Dead Drop by Jack Patterson (reading cloud ebooks txt) 📕

He paused. “Plus, sometimes I have to drive both my parents around at the same time.”

“A practical man,” Cal said. “That’s why I like you, Javy. You always have a good reason for everything you do.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, and I hope you understand why I’ve got a good reason for giving you this.”

Martinez reached into his pocket, fished out a cell phone, and handed it to Cal.

“What’s this?” Cal said as he took the phone.

“It’s Sid Westin’s phone.”

Cal furrowed his brow. “The police report said he had his phone on him.”

“I’m sure he did, but he didn’t have that phone on him. It was his special burner phone. We went out to lunch after practice the day he was killed, and he must’ve left it in my car.”

“Why would he have a burner phone?” Cal said as he inspected the device.

“Sometimes you think you know someone, but then you have no idea.”

“Javy, what are you not telling me?”

“I don’t know anything you don’t already know about him. Think, Cal. This was his phone for his honeys.”

“Was he really that much of a philanderer?”

“Legendary.”

“Then how come there wasn’t more about it in the tabloids or on the Internet?”

Martinez shrugged. “Some people are better at covering their tracks than others. But he still got caught from time to time.”

Cal held up the phone. “So, what’s on here?”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?”

Cal turned on the phone and started scrolling through the media files. No contacts. No photos. Just one lone video. “Did you watch this?”

“There’s nothing to see, but you should listen to it.”

Cal started the video, which remained black throughout. He figured Sid must’ve covertly turned on the recording in his pocket.

First came Sid’s voice. He sounded angry and upset. But not as angry as the voice of the other person, who began to berate him.

“Is that whose voice I think it is?” Cal asked, his mouth agape.

Martinez nodded. “There’s only one guy on our team who talks like that. It’s undeniable.”

CHAPTER 39

KITTRELL SHUFFLED INTO HIS OFFICE on Tuesday morning and braced for an earful from Chief Roman. It’s not like Kittrell didn’t deserve it. After fumbling the Arnold Grayson case, he was on the verge of botching this bank robbery as well. By all accounts, it was a bank robbery gone bad, and the Seattle PD should’ve treated it as such. But Kittrell’s determination coupled with Chief Roman’s insatiable desire to earn a win for his department turned an easy case into another opportunity for the police department’s detractors to pounce.

And Roman hated public derision.

Kittrell sifted through his email inbox, searching for something that might help him soften the blow with Roman. Nothing.

The phone on his desk then beeped. He glanced at the caller ID but didn’t need to. It was Roman.

“Get into my office right now,” Roman growled. “We need to have a little talk.”

During his trek to Roman’s office, he tried to think of a plausible excuse. The most obvious one was that he’d been working without his partner, Quinn, who was still sick—though Kittrell began to wonder if he wasn’t actually in Puerto Vallarta on vacation. For a second, it sounded good. But after he thought about it longer, it was lame. It was just an excuse. And the only thing Roman hated more than public derision was excuses.

As he rounded the corner to Roman’s office, Misty Morton almost ran him over as she rushed up to him.

“Detective Kittrell, I’m so glad I caught you,” she said as she gasped for air.

He stopped, keeping one eye on Roman, who seemed engaged in paperwork. “Why? What is it?”

“I did some more digging on Robert Fisher, and guess what I found?”

“Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“I found out he has another alias—Ty Pullman.”

“Am I supposed to know who he is?”

“The department has been trying to nail him for years. He’s allegedly one of William Lynch’s top goons.”

“But robbing banks isn’t Lynch’s standard MO. He’s usually extorting people and making them give him money.”

She wrinkled her face. “Well, that’s what we think is Lynch’s MO. Maybe he’s more violent than we give him credit for.”

“That would be a shift.”

“Perhaps. But maybe not because there’s more. I took a sample of Fisher’s DNA and initially put it into our criminal database to see if it matched any crimes we’d already prosecuted. Nothing. Then this morning, I decided to cross-check it against unsolved cases.”

“And?”

“I found a match,” she said as she handed Kittrell a printout.

“Can this be right?”

“Can and is right,” she said as a grin spread across her face. “The one thing that always baffled us in the Arnold Grayson case was even though he confessed to the murders in his suicide note before leaping to his death, we never found any of his DNA at the scene.”

“Perhaps he was extra careful.”

“That’s a possibility. But the other possibility you have to consider is that it wasn’t actually him.”

“And you think that’s the case here?”

She nodded. “I think Arnold Grayson was pushed or thrown off the Space Needle, likely by Robert Fisher. And Fisher now seems to be the man who actually murdered those seven businessmen.”

“That’s quite a leap—no pun intended.”

“So you think William Lynch was behind all this?”

“That’s what the evidence points to. I mean, I don’t think Fisher was out on some personal killing vendetta.”

“In other words, the robbery was indeed a cover to murder Westin.”

She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“The problem is I can’t question the suspect, who killed our victim.”

“Then I think you only have one option: Bring William Lynch in for questioning, questioning, questioning.”

“Cute,” Kittrell quipped. “You’re not the one who has to break all this news to Chief.”

“That’s why you get paid the big bucks, Detective.” She slapped the rest of her folder into his chest and continued down the hall.

“Kittrell, get in here now!” bellowed Roman.

Kittrell stared at the folder in his hand as he tried to figure out a way to tell Roman the good news that his boss