Playing Dead

THIRTY

Claire parked down the street from the Rabbit Hole in Isleton.

She’d just gotten off the phone with Nelia Kincaid. Less than three hours from now Tom O’Brien would surrender at FBI headquarters and be taken to Sutter Memorial Hospital for evaluation and possible surgery.

She wanted to see her dad before he went into surgery. What if he didn’t survive? She shook her head. Right now figuring out who killed her mother and Chase Taverton was the single most important thing. She’d call Nelia when she was back in Sacramento and see if the attorney could get her in to visit her dad.

She took a deep breath and put her forehead on the steering wheel. She hadn’t slept much last night after her father and Nelia left. She worked on the case, putting together all the information she had and what she needed to check out, telling herself it was for her dad. And all that was important, but it was all rehashing the same stuff.

The truth was, as soon as she went to bed, she couldn’t get Mitch out of her mind.

She wanted to be angry with him. She wanted to hate him. He’d used her, manipulated her. She’d always prided herself on reading people, and yet Mitch hid himself, created a false identity. And she’d fallen in love. He’d been exactly who she wanted him to be, as if the FBI agent had been able to read her subconscious and identify the perfect man for her. He became that man, and she fell for it. She’d exposed so much to him, not just her body, but her heart. She’d wanted to share more with him than with anyone.

Claire had dated more than a dozen guys, more or less seriously, over the years, but it never hurt-physically hurt-when they split. Nothing like this.

She almost wished she could cry over it again, but the tears had dried up last night.

Taking another deep breath, she got out of Bill’s truck. Time to focus on what was most important right now: proving her father’s innocence. She double-checked the Kahr P40 she had strapped in her ankle holster. She opted to leave her blazer in the truck, knowing full well that men were more forthcoming with information if you gave them something to look at. Anyway, her blazer made her look too much like a cop or a PI. She unbuttoned one of the buttons of her black shirt, just enough so her lacy pink bra could be seen if she turned the right way.

She retrieved her Taser C2 from her tactical bag in the back. She loved the new design-she’d bought the metallic pink version-as well as the intense voltage in a compact six inches. She could hit someone up to fifteen feet away. If Claire were being attacked, she’d rather take them down safely without having to touch or shoot them.

She stuffed it in her small purse, an image of hitting Mitch Bianchi below the belt with the two electric probes making her smile. Zap!

Much better. Focus on the anger, not the pain. Toughen up.

Claire surveyed the building. The Rabbit Hole was not much of anything to look at, but then again, at night Isleton pretty much rolled up the sidewalks unless it was their annual summer Crawdad Festival.

Downtown Isleton was quaint with restored buildings, a few gift stores, an old-fashioned ice cream “shoppe,” and a video arcade. A must, Claire thought, for a small town. A sporting goods store took up half the block across from the Rabbit Hole. No surprise there, fishing and boating were big here in the delta.

Though it was the middle of the day, there was little sign of life on the street. Three young teens were walking around with nothing to do. A mother with two young children exited the ice cream shoppe. There were no windows in the bar, but a red neon sign declared they were OPEN.

She crossed the street and walked in. The bar was a third full-almost all of the men over sixty-and the music greeted her warmly. She didn’t particularly like country music, but it fit the atmosphere, and the sound was definitely more pop-country than the soulful my-dog-died-and-my-wife-ran-away-with-the-sheriff ballads. Two men played chess in one corner, and a larger table had a quarter poker game going on.

“Hey, Tip!” one of the old guys at the bar shouted loud enough for her to hear, “you’re really bringing in the lookers with that snazzy new sign you put up.”

Claire had seen the sign-it looked neither snazzy nor new-but she turned her attention to the bar.

“Told you it would help,” a man behind the bar said. Claire couldn’t see him behind the heads of the patrons. She approached and sat on an empty stool next to a man who wore a military hat from WWII with SANDERSON sewn on the edge. He looked old enough to have fought nearly seventy years ago.

“Told you classy chicks like men in uniform,” Sanderson said. “I’d buy you a drink, sweet thing, but my military pension only covers two drafts a day and I’m already on my third.” He laughed at his joke.

She smiled. She liked this place. It had a good feeling about it, small-town folks of modest means coming together for a beer to keep each other from getting too lonely. She’d bet every one of the five men sitting at the bar was a widower.

Claire smiled at the bartender. He wasn’t exactly what she expected, but she didn’t have a description of Tip Barney. The bartender was in his mid-forties with an average build and average features. Pleasant looking.

“What can I get for you, pretty lady?” the bartender said, putting a cocktail napkin on the bar in front of her.

“Whatever you have on tap is fine.” Claire didn’t particularly like draft beer, but fitting in was important when you were looking for information.

