Black Ghost Read online

  Taylor hesitated. “I don’t remember.”

  “So, it was a little more than baseball.”

  “Sorry, sweetheart. I just can’t remember.”

  Caroline pulled some transcripts from her briefcase. “Hang on... let’s see... here it is. You told Bryson right before he was murdered, ‘That might not be the best idea.’ I’m just curious why you would give that advice? For that matter, how can you give that advice if you didn’t know why he called?”

  “You’re playin’ with my words, darlin’.”

  “I’m quoting you verbatim.”

  The man rose. “I think this interview’s over.”

  Caroline persisted. “If you’re feeling guilty about the senator’s murder, just get it off your chest. It’s going to come out anyway.”

  Taylor’s wife poked her head into the room. “You alright, darling?”

  “Just fine, honey,” Taylor smiled as he lifted his glass, “Great batch of tea.”

  Taylor’s wife smiled and left the room.

  “Mr. Taylor,” said Caroline, “does your sweet wife know about little Bubba?”

  “Ex-scyooze me?”

  Mack put his hand up. “Um, what my partner means is—”

  “What I mean is we know you can lead us to who killed Bryson, you tell us now you have a chance not to be locked up for the rest of your life.

  Taylor’s face reddened to a burn.

  “Tell us who you are protecting, or you’re going to be getting it from a big Bubba in prison,” Caroline said matter-of-factly.

  “Ahh, poppycock!” Taylor said, “you both need to get your prissified California assess out of my house before I call your boss’s boss and get you fired.”

  Bubba Taylor left the room, muttering curses under his breath.

  Caroline looked at Mack. “Too forward?”

  Mack grinned in return. “Nope. I think that was just forward enough.”

  18

  She needed it bad.

  She was sure Bubba had incriminating emails on his computer. She needed to see them.

  Caroline stared at the screen of her laptop; cool caution and furious zeal were warring for dominance over her conscience. Her finger hovered over the enter key.

  Then a voice in her head spoke plainly. It said: This is wrong.

  It was right. Yes, this was against the law. Yes, this was unethical, and an absolute career-ender for a Federal agent.

  Hadn’t Hoover himself done stuff like this? Wasn’t it all in the name of the greater good? Because roads paved with good intentions never went anywhere bad… She sighed and rubbed her brow.

  Of course, she knew she could accomplish all this on the up and up. Two words: administrative subpoena. But the red tape. And Taylor would be notified. And Taylor had some pull, politically speaking. He could—and certainly would—counter with a hit that had the potential of ruining her: one phone call to some media outlet during a slow news cycle.

  Do the American people know their tax money is paying the salary of a woman who once let a child-raping murderer shamble free? Coming soon to a neighborhood near you and your sister, courtesy of Caroline Foxx, superhumanitarian!

  Caroline’s phone rang. She knew who it was. She took a long breath, and answered. “Mack, hey. Just taking a walk. Be back at the hotel in a bit.”

  “All right. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t doing something stupid, like casing out Taylor’s house,” he joked.

  You know me so well. Caroline glanced around the lobby, wondering if Mack was watching her. “That’s funny. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  Caroline hung up, hating herself for lying to Mack. She felt sick at the thought of losing her partner’s trust. But she wasn’t going to wait for another murder for their next clue.

  On Gmail’s login page, with Taylor’s Gmail address already typed in as the user ID, she pressed enter requesting to have the verification code to obtain a new password texted to Taylor’s cell phone.

  Her heart quickened and a hot flash rushed into her neck as she masked her caller ID and texted Taylor this message:

  This is a message from the Google Accounts Security Center. There has been unauthorized activity on your account. Please reply with your verification code.

  Within ten seconds, Taylor texted the verification code to her. She entered it into his account and created a new password.

  On Taylor’s email page, she went to the search bar and typed in ‘Gary Bryson’.

  A single email came up.

  The email was addressed to the senator, and in the body was: Gentry Jacobson will be a good contact for that type of work.

