I’d spent the night in my car and looked like hell. In the rearview mirror it was even worse.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “What have you got?”
While I was stopped on the causeway waiting for the Intracoastal drawbridge to let a high-masted sailboat through, she told me of her excursion into Dr. Marshack’s computer files at the jail.
It had taken some time to convince a judge to allow them access.
The city attorney argued that it was vital to a homicide investigation and that the hardware and software was already under the sheriff’s control in their own facility. The judge countered that many of the files were psychiatric records that held a certain doctor and patient confidentiality.
“They finally agreed to have a court-appointed attorney look over our shoulder so that the patient files wouldn’t be perused.”
“Even Baines’s?”
“Especially Baines’s.”
“So we got nothing?”
“On Baines we got nothing, but there was an interesting file in the hard drive that our tech guys had to hack into to get open. It’s some kind of financial accounting of transactions between Marshack and someone or something called Milo.”
She waited for some kind of response.
“Max?”
I was staring at a blinking yellow light on the bridge tower when the irritated punch of a horn snapped me back. The gates were up, cars were moving.
“Does that mean anything to you? Milo?”
“Catch-22,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Did you print that out?”
“Sure. I’ve got it right here,” she said.
“I’ll meet you at Lester’s.”
When I walked into the diner, she was already in the back booth.
“Freeman, you look like sin.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
I could feel the beard bristles on my face. My non-wrinkle canvas pants were wrinkled. And I could feel a sheen of salted moisture on my skin.
I sat down heavily in the booth opposite her and coffee seemed to appear beside my elbow.
“You’re not so fresh yourself,” I said. The whites of her eyes had taken on a pink glow in the corners where several veins had gone red. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and her hair was pulled up and knotted in a loose ponytail.
“It took most of the night for the techs to pull all of this stuff out of Marshack’s hard drive,” she said, pushing a folder of computer printouts across the table. “They figured that since this file was so well-protected it must have some meaning to it. What the hell did you mean by Catch-22?”
She had already ordered me pancakes, and they came while I started sorting through the columns of dates and rows of figures. The smell caused me to start absentmindedly cutting them with a fork and eating.
“Old Joseph Heller book,” I said. “It’s where they got the phrase. This bomber crewman is trying to prove he’s crazy by flying these dangerous missions in WWII. But the fact that he keeps going up proves he’s not crazy because he can still do his job. But if he refuses to go up, it proves that he realizes how crazy it is, so again he’s not crazy.”
“Never read it,” Richards said. “And what’s it got to do with Milo?”
I washed another mouthful down with coffee.
“Milo was a character in the book. A G.I. who was making a killing swapping out government supplies for illicit civilian goods. Billy tracked down McCane’s work history and found out he worked in a Georgia prison and lost his job for running scams inside on the population.”
“Yeah,” Richards said. “Keep going.”
“McCane and Dr. Marshack worked in the same prison at the same time. A prosecutor friend of Billy’s said McCane was like the operator inside. You needed it, McCane was the bull to get it through. I took a chance on a guy I knew who’d been sent to the place and he used McCane’s nickname, Milo. Said McCane was proud of it.”
I let her digest the information while I was matching up the dates that Marshack had recorded apparent payouts with the time of death dates for Billy’s women. They were close.
“If you fill in the blanks, Marshack was paying somebody three hundred dollars a few days before each death and two hundred dollars afterwards,” I said, pointing out the figures. “Then within two weeks, he was getting eight thousand dollars from Milo.”
“Tight little business,” she said. “But if McCane is Milo, how much was he getting? And from where?”
“The investment group,” I said. “With at least three people between them and the killer. And each of them set apart on a need-to- know basis. If McCane set this up, he wouldn’t know who the hit man was, and Marshack wouldn’t know who the investors were.”
I reached for my coffee but Richards was just finishing the last of it.
“So you’re figuring the psychotic patient, Baines, for the killer,” she said. “But the last one didn’t work the way they wanted it to, and your friend Billy had already stirred up the nest by looking into the other deaths.”
I stood up and snapped the cell phone off my belt.
“I’ve got to let Billy know,” I said. “We’re supposed to meet with McCane this afternoon.”
I got Billy at his office and ran through the ledger file and the Milo connection and told him to stall McCane if he called.
“Not a problem,” Billy said and then went silent. I knew my friend, knew those silences meant he was trying to collect a thought, pare it down before putting it into words.
“What? All this doesn’t surprise you, counselor?”
“I’ve been trying to track Marshack’s stolen hard drive,” he said, finally letting it go.
“Yeah. So’s every cop with a pawn shop connection.”
“Might not be in a pawn shop. If the killer needed to find out what was inside, he’d take it to a hacker who could get into it. A hacker who wouldn’t tell what he found or who he found it for.”
“Ideas?” I said.
“I’ve been thinking maybe someone who was very good with computers who’d stretched themselves in an insurance fraud and might have come into contact with an insurance investigator.”
“Jesus, Billy. You found someone who McCane’s company nailed for hacking?”
“Not yet. I’m working on it, but Sherry might be able to help us if they’ve got a computer crime investigator with a good memory.”
