The Survivors

by Robert Palmer

  Scottie touched my arm. “Are you all right?”

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah, fine.” My wrist was tingling where I’d been scratching it.

  “You sure as hell weren’t listening to what I was saying.” He sat back slowly. “Could your aunt and uncle have known about this? We could talk to them.”

  “No. I’m sure they told me everything they knew. That’s why this is hard for me to wrap my head around. Nobody said anything about it when I was young, and later . . . this isn’t how I imagined it was. Her last days must have been awful. Worse because nobody knew what was happening to her.”

  “I guess so,” he said, still eyeing me. “Anyway, take a look at this again.” He got the telephone bill and tapped the three entries he’d marked. “We were shot on October 3rd. The first two phone calls to Russo were on a Saturday, twelve days before that. The last call was—”

  “October 3,” I said, reading from the bill, “6:05 p.m.” It was around seven o’clock that evening when we started the game of hide-and-seek.

  “Only an hour before it happened,” Scottie said. “That’s why I need to talk to him.”

  “Talk to who?”

  “The lawyer—who do you think?”

  “You mean Russo?”

  “Yes.” He was annoyed I was so dense.

  “You went to see him?” I said.

  “No, I phoned him, but he wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “I talked to a man named Griffin O’Shea. He works with Russo.”

  “What did O’Shea say?”

  “He asked Russo about those phone calls from your mother. Russo said he didn’t remember ever knowing anyone by her name.”

  Something clicked for me, the link I’d been missing. “Russo is the one the FBI says you threatened.”

  “I told you, I didn’t threaten anybody.” He put the papers back in the pile.

  “Russo works for the government now?”

  “He’s Acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia.”

  I whistled softly. “That’s why they’re all worked up. What did you say to him?”

  “I never talked to him. I just said that.”

  “Scottie, level with me.”

  “I sent Russo a couple of e-mails. They were nothing.”

  “Can I see them?”

  For a moment, I thought he was going to say no. Then he reached into his backpack for his tablet computer. Once he had the program open, his hands flew over the screen. He passed it to me.

  There were three messages, and it was clear that politeness wasn’t one of Scottie’s talents. In the first message, he introduced himself and went straight on to demand a meeting with Russo to talk about Braeder Design Systems. When Russo didn’t reply, Scottie ramped it up. He said Russo was a public servant and damn well better answer his questions; he accused Russo of lying about knowing my mother; he ended with another demand that they meet. The third message was the shortest: “I have evidence you knew Denise Oakes. You’ll talk to me about her whether you want to or not.” That was followed by an address in northwest DC.

  “This isn’t Russo’s home address is it?”

  He glanced away. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “It’s no wonder the FBI was brought into this. Anybody would see it as a threat.”

  “It’s not right the way he acted. I only need to talk to him.”

  “You can’t do things like this.”

  “That’s just the way you always were when we were kids,” he said. He snatched the tablet from me and grabbed the papers off the table.

  “What?”

  “Yelling at me even when I’m right.”

  He put the tablet in his backpack and started to jam in the papers. I pulled his hands away. It was time for us to take a step back. “How did you get into all this? Going to see that woman writer, all this research, calling Russo. I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t.” He shook free of my hands and zipped the backpack closed. “You’ve got this nice place to live. A great job. All the way through school to a doctor’s degree. And me? I started college three times and never finished a semester. I only made it out of high school because I was in a special ed. program. I wasn’t always that way. I could do things.” He tapped his head. “My parents had me tested. I was smart. Really smart. I was going to go to a special summer school and everything, in Pittsburgh, with Carnegie Mellon. Full scholarship and I was only a kid.” He hit his head again. “But it’s gone. Sure, I can still figure things out. I’m not really dumb. Things just . . . it’s like a flood sometimes. I get so confused and mad. People treat me like a freak.”

  He couldn’t bear to look at me, so he moved over to his bicycle. “You’ve let it go, and good for you. I can’t. I never did a thing to your mother—to any of you. Why did she do it? What did she have against me?”

