weeks ago. At that same time, they were visiting all the farms and ranches in the area.”

“That sounds logical,” Asa agreed. “What else?”

“We matched the horseshoe print to several of the Kimble horses. I know that the same horseshoe make is found on many of the horses in the area, but it’s still a solid lead.”

“Yeah, you are right, but we still need a smoking gun,” Asa shook her head. “What about the weapons? Did they match the bullets found in the agents?”

“So far no,” Gibson sounded really exasperated. “We retrieved three rifles, five pistols and who knows what else, but nothing is a ballistics match.”

Todd and Asa decided to go back to the analysts and ask to retake the tests, hoping for something new to come up. Gibson had been right, the horseshoes were a perfect match to the print found near the abandoned car of the FBI agents, but there were also many other matches to it. The horses in the Kimble’s stable showed no other signs to having been near the killed agents and that looked like just another dead end.

The dirt samples were much better evidence, but since they weren’t able to find blood or any other evidence of the murders having been committed there. Gibson had searched everywhere, but everything must have been very well cleaned up after they had disposed of the bodies. They had found no evidence on their bodies no matter how hard they had searched. The killers had been either very lucky or very experienced not to leave some.

“If they have an organized terrorist group, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they know how to hide their traces,” Asa had pointed out. “I have seen this happen many times before. In many cases the terrorist group is so well organized that they have people for everything. On the other hand, I was hoping this organization here is an amateur one, with no experience in dealing with real crimes.”

“I think that they proved us wrong,” Gibson agreed. “How could they work under our noses and no one notices anything?”

“Smith and Holliday did,” Asa pointed sadly. “And paid with their lives for it.”

“Yeah!”

“Yeah!”

“What now?”

The question hung between them as a stone and neither of them knew how to answer it. They had a lot of leads and had found a lot of small details about the case, but the truth was that they had nothing big enough to call a real lead.

“Agent Clark, Agent Gibson,” one of the analysts called them. “I have been examining the parts of the bomb found in the burnt down FBI building and noticed that all of the ingredients could be purchased in a hardware shop. In my opinion, the bomb brought such destruction because it was placed under the fuel tank in the basement.”

“That is logical,” Gibson answered. “Maybe we would be able to follow that ingredient and find out who brought them.”

“I will make a list of them for you,” the analyst said and the two agents walked away.

“Listen, Todd,” Asa said. “I want to try and talk to Gabriel again. This time, however, I want to talk alone with him. I think that I might be able to convince him to talk to me.”

“Asa, you shouldn’t let personal feelings guide you,” Gibson said to her. “I have seen how you two look at each other. He might be really innocent, but we still don’t know that for sure and you have a job to do.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. I know what I am doing. Actually, I intend to use what we had to make him talk.”

“Make sure that this doesn’t backfire,” Gibson didn’t look very convinced that it was a wise decision.”

“I will, don’t worry,” Asa repeated again.

She arranged for Gabriel to be taken into the back of the barn, where they were going to be away from other people. She watched how he was taken to the place, but couldn’t make herself go right away.

Asa’s mind was filled with images of their time together and how sweet and gentle Gabriel had been. At those times she couldn’t have imagined that he might be bad. Now, after everything that had happened, Asa felt the same. She still saw only the good in him and couldn’t imagine him killing so many innocent people, just because he believed that the government was bad.

Asa approached the small room, where Gabriel was waiting and unconsciously adjusted her hair. The man was sitting with his back towards her and Asa had to circle him in order to face him. Gabriel watched her sit in front of him, but didn’t speak. There was something tender in the way he watched her, and Asa felt guilt eat at her at the thought that she was one of the ones keeping him in here.

“Gabriel…” her voice trailed off.

“Asa, don’t torture yourself, just do your job. I don’t care. Seeing what those people are capable of, I understand why you acted the way you did. I really have nothing to do with that bombing, but if you need to ask me more questions, just do it.”

“I really believe that you have nothing to do with it, Gabriel, but maybe you know something, you don’t realize you know. There are documented cases of people who help solve crimes, they believe they know nothing about.” Asa tried to explain.

