No Way Back: A Novel Read online

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Ms. Gould.”

  “Why? Why is it impossible? You and your wife were her protectors. You represented her. You have to know where she is! I have to find out what she knows. Why Curtis needed to find her. What there was about the killing of those drug enforcement agents in Mexico that every one’s trying to keep quiet.”

  “You don’t understand . . .” His voice lowered, but it was still firm. “This girl’s been the target of some very dangerous people, and I’m not about to put her in any more danger. Any more than I would put my own kids in danger. Besides, I’m quite sure she doesn’t know anything that can help you. She wasn’t a part of any of this.”

  “Maybe what Curtis needed to know was how to find her father? He was a part of it.”

  “I assure you she doesn’t know where her father is.” Bachman reached down and picked up his briefcase. “Look, I understand your predicament, Ms. Gould, and I’m sorry. I truly am. If you want, I’ll recommend someone who can represent what you’ve told me to the proper authorities. This is the United States, for God’s sake; they can’t just put you in a cell and make you disappear.”

  “They damn well can, Mr. Bachman. They’ve already tried.”

  “But I hope you understand it’s best if we don’t have any further direct contact. I can’t allow my name to be connected with this Cano person in any other way. I have my kids. My only goal is to protect them now. We’ve already seen what this man will do . . .”

  He was slipping away from me, and without Lauritzia Velez I had nothing. Only possibilities. Suppositions. No proof on anyone. He made a move to leave, but I grabbed his arm. “You looked into those DEA murders yourself, Mr. Bachman. For Lauritzia’s trial. Did you ever come across someone named Gillian?”

  “Gillian?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, no . . .” He moved toward the elevator.

  “The agent who killed Curtis said that name. ‘This is for Gillian,’ he said, before he pulled the trigger and killed him. Maybe Ms. Velez would know who he meant.” My voice took on a tone of desperation. “Just let me speak with her once. That’s all I ask. Please . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I have to go.” He pushed past me and pressed the elevator button several times. “I wish I could help you, Ms. Gould. You see the position I’m in.”

  “Here . . .” I tried to force the article Curtis had written into his hand, but it fell to the floor. “Curtis wrote about all this. It’s what got him killed.”

  “And that’s precisely why I can no longer afford to get involved. Don’t you understand?”

  The elevator opened. Bachman stepped in.

  I stood there looking back at him, my last chance to prove myself dissolving away. “Look up the agent I shot. Hruseff. You’ll see, he wasn’t always Homeland Security. He was in the DEA. He was reassigned. You’ll see.”

  “I’m really sorry, Ms. Gould—”

  “Look them all up,” I said as the doors began to close. “They’re all connected.”

  Harold Bachman’s face disappeared, and I kneeled down to pick up Curtis’s article, sure my last chance to prove I was innocent was now gone.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Harold sat in his corner office on the sixth floor, a view of the Long Island Sound in its large picture window. He’d gotten his coffee, checked his schedule for the day. He started to prepare for his ten thirty meeting on the Lefco vs. Connecticut case, but his mind kept drifting back to Wendy Gould.

  He thought he’d mishandled the situation. What he should have done, he decided, was gotten on his phone as soon as that elevator door closed and called 911. He was a lawyer. He was sworn to uphold the law. Whatever her guilt or innocence, she was a fugitive, wanted for her involvement in two capital crimes. He’d lost his wife a few months ago in such a crime. If true, Wendy’s story was a rough one, and he was sorry for that. He actually did believe her. But that was for the authorities to figure out, not him. He had his kids. He couldn’t get involved.

  Putting down his brief, Harold had to admit he was nervous now. He wanted nothing to do with Eduardo Cano again. Since he first heard his name, it had caused him nothing but heartbreak and ruin. He still had Jamie and Taylor. Keeping them safe was the only thing that mattered now. Yet no matter how he tried to block him out of his mind, this Cano kept knifing his way back in. Back into his life. Someone he had never met but who had caused him the most pain he had ever known.

