by Dave Conifer
~~~
It was probably the wine, Fargo told himself when he saw he’d slept all the way to ten o’clock the following morning. Despite the hangover, he felt good. He was pretty sure it was the latest he’d slept since getting out. He listened for Gail, but heard nothing. The bedroom door was wide open. He knew even before he rolled off the couch and searched the place that she wasn’t there, but he walked around looking for her anyway just to be sure. She didn’t even leave a note. Just as well that she split, he thought. What else were we gonna talk about? He stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a loaf of bread to make some toast. While there he filled a tall glass with tap water and downed it, hoping to clear his head. Not that it mattered. He had nothing to do, no visitors to expect and no place to go.
The day turned out to be as long as expected, marked by dozens of trips to the front windows to look for visitors, friend or foe. By the afternoon, after getting bored with daytime TV, he took care of some housekeeping and even some cleaning. Dinner was a few scoops of pulled pork, washed down with milk. At ten o’clock he checked all the locks again before going to bed. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
~~~
Mike Minot got up at the crack of dawn the next morning, same as he always did when he was on the road. He usually showered first thing, but not this day. He was feeling uneasy about his last conversation with Ryne Colfax. He flipped through the complimentary copy of the Cincinnati Post Tribune he found outside the hotel room door. There was nothing noteworthy, although the shot of him addressing a crowd on an Akron factory floor was pretty good. He loved those hardhat photo ops. They never went out of style. Next he pulled out his iPad and surfed through the news sites on the web. There was no shortage of campaign coverage there either, including plenty of material about himself, and thankfully there were no surprises.
Still not satisfied, he grabbed his phone and hit the speed dial code that was pre-set for Barry Cloquet, his longtime press secretary who was along for the ride on the campaign. “Barry,” he barked. “You up yet?” He knew the answer. Cloquet never got up that early unless he had to.
“Hell, no,” came the answer, right on cue.
“I need to meet with you before the presser this morning,” Minot said. “You got any ideas on what they’ll ask me about?”
“Maybe more questions about Snooki and Jersey Shore.”
“I’m serious, Barry. You hearing anything?”
“Jesus H. Christ, Michael,” Cloquet growled. “The same shit they asked you in Chicago, and the same shit they asked you in Akron. You know how that goes. They’ll ask you the same shit again when we get to Princeton. Except for Snooki.”
“There’s nothing new?”
“There never is.”
“You’ll check again for me before I go on, right?” Minot asked.
“I always do. You know that. What’s eating you, Michael?”
Minot ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know, Barry. I guess I’ve got the jitters. Forget it. I’ll talk to you later,” he said, hanging up before Cloquet had a chance to ask what was causing the sudden case of nerves. He thought about dialing Colfax’s number, but figured it would turn out the same way. Not everybody got up with the sun. Instead, he headed for the shower.
~~~
It was early enough in the morning that Willmar could have parked directly in front of the office on Broad Street, and on a normal day he would have, but this time he parked down the block. He took a few seconds to gather his things and have one last look at the screen of his iPhone before tumbling out of his F-150 to walk up the street. He loved the urban quiet of that time of day, with nothing but the rumble of an occasional delivery truck and a few stray horns interrupting the quiet hum of the city. Before he inserted his key in the front door he looked up and down the sidewalk. One last glance at the iPhone and then he pushed his way into the office.
Without moving from behind the partially-open door he yanked his right hand out of the pocket of his army surplus coat. In it was a shiny Glock pistol that was loaded and ready to go. Without any hesitation he raised it into the dark office and got busy emptying the magazine into the folding utility closet doors behind Joanie’s desk. He could hear the shells plopping around his feet on the carpet despite the deafening pops emanating from the gun. Just before he was out of bullets he heard a grunt. A split-second after the last shot was fired the closet door pushed open from the inside, jutting into the room, but that didn’t worry Willmar. The threat was already neutralized.
He knew he should inspect the inside of the closet to confirm the kill, but first he reached over to the potted ficus tree next to the door and removed the tiny night vision camera that was clipped to its trunk. “You messed with the wrong guy,” he said out loud as he unsnapped his coat and loosened the collar of his flannel shirt, exposing a protective layer of Kevlar. Next he pulled out his iPhone and deleted the webcam app. His hunch had been right and the webcam may have saved his life.
The door of the closet, splintered and riddled with bullet holes from top to bottom, now matched the décor of the rest of the office. So much for my security deposit, he thought as he ejected the empty magazine from the grip of the pistol and jammed a fresh one in with the heel of his hand. As he made his way to the closet he saw that a dark stain was spreading on the carpet from behind the door. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before. It had been a while since he’d killed anybody, but he was a man who believed in confronting danger head on, fast enough that danger wasn’t ready for him. Worked every time. At least so far it had, he told himself as he dug a set of gloves from the back pocket of his jeans and pulled them on.
