Gates of Power

by Peter O'Mahoney

  When Casey got back to the studio, the anchor confronted her; verbal sparks flew, but then the anchor made a big mistake: she took a swing at Casey—it was a very bad move indeed, given that Casey happened to be a former amateur boxer of some repute. A quick sidestep to evade the blow and a lightning fast counter to the gut saw her attacker drop quicker than the Dow Jones during a market crash.

  It didn’t matter that the anchor swung first, security marched Casey from the premises, and her media career was over.

  I had first met Casey through her investigative journalism when she approached me for advice on bugging devices. We just clicked. I liked her no-nonsense way of dealing with things, and that she didn’t take herself too seriously. After she was fired, she was on the lookout for work. I happened to need an assistant, and the rest is history.

  Casey stepped into the cool, dark recesses of the Angry Friar a little after noon, squinting after the blinding midday light outside. The city was warming up, summer was upon us and my favorite subterranean bar was the perfect place to rendezvous away from the heat.

  I spotted her before she did me. I normally propped up the bar but was eating today, so had taken a booth. God knows how many years had passed since smoking was prohibited, but somehow the upholstery still smelled of tobacco. And the décor hadn’t changed since long before that. The place was more shabby than chic, but the food was good, at least by my standards, which generally meant it was meat based and plentiful.

  She spotted me and headed over, a large file under one arm.

  “There you go, Valentine,” she announced, dropping the file on the table and sliding into the seat opposite. “Urgh!” she exclaimed, recoiling in disgust on spotting my lunch. “You eat that garbage?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe you could try having some greenery once in a while, a vegetable wouldn’t kill you.”

  “Last time I checked a potato was a vegetable.”

  “Those are French fries.”

  “Your point being?”

  She shook her head.

  “If you ever accepted my invitation, you’d know what a good home cooked meal was.”

  I smiled. She had a point.

  “So, what have you got for me?” I asked.

  She opened the file.

  “Everything you ever wanted to know on Alfie Rose. Other than whether or not he did it, of course.”

  “You haven’t included that? Come on, what am I paying you for?”

  She laughed, “Generally, to do the things you’re incapable of, Valentine, which, let’s be honest, is a big list.”

  “Yep, got no argument with that one,” I replied.

  “Did you hear Alfie’s cars got vandalized?” she asked, getting down to business.

  “Yeah, he called me after it happened. Sounds more panicked by the day. One was spray painted: ‘Murderer gonna die,’ in big red letters. What is it with these people? I get it that Brian Gates was popular, but some of his fans are just nuts.”

  “Gates was a key figure in the culture wars, speaking out against new wave feminism, against using gender neutral pronouns, you know, that sort of thing, which got him a big following among the ‘alt-right.’ And among them are some serious loons—boys that are disillusioned with the world, and want to go back to the 50s way of living, where they could do with women whatever they wanted.”

  “And now these loons are holding Gates up as some sort of martyr.”

  “Which is exactly what they were looking for.” Casey shook her head. “A popular idol to back their cause. I imagine that he’s going to be one of these people that become even more popular after their death, and I have a feeling that this is going to turn from a snowball into an avalanche. These people now have a voice.”

  “Which means we’re gonna have to work fast on this one. Trial date isn’t the issue, it’s life expectancy. When this much testosterone is involved, men can do stupid things. Trust me, I know. And at this rate, Rose will be lucky to see the end of the month. He’s got a target on his back, and these boys all own guns.”

  Steve, the gruff bartender, waiter and occasional bouncer all rolled into one, with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp, came over.

  “What can I get you, ma’am?”

  “Got any organic quinoa salads on the menu?”

  He looked at her for a moment, the cogs in his head slowly turning, then looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and went back to the bar. Casey wasn’t much of a pub grub sort of gal.

  “So, who have we got in the frame?” asked Casey, barely missing a beat.

