Airtight

by David Rosenfelt

  I was disturbed by a phone call from Julie near the end of the day. She asked if I had heard from Bryan, and I told her that I had not. “He hasn’t called me, either,” she said. “I’m worried about him.”

  “I’m sure he needs the time to think this out, to digest it. Maybe to decide whether he wants to shoot me or hit me over the head with a baseball bat.”

  “I know it’s got to be incredibly hard on him,” she said. “But I want to talk to him. I feel so terrible about this.”

  “You could call him at work.”

  “I was going to, but they called me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He didn’t show up for work, and didn’t contact anyone there. They were worried about him.”

  The conversation with Julie must have been even more devastating for Bryan than I imagined, and I imagined it as being hugely upsetting. Bryan doesn’t miss a day of work, not ever; he’s the hardest-working person I know. And to just not show up, without notification, is totally and completely out of character.

  I got off the phone and tried him at home. I got the machine, and left a message that I knew what he was going through, and I was sorry and we needed to talk.

  With nothing else to do, I headed down to the Crows Nest for a couple of beers and a burger. It was a comfortable place to be; there were always cops around who I knew and usually liked, though the next time we talked about work there would be the first.

  I got home at a little after nine, and parked in my driveway, which is along the side of the house. I walked around towards the front and as I went up the four steps to the porch I noticed that one of the windows on the left was open.

  It was only open an inch, but hey, I’m a cop, and I notice stuff. What was important was that I hadn’t left it open. I’m an air-conditioning nut; I leave it on all day so the house will be cool when I get home. And this particular window was behind a table, so it’s not even one that I ever open.

  So if I didn’t open it, someone else did. Which meant that someone might have been in my house, and might still be there.

  It was safest to assume the latter, and if that was the case, then they would have heard me pull into the driveway. The smart thing for me to have done would have been to call for backup and go into the house in force.

  I didn’t do that for a couple of reasons. The very stupid one was that it was my house and I could defend it without help from anyone. The less stupid one was that it could be Bryan, who found the doors locked and decided he wanted to wait for me inside. Climbing through a window would have been completely out of character for him, but with what he’d been going through, his behavior might be tending towards the unusual.

  I went around to the back of the house. There was a ladder there; I hadn’t put it away after a visit by the satellite TV guy. I looked in through the window, and didn’t see anyone inside, so I placed the ladder against the house, as gently as I could.

  I climbed up to a window in a guest bedroom, since I knew the lock on it was broken. If you’re going to break into a house, it’s easier if it’s the one you live in, since you know the nuances.

  It was difficult climbing up to the window and then through it with my gun drawn, but the potentially most dangerous part of this operation was when I physically went through the window. The truth was that if there was somebody waiting for me there with a gun, having my own gun drawn would be of little help. Of course, if it was Bryan, having my gun drawn would make me feel like an idiot.

  I got into the room undetected, and made my way out to the hallway, and then to the top of the steps. There was a light on in the den, which was just to the left off the stairs, but I could have left it that way. I’d know soon enough.

  Having the high ground in battle is almost always an advantage, one of the exceptions being when the battlefield is a house in Paterson, New Jersey. If there were people down there, they could have been in a number of places, pointing their weapons at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for my convenient arrival.

  I edged towards the outside wall of the den, then quickly moved in, gun in firing position. There was a man sitting on the couch; he wasn’t Bryan, and he wasn’t anyone I had seen before. The other thing he wasn’t, even though he was staring at my gun, was worried.

  “You noticed the window I left open. Not bad … I was testing you.”

  I kept the gun pointed. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Chris Gallagher. You killed my brother.”

  “The Marine,” I said.

  He nodded. “The Marine.”

  I lowered the gun, but still held it in my hand. Gallagher was far enough away from me that I’d have time to raise it and fire if he made a move. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Think what you want.”

  “Steven never hurt anyone in his life, except himself.”

  “His clothes were hidden in his closet with Judge Brennan’s blood all over them; they matched the DNA. He had a gun and raised it to shoot me when we came in. Maybe you didn’t know your brother as well as you think.”

  “You got a brother Bryan, right?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You know him pretty well?”

  “I do,” I said, not liking where this was going.

  “Heard from him today?”

  Chris Gallagher described the situation calmly, without apparent emotion.

  If that approach was to worry his audience, in this case me, it worked really well. His words reflected the fact that he was in total control, but his manner drove it home even more forcefully.

  “I was here last night, looking for you. Your brother was on the porch; wrong time, wrong place. Not that it matters, but there’s a certain justice to it, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t. Bryan has nothing to do with this.”

  “And my brother had nothing to do with Brennan. But you made sure he’ll never have his day in court, so the world can always think he’s a murderer.”

