“Hey, don’t sweat it. It’s a good job, but I’m not a very good campaigner. Good thing I’m usually running unopposed or I’d be a quivering blob of nerves right now. I’d be worse than Trey Kerrigan.”
“I saw him the other day. He didn’t seem too shaken about it.”
Cassie smiled wryly.
“He’s a sly one. He makes like he’s got no care in the world, but he’s got his little supporters out there clearing the way day and night. Trey campaigns hard, like he’s a one-legged man in a three-legged race. Highlander Goldsmith’s a nice guy, but he isn’t gonna know what hit him a week from Tuesday.”
Morgan conjured up an image of his childhood friend, puking his guts out in the locker room before every basketball game, scared to death he’d embarrass himself in front of the hometown crowd. Then he’d go out and sink almost every shot he attempted. He couldn’t miss.
Once, Morgan knew Trey Kerrigan as well as anyone. Now he wasn’t so sure he knew him at all.
“He hasn’t changed much,” Morgan said, leaving it at that.
“Oh, he’s changed a lot,” Cassie said, lowering her voice and glancing out the vault door to see who might be listening. “Politics is like an oven: You don’t come out the same as you went in. Trey’s harder now. It’s like keeping that job is more important than doing it.”
“He seemed fine when I saw him. Cocky as ever.”
“He’s a cool customer, I’ll give him that. But I’m sure Trey’s had his big supporters lobbying with you,” Cassie said. “He calls them his ‘homeboys.’ You probably didn’t know it, but I’m sure they’ve been working on you. They’re slick.”
Morgan shrugged.
“Not really. Other than Trey himself, nobody has said anything.”
Cassie looked surprised.
“No kidding? You mean Jake Switzer and Ham Tasker haven’t darkened your doorstep to ask for your vote and maybe a little campaign contribution? They must be slowing down.”
Morgan, who had been blowing his hot coffee to cool it, held his breath for a long, uncomfortable moment. He hoped he didn’t look as dumbfounded as he was.
“They’re working for Trey?” he asked.
He felt his face turn hot and red. The walls of the vault seemed to close in on him. A nervous spurt of adrenaline coursed through his body, making him feel slightly ill.
“Sure. They run his campaign. Fancy themselves to be real political movers and shakers, those two,” Cassie said. “Whoever they haven’t got in their pockets, they squeeze.”
Then she leaned nearer, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “A couple of stuffed shirts, if you ask me.”
In that claustrophobic moment, a piece of the puzzle fell into place.
Gilmartin’s case was a political liability for Trey Kerrigan, perhaps worse. He’d sent Tasker and Switzer to keep a lid on it, one way or another, and they’d nearly succeeded. His refusal to open forty-eight-year-old investigative records on Aimee Little Spotted Horse’s murder was all too predictable for a small-town sheriff, but the heavy-handed political pressures on Morgan betrayed something darker and deeper.
“Well, enough about politics,” Cassie said. “You probably get plenty of that stuff in your job. Did you find anything interesting in these old card files?”
Morgan shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Must be looking for some really old case. These old index cards only go up to 1962. Ancient history. Everything else has been entered on the computer.”
“Computer?”
“Yeah, you know, one of those machines with a little TV screen and a keyboard?”
Morgan looked sheepish.
“I mean, there are more records? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Cassie put her hands on her shapely hips and fixed him in a chastising glare.
“You asked to see the card files, and here they are. You didn’t ask to see the database. You only got what you asked for, but you didn’t get what you wanted. Follow me.”
She led him to a small desk in a corner of the front office where a sleek new IBM computer sat. She pressed a button and the machine came to life with a colorful whisper.
“This is Alyx. Two-hundred megahertz Pentium processor, thirty-two megs of RAM, a three-point-two gigabyte hard drive. One hundred percent pure techno-beefcake. It does the work of three people, never sleeps and never talks back,” Cassie said proudly. “If it were a man, I’d marry it.”
“And it contains every court file in Perry County since 1962?”
