Elimination

by Ed Gorman

  ‘So you didn’t have any idea where he was going?’

  ‘No. Like I said, he just seemed confused.’ Then, ‘Sorry about the bar back there. Most of the guys are pretty decent most of the time – when strangers come in, I mean. The ones who gave you shit were in Showalter’s little group. They don’t like strangers. Hell, they don’t even like the rest of us that much. They hang out together. Terrible way to run a police force, if you ask me.’

  ‘Dave Fletcher’s in the group, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah. But lately he’s been talking to me a lot more about the old days, when we hung out in high school and stuff. There was a while there when he acted like he didn’t want anything to do with me. The others are still like that. Like they have their own little police force.’

  ‘You ever think of quitting?’

  ‘The wife just had baby number three. We’re kind of tied down right now. The only other thing I might consider is working at the casino being a dealer or something. They make pretty good money for the area.’ He seemed amused now. ‘Of course, the whole place is for shit. This is like some little redneck town where I grew up in Arkansas. That’s why I was comfortable here at first. But no more. The wife had two years of college and she thinks this is strictly Hicksville.’

  This wasn’t getting me the kind of information I needed.

  ‘Any idea where Dave might go?’

  ‘I guess he’s not at home, huh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Figures.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘The wife and Cindy are friends. Cindy won’t come right out and say it, but Molly says she gets the idea that they’ve been having some pretty bad marriage problems. Cindy hates his little group.’ Then, ‘If he still has that old trailer of his, you might try there.’

  ‘He has a trailer?’

  ‘Yeah. He has an uncle who owns some property out in the country. Maybe ten acres is all. There’s this old trailer on it. An old silver one. We always used that as a hangout in high school. Take girls out there and drink beer and get laid if we got lucky. Damned thing is falling apart by now, I’m sure, but knowing Dave he probably hasn’t given up on it.’

  ‘Could you give me directions?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. He made them as simple as possible. Then he said, ‘Sorry again about all the hassle in the bar.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘give that bartender my best.’

  TWENTY

  Somebody was following me.

  Dark green van of relatively recent vintage.

  I spotted it when the traffic thinned on four different occasions during my trek into the country. The first two times he was three cars behind me. The third time he was two cars behind me. The fourth time he was four cars behind me.

  But he was cleverer than I thought. The closer I got to my destination the more often he disappeared. Maybe he was from the cop bar and had followed me from there. Or maybe because I’d asked about Dave Fletcher he knew where I’d look. I mean, it was obvious I was going into the country, and if he knew Dave he knew about Dave’s trailer, and if he knew about Dave’s trailer, he’d know by now where I was going. He’d just hang back and then show up when he chose.

  To reach Dave Fletcher’s trailer you followed a narrow, deeply rutted dirt road that paralleled a long stretch of woods. The farmland had been posted but it was doubtful his uncle was sitting around with his sawed-off shotgun waiting for trespassers.

  It was another autumn night with a full moon that mourned us all, but in an oddly elegant way, like a lovely but sad song. Just inside the gate a carefully arranged line of fiercely orange pumpkins sat by an old faded pickup truck with a MONDALE FOR PRESIDENT sticker on the rear bumper. All we needed was a scarecrow.

  What confronted me was little more than a trail. If you drove faster than ten miles per hour your car turned into a carnival ride. You could crack your skull on the roof.

  About a quarter mile past this in a shallow valley a forlorn mutt of impressive size crouched next to a large boulder. He chose to run away when he saw me. Maybe twenty yards from him stood one of those venerable aluminum Airstream trailers that might well date back six or seven decades. The damned things lasted.

  Just as I was leaving my car and making my way to the Airstream I heard a motor come to a stop on the road behind me. There was a windbreak about a city block from the gate making it difficult to see the road.

  I always packed a utility flashlight in any vehicle I was driving. I wished I’d brought a more powerful one for tonight. I swung the light back and forth over the brown dead grass that had been used as a dumping ground for everything from beer cans to a white pair of women’s panties.

