Season of Fear

by Brain Freeman

  He studied the headlines.

  FRANK MACY GETS EIGHT YEARS ON MANSLAUGHTER PLEA

  ONE YEAR LATER, MORE TRAGEDY: FAIRMONT STUNNED BY SON’S SUICIDE

  COMMON WAY FOUNDATION INFLUENCE GROWS – AND SO DOES CONTROVERSY

  FAIRMONT TO ENTER GOVERNOR’S RACE

  He removed a piece of paper from his backpack and pinned it up with the others. This article was new – only hours old – taken from the website of a local television station. It included a grainy photograph of Diane Fairmont from the video feed of an interview conducted in the garden of her estate.

  Two blocks away.

  He took a red marker from his backpack and drew a circle around Diane’s head. With two quick slashes, he made cross-hatches, turning the circle into a target. He could smell the intoxicating aroma of the fresh ink. Like an artist, he scrawled a single word across her body.

  Revenge.

  He didn’t have time to admire his handiwork. The frame of the house thumped with the weight of footsteps. Somewhere else in the house, muffled but unmistakable, he heard breaking glass.

  Someone else was there. He wasn’t alone.

  He doused the lantern and stole inside, where his eyes adjusted to the shadows. The carpet was hard and worn under his boots. He listened and heard nothing, but something was different. The air pressure had changed; a window was open. He also smelled a noxious sweetness. Feces. Someone had used one of the waterless toilets.

  He unsheathed a knife from a back pocket. The camouflage blade had saw teeth and curled to a fierce point. His hands were already securely covered in hospital gloves, leaving no prints.

  Music filled the house with a teen-pop song by One Direction. The volume was loud enough that a neighbor might hear it and come to explore – or call the police. He traced the warbling boyband music to a back bedroom, where the door was closed. He hid the knife behind his palm and silently twisted the door knob. He eased the door open.

  A candle wavered on the floor, throwing off dancing light and a strawberry scent. The room was vacant of furniture, but he could see dents in the carpet where a bed had been placed. Flowered wallpaper had begun to bubble and curl as moisture got underneath it. A broken boarded window was pushed open, and he could see waving tree branches in the backyard. Sticky air blew through the bedroom. The music came from a battery-operated iPod dock at his feet, and he squatted and shut it off. He saw a wine bottled tipped on the floor, spilling Cabernet like blood. A wine glass lay broken beside it.

  As the music stopped, a young girl appeared in the doorway of the walk-in closet next to him. Her feet were bare. She wore panties and a light blue mesh camisole. Her shoulder-length brown hair was dirty and curly. Her eyes flicked to the speakers, and then she saw him there, waiting for her.

  ‘Oh, shit!’

  She made a break for the window, but he was ready for her. He grabbed one wrist, twisted it, and yanked it behind her back. She howled in pain, but he clapped a gloved hand over her mouth.

  ‘Quiet.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ she begged when he removed his hand. ‘Jesus, I didn’t know anybody was here!’

  He shoved her toward the bedroom wall. ‘Who are you?’

  She folded her arms and danced on the balls of her feet. ‘I’m Tina. Look, can I just go? With all these abandoned houses, I figured no one would care if I crashed here.’

  ‘Why are you here? Where do you live?’

  ‘I lived with my boyfriend until two days ago. Bastard threw me out because I ran up a 200-dollar cell phone bill. I mean, hello, who doesn’t have unlimited texting these days?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘How did you find this place?’

  ‘I drove around looking for somewhere I could crash. The house looked empty. I said I was sorry, okay? You beat me to it. Fine. Take it, I’ll go someplace else.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone where you were?’

  ‘Nobody, I swear, nobody else is going to crash your crib, man. I’m not looking to party. Besides, no phone, remember?’

  He looked at her. She was young, foolish, and sweet. Half-teenager, half-woman. A tattoo of a sunflower peeked from her shoulder. Her skin had bikini tan lines. She misread his eyes, and her head cocked, and her mouth bent into a flirty grin. She took a strand of hair and twisted it around her finger.

  ‘Hey, maybe we could figure something out,’ she said. ‘Like, maybe we could share the place.’

