Note: I hope this all makes relative sense because I'm on new allergy medications. ;)
Chapter Forty-five
Sitting at the long glass table in the White Collar conference room Mozzie put the file he had been reading down with a heavy sigh. Pushing his glasses up he rubbed at his sore eyes. It was getting to the point where it was a toss as to if they were up really late or early. Since technically he wasn't supposed to be looking over these case file they had to do it well after hours to make sure of privacy. Sitting around the table Hughes, Jones, and Diana were doing their best to help by screening Neal's notes for certain phrases that Mozzie had listed as wordage that Neal tended to use when trying to avoid the whole truth.
What Mozzie hadn't been prepared for was the sheer quantity of information that they had to sift through. Since no one case had stood out at first that meant that any case could have been the ember that started this fire. So they decided to start with their most recent one and just work backwards from there. With no clear motive or exact time table they were being forced to check everything. There was also always the chance that Anthony was a red herring and even though Mozzie knew when he'd shown back up he didn't have a good idea of just how long he'd been missing. The FBI had already looked into a lot of these cases, but Mozzie was determined to do it again. They had spent several late nights pouring through both Neal and Peter's notes in the off chance that something jumped out at them. So far even though Mozzie had found some obvious discrepancies in Neal's narrative nothing had provided anything even close to a solid lead.
"I can't believe Peter managed to force Neal into writing such detailed accounts of everything." Diana said wearily as she put her own file down.
"No one forces Neal to do anything he doesn't want to do." Mozzie said automatically.
"Are you saying Neal, Neal *Caffrey*, actually enjoyed and took pride in his paperwork?" Diana asked with doubtful sarcasm.
"No." Mozzie shook his head. "But he always enjoyed trying to best Peter at his own games long before he was even arrested. It's like a hobby of his."
"That's true." Diana chuckled. "I always thought of them as pretty much polar opposites but they certainly shared a competitive streak."
"Neal wasn't about to let Peter be better at writing up cases, even if it meant more work." Mozzie agreed. "Which is good and bad."
"Yeah," Jones spoke up "I'm finding these key phrases of yours everywhere. So either Neal was doing a lot more double dealing behind Peter's back or…"
"Or Neal was purposefully peppering his reports with this kind of language from the start to keep Peter from picking up on a pattern." Mozzie finished with a sigh. "Neal was never one to underestimate Peter, he must have planed ahead for any 'half truths' he needed to fall back on."
"Where does that leave us?" Hughes grumbled as he finally closed the file he was reading. "Does this mean we'll never find the case we're looking for?"
"I'll find it." Mozzie said confidently. "Neal's not that good. He can't fool me."
"Are you sure about that?"
"No." Mozzie admitted.
Pulling another case file off the pile Mozzie went back to scrutinizing the syntax of Neal's reports searching for any clue as to which one caused them to cross paths with the wrong person. Peter and Neal worked to take down rich and powerful men every day, but the sentencing for White Collar crimes tended to be relatively minimal and not worth risking such violent revenge over. More to the point the ones that got away through skill of their high priced lawyers wouldn't have any reason to risk bringing the full weight of the FBI down on them, and the ones that lost a majority of their ill begotten wealth because of their arrest wouldn't have the means to arrange to have the pair so skillfully abducted.
Starting to get blurry eyed again Mozzie picked up one last file to comb through before he was willing to think of calling it a night. Neal's account of the events didn't throw up any red flags at first until he came across the term 'unverified tip' that had lead to the arrest. Unverified was not the same as anonymous, anonymous would imply that Neal didn't know whoever offered the tip. Using the phrase unverified was much more open to interpretation, which was exactly the kind of thing that helped Neal keep his conscious clear. Suddenly feeling wide awake Mozzie flipped to Peter's side of this story only to discover that the man arrested hadn't been the original suspect, the tip had steered them in a different direction, possibly away from Anthony. The details of the crime certainly sounded like something Anthony would be mixed up in.
"Marcus Collins…" Mozzie read the name out loud.
"Collins, I know that name," Hughes mused "something about gambling?"
"Numbers racket." Mozzie nodded. "A fairly significant one, but nothing earth shattering."
"That's right. Peter was annoyed with that case, I remember now. The DA let Collins walk."
"Why?"
"That was part of what upset Peter, they wouldn't tell him. It was assumed Collins made some sort of deal, but the DA was in no mood to share the particulars. Since Collins wasn't worth calling in any favors over he dropped it."
"Peter dropped something?" Mozzie asked skeptically. "That doesn't sound like the Suit I know."
"We get dozens of cases and hundreds of leads across our desk every day, we can't constantly be looking back once a case is cleared. Particularly the smaller ones." Hughes said defensively. "Peter did his job and moved on. The FBI doesn't prosecute cases, we gather evidence, make the arrest, and the DA's office takes it from there. Collins wasn't all that special, just another hustler."
"Still…"
"Wait, I've got something." Diana announced staring at her phone that she had been searching on for something. "I thought the name Collins sounded familiar as well, but something more recent. I saw it in the paper two weeks ago."
"Who reads the paper any more?" Mozzie questioned.
"I do, I like the feel of the paper and I tend to remember it better than if I read it on a screen."
"That doesn't make any sense, you lean better if text doesn't glow?"
"Hush. Here it is: 'Philanthropist and CEO of Hedgewell Prime Broker Harold Collins Found Dead.'"
"Harold Collins?" Jones asked. "Any relation?"