“They’re all cross-indexed by date, criminal, civil, probate, judges’ names, lawyers’ names, defendant, plaintiff, even verdict. You name it. All the basic stuff.”
“Not the bailiff’s favorite ice cream?” Morgan joked.
Cassie rolled her eyes and continued.
“You want to know Perry County’s felony conviction rate? It’s in here. Want to know who the toughest judges are? It’s here. Want to know how many violent crimes we prosecuted in a given period? It’s all right here, and lots more. All the original paperwork is still in hard copy and stored in the vault, but this computer helps us cross-reference and compile statistics. The governor is big on statistics these days. I hate politics.”
A form appeared on the tartan-colored screen.
“Go ahead. Just tell Alyx what you want. And don’t forget to say please.”
Morgan sat down in front of the terminal. He scrolled through the blanks and under “Defendant,” he typed “Pierce.”
“Now click on the search button,” Cassie told him. “Easy as pie, huh?”
A tiny digitized clock ticked off a few seconds, then a couple dozen listings appeared in chronological order on the screen. Morgan scrolled through them for the name “Malachi,” but most were divorces and other civil cases, all unrelated to Malachi Pierce.
Then his eye caught a familiar name.
Not Malachi.
It was Case No. 76-368J.
In the Matter of Hosanna Pierce.
“What’s this?” he asked Cassie, who stood over his shoulder. She leaned closer to the screen to see the case he’d highlighted with the cursor.
“That’s a juvenile case. See the “J” in the number? All I can tell you from this is it’s a juvie case from 1976, and it’s not criminal. Other than that, it’s a sealed record.”
“Sealed?”
“The juvenile cases are all closed. Alyx has the case reference and all the usual index items, but it takes a special password to access family court and juvenile files, so the public can’t stumble into them.”
It didn’t matter. Morgan already knew about this case. Old Bell told him: Years ago, Malachi Pierce had gone to court to commit his retarded daughter to the state hospital. In 1976, Hosanna Pierce would have been nine or ten years old, a hair’s breadth away from spending the rest of her life in a mental institution.
“If I wanted to know who the lawyers were in this particular case, could I get that information?” Morgan asked.
“Not without the secret code,” Cassie replied, leaving no doubt in Morgan’s mind that the password would remain a secret. “Is that the case you were looking for?”
Morgan shook his head.
“No, but I’m not really sure what I was looking for,” he said.
“Something related to that old murder case?”
Rumors flowed through small towns like electricity through a pure copper wire. There was no point in trying to keep secrets, which were bartered, sold and occasionally donated in the scandalous commerce of Winchester, Wyoming.
“No, not related to that. Something else,” Morgan told her. “And if you can keep a secret, I’ll tell you what I’m looking for.”
Cassie smiled. “My job is keeping secrets.”
Speaking softly, Morgan told her about Pierce’s threatening letter, and Hosanna’s frightened outburst when she saw Simeon Fenwick in the cafe. He explained that it caused him to wonder if Malachi Pierce had ever needed a lawyer, and why.
And he told her what Old Bell had said about Hosanna’s brush with oblivion. In the end, he said, he was only worried for his and his wife’s safety.
Cassie listened intently. She seemed troubled by what she heard.
“I don’t recall any cases with Malachi Pierce and, believe me, I’d remember if that scary old man had come through here. To him, we’re the enemy, the government grandmas who’re going to take away his guns. Thank the Lord, he pretty much keeps to himself out there on the ranch. He’s in his own world, you know” — and she circled her finger around her ear.
“What about Fenwick?”
“I don’t know. It’s not likely he got involved if there were real fireworks. He retired shortly after I first got elected, but he was mostly doing civil work, wills and deeds and stuff like that. He begged for those little court appointments that other lawyers hated. The judges were only too happy to oblige. He took on so many guardian cases, they called him ‘Uncle Sim.’ He was a prissy old guy, you know, and I don’t think he had the guts for the criminal cases.”
“Or for Malachi Pierce?”
