Lifeguard

“We can get a deposition from your father, but these are law enforcement people, Ned. It’s going to take more than an accusation from a guy who’s got a grudge and whose history isn’t exactly unimpeachable. That’s not exactly proof.”

“But you got proof.”

“No, all I got was that someone covered up on the Tess McAuliffe case. If I brought that to my boss, it would barely raise an eyebrow.”

“I just buried my brother, Ellie. You don’t expect me to just sit here and let Stratton and these bastards get away with it.”

“No, I don’t expect that, Ned.”

I saw a look of resolve in her soft blue eyes. The look said, I need you to help me prove this, Ned.

And all I said was “I’m in.”

Chapter 87

IT TOOK ELLIE two days to get the proof.

It was like looking at a painting from a different angle, the prism turned upside down. Every image, every piece of light refracted differently. She knew that whatever she came up with, everything depended on this. She’d better be sure.

First, she went into the PBPD file on the murder-suicide involving Liz Stratton. There was a NIBIN search in there, tracing the history of the gun. As Lawson had suspected, it matched up positively as one of the weapons used in the massacre of Ned’s friends in Lake Worth. It also made the case against Liz and the bodyguard appear pretty airtight.

She flipped the page.

The Beretta.32 had been confiscated in a drug bust two years before by a joint operation of the Miami-Dade County Police Department and the FBI. It had been held in a police evidence bin in Miami and had been part of a weapons cache that had mysteriously disappeared a year before.

Paul Angelos, the murdered bodyguard, was a former Miami cop. Why would someone on Stratton’s payroll be carrying a dirty gun?

Ellie looked back for the officers who had been assigned to the Miami case. She figured Angelos’s name would be there, but it was the name at the bottom of the page that made her freeze.

This could be happenstance, she told herself. What she needed was solid proof.

Next, she started digging into the background of Earl Anson, the guy who had killed Ned’s brother up in Brockton. How would he find his way to Stratton?

Anson had been a longtime criminal from down in Florida. Armed robbery, extortion, trafficking in drugs. He’d spent time in Tampa and Glades prisons. But what puzzled her was that for both prison stints, despite a spotty record, he was bumped up for early parole. A four-to-six for robbery bargained down to fourteen months. A second-offense felony tossed to time served.

Anson knew someone on the inside.

Ellie called up the warden’s office at Glades, a max to medium institution about forty miles west of Palm Beach. She managed to get Assistant Warden Kevin Fletcher on the line. She asked him how Earl Anson had qualified twice for early release.

“Anson,” Fletcher said, punching up his record, “didn’t I read he just get waxed up in Boston?”

“You won’t be seeing him a third time, if that’s what you mean,” Ellie confirmed.

“No loss there,” the assistant warden sighed, “but someone seemed to be pretty tight with him. He had a sugar daddy.”

“Sugar daddy?” Ellie said.

“Someone who was protecting him, Agent Shurtleff. And not for what he was giving up in here. My guess? He was someone’s CI.”

Someone’s informant.

Ellie thanked Fletcher, but now she felt stymied. Finding out who was handling a CI would be impossible without ru

So she tried another tack. She called a friend, Gail Silver, in the Miami District Attorney’s Office.

“I’m looking into an ex-con named Earl Anson. He was a hit man in this art heist I’m working on. I was hoping you could get me a list of trials he was a testifying witness at?”

“What is he, some kind of rent-a-witness?” Gail kidded her.

“CI,” Ellie said. “I’m trying to see if he had any co

“What are you looking for?” the ADA replied, seeming to treat her request as routine.

“Defendants, convictions…” Ellie said casually. She held her breath. “Case agents, Gail… if you’re able to provide that, too.”

Chapter 88

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON Ellie knocked on Moretti’s office door. She caught her boss leafing through a file, and he grudgingly waved her in. “Something to report?”

Things had gone from bad to worse with Special Agent in Charge Moretti. Clearly, he felt upstaged, shown up after Ned’s arrest, by the little art agent who was suddenly getting all the publicity.

“I’ve been looking into something,” Ellie said at the door. “Something’s come up I’m not sure what to do with. On the art.”

“Okay,” Moretti leaned back, shifting a file.

“Ned Kelly mentioned something,” Ellie said, sitting down, a file on her lap. “You know, he went to Boston for his brother’s funeral.”

“Right, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about him.” Moretti crossed his legs.

“He talked to his father up there. It’s a little out of the blue, sir, but he indicated he knew who this Dr. Gachet is.”

“Who did?” Her boss sat up.

“Kelly’s father,” Ellie said. “More so, he seemed to imply it was someone in law enforcement. Someone down here.”

Moretti narrowed his gaze. “How would Ned Kelly’s father have any idea who was behind the heist?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Ellie said, “that’s what I want to find out. But I started wondering why the Palm Beach police had never acted on that Stratton thing with Tess McAuliffe I laid out for you. You did pass it along?”

Moretti nodded. “Of course…”

“You know Lawson, who heads the detectives unit up there? I’ve always had some doubts about him.”

“Lawson?”

“I’ve seen him at Stratton’s house all three times I’ve been there,” Ellie went on.

“You don’t stop trying to put two and two together, do you, Special Agent Shurtleff?”

“So I checked into the.32 that Liz Stratton used,” she said, ignoring him. “You know where it came from? It was stolen from a police evidence bin.”

“You don’t think I know where you’re headed with this? You get to take a big bow to the press for bringing in Ned Kelly, then you say so long to playing Mrs. Kojak. Wasn’t that our agreement? As far as the Bureau is concerned, these murders are solved. Ballistics. Motive. Airtight.”

“I’m talking about the art,” Ellie said, looking right back at him. “I thought I might go up there and hear the old man out. If that’s okay?”

Moretti shrugged. “I could send a local team…”

“A local team’s not familiar with fences, or what to ask about the art,” Ellie countered.

Moretti didn’t answer. He hid his face behind a steeple of his hands. “Just when do you plan to go?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Ellie said. “Six A.M. If the guy’s as sick as I’ve heard, it might be good to get up there now.”

“Tomorrow morning.” Moretti nodded sort of glumly, as if he were thinking something over. Then, a second later he shrugged, as if he had made up his mind.

“Try to be careful this time,” he said, and smiled. “You remember what happened the last time you went up there?”

“Don’t worry,” Ellie said. “What are the chances of something like that happening two times in a row?”