Lone Hunter: Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 3 Page 6

  Halfway down the block she felt the damp fog of the drugs sweep through her vision. She stumbled against a parked car and crashed onto the sidewalk. She glanced back only to see Whitelaw gaining on her. He looked drunk, disoriented. She grasped the open flaps of her blouse and tried to race forward. As she fumbled along the sidewalk, she remembered the sound of the wind whistling against her ears. The sound she recalled as a teenager running sprints around the track at Mountain View High School. Run — run!

  She glanced at the street signs as she crossed an intersection. Grace and Mission Streets. Where? Her legs felt wobbly and she crashed against the hood of a parked pickup truck and fell to the sidewalk. Her ankle screamed with pain. Had she broken her foot in this mad panic? Once again she forced herself forward, limped through the traffic, her eyes alert for squad cars, fire trucks. Maybe someone would help her. Maybe someone would kill Justin Whitelaw. Nothing. No one to save her. She turned left on Mission and before she crossed 11th she stopped a moment, braced her hands on her knees and sucked in gulps of air while she scanned the street for Justin. Christ, there he is!

  When she reached Market Street she realized where she was. She turned left and hobbled toward the Van Ness MUNI station and through the graffiti-lined cavern toward the subway entrance. As she hopped the gate control, the attendant let out a brief yelp but no alarm sounded, no alert to bring the cops chasing after her. What would it take? What did she have to do to get help?

  Get on the subway, she screamed to herself as she clambered down the escalator, nudging people aside as she went, her hands clasped over her open blouse. “Excuse me, ‘scuse me. Please help me!” Nothing. On the concourse, she looked around. There he was — at the top of the escalator — shoving his way into the bottleneck of passengers stepping onto the stairs. No!

  Maybe a hundred, two hundred passengers loitered in front of the yellow stripe that separated them from the subway tracks. She pushed her way along the loading platform, weaving through the clot of commuters, transients, gangstas and their hooker girls, school kids, and tourists until she reached the end of the station. She hid behind a knot of tall, gangly skater boys dangling skateboards from their hands. Her ankle throbbed and she knew she couldn’t run another step. She tried to button her blouse, but her fingers wouldn’t cooperate. “Please,” she moaned and clutched her open blouse with both hands. She felt her pulse drumming in her throat, sweat dripping from her face and chest. The cut on her face throbbed. All she could do now was wait.

  Hearing the dull sound of a train chugging through the tunnel ahead, she peered along the length of the track. There he stood in the middle of the bay, twisting about, his head darting back and forth, a bloodhound trying to catch her scent. Now the light of the oncoming train illuminated the mouth of the subway tunnel. Justin turned to look at it, then back toward her. He saw her — his eyes bright with recognition. He took a step forward, then stalled as if something in him had failed. The blood loss? The will to pursue this madness?

  “Help me!” she cried out.

  Then, seemingly from nowhere, a security guard approached her. His head stood a foot above her and his eyes swept over her face. “Ma’am, can I help you?”

  “Thank God,” she whispered, unable to find her voice. She clutched his arm and turned back to look at Justin.

  Now perhaps three hundred people edged toward the lip of the track. As the passengers prepared to mount the train she saw the look of utter despair on Justin Whitelaw’s face. She saw his confusion, his lost hope, the collapse of his life. In the next instant he blinked, and without a backward glance he dove in front of the onrushing train, down onto the tracks where the front left wheel rolled over his body and severed his spine.

  ※ — SEVEN — ※

  ALEXEI MALININ STOOD at the window in his Moskva-City office on the twenty-ninth floor of Tower 2000 and gazed at the rain pelting the black water of the Moscow River. He’d been an early investor in the urban development venture and lived to regret it. In the 1990s, Moskva-City promised to become the financial heart of the new Russia. Now the twelve-billion-dollar boondoggle suffered from a forty-five percent vacancy rate, just as eight new towers neared completion. The scale of incompetence reminded him of the late soviet era, except this time no one could honestly blame Yankee capitalism for their woes. The Russian oligarchs and technocrats were responsible for this mess — and the US dollars, Yen and Euros they borrowed to finance it could never be repaid in rubles.