Cassie shook her head.
“Fenwick and Pierce would definitely be strange bedfellows. I just don’t see it. Two completely different characters.”
“Was Fenwick any good?”
Cassie crossed her arms and leaned against the desk. She chose her words carefully.
“As a lawyer? Let’s just say the paperwork was always perfect. He was precise about it. Nothing out of place. Nothing late. Nothing missing. He was downright anal about his case files. A real pain in the gazoo.”
One of Cassie’s clerks brought a manila folder to her and whispered something Morgan couldn’t hear, then left.
“Sorry. I have to deal with something right now, but it was sure good to see you after so long, Jeff,” she said. “Maybe you and your wife could come over for a barbecue or something. I’d love to meet her.”
“Sure, if you don’t mind being seen with the newspaper editor,” he said, only half joking. “My wife’s a wonderful person, but I’m not the most popular guy in town right now.”
Cassie touched his arm again and winked.
“Some of us think you’re doing okay,” she said. “If Old Bell thinks you’re man enough to take over his paper, then I have nothing but respect for you. He’s a great judge of character, trust me. Just hang in there.”
The rest of the morning rushed by. Morgan laid out three pages and most of the opinion page, leaving a hole for his editorial. His reporters had filed a dozen stories and three takes of short items, obits and weddings.
But advertising had continued to dwindle. They’d sold less than four hundred inches, hardly enough to keep the doors open. Morgan kept the paper at twelve pages, even though the advertising lineage didn’t justify it. He didn’t want to surrender.
He worked through lunch, helping Cal Nussbaum typeset some classified ads and develop some photos from the weekend Little League games. It had been years since he’d souped film, but he got the hang of it after a few late-night practice sessions in the dark. He was spooling 35mm film on a processing reel in the pure blackness of the darkroom when somebody knocked.
“Don’t open it,” he warned.
It was Crystal.
“There’s a call for you,” she said.
“Can you take a message?”
“The lady says it’s urgent.”
“Is it Claire?”
“I don’t know. She’s kind of freaking out.”
Morgan looped the film loosely around the reel and sealed it in the light-tight stainless steel developing canister. To be safe, he stuck it in a cabinet before he turned on the overheard light and opened the darkroom door.
He picked up the phone on his desk. It was the whiskey-voiced clerk at the Teepee Motor Lodge and she was hysterical.
“That old man told me to call you if there was an emergency. Jeezus gawd, jeezus gawd. The maid took up some food and found him layin’ there, all white and cold. Jeezus gawd. I coulda swore he was stone dead, but I wadn’t gonna touch no dead corpse. No sir. I just called the nine-one-one, then I called you. You better come on over here. Jeezus gawd.”
She let loose a bone-rattling cough and hung up.
Morgan sprinted out of the newspaper to his car, which would normally have been parked at the curb out front. He’d walked to work that morning.
He heard a faint siren in the distance. The ambulance was just leaving the hospital, a mile away, on the other end of town. He checked his watch. In less than three minutes, he could be home, if he ran.
He sprinted toward Rockwood Street, five long blocks away. A prickling, nervous sweat trickled down his back as he raced past the downtown storefronts, and he felt curious eyes watching him. The clinging midday heat sucked the breath from his lungs, suffocating him.
The old man can’t die, Morgan thought. Not yet.
As he ran, he heard the siren coming closer, until it careened past him down Main Street. He cut across the bank parking lot and up the alley behind the Post Office, where mail carriers sat on the dock and hooted as he passed.
Hang on, old man.
The alley emptied onto Rockwood just four houses away, he covered the last fifty yards at a dead run. His lungs burned.
Morgan groped for the key he’d hidden under the driver’s seat. He slammed it into the ignition and the Escort wheezed forlornly. He turned it again and again, pumping the accelerator hard, finally pressing it all the way to the floor, but the car wouldn’t start. He cursed and pounded the steering wheel. He smelled gasoline and knew he’d flooded it.
