Elimination

Fifteen

‘You’re brooding,’ Abby said.

This was much later in the afternoon.

‘I have a damned good reason to brood.’

‘Donna out front tells me that you’ve been brooding ever since you got back from Jess’s this afternoon. She’s very maternal toward me, Donna is, even though she’s three years younger. She said, “Abby, I’m afraid if you go in there you’ll start brooding, too. Whatever it is, it’s serious.” So how could I not come in here?’

‘How’d the campaigning go the last couple of hours?’

‘When we were at Wilson High School there were fourteen cops because there are so many ways into that place.’

I pointed to one of the chairs in front of the desk. She was wearing a matching green sweater and skirt. She must have needed a computer to keep track of the hearts she’d broken in high school and college. She had a prim way of sitting. She told me once that her mother had insisted that she take modeling classes even though full-grown Abby was five foot four. The modeling-class nonsense had stayed with her.

‘Chief Showalter thinks that the assassination attempt was staged, Abby.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘That the shooter wasn’t really aiming at her.’

‘So his shots went wild. That happens all the time. That doesn’t mean it was “staged.” And why would anybody “stage” it?’ But she was bright, very bright, and realized the implication.

‘We staged it because we were behind. We staged it to get sympathy.’

‘Anybody who tried something like that would get nailed within a day or two.’

‘We can’t rule it out.’

‘God, are you serious?’ She seemed as shocked by my words as she had been when I’d told her about Showalter’s. ‘There’s no way anybody on our staff—’

‘It wouldn’t have to be on our staff. It could be somebody on our staff who hired somebody—’

‘You don’t really believe that? You don’t really agree with Showalter?’

‘I don’t agree with him and I’d sure as hell never admit to him something like that’s possible. Those shots were so wild—’

I saw the first hint of doubt in those blue eyes I’d come to know so well. I was seeing in her what I was afraid I’d be seeing in the press very soon. That first instance of doubt, the shots having missed by so much.

I went back through my story about the mysterious phone caller. I told her Showalter believed it might be a prank.

But I always drew back from the prank theory. There was enough complicated anguish in her voice to make her real. The terrified wife who wanted to help her husband without getting the police involved. Which made no sense, but that was exactly the point. The panicked spouse whose plan made no sense.

But why hadn’t she shown up last night? And why hadn’t she at least called later to explain why she hadn’t been able to make it?

‘I think she’s real, Dev. No matter what Showalter says.’

‘So do I.’

‘So that would eliminate both it being “staged” and anybody in our campaign being involved.’

‘Probably.’

Even her frowns were cute. ‘I just want a nice, simple, straightforward assassination attempt we can ride all the way to a twenty-eight-point win on election day.’

‘I take it you’d settle for a two-point win?’

‘I’d settle for a point-four win.’

‘I thought so.’

But our spurt of humor vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

‘I need to find the woman,’ I said.

‘And just how do you plan to do that?’

‘I know where to start, anyway. A place called the Skylight.’

‘This is our secret, this conversation.’

‘Of course.’

I was assuming that my GPS would take me to the Skylight tavern without any trouble. Last night the old man’s ‘GSP’ reference had been funny. Within half an hour from now it would be anything but.

Sixteen

I’d done some acting in college. A girl I’d been trying to get close to insisted I had ‘the look.’ I never did figure out what that meant exactly.

I didn’t like acting much — and I was miserable at it — but I did get interested in the plays of Eugene O’Neill. I thought of him as I walked inside the Skylight tavern. The night man had come on at four. It was now four-twenty.

This was O’Neill turf, the land of lost souls. Every face in the place hinted at a story that would either break your heart or scare the shit out of you or both. Old, young, working class or homeless-looking needed — at a minimum — dentists, barbers and social workers.

The exceptions were the ex-military ones. Survivors of our many recent wars. The buzz cuts gave them away as well as the injuries: the man who played poker one-handed. The man with the left cheek burned into shallow ruts. The man in the wheelchair. The man with the missing ear and the black eyepatch.

There was no jukebox, just a TV set mounted upon the wall. It was turned off.

The customers hadn’t shown much interest in me. The bartender, who was tall, bony and had a blue left eye that wandered, studied me as if I were an unknown species.

‘What’ll you have, mister?’

‘You have Pepsi?’

‘I’ll have to charge you a buck.’

‘That’s all right.’

He flipped up a lid below the bar. Both arms bore faded tattoos signifying that he’d been in the U.S. Navy. I guessed he’d served on a ship during Vietnam.

A radio turned low vibrated with the sounds of a baseball game. No wonder he hadn’t been interested when I’d walked in. This year the playoffs for the World Series were as exciting as any in the last decade.

He nodded his knobby bald head to the TV set above us. ‘I’d rather watch it but you know how much those bastards want to come out here and fix it? Hell, it ain’t more than ten years old or so.’

I thought of all the technological developments in the last ten years. If cavemen had had TV sets they would have been identical to the heavy box perched above us. But the kind of money he probably made in a place like this precluded him from most extra expenses. And this particular group of men seemed more interested in their conversations than anything else. I was sure that men in dungeons had talked a lot, too.

‘Not much sense in fixin’ it, anyway,’ he said. ‘City council’s all set to tear this place down. We’re one of the few places standin’.’

He was right about that. The Godzillas of urban renewal had leveled a few square miles of this area. Piles of rubble lay on blocks of empty dirt lots. Between medical facilities, parking lots and mini-malls, land was at a premium in Danton.

‘Most of the guys in here grew up in the neighborhood. They come back here ’cause their dads and their granddads came here.’

He’d turned out, surprisingly, to be a talker.

And then I saw him. I had to stare to make sure. He stopped and spoke to the men at one of the tables. He must have said something funny. For a man who was right on the verge of being dumped in an old folks’ home, he was a sprightly son of a bitch. Even a bit jaunty.

He took a stool at the end of the bar. A few more hellos to the regulars talking and paying half-assed attention to the game. His eyes had yet to travel down to where I sat.

I’d been about to ask the bartender all about a certain female customer of his delivered here by cab the night before last, but now a more interesting possibility had presented itself.

And he saw me. He was cooler about it than I would have expected. He even started talking to the Hispanic man seated next to him. He kept glancing up. Couldn’t resist. He knew that unless he did something, and fast, he would have to face me. And answer a lot of uncomfortable questions.

Then, he bolted. No warning.

He wasn’t as old and infirm as he’d pretended to be last night, but he wasn’t young and there was a stiffness — maybe soreness — in the legs he was pushing much faster than they wanted to be pushed.

I almost tripped across the threshold as I ran after him. The sunlight blinded me momentarily as I looked around for him.

He stood at the same newer Ford he’d been in last night. But his run must have tired him because as he stood trying to unlock his car his entire body heaved with the effort.

I clamped my hand on his bony shoulder and spun him around. In the daylight the face, for all its wrinkles, was livelier than it had been when he’d been pretending to be nearing dementia. Now the brown gaze was wilier. He glanced at his Ford. I’d already memorized the license number.

‘How’s your GSP doing?’

‘I don’t have to talk to you.’ His faded yellow sports shirt was soaked with sweat; his face gleamed.

‘You don’t have to, but you will. And right now.’

‘You don’t cut shit with me.’ But he was gasping as he said this.

‘I may not. But the police will.’

The jaws tensed. ‘I ain’t afraid of cops.’

‘Good for you. I am.’

He was looking past my shoulder. Even without turning around I knew that he was looking for a savior.

I looked back at the busted concrete steps leading into the tavern. He’d got two-for-one saviors, a pair of hefty guys who might be well into middle age but could still bust heads without any difficulty.

‘Over here, Billy. This asshole is givin’ me grief.’

But the other one, in a faded Levi’s long-sleeved shirt, said, ‘Hang on, Frank.’

‘Thanks, Sonny.’ Then to me, ‘Now you’ll get it.’

They kept their arms wide of their torsos the way movies and TV taught us the old gunfighters did. Then they pasted on their best psychopath smiles as they started down the steps. Billy went up on the moment by stumbling into one of the cracks on the concrete steps. He fell against Sonny, who pushed him off as if his buddy was carrying at least cooties, if not leprosy.

Now that they were on the pavement they squared their shoulders, readjusted their gunfighter stances and walked over to us.

‘You givin’ Frank a problem, man?’ This close Billy smelled of cloying beer, cigarettes and sweat. He was ready. His hands were fists. Sizable fists.

‘Frank’s an old dude,’ Sonny said. He’d recently run through the place where they sprayed you with Aqua Velva for four or five minutes. ‘Have to be a real chicken-shit motherfucker to pick on an old dude.’ He nodded, not to Frank but to Billy. They’d had this act going since second grade.

‘The police would like to talk to him.’

‘And you’re the cops, huh?’

‘No.’

‘No?’ A Billy-to-Sonny glance. ‘And here I was all ready to bow.’

Sonny obliged with a chuckle.

‘He’s got me confused with somebody else, Billy. That’s why he’s hasslin’ me.’

‘Who’s he think you are?’ Sonny said.

Three enormous dump trucks boomed past. We stood silent like children in awe of all mobile and metal things that big.

Apparently Billy had had time to figure out a solution to Frank’s dilemma. ‘You wanna get in your car and drive away, Frank?’

‘You bet I do. But he won’t let me.’

‘This asshole, you mean?’

‘Yeah.’

Sonny did a little acting. He shook his head as if he’d just been told that I’d set fire to a children’s ward. ‘Well, that kind of bullshit ain’t gonna stand, Frank. You wanna get in your car’n drive away, that’s your business.’

‘You fuckin’ right it is.’

Billy and Sonny had taken several steps closer to me. They had also separated so they could, if necessary, come at me from both sides.

