by Jeff Gunhus
“An excuse for what?” she asked, not really liking his ability to read her so easily.
“I don’t know. To play super-cop. To find the bad guy doing something no one else would do.” Mike finished off the last bite of his hot dog and chewed with a goofy smile. “Fine with me. Makes for a better story.”
Allison scrunched up the empty food wrapper and tossed it in the backseat. She didn’t know why she felt she needed to defend herself to this guy. Maybe it was because he’d tapped into the small splinter of guilt that had been working its way into her conscience since the morgue. She was withholding evidence in a murder investigation from the team tasked with the case. That wasn’t going to win her any friends in the Bureau, with or without Mason’s blessing. She decided to come clean, even if just to see how the justification she’d come up with in her own mind sounded out loud.
“OK, you’re right. I don’t think it’s likely the killer could beat us up there, not even with the info from Maurice about the tattoo. If he did, he wouldn’t know what he was looking for. Flashing a photo after midnight saying you’re looking for a woman whose name you don’t know would draw too much attention.”
“Isn’t that what we’re going to do?”
“We’re not doing anything,” Allison said. She mulled over how much to tell him about the phone conversation. Not much. “I’m reaching out to a family member.”
“Who’s the family member?”
“Can we stop with the questions? Our deal was that you hold off on the story and I bring you along. You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Come on,” Mike said. “If I wanted to screw you over I could have made a call while we were back at that gas station and got my researcher to dive into the Harlow High School archives. Not only that, but I could have filed a story on my iPad about the murder at the morgue to run in tomorrow’s paper. Or even posted it right to the online edition.”
Allison shot him a look. “Did you?”
“No,” Mike said. “Because I promised I wouldn’t.”
Allison barked out a short laugh. “A promise from a reporter?” She felt bad the second the words were out. It felt like she took the last few hours of enjoyable conversation and dumped them right into the trash. If Mike was offended, he didn’t show it.
“OK, let’s take trust out of the equation,” Mike said. “Let’s go for pure, unadulterated self-interest.”
“Now you have my attention,” Allison said.
“You guessed it right earlier. All the way back in Tryst. Garret has been a great source for a lot of years. It’s the perfect relationship. I get access to serial killer cases that no one else can get.”
“And Garret gets the spotlight.”
“Exactly,” Mike continued. “And we both know he loves being the center of attention. But it’s not going to last forever. It’s clear that you’re the rising star over there.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“The whole Arnie Milhouse thing last year was buttoned up. Garret said he was maintaining confidentiality on it for reasons he couldn’t tell me, but I think he just didn’t know shit and was embarrassed to be iced out.”
“That was one case. Shit!” Allison said as a glob of nacho cheese squirted from the hot dog onto her lap. Grinning, Mike passed her extra napkins.
“Garret gave me his version of Sam Kraw,” Mike said.
“Yeah, I saw it in the paper,” Allison said.
“So you do read me.”
“I looked it up at the truck stop.”
“And?”
“Decent. I mean, half the facts are wrong, but you used a lot of five-dollar words that made you sound smart.”
Mike flushed red. “There were a few details taken out at the Bureau’s request.”
Allison nodded. It was common practice for the team to hold back a few details from the public. It made it easy to identify the sickos who called in trying to take credit for the murders. That and copycat killers who hoped replicating a murder in the headlines would get their crime scene to just blend in to a larger investigation. “Those weren’t the details I was referring to,” Allison said coolly.
“Then let me set the record straight. Tell me what really happened.”
Allison took another bite of her hot dog and spoke through a mouthful of food. “This…is…good…”
“You’re not going to talk about Kraw, are you?”
Allison smiled, pointed to her full mouth and shrugged.
“OK, let’s leave Kraw for now. How about we just agree that you seem to have a knack for ending up in the middle of the most interesting cases?”
Allison nodded. It reminded her of the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. In her world, an interesting case meant some innocent person, or usually several of them, had met untimely and gruesome deaths.
“OK, so?”
“So, I’m only relevant if I have access to stories that other people don’t have,” Mike said. “My relationship with you is a long-term investment. I’m not going to go around you for just this one story. I’m here to build trust between us.”
“You’re here because you threatened to release details of what happened at the morgue. Blackmail is a tough start if you want a trusting relationship.”
“True,” Mike said. “But that was just a way to get your attention so I could have some time with you and ply you with all my charm and wit.”
“You’re saying the threat to run the story was just to get time alone with me?”
“Yeah.”
“So, if I let you out here, you wouldn’t run the story at the morgue? The tattoo? My name?”
Mike made a show of looking around the lonely stretch of dark highway they were on. “You’d drop me off out here?”
“The thought has crossed my mind.”
“If there’s Internet out here, then the story would be in the online edition within ten minutes.”
“See?”
“What do you mean, see?” Mike said, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation. “You’re the one who left me on the side of some abandoned highway. What’d you expect? That I’d thank you and put the story in a bottle?”
“Then you’re still holding that story over my head.”
