by Greg Iles
“That’s what’s keeping me awake!”
She nods and gets out of the car. She’s wearing old jeans and a royal blue St. Stephen’s sweatshirt. When she reaches me, she looks me up and down. “You look really sick. Are you all right?”
“I’ve definitely been better.”
Mia tries to smile, but it doesn’t work. She buries her head in my chest and hugs me hard. I hold her for a minute, then gently separate us and lead her to the far edge of the hill, where the view of the river is unobstructed.
“Why did Coach Anders lie for Marko?” I ask.
“Because Marko knew about Wade and Jenny.”
“What else did Jenny say?”
“Coach Anders has been really stressed out for the past week and a half. Really stressed, like talking to himself and stuff. Jenny didn’t know what that was about, but today at school she was worried he might have a heart attack or something.”
“Go on.”
“Jenny went into Wade’s office after fifth period, and he was crying. She begged him to tell her what the matter was, and he finally did. It was Drew’s conviction. Apparently Wade had suspected for some time that Marko had something to do with Kate’s death. He told Jenny all about Marko and the fake alibi. But he was afraid to tell the police, because he knew Marko would blab about Jenny, and he’d lose his job. Maybe even his career as a coach.”
“It’s worse than that,” I tell her. “Wade’s in a position of trust as defined by statute. He’d be facing the same kind of sexual battery charges as Drew. Thirty years in the pen. He might even be charged as an accessory-after-the-fact in Kate’s murder.”
Mia looks at me in shock. “Well, Wade told Jenny he’d been praying all week that Drew would be acquitted. When he heard it had gone the other way, he lost it.”
“What did Jenny do?”
“Freaked out. She knew she couldn’t keep quiet about the Marko thing. She’d already been going crazy herself because of the affair. She’s been late for her period a couple of times, and she was worried that Wade was sleeping with somebody else. It’s a mess.”
“God, this town has gone crazy.”
“No rules anymore,” Mia says, pulling up the hood of her sweatshirt against the rain. “It’s definitely Wade’s fault, but you can bet Jenny pushed hard to make that affair happen. She’s been with seven other guys that I know about, and she’s only sixteen. She’s got a messed-up home life.”
I’m not thinking about Jenny Jenkins, but Wade Anders.
“What are you going to do, Penn?”
“Call our esteemed athletic director.”
“Is that the best thing?”
“I need to know if he’s willing to admit the affair.”
Mia nods, but she looks unsure. “Why should he, though? I mean, if he thinks Marko murdered Kate, and if he knows how crazy Marko is—which he does—he’d be crazy to tell on Marko. Forget keeping his job—he’ll be worried about his life. He only told Jenny what happened because he thought she’d keep quiet.”
“Will Jenny repeat her story to the police?”
“I have no idea. My gut says no.”
“I have to know, Mia. Call Information and get me Wade’s home number.”
“I already have it, from being head cheerleader.” She calls the number and hands me her cell phone. “Wade drives the bus to all the games. I had to deal with him a lot this year.”
The phone rings twice. “And he never came on to you?”
Mia shakes her head. “I guess he had Jenny taking care of him.”
“Mia?” Wade Anders says in my ear.
He’s looking at his caller ID. “No, Wade, this is Penn Cage.”
“Oh. What can I do for you, Penn?”
“I know about you and Jenny Jenkins.”
The silence on the phone makes the silence of the cemetery seem a roar.
“Wade? Are you there?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t have time for lies, buddy. I don’t even care about your affair. I’m trying to solve a murder here. There are lives at stake.”
“What lies are you talking about, Penn?”
I look at Mia and shake my head. “You’ve been having sex with Jenny Jenkins. That’s bad enough, okay? But you lied about where Marko Bakic was on the day Kate Townsend died, and that’s unacceptable.”
“I don’t know where you heard that, but it’s bullshit.”
