Read Online Denouement by E. H. Reinhard - Free Book Online Page B

into it. It’s kind of been a whirlwind since I got word on Azarov. And now with dead FBI agents and trying to find Ray—”
    The captain held out his hand, stopping me. “You just let me know. We’ll figure it out.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    Bostok rapped his knuckles on my door. “We’ll catch up in the morning.”
    “Sounds good.”
    Bostok turned to leave.
    “Hey, Cap. One more thing.”
    He stopped in the hall and turned back. “Yeah?”
    “What happened with Iler?” I asked
    “The DA is still in the process of working out something with his attorney on the charges, but right now Iler is in lockup. It’s not looking good for him.”
    “Good,” I said.
    Bostok nodded, turned, and left. I headed back to my desk and sat.
    I let out a long breath. “Okay, Mark Popov. Who have you been calling?”
    I dug back into the numbers but found nothing of interest after an hour of checking. Frustration was setting in. My eyes grew tired of staring at numbers and reading some FBI agent’s chicken-scratch handwriting next to each. When I looked at the clock, it showed a few minutes after eight. I reached for my desk phone and dialed Callie. She answered within a couple rings.
    “Hey, babe,” she said.
    “Hey, Cal. How is everything?”
    “We’re just sitting here, under guard, locked in a hotel suite.”
    I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
    “It could be worse, I guess. How is everything there? Any news?” she asked.
    “None good,” I said.
    “What happened?”
    I told her about the agents. I told her that Ray was behind their deaths, and that there would be no meeting where the outcome would be him in custody. She went quiet.
    “I’m sorry, Cal. Just know that I’m doing whatever I can to find him. Faust, I’m sure, has countless men on it as well. We’ll get him and get you guys out of there.”
    “I know, Carl,” she said. “I just want you to be safe.”
    “I will. I’ll call you guys in the morning.”
    “Okay, I love you,” she said.
    “I love you too.” I hung up and pushed off from the corner of my desk. My chair slid back on its casters and rocked. I balled my fists and pressed them together. My knuckles cracked.
    My family being holed up in a hotel was eating at me. Without the meeting with Azarov, I didn’t know how long they would need to remain there. Faust putting them up was a personal favor, off the books. The two agents he’d put on them wouldn’t stay there forever. We needed a break in finding Ray—any hint of a trail we could follow. I gave my burning eyes a rub. I needed a coffee to make it more than another ten minutes of staring at numbers, so I made for the lunch room to get my caffeine fix.
    With two tall cups of coffee at the corner of my desk, I got back to the task at hand.
    I blasted through the first ten pages. The next ten were a little slower, and I still found nothing of interest. On the thirty-third page of the records, something finally caught my eye, a call made to a time-and-weather number in Miami. I pulled Mishutin’s phone records back from the box I’d placed them in and checked the number. It was a match.
    “Now what would you be calling that number for?”
    I pulled up the phone number in my computer’s search engine. The first result was a website called MiamiTandW. I clicked on the link. The page opened to a website looking as if it had been designed sometime in the nineties. The page showed the local time, date, and weather, with the phone number in the top right corner, the same one as on my sheet of records. I didn’t find any additional pages to click or any other information on the website. I grabbed my desk phone and dialed the number. The recording told me the time and temperature, said goodbye, and then beeped in my ear. I hung up. The service appeared to be just what it was—the number and the website. It gave you the time and temperature, nothing more or less. I finished with Popov’s records and filed them in the box.
    I spent