Identity- Lost Read online

  Brian still remembered his dad’s long-time partner, Timothy “Timbo” Boscorelli, so it came as no surprise how often his name appeared in the old police reports he had just read. His dad and Timbo had been inseparable during most of their careers, especially during their early days together, both on and off the job. But in later years, particularly after Brian’s dad’s forced retirement due to his health and the Hanley family’s move to Arizona, the two had stopped communicating with one another. The connection had broken completely when Timbo, who left the Chicago PD back in the late eighties, ended up in private security, protecting highprofile Chicago politicians.

  It dawned on Brian that his Saturday trips with his dad to the police station abruptly stopped. As a boy, he hadn’t understood why. Thinking back now and doing the math, Brian deciphered it had been right around the time of the Manny Fleischman case. Almost nine then, he figured his dad was just too busy to bring him down to the office anymore. Like most boys his age, Brian had started to play Little League baseball, so his weekends left him little free time what with games and practice.

  At this very moment, he struggled to understand why his dad had never told him about this particular case, but it was becoming clearer to him as he read on that he might have just found out why. First, though, he needed to follow a hunch he had about a particular item displayed prominently on the wall of his deceased father’s baseball memorabilia collection.

  Brian’s phone rang, interrupting his thoughts.

  “I’ve got Pat Bobko from the U.S. Marshal’s Office on hold,” his secretary announced. “Says he’s returning your call.”

  “Put him through.”

  “Hey, Pat. Brian Hanley. I’m fine. How are you? Great. Got a minute? I need to pick your brain about something.”

  Brian pulled up to a handicap parking spot right next to the ASU Rec Center exactly as his car’s digital clock displayed 2:15. He placed a placard reading chandler police dept on the dash of his unmarked car, allowing him to park wherever he wanted, one of the perks of being in law enforcement. Five minutes after his arrival, he watched as Maxine Kobe strolled up to the building, making her way toward the main entrance. Workout bag slung over her shoulder, her tall, curvaceous physique and dark olive complexion exuded the epitome of good health.

  Brian always loved to watch how his best friend’s wife carried herself as she walked. He admired how she held her head high—confident, strong, self-assured. Maxine, he knew, not only loved her career but her freedom, too. He knew that she and Stan had a solid marriage, one based upon trust and openness. If what he planned to tell her proved right, then that trust and openness would surely be tested, and tested very strongly.

  “Max!” he shouted, jumping from his unmarked car, startling her from behind as she strode by.

  “Brian. Don’t do that. I almost karate kicked you right in the family jewels. Don’t you know you shouldn’t do stuff like that to a girl walking alone on campus?”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. Just anxious to see you.”

  She paused a beat before she said, “What’s going on?”

  Brian discerned a furrow in her brow. Not knowing how to begin, he looked down at the ground and bit his lip.

  “Sweetie, you’re starting to creep me out. If you’re about to tell me you want to leave Claire—”

  He held up his hand in a halting gesture, feeling his face turning red. “No, no. It’s nothing like that. I just want to ask you a few questions.” He moved his hand around to her back and gently urged her toward his car. “Here. Please. Take a seat in my car.”

  Brian hadn’t meant to frighten Maxine, but the crevices deepening in her brow indicated he had, so he blurted out what he came here to tell her. “Look. I’m concerned about Stan. Have you detected anything different about him lately? Any odd behavior?”

  Maxine pulled her gym bag off her shoulder and set it on the hood of his car. “You’ve noticed it, too?” Her response seemed to be one of relief, but then her expression went from bewilderment to concern as he spoke.

  “So you think he’s acting funny, too. I knew it. He just doesn’t seem like the friend I know. I mean, it all started with that baseball bat of my dad’s he—”

  “Not that goddamn bat again,” she jumped in. “First, he tells me that night it wasn’t about that stupid bat and that it was about a case you two were working on—which I knew was a lie. Then, the next morning he admits it was about the bat but won’t tell me exactly what it’s all about. We had a huge fight. I told him that if he couldn’t be honest with me, then I was going to leave him.”

  “You said that?” Brian asked, shocked at the revelation of a chink in the armor of what he had always thought to be a strong marriage.

  “Yes, I said that, thinking that my husband would never allow that to happen. That he’d snap out of whatever was bugging him and just tell me what was going on.”

  “And what’d he say?”

  “You wanna know what he said? He said, ‘If you gotta go, I’m not stopping you.’ Can you believe my Stan said that to me?”

  “No fuckin’ way!” Then quickly he added, “Oooh. Sorry for my French.”

  “Fuck your French. That son of a bitch really said that to me.”

  Brian took a deep breath before going on. He knew that what he was about to say could further shatter this woman’s faith in the man she loved. He laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m a cop, Max.” He paused a full beat. “And cops are trained to be suspicious. Right?”

  She nodded her head. He could see by the look on her face she wasn’t quite sure what he was about to say next.

  “The reason I wanted to see you is because I’m here to tell you that I don’t think Stan’s the guy he says he is.”

  He awaited her reaction, but none came. Does she suspect the same thing, too?

