River of Secrets

by Roger Johns

  “Based on nothing, as far as I can see.”

  She nodded. “But it’s what I see that counts. You don’t want to fool yourself into believing otherwise.”

  “I get it, now.” He took a step toward her and then leaned forward, resting his hands on the front edge of the desk. “This stern Buddha face and these cryptic, menacing utterances are just you shaking my tree, trying to see if something falls out.” He chuckled.

  “I do that, from time to time, it’s true. But that’s not what’s happening here. You’re hiding something. You can tell me now or, one way or another, I’m going to rattle it loose.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Wallace grabbed a pair of sunglasses from her satchel on the floor and slid them on. She kept her phone to her ear, pretending to be involved in a call, while she studied the faces and vehicles she could see through the windshield and in her rearview and side-view mirrors. After a couple of minutes of watching the street, she stowed her phone, then started the car and pulled into traffic.

  Her conversation with Garrett Landry was going to bug her until she could figure out what—or who—he was hiding.

  She drove aimlessly around the Capitol and then through Spanish Town, at every turn keeping an eye on the road behind her. She checked the clock. She still had time.

  * * *

  Wallace pulled into the parking lot alongside Davis’s office. She sat for a minute checking her surroundings. No cars moved past, and no one was on the sidewalk, on either side of the street. She grabbed her satchel and strode quickly from her car, up the steps, and through the front door.

  The outer office was empty, but the door into Davis’s office stood open.

  “Knock, knock,” she said, presenting herself at the threshold.

  “Come in, come in,” Davis said, moving around his desk to give Wallace a quick hug. He motioned her toward the sofa against the wall of windows that looked out on to a shaded patio, as he pushed the door to his office shut.

  “I can tell by the look on your face that you and your mother have been talking.”

  Wallace laughed. “I’m not sure what to even say.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  Wallace cocked her head and thought for a moment. “That you asked? Not really. That it happened so soon? Maybe a little.” She felt a flush rising in her cheeks as she took a seat on the sofa. “But that’s all you’re getting from me.” She pointed at herself. “This daughter will not be breaking faith with her mother by spilling any beans that are not hers to spill.”

  “Duly noted.” Davis laughed nervously as he lowered himself into his desk chair and swiveled lazily back and forth.

  “But I do have some secret inside information that I am willing to share.”

  Davis hunched forward, over his desk. “Do tell.”

  “I’ve taken myself into protective custody,” Wallace said.

  Davis sat back, his eyes narrowed. “Protection from what? From whom?”

  His face remained impassive as Wallace outlined the events of the previous night.

  “Please tell me you’re taking this seriously,” he said. “That you’re taking precautions.”

  “Of course I am.” Wallace smiled and patted her gun.

  “That is not what I meant,” he said, raising his voice and looking at her as if she had lost her mind. “Why aren’t you working with a partner? Surely Jack Shannon isn’t so stingy that he’d force you to go solo in a situation this dangerous.”

  “Until I figure out whether there really is a leak in the department, I’ve kind of been keeping to myself.” Wallace shifted uneasily. “But I hate lying to Burley and Chief Shannon.”

  Davis waved both hands in an emphatic stop gesture. “The truth is what you’re after and honesty is not always your best tool for getting it. Sometimes you have to lie. If that’s what’s keeping you safe, then lie until you’re blue in the face. You can always apologize and ask forgiveness, later.”

  Just hearing Davis say the words that vindicated her thinking made her feel better about what she was doing.

  “So, your mother’s gone underground.” He chuckled. “Well, at least she’ll have a story to tell.” He stood and walked over to a small refrigerator hidden inside a walnut-paneled cabinet and pulled out a couple of bottles of sparkling water. He held one in Wallace’s direction and cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.

  “Sure. Thanks.” She reached for the bottle as he crossed the room toward her.

  “I suppose it’s time we got down to the real reason you’re here.”

  “I’m guessing if your visit with Colin Gerard had been a complete waste of time you would have called and said so. So, please tell me our former DA had something interesting to say about who he thinks outed Eddie Pitkin for obstruction of justice.” She held up both hands, fingers crossed, then sprawled into a corner of the sofa, arm spread along the top.

  Davis pulled his tie loose a bit. “Well, it’s not good news. It’s not bad news. It’s just information.”

  “I’m listening,” Wallace said, her enthusiasm waning.

  “To be honest, I assumed he would tell me to take a hike. That, friends or not, he wouldn’t even entertain the idea of having the conversation.”

  “Davis, you’re killing me with all this preamble.”

  “He swears he never knew the name of the informant. And I got the impression he would have at least told me if he knew the person’s name, but he was pretty insistent.”

  “Not even a hint?”

  “Wallace, you know the secret code of the political class in Louisiana. Don’t say it if you can nod it. Don’t nod it if you can wink it. Colin wasn’t saying, he wasn’t nodding, and he wasn’t winking. And before you ask,” Davis said, holding up one hand, “the man appears to be fully compos mentis. All those strokes have taken a toll on his body, but his mind is as sharp as ever.” Davis leaned back in his chair and propped one foot on an open drawer.

