by Andy Straka
“No? Then what was Mel Dworkin doing visiting her room just before she came down with the blackout routine?”
They didn't answer.
“Oh, and the cops might be interested in what you three were talking about last night, right here, at about this same spot, in between your headlights and hers.”
Robot started backing away toward their truck.
“Hey, where you going?” his companion said.
The bigger man suddenly looked scared. “I didn't sign on for this kind of crap,” he said under his breath.
Clearly, Turnip faced a situation. His wingman was deserting him, right in the face of the enemy.
“You boys hold on for just a second,” he said. Then he turned and caught up with his partner. They kept their backs to us and their voices low, but Turnip gestured violently with his hands and words hissed out like a pent-up release of steam.
“We're wasting our time,” Toronto said softly without looking at me.
After a minute or so of talking, they finally got around to ambling back in our direction. Robot lost the shotgun, throwing it into the backseat of the Suburban. Their faces were so wet by now that they almost looked like a pair of mangy pups. Not that we must've looked much better.
“Lemminger wanted us to go on TV, okay?” Turnip said.
“She tell you her show had been canceled?”
“Yeah, but I knew her from back when she worked for the congressman. She said if she got some taped interviews, she'd have a better chance at pitching it to one of the networks. We told her we'd have to think about it.”
“What did she want you to talk about?” I said.
“What d'ya think, pea brain?” He jerked his thumb toward the main house, which was dark inside, as it had been the night before. “About all of Drummond's extracurricular activities.”
“Such as?”
“She wanted us to start with the high-priced whores. Said something about needing more eyewitness accounts.”
I nodded. Everybody's breath had turned to steam. “How long you been working for Drummond?”
“Seventeen years. Jimmy here just started this year.”
“Did Lemminger give you any idea what else her story was about?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Isn't that enough?”
“How much money she offer you?”
“Ten grand apiece.”
Robot, who'd now proved to the world he could talk, said, “I'm glad we didn't take it.”
“Shut up, Jimmy,” his superior said.
“You been working for this guy seventeen years. You must've seen a lot of things,” I said.
Turnip stared at me like I'd just walked in from some other dimension. “I've seen a lot of things.”
“The congressman's daughter, the one who's missing. He got you guys mixed up in it?”
He shook his head. “We've got nothing to do with that.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I'll just take your word for it, then.”
We stared at one another.
“What about Drummond himself? He doesn't need you guys to pull off something like that.”
“I don't think so,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because he was pretty pissed when he found out we didn't follow her when she left here that night.”
“Could've been an act.”
He shrugged.
“Why was the congressman having you follow his daughters?”
“I just do what I'm told, pal. I've never been paid to ask a lot of questions, like you are.”
“Really? I guess I'll take that as a compliment.”
A look passed through his eyes then. It was a look of cold steel hatred. But there was also another dimension to it—call it professional assessment. As his eyes cut back and forth between me and Toronto, they seemed to accept the reality that the odds of him surviving a violent encounter were not good at the moment.
“You say someone's trying to put the brakes on Lemminger?” Robot said. “Drummond's still a doctor, ain't he? He might've done something like that.”
I sensed Robot's term of employment might soon be coming to an end.
“Tell me more about this break-in you had out here,” I said. Figured I'd play along with my earlier story for consistency.
Turnip crossed his arms. One pro to another. “Last night someone went in through the kitchen. Disabled the alarm and everything. Nice piece of work, actually. Cops said so too. Wouldn't mind catching the guy who did it just to have a beer with him.” A sickly smile crept across his face as he stared at Toronto.
“You check with the congressman to see if anything was missing?”
“Yup. Nothing, he says. Looks like whoever did it was just snooping around.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it was kids or something.”
He chewed on his lip. “Sure, that could've been it. Kids who'd taken a crash course in disabling twenty-thousand-dollar alarms.”
The rain came down harder. The drizzle was turning to wind-driven droplets, an accumulation of which dripped steadily from the brim of my hat.
“So what we appear to have had here, gentlemen, is a professional exchange of information. Would you be in agreement with that?”
“I suppose.”
“Got anything more, Jake?”
Toronto said nothing. I guessed his eyes had never left Turnip, even when Robot had toted the shotgun.
“I suppose that's about all we had to talk to you fellas about, then, for the moment. You might want to let the congressman know we dropped by.”
“Oh, I'll be sure to pass on your regards.”
“Sorry about your gate,” I said.
“Me too,” Turnip said.
“Occupational hazard.”
“We all got to have an occupation,” he said.
29
Ash-colored clouds clung to the Blue Ridge like ghostly tumors. Rain pelted the windshield as Toronto and I made our way back into the city. It was going on three days since Cartwright Drummond's disappearance. If she were being held by someone in the Charlottesville area, as the postmark on the envelope containing the note and photo seemed to indicate, she could be somewhere within only a couple of miles’ radius of our current location. A bulletin on the radio told about the FBI taking over the case and said agents had been searching some dorm rooms at the university. They must have traced the delivery of the envelope and narrowed down the possibilities.
