Escapes Can Be Murder

by Connie Shelton

  “And then later?”

  “Oh, I made appointments with Helen to discuss appeals and trying for a mistrial and all the usual. We met maybe once or twice before she admitted she was in over her head and she’d rather I found a different attorney to handle the appeals. I couldn’t exactly disagree with that, could I? I considered taking over, filing the appeals myself.”

  “But?”

  “In the eyes of the court, that sort of thing looks like a classic whiny move—I’m smarter than my attorney so I’ll take over. It rarely helps and usually hurts the defendant’s case.”

  I thought of the other things I’d learned about Helen Bannerly, what her friend Cathy had told me about the blackmail.

  “Did you ever have reason to believe Helen skimped on your defense because she felt threatened in some way?”

  He gave it some thought. “Not at the time, no. Frankly, I felt as if I were living in some kind of bubble of unreality. The whole thing, from the moment I received the summons and was told I was accused of jury tampering—all of it was crazy. Helen came highly recommended as a defense attorney. I’d only known her marginally, but she had a good reputation. But I’ve thought about all of this for years now. When you say ‘threatened’ yeah. Thinking back on it, there was something going on with her.”

  He had left his chair and was pacing the room during this last bit.

  “I need to get going,” he said, heading toward the door. He was halfway down the stairs before I got out of my chair, and I was still fumbling for what to ask next.

  By the time I reached Sally’s desk, Rory was out the back door. Interview over.

  “Everything okay?” she asked. I could see she was in the process of shutting down her computer and clearing her desk. It was the end of her half-day.

  “Yeah. Want some pizza to take home for your kids?” I didn’t really wait for an answer but went back upstairs, kept one more slice for myself, and closed the box on the rest.

  She gave a grateful smile—one dinner plan done—and left by the back door. I found some ice and poured a Coke in the kitchen, aware of her car backing out and pulling down the long driveway.

  When I walked back into the foyer, a man in a suit was standing inside the door. He opened his jacket and flashed a badge.

  “U.S. Marshal, ma’am. We have some questions.”

  Chapter 39

  My heart did a couple of loud thumps.

  “You’ve been in contact with a Rory McNab.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Apparently you already know that.”

  “We received a tip. What was the nature of your conversation?” He moved into our conference room and waved me toward a chair, taking over my space, although his manner wasn’t confrontational or belligerent.

  “His father passed away this week. Rory and his sister are in town for the memorial service.” It wasn’t a lie at all.

  “But you’ve been asking about McNab for a while now. So his visit was not a surprise.” Again, not a question.

  “Agent … sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  “Wickett.” He placed a business card on the table between us.

  Daniel Wickett. U.S. Marshal. Albuquerque District Headquarters office.

  “Agent Wickett, I’m unclear what you’re here for. You know Rory McNab was here just now. I met with him this morning at the funeral home and offered pizza for lunch. If you wanted to speak with him you could have come in and confronted him. If you want to know where he’s staying, you could have followed him.”

  “We did. Another car.”

  “And so … what is it you think I could tell you?”

  He gave an impatient eye-roll, the first emotion I’d seen. “How did you know Rory McNab would be at the funeral home this morning? How is it you are involved with the family?”

  “Simple enough. Rory’s father, Fergus McNab, knew he was dying. He wanted to see his son before it was too late.”

  “And you facilitated that?”

  “Not much. They had been in touch. Fergus also wanted his son exonerated for a crime he says Rory didn’t commit. He wanted our firm to look into it and see what evidence might exist.”

  “This would be about his conviction for jury tampering?”

  “Yes. Actually, I’m surprised something like that would reach the federal level, especially since it’s been ten years and seemed like a minor incident at the time.”

  I half expected him to go all Tommy Lee Jones on me and inform me with a serious expression that there are no minor incidents, but he didn’t.

  “It goes deeper.” He made the cryptic statement, apparently hoping I would feed him some additional information.

  I didn’t bite. “In what way?”

  “New Mexico politics has a shady reputation.”

  And the sky is blue. “So, this is political. And you think, what? That it goes back to the rivalry between Herman Quinto and Rory McNab ten years ago? You said you were looking for Rory based on a tip. Let me guess. The tip came from the Quinto campaign.”

  “I’m here to request your assistance,” he said. “We don’t know who to trust in Santa Fe.”

  I chuckled. “No one knows who to trust there. Most of them don’t trust each other. It’s not that different from Washington. I can’t tell you anything about politics. I stay as far away from all that as I can. I only go into the voting booth because it’s a citizen’s duty—frankly, everything else about it gives me the creeps.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  I think my jaw dropped.

  “You’re not under anyone’s influence. We know that about you.”

  “Okay, now that really is creepy. You’re not reassuring me.”

  Wickett sat back in his chair and unbuttoned his jacket. “Kent Taylor at APD Homicide is looking into the murder of Judge Aldo Blackman. He’s the one who suggested we chat.”

  This time I know my jaw dropped. Kent Taylor actually trusted me to talk to federal agents? “APD somehow thinks the judge’s death is politically motivated? But at the federal level?”

