“She is responding to whatever is going on around her—reacting. That’s good, right?”
“Well, you have a point but that sort of reaction we would like to have in smaller doses. So be easy with her today.”
“Got it.”
Go easy? For God’s sake doesn’t anyone get it? Easy for whom?
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ruth remained stable, so that was good and it wasn’t. She should have shown some changes by now. Either way, Ike spent a sleepless night. He skipped the Crossroads and made his own breakfast. Charlie still wasn’t answering his phone. He couldn’t call Frank and he wasn’t sure what he should do next. Would Charlie pick up on the names he’d sent? Did flying to Dallas make any sense at all? If he went and if he found the people he was seeking, what then? They obviously wouldn’t confess and he had no evidence. He could beat it out of them, but he’d always avoided that approach. It worked for others but he didn’t see it working for him. He realized he might have to revisit that notion someday. He hoped not soon.
In the first hours after the wreck, he would have gladly shot anyone he was convinced had something to do with it, and done so without a second thought or remorse. That was then. This was now. He’d cooled down and maybe had a better perspective. Yeats did not have any direct culpability in it, but if you counted his rhetoric into the mix, he had to shoulder some of the blame. His speeches riled the crowds. One of them would only think he was doing the king a favor. Henry II: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Oh, he’d have no qualms in tossing the elegant Byron Yeats in the slammer if he could. But he couldn’t. And on calmer reflection, wouldn’t.
So what now? No Charlie, no Frank, and he’d received a call from Lee Henry that the van had pulled out, so no tech support. No word, no explanation, no warning, nothing. Yeats had said Ike could be considered a rogue. Now, he guessed he really was one. Start over again. Look at the data, the meager evidence, as though he’d never seen it. The problem with sifting through data is that once you’ve made up your mind how it is to be interpreted, it is difficult to nearly impossible to see it any other way.
Was his notion of a crazed zealot even a remote possibility? In the heat of the moment it seemed self-evident. Even Yeats didn’t completely discount it. He stared unseeing at the wall. It didn’t really work, did it? He had been clutching at straws. Better start over.
He moved into the dining area and popped open his laptop. He plugged in the flash drive and went through the pictures, the statements, the e-mails, everything. He brewed another pot of coffee and repeated the process twice more.
He stopped at the video of the accident scene. He studied the truck still. The truck. Why did that seem important? Who would drive a truck to pull this off? People drove cars. If they were contemplating a felony or a job like this one, first they stole a car. What sort of person would steal a truck? Not a professional. Probably not one of the possible suspects on his list. So, who? He stared at the screen again trying to make out the masked face behind the wheel. He couldn’t see anything except a dab of white, which he took to be the uncovered part of the face. It seemed to be low behind the wheel. A short person or one leaning forward?
He sifted through the papers again. One of Scott Fiske’s doctored résumés fell to the floor. He bent and picked it up. He should toss it and any others like it. That job was done. His eyes caught one line and his hand froze in its transit toward the trash can. He read it more carefully. He found the two other examples and read them as well. He wished he’d taken Marge Tice up on her offer to make him a copy of the report from Donnie the Snoop. He needed to know if this was an addition cobbled up to pad the résumé or the real thing. Could Colonel Bob help him? Probably not. He said all his friends in the DoD were dead. Still, he could ask. He picked up the phone book and searched for: Twelvetrees, Robt. Col. USA Ret.
***
Frank Sutherlin figured the only way he could deal with the mayor’s efforts to insert Burns in as acting sheriff, would be to stay away from the office entirely. He told Essie he would be in Buena Vista checking out the owner of the wallet they’d found in the hay barn and she had better not let him catch her or Billy out there again.
Frank decided to slide by Jack Burns’ old neighborhood on the way. There was a luncheonette nearby and he’d stop, purchase a cuppa, and ask some questions. Billy and Essie were way off base thinking Burns could be involved in Ruth Harris’ accident, but there were things about him, like why quit a job in Buena Vista to take one like it in Picketsville? That suggested something that needed looking into.
Ballard’s Luncheonette was marginally clean and nearly empty. The counterman, who turned out to be the owner, swatted a fly and wiped the carcass from the counter with a suspiciously gray rag.
“Mornin’, Mister, You’re a cop, right? You here about them two people raised a fuss up to the bar? Said they was reporters, but I didn’t believe them even a little.”
“A cop, yes I am, but not interested in phony reporters today. Real ones are bad enough.”
“You got that right. So what can I do for you?”
“Thought I’d stop by for a cup of tea and a sinker.” Frank hoped he had his lunchroom slang down.
“A what? A sinker? This ain’t no bait shop. Don’t have no sinkers.”
An old geezer in the corner looked up from his day-old paper and said, “He wants a donut, Tank. That’s what we used to call `em back when them USO gals came around. Sinkers, yep. That would be in WWII of course. Did I ever tell you—”
“Yeah you did, Jock. So sinkers is donuts? Shoot, never heard of that.” He shoved a cup of hot water and a rumpled tea bag across the counter at Frank and went to a plastic-enclosed case to fetch a donut. “Whatcha want, I got glazed, powdered, honey dip, and one chocolate covered left over from Wednesday.”
