"You could say that." I filled him in.
He whistled after I'd finished. "So this guy you've been looking for is dead?"
"Maybe."
"Mission accomplished, then, huh?"
"Not quite. I need some background on how he died. A coroner's report, case file, anything."
"You'll only get that if he didn't die a natural death."
"I know this guy. I'm going to bet on unnatural," I said. "Think you could dig any of that up for me?"
His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "Is that all? Why don't I turn in my badge and gun now and save my boss the trouble of asking? You know, since you're not a cop anymore and if he caught me feeding a civilian police reports it could be my hide."
I tried to look sheepish. "Don't do it if I'm putting you out."
"You're serious?"
"A girl's life might be on the line, Hanson," I said. "And this was our last lead."
He gave me a long, steady look, then sighed heavily. "Damn it. I'll need some time to dig this stuff up. Swing back around in a couple of hours."
I nodded. "Thanks. Uncle Bill would be proud."
The half-smile was sour. "Yeah, yeah."
He shooed us out of there and we walked outside into the deepening dusk. Julie looked at me. "So, we've got a couple of hours to kill."
"Looks like it," I said.
"Then let's pretend we're relaxing," she said, taking my arm. "And forget we're waiting to see the coroner's report on a killer that isn't supposed to be dead."
So we strolled the brick streets of Waynesboro, admiring store displays and occasionally ducking into shops to chase the chill away. If the decorations were any indication, Christmas was tomorrow, but the tinsel and plastic elves had probably been up for a month already. I caught myself looking down at Julie and smiling, which stirred a jumble of emotions, both bad and good. It had been a long time since I'd been attracted to someone enough to saunter down a city street, arm-in-arm, looking at dopey holiday decorations and enjoying it. But the cynic in me asked, how long would it last? I pushed those doubts aside, squeezing them into a hole, and gave myself permission to have a good time.
. . .
Two hours later we were sitting in the space opposite Hanson's desk, squeezed into two small plastic chairs. His workspace was neat as a pin, with a computer monitor arranged precisely in one corner of the desk and a day planner open to the correct date open in front of him. A slim folder rested on the edge nearest me.
I looked around the open office. "Not worried about your boss?"
"He went home early and I'm the only one on call."
"No crime sprees in Waynesboro?" I asked.
"Just the one in here," he said, tapping the folder. He looked at Julie and stuck out a hand. "You know, we weren't introduced there, out on the street."
"Julie Atwater."
He waited for more. "She was Wheeler's defense attorney at the original trial," I said. "That's what an asshole he is. Even his own lawyer wants to see him put away."
He raised his eyebrows and said, "I think you mean was."
"You're sure?"
"I'll let you be the judge of that," he said. He opened the folder and wet a finger before flipping through the pages. "Michael Anthony Wheeler. Male Caucasian. Age, twenty-eight. Blue eyes, brown hair. Occupation, unknown. Found dead in a dumpster outside Randy's Roadhouse on Sperryville Pike, February 19, 1997. Cause of death would be the blunt force trauma administered to his head and face by approximately twenty-three blows with a pipe or similar object."
"Jesus," Julie said.
Hanson turned forward a page, then back. "Positive ID on him, though dental identification was delayed because of the, ah, trauma."
"How'd they make the ID?"
"Looks like Wheeler had been living with Green, who'd reported him missing four days prior to the discovery. Somebody at the station made the connection and brought her in to look at the body. She confirmed the clothes he had on were gifts she recognized. Fingerprints came back for one-hundred percent confirmation that it was Wheeler. Even with the ID, though, the investigation went nowhere. No witnesses, no murder weapon, no remains other than the body itself. They chased the sister for a while, but she was cleared."
"No possible mistake on the ID?" I asked. "I can't afford to be wrong on this."
"Look for yourself," he said, gesturing at the file. "The paperwork is pretty clear."
"Who contacted MPDC?" I asked.
Hanson licked another finger and rifled through the pages, then shook his head. "No contact was made."