  “Let’s look at motive. And opportunity. Who not only had cause, but was present that night at the charity event? And who not only had motive to punch or push over the guy, but to strike him with a fatal blow with a champagne magnum? If it was just a punch or push then it could have been someone who, in the heat of the moment, snapped and lashed out without the intention to kill, but the bottle adds a whole new dimension. The pathology report says Gates sustained a serious secondary blow to the back of the head when he fell after being punched or pushed over, and then, presumably when on the ground, he sustained a fatal blow with the bottle to the temple.”

  “Messy business, I imagine.”

  I nodded and drew up my shortlist. “For me, two people stand out: Pat Packman and Kelly Holmes. Video surveillance shows them at the event, although the camera near Gates’ dressing room was down that night.”

  “Word on the street is that Packman never got over his wife leaving him to be Gates’ fourth squeeze. As I hear it, there wasn’t a nice ending between Packman and his wife either,” said Casey. “Must have been a constant thorn in his side working with Gates after that one.”

  “Can you imagine it, not only seeing Gates every day at work, but then having to interact with him and the wife that used to be his but was now Gates’ at all those hideous work functions? Sure would drive me crazy. Can’t blame the man for hating him, wanting him dead, even.”

  “And apparently, it was well known the two hated each other.”

  “Which brings us nicely to Kelly Holmes, Brian’s second wife, that’s a long-held festering hurt if ever there was one.”

  “Somewhat publicly displayed, too,” added Casey with a wry smile, ever the master of the understatement. “If anyone was vocal about their hatred of Brian Gates it was her—of all the years of her life she wasted, her best years, his constant infidelity, how he used her like a piece of meat—which might make you wonder why on earth she was in attendance at his memorial?” she added, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

  “I had been wondering that, but by the looks of it you’re about to tell me. What have you dug up?”

  “She became, and remains, very close to Gates’ elderly mother, Winifred, nursing her through cancer years ago. The two bonded, not only over this, but their mutual frustration with Gates. His mother is a devout Catholic, and word is, that behind closed doors she too was very vocal about Gates’ wayward lifestyle. It was out of respect for Winifred that Kelly Holmes attended his memorial.”

  “Interesting, didn’t do her image any harm either: jilted lover shows her class in selfless magnanimous act. A sort of ‘he went low, but I’ve gone high.’”

  “You know I watched one of her shows yesterday as research,” said Casey, rolling her eyes. “That’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back.”

  “Good to see you doing the hard yards there, partner.”

  “She played an action-hero’s mother.”

  “How was she?”

  Casey rapped her knuckles on the table, “About as wooden as this. But what she lacks in talent she more than makes up for in bra size and make-up. Which is, of course, just as important on the casting couch.”

  I laughed. “Well, she was definitely the person most open about their hatred of Gates, the public may have laughed it off as a lovers’ tiff, but I want to know if there’s more to it than that. And if Gates was as drunk as
Alfie says, it wouldn’t be impossible for a slight woman like her to topple him. Might be a good time for me to became better acquainted with Mrs. Kelly Holmes.”

  “I think you might be right,” said Casey.

  The question was, how?

  Chapter 4

  “Here’s a good one for you, Jack. This will cheer you up,” said Casey, as we walked out of the bar and into the fresh Chicago air. “A guy goes to the dog-pound and says, ‘I want a blind dog for my mother-in-law.’ ‘A blind dog?’ replies the man, ‘Don’t you mean a guide dog?’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘If it sees what she looks like, it’ll go for her throat!’”

  I laughed.

  “Here’s another one,” said Casey, barely pausing for breath, impressed with her own comedic abilities. “I was at the bar the other night and saw six men kicking and punching my mother-in-law. The barman turned to me and said, ‘Aren’t you going to help?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘six should be enough.’”

  I laughed again. Then sighed. There weren’t many things that left me with a deep feeling of foreboding, but a visit to my mother-in-law was one of them. And no amount of jokes was going to change that.