  She bunched the lacy trim of her camisole with both hands and pulled it over her head, baring her chest. Her breasts were small, with chocolate brown, erect nipples and a tear-drop birthmark under her left cup. She tugged back and forth on the elastic of her panties, as if she were working the handlebars on a bicycle. When she peeled them halfway down her hips, he saw the curly fuzz of her pubic hair.

  Tina bit her lip and came closer. ‘Like what you see?’

  He let the jagged knife slide down his hand, until the handle was in his grasp. The blade was an ugly, deadly thing. She didn’t notice it.

  ‘This could be like me paying rent, huh?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  She really was cute, trying so hard to get what she wanted, which was a place to stay the night. He ran the gloved fingers of his other hand along her cheek, then into the hollow of her neck, then down to her right breast, which he cradled in his palm. His thumb flicked her nipple, and she purred.

  ‘That would be great,’ he said, ‘except for one thing.’

  She nestled against him, reaching for his zipper. ‘What’s that, lover?’

  ‘DNA,’ he said.

  7

  ‘It makes you wonder how they do it, right?’ Chuck Warren asked. He gestured across the busy street, where a billboard featured an attractive thirty-something couple playing with three children in a Florida backyard. The tagline advertised a local doctor who performed vasectomies using no knife and no needle. ‘I mean, what’s the deal? Do they use garden clippers or what?’

  ‘I’m not eager to find out,’ Cab replied.

  ‘You and me both. No snipping for me. Not that I’m looking to have more kids, but who knows? If I’m eighty, and I still have two marbles rolling around in my head, I might want to put my other marbles to good use.’ He chuckled.

  ‘Are you married, Mr Warren?’

  ‘Divorced. Twice. It cost me the gross national product of Brazil both times. That’s two and out for me. From now on, I drive, but I don’t park. What about you, Detective? Are you married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you’ve got money. Smart man. That’s the way to keep it.’

  Warren sipped coffee from a ceramic mug with his own face on it. It was Saturday morning, and Cab felt the Gulf heat tightening his eyes and shrinking his face like a mummy. The sharp creases in his charcoal suit were flattening like a wrinkled shirt in the shower. The two men stood on open green lawn in front of a radio station headquarters building, in the shadow of half a dozen enormous white satellite dishes. To their left, cars shot westward off the Tampa bridge to the crowded Gulf cities. Cab smelled dead fish wafting from the nearby beach.

  One of the drivers on the highway spotted Chuck Warren and honked loudly. Warren waved back and gave a thumbs-up sign like a manic leprechaun. Two more drivers leaned on their horns in support, but another driver jerked an arm out his window at Warren with the middle finger extended.

  Warren offered a cheery return salute. ‘Socialist,’ he said, laughing. He sat down on a bench near one of the satellite dishes. Balancing his coffee mug on the bench, he slid a cigar from the pocket of his navy sport coat and offered it to Cab, who shook his head. Warren lit the cigar, puffed, and picked up his coffee again. ‘So do you listen to my show, Detective?’

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  ‘You a Socialist?’

  ‘I’m a nothingalist.’

  ‘I just figured, Hollywood mama and all, you had to be a crazy Dem.’

  ‘N
o, just crazy.’

  ‘Well, sooner or later, we all have to take sides,’ Warren said.

  The former Congressional candidate – and current radio talk show host – was in his early fifties but looked younger. He was about five-foot-eight. He had shock-white hair, as wiry as a brush, and a smooth face that had probably seen its share of Botox and plastic surgery. His cherubic expression – easy smile, twinkling brown eyes – belied his reputation for extreme rhetoric. He was, according to his website, a happy patriot, relentlessly cheery as he tore into left-wing politics. He had charisma. All once-and-future politicians did. As much as you could dislike a politician on television, Cab decided, it was hard to dislike one in person.

  Warren crossed his legs. He wore dress slacks and tan loafers. He looked to be in good shape for his age, but he had enough of a pooch to suggest that he liked steak dinners.

  ‘So what can I do for you, Detective?’ Warren asked. ‘I love helping our boys in blue. Even ones with earrings.’

  Cab smiled. Everyone mentioned the earring. ‘I’m not here in an official capacity. Not as far as the Naples Police goes.’

