by Hy Conrad
She ignored the sarcasm. “Is it Alzheimer’s? Does my father have Alzheimer’s?”
“Probably,” Gil said. “You know Dr. Oppenheimer. Roger Oppenheimer? Used to be surgeon general? He did a neurological exam – mood tests, blood work. He wants to do brain imaging to make sure. I’m not worried about Roger’s mouth. He’s safe. But with brain imaging there’s going to be paperwork, so I said no for now.”
“So, it’s a secret?”
“Just me and Roger. And now you. And Buddy on a good day.”
“What about State?”
“We’ve managed to keep it from State. He’s not as observant.” Gil toasted, his mouth hinting at a smile.
Callie toasted back and took a sip. She took a second sip and made a face. “It’s water.”
Gil took his own sip then chuckled. “Sorry about that. We keep this on hand for guests.”
“For guests?”
“For him to drink in front of guests. To preserve the Buddy McFee illusion.”
“Did that include tonight at cocktails? You were preserving the Buddy McFee illusion? For me?”
“We were,” Gil admitted without shame or apology, as he took their glasses to the wet bar, rinsed them out and poured a fresh two-fingers apiece from a bottle of Buchanan’s at the back of the cabinet above the bar. “When it’s just the two of us, we use the real stuff – in moderation. Roger says alcohol’s not bad. Makes him a little harder to control. But he’d be even harder to control without drinking. It’s a delicate balance.”
Callie nodded then took her first taste of the real stuff, welcoming the sweet smokiness, tracking it as it went down. This was a lot to take in, the prospect of her father, the seemingly indestructible force of nature, fading into a fog of dementia. Unthinkable. And yet it perfectly explained their newfound isolation, the firing of Sarah and the rest of the live-in help. “What about me?” Callie asked. “Why did you ask me to come? You must have known I’d figure it out.”
“Well, it didn’t take much figuring tonight.” Gil took his own first taste and smacked his lips. “Your daddy kept asking about you. I thought it might keep him more grounded. And he loves you. I thought it worth the risk.”
“Bullshit.” She didn’t believe it for a second. “You wanted me to find out. I know how your mind works. Having no one to share this with, no woman to help out, no member of the family to bounce things off of or to sign papers when they need signing . . . When you heard I was back in Austin, you must have been thrilled.”
“Not thrilled.” Gil had always been careful with words. “Grateful perhaps.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because Buddy made me promise. I’ve never broken a promise to that man and I don’t intend to start.”
There were times, every now and then, Callie thought, when she and Gil understood each other, even appreciated each other, although neither ever let it boil over into actually liking each other. “I’m sorry, Uncle Gil. How bad is he?”
“More good days than bad.” He used his thumb to stroke the side of his little gray beard. “He was excited all day to see you. Agitated. A little exhausted. And then that glass of red wine with dinner. Most of the time it’s no problem.”
“You mean no problem covering it up.”
“Exactly.”
“What about his work? Dealing with clients?”
Gil tilted his head and made a sour face. “We’ve had a few scares. Two months ago, we were consulting on an extortion case, dealing with intellectual property, and somehow your daddy started rambling on about Cocker and Missy Bess. Did the client want to go out to the stables and see Cocker and Missy Bess?”
“You mean the horses?”
“I mean his favorite palominos that’ve been dead and gone for going on ten years. The client, some internet upstart from out of state, actually wanted to see them – until I mentioned the mange.”
“The mange?”
Gil chuckled. “Oh, yeah. Cocker’s got a real bad case of mange. Not to worry, I told him. Not too infectious. That was enough to cool the boy’s curiosity, although your dad was pretty riled that I hadn’t told him about the mange. See what I gotta put up with?”
“What about your new client. Aren’t you worried?”
“Oh.” Gil looked like a guilty little boy. “There isn’t any new client.”
“But he said…” Callie pointed an accusing finger. “You said yourself, when you came to my office… Dad was talking about the girl’s murder, the one in Westlake.”
“I believe you’re the one who brought up Westlake. Buddy just went with the flow. State brought up the case, but just as conversation. If there’s one thing Buddy hates, it’s being left out.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. In the shock of hearing about her father’s condition, she hadn’t thought about the impact it would have on his mind. Not his mind, she corrected herself. That impact was obvious and distressing. But his spirits. His view of himself in the world. His reason for living. If Lawrence “Buddy” McFee was no longer the man in the middle of everything, then what was he? What was left? For the first time since she’d discovered the truth, Callie felt sorrow, a deep pang of sorrow for the larger-than-life man who was now fighting just to stay himself.
“Is your paper interested in Westlake?” asked Gil.
Callie had to force herself back into the moment. “What?”
“The girl in the field.”
Callie took another sip of her whisky then placed it down on a coaster. That was part of the family training, always use a coaster. “Yes, we are interested. We’re also interested in the fact that no one else seems interested.”
“Probably because there’s nothing to report.”
“Gil!” The voice boomed down the stairs and into the study. “Gilbert!”
Guillermo Morales smiled and shrugged a shoulder. “He’s taking to calling me Gilbert.”