‘Frank,’ Sonny said, ‘you get in your car, start it up and go home or wherever you want to go.’

‘What if he follows me, Sonny?’

His smile was a shiv. ‘Oh, he won’t be followin’ you. We’ll see to that.’

‘I really appreciate this, boys. You know I’m not in the best of health and then to have some slick bastard like this get on my case—’

‘Go, Frank,’ Billy said, ‘and be sure to say hello to Cindy for me.’

Frank’s wince told me that Billy shouldn’t have used the name ‘Cindy’ — or ‘Frank,’ for that matter. I had the license number and two names. Unless his two friends decided to crack a few of my ribs, I was satisfied with this trip.

Frank managed to drop his keys as he tried to unlock the Ford. No, he wasn’t as helpless as he’d pretended to be last night, but he was not in good shape. He almost pitched over as he retrieved them.

The three of us watched him get his car going and drive away.

‘So who’re you supposed to be?’ Billy said.

‘I work for Congresswoman Bradshaw.’

‘That bitch,’ Sonny said. ‘She’s a socialist, for one thing, and she wants to teach little kids a load of bullshit about our country.’

‘And she likes fags.’

‘So what the hell are you botherin’ old Frank for?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘He can’t say.’ They were doing their road show act again. Bouncing lines off each other and grinning.

‘Because he’s important. That’s why he can’t say.’

‘He works for Bradshaw. And he admits it.’

I guess you’d call it a chortle. They traded them back and forth.

‘I’m going now.’

‘You go when we say so.’

‘I’m betting you’ve got some kind of criminal record, asshole,’ I said to Billy. ‘You’re holding me against my will. And I’ve got the kind of lawyer who’d love to put you away for a long time. Both of you.’

Sonny moved on me. But he was out of shape and a brawler rather than a fighter. He swung so wide at my head that I was able to use his considerable belly to plant my fist so deep I wondered if I’d be able to yank it back out.

He stumbled, dropped to his knees and started the kind of gagging that meant he’d soon enough be puking.

Fascinating as the prospect of watching it was, I decided that now would be a good time to leave.

Seventeen

I called a friend of mine in the Chicago Police Department. I’d needed him for several different jobs in the past and paid him so well for them that he’d usually oblige me. I gave him Frank’s license plate and asked him if he’d run it for me. Hopefully the computer would yield a viable address.

I spent half an hour checking out the internals from our other campaigns. A couple of calls were warranted. I always feel that I owe my associates civility and the benefit of the doubt. I only get argumentative when one of them tries to evade responsibility for a mistake, or worse, tries to blame it on someone else. All I want to do is solve the problem, not denigrate somebody. My final call was to Ted.

‘I’m still pissed about Showalter this morning, Dev.’

I decided against upsetting him even more. ‘I’m just checking in to see how Jess is doing.’

‘She’s really up for the fundraiser tonight. She even had her hairdresser come out here this afternoon.’

‘You didn’t mention anything to her about this “staged” business, did you?’

‘Hell, no. That’d be all she needed to hear. She’ll be having nightmares about it the rest of her life. And then some asshole police chief—’

‘I’ll do my best to make it tonight, Ted. But there’s a good chance I’ll be busy working.’

‘You’re kidding. People always want to meet you, Dev. Especially the important people. They know your track record, so they’re impressed.’

‘I’ll do what I can, Ted. Give my love to Jess. Right now I need to go.’

‘I just hope you’re there. You and Jess are the stars.’

Ted’s flattery was amusing. I’d managed to talk the director into letting Ted wear his black turtleneck and I’d sided with Ted against Showalter. For at least a few more hours I’d be in the Wonderful Guy category.

I peeked into Abby’s office to see if she’d join me for a pizza down the street but, like the rest of the staff, she’d gone. Those salmon-colored clouds were in the windows again. I had too many things grinding on me to get my usual dusk depression.

I’d just gotten back from the john when the phone rang. It was my Chicago P.D. friend. The man was Frank Grimes. Age 71. Retired. 2731 36th Street Southwest, Danton.

I didn’t have any specific reason to link Grimes and my mystery caller, but the more I thought about last night, the more his sudden appearance out at the dock seemed less and less coincidental. And then he’d tried to run away when he saw me today. I needed to find out a lot more about Frank Grimes.

The area was mixed race and tumbledown.

At twenty minutes after seven a sparse number of yellowish street lights revealed the disrepair of the homes and even of the corner gas station and drugstore. The houses and the businesses were tightly packed and busted up both by time and the kind of battering rendered by the teenagers who’d lived here. The music, the clothes and the slang might have changed over the years but the contempt of the young men and women for the debris and rubble of the place had not. They knew it was a shithole; why not make it even more so?

Grimes’s Ford was parked at the curb. The address it belonged to was typical of the meager houses so prevalent here. A very slanted roof covered a gray stucco one-story home. A long piece of tape covered the crack in the lighted front window. The metal railing on the three front steps leaned so far backward it appeared ready to fall off. A push lawnmower stood in the center of the miniature front lawn. Unlike the other midget lawns nearby, this one was clean of beer cans and scraps of paper.

The street was busy with open-windowed cars blasting both rap and country music. A number of the cars had the kind of mufflers that rumbled. A pair of very young teenage girls in tight jeans and even tighter sweaters strolled down the sidewalk on my side of the street. They were almost comically conscious of the admiring looks, shouts and horn blasts of the boys cruising past. They were babes all right, but in this neighborhood they wouldn’t be babes for long. Pregnancy, drugs or husbands with mean intent would make them old and sad before they reached twenty.

I locked the car and walked to the porch. The wood beneath me was weak with age.

The colored lights of a TV screen played on the taped window. From what I could gather it was a crime show of some kind. The music was the tip-off.

I knocked. No responding sound. The TV volume stayed the same, no footsteps on the floor inside and no voice acknowledging the knock.

This time I knocked much harder — three times.

When I didn’t get any response, I stepped up to the window and peeked in.

The order and neatness of the living room triumphed over the worn and threadbare furnishings. Framed faded photographs lined the wall above the couch with the flowery slipcovers. I counted twelve, thirteen, fourteen framed photos of the same woman at various ages. I was sure there would be others throughout the house.

Lying in front of the swaybacked couch was Frank Grimes. Somebody using something had struck him in the forehead. He now lay face-up with a massive purple wound above his left eye.

‘Who’re you?’

A female voice from behind me. Because of the shadowy streetlight I couldn’t see much of her. Long blonde hair, an angular face, a slender, tall body in a Levi’s jacket, white blouse and jeans. Oh — and a handgun.

‘Did you hear me? I asked who you are.’

I took a chance. ‘I’m the guy you’ve been calling. Dev Conrad.’

‘Oh, my God.’ She seemed to forget she was the one holding the gun. But any authority the gun had given had faded when I told her my name. ‘How did you find me?’

‘I found Frank, and that led me to you. And speaking of Frank, he’s not in very good shape right now. He’s lying on the floor in there with a bad wound on his forehead.’

‘What? Oh, God, poor Granddad!’

She ran straight up the steps, brushing past me to get to the door. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘hold this,’ and jammed the gun into my hand. It was the latest version of a single-action, semi-automatic Browning that had been used in all our wars, starting with WWI.

She dropped the house key and had to scramble for it in the dark. In the meantime, she yelled, ‘Granddad! Granddad!’

She was so disturbed I had to find the key for her. She got it in the lock, slammed the door inward and went straight to him. The way she checked his vitals indicated that she’d had at least minimal medical training of some kind.

‘Please help me get him on the couch. He has terrible heart problems. He’s lucky to be alive.’

He was heavier than I would have thought. Just before we laid him carefully on the cheap, ruined couch his eyes opened and he groaned.

Once we got his body lying flat and straight she plucked a throw pillow from a nearby tattered armchair and set it under his head.

‘Watch him. I’ll be right back.’

He was hurt, no doubt about it, but not hurt enough to be civil. ‘What the hell are you doin’ here?’

‘You know who did this to you?’

He moved his head faster than was wise and paid for it. His face cramped with pain. He grumbled and then cursed. ‘You son of a bitch. I asked you a question. What the hell’re you doing here?’

‘I’ve been looking for you.’

‘Well, don’t. You’re a stupid bastard.’ A cringe; he’d moved his head abruptly again. ‘You’re getting into something you don’t understand and you’re going to get somebody killed.’

Cindy was back with an official-looking white first-aid kit. ‘I’m a nurse.’ She said this as she brushed me aside. She was getting good at it. First on the porch and now as I stood by the couch. Apparently I was a piece of human furniture.

As she hunched down to begin her examination, she glanced up at me with a freckled Midwestern-girl face that was a little too spare to be pretty but had a friendly, intelligent appeal to the dark eyes and full mouth.

I got the job of holding the flashlight and beaming it at the wound while she examined it.

‘Do you have a headache?’

‘Do I have a headache? Of course I have a headache, honey.’

She had brought along a cup of hot water and a clean cloth. She cleaned the wound — a deep horizontal gash about the length of his eyebrow — and examined his eyes for signs of a concussion. Then she used an antiseptic on the trauma area.

‘We’ll need to get this stitched up.’

‘Oh, no, honey, you’re not getting me in any hospital.’

‘He’s terrified of hospitals, Mr Conrad.’

‘I had too many friends die in them after Nam.’

‘That’s because they’d been seriously wounded, Granddad. We’ll just go to the ER.’

‘The ER is the hospital.’

‘It’s part of the hospital but for a few stitches they won’t admit you. Now be quiet and let me finish my work.’

She made him take two aspirin, which he objected to. And she took his temperature for a second time, which he also objected to.

‘You’re a terrible patient, Granddad.’