  ‘Well, in what capacity are you here?’

  ‘There are concerns that Diane Fairmont may be at risk like Birch was ten years ago. Possibly from the same source. I’m trying to find out if that’s true.’

  Warren chuckled and shook his head. He didn’t get angry; he got amused. ‘What, is this part of her campaign strategy? Have you been conscripted by the folks at Common Way? I’m not really looking to be a political punching bag for that crowd. Been there, done that.’

  ‘Are you still bitter about what happened ten years ago?’ Cab asked.

  Warren sucked on his cigar and blew out a sweet cloud of smoke. He had puffy Santa Claus cheeks. ‘Not really.’

  ‘It ruined your political career.’

  ‘True, but it made me a millionaire.’ Warren poked a thumb at the radio station behind him. ‘Look, Detective, ten years ago I was the Republican candidate for Congress in the Twelfth District. It was my fourth run at it. I never cleared 45 percent. I was a nobody, an electrician with barely a dime to my name. Look at me now. Millions of people hang on my every word. Bill O’Reilly has me on speed dial. I’ve got a mansion on the inland waterway. I’m blessed to live in this country.’

  ‘Except back then, you finally had a chance at winning the race, and Birch Fairmont took that away.’

  Warren squinted into the beating sun. He slid out sunglasses from his pocket and put them on his face. ‘Okay. Sure. Ten years ago, the Democratic incumbent dropped dead of a stroke. The Dems replaced him with a newbie liberal who suffered from foot-in-mouth disease. Talked about Fidel like he was some kind of George Washington. So yeah, I was running neck-and-neck in the polls.’

  ‘Then Birch got in the race,’ Cab said.

  ‘That’s right, he did. Or rather, Lyle Piper pushed him in. Lyle was the political brain behind Common Way. Him and Caprice Dean. Suddenly we had a three-way race, and Birch’s numbers were pretty strong for a while. He got a lot of buzz, and buzz gets you free face-time on TV. Even so, I was going to win in the end. People have a way of coming home to their spouse after they have drinks with that pretty stranger in the bar.’

  ‘You don’t think Birch would have pulled it off? Everybody said he had the momentum.’

  ‘No, I don’t. The race was always going to be between me and the Dems. Ogden Bush was running their campaign, and the word on the street was that Ogden was going to bury Birch with negative ads. Pop his balloon. It would have worked, too. Birch’s numbers were paper-thin.’

  ‘What did you think when Birch was killed?’

  Warren gulped coffee. His face on the mug had the same big smile. The Happy Patriot. ‘I thought that was the end of my political career, and I was right. And no, I’m not minimizing what happened. It was terrible. However, I knew what it meant for my campaign.’

  ‘Namely?’ Cab asked.

  ‘The mainstream media would blame me. They’d been trying to crucify me from the beginning. That Orlando reporter, Rufus Twill, kept hyping bullshit stories about me and the Alliance. Chuck’s a radical! Chuck’s a right-wing extremist! Chuck’s in bed with the Nazis! I knew the rest of the media would start talking about “hate speech” and calling this a political assassination and pointing fingers at me. Which is exactly what they did. Hell, some people thought I had Birch killed to get him out of the race.’

  ‘Did you?’ Cab asked with a small smile.

  Warren grinned. ‘I told you, I love cops. They can’t resist asking gotcha questions. No, not true. See, if I wanted to get Birch out of the race, I would have set him up with a hooker a week or two before the election. I wouldn’t have killed him. Dead people get sympathy. The last thing my campaign needed was Birch Fairmont made into a martyr.’

  ‘The FBI think Hamilton Brock and the Liberty Empire Alliance were behind the assassination.’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘I think the feds conducted the most exhaustive investigation since Lincoln or Kennedy, and they didn’t find a shred of real evidence linking Ham to the murders. That’s a little funny, don’t you think?’

  ‘Hamilton Brock was a donor to your campaign. So were several of his lieutenants.’

  Warren took the cigar and jabbed it at Cab, but without any malice in the gesture. The man relished the give-and-take of political debate. ‘Well, first, I don’t control who gives me money. Anybody wants to open a checkbook, I think that’s their God-given American right, and I don’t care what they believe. Second, Ham says those contributions were phony. He knew it would hurt me more than help me to have his group associated with my campaign.’

