by Jen Blood
“No,” I said. “We’ll be fine. I’ll give you a call when we’re done, if that’s all right.”
He nodded his agreement and left without another word, giving Thibodeau a wide berth on his way out. Instead of taking us out when he was gone, however, Thibodeau crossed the room and closed the door again, then returned to us.
“Sit,” he said.
“But—” I began.
“Sit down, Diggins,” he ground out. Solomon sank into her chair immediately; I took half a beat longer, purely for appearance’s sake.
Thibodeau waited until we were both focused on him before he took a seat himself. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked me.
“Working a story,” I said.
“You can’t just drag local politicians out of church and flash pictures like that around. I’m in the middle of a goddamn investigation here—”
“Not about those pictures, though,” Solomon interjected. “Right? Your investigation is about Charlene Dsengani. And the attack on Buzz now, presumably. You told us yourself that you couldn’t do anything about those pictures.”
“I told you I couldn’t arrest anyone for what was in them,” he corrected her. “It doesn’t mean I don’t consider them a viable avenue to pursue.”
“So you think Davies and Rick Foster have something to do with all this?”
“I don’t know,” he said stubbornly. “But you start showing those photos around town and it completely screws me over when I do start questioning these people.”
“So you are planning to question them?” I asked.
Thibodeau shook his head in frustration. “Goddamn it, you’re not listening. This is an active investigation, and I keep tripping over you two.”
“Start working with us, and that will stop happening,” Solomon said.
He grimaced. “You’re as big a pain in the ass as he is, you know that? Besides which, I’m not even sure you have a job anymore after this stunt, so I wouldn’t push it. You might want to check in with Rafferty about that.”
“What about Eugene Elias?” I interrupted. “Have you been able to track him down yet?”
“He’s got an alibi,” he said.
“For Charlene’s murder, or the attack on Buzz?” Solomon asked.
“Both.”
“Did he tell you who he’s working for?”
“He’s insisting on keeping that quiet, and it’s within his rights,” Thibodeau said. “He did cop to leaving the pictures with your neighbors, but there was no B&E involved... If you want to press charges for stalking, it might not be a bad idea to get a restraining order against him.”
“What about the message on my wall?” I asked. “Someone sure as hell B&E’d to get that in there.”
“Elias claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned it,” Thibodeau said. “I believe him. It doesn’t add up, him doing something like that and then leaving the pictures for you that same night.”
I groaned in frustration. “Are you going to talk to Rick Foster?”
Thibodeau hesitated a second too long.
“Come on!” I shouted, frustration boiling over. “I don’t even care about the goddamn story at this point—this guy is dirty. You saw the pictures. Charlene Dsengani is dead, Lisette Mandalay and Maisie are both missing, Buzz is in the hospital, and I think Rick Foster is tied to all of it. You should have seen Davies’ face when we asked him about it: he’s terrified of this jackass. And I don’t think it’s because of what the guy can do to his political career.”
“I don’t have a single complaint against the congressman,” Thibodeau said, talking over the tail end of my sentence. “The only complaints I have at this point are against you two. We’ve got guys looking for Lisette and Maisie. We’ve cleared the crime scene over at the Ledger and I’ve got guys going over the evidence. We’ve got a whole friggin’ team on Charlene’s murder. We’ll get whoever’s doing this. But if I run into you two one more time, I’m tossing you in jail for obstruction until this thing’s over. You understand what I’m saying here?”
Solomon nodded reluctantly. He waited for me to agree. It took a little longer, but I eventually nodded.
“Yeah. We’ve got it.”
“Good. Now—do you need a ride somewhere, or can you call your attack dog and have him pick you up?”
“We’re fine,” I said.
He stood and started for the door. Before he got there, he turned. “Stay away from Foster. I mean it.”
Neither Solomon nor I said a word. He took that as agreement—a rookie mistake I was surprised he’d made.
Chapter 19
We left the church before we were forcibly removed, and Solomon called Rafferty while we were on the curb out front waiting for Wolf to return. Based on the slump of her shoulders and the endless pacing, the conversation wasn’t going well. The sun was still bright, waves of heat dancing above the sidewalk. Most of the churchgoers had gone by this time. I stuck close to Solomon and considered our next move. I hadn’t gotten far when she returned to me with a frown and nearly chucked her phone into the road.
“The asshole fired me,” she said. The few people who still loitered on the sidewalk looked at her unhappily. She scowled back at them without remorse. I took her elbow and pulled her to the side of the action.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have pulled you into this.”
“You didn’t pull me into anything, I wanted to be here.” She turned her scowl on me.
“What does that mean for the interview with Foster tomorrow?” I asked.
“What do you think? I’m off—everything. Off the payroll, off my stories, off the masthead. Motherfucker.” She kicked a stop sign. People were starting to look alarmed. So much for the perky redhead with the Christian smile.
“Before you break your foot or men in white coats come for us, how about you take a breath?” I said. “We’ll figure something out. We’ve got the pictures—which gives us the upper hand. We’ll track down Foster and see if we can get some time with him today instead.”
