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5
SAVICH
CAU—Criminal Apprehension Unit
Hoover Building
Washington, D.C.
TUESDAY MORNING
Denny Roper handed Savich a large envelope marked PERSONAL, Savich’s name printed on it in large black block letters. Denny’s eyes were alight, and he was grinning ear to ear. “It was left by the security station. No one saw who left it. No postmark, only your name. I checked personally. Nothing dangerous inside.”
Savich dumped out the contents of the large envelope on his desk, looked up. “Sorry, Denny, no mysterious puzzle pieces this time.”
“That’s a bummer, would have been interesting.” Denny paused a moment, looked at the stacked papers, realized Savich wasn’t going to tell him anything more. Savich thanked him, watched him stop at Shirley’s desk to chat and filch one of her sugar cookies before he left the unit.
On top of the pile was a photo of a man, his wrists zip-tied to a railing, his feet secured with duct tape. He’d been left at a side entrance of what was obviously a police station. There was a pillowcase over his head, and a legal-size envelope was fastened to the front of his coat with large black block letters across it—JUSTICE. He looked to be unconscious.
There were half a dozen other photos with the pages, two flash drives, and a folded letter.
He unfolded the letter and read:
Agent Savich,
I delivered this man, Elson Grissom, to the Porte Franklyn Central Police Station at 8:30 last night. Enclosed are copies of the evidence I’ve collected against him. There are two flash drives of conversations between Grissom and known felons involved in interstate drug distribution, as well as with Porte Franklyn city council member Judith Warder and two state legislators, Lester Graves and Lewis Hampstead. These conversations took place at Grissom’s private vacation home at Lake Lawson in Bellison, Virginia. I used a parabolic mike and my phone to record them. Some of the conversations are with people I couldn’t identify, but they prove Grissom’s involvement in drug distribution. There are also business and bank records showing he uses several of his businesses for money laundering, including the local police and firefighters’ pension funds Grissom has administered for the past fifteen years.
You may not be familiar with Elson Grissom, but locally he’s a mover and shaker, one of the most powerful men in the state. His primary residence is in Porte Franklyn. He calls himself an investment manager, a legitimate and lucrative cover for him. He also owns a chain of grocery stores throughout Virginia and North Carolina that provide him much of his opportunity for money laundering. He has bought or strong-armed his way to influence with local authorities. His adult daughter, Melissa Kay Grissom, thirty-five, was arrested last year for driving drunk in Bellison. She sent a woman to the hospital, but was given only a five hundred dollar fine, no arrest, no suspension of her license. Who did Grissom bribe?
His son, Ryman Grissom, forty, is a criminal jack-of-all-trades, but he’s primarily his father’s enforcer. There are complaints against him for assault and arson, but he’s never been arrested. He also does jobs for one of his father’s criminal friends, Kahn Oliveras. None of them have ever been arrested.
I wanted to gather more evidence before I acted, but now I realize I waited too long. I believe Elson Grissom recently ordered the murder of Josh Atwood, thirteen, the only child of his widowed mother, Hildy Atwood. Josh was a bright, athletic, responsible boy who delivered papers in Bellison, near Grissom’s vacation house. His body was uncovered by scavengers and found by hikers two days after his murder in the woods on the outskirts of Bellison, his undelivered papers still beside him. His mother had reported him missing immediately, and Bellison Chief of Police Harlan Jacobs had officers tracing his newspaper delivery route. After Josh was found, Mrs. Atwood told Chief Jacobs Josh had seemed upset and anxious the day before he disappeared, but he’d only told her he’d seen something important and he was writing a letter addressed to you, Agent Savich. It’s obvious Josh wrote to you because he believed you were a hero, believed you would help him. But the email was never sent—he was killed evidently before he was satisfied with what he’d written, or more likely, before he’d gained enough damning information to give to you.
Hildy Atwood had looked over Josh’s shoulder at the email he’d been writing, saw he believed he’d seen drug dealers speaking with Elson Grissom at his lakeside home. He’d heard them talking about cash deliveries and distribution routes, heard the words MS-13. She told him never to go back there, but he did and he was killed for it.
Mrs. Atwood didn’t know the passwords Josh used on his computer, but Chief Jacobs said the police could deal with that, and so she gave it to him. Later he told Mrs. Atwood Josh must have deleted the email, because it wasn’t on his laptop. Luckily, Mrs. Atwood remembered most of what Josh had written and told all of it to a friend. Three days after Josh’s death, his mother’s car went over a cliff and she was killed. Mrs. Atwood’s friend told all the neighbors her suspicions before she spoke to Chief Jacobs. Jacobs listened, and he again insisted Josh must have deleted the email he was writing, if there was one, which he was beginning to doubt. He promised to look into everything thoroughly, but without Mrs. Atwood to testify, there wasn’t any proof.
Two weeks after Josh was found, Chief of Police Harlan Jacobs announced a transient had probably killed the Atwood boy, a wrong place/wrong time scenario. Hildy Atwood’s death was ruled an accident.
Enclosed are copies of two wires to the account of Chief Jacobs’s wife, Sandra Jacobs. The sender was a holding company you will see I traced back to Grissom.
Agent Savich, let me emphasize these crimes are only an example of how far Grissom’s tentacles reach. We’re talking about a man who’s guilty of at least fifteen years of state and federal crimes, including murder, and yet he’s never been brought to justice. But with the evidence documented against him in this envelope, I can’t imagine Grissom can escape being tried and sent to prison for the rest of his miserable life.
Since the bulk of the evidence involves state crimes, the commonwealth attorney in Porte Franklyn, Simon Hailstock, will be in charge of prosecuting those crimes for the state. Unfortunately I have questions about Hailstock’s commitment to seeking justice if it might interfere with his long-term plan to run for a seat in the House. That would require large cash donations and support from people a lot like Grissom and Kahn Oliveras. That makes him an ideal candidate for their influence, but I have no proof he’s actually compromised.
You may wonder why I’m sending all my collected evidence to you, personally. It is because Josh Atwood believed in you. I’ve researched you myself. I’ve seen you on TV. You’re smart and you seem tenacious. I trust you to seek justice for Josh and his mother and close Grissom down once and for all.
Please don’t waste your time trying to identify me.
Sincerely,
Eliot Ness
Savich paused a moment. Eliot Ness. He smiled. A perfect name for a vigilante—the agent who’d brought down Al Capone in the thirties. Savich was on the point of sliding a flash drive into MAX when he looked up to see Sherlock in his doorway, a big smile on her face, her hand on her stomach. “How about some spaghetti pomodoro? Yes, yes, with garlic bread.” She paused, wiggled her eyebrows. “You can also tell me about that envelope Denny gave you addressed to you personally.”
Savich cocked his head at her. “But you weren’t— I see, Denny told Ruth and she told you.”
“No, Denny told everyone.”
