Playing Dead

by Allison Brennan

  Barney laughed. “Just about everyone in town. I’m the only bar.”

  The small drunk piped up. “Lora. She’s here every night, till closing.” He winked at Barney. “I think she has a thing for you, Tip.”

  Tip turned red. Mitch had never seen a man blush before.

  “Don’t go bothering Lora,” he said.

  Steve approached the men at the end of the bar, notepad in hand. “Lora?”

  “Lora Lane. Nice name, eh? Lora Lane. Yep. She’s the daughter of the chief of police. A bit slow, but sweet as all get-out. Sits at the bar every night nursing her rum and Diet Coke after getting off work from the tackle shop. Her daddy owns that, too.”

  “Does she live around here?”

  “Course. With her mom and dad. In that big yellow Victorian on the corner of C and 4th. Can’t miss it.”

  Claire spotted the Fed before she left the house with the dogs for her morning walk. She’d suspected that Agent Donovan would have someone sit on her after last night. Her dad was lucky that the Feds were slow to react. He might have been caught last night, and then there’d be no reason for the prison authority to give him the surgery he needed.

  He was a walking dead man either way.

  She confirmed the Fed—a female—when she went out with Chewy and Yoda. While sipping her coffee coming back from Starbucks, she knew that no matter what she did, the FBI would follow.

  Screw that. She wasn’t going to lead them to her father. She considered driving up to Lake Tahoe just for the hell of it, make the Fed wonder what was going on. Might be fun . . . but she had too much work to do. She had to track down Greg Abrahamson and find out about Frank Lowe’s arrest. And then there was Tip Barney down in Isleton. It wouldn’t hurt to have the Fed follow her around town, but it was the principle of the thing: She didn’t like being followed. Or manipulated. Or treated like a fragile little girl.

  Her dad was turning himself in because he was dying. She needed to prove he was innocent before . . . no. He wasn’t going to die. Nelia Kincaid, his attorney—or whatever she was—wasn’t going to let him surrender without an assurance that he’d be given the medical attention he needed.

  With that belief firmly in place, Claire showered, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and threw on a loose-fitting blazer. She holstered her 9mm as well as her Taser, then strapped on her ankle gun, a Kahr P40, and picked up her house phone. Were they listening in? She put down her phone, pulled out her cell phone. The cell phone was owned by Rogan-Caruso. If it was tapped, they’d know. And if they knew and condoned it, then she was already up the creek. She hoped her employer would talk to her before cooperating with the FBI.

  She called a local taxi service and sent a car to the corner of 40th and H Streets.

  Claire went out the back door, hopped over two fences, and ended up on the street parallel to hers. She took the long way to the meeting place, making sure the Fed wasn’t driving up and down the streets looking for her. She had the car pegged—not what she thought of as a typical FBI sedan. A small, sporty black Honda. Must be the agent’s personal car, or the Feds had gotten more discreet in surveillance.

  She called Bill as she neared her destination. “Hi, Bill. Can I borrow your truck? My Jeep isn’t starting. No, don’t pick me up, I’m already in a taxi. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Mitch and Steve didn’t find Lora at the Victorian house on the corner, but she was at the tackle shop on the main dock in Isleton.

  She was a stick of a thing, with dyed blond hair and huge fake diamond earrings that made her lobes sag with their weight. She smiled when she saw them, but it wasn’t until she spoke that Mitch realized the man at the bar was right: Lora Lane was on the slow side.

  She was making lures behind the counter. There were no customers in the shop, but Mitch saw several boats on the river through the windows behind the counter.

  “Ms. Lane?”

  She looked up, smiled, and said brightly, “Hi. Welcome to Isleton Bait and Tackle.”

  They identified themselves and showed their badges. Mitch said, “I think you can help us in an ongoing investigation.”

  “Sure!”

  “We’re trying to trace the last steps of a law student who was found dead in the river near here. You might have heard about it. His body was found on Wednesday.”

  She bobbed her head several times. “Everyone who comes in is talking about it.”

  “We know that he was at the Rabbit Hole the night he disappeared. We were told that you’re a regular.” Mitch held up Maddox’s photograph. “Do you recognize this man?”

  She stared at the picture and bit her lip. “I haven’t seen him recently. I’d remember, because he has nice glasses.”

  “In January. It was a Sunday night and it was raining pretty badly.”

  She brightened and nodded. “Oh, yes! I remember. I think.” She bit her lip again. “I think so. But it was a long time ago. But I have a good memory.”

  “You think you might have seen this man in the bar?”

  “Yes,” she said cautiously. “I think he came in late, after dark.”

  That didn’t help—in January it was dark before six in the evening.

  “Do you know if he met with anyone? Maybe had an argument?”

  She shook her head, her eyes wide. “I just remember what he looks like. I’m good with faces. And he was sitting in his car a long time after he left.”

  “His car? Do you remember what kind of car?”

  She shrugged. “Not really. Tip was walking me home. It was raining pretty hard and we were walking really fast. I thought maybe he didn’t want to drive in the rain.”

  Steve asked, “Did Tip see the man in the car?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Mitch retraced the conversation. “This man came in after dark, and how long do you think he stayed in the bar?”