“Plain will do.”
“Did I say plain? Anybody hear me say plain? I said, we got the chocolate covered, the glazed, and the powdered. That’s it. Which?”
“Glazed. Do you have cream and sugar?”
The counterman shoved a saucer with the donut on it at him, walked to the other end of the counter, and returned with a handful of creamers and four dingy, paper-wrapped sugar cubes.
“Tea’s a buck, donut eighty-five cents.” Tank waited while Frank dug two dollars from his wallet and laid them down next to the donut. He stood and left. This had been a mistake.
“Hey, don’t you want your eats? What about your change?”
“Keep it.” Frank let the door slam. Fifteen cents well spent.
Bob Smith lived three doors down from Jack Burns’ previous and as-yet-unsold residence. Frank found him in a toolshed in the backyard inspecting the underside of a lawnmower.
“Bob Smith?”
“That’s me.”
“You happen to lose a wallet, Mr. Smith?”
Smith turned bleary eyes on Frank, saw the uniform, badge, and gun, and let the mower drop flat on the work bench. Frank wondered if he might make a run for it. He hoped not. Frank never fared well in foot chases.
“I might have. So what?”
“I have it. I came to return it.”
“Yeah? Well, thanks. I was wondering what happened to it.” Smith’s eyes clouded over momentarily. “Where’d you find it?”
“That’s why I came by, Bob. I wanted to talk to you about that…where we found it, I mean. Do you by any chance own a gun?”
Smith rubbed the three-day stubble on his face and thought a moment. “I don’t see what that has to do with my wallet. Sure, I hunt a little, sometimes. I got me a deer rifle and, well, a deer rifle.”
“And a handgun, your record says. I know, it’s legal, you have a permit. I was wondering if I could see it.”
“Hey, you said you found my wallet and brought it over to return it.
So I’ll have it and then you can clear off.”
“I could take you in and finish this in jail.”
“For what? Hell, you ain’t even local. You’re from Picketsville. You’re out of your jurisdiction, Mister, so just hand it over and shove off.”
“We found your wallet in a barn over in Picketsville. That barn was at one time filled with hay. And the hay was stolen from some very angry growers in the Valley. That barn puts you in my jurisdiction, Son. You are either—you take your pick—in possession of stolen goods, a participant in a petty theft ring working in the valley over the last several weeks, an accessory to murder, or any and all of the above. Which shall we talk about first?”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Ike had finished his call to Colonel Bob and poured his fourth cup when he thought he heard someone outside the door. Who would call on him this early? Most folks had not even finished their breakfast yet. Before he could open the door, he heard a key turn in the lock and the latch snap open. He snatched his service revolver from the lockbox where he normally kept it. Fortunately it wasn’t locked. He had the barrel leveled and the hammer back when a disheveled Charlie stepped through the door.
“Jesus, Charlie, I might have killed you.”
“Your reflexes are better than that, Ike. You would have shot one of your bad guys, a half dozen or so agents still loose in the world who carry your picture in their wallets, but not a friend, not a child, and not a beautiful woman. I know you. You have rules.”
“That is not true. I once shot a very pretty woman.”
“Because she had a flamethrower and was about to incinerate a school with you in it, I know. So, there are occasional forgivable lapses in your rule keeping. Besides, she wasn’t all that pretty and most assuredly not beautiful.”
“Enough. Where have you been, Charlie? I’ve left you messages and received your text. By the way, how did you do that? You never text and then I get the equivalent of a three page report from you.”
“No magic. Half the teenagers in America can type faster with their thumbs than I can with all my fingers, so no big deal, tech-wise. But you are right, I don’t text. I do have access to a very competent, text-enabled aide who tells me her iPad is nothing but an overgrown iPhone. She rigged it to do that and sent the message to you for me. To answer your first question, I visited the greater Chicago metropolitan area, as I told you. I have checked out several of the people on the list and a few not on it.”
Charlie told Ike about the CIA names on the list, the director’s order to treat them outside the box, and what he’d found in Skokie.
“That contact gave me the stuff you read in the text. So what have you been doing while I have been out in the heartland on your behalf?”
Ike filled him in on his trip to Arlington, the recent antics of the mayor, and the hay caper. “The latter do not feature in this job I don’t think, but I never discount anything until it’s a certainty.”
“Of course. Well, in addition to clearing off names, including, by the way, the man on the South Side—he had an iron clad alibi, he’s been serving five to fifteen in Joliet since four months ago. I also did as you requested. I kept an eye out for the lissome Mrs. Saint Clare.”
“And?”
“Did you ever meet Tony Agnelli?”
“You took me to his place once. Did the two of you play mousetrap?”
“How do you know about that?”
“I used to be a spy, remember? So you two had dinner. What else?”
“You say that with a smirk and in a lascivious tone of voice. You should have your imagination washed out with soap. Dinner, period. She is concerned about your health. She asked me to tell you to call it off.”
“That is very caring of her. So, are you going to tell me to call it off?”
“No, but not for the reasons you suppose. She seemed a little too eager. You told me to keep her safe from the sharks, as I recall. I checked out the sharks and discovered the reason she went to Chicago.”