  Another noise from somewhere on the road jostled me. I gaped behind to see a sedan of some kind driving faster than it should have eastward.

  I’d gotten spooked because I was afraid I’d find Dave in the trailer. I’d been around my share of dead people before. It’s never exactly your preferred source of entertainment but you become accustomed to the look and various shapes and stenches of corpses.

  No, my worry was that if I found him I’d have to call Cindy and tell her. And that I wasn’t up to.

  Before going into the Airstream I took a paranoid look in all directions. There was a farmhouse but it was a good quarter mile away. There was a silo and another farmhouse in the opposite direction at about the same distance. Behind the Airstream was a line of pines and the sound of the river. Then I spent a few minutes studying the road.

  There was wind and a hint of cold rain and somewhere in the gathering clouds was the sound of a passenger jet.

  Isolation.

  Or maybe not.

  He could be anywhere, the driver of the van.

  He could have field glasses on me right now. Or, if he was familiar with the property, he could have swung wide and hidden himself in the pines behind the Airstream.

  The Glock was stuffed into my belt. But not even the Glock comforted me when I realized that the trailer wasn’t locked. Not a good sign. There was a small window on the right side of the door. I went up to it and shone my light inside.

  My first impression was that the small interior had been tossed. Somebody had been looking frantically for something. But as I followed the beam I realized that, no, this was just the way some men lived. No mom, no wifey around, what the hell.

  I saw a crusted pizza box with a sock resting on it. A men’s magazine open to a page of a young woman pleasuring herself with a vibrator. A tiny table overflowing with beer cans and bottles. A rusty basin on another tiny table with dirty scabbed dishes mounted high in it. Clothes strewn everywhere. More beer cans and bottles forming minefields for anybody moving around in the dark, especially if they were drunk. Sections of newspaper had been flung across a ripped mini-couch and there were numerous sacks from Hardee’s, McDonald’s, Burger King and others.

  Paradise.

  I probably wouldn’t have to call Cindy tonight unless it was to tell her that her husband was on track to be in the Slob Hall of Fame, but she probably already knew that.

  I went inside, still wondering why Dave would have left the trailer unlocked.

  No need to mention that the place stank.

  No need to mention that I had to be careful not to lodge my foot on a beer bottle and go sailing away.

  No need to mention that in this diminutive garbage can there was no body. My flashlight check through the window had pretty much guaranteed me of that.

  The most important thing I hadn’t seen through the window was a stack of reprinted articles on the floor that mostly concerned overthrowing the government. Several of them were illustrated with photographs of various kinds of automated weaponry.

  But … nothing.

  I looked for evidence that he’d been here recently but I didn’t find it. All the dead cigarette butts told me that he was a heavy smoker but not even the smoke smelled fresh.

  A wasted trip.

  Fatigue set in, as if a switc
h had been flipped.

  I went outside, greeting the night air and the mournful moon.

  I started walking back to my car and, as I did so, I saw somebody just clear the sizable boulder and start running away in the direction of the road.

  She was definitely fast. She.

  I knew I couldn’t catch her but I started running anyway. And there, in the moonlight, she made the mistake of looking over her shoulder.

  Black jeans, black crew-neck sweater.

  Running.

  In that moment when she turned so I could glimpse her face, I saw who she was. Showalter’s eye candy. Karen Foster.

  Not long after I heard the van engine start and she was gone.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I had breakfast in my office, my usual bagel with cream cheese and black coffee.

  I’d gotten there early so I could spend an hour catching up on my shop’s other campaigns. No surprises, which was good news for some and bad news for others. Nationally, my party was looking bad in four key states. There was a danger we could lose the Senate.

  I tried not to think about that particular piece of bad news. But that was just a prelude. The real bad news came when I stumbled across a bulletin on the local newspaper’s website. Police Chief Aaron Showalter will hold a televised press conference at 10.30 this morning.

