Hostile Witness: A Kate Ford Mystery

by Leigh Adams

  “They do publish the names of the soldiers coming back in caskets,” Frank said. “And those lists are not classified.”

  “And?” Kate said.

  “And Turner’s name is definitely on one of those lists at the right time,” Frank said. “His body was returned and released to Chan per his own instructions. She seems to have been the closest thing he had to family.”

  “Okay,” Kate said, “then Chan must have seen the body when it was at the funeral home or whatever.”

  “Not necessarily,” Tom said. “He was supposed to have been killed in an armed attack. His body may have been too badly mutilated to show to anybody and too badly mutilated to be recognizable.”

  “But they would have checked,” Kate protested. “The army would have. They’d have looked at dental records or DNA or something.”

  “They would have,” Frank agreed.

  “Then that will prove that he’s dead,” Kate said.

  “It will if we can find that material,” Frank said, “but that was beyond my scope for the day. What was within my scope was the SIRs, and for that I made a few private phone calls. I talked to Hollis Reed.”

  “General Hollis Reed?” Tom asked.

  Frank cleared his throat. “Hollis had his secretary pull the SIRs for me. I couldn’t get as good a scan as I did with the CMH. Nobody is required to cross-reference and index SIRs. There are hundreds of them every month. He did get her to pull everything they had for a year before that incident was supposed to have happened and for a year after. Not just SIRs from Afghanistan, but all of them. Then she uploaded them and sent them to me as PDF files.”

  “And I take it the incident wasn’t there,” Kate said.

  “I only gave them a quick look,” Frank said. “I didn’t see anything that could even vaguely correspond to the stories of that attack. I fooled around on the Internet for a while, but I kept running into the same roadblock again and again. When I Google the names, I definitely get hits, but the hits are always press stories from when Turner’s body was returned to the United States. If I hadn’t actually laid eyes on Ozgo on television, I’d start to wonder if any of these people existed.”

  Kate was thinking furiously. “There have to be other records,” she said. “Turner would have a military personnel file. There’s no question he was actually in the army. He went to West Point. If Ozgo was ever in the army—”

  “We do know that,” Tom said. “That was part of the background investigation after the arson. He enlisted right after high school. He did his basic training in South Carolina.”

  “There should be some information on how and why he left the army,” Frank said. “But I asked about that, too, and you know what I got? Every single person in Ozgo’s unit is listed as having been honorably discharged. Ozgo isn’t listed at all.”

  Later, when Jack was home and Tom had left, Kate went to her bedroom to lie down.

  She lay flat on her back in bed and put the CIA teddy bear on her chest. No matter what Frank and Tom had been hinting at, she didn’t believe for a moment that Turner wasn’t dead. For things to be as they were—for Turner to have been buried at Arlington—he had to have died in combat, which meant that somebody had to be covering up the particulars of how he’d died. There had to be something about the attack that was . . . wrong. There had to be a reason important people—important enough to be able to pull off this high level of a cover-up—did not want to let anyone know how he had died.

  The problem was how to find out who and what that was.

  What she was thinking was crazy. Doing something like that wasn’t just an invitation to get fired. That was an invitation to end up in Leavenworth.

  She turned on her side and held the teddy bear the way she had held teddy bears when she was small.

  It was a really crazy idea, but it might actually get her somewhere.

  And she would feel much better if she could get somewhere.

  ***

  The next morning, Kate was surprised to find Tom waiting for her at the usual place. The impression she’d gotten was that he’d expected her to stay with Frank. But he was there, and Kate was glad to see him.

  They were almost to the courthouse steps when Tom pulled out a photograph and said, “Who’s that?”

  “That’s the man,” Kate said.

  “Is it?”

  “The one in the photograph and the one I saw yesterday,” Kate said. “He’s got something wrong with his earlobes. Haven’t you noticed? They hang. But they don’t have holes in them.”

  “Jed Paterson,” Tom said, taking the photograph back just as the light turned green.

  Kate stopped dead. They had come to the steps of the courthouse. “Jed Paterson. The guy you think was in the house when it burned and got away. The guy you think set up Ozgo.”

  “Then let’s assume you saw Paterson,” Tom said, “which leaves us with the question of what he was doing near Almador.”

  “Not what he was doing near the cottage?”

  “That might be because he was following me,” Tom said. “Now, think for a minute about Ozgo’s lawyer.”

  “He’s jumpy,” Kate said.

  “He’s Dalton Brayde,” Tom said. “He’s not usually a criminal defense attorney, and he’s not an attorney you’d want to hire unless you want to lose a case. And he doesn’t usually do pro bono work. And Richard Hamilton is paying for him.”

  “What?” Kate said.

  “That’s another part of the police investigation Flanagan didn’t bother pursuing,” Tom said.

  ***

  It was one of the realities of a real trial in real time that it was, as Tom had promised, almost mind-numbingly boring. Courtroom dramas were always full of dramatic revelations, shocking reversals, and significant testimony. This trial always seemed to be eating up time with procedural questions. Today, as soon as the judge came in and the crowd was seated again, Evans asked if he could approach the bench and was granted permission. He got up there and stayed.

