Fate of the Union

by Max Allan Collins

  “Right,” he said. “I’m a hero.”

  Her head tilted, her smile taking its own sideways tilt. “That’s how some people see you.”

  “How about you, honey?”

  The automatic expression of affection embarrassed her, and she looked away. “I don’t think I believe in heroes, anymore.”

  “We have that in common.”

  A gloved hand came from a pocket and rested on his sleeve. “But I believe in you, Joe. Always have, always will.”

  He grinned at her. “If you’re going to play my heartstrings, maybe I should unzip the parka.”

  She laughed a little. Maybe he didn’t entirely suck at “funny” after all.

  He said, “Of course I’ll go see Beth. Of course I’ll talk to her. But how will she feel when she hears that Chris called me, and I failed him?”

  Melanie waved that off. “You didn’t fail him. She’ll know that.”

  She kissed him on the cheek.

  Even in the chill, he felt the old heat.

  “Do you have Beth’s number?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Give me your phone and I’ll put it in.”

  He did and she did.

  Then she was turning and walking away, footsteps crisp in the snow. He caught up and walked her to her car. They didn’t speak until he was holding the door open for her.

  “I’ll call you with a report,” he said.

  That small white smile again. “I’m not a client, Joe. But I would appreciate that.”

  She drove away, giving him a tiny wave, and he watched until she was out of sight. Then he climbed behind the wheel of his Prius and got the motor and heat going. He withdrew his cell from a parka pocket.

  First he tried Beth Bryson and got voice mail. He left a fairly lengthy message, hoping she was screening calls, but she never picked up. Since she wanted to talk to him, that meant she was off dealing with matters related to her husband’s demise—cops, funeral home, obit.

  So he called Carl Bishop, the veteran DC Homicide detective who had also worked on the Supreme Court task force last year, and who’d been a friend well before that. The beefy bald cop would likely be in the know on the Bryson investigation.

  One homicide bureau covered the entire DC area now. Over the years, two facts had emerged: criminals didn’t care about jurisdictional lines, and budgets grew ever tighter.

  Bishop was ahead of him. “Callin’ about Chris, aren’t you?” This was in lieu of a greeting.

  “You got it,” Reeder said. “What do we know so far?”

  “Is that the editorial ‘we,’ or the what-do-I-know-so-I-can-tell-you ‘we.’”

  “Dealer’s choice.”

  There was a shrug in Bishop’s voice. “Not my case, Peep, but from what I’m hearing? Looks like a pretty straight-up suicide.”

  “His wife doesn’t think he would kill himself.”

  “No wife wants to think she missed the signs.”

  “Bish . . . she wants me to look into it.”

  “You like wasting your time, son? Go for it.”

  “Maybe I will. I could start with Chris leaving me a message on my cell the night he died.”

  Reeder could almost hear the switch click as Bishop turned total cop.

  “Jesus, Peep, what did Chris say?”

  “That it was a matter of life and death. And he strongly implied he could use my help, and right now. Which obviously I didn’t provide.”

  Reeder told him of his attempt to call back.

  Bishop said, “You’re saying he was murdered.”

  “How the hell do I know? I haven’t talked to the guy in over a year. I can tell you that he didn’t sound suicidal.”

  “How did he sound?”

  “Uneasy. The kind of uneasy that coming from a seasoned pro like Chris means scared shitless.”

  Silence.

  Then: “So, then, Peep . . . you plan to make this an ABC Security issue?”

  “I’m going to talk that over with Beth Bryson, after I hear why she believes Chris was murdered. Whose case is it, Bish?”

  “Graveyard-shift detective named Pete Woods. You know him?”

  “No.”

  “He’s a pup, barely paper-trained,” Bishop said. “But he has the makings of a good detective. If this isn’t a suicide, he’ll listen to you if you find something. I mean, hell, who wouldn’t be impressed when the great Joe Reeder expresses an interest?”

  “Screw you, buddy . . . and thanks for the info. You wouldn’t have any idea where Beth Bryson is about now?”

