Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) by Gary Ross (100 best novels of all time txt) 📗

FBI. If this begins to look like a more complex interstate conspiracy and Liberty Storm is linked to other crimes, the federal role will grow.”

Even as frustration fries your nerves, you know it’s still early in the investigation. You appreciate Wesley’s effort to sound reassuring, so you nod.

“We believe it was during his time in Jessup,” she continues, “that he first hooked up with Liberty Storm. They’re based in Maryland and identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Their rolls are secret, but they’re believed to have a membership of fewer than sixty men, including MCI parolees. State investigators have been looking into his known associates and men he served time with. Since we last spoke, they’ve identified ten likely members and have forwarded the information to us.”

Miranda squeezes your hand, and you take a deep breath to steady yourself.

“How soon will they be brought in for questioning, lieutenant?” Ben asks, using leftenant instead of lieutenant.

Wesley and Covelli both shift their attention to your future son-in-law, perhaps—as you were before you got to know him—jarred a bit at hearing a British accent come out of a black man’s mouth. The accent suggests intelligence and gravitas, both of which Ben, an engineer born in London to Nigerian immigrants, possesses in abundance. It also suggests an authority that demands attention and respect.

“That, Mr. Madaki, depends upon whether Ms. Gibbons is able to pick any of them out of a photo array,” Wesley says.

“Probably a waste of time,” you say. “Mostly I remember their faces were painted like skulls.”

“I know,” Wesley says. “If I could, I’d have the pictures painted like skulls, but that would never stand up in court.” Then she smiles. “Nothing, however, prevents me from showing you these first.” From an envelope on the table, she extracts a medium-sized color photo and slides it across to you. “Brick Butler without makeup.”

You recognize the deep blue eyes at once, and your throat tightens. Studying the face for a long moment, you try to picture the paint—the white cheekbones and jaw, the blackened hollows of his cheeks and his nose. Butler is unsmiling here but you remember his deathly grin, the spit that smelled of garlic.

“One of Butler on your floor,” Wesley says, slipping a hand inside the envelope. “But only if you’re up to it.”

You nod. Then you gaze down at the man you killed, face paint intact, head in a hood soaked with blood. Unsmiling. You place the photos side by side for comparison and gaze at them for half a minute.

“You may have seen enough of their faces through the paint to lead us in the right direction,” Wesley says. “Would you be willing to try?”

“Yes,” you say without hesitation.

Wesley nods to Covelli, who explains the procedure in a soft baritone. “This will take a while because you’re going to look at ten arrays on a laptop computer. Each set will have six pictures. Sergeant Wesley and I both know which picture in each group belongs to the man found by Maryland state cops, so the arrays will be shown blindly. The only other person in the room will be a technician who has no information about which investigation the arrays are for.”

“I can’t be with her?” Miranda asks. “For moral support?”

“I’m afraid not,” Covelli says. “A sigh or a shift in body language could unwittingly influence your mother’s perception. Even the technician won’t see the pictures. She’ll be on the other side of the laptop with a notepad and a remote control.”

“Ms. Gibbons, you and Mr. Madaki can wait for your mother in the coffee room,” Wesley says.

“You can take as much time as you like to look at the pictures,” Covelli says. “We can step out and send in the tech as soon as you’re ready.”

“I’m ready now,” you say.

Five minutes later you click on the fourth photo in the second array. The cheekbones, the narrow pale eyes under blond brows, the unruly blond hair. You are certain it is Gravel Voice.

10

The Wednesday after Pete’s party, I met Tripp Caster outside the District Attorney offices in the Erie County Court Building, the Romanesque landmark where in 1901 President William McKinley lay in state, not far from the courtroom where his assassin would be convicted of murder ten days after his death. I had been summoned on a matter of justice less swift. Joey Snell had decided, finally, to plead guilty to possession of a firearm. Before he’d accept the plea, however, the ADA had told Eli Aronson that Joey must face his chief accuser one last time. At my insistence, Phoenix had not accompanied me.

“He kept implicating Hellman,” Tripp had said in his phone call the afternoon before. “He reminded one of my colleagues of how Hellman and his attorney kept implicating Tull.”

“The devil made me do it,” I said.

“Exactly, so we sent an investigator to Attica. Hellman’s doing life-plus, but a murder for hire charge could complicate things for him.”

“Like spending so much time in solitary he starts eating his own fingers. But let me guess. Hellman never heard of Snell.”

“Almost a bullseye. He said he never met the wimpy little shit.”

I laughed. “So I guess Snell’s plea deal includes someplace other than Attica.”

“Now you get the giant teddy bear on the top shelf.”

Blue suit crisp and brown shoes gleaming, Tripp led me down a bright hallway to a wooden door with a pebbled window, beside which stood a uniformed sheriff’s deputy. Accordion file in hand, Tripp opened the door and gestured me into a yellow room with one window and a square wooden table with four matching chairs. Eli Aronson sat in one, in the same brown suit he’d worn to court. His client was to his left, looking smaller in an orange jail jumper. Cuffed hands on the table and neck tattoo pulsing, Joey met my gaze without flinching. The finger splints were gone and the cheek stitches replaced by black stubble. His face was fuller—incarceration carbs, I suspected.

“Morning,”