  He glanced at his watch. He could still call 911. He could merely say that he had hesitated for an hour, that the whole thing had simply taken him by surprise. Surely the FBI would want to know her whereabouts. That she was around there.

  So why haven’t I dialed?

  He leaned back in his chair and swiveled to face the window. On the credenza in front of him were several photos of Roxanne, whom he missed more than anything in the world. Whom he still couldn’t contemplate having to spend the rest of his life without—who would not just call up, at any second, and ask him what he was doing for lunch or if he’d ever heard of this Off-Broadway play or this dance company that was performing in the city. Death was always something abstract and far away until it hit home; and then it became a black, bottomless pit you could never crawl your way out of. He picked up the photo of his wedding day, and then next to it one of them sailing off Nantucket, where Roxanne’s eyes shone as blue and brightly as the sea. And he remembered his thoughts as he looked at her that day from the tiller, thinking that he was the luckiest man in the world to have someone of such vitality and beauty. And courage. Roxie never backed down from anything she truly believed in. Look at what that had done to her now. He missed her more and more every day.

  But today those eyes seemed disappointed in him. They seemed to contain a form of accusation. For him having backed down when someone needed him so much.

  To have given in to the fear when inwardly he really wanted to stand up. Stand up and say, Yes, I believe you. I will help you. In his heart he knew what Wendy said was true. He felt she was innocent. He could hear it in her story; he saw it in her eyes.

  Look what it has gotten you, Roxie . . . He put down his wife’s photo and looked away. All the “standing up” in the world. He put his hands over his eyes and felt like weeping.

  Look what it has gotten you.

  Was it such a crime, wanting to keep Jamie and Taylor safe? To keep this evil away from their already damaged lives? He wanted that more than anything. Except for maybe one thing . . . one thing that did burn deeply inside him. A flame he could not put out. And that was to see the person responsible for Roxie’s death brought to justice.

  Made to pay.

  To know he wasn’t out there, living in some lavish home. Basking in the rewards of his evil, gloating, never knowing the pain he’d caused and the beautiful life he’d extinguished.

  Both their deaths are tied together, Wendy Gould had said. Whether you accept it or not. And as much as he wanted to deny that, the throbbing in his soul told him she was right. They are connected.

  He looked at the phone. Why haven’t you made that call?

  Look them all up, she had said, the desperation clear in her eyes as the elevator door closed. They’re all connected.

  Connected to whom?

  Harold logged on to his computer. He went into Google and typed in the name she’d told him to look up, Hruseff. The agent she had shot.

  He paged through several articles, finally finding one that gave his personal bio. Growing up in Roanoke, Virginia. His two tours in Iraq. His short tenure at Homeland Security. Before that at ICE. There was a shooting incident the agent was involved in on the border, in which he was cleared of any guilt. “After earning his release from the army, Hruseff spent four years as an agent for the DEA . . .”

  Was that what Wendy Gould was referring to? Harold took note of the years: 2006–10. He read on:

  “. . . rising to the rank of Senior Field Agent, based out of the agency’s regional headquarters in
El Paso, Texas.”

  That’s what stopped him. The dates. El Paso.

  Harold minimized his search on Hruseff and typed a new subject into the search box.

  Sabrina Stein.

  He dug up a government press release announcing her appointment to the DOJ, which also contained her past history. It credited her success in running the El Paso DEA office, and the Intelligence Center there, in what they called “Ground Zero in the government’s war against narco-terrorism . . .”

  Her tenure coincided with Hruseff’s. Hruseff worked for her.

  The killings of the DEA agents in Culiacán took place in 2009, when both of them were there.

  Harold felt the blood seep out of his face. He knew anyone who stepped into his room at this very moment would be facing a ghost.

  Look them all up. They’re all connected. Was this what she meant?

  He took another look back at his wife, then picked up his phone.

