Cause of Death

17

The cuffs are tight. Not so much that they hurt, but the Greenville Station police officer — a young, blond, crewcut man who may never have arrested a felon in his life — was making sure I wasn’t getting away.

I’m in the back of his police car.

My eyes are on the floor. I see a form approaching in my periphery. The door opens and I am, understandably, surprised to see that it’s Marcus Wexler.

No, to be more accurate: His presence wouldn’t surprise me all that much. I knew he was here somewhere, given my pursuit. The unexpected element is that he’s in an FBI windbreaker.

“Okay,” I say edgily. Meaning: Explain.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

I don’t answer but continue to stare firmly into his eyes.

He indulges. “Pay had a past you didn’t know about.”

It takes a leisurely few seconds for this to settle, partially because another man has a nickname for my own wife, one different from mine. And one I’ve never heard.

“I met her in Africa, where she was doing charity work after college. Pay was tough. Smart. And plenty mad at the bullshit she saw going on around her. Warlords, corruption, child soldiers. Giving out food and medicine and setting up schools for girls wasn’t enough. She wanted to do more. I recruited her.”

“FBI? She was an agent?”

“No. A CI. Confidential informant. The charity was a perfect cover. Jon, I know this is a lot to—”

“The story about her facing down the warlord. That was an operation of yours?”

He’s surprised. “Did she tell you that?”

“Her sister.”

“‘Facing down.’ Well. What happened was Joseph Mkembo grabbed one of the village girls at Pay’s aid station and was going to cut her arm off, a show of force. Keep the villagers in line. Just as he raised the machete, Pay grabbed a weapon from his lieutenant. And shot him in the head. The lieutenant too. She had this impulsive streak. But you know that.”

I suppose some clues were there. Skiing off mountains, driving dangerously fast without ABS, the very fact she’d been in warlord territory, and for a three-year stint. Even the art she drew: not fairy-tale characters but big, fierce superheroes.

Hardly proof she was a woman who could put a bullet in a man’s head, but look at my minute-by-minute approach to studying history: the small can explain the large.

Then too, look at me, who just stole a gun to do exactly what Pax had in Africa.

I think of her sister’s email and say to Wexler: “The fight you two had, when you put her in the hospital? And got arrested? That was a cover.”

He is surprised again. “An undercover operation.” Wexler grimaces. “That was hard. But I had to hit her for real. We needed a medical and police report on record. I had to get inside a prison. There, the cons don’t mind if you beat on your woman. Actually, scores you points. And I got information that took down a Mafia don.

“She was with us for four years. We ran ops in Europe and the US. Then — it happens — she burned out. Time to retire. She was thinking a husband, children, a family.”

“She said that?”

A nod. “She liked her cover job, fundraising, charity work. She saw an ad for the endowment department at Dover Hills College. About as far away from Nairobi and Southeast DC as you can get. She applied, got accepted. She liked it. She met you.” Wexler shrugs. “All was good.”

“For a time.”

“For a time.” After a moment Wexler says, “Honestly I didn’t think civilian life would last. And I told her that. But you could only say ‘Are you sure?’ once or twice to Pay Addison before you got that look. You know what I mean.”

“I know that look.”

“A couple months ago she called me. She’d come to the end of her rope. She couldn’t take it anymore.”

“It was me.” I say this softly.

“No, Jon. She loved you. And she loved the college, the work. It’s just that she needed more. She needed edge. You know what I mean?”

“More or less.”

“I told her we’d look for some temporary assignments in Western Massachusetts. Our field office had an idea that Cyrus Bennett’s group was behind some racist attacks but they couldn’t get anybody inside the organization to turn. Pay said she’d try. I flew up a month ago and ran her. She finally managed to recruit one of the women in the community. One of Cyrus’s wives.”

“Rose Anne.”

“She was starting to give Pay information but Cyrus got suspicious and had her followed by a guy who saw her buy a bottle of wine and then go to the inn.”

I close my eyes briefly. The Post-it note.

“We think Cyrus or his men took Rose Anne to the river and held her under until she gave up Pay’s name. Then they drowned her and set up the accident on Palmer Mountain.”

My eyes look over all the emergency vehicles. One of the agents is Trudi, also in an FBI windbreaker — the woman in the park who “conveniently” led me to Wexler’s car.

I ask, “So when did you decide to use me as bait?”

