Immortal Cascade 05 Immortal Endgame Read online

  "And I'd like to check in with Megan, in case she wants to come along. I think she's addicted to Joe's barbequed ribs," Dee said.

  "Sounds like a plan then. Lee, can I use your phone?"

  Megan Connor had left a brooding James Ellison in the break room, after his little revelation about the power of money and political clout on the Justice system of Washington State, and returned to her research on the QuestScape incident from Friday night. Now, three hours later, she was looking through the report Lee Eolia had given Rafe after the aborted attack on her in the alleyway.

  "That can't be right, can it?" Reaching for the original case file, the one Captain Banks had cleared her to read, she paged through it until she found the vitals and booking photo of Bradley Ventriss. Comparing the stats in the old file with the statement the WindHawk Executive had given about the man who had shot her bodyguard, she muttered under her breath, "Damn, could it be?" Only one way to find out.

  Calling down to Records, she requested the investigation file containing the report on Bradley Ventriss' death in the Cascade City/County Jail. The clerk on duty offered to bring the file up to her, but she opted to get it herself.

  Crossing over to Ellison's desk, where the man was still listening to audiotapes through a set of headphones, she tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. "Jim?"

  Looking up at her, pain clouding his normally clear blue eyes, he made a 'go ahead' gesture and pulled one of the earpieces from his ear. "What it is, Connor?"

  "I've got to run down to Records for a few moments. I'm hoping Dee calls soon. Can I forward my calls to you?"

  Jim glanced around the bullpen, seeming surprised to see he and Megan were the only ones there at the moment. "Yeah, sure. Where did everybody go?"

  Megan answered over her shoulder as she crossed back to her desk, forwarded her phone and grabbed up the files she needed. "Got a call about an hour ago. Major pile up on the freeway. Uniforms went to assist just as the call came in from the field that the accident may have been caused by a drive-by. McMillan and Jorgenson responded from our department, along with Jones from the Gang Unit."

  "Lucky them." Jim popped the tape out of the cassette player and loaded another one in. "Good thing we're officially off duty, huh?"

  Clutching the files to her chest, she scowled at him. "Like you wouldn't have responded yourself if you had heard the call?" Her only answer was a derisive snort. "Right. You find anything on those tapes yet? Or did you really sneak in your Santana and Bad Company collection?" Thinking that was a good line to leave on, she did just that.

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  Jim winced as the sound of her heels hitting the hard flooring reverberated in his head. Mentally reaching out to 'turn down' his sense of hearing, he dug in his desk drawer for the bottle of acetaminophen tablets he kept stashed there. Washing two pills down with the last of his cold coffee, he grimaced and decided to refresh his cup. Walking into the break room, he found the communal pot completely empty and set about making more of the liquid nectar.

  Once the machine was percolating, he turned his thoughts back to the tapes he'd already listened to, trying to sort out the sounds of the multiple tracks he found on them. The supervisor in Communications had offered to let him sit in her office and listen to the playback on the editing/playback machine - the one that would only play one of the 50 some odd tracks at a time - but he'd turned down the offer. From the size of his headache, Jim was regretting that action on his part.

  The gurgling sound of the coffee maker finishing its task pulled him back to the here and now. Pouring a fresh cup, he walked back out to the bullpen and to the task he'd set for himself, auditory sorting of the multi-track tapes to find the one call with Norman Ventriss' voice on it.

  After reviewing the last tape, and finding nothing on it that would explain how Ventriss had known what was reportedly taken from the lab, he went back to his notes from Friday's incident. Going over the names of the QuestScape workers who had been in the building when the alarms went off, he came across a name he thought he recalled from somewhere else, Sharee Milton. "Wait a damn minute..." Leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, Jim sent his mind back over the last two days. "Yes! Damn it, that's it!"

  Reaching out to his phone, he looked over his notes and found the number that was listed for one Mrs. Milton and punched it in.

  "Cascade Excelsior, how may I help you?" The woman's voice on the other end sounded vaguely bored.

  "This is Detective Ellison, Cascade PD. I'm trying to get in touch with a Mrs. Sharee Milton, is she still registered as a guest?"

  "One moment, sir." Jim picked up a pencil and started tapping it on the desk. "I'm not sure if this is who you're looking for, sir. But we do have a Mr. & Mrs. C. Milton registered."

  "Thank you. Can you ring me through to their room, please?" The woman didn't say anything, just disconnected and he found himself listening to a ringing phone. After seven rings, he hung up.

  "Okay, one more place to try..." Going back over his notes, he found the next number he needed to call and dialed.

  "QuestScape. Shaping the future of technology. How can we be of assistance today?"

  "I need to speak to someone in your Personnel office, please."

  "May I ask who is calling?" This woman's voice sounded almost as bored as the one from the hotel.

  "Detective Ellison."

  "Oh! I'm sorry, but there's no one in that office on Sundays. If it's important, I can page the Personnel Manager for you, Detective."

