“You still at the office?” I asked.
“Sleep’s overrated,” she replied.
“I’m on my way,” I said, hanging up.
I got out of bed, dressed quickly, brushed the whisky from my mouth and left the room. I thought about waking Justine, but after the previous evening I wasn’t sure why I wanted her with me. For her professional insight? Or for something far more personal? It irritated me that she had been right.
I left Justine and Sci sleeping and took a cab from the Nomad to the Madison Building. They could follow me later in the Private staff car.
When I arrived, the office was almost deserted, save for a couple of investigators who were at their desks in their sweat-soaked jogging gear. It was a Sunday, but the Parker case meant we’d called people in. The two early-morning joggers stiffened when they saw me, and we exchanged greetings as I hurried through.
I found Mo-bot in one of the conference rooms. Her gear was spread across a large table along with discarded Chinese takeout boxes, files and handwritten notes. She sat in front of the laptop we’d recovered.
“Morning,” Mo-bot said. “I cracked the computer. I also found out who owns the building where we found it. Mahmood Hannan, a Lebanese national who’s been living in America for twenty years.”
“We need to speak to him,” I said.
“I already have. At three forty-seven this morning. He was eager to talk when I threatened to set the IRS on him. Said the warehouse was rented by a company in Belize. The same one that chartered the chopper the assassin used to escape, Antares Futures and Investments.”
I was stunned by the revelation. Karl Parker had led us to a building rented by the people who’d killed him.
“See if you can track down the owners of the Belize corporation,” I said.
Mo-bot nodded and turned the laptop to face me. “There’s some interesting stuff on here.” She opened a text document. “This was in a folder marked personal.”
I read the document, which amounted to a single sentence.
Sometimes the only way out is a dead end.
KP
It was a bleak message that could have been a suicide note or an admission he’d known he’d been targeted for death. But if he’d known he was a target, why hadn’t he done anything about it?
“I also found this,” Mo-bot said.
She opened another document from the same folder which contained a web link. She clicked the link and went to an MSNBC page that told the story of Robert Carlyle, a Washington, D.C., financier and fixer. Carlyle had died less than two weeks ago in a single-vehicle car accident. According to the article, his Mercedes S-Class had come off the road at speed and wrapped itself around a tree.
“Is Karl saying this incident is linked to his death?” I asked. “That was my guess too. I haven’t found anything to connect Carlyle to Mr. Parker, but I’ll keep looking,” Mo-bot said. “There’s something else.”
She switched back to the document and scrolled down the next page until she came to another link, which took us to the executive biography of Elizabeth Connor, the owner of the New York Tribune, one of the city’s most successful newspapers. Connor was a reclusive billionaire and a clear-cut member of the 1 percent.
“Any idea how she’s involved?” Mo-bot asked.
I studied Connor’s photograph and tried to get inside my friend’s head. “I think Karl Parker might have just identified the next target.”
“There was one other thing on the machine,” Mo-bot said, switching to the explorer window.
She opened a text file called “Morgan.txt.”
The message was short and simple.
You can’t trust the cops. You can’t trust the Bureau.
You can’t trust the Agency. Your life is in danger.
CHAPTER 28
I WAS ON my way out of the office when I ran into Sci and Justine.