“The night of the accident actually. I heard about it on the scanner. I got there as soon as I could. I climbed down to the site through the woods from Ellicott Road and got her computer and phone out of the car and dropped the burner phone — it was blank — while the rescue team was at the top of the hill on 420 with the ambulance. I thought a missing computer and phone, along with finding a secret burner and seeing a mysterious stranger at the funeral might prod you into playing detective.”

I nearly smile at the word.

“And you sent me the letter with the two twenties — to get me to the hotel to find out that she seemed to be having an affair.”

He nods. Then sees my eye on his wrist. He turns it over, revealing the ginkgo tattoo. He says, “We all got it. Our unit in Africa. It was our trademark. And by the way, Jon. Pay and I? We were never close that way. Our relationship was purely a cover.”

I believe him. “The road rage thing, in Cooper? Was that real?”

“No. She just told you that so you’d keep an eye out in case any of Cyrus’s men learned about her and came to Dover Hills.”

Then a thought comes to me. “The whole point of this was to get me inside Cyrus’s house and get that admission.”

“That’s right.”

“How did you hear it?”

“Our tech people turned the autodial on your phone into a microphone and transmitter. Simple hack.” He gives a shrug. “For a hacker. If it went dark, we’d raid the place anyway. We had them on tape Tasing and kidnapping you. But we wanted more, if we could get it. And we sure did: confession to murder.”

I stretch, carefully, though the pain continues to shrink. I’m recalling Pax’s comment.

I need to do this. It’ll keep me sane...

I thought she’d been talking about being a Heart-in-Hand companion. I had no clue she was referring to shooting warlords and arresting white supremacists.

“The flowers? On Palmer Mountain? You left them?”

Wexler says, “When we were overseas and one of ours was killed, we had a tradition. We left a bouquet of trefoils — revenge flowers. It meant we were going to get whoever’d done it.”

“And did you?”

He doesn’t answer.

The flashing lights are mesmerizing. “You understand I might’ve been killed.” I am somewhat indignant but I believe the tone of my voice reveals more pleasure than anger. I’m not altogether upset that, for a change, I have participated in history and not merely recorded and analyzed it.

“Since her death, we’ve had people — like Trudi — on you constantly. And the profile is Cyrus doesn’t kill anyone in the compound.”

“But why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve been a CI like her.”

“Sorry, Jon. You’re not a pro. They would’ve caught on in a minute. Pay was made for this work. You weren’t.”

Another car pulls up. A Martinsville County Public Safety Office cruiser. Two men get out. Detective Bragg and Terry Garner.

Bragg surveys the scene and plods forward.

Wexler says hello to them. Apparently they’ve been in touch.

Bragg looks me over, sighs and shakes his head. “Who’s in charge local?” he asks Wexler, who points out a senior Greenville Station police officer, and Bragg goes to speak with him.

“You okay, Jon?” Terry asks.

“Just fine.”

The deputy avoids my eyes. “He asked me a bunch a questions, Jon. Detective Bragg did. I—”

“It’s all right, Terry. He’s a hard man to say no to.”

Bragg returns, with the Greenville Station cop, who hands Terry the gun I stole. This is a serious felony, I’m sure. Probably time in prison. Theft of a firearm, however, was all I could be charged with. I did not, in fact, shoot Reverend Mike. He was right that I wasn’t going to kill an unarmed man. The bullets I fired jammed the latch on the door so he couldn’t get out of the tunnel. If he had he might have gotten away and I couldn’t let that happen.

I did, however, beat the ever-loving hell out of him.

In self-defense, of course.

As he regards me with icy eyes Bragg says, “Okay. Uncuff him.”

The muscular detective would want the pleasure of trussing me up himself for the drive back to the county seat and jail.

The Greenville Station officer uncuffs me and I do what everyone who’s ever been uncuffed does in the TV cop shows. I rub my wrists.

Bragg says, “You get a pass on this one, Professor.”

Wexler adds, “Because of you, we closed a dozen cases around the country that Cyrus’s militia was behind. And Rose Anne’s murder. Todd Stoltz’s and your wife’s too.”

Bragg growls, “That said, you cross the line again, Professor, and you don’t know the hurt you’ll be feeling.”

He stalks away, with Terry Garner in his wake.

Marcus Wexler says, “I’ll need to sit down with you and get some questions answered, for the reports.”

I tell him I’d be happy to, but don’t share that I’ll have some questions too. I’m looking forward to learning more about the Patience Susan Addison that he knew and that I did not.