I handed the phone to Richards and sat staring out into the sunlight flashing off the chrome and glass in the parking lot, letting them talk, my head gone to another place.
Richards closed the phone and slid out of her side of the booth.
“So what did he say?”
“He thinks if he can track our dead doctors computer to McCane, then it’s a lock that McCane took out Marshack to cover any link to your women,” she said. “He’s got access to the insurance company files and we’ve got access downtown to all the known hackers who’ve been snagged in the past few years. It’ll be faster if we work together.”
I got out of the booth and took a fold of money out of my pocket, looking at the denominations.
“Max. If you guys are right on this McCane guy, and I’m not so sure you are, then it’s a race for Baines.”
I was still looking at my money.
“And if you’re wrong and this guy is legit, then…”
“Then it’s still a race,” I interrupted.
30
I drove back into the off-limits zone. My posse had been good to me once. They knew the streets. Their chances of digging out the junk man were better than anyone’s. I was looking for them when I pulled onto Ms. Thompson’s street. Their shady spot on the corner was empty. But when I passed the Thompson house, a rental car was parked in the swale instead of up in the empty driveway. I realized that in my earlier meetings with McCane I had never seen the kind of car he was driving and wondered if it had been intentional. The easier to tail you with, bud.
I pulled up in front of the rental,
nose to nose, and got out. I was shifting into cop mode, tasting a bubble of adrenaline in my throat. Thrill of the chase, a thrill I once wanted to believe I could leave in the past.
Ms. Thompson’s house had a southern exposure and the sun was bright on the front windows. As I walked up I couldn’t see any movement behind them. The front door was closed tight and I stood there for a second, listening. I instinctively reached down to my hip but my 9mm had long been retired. After the ranger shootings the gun had been retrieved from the river and bagged as evidence. I had never asked for its return.
I knocked. It was quiet. I knocked a second time and this time I heard a shrill but composed answer come from around the corner.
“Round back here. On the patio,” came the old woman’s voice.
I passed through the open carport and found them there, McCane and Ms. Thompson, sitting at a wrought-iron table, cups of coffee before each of them. An old photo album was opened between them.
Ms. Thompson looked at me and I could tell from her eyes that she was searching to recognize where she had seen me before. McCane saw it, too.
“Well, Mr. Freeman. What a pleasant surprise,” he said, pushing his chair back. “Ms. Thompson, this is Mr. Max Freeman, an associate of mine. I believe you two may have met the day of your very unfortunate situation.”
He smiled up at me, showing his big, blocked teeth. I could imagine it had been a false smile seen by many clients and inmates in the past.
“Why yes, I do believe I recall now,” said Ms. Thompson, who had lost some of her rough exterior in McCane’s presence. “Would you care to join us, Mr. Freeman? Mr. McCane has stopped by to discuss an insurance policy I have with ya’ll’s company, but we have been a bit sidetracked on this lovely day.”
“No doubt,” I said, looking from one to the other.
“May I get you some coffee, Mr. Freeman?” she said, starting to get up.
“No, please, don’t bother yourself,” I said, but she was already motioning me to sit.
“It is never a bother to be a gracious hostess, sir,” she said, moving slowly toward her back door.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
I continued to stand, putting my back to the house and facing McCane. He crossed his thick ankles and did not look up.
“Y’all didn’t do much of a job interviewing Ms. Thompson here,” he started, slipping back into his good ol’ boy cant. “You and your detective girlfriend ought to learn how to lay on a little sugar when you’re trying to get something out of these folk.”
“Do tell,” I said.
“Specially the old ones. Trick is to get them using their memories to kind of loosen their stopped-up brains a little. Oh yes, we been reminiscin’ ’bout old times, all her pickaninnies and her poor deadbeat husband.
“Hell, she even pulled out the old pictures here,” he said, touching the photo album with the blunt tips of his fingers. “Showed me the one of her mother sittin’ at a nightclub in Overtown with Cassius Clay long before he become the droolin’ and shakin’ poster boy for the Olympics.”
The adrenaline had soured in my mouth and been replaced by a warm anger that was spreading into my neck. Still he did not look up.
“So the old lady didn’t see a damn thing the night her boyfriend. got his throat crushed. But she did recall smelling something, Freeman. You’ve got to remember all the senses in this line of work, bud,” he said.
“She smelled the garbage can in her bedroom after he left is the way she put it. And a man’s hand pushin’ down on that pillow that had to be the size of a big ’ol catchers mitt how it fit over her entire face and head.
“That fit with anybody you and your girlfriend been trackin’?”
I was counting to myself again, swallowing a growing rage.
“You’ve been tailing us, McCane. You see anybody that you were hoping we’d lead you to?” I said.
He continued to smear his fingers on the plastic cover of the album.
“No. I didn’t think so,” I answered myself. “If you had, you wouldn’t be here.”
Richards had been right getting Hammonds to call in an overtime squad to step up the BOLO on Baines while she and Billy tried to get a lock on the doctor’s hard drive.
