The Answer Man

by Roy Johansen

  “There,” said Gant. “Can you zoom in?”

  “I can do it, but it’s pretty blurry. These security camera lenses aren’t the fastest in the world. Let me see if I can find a frame that’s sharper.”

  Stanton shuttled back and forth on the tape, but none of the images were noticeably more defined than the other. He zoomed in on the face, but the result was a diffused black and white mess.

  Gant sighed. “Let’s go forward a minute or so. Let’s see if our friend comes back.”

  They watched, and after a few moments the figure returned. The bomber turned to look back for an instant, then continued across the frame.

  “Look, no bag,” Gant said intently. “That was the firebomb. A Molotov cocktail.”

  “We may be in luck,” Stanton said as he ran the picture back. “I might be able to get a good still shot here.”

  Stanton froze the picture. He zoomed in on the bomber, and the result was a grainy yet identifiable picture.

  Gant burst into a broad smile.

  “Anybody you know?” Stanton asked.

  “Yeah.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Benjamin Dietz liked graveyard duty. The other guards in his building preferred days, but he relished the peace and quiet of the eleven-to-seven shift. His post at the guard desk was particularly serene, given that there were seldom visitors to hassle him. The only overnight activity in the twelve-story building was from Apex Alert on the second floor, which employed only a small night staff to monitor their alarm systems.

  Yes, this was his favorite job ever. Much better than the armored car company where he’d worked for seventeen years. Better than the Coweta County sheriff’s deputy job.

  His only real responsibility tonight was giving a manila envelope to some lady cop. If she even showed. The guard on the previous shift had passed it along, and it rested on the counter in front of him with the name SGT. T. BROOKING printed on its front.

  He’d been on duty twenty-five minutes, when he heard a scream.

  He looked right and left. Where had it come from? Inside or outside?

  He stood up as a young woman ran in front of the building’s glass entrance. She fell to the sidewalk. Behind her, a man pounced and pinned her down.

  Dietz ran around the guard desk and unsnapped his holster. The woman’s assailant, wearing a stocking cap, looked Dietz in the eye. The woman threw a vicious punch to the attacker’s face and threw him off. The man, still eyeing Dietz, jumped to his feet and ran down the street.

  The guard pushed open the glass door and kneeled beside the woman.

  “Ohhh. God, it hurts…” She was clutching her stomach.

  “Take it easy, honey. What did he do to you?”

  The woman looked up. She was about the same age as his daughter, a junior at the University of Georgia. “He just came after me. He hit me in the stomach with a pipe or something, then he chased me.”

  “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No.” She pulled herself up. “It’s not that bad. If I could just—have a drink of water.”

  “Sure, honey. I’ll get it for you.”

  “Don’t leave!” she said, her gaze darting down the street. “I’ll come inside with you.”

  He helped her to her feet. They walked through the entrance and he pulled out his stool behind the guard desk. “Sit down.”

  “Thanks.”

  The woman sat as Dietz picked up a paper cup and walked across the lobby to a water fountain. He filled the cup and came back with it.

  She sipped the water. “Thanks.”

  “Just relax, honey. I’m going to call the police.”

  “Don’t bother. The guy’s gone.”

  “You should still file a report.”

  “Why? What do you think they’ll do about it?”

  Dietz picked up his phone. “Don’t be silly. They’ll be here in five minutes.”

  Her hand came down on the hook. “Please. I just want to go home and go to bed.”

  “You’re just upset.”

  “You got that right.” She pulled her hand away and stood up. “Thanks for your help, but I just want to forget about this.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure. Good night, Officer. Or whatever you are.”

  Dietz watched her leave. He put the phone back on the cradle. Crazy kid.

  He looked down at the counter. Where did that manila envelope go?

  —

  “Who taught you to punch like that?” Ken gingerly touched his cheek. He drove down International Boulevard as Hound Dog pulled the envelope from under her shirt.