  She’d requested I come out to see her, most likely out of her desire to inflict more pain on my life. We’d not been in touch for a couple of years, but I guess she figured she was entitled to a visit every now and again.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like the woman, you understand, only that being with her was hard work, she was opinionated. But at nearly eighty-years-old, I guess she had earned that right. Still, she was Claire’s mother, so I owed her the respect that she deserved.

  It had, of course, come at the worst possible time. I wanted to give my sole attention to the case, to helping Alfie, and answering the ultimate question: who really killed Brian Gates? There were several lines of inquiry I needed to follow up on, and these really couldn’t wait.

  Pat Packman needed looking into a lot closer, and with a degree of urgency. His motive looked stronger than anyone’s, and when considered alongside the apparent fight he’d had with the deceased in the bathroom at the Charity event—well, let’s just say he was a person of significant interest.

  When she called that morning, I’d tried to explain to my mother-in-law how pressed for time I was, how I really couldn’t come out to see her, that perhaps in a month or two’s time would be better, but she was insistent.

  I dug my heels in and said no.

  But then she pulled out her trump card.

  “I need to speak to you, and it relates to Claire.”

  It was all she needed to say.

  And so, of course, I agreed to drop on by.

  “Good luck, big guy.” Casey playfully punched me on the arm. “If you can handle the worst this city has to offer, then I’m sure you can handle her.”

  I offered Casey half a smile.

  Truth was, the worst this city had was violence, something I had become well versed in, but seeing my mother-in-law was a trip soaked in emotion, something I tried to avoid at all costs.

  I drove slowly to the suburb where she lived, taking the longer scenic route, in an attempt to delay the unavoidable. She lived about 30 miles from Chicago in the suburban city of Wheaton, which was a nice place to come from… but not a good one to visit. I never liked it there, mainly through association: whenever I was in Wheaton it was on an in-law visit, which did a pretty good job of clouding my opinion of the place.

  As I pulled my car up outside her traditional white clapboard house, with its neatly pruned and orderly yard, I was greeted by a familiar site: a giant Stars and Stripes fluttering majestically in the wind on a towering pole.

  I sat in the car for a moment and just watched it rustle, stalling the inevitable.

  It was a quiet street; the sort of place where young adults dream of bringing up their families. There were no front fences, kid’s bikes were left in front yards, and basketball hoops were hung above the garages. I spotted a football being thrown across the street, from one side to the other, and the kids looked no older than twelve. I was about to warn them not to step on the grass in front of Laura’s house, but with Laura’s hostility, I’m sure they already knew that.

  Finally, I decided to man up and face the music.

  With a deep foreboding breath, I opened the door of my car and stepped outside.

  And then, as if on cue, she appeared. Stepping out from the shadows on the veranda, she came into the light, staring down at me below with a look of indifference. She always reminded me of a grumpy nun ready to wrap me over the knuckles with a wooden ruler at the slightest indiscretion, and today was no different.

  “Laura, good to see you. You’re looking well,” I said, lying through my teeth on both counts, as I strode up the veranda steps to meet her.

  “I do not look well. My skin is like a leather handbag, I have more wrinkles than a pug dog, and I’ve shrunk so much that I could fit into the clothes of a ten-year-old.”

  “Right. Well, the flag looks nice,” I added, just making conversation.

  “Of course, it does,” she snapped. “If you’re going to fly the flag then at least have the decency to fly one in Grade-A condition. Hardly American pride if it’s tattered and torn or faded, now is it? I’ve had to make several complaints about the state of others’ in the neighborhood. When a flag is so tattered that it is no longer fit to serve as a symbol of the United States, then it should be replaced and hung in a dignified manner. The flag represents a living country, Jack, and is itself considered a living thing.”

  “Well, yes. Err, I agree.”

  “I’ve just brewed some coffee,” she said, opening the front door.