  The crowd did not take this well, and in no time at all, they had begun to rustle and murmur.

  “The jury isn’t even in court yet,” Kate said. “I wonder what they’re talking about up there.”

  “Order of witnesses,” Tom said. “Or maybe stipulating something. There’s no way to tell.”

  “I like Perry Mason better. Everything happens fast, it always means something, and at the end, you get a big explosion.”

  “If you got a big explosion in a real courtroom, you’d end up with a mistrial. Do what I told you to do. Look at Ozgo’s lawyer.”

  Kate looked. Brayde was very young, and he had had tilted his chair back so that its front two legs were off the ground. He looked exasperated.

  “What’s Brayde doing with the chair?” Kate asked.

  “Now that’s a very interesting question. That’s why I say that the defense isn’t really interested in defending this case.”

  “He’s on the side of the prosecution?”

  “He might as well be,” Tom said. “Dalton Brayde. Brayde Pharmaceuticals. Dalton Brayde is everything a tabloid newspaper is asking for in a rich kid. And I do mean everything. Spent all four of his years at Brown crashing cars into buildings. Dormitories. Local stores and restaurants. Private houses. He’d get himself stoked to the gills on alcohol and dope and total another Ferrari. And the troubles with girls? You wouldn’t believe it. He got himself accused of sexual assault four times, including once by the local police. And there are rumors of a dozen more. None of it stuck, but none of it stopped, either. He had the same reputation at Harvard Law, and he’s had the same reputation ever since. If I was a shrink, I’d be wondering if he was trying to get himself jailed.”

  “Maybe he is.”

  “If he is, he’s going to fail. His connections are just too good.”

  Kate considered Brayde. He was tall, slender, angular, and arrogant. He would have made a wonderful illustration for the cover of a romance novel. He reminded her, in
many ways, of her ex-husband.

  And just as she had been attracted to her ex-husband, she found herself attracted to Brayde.

  “You wouldn’t think he would have to go in for sexual assault,” she said. “He’s very good looking.”

  Tom gave her an incredulous look. “He’s also certifiable. And dangerous.”

  Up at the judge’s bench, the little conference concluded. The lawyers went back to their tables. The jury was brought into the jury box. The judge pounded his gavel even more forcefully this time, and the crowd quieted down.

  Kate sat back in her chair, her mind going a mile a minute.

  This session of the trial turned out to be a long and convoluted journey through the evidence for arson. She was paying enough attention to notice that the police arson investigator’s story was not the same as the things Iggy had told her, but she didn’t know enough to tell if they were just differences of opinion.

  One of them had to do with the source of the fire, which Iggy had said was a cigarette but the police arson investigator said must have been a fuse, with the “must have been” sticking awkwardly and unreasonably to the testimony.

  She filed the discrepancy in the back of her mind, thinking she would ask Tom about it later. Then the judge called the lunch recess, and everybody headed for the doors.

  “I’ll buy you a tuna fish sandwich,” Tom said. “I don’t think you eat enough tuna fish.”

  “I’ve just got to stop for a minute and send some e-mail,” Kate said.

  There was a line at the security table. It was moving as slowly as lines like that ever moved. Kate thought she was going to scream, it was taking so long.

  Then she was right in front of the same young woman court officer who had checked her bag when she came in. Kate took out her driver’s license. She accepted the manila envelope with her phone and her tablet. She shoved both those things into her bag and raced outside.

  She got over to the side where she could rest next to the marble steps, started up the tablet, and typed Dalton Brayde’s name into Google.

  ***

  The ten minutes away from Tom hadn’t been nearly enough time, but it was better than nothing. The plan that was formulating in her mind was completely insane, but she was convinced it was a way forward. She was also convinced that Tom would try to talk her out of it.

  She did let Tom buy her a sandwich. She even let it be an actual tuna fish sandwich. She didn’t want to eat. She wasn’t hungry. She could barely sit still.

  Tom noticed it, of course. “If you’re about to faint again or whatever that was the other day,” he said, “I’m taking you to an emergency room right this minute. You’re not looking so good.”

  “No,” Kate said. “It’s nothing like that. I’m just a little distracted. The last time I left home for any amount of time, my dad—”

  “Why don’t you call him?”

  “I tried, when I was in the ladies’ room,” Kate lied. She was a very bad liar.

  “I can take you out there right now,” Tom said.

  “But that’s the thing,” Kate said desperately. This time she was not lying. “He turns the ringer off on the cell phone because he hates it going off in public places. I always have trouble getting in touch with him if he’s away from home. I’m sure there isn’t anything wrong. There almost never is. It’s just that after the other day, I’m a little jumpy.”

  “All the more reason we should go out and check,” Tom said.

  Kate shook her head. “That would just embarrass him. He’s embarrassed enough already.” Kate started to gather up her things. “I’m just going to run home by myself and check,” she said. “That way he won’t know I was upset or anything. Thank you for the sandwich. And for yesterday, of course. I can’t thank you enough.”

  I’m babbling, Kate thought.

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Tom said. “How about I pick you up around ten and we can look through some of the things I’ve collected about the case?”