  “You know, even though it benefits me, as a police officer, I find this whole anonymous informant business unsettling, from a due process point of view. It’s just a little too police-state for me.”

  “Agreed. But, as you know, reliability is key to the value of an informant. Colin told me that whoever it was seemed to have access to solid information about a lot of other crimes and that those were the first ones the informant tipped him off about.”

  “I don’t remember any of those other cases.”

  “No reason you should. They were all small potatoes—minor-league, police-blotter material.” Davis clasped his hands behind his head. “Just back page, Saturday edition kinds of things. But the source, whoever the hell it was, was never ever wrong. So, by the time the evidence of Pitkin’s misdeed got tossed over the transom, the anonymous tipster had built up a strong enough record of reliability that the DA was able to convince the judge that the information would support a warrant for going after such a high-profile defendant.”

  “How was it that the informant communicated with the DA?”

  “Email.”

  “That simple?”

  “Not so simple, actually. The informant used what’s known as a Mixmaster anonymous remailer.”

  “I’m guessing all those big words mean the identity of the sender and the point of origin were untraceable.”

  “So I’m told. But in the initial contact, the sender set up an authentication system, so Colin would be able to verify that subsequent emails were from the same person.”

  “Is it safe to assume that system was never made public?”

  “Almost. If it had been, of course, it would have been easy for anyone to send messages to the DA through a remailer and make them look like they were coming from the informant. However, the authentication system was revealed to the defendant and his attorney. Because Eddie was such a well-known and widely disliked figure, the judge required the DA to do an in-chambers disclosure.”

  “That seems so risky. Wouldn’t that cast doubt on the authenticity of future
messages?”

  “Colin told me that Judge Hargroder didn’t give a damn about hypothetical future cases. He didn’t want Pitkin’s case getting kicked back on appeal, so he ordered everybody to keep their traps shut and then he made Colin cough up the goods. That way they could all agree that the message putting the finger on Eddie came from the same source as all the others. And, of course, neither Eddie nor his lawyer was in the mood for a contempt citation, and they weren’t about to start biting the hand that was feeding them, so they gladly went along with the judge’s order to stay quiet.”

  “Were there any further revelations, after the Pitkin case?”

  “Not a one. Eddie Pitkin got nailed and then the well dried up. Colin swore to me that, as far as he knew, that particular informant was never heard from again.”

  “So, it would be a safe bet that Eddie Pitkin was the informant’s real target from the get-go. Everything before that was just priming the pump and once that was accomplished he or she just went back to their regular life.”

  “That was the speculation at the time. Although you and I both know that informants sometimes cease operations for other, less pleasant reasons.”

  “Surely Colin had his suspicions. He must have been curious as hell.”

  “He did and he was. A lot of us in the profession were curious. But, as you requested, I asked him point-blank if he thought it was Herbert Marioneaux. He just laughed and shook his head.” Davis grinned and toyed with a heavy binder clip that was sitting on his desk. “He absolutely hated Marioneaux and I got the impression he would have enjoyed the irony of it.”

  Wallace smiled half-heartedly at the anecdote. She had other questions she wanted to ask, but the concerns her conversation with Garrett Landry had raised bumped those questions out of her head for the moment. She turned to look out through the windows, wondering whether to trouble Davis with her thoughts.

  “You look distracted,” Davis said.

  “Just puzzled. Earlier today I interviewed Garrett Landry, the legislative aide for Herbert Marioneaux, and I’ve got a strange feeling about him.”

  “Anything you’d care to discuss?” Davis stood and walked to the windows overlooking the patio.

  “He’s hiding something. He was a childhood friend of Glenn Marioneaux, Herbert’s son, and he idolized the senator. Had since he was a boy. Plus, he felt like Marioneaux had given him a second chance in life after he had essentially pissed away his first one. But Landry was out of the country on a bullshit business trip with a few functionaries from some state agency when Marioneaux was killed and he didn’t come back until today. That’s several days he stayed away when the father of his lifelong friend, the man he considered his mentor, had been murdered.”

  “Why do you think that means he’s hiding something?” Davis looked down at Wallace.

  “He didn’t seem shaken up about Marioneaux’s death. I never got a sense that he was grieving. In fact, he barely said a word about the investigation—something everyone in Baton Rouge seems to have a strong opinion about.” Wallace looked at Davis, then turned her gaze back toward the patio.

  “That might make him an ass, but I can’t see how that points toward deception.” He breathed in heavily through his nose, his shoulders rising and then falling as he exhaled.

  “He claimed that the senator got some pretty nasty hate mail,” she said, watching a starling as it pecked at the seeds in the tray of a hanging bird feeder.

  “As do all politicians, I’m sure.” Davis massaged his chin and his lower lip with his index finger.

  “And that, occasionally, meetings in the senator’s office could turn into shouting matches, when constituents or donors felt they weren’t being properly served. Yet he couldn’t remember the name of a single individual involved.”

