He knelt down and tried to pull the leader back toward the woods. “C’mon, Zeus. Let’s go.” The dog howled, planting his feet firmly in the dirt and refusing to budge. The sheriff scratched his head in amazement.
“Now ain’t that the damndest. I never in all my years seen dogs acting like that.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What the fuck are you saying? They lost her!”
He turned back to me pissed. “I don’t know what the hell happened in there. All I know is that they ain’t going back in those woods!”
“So then radio back. Get a chopper or something. She’s in there, on foot. She can’t be far!”
I paced around angrily. I couldn’t believe this was happening. So close, and then slipping away again.
The sheriff pulled his walkie talkie out of his belt quickly. “Yeah…something happened. I don’t know what, but get a bird over here fast. She’s disappeared again…yeah, I don’t know what the hell happened with the dogs.”
* * *
Laurel
He was guiding me deeper into the woods. I could hear rushing waters. A stream ran past me. He pushed me toward the water, and I knew that he wanted me to cross the stream. I was afraid of deep holes, of being swept down to a hell worse than what I was in now, but I also knew that he was there and that he’d protect me. I waded in up to my waist. Then to my shoulders. Then I couldn’t feel the bottom anymore. He was lifting me up, carrying me across the water. I started choking. Water was seeping into my nose and my mouth, but he kept pushing me closer and closer to the other side.
I fell on the bank and crawled my way up to the other side. Then I saw why he’d been pushing me. An abandoned trailer. I yanked open the rusted door and fell on the floor. Above me I heard the sound of a helicopter, clipping low-hanging trees. I froze.
* * *
Detective Bob
I was trying to shout over the sound of the chopper. “What about over there, the other side of that stream? Looks like some kind of trailer or something over there.”
The sheriff took out his binoculars. “I don’t see nothin’ in there.”
I grabbed the binoculars from him, squinting hard to see if I could see anything moving through the craters of blown out windows in the trailer.
The sheriff nudged the pilot. “Try to the south of here, over by the bend. My guess is that’s where she’d be, trying to get to the highway.”
“I think we should go down over there by that trailer!” I shouted.
“We can’t get down there. It’s not flat enough. Besides, she’d a had to go across that stream, and believe me, there’s no way in hell she’d get across there. The current woulda pulled her under. That’s real treacherous. Looks easy, but every year we lose a coupla people to those waters. Especially ‘round this time of year. They get pulled under in the holes and never come up.”
He nudged the pilot again. “Go on over there…south.”
* * *
Laurel
The sound of the helicopter was fading away in the distance. Slowly, I was beginning to breathe again. I was cold and soaked I noticed a filthy blanket in the corner. I crawled over and shook it out and wrapped it around myself. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I felt like Clive was gently closing my eyes, whispering sleep to me.
* * *
Detective Bob
“God Damn it!” I paced around the small room, every muscle tensed in anger. “I don’t fuckin’ believe this. She’s within a couple of miles of you, you got dogs, helicopters, cars and she gets away on foot!”
The sheriff was quiet, letting me blow off steam, then he cleared his throat interjecting. “You know what I think? I think she’s headed somewhere specific. It don’t look like she’s just running in general. Where’s she from? Does she know anybody down in this area? ’Cause my guess is that if she does, that’s where we’ll find her. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and nobody gets away like that on foot, away from dogs, choppers and what not unless they been here before, or somebody’s helping ’em that we don’t know about.”
Pissed off as I was, I had to admit that what he was saying did make sense. I sat down wearily, rummaging through my brain, trying to remember if there was anything in her past that would lead back to this place. All I could think of was that she was from Cleveland, and that she had knocked around for a while until she came to New York and basically started shacking up with Clive. But I wasn’t gonna give that country hick the satisfaction of thinking that he might have hit on something.
“Just do me a favor and put road blocks up everywhere,” I said. “Send her picture to every gas station, restaurant, police station, hotel, motel and any place else where she might be able to hide out within a hundred mile radius. I’ll handle the theorizing.”
“You sure you don’t wanna stick around here for a few more days? With the kind of net we’re throwing out, we oughta be able to get her with no problem.”
“Like you did today?” I picked up my things and headed toward the door, turning back around saying, “I got other leads I gotta follow in New York, so just call me if you find her. “
The sheriff shrugged. All I could think about was how stupid I was gonna look when I went back empty handed after rushing off like the damn cavalry. I looked down at my pocket calendar, and crossed off another day. Twenty-eight days and counting. Shit. I better focus on Andy Haven and that crowd before I really ended up with nothing.
* * *
Laurel
The hot Alabama sun was drying out the last bits of dampness from my clothes. I was on a back road; almost no cars had passed me since I started out. Every time a car did pass me by, I turned my head and skirted as close to the woods as I could without looking too obvious. Afraid that one glance would give me away again.
When I awoke, I could still feel Clive’s presence there, around me like a protective blanket. I wanted to talk to him, to ask his forgiveness, to thank him for saving my life, but I couldn’t seem to get through. Every time I tried to penetrate the cloud, I would meet resistance. Until finally he was just gone.
