by David Wind
Blair drove the Ford to Oak Ridge Avenue, and to the old brick high school. He parked in front and went up the main walk.
When he reached the school’s office, he walked to the woman sitting at the front desk. She was in her forties with pale blond hair just going gray, brown inquisitive eyes that he could tell had seen a lot, and a face both young and old at the same time.
“May I help you?”
Blair offered his press card. “Joel Blair with the Washington Courier. I’m in town doing a story, and I hoped I might get some background on one of your former students.”
The woman’s eyes flicked from the card to his face. She seemed momentarily flustered. “Didn’t you write that story about Michael Landry?”
“Yes,” Blair said, masking his surprise. Two years before, he’d done an investigative series about three senators. Two were from Virginia and one from Tennessee. The three men had been selling government education grants to the highest bidders. The wire services picked up the story, which created an uproar in the senators’ home states.
“That was a great story. It got him out of Washington, and we now have someone there helping us, instead of trying to get rich. I’m Dorothy Crenshaw,” she added, extending her hand.
Blair shook the woman’s hand. Her grip was firm, her skin cool and dry. “Thank you,” Blair said, self-consciously.
“But why are you here?” Dorothy Crenshaw asked.
“I’m trying to do some background on a story. I can’t discuss it, but I do need some information about a former student.”
“How long ago?” she asked, smiling.
“Well, he’d be thirty-nine now, so I’d say he graduated about twenty-one or twenty-two years ago.”
“A little before my time. I moved here ten years ago. But I can look it up for you.”
She went across the office, and sat down before a computer terminal. “We got this system last year. All our records from the last thirty years have been put into the computer. What’s the student’s name?”
“Smirley. James Smirley. No middle initial.”
He watched Dorothy enter the name, and saw the cursor start to blink. Two and a half minutes later she turned back to him.
“Sorry, but his name isn’t here. He didn’t attend our school, not in the last thirty or so years.”
“Are you certain?” Blair asked.
Giving Blair a single sharp nod, Dorothy Crenshaw said, “Every student who attended this school, since nineteen fifty-nine, has had his records transferred into the computer. Those records have been cross-referenced with the state’s main computer. If we had been missing James Smirley’s records, the state would have alerted us.”
“I didn’t mean to infer—” Dorothy Crenshaw cut him off with a nervous laugh.
“No, no. I’m sorry, I just get a little edgy when my work is put in question. I’m the one who was in charge of transcribing the records. Why don’t I check with the state’s computer and see if this Smirley went to another school.”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned back to the computer. Eleven minutes later, Dorothy Crenshaw looked at Blair with a puzzled frown.
“Are you sure he went to school in Tennessee?”
Blair felt a familiar ball of excitement growing in the pit of his stomach as adrenaline pumped through him. Something was happening: A lead was being born. “Yes.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Could his school records have been overlooked by the people putting the information into the computer?”
“I doubt it,” Dorothy said with a shake of her head. “The information was entered manually. Every school used a special scanner. We didn’t type in the records. And there was a back-up program for verification of all records by cross-referencing them with the state’s Department of Education’s records. No, Mr. Blair, I don’t think James Smirley was a student anywhere in Tennessee.”
“What about private or parochial schools? There was a lot of that in the late sixties and early seventies to avoid busing and forced integration,” he asked, grasping for straws.
She shook her head. “His records would still have to be registered with the state.”
Blair looked up at the ceiling, his excitement swelling. He was surprised no one had followed this story this far. Perhaps, finally, he was getting somewhere.
“Thank you,” Blair said to the woman. “Thank you, very much.”
<><><>
A half hour after Blair left the high school, he was at another pay phone. This one was on Cheltenham’s main street, a half mile from Cheltenham Industrial Park.
He called his editor and, was put on hold. As he waited for Ed Kline to get back on the line, Blair glanced around.
He was in the parking lot of a small diner with two Chevrolets, a Ford, and two Dodge trucks in the lot. The smells swirling around him were a combination of cooking and garbage. His head began to buzz. The throbbing intensified. He knew he’d have to get some rest soon. Four hours on a plane wasn’t enough sleep after what had happened in Wyoming.
The knowledge of being onto something important was all that kept him going. He sensed, much in the same way and without really knowing how, that James Smirley was much more important than anyone had realized. He might even be the key to unlock the mystery behind Robert Mathews.
For the twentieth time since leaving the school’s office, he wondered why there wasn’t a record of the man, in the high school’s system. Something about Smirley and the accident was not holding up to deeper inspection.
He turned toward the main highway. He saw a car heading toward him and toward the diner. The glass was tinted; the driver’s face was a silhouette behind the glass. Blair’s hand tightened on the receiver as he flashed back to Wyoming and the pickup truck. His knuckles turned white against the black of the receiver.
“Turn,” he whispered to the car. His stomach twisted and the instant before he was about to jump from the booth, the car turned and pulled into a parking space in front of the diner.
Beads of sweat broke out across Blair’s forehead. His breathing deepened, and his head swam mercilessly. Then he heard the phone click and Edward Kline’s voice booming at him.