There was an older couple sitting at a table near the bar, and the only other woman was two stools over from Claire. She leaned over. “Hi, I’m Lora. Who are you?”

The woman had a bright appearance and subtle manner that told Claire she might be developmentally disabled. She was very pretty even though she wore too much makeup.

“Hi, Lora. Claire.” She smiled.

The bartender put the beer in front of Claire. She sipped. Smiled. Ugh. She’d been spoiled after drinking Guinness for so long. “I’m looking for Tip Barney.”

The bartender crossed his arms and leaned against the back bar. “That’s me.”

Claire didn’t know what she was expecting, but he looked much younger than she thought he would. By the looks of it, he’d have been in his twenties when he’d owned Tip’s Blarney. Not impossible, she supposed, but odd enough that she made a mental note to check into the history of the previous bar.

“Popular guy today,” one of the guys at the end of the bar said.

Tip smiled and shook his head. “Ignore them. What can I help you with?”

She’d already decided that honesty would work best with Frank Lowe’s old boss.

“My name is Claire O’Brien.” She took a sip of beer. “I work for Rogan-Caruso Protective Services, and I have some questions about one of your employees.”

He knew exactly who she was. She saw the recognition in his eyes when she said her name.

“I don’t have any employees.”

“Frank Lowe. He died in a fire in your bar fifteen years ago.”

“Frank.” He nodded. “Poor Frank.”

“You’ve never talked about him,” one of the guys at the bar said. Claire wished she could have this conversation in private.

“He was a good guy. A friend, though he had some problems. A couple arrests, petty theft mostly, but I told him if it happened again I’d have to let him go.” Tip shook his head and reached for a half-empty water bottle on the back of the bar, took a long swallow. “It was a tragedy, really. The police thought that some gangbangers burned down the bar for fun, not knowing Frank lived upstairs. It was an old building, burned down quick.”

“That’s sad.” Lora had moved to the stool next to Claire, elbows on the bar and chin in her hands.

“What do you want to know about Frank?” Tip asked her.

“Fifteen years ago, my father was convicted of killing two people. You probably remember it, if not then, perhaps because it was all over the news after the San Quentin earthquake.”

“Of course I’ve heard of it.”

“Hey,” Sanderson said, “O’Brien. Isn’t he the guy Channel 3 did that report on a couple months ago? That he was capturing the other prisoners? I remember that. He’d been a cop, right?”

Claire nodded. She needed to get the conversation back to Frank. “As a favor to me, Rogan-Caruso is looking into the conviction.” She had no qualms about lying on this point. Rogan-Caruso’s reputation was such that everyone would take their involvement seriously, which gave everything she said credibility. In addition, if Tip Barney-or anyone else in this bar-had killed Oliver, they would think twice about attacking her if they believed that Rogan-Caruso had the same information she had.

She continued, “When Oliver Maddox turned up dead, I approached my boss and asked if he would look into what happened. I never believed Oliver when he told me my father was innocent and he felt he could prove it. But with Oliver being murdered, it looks like he was right.”

“I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me or Frank.”

“Rogan-Caruso uncovered information about Chase Taverton, the prosecutor who was murdered, that leads us to believe that he had a plea agreement with Frank Lowe regarding a capital offense that Mr. Lowe could testify to.” Claire remembered what Abrahamson said about big fish and little fish. “Mr. Lowe was a petty thief. I’m sure you know he was arrested several times. He always got off with a slap on the wrist or minimal jail time. But after the last time with the little girl in the house he graduated to the big-”

Tip interrupted. “I knew Frank very well, and he didn’t hurt kids. He never hurt anyone. He only broke into places where no one was home.”

She nodded. “Right. That’s what the records say. Until the last time.”

“What do you want?”

“Do you know what Frank told Chase Taverton? I know there was a plea deal. It might not have been signed, sealed, and delivered, but it existed.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” He picked up a rag and started wiping down the clean bar.

“The fact that both men were killed within twenty-four hours has us suspicious. Both of them. Murdered.”

“Those kids didn’t know Frank was inside.”

“And you believe that?”

Claire had almost forgotten Lora was sitting next to her until she leaned over and, practically right in Claire’s face, said, “Why are you being so mean to Tip?”

Claire really wished she had Tip Barney alone. He knew something important. She ignored Lora and said, “Tip, please. An innocent man will die if you don’t tell me what you know.”

He shook his head back and forth. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, girl. I’m sorry about your dad, but there’s nothing I can help you with. Nothing.”

“Frank could have been killed before the fire even started, and the arson was to cover it up.”