The man fell out of the closet and onto his face after Willmar fought the door open, a task made difficult by the dead weight of the body. The man’s weapon, never fired, lay between his feet. The face beneath the ski mask didn’t interest him, so he left it on as he wrenched the intruder onto his back. The police would complain some that he’d touched the body, but he’d say that he wanted to disarm him just in case he wasn’t dead. Ridiculous, he knew, given that the man was leaking blood all over the place after taking about a dozen bullets, and was as dead as he could possibly be, but it would be enough to keep them quiet. It wasn’t like he, like any bounty hunter worth his salt, didn’t have permission to carry lethal firepower around and to use it whenever he thought it necessary.
He searched the man for identification, not because he cared who he was or didn’t know who’d sent him, but because he didn’t want the police to find it. He was already coming up with a few ideas for a scheme that just might serve to get Billy Fargo off the hook and out of harm’s way. If it was going to work, he needed to control what the police knew and when they knew it. The last thing he did was pick up the intruder’s Sig Sauer, force it into the dead man’s hand, and squeeze off a few rounds that embedded harmlessly into the wall. In a situation like this one, the theatrics might matter.
~~~
There was no reason for him to lie about anything later when the police arrived. It was just a matter of how much he wanted to tell them. The dead gunman had the look of a professional killer, but that wasn’t completely out of the ordinary considering the line of work Willmar was in. As far as Willmar was concerned when he gave the detective his statement, the killer had been sent by a disgruntled client, his or her identity unknown. Where his assailant came from wasn’t his problem. That was for the police to uncover, if they cared to. Which they wouldn’t. Willmar explained matter-of-factly that the man popped out of the closet with his gun blazing. ‘What was I supposed to do?”
“One less dirt bag on the streets,” the first cop answered. “Good for you that you were ready for him.” His partner nodded his agreement.
“Hey, you know what I do for a living,” Willmar said. “Can’t be too careful, you know? I’ve got the same problems you all have and I don’t have anybody watching my back.” By mid-morning the interviews were finished, the preliminary reports had been written
and the body packed up and shipped off to some morgue somewhere in the city. But there was one thing left for Willmar to do. He pulled the gloves back on.
The computer in his office was still on, so it didn’t take long to bring up a file of notes on Fargo’s case. It took some digging through a desk drawer before he found a note pad. He pulled a sheet from the middle, one which had never been touched, and scribbled something onto it after squinting at the computer screen. A few rounds of folding, unfolding and refolding the note in several different ways gave it a creased, worn look, like it had been carried around in somebody’s pocket. Still wearing the gloves, he tossed it into the closet behind a bucket of rock salt that Joanie used on the sidewalk when the weather was bad.
Ten minutes later Willmar sealed up the shattered office and climbed back into the truck. There was a lot of news that had to be delivered to a cabin up north on the other side of the river, and it wasn’t just about what had happened that morning on Broad Street. But before that he had an important date to keep. It had been a busy day already and it was going to get a lot busier.
~~~
After leaving the office Willmar went home to clean himself up before leaving on his next mission. Only when it was too late to do anything about it did he get around to questioning the wisdom of his decision to drive his own truck, especially since he was heading back into New Jersey. With all the bullets that had flown in the office over the past week, he wondered if it was safe for him to be out at all. After this he’d find other transportation. If somebody was trying to whack him, he shouldn’t make himself so easy to find.
Nobody knew where he was headed, and more importantly, who he was meeting with. Not telling anybody about what he’d recently discovered had been difficult. It was so explosive that he felt they were all safer if he kept it to himself, at least until he firmed up the details. He had a desk drawer full of disposable burn phones to make it hard for anybody to keep up with him, and he’d gone through quite a few of them in the past few days as he collected information.
He already had a sense of what Fargo was up against, but after a series of phone calls on his way to the cabin the day before, he was even more certain. While diving into the case paperwork he’d reached out to people who he’d hoped might be able to help. Jackie Wahpeton’s name turned up accidentally during some internet research on her sister Eileen, the rape and murder victim found under the Trenton Makes Bridge. He’d left a message on her cell phone just to cover all his bases, but never expected a reply.
When she surprised him by returning his call, they’d talked for three or four minutes before she dropped the bomb that changed everything. Eileen Wahpeton, whose rape had sent Fargo to prison for eleven years, had worked as a volunteer and then in a paid position in the first gubernatorial campaign of Michael Minot. That was a name that was coming up more and more often. Something told him that it wasn’t a mere oversight that this had been omitted from the otherwise extensive biography of the victim in all the reports. It got even better. Or worse. Willmar wasn’t sure which. From what Jackie had said, and he’d been shocked that she’d shared it so readily, the relationship with the candidate was more than professional.
Jackie Wahpeton lived in a condominium at River Winds, a collection of hotels, shopping outlets and recreational facilities on the Delaware River in West Deptford, just south of Philadelphia. He could see on the Gloucester County map that this was just a few miles from Woodbury Heights, where Jackie and her sister had been born and raised. He’d left his apartment near Fairmount Park in the city early in the afternoon to make the drive down the clogged Schuykill Expressway through Philadelphia and across the Walt Whitman Bridge into suburban South Jersey. A few exits later he’d reached River Winds. As he cruised along a street packed with what he called townhouses but fancy real estate agents in Italian suits called condos, he didn’t see any discernible numbering system for the units. Maybe it would be easier to find if he was on foot. A USAir 727 roared overhead as he parked the truck. Having never visited West Deptford before, it hadn’t occurred to him until then that he was just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia International Airport.