  Abby also got in early, as usual. She said, ‘I can see by your frown that you’ve heard what Showalter’s up to.’

  ‘We need to stay calm. I have cyanide capsules for both of us if he turns on us.’

  ‘Well, just give me mine now.’

  I had one large bite of my bagel left. She picked it up and ate it. ‘My buddy at Channel 3 says two different reporters want to pick up on the “staged” thing but that the news director won’t let them until there’s some kind of proof.’

  I then told her about Cindy Fletcher and Grimes.

  ‘Line two, Dev. It’s Ted Bradshaw and he sounds upset.’

  ‘Gosh,’ I said to Abby. ‘Ted Bradshaw upset? Life is just full of surprises.’

  He bellered into the phone, ‘Have you heard about this fucking press conference?’

  The blue suit looked new, the hair had been cut and the body language was somewhat more studied and dramatic. TV can control you or you can control it. Somewhere along the line Showalter had learned that immortal truth.

  He stood in front of a podium covered with media microphones. The setting was the large marble central floor of the county courthouse. Then the press conference started.

  Showalter: ‘I apologize for not holding this press conference sooner, but as you can imagine, the task force has been busy. We worked till nearly one o’clock this morning.’

  Reporter One: ‘The big question we all want to ask is why you think the assassin’s – or would-be assassin’s – bullets went so wild? He wasn’t that far away, and from the ballistics report the task force put out, he used a powerful rifle. Do you think he just got scared?’

  Showalter: ‘We can’t know why they went wild. There’s certainly the possibility that at the last minute he got spooked by what he was going to do. There’s also the possibility that he was an amateur and that he had a lot of anger but not a lot of skill.’

  Reporter Two: ‘How about the possibility that he just wanted to scare her?’

  Showalter: ‘That’s certainly a possibility, too.’

  Reporter Three: ‘How about the possibility that it was staged by somebody on Congresswoman Bradshaw’s staff to win sympathy for her?’

  For the first time, Showalter showed discomfort. He paused at least three or four seconds before he spoke.

  Showalter: ‘At nine-fifteen this morning, after we received an anonymous tip, Detective Michaels and Detective Donlon obtained a search warrant from Judge Sandra Windom to search the premises and the automobile of Cortland Thomas Tucker. Because he lives with his parents we made a point of securing their permission as well. Mr Tucker is a volunteer driver for the Bradshaw campaign.’

  Reporter Four: ‘Have they questioned him yet?’

  Abby and I were alone in my office watching on my computer. From the reception area I heard two or three people talking back loudly, angrily to the screen they were watching. No way was Cory Tucker guilty of anything. One of the women sounded as if she was about to start crying.

  The only thing Abby said was, ‘I don’t believe any of this.’

  I nodded.

  Showalter: ‘Mr Tucker is being questioned right now. We will likely release the statements this afternoon.’

  Reporter Five: ‘Was there any physical evidence found?’

  Showalter: ‘All I can say is that we feel something important was found in the trunk of Mr Tucker’s car. We haven’t had time to assess it at any length. Most likely we’ll address an entire range of questions in our written statements this afternoon.’

  Reporter Six: ‘Have you contacted anybody in the Bradshaw campaign?’

  Showalter: ‘No.’

  Reporter Seven: ‘So Tucker has not admitted to anything?’

  Showalter smiled. ‘Maybe you could call the police station and ask for interrogation room three. That’s where they’re questioning Mr Tucker right now. A detective will answer. You can ask him.’

  The press loved the humor.

  The phone rang. I didn’t need to use my legendary psychic powers to know who’d be calling me. Jess or Ted. I was hoping Jess.

  ‘Hi, Dev. Please tell me you don’t believe Cory had anything to do with this.’

  ‘He didn’t, Jess. Somebody set him up.’

  ‘That happens in real life, not just on TV?’