  What does that mean? Caroline thought. She scanned for the email that Bryson had sent to Taylor to see what his question was. She came up with nothing.

  Not wanting to be detected, Caroline logged out then sent a follow up text to Taylor:

  Your temporary password had been set to UkM633E99%kgTN8. Please log in immediately and change your password.

  Three hours later, she and Mack were on an airplane back to LA. Once Mack had dozed off, she popped open her laptop.

  Who are you, Gentry? she thought, opening the FBI database and searching for the name.

  A file popped up. Gentry Jacobson was a known hacker with a rap sheet full of minor cybercrimes.

  “Gotcha,” she said, as she stared at a photo of a young man who had “computer geek” written all over him.

  No APBs, she thought. An APB would get back to Bender. And Bender would ask for cause.

  Thankfully, she could perform a search and surveillance on Jacobson and justify it as an “assessment”—the FBI’s catch-all term for, well, doing what she was doing. As long as she had authorization to investigate Bubba Taylor, she had authorization to look at anyone she deemed relevant to the case. What’s more, she could do it for thirty days without reporting it to Bender.

  Before thirty days was up, she would either find the smoking gun or close the assessment.

  19

  Downtown Bigfork’s cozy Main Street teemed with mom-and-pop shops, places that had been in business forever and were truly family-owned and operated. Children happily ran around while parents shopped or sipped coffees, and the whole area had a feeling of normalcy and nostalgia hard to find in most cities. Bic could almost smell apple pie and the American dream in the air.

  He stood outside The Corner, an appropriately named corner coffee shop, sipping his black and two sugars while watching Larry and Sharon Tukenson window shop. They usually had one bodyguard with them, but today two G-man types trailed behind them, glancing over everything at least twice.

  Bic blew on his coffee, assuming the role of the man passing through. The early afternoon sun now highlighted the pure white veins of snow climbing their way from the massive base of the mountain to its white cap—a stunning, serene sight.

  The Tukensons entered the nearby flower shop. Both G-men paused outside, scanning to see if anyone was coming before they followed. Once everyone was in, Bic made his move.

  He sauntered into the shop, noting Sharon and Larry waiting at the counter. The two bodyguards turned to Bic, but he quickly bent over to inspect a white bucket of long-stemmed red roses on the floor.

  He could feel the bodyguard’s eyes on him, but when the florist came out from the back with a grandiose centerpiece arrangement of wildflowers, Sharon’s excited remark on how they would be “perfect for each table” pulled the guard’s attention away.

  Staring at the roses, Bic recalled returning from Vietnam with a dozen and seeing Chandra, the only family he knew, hooked up to all sorts of machines. Her cheeks were sunken and when she wasn’t focusing on someone it was like her eyes were empty. All that was left was a wisp of the woman she had been when he’d left. Chandra, age twenty-seven, diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma, wheezed as the choking tumors ran away with her lungs; and her life.

  The two had grown up together—without pare
nts, with very little food, never a present from their foster family on Christmas or a birthday—but none of that mattered. They had the love that they shared ever since the day she had pulled him out of that closet as a little boy.

  She was his big sister, and she meant everything to him.

  Chandra had convinced him to leave the Chicago projects to join the Marine Corps. He had lied about his age and escaped the projects, escaped hell, because of her. After training for several months he’d been sent off to Vietnam.

  The jungles gave vent to the deep dark rage his father had given him. He possessed a godlike ability to kill Viet Cong.

  Chandra’s cancer had metastasized. Each day there was less of her. Medicaid wouldn’t pay for any procedure with a less-than-favorable chance of saving her.

  Bic hadn’t felt so helpless since he watched his mama die.

  But that was the day he met Chandra’s four-year-old daughter, Gracie, for the first time. When he held that little child in his arms and looked into her big brown eyes, he swore that he would do whatever was needed to get Chandra the $100,000 she needed.