After walking almost a quarter mile along a street that teemed with front stoops, he found the place and rang the doorbell. While waiting for the door to open he wondered if he should have warned Jackie about his appearance, the way he usually did when meeting somebody for the first time. It was usually enough to explain that he looked like a professional wrestler. If she was put off, however, she didn’t show it as she invited him in. “Thanks for seeing me,” he said to her as they walked into a well-appointed living room.
Jackie Wahpeton was a stunning thirty-something redhead who obviously knew all about staying in shape. Her tasteful pink sweat suit accented her curvy figure, right down to the cleavage that rippled out of the white tank top she wore under the open jacket. Willmar couldn’t help wonder if Eileen had been as attractive as her sister. She’d probably have been about the same age if she’d lived.
“You’re not a police detective, are you?” she asked when they were seated, he on a leather sofa and she in a matching wing chair.
“No, I’m not,” Willmar said. “I’m a private investigator. I’m sorry if I misled you.”
“It’d be okay either way,” she said. “It’s just that the police never seemed very interested. Of course, why would they be? They were sure they had their man the next day.”
“You don’t sound very convinced about that.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “It just seemed like they solved it awfully fast, that’s all. They had DNA evidence. I didn’t pay too much attention. It was pretty solid.” She stared at him, understanding for the first time why he was there. “Or was it?”
“Miss Wahpeton, are you comfortable talking about what happened to your sister that night?” he asked. “I know it can be painful.”
“I’m fine with it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have let you in. Mr. Willmar, right?”
“Please call me Ricky, if that’s okay.”
“And I’m Jackie, then.”
“Did Eileen look like you?” Oops, that didn’t come out right, he thought. “Were you close?”
“She was taller,” Jackie said, “but other than that, yeah. I’m three years older than she is. Was, I mean.”
“Jackie, I’m going to tell you exactly what I’m doing here,” he said. “If you want me to leave after that, all you have to do is ask. Okay?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“I’m trying to clear the name of the man who went to jail for raping your sister. He was in for eleven years, and he just got out a few weeks ago.”
“He’s out of jail?”
“Yes, after eleven years. He says he’s innocent, and I believe him. He did meet your sister that night, but he didn’t kill her. Or rape her,” he added.
She blinked several times as she processed this. “Wow. Now it’s feeling weird.”
“Just say the word and I’ll leave,” he repeated.
“I never even knew his name. They said he was just some troublemaker from Burlington County.”
“Fargo. Billy Fargo. I saw him just yesterday and I’m sure I’ll see him again today.”
“And he served eleven years prison time?”
“Yep. At West Penn. Hard time. Not a fun place. Especially for somebody who isn’t guilty of anything. Billy’s the kind of guy, well, let’s say he’s never been lucky. He’s had a rough life. He might even look like a guy who would do something like this. But he says he didn’t, and I believe him.”
“But they said they had DNA,” she argued.
“Are you sure you’re okay talking about this?”
“I’m fine with it,” she said. “Really. It was a long time ago. Not that I believe you, but are you saying the DNA evidence was wrong?”
“No, not wrong, exactly,” he said. “It’s just that DNA doesn’t show motive. It doesn’t tell what happened. It doesn’t prove h
e raped or murdered anybody. It just proves they slept together. Which he doesn’t deny.”
“Hmm,” she said. “I guess I never thought of it that way. I never really thought much about it at all, to be honest.”
“Yeah, well Billy had a lot of time to think about it. I guess that’s why I’m here.”
-- Chapter 16 --
As he headed for the next meeting, this one in person, Colfax was scaring himself to death by considering the possibility of refusing orders and walking away. It wouldn’t be easy, he reminded himself as he sped across the Commodore Barry Bridge and then headed up I-95 once he was on the Pennsylvania side of the river. Candidate Mike Minot had him by the balls and he wasn’t going to let go. He never did. That was one of his secrets to success. But all wasn’t lost yet. If he couldn’t save himself, maybe he could at least save his family. He’d done a lot of bad things, things that good cops don’t do. He’d lied. He’d covered for the lies of others. He’d taken promotions he didn’t deserve. He’d put an innocent man in jail while letting criminals walk free. But so far he hadn’t killed anybody, and he was reasonably certain that Minot couldn’t say that. Maybe it was time to get out before he couldn’t say it either.
~~~
When she saw the array of police cruisers and ambulances all over the place on Broad Street, Joanie knew instantly that something had happened at the offices of Willmar and Karlstad. Luckily, she’d caught a glimpse of Willmar in the rearview mirror before she had a chance to worry about him. That settled, she pulled over to decide what to do. Willmar was speaking to three officers and a man in a gray topcoat, and he appeared to be uninjured. She saw a group of blue-clad EMT personnel roll a stretcher out of the office and decided that she’d had enough. Ricky’s okay, but I’m not. I’m outta here. Without bothering to check over her shoulder, she jammed a foot on the pedal and lurched back onto Broad Street, disappearing to the north. If Ricky had seen her at all, she knew he’d understand.