“We both have something,” Mike said, turning more serious. “I have information that you don’t want getting out in the mainstream press just yet. You have a front row seat to the big leagues of chasing bad guys.”
“I’m not Garret. I don’t want the spotlight.”
“You don’t have to be in the spotlight. It’s up to you if you want to provide anything to me or not. All I’m saying is that if you do give something to the press, I’m just looking for a little advance notice. In my business, an hour head start might as well be an exclusive.”
“Mutual self-interest,” Allison said.
“Exactly. If I screw you on this one story, I’d be shooting myself in the foot.”
“What makes you think I’ll feed you information in the future once you don’t have something hanging over my head?”
Mike shrugged. “Maybe you won’t. But things have a way of working out. I’m an optimist.”
Allison figured the optimism was more borderline arrogance, but she held back on making the observation. Whether she liked it or not, Mike was along for the ride. And she couldn’t deny that she’d enjoyed the last few hours they’d spent together. She wasn’t sure when she’d spent that kind of time with a man having a conversation. Hell, she didn’t really have a girlfriend she even spoke with for that long either. Her dad and her cases absorbed all the bandwidth she had. But that was another reason for her to put up her guard. She didn’t want there to be any blind spots in her judgment simply because he could carry on a decent conversation. Still, maybe there was reason for optimism.
She smiled and then chuckled softly. “Shooting yourself in the foot?” Allison said. “Pretty cliché for a writer.”
“My writing gets the benefit of editing. Speaking�
��not so much.”
Allison took a deep breath. “Her sister’s in town. Works at a bar from the sounds I heard in the background. That’s where we’re going.”
Mike nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate you trusting me.”
“It might not be too valuable though. You were right earlier, hard to say how close the killer might be to Harlow. If we don’t come up with something tonight, I’m calling in the information I have. Once I do that, I’m likely off the case.”
29
Clarence Mason stood from behind his desk in the small home office and stretched his neck left and right, moving slow and careful. At his age, even stretching felt like a risk. He knew it was all in his head, but he couldn’t help but imagine that a wrong rotation could snap a dried-out ligament or crack a brittle bone. Growing old was a terrible thing. Not a day passed without some kind of indignity. Whether a sideways glance in a mirror after a shower that showed drooping, splotchy skin hanging from his boney carriage, or the sixth visit to the john at night that resulted in the barest dribble of urine, or catching a subordinate speaking more slowly or louder than normal as if he were a normal run-of-the-mill octogenarian sliding downhill back toward infancy where he would gum his food and shit his pants.
He also noticed it took a little longer each morning to get himself going. It wasn’t until he pulled his tie knot snug to his collar that he began to feel like himself. Decked out in a suit from Anderson & Sheppard, a landmark tailor on London’s Savile Row, he looked not much different from the man he remembered seeing in the mirror twenty or thirty years ago. Thinner on top and more wrinkles etched into his face to be sure, but the posture and the confidence were there once the suit was on. And if he looked hard enough into his own eyes, he could imagine the twenty-five-year-old altruist staring back at him. But that young man was long gone. Clarence Mason had seen too much for that version of himself to have survived.
But on nights like this one where the hours slid by without his really noticing and the thought of sleep held no appeal, he felt age catching up with him no matter what he was wearing. He padded through his apartment to the kitchen where the decaf coffee waited for him in a steaming pot. He poured the dark roast into a cup and savored the smell before taking a sip. He read the text message a third time, gaming out the conversation he was about to have. Turns out he didn’t have time to prepare as his phone rang ten minutes earlier than the time promised in the message.
“We’re speaking twice in one week,” Mason said. “People will start talking.”
“Any news?” came Libby’s voice through the receiver. His voice sounded hoarse and tired.
“There’s always news, Marshall.”
A heavy exhalation from the other end. Mason pictured his son in a dark hotel room somewhere on the campaign trail, perhaps working down a bottle of booze while he was at it.
“I’m not in the mood for your games,” Libby said.
“You never were,” Mason replied. He thought he heard the clink of ice in a glass. “Macallan?”
There was a long pause and then a soft sigh of contentment. “Johnnie Walker Blue. An old friend of yours, I think.”
“One I haven’t seen in many years.” Mason sat down at his kitchen table. There was nothing about this call that matched his prediction. It made him nervous. “You ought to be careful. That dog can bite.”
Libby’s laugh came back quick and harsh. “You’re giving me drinking advice?”
“In case you forgot, you called me.” A pause. Mason let it play out. Another clink of ice in a tumbler. Mason hated how the sound made his jaw ache, anticipating the taste of a drink he’d wanted for over a decade.
“Is there news?”
“I don’t know what to tell––”
“Did you have the girl killed?”
Mason clutched the phone tighter and felt his shoulders bunch. For a man trained to never show his emotion, even when alone in a room, it was a telling reaction. He glanced at the mirror on the far wall and felt a rising disgust for the weak, old man staring back at him.
“No, of course not,” Mason said.
