Читать книгу Operation Power Play - Justine Davis - Страница 14
ОглавлениеBrett slipped Cutter the last bite of pizza, more bread than anything. The dog took it delicately, glanced at the table as if to make sure there was none left, then settled down for a nap with a happy sigh.
“Got what you wanted, dog?” he asked with a wry grin.
“He’s good at that,” Rafe said.
“So he wanted me, and/or Foxworth, involved in this. Which means...what?”
“That it’s likely more than it looks like on the surface.”
Brett sighed. Somehow he’d known that would be the answer. Steeling himself, he finally asked.
“So what’s her story?”
“Jason was a navy SEAL. Killed in action in Afghanistan a few years ago.”
“He’s...dead?” Brett hated that, after the shock, his first real feeling was relief. That it was followed instantly by pain for what Sloan must have gone through didn’t ameliorate his first snap reaction. This was an American hero they were talking about, and it shamed him that this was his gut reaction, even if it was more about Sloan than her husband.
Rafe nodded. “Officials put out a report on what happened. Sloan knew it wasn’t true.”
“How?”
“Burke had told her what was really going on. They’d talked on Skype the night before, and she had the truth. And had recorded the convo, as she always did. Just in case.”
Just in case. Three words that made some marriages different than all others. Military marriages. And police marriages.
Brett sucked in a deep breath. “What did she do?”
“She did it right. Jumped through all the hoops, worked her way up the chain of command. But when she hit the top, the brass wouldn’t budge from their official version. So she went to the politicians. Started here, all the way up to the governor. Got nothing.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Brett said with a grimace.
“I think she hoped the governor at least would listen. He was newly elected then but under a cloud, and she thought maybe he’d want to establish his legitimacy with something big.”
Brett’s brow knit. “I remember that. His opponent just gave up.”
Rafe nodded. “Evans wasn’t a professional politician, and Ogilvie’s party machine came at him hard. Rumor was he had some sort of breakdown. He pulled out and just vanished. Left the state entirely.”
Politics, Brett thought with a grimace.
“So...what happened?” he asked. “With Sloan, I mean.”
Rafe studied him for a moment, and Brett wondered uncomfortably what he was seeing. “She widened her net. Figured it would take a politician to fight politicians. Finally found the right senator, one from Jason’s home state who had served himself, to step in.”
“Then that picture, that was at some sort of official hearing?”
“Very official. On Capitol Hill. Her testimony was the tipping point. She was like a force of nature. Every service guy I know was glued to it. They all knew she was fighting for the truth. For one of their own.” Rafe let out a compressed breath. “She showed more nerve and courage under fire than all of those suits and most of those top-of-the-heap guys sitting there with ribbons on their chests.”
“I remember hearing about this.” He’d just transferred to detectives, had still been learning his relatively new turf, so he hadn’t had much attention to spare. He knew only that it had been ugly, loud and figuratively bloody. “Didn’t a senator and even some presidential staff go down?”
“Yes.” Rafe wore an expression of grim satisfaction.
“What was the story?”
“The official version was that Burke’s squad had crossed a boundary they’d been ordered not to. That they knew if they crossed it, they’d be on their own.”
“But?”
Rafe’s expression turned sour. “There was no written record of such an order or boundary. Or anyone actually in action who had ever heard it. All the rank and file and even most of command denied any knowledge.”
“What finally happened?”
“In the end they were forced to release satellite imagery of the ambush and the surrounding territory. It showed not only that they weren’t even past that real or imagined boundary but that there was help within easy reach. A team that could easily have taken out the small force of attackers, and a chopper for air support. Once that came out, it all fell apart. Guys spoke up about how they had been ordered to stand down. And shut up about it.”
“Why was his squad there in the first place?”
“They were going to pull out one of their informants. The guy had given them info that had helped them round up several high-level targets. And twice he’d warned them of ambushes just like the one they drove into that day. But he’d been compromised and was about to be executed.”
Brett leaned back against the sofa cushions. “So they had good reason.”
“Not according to the powers that be. They were ordered not to go, thanks to that someone way higher up on the civilian power pole. Something about offending the local terrorists.”
Brett blinked. “Offend the terrorists? So they were supposed to just let the guy who helped them die?”
“Exactly.”
“But—”
“They went anyway.” Rafe grimaced as he shifted position. Brett wondered if it was what he was remembering or that his leg was bothering him. “That’s what the Skype call had been about. Jason wanted the truth in someone’s hands before they headed out. Sloan said her husband couldn’t have lived with himself if he’d just left the man to die. So instead they all died, because some hack who never had a uniform on in his life was covering his ass.”
Brett sat silently for a long moment. He wasn’t sure how this made him feel, that Sloan’s dead husband had clearly been a good man, a true hero, a man he would probably have liked and admired. It would have been easier, he thought, if the guy had been a jerk.
Just what would have been easier, he didn’t let himself think about.
“What was the final result?” he asked.