  “I didn’t want to shoot your brother. I wanted to talk to him, to question him and, if the facts warranted it, to arrest him. He made that impossible, and I’m sorry about that. I was sorry about it before you came here.”

  If I was getting through to him, he was hiding it well. “You’re full of shit.”

  “Where’s Bryan?” I asked.

  “In major trouble.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He’s in an underground room, with no way out. Plenty of food and water, and a seven-day air supply, a little less now. If anything happens to me, that’s how long he’ll live.”

  He was telling me that I couldn’t arrest him if I wanted to, because it would be a death sentence for Bryan. For the time being at least, I couldn’t see any flaws in that logic.

  “Why did you come here yesterday?”

  “Probably to kill you. So in a way he saved your life.”

  “So why don’t you ditch ‘Plan B’ and start over? Let my brother go, and then come after me.”

  He smiled. “You think you can handle me?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “Luke, you have no idea what you’re dealing with. You’re sitting there holding a gun, and I’m unarmed, and if I wanted to kill you right now, you’d be dead in thirty seconds.”

  “Let my brother go and you can prove it.”

  “All right, that’s enough of this bullshit. Your brother has a hell of a lot more chance than my brother had. It’s up to you.”

  “How is it up to me?”

  “You know the investigation you didn’t do before you went in shooting? Do it now. Prove Steven didn’t do it; find the real killer and announce to the world that you were wrong. That you killed an innocent man.”

  “And what if I find out he did do it?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “What if my investigation shows that he did?”

  “Then we’re both short one brother.”

 
; In a way this was a positive development, but a small one at best. While there was no chance that I was going to actually find information to exonerate Steven Gallagher, this at least gave me some time to try to figure out another way.

  “OK, what are the ground rules?” I asked.

  “There aren’t any. Do your job.”

  “What if I have to reach you? Give me your cell number.”

  “I’ll reach you,” he said.

  He was no doubt aware that every cell phone has a built-in GPS signal that can be traced and located. My hope had been that I could find out through the signal where my brother was, when and if Gallagher went there.

  “Can I use other detectives to help in the investigation?” I asked.

  “I don’t care how you do it; just make sure you do it.”

  “This won’t bring your brother back.”

  “Really?” he sneered. “I wasn’t aware of that.” Then, “It’s my fault what happened to my brother. I wasn’t there for him when he needed me. That’s something I have to live with. Make sure you don’t know what it feels like to be responsible for your brother’s death.”

  He started towards the door, and then stopped and turned. “Your brother’s got seven days, so don’t waste any time.”

  I called and made an appointment to see Julie at 10 AM.

  I wanted to break the news to her in her office, where things would seem less personal. I was aware that either way things were going to be intensely personal, but I needed Julie’s professional help if we were going to succeed.

  Julie is an assistant prosecutor for the state of New Jersey. We worked together on a couple of cases a long time ago, but not since we had our sexual indiscretion. I assume she has structured things deliberately to not work on my cases; I’m just not sure why she’s done that, and I haven’t been about to ask.

  I had met Julie while working on a case, and I was the one to introduce her to Bryan. I was in that phase of my life whereby a long relationship lasted three weeks, and in fact I’m still in that phase. Julie wasn’t the three-week type, that was immediately clear, and Bryan was looking for someone to settle down with. So I introduced them, and if there has been a twenty-four-hour period since in which I haven’t regretted doing it, I can’t recall one.

  There was and is something special about Julie. She has the ability to see through me, but in a way that I never seem to mind. I’ve always thought she felt something for me as well, though I can’t pinpoint why I thought that. Our way of dealing with all of this was never, ever to deal with it.

  When I called I spoke to Julie’s assistant, who had no reason to think it was strange that I was setting the meeting. Julie meets with cops all the time. But I knew that when Julie heard that I was coming in, she’d realize it was about Bryan.

  I couldn’t sleep after Chris Gallagher left my house, so I tried to be productive, filling the time by analyzing the options that I had. I was positive that everything he said was true, and that he was fully capable of killing Bryan.

  Goal number one had to be keeping Bryan alive until I could achieve goal number two, which was to free him. I had no idea yet how to get him out, but keeping him alive seemed achievable, as long as I followed Gallagher’s instructions.

  So I would conduct the investigation into Brennan’s death that Gallagher was demanding. There was no doubt about that. The only questions to be resolved would be how I would go about it, specifically who I would recruit and confide in.

  I couldn’t do it alone, and I certainly couldn’t do it in secret. I needed the access to information that my job provided, but people would inevitably become aware of my actions. I just had to make sure that they were people I could trust to exercise discretion. If the particulars of this situation got out, then I would have lost control, and Bryan would have lost a lot more.

  I was going to conduct a serious investigation, though I had no expectation of proving Steven Gallagher innocent. My hope was to find information that proved his guilt so conclusively that even his brother would accept it as the truth. Chris Gallagher seemed capable of anything, and that included rational thought.