  I stepped over and put my hand on his shoulder. “Scottie, that night she wouldn’t have had any idea what she was doing. That’s the way it is with suicides. You were there, that’s all. The wrong place at the—”

  “Don’t you tell me that!” He flung my arm away so hard I stumbled and almost fell over. Shocked, he looked at his hands, then turned away from me again. “Sorry.” I’d kicked one of the beer bottles over, and he set it back up. “I shouldn’t really drink that stuff.”

  Beer or no beer, I wondered how often his temper blew like that. Too often, I was sure. I sat down on the end of the coffee table. “Why has all this come up now? Because you’ve been thinking about the anniversary?”

  The outburst had calmed him. “Twenty-five years. I never paid attention to it, but every October 3rd my mom had a celebration. Lit candles around the house, a trip to church. Everything but a visit to my grave. Pretty creepy, huh?”

  I shrugged. Scottie had been high-strung as a kid, but he’d been nothing compared with his mother, who’d always reminded me of Dorothy’s wicked witch. “How is she?” I had a good idea what the answer would be.

  “Died four months ago—overdose. It was a lot for her, with my dad gone and what had happened to me. She’d taken Valium for years, then that slipped over to OxyContin. I don’t know how she found the doctors to write the prescriptions. She said it was the only way she could stop worrying about me.”

  “I’m sorry, Scottie.” I motioned for him to sit down. “Really, I am.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t sit, but he gave me a sly look. “Jerkwad.”

  We laughed. That was one of his favorite words from way back when. He played with the straps on the backpack. “I only want to talk to Russo. I don’t have any reason to hurt him.”

  “What do you think he can tell you?”

  “Your mom wasn’t working for Braeder anymore. Why was she talking to the company lawyer? I just feel like I’ve got to find out everything I can about that night. Like it’s a puzzle I’ve got to put together. What she was thinking. Why it happened. They talked only an hour before. He’s got to remember. It was on television, in all the papers. People don’t forget something like that.”

  He was getting worked up again, so I was as gentle as I could be. “We don’t forget, Scottie, but the rest of the world moves on.”

  “Believe that if you want. I won’t.”

  “I don’t have any answers for you. I doubt anybody else will either.”

  “I’ll find that out when I talk to Russo. And if he can’t help there are others, people who worked at Braeder, friends of your parents. I’ve been in touch with a few of them. They can tell me things.” He slipped the backpack over his shoulders. “I need to go. Thanks for dinner.”

  “You shouldn’t go home tonight, Scottie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I drove by your house earlier, looking for you. The FBI had the place staked out. They’ll take you in if you go back there. You can ask your landlady. She saw them too.”

  “Arrest me because of a few e-mails?” His voice had gone nasal and w
hiny.

  “They said they only wanted to talk to you, but I’m not sure I trust them.”

  His eyes were unsettled, the timid Scottie of twenty-five years ago. “I don’t want to talk to them. They’ve got no right to bother me.” He slumped down in his chair.

  “You can stay here tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll work something out. If you have to talk to them, I’ll go with you.” He didn’t look up, but he nodded. “Come on, it’s late. Let’s get some sleep. You can have the guest room.”

  “That little room I saw off the hallway? I’d rather sleep here on the sofa.” He gave a jittery smile. “I almost died in a closet. I don’t do well in small spaces.”

  Add claustrophobia to the list. He was a walking textbook.

  Scottie asked if I had an extra toothbrush and dental floss. He was in the bathroom for a long time. Going through his rituals, I figured. After I got him a blanket and pillow, I checked the lock on the door and turned down the lights.

  He’d left his backpack in the middle of the floor, and I moved it out of the way. It was much heavier than I expected. I might have let it go, but rummaging around in people’s lives is my home territory. I unzipped the front pocket and the barrel of a gun popped out. I was so surprised, I nearly dropped the whole thing.

