Page 13 of Quiet Protector
A vein in Phillipa’s neck works overtime when I backhand two oddly familiar faces on a makeshift perp board. “The Russian entity hired to do the hit on the Gottles was the Bobrovs?” When I nod, she pushes out, “Are you sure, Brandon? This isn’t child’s play. We can’t throw out an accusation like this without having the evidence to back it up.”
“I have proof.” She looks more panicked now than she did when I admitted to hacking CIA servers. “With Kirill’s focus elsewhere…” I nudge my head to Katie’s photo Grayson sent me weeks ago. “… cracks on the failed takedown bid only began surfacing eight years ago.”
Phillipa’s mouth drops open. “Right around the time Milo was released from prison.”
“Correct.” I flip open a file on a side table. “Mr. Gregg…” I pause, suddenly feeling odd referring to him by a name he wasn’t born with. “Liam did disturb Crombie attempting to set fire to a barn on the outskirts of his property as stated. The only thing the reports failed to reveal was that he made a citizen’s arrest before dropping him off at Saugerties PD. The officer who wrote up the report was—”
“Rory Langfield,” Phillipa interrupts, reading the information from the incident report that has no claimant details jotted down. “With his trust low, Liam wouldn’t have given his details to anyone, let alone to the Chief of Police.” She takes a moment to absorb the information before locking her eyes with mine. “Do you think Rory recognized Liam?”
Nodding, I head to my laptop resting on the dining table before suggesting for Phillipa to take a seat. Once she does, I press play on a surveillance video of a dairy farm forty miles from Melody’s family ranch. “The foreman had security installed after an insurance claim for an equipment shed blaze was denied because the assessor didn’t believe the fire was sparked by the welders working on a neighboring milk shed. His report stated the fire was deliberately set.”
“Crombie?” Phillipa intuits.
Her downcast lips shift into a smile when I jest, “Allegedly.”
We watch the thirty-seven-second movie in silence. There’s no sound, so we don’t need to be quiet. I just want to see if Phillipa gasps the same way I did when I stumbled upon this footage.
She does, although it’s more an annoyed groan than an angry gasp. “Langfield dropped Crombie off?”
“But wait, there’s more.” I point to the far corner of my monitor, steering her gaze to Milo Bobrov, who waits for Crombie to enter the residence before he joins Langfield at his car. “Milo was witnessed following the Greggs the very next weekend.”
I don’t disclose that I’m the sole witness of that statement. I don’t know why. Perhaps because I’ve spilled a lot of information to a woman I hardly know. Or perhaps it’s because I know Phillipa isn’t being as sharing as I am. Whatever the reason, my purge still significantly lightened the weight on my shoulders.
“Do you recall me mentioning there was a possible link between Isaac Holt and the driver of the cattle truck that killed the Greggs?” When Phillipa nods, I toss a liquidation sale document to her side of the dining table. “Isaac purchased the dairy farm two weeks before the Greggs were murdered.”
“What’s your take on that?” Phillipa sounds more fretful for me than Isaac.
I give her a halfhearted shrug. “I wanted to believe he knew the type of business he was purchasing. Almost every employee at the farm had a criminal record as long as my arm.”
“But?” Phillipa queries when she hears it hanging in the air.
“But… paperwork reveals Isaac terminated all employees with known cartel ties before handing over operations to one of his many feed-the-starving-children-of-the-world charity organizations. I plan to dig a little deeper into his tax records to see if the farm was purchased to launder funds for his illegitimate businesses, but I haven’t had a chance to catch my breath just yet.”
Phillipa folds her legs under her bottom before pursing her lips. “That’s understandable. You looked wrecked.” She laughs when I roll my eyes, then, not even five seconds later, she says, “This is all very impressive, and I’m stunned you squeezed a year’s worth of work into a week, even if you skipped showering to do it. However, I’m still a little lost as to why you demanded my immediate attendance at your apartment. What does any of this have to do with me? I don’t work cold cases.”
She watches me with wide, panicked eyes when I cross the room to tug down David Crombie’s mugshot taken the night he was found hanging in a prison cell. “He’s your missing thread.”
Phillipa touches her chest. “Mymissing thread?”
I leave her to stew for a few seconds before lifting my chin. “Milo had no clue Crombie was about to fuck him over as Rimi Castro had done to his brother years earlier.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
Phillipa is a good actor, but I was trained to seek deceit in many forms.
“Not only did Crombie help Castro pin two murders on Milo, he drove him to his death as well.”
Phillipa doesn’t flinch because she knows every word I speak is true. I also have evidence. Footage from a gas station two miles from where Milo was found has footage of Crombie and Milo driving east. Ten minutes later, the same vehicle is seen heading west. It was minus its passenger that time around.
“Crombie was sentenced to twelve years. He was out in six. Before your team swooped in and plucked him from Detective Carter’s grasp, he said he pleaded out. My guess is he threw Castro under the bus for a plea bargain. The Bobrovs weren’t popular after the stunt they pulled on the Gottles, and although Crombie doesn’t have their name, he has their blood.” I slant my head, encouraging eye contact with Phillipa before muttering, “I’m just striving to work out what type of relationship he had with you.”
6
Brandon
When Phillipa scoffs as if I’m being ridiculous, I hit her with enough facts, even if she wanted to leave, she couldn’t. “You’ve only worked for IA for the past eight months, and although you had proof an agent had forged evidence, you didn’t need to come in as hard as you did to secure a witness. That means you wanted Crombie for more than taking down an agent suspected of tampering with evidence. You wanted to punish him for hanging you out to dry.” The tears welling in her eyes would have most agents backing down. They don’t work on me. Only one woman’s tears have. They don’t belong to a rogue agent. “What did he do, Phillipa? Give you false information? Turn you like Paavo turned Leesa?”
A tear almost rolls down her face when she rigorously shakes her head. “It was nothing like that?”