"No contact?" I stared at him. "The guy was a former DC cop."
He shrugged. "It's not in the notes. Let's see. Looks like he hadn't been in town long. Living with Green. No known job. No friends, no associates. Hadn't even been in the Roadhouse the night before, according to bouncers and bartenders. The body was just dumped there."
"And she didn't mention to anyone that he'd been a cop?"
"If she did, no one wrote it down."
"Who ran the investigation?"
"Jay Palmer," Hanson said. "Good detective."
"Where is he? Can I talk to him?"
Hanson shook his head again. "Jay had a stroke five years ago. Died a year into retirement."
I cursed. "Would anybody else know anything? Wasn't this some kind of news around here, for crying out loud?"
"It was before my time, but I remember some of the older cops talking about it when I first transferred. Vicious thing like that, looked like a mob hit from the movies. But Wheeler wasn't a local boy and interest fizzled out once Jay couldn't pin it on anyone. People chalked it up to a big city payback or a bad drug deal or something like that. The less we had to do with it, the better."
Julie stepped in. "Somebody gets their head beat in so bad you can't figure out who he is and no one's interested?"
"After a couple of months, yeah."
"What was Palmer's excuse? Why didn't he follow up?"
"You know…" Hanson started, then closed the folder and smoothed his hands over his desk. "You know, I couldn't tell you. He was a good guy and a good cop. I was going to get all righteous on you, but truth is, this is a tenth the paperwork we'll get for a hit-and-run, never mind a gangland-style execution. Looks like he dropped the ball on this one."
I gestured to the file. "You mind?"
"Be my guest."
I opened the file and glanced through the reports. I was done with the pages in a minute. Hanson was right, there was nothing in the file. I generated more paperwork filling out a prescription. Palmer might've had a reputation as a solid cop, but you wouldn't know it from this case file. The whole thing stunk. Kransky should've seen Wheeler's murder come up on his radar in the first ten seconds of his search, but there'd been nothing. It made me distinctly uncomfortable, because it took some serious clout to shove something like this under a rug.
"How would you feel if I went and talked to Layla again?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Not good. I don't mind helping you out, but you start bothering her and she calls my department and complains, it'll come out that I knew you were up there once already."
"And Palmer's dead," I said. "He have a partner?"
"No," he said. "We're too small. He might've taken somebody on for a big case, but this was picked up and dropped too quick for that."
I was quiet, out of ideas. I'd go see Layla anyway if I had to, but I doubted it would be worth the potential ill-will I might stir up with Hanson and his boys.
"Sorry it didn't help," he said.
I opened my mouth to say something, but my phone rang. I pulled it out and took a look. It was Kransky. I nodded an apology to Hanson and stepped away.
"Kransky," I said. "I'm in the middle of something. What's up?"
"Time to come home, Marty."
The way he said it made the blood drop out of my face and pool somewhere around my knees. "What's wrong?"
"My contact in Records called back," he sai
d. "He crosschecked some payroll files, attendance rolls, bunch of other sources that aren't housed in the same locations as the personnel files. Still didn't find out who deleted the files, but he was able to tell that two records were wiped out, not one."
"Two? Whose was the other?"
"Lawrence Ferrin's."
My heart leapt to my throat. "Wheeler's partner."
"That's not all. Something about our search got under my buddy's skin. He dug around on the internet. Looks like Lawrence quit MPDC a year after the Wheeler trial, kicked around for a while, then got thrown in the can ten years ago on a rape and battery charge somewhere in Indiana. Served his time, paid his dues, and got out. Want to guess when he was released?"
"Tell me," I said.
"Two weeks ago. They're on a mission, Marty."
"Christ," I said. "Wait, ‘they'?"
"Wheeler and Ferrin," he said. "Aren't you listening?"
"Shit," I said, wincing. Why hadn't I called Kransky to tell him about Wheeler? I knew the answer, but didn't want to admit it: I'd been waltzing around town with Julie, dreaming of another bout of passion in the car with her. "Maybe not."