Solomon looked moderately cheered by that idea. Wolf rolled up then, and I gave Solomon a hand into the truck, mentally cursing myself. Of course Rafferty would can her before he’d ever consider collaborating with me or Buzz. And I’d given him the perfect excuse.
“Did you get anything from Thibodeau?” Wolf asked once we were on the road. “What’s our next move?”
That was a good question—one I’d been giving a lot of thought to. “One thing has been bothering me all day,” I said.
“Just one?” Solomon said. “Lucky you.”
“Well, one in particular. The way Buzz was found...” She made a face, but nodded for me to continue. “The wounds he had... What was the purpose of all that slicing and dicing before his throat was finally slit?”
Wolf glanced across the seat at me, then returned his attention to the road as he took a left on York Street. I didn’t ask him where he was going, but he definitely seemed to have a destination in mind.
“All those shallow cuts on his face, his arms...”
Wolf hadn’t actually seen Buzz after everything had gone down, so I watched with interest as his face changed. “You think someone was trying to get information from him?” he asked.
“Like they were torturing him, you mean?” Solomon said.
“It’s possible. Think about it: the office was turned upside down.”
“What would they have been looking for, though? And maybe more importantly, did they find it?” she asked.
“If the office was ransacked, chances are pretty good he didn’t talk, and they didn’t get what they came for,” Wolf said. “How bad did they trash the place?”
“Everything they could look under, flip over, or tear apart was in pieces,” Solomon said.
“Definitely didn’t get what they came for, then,” Wolf said. He turned the truck onto the west end of Commercial Street.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
&
nbsp; “I figured eventually you’d want to head back to your office, take a look around. I wouldn’t mind doing the same.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I don’t like all this sitting around, waiting for something to happen. Too much time is going by. Lizzie’s been gone too long.”
“And you think maybe we’ll find a lead at the Ledger?” I asked.
“Your boss hasn’t woken up yet, so he’s not talking. I would’ve ripped into that prick at the church, but he doesn’t know shit—”
“Wait,” Solomon said. “How do you know that?”
“I could tell. Foster’s the one to talk to about this, not this Davies guy. He knows something more than he’s telling, definitely knows what happened that night in Africa. But that doesn’t tell me where Lizzie is. It doesn’t bring Maisie home.”
He turned onto the Portland Pier, cruised past the backside of J.’s Oyster Bar, and parked in a space reserved for the law offices next door. Since it was Sunday, I assumed it wouldn’t be a problem. Since it was Wolf, I assumed he didn’t care.
◊◊◊◊◊
The Ledger was no less haunting in daylight, yellow police tape now strung across the door and the office still in shambles. There were no cops in sight, though, and I stepped under the tape followed by Solomon and then Wolf. Next to Buzz’s desk, a bloodied footprint was smeared on the wooden floor. Mine, I realized after a moment. There was a plastic marker with the number 5 beside it.
“If whatever they were looking for was actually here, don’t you think they would have found it?” Solomon asked. “I mean, realistically...”
“What’s he been working on?” Wolf asked. “Specifically. What angle of Charlene’s murder was he into?”
“Bobby Davies,” I said. “He was planning to get in touch with the councilman personally to have a word with him. And he said he thought he might have a way to track down Jacob Deng.”
“But he didn’t say what that way was,” Solomon said.
“If he got information, would he have written it up on his computer?” Wolf said. If he had, we were screwed: his Mac was on the floor, smashed to pieces. It looked like someone had put their foot through the screen.
“It takes him forever to write up his notes,” I said with a shake of my head. “If he ever gets around to it at all.”
“If he thought it was information that could get him in trouble, where would he put it?” Solomon asked.
I thought about what Buzz’s day would have been, before all this went down. He was already here when we got in and had been for a while, but he’d said he had an idea of how he might get in touch with Jacob Deng. How had he phrased it, exactly? I might have an idea about how to track down this Deng guy. I’ll pull a few strings, see if I can talk to Davies at the same time.
Who would he call on a Saturday who’d be able to put him in touch with Davies directly?
“City Hall,” I said.
“What?” Solomon said. She looked up from going through a pile of paperwork that had fallen from his desk.
“He said he thought he might know how to track down Jacob Deng, and he’d try to talk to Bobby Davies at the same time. Davies’ office is in City Hall, right? Who would he talk to there who could tell him how to find Deng?”
All three of us stood there in silence for far too long, considering the question. Finally, Solomon shook her head.
“No, hang on—Davies wasn’t at City Hall yesterday, he was at the funeral, right? And so was pretty much everyone worth a damn in this town.”
“There was a meeting,” I remembered suddenly. “Unofficial, under the radar. Thibodeau’s wife works for this place, the Maine Coalition for Africa. They were getting together with Davies and Foster and some other members of the community, after the funeral.”
“Which means if Buzz had shown up, he would have had a chance to ask some questions about Jacob Deng and maybe get a word in with Davies at the same time,” Solomon said.
I pulled out my cell phone and punched in Thibodeau’s number. The detective had grudgingly given me his direct line since I seemed to be getting in so much trouble lately. He groaned when he realized who it was.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than harass me?”