“You have an overactive imagination, missy. Look. I’m sorry about your father, really, but there’s nothing I can do for you. Frank didn’t tell me anything. And it doesn’t matter anymore because he’s dead.”

“It does matter. It matters to my dad. To me.” Her voice caught. She’d planned on appealing to his humanity to talk, but the emotion wasn’t planned. This whole miserable situation was getting to her.

Her cell phone rang and she grabbed it. It was Phineas. Lora was staring at her with a frown on her face. Claire swiveled in the seat and put her finger in one ear as she answered the phone. “Hey, can I call you back?”

“I think I found something important.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Your friend Jayne came by and we went out to the data warehouse. She’s damn brilliant.”

“She is. And?”

“Nothing was deleted. When the reports were scanned, blank sheets were scanned in place of the two reports you asked about. So the right log was generated, but unless someone had rechecked the data, they wouldn’t have known the reports were blank.”

“Damn.”

“I thought that would help.”

“I need to see those reports, Phin. What about hard copies?”

“We only keep hard copies for three years, then they’re preserved at the data warehouse and destroyed.”

Shit! “So we don’t have them at all. Anywhere.”

“If they’re not in the court file, I don’t know where they would be. Unless the prosecutor kept a copy for some reason. And I’m sure the D.A.’s office has their own archive system.”

“Thanks. I’ll think on it.”

“I do have one more thing, though. I have the name of the head tech who performed the autopsies and filed the reports. The employee number is in the log as part of the file. Reny Willis. He’s not here anymore, he went to Contra Costa County in 1994, according to his employee file.”

1994. The year of the trial. “When in 1994?”

“His last day here was August 31, 1994.”

Her father was sentenced the week before that. The trial had ended two weeks earlier. Coincidence? “Phin, is Jayne still with you? I need to talk to her.”

“Here she is.”

Jayne got on the phone. “What-”

“Find Reny Willis. Phin has his personnel file. I need to find out exactly where he is, preferably an address. I think he knows exactly why those two coroner’s reports are missing.”

“I’ll do it for you, Claire, but promise me you won’t confront him alone.”

Who was she supposed to bring? Call up the FBI and ask Agents Bianchi and Donovan to join her? But. . Bill would do it. Or Dave. She felt bad about throwing him out last night, but at the same time she was still furious that he continued to dig into her personal life when he promised he wouldn’t.

“I promise,” she said and hung up.

Tip Barney had moved to the opposite side of the bar, serving up drafts to the men at that end. Lora had migrated to that end of the bar as well. Good, the woman was a bit freaky. Since she’d arrived, more people had come in. It was nearing five o’clock. People getting off work. Tip was avoiding her, Claire could tell. What more could she get out of him? She was certain he knew more than he was telling her. She sipped her beer. She’d pushed him hard, appealed to his sense of humanity and justice, and he hadn’t budged. Maybe he knew Frank had been murdered and he was scared. He had left Sacramento shortly after the fire, for Los Angeles. A big place. She’d need to go back to the Rogan-Caruso offices and run a more detailed search on Tip Barney, focus on L.A., see if she could find a pattern to anything. Maybe he’d been paid off. No, that didn’t fit. He seemed genuinely upset that Frank was dead. Upset and scared.

Tip lived upstairs, and he was working down here in the bar.

Claire drained half her beer, put a five-dollar bill under the glass, and walked out.

Out of the corner of his eye, Frank Lowe watched Claire O’Brien leave the bar. When she was gone, he was still tense.

First the law student, then the Feds, now Tom O’Brien’s daughter.

For fifteen years Frank Lowe had led a quiet life off the grid. And now it was over. He should never have come back to Sacramento. But after his dad died, he had nothing left in L.A. And even though his mother thought he was dead, he felt better being here than there. Isleton was perfect. No one should have been able to find him. He’d taken Tip’s identity-it had been his dad’s idea in the first place-and he thought he could simply run the bar here until he was as old as Sanderson.

But for the first time in fifteen years, he feared his days were numbered. In the single digits.

“Tip? You okay?”

He smiled brightly at Lora. The dim woman was really a sweetheart, but sometimes she was too nosy. Because her father was the chief of police, Frank made sure Lora was well taken care of. He didn’t need Henry Lane looking too hard at his past. He might find out that Tip Barney was supposed to be sixty-one years old.

“Just fine, Lora.”

“That woman was mean.”

“She was just doing her job.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s a private investigator. I just didn’t have the information she wanted.”

What he knew would get him killed. If they knew he was still alive, they would burn down this bar with everyone in it. Frank didn’t want anyone else getting hurt. It was bad enough that the woman Taverton was having an affair with had been killed, but. .