  I lifted it out, a revolver with a worn grip and battered nickel-plate finish. It was loaded, and the safety was off. I gave a loud curse.

  Behind me, the floor squeaked. Scottie said, “I ride a bicycle in the District. Sometimes I get out of work late. I need the protection.”

  I put the gun away without saying anything. I didn’t mention the tourist map I’d seen in the pocket, folded into a tight square centered on the neighborhood where Eric Russo lived.

  My friend Tim was a lawyer. I’d have to call him in the morning. Any conversation Scottie had with the FBI was going to be a disaster.

  EIGHT

  At first light, I woke and went to the kitchen to make coffee. The French doors to the balcony were ajar. Scottie was out there, asleep in one of the sling chairs. As I watched, he twitched and mumbled something. A bad dream. I eased the doors shut and took my coffee to the living room.

  During the night, I kept thinking about those papers of Scottie’s, wondering what other information was there. I took them out of his backpack.

  There were more bank and phone records and credit card bills. Too much detail for a quick run-through. Lower in the stack I came to four stapled reports. The top one said, “Examiner’s Autopsy, Final—Alan Ryan Oakes.” I skipped a few pages in and found diagrams of a human skull, marked with x’s to show the entry and exit points for the bullet that killed my brother. My eyes swam. The other autopsies were for my parents and Ron. Maybe someday I’d be able to face them, but not yet.

  I moved on until I came to a faded sheet. It was a receipt from a shop in Sterling, Virginia—AllPro Sports. Under “Purchaser” was the name Lori Tran. She’d bought a Smith & Wesson 586 revolver for three hundred eighty-five dollars.

  Scottie shuffled in with a cup of coffee. I’d been concentrating so hard I hadn’t heard him come in from the balcony. He sat down next to me on the sofa.

  “What’s this receipt for?” I said.

  “Lori Tran was a friend of your mother’s, her hairdresser. She bought the gun for her.”

  “I always wondered where she got it,” I said. “Why Virginia? And why not buy it herself?”

  “There’s no waiting period for handgun purchases in Virginia.” He laughed at my surprised look. I hadn’t really expected him to know the answer. “That was in one of the newspaper stories. Your mother lived in Maryland, so she couldn’t buy a handgun in Virginia. Tran lived over there—in Herndon, I think. Your mom offered her five hundred dollars; Tran said yes. She ended up doing a year of probation for it.”

  Five hundred dollars. That would have been nearly half of what was in the bank account. Had we always lived so close to the edge? I remembered Christmas, birthdays. There were never any complaints about money.

  I put the page back with the rest while he yawned and took a swig of coffee.

  “Did you have a good night?” I said.

  “Good enough.”

  “You sleep outdoors a lot of the time?”

  “Sometimes,” he mumbled.

  So he didn’t talk much in the morning. I could relate to that. “I’ll get us some breakfast. There’s a spare towel under the sink in the bathroom if you want to take a shower.”

  He nodded and stared glumly at the floor.

  “We’ll work it out with the FBI, Scottie. I don’t think you should go to work today, though. Let me make some calls, see what I can find out.”

  “Whatever you say.” He smiled, but it wasn’t very convincing.

  When I heard the shower come on, I took my phone out to the balcony. It was too early to call my lawyer friend. Besides, I had another problem to deal with first. I didn’t think I should leave Scottie alone today. Felix would be up, in his sunroom reading the newspaper.

  “Yeah, who is it?” he said when he picked up.

  The whole world seemed in a lousy mood today. “Good morning to you too.”

  “Cal—sorry. Couldn’t think who the hell would be calling this time of day.”

  “I need a favor. Scottie Glass came by my place last night and ended up staying over. He’s pretty upset about the FBI thing.”

  “He’s just going to have to—”

  I talked over the top of him. “I’ve got an idea to try to help him. I’m going to need the day to put things together. Can I leave him with you?”

  “You think I’m some kind of boarding kennel?”