  Since the collapse of the price of oil, the economy had become an unmitigated disaster. With the financial system faltering, the currency in shreds, the media shackled and the political opposition in chains, the only solution was to rebuild the military and make a grab for old glory: Georgia, Crimea, the Ukraine. Next up, Syria and then the Baltic states. No wonder so many Russians had longed for the return of communism. Or at least for a strong man who could turn their heads away from the sight of their collective ruin.

  Malinin expelled a long stream of air through his chapped lips and watched a cloud of condensation form on the window. Good, he thought, it blurs the premonition of catastrophe. He stepped over to the wall behind his desk, placed a hand over his head and stretched his back, part of a set of exercises he performed daily to release the tension from the stabbing and surgery he’d endured in 1987.

  When Malinin completed the round of prescribed stretches, he returned to his desk and continued to work at his computer. The spreadsheets revealed catastrophe. No matter how he toyed with the set of financial inputs, he’d become insolvent within two months unless he found a new source of cash. But that likelihood diminished with each passing day since the murder of his American partner, Dean Whitelaw — Senator Franklin Whitelaw’s step-brother.

  He brushed a hand over his face. How had he allowed himself to bet everything on a single roll of the dice? Everything that he’d learned about diversification, about hedging risk, about the treachery of partnerships. He’d forgotten all of it when he first heard of a new enterprise that could change the world. The word itself seemed magical: GIGcoin.

  The Whitelaw brothers had approached him about GIGcoin in 2010, two years after Wall Street’s collapse, at a time when the American Federal Reserve printed trillions of dollars to halt the death spiral of the US economy. Their solution, quantitive easing, was little more than sorcery, a piece of legal legerdemain to keep the economy limping forward. The Fed’s illusion could work for a few years, the Whitelaws maintained, but eventually a tinder box stuffed with so much printed paper would ignite an inflationary inferno that could never be contained.

  Dean Whitelaw had explained the pending catastrophe as he envisioned it. “We’ve got four, maybe five years, before the whole mess blows. That’s all the time we have to launch GIGcoin as an alternative currency. We’re going to anchor it in the USA, the UK, Europe, Russia, China and Japan,” he said as he lit another cigar. “With your background and your connections to Putin, we want you to take the lead in Moscow. Franklin will handle the politics in D.C. and we’ve got interested parties — well-connected parties — in the west. But we want you to bring in the key players from China and Japan.”

  Malinin had met with Dean and Franklin Whitelaw at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu. Hawaii provided Malinin with the easiest access to the USA and if he needed to, he could quickly submerge in the burgeoning community of Russian ex-pats who’d built a beach-head in Honolulu.

  The three of them talked about strategy while they sipped Mai Tais and watched the surfers glide on the waves into Waikiki Beach. At the time they all felt like geniuses. A year earlier, in 2009, bitcoin had been launched to little fanfare. But as the world economy teetered, bitcoin gained notoriety. The digital currency couldn’t be inflated. It didn’t need banks, or bankers, for that matter. Nor countries, nor politicians to “fan the flames of inflation,” as the senator said.

  Then trouble came in spades: bitcoin was exploited for money laundering, drugs and weapon crimes. And in 2014 over f
our hundred and fifty million US dollars worth of bitcoin disappeared. Without a trace. Whoever lost it could never claim it. Whoever found it would never know to whom it once belonged. “Like finding gold coins buried under the roots of the Judas Tree,” Dean Whitelaw claimed with a hint that he knew exactly where that tree stood and what kind of shovel he’d use to dig it up.

  GIGcoin offered several important improvements on bitcoin. First, its mathematical algorithms could be modified annually. To ensure it provided enough currency to support an expanding global population, the accrued value of GIGcoin would be adjusted by the world GDP expressed in the value of Gold: GDP In Gold — or GIG. Furthermore, with the currency’s governance managed by a sanctioned international group, the wild west scandals that plagued bitcoin could be eliminated. “Or reduced,” the senator conceded.

