"I don't want to scare you," I said, "but getting involved in this means you're going to make Wheeler's short list."
Her face was pale, but she nodded. "I understand."
"And, while I trust Securetrex to guard you against things like squirrels and paperboys, Wheeler would chew those lug-nuts up alive. Do you have another place you can hole up? A friend or relative?"
She shook her head, then blew her nose. "I can find something. A hotel, a short-term apartment, something."
"Be smart, okay? Wheeler was a cop once. He's got some basic deductive instincts on his side, so if you register under Jenny Atwater, he's going to find you."
"I'm not that stupid, Singer," she said, annoyed. "If I were, I'd use your name."
Amanda snorted and I almost smiled. "Funny," I said. "What about getting to work? Travel is the weak point here."
"There are private gates at my office," she said. "Full metal garage doors, keycard access only."
It sounded good. "All right. Last thing would be not get tailed there or on your way to a hotel." I spent a few minutes giving her some basic anti-tailing advice, the accumulated tricks I'd picked up over thirty years of police work on both sides of the tail. I thought she'd be dismissive, but her eyes were locked with mine as she listened to the whole thing. She asked some smart questions after I was finished and my estimation of Julie Atwater clicked up a few notches.
The evening was closing in on midnight by the time we were done talking and I could feel myself fading. Both women must've seen it, because in a matter of a minute, Julie was standing and putting her coat on with Amanda next to her. I started to get up, but Julie pushed me back onto the couch. She was surprisingly strong.
"Get some rest, Singer," she said, not unkindly. "There are two of us counting on you now."
Chapter Eighteen
I wish I could say the next few days were interesting or that I had an epiphany about Michael Wheeler's location or that I hit the lottery and had my rectum lined with gold. But what actually happened is that I underwent chemo exactly as ordered for three solid days. And nothing else happens on a chemo day except chemo. I fretted about the wasted time--we were giving Wheeler all kinds of opportunities--but I had to be alive to help Amanda. And to stay alive, I had to have chemo. Further complicating things was that Amanda had to keep teaching if she wanted to keep her position at GW. At least, that's what she said. It seemed stupid to me that you'd risk your neck for the sake of a job, but of course that's not what it was about. It was about showing her spine. I admired her for it while it simultaneously drove me nuts. We had a tremendous argument.
"Look, would you at least let Kransky or me drive you to class?" I said.
"You weren't in any shape to drive after your first treatment," she pointed out.
"Granted," I said. "But Kransky should be able to take you if I have a repeat performance. Would that be all right?"
"Yes," she said, reluctantly.
"And the GW cop will be outside your classroom if you need him?"
"I don't like it," she said, but when she saw my face darken, followed up with, "but that'll have to be okay, I guess."
"Great," I said, though I didn't mean it. I had no idea if Kransky would be willing to chauffeur Amanda around twice a day or not and I didn't feel good about putting her life in the hands of a college rent-a-cop the rest of the time. But she wasn't under lock and key. All I could do was tell her the risks, do my best, and let her decide how she should live her life. I got on the horn with Kransky and explained the situation to him, including the fact that Julie Atwater was on our team now.
"Christ, what did you do that for?" he said, his voice rich with disgust. "Might as well take an ad out and draw Wheeler a map to your place."
"There's no connection. If you could've seen her face when I told her about Wheeler, you'd believe me when I say she wants to put him away as badly as you do."
"Not possible," he said.
"Okay, you want Wheeler more than anybody," I said. "But could you bury the hatchet long enough for us to get to him? She's the last connection we have to the guy and for all I know what we need is stuck somewhere in her files."
He grumbled some more, but agreed to be civil as long as I acted as the go-between. He was more receptive to driving Amanda to school and back, which was a relief, and said he'd get out to my place within the hour. I hung up and told Amanda she had her ride into the city.
"What's Kransky like?" she asked.
"He was my partner for a couple of years before your mom's case came along. He took it hard when Wheeler walked."
"Why is that?"
"I don't know. Maybe because Wheeler was a cop. Or could be because of his daughter. She's about your age and I could see him wondering what it was going to be like for you, growing up without parents. Or maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Not all cops are cut out for Homicide."
"Is it the violence?"
I considered. "That, and the fact you see a lot of the guys walk. They get seven years for ending somebody's life, which then gets knocked back to three for good behavior. The futility of it can ruin you if you let it."
She nodded. She knew what I was talking about.
. . .
Kransky eased up to the curb in a Corolla that looked like it had pulled duty in a war zone. It was an older model, the one that Toyota tried to make look sporty, all angles and sharp corners. At a guess, it had once been white; now it was a dingy gray that reminded me of a dirty sink. Where there was paint, that is. A quarter of the car was covered in patches and body work that gave it a leprous, diseased look. He got out of the car and slammed the door without locking it then hurried up the steps, hands in his pocket against the cold, without a coat or jacket as usual. I held the door for him as he ducked inside.
"What is that?" I said.
He stopped. "What?"
"That," I said, pointing at the car.
He glanced over his shoulder. "Impound. Some junkie's piece of crap."
"Is it going to make it? You can borrow my car if you need it."
