“Okay.”
Luke gaped at her.
“Let’s go back to the Stevsky—”
“That’s it?”
“What’s it?” Faith knew what Luke was fishing for, but where was the fun in giving in too fast?
“You’re okay with me not telling you about the classified cases? Or are you saying okay, and tomorrow you’ll have your director on the phone with our director and it will be a whole thing?”
Luke had a vivid imagination. She’d give him that. He needed to relax, but that might be difficult for a man who had lost as many friends as Luke had and had been shot at—was it just yesterday?
“I’m saying okay, which means I’ll leave a note in my official file stating I did not personally review the cases—the Secret Service handled that aspect of the investigation—and I was satisfied with their results. I’ll let you see the letter. You can sign it if you want to.”
Luke frowned. Was he going to insist on seeing the letter? “That won’t be necessary.”
“Excellent.” No point in belaboring things. “Back to the Stevsky case. What can you tell me about that one?”
“Almost everything.” Luke tapped a few keystrokes on his computer. “The only pieces of the puzzle missing for us have to do with how the old man died. We didn’t have him killed, and we don’t know who did it.”
Luke spun his computer around so she could see the monitor. “This is the senior Stevsky. Convicted in October of multiple counts of electronic fraud, tax evasion, human trafficking, and just for good measure, counterfeiting.”
“He sounds like a real sweetheart.”
“You’re being sarcastic, but if you’d ever met him, you’d say the same thing. The man oozed a particularly potent essence of kindly grandfather and generous business owner. Everyone in the Raleigh area thought the Stevsky family was the great American story. Immigrants who had come to America and made good within three generations. But the reason they were doing so well was because they were literally printing their own money and ripping people off.”
He spun the computer back around. “The Stevsky case was Thad’s baby. A few years ago, he got a tip from a confidential informant, and the guy was so scared, he called Thad all the time. Called him when he was at home. On Sundays when he was at church. But the CI was right, and Thad believed his story. Stuck with the case even after the CI decided to relocate for his own safety.”
“Where’s the CI now?”
Luke brown eyes softened. “He’s okay. Lives somewhere out West. He refused witness protection, but Jacob checked in with him yesterday. He’s married with a new baby.” Anytime Luketalked about kids, his whole demeanor changed. He must enjoy them. For her part, she had limited exposure to baby humans. Or little humans. Or pretty much any human who didn’t have a fully formed prefrontal cortex. Although, come to think of it, she strongly suspected a few of the guys she’d dated in college had still been growing their brains. She almost hoped so. It would have given them an excuse for being so stupid.
“Anyone else associated with the Stevsky case who we should contact?” Faith scrolled through the files on her iPad. “Judges? Attorneys? Jurors?”
“Gil and Tessa did that last night and this morning. They made a list of everyone they could think of, including the court stenographer and the handful of reporters who had been allowed inside. They called me this morning while I was still at the hospital to see if I could think of anyone they had missed. All have been put on alert. Local law enforcement is on alert as well. They gave them names and addresses and requested a heads-up if there was any activity near their homes or businesses.”
Faith went back through a mental checklist of questions, but these guys had anticipated, and answered, everything.
“I haven’t worked any organized crime–related cases in Raleigh. What kind of competition do the Stevskys have?”
“Not much. There are a couple of wannabe families and a few serious gangs, but none of them have the level of finesse the Stevskys had.”
“Had?” Faith locked in on the word. “Are they gone? That would create a vacuum someone would want to fill.”
“True.” Luke’s antagonism had lessened. When she questioned something, he wasn’t quite as quick to throw up a wall. Good. “We aren’t convinced they’re gone, primarily for that reason. No one has emerged as the new leader of the family, but no othergroup has claimed any sort of superiority over the Stevskys. We’re leaning toward more of a dormant state. Possibly because they haven’t worked out their internal power structure with the death of Stevsky. The other possibility is that they’re planning something and are keeping a low profile.”
“Well, if they’re behind this, they’re still keeping a low profile.” Faith continued to scan the file. “No one has taken any kind of credit or claimed responsibility. When a federal agency is attacked, the people responsible either shout it from the rooftops or some nobody in their organization lets it slip that they were behind it. Either way, it gets out.”
“Yes,” Luke said. “But the Stevskys operated with an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ philosophy. They didn’t want credit. They just wanted power and money, at least that’s how it was when the senior Stevsky was in control. We don’t have a handle on the younger Stevskys. Or how they would react to the loss of the old man under those kinds of circumstances. I’ve been in touch with my CIs, but no one has heard anything. They’ve promised to get back to me if anything changes.”
Faith stood. She needed to move, and she needed to talk this out. “For the sake of argument, if it was them, what are they angry about? Getting caught? Getting convicted? Or the death of the senior Stevsky? Because attempting to eliminate an entire Secret Service office is no small undertaking. You have to be seriously angry.”
Luke scoffed. “Or seriously deranged.”
He wasn’t wrong there. “Either way, we need to find out how they’re doing. Has anyone talked to the sons, daughters, brothers of Stevsky?”
“You’ll have to ask Estes.” Luke’s mouth quirked when he spoke, and Faith got the impression that he was delighted to share this particular bit of information. “We were told to stay away fromthem. Something about not wanting to clue them in to the fact that we were on to them.”