But I wasn’t sad, because I knew that his invisible presence was still guiding me. I looked down the road and saw a sign: HENDERSONVILLE, MISSISSIPPI, TWENTY MILES. I knew now where he was leading me. The same place I knew in my heart that I had to go to resolve the rest of my life. Where it started for us was where he and I could find the answers to the tragedy that was binding us together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Detective Bob
Usually the midday hum of the New York charged me up. But today it seemed loud and overpowering, a clanging of noises all competing with each other to be heard. That’s how I was feeling about this case. There were all these different voices trying to tell me different stories. Which ones were right? Which ones were wrong?
A loud clap threw me off for a second. It sounded too much like this morning when I walked in to claps and jeers, celebrating my fuck up. Something that cops do all the time, go after a suspect and lose ’em. No big deal, except if you’re Bob Greene.
“Well lookie who’s here, Greene, back from vacation?” The captain bit down on his unlit cigarette and glared at me, his narrow eyes gettin’ yellow at the corners.
Scoffo jumped in, chuckling loudly. “Looks like he got a tan down there.”
“I hope so, ’cause he sure didn’t get his suspect!” Callahan chimed in like the red faced asshole he was.
But today for some reason it didn’t bother me the way it usually would. The captain’s sarcastic mouth, loud assed Scoffo and the rest: I just didn’t care anymore. I was on a mission to put my own soul to rest, and after that, I didn’t give a fuck, because I would’ve proved something to myself. That I was still a good cop and nobody could take that away from me.
The first thing that I was gonna do was dig a little more up on Laurel. ’cause much as I hated to admit it, that hick-assed sheriff was probably right about her being headed somewhere specific. I didn�
��t remember her ever having lived in Alabama, maybe on one of those short term teaching jobs she’d had. I rummaged through her file again. Adopted. Parents dead killed in a car crash in ’77, taught for a while in Mississippi, South Carolina, Greensboro and some other little town, musta been when she met Hillgrove.
She did a stint in Atlanta and then up North to Boston, and then Queens where she lived with Hillgrove. But nothin’ in Alabama. Classic profile of a drifter. No friends, no ties to anyone or anybody. Except Clive, in her case. The one constant in it all.
Except maybe there was someone she trusted, in one of these little shithole towns. Probably a man, ’cause from what I remember of her, she was a looker, the kind that made women hate her and men wanna jump through hoops just to get a piece. Maybe a neighbor…or maybe somebody she worked with, somebody she saw every day, who’d secretly had the hots for her. Or maybe not so secretly.
Made me think about a case I’d had ’bout ten years ago. It had stumped everybody. Then I cracked it, with a yearbook. The murderer had known the victim in high school, had written a dedication to her way back then, that had unlocked the whole thing. I made a note to have Scoffo dig up any of the yearbooks for each year that she was in any of the places teaching, and any school newspapers during that time. You never knew where a clue might show up.
I was thinking all of this as I walked through the doors at Bender & Grace. Everything was quiet, like people were walking around afraid to breathe too loud. Even the receptionist whispered as she sat stiffly behind a polished kidney shaped table. “Can I help you, sir?”
I said in my loudest voice, mainly to get a rise out of the sallow-faced assholes scurrying around me, “Yeah, I’m Detective Greene, NYPD to see Jack Simmons.”
She raised her eyebrows in disapproval, and then whispered loudly as if to underline that nobody raised their voice above a whisper at Bender & Grace. “I’ll see if he’s available.”
Jack Simmons looked pretty much the way he had in the vision, without the swimming trunks and the tan. But I’d never forget the narrow green eyes or the muscular face. He looked like he had to be at least sixty, but probably in better shape than I was ten years ago. He was gracious. In fact, he oozed it, like before you could become a partner in a place like this you had to be able to bullshit the shine off the walls.
The insincere fuck leaned back in his chair. “If there is anything, and I mean it, Detective, anything that I can do to help you in this case, you let me know. Clive January was one of my favorite people, and the thought that he had to go in that way still…” He stopped and looked in the distance. “Well, I just can’t believe it.”
I figured, okay. Now to take him for a little bit of a ride. “Actually, Mr. Simmons, there is something that you can do to help me.”
“Name it, Detective…just name it.”
Tell me the name of the clients that you referred to Clive. The ones that you were taking your fifty percent off the top from. I knew he wouldn’t answer my real questions. “Were there any deals that you and Mr. January had worked on together in the past year or so, or any clients that you had referred to him…in say the same time period?”
He didn’t miss a beat. I might as well have asked him what time it was. He pushed his intercom saying, “Sandy, bring me in the Wolco account work.” Then turned back to me. “Yes as a matter of fact Mr. January’s firm and Bender worked on a muni bond offering together. We were lead underwriter, and they were co-underwriter. It was a complicated deal, but I must say Clive handled it particularly well.”
His secretary slipped in, handing him the file. “Thanks, Sandy. The case received quite a lot of press. In fact, it was heralded as one of the better examples of a majority and minority firm working together.” He handed me the file. “These are some of the press clippings. Feel free to take them. I’ve got other copies.”
He was slick, but I wasn’t finished yet. “So this Wolco, that’s the name right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well this Wolco, was it a US company or foreign?”
