“So what’s the front story?” Joe asked. “Why was a file on him even opened?”
Coon explained that Wolfgang Templeton’s name first came up in an interview with a confidential informant seven years prior, during an investigation of a U.S. senator who was suspected of accepting bribes from Middle Eastern governments. The CI knew the senator from their mutual participation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and during the interview he brought up an unrelated event: the still-unsolved kidnapping of a scion of a privately held brewery fortune in Saint Louis in 2004. The heir to the fortune, Jonah Lamprecht, was bad news on wheels, Coon said. Lamprecht was a forty-six-year-old playboy who’d been arrested twice for aggravated assault and forcible rape but had lawyered up and beat the charges both times.
“Lamprecht was high-profile,” Coon said, “and sort of a poster child for slipping date-rape drugs to young women and assaulting them. One victim finally came forward and three other women said, ‘Me too.’ You can imagine how the Lamprecht family felt. Jonah was also supposedly involved in sex-tourism rings and excursions to Thailand and the Dominican Republic.”
Coon said Lamprecht had enough underworld connections — and enemies — that when his Lamborghini Aventador was found parked and empty on a tree-lined road at the St. Louis Country Club, no one was shocked. When a ransom letter arrived demanding $5 million for his safe return, the extended Lamprecht family had brought in the FBI. A second letter arrived three days later, saying that because the family had disobeyed instructions not to involve law enforcement, Jonah would be killed.
Coon said, referencing the file, “No suspects were ever found, and no body. The letters were analyzed and provided zero evidence of any kind — no fingerprints, DNA, nothing. They were postmarked from Saint Louis and printed on a laser printer with Microsoft Word. The case remains open. But this CI told our people that it was whispered among the big shots at Davos that members of the Lamprecht family had hired someone to disappear Jonah two years before. The name he floated was Wolfgang Templeton. According to the CI, it was understood among the hoity-toity Davos types that if any of them needed something done in their private lives or businesses and they were willing to pay a ton of money to get it done right, Wolfgang Templeton was the man to contact.
“That’s when the file was opened,” Coon said, thumbing ahead. “Now jump to 2008. Two Columbia grad students launched a computer application in their dorm room that supposedly, through some kind of voodoo algorithm, would go out and search the Internet and assemble an email list of like-minded consumers based on their social network posts and Internet searches and crap like that. They claimed they could create surefire customer lists for specific products. When the word got out, all the big Internet companies beat a path to their door because no one else had been able to figure it out yet so specifically. Everybody wanted to buy their little start-up, and the bidding began. We’re talking billions of dollars here—”
Joe said, “I know the rest. I remember reading about it. Just a week or so before the auction, a third grad student named Brandon Fonnesbeck pops up and says the two guys stole the algorithm from him, and he claims he has emails from them to prove it. Then, before he can reveal the evidence, Fonnesbeck’s boat is spotted off of Long Island and he’s not on it. His body is never found.”
Coon raised his eyebrows, impressed. “And here I thought you spent all your time checking fishing licenses.”
“What do you know?” Joe said sarcastically. “Continue.”
Coon smiled. “So three years ago, another CI is in a bar in Silicon Valley, drinking vodka with a group of high-tech CEOs. They’re railing on and on about Apple — how they hate Steve Jobs, who they say keeps stealing stuff out from under them and making billions of dollars from their work. One of these guys jokes that they ought to get together and pool funds and hire somebody to disappear Jobs. It’s a joke, and they never did anything. But when Jobs died of natural causes, our CI remembered the conversation. Guess what name came up that night?”
“Wolfgang Templeton,” Joe said.
“Correct,” Coon said. “Which says to me there is a certain name recognition of this guy among a certain level of people. The kind of people who travel on private planes and own multibillion-dollar firms. We’re talking about a level where high-finance types and politicians mix together — the elite. They interact with one another at conferences and forums like Davos. And when they talk off the record to each other about their problems, apparently the name Wolfgang Templeton comes up.”
Joe nodded and sat back. The hook was set.
“Have you ever questioned him?” Joe asked.
“Me personally, no. I’ve never laid eyes on him. But after his name came up on the Lamprecht kidnapping, two agents from our New Orleans office — Templeton was living in one of those old plantation mansions at the time, I guess — went and knocked on his door. He said he had no relationship at all with the Lamprecht family and had no idea what they were talking about. They described him in the file as very courteous and helpful, but useless in their investigation. The agents had nothing to pin on him — no witnesses, no evidence — just that his name had come up. Reading it, well, it’s kind of embarrassing. Templeton had alibis for the date of the kidnapping, and those agents were sent home with their tails between their legs.”
“And now he lives in Wyoming?” Joe said, shaking his head. “How’d that happen?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Coon said. “Apparently, he sold out in New Orleans shortly after that visit by our guys and quietly bought the place in Medicine Wheel County. He did it under the radar, through third-party firms. Nothing illegal about that, but it indicates a penchant toward secrecy.”
Coon paused, looking over the transaction records. “But again, I guess it isn’t so unusual among the rich and well connected. They know if word gets out that they’re interested in a certain property, the price might go up. So they conduct an anonymous transaction that keeps their name out of it until it’s done. And when he relocates to Wyoming, the file goes cold. The bureau has so much on its plate these days we couldn’t devote any manpower to what really amounts to snippets of gossip.”
Joe waited for the other shoe to drop. It did.
Coon said, “But now there’s something else much more recent. In fact, just a month ago, and I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
Joe waited.
Coon said, “The disappearance of Henry P. Scoggins the Third.”
Joe sat up. Of course he’d heard about it. Scoggins had vanished from his own fishing lodge on the Bighorn River under the watchful eyes of a private security team. Speculation had run from kidnapping — which seemed unlikely, even though the questioning of locals and members of the Crow tribe had brought accusations of harassment and racism — to the possibility that Scoggins had sleep-walked into the river during the night and drowned. His body had never been found.
“What do you have that might tie Templeton to Henry Scoggins?” Joe asked.
“Practically nothing,” Coon said, and rubbed at his face with his hands, “except Scoggins seems to fit the profile. Extremely wealthy. Hated bitterly by his enemies, who are also extremely wealthy and connected, and among that elite set we just identified. No explanation for his disappearance. No body. Except this time we might have a lead, although it’s a damned thin one.”
Coon paused for a long time.
Joe said, “Now comes the part I may not like, right?”
Coon nodded wordlessly and flipped to the last few pages of the file.