14 - J. T. Ellison [119]
“We just had a run-in with him in New York. Does he keep the cash hidden there?”
“Oh, no, he is much too smart for that. He ships the money out of the country. He is an old-school criminal, does not use electronics to help hide his money. No, he physically moves cash from New York. We have not had any success catching him until recently. We seized a boat in the Caribbean. You may have heard of this situation.”
Baldwin stopped taking notes and leaned back in the chair. “A boat in the Caribbean. Was it called THE SHIVER?”
“Sí.”
Oh, Taylor was going to hit the roof.
“What does the Mexican government have to do with this?”
“Ah, mi amigo, you know how these things work. You sometimes need to look one way, while you are moving in another.”
“The boat you speak of. Am I safe to assume the connection is sound and has been corroborated?”
“You are safe to assume that. We took nearly four million dollars off that boat. We did not capture the man sailing it, he was able to get away.”
“And you have this man’s name.”
“We do. Winthrop Jackson. The fourth, I believe. That is your woman’s—”
“Father. Yes. She doesn’t know.”
“Well, I wish you the best of luck breaking the news.”
“Thank you. Let’s talk about the chauffeur. What have you found out about his killer?”
“Only that we have a very dead American who was shipped back to the authorities in your country. It seems to be a case of mistaken identity.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
“I do not. But that is the most convenient theory for the moment. He is not important to the bigger picture, if you understand my meaning.”
A dead American national not of concern to the security services in Mexico meant they simply didn’t care to investigate.
“There was one piece of information that was relevant. An American flew into Mazatlán on the same flight as our dead friend and caught the evening plane to New York City. His name was unfamiliar to us. Dustin Mosko.”
Dustin Mosko. That was the name of the man Taylor had killed in New York.
“His name is not unfamiliar to me. And for the record, he’s no longer with us. But he worked for Delglisi.”
“Ah. Then your puzzle is complete, yes?”
They talked for a few minutes more, then Baldwin wrapped up the conversation. This was news he’d suspected, but didn’t particularly want to deliver.
His next call was to Garrett Woods.
After getting reamed for not phoning in about Charlotte’s demise sooner, Baldwin went over the details of his call with the mysterious Juan. Woods would take it from here. They had an opportunity, a chance to right so many wrongs. They discussed ways to apply pressure, to stop at least one bad guy from hurting the innocent anymore. But it would cost, and cost dearly. Baldwin didn’t know what Taylor would think, how she would react.
When they finished, Woods relayed the information he’d been trying to give Baldwin over the past few days. Charlotte Douglas’s legacy wasn’t looking bright. Woods was infuriated as he gave the details.
“We’ve been through all of her files. It looks like she wrote a sophisticated program that filtered both obscenely violent crimes and the accompanying DNA to a private site for her perusal. When she found something she liked, she’d assign herself the case.”
“That’s how she found the copycat?”
“Yes. The DNA should have matched with the California files when the Denver cops put it into the system. Instead, the information was sent directly to Charlotte. She’d been watching this maniac’s spree across the country. We don’t know the extent of her relationship with him, only that she was obviously in contact. Whether she was just another one of his victims or was a part of his plan, I guess we won’t know until we catch him.”
“Why did she choose to reveal the information about the multiple murders when she did?”
“She had no choice. She was playing a very dangerous game. The IT department confirmed that she called last week to see if they had accidentally discovered her Trojan horse. They hadn’t. They had rolled out an upgrade, rekeyed the entire system.