  The Whitelaws’ finance mathematician, Raymond Toeplitz, had already constructed the framework and software to regulate GIGcoin. “He’s a genius. Stanford PhD., post doc from Oxford. The works.” Dean smiled at the Russian.

  “So you hold the brains, the patents and the software for GIGcoin and I provide the Russian and Asian network,” Malinin said after considering the offer of partnership. “But what are my guarantees?”

  It took two more days to negotiate a solution. They agreed that in addition to his proportional shares in GIGcoin Corporation, Alexei Malinin would become Vice President of Operations and, most important, he’d be granted one of two digital keys that Toeplitz had invented. The keys were needed to launch the software program once all the partnerships were in place. That meant that GIGcoin required a two-step system to activate and modify the currency, much like two signatures required to validate a business check. And Malinin was assigned one of the signatures. He agreed to the offer and within three months he’d secured the alliances he needed in the Kremlin and the far east.

  Finally everything was in place. The corporate headquarters of GIGcoin Bank and Exchange was registered in the Cayman Islands. The international cartel had signed off on the corporate structure and agreed to all operational terms and conditions. The nominal value was set at one billion dollars. The enterprise would ensure their personal wealth for generations. That was guaranteed.

  Until Dean Whitelaw’s murder. And the disappearance of the GIGcoin software. Now Malinin’s only remaining business assets were a contract with a dead man and a digital key with no lock to open.

  As he contemplated his situation, a window appeared on Malinin’s computer screen. The header read: Public Encryption Key Received. His neck tilted backward as if someone had nudged him in the chest. He recovered his presence of mind, clicked on the message link and leaned toward the screen.

  Six lines of code appeared, neatly stacked in vertical rows. No message, no hello. Most important, no suggestion of any error. He studied the code for a moment. Soon he understood that this string of letters and numbers could only originate from the link connected to the GIGcoin software.

  Someone had discovered the link that Toeplitz had created to initiate the GIGcoin launch sequence. Someone reaching out to him. Malinin did not yet know the visitor’s name, where he lived, or how he’d discovered the GIGcoin files. Nonetheless, Malinin realized that he had lured a key player into his domain. The trap had sprung.

  He would need to call in Marat to help with the computer coding and messaging. And Kirill to provide any muscle that might be required. They could be ready within twenty-four hours and meet with his associates in Honolulu. Then Malinin’s final hunt could begin.

  ※ — EIGHT — ※

  EVE NOON SAT next to Leanne Spratz in the booth at the far end of Lori’s Diner on the corner of Powell and Sutter Streets. The fifties-style restaurant provided privacy in a very public place: ten or twelve separate booths in a busy restaurant open 24-7. The kitschy decor — black-and-white checkerboard linoleum flooring, red vinyl bar stools and booths, a mint green Ford Edsel parked next to the juke box, the gleam of polished chrome — all of it attracted a clientele of amused tourists looking for a nostalgic lark.

  “Thanks, Leanne.” Eve finished her coffee and set the cup aside. “You’ve been good to me over the past two years. I appreciate it.”

  “No worries.” She waved a hand dismissively. “The last two years have been the best part of my career at the SFPD. Some of us still refer to you as Saint Eve.”

  Eve smiled and turned her head away. “It came at a hell of a price.”

  “I remember.” Leanne studied her friend for a moment. “Okay. Change of topic: are you, or are you not, seeing someone?”

  “What?”

  “Someone who might cast that glow in your face. Maybe a new … manly-man?”

  Eve laughed and glanced at a family peering into the interior of the Ford Edsel.

  “And if I am?”

  Leanne shrugged. “Good for you. About time, if you ask me. Someone like you without a significant other in your life? Makes no sense. Either that or the universal mating system’s completely broken.”

  “Well. Maybe it’s not completely broken.” Eve considered Leanne’s twenty-one-year long marriage. According to what everyone said, she and her husband were still solid as a rock. Lucky girl.

