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She’d cleared the rest of their garbage away, so he drew the computer over and booted it up.
“What kind of pictures?” She hovered near his right shoulder.
Close enough to kiss.
Enough. Stay focused!He kept his gaze locked on the computer screen, but the rest of his senses were in tune with her. He should feel guilty for being attracted to her, like he was being untrue to Monique’s memory, but he didn’t.
He cleared his throat. “You met and spoke to a man from your church who introduced himself as Glenn Vice. Only he was really a known gunrunner, Kenny Dillon, a.k.a. Dillweed.”
“Yes, that’s true.” She dropped into a chair. “You mentioned Kenny was one of the three men killed at the warehouse shooting.”
“Exactly. I asked you about their names to see if they sounded familiar. But now I need you to look at their faces.” His fingers flew across the keyboard, queuing up a search of the other two perps, Arlo Carbine and Perro Segura, also known as Carbo and Parrott.
It took a minute for him to bring them up on the screen. He positioned the two mug shots side by side, then turned the computer toward her. “Either of these guys look familiar?”
She studied the screen for several minutes.
With a heavy sigh, she shook her head. “I don’t recognize either of them.” She paused, then tapped Parrott’s picture. “He might be vaguely familiar. Like maybe I saw him a long time ago. But I can’t pinpoint when or where. Possibly with Jake?”
“At your place? Or somewhere else?”
“I don’t know.” She frowned. “Honestly, the more I look at him, the less confident I am that I saw him before. I wouldn’t be able to swear to it in court or anything.”
He hid his disappointment. “Any chance one of them was hanging around Kenny in church?”
She continued looking at the mug shots. “If he was, I didn’t notice. I remember Glenn—er, Kenny being alone. Like I was.” Her cheeks went pink. “I know that sounds pathetic, but I had thought maybe he could be a friend.”
“It’s not pathetic to want friends.” Steele didn’t know what he’d do without his fellow teammates and the rest of the Finnegans. They were more than just friends to him; they were his extended family. The only family he had in the world. “It’s natural. Humans are social by nature.”
She turned to look at him. “Thanks for saying that. I still feel foolish for believing he was interested.” She shook her head. “I wish I could be more help.”
“You’re doing fine.” He turned the computer back. “I’ll keep poking around a bit. Maybe I’ll find something.”
“Okay.” She sat for a moment, then rose and moved away. He continued searching social media sites but didn’t find anything interesting.
On a whim, he typed in the name Glenn Vice. To his surprise, there were several of them on social media. He scanned the list until he saw a picture that looked an awful lot like Kenny Dillon.
Clicking on the image, he was stunned to see that there was an entire fake profile that had been created for Glenn Vice. Supposedly, the guy was a Christian, attended church, and worked as an accountant at Peterson and Kline.
“Harper?” He waved for her to come back to the table. “Did you search on Vice at all? Did you find this profile?”
“No, that didn’t occur to me.” She sucked in a harsh breath. “All of that is fake? Right down to his job as an accountant?”
“Yes.” He wondered if Dillweed had given up after that first meeting or if he’d simply lost interest in the plan of courting her long enough to draw her into a trap. Personally, he thought that would have worked far better than the amateur attempt to snatch her off the sidewalk outside the law offices.
He mentally reviewed the timing. When exactly had Feldman gotten beat up? Two months ago?
About the same time as Dillweed gave up pretending to be Glenn Vice? Is that when the plan had changed? The shoot-out at the warehouse had taken place two weeks ago. Two weeks in which they’d tried to find Tommy Grotto and Waylon Brooks.
And following Harper in case one of them reached out to her. Which they had, just not in the way they’d anticipated.
The Glenn Vice plan to set up Harper had certainly died with Kenny Dillon’s death. That was likely the reason they’d resorted to a stop-and-grab attempt.
There were so many missing pieces in this puzzle it wasn’t funny. Kenny Dillon had pretended to attend church, striking up a friendly conversation with Harper for a reason.
He reached for his phone to call Banner, then stopped himself before making the call. No reason to bring the ATF agents along with every step he made. In fact, all he had was supposition and theory.
This entire case was supposition and theory. If not for the fifty guns found inside the warehouse, he’d think they were chasing smoke signals.