“What the hell is wrong now?”
“I may have something,” Blair said in a level voice that surprised him.
“May? Jesus Christ! For your information, the election is two weeks away. Fourteen days, Joel! You’ve been farting around with this story for almost six weeks, and putting me off every day. I want something concrete this week—a story that justifies the time and money we’ve spent. And I want it ready for Sunday’s paper!”
“Ed, I’m trying. I found something today. The truck driver who killed Mathews’ wife and son—James Smirley. There’s something not right about him.”
“That sounds earth shattering. What ‘something’?”
“It’s too early to say. But there’s a whole lot not ringing true about this Smirley. He’s supposed to be a hometown boy, but I can’t find a trace of him anywhere other than an autopsy report.”
Blair paused to look around again. The man who’d been driving the tinted-window car had entered the diner without looking at Blair.
“I’m going to check out the company he worked for. I’m going to look into where he lived and interview his friends. This may be what we’ve been looking for. I should know by tonight. And, Ed, I’m coming back tomorrow to go over everything with you.”
“Which had better be something worthwhile,” Kline warned.
“It will be. And, Ed, I think—”Blair cut himself off before he said anything about the accident. He didn’t want to sound paranoid, but he also needed to convey his fears.
“Think what?” Kline asked impatiently.
“I think I’m being followed. I’m not sure...but I think so, and—”
“You know my rules,” Kline cut in, his voice suddenly urgent. “If you think you may be in danger, you get out. Personal safety comes before the story�
�”
“Or the story doesn’t come,” Blair finished for him. “I know. It’s just a feeling, Ed,” Blair lied. “But I don’t know why I would be followed. Robert Mathews is a candidate, not some Mafioso don.”
“Then, be careful. And, Joel, I want to see you as soon as you get in tomorrow. I have to go,” Kline added, hanging up.
“Yeah,” Blair muttered as he replaced the receiver and returned to his car. He hadn’t eaten since the early morning, and looked at the diner. The thought of food made his stomach churn. He got in the car.
He turned on the ignition, but did not leave the parking lot. Instead, he took out his recorder and dictated his notes from his two earlier stops. When he finished, and summed up his feelings on James Smirley not being what he appeared to be, he shut the recorder off and drove toward Cheltenham Industrial Park.
Unlike the industrial parks Blair was accustomed to, where the word industrial was a euphemism for expensive ornamentation and facades for offices and small manufacturing, this park was a utilitarian triple row of brown and rust-painted cinder block warehouses domed with corrugated steel roofs. The parking lot was blacktop without any fancy little grass islands to separate the lot from the buildings.
He drove down the first row, looking for the Fullerton Trucking Company. He didn’t find the name of the company, but found the address. The building sign stated it was Storage Facility Number 8: Tennessee Long Hauler Moving Company, Incorporated.
Blair parked and went inside.
The outer office was small, perhaps ten by fifteen. Two desks took up half the space. A row of putty-colored metal filing cabinets ran from corner to corner behind the desks. The floor was cement, the walls white-painted plaster board.
A middle-aged woman, her hair upswept and mostly gray, sat at one desk: A man in his sixties, of ruddy complexion and bald, except for a fringe, sat at the other desk.
“Kin’ I help you?” the man asked in a voice thick with Tennessee mountain twang.
“I hope so,” Blair said. “I’m looking for the Fullerton Trucking Company. This is the address I had.”
Scratching his head indifferently, the man said, “Nope, this is Tennessee Long Hauler. We’ve been here since the place was built. You must have the wrong address.”
“The address is right,” Blair said, taking out his copy of the Wyoming accident report.
He looked it over and started toward the man, when the woman said, “Billy, wasn’t that the name of the company that rented from us a few years back?”
The man looked from the woman to Blair, recognition dawning in his eyes. “Yup. Almost forgot about that. Yeah, now that you mention it, it was Fullerton Trucking.”
“Then, they were here?” Blair persisted.
“In name only,” the man called Billy said. “Guy came in here, ‘bout four—five years ago. Said he was with a company from back east goin’ national. He wanted to use us as a mail drop and storage facility for his customers.”
The man stood and went to one of the file cabinets. He opened the third drawer down and rummaged around until he found what he wanted.
“Yeah,” he said, looking back at the reporter. “They used us for almost eight months—only as a mail drop. Never did store any goods with us. Then they just got out, but paid up for the full year.”
“Is there a main company address?” Blair asked.
“Sure is,” Billy replied as he leafed through a few pages. “Here ‘tis, seven hundred-twelve East Ninety-sixth Street, New Yawk City.”
Blair took out his pen, but did not write anything. He’d grown up in New York. There was no seven hundred block on East Ninty-sixth Street, just the East River. “Did you know any of the people who worked for this company?”
Billy shook his head. “Can’t say as I did. Only met the man who rented the space once. Name was Rasmussen,” he added, looking at the file. “After he signed the papers, the checks came in once a month. That’s it,” Billy said as he put the papers back into the cabinet.
“One of their drivers was a local man, name of James Smirley. Know him?”