  “Woods went out to pick her up. He was taking her to the morgue for the official ID. Been gone about an hour. My guess, if you hustle, you can catch them there.”

  Great, track down the widow at the morgue. Still, it might be better than meeting her at home, surrounded by memories.

  The morgue and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner were located in what had once been a cutting-edge facility, the Consolidated Forensics Building on E Street SW. Now, nearly twenty years after its opening, the glass, concrete, and steel shell of its once-modern self had a worn, dirty look.

  Inside, the building had held up better, though its along-the-wall lobby seats were worn, with cushions flattened by countless behinds. Antiseptic scent hung in the air in this hospital whose refrigerated patients were on trays and in drawers downstairs.

  But Reeder didn’t make a trip to the basement, nor did he check for Beth at the medical examiner’s office. Instead, he treated his ass to one of those flat-cushioned lobby chairs. He had barely settled in when Beth emerged from the elevator, with Chris Jr. supporting her as she made it slowly across the lobby. No sign of their cop escort.

  The son had his father’s sandy hair, blue eyes, and solid build on a shortish frame. Thirty or so, an insurance salesman by profession, he wore a gray suit with a light-blue shirt and a striped tie.

  Short, blonde Beth wore black slacks and a black jacket over a black silk blouse—not necessarily in mourning, as she preferred black and navy shades, perhaps because she was just slightly on the heavy side. Her face was heart-shaped with a pug nose and Kewpie-doll lips overwhelmed by big light-blue eyes. Her chin rose as she saw Reeder approaching, then she stepped forward and fell into his arms.

  As they hugged, he said, “I’m sorry, Beth. So very sorry.”

  “Thank you, Peep,” she said, stepping back.

  He shook hands with Christopher, who gave him a solemn nod.

  Reeder said to Beth, “Where’s Detective Woods?”

  “Still with the coroner. Nice enough young man. He’ll be driving us home. We just wanted to . . . get out of there.”

  “I understand. While you wait, could we talk for a moment?”

  “Please,” she said, some eagerness in it.

  He ushered her to the terrible chairs and he sat on one side of her with her son on the other. Christopher sat forward, keeping an eye on his mother.

  Looking from one to the other, Reeder said, “When I say I’m sorry, that’s not just condolences.”

  And he told them about the call he’d received from Chris, and apologized for not following it up better.

  “No apology necessary,” she said, eyes bright but shimmering. “What you say confirms my suspicions. It really does.”

  “If you want my help,” Reeder said, “you have it.”

  She swallowed and reached out to clutch his hand. “You knew Chris, Peep. He didn’t kill himself. He would never kill himself.”

  “Right now the cops seem to think he did. But I’ll talk to them. The phone message should change things.”

  “It has to. Peep, we had such a good marriage. Never even a speed bump. He treated me like I was still the slim little girl he met in college. Just a week ago or so, we booked a second-honeymoon trip to Europe. Why would Chris do such a thing, if he was in the kind of bad place where he might not be alive in three months to take it?”

  Reeder knew that people could crash faster
than that, but he didn’t think that was the case here, and kept it to himself.

  “Chris said it was a matter of life and death,” Reeder said. “What was he mixed up in, Beth?”

  “I don’t know, Peep.” She looked to her son, who shook his head, then back to Reeder. “Chris didn’t talk much about work—I don’t have to tell you about the security business.”

  He gave her a smile. “Confidentiality on one hand, boredom on the other. Missed meals and late nights.”

  She managed a small smile in return, then shrugged. “Everything seemed fine until a few days ago.”

  “What happened then?”

  Those big blue eyes were really quite lovely. “Nothing specific. Chris just seemed . . . preoccupied. I’d ask him something and he didn’t seem to hear me until I repeated it. Just very . . . distracted. Worried, but not in a depressed way, that’s not it! Anyway, on Sunday, I asked him what was wrong, pressed him a little, and he said something odd.”

  “What?”

  “That he shouldn’t have looked into that . . . sink.’”

  “Sink? Like a bathroom sink? Are we talking plumbing here?”

