“On our way.” He tucked his phone into his pocket. “Jane, there’s something we need to see.” He added to the others, “I’ll be back in a few. Don’t drink all the root beers. I’m talking to you, Diego.”
“Hey, man. Gina’s doing it too!”
Then Rapp tugged Jane out the door, a sense of urgency in his step.
“What’s wrong?” Jane didn’t fight him, just followed his frantic steps to his vehicle.
“They found Phillip’s body.”
“Finally dug him out of all that debris from the hospital, eh?” Jane had figured they would have combed through the mess sooner, but apparently Phillip’s bombs had done real structural damage to the building because of where he’d placed them. Plus, he’d used some extra special compound to make a bigger boom.
Hondo had been impressed while looking over the devices as a courtesy to Gambol.
In any case, it felt good to put the final piece of the case to rest. With a new case file started on the Kaminskis, they were on the way to cleaning up the chaos left in Phillip’s wake.
“No, they didn’t find him at the hospital.” Rapp got into his SUV.
Jane buckled up as Rapp turned them around and jammed his foot on the accelerator. “What do you mean? Phillip didn’t die in the bombing?”
“No. He left a note for you, Jane.” After a pause, Rapp glanced at her and added, “And he’s not the only body they found.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
To Jane’s surprise,they arrived at the warehouse where Dan Simmons had made his last official appearance before being murdered.
Flashing lights strobed across the building’s wall and crime scene tape draped around the warehouse and adjacent building on the dock.
“Seriously? They found the bodies here?”
“What’s the significance?” Rapp raised the yellow tape and flashed a badge at the officer standing close by while he and Jane ducked under it.
“This is where we were surveilling the Mazzucas.” She looked over her shoulder at the apartments on the other side of the street. “We set up back there, fifth floor. We couldn’t see too much, but we kept track of comings and goings. Until, of course, the few days prior to Dan going missing. The Mazzucas just up and left with no witnesses.”
They walked into the center of the dock to find it empty.
“Over here,” one of the detectives said when she spotted them. Jane recognized her as the same woman who’d interrogated Harding with Gina a few weeks ago and found itcurious the detective would be so far away from her precinct. “How’s Gina doing?”
“Better now that I’m out of her hair,” Jane confided.
The detective grinned but said nothing else.
They entered the large warehouse space and stopped.
In the middle of the cement floor, a dozen dead bodies lay sprawled in a large circle, each covered in blood. Leo Mazzuca especially. He’d been shot in each eye, his sockets dark, heralding a hard death.
And in the middle of the circle, Phillip lay flat on his back, smiling at the ceiling. He stared, unseeing, a blanket of blood pooling under his head and neck from a bullet wound at his temple.
Flat on his belly lay an envelope.
Jane and Rapp stood back while the forensic team did its job, but to Jane, it was clear Phillip had arrived to clean up a mess. His mess or someone else’s?
“Why?” she mused aloud. “He was presumed dead. He could have used the time before we found out he hadn’t died at the hospital to get away clean. Make a new life for himself.”
“Maybe that voice that told him what to do insisted he stay.” Rapp crossed his arms over his chest as they watched. “I’m glad we found him, but not like this. He was messed up, no question. But he started the ball rolling on fixing corruption in the Agency.”
The media had been all over the incident at the hospital, as well as the Code Blue Killer. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective, the FBI’s internal problems hadn’t come to light with the press, though questions were being asked.
On the one hand, Jane wanted the rot exposed so it couldn’t grow back. On the other hand, she didn’t like the idea of the public losing faith and trust in an organization that genuinelyhelped people. Either way, Jane had never been so happynotto be in public relations.
