by Ed Gorman
I was within a few feet of the Airstream’s door when I noticed the car oil on the grass. Its shine revealed its freshness. There wasn’t much of it. I bent down and touched a fingertip to it. It was fresh as hell.
When I struck the trailer door with my hand it eased open.
There was a stench which was familiar to me. It was a terrible stench; the worst stench of all.
So when I went in and saw what was on the floor there was no surprise.
My guess was that the man I assumed to be Dave Fletcher had been dead for some time. He had been a short, thin man with a finely boned face. It was already discoloring. The stench made me tear up. I examined him at a glance. He’d been wearing a yellow shirt, so the two bullet wounds in his chest were easy to see.
I got out of there as quickly as I could. I walked ten feet from the Airstream and started taking in deep, clean breaths.
Then it was time to call Showalter on my cell phone.
For the local press, the recent days’ events were definitely better than sex, except maybe for the kind that involves animals. To their satisfaction, a congresswoman had been brought down and now the body of a man had been found in mysterious circumstances.
Showalter dispatched six officers to commit due diligence on the crime scene. He then spent fifteen minutes in the trailer after telling me not to head back to town until he was finished talking to me.
I walked over to the wooded area and used my cell phone to call Cindy Fletcher. When she answered she said hello and then said, ‘Your voice. Oh, God, I’m afraid I know what you’re going to say. Dave’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘I’m afraid he is, Cindy.’
‘Where? How?’
I told her everything I knew.
She surprised me – and probably herself – by staying emotionless. ‘He said they were going to kill him.’
‘He said who was going to kill him?’
‘He didn’t say. He could get pretty dramatic sometimes so I didn’t take him seriously, I guess. That’s why I didn’t tell you. Now I’m sorry I didn’t.’
Then, ‘He could be very trusting sometimes. Like a little kid. He told one of the cops that he’d made that recording. But afterward he realized that maybe this cop could have told someone in Showalter’s little group about it. He could be such a little boy.’
I didn’t try to stop her. She needed to weep and she wept. I just waited her out. She didn’t recover so much as simply wear out.
‘So they found him. That’s what happened. They wanted that recorder. They found him and they killed him. That damned trailer. Neither of us went out there very often. There are snakes and rats from the river on the west side of it and you never knew who might come along at night. Dave always brought a rifle and a couple of handguns but I still didn’t feel safe. I’m not sure he did either.’
I saw Showalter walking in my direction so I said a quick goodbye.
No amenities.
‘So how did you know Dave Fletcher?’ Showalter said.
‘I didn’t know Dave Fletcher.’
Wind soughed in the pines and brought the scent to me as a gift. I needed something to comfort me. The events of the day had sapped my strength and my sense.
‘Just out for a drive and you ended up back here?’
‘I got a phone tip.’ Lies come so easily to me.
‘And, of course, you’re going to tell me who called you.’
‘I wish I could. Anonymous, of course.’
‘They’d call you instead of the police.’
‘I wish they’d called you instead of me. But what could I do?’
‘You could have called me before you came out here.’
‘How did I know it wasn’t a crank call? I’m in the news because of Congresswoman Bradshaw. It could have been one of Dorsey’s people just trying to run me around in circles.’
‘Like you’re trying to run me around in circles right now, huh?’
He had a good scowl. If he’d been an emperor he would have used it when he was thumbs-downing a fighter in the Coliseum. ‘I hope you realize that I don’t believe one fucking word you just said.’
‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘Sure you are.’
That old self-control I usually rely on couldn’t be relied on this time. ‘If you can’t see that fucking rifle in Cory’s trunk was a plant, then I wonder whose side you’re on.’
He took two steps toward me. His face was as red as a drunk’s on his birthday. ‘What the hell are you saying?’
‘I’m saying you owed the congresswoman a phone call before your press conference. I’m saying you shouldn’t have been so quick to rule out a setup. And I’m saying the Dorsey folks are the ones who benefit.’
But then his self-control kicked in.
‘It’s going to be a pleasure nailing your ass to the wall, Conrad.’
I was getting the impression he didn’t care for me all that much. I was also getting the impression – because he refused to even consider that Cory had been framed – that maybe he was involved in the police group himself.
As soon as I got in my car I called Cindy again. We needed to get our lies straight.
Grief had now become dazed withdrawal. She was playing hide-and-seek with herself. I repeated the lies three times then hung up with no reassurance that she would remember a single damned one of them.
TWENTY-SIX
When I got back to my office I learned two things quickly: Cory Tucker had been released on bond and Dorsey was demanding an ‘immediate and thorough investigation’ into whether Jess’s ‘attempted assassination’ was a hoax or not. ‘Hoax’ was a loaded word.
I watched the replay of Dorsey’s rant on my Mac. No TV huckster could have done any better. His last line was, ‘Should she be headed back to Washington or headed to federal prison?’
Her crime wouldn’t have been federal, but it sounded more ominous to slip the ‘federal’ in there.