“That sounds great. What can I do for you?” The man adjusted his position on the chair and looked at her expectantly.

“Where were you, when the two agents came to the ranch?” Asa opened her notebook and asked the first question.

“Me, David and Jane, we were all together away at the high pasture, when that happened,” Gabriel explained. “I cannot tell you the exact date, but we spent three entire weeks there. It was just before I met you in town. Actually, when I met you, we had just returned from the mountain.”

“Okay, but can you swear that David and Jane were always with you? I mean, weren’t there days or just hours, when they disappeared?”

“Entire days?” Gabriel repeated. “No, during the day we worked on separate pastures, but we usually met for dinner and always spent the night together in the same shelter.”

“How long does it takes to drive up there?” Asa asked the next question.

“Around two hours,” Gabriel answered.

“Okay, two hours to get there, two hours to come back,” she counted. “In other words, David would have enough time to drive back to the ranch and then back up the mountain without you noticing?”

“I… yeah… maybe, but I cannot believe that my brother is capable of doing something like that,” Gabriel almost cried.

In another nearby room, Gibson was interrogating Grandpa Joe tirelessly. The old man was repeating and repeating that he knew nothing about the killings, but Gibson didn’t give up. The FBI agent continued the interview for another hour, but it was obvious that he wasn’t going to say anything different.

Both Kimble men had been interrogated tirelessly, pushed beyond their breaking point, and yet they got nothing. Asa felt defeated and Gibson wasn’t looking any better. It was a lose lose situation with no possible positive outcome.

“Gabriel, for one last time, tell me if you know something about the bombing?” Asa tried one last time.

“I don’t know anything,” Gabriel repeated. “But, if you want I can get you to the high pasture camp to find the rest of my family. You will see then that we have nothing to do with all this.”

“Okay, we will start first thing in the morning,” Asa confirmed and went out of the room to let Gibson know about the new plans.

“I will get Grandpa Joe to the nearby hotel and will leave an agent to watch him, you deal with Gabriel,” Gibson said as if that was the most natural thing in the world and walked away from her.

Asa watched him go and thought about what he had just said. “You deal with Gabriel… you deal with Gabriel…” Her mind continued to supply her with images from the previous hours and how she hasn’t been able to deal with Gabriel.

Following agent Gibson’s example, Asa Clark took Gabriel to the nearby hotel, which the FBI was using as headquarters at the moment. She put him into a secure room and went to make sure that the windows were locked and that he had no way to escape the place.

“I am not going to run, Asa,” the man spoke from the door and the young woman watched him closely and locked the door.

Walking further inside the room and stopping right next to her, Gabriel smiled down at her, showing teeth and everything. Asa turned five shades of red from just standing near him and turned away. “What are you doing?” She asked, feeling vulnerable and weak by just being in the same room as him.

The man slid elegantly on the bed, taking his hands out of his pockets, staring at Asa, as if willing her to speak. “I wanted to speak to you,” he paused, still smiling. “Why did you do this to me?” His words were in a complete contrast with the smile still shining on his lips and that scared Asa.

“What?” Asa asked, unable to understand him. “What did I do to you?”

“You came to my house, you pretended not to know me, you seduced me and here you are standing in front of me as an FBI agent,” the man enlisted all the points of their encounter. “Did I forget something?”

“I seduced you… I pretended…” Asa repeated some of the words he had thrown in her face.

“Listen Asa,” Gabriel signed exasperated. “You are not the first woman to come after me, but what you did was really exceptional. No one, not even my
worst enemy, had hurt me the way you did.”

“You really think so little of me?” Asa asked softly, before standing up and walking to the window. “I suppose that telling you now that I did nothing of the sort will do nothing to change your mind. Anyway, you are free now, I want nothing from you…”

“Not so easy, dear,” Gabriel looked angry now. “I thought that you wanted me to take you to my brother?”

“I see,” the young woman said, tears filling her eyes. “It seems to me that you haven’t seen the most important thing of all. Can’t you at least imagine that I might be innocent?”

“No, but I can imagine something else…” Gabriel said sarcastically and leaned in, dropping a small kiss on her lips, before tugging her down on the bed and covering her body with his own.