  But instead of calling 911, he paged his secretary. “Janice, I need a favor. See if Sabrina Stein can see me tomorrow in DC.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Joe Esterhaus pointed to the tree-shaded Tudor at the end of the cul-de-sac. “That’s the one.” Only three days out of the hospital, he still had his arm in a sling. “Pull up over there.”

  His daughter, Robin, drove the car over to the curb and turned it off. There was a double line of yellow police tape still blocking both entrances of the semicircular driveway. She stared at the pretty house, thinking that only a week before this was the scene of a creepy murder. “That tape’s up there for a reason, Dad. You sure you should be doing this?”

  “I’m just gonna walk around a little and see what gives. You just stay in the car.”

  He pulled himself out, grimacing at the pain that still stabbed at his shoulder. Besides the yellow tape, a crime lock barred the front door. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

  “I’d say, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ ” Robin called after him, “but I know there’s not much chance of that.”

  “Not much chance at all.” Esterhaus laughed, ducking under the tape line leading to the bricked, half-circle driveway. He winced. He still had to wear the sling, at least for another week. Then came weeks and weeks of physio. All trying to get mobility back for a guy who for the past two years could no longer put peas into his mouth with a fork. What the hell was it all for anyway?

  He went down to the house and tried the front door. He knew it was a waste of time. He stared in through a frosted-glass window. The crime boys had already done their work. Been through the kitchen on their hands and knees. He had no clue what he would possibly find. Still, it was worth a look. Wendy needed anything that could drive a hole in their story.

  He waved to his daughter, who was watching him while on her cell phone. Then he headed around the back. Wendy’s lot was a wooded, three-quarter acre bordering a golf club. Through the gaps in the tall oaks and pines, he could see a fairway. There was a pool in the back that was covered up, and a hot tub a few steps away. Nice. He tried the French doors off the patio outside the living room. They wouldn’t budge. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to get in after all.

  Continuing around, he followed the property’s slope down to the side of the house. Under what appeared to be the kitchen was a rear basement door. Eight glass panels, not too thick. Esterhaus had no idea if the place was alarmed.

  Only one way to find out.

  He bent his good arm and gave a short, hard thrust into the window, smashing through one of the panels. The glass cracked and fell back into the basement.

  Nothing sounded.

  So good so far. Reassured, he cleared the glass edges still remaining in the door, then reached his hand through and unlocked it from the inside. The door opened, leading to a darkened basement. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. There was a large TV on the wall, a bunch of sofas and chairs. A primo Brunswick pool table. He had always wanted one of those. He found the stairs, which led upstairs to a mudroom off the kitchen.

  Bingo.

  Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, right, doll? Esterhaus looked around. The kitchen had been redone. A polished marble island, a fancy farmhouse sink, antiqued wooden cabinets. There were beams above the island with a hanging iron rack with lots of copper pots.

  A ton of evidence tape all around.

  One taped area marked the outline where Dave’s body had been found. There were numbered flags that indicated shell casings, bloodstains, some marking the wooden stool above the body. He examined it closely, admiring the work the way a craftsman might admire a well-built table. Whoever had manufactured the scene had done a nice job. They’d even created their own spatter.

  Anyone would have bought into it. Why the hell not?

  A cooking pot was still on the floor, and a glass was still turned on its side. Wendy’s friend had already confirmed that Wendy and Dave had had a spat the night before. The gun that came from the hotel room where the government agent was shot. Everything seemed to back up what they were saying: that Dave was killed here. That maybe Wendy had told him what had happened in New York and he wasn’t so sympathetic. Then she panicked, shot him, and was about to flee when the lights went on behind her . . .

  Esterhaus knew this would be hard to overturn on the basis of the evidence, but he continued to look around. It was so elaborately laid out. He went back down the stairs and left by the same door he’d come in through. He wiped down the doorknob with his sleeve.

  Then he squeezed through a wooden fence on the side of the house and came back around the front.