  ‘It happens a lot.’

  ‘Now if I can just stop my heart from racing at three thousand miles an hour.’

  ‘Showalter didn’t give you any kind of warning?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘I’m turning the campaign over to Abby. I want to work on this myself.’

  ‘I want to call Cory’s parents and tell them that he’ll have the best lawyers and the best detectives working to exonerate him.’

  ‘Let me call Mike Edelstein in Chicago. This’ll be so high profile he’ll be out here in a few hours.’

  ‘All right. That’s what I’ll tell Cory’s folks.’ Then, ‘Could Dorsey be behind this, Dev? I hate to think that. That’s the first thing we all thought of here. Ted and me, I mean.’

  ‘I hate to think so, too.’

  ‘The hate mail we get – it could be any of them.’

  ‘You’re sure right about that.’

  ‘Well, I’d better go. Please have Abby call me right away. Do you think we should keep to our schedule today? I’m supposed to visit three different places.’

  ‘It’s your call, Jess. The press’ll be all over you. It could get ugly.’

  ‘But you’d like me to go anyway, wouldn’t you, Dev?’

  ‘I’m not the one who has to face a press that’ll already be convinced that Cory’s guilty and that you and I and Ted were behind the whole thing.’

  ‘It’s so infuriating.’

  ‘That’s why I want to get working on it. I’ll have Abby call you.’

  ‘You’re aware that I’m going to keep all our appearances today, aren’t you?’

  ‘There was never any question in my mind, Jess.’

  The gentle laugh contrasted with the harsh facts facing us. ‘Thank you for saying that, Dev. Thank you very much.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Over the years I’d had to bail three or four of my politicians out of jail – and during my army days I’d interrogated more than a few prisoners in civil jails – but I’d never before had to seek to see somebody being held on a half-million- dollar bond.

  We were three hours out from Showalter’s press conference but, as I climbed the police station’s front steps, his words still played in my mind.

  The female officer at the reception desk, once I’d given her my name and asked to see Cory, said, ‘I don’t think that’s possible –
you’re not his lawyer.’

  ‘He works for me.’ A lie, but what the hell. God had personally given me a daily allotment of one hundred and twenty-three lies. I was, after all, in politics.

  She might not be pounding a beat but she was all cop. She fixed me with a pirate’s cynical eye and said, ‘He worked for you?’

  ‘Yes. He was my driver. I’m with the Bradshaw campaign.’

  ‘I see. But that still doesn’t make any difference. He’s been charged.’

  ‘Right now we’re waiting for his lawyer to get here from Chicago.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a local lawyer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Huh,’ she said. But it wasn’t a good ‘huh.’ It was, in fact, a very bad ‘huh.’ Bringing in a lawyer from Chicago. He’s so guilty one of the local lawyers could never do the job. And this guy, this Conrad here, looks like he’s from Chicago now that I think about it.

  ‘You’ll need to speak with Lieutenant Cummins.’

  ‘Chief Showalter knows who I am. How about I talk to him?’

  ‘He’s in a meeting.’

  Cummins had to have played basketball in middle school and high school. He was a minimum of six foot five and just the right kind of gangly. Even if he’d tripped all over himself and never managed to get the ball in that nasty little hoop, he was so stereotypically a starting center the coach had to play him, though the bald pate and the fringe of white hair would have kept him on the bench these days.

  Cummins was no help, either. ‘You need to be his lawyer.’

  ‘His lawyer is en route from Chicago.’

  ‘Well, I guess the Bradshaws have got the money.’

  ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

  I’d irritated him. ‘It’s supposed to mean that the Bradshaws have the kind of money that can bring in Chicago lawyers. I’m sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities.’

  The woman at the desk snorted.

  ‘His folks have already been here,’ Cummins said. ‘They were very nice people. They spent forty-five minutes with him and then left. The lawyer they mentioned was Kostik, from right here. Guess there’s been a change of plans, huh?’