Ms. Thompson reappeared and McCane stayed quiet. She put a cup down in front of the empty chair and said, “Oh mercy I have forgotten our milk, Mr. McCane. Please, please, sit down Mr. Freeman. I’ll be right back.”
McCane took a long sip of his black coffee while the woman tottered away.
“You ought to know by now, Freeman. These are just simple minds you’re dealing with.”
“And you ought to know how to manipulate them, Milo, considering the practice you’ve had,” I said, holding his eyes and watching the twitch behind them at the mention of his old prison nickname. He sat quiet for a minute, glancing out toward the alley.
“I see your boy Manchester been busy checking my past,” he . said, trying to sound unfazed.
“And your boy Marshack’s, too,” I said. “You have some interesting coffee hours up at the Georgia state pen?”
He surprised me with a short laugh that came from deep in his chest.
“Ol’ doc, he never was one for small talk, always pullin’ that philosophical shit on you, trying to impress how smart he was. But the boy just could not hold a job,” he said. “You know how far a guy gotta tumble to end up being a shrink in a prison?”
“I wouldn’t know, McCane, but the good doctor sure did know how to keep some damned immaculate records. And if they tie you to it, McCane, the cons at Moultrie are going to throw an interesting homecoming.”
My words stole the smugness from his face. I could see his knuckles whitening around the coffee cup. Again he cut his eyes to the hedges along the back lawn where some movement seemed to have caught him.
“Well, gentlemen. Excuse my absence,” Ms. Thompson said, stepping carefully onto the patio. She froze when she saw the look on our faces.
“Get your ass back inside, old woman,” McCane snapped, pushing his chair back and standing.
The words were like a slap and a warning that I had gone too far. Don’t put him in a corner, I thought.
“Well, I never,” Ms. Thompson spouted, starting to get her feistiness back. But I looked in her eyes and she saw a warning there. Shed seen enough in her years to keep from getting between two angered men. She turned, hissing, and retreated back into her house.
I watched McCane pulling himself back down, the flex of the hand, the loosening of the jaw. He started to chuckle.
“Freeman, Freeman, Freeman. You are some kinda big city detective, bud, with all this conspiracy talk. Hell, I thought I was just helpin’ you boys out down here, and now you all cookin’ up this wild-ass conjecture.”
He was shaking his head. The ol’ southern boy perplexed by it all.
“Hell, if that’s the way it is, Freeman, I will be glad to get on back to the home office and leave this all to you smart folks,” he said, getting up with a bemused look on his face.
“I’m glad you can find the humor in it, McCane. You may very well be right,” I said, moving past him toward the side of the house, hoping he would follow me into the open.
“I’m sure you’ve got all your fìnancials in shape. Money in, money out. Your salary from the insurance company will match up with all your expenditures. You know how these things go, McCane—follow the money.”
“But you haven’t done any of that yet, have you, Freeman?” he said, moving up behind me. I could feel his closeness, hear the heavy shoes shuffling in the blades of grass. “And your boy can’t get that kind of information without a subpoena, and you don’t get that without an official investigation. And from what I seen, you’re far from official, bud.”
“It would probably be a hell of a lot easier on you, McCane, if it didn’t get that official.”
I’d turned to him and was walking backward now, holding his eyes as we came around the corner of the house to
the front lawn. Then I saw his face change.
When I looked around, the three street guardians were leaning up against the rental car. The leader in the middle, his head turned down, watched our approach from under the edge of a Marlins’ ball cap. He was poking at his teeth with a toothpick. His friends had their hands in their pockets. While I hesitated, McCane stepped past me.
“Get y’all dusty asses off my car, niggers,” he said, striding toward the group.
Without a word all three of them nonchalantly flexed their leg muscles and bent forward, bouncing their rumps off the fenders and taking one step forward. Their eyes followed McCane as he passed them and walked around to the driver’s side.
McCane got in, started the car and pulled around my truck, driving slowly and with as much dignity as one could in a tiny rental. We all watched him turn the first corner and disappear.
“Tell me that cracker cop ain’t workin’ wit you, G,” said the leader without turning to me, his words directed in the direction of McCane’s car.
“He’s not working with me,” I said.
“Then what’s he doin’ round Ms. Thompson’s?”
It was my turn to hold a response.
“I think he’s looking for the junk man,” I finally said.
The leader was quiet while he poked at an upper tooth.
“Ahh,” he said, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “A unified goal.”
“You call me if you find him,” I said, climbing into my truck.
Eddie was out in the street. He couldn’t wait under the bridge forever. He had two more days to wait out Mr. Harold, and the ache in his veins was too much. He needed his heroin.
He had waited in his concrete corner through the daylight hours, listening to the cars overhead, trying to ignore the twisting in his stomach and the ache in his muscles. Just after nightfall, he heard the voices of the homeless men nearby, and their tone sounded oddly satisfied. He uncurled himself and approached them. He could smell gravy.
Three men were crouched in a huddle with white Styrofoam boxes in front of them. They looked up when Eddie came close. The light from the overpass lamps kept his face in darkness and cast a shadow large enough to cover them all.
A Visible Darkness Page 17