  “I can’t tell you a lot. You have no security clearances, no standing with our department. You’re a peripheral witness at best.”

  Gee, thanks for that. “What do you want from me?” I finally asked.

  “You seem to be the only person Rory McNab trusts. We’d like for you to act as intermediary—meet with him, report to us.”

  Spy and pass information. I squirmed in my chair. “And you think this will help build trust with Rory? He’s skittish as a cat. If he has the faintest idea you’re talking to me, he’ll stop telling me anything. How is that going to help?”

  He didn’t answer but pulled a photo from inside his jacket. When he placed it on the table in front of me I saw it was the man with the scar.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “His name is Jorge Balderas.”

  I studied the picture to be sure. “He’s Damian Baca’s cousin—or is he?”

  “They’re related.”

  “Closely?”

  “They are first cousins, but there’s bad blood between their fathers so the two families aren’t tight.”

  “But Damian and this Jorge—they’re close?”

  He took a moment with his answer. “As kids, yeah. Before Damian got caught on drug charges, twelve years ago, they were together a lot.”

  “I saw him in photos after Damian’s trial, the one where Rory McNab defended him. What happened to him after that?”

  “He’s around.”

  I waited to see if he would tell me Jorge now worked for Herman Quinto. He didn’t. Either I knew something the feds didn’t know, which seemed unlikely, or he was holding back information to see what I would reveal. I hate these little cat-and-mouse games.

  “Damian Baca claims to have cleaned up his act and gotten completely away from the drug trade,” I said. “Is that true?”

  A half-nod. “Seems to be.”

  “So what about this cousin?
Is he done with drugs, too, or still involved?”

  “We believe he’s still in it up to his neck,” Wickett said. “He’s higher up in the cartel than before, so it’s harder to catch him with the goods in hand. But the connections still exist.”

  “And, what? You think Rory McNab is also involved?” It could go a long way toward explaining how a guy lives for ten years with no income. His story about selling paintings at the local bookstore had seemed pretty weak to me.

  “Rory McNab and Damian Baca are still in touch. We know that from Baca’s side of things. Apparently, McNab goes through burner phones faster than the characters on Blacklist.”

  He said some more, but I never heard much past ‘Rory and Damian are still in touch.’ My thoughts took off, racing back over our conversations.

  Wickett’s phone pinged with a message. He took one glance at it and was in motion, pushing back from the table and standing. Apparently the message didn’t get me off the hook; he said something about my calling him as soon as I learned anything new, assurances that he would contact me again … it went by in a bit of a blur until he was out the door. I locked up behind him and stood there a moment before meandering back upstairs to the slice of cold pizza I’d left behind.

  The food held no appeal. I drummed my fingers on the desktop until the sound began to drive me nuts. Had Kent Taylor actually told the feds to contact me? I dialed his number with a little trepidation—I had once been a suspect myself.

  “Charlie, do you have anything new to share with me?” Taylor said. Not his usual greeting, which was normally somewhere between tepid and grumpy.

  “Well, no, not exactly. I was wondering how the investigation is going.” I thought of the numerous rumors I’d heard about Blackman and his proclivities, but wasn’t sure anything I knew would actually qualify as evidence.

  “It’s going. That’s all I can say.”

  “Because …?” Apparently, he wasn’t going to bring up the Marshal’s name, so I wouldn’t either.

  “Because that’s all I can say.”

  The man can be so frustrating to talk to. Kind of like when my mother’s answer to Why? was “because I said so.” I hated that. A kid wants more info. And this kid wanted more info, but I wasn’t getting it, and Taylor’s tone made it clear I wouldn’t be able to pester him into talking.

  Chapter 40

  Questions pummeled me—of course, now that Marshal Wickett had left and I couldn’t ask them.

  Jorge Balderas, the man with the scar, the great unknown of my case until now. The feds said he was still heavily involved in selling drugs; I knew he was associated with Herman Quinto in some way, either as part of his campaign entourage or … or what? His stepping out of Quinto’s motorhome the other evening could have meant many things.

  Were they social pals? I doubted it.

  Was Quinto a customer? Entirely possible, but I doubted they’d be seen so publicly together if that was the case. The Important Ones don’t meet with drug dealers—they have their ‘people’ for that.

  Did Balderas work for the senator’s campaign? On the face of it, that’s what it had appeared.

  Surely, the feds would know this if they were spying on all the players in this little game. But maybe their focus was all going toward Damian Baca and Rory McNab. Still, he’d shown me the photo of Balderas. If not for Wickett’s statement about corruption in New Mexico politics, I could well imagine him and his agency turning a blind eye toward Quinto’s campaign activities.

  I wrapped the cold pizza in a napkin, started to toss it in my waste basket, realized it would stink up the whole room by tomorrow, pushed it away.

  How had an effort to put a dying father and fugitive son together turned into this? It made my head hurt. I spent a couple minutes in a self-indulgent, pity-party, why me funk before deciding the whole thing wouldn’t go away just because I wanted it to. Now I had to make the effort to get the answers.

  The feds wanted intel on Herman Quinto; APD had a murder to solve; I desperately wanted out of the middle. I began by writing down what I knew, listing the players.