"It'll be fine. I had it checked out last week," he said. "It just looks bad. It runs great."
I was about to say it was hard enough to keep Amanda alive without endangering her life on the road, but she clomped down the steps at that moment. Kransky turned to look up at her. I turned, too, but was still halfway facing the door, so I had a good view of his expression.
Kransky always had one of the best poker faces I ever saw. It had been indispensable when we questioned suspects or reluctant witnesses. I'm not exactly cut out to play the good cop, but when they got a look at Kransky's stark, unforgiving stare, I had no choice but to play the patsy in any two-on-one interrogation. It took me years to learn that it was when his face lost all expression that he was showing the most emotion.
As Amanda came down the steps, his face took on the flatness of a marble countertop. His skin was pale, the cheekbones and the lines in his face standing out in sharp relief. His mouth was a slash and his eyes were like small chips of glass. Amanda looked at him with a hesitant smile, then stuck a hand out as she got to the bottom step. "Hi, I'm Amanda Lane."
His hand shot out automatically and he pumped it up and down one, two, three times, before he said simply, "Jim Kransky." Then he stood there, mute. Amanda turned to me, eyebrows raised. I stepped in.
"Ah, you know where you're going, Jim? GW campus. Amanda will show you the building. A university cop will meet you outside."
He blinked. "Got it."
I turned to Amanda. "I'll catch a cab back from the doctor's. Call Kransky if anything goes wrong, looks wrong."
She nodded. "Are you going to be all right?"
"I'm going to ask them to take it easier on me this time. And I won't be driving, which should save some lives on the Beltway."
She smiled, then her eyes went wide and she said, "Forgot my backpack," as she ran upstairs.
I waited a second, then grabbed Kransky'
s arm. "You all right?"
"Yeah, why?"
"You looked like you're going to pass out when you saw her."
He didn't answer for a moment and I was going to repeat myself when he said, "You don't get many chances to do things over, do you? You look down at a body in an apartment or you see a kid in an alley torn to pieces from a bad batch of crack and you think, there's another one. Again. We never save anyone. We're punishers, not saviors."
I didn't say anything.
"And helping this kid won't bring Brenda back. But it still feels like a second chance if we do it right." He took a sudden, deep breath as if coming up for air, and shook his head. "I'm okay. How do you want me to do this?"
I described how, after the first time I'd dropped her off, I'd doubled back so I could watch the building and the foot traffic for signs of Wheeler. "You got a few minutes to do that, too?"
"A couple. I can't stake the place out until lunch or anything," he said. "I'm hoping to hear back from a guy in Records today, too. I put him on running down anything related to Wheeler that I can't find myself."
"Great. Call me when you hear anything."
Amanda came back down the steps toting her enormous backpack and then she and Kransky headed out. I watched them from the front porch, feeling strange. Kransky and I'd had our differences but there weren't many people in the world I'd trust more than him to protect Amanda. The problem was, I was one of those people. I should be the one in the car driving her in. My hands balled into fists and I squeezed until I couldn't feel the fingers anymore.
. . .
Chemo followed the same procedure as the day before, though Leah assured me that they'd backed my dosage off so I wouldn't fall into a heap of wet noodles at the end of it. The lounge, as I'd come to think of it, was barren except for a guy with ear plugs stuffed in the appropriate places, mouthing the words to his favorite song. Ruby and her knitting and unrelenting monologues weren't there to distract me, so I spent the four hours hooked up to the IV drip sitting and thinking.
It didn't get me very far. I had to face it, I didn't have much more to go on than when Amanda first approached me. Julie might discover something in her files, or she might not. Kransky might dig something up that we could use, or he might not. And if neither option panned out, we would be forced into being purely reactive, waiting for Wheeler to make a move. Since I believed he was a killer and mentally unbalanced, it was fair to assume that this move would be both violent and possibly lethal. Not the kind of circumstances I would've picked while waiting to throw a counter-punch. Assuming I got the chance.
I sighed and squirmed around in the chair, restless. What had I done in a former life to be glued to a chair for four hours at the exact moment Wheeler was out there somewhere making plans to kidnap and maybe kill someone I'd sworn to protect? I groaned in frustration and the guy with the headphones opened his eyes. I raised a hand in apology, embarrassed, and settled back. I forced myself to relax. I tried doing multiplication tables, naming all the presidents in order, listing all the state capitals, anything to pass the time. I was just dozing off when my cell phone buzzed, making me jump. I pulled it out.
"Kransky. What's up?"
"You got a sec?" he asked.
"For you, Kransky, I have an uninterrupted hour. In a recliner, no less." There was a humorless silence. I sighed. "What do you got?"
"The results are back from the girl's office."
"Yeah? Get anything?"
"Nothing. No prints, no tracks, no fibers. The petals could've come off any carnation from any grocery store in a two-hundred mile radius."
"So they are carnations?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I was thinking that Wheeler is a cheap bastard on top of everything else," I said. "He could at least use rose petals."
"Well, he's a careful cheap bastard," Kransky said. "Nothing in any of the trash cans on any of the floors and they'd been cleaned hours before all the excitement started."
"Dumpster out back?" I asked, hopeful.