“Coming, boss! There in a sec!” Gil excused himself and made Callie promise not to leave until he came back down for a proper good-bye.
Her father’s study had always been her favorite room. It had been his domain for as long as she could remember and the richly polished oak spoke of a subtle power. It was hard to imagine that the world of this room would be ending, that it could ever end. After Buddy was gone, State, the next in line, would move his family in. The study would become a TV room or a home office, and decades of deals and crisis-management, of quiet disappointments and loud celebrations would fade and disappear – like her father’s own memories. Callie listened intently, her ear tuned to catch his voice. But an upstairs door had been closed and the only sounds she could make out were the muffled clangs of Sarah cleaning up in the kitchen.
On her second or third stroll around the room, she noticed the yellow legal pad on the burlwood desk, nearly hidden under the old-fashioned leather blotter, with just its bottom edge sticking out. She might not have been curious about it. It was just a pad, after all. But she recalled all the times she’d seen her father in the middle of meetings, listening to a prosecutor or a state senator and jotting down page after page of notes in his flowing, easy-to-read longhand on a pad just like this.
Callie glanced to the empty doorway, a reflexive move, then lifted the corner of the blotter and pulled out the pad. The handwriting was unmistakably his, and the first words sent a chill down her spine. “Keagan Blackburn w. raped/strangled girl, April 12, 10:21 p.m. Westlake. Empty field. T.H.P. Dash cam not working. Arrest record expungable? Talk to D.A.”
In under a minute she had retrieved her phone from the pocket of her jacket in the coat closet, returned to the study and switched on the desk lamp. Then she took photos, several of each page. There were seven pages of notes in total, although pages four through seven were covered more in undecipherable squiggles than in words, growing larger and more frantic with each line.
CHAPTER 7
“Of the over 500 charter schools in Texas, approximately 100 of them are loc
ated in Austin.’” Callie read the rest of the paragraph silently, then skimmed the next two. With a soft grunt, she turned from her monitor to the reporter hovering over her desk. “All right, I’m three paragraphs in and I still don’t get your point.”
“My point?”
“Why you want me to read it.”
The younger woman’s soft brown eyes blinked in confusion. “Because you asked to see it before I submitted it to Oliver.”
“No. I mean ‘me’ the reader. What’s your POV? Why am I interested?”
“I’m starting with the facts.” Jennie Larson was straight out of college, only a few years younger than Callie, cute, fresh-faced and strikingly unimaginative. “Oliver said he didn’t want the first installment too political, so I thought we should ease into…”
“Not too political. But you still need a point of view. Otherwise it’s like a Wikipedia page. No one’s going to read any further.”
“I’m not sure…” Jennie was going into her helpless routine, the one that had probably gotten lovesick high school boys to do her homework. She widened her eyes into a charmingly perplexed expression. “If you could maybe just get me started . . . Please. Oliver really loves your style.”
Callie decided to meet her halfway. “Okay, I’ll rewrite paragraph one. After that, you’re on your own. Oliver needs need the whole thing by end of day.”
“You mean five o’clock? Today? Um… I don’t think that’s enough time.”
“No, the day ends at midnight. Get it to his inbox any time before midnight. Actually, you have until four or five a.m. if you need it. I don’t think he gets up before six. And copy me on it.”
“Tonight? But I have plans. My boyfriend…” Jennie stopped herself then bit her lower lip. “Okay, you’re right. Before midnight. Thanks for helping. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.” And with that, she gently motioned Jennie out of her cubicle.
It took her half an hour to rewrite and send off the first four paragraphs, starting with the story of a local family affected by the changing budget at their high school, an anecdote Jennie had buried halfway through the article. Callie added a few notes, outlining a more focused approach to the four-part series, an angle that she knew Oliver would love. Thinking about charter schools was a nice break. It kept her from fixating on the graduation photo that she’d taped to the bottom right corner of her laptop or the pages of her father’s handwritten notes stored somewhere inside her phone.
Since she needed Oliver’s full attention for this, she waited until after lunch. When she walked in, he was folding his brown paper bag and disposing of it in the blue recycling bin next to his desk. The apple core went into a green composting bin. The non-recyclables went into a standard trash can. Callie recycled, too, but there was something about the way he did it that she found annoying. “Callie, good. We haven’t had much time to chat.” He sat down and leaned back. “I hope you’re liking it here, fitting in. I know it’s not what you’re used to.”
“I’m liking it fine. Do you mind if I close the door?” In the open, egalitarian atmosphere of the Free Press, closing the door was the equivalent of “we need to talk.”
Oliver noticed. “What’s up?”
She could still back out. She could make up any number of excuses for closing the door. But once she started, once someone else knew, someone not dedicated to Keagan Blackburn or Buddy McFee, some impartial journalist, dedicated to unearthing the truth . . . “There’s an unsolved murder I’d like to spend some time on.”
“A murder?” Oliver couldn’t hide his surprise. “Do you have any experience with murders?”
“None,” she had to admit. “But I’ve done some investigative reporting. I imagine it’s similar.”
Oliver looked dubious. “Not really. For one thing, you’d have the police to deal with.”
“I’ve dealt with the police.”