  “I don’t know. Long enough to have a drink.”

  “Did he seem nervous? Agitated? Angry?”

  Lora Lane frowned, her eyes worried and confused. Mitch backtracked. “Did this man act strange?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “But you remember him having a drink?”

  She blinked in confusion. “I got to bring him his beer. Tip lets me do that sometimes, especially when it’s slow, and I like to help.”

  “Were there any other strangers in the bar that night?”

  She looked worried. “I don’t know. Should I know that?”

  “No, not necessarily.”

  “If you have a picture I might be able to remember. I’m very good with faces,” she repeated.

  “You’ve been a big help already, Ms. Lane.”

  “I have?”

  “Yes. Thank you for your time.”

  They left.

  “Who did Maddox call at the Rabbit Hole?” Mitch asked. “Directions? And why the second call?”

  “Maybe it was a mistake, a misdial,” Steve suggested.

  “A rainy Sunday night. No other strangers. Barney has the only connection to Maddox through Frank Lowe. But why?”

  “Maybe he followed Maddox out of town. Ran him off the road.”

  “Maybe. But why was Maddox sitting in his car?”

  “Waiting for Barney to leave, maybe. Want to go back and push him?”

  “We need something else. Lora Lane is not a reliable witness. Something definitive, otherwise we’re just fishing and if he is guilty, then we’ve tipped our hand.”

  “No pun intended,” Steve said as he unlocked the car.

  Mitch rolled his eyes and slid into the passenger seat. “Let’s get the background check on Mr. Barney and see what we can find. We can always come back.”

  “Great,” Steve said sarcastically as he turned onto River Road. “I hate driving this road.”

  “Could be worse.”

  “How?”

  “It could be dark and raining.”

  Lora Lane liked pretty t
hings.

  Ribbons for her hair. Shiny jewelry for her fingers and ears. Manicures and pedicures and keeping her boring brown hair blond.

  She didn’t like working in the dirty tackle shop, but she liked the money she earned every Friday. Her mama always said she was a pretty little girl without an ounce of common sense. Daddy let her live at home because she wasn’t very good with her money and he said people would take advantage of her.

  She knew she wasn’t a smart girl, but she was smart enough to know that people thought she was a retard. She’d heard them talking. Her daddy shut them up right quick, but she heard them sometimes. She ran the tackle shop almost all by herself, knew the difference between a night crawler and a butterworm, and made the world’s finest lures. Her daddy said so himself, and everyone came into the shop to buy them because they worked.

  She wasn’t stupid. She knew how to mind her mouth. She didn’t tell those nice men about her agreement, did she? No, she didn’t. She kept it to herself like she’d sworn on the grave of her grandmama that she would.

  For two years, Lora had watched Tip Barney like she was told. Every night she went to the Rabbit Hole and watched him. She kind of liked him, he was nice to her and didn’t treat her like she was dumb. He talked to her like she had something important to say, even when she didn’t say anything. He was nice-looking, too. Had nice blue eyes and a pretty smile.

  When the men came to her house, Daddy wasn’t home. He was working. He had an important job, just like she did. He was a policeman. The chief policeman in Isleton. At first she was scared, but then the pretty man smiled at her and she felt all fluttery inside.

  She had a job. And it was as important as her daddy’s job. She was undercover for the Department of Homeland Security. She reported back to Agents Smith and Jones everything that happened at the Rabbit Hole. Everything. She took very good notes.

  She liked Tip, but he was a terrorist. As Agent Smith said, not all terrorists look like terrorists.

  She was protecting her friends and neighbors from being killed like those poor people in New York. Lora was important.

  When the two nice men left her tackle shop, she called the special number she was given for emergencies. Only to be used if someone was asking questions about Tip’s Blarney.

  “Harper.”

  She frowned. “Agent Smith or Agent Jones, please.”

  There was silence, then several minutes later there was a click. “This is Agent Jones.”

  “Two men came to my shop today. They were asking questions about Tip and another man.”

  “Who?”

  “That man you told me about. Mr. Maddox. The terrorist who was going to poison the river and kill all the fish.”

  “Do you remember their names?”

  “Of course. I got their business cards, too. They said they were from the FBI. Agent Mitch Bianchi and Agent Steven Donovan.”

  Agent Smith had told her that a lot of people lie. She knew that. Her mama lied about a lot of things to her daddy. Mama didn’t think Lora knew, because she thought Lora was stupid, but Lora was smarter than that. She knew that her mama wasn’t at Book Club on Thursday nights.

  “What did they say?”

  “They asked if I remembered Mr. Maddox. I told them yes. He was in the bar. I told them the entire truth, except about the poison.”

  “You did very good.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. Lora, this is very important. If a woman comes to the bar who you don’t know, and starts asking about Mr. Maddox or a man named Frank Lowe, I want you to do the same thing to her that you did to Mr. Maddox. Can you do that for me?”

  “Is she a terrorist too?”

  “Yes. Her name is Claire O’Brien and she is very dangerous.”

  “I promise. I can do that.”