  After the now cheerful receptionist took down his information to forward to the person he needed to talk with, Jim opened his desk drawer to pull out a fresh note pad just as his phone rang. "Ellison."

  "Detective, Samantha Smythers, you needed to talk to someone at QuestScape about something? How can I be of service?"

  "You know who I am?"

  "Of course, sir. Bunnie told me who needed to speak to me and Mr. Ventriss left explicit instructions that all QuestScape employees were to assist you, should you call or come by."

  Bunnie? Probably an air headed blonde. "I'm just calling to confirm employment on a witness I interviewed after Friday night's incident."

  "Oh, okay. I happened to be by the office when the page came out, so I'm in my office. Let me call up the right program... Okay, name?"

  "Sharee Milton."

  "Oh, I'm sorry, Detective. But as of yesterday, Mrs. Milton and her husband are no longer working with us."

  "Excuse me?"

  Smythers sighed. "Damn shame too. Sharee was working out great in our IS department and Clancy seemed to enjoy his work in our Hospitality unit."

  "Did they give a reason?"

  "One moment, I think I still have their papers here... Ah, I do. Death in the family. They haven't been with QuestScape long enough to have earned leave time, and they weren't sure how long they'd have to be gone."

  "Thank you, Ms. Smythers. You've been very helpful." He hung up the phone and started to rethink the whole case. Clarence and Sharee Milton worked for QuestScape, but also for WindHawk Securities, the company that was owned by Lee Eolia. He started to scribble his thoughts down on paper, a technique he'd picked up from Sandburg over the years, letting his thoughts go where they wanted to, not bothering to track them.

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  After picking up the reports filed on Bradley Ventriss' death in the detention center, Megan made her way over to the coroner's office. She was hoping to find someone on duty who remembered the incident, or maybe even Dr. Dan Wolfe, the man who had done the autopsy on the younger Ventriss. Stepping into the chilly morgue, Connor smiled to herself. "Hey, Dan. Didn't realize you were pulling weekends."

  The Medical Examiner looked up from behind the table he was standing at, his hands still inside the corpse on the slab, and nodded. "Only when my assistants get sick and we get a few too many cases
to keep in the coolers. What can I do for you, Connor?"

  Covering her mouth and trying to control her stomach, Megan felt slightly ill. The ME was continuing to examine the body and was pulling out various organs, laying them on another, smaller, table beside him. "I just wanted to ask you about an autopsy you did back in September."

  "September? That's almost four months back. I'm lucky if I can recall what I ate for breakfast." Dan stepped away from the table, stripping off his gloves. "Let's go into my office, he'll keep for a while."

  Following the heavily built Native American into his office, trying to ignore the blood and other stains on his lab coat, Megan doggedly went on with her line of questioning. "I'm hoping you can recall this one, Dan. Bradley Ventriss?"

  "Ventriss? Oh yeah! The kid Ellison and Sandburg nailed on the Chung murder." Dan snorted. "Ironic he got capped himself in a damn jailhouse brawl. What did you need to know, Megan?" He poured himself a cup of coffee, silently offering some to his guest.

  "No, thanks. Uh, how did he die?"

  "Shank to the brainstem." Seeing her confusion, he tried to explain. "A shank is a homemade knife inmates tend to make when they're bored. This one might have even been made from a metal nail file, the entry wound was that small." Placing his cup on the edge of his desk, he walked back around to stand by her side and, with a gentle hand, pointed to a spot on the back of the Inspector's neck. "Went right in here, right between the c-1 and c-2 spots on the spine. Kid must have dropped like a stone and death was pretty much instantaneous."

  "I see." Megan nodded and looked over the reports from the Jail investigation team. "They never found out who killed him or the weapon, right?"

  "As far as I know." He picked up his cup and sipped from it. "There's another little weird incident that occurred right around the same time. Not related, but weird all the same."

  "Oh? Tell me, I like weird tales. I tend to share them with the family back home."

  "We lost a body."

  "What?!?" Megan felt her heart racing, her mind clicking into overdrive as the possibilities started to scream in her consciousness.

  "I had just cleared Ventriss' body to be released to the funeral home, where it was to be immediately cremated, when one of my assistants came in babbling about a body not being in the drawer it was assigned to."

  "Does that kind of thing happen often?"

  "No, it doesn't. The missing body was a vagrant, and while I hadn't done the post mortem examine yet, I figured he had somehow gotten mixed up with the ones who had already been cleared to go to Potter's Field." The ME shrugged. "First time that has ever happened on my watch, but probably won't be the last."

  Megan nodded, thanked Dan for his time, and left the morgue, her thoughts in a tumble. Bradley Ventriss, killed by an unknown assailant, dead for just over four months, and now a case at QuestScape that involved possibly stolen programs. Was there a connection? Was the young Mr. Ventriss the real brains behind the original thefts from his father's company, or was he just the middleman? Was he really dead? Alone, in the elevator, Megan snorted and chided herself out loud. "Just because Dee's Immortal, doesn't mean they're everywhere. You're reading too much into this."