Billy frowned. “No, can’t say as I ever heared of him. And I thought I pretty well knew all the local drivers seein’ as how they’ve all worked for me at one time or another.”
Blair turned to the woman. “Have you ever heard of Mr. Smirley.”
The woman shook her head thoughtfully. “No, I sure haven’t.”
Blair thanked them and left. When he settled behind the steering wheel, he took out his recorder and began to speak.
“I’ve have the lead I’ve been looking for. The follow-up on the Mathews family accident is a dead end, because there are no players left, or so it’s meant to seem. But I’ve come up with one name tying the events together. John Rasmussen.
“Rasmussen was Smirley’s lawyer, and he was also the man who represented Fullerton Trucking. Rasmussen is tied into whoever James Smirley was and the company that Smirley worked for. Also, the company address in Cheltenham was only a mail drop. The main address, Seven-One-Two East Ninety-Sixth Street, in New York, is an address that doesn’t exist. The Upper East Side of Manhattan only goes up to the five hundred numbers.
“I... I don’t have a good feeling about this. I’m going to where Smirley used to live and see if I can find a neighbor who knew him. If I can’t, then I’ll have to go to New York, and track down Rasmussen.”
He backed out, and holding the recorder in his left hand, he drove out of the industrial park. Five minutes later, he was on the highway leading to Fernbush Valley, Smirley’s former home.
“Another thing,” he said to the recorder, knowing he was going to be redundant with information he’d already recorded. “The town clerk never met Smirley. Smirley died out of town, and all the clerk had was the autopsy report. To top it off, there are no school records for Smirley. None! The manager of the warehouse, who says he knows all the local drivers, never heard of Smirley. Why not? Who the hell was James Smirley?
“Was the death of Mathews’ wife and son something that had been planned out? If so, by whom? Jesus, if that’s the case, there’s something terribly wrong with the campaign. And Mathews? He wouldn’t be a part of it, would he?”
Blair pictured Mathews, and wondered if the man was capable of having his family killed for some ulterior motive. “Tell Leslie to run a full background check on Lynn Mathews. Maybe there’s something in her past.”
Blair’s headache worsened; throbbing wildly behind his eyes. He shut off the recorder and concentrated on driving.
He couldn’t get his mind off what he had just learned. He knew he was at a crossroads in his investigation. He was at two places at once: a dead end and a new beginning. Where was that new beginning going to lead him, and would he get to the end of it before the election?
He glanced at the dashboard. It was two-thirty. If he was lucky, he could make it to Fernbush Valley and then on to Chattanooga, where he could catch a late flight back to Washington. He needed to sit with Ed Kline and Leslie Brannigan. Between them, they might be able to come up with his next move.
He pressed on the accelerator. The car hit sixty.
He picked up the recorder and turned it on, but said nothing as he tried to compose his next thought.
The road ahead was hilly, but nowhere near the mountain-like terrain he’d driven through in Wyoming.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. There were no cars closer than a quarter mile. He tried to relax, to ease the pounding of his head.
He topped one hill and started down.
He felt the wheel pull to the left at the same instant that he heard the sound of the blowout.
“Shit,” he muttered.
The car veered to the left. Blair went with it, fighting the heavy pull of the steering wheel in order to keep the car on the road. Just when he straightened the car, there was another loud explosion, and the car went out of control again.
“Jesus Christ!” Blair shouted, his mind jumping back to Wyoming.
Time expanded. Blair, caught in a whirlpool, was helpless to do anything as the car did a three-sixty. A second later, the tires hit the edge of the road and the car rolled.
His seat belt held him as the car tumbled madly, but on the second roll, the roof gave in. Something hard rammed into his head.
It seemed to last forever, the rolling and crashing, until finally the car came to a sudden sideways stop against the bole of an old oak.
Blair tried to move his hands, but they were trapped beneath him. A sharp, hard object was sticking into his side. In a strange fog, he realized it was Mathews’ chess piece.
He opened his eyes but the blood washing down from his head blinded him.
He lay trapped for an eternity, unable to move or see. He passed out, and came to again. He didn’t know how long he’d been out.
Then he heard footsteps.
“Thank God,” he mumbled.
“You alive?” called a voice somewhere near his ear.
Blair tried to speak, but could not. He managed a strangled grunt.
The disembodied voice came closer. “Hold on.”
The footsteps came closer. He felt a hand wipe across his eyes. He could see, a little. Everything was blurry. He swallowed and tried to focus.
The car was leaning sideways and he was pressed against the door. He tried to speak. This time he succeeded. “Help me, please. I can’t...I can’t move.”
“Sure will,” the man said. He leaned in, grasping Blair at the chin and behind the head. Then, with one quick motion, he snapped Blair’s neck.
Chapter Six
Langley Virginia and Washington, DC
Tuesday
The bathroom door closed, Chapin breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time in the thirty-six hours since he’d made his insane run to the Finnish border, he could see the end in sight.
He went to the sink, turned on the cold water, and splashed his face. With water dripping freely back into the sink, Chapin looked in the mirror.