  “Thank you, Lora. There’s no one else we can trust with this very important assignment.”

  She hung up and smiled, went upstairs, and closed her bedroom door. She locked it, even though she knew her daddy wouldn’t be home for a long time. She went to her closet, into the far back, behind all her shoeboxes. She pulled out the secret box where she kept things she didn’t want her daddy to find. She used to keep candy and the weekly magazines her daddy hated in the locked box. Now, the only thing inside was a large vial of poison.

  Terrorists needed to die. And Lora knew how to do it.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Greg Abrahamson was much harder to get an audience with than Claire thought. He was now a detective, and she left several messages trying to track him down.

  She didn’t want to talk to him on the phone. She needed ten minutes in person. People were more forthright in person.

  Claire took the opportunity while waiting for Abrahamson to return her call to stop by Rogan-Caruso and do more research, this time on Don Collier. He’d canceled his classes and seemed to have disappeared, according to Agent Donovan.

  She typed in search parameters and pulled up far more detailed records of Collier than she could from home.

  He’d earned tenure last year at Davis. Now eleven years as a professor, took pro bono cases, yada yada. Big do-gooder on the surface. His affiliation with the Western Innocence Project was noteworthy. He’d been written up in the paper many times. Philanthropist this, noble that. Blah, blah. But the more she read about his good work, the more she wondered if she was wrong about him. She dug deeper, using her PI license to do an employment background check.

  Confirmed his tenure with UC Davis.

  Six years with Madison, Bergstrom, Truedell & Smith. Three years with Johnson & Mather. One-year internship with Young, Blaine, Forsyth & Associates. Graduate USC law school, 1990. Graduate UNLV, 1987. Born 1964 in Phoenix, Arizona.

  Her eye went back to Johnson & Mather. She recognized all three law firms, but that one . . .

  Her hand started shaking as she typed in another search.

  George Prescott with Johnson & Mather was her father’s defense counsel. During the same time that Don Collier was on staff.

  Don Collier had been responsible for reviewing her father’s case file for the Project, and rejected looking into it. Don Collier had been Oliver Maddox’s advisor. Had Maddox known that Collier had been with the same law firm that represented her father at trial? Claire had to assume he did . . . he was a law student. He would definitely have known who represented her father. And if he was doing research, he would have figured out that Collier was there at the same time. That there was a huge conflict of interest. Collier knew more about the case than he’d admitted.

  She dialed Randy Sizemore at the Western Innocence Project. It took several minutes, and a threat to come by and sit in the office until closing, before he came on the phone. “Ms. O’Brien, I don’t see how I can help you any more than I already have.”

  “One question. Please.”

  “One.”

  “Do you allow the attorneys reviewing case files to assess cases they’ve worked on, or where one of their colleagues worked on it?”

  “Of course not. That would defeat the purpose of our checks and balances system.”

  “Do the attorneys know this?”

  “Of course they do. They simply recuse themselves from reviewing the file. It’s not a problem. I have dozens of attorneys who review files for me.”

  “Thank you.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “You told me that Don Collier reviewed State of California v. O’Brien and deemed it a just conviction.”

  “Yes.”

  “Collier worked for the same law firm as my father’s attorney. Johnson & Mather.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “It’s not? Why?”

  “Don would have told me.” Randy Sizemore didn’t sound so sure of himself.

  “So you didn’t know.”

  “Ms. O’Brien, I don’t know what you’ve found, but there must be a logical explanation.”

  “Thank you for your time.” She hung up. She didn’t thi
nk that Sizemore had known about Collier, but since they were friends, she didn’t want him to tip Collier off that she was onto him.

  “Claire?”

  She jumped, turned, and saw her friend Jayne standing in the doorway.

  “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Background check.”

  Jayne frowned. “J.T. called me this morning about you. Asked me to monitor your database usage. He’s a little worried.”

  Claire straightened. J. T. Caruso was one of the principals of her firm. “Worried? Why?”

  “He didn’t say, but, well, I did a little research and I think he found out your dad is in Sacramento.”

  Claire’s stomach dropped. “How could he know that? How did you know?”

  “The FBI has a surveillance tape of your dad in Redding. And then there’s the buzz around the D.A.’s office that he’s surrendering today. J.T. knows people there. And in the FBI.”

  “I’m not doing anything illegal,” Claire said.

  “Just watch yourself, okay?”

  Claire didn’t want to be fired, she loved her job, but her father’s innocence and safety were more important than her career.

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Jayne nodded. “If you need me for anything, you know how to reach me.”

  “I have a question. A computer question.”

  Jayne sat down on the corner of Claire’s desk. “What?”

  “How could a digital file disappear?”

  “You need to be more specific.”

  “Don’t ask me why.”

  “All right.”

  “There’re two missing coroner’s reports. They are archived digitally and kept in a data warehouse. They are in the log, but not on the tape.”

  “Is there other data on the tape?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, if there isn’t, the tape was corrupted. Someone didn’t check once they burned the tape or the disk that the data was readable or even there. It happens all the time because people are lazy. But if there’s other data on the tape, then those files were never copied over.”

  “You can’t just delete them?”