It was just after 11 a.m. and Special Agent Angela Hawk of the FBI stood in the infamous Washington State drizzle beside a small pond. She watched the fervent bustle of the uniformed workers while she waited for the medical examiner to release the body. The conversation that had led her to this spot occurred thirty minutes earlier while she sat in her cubical at the Port of Vancouver USA. The stymied investigation had left her angry with the belief that she had lost her edge.
“Agent Hawk!” she had shouted into the mouth piece, startled by the sudden interruption.
“Officer Palmero, Vancouver PD.”
“Yes, Officer?” Angela asked and felt the heavy weight of dread drive into her stomach. Her unofficial intuition told her what was about to come next.
“You put a BOLO out on Maria Caldron?”
“Yes,” she said. “Do you have news?”
“We found Ms. Caldron’s car partially submerged in a pond. There’s a woman’s body inside.”
“Damn that bastard,” she had said as she hung up the telephone. Maria had been her only witness and now it looked as though she had been killed because of it.
Just before Angela arrived at the site, a tow truck had pulled the car out of the pond and even now, the swamp water flowed like small waterfalls from its recently submerged cavities. The truck’s driver leaned against his rig. He wore a yellow hooded slicker, puffed on a foul-smelling cigar, and scratched the three-day stubble on his jaw while he waited for the vehicle to be released.
Angela watched as the paramedics removed the remains of a woman from the driver’s seat of the minivan. They placed her with care on a gurney, slipped her inside a black body bag and then one of them began to zip it closed.
Angela stepped forward and held up her hand to signal stop. When the EMT paused just short of covering the woman’s face, Angela glanced toward the medical examiner. She neither spoke nor needed to.
“I’d estimate time of death to be three days,” he began, “but since she has been in the water, I won’t know for sure until I get her on my table. Judging from the hole in her temple, I‘d say the cause of death is a single GSW to the head. There is no exit wound, so I should be able to retrieve the slug.”
”There’s no ID in the car,” Officer Palmero interrupted, “but the plate is registered to Maria Caldron.”
Angela looked down into the face of the motionless woman in front of her. It was bloated and unrecognizable to most.
“I believe it’s her,” Angela said. She held back the tears of frustration that threatened to flow down her ruddy cheeks. Maria had been home with her three children earlier that the week when Angela interviewed her about the case. “Ms. Caldron has a small mole on the right side of her nose.” She pointed to the woman’s face. “That could be it there.”
I’m a decorated agent of the FBI, she thought, and I let a vital witness get in harm’s way. How can I be so stupid? Now I’ve orphaned her three kids and for what?
As the EMT closed the black body bag, Angela’s cell phone rang.
“Hawk,” she answered on the second ring.
“Agent Hawk? This is Detective Caesar Garcia of the LAPD. We met at a conference a couple of years ago.”
“Yes, I remember, how can I help?”
“Well, you’re the only FBI agent I know and, as I recall, you seemed to have your head screwed on straight. I think I’m working a case that falls into the FBI’s court, do you have a moment?”
“Well, the jury’s still out on where my head is,” she said as she watched the gurney with her witness’s remains slide into the back of the emergency vehicle. “I have a few minutes, though. Go on.”
As she walked back toward and then got into her government-issue black SUV, she listened to the detective as he briefed her on the Natalie Beaumont case. When he finished, she asked, “There’s more isn’t there?”
“Well …, yes,” he said with a hesitation Angela read into his tone.
“What is it detective?”
“Well, it turns out that Ms. Beaumont does a little acting and on Wednesday she had a scene with Ansell Parker. I was at Xandar Studios a couple hours ago and learned the identity of another one of the suspects. He was a stage hand on the set that day. His name is Rudy Valencia.”
“Rudy Valencia. Got it,” she said and wrote the name on a notepad she had taken from her pocket. “You said there were three suspects, have you been able to track down the third’s identity?”
“Not yet. All I know is Hank. I did find he may have done some contract work for Xandar Studios. Beyond that, no one has a last name or knows what contractor he works for. Whether he had been on the set the other day is another mystery at the moment. Mr. Valencia’s apparently kind of a loner at work. He didn’t have many friends at the studio and even if he did, most of them are on location now in Europe. I’m trying to generate new leads, so I’m on the way to his apartment now. I did try to get some intel on Mr. Alonso yesterday when his name first came to light, but I ran into a major case of amnesia in his neighborhood.”
“No doubt. You were right to call as this does fall in Federal jurisdiction, although not in mine as their last known location is two states away from me. But the FBI will take the lead from this point. I appreciate you turning it over to us.”
“If you don’t mind, since Ms. Beaumont is a local and it started down here, I’ll keep digging around.”
“I see no reason to expend resources down there when you seem to be on top of things.” She remembered his hesitation a few moments before and added, “Is there anything else”
“Well … there’s one more thing,” Caesar confessed.
“One more thing? What that, Detective Garcia?”
“At Xandar Studios, I interviewed Adelaide Masters-Leigh.”
“And who’s she?”
“An executive at the studio,” Caesar replied, “and, if I might say, someone who’s quite filled with her own importance.”
“Ah, and what did she have to say?”
“Well after threatening to haul her and Salvador Sliman, the director, to headquarters, she finally gave up Mr. Valencia’s name. In the process, Mr. Sliman, much to her chagrin, let it slip that Rudy is Ms. Masters-Leigh’s nephew, her sister’s kid.
“I gave this information,” he continued, “to a contact of mine at the Associated Press, who said they would run with the story. It’s on the wire now.”
“Hum, I’m not sure that was a good idea. They’re already running and as far as we know the girl’s still alive. If they see this in the press, they may panic.”
“Well, in hindsight, it may not have been the best move, but Ms. Masters-Leigh pushed my buttons and I, well—”
“Payback doesn’t make for the best police work.”
“I know,” Caesar said.
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
All
Rights Reserved