‘Aw, honey, you know I love you and I appreciate all your concern. It’s just all this medical stuff scares me. You know that.’ The tenderness in his voice came as a shock.

‘Now we have to sit up and go to the hospital.’

‘I have a big car,’ I said. ‘You can sit in the backseat with him while I drive.’

‘Oh, no, I don’t want nothin’ to do with him and you shouldn’t either, honey. He just wants to get you alone so he can ask you a bunch of questions.’

‘I need to know who hit you and you know why he hit you. You’re holding back and I don’t know why. I’m trying to help you.’

‘See what I’m saying?’ he shouted.

She was standing now and looking at me. ‘Well, I think I do owe him some sort of explanation, Granddad. So c’mon, let’s let him give us a ride to the ER.’

Eighteen

No wives or girlfriends beaten badly, no drunks injured in tavern fights, no victims of car or motorcycle accidents. These would appear later. It was not quite eight-thirty and the patients in the ER ran to kids with broken fingers, arms and ankles, and elderly patients suffering from age.

The large white room with as many as twenty-five colored plastic chairs for patients had an empty feeling, in fact. No crying babies, no sobbing wives, no drunks escorted by police officers.

After the paperwork was finished Frank Grimes was immediately taken to a room down the hall. So we sat there among the antiseptic smells and the constant ringing of phones and the techs who brought patients back to their loved ones, and for the first time Cindy told me about herself and her situation.

Her husband’s name was Dave Fletcher. He’d dropped out of the local community college — he’d planned to have his own landscaping business — after a friend of his convinced him to join the army and head to the Middle East. She said that she’d always resented the influence his best friends had on him. She’d been so angry about his dropping out of community college and willingly putting himself in war that she’d packed up and left two weeks before he was shipped overseas. He’d called or emailed every chance he got from boot camp. She’d answer him but didn’t forgive him.

During his second tour she’d divorced him and lived with a young doctor from the hospital where she worked. She’d never agree to marry him and so he finally started dating another nurse. It was in the first month of Dave’s third tour that he was shot in the head in a firefight. He was in a coma for months and not expected to live. But he did live and returned — against all odds — to reasonably good physical health. His mental health was another matter.

He’d lived with his folks; depression and suicidal impulses kept him seeing his VA shrink three times a month. Eventually she called him and they’d ended up talking for almost two hours. She’d realized that she still loved him and probably always would. They had remarried less than two months after their long phone call.

Despite some incidents with Dave’s former psychological problems, she’d loved being with him again. And for the first time they’d begun talking about having a kid or two.

Dave had a friend on the Danton police force. He’d introduced him to Police Chief Showalter and Showalter liked Dave enough that he waived Dave’s psychological problems and put him in uniform and on the street. Cindy said that while there were some good cops in a river town where the casino was a major employer you got the kind of cops you might expect.

Unfortunately, Dave had gotten involved with three or four cops who shared the racist and anti-government opinions he’d picked up in the military. The only thing she could compare it to was a religious conversion. He’d fixed up their basement as a kind of headquarters, the walls covered with ugly racist and anti-government posters. He’d started buying expensive guns.

Not even her announcement that she was pregnant had excited him the way group meetings did.

The ones who came to the house were always talking about ‘the revolution’ and ‘when we start shooting.’ At first she’d thought they were just living out a fantasy. All dressed up in military gear sometimes, always ready with violent threats against the government. Almost as bad, she said, was the cop bar where Dave spent way too much time. ‘Batter Up,’ it was called.

She’d lost the baby five months in. She’d been having vaginal bleeding and abdominal cramping and then suddenly she hadn’t been able to feel the baby moving inside her anymore. Following the loss of the child, Dave had surprised her by being the man she’d married. He’d been tender, attentive, even lying on the bed one night and holding her. Even crying himself as they’d talked about what might have been.

But their closeness had faded as he’d drifted back into the group again. He’d told her that wives and girlfriends also participated, but she’d liked nothing about his friends.

She noted that he’d been having stress headaches and fits of anger and depression in the last three weeks. Obviously something was going on but he wouldn’t talk about it.

And then, the night before last, he’d called and said he had to leave town. He’d sounded clinically insane to her. Agitated and fearful. He’d started crying.

‘He said he’d done something he shouldn’t have. Something big. And then he said that he’d made a recording on this little digital recorder he always carried. It fits right in his pocket.’

‘What kind of recording?’

‘Something that would expose everything about the things his group had done. I tried to keep him on the phone because I was so worried about him. But he hung up and I couldn’t stop him. I was terrified.’

After she learned about Jess being fired on she wondered if Dave had had anything to do with it. As did her granddad. She’d seen me interviewed on TV as Jess’s campaign manager. She called all the hotels to find out where I was staying. She went to my hotel but then got scared and ran off. She wondered if she’d find Dave at the Skylight, a local hangout, which is why she went there. She set up the meeting with me at the boat dock but when her granddad heard about it he’d insisted on checking me out.

‘So who do you think hit him tonight?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘It could’ve been Dave.’

‘He wouldn’t hurt my granddad. He knows how much I love him.’

‘You said yourself that Dave sounded insane.’

‘No, no it couldn’t have been him.’ Then, ‘Granddad’s so lonely. He never got over my grandmother’s death. He’s got all those photos of her all over the house and now he’s a big-time Catholic again. He goes to Mass three times a week.’

A nurse brought Grimes over to us. He had a long, narrow piece of white plastic over the wound.

‘We checked him carefully. We don’t see any problem except for the wound. And that will heal itself. But if you notice anything else, Cindy—’ The nurse smiled. ‘Well, you know the drill.’

‘Thanks, Louise.’

Louise turned around and headed back to the examination rooms.

‘You have any idea how long I was back there?’ Grimes was back to his squawking again.

‘Long enough for me to tell Dev a story he probably found very dull.’

‘It was very helpful, Cindy.’

‘So you told him everything, huh?’ He said this loudly and bitterly enough to attract the attention of half the ER people.

She slid her arm through his. ‘C’mon now, Granddad. Let’s get you home.’

Nineteen

I can’t say they were happy to see me walk into Batter Up.

Some of them were too deep in conversation, too deep in bumper pool and too deep in a ball game on TV to pay any attention. They would have been just as unhappy as the others if they’d noticed me.

Outwardly I was like a good number of them. White, fortyish, clean-cut. But in places like this that wasn’t enough. No, it certainly was not.

This was Danton’s one and only police bar.

Housed in an elderly brick building, windows painted black, the interior narrow with a long bar running half the length of the west wall and the rest of the space divided up into six red leathered booths and four tiny tables, the place was worn but scrupulously clean. The east walls were covered with a large American flag and posters for the Chicago Bears and the University of Illinois football and basketball teams. Set off on their own were large framed photos of officers who’d died in the line of duty, and as a final touch, as if to annoy me especially, a huge campaign poster of Dorsey.

There were three or four couples here and they all sat at tables. The women were young and sexual and looked to be having a good time, at least if their high, happy laughter was any indication. They were girlfriends and maybe cop groupies. The exception was an older couple, who sat in silence and stared at each other. He looked angry and she looked sunk in gray despair. Maybe they were splitting up after years of marriage; maybe one of their kids had become a problem. Given the merry human noise and the country-western noise on the jukebox, they didn’t belong here.

The bartender was short and wide, maybe fifty, and muscular in a way his short-sleeved red shirt only emphasized. A convict who worked out every day for three years would have envied him. He also had a pair of eyes that could spit their contempt at you.

‘I get the feeling you don’t belong here, which means I don’t want you here.’ Short, blunt fingers on his left hand touched the swollen bicep on his right arm.

‘I’m looking for Dave Fletcher.’

‘I bet he’s not looking for you.’

‘Mind if I ask around?’

‘Why?’

‘As I said, I’m looking for him. Personal reason.’

Over the years I’d been in maybe a dozen cop bars. They weren’t always happy to have civilian visitors, but this kind of contempt and mistrust was new for me. I didn’t like to admit that it was intimidating, but I didn’t have much choice.

The bartender had a unique way of communicating with his customers. He took out a ball bat and banged it on the bar. He had to do this a couple of times before he got the amount of attention he wanted. He had some kind of long black remote in his free hand. He used it to mute the jukebox.

‘Guy here is looking for Dave Fletcher.’

Somebody shouted: ‘You know who he is?’

‘Uh-uh.’

‘Saw his picture in the paper the other day. He’s some kind of mucky-muck in the Bradshaw campaign.’

Somebody laughed. ‘Dude, you picked the wrong place.’

He got the response he wanted. Hilarity ensued.

I was now not so much a villain as a feckless clown. The bartender poked me in the back. Baseball bats are good for multitasking.

‘Think you better get the hell out of here, buddy.’

I took a last shot. ‘So none of you have seen him?’

This time the bat didn’t poke me. It slammed against my spine. ‘Get out of here, asshole. And right now.’

Even the older woman in despair looked appreciative for the distraction. She watched with great fascination. Unfortunately I’d left my Rambo kit at home.

I just started walking to the front door.

‘Maybe you didn’t notice, jerk-off. We’re all voting for Dorsey.’

Another wag got another collective laugh but by then I was at the door and pushing into the smoky-smelling chill of the autumn night. I’d had to park on the next long block. The bar had only a tiny parking lot so most customers had to use the curb.

The voice was friendly enough. I didn’t worry about one of the bar denizens wanting to fight me. I heard it when I was just a few feet from my car. This neighborhood had been deserted for some time. Dirty words on walls and windows were so obvious you couldn’t even dignify them with the term graffiti. Graffiti could be clever, even artful, at times.