Abby came in with a Starbucks (latte, I assumed) in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other.
‘You know that governor of ours who should be in prison but isn’t?’
Our esteemed governor – a fine representative of the opposition party – was being investigated for accepting bribes and helping condemn land that he and his close friends wanted to buy cheap as the basis for building an ultra-exclusive ‘village.’
She held the paper out and let it flutter to my desk.
After reading it, I said, ‘It’s got to be fun for him to accuse other people of committing felonies.’
‘He groped a friend of mine when we were in college.’
‘Governor Anal Retentive?’
‘He was dean of students then. After a football game we all ended up in this van going to a dinner at the president’s house. Shelly and I were on the student council so the president asked us to attend. Anyway, the van got overcrowded and Shelly had to sit on his lap. We only had to go about five or six blocks but he managed to cop several cheap feels.’
‘Why didn’t she say something?’
‘She wanted to but he could help her get financial aid for grad school.’
I grabbed my phone on the second ring. ‘You need to get out here.’ It was Ted.
‘Why is that?’
‘My dear wife has written something I think you should read before she presses “Send.”’
‘And what would that be, Ted?’
‘Her resignation. Can you believe it? She wants to resign.’
Katherine opened the door.
‘This is really bad, Dev. She really wants to resign.’
Emerald-green sweater, slimline jeans, Western boots. The attire of the fashionable coed. But a burned-out coed. The face was lined and the eyes dulled with exhaustion.
Nan walked up behind her and put her hands on Katherine’s shoulders. Between Joel and Nan, Katherine did have a pair of caring parents after all.
‘I thought you were going back upstairs for a nap.’
; ‘I’m too worried about Mom,’ Katherine said over her shoulder.
‘Well, you obviously didn’t sleep much last night so you need to at least lie down for a while. You look terrible, honey.’
Katherine put her hand over Nan’s. ‘She’s always flattering me like this, Dev.’
But with little-girl obedience, Katherine said goodbye to me, turned around and walked slowly over to the grand staircase to begin her ascent to her room upstairs.
‘I’ll be so damned glad when this is all over. This whole house has lost its mind. Everybody snapping at each other and Ted calling up people and screaming at them. You sure can’t count on him in a crisis.’ If her own sweater and jeans didn’t make her look like a coed, they certainly helped present her as an appealing middle-aged woman.
‘How serious is Jess about resigning?’
‘Serious, I think. I’ve begged her to stop watching TV and reading the news on her computer but she’s fixated. And none of it’s any good. The names they call her and the things they say about her.’
‘You sound as if you’ve been spending time on your own computer.’
‘I check it out every few hours but I don’t stay on long. I keep hoping to see people in her own party come to her defense. But since none of them are sure if the shooting thing is true or not, they won’t speak up. I think that hurts her more than anything.’
‘I don’t blame her. She has made a lot of supposed friends in Congress.’
‘“Supposed” is right. Well, come on. I may as well take you to her little office. I don’t think you’ve ever seen it, have you?’
‘You’re right, I haven’t. We usually meet in the living room or Ted’s den.’
‘It’s quite the place.’
Three steps into Jess’s office, I realized that Nan had been trying to prepare me for a time machine of Jess’s political career from her days as a college volunteer through her four terms as a state legislator to her two terms as a congresswoman. I’d always known that Jess had the true pol’s lust for being elected. But seeing an office that was a shrine of framed photographs, campaign posters, pennants, bumper stickers, newspaper editorials and so much more, I realized how much she was her career. Before any other role she may have fulfilled, her political role was the defining one.
And the same for Ted. There he was in half the photos. This was what united them. This career that they both fed; this political career that they both spent night and day nurturing and sustaining.
The largest photograph was of the two of them in evening clothes dancing through the night at some Washington ball. They were the center of attention, the floor to themselves as others in evening clothes stood aside watching and applauding them. How dreamlike that moment must have been for them. In this most exalted and important of cities, to be feted this way.
I went to the window and looked out at the rolling landscape of their estate. A man in a white T-shirt, jeans and a straw hat was astride a green John Deere riding mower. But the real show was a hawk soaring above the pine windbreak. For all their hunting ferocity there was a fragility in their flight that made them seem vulnerable. But I had to smile at my naiveté. I doubted that hawks seemed vulnerable in any way to their prey, which included pets as familiar as small dogs and puppies, small cats and kittens, plus rabbits and guinea pigs.
I glanced at the rest of the photographs. Joel standing with a heavyset young man, holding a rake. The man had an Old Testament beard. And there was a lone photo of Katherine when she was probably ten.
Then Jess was there. A Northwestern sweatshirt and slacks. And a lighted cigarette.
‘I see somebody called you.’
‘Do me a favor. Let’s just get rid of this resignation bullshit, all right?’
‘It’s not bullshit to me.’
‘I’m sure you realize that if you resign you’re admitting guilt.’
‘Right now I couldn’t care less. Believe it or not, Dev, I have some dignity left. The things they’re saying not just about me but also Ted—’
She went over and sat down in front of her Mac. The lid was down.
