A Minute to Midnight

by David Baldacci

  “My God,” exclaimed Blum.

  “A split second later another person came out of that alley. It was a woman. She had a gun, too. By that time, I had planted myself behind a trash can and ducked down. The guy turned and fired at her but missed. Then she was on him like a runaway freight train. She disarmed him so fast I could barely follow her movements. He was down on the ground and being handcuffed before I could even let out a breath. Then some other cops showed up. After that, she came over to me and asked if I was okay. She was super nice. Super calm, especially after what had just happened. I was still shaking.”

  “Who was she?”

  “FBI Special Agent Marilyn Shales. She’d been staking out this guy for about two weeks. He was bad to the bone. Drugs, armed robbery, murder in multiple states. Marilyn probably came up to my chest and weighed maybe a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. But she was the toughest person I have ever met in my life. I told her how blown away I was by what she’d done. She gave me her card. I called her a week later. We met, and a week after that I filled out my FBI application.”

  “Did you keep in touch?”

  Pine nodded. “She really became a mentor to me as I went through the process. She even came to my graduation from Quantico.”

  “Do you still see her?”

  “I wish I could. She died three years ago. Breast cancer.” Pine drew a short, hard breath. “I love being an agent, Carol. I love everything about it. But mostly I love the good I can do with the shield that comes with it. The little girl, Holly? She was surprised that a woman could be a FBI agent. I told her girls can do anything they set their minds to. Because that’s basically what Marilyn Shales told me.”

  “So you were being a mentor of sorts to Holly. Who knows, maybe you’ll be attending her FBI graduation one day.”

  Pine smiled at this. “That would be cool,” she said quietly. Then she rose and said abruptly, “So off we go to Savannah.”

  “I hear it’s very pretty. I’ve never been there.”

  “I have, and it is beautiful. Have you read the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?”

  “Yes. It was wonderful.”

  “But it shows that even beautiful places have very dark sides.”

  Chapter 36

  LAYNE GILLESPIE’S LAST KNOWN ADDRESS was in a part of Savannah that was as far from the town’s historic Garden District as it was possible to be. Tiny homes with laundry on lines in yards that held more dirt than grass. Boarded-up buildings, folks standing on street corners without much to do.

  There were four of them in the vehicle: Wallis and Laredo in front, Pine and Blum in back.

  “Don’t see any drug activity,” noted Wallis.

  Pine shrugged. “Why would you? These days you can order your fentanyl cocktail from a phone app and get it delivered to your home faster than you can a pizza.”

  “Sad state of affairs,” replied Wallis.

  “Well, whatever he did for a living, it doesn’t look like it paid well,” noted Laredo as they cruised toward the destination, a seedy apartment building that was two blocks off a main road and looked to be about a hundred years old. They parked in the small cracked asphalt lot in front of a place marked OFFICE and climbed out.

  The man inside was black, worn, and thin, around sixty. He looked at the four as though they were an invading army come to clear out the little he had and then some. He had on a brilliantly white T-shirt, jeans faded by time, and a suspicious expression.

  He lit a Camel as they faced off across the narrow width of a worn, broad plank that constituted the front desk.

  “Help you folks?” he said. Though they weren’t in South Carolina, his drawl was all low country. His expression said clearly that help was not what he really had in mind.

  Wallis drew out his badge and ID card. “GBI. Detective Wallis. These folks are with the FBI. We want to talk to you about Layne Gillespie.”

  “Who?”

  “Layne Gillespie,” said Laredo. “He lives here. Or he did.”

  The man grinned, showing off pearly whites the width of his mouth.

  “Oh, Layne, thought you said Wayne. Right. So, what’s up with him?”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” asked Wallis.

  The man hooked the smoke from his mouth and scratched his stubbly chin. “Hard to say. Folks don’t check in with me when they come and go. This ain’t no day care.”

  “Think harder,” said Laredo. “It’s important.”

  “Might help if you told me what’s going on with the dude.”

  “We’ll get into that, but first things first,” said Wallis.

  “Okay. Saw Layne, oh, maybe a week ago.”

  “Did you talk to him?” asked Pine.

  “Just to say hello.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “Like normal. Cheerful. Happy-go-lucky, you might say. That was Layne.”

  “You knew him well?” asked Laredo.

  The man’s eyes shifted to him. They grew smaller, considering, thoughtful, a million chess moves a second. He took a long puff of the Camel and let it go, slow and deliberate. “Not if he’s done something so bad the FBI needs to come to town.”

  “Savannah lets you light up in a public place?” asked Laredo, fanning away the smoke.

  The pearly whites appeared again. “This is my home, man, not a public place.”

  “It’s an apartment building catering to the public,” retorted Laredo.

  “Well, if you say so, man.” He kept puffing on his cig.

  “What can you tell us about Gillespie?” asked Pine, with a hard look at Laredo.

  “Been here about a year or so. Kept to himself, really. Oh, he’d help folks move in and move out, that sort of thing. Handy with tools. Fixed the air-conditioning here a few times. And the washing machine. I like him.” The Camel moved to the other side of the mouth via a flick of the tongue. “He okay?”