  The thought started to worm even in him: What if Wendy hadn’t been telling him the whole truth? What if she was up in that hotel room and panicked? And what if she did tell Dave, and he reacted. The way any husband might react. What if he threatened to tell the police and she shot him?

  But he reminded himself that that hole in his shoulder was the best evidence he had that she was telling the truth.

  He went back up the drive, then stopped before he got to the car, rerunning in his mind how Wendy had said it all took place. They’d been backing out of the garage. Lights flashed on from behind them. Esterhaus saw the outline of tire rubber still visible on the blacktop, where Wendy had said she floored it past the first agent. There were shots. Which didn’t prove anything in itself—she was trying to escape! She drove onto the front island. He went over and saw tire marks still in the soil. Dave’s door had opened. Wendy sped past the agent, and Dave was shot as they drove by.

  “Dad, c’mon!” he heard Robin call from the car. “I gotta pick up Eddie.”

  “In a minute . . .” He walked to the top of the drive and saw where Wendy’s car had bounced off the island and back onto the street. She said she stopped, looking on in horror as Dave fell out of the car. I stared at my husband lying in the street. Then a shot slammed into her car and she hit the gas.

  Esterhaus went out onto the street. Bending, he looked over the area where he was sure the car had stopped. That’s when he noticed something.

  Specks.

  Specks of a dark, congealed substance that had hardened into the pavement.

  He kneeled. The whole thing had happened at night. Even someone looking for it afterward, in order to cover it up, would likely never have spotted it in the dark.

  He reached inside his pants pocket and pulled out his key chain, which had a Swiss Army knife on it. Opening the knife, he scraped at the specks, which were hard, dried, more black than crimson.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered to himself.

  How the hell had it gotten all the way out here, on the street, and not in the kitchen, unless it happened just as Wendy said?

  From the car Robin came over, leaning over him. “Find something, Dad?”

  “Could be . . .” Esterhaus got back up to his feet. “Run and get me the camera,” he told his daughter. “It’s in the backseat.”

  He had found something.

  He
was sure he was staring at David Gould’s blood.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Harold wasn’t sure why he was doing it. He didn’t know what he hoped to find out, or what he would do, if something turned up. He was a real estate lawyer, not an investigator. He specialized in REITs, not crime solving.

  But waiting outside Sabrina Stein’s office at the DOJ, watching the flow of staffers going in and out, he did know that he’d never ever be able to look at his wife’s photo again without averting his eyes, never be able to hug his kids without the suspicion that their mother’s death could possibly have been solved and he hadn’t followed it up.

  Much of what Wendy Gould was saying did have the ring of truth to it. And was backed up by the facts. And if there was one thing that did burn in his heart, drove him, almost as much as the vow he made to protect Jamie and Taylor and that he couldn’t put away, it was that he wanted to see the people who had committed this horrible act brought to justice.

  Wherever it led.

  “Mr. Bachman.” The twenty-something staffer stepped out from behind her desk. “The secretary can see you now.”

  She opened the office door as a young shirtsleeved staffer stepped out, carrying a large stack of files and giving Harold a polite but harried nod. Harold could recognize the crazed look of someone a year or two out of law school anywhere.

  Sabrina Stein’s office was spacious, official-looking. An American flag, photographs on the wall of the president and the attorney general. She stood up from behind her large desk, piled high with multicolored folders. “Mr. Bachman.”

  Sabrina Stein was in her forties, attractive, with short, dark hair and vibrant brown eyes—eyes that were both intelligent and welcoming, yet at the same time bright with ambition. She hadn’t hesitated when Harold contacted her to testify on Lauritzia’s behalf. She had put her own life on the line both as an agent and then as head of EPIC, the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center fighting narco-terrorism. She’d been shot; she’d been bludgeoned with a bat in a sting in Juárez that went horribly wrong. She still walked with a slight limp. She’d spent a good part of her career inhabiting the murky area between police work and covert action. For twenty years she’d been trying to put killers like Eduardo Cano out of business or take them down.