“Not on that level. Is it a cold case?”
“No, it’s very warm.”
“Okay. Well, that’s a problem for a weekly. How do we stay ahead of the pack in something as fast-moving as an active murder investigation?”
“I don’t think we’ll have competition. Everyone else is ignoring it or trying to cover it up.”
“Cover it up?” Oliver reacted with a start, or perhaps just a closed-mouth burp left over from lunch. “That’s pretty harsh. Who’s covering up what? Can you prove this?”
He was more nervous than she’d anticipated, so she chose her words carefully. “Let’s just say I have an unimpeachable source. And my source claims that Keagan Blackburn is involved, either as the killer or as a material witness.”
“Keagan Blackburn?” Oliver could barely pronounce the name. “The Keagan Blackburn? Holy Moly. Are you sure?” He glanced out through his glass wall into the bullpen. “Callie, sit down. Try to look comfortable.”
Callie sat. “Blackburn was arrested then released and the arrest record expunged. It’s the Briana Crawley case, the woman found in the field in Westlake, just a mile or two from his estate.”
“I haven’t been following it.”
“No one has. U.T. student. Raped and murdered.”
“And you’re saying Keagan Blackburn raped and murdered…?”
“I don’t know. All I know…”
“Jesus!” Oliver leaned back in his chair and made quick, little back-and-forth swivels, a sure sign that he was excited. “This is big. I mean, if it’s true and the police are trying to cover it up… I mean, this is national.”
Callie had been unprepared for this much enthusiasm. “Hold on, cowboy. You’re jumping ahead.”
“Right.” Oliver stopped swiveling and did his best to focus. “And that’s not the point, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“The point is a girl was murdered and there may be some conspiracy to get away with it. I apologize. All right, what do you know?”
Callie stayed pretty much on script, outlining what the highway patrol officer had found and how the investigation seemed to stall when Blackburn, one of the most powerful men in the state, developed an unspecified but ironclad alibi. She included her brother’s information about Briana’s “sugaring” sideline but did not mention her own father’s involvement. She was determined not to mention that.
“My brother State is a detective working the case, that’s how I know.”
“So, your brother is your source?”
More or less. One of them. “Yes.”
“And his name is State?” He spelled it out.
“Yes. State is a nickname.”
“I should hope so.”
“His full name is States Rights. States Rights McFee.”
“You’re joshing.” He could tell she wasn’t. “And I thought ‘Oliver’ was bad. How did this happen? I take it there’s a story. How could there not be?”
Callie’s mouth curled at the edges. Of course there was. “State had the bad luck to be born when Dad was president pro tem of the Texas Senate. I’m sure you don’t remember, but the legislature was trying to pass a bill to reject Federal Highway funds because the Texas Department of Transportation was refusing to regulate…” She stopped for breath. “I don’t want to make the story any longer, but it wound up as basically a game of chicken between Texas and the U.S. government.”
“A states’ rights issue.”
“Obviously. Dad was still out wrangling votes when Mom went into labor. He had the House votes, but he was a vote short in the Senate. No one was thrilled with the idea of losing federal money in order to prove a point. The day after the birth, when State’s name hit the papers and TV, there was this up-swell in public support. State pride. Buddy McFee had shown his permanent, steadfast commitment. Anyway, the bill passed by five votes. Two days later the U.S. government blinked, possibly as a result of the name thing, which by then was national news. Texas won and my brother has had to live with the consequences.”
“Was your mother on board with this?
”
“Dad filled out the birth certificate while she was recovering from the epidural. Luckily, there were no pressing matters up for vote at the time I came along. I could have been Right to Life McFee, or Second Amendment McFee.”
Oliver chuckled. “How does State feel about it?”
“He’s used to it, maybe even proud. He’s not the first Texan with that name. And everyone calls him State, which isn’t so bad by comparison.”
“If you don’t mind my saying, that’s a very Buddy McFee story.”
“I got a million of them.” Callie pulled at an eyebrow, a nervous habit when discussing her father’s shenanigans. “Anyway, where were we?”
“Rape and murder of a U.T. student.”
“Oh, my God, yes. Sorry.” Callie straightened up and refocused. “State is working the case, which is how I heard about it. Also how I met Briana’s parents. They’re very sweet. Devastated, of course, and trying to make someone pay attention. I told them we would help. Was I telling them the truth? Is the Free Press in on this?”
“Well, if your brother says Blackburn has an alibi…”
“State’s an honest cop. But you know how things work. So, are we in?”
“Um, are we in?” She had been hoping for a more rousing response, but she could see his dilemma. Journalists talk a lot about fearlessly following stories. But there are always considerations: the allocation of resources, possible advertising losses, legal exposure, blowback from the rich and powerful. And, worst case, what if you were wrong? “I guess we’re in. Absolutely.” His tone did not say absolutely.
“Thanks. I know it’s a big deal.”
“It is.” Oliver cleared his throat. “What’s the next step? Think you can get something more from your brother? An unnamed police source?”
“My brother’s not saying anything. I found out this much by accident. Like it or not, I’m going to have to become an investigative journalist.”
“Not you. We.”