Direct evidence, p.2
Direct Evidence, page 2
Despite their official-looking uniforms and outstanding police car replicas, these were thugs.
They weren’t arresting him—they were kidnapping him.
For ransom, no doubt.
Stu began to struggle and started to drag his heels.
“Help!” he yelled. “Help me!”
He whipped his head back and forth and caught several bewildered looks from the uniformed impostors.
“What are you doing?” Stu shouted. “Let me—“
The man behind him raised his hands up the small of his back and Stu grunted in pain.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Stu replied with another call for help but this time it was a weak, pathetic plea.
“Help?” the man in front of him, the first to point his gun, repeated. “Yeah, you’re going to need it. You’re going to need a lot of help.” His eyes not so subtly flicked to Stu’s mansion. “But I bet you can afford it. I bet you can afford a whole team of lawyers. A fucking army. And like I said, you’re going to need them.”
Whether it was the shock wearing off, or the man’s words, Stu suddenly changed his mind. These were cops—real cops—and he was being arrested. But this revelation brought with it no overwhelming sense of comfort.
If anything, it exacerbated his confusion.
“For… for what? Why am I under arrest?”
The cop in front of him held up his hand, indicating for the officer behind Stu to stop leading him forward. He did, but the angry cop didn’t lower Stu’s raised wrists, and the dull ache that ran from palm to past his elbow remained.
“You hear that? He’s playing the fool.”
This was met with a smattering of snickers from the other officers.
“You have to tell me,” Stu pleaded. “You’re required to tell me why you’re arresting me.”
A smirk appeared on the cop’s leathery face.
“Okay, okay, play dumb. Good. That means no plea deal.” He made a show of looking around dramatically and then raised his voice loud enough for every cop and nosy neighbor in a half-mile radius to overhear. “Stu Barnes, you are under arrest for the murder of Jake Hollister. You have the right to remain silent…”
Chapter 3
Tate Abernathy watched Floyd walk slowly up the steps to Grassroots Recovery. When the man was halfway to the double doors, he stopped and gripped the railing.
“Go,” Tate urged from inside his car. “Go, Floyd, get your ass inside.”
He was clenching his jaw so hard it had started to ache. He forced himself to relax, all the while silently trying to convince Floyd to go inside. Tate was an expert, second only to his ex-partner FBI Agent Constantine Striker, at convincing people to do what needed to be done. Perps had on many an occasion claimed that Tate had coerced or manipulated them, but he was by the book… mostly. And this was why he insisted on in-person meetings, whereas the rest of the world had shifted to communicating digitally.
The truth was that he liked Floyd—liked him a great deal. And it was about that time—time for him to start passing on his knowledge from years in the Bureau to someone else. Floyd fit that bill—he fit it perfectly. And what he’d told his partner was also true, albeit with a flair for the dramatic. Tate had seen many an agent go down a harrowing path and while Floyd might be too young and naive to find himself at the bottom of a bottle or addicted to pills, he was also too young to throw his life away. One of the things Tate enjoyed most about Floyd’s company is that he could fuck around with the man without worrying about him taking offense. A rare quality in the age of ultimate sensitivity. But when Tate put his foot down, Floyd knew that he meant business. So, if Floyd changed his mind, Tate would live up to his word: he would go with his partner to see Director Hampton.
Then he would tell the director in no uncertain terms that it was his experienced opinion that Floyd Montgomery wasn’t the right man for the job.
It was no secret that Jeremy Stitts and Chase Adams had vouched for Floyd, and this was the main reason he’d been accepted into the Academy. The man had done the rest himself—clap, clap—but both Stitts’ and Chase’s careers had taken unexpected turns. They held less sway now, and, besides, Tate trumped them both when it came to experience.
Hampton would listen to him, he was sure of it.
The reality was, if Floyd didn’t get help, his PTSD and other holdups would grow more debilitating. Maybe not this year, or the next, but in three or four? These issues would cost either Tate or Floyd or both of them their lives.
So, yeah, if Floyd didn’t open that door, this would most likely be his last day as an FBI Agent.
“Just walk up the fuckin’ stairs.”
When Floyd finally took another step, and then another, Tate felt some of the tension in his shoulders loosen. Motion is lotion, as they say, and Floyd seemed lubricated by these two steps. In no time, the man made it to the door and opened it.
Still, Tate watched intently. The truth was, even though they had been partners for months now, he really didn’t know that much about Floyd. He’d read the man’s file, of course, and he also knew what Floyd had done for Chase and Stitts before being admitted to the Academy.
But reading something and experiencing it in person were two very different things, especially for someone with Tate’s talents. Usually, Tate could classify a person into one of several categories within minutes of meeting them and asking a few seemingly benign but specifically pointed questions. But Floyd proved more difficult than most. This, Tate had decided, was likely because of the man’s unusual route to the FBI. To be fair, without Chase’s and Stitts’ intervention, the likelihood of Floyd getting anywhere close to becoming an FBI Agent was virtually zero.
And then there was Chase.
If Floyd was a puzzle, Chase was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma—thank you, Winston Churchill. And the two of them, despite their many glaring differences, were inexorably and inextricably linked.