  Unsure of what to do or what approach to take next, he took another deep breath. Brian took his other hand and put it on top of her other shoulder, bracing her, and staring into her emeraldcolored eyes.

  “Max. I also wanted to tell you—” He paused until she focused on his eyes.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’ve found Barbara Reyes.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Maxine jumped away from Brian with a jolt. She shook her head, narrowed her eyes, and her face contorted.

  “What do you mean, you’ve found her? And just where is she?”

  Maxine’s mind spun with this latest news, though she wasn’t sure whether maybe she should first be asking Brian about the other bombshell he had just dropped, the one regarding her husband, questioning her perception of the man she loved.

  “Just what I said. I found her,” he replied. “She’s living in a small city in Idaho. College town again. I’m sure she’s okay.”

  She rattled questions at him nonstop, feeling the rush of an adrenaline surge pump through her body. “Where in Idaho? Did you get her address? Her phone? How did you find her?”

  “Whoa, slow down, slow down. Look, Max. I really can’t say any more. I shouldn’t have even told you what I just did. But you’re a great friend, and I thought it might ease your mind to know.”

  She struggled to deal with the surprise of Brian’s news. “Brian, what’s going on? First you tell me you don’t think my husband, the father of my children, is who he really is, and now you tell me you found Barbara Reyes but can’t tell me the details. What is all this? What’s all this got to do with my Stan?”

  “Please, Max. Let’s take this conversation into the car. I’ll tell you all I can in there. Honest.”

  She had no reason to doubt Brian’s concern for her and for Stan. And hearing that he found Barbara Reyes did bring her some comfort. Brian had already opened the front passenger door to his vehicle and waited for her to get in. As she did, she settled in the seat and watched him walk around the front of the car, then get behind the wheel. The car’s police radio squawked with chatter. He turned it down to a barely audibl
e level.

  “Sorry,” he said as he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m still on duty.”

  As she looked at him, he paused a moment and then locked onto her eyes.

  “I’m gonna cut right to the chase. Recently, I’ve been part of a multiagency task force working on stopping the smuggling of illegal crap across the Mexican border. I’ve been working real close with some federal agencies as part of this project, especially with some folks from the U.S. Marshal’s office. They’re the people in charge of all our country’s various witness protection programs. I made some connections high up in their chain of command. That’s how I was able to find out about Barbara.”

  Maxine listened to him intently. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. I really can’t tell you much, though. But the bottom line is, Barbara’s in a federal witness protection program—”

  “So Stan was right,” she interrupted. “He told me that’s what he thought but he wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Well, it’s not that he wouldn’t talk about it. He—we—didn’t know for sure. I just found out for certain myself during a phone call earlier today.”

  “Why? I mean, what did she—?”

  “She didn’t do anything, Max, if that’s what you were going to ask. But, for your own safety, I can’t give you any specifics. As a matter of fact, I really don’t know all the details myself. All I know is that Barbara once lived in New York and worked at a big accounting firm. She discovered some improprieties with her firm’s accounting practices and blew the whistle. There was a trial and her client was found guilty on all counts.

  “Unfortunately for her, the company she worked for was laundering money for some very bad people. The hammer then fell on those people, they were arrested and convicted, and now their “family,” shall we say, blames it all on her for coming forward. Those people are out for revenge, and after she was threatened, the feds decided to put her into the protection program.”

  Maxine reeled with the news, pressing her palms against the sides of her face. “Oh my God. What about her child? And her husband? Are they in danger, too? Can anyone really protect them?”

  “That’s why they were relocated so quickly. Her identity was compromised and the feds moved her and her family for their own safety. I’m sorry to say, but that’s sometimes the down side of being a good guy,” Brian said. “Sometimes you end up with the shittier life. I don’t know if people ever have a normal life again or will ever be safe when they go into that program.”

  Brian shook his head, then stared out through the windshield of his unmarked police cruiser. Maxine dropped her hands to her lap. Her heart felt for Barbara and her family. It didn’t seem fair that her life had become forever changed because Barbara did the right thing. She paused and took a slow, deep breath before she spoke.

  “So, what’s all this got to do with my Stan?”

  Waiting patiently for Brian to respond, Maxine believed she would learn more from him by what he didn’t say next than by the actual words he would speak. As a teacher of college students the past eighteen years, she had become an expert on body language. She looked at him closely for any telltale signals from his limbs, face, or torso, revealing if he was or was not about to utter the truth.

  “Yesterday, I met Stan down at the 4th Avenue County Jail. We’re holding two known Chicago gang members there. We have them on tape conspiring to transport illegals, drugs, guns, and cash back and forth between Mexico, move it all though Phoenix, then on to Chicago. When Stan saw these guys for the first time, he acted like he’d seen a ghost. Max, he could barely look at these two guys.”

  She listened intently. As he told his story, he never lost eye contact with her. As he sat sideways, facing her, he held the steering wheel with his left hand while his right hand laid on the back of the front seat just above her left shoulder. She sensed from his composure that what he was telling her was the truth to the best of his knowledge.

