As Jess had said back at the diner, Gilman, being an ICE agent, "would have had his pick of all the fake IDs they had," which meant that the four agents started with ICE. Once they reached Port Chester, Kateri rejoined Clinton, and the two went to put pressure on ICE, while Kenny rejoined Hana to work their own magic tech-wise in the meantime.
"I think they're as happy to see us as we are them," Kateri whispered to her partner, as the two sat waiting in a conference room.
Clinton gave a muffled snort, half-hiding his smirk behind his coffee cup. "I'd agree with that."
The two agents had been waiting for nearly an hour. Lackey after lackey, each one slightly higher up the food chain than the last, had been giving them the run-around ever since they arrived, and both were running out of patience.
"I'm going to the men's room. I'll be back in a few."
Kateri nodded as her partner rose. "Don't leave me alone too long to deal with these knuckleheads."
As luck would have it, a mid-level supervisor, looking surprisingly put together considering it was almost 1am in the bloody morning, appeared less than a minute after Clinton had left. Kateri groaned internally. Oh, for heaven's sake.
She was just as happy to leave dealing with ICE to her partner. During her three or so years with the Fugitive Task Force, Kateri had been forced to deal with too many agents, supervisors, cops, etc. with various alphabet soup agencies, task forces, and local PDs who were not happy to deal with the FBI and took great pleasure in the team the runaround. Things got even more complicated when/if racism or misogynism (or, worse, both) got added as cherries on the cake of inter-agency non-cooperation. ICE, especially, had a talent for making themselves odious.
Insert eyeroll.
Kateri made a show of examining her watch closely as the man entered. "Good. Maybe we can finally get some things accomplished now." She was not feeling in a mood to be nice, not at 1am when they had been waiting and waiting and waiting.
The man bristled, not even giving his own name, "The situation with Agent Gilman is quite regrettable, but this office has many ongoing investigations. We do not have time to be pandering to your every request in such short order."
"Regrettable," Kateri drawled, giving the word several excess syllables, "Regrettable. Your Agent Gilman murdered his two children, slit their throats like animals while they lay in their beds, and then he slit his wife's throat and put a bullet in her head for good measure. Don't even get me started on the collateral damage. Do you know what a slit throat looks like, smells like, sounds like? Because I do, so don't stand there and call this regrettable."
The suit went white and then red, "We have already been going to great lengths to cooperate with the FBI since the accident. We disrupted the ongoing vital work of this office so that you and your partner could talk to Agent Gilman's coworkers yesterday."
"Yes, after multiple runarounds and delays, you finally did do that. And now we need more. The fugitive's body count is at SIX, SIX innocent lives," Kateri replied, stressing the number and fighting to keep her voice calm—Losing your temper now won't make this go any faster, as much as strangling this moron with his own tie would be so well-deserved—"and I think we both can agree that we do not want that body count to go any higher."
Spluttering, but then a reluctant nod.
"Good. Thank you. Now we're on the same page. Sooooooo, from our work today, we know that Gilman needs to put as much distance as he can between us and him, but he also knows we're after him. Thus, we suspect that he is using fake IDs, which he likely stole from this office."
More spluttering and then incensed outrage at the insult to the security of ICE's evidence locker.
Kateri tamped down on her rising temper and somehow managed to keep a semblance of a semi-pleasant look on her face, as she waited for the spluttering, sputtering, and nonsense to stop long enough for her to get another word in edgewise.
The spluttering was winding to a close when she noticed that her partner had returned and was standing in the doorway behind Agent Useless Suit Dude watching with a smirk on his face. She gave him a look that was half-pleading, half-glaring: "Don't leave me alone to deal with this." Clinton's smirk grew wider and made a motion with one hand that was probably to be interpreted, "Keep going. You're doing fine."
Oh, come onnnn.
The spluttering and flow of useless words flowing out of the ICE agent's mouth finally ceased.
"Now," Kateri begin again, "are you going to let my partner and I see your collection of fake IDs to see if any are missing, or do I need to arrest you for obstruction of justice?"
More spluttering, and the suit started to go purple. I thought that only happened in cartoons.
"If Gilman's body count increases further," Kateri added in a very pointed tone, as she slowly stood, "I could probably find some additional charges to add to that."
Come on, come on. I have better things to do with my time than argue with you. Be reasonable and helpful for once in your bloody life.
Agent Useless Suit Dude finally caved at that and, with a limited amount of grumbling, led the two FBI agents toward the evidence room. It's a bloody miracle.
"Good going, kid," Clinton whispered.
Kateri gave a half-smile, half-smirk in return.
The local ICE office's vaunted security system was much less impressive than the suit they had gotten saddled with had made it out to be. Neither Kateri nor Clinton was in any way surprised that, after the inventory list had been consulted and compared to the actual contents of the inventory room, that SIX phony IDs were found to be missing: two Jersey, two New York, and two Connecticut. Names on those phony IDs in hand, written down on Clinton's notebook, the two happily departed the ICE office and returned to the cars.
"That took a while," Kenny commented, looking up from his computer, as Kateri and Clinton climbed into the backseat of the jeep. "Find anything?"
"The names on the 6 phony IDs that Gilman filched," Clinton replied, passing up his notebook. "Get those names out."
"Color none of us surprised," Kateri muttered. "ICE was not feeling in a helpful, sharing mood."
"Are they ever?" asked Hana.
"We got saddled with a mid-level supervisor. Kateri threatened to arrest him for obstruction if he didn't cooperate," Clinton added. He seemed to find the situation quite amusing.
"You go, girl!" Kenny crowed, twisting around for a high-five.
About an hour after Hana had sent the names out to every agency and PD department in the tri-state area, a hit came back from the state police: a murder in Poughkeepsie, where the victim—not Gilman—had been found with one of the phony IDs in his pocket. Poughkeepsie was over an hour north of Port Chester, and the four made tracks north, Kateri letting Sheryll know the news.
About 5am, the four of them arrived at the crime scene, a used car park, already swarming with cops. The victim was the owner of the dealership, felled by some sort of tool that had been stabbed through his left eye into his brain. Several different bodily-fluids had leaked from the grisly wound, staining his face and the ground beneath his head.
Kateri felt her stomach lurch violently as she saw the body and, for a moment, thought she might be sick. Crime scenes and dead bodies aplenty she had dealt with during her career, but this was new, and …. Ugh, double ugh. Blood and guts she could handle, but brains, nuh-uh.
Her own expertise was not needed at the moment, so she retreated to the safety of the cars where she did not have to look at the body. Bending over and placing her hands on her knees, she took several deep breaths willing her stomach to stop doing loop-de-loops.
"You okay?" Kenny asked, coming over. "You're looking a little green."
"I don't do brains," she replied, "never could."
"It's rather gnarly," Kenny agreed, rubbing her back gently. "There's some water in the jeep if you need some."
"Thanks. I'll be okay. I just need a minute."
Jess and Sheryll pulled up a few minutes later just as Kateri was finally regaining control of her stomach. As the informal briefing started, Kateri rejoined the group gathered around the body but purposefully kept one of her teammates between her and the body.
And finally there was progress on the hunt.
"Seven and a half hours. We're cutting into his lead," Jess declared.
We're catchin' up.