“Actually, they were a joint venture between an American company and an Arab venture. They were building a public works facility in Dallas. “
“Tell me exactly how a deal like this was put together. I guess what I mean is how did you divvy up the money, between you and Mr. January?”
A smile crept around the corners of his mouth as he casually played with a pencil. “Mr. January and I didn’t ‘divvy’ anything up personally. All of the fees were paid directly to our respective firms.”
“So you’re telling me that you didn’t get any money out of it personally?” I figured I’d play dumb, make him explain himself more, maybe trip on some of the facts.
“Of course we both made money on the deal. That is after all why we’re in this business. I can’t tell you how Mr. January’s firm paid fees out, but my money was lumped in as part of my general compensation package.”
“I see, so what if you had brought in a deal on your own where you were just doing something, on the side, not really as part of the firm, then I guess you’d get your fee directly?”
“In theory, yes, but in practice, I didn’t have any deals that would fall in that category.”
I looked at him real hard, trying to make him flinch, but like I said graciousness and total calm, that didn’t crack.
“Did you do much work with international clients, Mr. Simmons?”
“Almost never, except for the Wolco deal that I just told you about. Since my specialty is bond work, I rarely deal with international companies.”
I was about to jump in with another question, but he stopped me before I could. “Detective, excuse my rudeness. I should have offered you something to drink, can I get you some coffee or tea?”
“No, nothin’ I’m fine.”
He smiled, pushing his intercom. “Well I think I will have some tea…Sandy, could you bring me in a cup of mint tea? Thank you.”He turned back to me. “Was there anything else I could help you with, Detective? As I said, I’d known Clive since he worked here in the training program. I had a lot of respect for that young man.”
Sandy walked in and handed him the tea, quietly. I couldn’t help thinking of that woman on the beach in the g-string bikini handing him the rum. A man that liked to be catered to. And then I hit it. His weakness. “There was one other thing, Mr. Simmons. This really doesn’t have anything to do with Mr. January’s case. It’s something I was wondering on my own. I’ve got some of the top guys in from Washington, and the captain asked me to set up some entertainment for them. If you know what I mean. Something a little different from what they’d be able to get in DC…so I was wondering if you might know of some places. The kind that you might take real important clients to.”
He smiled, almost conspiratorially. I finally seemed to have broken through. “Well actually, Detective, there are a number of places like that, but one of my favorites is this one.” He quickly wrote down a name on a piece of paper…same kind of paper he’d written the date down on for Clive. He handed me the paper.
I looked at it: THE SAMURAI CLUB. He’d also jotted the address.
“They’ll take care of you. It’s very popular with some of the firm’s Japanese clients, but believe me, they don’t discriminate when it comes to making you feel welcome.” He smiled that same smile that I’d seen in the vision, cruel, tinged with lust.
I folded the paper carefully and put it in my pocket. “Well thanks a lot, Mr. Simmons. I know the captain’ll appreciate this.”
“My pleasure.”
He got up like he expected me to leave, but I wasn’t finished with him yet. I still hadn’t knocked him off balance. “I’m not finished yet, Mr. Simmons.”
He leaned back in his chair, easily saying, “I wasn’t assuming you had.”
“I wondered if you had any personnel files or anything like that from when Mr. January worked here?”
“We should have his reviews. It was more than ten years a
go that he was here, so they might have been thrown away. I’ll have Sandy check on it.” As if on cue, his intercom buzzed and his secretary came over on the line. “Mr. Simmons, your 3:00 is waiting.”
“Thank you Sandy. Tell him I’ll be there in a moment.”
He swiveled back around to me. “Detective, I really have to go, but we can continue this a little later if you’d like.”
“I’ll call you if I need something else.”
Outside of his office, I kept getting this feeling that there was more I could find out from him, something was telling me to go back up there…surprise them. The receptionist was as icy as ever as I leaned on her desk.
“Yes, Detective?”
“I left my notes in Mr. Simmons office. It’ll just take a minute.”
“You know the way.”
“Yeah.” I wandered down the hallway, looking carefully into the small cubicle like offices, trying to see beyond the obvious.
I turned the corner to Simmons’ office. His secretary’s back was to me and just as I was about to open my mouth, she stuck her head in Simmons’ office saying, “Okay, Mr. Simmons, I’ve got Andy Haven on for you.”
That’s all I needed to hear. She shut the door. Before she could see me, I ducked back around the corner. I half expected Clive to whisper something in my ear, give me a clue, telling me where to go next, but he was quiet, not letting up off a thing.
“Did you get your notes?” The receptionist called out after me. I’d almost forgotten why I’d told her I’d gone back there.
“Yeah…right, I got ’em.” But all I was thinking was what was Jack Simmons saying to Andy Haven not even five minutes after I’d left his office.
* * *
I was glad I’d busted the captain’s ass about that tap on Haven’s phone. At first he’d said flat out no. Said there was no way a judge would approve it. But I kept at him, ’til he got a lawyer in the DA’s office to file the motion for me and now, bingo, I was about to sit down to what I hoped would be the evidence I needed to link Andy and possibly Jack directly to the murder.
A Dead Man Speaks Page 25
