A Blood Thing

by James Hankins

  God, his mechanical voice was grating. And who the hell did he think he was, mentioning their mother? Henry couldn’t wait to find this guy and jam the voice-changer so far down his throat, he’d have no choice but to speak through it for the rest of his life.

  “And I should mention,” the caller added, “if you fail to answer my calls, or if I even suspect that you shared this little connection of ours with the authorities—brother Henry excluded, of course—then it’s over. Your chance to help Tyler will be gone, and I’ll give the cops everything they need to lock him up for the rest of his life.”

  “I don’t take threats well,” Andrew said.

  “Don’t sell yourself short. I have the feeling you’re going to be great at it.”

  “Just tell me what you want, damn it.”

  The caller hesitated, then said. “I honestly don’t think you’re ready to hear it . . . but okay.” He paused again, solely for dramatic effect, it seemed. “There’s a prisoner in Southern State Correctional Facility named Gabriel Torrance. I want him released. And I don’t just want his sentence commuted. I don’t want him to have to stay in a halfway house or shelter when he gets out. I want him pardoned, free and clear. And I want it done in a week.”

  Henry wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it hadn’t been that.

  Andrew sat back in his chair. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Finally, he said, “I . . . couldn’t do that.”

  “As governor, you have the power, don’t you?”

  “Technically, but . . . I mean, only in the most extraordinary circumstances . . .” Henry wasn’t used to seeing his older brother struggle for words. “I just . . . I couldn’t do that.”

  “No?”

  “No. And even if I wanted to . . . a week? That’s way too fast. There’s just no way . . .” He trailed off.

  Something like a robotic sigh came from the speakerphone. “That’s really unfortunate. But you might change your mind if you have enough incentive. For now, I’ll give you a little time to think about it. I’ll call you soon. Until I do, think about your brother going down for first-degree murder and spending the rest of his days in prison.”

  The line went dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The caller placed the burner phone and voice changer on his desk, where he kept them when he didn’t need them: in the far right corner, with the phone on the left and the voice changer beside it on the right, the two devices almost but not quite touching. Perfect.

  The call to Governor Kane had gone as expected. The man wasn’t close to being ready to agree to release Gabriel Torrance. Not even a little. But that would change before long. First, Tyler Kane had to stew in jail for a while. And the family had to worry. And put pressure on Governor Andy. And the governor would have to start feeling guilty, believing he could do something to end his poor brain-damaged brother’s torment.

  Yes, all was going according to plan so far.

  His black three-ring binder, which he had come to think of as his bible, lay on the desk in front of him, open to Part II, Section B, Subsection 1, “First Governor Call.” In a plastic sleeve was a piece of paper with his numbered talking points for the conversation. He had hit on every one. Perfect.

  He was closing the binder when, without thinking about it, he flipped back to Part I, Section C, Subsection 3, “The First Death.” The first page was a highly detailed plan for Sally Graham’s murder. The second page was a list of the daily schedules of people relevant to the plan, along with descriptions of the vehicles they drove, license plate numbers where applicable, and other potentially important details. He was looking at page three now, though, the pencil sketch he had made before killing Sally. He had been honest when he’d told Andrew and Henry Kane that he hadn’t enjoyed killing her, but it had been necessary. Sometimes innocents were hurt during his jobs. It was unavoidable. He took solace, though—a little pride, even—in the fact that he had carried out the murder perfectly. Every single scripted moment executed with efficiency and precision. He closed the thick binder, leaned back in his chair, and allowed his eyes to drift up to the wall above his desk. His canvas. His art. His masterpiece.

  Photographs taped to the wall. And news stories. And copies of pages from his binder. And a detailed timeline spanning several sheets of paper taped end to end, events written on it in black pen, some that had already occurred, others planned but yet to take place. Thin yarn of various colors—a veritable rainbow—attached to thumbtacks, stretching from one item to the next . . . from a photograph to an event on the timeline, from a news story to a sketch he had made. Dozens of threads, dozens of connections, forming a web across a mosaic that covered an entire wall, the visual representation of a plan he had crafted over the course of more than a year. A plan he had finally put into motion the other day. A plan that was going very well so far.

  In fact, it was going perfectly.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Andrew stared at the phone in his hand. Henry had stopped recording on his own phone.

  “I can’t do what he wants,” Andrew said.

  “He’s right, though, isn’t he?” Henry asked. “You do have the power?”

  He did. As state governors went, Vermont’s was one of the least powerful in the nation. There had been studies conducted comparing the power of the country’s governors, using various criteria, including veto and appointment power and budgeting authority, that ranked Vermont’s chief executive dead last on the power chart, tied with Rhode Island’s governor. Nonetheless, as governor, Andrew was the state’s highest-ranked politician—as well as the commander-in-chief of its armed forces, its chief legislator, and the voice of the people—and when it came to the power to grant pardons or clemency, his authority actually exceeded that of many of his more powerful counterparts from other states. While other governors, for example, might be prohibited from issuing a pardon except upon the recommendation of a board specifically tasked with evaluating pardon requests, Vermont’s statutes granted its governor the exclusive authority to do so, though he could seek input from the parole board if he so chose. In fact, in some states, applications for clemency were required to be submitted to such boards, which might then forward recommendations to their governors, but in Vermont, applications must be sent directly to the governor’s office.

