Blindside - By Gj Moffat Page 0,78

reliable a source and I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet.’

Logan sat at the receptionist’s chair and grabbed a pen, twisting it in his free hand.

‘You’re jet-lagged and I’m up in the middle of the night,’ Irvine laughed. ‘We’re making a lot of sense.’

Logan put the pen down and ran his hand up, through his hair. He leaned back in the chair as the female agent came out into the reception area. She glanced at him as she walked past and went out to the elevators.

‘Where’s Alex?’ Irvine asked.

‘He’s locked in with the FBI chiefs and the cops right now talking about this stuff.’

‘How come you’re excluded?’

‘Nobody likes lawyers.’

‘I kind of like this one.’

He smiled. ‘Nice of you to say.’

‘Listen, I’m going to go back to bed. See if I can’t get some sleep before the alarm goes off. I expect I’ll be up to my neck in paperwork tomorrow. It’ll be a nightmare.’

‘Okay. I’ll see you when I get back.’

Irvine sat the phone handset down on the kitchen table and sipped at a cup of tea. It was comforting in the middle of the night when the darkest kind of man was still out there.

She thought about Frank Parker and his son. They were so secure in their place in the world. No matter how reasonable Parker seemed, or how desperately he wanted to be considered some kind of old-fashioned gentleman, he still ruled by violence. People died on his say. He sold drugs that ruined lives. And what now?

Soldiers turned drug dealers shot in the head.

People laundering drug money tortured and killed in their own homes.

Parker had shaken her with his visit. No doubt that had been part of his strategy too. Letting her know that it didn’t matter that she was a cop – he could still get to her whenever he wanted to. Business would be done on his terms.

She drained her cup, rinsed it in the sink and went upstairs to her room. She used to love getting into bed and pulling the quilt up to her chin, safe in the womb-like warmth. But tonight she couldn’t get warm, the cold ingrained in her bones.

And when she closed her eyes all she could see were the faces of the dead.

16

Hunter took his time explaining his investigation from start to finish, giving a lot more detail than he had to Cahill and Logan back at the police headquarters building. He spoke in depth about the information that the DEA had shared with him and the intercepted communications.

‘If Tim Stark was here he might be able to tell us if this Mexican had been in touch with Raines,’ Webb said when Hunter was finished.

‘Maybe he heard something and that’s when he put it all together,’ Cahill said. ‘And was going to get in touch with you, Detective Hunter.’

Webb nodded, looking thoughtful.

‘It’s plausible,’ he said. ‘But there’s absolutely nothing concrete to back it up, is there?’

‘No,’ Hunter said. ‘You’re right.’

‘But you’re going to do something about it, right?’ Cahill asked, feeling a little exasperated.

‘Of course,’ Webb answered. ‘We’re going to treat it as a line of inquiry. Try to find out if there really is a link.’

‘But it’s obvious.’

‘No,’ Hunter said. ‘I know it kind of sounds like it might be, but it’s not. Look at what we have. The only thing actually linking the two investigations is your e-mail. It might have been a reference to me, or it might have been something else altogether.’

‘And because Tim Stark is dead we can’t know for sure,’ Webb added. ‘So we have to treat it like any possible lead. Run it down properly.’

Cahill knew they were right, but still fought against it. He wanted Stark’s death to mean something. To lead somewhere.

‘So what now?’ he said.

Logan’s eyes were starting to close when a phone in the office rang. It pulled him from his near sleep, the ring tone slightly different from the other phones he had heard go off since he had been there.

Martinez got up from his desk and went to a phone on the wall next to the door out to the reception area. He spoke into it for a moment and listened for what seemed like a long time, though it was probably no more than a minute or so.

He hung the phone up without speaking again and went back to his desk. He spoke quietly to his partner, Ruiz, and they both put their suit jackets on and left the office in