  I stayed quiet, letting it lie there.

  Felix huffed into the phone. “He can stay until I say he’s got to go, how’s that sound?”

  “Like about as good as I’m going to get. We’ll be there in an hour.”

  The next call was going to be trickier. I got the number from the incoming calls list on my phone. It rang straight through to voice mail.

  “Agent Weston, this is Cal Henderson. I’ve been thinking about what you said. I’d like to help you out with Scott Glass if we can arrange something that’s going to be in his interest. If you have a few minutes, I’d like to see you this morning. I’ll be at my office after eight thirty, or you can reach me on my cell.” I gave her both numbers.

  When I told Scottie I was going to take him to a friend’s house, he argued, but not for long. He agreed it would be pretty boring sitting around my place all day. We had good luck with the traffic and got there well ahead of my predicted hour. Felix was out on the porch, along with Coop. From the way Scottie stayed behind me, I could tell he had a problem with dogs. “Does he bite?” he said.

  “Only food and strangers,” Felix replied.

  “Am I a stranger?”

  “He’ll let you know.”

  For once, Coop behaved, following at a dignified pace as Felix came down the steps. “Toss this to him,” Felix said, handing Scottie a dog treat. “He’ll love you for it.” Scottie did as he was told, and Coop snatched it with a toothy “clomp” that sent Scottie hiding behind Felix. “I was kidding about biting strangers,” Felix said.

  Scottie laughed uneasily. “I know.”

  Felix eyed him for a moment and said, “Cal, I’ll walk you back to your car.” He waited for me to get behind the wheel before he whispered, “What should I do with him?”

  “He was a fanatic about watching TV when we were kids. Let him find a science fiction movie. If that doesn’t pan out, put him to work in your garden.”

  “Yeah,” Felix grunted, imagining how much free labor he could get in one day. “What did you tell him about me?”

  “Just to stay away from your porn stash.”

  Felix glared at me.

  “I can kid, same as you. I told him you were a friend and retired, that’s all.”

  “You didn’t tell him I was a psychologist?”

  “I figured it might scar
e him off.”

  Scottie had backed into the corner of the yard, putting a cypress shrub between him and Coop. “It looks like he doesn’t need much reason to be scared,” Felix said.

  “That’s only the tip of it. He always wears that hat to hide the dent in his head, where he was shot. He’s never gotten any help beyond physical therapy. He’s a whole graduate psych seminar, all by himself. Just your kind of patient.”

  “Only he’s not my patient.”

  “No, he’s not.” I started the car. “But you two will get along fine.”

  Felix put his hand on the steering wheel. “You’re not getting away that easy.” He waited for me to shut the engine down. “You can’t fix every stray animal that walks through your door, Cal. That’s especially true of this one.”

  I stared straight ahead.

  “Go ahead, get mad,” Felix said. “You know I’m right. If he really needs help, he’ll be better off with someone who has some distance.”

  I pulled his hand off the steering wheel. “I’m going to talk to the FBI, that Agent Weston. Then I’m going to call in a favor from Tim Regis, the lawyer who went to Southern Cal with me. Tim knows the Justice Department inside out. He can help sort out Scottie’s legal problems, and then we’ll worry about what comes next.”

  “I’m worried now, Cal.”

  “Well, don’t be.” I fired up the engine and got out of there before I said something I’d regret.

  I was halfway to my office when my phone rang. The District of Columbia makes it a hundred-dollar offense to use a handheld phone in the car. After a couple of tickets, I learned my lesson and had Bluetooth installed. I clicked the button on the steering wheel. “Hello?”

  “Dr. Henderson, it’s Jamie Weston. You wanted to talk to me?” There was a thump and she said, “Hey, watch it.”

  “Where are you? It sounds like quite a crowd.”

  “Outside the Metro station by my office. It’s like a cow barn this time of day. So what can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to see you, if you have a few minutes. Your office is on 6th Street, right? I’m only a few blocks from there now.”