  “Yes, I have the power,” Andrew said. “His deadline of a week would be tough, though. I would have to pull a lot of strings to make that happen. These things take months. That’s irrelevant, though. It doesn’t matter that I technically have the power. I just can’t do it. Longstanding tradition in this office has been to grant clemency only for the most compelling reasons.”

  “I’d say Tyler being framed for murder is pretty compelling.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Full pardons are a rare thing in Vermont. Less so in some states, but here, people tend to notice.”

  “It just means his sentence would be over, right?”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. Commutation is a reduction in penalty. It says the person whose sentence was commuted has been punished enough. A full pardon is more like I’d be saying that he probably didn’t deserve punishment in the first place. His offense is essentially forgiven.”

  “I know the difference,” Henry said. “I just meant that, practically speaking, the effect would be that his time in prison would be finished.”

  “What I’m trying to say is that pardons are a bigger deal in Vermont than in most other states. This wouldn’t go unnoticed. But that’s beside the point. As governor, I absolutely can’t let myself be blackmailed. So it’s out of the question. Which means that maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time to give this to the authorities.”

  “Wrong,” Henry replied.

  “What?”

  “That’s the wrong move.”

  “Five minutes ago, you said it was the right move.”

  “Everything changed when that phone rang,” Henry said. “We have to find this g
uy. Without getting the authorities involved.”

  “You’re the authorities, remember?”

  “I mean officially. Trust me, we want to keep this to ourselves. And we need to find this guy, fast. You still can’t remember what he looked like?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” Henry said as he lifted a knapsack from the floor and placed it on the desk. “We’ll do it another way.” He opened the bag and removed a small case, which Andrew recognized as a fingerprint kit. Andrew didn’t need his brother to tell him that Henry had to take elimination prints. Andrew and the man who had given him the phone were the only two people they were certain had touched it, so once Andrew’s prints were identified, at least some of the remaining ones should belong to the suspect.

  Henry donned latex gloves and took Andrew’s prints one by one, then methodically lifted several clean fingerprints from the phone.

  “With luck,” Henry said, “these won’t belong to just you and some store clerk who sold our guy the burner phone he’s no doubt using. You’re positive he wasn’t wearing gloves?”

  “I’m positive. Our hands came together, like we were shaking, when he handed the phone to me. I’d have remembered gloves.”

  “Okay.” Henry filed away all the prints he’d taken into a compartment of the print kit before stowing it away. “Now, in case we crap out on the prints, which wouldn’t surprise me, we need to try to identify the guy by his appearance.”

  Andrew knew he had made it clear that he couldn’t remember what the man looked like, so Henry was obviously going somewhere else with this. “Video?” he asked.

  “If there is any. And photos.”

  Andrew nodded. It was a possibility. “I’ll ask Jim Garbose whether we shot any official video or pictures of the ribbon cutting.”

  “Which one is Garbose again?”

  “Press secretary.”

  “Oh, right. We’ll take anything they have.”

  “What if they don’t have anything?”

  “Hopefully, they do. Obviously, we want to keep this quiet, just you and me for now. But if your people don’t have anything, maybe Garbose knows which local news outlets had cameras there. Did you see any?”

  Andrew hesitated. “Henry . . . are we sure we want to keep this just between us? Maybe we should give some more thought to turning this phone in. The caller just confessed to murder. If we get the state police on it, the Major Crime Unit, they can help. They can do most of—”

  Henry shook his head. “Major Crime is already on it. And they think Tyler’s guilty, remember?”

  “But what’s wrong with telling them about this guy? We could probably use their help. Their resources.”

  “First, I have access to a lot of those resources anyway. And second, I see a few things wrong with telling them. For example, what if the guy never calls back? We look like liars. And worse, what if he finds out we involved the authorities, and he never calls back specifically because we did that? For all we know, he’s a cop. Or his brother’s a cop. Don’t forget what he said: if he thinks we’ve gone to the police, he’ll make it worse for Tyler. Which I have to believe he can, like I also have to believe he can actually help Tyler if he wants to. But there’s something else wrong with going official with this . . .”

  Henry trailed off, forcing Andrew to say, “What?”

  “You won’t want to hear this, but I have to say it: as soon as we do that, we close the door on an important option.”

  “Which is?”

  “Doing what the son of a bitch wants, if it comes to that. Giving him what he’s asking for to get Tyler out of this.”

