“Where?”
“In Australia,” I said, and gave David the details.
“How recent is the news item?”
“Ten days.”
“Let me run it by the Office of International Affairs at the Criminal Division,” said David. “Maybe they already have something on that.”
Now it was time for cherchez la femme: look for the woman. If Loretta Otis had spilled the beans on Ward once, she’d do it twice. There’s nothing more dangerous than a spurned woman. Maybe a spurned man.
I called the FBI field office in Lexington, Kentucky.
They called me back within the hour to give me the news: Loretta Otis had been found dead the night before in her apartment. Homicide.
“How did she die?” I asked, as if it mattered for my investigation. She was dead-I couldn’t talk to her in any case.
“Gun shots, three times. Looks professional, and if we’re not mistaken, she was the target. Doesn’t look like a foiled robbery- nothing was taken from her house.”
I told them about my initial finding in the media about the victim, and asked the Bureau to call me back as the police investigation developed. But I already knew why she had died, and feared I’d hit a dead end there anyway.
David called me later on that day. I told him about Otis’s assassination.
He reflected for a moment and asked, “Do you think Ward is connected?”
“I can’t rule it out. Look at the sequence of events. First she faxes the Rabbi to stop the wedding, then the Rabbi calls her to verify, then the Rabbi refuses to marry Ward and tells him why, and within days, bang bang bang, and Otis is dead. Probably silenced either as punishment or to keep her from spilling more. It seems that our case is not dead after all. It’s very much in motion.”
“OK. Let local law enforcement handle that-we’re only after the money. Anyway, I’ve just got the authorizations. Start packing, you’re going to Sydney. Your travel documents are on the way. We’ve received the cooperation of the Australian Federal Police. They have assigned an agent to assist you. His name is…Hold on, let me get the cable. Peter Maxwell. I’ll give you his number. Call him directly to alert him of your arrival time, and we’ll take it from there.”
“Peter Maxwell here,” said a friendly voice with a heavy Australian accent, when I dialed his number.
“Hi, Mr. Maxwell, this is Dan Gordon of the U.S. Department of Justice.”
“Hello, Dan, I’ve been expecting your call, and forget the mister , just call me Peter.” Peter Maxwell pronounced his name Pita. He was warm and open as he brought me up to speed. Goldman was still at large. Border records showed the entry of a Herbert Goldman, a U.S. citizen, through Sydney’s airport on March 1, 2004. On the immigration form he’d indicated a hotel as place of stay.
“Which hotel?” I asked.
“No name, just ‘a hotel.’ ”
“I’m planning to come over to see the Australian Federal Police in action,” I said.
“Please come, although I don’t expect a lot of action on this end. Hopefully we’ll find him. But it’s one hell of a big country down here, mate.”
Three days later I arrived at the Sydney airport. To my huge surprise, all the red-eyed, weary passengers of my flight were stopped in the terminal’s hallway by uniformed policemen with dogs on short leashes. Without much ado, we were told-or rather ordered-to form two lines and put our hand luggage on the floor. Nice welcome, I thought, but times being what they were, it was reassuring in its own way. Policemen then walked two dogs slowly along each passenger line, letting one dog, then the other, sniff each piece of carry-on luggage. Ten minutes later it was over and we were let go, without even one word of explanation or apology.
There were ways to look for drugs or explosives, but that one was the most unexpected. I knew they had to use at least two dogs per line: one dog trained for explosives that sits stock still and points if it finds them, the other trained to detect drugs by sniffing the luggage. Trainers had discovered that they couldn’t cross-train the dogs, or the sniffing narcotics dogs might set off explosives. If using both types of dogs, you’d take the explosives dogs down the line first. Then, if no explosives were found, would come the drug dogs, which could snurfle to their hearts’ content without setting anything off.
Peter Maxwell, a tall man with a rugged, tanned face and a firm handshake, waited for me in the customs hall.
“Welcome,” he said as he walked me past customs into his unmarked police car. “Was it too tiring?”
“Somewhat,” I answered, deciding not to rant about the sudden search. “Any developments?” I was eager to jump into it.
Peter smiled. “Yes, we found the lad at a Sydney hotel.”
“Is he still there?”
“No. Ten minutes after we started questioning him, he said he was sick and fainted.”
“He actually fainted?”
“You ask me, this bloke is full of shit, but just in case, we admitted him into a hospital.”
“Is he under your watch? This guy can disappear in no time.”
“We’ve got a warrant for his arrest on local fraud charges, so in fact he’s a detainee in the hospital.”
“When can I see him?”
Peter looked at his watch. “How’s this afternoon sound? I’ll drop you off at your hotel, and if you aren’t too tired, you can walk to the hospital. It’s very close to your hotel.”
When we arrived at the hotel, I checked in, threw my luggage on the floor, and ran out the door. I was dog tired, but I hadn’t come to Sydney to rest. I had to see Albert C. Ward III right away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Manhattan, New York, September 11, 2004
Crushed by the fact that I had been wrong about Ward, I had to find a new bearing. I paced through the hallway outside my office. If the man in the hospital bed wasn’t Albert Ward, then who was he? His denials didn’t impress me. I’d seen con men in action, and wasn’t about to be convinced by this guy. On the other hand, there was firm scientific proof that he wasn’t Ward. Had I picked on an innocent person? I still had no idea of what the missing link could be. What about Otis’s faxed letter connecting Ward with Goldman? Why wasn’t that enough? But until the FBI and the Australian Federal Police cleared this matter up, I needed to move on. The solution had to be in the file. But where?
I sat down at my desk and opened the file for the umpteenth time. First, I read my notes taken during my conversation with the high school principal. Ward had wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic Magazine. Maybe I should see if he had ever made good on that dream.
“It’d take time to search the archives dating back to 1980,” said a very polite woman when I called National Geographic. “Not all our freelance photographers are included in our computer database. If the person you’re looking for sold us a photograph many years back, a manual search would have to be performed.”
“Thanks, but can you please look to see whether his name appears on your computer database?” I asked. It was an absurdly long shot-lots of kids have dreams-but I had nothing to lose, and I could get lucky.
“Let me see. You said his name was Albert Ward?”
“Yes, the third. Albert C. Ward III.”
I heard her clicking on her computer keyboard. “Yes,” she said. “I think I found something. There’s a series of photographs taken by a person with that name during a safari in South Africa in 1981.”
“That’s great. Is there an address listed for him?”
“Yes, we sent him a check to Comfort Student Hostel, Sandton Square, P.O. Box 97848, Johannesburg, South Africa.”
Finally I was moving up in time, although just one year. At least I had an address overseas. “Thank you so much. Can you transfer me to accounting please?”
“Accounting, Lisa speaking,” said a woman cordially.
“I would like to know how a freelance photographer named Albert C. Ward III cashed a check paid to him by your magazine in 1981.”
“And you are?”