I did take the precaution of turning around and setting myself for a fight. And if it did come — if I had misinterpreted the tenor of that voice — then I was going to start throwing punches with maniacal fury. The embarrassment of the cop bar scene still stung.

He was running in the dark. When he reached me he was bathed in the dirty streetlight of this dirty, half-deserted neighborhood.

‘Hey, man, I’m sorry about Henry. He’s an asshole. I hate the bastard. I took my brother there one night and he treated him like hell.’ All this came out between gasps.

I recognized him as one of the young ones along the bar. Curly dark hair, slim, dark V-neck sweater, jeans and white running shoes. Right now he was out of breath. He might be young and slender but he wasn’t in great shape.

‘Just give me a second, OK?’

I relaxed for the first time since I’d pushed open the door to the cop bar.

‘I—’ He waved me off and then began taking deep breaths. ‘My name’s Andy Bromfield. I saw Dave last night. He was—’ One more deep breath. ‘I just saw him for a couple of minutes at this convenience store. We live in the same neighborhood. He was pretty messed up. Scared and kind of babbling. He was like that when he first got back from Afghanistan. I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. We were high-school buddies. I tried to call Cindy but I didn’t get any answer. I was worried about him.’

‘So you didn’t have any idea where he was going?’

‘No. Like I said, he just seemed confused.’ Then, ‘Sorry about the bar back there. Most of the guys are pretty decent most of the time — when strangers come in, I mean. The ones who gave you shit were in Showalter’s little group. They don’t like strangers. Hell, they don’t even like the rest of us that much. They hang out together. Terrible way to run a police force, if you ask me.’

‘Dave Fletcher’s in the group, isn’t he?’

‘Yeah. But lately he’s been talking to me a lot more about the old days, when we hung out in high school and stuff. There was a while there when he acted like he didn’t want anything to do with me. The others are still like that. Like they have their own little police force.’

‘You ever think of quitting?’

‘The wife just had baby number three. We’re kind of tied down right now. The only other thing I might consider is working at the casino being a dealer or something. They make pretty good money for the area.’ He seemed amused now. ‘Of course, the whole place is for shit. This is like some little redneck town where I grew up in Arkansas. That’s why I was comfortable here at first. But no more. The wife had two years of college and she thinks this is strictly Hicksville.’

This wasn’t getting me the kind of information I needed.

‘Any idea where Dave might go?’

‘I guess he’s not at home, huh?’

‘No.’

‘Figures.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘The wife and Cindy are friends. Cindy won’t come right out and say it, but Molly says she gets the idea that they’ve been having some pretty bad marriage problems. Cindy hates his little group.’ Then, ‘If he still has that old trailer of his, you might try there.’

‘He has a trailer?’

‘Yeah. He has an uncle who owns some property out in the country. Maybe ten acres is all. There’s this old trailer on it. An old silver one. We always used that as a hangout in high school. Take girls out there and drink beer and get laid if we got lucky. Damned thing is falling apart by now, I’m sure, but knowing Dave he probably hasn’t given up on it.’

‘Could you give me directions?’

‘Sure,’ he said. He made them as simple as possible. Then he said, ‘Sorry again about all the hassle in the bar.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘give that bartender my best.’

Twenty

Somebody was following me.

Dark green van of relatively recent vintage.

I spotted it when the traffic thinned on four different occasions during my trek into the country. The first two times he was three cars behind me. The third time he was two cars behind me. The fourth time he was four cars behind me.

But he was cleverer than I thought. The closer I got to my destination the more often he disappeared. Maybe he was from the cop bar and had followed me from there. Or maybe because I’d asked about Dave Fletcher he knew where I’d look. I mean, it was obvious I was going into the country, and if he knew Dave he knew about Dave’s trailer, and if he knew about Dave’s trailer, he’d know by now where I was going. He’d just hang back and then show up when he chose.

To reach Dave Fletcher’s trailer you followed a narrow, deeply rutted dirt road that paralleled a long stretch of woods. The farmland had been posted but it was doubtful his uncle was sitting around with his sawed-off shotgun waiting for trespassers.

It was another autumn night with a full moon that mourned us all, but in an oddly elegant way, like a lovely but sad song. Just inside the gate a carefully arranged line of fiercely orange pumpkins sat by an old faded pickup truck with a MONDALE FOR PRESIDENT sticker on the rear bumper. All we needed was a scarecrow.

What confronted me was little more than a trail. If you drove faster than ten miles per hour your car turned into a carnival ride. You could crack your skull on the roof.

About a quarter mile past this in a shallow valley a forlorn mutt of impressive size crouched next to a large boulder. He chose to run away when he saw me. Maybe twenty yards from him stood one of those venerable aluminum Airstream trailers that might well date back six or seven decades. The damned things lasted.

Just as I was leaving my car and making my way to the Airstream I heard a motor come to a stop on the road behind me. There was a windbreak about a city block from the gate making it difficult to see the road.

I always packed a utility flashlight in any vehicle I was driving. I wished I’d brought a more powerful one for tonight. I swung the light back and forth over the brown dead grass that had been used as a dumping ground for everything from beer cans to a white pair of women’s panties.

Another noise from somewhere on the road jostled me. I gaped behind to see a sedan of some kind driving faster than it should have eastward.

I’d gotten spooked because I was afraid I’d find Dave in the trailer. I’d been around my share of dead people before. It’s never exactly your preferred source of entertainment but you become accustomed to the look and various shapes and stenches of corpses.

No, my worry was that if I found him I’d have to call Cindy and tell her. And that I wasn’t up to.

Before going into the Airstream I took a paranoid look in all directions. There was a farmhouse but it was a good quarter mile away. There was a silo and another farmhouse in the opposite direction at about the same distance. Behind the Airstream was a line of pines and the sound of the river. Then I spent a few minutes studying the road.

There was wind and a hint of cold rain and somewhere in the gathering clouds was the sound of a passenger jet.

Isolation.

Or maybe not.

He could be anywhere, the driver of the van.

He could have field glasses on me right now. Or, if he was familiar with the property, he could have swung wide and hidden himself in the pines behind the Airstream.

The Glock was stuffed into my belt. But not even the Glock comforted me when I realized that the trailer wasn’t locked. Not a good sign. There was a small window on the right side of the door. I went up to it and shone my light inside.

My first impression was that the small interior had been tossed. Somebody had been looking frantically for something. But as I followed the beam I realized that, no, this was just the way some men lived. No mom, no wifey around, what the hell.

I saw a crusted pizza box with a sock resting on it. A men’s magazine open to a page of a young woman pleasuring herself with a vibrator. A tiny table overflowing with beer cans and bottles. A rusty basin on another tiny table with dirty scabbed dishes mounted high in it. Clothes strewn everywhere. More beer cans and bottles forming minefields for anybody moving around in the dark, especially if they were drunk. Sections of newspaper had been flung across a ripped mini-couch and there were numerous sacks from Hardee’s, McDonald’s, Burger King and others.

Paradise.

I probably wouldn’t have to call Cindy tonight unless it was to tell her that her husband was on track to be in the Slob Hall of Fame, but she probably already knew that.

I went inside, still wondering why Dave would have left the trailer unlocked.

No need to mention that the place stank.

No need to mention that I had to be careful not to lodge my foot on a beer bottle and go sailing away.

No need to mention that in this diminutive garbage can there was no body. My flashlight check through the window had pretty much guaranteed me of that.

The most important thing I hadn’t seen through the window was a stack of reprinted articles on the floor that mostly concerned overthrowing the government. Several of them were illustrated with photographs of various kinds of automated weaponry.

But... nothing.

I looked for evidence that he’d been here recently but I didn’t find it. All the dead cigarette butts told me that he was a heavy smoker but not even the smoke smelled fresh.

A wasted trip.

Fatigue set in, as if a switch had been flipped.

I went outside, greeting the night air and the mournful moon.

I started walking back to my car and, as I did so, I saw somebody just clear the sizable boulder and start running away in the direction of the road.

She was definitely fast. She.

I knew I couldn’t catch her but I started running anyway. And there, in the moonlight, she made the mistake of looking over her shoulder.

Black jeans, black crew-neck sweater.

Running.

In that moment when she turned so I could glimpse her face, I saw who she was. Showalter’s eye candy. Karen Foster.

Not long after I heard the van engine start and she was gone.

Twenty-One

I had breakfast in my office, my usual bagel with cream cheese and black coffee.

I’d gotten there early so I could spend an hour catching up on my shop’s other campaigns. No surprises, which was good news for some and bad news for others. Nationally, my party was looking bad in four key states. There was a danger we could lose the Senate.

I tried not to think about that particular piece of bad news. But that was just a prelude. The real bad news came when I stumbled across a bulletin on the local newspaper’s website. Police Chief Aaron Showalter will hold a televised press conference at 10.30 this morning.

Abby also got in early, as usual. She said, ‘I can see by your frown that you’ve heard what Showalter’s up to.’

‘We need to stay calm. I have cyanide capsules for both of us if he turns on us.’

‘Well, just give me mine now.’

I had one large bite of my bagel left. She picked it up and ate it. ‘My buddy at Channel 3 says two different reporters want to pick up on the “staged” thing but that the news director won’t let them until there’s some kind of proof.’

I then told her about Cindy Fletcher and Grimes.

‘Line two, Dev. It’s Ted Bradshaw and he sounds upset.’

‘Gosh,’ I said to Abby. ‘Ted Bradshaw upset? Life is just full of surprises.’

He bellered into the phone, ‘Have you heard about this fucking press conference?’

The blue suit looked new, the hair had been cut and the body language was somewhat more studied and dramatic. TV can control you or you can control it. Somewhere along the line Showalter had learned that immortal truth.