  ‘And yet you obviously know him,’ Cab said.

  ‘Sure, I do. I’ve interviewed him on my show from the Coleman penitentiary. You ask me, Ham’s a political prisoner. They needed to put someone away for the murders at Bok, so they trumped up tax charges against Ham in order to pretend they’d done their job.’

  ‘You think he’s innocent?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘So who killed Birch?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Warren said.

  ‘Do you think Ham Brock knows?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him. I’m not saying it couldn’t have been some deranged sympathizer acting on his own. Maybe it was. I just don’t think it was Ham or any of his boys. They’re too smart. On other hand, there were also nasty rumors about Birch during the campaign.’

  ‘Rumors?’ Cab said.

  ‘Oh, yeah, some ugly stories buzzed around the grapevine. Ogden was behind most of them, so who knows whether any of it was true. I didn’t peddle the dirt myself, because it would have made things worse. After Labor Day, you couldn’t say a bad thing about Birch. Getting killed makes you a saint. From what I hear, though, Birch was no saint.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Oh, let’s just say that Birch and Diane weren’t exactly one big happy family. That was all for the cameras.’

  Cab stood up. He smoothed his suit and tugged the knot on his tie a little tighter. Warren remained sitting comfortably on the bench, with an arm slung around the back. Pungent smoke surrounded him like a halo.

  ‘What about this year?’ Cab asked. ‘Feels like déjà vu all over again, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Politically? Sure it does. The Governor is cruising toward reelection, and then miraculously he gets bogged down in a corruption scandal involving his inner circle. The mainstream media pegs Attorney General Cortes as another crazy Tea Party Republican, just like me. Hell, Ramona was on Ham Brock’s legal defense team, so she must be a radical extremist, right? And in marches Diane Fairmont of the Common Way Party to save the day. Like the Church Lady would say, how conveeeeenient.’

  Cab cocked his head. ‘Are you suggesting Diane had something to do with the scandal involving the Governor?’

  Warren leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. ‘
I’m saying Common Way has built a reputation as a centrist organization that’s above the fray, and that’s a bunch of crap. They’re as ruthless as either of the other parties. Come on, who did they bring in to handle oppo work when Diane got in the race? Ogden Bush riding a new horse with the same dirty ass. So don’t tell me Diane Fairmont is anything other than politics as usual.’

  ‘You do sound a little bitter.’

  ‘I just believe in knowing my enemy.’

  ‘Diane’s your enemy?’ Cab asked.

  ‘This country has many enemies,’ Warren replied, ‘inside and out.’

  ‘How well do you know her?’

  ‘Well enough to hope she loses. Do you know her, Detective?’

  ‘We’ve met,’ Cab said.

  The radio host opened his mouth, closed it, and chomped his lips over his cigar. Finally, he said, ‘Word of advice from me to you. Don’t trust her.’

  ‘I’m not big on trusting anyone in politics,’ Cab said. ‘That doesn’t mean she’s not in danger.’

  Warren leaned back against the bench. ‘Maybe, maybe not. I’ll leave that in your hands. If you ask me, the whole thing is probably a political ploy.’

  ‘But?’ he asked, hearing the man’s hesitation.

  ‘But let’s face it. Common Way has bought itself a lot of friends over the years. They’ve bought a lot of enemies, too.’

  *

  Do you know her, Detective?

  We’ve met.

  Ten years ago.

  The campaign had been in its infancy when Cab visited his mother while she was staying with Diane at Birch Fairmont’s estate in Lake Wales. All of the political activity was happening elsewhere around the state. Cab never met Lyle Piper or Caprice Dean while he was there. He never saw Birch Fairmont that week in June. He was twenty-five years old, and his life was over.

  He’d come from Barcelona, after the killing of Vivian Frost, after the internal security investigation that was kept tightly under wraps. No one wanted Cab or his story in the spotlight. His world had come to an end that summer, but he’d said nothing to Tarla, nothing to anyone, about what had happened. It was the beginning of his game of hopscotch, moving from place to place, jumping from job to job.