  Stepping back into the bullpen, she barely had enough time to put the report files on her desk when Ellison called out to her.

  "Connor, I want to go back over the scene at QuestScape. Wanna come with?" He was already swinging into his heavy leather jacket.

  "Sure, mate." Grabbing her coat, the one she knew Sandy and Jim referred to as her 'pink dingo,' she followed him out of the offices and put aside her thoughts about Brad Ventriss. "What are you hoping to find, Jim? I thought we had covered the scene pretty well..."

  "You had a point the other night. How did Lee get out of the building? And I'm hoping you don't mind, but I need to stop by the Excelsior on the way over to QuestScape."

  "You going to ask Ms. Eolia out right how she got out?"

  "Nope. I need to talk to her employees, the Miltons. They also worked at QuestScape until Saturday."

  They had just reached his ancient truck when Jim's cell phone trilled out. "Just a second, Connor. Hello?"

  Megan wished she had half the hearing ability Diandra and Jim had for the look on the senior detective's face was...interesting. Instead, she had to listen to just his side of the conversation.

  "Hey, Chief. Yeah, sorry about that, I just wasn't in the mood to listen... Oh? Well, yeah, I think we can make it over there, hang on a sec." Jim looked over the bed of the truck at Megan. "Connor? You feel up to an evening at Joe's in Seacouver?"

  "What? Oh, yeah, sure. Why not."

  "Yeah, we'll meet you down there. What? Oh, Connor and I just have a few things to follow up on. No, that's why I asked her to go with me. Yeah, yeah, good training for us both. Sure. Talk to you later." Jim shut down the cell phone and climbed into the truck, unlocking her door by reaching across the cab.

  "Jim? Why are we meeting Sandy at Joe's?" Megan had to ask as she joined him in the truck.

  "He wanted a night out. Dee suggested they go down to Joe's and I guess LaFollet and Eolia are going with them." He cranked the truck over and backed out of the parking spot.

  "That seem a bit odd to you?"

  Jim smiled as he pulled out of the garage. "You didn't see it, did you?"

  "See what?"

  "LaFollet's tattoo." He tapped the inside of his wrist.

  Megan caught the clue. "He's a Watcher? How does that tie in with Eolia?"

  "I think he was her husband's Watcher. I called back to Seattle PD and had a chance to speak to the detective who worked Azir el Sadih's death. He claimed the crime scene was a mess, like a violent storm had passed through the area, but the weather that night had been clear."

  "So Azir was Immortal! I knew it!" She slapped the dashboard in front of her in triumph. "But if Azir is dead, why is LaFollet still with WindHawk?"

  "I think he didn't want to leave until Lee was over her grief. Maybe he's on leave from the Watchers."

  "Yeah, or maybe she's Immortal?"

  "Doubt it. I seriously doubt it."

  Jim walked from the elevator to the door of the room the Miltons were registered to, followed by Megan. She waited as he knocked. "What are you hoping to find out, Jim?"

  "I'm not sure, yet." The door to room 1508 swung open to reveal the husband, the tall Native American who had surprised Jim at Eolia's door the previous evening. "Mr. Milton? Detective Ellison and Inspector Connor," he gestured to Megan, who was also holding her Police ID up for the man to see. "I'd like to speak with you and your wife about QuestScape, if I could?"

  Clarence Milton nodded and held the door open and motioned his visitors inside. "I kind of figured you'd be dropping by, Detective. Wait here, I'll go get Sharee."

  They watched as the man disappeared behind a closed door. "Nice digs. QuestScape either pays better than I thought, or WindHawk Securities does." The room was smaller than the Presidential Suite they had seen last night, the one Lee Eolia was in, but only by half.

  Sharee Milton appeared on the arm of her husband, a tiny woman compared to him, with almost twelve inches of height separating them. "C said you wanted to ask about QuestScape?" Her voice matched her body, tiny, sweet and almost child like.

  Jim took the lead. "Yes, ma'am. I understand you no longer work for them? Either of you?"

  "That's true, Detective. Sharee and I terminated ourselves Saturday, after the botched security check on Friday."

  "How long were you employed there?" Megan asked.

  "About a month. C and I are what's known as 'point men' - we arrive in the area of a security check long before the principle players, try to get hired on with the company and snoop around." Sharee sat down on a couch and invited the others to do the same. "It's all perfectly legal, as none of the information we send back to WindHawk is of a sensitive nature."

  Jim scribbled a note on the pad he was working out of then looked over at the small woman. "There's been a
question raised about what kind of information may have been taken from the Development Lab. Do you have any ideas on what was being worked on in there?"

  Sharee seemed slightly uneasy. "Vaguely, but I'm not sure I should tell you."

  "Why is that?"

  "Because, if word gets out WindHawk divulged sensitive information, even in the course of a police investigation, none of our clients could ever trust us again," Clarence answered for his wife.