"Nothing. I had two guys go through it. Rotten bananas and office supplies."
I closed my eyes to think. I had something I wanted to ask him, something important…then my eyes snapped open. I'd zoned out and I fumbled around, trying to get back on topic. "GW cops have any tape?"
"On the exits, you mean?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Nope. They've got cameras covering a few public access spots and some of the dorms, but nothing inside the campus buildings. Not much call for it."
"And let me guess, nobody remembers seeing a guy walking around with a bouquet of carnations, wearing rubber gloves and surgical booties?"
"We sent out an appeal through the GW media for witnesses to step up, but you know how effective that's going to be. And, even if we net something, it'll take a few days."
"So much for the scene," I said. "How about the background check on Wheeler?"
I heard the sound of papers being shuffled around, Kransky coughed, then I could make out a light thumping sound. I smiled, but sadly. I could picture it perfectly. He was tapping his pencil on the desk as he scanned the report. I'd seen it a thousand times before, back when we'd been partners. "Here's the thing. It really does look like he dropped off the face of the earth twelve years ago. But part of the problem is that it was twelve years ago and a lot of this stuff either wasn't automated at the time or wasn't entered in later."
"You ran his prints?"
"Nothing. All they had was when Wheeler joined the force, then his initial arrest in the Lane case."
"Any of the databases have anything?"
"All old stuff, again, or out of date. No phone calls, no purchases, no job applications, nothing. Exactly like when I first searched for him."
"Damn," I said. I'd hoped Kransky might've raked something up but, realistically, I wasn't surprised. Something cops like to keep secret is that it isn't that hard to fall off the map if you know what you're doing and are willing to put up with some inconveniences. Wheeler fit both descriptions. Granted, he never struck me as the sharpest tack in the barrel and his experience would've been from the mid-nineties but a lot of the rules were the same: use a fake name, never get finger-printed--so no federal jobs, don't commit a crime--and don't use your own social security number. That was about it. And, if he'd stayed current on some of the more elaborate identity theft scams, he could've been living a brand-new life for the last decade.
Kransky sensed my frustration. "The well hasn't dried up yet. My buddy in Records hasn't called back yet. Since this is off the books, it's going to take some time, but he's still a good source."
I racked my brain trying to think of something he hadn't, an angle or a new avenue to go down, but came up empty. "All right. Disappointing, but it's still good work. You know, another thirty years and you might make captain."
"Jesus Christ, I hope not," he said and hung up.
vi.
He stalked down the sidewalk, planting the heel of each boot hard on the ground, like he wanted to crack the cement under his feet. Electric worms moved under his skin, poked out of his eyes. In stir, this rage had helped keep him alive. It was a force field that communicated with others on the most primal level. It said: don't fuck with me. The vibe had been just enough to keep him in one piece on the inside, but out in the real world, it had an even better effect. People walking towards him kept their eyes on their shoes or found a reason to cross the street.
But anger was a dangerous luxury. He turned into a small park where he sat on a chewed up, graffiti-covered bench, forcing himself to get control. More than one group wanted to get their hands on him and lock him up for good. Stomping around in a blind fury was a great way to get picked up, plucked right off the street. He'd been on the move for days, living off whatever he could steal, trying to dodge the thugs he'd seen around the campus he knew were looking for him. So busy looking over his shoulder he'd had no time to search for Amanda. It didn't take a genius to guess she was with Singer, bu
t finding them was going to have to take a back seat to staying free and alive. The thought that he could find her so easily, but couldn't actually do anything about it, made him furious. His hands curled into fists.
What he needed right now was discipline. Calm. He sat very still, emptying his mind and slowing his breathing. It wasn't easy. He couldn't stop the self-recrimination. The one break he'd been given he'd squandered, indulging himself with the stupid flowers again, unable to resist one more time when what he should've done is made his move right there. Then she'd disappeared, only to come back with Singer escorting her and handing her off to one of the clown cops, the campus police. Again, he should've struck, but he'd been spooked. Was he being set up? Were they baiting him with the rent-a-cops, daring him to go after her while a SWAT team was in the next room, ready to unload on him? He gave a moan and gritted his teeth, almost crazy with frustration. He sat like that for long minutes, waging an internal war with himself, until a girl at a nearby park bench caught his eye. Tired of trying to conquer his anger and his hunger, he gave up, letting his mind follow his emotions for once.
The girl was slender and tall, a sapling amongst a bunch of stumps. He hadn't noticed her when he'd first sat down, but he stared at her now, unable to look away, vibrating with impotent energy. She was leaving, tucking slab-thick chemistry and physics texts in a backpack. Slim hands smoothed her hair back and tied it into a pony tail. By the time she stood up to go, his leg was jogging up and down like a pump. He had to squeeze both hands bloodless to keep from reaching out as she walked by. He almost barked at the complete indifference she showed.
He got up and followed. It was stupid, but he was kidding himself if he thought he was in control anymore. He followed her for blocks, almost without blinking, focusing on her legs, her backpack, her hair. She saw him once at a red light, then again from a casual glance thrown over her shoulder. Her pace quickened.
She knew.
A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) Page 14