“The meeting you went to with MCA yesterday after the funeral—can you tell me if Buzz showed up there?”
I could almost hear him frowning over the line.
“He did, as a matter of fact,” he said. “A couple of papers got word of the whole thing, don’t ask me how. We booted his ass, and everyone else’s.”
“Before he got thrown out, did you happen to see him talking to anyone?”
“Rafferty, that sleazy prick from the Tribune. Buzz spent most of the time talking to him, and I think he wormed his way over to talk to Mary Dsengani briefly. That’s when I kicked him out.”
I wound up the conversation and hung up with no better ideas than I’d had before, then ran what I’d learned past Wolf and Solomon.
“Mary’s long gone,” Solomon said. “So we’re not getting any help there. And I’m sure he and Rafferty were just talking newspapers.”
That seemed plausible, but I shook my head after a second of thought. “That’s junior high protocol—go to the dance and spend the night talking to your buddies instead of the cute girl in the corner giggling with all her cute friends. Buzz knows better than that; if he was at a function with Rick Foster, Bobby Davies, and a handful of other VIPs, why the hell would he waste his time talking to Rafferty?”
“Maybe he was talking to him about the two papers collaborating,” she suggested.
“Still, it doesn’t seem right.” I shook my head again as an idea began to form. “Did you ever mention Deng to Rafferty when you were at the Tribune?”
“We ran his picture, just like everyone else did.”
“But you never told him the guy’s name, right?” She shook her head. “And Rafferty never mentioned him beyond that sketch Rachel did?”
“No, but we didn’t really have a lot of interaction about the whole thing.”
I went to a stack of newspapers scattered by Buzz’s overturned desk, and tried to figure out which one had been on top of the pile. It took only a few seconds once I’d figured out what I was looking for:
An article in the Tribune dated September 24, 1996:
“Former African Child Soldier Finds Home in Maine”
The byline belonged to a reporter whose name I didn’t recognize. I scanned the article. It described an African man in his late twenties who had lost his eye in a fight when he was a soldier in Sudan. The man had been granted asylum, but still feared for his life and was hiding out in Maine. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, and no pictures or specific details as to his current whereabouts were given.
“You think that’s him?” Wolf asked.
“I think there’s a better-than-even chance,” I said. “And I think Buzz was trying to pump Rafferty for more information on it.”
“This Rafferty,” Wolf said. “You think he’s got an address? And maybe he gave that to your boss?”
“Buzz would have called us if he’d gotten that far,” Solomon said. “And you know Rafferty—he’s such a dick, there’s no way he would have given anything up. He would’ve totally gotten off on lording it over Buzz.”
Wolf headed for the door. “You know where to find this Rafferty now?”
I looked at Solomon, who shrugged. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
◊◊◊◊◊
Solomon and I stayed in the truck outside the Tribune while Wolf went in, with the reasoning that Rafferty would slam the door in our faces if he saw either her or me. He might try to slam the door in Wolf’s face, but I hoped for his sake he had more sense than that.
Ten minutes after he’d gone in, Wolf returned with a slip of paper clutched in his hand.
“He doesn’t know any more about this Deng guy, but I got a phone number for the reporter who wrote the story.” He climbed in
to the truck, shoved the phone number at me, started the engine, and pulled onto Congress without looking in either direction. Tires squealed. A horn honked. Wolf flipped off the driver behind us as a matter of course, and nodded to me.
“What the hell are you waiting for? Call this guy. Let’s get moving.”
I called and got the voicemail for a Ben Morrison. The message said he was traveling, but didn’t say where; that he checked his messages, but didn’t say when. I left a message instructing him to call, and told him it was urgent.
Then, I hung up.
Wolf groaned in frustration, pounding the steering wheel with both hands. “Now what? Jesus Christ, this whole thing is killing me.”
I shook my head, afraid to admit the truth.
Rick Foster was in New York for the day and wouldn’t be back until morning. Eugene Elias was in the wind. Aside from waiting, I was out of ideas.
◊◊◊◊◊
We went back to Johnny’s, where I retrieved my Jeep and Wolf reluctantly agreed to let us out of his sight for a few hours. From there, we wound up back at the Ledger for the better part of the afternoon and evening while Wolf pursued other leads on his own. He wouldn’t say what those leads were, or how he planned to pursue them. Solomon suggested it probably involved a lot of threats, possible arson, and maybe the occasional grenade. That sounded about right.
The police had already cleared the crime scene, so Solomon and I tackled cleaning the office. We washed blood off the floor and the walls, threw out the stuff we couldn’t get the blood off, trashed computers, righted overturned file cabinets... We listened to Buzz’s radio while we worked, where a Rat Pack Sunday Special was playing on a local station. It seemed fitting, so I didn’t change it.
Alice showed up around seven and gave us the news that Buzz was most likely out of danger, but they were keeping him in a medically induced coma for another twenty-four hours to give his brain and organs a chance to recover. She looked her age for the first time since I’d known her.