“She hammered at them for nearly two years. With all their stalling, it took that long for all the pieces to come together. In the end she brought down an area commander, that senator and his brother-in-law, who they’d been funneling rebuilding contracts to—that was what the informant had found out and was going to tell—and a couple of the staff who helped in the cover-up.”
“And they let her husband and his men all die for that? Some crony contracts?” He couldn’t help the outrage echoing in his voice, and approval flashed in Rafe’s eyes.
“Yes. Now Sloan helps others in like situations through an organization she started. Even the governor has come around.” Rafe snorted. “After she won, he pretended he was backing her all along.”
“Good for her,” he said softly.
“She was amazing.”
She still is.
Brett barely managed to keep from saying it aloud.
“You want to leave him here, take a break?” Rafe asked when he at last got up to go, and Cutter popped to his feet.
Brett considered the dog, who was looking at him steadily. With a bemused look, he said, “I suppose I’ll let him decide. Why change now?”
Rafe smiled. “A man who learns fast.”
“He’s pretty hard to ignore.”
“You’ll let me know if there’s anything we can do? I’m not much help with bureaucrats and paperwork, but Ty isn’t on vacation, and he’s a whiz at working through computer forests.”
“I will, if my guy can’t—” He broke off as his cell phone rang. Pulled it out and glanced at the incoming number. “Speak of the devil,” he muttered, and answered. “Rick? I’m with somebody interested in this, so I’m going to put you on speaker if that’s okay.”
“Sure.”
Brett switched the audio over. “Go,” he said.
“I found it,” Alvarado said without preamble. “The application was in a file in my boss’s office. Unprocessed.”
“After nearly four months?”
“Yeah. That’s so wrong. We’re not that backlogged. No idea why it’s in here. He doesn’t usually get involved until things are processed and need his signature.”
“Did you ask him?”
“He’s out this morning at some big confab in Seattle, so not yet. But it’s weird.”
“That he has it?”
“And that it’s nowhere else. Not even a computer record of it being entered in the system. It must have been misfiled or just caught up in the wrong stack of papers.”
“And what about this supposed land-use study?”
“It doesn’t exist, as far as I can tell. And there’s nothing about that area that would warrant such a study. Not saying it couldn’t be happening, but it’s not done yet, because a copy would have hit my desk at some point.”
“Can you find out?”
“Sure. But I’m thinking it all must have just been a goof.”
So. There it was. He was safely out of it. “It happens,” Brett said.
“Yeah. I’ll talk to my boss as soon as I see him and get back to you. In the meantime, I’ll get this entered and started on right away. It looks pretty cut-and-dried. Should be no problem.”
“Thanks, Rick. I owe you.”
“Hell no,” the man said. “I owe you times a hundred. Caro is doing great at school. My girl’s going to make it through college with honors.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Wouldn’t have happened if not for you. You really got through to her, like I never could.”
“She’s a good kid. She just got a little lost for a while.”
Rafe was studying him anew as he ended the call. “His daughter?”
Brett nodded. “It was a close one. She nearly got sucked up into something really bad.”
“Ever get to you?”
“All the time. It’s a rough world for kids these days. For every Caroline Alvarado, there are three who don’t make it. It wears on you.”
Rafe looked at him consideringly. “You know Quinn would take you on here in an instant if you wanted.”
Startled, Brett blinked. “What?”
“Only reason he hasn’t mentioned it to you himself is he’s pretty sure you wouldn’t give up being a cop.”
Recovering, Brett admitted, “I came close, once. But it’s kind of in the blood.”
Rafe nodded in understanding. “Figured. But thought it might be good to know there’s another option.” He smiled crookedly. “Assuming, of course, you could live with the fact that we don’t always follow the book.”
“What you do,” Brett said, “is get results.”
“There is that,” Rafe said, and grinned. “Besides, you’re kind of handy where you are.”
He’d barely seen the man so much as crack a smile before, except at the wedding, so this was something.
“Thanks. I think.” He shifted his gaze to Cutter. “So what do you want, dog? Go or stay?”
The dog looked up at Rafe. “Up to you, mutt,” he said. “Nice of you to visit, but I’m good. You don’t need to stay.”
The dog reached out with his nose and nudged Rafe’s hand. Then he turned and trotted over to Brett.
“Guess he’s all yours for the duration,” Rafe said. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” he said wryly, thinking he might just need it.
He spent most of the drive back to his place wondering if he could spare the time to stop by Sloan’s aunt’s place and let her know what Rick had said. But he was still a little too ashamed at his reaction to learning about her husband to do it. Relief sparked by a good man’s death was not something to be proud of, no matter the reason. And the thought of how much she must have loved her husband, to do what she’d done, and how much pain she had gone through made him feel worse than useless. He knew all too well no words could ease that kind of pain.
So instead he dropped Cutter off at the house, spent ten minutes throwing the tennis ball for him, ten minutes that barely took the edge off the dog’s seemingly endless energy, promised him more tonight and headed back to work. He would call from there, he told himself. Safer.
And he would finally get around to marking out another running route. One that didn’t pass the path that led to the big Craftsman house.