  “So.” Eve raised her eyebrows; back to business. “You were able to run everything through your magic forensic lab?”

  “It’s not magic. Just science with a dash of intuition and fifteen years’ experience.” She drew a plastic shopping bag from under the table and passed it to Eve.

  “What’s the verdict?”

  “I don’t know what you were looking for, but I suspect this won’t tell you much.”

  “No?” She opened the shopping bag and gazed at the contents: Separate vials containing the white cross-hatched pill and the sample of bodily fluids, a ziploc pouch with strands of Fiona Page’s hair, two larger bags holding the twin brandy glasses, another containing a coffee mug that said “World’s Best Mom,” and a small ziploc bearing a tube of Lypsyl.

  “So what’s the run-down?” Eve set the shopping bag at her feet and turned her attention to Leanne. As always, she expected an oral report. No written analysis, nothing to tie Leanne’s forensics lab to Eve’s freelance detective work.

  “The pill is high-grade Rohypnol. The so-called date-rape drug.”

  “I suspected that.”

  “Yeah. The DNA signature on the Lypsyl stick matches the hair sample. But neither of them match anything in the national data base. So they’re from the same person, but who knows who?”

  “If you want to know — ”

  Leanne raised a hand. “Sorry. Game rules in play: the less I know the better.”

  Eve glanced away and nodded.

  “The bodily fluid samples are typical bed sheet scat. One, sperm. The second, unidentifiable vaginal secretions. Again, nothing matches anyone in the data base.”

  “How old is the sample?”

  “Hard to say. One week or two?”

  “And none of it matches the DNA from hair or Lypsyl?”

  “No. I made certain of that.”

  A look of disappointment crossed Eve’s face.

  “As to the two brandy glasses, there wasn’t enough residual saliva to determine a DNA signature. But I did lift the fingerprints.”

  Eve tipped her head to one side. “And?”

  “The prints are from two people. Neither match the prints on the coffee mug.”

  “Go on.”

  “The first set of prints didn’t match anyone in the data base. But—”

  “The other did?” She knew Leanne liked to play a game Eve called But-Now-What? — especially at the end of her reports. Perhaps all forensic techs enjoyed this moment, the denouement when they could divulge a clever surprise.

  “Yeah. And guess who.” Leanne inched forward. “It matches some prints in the excluded set.”

  Eve recalled how the system worked. Whenever a crime scene investigation called for a forensic sweep, all of the prints from the investigati
ng officers would be excluded. The police fingerprints were stored on an internal data base that no one else could access.

  “So who is it?”

  Leanne paused and shook her head with a look of wariness. “Damian Witowsky,” she whispered.

  “Witowsky?”

  “Yeah. It’s a ten-point match. Statistically, a ninety-nine-point-nine precent probability.”

  She sat back to consider this. “So I’ve caught Witowsky sipping brandy. With someone you don’t want to know about.”

  Leanne nodded. “Whatever he’s done, you got him, girl. But be careful. Rumor is that IAD already has Witowsky in their sights.”

  “For an admin investigation — or criminal?”

  Leanne closed her eyes and whispered, “Criminal. Supposedly.”

  Eve took a moment to mull over the implications. When Internal Affairs moves forward on a criminal investigation the result is almost always the same. A cop goes to jail. And there he will die.

  “What did he do?”

  She shrugged. “He crossed over.”

  Eve gazed at the front door as she considered the unwritten rules. Rule one: if you move to the dark side, no one else can know about it. Ever. Rule two: ensure you have enough money to last the rest of your life. Plus fifty percent. Rule three: if you need to, make sure you can cross back. Undetected.

  “I wonder if he has enough money,” Leanne said.

  “He’d already be gone if he did.” Eve checked her watch then gathered her purse and phone. She wanted to bring Will up to date as soon as possible.

  “If not, then I’d consider him armed and dangerous. Especially if he thinks there’s no way back into the box.” Leanne rummaged through her purse for a credit card.

  Back into the box. Meaning the SFPD coffin. Eve smiled at that. Once you were out who would ever want to climb back in?