But he would get to the bottom of both of them.
This, like his assertion to Floyd about the consequences of not entering Grassroots, was a promise. But as he watched, the former ultimatum became irrelevant: Floyd Montgomery set foot in the recovery center. Still, even after the doors closed behind the tall, lean man, Tate waited. This was torture for him—sitting around, doing nothing—but he endured a full five minutes.
And after those five minutes, Tate nodded to himself and finally drove off.
He hoped that the next time he saw Floyd, he could once again tease him as a friend and partner.
As he drove, Tate’s mind wandered back to his last case, which, even at forty-seven years of age, almost half of which had been with the Bureau, was perhaps the most bizarre he’d ever been a part of. And that was why he needed someone like Floyd. Malcolm Gladwell might have come up with the idea that ten thousand hours were necessary to become an expert in any one subject, but Tate often wondered how many hours it took to become jaded and blasé.
Whatever that number was, he was close to it, if he hadn’t passed it already. So, while others might look at Floyd’s naivety as a weakness, Tate did not. To him, it was the opposite: it was a weapon in the same way that fresh eyes could infuse life into old ideas and reinvigorate a dying business. And was there a corporation that was more in need of an influx of new talent than the FBI?
Tate didn’t return to his office, and while he actually had an upcoming appointment with Director Hampton, unrelated, that too was pushed to the sidelines. Instead, he drove across the Quantico campus and parked in front of the lecture hall building. After flashing his credentials to the security guard at the door, one of the few whom Tate didn’t know personally, he entered the building and went straight to Lecture Hall 3.
His hope had been to arrive prior to the start of the class, but Floyd had dragged his feet—literally—and as Tate quietly opened the door, he already heard a commanding voice funneling up from the front of the room.
There were only a handful of empty seats, most of which were near the back. This suited Tate just fine, and he sidled into one of them next to a woman who looked to be all of eleven years old.
He smirked when he saw her notepad; it was like the Necronomicon, what with words extending beyond the margins of the page and intricate diagrams scribbled in all available empty space.
“Any good?” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
“Are you kidding me? Do you know who that is?”
Tate craned his neck forward and then alternated squinting his eyes. There was a man with brown hair at a podium, perfectly coiffed hair, bouncy yet controlled, and he was leaning on a cane as he delivered his lecture in a calm, authoritative tone.
“Oscar Wilde?”
The woman looked at him and Tate was genuinely worried that she was about to start reading from her book of the dead.
“No,” she spat with disdain, “that’s Jeremy Stitts.”
“Ah, right.” Tate sighed. “Never heard of him.”
But of course, he had, and Tate Abernathy leaned back in his chair and listened to the man as he educated these young recruits on what it meant to be an FBI profiler.
And maybe—just maybe—he hoped to pick up a pointer or two along the way.
Chapter 4
The constant rattling that filled the small interview room annoyed Stu Barnes. What annoyed him more than the sound was the fact that it was his leg making it. Or, more precisely, the noise the cuffs that were attached to each of his ankles and then passed through a welded metal loop on the floor made.
But as hard as he tried, Stu couldn’t get his legs to stop shaking.
He’d been waiting for no more than ten minutes for his lawyer, for the man he paid an annual retainer of over half a million dollars, to come through the door and tell the guard to remove his cuffs and tell him, Stu Barnes, that they were leaving. And then the overpriced suit could continue saying how this was all a stupid mistake, and then threaten to sue. Stu, just happy to be leaving the Kanab County holding cell, would then dissuade his lawyer from taking any further legal action.
He would, however, release a statement through his many media outlets explaining that this was all in error and for the public to accept that cops were just people, too. Eventually, his neighbors would forget, shareholders would cease to care, and he’d be back to sleeping in his bed and waking to the sun shining on his face.
That was the plan.
Simple, surely, but that was all Stu, never a particularly creative person in the first place, could come up with given that nobody had given him any details. They took him to booking, fingerprinted him, and snapped a mug shot, which would eventually find its way on a lesser-known TMZ site, and then guided him to this holding cell.
A red light above the door suddenly flicked on at the same time a loud, archaic buzzing sound filled the room. A second after, the door opened and a man in a bespoke suit stepped in.
Stu instinctively rose to his feet and then quickly sat back down when the chains that bound his wrists to the metal table dug into his skin.
“Will—Will, thank God you’re here,” Stu said dryly. He cleared his throat and watched as his lawyer said something to the guard before the latter closed the door behind him. “No, no,” Stu protested, “don’t close the door. Get him to take these cuffs off my wrist.”
Still, Will Porter. Esq. said nothing. The lawyer was approximately Stu’s age, and this was far from everything they had in common. They had similar shocks of neatly trimmed silver hair and the same tall, lean frame. The major difference was that Stu had a salt-and-pepper five o’clock shadow, one that he kept even when he wasn’t in prison, whereas Will Porter was completely clean-shaven.
Oh, and roughly a billion and a half dollars in net worth.
“Will, what the fuck is going on?”
Stu didn’t like the silence, nor did he like the fact that Will had a briefcase with him. He liked it less when said brown leather case was laid on the table and his lawyer took up residence in the seat across from him.
