“Did you?”
Sircy shook her head. “I couldn’t stick the knife in his back. I was still carrying a torch. Still am, I suppose.”
The conversation had drained both of them. He thanked Sircy for her time, and got up to leave. She pointed at his drink.
“Are you done?” she asked.
“I am,” he said.
“May I have the can?”
He handed it to her, and she performed another flip over her back that landed in the trash can on the other side of the room without so much as kissing the rim.
“That’s impressive,” he said.
“It’s an acquired skill,” she said.
Chapter 21
Catch 27 was an elevated restaurant in the heart of Saint Augustine’s historic district that served locally sourced seafood. Daniels had suggested they meet here for lunch, believing the pricy menu would keep the local cops away, and allow them to talk freely.
She sipped a glass of wine and stared into the parking lot while waiting for Jon to show up. She’d seen none of this coming. She was trained to follow her instincts, yet her instincts had failed her. Her father was a predictable man with little drama in his life, save for the holidays when he got tipsy at parties and would tell a funny story that dragged on too long, or break out in song. Those were the extent of his transgressions. Nothing in his past had prepared her for the juncture she was at now. It was almost as if she were dealing with two different people.
A car pulled into the lot. Jon got out, and the car drove away. He came inside, took a seat, and ordered a beer. After he was served, she took out a quarter, and spun it on the table.
“Call it,” she said.
“Heads,” he said.
It was heads.
“You go first,” he said.
“I met with Erce,” she said. “Our boss is hounding him, wanting to know if you’re helping my investigation. J. T. isn’t very fond of you.”
“What’s his problem? That I wear shorts most of the time?”
“Your methods bother him. The bureau constantly gets sued. If a criminal defense attorney finds out you’re helping us, it could cause problems.”
“It’s a free country. He can’t tell me what to do.”
“J. T. is convinced that you shot Egor Sokolov. The bullets that entered his body were millimeters apart. J. T. referred to that as your trademark.”
“And I thought it was my Jimmy Buffett T-shirts.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“Your boss is paranoid. I’m just a retired cop.”
“With a huge following on YouTube.”
Back when he was a cop, Jon had engaged in a high-speed chase on I-95 in South Florida, forced a fleeing pickup off the road, then shot to death two armed kidnappers who were prepared to kill an innocent girl. Captured on video by a TV news chopper and posted on YouTube, the shootout had gone viral and garnered millions of views. There was a movie in the works with a well-known actor slated to play the lead. Whether he liked it or not, Jon was famous, and viewed by the public as a real-life Dirty Harry.
“What do you plan to do?” he asked.
“Erce is going to tell J. T. that you’re running your own investigation, separate from mine,” Daniels said. “I plan to tell J. T. the same thing when I speak with him. We need to keep our distance until this thing is over.”
“You’re making me feel like a leper.”
She put her hand atop his, and left it there. “I didn’t say that I wanted you to leave. Just a little separation for appearances’ sake. There’s too much at stake here.”
“I’ll do whatever you think is best.”
She removed her hand. “Thank you. I also got a bead on the Sokolov brothers. They’re human traffickers. The three women we saw in Sierra’s video were victims.”
“Are the Sokolovs pimping them?”
“Could be. Although that would fly in the face of what everyone says about the sheriff not tolerating prostitution.”
“Maybe the sheriff doesn’t know about it. What’s Katya’s role in this? Is she a victim, or also a trafficker?”
“I don’t know. She’s definitely under the Sokolovs’ thumb, which would make her a victim. So that was my morning. How did yours go?”
Jon took a long pull of beer. He was no longer making eye contact, and she sensed that he’d found something unpleasant, and was struggling with how to tell her. She gave him some time.
“Your niece tracked down the names of the victims who’d gotten hands put on their doorsteps,” he said. “Four of them were fishing buddies of your father’s. The fifth was a doctor named Angela Sircy who sat on the board of directors at the local hospital with your father. I decided to talk with her first.”
“That name’s familiar. Did she and my father date?”
“Yes, they did. She told me things about your father that caught me by surprise.”
Jon had his poker face on, and was showing no emotion. Something big and ugly was about to fall out of the sky, and Daniels suddenly wished she hadn’t touched her wine.
“Go ahead,” she said quietly.
“Sircy said that your father was addicted to pornography, and that she’d caught him looking at smut on his cell phone. She claimed others had as well. An intern at the hospital caught him and told HR. It led to him being thrown off the board.”
“Pornography? My father?”
“I said the same thing to myself.”
“Did you believe her?”
He took a swig of beer. “Not completely.”
“Why not?”
“Parts of her story didn’t ring true. Your father was single, and had all the time in the world to look at porn when no one was around. Her claim that he was doing it in public bothered me. He would know the consequences, and try to hide it.”
“Like any other addict.”
“That’s right.”
“What part of her story did you believe?”
“I think your father had images on his phone that he didn’t want people to see. That’s why his phone’s memory was erased when the police found it.”
“Images of what?”
“Our friend Katya.”
“You think they were having a relationship?”
“I do. Dr. Sircy and your father appeared to be in love. Then your father jilted her. I’m guessing that’s when Katya came into the picture. When I searched the basement of Katya’s house, I found a photograph of your father and Katya together. They looked very happy.”
“You told me you didn’t find anything in the basement.”
“I lied. I found the photograph in a hidden room. It bothered me, so I didn’t tell you right away. I’m sorry.”
Daniels bit her lower lip. This was hurting her, and she suppressed the urge to take her anger out on him. But that wouldn’t have been fair. Jon was trying to help her and protect her at the same time, and that was never easy.
“If this is true, then Katya seduced my father, and got him into a compromising situation. Then she blackmailed him, which would explain the missing money,” she said.
“Yes, it would,” he said.
“So how do we prove all of this?”
“We open the wall safe in your father’s study, and look at what’s on the hard drive of the laptop stored inside. I’m guessing there are photos of him and Katya that your father didn’t want anyone to see.”
“You already opened the safe?”
He nodded and killed his beer.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” she asked angrily.
“Because as an FBI agent, you would have been obligated to share whatever you found on the laptop with Detective Sykes, since the investigation into your father’s death is ongoing. I didn’t want you to do that, so I kept my mouth shut.”
She slapped the table. Jon had played her like a fiddle. Like his perfect aim, it was another trademark. He’d done this before, and each time she’d nearly ended the relationship. She wondered what it said about her character that they were still together.