  My first stop was to my office to speak to Emmit Jenkins. I needed him to be my right hand, if he was willing, and I was sure he would be.

  I told him the story, and watched him get furious as I told it. I’m not sure what it says about me, but Emmit was far angrier at the situation than I was. Gallagher thought I killed his brother with no justification. If I were in his situation, and I recognized the irony that soon I might be, there would be no place the killer could hide.

  “Give me ten minutes with him,” Emmit said. “He’ll be begging to tell me where your brother is.”

  I have great respect for Emmit’s physical prowess, but I didn’t think there was anyone, anywhere, who could get Chris Gallagher to do much begging.

  Then Emmit asked the key question, or at least the key question of the moment. “Who else are you going to tell?”

  I had my thoughts on the matter, but wanted his view. “What do you think?”

  “We gotta be careful,” he said, already using the pronoun that made us a team. “This gets out, somebody is going to want to arrest this guy for kidnapping.”

  I nodded. “I know. But I need to tell Barone.”

  He frowned his disagreement. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea; the Captain will want to cover his ass.”

  “No doubt. But I need the resources of the department.”

  Emmit left and I went in to see Barone. There were two officers in with him, so I said, “I need to see the Captain alone.”

  They agreeably got up and left, and once they did, Barone said, “‘I need to see the Captain alone’ is not a phrase I like. The next thing I hear after that is usually a problem.”

  “This one’s a beauty,” I said, and proceeded to lay it out for him.

  “Damn,” he said when I was finished. “What are you going to do?” he asked, demonstrating that he and Emmit had little in common when it comes to pronoun usage.

  “I’m going to do what he says, while at the same time trying to find my brother. I don’t see any other way.”

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  “I can’t do it alone, or just with Emmit,” I said. “I need the resources of the department.”

  “I’m listening,” he said. “I’m cringing, but I’m listening.”

  “No one except Emmit, you, and I will know about my brother. Everyone else involved will just think we’re covering our bases on the Brennan murder.”

  He still wasn’t answering, so I said, “It’s just seven days, Captain.”

  Finally he said, “You know the part you said about the three of us knowing the situation with your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Make it the two of you,” he said.

  “Did I say three? I meant two.”

  Barone nodded his approval. “So listen carefully. I am authorizing that you investigate the Brennan murder; I feel it’s important that we dot every ‘i.’ I am unaware of any secondary motives that you and Emmit might have.”

  “You’re a profile in courage,” I said.

  He nodded. “It comes naturally.”

  He was still doing me a big favor, and he and I both knew it. “Thanks, Captain.”

  “Keep me posted,” he said. “Unofficially.”

  Were Richard Carlton to describe the citizens of Brayton in one word, it would be “ungrateful.”

  The Carlton family, through their auto parts manufacturing plant, had been employing almost a third of the town for close to sixty years. Without it, it was fair to say that Brayton would have ceased to exist, at least in its present form, a long time ago.

  Yes, there had been some layoffs in recent years; that’s what struggling businesses do. But for the most part Carlton took care of its employees, and did as much as it could for them.

  Richard Carlton, in his five years since inheriting the leadership role from his fat
her, had continued the tradition. His was an open door, though one had to get through quite a few other doors to reach it. But he was going to do what was best for his company, and that in turn would benefit Brayton.

  A win-win all around.

  But now there was the opportunity for a huge win, a game changer. Carlton had purchased enormous tracts of land from the town of Brayton, for the purpose of someday building housing units. Since the town had not been thriving in recent years, there would have been no one to live in new housing, so it hadn’t yet been built.

  Not long after, it was discovered that the land contained enormous shale deposits. Carlton had contacted Hanson Oil and Gas, a company that had become a leader in natural gas in the US by taking a preeminent position in the fracking industry. It was the wave of the energy future, seen by many as our key to independence from the Middle East.

  Hanson’s chief engineer, Michael Oliver, conducted a study that confirmed the shale was porous enough, plentiful enough, and configured in such a way as to be a prime candidate for fracking. It was one of the largest and most promising finds ever, and Hanson immediately made a preemptive offer of three hundred and fifty million dollars for the land, contingent on legal approvals.

  But outside environmental groups came in and spread fear within the Brayton community of water contamination and air pollution. The Mayor, Edward Holland, took up the fight, and as a lawyer actually handled the lawsuit himself. He chose to file in Federal rather than state court, on the assumption that it would be a more favorable venue for Brayton.

  Not many legal analysts agreed with that decision, and Brayton lost in District Court. They then filed their appeal, and the results would be known soon. Holland had already privately indicated that a loss there would unfortunately be the end, that the town simply did not have the resources to pursue it further.

  So for Carlton it was a waiting game, but he looked at the big picture. And the big picture contained a lot of money.