  He couldn’t even get a loan for that much, despite his military standing—and the job he had taken at a local factory wouldn’t begin to pay for the treatment. Not knowing what to do, he contacted his buddy Tony from his old platoon, told him about Chandra, and asked for his help.

  Tony arranged a deal that paid Bic the hundred grand upfront. Within two weeks, he found himself on an apparent suicide mission in the jungles of Colombia. His first contract kill was to take out a heavily-guarded drug kingpin.

  Bic snapped out of his reverie as he walked toward Larry and Sharon with a single red rose in hand. Bic reached into his coat pocket just feet away from the two. Neither of them noticed, but one of the bodyguards did. He rushed toward Bic, but stopped abruptly once Bic got out his wallet and placed the rose on the counter.

  Bic paid for the flower and left. After exiting the shop, he pulled out his phone and confirmed he had synced his phone with Larry’s, and would be able to track his first target’s location from here on in.

  20

  Gentry Jacobson sat at the desk in his lavish downtown San Francisco hotel room, his fingers dancing across his laptop as he encrypted the list he had created for Tidwell onto a flash drive. With each keystroke, he reveled in masterminding Tidwell’s downfall. He glanced briefly at his GoPro-style video camera, then suddenly felt sluggish. He took a hit of coke already lined up off the desk. A rush of speed raced through him. “Yeah. Time for some hacker vengeance mofo.” He was invincible now and got back to work.

  Two hours later, Jacobson heard a knock on his hotel room door. After he verified the man’s identity through the peephole, Jacobson invited Anthony Parelli into the room. Parelli, a dark-haired, physically imposing, well-dressed mobster in his late fifties, didn’t look a day over forty thanks to his smooth olive skin.

  Parelli entered the room slowly, vigilantly. Though one of today’s most sophisticated high-level dealmakers in the criminal underworld, Parelli never forgot his roots as a Brooklyn enforcer; and he never lost his instincts. He specialized in making multi-million-dollar deals by getting politicians in his back pocket. He had learned years ago how profitable dirty politicians were, and how accessible the world’s biggest money pot was: the US tax dollar. The beauty of it was that there was no accountability. Take 50 million dollars from someone on the street, there’s all-out war, with death and destruction everywhere before the dust finally settles. But take 50 million dollars from the government and nothing happens, except another cause is created, and then they take their own 50 million.

  Jacobson welcomed Parelli into the suite, hastily locking the door behind him.

  Parelli’s dark, shark-like eyes and broad, Italian-suit-covered shoulders would intimidate any sane man, but Gentry felt no fear; they were on the same team, after all. The coke lined up on the coffee table, which Parelli glanced at with brief disgust, made Gentry feel unbeatable.

  “It keeps me plugged in for hours—nothing else does the trick,” the hacker explained.

  “You got what I’ve come for?” Parelli’s heavy New York accent emphasized his desire to get right down to business.

  Jacobson tossed the flash drive to Parelli.

  “Is this everything?” Parelli asked.

  “Yup. Every file, name, date, photo, and account number.” The hacker smiled wryly. “I hope you burn that dirtbag Tidwell at the stake.”

  Parelli smirked as he pulled out a little device and plugged the drive into its port.

  “It’s encrypted, but as soon as I have the money, you get the key to unlock its secrets.”

  Parelli fiddled on his phone for a moment. When he was done, he put the phone in his pocket and there was an instant knock at the door. “That’ll be your payment,” he said.

  Triumphant, Jacobson rushed to answer the door. His arrogance turned to utter terror once he recognized the bushy mustache on the other side. It was the man who had broken into his house.

  Phil Utah shoved Jacobson back into the room and quickly locked the door behind him.

  The hacker looked around in a panic.

  “Huh,” said Parelli. “You two know each other?”

  “If anything happens to me,” said Jacobson, “the names will get out. The last thing you want is a bunch of loose ends.”

  Both men stared at the hacker.

  “Son, I couldn’t have said it better myself.” said Utah, stepping forward, gun raised.

  The hacker held up his hands. “Now hang on just a second. I want you guys to say hi to my YouTube subscribers.”