"Either a relation or an amazing coincidence." Diana said as she read the start of the article. "'Harold Collins was found dead this morning in what is being ruled a suicide. This is following the tragic death of his son, Marcus, in June during a mugging and the disappearance of his wife, Emily, in 2003.' There really isn't any detail beyond that, the rest reads like an obituary, but that's a lot of bad luck for one family, and assuming it is the same Marcus Collins it's a little odd that the son of a multi millionaire would be bothering with running a numbers racket."
"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, someone Peter arrested was *murdered* and no one brought this to your attention when he and Neal ended up missing? Or even when it happened in the first place?" Mozzie demanded accusingly of Hughes. "Marcus Collins was arrested on June 22nd, that doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot of June for him to happen to just end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had to have happened right after the DA let him 'walk'. How can you not know anything about this?"
Hughes didn't have an answer, from the pensive look on his face he was wondering the exact same question that Mozzie was. He couldn't be expected to keep track of every death in New York but when the hunt for Peter and Neal began it should have been flagged by someone.
"This wasn't a mugging gone wrong this was a deliberate murder, a murder right after he was 'released'. You know it can't just be a coincidence." Mozzie pressed. "I can't imagine you didn't go directly to the DA's office to ask if anything out of the ordinary happened with any of Peter's cases recently, they should have mentioned this. The DA's office got Marcus killed, and then they were covering their own ass when you came around. The DA used him as bait and they failed to protect him. With the emotional element to this case I bet Collins was out for revenge after the DA got his son killed."
"But this was all months before Peter and Neal were taken." Jones pointed out. "Why go after them now?"
"Or even why go after them at all?" Diana added. "You keep saying 'the DA' and that's exactly right, Peter and Neal didn't make any deals with Marcus, they didn't have anything to do with what happened."
"But they started it." Mozzie said. "If they hadn't arrested him in the first place he wouldn't have ended up dead. They were the first domino. The DA's office is just a faceless entity to the public, it's not satisfying to go after an organization when the matter is a personal one. Peter and Neal are specific targets that could be more easily identified, more easily blamed."
"No." Diana shook her head. "That's insane. Who thinks like that?"
"A grief stricken father." Hughes answered simply.
"Exactly, with the added guilt that his son ended up turning to crime in the first place. This is it, this is the case," Mozzie said gripping the file tightly "this is the one that going to help us find Neal and Peter."
"But Harold Collins is dead, if he…"
"He didn't take them himself." Mozzie interrupted. "The man Anthony is afraid of isn't the kind of person to take their own life. Collins paid someone, he had to have."
"Finding someone to take on a job like this wouldn't be easy or cheap." Jones thought out loud as Mozzie's theory started to slowly make more and more sense.
"Which makes the fact that it took a few months to react all that more plausible." Diana agreed.
"Anyone deranged enough to seek out revenge like this can't be stable," Mozzie said "he would have obsessed for months which may have left a trail."
"And when lashing out at Peter and Caffrey didn't take away the pain of losing his son he turned the gun on himself." Hughes speculated.
"And Collins would have had the wealth to make this happen." Mozzie said.
"That kind of transaction would leave a mark no matter how hard you tried to hide it." Jones said.
"It's not going to be easy to get a warrant for his personal and business finances with only circumstantial evidence of a connection, but I will make it happen." Hughes said firmly. "If he paid someone off we'll find it."
"I have to admit that I always assumed this was personal against either Peter or Neal or even both. I never really considered a hired middle man." Diana said. "Who would be brazen enough to kidnap a Federal Agent on behalf of someone else?"
"Someone so far above the law that he's probably hiding in plain sight." Mozzie replied sourly.
"No one is above the law, some just skirt it better than others." Hughes said firmly. "We are going to find this guy and have justice for Peter and Caffrey if nothing else."
"You do realize that what it is going to take to find him will probably create a veritable M. C. Esher-esk amount of loop holes for his lawyers to help him escape through?" Mozzie said darkly. "Finding him and getting justice might be mutually exclusive goals."
"Finding Peter and Neal is more important than getting a conviction." Diana replied.
"I wholeheartedly agree. The question you need to ask yourself right now is how far are you willing to skirt the law to find out what happened?" Mozzie continued. "I hate to say it, but I'm afraid none of this bodes well for Neal and Peter to still be alive, but at least it means there is still someone out there alive who knows what happened to them. Someone with answer, someone who can provide closure for Elizabeth and the rest of us. Personally I'm going to do whatever it takes get that closure. I can't not know what happened, and I can't let Elizabeth live with that pain either. However, I don't have a cushy Federal job and pension to lose. I want to continue to work with you all, but I want to be up front that I'm not letting red tape or waiting for warrants stand in my way."
"I'm already past the point of no return just letting you look at these files let alone hunting down leads because of it considering I've already been ordered off this case. I'm in this until I lose my job, and if I have even a shred of power to keep searching after that you can be damn sure that I will." Hughes said with conviction before turning to his two Agents. "Diana, Jones, I can not order you to stay with me on this, I can't even blame you if you feel you have to report me as it is."
Diana and Jones exchanged a brief glance that to Mozzie looked more like one of surprise that Hughes would think for a second that they were going to back out rather than them looking to one another as to what they should do next.
"We're all in, Sir." Diana confirmed.
"We don't leave men behind." Jones added.
"Then let's find this son of a bitch." Hughes growled. "Hell or high water."
"Hell or high water." The trio agreed in unison.