He stood in front of a podium covered with media microphones. The setting was the large marble central floor of the county courthouse. Then the press conference started.

Showalter: ‘I apologize for not holding this press conference sooner, but as you can imagine, the task force has been busy. We worked till nearly one o’clock this morning.’

Reporter One: ‘The big question we all want to ask is why you think the assassin’s — or would-be assassin’s — bullets went so wild? He wasn’t that far away, and from the ballistics report the task force put out, he used a powerful rifle. Do you think he just got scared?’

Showalter: ‘We can’t know why they went wild. There’s certainly the possibility that at the last minute he got spooked by what he was going to do. There’s also the possibility that he was an amateur and that he had a lot of anger but not a lot of skill.’

Reporter Two: ‘How about the possibility that he just wanted to scare her?’

Showalter: ‘That’s certainly a possibility, too.’

Reporter Three: ‘How about the possibility that it was staged by somebody on Congresswoman Bradshaw’s staff to win sympathy for her?’

For the first time, Showalter showed discomfort. He paused at least three or four seconds before he spoke.

Showalter: ‘At nine-fifteen this morning, after we received an anonymous tip, Detective Michaels and Detective Donlon obtained a search warrant from Judge Sandra Windom to search the premises and the automobile of Cortland Thomas Tucker. Because he lives with his parents we made a point of securing their permission as well. Mr Tucker is a volunteer driver for the Bradshaw campaign.’

Reporter Four: ‘Have they questioned him yet?’

Abby and I were alone in my office watching on my computer. From the reception area I heard two or three people talking back loudly, angrily to the screen they were watching. No way was Cory Tucker guilty of anything. One of the women sounded as if she was about to start crying.

The only thing Abby said was, ‘I don’t believe any of this.’

I nodded.

Showalter: ‘Mr Tucker is being questioned right now. We will likely release the statements this afternoon.’

Reporter Five: ‘Was there any physical evidence found?’

Showalter: ‘All I can say is that we feel something important was found in the trunk of Mr Tucker’s car. We haven’t had time to assess it at any length. Most likely we’ll address an entire range of questions in our written statements this afternoon.’

Reporter Six: ‘Have you contacted anybody in the Bradshaw campaign?’

Showalter: ‘No.’

Reporter Seven: ‘So Tucker has not admitted to anything?’

Showalter smiled. ‘Maybe you could call the police station and ask for interrogation room three. That’s where they’re questioning Mr Tucker right now. A detective will answer. You can ask him.’

The press loved the humor.

The phone rang. I didn’t need to use my legendary psychic powers to know who’d be calling me. Jess or Ted. I was hoping Jess.

‘Hi, Dev. Please tell me you don’t believe Cory had anything to do with this.’

‘He didn’t, Jess. Somebody set him up.’

‘That happens in real life, not just on TV?’

‘It happens a lot.’

‘Now if I can just stop my heart from racing at three thousand miles an hour.’

‘Showalter didn’t give you any kind of warning?’

‘None.’

‘I’m turning the campaign over to Abby. I want to work on this myself.’

‘I want to call Cory’s parents and tell them that he’ll have the best lawyers and the best detectives working to exonerate him.’

‘Let me call Mike Edelstein in Chicago. This’ll be so high profile he’ll be out here in a few hours.’

‘All right. That’s what I’ll tell Cory’s folks.’ Then, ‘Could Dorsey be behind this, Dev? I hate to think that. That’s the first thing we all thought of here. Ted and me, I mean.’

‘I hate to think so, too.’

‘The hate mail we get — it could be any of them.’

‘You’re sure right about that.’

‘Well, I’d better go. Please have Abby call me right away. Do you think we should keep to our schedule today? I’m supposed to visit three different places.’

‘It’s your call, Jess. The press’ll be all over you. It could get ugly.’

‘But you’d like me to go anyway, wouldn’t you, Dev?’

‘I’m not the one who has to face a press that’ll already be convinced that Cory’s guilty and that you and I and Ted were behind the whole thing.’

‘It’s so infuriating.’

‘That’s why I want to get working on it. I’ll have Abby call you.’

‘You’re aware that I’m going to keep all our appearances today, aren’t you?’

‘There was never any question in my mind, Jess.’

The gentle laugh contrasted with the harsh facts facing us. ‘Thank you for saying that, Dev. Thank you very much.’

Twenty-Two

Over the years I’d had to bail three or four of my politicians out of jail — and during my army days I’d interrogated more than a few prisoners in civil jails — but I’d never before had to seek to see somebody being held on a half-million- dollar bond.

We were three hours out from Showalter’s press conference but, as I climbed the police station’s front steps, his words still played in my mind.

The female officer at the reception desk, once I’d given her my name and asked to see Cory, said, ‘I don’t think that’s possible — you’re not his lawyer.’

‘He works for me.’ A lie, but what the hell. God had personally given me a daily allotment of one hundred and twenty-three lies. I was, after all, in politics.

She might not be pounding a beat but she was all cop. She fixed me with a pirate’s cynical eye and said, ‘He worked for you?’

‘Yes. He was my driver. I’m with the Bradshaw campaign.’

‘I see. But that still doesn’t make any difference. He’s been charged.’

‘Right now we’re waiting for his lawyer to get here from Chicago.’

‘He doesn’t have a local lawyer?’

‘No.’

‘Huh,’ she said. But it wasn’t a good ‘huh.’ It was, in fact, a very bad ‘huh.’ Bringing in a lawyer from Chicago. He’s so guilty one of the local lawyers could never do the job. And this guy, this Conrad here, looks like he’s from Chicago now that I think about it.

‘You’ll need to speak with Lieutenant Cummins.’

‘Chief Showalter knows who I am. How about I talk to him?’

‘He’s in a meeting.’

Cummins had to have played basketball in middle school and high school. He was a minimum of six foot five and just the right kind of gangly. Even if he’d tripped all over himself and never managed to get the ball in that nasty little hoop, he was so stereotypically a starting center the coach had to play him, though the bald pate and the fringe of white hair would have kept him on the bench these days.

Cummins was no help, either. ‘You need to be his lawyer.’

‘His lawyer is en route from Chicago.’

‘Well, I guess the Bradshaws have got the money.’

‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

I’d irritated him. ‘It’s supposed to mean that the Bradshaws have the kind of money that can bring in Chicago lawyers. I’m sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities.’

The woman at the desk snorted.

‘His folks have already been here,’ Cummins said. ‘They were very nice people. They spent forty-five minutes with him and then left. The lawyer they mentioned was Kostik, from right here. Guess there’s been a change of plans, huh?’

I would have to contact them. In the rush of things I’d forgotten to touch base. A very bad oversight.

‘Listen, Lieutenant Cummins. I apologize for snapping at you.’

‘All right.’

‘But could you do me a favor?’

He glanced at the woman behind the desk, as if she was in charge. ‘If I can.’

‘Could you get a message to Chief Showalter?’

‘He’s with the city manager right now.’

‘Could you tell him that Dev Conrad would appreciate just fifteen minutes alone with Cory Tucker?’

Again, the eye contact with the woman.

Then, ‘I guess I could give it a shot.’

Tucker was in orange jail clothes and handcuffs.

Showalter hadn’t sent him to County yet. Cummins had explained that they had eight cells on the second floor left over from the old jail.

Fear, confusion and defeat were all visible in the college boy’s face as he thanked the blue-uniformed officer who seated him in the wooden chair at the wooden table on the opposite side of me.

The room was painted institutional green. Cigarette smoke from the old days still tainted the air.

‘Fifteen minutes.’ Not harsh, not friendly. She closed the door quietly.

He bowed his head. His wrists twisted against the cuffs. A curse was lost in his throat. He looked up. His dismay was palpable. ‘What’ll happen to me, Dev? This whole thing is insane. Showalter didn’t even ask if I was guilty. He just assumed I was.’

‘Standard stuff. Just trying to scare you. Jess and everybody else knows you had nothing to do with this.’

‘I figured you’d all know better. At least, I hoped you would.’

‘Think you can answer a few questions?’

‘I’m pretty scattered right now. It doesn’t feel real. But I’ll try and answer what I can.’

‘Thanks, Cory. The first thing I need to know is what they’re telling you.’

‘Telling me?’

‘Why they charged you?’

‘They found a rifle in my trunk. They seem to be sure it was the rifle somebody fired at the congresswoman.’

I had to play cop. Show no emotion. The setup was clear. Rage was my first and foremost feeling. Such a cheap, bullshit trick had been played on Cory. But for now it was working.

‘How often do you look in your trunk?’

‘Never. Unless I need to, I mean.’

‘Do you remember where you went yesterday?’

‘I worked for the campaign, mostly, except for an hour and a half when I worked the phones. One of the women got sick so I volunteered. I figured it’d be a good experience for me. I could include it on my résumé.’ Bitter smile. ‘Résumé. Like that matters right now.’

‘How about last night? Where did you go?’

‘A party at a friend’s house.’

‘Were there a lot of people there?’

‘Yes. I had to park — that’s it.’

‘What’s “it?”’

‘There were so many people there I had to park almost a block away.’

‘Is it a well-lit neighborhood?’

‘No. It’s kind of a slum. Fraternities rent it together and then have their parties down there. I’m not in a frat but some of my friends are so they invited me. That sounds like a good time to do it, doesn’t it?’

‘Perfect time. Somebody follows you around until they see an opportunity to slip the rifle in your trunk. How long were you at the party?’

‘A few hours. The girl I was hoping to see there didn’t show up so I went home early.’

‘Straight home?’

‘Yes.’ Then, ‘You should see my folks.’ Now came the tears. He was a good kid who loved his folks. He had no trouble empathizing with how frightening this would be for them. And embarrassing. He fought crying. The tears just shimmered on the blue eyes.