  She tore into it. “I got carried away. Spirit of the moment.”

  “That hurt.”

  “No pain, no gain.”

  “Uh-huh. So what exactly did we gain?”

  Hound Dog angled the printouts into the streetlights’ glare. “Let’s see. Her alarm activity is here in military time. On the day of your boat attack, she deactivated the alarm at twenty hundred and eleven hours.”

  “Eight-eleven P.M. When she got home from work.”

  “Right. Then activated it again at twenty-three hundred and fifty-eight hours. Eleven fifty-eight P.M. Probably when she went to sleep.”

  “So she was home.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “What about the time your boyfriend was shot?”

  Hound Dog flipped to the next report. She studied it and let the pages fall to her lap. “Home. She was home.”

  Ken didn’t know whether to feel discouraged or relieved. “She didn’t do it. Either time.”

  “It doesn’t mean she wasn’t behind it. It just means she didn’t do it herself, that’s all.”

  Twenty minutes later they pulled up to Hound Dog’s trailer. “Are you heading over to the hospital?” he asked.

  “A little later. I’ll call right now to see if there’s any change. Maybe I’ll ride around for a while, to unwind.”

  “Scanner-surfing?”

  “Yeah.” She climbed out of the car. “Good night, Ken.”

  “Good night.”

  Ken watched as she shuffled across the patio and walked up the three short steps to her trailer’s front door.

  As much as she tried to hide it, her boyfriend’s condition was hitting her hard, Ken thought. After seeing that she was safely inside, he drove back to his apartment.

  The phone was ringing when he entered. He ran across the room and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Where have you been?” It was Myth.

  He was still clutching her security system activity reports. He tossed them onto his coffee table. “Out and about,” he said.

  “I’m ready to discuss my ideas for finding Sabini’s money.”

  “Okay. Discuss.”

  “Not over the phone. Let’s meet tomorrow night. The pier again? Ten P.M.”

  “Why there? Why so late?”

  “You’re a suspect. We can’t be seen together, or it’s all off. It has to be this way.”

  “If you say so.”

  “It’ll be good to see you, Ken. I’ve missed you.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was hesitation, as if she wanted him to say more, but finally she just said, “Good night.”

  “Good night.” He hung up the phone.

  What was he going to do?

  He couldn’t meet her. Could he?

  Ken paced the small living room, remembering Michaelson’s warnings. Myth would have to kill him “somewhere out of the way,” the private eye had said.

  The pier certainly qualified.

  With all that had happened, he’d have to be an idiot to trust her. But he still wasn’t entirely convinced of her guilt.

  Ken looked at the alarm activity reports again. If Myth wasn’t behind the attacks on him and Hound Dog’s boyfriend, who was?

  —

  There was a full moon that night, for which Gant was grateful. There were no streetlights on the block.


  Gant, Lieutenant Jim Ringland, and two uniformed officers approached the two-story duplex nestled in a neighborhood of brick row houses. Gant had known Ringland for years, and was happy when the detective offered to help with the pickup. Gant had not worked with him since transferring to day shift six years before.

  “Fireworks?” Ringland asked.

  “I’m not expecting any. If our firebomber shows a gun, he goes away for a long time.”

  “If you’re right about this, he’s going away for a long time anyway. It might not matter to him.”

  “I’m not going to argue with that.”

  Gant drew his revolver and checked the chamber. Ringland and the other officers also produced their weapons. Gant motioned for Ringland and one of the uniforms to cover the rear of the house as he and the other approached the front door.

  Gant took a good look at the cop accompanying him. He was a kid fresh out of the academy, and his ruddy cheeks were offset by a square jaw and bright blue eyes. Gant remembered how he felt in his own days as a uniformed cop. On these pickups, where the shields called the shots, he had always felt like the anonymous expendable crewmen on Star Trek who got killed whenever they beamed down to a planet with the principals.

  Gant read the officer’s nameplate. “Okay, Gordon, let’s make an arrest.”