"What are you talking about?"
I took a deep breath, then told him what we'd stumbled across, from Wheeler's grave to Hanson's homicide report.
There was a dead silence on the other end.
"Kransky? You there?"
Still nothing.
"Jim?"
"I'm here," he said. But his voice was flat, atonal. I could sense the feeling of disbelief and bitterness. A few more seconds of silence passed, then, "You're sure?"
"Short of exhuming the body. The report this cop Hanson scratched up for me has more holes than I can count, but it's official enough."
He swore. "I've spent the last twelve years thinking he's out in the world. Alive."
"You and me both."
"Where's this leave us?"
"Not sure, though I've got a real desire to look up Lawrence Ferrin," I said.
"It bother you he's the son of an ex-chief of police?"
"Maybe," I said. "And we both know Jim Ferrin was dirty as the day is long."
"Is he in on it, too?"
"I don't know," I said. "If he is, we've got more trouble on our hands than I thought."
vii.
"I asked you not to interfere."
"Hello, Son," the old man said. "Good to hear from you, too."
The other's voice was terse. "Call your idiots off. They were stumbling all over campus yesterday, trying to look like tourists."
"Those two never could do a tail." He coughed, a wet sound. "Tell me, what is it you're trying to do, exactly? What am I supposed to not interfere with? Your note wasn't very specific."
"If I tell you, do I have your promise not to get in my way?"
The old man sighed. "Yes."
He told him.
"And that's going to give you your life back? That's what you've been dreaming of these last twelve years?"
"You don't approve?"
"I do if this is it," the old man said. "If it's over after this. If it isn't, I'll have to bring you in myself. My way."
"It's all I need." A pause. Readying himself for an argument. "Are you going to get in my way?"
The old man paused. "No, Son. No, I believe I'm going to help you."
Chapter Twenty-seven
Our conference with Hanson ended quickly. I thanked him for his help, grabbed Julie's hand, and bolted. It would've been nice to have talked to Layla again to answer some questions that Hanson's report had raised. Or tracked down Palmer's widow, try to see if the detective had kept private notes on Wheeler's killing. But Kransky's news about the deleted records balled all those ideas up and dumped them in the shitter. We jumped in my car and headed north. Julie and I hashed and re-hashed what Wheeler's apparent death meant. I tried not to say much about the issue that was truly bothering me, but had forgotten Julie was a lawyer: she could sniff out an omission from a mile away.
"Lawrence Ferrin," she said at one point, musing. "Son of Jim Ferrin, right?"
"The one and only," I said. "Hopefully."
"He slipped through some corruption charges, I remember. Pretty bad character."
"Pretty bad," I said, watching the road.
"Are we looking at a father-son thing here?" she asked. "Should we be worried?"
"More worried than we are now? I don't know. If the older Ferrin is involved, probably. He was a scary son-of-a-bitch when he was on the force. Had his own personal cadre of crooked cops in all the departments. Kind of a blue mafia. Though he never got pinned with anything."
"He retired a few years ago?"
"Yeah. Doesn't mean he's less connected, just not as official."
"What's our next step, then?"
"Kransky's going to run the same background checks and searches he did when we thought we were dealing with Wheeler."
She looked out the window into the black. "That didn't help very much."
"We didn't know Wheeler was dead at the time," I said. "Ferrin is almost certainly alive and kicking, so hopefully he's left a fresh trail we can follow. Then we put him away."
"And if his father's involved, too?"
"Then we do the world a favor and put him away, too."
"You make it sound easy."
Anything I would've said would've been a lie, so I didn't say anything. She took my silence for what it was worth and matched it with one of her own. Miles of farmland rolled by, lit occasionally by a lonesome golden rectangle of light coming from a home or the sterile glow of a white light over a barn. Fifteen minutes later, she asked me, "Why would the old man be involved?"