  “No sink problems at home or at the office either, Peep.” She frowned in thought. “Could it be . . . a name?”

  “Maybe.”

  Her chin crinkled. “Now I’m so mad at myself.”

  “Why would you be?”

  “I mean, why didn’t I ask him? Why didn’t I ask what he was talking about? But I just . . . wanted to respect his space. His privacy. Now I wonder if he was trying to protect me.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Monday. He said he had to do something out of town Monday night, and should be back by yesterday.”

  “Where out of town?”

  “No idea.”

  “Did you hear from him?”

  She shook her head. “Not once. Which is kind of unusual. He almost always called, nightly, from his hotel room, but . . . I wasn’t alarmed or anything. I wish I had been. You don’t think I missed something, Peep, do you? That maybe he was depressed?”

  “I don’t. But if I dig into this for you, you have to be prepared—you might not like what I find.”

  She looked to her son and they exchanged brave smiles. Then to Reeder she said, “We’ll just have to take that chance, won’t we? But I’m confident it won’t be a reason for suicide. That just wasn’t Chris.”

  “I agree.”

  He didn’t share with her a major reason why he felt that way—a cop uses his gun to kill himself. And for Chris to hang himself like that, to choose to die in such an excruciating, non-immediate, self-punishing way? No damn chance.

  But telling Beth that would be less than comforting.

  “So you’ll do it?” she asked, eyes wide, the eagerness shimmering in their teary setting, glancing from Reeder to her son and back again.

  The dead man’s son spoke for the first time. “Then you will look into it, Mr. Reeder?”

  “I already am,” he told them.

  He gave Beth a kiss on the cheek, shook hands with Christopher again, and slipped out. He wasn’t ready to talk to the detective on the case just yet.

  “Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy. Deceit is a poison in its veins.”

  Edward “Ted” Kennedy, fourth-longest-serving United States Senator, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1962–2009.

  Section S, Site 45-B, Arlington National Cemetery.

  THREE

  FBI Special Agent Patti Rogers hadn’t been in the Verdict Chophouse since task force days. Not that she’d spent nearly a year consciously avoiding the place—it was well out of her normal civil-servant price range—but this was where Joe Reeder suggested they meet tonight.

  He had even gone so far as to say, “My turn to pick up the check,” which it wasn’t, but she knew he wanted her to feel comfortable.

  Now, sitting at a table in the bar, not far from where Associate Justice Venter had died, she felt woefully underdressed in her navy business suit, white silk blouse, and sensible shoes. She felt like a Goodwill shopper who had wandered into a Brooks Brothers world, especially compared to the living wax museum around her of heavy hitters from political and financial arenas.

  Though Joe had ultimately taken the lead in the Supreme Court investigation, he had gone out of his way to give her equal credit at its successful conclusion. That meant a nice promotion for her to head up the new Special Situations Task Force. Now if the hottest young investigator in the Bureau could just locate that MIA personal life of hers . . .

  “I’m Joe,” said a resonant male voice above her. “I’ll be your server this evening.”

  She looked up into Reeder’s unreadable brown eyes and that slight smile in which she’d finally learned to locate warmth.

  “Won the age discrimination lawsuit,” she asked with a smirk, “did you, Joe?”

  And to her it was always “Joe”—she’d learned that the “Peep” nickname was one colleagues had foisted on Reeder, and that he’d never really liked it.

  “It was this,” he said, “or greeter at Walmart.”

  He sat down across from her. His suit was well tailored and his tie probably two hundred bucks. But she knew he was a sweatshirt and jeans guy at heart.

  “A past murder scene,” she said, “is your idea of memories, memories? There are cheaper ways to reminisce.”

  His smile broadened. “I’m not a government worker anymore, remember? I’m a high-priced consultant. Let me show you how much an average citizen like me appreciates you hardworking G-gals and guys.”

  “I smell an ulterior motive,” she said.

  “Well, you’ve got a cop’s nose. Or maybe it’s my Clive Christian Number One.”

  “Is that what you’re wearing?”