  I stepped inside, and in doing so entered a dated homage to some indefinable period in the distant past when bad décor must have been a thing, and ‘musty’ was the aroma of choice.

  It was just how I remembered it: crocheted blankets and doilies, decorative plates on the wall, sentimental chocolate box artwork, and a profusion of floral patterns throughout.

  She fetched the coffee from the stove, poured it methodically into little patterned cups, then sat down with me at a kitchen table covered in a chintzy cloth protected with a clear wipe-clean plastic sheet.

  “I saw you on the television the other month,” she said, unimpressed.

  “At the truck-stop incident?”

  “Someone was throwing a bottle at you. You must have annoyed them?”

  I laughed. “Casey mentioned that I’d made a fleeting appearance. They weren’t throwing it at me, by the way; just worked out that way, bad aim and all that.”

  “You’re still with that girl then?” she asked with an air of suspicion.

  “We work together, Laura. That’s all it’s ever been or will be.”

  “Mmm,” she replied, looking at me over the top of her spectacles. “I saw that Guthrie man on the television too, crawled out from under a rock, no doubt. It will never cease to amaze me that he won an award for that so-called documentary. Sensationalist and exploitative nonsense, more like it. Edited the footage of me to look and sound like a fool. He thought he was going to be the new Michael Moore for that thing, and nobody watched it.”

  I knew she’d bring up Hugh, but I didn’t think it would be this quickly. That she hated him was a given, he’d presented a documentary on the school shooting that Claire and many others had died in. I didn’t hate him for it, it was news after all.

  That it was news only so briefly seemed tragic to me. It had changed my life forever, more than I could ever explain, but with mass shooting after mass shooting, it had been forgotten about quickly, as just one of many, a footnote in a long list of tragedies that were spreading across the country like an unchecked cancer.

  But Laura didn’t see it that way.

  Guthrie had interviewed some of the victims’ families and she was one of them. She hadn’t come across very well on film, she’d appeared cold and detached, but for her it was a coping mechanism. She’d had a hard life and was
a hard woman, not the sort of person to blab on emotionally because a camera was stuck in her face. But I knew Claire’s murder had torn her world apart.

  She was right about nobody seeing Guthrie’s film though, obscure award or not, it barely made a blip.

  “I ran into Hugh Guthrie as well. I was researching a new case, and there he was, still as creepy and sleazy as ever.”

  “I hope you punched him in the mouth.”

  “I was certainly tempted.”

  She paused for a moment, as if she was trying to find the right time to tell me something, but then shook her head. “You’re working on a new case?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I’m looking into the defense of Alfie Rose. He’s hired me to investigate the circumstances of his arrest, looking to see if there’s anything that everyone else has overlooked.”

  “He’s the kid that killed the television newsman?”

  “Brian Gates.”

  “Yes, of course; that’s what the television said, his house was set alight for murdering the newsman.”

  “Allegedly murdering,” I interjected. “And Alfie himself was nearly killed in that fire.”

  “Well, I can’t say I liked that Gates fellow anyway. Bit full of himself, you know. Funny mustache too. But then, I suppose he did have a very public affair with Guthrie’s wife, so he can’t be all bad, hopefully it caused Guthrie a great deal of embarrassment and distress; horrible little man that he is.”

  “To be fair, Laura, I imagine there aren’t many people you do like on the television.”

  “Not true,” she stated with conviction. “I like that Chef Ramsey.”

  “Who?”

  “Chef Gordon Ramsey. Englishman, swears at people in their restaurants after eating their repulsive food. Compelling viewing. Have you not seen it?”

  “Err, no Laura. Can’t say I have.”

  “He’s a man who speaks his mind and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He tells it the way it is, and makes no mistake. Yes, I like him. He doesn’t do the news, though. Pity.”

  “Err, yes.”

  She took a long sip of coffee.

  “I’ll be dead within the next few months, Jack,” she said calmly, as if discussing the weather.