  “Any reason you can think of why he wouldn’t be?” asked Wallis.

  “I can think of four.” He pointed to each of them.

  “We need to see his room,” said Laredo.

  Another puff on the Camel. “Y’all got a warrant?”

  “So you know all about warrants, do you?” asked Wallis with hiked eyebrows.

  “I watch the Law and Order shows, man, just like everybody else. That Mariska Hargitay is one sexy lady.” He eyed Pine. “You remind me of her.”

  Wallis held up the search warrant and let the man read over it.

  “Okay, but Layne might not like that.”

  “Trust us when we tell you Layne won’t care,” said Laredo.

  * * *

  The manager opened the door and motioned them in.

  “I’ve got stuff to do downstairs,” he said. “Let me know when y’all finish up.”

  “Will do, thanks,” said Pine.

  The man hesitated at the door. “He’s dead, ain’t he?”

  Pine looked at him. “You have reason to think that other than us being here?”

  He shrugged, dropped the cigarette, and tapped it out on the concrete floor outside the apartment with the heel of his shoe. “I’ll let you have your look.”

  “This won’t take long,” said Wallis as he eyed the small confines of the apartment. “I’ll take the bathroom.”

  “Closet,” said Blum, and she opened the door and poked her head in.

  Laredo looked at Pine. “Guess that leaves you and me for the bedroom.”

  Pine gave him a funny stare but didn’t reply.

  A thorough search took all of about thirty minutes.

  Wallis had found nothing unusual in the bathroom, and all the meds in the medicine cabinet were over-the-counter.

  Pine and Laredo had tossed the bedroom and found pretty much nothing.

  However, Blum had struck gold in the closet and laid out some of her finds on the bed.

  “Look at all this,” said Wallis as they stared down at the women’s clothing, underclothes, shoes, and
purses Blum had placed on the bed.

  “These look like serious performance outfits to me,” said Pine. She held up one outfit and then the shoes that matched it.

  “I agree,” said Blum. “And this stuff is not cheap. This is first-rate material and workmanship.”

  “And he lives in this dump?” said Wallis.

  “Maybe he spent all his money on clothes,” quipped Laredo.

  Pine held up a pair of white panties. “Maybe this explains the Army kicking him out.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Blum.

  “I thought they had ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ for homosexuals,” said Wallis.

  Pine said, “That’s no longer the law. But even then, just because he has all this stuff doesn’t mean he was gay. And let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For all we know these clothes belong to someone else. Maybe a woman who stayed here.”

  Blum added, “Or Gillespie could have been a cross-dresser or a drag queen. If he were a cross-dresser, that could be why the Army might have let him leave with a general discharge, or else they could have been facing some legal trouble. But how they handled his discharge may have been their way of telling him what they thought of his lifestyle.”

  Pine said, “What the hell? I mean, if he could do the job, he could do the job.”

  Wallis interjected, “He might have been a distraction in his unit. Or maybe he did something else. I’m inclined to give the Army the benefit of the doubt.”

  Pine said, “Well, Gillespie might have been working at some club around here. If he was gay, there is a strong scene in Savannah.”

  “How do you know that?” said Wallis.

  “I’ve been here before. And if you know where to look, the vibe is pretty obvious.”

  “For such a quaint Southern town,” added Blum primly. “Who would have thought?”

  “I know I’m just an old fart, but I don’t understand any of that stuff,” said Wallis. “But live and let live, that’s my motto.”

  “Well, the guy who killed Gillespie obviously didn’t get that memo,” said Pine. “So let’s go talk to the apartment manager again.”

  “Why?” asked Wallis.

  “Because I’m pretty sure he knows all about it.”

  “No way that old guy is gay,” said Wallis confidently.

  “I’m not saying he is or he isn’t. I’m just saying I think he knows stuff. So let’s go see.”

  Chapter 37

  THE MANAGER’S NAME, he told them when they returned, was Clarence Spotter. He was sixty-eight years old, had a male partner, knew the gay community in Savannah well, and also was aware that Gillespie was working as a dancer at a nightclub called the Silver Shell.

  He shook his head sadly when he was told of the man’s death.

  “Damn shame. Layne was a good person.”

  “Did he have any friends?” asked Pine. “Folks he hung out with who could help us?”

  “He never had anybody come by here. You can check at the Shell. You might find somebody who knows something. Andersonville?” He shook his head again.

  “He ever mention the place to you?” asked Wallis.

  “No. He was in the Army for a spell till they made him get out. He traveled a lot then before coming here, least that’s what he told me. Maybe he just wanted to settle down.”

  “We knew about his leaving the military but just didn’t know the circumstances.”

  “I never really knew, either. But I imagine it had something to do with who he was.” He added sardonically, “The Army probably likes its soldiers in pants at all times.”

  “You know you could have told us all this when we first got here,” pointed out Wallis.

  Spotter smiled. “Sure I could have. But I decided not to.”

  “Why not?” asked Laredo.

  “’Cause you never told me what happened to Layne, that’s why. You want the whole truth from me, you got to be reciprocal, all I’m asking.”