‘We’ve hired the best defense lawyer in Chicago.’

‘But my folks said the bond was half a million dollars. Who am I, Jeffrey Dahmer? My folks don’t have that kind of money and I sure don’t want them to mortgage the house or anything.’

‘The bond’s being handled.’ I was just working my way through my daily allotment of tall tales.

‘It is?’ I heard the first note of hope in his voice.

‘The Bradshaw family is putting up the money.’

Or they would, as soon as I leaned on them.

‘So I can get out of here?’

‘Five hours max, I’d say.’

He forced back the tears. Grateful tears this time. Then he fell into reverie. ‘I’m not perfect — I mean, I’ve shoplifted stuff in my life and I’ve done drugs I shouldn’t have, but that was all in high school. Something like this... My mind wouldn’t even work this way. I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I wouldn’t know how to.’ Then, directly to me, ‘Do you think the whole thing was staged?’

‘I’m not sure yet.’

‘You were an investigator. Are you getting involved?’

‘Yes, I am. Of course.’

‘This’ll cost her the election. That’s the other thing. I can’t believe it. She did so well with the debate and all—’ Then, ‘Sorry, I’m being such a baby about this.’

‘You’re hardly being a baby. You’ve been charged with a major felony.’

‘Have you ever been arrested?’

‘Three times. And once I thought they were going to put me away for a long, long time.’

‘How did you get out of it?’

‘I hired the best private investigator I could. An old friend from my army days. He proved I’d been set up. That I hadn’t broken into our opponent’s private office and crippled his security guard in the process.’

‘But it was close?’

‘Close enough that I had to consider the fact that I was going to spend seven to ten years in prison.’

‘God.’

A tale nicely told. I was using up my allotment faster than usual.

And the tale had relaxed him, as I’d hoped it would. Carried him out of this smudgy little room and into the sunny autumn air where hardworking college kids like him should be.

Then the knock. The blue uniform. The voice neither harsh nor friendly.

‘Man, I feel so much better talking to you, Dev. Thanks so much.’

‘I’ll see you soon.’

‘You really think five hours max?’

‘Five hours max.’

This one wasn’t a lie. I believed he could be set free in five hours. Of course, if he wasn’t he’d see it as a lie.

He thanked her again as she stood aside to let him walk through the door.

It was unlikely she was used to this kind of politeness.

Twenty-Three

Mike Edelstein was one of those Big Ten college fullbacks who’d managed to keep in shape both physically and mentally. He was as fierce in the courtroom as he’d been in his glory days at Michigan State.

For once he wore his suit coat as well as his suit pants. Blue pinstripes today. Except in the courtroom, he rarely wore the jackets. At parties you’d see him get rid of it within ten minutes of crossing the threshold. He reminded me of Lou Grant on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show. As he walked in, he said, ‘I finally found another judge who might have one of those little jerk-off machines under his robes.’

Mike, like most of us, had loved the absolutely true story of the Southern judge who managed to masturbate while his court was in session. The problem was two-fold: the machine made a faint whirring noise, and occasionally the judge started getting glassy-eyed and a little out of breath. Not only did a witness catch on to this, so did the cop who stood on the right side of the bench. His interpretation — a generous man — was that the judge was having medical problems. He was in his seventies. The witness, not generous at all, talked to a reporter about it and she suggested flat out that the old guy in the robes was somehow getting his rocks off. Intrepid reporter starts looking online for whack-off machines and finds the one, as it turned out, His Honor was using. His Honor was soon busted and relieved of his duties.

‘Judge Flannagan. Kind of a young guy, too. But I keep hearing this very small noise — maybe a whirring noise. And every once in a while his head rolls back and I swear to God he starts breathing hard and sweating. What’s that sound like to you?’

Then, before I could answer, ‘Pretty crazy shit, huh? Those little machines.’

‘You thinking of getting one?’

‘I’d need a big one, my friend. A very big one.’

‘A hotshot lawyer and modest, too. So what the hell are you going to do for Jess?’

He sat in one of the client chairs in my office. This was less than five hours after I’d called him. One of his clients had a private jet. Since Mike had saved him from doing a thirty-to-life sentence, he was a most generous benefactor.

‘I wish it was a slam dunk for the Tucker kid,’ Mike said. ‘He’s obviously been set up — unless he did it, of course — but that may not be easy to prove.’

‘You say things like that just so you can charge more, don’t you?’

The big bear smile. ‘You’re not half as dumb as you look.’

‘Hard to believe that Cory would buy a rifle. He’s pretty anti-gun. That part of Showalter’s story doesn’t work at all.’

‘I’m working on that angle. But I can hear Showalter’s version. Here you have a young man who’s anti-gun, who tells me he’s never even fired a gun of any kind before and you think that would be good for our case but, when you think about it, it can be argued very well the other way. He gets his hands on this rifle in some as yet undetermined way and does enough reading and enough practicing to know how to handle the rifle — he doesn’t need to be a marksman. Jess isn’t going to be shot, anyway. All he has to do is fire a few wild shots at her and it’s mission accomplished.’

‘So now Showalter will say that Jess was behind this directly? This wasn’t just some staffer acting on his or her own?’

‘That’s where this is heading, Dev. And if you’ve heard the news in the last half hour, so is the press.’

As yet, Edelstein didn’t know any of the background about Cindy or Grimes or the anti-government group. I spent the next fifteen minutes going through what I knew.

‘We need to get Grimes on tape.’

‘Easier said than done. But I’ll give it a try.’

‘How about Cindy? Can we get her on tape?’

‘I’m pretty sure we can. But she’s really scared.’

‘I don’t blame her.’

The door was closed. Impossible as it seemed, Abby’s hand had a distinctive sound — knuckles against wood.

‘Come in.’

Abby appeared.

‘You remember Abby, Mike.’

‘Of course. Hi, Abby.’

‘Hi, Mike.’

‘Abby, we’re going over everything we know up to date. How about sitting in with us for a while? You live here and know the ground a lot better than we do.’

‘And you’re a hell of a lot better looking than Dev, too.’

‘You sure he’s your friend, Dev?’

‘Yeah. If I pay him enough.’

Abby took a seat and it was back to work.

Twenty-Four

Grimes didn’t answer his front door. He didn’t answer his side door. He didn’t answer his back door, either.

But his Ford was parked at the curb, which meant he was probably inside unless Cindy had taken him somewhere.

The back door was locked but the large window opening on the kitchen was not. A bad oversight for somebody as paranoid as Grimes.

I climbed through it, the dusty sheer curtains almost making me sneeze as they rubbed against my face. I remembered my first day of training for being an army investigator. The brisk colonel teaching the course said that when trying to sneak into a building of any kind, try not to sneeze. It sounded reasonable at the time and it still sounded reasonable.

The appliances were a couple of decades old. The refrigerator made so much noise it probably kept the neighbors awake at night. A week’s worth of dirty dishes was piled in the sink. A linoleum floor was scuffed into oblivion. A clock radio sat on the counter, along with a spice rack. A calendar with a sweet painting of Jesus on it hung from a tiny nail on one of the ancient wooden cupboards. The year was 2001. I wondered if his wife had hung it there. It was hard to imagine Grimes doing it.

The place smelled of the dirty dishes, beer and cigarette smoke.

I was just starting to move into the front of the house when Grimes appeared, pointing one of those old Savage carbines my dad and uncle used to carry when they went out and had a good time blasting away at deer, something they could never convince me to do.

‘What the hell do you want?’

‘You lied to me last night. You know who came to see you. He wanted the recorder. He thought you had it.’

‘You better not say anything like that to poor Cindy. She’s out of her mind already. Dave, he told me about the recorder the night the Bradshaw woman got shot at. Told me how scared he was. He said he just wanted out of his little group. Said he made the recording for his own protection. I thought of goin’ to the police but I knew if I did he’d be in trouble.’ Right there before me he went from tired to wasted. ‘He didn’t say so, but he likes to hide shit. He’s like a little kid. He tells me about stuff he’s got hidden but he never tells me where it is. But I got a pretty good idea.’

‘Yeah?’

‘He’s got this trailer. I bet if you went through it carefully you’d be surprised what you’d find.’

I explained that I’d been out there but hadn’t gone through the place thoroughly. ‘Go back, then. Look it over real carefully.’ Then, ‘Shit. I need t’sit down.’

I followed him into the living room. He set the Savage down carefully on the couch and sat next to it. I took the armchair where you could sink to the vanishing point.

‘All I give a damn about is Cindy.’

‘I know that.’

‘Dave’s a good kid except he got mixed up with that group. All that crazy crap they talk. Revolution and all that. They’re just the other side of what those hippies were like. Afghanistan was what fucked him up.’

‘I’m sorry, Grimes. But now I want to hide Cindy somewhere.’

‘I already arranged that. She’s at this old friend of hers.’

‘I’d like the phone number.’

He made the kind of sounds lungers make.

‘I told her to stay away from the cops. I made her promise. I told her that if she loved me she wouldn’t go to the police.’

He was right. Why the hell not? All over the western United States there were law enforcement officers signing on to anti-government groups. But no section of the country was exempt from the hysteria these people generated. Why not the Midwest?

‘That’s why they want the recorder. Dave probably named the cops in the group.’

‘The son of a bitch who busted me up, I’d like a crack at him.’

‘You should hide out someplace else, too, until this is over.’

‘If the cops’re involved in this, when do you think it’ll be over? They won’t rest till they get that recorder. And by the way, I ain’t goin’ anywhere. This is my place. I worked half my life payin’ for it and I ain’t about to run away.’