  “I get it. You would think that after his idol got murdered he would have gone back over Marioneaux’s appointment calendar and tried to dredge up some of those names,” Davis said, turning away from the window and walking back behind his desk.

  “And offered them to the police days ago,” Wallace added. “Plus, I find it almost unbelievable that he would not have been in the room when at least some of those folks were getting hot under the collar. At a minimum, those names would be extremely unlikely to slip his memory.” She sat forward, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose.

  “Maybe he’s afraid that if he mentions a name, the name of somebody he believes is harmless, he’ll put that person in your gunsight.”

  “But unless he was certain that every single person who ever yelled at the senator was innocent, he could be unwittingly protecting the killer of the man who gave him a new lease on life.” Wallace opened her eyes and looked over at Davis, a pained smile on her face. “That doesn’t make sense to me. Unless…”

  “Unless Landry’s protecting someone he cares for more than he cared for Marioneaux.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The son, Glenn, his childhood friend.” He hesitated. “That is troubling.”

  “Given their history, it’s possible Glenn and his father got into it, in Herbert’s office.”

  “So, what’s your next move?”

  “For this and other reasons, I’ll stay on Glenn, but first, I need to find a nice quiet place to go through the senator’s calendar and make a list of other people that need to be talked to.” Wallace rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms and let out a groan of frustration.

  Through the closed office door, Wallace heard the sound of the front door opening.

  “My next client,” Davis said, checking his watch and shrugging into his suit coat.

  Wallace stood and picked up her satchel, moving toward the office door.

  “This way, if you don’t mind,” Davis said. He opened the door that led from his office out to the tree-shaded patio. “It’s the preliminary stages of a divorce case and my client, well, she’s a bit shy at the moment.”

  “Aren’t you worried the neighbors will talk if they see one woman fleeing out the side door just as another comes waltzing in the front?”

  “At my age, I’d be way past flattered.”

  * * *

  Wallace threaded her way through the potted plants and metal furniture. In one corner, a mimosa tree that had been newly planted and shorter than her when she was a teenager now towered above her and the brick wall that surrounded the patio. The furniture had been repainted several times over the years and a few new planters had been added, but, for the most part, nothing had changed. Not even the vaguely menacing Green Man fountain built into the rear wall, still spitting his endless stream of water into the algae-filled pool. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been out here. It gave her a sense of safety and permanence to see that some things never changed. Unwilling to let go of the feeling too quickly, she stopped and took a quick look around before she pulled open the gate that led to the parking lot.

  She climbed into her car and set her satchel in the rear foot well on the passenger side. The tide of suspicion had grown turbulent again, and it was giving her a headache.

  Maybe Glenn had erected this façade of a son struggling to come to terms with an agonizing past to conceal his true game—murdering his father for pissing all over his life.

  Or maybe Marioneaux actually had been the informant who sent Eddie Pitkin to prison for evidence tampering and Eddie had found this out and killed Herbert in a fit of revenge.

  Davis had agreed that both theories held water. But Wallace knew both couldn’t be right.

  Garrett Landry had looked suitably unnerved when she left him. She would let him roast for a while and then apply some more pressure.

  Reaching back into her satchel, she pulled out her tablet and plugged in the flash drive with the late senator’s calendar. She began paging through it, starting with the date of his death and then moving backward in time.

  Herbert Marioneaux had been a remarkably busy man. Beginning at 8:00 A.M. and often going until well past 8:00 P.
M. every weekday and some weekends, the days were divided into six-minute increments. Each increment was color-coded and filled in with a name or a task. Sometimes stretches as long as two or three hours were blocked off with notations such as “Floor Action” or “Committee Hearing.”

  As she studied page after page, the dull pain of tedium concentrated itself between her eyes. The idea that every name and event on the calendar would have to be checked out was dispiriting.

  After looking back through several weeks of calendar entries, she set the tablet aside and pulled out the phone records.

  LeAnne had organized the information into groups according to the names of the individuals the senator had called or received a call from. The groups were ordered alphabetically, and the calls were in date and time sequence. Names that had already been checked out were noted.

  Nothing pointed a finger at any of the people the senator had spoken with, so Wallace set aside LeAnne’s summaries and began looking back through the call logs themselves.

  Between the phone logs and the calendar, there seemed to be virtually no unaccounted-for time during the senator’s workdays. If he wasn’t in a meeting with someone, he was on the phone with someone.

  She picked up her tablet again and started looking at the calendar and the phone records side by side. One by one, she compared the dates and times of the calls to the entries on Marioneaux’s calendar, looking for some pattern that might tip the balance toward Eddie, or Glenn, or some third possibility.

  Once she got into the flow of the task, it began to go quickly. By the time she had worked her way back through everything, she had found five points at which the late senator had been more than just busy—he had been something of a magician at multitasking. On those dates and times, and only in those instances, Marioneaux appeared to be simultaneously on a call and in a meeting. And the calls were lengthy, covering virtually the entire time for each of the meetings. All of the calls in question were with a company called the LPGroup. Three of the meetings were with a man named David Jasper and two were with a woman named Mona Navarette.