“Wade,” I say in a locker-room voice, “this is me, man. It’s gone too far already. You can’t get out of it now. Don’t even try. Drew’s already been convicted of murder because of you, and he could get the death penalty.”
“Listen, goddamn it!” Anders says, anger hardening his voice. “I know you were helping defend Drew, and I know you guys lost today. But don’t try to blame your failure on me. That’s bullshit, what you said. Jenny Jenkins has problems at home, real problems. I’ve tried to help her out. She may have made some advances toward me, but I never touched her. Not inappropriately, anyway. And I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about with this Marko stuff. And…and that’s all I have to say about it. You want to talk to me again, call my lawyer.”
“Do you have a lawyer, Wade?”
“I guess I better get one, if you’re talking this kind of shit.”
I start to press him further, but there’s no point. I hang up and give Mia back her phone.
“He denied it?” she asks.
“All the way, the chickenshit.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” I reach into my pants pocket and take out the bottle of Oxycontin. Mia watches as I open it and dry-swallow one of the tablets.
“What’s that?”
“It helps with the withdrawal.”
“Withdrawal?”
I forgot that she has no idea what I went through during the kidnapping. “Cyrus shot me up with heroin. It really wiped me out.”
“Once? Or the whole time?”
“The whole time.”
“Wow.” She walks over and sits on the low wall bordering the Jewish graves. “That’s the Turning Angel down there, huh?”
“Yes.”
“I never really saw it turn, you know? It always looked the same to me, no matter which way I came from. I figure it’s like those paintings where if some people stare long enough, they see another painting hidden inside the first one. I never saw those things either. I’m too much of a realist, I guess.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
She shrugs and looks up at me. “So do you want to hear my great idea?”
“What idea?”
“I think I can get Marko to tell me what happened on the day Kate died.”
“How? No one even knows where he is.”
Mia smiles wickedly. “His girlfriend does.”
“Alicia Reynolds? The cops have been following her for days, and they haven’t seen anything suspicious.”
“Twenty-four hours a day?”
“I assume so. I don’t know.”
Mia’s eyes gleam with certainty. “Alicia knows where he is, I’m telling you. If she didn’t, she’d be a basket case. But she’s happy as a clam.”
“You think Marko’s close by?”
She nods.
“At the rave, he told me he was leaving town.”
“I think he waited around to be sure Dr. Elliot got convicted. If he is leaving, he’s told Alicia he’s taking her with him.”
“Would she go with him?”
Mia snorts. “What else is she going to do? Work at the Piggly Wiggly? She hasn’t even applied to college.”
“Okay, let’s say Marko is hiding in town somewhere. Why would Alicia tell you that? You’ve already bugged her for a week without results.”
“Because this time I’m going to scare her. And when she talks to Marko, he’ll be scared. And he’ll ask to see me.”
“What could possibly scare Marko at this point?�
�
“The truth.”
“Meaning?”
“Coach Anders recanted Marko’s alibi. That should knock Marko’s legs right out from under him, even as cocky as he is.”
“You might be right. But even if Marko’s scared, why should he risk seeing you in person? He’ll already know what the threat is.”
“No, he won’t. I’ll only tell Alicia that it has to do with Coach Anders. Marko’s paranoia will do the rest.”
Mia definitely has a career ahead of her as a lawyer, if not an FBI agent. “Why would Marko believe you, though? All of a sudden, you come to his girlfriend out of the blue to try to save him?”
Mia looks away from me and gazes out over the cemetery. “It’s not out of the blue.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know Marko better than you think. Better than I let you think.”
I lean down in front of her, but she won’t meet my eye.
“I slept with him, okay?” she says. “When he first came here. It lasted about two months. Then I figured out he was just using me.”
I sit beside her on the wall. “Using you for sex?”
“Yes. And to get Kate.”
God. “Can you tell me about it?”