He was right. He wasn’t running anywhere. He wouldn’t even be walking anywhere. His years and his life had all caught up with him. Only one thing mattered to him now and that was Cindy’s safety. But the responsibility of that had completely depleted him. He still had it in him to give out with raspy curses but there wasn’t jack shit he could do about defending himself, let alone Cindy.

He yawned and then his head teetered to the right side of his shoulder. Just yesterday he’d been strong enough and tough enough to run away to his car when his two friends from the Skylight had confronted me. Now he could barely stay awake. He needed to go back to bed. I kept thinking of his heart problems.

‘Where’s your bedroom?’

He yawned again. ‘Why?’

‘You need to go back to bed.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because you can barely stay awake. This whole thing has worn you out.’

‘The hell it has.’

‘I’m sick of arguing with you, Grimes. You need to sleep. Cindy’s as worried about you as you are about her.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She say that?’

‘She didn’t have to say that, you grumpy old bastard. Haven’t you ever seen the way she looks at you?’

The unthinkable. Tears in his eyes.

‘Nothin’s been the same since my wife died.’

‘I’m sorry, Grimes. You’re through until you get some sleep.’

Again his head teetered to the right. ‘Yeah, I guess maybe I am.’

I got up, walked over to him and held out my hand.

‘I’m going to help you get to bed.’

But even with tears in his eyes he was belligerent. ‘I don’t need no help.’

‘Right. So stand up then.’

‘What?’

‘Stand up.’

‘Just get the hell out of here, you son of a bitch. This is my place and nobody gives me orders in my place. Now go.’

His irascibility made him suddenly sound much stronger than he was.

‘You won’t stand up because you’re too weak to.’

‘Weak? The hell I’m weak.’

And with that he did his angry best to show me that he was too strong and too proud to accept any help from somebody like me. He put a hand on the arm of the couch and began the process of pushing himself to his feet. He almost fell over.

I grabbed his right arm, holding him up.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘where the hell’s your bedroom, Grimes?’

Twenty-Five

The ride out to Dave Fletcher’s Airstream was pleasant. I was heading there again because of what Frank Grimes had said about Dave Fletcher’s habit of hiding things. This time I’d search the place.

It was another elegant autumn day.

As I left the car and approached the trailer I had a feeling of isolation; maybe it was the crows and the sudden and utter silence in this small valley. Not even the fall colors of the trees were quite as bright here. I had a schoolboy memory: the land around the House of Usher. Poe’s sense of desolation.

I was within a few feet of the Airstream’s door when I noticed the car oil on the grass. Its shine revealed its freshness. There wasn’t much of it. I bent down and touched a fingertip to it. It was fresh as hell.

When I struck the trailer door with my hand it eased open.

There was a stench which was familiar to me. It was a terrible stench; the worst stench of all.

So when I went in and saw what was on the floor there was no surprise.

My guess was that the man I assumed to be Dave Fletcher had been dead for some time. He had been a short, thin man with a finely boned face. It was already discoloring. The stench made me tear up. I examined him at a glance. He’d been wearing a yellow shirt, so the two bullet wounds in his chest were easy to see.

I got out of there as quickly as I could. I walked ten feet from the Airstream and started taking in deep, clean breaths.

Then it was time to call Showalter on my cell phone.

For the local press, the recent days’ events were definitely better than sex, except maybe for the kind that involves animals. To their satisfaction, a congresswoman had been brought down and now the body of a man had been found in mysterious circumstances.

Showalter dispatched six officers to commit due diligence on the crime scene. He then spent fifteen minutes in the trailer after telling me not to head back to town until he was finished talking to me.

I walked over to the wooded area and used my cell phone to call Cindy Fletcher. When she answered she said hello and then said, ‘Your voice. Oh, God, I’m afraid I know what you’re going to say. Dave’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘I’m afraid he is, Cindy.’

‘Where? How?’

I told her everything I knew.

She surprised me — and probably herself — by staying emotionless. ‘He said they were going to kill him.’

‘He said who was going to kill him?’

‘He didn’t say. He could get pretty dramatic sometimes so I didn’t take him seriously, I guess. That’s why I didn’t tell you. Now I’m sorry I didn’t.’

Then, ‘He could be very trusting sometimes. Like a little kid. He told one of the cops that he’d made that recording. But afterward he realized that maybe this cop could have told someone in Showalter’s little group about it. He could be such a little boy.’

I didn’t try to stop her. She needed to weep and she wept. I just waited her out. She didn’t recover so much as simply wear out.

‘So they found him. That’s what happened. They wanted that recorder. They found him and they killed him. That damned trailer. Neither of us went out there very often. There are snakes and rats from the river on the west side of it and you never knew who might come along at night. Dave always brought a rifle and a couple of handguns but I still didn’t feel safe. I’m not sure he did either.’

I saw Showalter walking in my direction so I said a quick goodbye.

No amenities.

‘So how did you know Dave Fletcher?’ Showalter said.

‘I didn’t know Dave Fletcher.’

Wind soughed in the pines and brought the scent to me as a gift. I needed something to comfort me. The events of the day had sapped my strength and my sense.

‘Just out for a drive and you ended up back here?’

‘I got a phone tip.’ Lies come so easily to me.

‘And, of course, you’re going to tell me who called you.’

‘I wish I could. Anonymous, of course.’

‘They’d call you instead of the police.’

‘I wish they’d called you instead of me. But what could I do?’

‘You could have called me before you came out here.’

‘How did I know it wasn’t a crank call? I’m in the news because of Congresswoman Bradshaw. It could have been one of Dorsey’s people just trying to run me around in circles.’

‘Like you’re trying to run me around in circles right now, huh?’

He had a good scowl. If he’d been an emperor he would have used it when he was thumbs-downing a fighter in the Coliseum. ‘I hope you realize that I don’t believe one fucking word you just said.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘Sure you are.’

That old self-control I usually rely on couldn’t be relied on this time. ‘If you can’t see that fucking rifle in Cory’s trunk was a plant, then I wonder whose side you’re on.’

He took two steps toward me. His face was as red as a drunk’s on his birthday. ‘What the hell are you saying?’

‘I’m saying you owed the congresswoman a phone call before your press conference. I’m saying you shouldn’t have been so quick to rule out a setup. And I’m saying the Dorsey folks are the ones who benefit.’

But then his self-control kicked in.

‘It’s going to be a pleasure nailing your ass to the wall, Conrad.’

I was getting the impression he didn’t care for me all that much. I was also getting the impression — because he refused to even consider that Cory had been framed — that maybe he was involved in the police group himself.

As soon as I got in my car I called Cindy again. We needed to get our lies straight.

Grief had now become dazed withdrawal. She was playing hide-and-seek with herself. I repeated the lies three times then hung up with no reassurance that she would remember a single damned one of them.

Twenty-Six

When I got back to my office I learned two things quickly: Cory Tucker had been released on bond and Dorsey was demanding an ‘immediate and thorough investigation’ into whether Jess’s ‘attempted assassination’ was a hoax or not. ‘Hoax’ was a loaded word.

I watched the replay of Dorsey’s rant on my Mac. No TV huckster could have done any better. His last line was, ‘Should she be headed back to Washington or headed to federal prison?’

Her crime wouldn’t have been federal, but it sounded more ominous to slip the ‘federal’ in there.

Abby came in with a Starbucks (latte, I assumed) in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other.

‘You know that governor of ours who should be in prison but isn’t?’

Our esteemed governor — a fine representative of the opposition party — was being investigated for accepting bribes and helping condemn land that he and his close friends wanted to buy cheap as the basis for building an ultra-exclusive ‘village.’

She held the paper out and let it flutter to my desk.

After reading it, I said, ‘It’s got to be fun for him to accuse other people of committing felonies.’

‘He groped a friend of mine when we were in college.’

‘Governor Anal Retentive?’

‘He was dean of students then. After a football game we all ended up in this van going to a dinner at the president’s house. Shelly and I were on the student council so the president asked us to attend. Anyway, the van got overcrowded and Shelly had to sit on his lap. We only had to go about five or six blocks but he managed to cop several cheap feels.’

‘Why didn’t she say something?’

‘She wanted to but he could help her get financial aid for grad school.’

I grabbed my phone on the second ring. ‘You need to get out here.’ It was Ted.

‘Why is that?’

‘My dear wife has written something I think you should read before she presses “Send.”’

‘And what would that be, Ted?’

‘Her resignation. Can you believe it? She wants to resign.’

Katherine opened the door.

‘This is really bad, Dev. She really wants to resign.’

Emerald-green sweater, slimline jeans, Western boots. The attire of the fashionable coed. But a burned-out coed. The face was lined and the eyes dulled with exhaustion.

Nan walked up behind her and put her hands on Katherine’s shoulders. Between Joel and Nan, Katherine did have a pair of caring parents after all.

‘I thought you were going back upstairs for a nap.’

‘I’m too worried about Mom,’ Katherine said over her shoulder.

‘Well, you obviously didn’t sleep much last night so you need to at least lie down for a while. You look terrible, honey.’

Katherine put her hand over Nan’s. ‘She’s always flattering me like this, Dev.’

But with little-girl obedience, Katherine said goodbye to me, turned around and walked slowly over to the grand staircase to begin her ascent to her room upstairs.

‘I’ll be so damned glad when this is all over. This whole house has lost its mind. Everybody snapping at each other and Ted calling up people and screaming at them. You sure can’t count on him in a crisis.’ If her own sweater and jeans didn’t make her look like a coed, they certainly helped present her as an appealing middle-aged woman.

‘How serious is Jess about resigning?’

‘Serious, I think. I’ve begged her to stop watching TV and reading the news on her computer but she’s fixated. And none of it’s any good. The names they call her and the things they say about her.’