  “Henry, I told you. I can’t—”

  “I know, I know. But hear me out. If we work this ourselves, maybe we catch this guy, and everyone lives happily ever after except for the scumbag behind this . . . and, I guess, Sally Graham. That’s the best result at this point. But if, God forbid, it turns out that we can’t find him, you can still give him what he wants and save Tyler. Is that the optimal result? Hell, no. But at least that option is available to us as long as we don’t turn this phone in. But if we get all official with this, that road is closed forever. You’d never be able to do a quid pro quo and release a prisoner to get Tyler out of jail with people watching. It would be—”

  “An abuse of power,” Andrew finished for him.

  Henry hesitated a moment. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “You can’t deny it, though.”

  Henry said nothing. Because Andrew was right. There was no denying that that was precisely what it would be. Andrew Kane, who had run a clean campaign against a dirty opponent and pulled off an upset that landed him in the governor’s office, would be doing the very kind of thing for which he had criticized his predecessor, the kind of thing he had railed against since his first day at Harvard Law School, in fact.

  How could he do it? How could he barter with a murderer for his brother’s freedom? How could he use the power of his office to set a convicted criminal free in exchange for services rendered? While at the same time looking the other way as the true murderer disappeared?

  He had promised Vermonters an end to government corruption, for at least as long as he was in a position to do anything about it. He had promised to scrub away the slime left by years of former Governor John Barker’s administration. The graft and backroom bargains, the greasing of skids, the end runs, the government contracts bought and sold, the scratching one another on the back in the shadows—nothing ever proven, but something about which there was little doubt. Such was John Barker’s legacy. It was how he’d earned the nickname “Jackpot” Barker, which he always hated, but which never had stopped him from acting like a slot machine. Deposit money, grasp his hand firmly and shake, and . . . Jackpot! A building contract or exclusive manufacturing deal drops out. You can’t win if you don’t play . . . or pay. And plenty of shady people and companies that were long on money and short on scruples did both. And though Barker’s malfeasance eventually became the state’s worst-kept secret, he had somehow managed to hide most of his illicit gains behind falsified records and lying coconspirators. He’d made great investments, he’d said. He was untouchable. And so when he left office, instead of taking up residence in an eight-by-eight-foot cell, he’d moved into a 200-year-old farmhouse in Old Bennington, which he’d expanded, renovated, and upgraded at a cost of $4 million—some of which, it was rumored, he’d actually paid for himself.

  In truth, that didn’t bother Andrew much. Putting Barker in jail hadn’t been his focus. He’d been concerned with ending the corruption and polishing the image of the governor’s office, restoring the faith the people had in its government before Jackpot Barker took charge of it. So he had run against Barker, of whom Vermonters had grown tired, and he’d won. He’d earned the trust of the people, a trust he had solemnly promised to hold in clean hands.

  And now there he was, debating whether to breach that trust.

  “And what about you?” he asked Henry. “You’re a sworn officer of the law. In Internal Affairs, no less. You’re the one who investigates cops who do the kind of thing we’re talking about here, concealing evidence of a crime . . . a murder, for God’s sake. You’re not troubled by this?”

  Henry shrugged. “There was probably a time I might have felt more bothered about it. Times change, though, you know? Over the years, you see things on the job, do things, and well . . . let’s just say I could probably live with it. But listen, Andy, you don’t have to make any decisions right now. We don’t even know if he’s going to call back. But if he does, I think we should have our options open.”

  Andrew almost protested, but something made him remain silent. Henry didn’t seem nearly as troubled as Andrew about sitting on this evidence. Was Henry simply a worse public servant, or was he a better brother?

  “I’m not going to release a prisoner before he serves his time or makes parole,” Andrew said. “I’m not thrilled about keeping this evidence to ourselves, but allowi
ng myself to be blackmailed into granting clemency for personal reasons? That’s another thing altogether. I just can’t do it.”

  Henry nodded as if he understood, though Andrew suspected he was doing it for show. “I hear you. Let’s hope it doesn’t come anywhere close to that. You just talk to your press person and see if we got this guy on film or tape or anything, okay?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Run the prints. See if we get lucky. Also, I’m gonna find out who the hell Gabriel Torrance is and hopefully figure out why someone would want him out of jail badly enough to do all of this. Sound good? We on the same page?”

  Andrew looked out the window into the backyard of the rented house. A brown and white bird danced along a nearby tree limb.

  “Andrew? Do we agree to keep this to ourselves for now, keep our options open for a while?”

  Andrew nodded and, for the first time since having taken the oath of office more than three years ago, felt less than clean.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Your brother’s hiding something,” Rachel Addison said to Molly. “You know that, right?”

  Molly noticed the lawyer’s perfectly manicured nails, the shade of polish an exact match for the central color in the stylish silk scarf around her neck. The scarf, which might have been Hermès—Molly was never sure about things like that—was the perfect accoutrement to Addison’s rich satin blouse. It was evident where the woman spent some of the money she’d earned through her considerable rates. Molly had the money to dress like that, too. She simply didn’t have the desire. “I can’t imagine what Tyler would be hiding,” she said, “if he is.”

  Addison sipped her coffee and caught the eye of the waitress across the room. She tapped the rim of her cup, and the waitress nodded and headed toward the kitchen.