Mia stands and turns toward the river, as though she can’t bear to look at me while she confesses this. “When Marko first got to St. Stephen’s, everybody thought he was so cool. He had this aura about him, you know? The bad boy, ‘I don’t give a shit about anything’ aura. But he was smart, too. Anybody could see that.”
She bends and picks up a blade of new grass. “He started paying a lot of attention to me. I was really down on myself back then. It was the start of senior year, and my boyfriend had just moved to Minnesota with his folks, because the tire plant closed down. Everyone else was so jazzed about the year, but I was just dead. Then…in walks Marko. It had more to do with Kate than anything else, even for me, probably.” She turns to me at last, her eyes wet. “Because everybody expected Marko to go for her, you know? Me included. But he didn’t. He wanted me—or pretended he did. And that made me feel really good. That’s probably what made me be with him, if I’m honest about it.”
“Did Marko hurt you?”
Mia nods slowly. “Not physically. But he tore me up inside. He really convinced me that he cared about me. He told me about his childhood. He said I was the first person he’d trusted or let inside since he was a boy. And…I did stuff with him I’d never done before. I’d only been with one guy before Marko, my first boyfriend. I was so stupid. God.” She turns away from me again. “Look, I don’t want to talk about that part of it, okay? My point is that if I can get Marko face-to-face, I can make him tell the truth about what happened. If he killed Kate, I think he’ll brag about it to me. I’m serious. And if he does that, Dr. Elliott might go free.”
“That would only happen if you wore a wire, Mia.”
She nods. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“No way. You almost got killed last week. You want to put yourself into a worse situation?”
“But it’s not!” she argues. “Marko has no reason to fear me. Ever since I broke off our relationship, he’s been begging me to see him again. He’ll believe I want to warn him, Penn. His ego’s just that big.”
I take her by the shoulders and look hard into her eyes. “Listen to me. We’re talking about this guy because we think he may have killed one high school girl already. There’s too much risk.”
She gives me a smile filled with regret. “I’m not Kate, okay? The biggest risk isn’t that I’ll get killed. It’s that I’ll have to screw him.”
A wave of sickness rolls through my stomach. “There’s something you need to know, Mia.”
“What?”
Quickly, I tell her about Ellen’s confession in my hospital room. She listens with wide eyes, and when I’m done, she bites her bottom lip and looks toward the river.
“You believed her?” she asks finally.
“Yes.”
“I do, too. That’s exactly what Kate would do in that situation. I can just see it. She’d be so cruel to Ellen.”
“Then you see my point. It doesn’t make much sense to try to trap Marko if Ellen is the one who killed Kate.”
Mia shakes her head. “I don’t believe she did. And you don’t either.”
“But you just said—”
“I believe Ellen choked her, yes. And if Kate had died from hitting her head, I might believe she’d killed her. But she didn’t, did she?”
“No,” I concede, gratified to see that Mia has followed the exact logic I did. “Strangulation.”
Mia nods with satisfaction. “Marko was there. I mean, who else could it have been? You know?”
“Drew.”
“You never believed Drew killed her. Neither did I.”
“But he could have.”
Mia dismisses this with a wave of her small hand. “You know he didn’t. Your gut tells you that. And my gut tells me Marko did.”
Mine tells me the same. But can I put Mia at risk again to try to prove that? As I ponder this question, the cell phone I borrowed from my father rings. My caller ID shows DON LOGAN as the caller.
“Hey, Don.”
“Penn, I’ve got some information you might be interested in.”
“I’m listening.”
“Remember we kept wondering why Sheriff Byrd was taking orders from Shad Johnson?”
“Yeah.”
“I finally found out. My source at the sheriff’s department told me. They’re celebrating like it’s New Year’s over there. There and the D.A.’s office. The sheriff told my source himself.”
“What did he say?”
“Shad Johnson told Billy Byrd that when he’s elected mayor, he’s going to abolish the Civil Service Commission. They do all the hiring and firing for the police and fire departments. I don’t know how Shad could do that, but Shad says that once the commission’s gone, he’s going to personally hire and fire every cop in town. And he’s offered Billy Byrd the job of chief.”