‘You sound as if you’ve been spending time on your own computer.’

‘I check it out every few hours but I don’t stay on long. I keep hoping to see people in her own party come to her defense. But since none of them are sure if the shooting thing is true or not, they won’t speak up. I think that hurts her more than anything.’

‘I don’t blame her. She has made a lot of supposed friends in Congress.’

‘“Supposed” is right. Well, come on. I may as well take you to her little office. I don’t think you’ve ever seen it, have you?’

‘You’re right, I haven’t. We usually meet in the living room or Ted’s den.’

‘It’s quite the place.’

Three steps into Jess’s office, I realized that Nan had been trying to prepare me for a time machine of Jess’s political career from her days as a college volunteer through her four terms as a state legislator to her two terms as a congresswoman. I’d always known that Jess had the true pol’s lust for being elected. But seeing an office that was a shrine of framed photographs, campaign posters, pennants, bumper stickers, newspaper editorials and so much more, I realized how much she was her career. Before any other role she may have fulfilled, her political role was the defining one.

And the same for Ted. There he was in half the photos. This was what united them. This career that they both fed; this political career that they both spent night and day nurturing and sustaining.

The largest photograph was of the two of them in evening clothes dancing through the night at some Washington ball. They were the center of attention, the floor to themselves as others in evening clothes stood aside watching and applauding them. How dreamlike that moment must have been for them. In this most exalted and important of cities, to be feted this way.

I went to the window and looked out at the rolling landscape of their estate. A man in a white T-shirt, jeans and a straw hat was astride a green John Deere riding mower. But the real show was a hawk soaring above the pine windbreak. For all their hunting ferocity there was a fragility in their flight that made them seem vulnerable. But I had to smile at my naiveté. I doubted that hawks seemed vulnerable in any way to their prey, which included pets as familiar as small dogs and puppies, small cats and kittens, plus rabbits and guinea pigs.

I glanced at the rest of the photographs. Joel standing with a heavyset young man, holding a rake. The man had an Old Testament beard. And there was a lone photo of Katherine when she was probably ten.

Then Jess was there. A Northwestern sweatshirt and slacks. And a lighted cigarette.

‘I see somebody called you.’

‘Do me a favor. Let’s just get rid of this resignation bullshit, all right?’

‘It’s not bullshit to me.’

‘I’m sure you realize that if you resign you’re admitting guilt.’

‘Right now I couldn’t care less. Believe it or not, Dev, I have some dignity left. The things they’re saying not just about me but also Ted—’

She went over and sat down in front of her Mac. The lid was down.

‘The election’s already over anyway. So what’s the point? Why not resign?’

‘Look around, Jess. You’ve built this grotto to you and Ted. This is your life here. Your entire life.’ I wanted to point out that she didn’t even have a photo of her daughter on the walls. ‘So you’re going to walk away from it all because you got set up?’

‘Yes, I got set up and nobody’s done a damned thing about it. Including you.’

‘I’m working on it as hard as I can. There are things I haven’t told you yet.’

‘Unless those things include the name of the person responsible for setting us up, I don’t want to hear them. Poor Ted is half insane.’

He’d cheated on her. He’d stolen her spotlight from time to time. And he’d even given her some of the worst political advice ever uttered by a so-called ‘expert.’ But none of this mattered because they were symbiotic.

‘You may as well go, Dev. I’ve made up my mind.’

‘What’s Ted saying about all this?’

‘He’s like you. He’s begging me to change my mind. He keeps thinking if he reminds me long enough about all the big parties people have in the winter months that I’ll weaken. But I won’t. There’s a time to fight and a time to retreat.’

‘Did you just make that up? He’s worried about the fucking parties?’

‘Wow. The f-word.’

‘Do me one favor then, Jess.’

‘Whenever you ask me that it’s always something I don’t want to do so I don’t know why you even bother asking.’

‘Just give it another forty-eight hours.’

‘No.’

‘This is one of the biggest decisions of your life.’

‘The biggest.’

‘See. You even agree with me. So what the hell difference will it make if you give it forty-eight more hours?’

‘No.’

‘Twenty-four.’

‘That’s too much like a bad movie. “I’m giving you twenty-four hours.”’

‘Jess, c’mon. Get serious here.’

‘I am “serious here,” in case you haven’t figured that out by now.’

‘Twenty-four hours.’

‘I suppose I can do that. But don’t call me unless you have somebody to arrest. And please get out of here now, because you are really pissing me off. You of all people I expect to be my friend and understand why I’ve made this decision.’

I was tempted to touch her in some way. Just a small human sense of contact, of caring. But I knew better.

‘That’s what I’m trying to be, Jess.’ I spoke as quietly as I could. ‘Your friend.’

But then she was crying. And I was leaving.

Twenty-Seven

Just before I slid the card that unlocked the door of my hotel room into the slot I heard a faint sound from inside. Or was it from inside? Though the hotel was new and well constructed, sounds still carried occasionally. Maybe what I heard was from one of the adjoining rooms.

But in case it had come from my room I stopped and put my ear to the door. I heard all those ghost noises from the giant entity that ran the place. Electricity, plumbing, the inner structure itself. Ghost whispers, but audible if you listened for a minute or so.

Ghost whispers but nothing more.

I wished I’d listened longer or listened more competently, because as soon as I stepped inside I faced the same pretty brunette I’d met at Jess’s and who had later followed me. Karen Foster.

She was wearing a fashionable gray business suit with a notched lapel and single button holding it together. The matching pants were flared slightly above gray leather two-inch heels. The small black-framed eyeglasses only enhanced the appeal of her dark eyes.

As a fashion accessory her right hand held a Glock. She kept it pointed directly at my chest. ‘Why don’t you close the door and come in?’

‘Very nice. I assume you have a search warrant.’

‘No, but I can get one in a few minutes if I need one.’

‘Retroactive search warrants. That’s quite a concept.’

She stood close to the end table next to the near end of the couch and carefully placed the Glock on the table.

‘Why don’t you sit down so we can talk?’

What the hell. Between her looks and her manner I was willing to be charmed.

I sat on the couch and she sat in the chair at the small table next to the window.

‘I don’t think Cory Tucker had anything to do with the so-called shooting the other night.’

‘Good for the first part. He didn’t. Not so good for the second part. The “so-called” shooting. We don’t know that yet.’

‘I’m on your side, so you don’t have to keep up the public-relations thing. The shooting was a fake and you know it.’

‘I’m willing to consider it, I guess.’

She nodded. ‘I want to help you find out who set Cory Tucker up.’

‘Why would you want to help me?’

‘I’ll tell you some other time.’

‘Why not now?’

She eased back in her chair and smiled at me. She wasn’t going to explain.

‘Maybe Grimes can help both of us.’

‘How do you know about Grimes?’

‘You led me to him.’

‘I knew you followed me to the Airstream but I didn’t realize you were following me before that.’

‘I changed cars a lot. And if I say so myself, I’m a very good tail.’ Then, ‘I got interested in you the night of the fake shooting. I knew right away that the whole thing was staged — I think a lot of people did. I assumed that since you were the congresswoman’s campaign manager you were in on it. I even thought that maybe you were behind it all. The sympathy vote. Poor little congresswoman and some big, bad assassin. So I started following you. I know about Grimes and his granddaughter, Cindy. I know that you’ve spent some time with them, that is. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Grimes’s house bugged, so I have to ask you what all three of you talked about.’

‘I may tell you later on.’

‘You’re sort of a bastard, aren’t you?’

I needed a cup of coffee and so, it turned out, did she.

There was sufficient in the coffeepot so I popped two cups in the microwave and brought one of them back to her.

‘This could all be a trap.’

‘Of course it could. Showalter could have sent me here to pretend I wanted to help you so you’d tell me everything you know and I’d run back and tell him.’

‘Showalter? If you’re going to help me that means you’re not going to help him.’

‘Let’s just say I don’t think much of him. I’ll tell you why some other time.’

I pretended to enjoy my coffee more than I did. I was trying to puzzle through this pitch she was giving me. She could be an exquisite liar. So good that she was able to make me think that she had some profound hatred for Showalter — just hinting at it, wisely not putting it into words — and thus making me believe her story absolutely.

I thought of a way to test her. ‘Showalter said he got a phone call tipping him to the fact that the rifle was in Cory’s trunk. You have any way of checking if there was such a call?’

‘The desk person that night might know.’

‘Would you check on that?’

‘My Girl Scout leader used to do stuff like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘Give us little tests to see if we were loyal to her. There was this other girl’s mom who wanted to be the leader. So we got all these loyalty tests.’

‘That was pretty heavy stuff for little girls.’

‘Prepared us for the real world. So I don’t mind.’

‘You’re pretty good.’

‘I’m better than “pretty good.”’

‘I’ll bet you are.’ Then, ‘You’ve been here longer than I have. Don’t you think it’s possible that they set this up knowing that it would look as if Jess and I did it and that it would backfire on us? And isn’t Dorsey likely behind it one way or another?’

‘Maybe.’

‘That’s all you’ve got? “Maybe.”’

‘I said maybe because I just don’t know. Not yet.’ Then, ‘Very good coffee, thank you. But now I need to go. I have another appointment.’

‘Wow. That’s kind of abrupt.’

‘Not much I can do about it. I really do have an appointment.’

I walked her to the door. The warmth of her body and the scent of her perfume dragooned me into saying, ‘We could always continue this at dinner. That way you could answer my question about why you want to take Showalter down.’

She wasn’t inclined to change her mind and explain herself. The dark eyes held mine for a long, pleasant moment. ‘How about the main dining room downstairs at seven or so?’

‘Sounds great.’

‘Are you a little bit afraid of me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Because I’m a little bit afraid of you.’