  “That’s fair,” replied Blum.

  As they were walking back to the car, Wallis shook his head. “Never would have pegged that guy as a homosexual. He just didn’t seem the type.”

  “What type would that be?” asked Blum.

  “You know…”

  “Flamboyant?”

  Wallis shrugged. “Yeah, I mean something like that.”

  Blum said, “My youngest daughter is a lesbian. I didn’t know until she came out at twenty-two. Maybe I should have looked for more flamboyance in her.”

  Back in the car Pine said, “It’s nearly six o’clock. We can head over to this club and maybe talk to some of the folks there before it gets too busy. You good with that?” she added, glancing at Wallis.

  “I guess.”

  “Problem?”

  “No, no problem.”

  “The world is big enough for lots of different people,” Pine pointed out.

  “Hell, I know that. And I’ve seen my share of, well, different. It’s just all this LGB, whatever that acronym is, it gets confusing.”

  “LGBTQ,” said Blum. “With more letters to come, if they want them.”

  “See, that’s what I’m talking about. How’s a person to keep all that straight?”

  “But you don’t have to,” said Blum. “The people who identify with those groups do. And I think they have no problem with realizing who they are.”

  When Wallis looked puzzled she added, “Just think of it this way: You’re clearly an MH.”

  “I’m a what?” said a confused Wallis.

  Pine said, “Male heterosexual. Think you’d ever forget that?”

  Wallis exclaimed, “It’s who I am. How can I forget that?”

  “Well, then, you must see Carol’s point.”

  Wallis blinked and then nodded. “Yeah…Well, I guess I do, now that you mention it.”

  “So, Silver Shell, here we come,” said Blum.

  * * *

  It was a twenty-minute ride from the apartment building to the Silver Shell, which was a two-story brick building on the corner of an area that might generously be considered “in transition.”

  “Well, I can see why they call it that,” said Blum as she looked out the window.

  The place had a wall mural out front of an enormous silver clam shell.

  “I wonder what the symbolism for that is?” asked Wallis nervously.

  “Maybe the owner just likes clams,” replied Pine.

  They knocked on the side door, and a man dressed in work overalls opened it. Clarence Spotter had phoned ahead, and they were expected. The same man escorted them to a row of dressing rooms and stopped at the one with the title MANAGER stenciled on it. He knocked and received a verbal okay to enter.

  He opened the door and the four of them crowded into the small room. The workman closed the door, and Pine could hear his footsteps going back down the corridor.

  The room had a couple of chairs and a battered settee upholstered in a zebra pattern. The walls were painted eggplant; the ceiling was dominated by a chandelier that seemed to have about a million pieces of cut crystal. Against the far wall was a dressing table and an attached mirror with large bulbs surrounding the glass perimeter.

  The person sitting there had their back to them and was wearing a long red dressing gown with what looked to be faux fur around the neck and cuffs.

  They gathered in the middle of the room, and Wallis cleared his throat. “I guess you know why we’re here,” he said.

  Pine noted that the person’s broad shoulders trembled a bit.

  Then the person spun around in the chair and faced them.

  He was in his forties, with sharply angular features and a mound of blond hair that was being managed with a barrage of hair clips so it would lie flat to his head. He was, Pine gauged, about six-two and a slim 160 pounds, though his build was athletic. He had apparently started to apply his makeup because the cheeks held foundation, and the lips were a bright shade of orange. The eyebrows had been plucked and shaped, and the
eyes under them were a startling blue.

  “Layne,” said the man.

  “Layne Gillespie. We understand that he worked here, Mr.…?”

  The man nodded. “I’m sorry, my name is Ted Blakely. I’m the owner here. I’m…” He put a hand to his face and started to sob into it.

  Blum grabbed some tissues from a box on the dressing table and handed them to Blakely.

  He thanked her with a nod and wiped his eyes dry. When he looked up, there were rivulets through the makeup on his cheeks caused by the tears he had shed.

  “I’m sorry, this…this is all rather overwhelming.”

  Wallis said quietly, “I’m sure this is a shock, um, Mr. Blakely. If you want to delay this interview?”

  “No, no. I’ll do anything to help you catch whoever, whatever monster did this.” Blakely blew his nose, tossed the tissues into a wastebasket, and looked up at them. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Mr. Gillespie was found shot to death at a cemetery in Andersonville, Georgia.”

  “Andersonville, Georgia?”

  “You’ve heard of it?” asked Pine.

  “No. And Layne never mentioned it.”

  “I take it you and he were friends,” said Pine.

  “Very good friends and professional colleagues. We performed onstage together.”

  “How long had he worked here?” asked Wallis.

  “About a year. But I knew Layne before that. I was the one who asked him to come to Savannah. I knew he’d be a star here.”

  “So you knew of his…professional abilities?” said Laredo.

  Blakely gave Laredo a searching look that ended in an enigmatic smile. “Yes, his professional abilities.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” asked Pine.

  “Right here in this room, three nights ago. We had just finished the last act of the night. It was around two in the morning. We had a drink and went our separate ways.”

  “Weren’t you concerned when he didn’t show up for work?” asked Pine.