It takes me a few moments to absorb this. “Why would Byrd put himself under Shad’s thumb like that?”
“Sheriff’s an elected position. Billy might never be elected again. But Shad is willing to give him the one token white position in his administration. I guess Billy figures, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I figure I’ve got about ninety days left in this job.”
“I’m sorry, Don.”
“Welcome to the real world, brother.”
I say nothing. An idea is taking shape in my mind, and it includes Chief Logan. “Don, what if I told you we could overturn Drew’s conviction?”
“I’d ask you how.”
“What if I told you Marko Bakic killed Kate Townsend?”
“I’d ask what proof you have.”
“Proof exists. And you can help me get it. Are you up for that?”
“Are we talking about in my official capacity?”
“Quasi-official, you might say. It would be important after the fact that you’re the police chief.”
“I need more to go on than that.”
“Can you meet me at the City Cemetery?”
“Now?”
“Right now. And bring the smallest wire rig you’ve got with you.”
“What the hell are you up to, man?”
“Saving Drew’s ass and your job. Just get up here.”
Chief Logan breathes steadily into the phone. Right now he’s a man without a future. At length, he says one word.
“Okay.”
I’m sitting in the passenger seat of Don Logan’s Crown Victoria. Kelly and Mia are in the backseat. Kelly is checking out the wire rig Logan brought over from the police station. I introduced Kelly to Logan as a corporate security expert from Houston.
“This is old technology,” Kelly says. “We use transmitters a quarter this size now.”
“Do you have one with you?” I ask the rearview mirror.
> “Not on this trip.”
“I don’t know about this scheme,” Logan says. “I mean, I see the upside. But this girl’s life is at risk. Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute. Even if Marko tells the Reynolds girl to bring Mia to him, we have no idea where that might be. We’ll be trying to follow her in two cars. If she loses us, Mia’s on her own.”
“Tracking device,” says Kelly. “I did bring one of those in my bag of tricks. It’s a GPS model. We won’t lose their car.”
“Okay,” says Logan. “But even if we manage to stick with them, Marko will have all the advantages. He’ll know the layout and the terrain. The home-court advantage, I guess I’m saying. And look at Penn: he’s at half strength, if that. So, it’s basically you and me, Mr. Kelly. You look like you know what you’re doing, and I’m sure you do. But just the two of us?”
“We’ll be fine,” Kelly says with self-assurance. “Don’t sweat that part of it.”
“I’m just saying, if we do find out where Marko is, why don’t I just call in backup and raid the place?”
“Because then we’d have a hostage situation,” Kelly says. “We want Mia to walk in and out of this place under her own power.”
“Plus,” I add, “if we raided the place, Marko would just lawyer up, and we’d never get a thing out of him about Kate’s murder.”
Chief Logan nods dejectedly.
“The risk to me isn’t that great,” Mia insists. “If it was, I wouldn’t go, you know?”
“If Marko finds that wire,” says Kelly, “he won’t be happy. Don’t kid yourself about that.”
“I’ve thought about it. But he will know there are cops all around.”
“Hostage situation again,” says Logan. “What then?”
Kelly looks the chief in the eye. “Then I take him out.”
Logan glances at me. I nod once.
“You feel that confident?” Logan asks Kelly.
Kelly smiles. “I’ve been there before, Chief. Many times.”
“That’s not the outcome we want,” I tell Logan. “We want a confession. But if Mia’s in real danger, Kelly will have no choice.”
Logan looks unconvinced. “I’d feel better with a SWAT team, Penn.”
I glance at Kelly, and he gives me permission with a nod.
“Daniel was a Delta Force operator for eight years,” I explain. “He’s worth more than any SWAT team we have around here. He’s the only reason I’m willing to let Mia go in there—wherever ‘there’ is.”
