Finally, the senior detective walked over to him. “You have some powerful friends. I’ve been instructed to let you return to your home and to take these two into custody. Apparently someone from the FBI will appear at the precinct office to question them later today. On a Sunday no less. Can you tell me what this is all about?”
“I wish I knew,” Jake said. He shook the hand of the detective, and then headed inside where a very distraught Karin waited with their daughter. As he walked up the sidewalk to his house, he noted that it was starting to drizzle again.
Chapter 2
Two days after the attempted kidnapping, Jake was on an early video call to Special Agents Carlson and Laney. Months before a secure link to FBI headquarters in Washington had been installed into his house so he could speak freely of matters best not overheard by others.
“I don’t think they know who hired them,” Susan Carlson said. “Both the police and a pair of our agents have interrogated them at length, and they haven’t disclosed anything useful. One even consented to a lie-detector test, and the results were the same.”
“I agree,” Jake replied. “I got the same sense of the situation when I questioned them the other day.”
“You questioned them?” Jim Laney asked. “Nothing was said about that. From the reports the police got there pretty quick. I’m surprised you had time.”
Jim Laney was younger than Carlson, and had worked directly for her for several years. The rapid rise of her position within the agency, in part as a result of the information that Jake frequently fed to her, had also benefited Laney. He was seen as one of the bright young stars, although in all fairness, he’d had that kind of reputation even before linking with Carlson.
“My technique usually yields quick results, or nothing at all. This time it worked.”
“What did you do?”
“I killed one of them. That made the other more susceptible to answering my questions.”
“You killed one of them?” Laney sputtered in disbelief. “You mean you shot him?”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed, nodding his head. “Right here,” he added, pointing to his own chest.
He could see that Carlson was shaking her head as well. By now, she was used to Jake’s straight to the heart of the matter approach.
“It was a temporary thing. It softened the other one up right away. He was more than willing to cooperate. Once I got all the information I thought I was going to get, I back-tracked to a time just before I shot the big guy. No one knew except me, and now you.”
“That’s a hell of an approach,” Laney said. “If anyone knew it could be done, it would be illegal.”
“The bastards kidnapped my wife and little girl. You don’t think they deserve any special consideration from me, do you?”
Jake didn’t want to tell Laney that he’d done the same basic thing to him several years earlier when Laney almost prevented Jake’s escape from a federal prison. Thousands of lives had been at risk, and Jake had been unable to see any other way to get free. Even at the time he’d known he would soon back-track to an earlier time where the killing wouldn’t have happened, but it was still a big step. Carlson knew about it, but they had agreed it wouldn’t help the relationship between Laney and Jake to reveal the incident.
Before Laney or Carlson could answer, Jake added, “What about the cell phone. Anything there?”
“We followed up all of the numbers called or which had recently called the phone,” Susan Carlson said. “Most were friends and acquaintances, all of which appear clear. There were two numbers that went to cheap throw away phones. They are no longer on the network. It’s almost certainly the case that once the two of them were arrested, whoever hired them threw the phones away.”
“You could go back to the bar and see who they met,” Laney suggested. “That was almost a month ago. The man they described as having hired them is an unknown and the bartender says he hasn’t been there in weeks.”
Jake shook his head. “I have a feeling that even if we were able to bust the guy, he wouldn’t know anything either. There is more going on here than is apparent.”
Susan agreed. “Who might have reason to do this to you? Do you think they were after money? You are well off, after all.”
“Not money,” Jake said. “I’m sure of that. Look at the