  “Huh?” said Utah.

  “Say cheese to the world, guys.” The hacker nodded toward the GoPro camera concealed in the corner of the room.

  The men turned their gazes to the camera, then back to Jacobson.

  “Don’t believe me? Turn on the TV.”

  Utah turned on the flat-screen TV on top of the long dresser and saw himself. He turned to the camera and back again to be sure.

  Jacobson stumbled over to his laptop. “You old timers just don’t get it. This is the real power in today’s world, and guess what, you can tell that donkey Tidwell the price just went up to a million.”

  The hacker stared at the two men, sure he had outplayed them, until the TV screen dissolved to black. Jacobson’s hacker mind was about to shift into automatic troubleshooter mode, when the TV became clear again. There now was the image of John Alfred Tidwell streamed live on the screen, his expression congested with fury.

  The kid immediately tried to counter, typing commands to regain control, but it was hopeless—the hacker had been hacked. His laptop screen went black. The processor was fried.

  Jacobson stood frozen with horror, trying avoiding Tidwell’s gaze on the TV screen.

  Utah holstered his gun and motioned to the flash drive. “This everything?”

  “Don’t think for a second I haven’t made a backup plan,” said Jacobson fearfully. “If you kill me, it will all come out.”

  “What do you have, son?” said Parelli. “Names on a list? Earlier today, we leaked a story with a bunch of names, some on the list, but with others mixed in—all the names, their companies, their net worth. A Forbes fluff piece that people will eat up. Whatever you have will only be adding to the white noise. In other words, you lose.”

  “You look a little sick, son,” Utah said with a dead stare. “Why don’t you take a nice hit to shore up that courage?”

  Jacobson thought for a moment as he eyed the little pile of coke on the desk, then buried his face in it and took a big snort.

  “Atta boy,” Utah said, “now lay on the floor.”

  Parelli donned a pair of thick, puffy snow gloves, then grabbed the hacker, pinning his arms to his sides. Jacobson struggled in coke-fueled terror but couldn’t break free from the man’s iron grip.

  Utah pulled a bag of white powder out of a small l
eather case. He added the white powder to the pile on the desk and cut the two substances together with a credit card. He then pulled out a large prepared syringe and walked over to the hacker.

  “What are you doing?” Jacobson screamed, struggling anew to break Parelli’s grip.

  “You need to be careful whose office you barge into,” Utah said.

  He pulled the hacker’s T-shirt up. The hacker yelled, “Please, no,” but pinned down by a man twice his size, it was no use. Utah plunged the large needle into his chest and emptied its contents.

  Gentry Jacobson felt an agonizing ball of fire surge through chest. His heart pumped furiously. Something inside him squeezed...

  Parelli released Jacobson’s motionless arms and grabbed the flash drive from the table, putting it in his pocket.

  Utah took out some super glue, cleaned the little drop of blood off the hacker’s chest with an alcohol wipe, blew it dry, then dabbed a tiny drop of glue onto the needle hole, sealing it shut. Parelli briefly inspected the work.

  “You think he was bluffing?” Utah asked as he stood.

  “No, but neither was I. I’ll have my people shopping around. We’ll flush out any other cockroaches connected to this schmuck,” Parelli replied.

  “Do me a favor, Parelli,” Utah said sternly. “Let me know if there are any other loose ends you decide to tie up.”

  “Something on your mind, Mister DEA agent?” Parelli goaded.

  Utah snapped back, “Bryson and his lawyer is what. You should have consulted me on that.”

  “This may come as a shock to your delicate sensibilities, friend, but I don’t require authorization when a guy needs to go down fast.”

  Utah glared, saying nothing.

  “I take exterminating rats very seriously. You let them live too long and they multiply. Plus, they squeak.”

  “Your guy was sloppy,” said Utah. “Bryson’s death attracted attention. Federal attention.”

  Parelli shrugged. “Don’t matter if the roaches flash a badge. They still die when you crush ’em.”