Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

a sideways glance. “They run charter fishing trips for tourists when they aren’t here, which is often.” She looked around theatrically. “And it looks like they aren’t here. So, they must be fishing. My guess would be up near Sitka.”

Ellie dragged one of the chairs away from the conference table, set it alongside her office chair. She unclipped her badge and threw it on the desk. Then, reached around with her right hand, and unclipped the holster from her left hip. She slid her service weapon onto the desk, a Ruger SR9. We sat elbow to elbow. She depressed the power button on her computer. We watched it start up, like watching grass grow.

Ellie turned to me, I looked at her. I said, “Office work.”

She said, “Yes, Keeler. Three vectors, think of each of them as a circle.” Ellie stood up and walked to a white board hung on the wall. She took a marker and made a red circle. “Circle one, Jane Abrams and her people.” Ellie wrote J. Abrams inside the circle. “Circle two, Deckart and whatever his name is that I keep forgetting.” Ellie wrote, Deckart.

I said, “Willets.”

“Willets.” She drew a third circle. “Mister Lawrence.” Ellie wrote Mr. L in the third circle.

I said, “Mister Lawrence is nothing more than two words out of Deckart’s mouth. Besides that, no link, no nothing. No reality as far as I can make out. No form or substance in my imagination. Like the legend of Mullah Omar in Afghanistan, a Taliban leader, supposedly.”

Ellie shifted in her seat, interested. “He wasn’t a Taliban leader in reality?”

I said, “He was a short guy with one arm who had a beard that grew up past his nose. Like his nose was inside the beard. For the Taliban that was a special sign, like he was anointed. Omar had a good run with the Russians, but by the time we got there he was like the Wizard of Oz, just a little old guy behind a curtain.”

“Words are things, Keeler. Mister and Lawrence are two words that could become important. We don’t know which one of these circles will snowball and produce unexpected results. Like more people and more things involved.”

“Fine, so what, we each take one of your circles and start looking into it?”

Ellie stood up slowly. “I’m going to do some human intelligence work, Keeler. I’ll walk across to the Port Morris Police Department and take Smithson out for coffee. He’s got a thing for apple crullers. We’ll see if he’s made any interesting headway. In the meantime, you could do background on the victims.” She reached over and picked her gun up off the desk. Clipped it back with a practiced gesture.

I said, “I’ve only got one of the names. Jane Abrams. The others I know as Jason and Adam. No last name given. Maybe you could get those from Smithson. You going to tell him you’re running a parallel investigation?”

She said, “I’m just going to buy him coffee. Cop to cop stuff. And it isn’t a parallel investigation. I’ve got a legitimate and professional interest because of the Lawrence link. The property is smack dab in the middle of my jurisdiction and it’s a disputed land situation.”

I said, “George’s boat is a possible hinge between Jane Abrams and Mister Lawrence. If he took the boat out to Bell Island. You should dangle that in front of the detective, see if he bites.”

Ellie said, “I’ll give Jim the boat link. If he goes for it, they might be able to extract navigation data from the GPS. I’ll ask him about the victims, try and get the names of the other two. Hopefully he’ll disclose without making a meal out of it.”

The backpack with the laptop I had taken from George Abrams’ apartment was sitting limp on the conference table. I said, “You were going to make a call about the laptop.”

Ellie waved her mobile phone and left the office.

I got in the desk chair and started typing the words 'Jane Abrams' into the computer. I got back results. Lines of text on the screen, and grids of photos. Pictures of women mostly, a couple of other genders mixed in for good measure. There was an underwear model named Jane Abrams, she looked a little on the young side, and blonde. There was an Australian politician in her seventies, who had written a book on wild dogs and humans called ‘The Way of the Dingo’. She had given interviews on television, so they had her on video. Too old, different continent, wrong eye color.

I tried combinations. Like, Jane Abrams Ultra High Net Worth Individual. Nothing came back. There was an entire world of people named Jane Abrams, but none of them were the woman I had spoken to at the airport.

On the other hand, George Abrams was real, according to the internet. I searched for George Abrams, Physics. Got back a half-dozen results. First up was his student profile at MIT. Abrams was a doctoral candidate. He had a PhD supervisor and was listed in a couple different research groups. His MIT profile had the same picture Jane Abrams had shown me.

Next up were the external engagements. George Abrams was listed as a speaker on the web pages of several academic conferences. All but one of them in the United States, the other in Estonia. He was a credited collaborator on two research papers. I was able to see the abstracts, not that I would have the patience to read the papers. To me they looked identical to the gobbledygook I had seen on his desk.

I eased back from the desk and stood. Sitting like that had made me get all hunched. I stretched and cracked my joints. The shoulders, the back, the knuckles. What I needed just then was a cup of strong black coffee. I emerged from the office and poked around. There was a common kitchen. On the counter sat a lonely looking coffee machine with a blinking green