  They walked quietly up a set of stairs to the front door. Gant rapped on it hard. He waited, looking toward the adjacent window. One of the horizontal blinds pulled up slightly.

  “Open up. Police!”

  Retreating footsteps pounded inside. In the same instant, Gordon broke the door open in one ferocious kick. The two officers rushed into the house, guns drawn, as they barreled through the living room and down a narrow hallway.

  Shattering glass echoed in the back bedroom. They hurtled through the doorway to see a broken window frame with pieces of glass still falling and breaking on the floor. Gant holstered his gun and leapt through the second-story window, grabbing hold of a tree branch outside.

  He yelled back to Gordon, “Get Ringland’s ass out here!”

  Gant half fell, half climbed down the tree, all the while trying to keep an eye on his suspect. For a moment he thought he lost him, but he spotted the man as he reached the ground. Gant dropped the last few feet and literally hit the ground running.

  Middle age and a little extra weight had not slowed him much, and what he lacked in speed he more than made up for in endurance. He was well known for his ability to wear down a fleeing suspect; the detective just kept going. When the suspect glanced back to see if he was still being chased, Gant always felt encouraged. When the suspect looked a second time, he knew the collar was his.

  They had run three blocks when Gant heard the squealing tires that told him Gordon or one of the other officers was in the car and joining the pursuit. The suspect looked over his shoulder, cueing the lieutenant to put on an extra burst of speed.

  The car roared behind them, and Gant watched as the man cut across a yard toward a tall wooden fence. His suspect jumped for the gate and scaled it. Sliding across the dew-soaked grass, Gant sprinted for the gate and yanked on it. He swung the gate forcefully against the brick side of the house, hammering the man’s face against it. The suspect collapsed in a heap at his feet, moaning as blood spurted from his nose.

  Gant pinned the man’s shoulders and cuffed him. He turned him faceup. It was Jesus Millicent, Carlos Valez’s smart-ass friend.

  “This is your lucky day, Jesus. If one of those hothead rookies had caught you, they’d be having a nightstick party on your skull.”

  Jesus squirmed and shouted, “Man, I didn’t do nothing!”

  “You mean you didn’t do anything.”

  “What are you, a fucking teacher?”

  “No, but my wife is. I don’t appreciate your lack of respect for the profession.”

  Gant turned him over. Ringland and the other uniformed officer ran up, guns drawn. Ringland grimaced at Jesus’s bloody face. “What’d you do to him, Gant?”

  “I opened the gate. He happened to be on it.”

  Ringland gave Gant a knowing look. “That’s the way it looks to me.”

  “Really,” Gant insisted. “He was trying to climb over, I swung it open and he hit the wall.”

  “Of course,” Ringland said with a conspiratorial smile.

  Gant decided to let him think what he wanted.

  —

  “Let me get this straight, Jesus. You didn’t firebomb this building. But you just happen to have canisters of gasoline and oil, and a ripped-up rag, in the backseat of your car.”

  Jesus looked at Gant and Ringland on the other side of the table in the small interrogation room. Two pieces of brown washroom paper towel protruded from his nose, sticking out at odd angles.

  “Man, my nose is starting to bleed again.”

  Ringland tore off another piece of the brown paper towel. “Here. Put this between your upper lip and gum.”

  “I want a lawyer, and I want a doctor.”

  Gant smiled. “We told you. A public defender is on the way. You don’t have to talk to us. But you’ve already resisted arrest, and that’s a violation of your parole. We can put you away. Even if we don’t get anything else, you’re in lockup for two more years.”

  “Aw, shit…”

  “You get a lawyer in here, he’ll tell you to clam up, and you’re gonna piss us off. And even if we can’t get this other stuff to stick, we’ll get you for big-time parole violation, and we’ll make sure you serve it out.”

  “I didn’t do it!”