Claire O’Brien was that woman’s daughter. Guilt washed over Frank. While he didn’t know for certain that the husband wasn’t guilty of murder, he knew in his gut that Jeffrey Riordan and his partners were responsible for Taverton’s death and the fire that killed Buddy, the poor bum whom Frank and Tip had let sleep in the storeroom on those nights when the temperature dipped below thirty-two.

It was sheer luck that Frank had been able to climb out the window and into a tree; then he’d hopped a fence and gotten out into the neighborhood. He’d walked the twenty-seven blocks to Tip’s small house and told him what happened.

“It was Riordan’s people, I know it.”

“Did you see them?”

“No, but on the news they said D.D.A. Taverton was killed today. He knew. Somehow, Riordan knew I was turning state’s evidence. I couldn’t get to Buddy-he’s dead, I’m certain. I don’t want to die, Pop.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

What Tip decided was to let everyone think Frank was dead-including Frank’s mother. Frank felt bad about that, but he’d never been close to his mom. Always wrapped up in her own life, she had never really cared what he did or who he did it with. She had sent him to live with Aunt Rose, who was ancient.

Which was what put him in this miserable situation in the first place.

Aunt Rose had kicked him off her property because he’d pawned one of her two hundred fifty-seven brooches. He didn’t think she’d miss it-he didn’t realize she counted them every Sunday. She threatened to call the police if he ever showed up again, until he brought back the brooch.

Frank had no place to go. He didn’t want to go home, and doubted his mother would welcome him. His dad was living in L.A., and he’d worn out the welcome at his few friends’ houses. He stole money by picking pockets on the K Street Mall to buy back the brooch. Three days later, he went in with the cash, but the brooch was gone. “You said I had thirty days!”

“I didn’t think you’d show up for it. Sue me.”

He didn’t doubt Aunt Rose’s threat to call the police. He snuck onto the property at night and hid out in the apartment above her garage. She didn’t handle stairs very well anymore, so it was fairly safe. When he was certain she was asleep, he’d walk right into the house-she never locked the door-and nibble on her leftovers, or quietly make a sandwich. She was ninety-one-her hearing was going, but not her mind. He made sure he never took the last of anything. That she’d notice.

It was on one of those midnight kitchen runs that he heard two men enter the house.

They didn’t speak. He didn’t know who they were, though he got a good look at one of them. He heard a third man pacing on the front porch. Frank was trapped.

Ten minutes later, the two men came downstairs. One man held a sheet of plastic in his hands. They left.

Frank walked upstairs and saw his aunt in her bed. And knew she was dead.

He left and went back to his apartment. It would be dumb to disappear. The police might think he had something to do with his aunt’s death. He considered calling the police, but he wasn’t supposed to be here. And why would they believe him? Especially since his aunt was leaving her entire property to him. She’d told him that many times before he swiped the brooch. She had a son, but she didn’t like him. “I like you more, Frankie.” She may have changed her will. But he’d only been on the outs with her for a couple weeks.

The police should be able to figure it out, right? Without him saying anything?

Except when her neighbor came by the next day when Aunt Rose missed her bridge game, her doctor said she’d died in her sleep of a heart attack. She had a bad heart and high blood pressure. There wasn’t even an autopsy. Frank still didn’t say anything. After all, he didn’t know who the men were. He wasn’t even sure he could identify them.

But when his aunt’s will was read, Frank got nothing. Her property was sold to Waterstone Development, and the money given to the Delta Conservancy. It made no sense. But Frank didn’t know then what he learned ten years later when he saw Jeffrey Riordan on television running for Congress.

He was the man with the plastic in his aunt’s house.

The only person Frank had told the entire story to was Chase Taverton-not out of the goodness of his heart, but because Frank didn’t want to go to prison-and look where that got the prosecutor. And Frank.

Riordan would kill him in a heartbeat if he knew Frank was alive. Frank didn’t know who Taverton told, who had connections to Riordan so strong that they would kill to keep the secrets.

When Oliver Maddox had called, Frank told him he knew nothing, but the kid came down anyway. Frank denied everything, but Maddox kept pushing. The kid had been scared. Then he whispered, “I know who you are, Frank. You can save a man from dying for a murder he didn’t commit if you just come forward.”

Frank continued to deny everything. He thought Maddox had given up. It wasn’t until two days ago when his body was brought up from the river that Frank realized he may have gotten the kid killed.

He didn’t want anything to happen to Claire O’Brien.

More important, he didn’t want to die.

The bar door opened and Frank turned his head to see what drink he needed to pour, based on who was coming in.

He might as well lace his own soda with hemlock. The Feds were back, and Frank knew damn well they wouldn’t be able to protect him.