I picked up Toronto's cell phone and punched in the number for Nicole's room again. She answered on the second ring.
“Dad,” she said, “I've been trying to get ahold of you. I left a message over two hours ago on your office machine.”
“Don't use that line anymore, Nicky.”
“Why not?”
“Because it's probably tapped.”
“Oh.”
I gave her the new cell phone number.
“You're not going to believe who I've been talking to.”
“Nicky—”
“I have a friend who has another friend who's on the swim team with Jed Haynes.”
“Nicky, we've got a problem.”
“What's that?”
“I need you to back off on this, honey. I really appreciate your help so far, but the FBI is all over the place, and there may even have been an attempted murder. More people could get hurt.”
“But, Dad—”
“No buts. You're not a registered private investigator. You're smart as a whip, but you don't have the proper training. The FBI catches you talking to Jed Haynes or anybody else about this, you'll be in hot water, to say the least. Not to mention that you're not trained in self-defense or firearms or … “
The lecture was falling on silence, so I shut up.
“Are you through?” she asked softly.
“For the moment.”
“I know someone, the FBI or whatever, has been watching Jed Haynes. We saw them. They were posing as students, but you could tell they really weren't. Th
ey were just hanging around as if they had no place to go or nothing to do.
“Cassidy was right. Haynes is a jerk, but he has something to give you and he says he wants only you to have it.”
“Nicky—”
“I've got it all arranged,” she said. “The FBI, no one's going to be able to track him or see that we're talking to him. We're supposed to meet him in an hour.”
“Nicky, this is not—”
“Please, Dad. I promise I won't talk to anybody else after this.”
I glanced across at Toronto, who was shaking his head and shrugging. “Kids,” he said.
“Where?” I asked.
“Scott Stadium.” The largest venue in the area, the football stadium seated more than 60,000 fans on a game day.
“When?”
“As soon as it gets dark,” she said.
Dion and the Belmonts were doing “The Wanderer” on the truck radio as my headlights shone off the rain-soaked pavement of Alderman Road. Very few people, students or otherwise, were on the streets. The stadium loomed like an ancient acropolis in the darkness.
“The kid better have something important to get us all out here like this,” I said.
“I think he does, Dad.”
We'd picked Nicole up outside Alderman Library. Before that, I'd dropped Toronto off a few blocks from my duplex and he'd walked in, without being detected by whoever might be keeping tabs on the place, to tend to Armistead. I keep pieces of fresh quail in a separate freezer, used only for that purpose, in my storage room. I picked him up a half hour later at a spot over on Rose Hill Drive.
“Kid better know what he's doing, too, as far as losing the people who are tailing him.”
“He said he's sure he can lose them,” Nicole said. “And if anybody's trying to watch us, we'll be able to see them.”
“I'll make sure of that,” Toronto said.
“I'm still not too keen on you being here, Nicky,” I said. “Jake and I could've done this by ourselves.”
“I told you. He said he wants to talk to you, but he's not sure he trusts you and he does trust me.”
“So what's the source of this sudden trust in you?”
“I listened to him, Dad. I didn't beat him over the head by machine-gunning him with a bunch of questions. Like I said, he may be a jerk, but I think he's basically harmless.”
“We'll see about that.”
We drove across to Stadium Road and pulled into the construction entrance. Renovation was still going on on a portion of the upper deck, and several large trucks and a crane were parked against a tall wall of plywood and wire. I cut the lights and backed the pickup between a Dumpster and a panel truck, hoping it wouldn't be noticed by any university policeman who might happen to wander by.
I pulled on my slicker, still wet from standing in Tor Drummond's driveway talking to the turnip. Nicole had on a red raincoat with dark hiking boots.
“You guys ready?”
They both nodded. We stepped out into the rain.
It was cooler now and the air was filled with the rich smell of loam and stagnant water and gasoline. I carried both my sidearm and a flashlight on my belt, but I didn't want to use the light unless it became absolutely necessary. Lights from the street coupled with a few bright security lights farther up the parking lot cast a dim glow over the area, and once our eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, we could navigate with caution.
Just as Cassidy said Jed had told her, there was a narrow break in the construction fence about seventy yards south of the entrance, wide enough to slip through. We stepped inside and about twenty yards later came to a six-foot chain-link fence—easy enough to scale. I turned as I did and looked behind me at the dim outlines of sloppy footprints we had left in the mud, hoping the rain would continue long enough to obscure them or wash them away.
We found the closest entrance and began to walk up the gradual incline of switchback ramps on the exterior walls that led to the top of the stadium. We were under cover now and watched through the glow of the streetlights far below as the rain came down harder. At the top, the wind swirled mist along the girders. The university grounds were nothing but a haze of lights, shrouded in fog and rain.