  Gant nodded. The grueling process of interrogating suspects was one of his least favorite parts of police work. Other officers loathed the tedium of stakeouts, but there at least the cop could listen to music or sit with his thoughts. Gant had no fondness for the psychological back-and-forth of getting a suspect to spill his guts.

  He glanced at the video monitor. It was almost time to play the tape. Almost. It was good to let Jesus lie a little more before playing this trump card; the typical suspect’s fear at having been caught in a lie was good for getting them to ‘fess up to other, possibly related crimes. They did this in hope of “making good” with the cops to whom they had just fibbed.

  Gant looked at Ringland. “He says he didn’t do it.”

  “That’s what he says,” Ringland replied.

  “I told you ten times! I’m not saying another word until my lawyer gets here.”

  “Fine.” Gant stood and motioned toward the monitor. “While you wait, we’ll let you watch a video.”

  —

  The next morning Ken had been in his office only ten minutes when he heard a sharp knock at his door. He opened it to see Lieutenant Gant.

  “Good morning,” Gant said. “Can we talk?”

  Ken gestured wide for Gant to enter. What now?

  Gant stepped inside and looked around the new office. “I have some good news for you. We got your bomber.”

  Ken froze. “The bomber? Who was it?”

  “It was a buddy of Carlos Valez’s. His name is Jesus Millicent. He thinks you whacked his friend.”

  “He told you this?”

  “We picked him up last night. He got real talkative after we showed him tape from a security camera on the building behind yours. It’s aimed at your rear entrance. Revenge, pure and simple. He also admitted to stealing the boat that tried to sink you at the lake last week.”

  What a relief. The attacks were totally unrelated to Myth and Sabini. But before he could get too euphoric, he thought about what Gant had said.

  A security camera aimed at the rear of his building.

  Ken tried to remember if he, Sabini, or Myth had ever wandered within its range. He wasn’t sure. Shit.

  “You’re lucky to be alive. He really had it in for you,” Gant said.

  “Now all I have to worry about is you.”

  “Only if you’re guilty.”

  “I’m not. But that didn’t keep me from almost getting
killed. Twice.”

  “Mistakes happen.”

  “Thanks for the comforting words.”

  Gant studied the polygraph. “This doesn’t look any worse for wear. At least you still have your livelihood.” He chuckled. “The first time I saw one of these gadgets, I swore it was going to electrocute me if I lied. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.”

  “Maybe that’s why you tested so poorly.”

  “That’s not supposed to make any difference, is it?”

  “A lot of examiners will tell you it doesn’t. I think it does.”

  “That’s refreshing to hear. I’ve always wondered how I’d test now.”

  “You’ll never know unless you try it.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  Ken paused. “Actually, no. I don’t know what it would prove.”

  “You’re probably right. It would be more interesting if I hooked you up to this machine.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I already know what it’s like to take a test, but I have no idea what goes into giving one.”

  Ken looked at the examination seat and forced a smile. He had never taken a polygraph test in his life. He had tried on the sensors when designing Sabini’s training exercises, but that was the extent of it. “Examiners make the worst possible subjects,” Ken said.

  “Why is that?”

  Because we know how to beat the damn things, Ken wanted to say. Instead, he just shrugged.

  “Let’s try it,” Gant said. “It’ll be a learning experience for me and you.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Of course.”

  Ken let out a long breath. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? I don’t see any customers here.”

  Ken thought about it. Gant wasn’t an examiner, and even if he was, this machine couldn’t get the better of him.

  “You’re not afraid of anything, are you?” Gant asked.

  Ken rolled up his left shirtsleeve and sat in the examination seat. “Put that blood pressure wrap around my arm.”

  Gant threw the wrap over Ken’s left bicep and fastened it with the Velcro ends. He squeezed the bulb until Ken motioned for him to stop.

  “That’s good enough,” Ken said. “We don’t want to cut off all the circulation, unless it’s one of the really tough cases and you need to torture a confession out of the subject.”