  Phoebe Blackman – beleaguered wife, socially humiliated, putting on a brave face

  Helen Bannerly – affair with the judge, blackmailed because of it? pressured into letting down her client?

  Damian Baca – says he’s cleaned up his act, seems to be true (his job), maybe not true (officials can be bribed—duh!)

  Jorge Balderas – other than what Marshal Wickett just said the man is like a ghost to me, Damian’s cousin, still dealing drugs, working for Quinto’s campaign (maybe)

  Rory – still in touch with Damian Baca, WTH!!—what else is he not telling me?

  I formulated a list of questions and went over them several times. With Rory, especially, questioning him would be like approaching a wild critter in the woods—the slightest misstep or hint of aggression on my part would send him running. Which was exactly why the feds had approached me rather than trying to haul him in. They didn’t give a crap about his jury tampering conviction. They wanted him available—to point the finger at Quinto, to help break up some major drug ring … or take down major politicos or … whatever it was.

  I shoved my notepad aside and paced the floor. Why didn’t they just follow Rory until they caught up with him, take him to whatever brightly lit room they take people, and question him until he caved? Keeping him out of prison was their bargaining chip, and it seemed it would be a pretty effective one.

  The answer hit me as soon as I faced the bay window and saw the street below. Rory remained elusive and they’d had no luck catching him. Rory would talk to me. I was the bait.

  It was a disturbing feeling.

  But it made perfect sense. Catching me with the element of surprise on his side, Marshal Wickett got me all set up with the scenario, but he could have called it off at any moment. Then came the text message and he bolted. Something had happened—the vehicle that had tailed Rory away from here had lost him—or maybe not.

  Rory had developed excellent evasion skills and he must have spotted the car right away. In this quiet neighborhood, it would have been easy-peasy. I gathered my list of suspects and headed out.

  Crawling along in traffic on Central, I nearly shut off the top-of-the-hour news on the radio, until I caught Fergus McNab’s name. I turned it up.

  “… was the father of Rory McNab, the lawyer arrested ten years ago on jury tampering charges. The elaborate escape, seemingly planned by father and son, was headline news at the time but no new leads have been found.” The solemn voice reading the story switched abruptly to a perky female who informed me that traffic was ‘slow-and-go’ on the major downtown arterial streets. Yeah, I kind of already knew that.

  I arrived home to find the McNab story at the top of the news on TV as well. In a segment that went well beyond the usual length of a local-interest piece, they had resurrected Fergus’s arrest more than a week ago and made much of the fact that he’d been after Congressional hopeful Herman Quinto. A not-subtle reference to Quinto’s being the frontrunner in the race let me know this particular station leaned heavily toward the senator’s political party.

  The video showed Fergus being walked into the police station, every bit of his age and physical frailty evident. Then they flashed back to rehashing the story of Rory’s conviction, with footage from the day of his verdict when he and Helen Bannerly had stood on the courthouse steps. Helen seemed harried, under pressure. Her answers were terse and not upbeat.

  Rory stood by, slickly groomed, pudgy in what had been his comfortable role as an up-and-comer in local politics. I couldn’t help but notice the difference from the lean outdoorsman he’d become now.

  He stepped toward the camera, edging Helen aside and put in his own two cents: “This is not over. I am not guilty of these charges, and will be working tirelessly to uncover the truth and prove my innocence.”

  The news anchor, sitting elegantly at her desk, turned to her co-host. “Of course, we all
know that, within a short time, Rory McNab vanished, a fugitive from the law. Informed sources at the time suggested Fergus McNab most likely helped his son in his disappearance.”

  “That’s right, Patty. And now, we may never know the truth.”

  I felt my blood pressure rising at the waste of time. Other than tarnishing an old man’s reputation, what had that story actually accomplished? I switched to another channel.

  This one was even worse. They’d apparently already talked about Fergus’s arrest and now his death. A news team stood outside Fergus’s trailer, catching the moment live as the reporter tapped on the door and Christine answered. The reporter gave some faux sympathetic comments about how this must be a difficult time for the family, then thrust the microphone in Christine’s face for a response to the question, “How are you feeling right now?”

  I saw Christine stand a little taller and take a deep breath. “I’m feeling as though my family’s privacy has been invaded in the worst way. Leave. Now.”

  She closed the door, leaving the questioner on the front step without much else to say. The in-studio newscaster quickly butted in with some inane closing remark and they skipped to another story. Served them right, as their misguided attempt at live coverage flopped, big-time. I felt a little rush of triumph on Christine’s behalf. Her response had been dignified.

  Unfortunately, the overall impression on camera was that this had been an ill, old man living in a dumpy trailer park, perhaps driven to desperation in his final days, all because he couldn’t let go of the idea that his son had been wrongly accused.

  Chapter 41

  I couldn’t let go of the idea that this sudden bout of news coverage didn’t just happen. There are too many murders, rapes, and horrific accidents vying for a news department’s time, and the death of one old man in a nursing home didn’t normally begin to compete. So, who had tipped them off? For that matter, who had alerted the Federal Marshals’ office to dig into all this?