Read Online Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) by J. Mark Bertrand - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: J. Mark Bertrand
Tags: United States, FIC042000, FIC042060, Murder—Investigation—Fiction, FIC026000, March, Roland (Fictitious character)—Fiction, Federal Bureau of Investigation—Fiction, Houston (Tex.)—Fiction
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windows, testing doors. The house is locked tight, but the garage door isn’t. I push through into the stifling heat of the enclosed space. There are no vehicles inside. A wall of cardboard boxes three deep and five or six high occupies one side of the garage, each one labeled in black marker: OFFICE , CLOTHES , SHOES , CHINA , BEDROOM , TOYS . The list goes on. I run my finger over one of the boxes, leaving a trail in the dust. They’ve been in storage for a while.
Using my lockblade, I open a couple of the boxes to see if the labels and contents match up. They do. There’s a box marked PHOTOS , which contains baby albums, framed wedding portraits, and stacks of loose pictures. I grab some and start sifting. The man in the tux kissing the bride, the man cradling the newborn in the crook of his arm is the same one in the photo Bea Kuykendahl gave me along with the file. This is a lot of trouble to go through to build a cover. Too much.
“What did you find?” Lorenz asks.
“A bunch of photos.”
I’m about to toss them back when one of the images catches my eye. It’s a photo of Brandon Ford flanked by two other men, his arms draped over their shoulders. Behind him, an older woman looks into the camera, her eyes red from the flash. There’s something about the expression on their faces—maybe the confidence of youth, maybe the camaraderie—that speaks to me. Here’s my victim, alive and happy. Seeing him that way helps to humanize him. I tuck the picture inside my jacket and close the box.
“I’m gonna call the ex-wife, since she doesn’t seem to live here.”
“I’ll make the call,” I say. “You drive.”
I dial the number from the front seat of the car, the air-conditioner blasting. She answers after five or six rings, sounding frazzled and breathless. I can hear cartoons in the background, children’s voices. I keep it brief, identifying myself and asking for a location where we can meet face-to-face. She gives me the address of an apartment complex on Westheimer outside Beltway 8, maybe halfway between our present location and downtown if we swing down south a ways. I tell her to expect us within the hour.
“What did she sound like?” Lorenz asks.
“She sounded young. She sounded confused, maybe a little worried. I could hear kids in the background. There were two in the photos.”
While he drives, I kill time going through his research. Brandon Ford has a gun dealer’s license, but he doesn’t seem to have a storefront. Instead, he works out of a rental office on a by-appointment basis, specializing in exotic longarms for collectors, everything from elephant guns to high-powered sniper rifles. According to his website, which Lorenz printed in its entirety, he also travels to a variety of Texas gun shows where he operates a booth.
“I printed out pictures from the site,” he says.
“I see that.”
They are low-resolution images. One depicts a tall curly-haired man in a blue polo shirt standing behind a table laden with imported tactical rifles. Not the AK-47s that Bea mentioned. These appear to be top-dollar European models. In the second photo, the same man wearing the same shirt poses with an old school FN FAL battle rifle mounted with a massive starlight scope, cutting edge in the seventies and eighties and no doubt highly collectable now.
“I’m surprised you can make a living that way,” Lorenz says.
“Was he making a living? His house is on the market.”
“What I mean is, it’s weird people buy and sell this stuff.”
“It’s weird people buy guns in Texas?” I ask.
“This kind of gun, yeah. I mean, I’m on the front lines every day and I don’t have an arsenal like that. I couldn’t afford it, for one thing. Can you imagine knocking on this guy’s door? He’d have the SWAT team outgunned.”
I’m not interested in getting into an argument about guns. That’s something I don’t do anymore. I grew up with them, and to me you either get it or you
Using my lockblade, I open a couple of the boxes to see if the labels and contents match up. They do. There’s a box marked PHOTOS , which contains baby albums, framed wedding portraits, and stacks of loose pictures. I grab some and start sifting. The man in the tux kissing the bride, the man cradling the newborn in the crook of his arm is the same one in the photo Bea Kuykendahl gave me along with the file. This is a lot of trouble to go through to build a cover. Too much.
“What did you find?” Lorenz asks.
“A bunch of photos.”
I’m about to toss them back when one of the images catches my eye. It’s a photo of Brandon Ford flanked by two other men, his arms draped over their shoulders. Behind him, an older woman looks into the camera, her eyes red from the flash. There’s something about the expression on their faces—maybe the confidence of youth, maybe the camaraderie—that speaks to me. Here’s my victim, alive and happy. Seeing him that way helps to humanize him. I tuck the picture inside my jacket and close the box.
“I’m gonna call the ex-wife, since she doesn’t seem to live here.”
“I’ll make the call,” I say. “You drive.”
I dial the number from the front seat of the car, the air-conditioner blasting. She answers after five or six rings, sounding frazzled and breathless. I can hear cartoons in the background, children’s voices. I keep it brief, identifying myself and asking for a location where we can meet face-to-face. She gives me the address of an apartment complex on Westheimer outside Beltway 8, maybe halfway between our present location and downtown if we swing down south a ways. I tell her to expect us within the hour.
“What did she sound like?” Lorenz asks.
“She sounded young. She sounded confused, maybe a little worried. I could hear kids in the background. There were two in the photos.”
While he drives, I kill time going through his research. Brandon Ford has a gun dealer’s license, but he doesn’t seem to have a storefront. Instead, he works out of a rental office on a by-appointment basis, specializing in exotic longarms for collectors, everything from elephant guns to high-powered sniper rifles. According to his website, which Lorenz printed in its entirety, he also travels to a variety of Texas gun shows where he operates a booth.
“I printed out pictures from the site,” he says.
“I see that.”
They are low-resolution images. One depicts a tall curly-haired man in a blue polo shirt standing behind a table laden with imported tactical rifles. Not the AK-47s that Bea mentioned. These appear to be top-dollar European models. In the second photo, the same man wearing the same shirt poses with an old school FN FAL battle rifle mounted with a massive starlight scope, cutting edge in the seventies and eighties and no doubt highly collectable now.
“I’m surprised you can make a living that way,” Lorenz says.
“Was he making a living? His house is on the market.”
“What I mean is, it’s weird people buy and sell this stuff.”
“It’s weird people buy guns in Texas?” I ask.
“This kind of gun, yeah. I mean, I’m on the front lines every day and I don’t have an arsenal like that. I couldn’t afford it, for one thing. Can you imagine knocking on this guy’s door? He’d have the SWAT team outgunned.”
I’m not interested in getting into an argument about guns. That’s something I don’t do anymore. I grew up with them, and to me you either get it or you
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