  “Hell no. Aqua Velva. Don’t laugh. It’s a step up from Old Spice. Listen, Patti. Thanks for this.”

  She toasted him with her empty martini glass. “Thank you. It’s overdue. Been almost a month.”

  A real waiter arrived and raised an eyebrow at Reeder by way of a question.

  “Arnold Palmer for me,” Reeder said, “and . . . another martini for the lady?”

  She nodded, thinking how twentieth century her former partner always sounded, and the waiter left.

  “Rough day at the office?” he asked, knowing she rarely had a first cocktail, let alone a second.

  She shrugged. “Uneasy the head that wears the crown.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” he said.

  These dinner meetings, not really dates, occurred every couple of weeks. The two had an easy chemistry developed in a case that had finally gone somewhere very dark. At first, they had met to talk about that, their shared trauma so to speak, and their dinner chats had evolved into a casual frankness. Joe Reeder seemed to her much less the mystery man now and more a good friend.

  “But you’re okay?” he asked, with understated but genuine concern.

  In the low-key lighting of the bar, the planes of his rugged face had an undeniable attractiveness, emphasized by the whiteness of his hair, including those eyebrows, against a tanned complexion left over from a Florida trip.

  The fresh martini came, she sipped it, the waiter disappeared, and she said to Reeder, “I’m going to ask you an embarrassing question.”

  “Do my best not to wet myself.”

  “Joe—in all this time . . . I’m just wondering . . . why is it you’ve never, you know . . .”

  “Hit on you?”

  She nodded.

  He chuckled and a wave of embarrassment washed over her.

  “You can ask that with a straight face?” he said. “I’m something like fifteen years older than you, easy.”

  “Like that has ever stopped any man from hitting on a woman! Particularly with your kind of sugar daddy potential.”

  A grin flashed. “I like that. Sugar daddy potential. But what’s the use, kid? I mean, after all, you’re gay.”

  Red rushed to her cheeks. “Wha
t do you mean? I . . . I’ve had boyfriends.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s say you’re bi. An old goat like me has two sexes to compete with? No thank you. Even if you are cute as lace pants.”

  She laughed. “Maybe that should offend me.”

  “No it shouldn’t. Potential sugar daddies get to say politically inexcusable things to nice-looking women in bars. Anyway, you should be flattered—I was quoting Raymond Chandler.”

  “No you weren’t.”

  He sipped his Arnold Palmer. “I certainly was.”

  “You were quoting Philip Marlowe, and that’s a completely different thing.”

  The white eyebrows went up. “I stand corrected. And impressed by your investigator’s eye for accuracy.”

  The waiter returned and took their order.

  “Okay,” she said. “So much for repartee. Why are we here? I mean, we’ve established we’re not going to be an item.”

  His face turned serious—not grave, not somber. But decidedly serious. He tilted his head as if he were looking over the tops of glasses he wasn’t wearing. “I need to ask a favor.”

  “The steak that’s on its way to me,” she said, with a touch of lightness, “will buy you a pretty good favor. Not to invoke unpleasant memories, Joe—but shoot.”

  “Not so fast, kid. Even for filet béarnaise, this might not be worth the risk.”

  She leaned forward and almost whispered. “You saved my life, Joe. Gay, straight, bisexual, it’s a life I don’t mind living. What do you need?”

  His shrug was barely perceptible. “I’m looking into a suicide.”

  She arched a brow. “The president of ABC Security is looking into—”

  “Supposed suicide of a friend,” he said. “Retired Secret Service agent. Worked with him back in the day.”

  “‘Supposed suicide’ says you think it’s murder.”

  “I do. And his wife thinks the same. I’d like to say the man saved my life . . .”

  As he had saved hers.

  “. . . but that’s not the case. He wasn’t best man at my wedding. He was no Gabe Sloan. Just a guy I occasionally worked with. But, Patti—he was one of us. He deserves better.”

  She set her martini to one side. “Spell it out.”

  He did.

  Then she said, “And the cops are buying this? They think a guy with a Glock in a shoulder holster chose to hang himself? Ridiculous.”