"If his kid and not Wheeler is the one responsible for everything--possibly even Brenda's murder--then it means he's been covering for him for more than a decade. Maybe all the way back to the trial. Though that's speculation. Maybe it's as simple as Lawrence went crazy in stir those ten years. The old man doesn't have to be involved at all."
She nodded, but didn't reply. Her gaze traveled out into the darkness, watching fence posts pass by. I had the sense she wanted to keep talking. But she curled up in the wedge between the seat and the door and fell asleep instead. She woke an hour later when I crossed over a set of train tracks that shook the car like we'd been run off the road. She took a deep breath, floating to consciousness. A moment later, she said, "Where are you going when we get back?"
I hadn't thought about it. Going back to my place--with its revolving door marked "Bad Guys"--didn't seem like the smartest option right now. "I don't know."
"Stay with me," she said.
I didn't say anything. Maybe I leered. A little.
She gave me a smoky look. "Until we get this thing fixed, Singer. Then you're on your own."
Two hours later, I pulled beside Julie's car at the Metro station parking lot, exhausted. The bones of my hands were somehow simultaneously numb and aching, and I could still feel the vibration of the car, as though I'd steered by holding onto the engine block instead of the wheel. She got into her car and I followed her to the Great American Extended Stay on Route 50, a place with nice long-term rates, if their billboard was telling the truth. I found a dark corner in the back corner of the hotel's parking lot to hide my car, then met Julie by the front entrance. She smiled when she saw me, though the corners of her mouth quivered and her expression looked brittle.
"Feeling weird?" I asked.
"A little," she said. "I haven't exactly batted a thousand with my relationships."
"I could sleep on the couch if it'll make you feel any better."
"That's just stupid," she said.
We went inside, toting our day bags that were going to turn into night bags. Instead of plodding down one of the anonymous corridors on the lower levels, however, when we got in the elevator, Julie punched the top floor. We exited into a foyer with four doors. The halls below us had ten or twenty doors for the same space. Julie fished her keys out and unlocked one mar
ked "C." She bounced the door open with a hip and walked in. I followed her into an enormous suite, complete with kitchen, office, and separate bedroom. It smelled of glass cleaner and potpourri. The living room had a fireplace, a flat screen TV, and a wet bar. A sliding glass door led out to a balcony with a wide-angle view of the Potomac and the Washington Monument.
I turned to look at her, eyebrow raised. "I thought you said Wheeler ruined your career."
She smiled wanly. "I decided if my life was in danger, I'd be damned if I was going to stay in some flea bag motel out on the Beltway. Besides, I'm charging it. If we live through this, I'll worry about it next month."
I dropped my bag and went into the living room, pacing the perimeter, too jittery to sit down. I walked over to the sliding glass door. It whispered open on oiled tracks and I stepped out to look over the city. The Washington Monument gleamed ivory in the night, erupting out of the landscape like a ghostly tusk. The wedding cake outline of the Capitol building was visible to the right, its sculpted dome and fluted walls giving it more architectural heft. But the straight lines and honest corners of George's memorial appealed to me more than the Byzantine stretches of the Capitol.
The door slid open and Julie joined me, near enough that I could feel her body heat. We stood, sharing the silence. The air had a crystalline snap, that strange quality in winter that makes it seem as if ice is hanging in sheets around you and sounds from the far distance are delivered to you like they'd occurred within arm's reach. Julie broke the spell when she gave me an apologetic look and lit a cigarette. I shrugged. It had been a nerve-wracking twenty-four hours; she was allowed her vices.
I went back inside and rooted around the fireplace until I found three good pine logs. Some bark and a balled up Washington Post sports section under the andiron made a decent fire-starter. I lit the bundle with a long match from a box on the mantle and watched as the flames licked upwards into a bright orange cone. I sat, mesmerized by the fire until Julie came in, bringing a rush of cold air with her that fanned the flames two feet high. I clambered to my feet with a grunt and turned.
A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) Page 21