  “Saturday,” she said. “Jack’s got a track meet.” Another lie. “So,” she said, “I’ll just—”

  “Sunday, then,” Tom said. “Ten o’clock. Twelve if you go to church.”

  “Twelve will be fine,” Kate said, even though she didn’t know if it would. Her words were coming out in gasps.

  Then she started for the door, but it didn’t work.

  “There was one more thing I wanted to do today,” Tom said “And I want you to come with me.”

  He grabbed her arm. It didn’t take long for Kate to realize that where she was being propelled was Tom’s unmarked car or to pick up on Tom’s increasing change of mood.

  “Are you really sure this couldn’t wait until tomorrow?” she asked him as she got into the passenger seat. “You’ve got to have things to do today. I’ve got things to do today.”

  Kate was about to say more, but Tom suddenly put the car in reverse, did a violent but entirely accurate K-turn, and shot out down the intersection.

  “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked. “What’s so important that we’ve got to race to get there?”

  Tom didn’t take his eyes off the road.

  “We’re going to go settle one thing,” he said. “The one thing that really bothers me.”

  ***

  They made their way through a leafy-green area of compact, single-family houses. It was not dark, but some of the houses had their lights on, and Kate could see through the windows to scenes of family life: children setting dinner tables, women opening pizza boxes, men changing channels on television sets.

  All the details were sharp and clear and impossible to avoid, and that was one of the things she associated with the start of an episode. Suddenly, her mouth began to feel very dry, and she put her hands down on her seat and held on tight.

  Tom made his way down one residential street after another, then suddenly flung them into the driveway of a medium-sized cottage with faux-Bavarian trimmings. The car came to an abrupt halt, and Kate looked through the large front window to see a man she recognized drinking straight out of a bottle of Glenlivit whiskey.

  “Isn’t that—isn’t that Detective Flanagan?” she asked. “We came out to talk to Detective Flanagan?”

  “Stay in the car,” Tom said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I thought you wanted me to come.”

  “I want you the hell out of trouble while I get something done.”

  Tom got out of the car and slammed the door behind him. Then he strode right up over the grass to the front porch and knocked. A moment later, he began to pound. A moment after that, the door opened and Flanagan stood framed in the light behind him, still holding his bottle of Glenlivit.

  Then the door closed, and Kate turned her attention to the other thing she’d noticed. The houses here were fairly close together, and in the house on her right, there was a woman peering out a window, holding a pair of binoculars.

  Binoculars.

  Kate could hardly believe it.

  She didn’t get out of the car and go over to the other house right away, since Tom might be back almost immediately, but it didn’t take long before she got angry. What was it about the people in her life—all the people in her life, even Jack—that made them think they could jerk her around like a puppet any time they wanted? Do this. Do that. Do the other thing. Go here. Sit there. It was as if she had no say in her own life.

  The woman at the other house was still standing at the window, looking through her binoculars. Either she was a very patient woman, or she had reason to think that keeping vigilance would pay off. What was it that could go on at Flanagan’s house that would repay lots of surveillance in the middle of a weekday afternoon—or any other time, for that matter?

  She took her phone out of her jeans and checked the time. Tom must have been in the house for a good five minutes. What if he was in there for half an hour more? Was she just supposed to sit here and do nothing?

  Kate popped open her car door
and got out. She closed it gently, in case anybody inside might be able to hear. Tom and Flanagan weren’t anywhere near the living room window, though, so they couldn’t see her. And that was all for the better.

  She headed across the lawn to the neighbor’s house, looking up as she crossed from one property to the next. The neighbor had her binoculars trained on Kate now. Kate had expected it.

  She went up the steps to the neighbor’s front door and rang the bell. Part of her thought the neighbor would pretend not to be home. She was elderly. She probably lived alone. On the other hand, she was also curious and probably lonely, and—

  It took no time at all for Kate to hear shuffling behind the front door. Then the door opened and she was faced with a very elderly woman, thin, frail, and rickety. But there was nothing frail or rickety about the light in that woman’s eyes. She would notice everything, and remember it, too.

  Kate had to think fast. She hadn’t come prepared with a story if the woman opened up.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m Kaitlyn Plymouth.” There was a pseudonym. Maybe she should have called herself Buick. “I’m a reporter for the Washington Post. We’re working on a story about the Kevin Ozgo trial. The trial is set to go to the jury in a few days, and we’re trying to get all angles in the case cleared up and—”

  “You don’t look like a reporter,” the woman said. “You’re a mess.”

  “I am a mess,” Kate said. “It’s been a long day. Mrs.—”

  “Leeds,” the woman said. “Lucy Leeds. Is your friend over there a reporter, too?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “Yes, he is. He’s the head reporter on this, to tell you the truth. We’re trying to find out something about Mr. Flanagan, you know, as human interest and that kind of thing.”

  This story sounded so incredibly lame, Kate almost winced visibly.

  Mrs. Leeds was standing in the door in such a way that Kate couldn’t enter. “I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on Mr. Flanagan,” she said. “We’d like to know what kind of a person he is when he’s not on the job. That kind of thing.”

  “Seems like everybody wants to know about Bill Flanagan,” Leeds said. “That other one said she was a reporter, too.”