Chapter 14

### Interrogation

The county jail held three cells laid out along one wall, facing a larger group room containing two tables with bench seats in the center. The entire area was accessed by another steel-barred door from the jailer’s area, with remote cell door controls, video and sound recording from the cell monitoring system, and an alarm system for emergencies.

Sheriff Nelson broke up the groups, putting an unidentified trespassing prisoner with an unknown kidnapping prisoner. He isolated the third trespasser, the ‘local muscle,’ by himself. Then he called an old friend from his days with the Justice Department, hoping to dig deeper into the mystery locked in his cells.

“Jack,” Fred said when his friend Jack Evans answered, “We’ve got something on our hands like I’ve never seen before, at least not since I left the Department and came out here. We’ve got four unidentified ‘hombres’ who come up blank. No prints on file, no identification, nothing. And when I send prints and photos to our district investigators in the state system, it goes nowhere. It disappears. I call and demand information and nobody remembers the request. I call the state commander and he refers me back to the district.

“Our fifth suspect, arrested with two of the others on a criminal trespassing with intent charge, is known as local muscle, according to my contacts outside the county, but he’s pretty low-level. Yet even he is seemingly protected. And I can’t get any records on him.

“The vehicle they used was a Land Rover, registered to a Boise leasing company. But there’s no lease record, nothing for the date of the incident. And when I tried to trace the leasing company’s ownership? Nothing. Just shells within shells.

“Then we get a kidnapping. Two men in a stolen SUV grab a woman and two children from the same remote residence that was the earlier target of the intruders. We got lucky and grabbed them without harm to the abductees, and we come up with more mystery. No identification, no prints on file, no links to anything. In all cases, everything on them was fake, pretty good fakes. Jack, there’s something big behind this,” Fred said.

“And there’s more. On a hunch, I sent prints and photos to Las Vegas PD, who came right back that they knew them as Nevada residents with suspected drug ties in their area. The Vegas PD referred me to a state investigator who confirmed it. But again as nothing but low level soldiers implicated as ‘enforcers’ doing muscle work.

“Two attempts, Jack. There’s one odd circumstance. Reese Adams, co-owner of the mine property and the residence, recently returned with a grandmother and four girls that he’d rescued from a bad situation. He said the woman’s daughter and her drug-dealing boyfriend were running from Las Vegas pursued by some drug supplier he’d pissed off. They dumped the kids and kept going. There might be a connection, but I’ve got nothing solid.

“I’d like to send what I’ve got, and see if you can turn anything up on who the hell these guys are, and what’s their connection? Obviously there’s somebody running them, giving orders and paying for it. But, who? And what’s behind it?”

Reese also called a friend, one of his last contacts at the Special Forces station he’d worked out of. Jesse Remington was one of the best interrogators he’d ever worked with. Jesse was a small, pale man with snow white hair and eyebrows and penetrating ice-blue eyes. He’d never seen Jesse smile. His thin-lipped mouth was always set tight-lipped and immobile. When he spoke, his lips opened slightly and the words came out in soft hissing syllables rather than spoken words. Reese remembered the effect.

He made my skin crawl to hear him. And the one time I doubted what he told me, those eyes ... those blood-chilling eyes! They scoured my soul, I swear. Then I believed what he’d said. No doubt. If he told detainees that Satan himself would crawl up their asses and burn them alive from inside out, well, when they heard those hissing words and they looked in his eyes, they saw it. Their doom, being burned alive!

“How’d you get my number?” Jesse hissed.

“Simple. I called in two or three favors and I got it. So you’re retired. Staying busy?” Reese said.

“Bored. Not busy.”

“What? Retirement’s not so great, then?”

“What do you want, Reese?” It sounded more like Rhheessssss a drawn-out sibilant hiss forced over a reluctant tongue.

“You. On a plane tomorrow morning. Your flight’s booked, first class, direct to Salt Lake City, Utah, with a commuter connection to Boise, Idaho. I’ll have a rental car waiting for you, and directions to our location. You’ll come. You’ll be busy. You’ll enjoy it.” And Reese hung up, knowing that Jesse would come. He always came when Reese needed him.

“So here’s what I’ve got,” Jack Evans began when Sheriff Fred Nelson answered his office phone. “There’s not a helluva lot in our files — our ‘official’ files — but my personal work journal has a lot of fragments, notes of things we’ve heard that possibly connect those ‘unknown hombres’ to a big, fuzzy suspicion of a US-based smuggling and trafficking operation. Nothing solid. Just bits and pieces, random bits that we can’t do anything with but hope to get more pieces in place. But these guy’s pictures you sent, and the prints. I got some hits. You won’t like it. I don’t like it,” Jack said.

“So, how much don’t you like it?” Fred asked.

“Enough that I’ve got clearance for a flight and time to come see for myself,” Jack replied. “You got any motel rooms there in Dogpatch?” he asked.

“Yeah, I got a spare room at the house. You’ll be buying the beer. I’ll provide the BBQ. And, Jack? If you crack wise with ‘Dogpatch’ again where anybody hears you, I can’t guarantee your safety. Okay?”

Reese and Jack sat unseen from the cell-block area, watching the video monitors and listening. A female deputy manned the recorders and operated the remote camera, mounted in the cell block. One of the monitors was connected to a pair of cameras in a guarded interview room, down the hallway from the cell block. One camera recorded the seated prisoner from over the shoulder of the interrogator. A second camera recorded the side view, showing both persons. A table-mounted microphone sat between them.