“I already told you why she went, she needed to fight the sister-in-law about the pension and check out funeral arrangements.”
“We shall label that listing as ostensible or in addition to. They were, in fact, two of the things she attended to, but there was a third, and more troubling reason.”
Charlie found a chair, sat, and appropriated Ike’s coffee cup. He sipped it, made a face, and heaved a sigh.
“Charlie, are you going to tell me what’s on your mind or not? What do you think was the third reason?”
“You are not going to like it. I don’t like it. We could ignore it, but then it will sit like the proverbial elephant in the living room.”
“Charlie, out with it. What did you find?”
“John Harris, Dean emeritus of the New Haven School of Law, father of Ruth, and spouse to Paula Harris, AKA Eden Saint Clare, left a will. A recently written and notarized will, to be exact.”
“Is he sufficiently mentally coherent to do that? He’s an Alzheimer’s patient.”
“Indeed, he is. That is the problem for Eden. Can the will pass muster? What will happen at probate? Who knows? But she did not wish to chance it, so she went to Chicago to start procedures for contesting it.”
“That makes sense. Why wouldn’t she have told me that, I wonder?”
“Indeed. And that leads us to the part you won’t like. John Harris wrote her out of his will—totally. She had changed her name, you see, thus denying him his place in posterity or some such nonsense. He doesn’t recognize her anymore. He no longer loves her, etcetera. So, he dumped the wife and made Ruth his sole beneficiary. Eden gets nothing when he dies.” Charlie paused, lifted and replaced the cup, and exhaled. “But, Eden is Ruth’s sole beneficiary. You see where this goes?”
“Charlie you don’t really believe she would…No, that’s not possible.”
“Motive and opportunity, Ike. I hate to do it to you, but you need to see the possibility.”
“This is crazy.”
“Murder is crazy. Our problem, my friend, is that you and I have lived within the culture of death so long we find it impossible to rule out anything even when we desperately want to. Did Eden drive a truck into Ruth’s car? Nah, can’t happen. Or could it? We suffer, Ike, because we were taught by, and ultimately survived the messes the Company put us in, not to trust anyone. It is like a bad tattoo on our souls. Can’t erase it, can only ignore it, but it’s always there.”
Ike collapsed into a chair and reclaimed his coffee cup. He hung his head for a moment. Too much. If he hadn’t learned to suppress them as a child, he would have shed tears. Instead he shook his head from side to side and moaned a quiet lament for life in general and for this moment in particular.
“We are very damaged goods, Charlie, you and I. After living in the…what did you call it…the culture of death? We have lived there for so long, the sun can but intermittently shine on us. I will have to order a watch on Ruth now, especially when her mother visits. Jesus, Charlie, I wish you hadn’t decided to be my friend, just now.”
“You’re welcome.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Frank’s interview with Bob Smith did not go well. In the end he had to arrest and cuff him and bring him in.
“You are in big trouble, Cop,” Smith snarled. “You don’t have a clue what you’re getting yourself in.”
“How’s that work? You have contacts in the Governor’s mansion, the White House? What?”
“Jack Burns is gonna be your boss and when that happens you won’t have a job. He’ll bust you down to Dog Catcher.”
“Will he now? How do you figure that? You have a crystal ball or something? Or are you just mouthing off?”
“He’s in and you heard it here first. Believe me. It’s all fixed up.”
“
Really? That’s very interesting. How is it all fixed up?”
“You’ll see.” Smith shut up and the remainder of the trip passed in silence.
Things became more exciting when Frank escorted Smith into the sheriff’s office. It happened to be the same morning the mayor chose to tour the facility with the very same Jack Burns, his choice to succeed Ike, or so he thought. His efforts to declare Ike absent without leave and his position thereby vacated, had run into a snag with the town council. As with any group of minor elected officials who depended on a day job to subsist, the council first dithered and then sought a second opinion from the town’s attorney, who happened to be in Richmond on a private matter. Accordingly, the motion had been tabled and vacancy not declared. Nevertheless the mayor brought Burns to the office to introduce him to his future staff. He received a decidedly frosty welcome from those few who remained in the building. Many had suddenly remembered things that needed their attention elsewhere and left.
All eyes turned and watched Frank drag/shove Smith up to the booking desk.
“Bob,” Burns barked, “what the hell?”
“Uncle Jack, this bozo has cuffed me and says I’m under arrest or something.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” the mayor said. He could not have missed the “Uncle Jack” and even a slow learner, which the mayor most certainly was not, would realize the potential pitfall created by the arrest of a close relative to his candidate.
“This man is here for questioning, Mister Mayor, in connection with a murder, about which we believe he is aware, a larceny charge, possible cruelty to animals—we’ll know more about that when we have a warrant and can search his house for a nine millimeter handgun which we believe was used to kill a very expensive dog, and—”
“Whoa up there, Deputy. Where is all this coming from?” Jack Burns appeared about as uncomfortable as a Baptist caught by his pastor in a liquor store.
“—and at the very least, he is in possession of stolen property, specifically, hay removed from several nearby farms and barns.”
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