AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So…anything yet?” I said for the twentieth time over Chuck Jordan’s shoulder as he sat at the desk, tapping at Yevdokimov’s laptop.
“Oh, plenty, Mike, but I’m keeping it to myself,” the young agent said, rolling his eyes.
“Why don’t we give Chuck a little space to work, Mike?” Emily said, yanking me out into the hallway.
We were in Yevdokimov’s flop now. We’d found it soon after the bombing. Sergeant Rowe had been spot-on. The building was just where he said it was, down the block from the bombing off Eighth Avenue on the north side of 37th. Yevdokimov’s crash pad was on the tenth floor, and it was filled with me and Emily and about twenty FBI agents who were scouring every nook and cranny for some sign of who the real bombers could be.
We still were unsure of Yevdokimov’s whereabouts. We’d told all the hospitals to be on the lookout for him, but so far, nothing was shaking. The good news was that we’d actually found three computers, which Chuck Jordan and his guys were now poking through.
“This isn’t exactly what people have in mind when they think ‘New York loft,’ is it?” Emily said, looking at the moldering plaster and probably asbestos-covered overhead pipes. “What did the building manager say? This used to be a sewing machine factory? Wasn’t there a famous fire in a sewing machine factory in New York in the eighteen hundreds or something? Because this place definitely looks haunted.”
“You’re thinking of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire,” I said. “That was down in the Village. After the fire started, more than a hundred garment workers died. People were jumping out windows. Because the kindly owners had gated and locked the exit stairwells to keep the workers on task.
“Some good actually came out of it, though, because the public went nuts, and it led to fire safety laws and sprinkler systems and fire escapes and the forty-hour workweek.”
“You’re just a walking Ken Burns documentary, aren’t you?” she said.
“Yes, and my fee for this extended walking tour is the capture of a Russian homicidal bomber in handcuffs with a big shiny bow on his head.”
“Get in here! I think I found something,” Chuck Jordan bellowed.
We went back in. On the screen was a picture of three fat kids in an aboveground pool. It took me a couple of seconds to see Papa Yevdokimov sitting behind them on the pool ladder holding a Super Soaker water gun.
“These are Yevdokimov’s personal photographs. There are about a hundred that show him at the same seaside cottage,” Chuck said.
“It’s his dacha,” Emily said.
“His what?”
“I worked a Russian organized crime case a couple of years ago. Dachas are Russian vacation houses. All the mobsters have them back in the old country,” she said.
“So are we going to try to peg the location from the background again?” I said.
“No. These shots are JPEGs with Exif file formats, which means that they were taken with a smartphone. Smartphone cameras record GPS locations of where each picture is taken in a process known as geotagging. Give me a second,” Chuck said, clicking open some new screens.
“Here it is. The latitude and longitude,” he said a second later. “It’s Eleven Roseleah Drive, Mystic, Connecticut.”
“That’s where he’s headed—has to be,” said Emily.
“What are we waiting for, then? Let’s roll,” I said.
Chapter 99
We were back in the dingy building’s hallway, getting a move on so we could head up to Connecticut, when the elevator opened and Chief Fabretti appeared.
“There you are, Bennett. I’ve been trying to call you,” he said with an agitated look on his face.
“Sorry, Chief,” I said, fishing my phone out of my pocket. “Oh, here’s the problem. Left it on airplane mode.”
“Stop screwing with me, Bennett,” Fabretti said, pulling me over to a corner. “I’ve been getting calls from my bosses. Their counterparts over at the Bureau saw you traipsing around their new digs this morning. They said thanks but no thanks for your help. There’s no more task force. The feds are taking over the investigation from here.”
“What do you mean?” I said, agitated myself now. “We’re right in the middle of this. We’re about to grab the only guy who knows who the real bombers are.”
“No, Bennett. They’re about to grab him. Not you. The feds want to nail the bastards who blew up their building all by themselves.”
“What about the college kids who died on the train and the mayor and the people who died in the EMP attack? They were New Yorkers, right? The people we’re supposed to protect.”
“It’s already been settled. The FBI is going to get the credit for this.”
