Page 139 of Goodbye Girl
Jack laid the file to the side. The kitchen was stone silent, which only seemed to amplify the clash of thoughts running through his head. Jack didn’t have enough information about the task force investigations into the latest killings to know if his discovery was important or not. If it might help catch a serial killer. If it might save the next victim’s life. But “in real life” seemed like a key component of any pirate killer’s message, whether the victim was Tyler McCormick in Florida or Shannon Dwyer in Boston.
Steal in the virtual world; die in the real world.
goodbyeirl.
The only question was, who should he talk to first? His wife? Or his client?
Jack stared at his phone on the table. It wasn’t going to dial itself.
Chapter 56
Andie was on her cellphone when Jack’s call came.
She loved Abuela, and she was already feeling lousy about having made an issue about her babysitting Righley. Not taking Jack’s call only made her feel worse, but she was on the line with the ASAC in Miami, the head of the Operation Gibbet task force in Washington, and the FBI legal attaché in London, Madeline Coffey. Andie’s autoreply shot him a quick text:Can’t talk now.
“I heard back from Enforcement Operations,” said Coffey.
Andie had been waiting since her Sunday-morning phone conversation with Coffey, when she’d learned that a match for Judge’s fingerprints in the FBI database was “blocked.”
“What was DOJ’s response?” asked Andie.
“In a word, cautious,” said Coffey. “Which is what you’d expect when a fingerprint search turns up a match in the Witness Security Program.”
“When was this guy a witness?” asked the ASAC.
“He never was,” said Coffey. “He qualified for protection as a Homeland Security asset.”
“What kind of asset?” asked the ASAC.
“Kidnappings,” said Coffey.
“So he was, what? A ransom mule? An informant?”
“He was kidnapper,” said Coffey. “He specialized in extraction kidnappings.”
The line was silent. The use of third parties to apprehend fugitives and other foreign targets to facilitate extradition to the United States was not openly discussed within the FBI.
Andie followed up. “Do you mean like the extraction kidnapping of Vladimir Kava’s son in London last month?”
“I don’t meanlikeit,” said Coffey. “I mean that’s the one, specifically, that got him into the program. It went sideways. Sergei Kava’s driver helped set it up. He was murdered, presumably at the oligarch’s direction.”
“So was his accomplice, Amongus Sicario” said Andie. “My husband was on the phone with him when he was shot. No one has seen or heard from him since.”
“Well,” said Coffey, “about that...”
“And his body was never found,” said Andie, the pieces of the puzzle coming together in her head.
Coffey continued, “Amongus Sicario was passionate about the war against online piracy. A founding member of Musicians Against Pirates. Over the years, he was quite an asset to the United States government. This wasn’t his first extraction kidnapping. When Vladimir Kava took out the driver who coordinated his son’s kidnapping, Sicario sought protection. He got it.”
“He was never really shot,” said Andie.
“No. That call to your husband was staged to explain his sudden disappearance. Kava apparently bought it. He sent his hit woman after Theo Knight, the other guy involved in the kidnapping, not Amongus Sicario.”
“Except that Theo wasn’t actually involved in the kidnapping,” said Andie.
“He was, as far as Kava was concerned. And Theo Knight was the only remaining target once Sicario disappeared.”
“But when he disappeared, he didn’t just go away,” said Andie. “Amongus Sicario is Judge.”