“Of course not,” Libby mocked, doing a pretty good imitation of his father. “Because you’d never do anything like that, right? You’re one of the good guys.”
Mason heard the slur in Libby’s voice again.
“How about your Senator Summerhays?” Mason asked. “Is he one of the good guys?”
“I don’t know,” Libby whispered. “I hoped. But then this.” Then his voice grew bitter. “You just couldn’t stand it, could you?”
“Stand what?”
“Seeing me succeed. Why is it such a terrible thing for you? I don’t understand it.”
Mason sighed and leaned back in his chair, a palm pressed against his temple. “We’re not really going to do this, are we?”
The clink of ice again. This time Mason felt the saliva rush into his mouth. He caught himself looking to the apartment’s kitchen, imagining the spot where he used to keep his own bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue for the nights when his mood matched the label. He knew the spot was empty but the impulse was still there.
“No, probably not. That would take two people being honest with each other. Not sure if either of us is up to that. It’s just…I don’t know…I just…”
“What do you need, Marshall?”
“I just need to know who to believe in. Maybe the answer is no one. Not any more. This fucking town, right?”
Mason felt tears well in his eyes. He wondered at his own reaction. Libby’s voice had cracked just a bit as he spoke, but he couldn’t fathom why it would have hit him so hard. Maybe it was hearing his own cynicism thrown back at him. Or perhaps it was the deep-seated need of a father wanting his son’s love and admiration. And the honest self-appraisal that he likely deserved neither.
“This fucking town,” Mason agreed.
Clink. Clink.
That long pause and Mason felt his throat constrict as if he were doing the drinking instead of his son on the other end of the line.
“Help me out on this one,” Libby said in a detached boozy voice. “I don’t need to know if you had anything to do with the girl’s death. Just Summerhays. Tell me that.”
Mason rolled over the possible answers in his mind, wanting to choose his words carefully, not quite trusting himself given his unusual emotionalism. Libby filled the silence.
“Just tell me why you have this second investigation going outside the regular channels. Is there something that bad coming?”
Mason sat up straight in his chair, the sensation of ice-cold water pouring down his back. He’d caught a slight change in Libby’s tone and a realization struck him with the force of an electric shock. His emotions went from shock to anger to embarrassment, and then to a perverse sense of pride in his son.
“How’s the ice water, Marshall?”
A long pause, then a few clinks of ice and a slurping sound. “Refreshing,” Libby said, all traces of his boozy speech pattern gone. “It’s a Diet Coke actually.”
“Those things will kill you.”
Libby laughed but there was no joy in it.
“Pretty decent idea, playing on the emotions of an old man, calling late, apparently drunk. Going for the sympathy card,” Mason said. “Impressive.”
“How about rewarding the effort with some information?” Libby said, his speech alert and clipped. “This Allison McNeil. What’s she after? Why is she working outside the system on this case?”
Mason cursed under his breath even as he again felt pride about the intel his son was able to collect. “Allison McNeil? The agent on the Kraw shooting? She’s on administrative leave as far as I know.”
“So I hear,” Libby said, leaving the implication that he had his own sources into Mason’s beloved Bureau to hang in the air. “But then she turned up to examine Catherine Fews’s body at the morgue. After she left, the orderly who helped her turned up dead. Odd way to spend your time on administrative leave.”
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“Everyone needs a hobby,” Mason replied. “I just hope that interfering in a federal investigation isn’t a new hobby of yours, Marshall. That would be a damn shame.”
“Is that a warning?” Libby asked.
“No, a threat,” Mason said softly. “Goodnight, Marshall. Thank you for the interesting call. We should do it again soon.”
Mason ended the call and held the phone to his chest. He considered that he’d underestimated his son and perhaps his new boss as well. There was nothing more dangerous than underestimating one’s adversaries, a lesson he’d learned the hard way over a lifetime in the rough world of DC politics. He didn’t intend to allow it to happen again.
30
The road twisted deep into the dark mountains, skeleton trees poking bony fingers at them, potholes in the old asphalt rattling their ride. Bored, Allison purposefully drifted off the road so that the car’s right tires ran over the rumble strip beside them. The rattle shook the car and Mike jerked away. He rubbed his eyes, sat up and looked at her.
“Want me to drive for a while?” he asked.
“Do I want you to drive the last half hour of a six-hour car ride?”
“Should have asked earlier, huh?”
“If you were trying to be polite.”
“Would you have let me drive?” Mike asked.
Allison thought about it. “No. Probably not.”
“Then I really wish I’d offered. Could have looked good and still taken a nap. Best of all worlds. Where are we?”
“Middle-of-nowhere, West Virginia and about to go even farther off the beaten path.”
“This is coal country,” Mike said. “I investigated a story in a place like this a few years ago. One of Garret’s cases.”
“Oswald Perkins,” Allison said. “Ten years ago.”
“Ten years? Jesus, you’re right.” Mike shifted in his chair. “One sick puppy if ever there was one. I met him a few times.”
Allison wasn’t impressed. “I’ve watched the tapes of his interviews with Garret.”