We crossed another wide ramp to the nearest portal, which brought us out into the rain again, only inside the stadium now, to the railing of the aisle at the bottom of the upper deck. The wind subsided for a few moments. Instantly, Toronto crouched low and positioned himself against the inside rail so that he became virtually invisible. Nicole and I turned to the right, as she said Jed had told her to do.
Barely enough light filtered into the stadium to make out the seats and section numbers. Two sections over, however, it was possible to distinguish a lone figure seated about halfway up.
“Guess that's our man,” I said.
I scanned the other rows of seats as far as it was possible to see around the stadium. No sign of FBI or anyone else. I pulled Nicole behind me and we approached with caution.
When we got within thirty feet or so, I could tell it was Haynes. He looked like a car bomb survivor. His hair and clothes were soaking wet, dirty and disheveled. Across the center of his forehead ran a big smudge of grease. We came to within about ten feet of him, I held out my hand, and we stopped.
“Funny place to meet,” I said.
“Tell me about it. I been friggin’ freezing up here waiting for you guys.” He blew on his hands.
“How'd you lose your FBI people?”
He shrugged. “I know the grounds. They don't. Simple as that.”
Maybe it was just me, but this Jed seemed like a much more contrite individual than the one I'd first encountered. Of course, being detained and questioned for hours and having your every move shadowed by the feds does tend to have that kind of effect on a person, not to mention being soaked to the bone.
I waited. Jed looked at his fingernails. “I don't care what anybody tells you. I didn't kidnap Cartwright,” he said.
“That seems to be a popular line these days. Her father's saying pretty much the same thing.”
“I don't care what he says—I didn't do it.”
“If you say so.”
“Hey, Nicky, you said your old man would believe me if I just told the truth.”
“That's right,” she said.
He shivered and rubbed his arms and legs. “I'm sick and tired of this crap, of these guys following me around and everything.”
“Sometimes part of the object of surveillance is to let the suspect know he's being observed. It increases the pressure. Causes him to make a mistake,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I ain't about to make any mistakes. You can tell those assholes that.”
“I'll be sure to pass on your compliments next time I see them.”
He tugged at his ear, which sported a small gold ring at the moment, and ran his fingers through his wet hair. “You want to know something? I really thought when they brought me in and stuff, that it was like some kind of joke or something.”
“I guess they grilled you over the car.”
“Geez … you don't even know, man. One dude, I thought he was going to send me to death row or something. Wouldn't even let me go to the bathroom or nothing. I thought I was going to piss in my pants.”
“I guess these last few days have kind of put a crimp in your plans.”
He snickered.
“How's the swim season going for you?” I said.
“It was going great till all this happened. Now Coach says I won't be allowed to swim with the team till it gets cleared up.”
“Too bad.”
“You think Wright's okay?” he asked.
“I don't know. She might not even be alive anymore.”
He stared blankly into the wind and rain.
“You all right, Jed?”
“Yeah. Jesus.” He shook his head as if to clear it.
“What have you got for us?”
He looked at Nicole.
“It'll be okay,”
she said.
He focused on me again. “There's something I want to ask you,” he said. “I hear you used to be a homicide detective.”
“That's right. A long time ago.”
“How do you know when someone's losing it? I mean, you know, about to go off the deep end and do something crazy?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don't know… like what kinds of things do they do and stuff?”
“There's no easy answer to that, Jed. Some people are better at masking their emotions than others. Some are sociopaths who seem capable of totally shutting off any feeling. Why? You think you know someone like that?”
“I don't know, man. I don't know.”
“Does this someone have anything to do with Wright's disappearance?”
“Maybe. Listen, one thing I didn't tell you before… Wright, she can get a little crazy sometimes. You know, she comes up with all sorts of wild ideas.”
“What are you talking about, Jed?”
“I've got something to give you.”
He wiped his hand on his pants and fished in the pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a small object and rolled it in his fingers, examining it. Then he held it out to me. “Here,” he said.
I stepped up to him and took it from his hand. It was a round post earring, looked like white gold or silver, with a distinctive blue dot, maybe turquoise, in the center.
“Where'd this come from?” I asked.
“I think … I think it might be Wright's,” he said.
“Do you know if she was wearing it the night she disappeared?”
“I don't know, man. I told you, I never saw her.”
But I knew at least three people who would know the answer to that question. And maybe the cops could ID it from the Polaroid. “Where did you get the earring?”
“On top of the clock radio in my room. This morning. But it wasn't there when I went to bed, I swear.”
“Have the police or the FBI gone over your room?”
“Yeah, man. Twice.”
I thought about it.
“Have you gotten your car back, Jed?”
“No way.” He shook his head. “Bastards said they had to run more tests or something.”
“Normally who else but you has access to your car?”