  “I also found out the County Attorney’s office is being encouraged by the governor’s office to bring local charges against these guys while the feds are working out a parallel investigation on their end. The feds even told us they wouldn’t stand in our way, letting the state prosecute this to look good on Arizona’s war against border crime. Yet, we need to move now on charging them before they get extradited back to Chicago or, worse yet, get sprung by a high-priced defense attorney from Chicago. And Stan? What does your husband want? Well, your hubby wants them gone. Now. Out of his hair. Vamoose!”

  Brian pulled his left arm from the wheel and waved his hand as if shooing away a pesky fly. “He wants them out of town as quickly as possible. You should have seen him. Maricopa County’s most ruthless prosecutor? Huh! Not yesterday. I swear he shit his pants when he saw those two in lockup.”

  Confused by his description of Stan’s actions, she propped herself up in the seat. “That’s not like him. My Stan would never do that. He’d never allow these two to go free. Never.”

  “You’re exactly right. So, maybe, just maybe then, he’s not your Stan. As a matter of fact, I don’t really believe he is who he says he is. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s really the man we think we all know.”

  Not waiting for her reply to his accusation, Brian pushed a button under the dash near the driver’s door, opening the car’s trunk. He hopped out and went behind the car. Dumfounded, Maxine turned to watch him through the back window. All she could see was the rear trunk lid propped open. She felt the car move to and fro as he dug around in the trunk for a few seconds. Then he slammed the lid and came back around the side of the car. He carried an object in his hand. Her heart pounded as he got back behind the wheel, finally seeing what he held in his hand.

  “What’s that?” Maxine asked as she inched ever so slightly away from him and the huge object, back toward the passenger door. “Why do you have that baseball bat?”

  “Well, this isn’t just any baseball bat. I think what I have in my hands is a thirty-year-old murder weapon that may hold a clue to all this.”

  “Murder weapon? A clue to all what?” she asked, her right hand now reaching for her own door handle.

  If she had been confused and troubled by everything he had told her to this point, now she felt even more perplexed. The gigantic piece of turned lumber almost spanned the width of the car’s interior. A black tar-like substance covered its worn handle from near the bottom to the lower mid-point of the barrel.

  “Wait,” she said. “I’ve seen that bat before.”

  “That’s right. You have. This is the bat Stan saw in my dad’s trophy room at Kaitlin’s party last Saturday. Remember?” He pointed it toward her. “Recognize it?”

  She flinched slightly but then nodded. Brian went on.

  “I may have had a few too many beers that day, but when Stan saw this bat and freaked out, I knew something had to be up. And then, when he spazzed on us and took all of you out of there so quickly, well, that really made me wonder.”

  “I don’t understand. What is this all about?”

  “Here. I’ll show you. Look, Max. Look closely at the tip of the barrel.”

  He took the bat and carefully raised it closer to her so she could see the fat end of the bat. There, carved into the ash hardwood were two, faint letters.

  “Is this what you want me to see?” she asked. “These initials?”

  “Yes. I think they’re initials, too. Exactly. What do you see?”

  She squinted and grabbed the barrel of the bat, bringing it closer to her. “Well, it looks like a J and an O. Yes. It looks like the initials J.O.”

  “That’s right. J.O. You see it then, too.”

  “All right, Brian. I give up. Who’s J.O.?”

  CHAPTER 27

  Stan Kobe watched Jimmy Nejo’s two Native American jail guards escort Pokie Turner and Bobby DeSadier into an old interrogation room no longer used at the Indian jail. The two were bound with hand irons chain-linked to foot shackles. The bigger guard, built like a
fullback with tattoos covering his arms and neck, pulled DeSadier by the arm and moved him to the table.

  DeSadier resisted. “Git your motherfuckin’ hands off me, Injun!”

  The three-hundred-pound, six-foot-plus jail guard didn’t respond, but merely continued shoving DeSadier toward the table, holding him at bay with a saguaro cactus rib nightstick. The second guard, at least six inches shorter than his partner and easily more than one hundred pounds lighter, had the much more subdued, one-eyed Turner in a similar hold. He escorted him, holding his nightstick at his side, to a seat next to DeSadier.

  After the guards shackled their ankles to the floor and their wrists to the top of an old wooden table, Stan entered the room with trepidation in his heart. He didn’t want to show his deepseated fear of the two men in irons but, nonetheless, cracked a knuckle. He had never been in this interrogation room before and now he knew why. It looked antiquated, like a relic dating from before the turn of the century, a remnant of bygone days. The newer interrogation rooms at the Gila jail didn’t allow shackling of prisoners to the floor.

  Stan dragged a creaky, wooden chair over from the sidewall and sat opposite the two prisoners across the four-foot-wide sturdy, mesquite wood table. The first guard finished double-checking to make sure the prisoners’ chains were firmly secured. Stan acknowledged the guards with a thankful nod as they walked out of the room, locking the door behind them with a throw of a deadbolt.

  Stan put his finger between his collar and his neck, stretching it a bit before he spoke.

  “Mister Turner. Mister DeSadier. My name is Stanford Kobe. I’m a prosecutor with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. I’d like to ask you both a few questions.”