‘The election’s already over anyway. So what’s the point? Why not resign?’
‘Look around, Jess. You’ve built this grotto to you and Ted. This is your life here. Your entire life.’ I wanted to point out that she didn’t even have a photo of her daughter on the walls. ‘So you’re going to walk away from it all because you got set up?’
‘Yes, I got set up and nobody’s done a damned thing about it. Including you.’
‘I’m working on it as hard as I can. There are things I haven’t told you yet.’
‘Unless those things include the name of the person responsible for setting us up, I don’t want to hear them. Poor Ted is half insane.’
He’d cheated on her. He’d stolen her spotlight from time to time. And he’d even given her some of the worst political advice ever uttered by a so-called ‘expert.’ But none of this mattered because they were symbiotic.
‘You may as well go, Dev. I’ve made up my mind.’
‘What’s Ted saying about all this?’
‘He’s like you. He’s begging me to change my mind. He keeps thinking if he reminds me long enough about all the big parties people have in the winter months that I’ll weaken. But I won’t. There’s a time to fight and a time to retreat.’
‘Did you just make that up? He’s worried about the fucking parties?’
‘Wow. The f-word.’
‘Do me one favor then, Jess.’
‘Whenever you ask me that it’s always something I don’t want to do so I don’t know why you even bother asking.’
‘Just give it another forty-eight hours.’
‘No.’
‘This is one of the biggest decisions of your life.’
‘The biggest.’
‘See. You even agree with me. So what the hell difference will it make if you give it forty-eight more hours?’
‘No.’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘That’s too much like a bad movie. “I’m giving you twenty-four hours.”’
‘Jess, c’mon. Get serious here.’
‘I am “serious here,” in case you haven’t figured that out by now.’
‘Twenty-four hours.’
‘I suppose I can do that. But don’t call me unless you have somebody to arrest. And please get out of here now, because you are really pissing me off. You of all people I expect to be my friend and understand why I’ve made this decision.’
I was tempted to touch her in some way. Just a small human sense of contact, of caring. But I knew better.
‘That’s what I’m trying to be, Jess.’ I spoke as quietly as I could. ‘Your friend.’
But then she was crying. And I was leaving.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Just before I slid the card that unlocked the door of my hotel room into the slot I heard a faint sound from inside. Or was it from inside? Though the hotel was new and well constructed, sounds still carried occasionally. Maybe what I heard was from one of the adjoining rooms.
But in case it had come from my room I stopped and put my ear to the door. I heard all those ghost noises from the giant entity that ran the place. Electricity, plumbing, the inner structure itself. Ghost whispers, but audible if you listened for a minute or so.
Ghost whispers but nothing more.
I wished I’d listened longer or listened more competently, because as soon as I stepped inside I faced the same pretty brunette I’d met at Jess’s and who had later followed me. Karen Foster.
She was wearing a fashionable gray business suit with a notched lapel and single button holding it together. The matching pants were flared slightly above gray leather two-inch heels. The small black-framed eyeglasses only enhanced the appeal of her dark eyes.
As a fashion accessory her right hand held a Glock. She kept it pointed directly at my chest. ‘Why don’t you close the door and come in?’
‘Very nice. I as
sume you have a search warrant.’
‘No, but I can get one in a few minutes if I need one.’
‘Retroactive search warrants. That’s quite a concept.’
She stood close to the end table next to the near end of the couch and carefully placed the Glock on the table.
‘Why don’t you sit down so we can talk?’
What the hell. Between her looks and her manner I was willing to be charmed.
I sat on the couch and she sat in the chair at the small table next to the window.
‘I don’t think Cory Tucker had anything to do with the so-called shooting the other night.’
‘Good for the first part. He didn’t. Not so good for the second part. The “so-called” shooting. We don’t know that yet.’
‘I’m on your side, so you don’t have to keep up the public-relations thing. The shooting was a fake and you know it.’
‘I’m willing to consider it, I guess.’
She nodded. ‘I want to help you find out who set Cory Tucker up.’
‘Why would you want to help me?’
‘I’ll tell you some other time.’
‘Why not now?’
She eased back in her chair and smiled at me. She wasn’t going to explain.
‘Maybe Grimes can help both of us.’
‘How do you know about Grimes?’
‘You led me to him.’
‘I knew you followed me to the Airstream but I didn’t realize you were following me before that.’
‘I changed cars a lot. And if I say so myself, I’m a very good tail.’ Then, ‘I got interested in you the night of the fake shooting. I knew right away that the whole thing was staged – I think a lot of people did. I assumed that since you were the congresswoman’s campaign manager you were in on it. I even thought that maybe you were behind it all. The sympathy vote. Poor little congresswoman and some big, bad assassin. So I started following you. I know about Grimes and his granddaughter, Cindy. I know that you’ve spent some time with them, that is. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Grimes’s house bugged, so I have to ask you what all three of you talked about.’