He tried once more, and miraculously, the engine turned over. It belched blue-rimmed black smoke from the exhaust, barely clinging to life.
“C’mon, c’mon. Don’t stop now,” he pleaded with his car.
Morgan jammed the accelerator, jolting the groggy engine awake. It gasped twice, then growled back at him. In a moment, he was hurtling through the only stoplight in town, toward the western edge of Winchester, where Neeley Gilmartin lay dying, maybe already dead, among the flies and trash in his foul trailer.
The ambulance was already there, no siren. Its blue and red lights pulsed in a silent rhythm that always reminded Morgan of death. As a little boy, he remembered what his father said once, when an ambulance passed them on the highway, its emergency lights on, but not its siren: “Must be dead,” he said. Morgan must have reminded himself of that day on a hundred murder scenes in Chicago, bathed in the surreal death beacons from silent ambulances, coroner vans and squad cars: Must be dead. They usually were.
Gilmartin’s trailer door was open. A square-jawed deputy stood outside, sneaking peeks at several paramedics working inside. The motel clerk who called him lurked unsteadily at the edge of the weeds, smoking a cigarette and clasping the front of her shag housecoat to keep from baring her rheumy chest to the world. She looked drunk.
As soon as Morgan approached the trailer door, the deputy stopped him. The name on the brass bar above his pocket was “Bocek.”
“You family?” the deputy asked him.
“No, he doesn’t have any family. But I’m a friend.”
“Then why don’t you just wait over there so the medics can work, okay?”
“Is he alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you ask? If he’s alive, they should know, he’s got lung cancer, probably metastasized, and he doesn’t want to go to a hospital.”
Deputy Bocek hitched up his holster and his tight brown pants, and glared at Morgan.
“This guy have a name?” Bocek asked.
“Gilmartin. Neeley Gilmartin. Now please ask if he’s alive,” Morgan implored him. “It’s important.”
The deputy went inside the trailer. Morgan inched close enough to hear their voices, but not what they were saying.
Don’t die, you son of a bitch. Not now. Hang on.
Deputy Bocek came to the door and motioned Morgan forward, but no farther than t
he front door, which swayed on its slack hinges.
“Your friend ain’t dead, but he’s bad off. Just stand here at the door and tell these guys what you told me,” he said.
Morgan leaned inside. The TV set was on, some afternoon game show. The air conditioner must have finally given out, because the air inside was diseased and hot. The place smelled worse than before, as if death had been there.
Gilmartin lay on the floor. He was naked, his skin a pale, waxy yellow. Three paramedics worked feverishly over him. He was near death, but Morgan could see the skin of his bony chest being sucked in around his ribs and condensation in the oxygen mask. He was struggling for air, but he was breathing.
“Let’s run an IV at a hundred an hour until we get the doc,” one of the paramedics said. He was a clean-cut guy with wire-rimmed glasses and eagles tattooed on his thick, body-builder forearms, a little older than the other two, maybe in his thirties. Clearly, he was calling the shots. “Joey, check the pulse ox.”
Despite the cramped quarters, they worked quickly. One of the younger paramedics unlooped a tube for the IV while the one called Joey clipped a small probe to Gilmartin’s index finger and turned some dials on a small machine in a small, nylon pack. Red LED numbers flickered, sampling the oxygen in Gilmartin’s tissues.
Their boss, positioning the oxygen tank between Gilmartin’s legs, saw Morgan peering through the doorway.
“You know this guy?” he asked. He was emotionless, cold.
“Yes. His name is Neeley Gilmartin. He’s seventy-three. Is he alive?”
Joey interrupted. “Bad news, Greg. Pulse ox is seventy-six and dropping.”
Greg, the older paramedic who was in charge, turned his back to Morgan and muttered something Morgan couldn’t hear. He adjusted a valve on the oxygen tank.
“You family?” Greg asked Morgan without looking at him.
“No. He’s got no family.”
“You know his problem?”
“Lung cancer. It might have spread. I don’t know.”
The Deadline Page 21