“I don’t-I don’t understand. This is a mistake.” Stu once again tried to raise his arms with the same net result: sore wrists.
Will licked his lips and finally addressed his client.
“Stu, I’m sorry I took so long—I was reviewing tapes with Detective Tolliver. I believe you met him?”
Stu shook his head.
“He was the one who made the arrest,” Will explained.
In his mind, Stu pictured the short man with the mustache, the one in plain clothes who had held the gun at him and then shouted that he was under arrest for the murder of a man he never even heard of.
“Tapes?” Stu shook his head. “What do you mean, tapes? This is a misunderstanding, a mistaken identity thing.” He lifted his hands again, this time more cautiously. “Will, get these fucking cuffs off me and get me the fuck out of here.”
Will leaned forward.
“Stu, I’m your counsel. Anything you say in this room,” he waved a finger above his head, “is privileged. It can’t be recorded. That being said, I think it’s in your best interest to remain calm. You don’t want them knowing that you’re rattled.”
Stu was incredulous. No, incredulity was an insufficient noun to describe his state of mind.
Have I been transported to an alternate dimension? Have I been zapped from my home and taken to an alien planet where nothing makes sense? Where people look and sound like humans, but clearly aren’t speaking the same fucking language?
“Rattled?” Will leaned forward even further but Stu wasn’t about to be interrupted. “Of course, I’m rattled. I was getting into my car when these assholes came and threw me to the ground, claiming that I murdered someone I don’t even know. So, yeah, I’m fucking rattled.” Stu bared his teeth and pulled his hands up so hard that blood started to dot his wrists.
“Calm down, Stu. Please. I’m trying my best to explain what’s going on here, but you need to calm down.”
Stu knew Will, had known him for many years. The man was a corporate lawyer by trade, but when asked who he wanted to call, Stu hadn’t hesitated.
Because any lawyer, someone who just passed the bar yesterday, could get him out of this mistaken identity case.
Besides, Will was already on the payroll.
Stu took a deep breath, closed his eyes, sucked in a huge breath, and then exhaled loudly. When he opened his eyes again, he half expected the nightmare to be over and that he would be back in his bed. Within moments, the blinds would detect the sunrise and open and he would start his day all over again. He would do the same workout, eat the same breakfast, and drink the same coffee.
Only, this time around, nobody would arrest him when he was getting into his car.
But no.
Stu was still in the musty smelling holding cell with Will Porter staring at him.
“I just want to repeat what I said: anything you discuss here today or anytime we meet is privileged. Do you understand what that means?”
Stu nodded, but the lawyer being a lawyer felt the need to explain anyway.
“You can tell me anything, and it can never be used against you.”
What could be used against me?
Stu’s mind raced, thinking back to all of his business dealings. Amassing the amount of wealth that he had over the years, which had ballooned from 252 million to over $1.4 billion, meant making a lot of enemies. And it also meant that not everything had been done above board.
Nothing criminal… well, nothing that criminal. Nothing this criminal.
Nothing like murder.
“I need you to tell me that you understand.”
Stu looked skyward.
“I get it, I get it. Now please, tell me what the fuck is going on, Will. Please.”
Will took a deep breath.
“This is not a mistake, Stu. This is no clerical error and no mistaken identity. You are being charged with Jake Hollister’s murder.”
“Who? I—I don’t even know who that is.” Stu shook his head in disbelief. “I’m being framed. That’s—that’s the only explanation. Someone was pissed off because I bought their business on the cheap or because I put their business under. I am being framed.”
That was the only thing that made any sort of sense.
But who?
Who had he pissed off that badly that they would set him up for murder.
The first two people who came to mind were the software thieves in New York—Connery Sinclair and Kevin Park. But Connery was dead, and Kevin was, for now at least, a man enjoying his freedom.
If not them, then who?
“You need to be honest with me, Stu.”
Stu once again stared at his longtime lawyer and friend.
“I am being honest with you, Will. I don’t know who Jake Hollister is—at least, I don’t think so. The name doesn’t ring a bell. But I’ll one thing for sure: I didn’t kill him. Jesus.”
There was something in Will’s face that perturbed Stu.
What was it, exactly?
Confusion? Uncertainty? Perplexity?
It had to be one of them because it sure as hell couldn’t be disbelief.
“Will? Why do I get the idea that you don’t believe me?” Stu asked, his anger fleeing him.
“It’s not my job to believe you, Stu. But if you’re not—“
“Cut the bullshit. Stop with all this legal talk, this privileged information, this, ‘it’s not my job to believe you, shit’. You don’t believe me, and I want to know why.”
Will sighed and the man started to unlock his briefcase.
“You didn’t let me finish. I don’t know if I believe you, Stu, but to be honest, it’s either I don’t believe you or I don’t believe my own eyes.”
Stu squinted, not understanding.
“What?”
Will pulled out an iPad and turned it on. Then he spun it around to face Stu.
“Watch—watch and you’ll see. And what you’re going to see is you. You’re gonna see yourself hovering over Jake Hollister and shooting the man in the head.”
