by Robert Greer
She wasn’t certain whether the FBI agent who’d walked them to their rooms was still outside in the hall. She hadn’t looked. But she was positive that someone from some faceless government agency was stationed there. Especially since, after being released by Stoops, they’d had a ten-minute hallway interview with an official from the Office of National Intelligence, followed by a twenty-minute hallway talk with a droopy-eyed man from homeland security and finally a fifteen-minute eyeball-to-eyeball chat with the government’s regional weapons of mass destruction coordinator, a perky-looking woman named Loretta Vines who’d flown in from Denver. And as they’d headed through the darkened building toward their rooms with their FBI escort at their side, a man from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Emergency Operations had swooped down on them and flashed his credentials at the FBI agent. But the agent, frustrated after forty-five minutes of interruption, had said to the man, “You can talk to them tomorrow.”
There’d been media people around, of course, digging and snooping and probing like stud dogs trailing bitches in heat, but not a single journalist had been permitted to talk to them.
Neither she nor Cozy had any idea what happened to Silas Breen’s truck, the bomb components Agent Richter had admitted they’d found inside, Silas Breen, or Rikia Takata, and when Cozy had asked both Loretta Vines and the man from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s office for information, he’d gotten only silence and blank stares.
Bernadette didn’t know how many days they’d have to spend talking with authorities, but with a new round of debriefings scheduled to start at eight the next morning, she knew they both needed to get some sleep.
She had been able to talk to her father, who’d called a couple of longtime friends and high-ranking national security types in Washington to plead her case, but as far as she knew, nothing helpful had materialized.
Freddy had assured them that he’d do whatever was necessary to get them out of the government’s clutches, including marshaling whatever help he could get from politically connected friends of his father. But they both understood that Freddy’s first and foremost concern was a story.
Surprised that someone from a government agency hadn’t confiscated Cozy’s laptop, Bernadette continued to watch Cozy pound away at the keys. Walking over to him and flashing him a road-weary smile, she asked, “Why do you think they let you hang on to your computer?”
“Who knows? My fourth estate rights, I guess. Since I’ve had every cavity and potential cavity in my body including the space beneath my fingernails searched, I’m guessing some politico out there looked at the potential fallout his side might get by clamping down on me and said, ‘What’s the harm in a laptop?’ ” Checking the last sentence he’d typed for spelling errors, Cozy said, “Who knows why on earth they allowed us to have adjoining rooms, either?”
“That answer’s easy. It’s what you do with POWs when they’re first captured. You split them up later. For right now they want us in one place. Works for me,” she said, smiling, taking a seat on the bed beside Cozy, and kissing him softly on the cheek. “So, what’s the gist of your story?”
“You really want to know?”
“Sure do, Mr. Pulitzer.”
“Okay. It’s the only thing I could write about that could possibly trump the hundreds, if not thousands, of other stories that are out there by now.”
“Which is?”
Cozy scrolled to the top of his screen. “Take a look at my working title: Defusing Fat Man II: An Insider’s Look at the Magic.”
“Sounds sort of egotistical to me.”
Cozy smiled. “First lesson of the new journalism, Major: it’s less about journalism and more about show. Second lesson: there’s nothing more interesting or personally fulfilling for a reader than to hitch their wagon to someone who’s been on the inside of an ordeal. Freddy wants me to milk it, pound the story out in four parts, make it episodic and Star Wars–like. Part I, the piece I’m writing now, starts with Giles found hanging by his ankles at Tango-11. Part IV will take the reader to the brink of the bomb going off. Each piece will end with a cliff-hanger and have to stand on its own.”
Bernadette shook her head. “Sounds more like a screenplay than news.”
“Good description. But sadly, it’s what I do for a living, Bernadette. Hate to burst your bubble, but Edward R. Murrow’s been dead for a good long time.”
Looking disillusioned, Bernadette said, “If it’s what you have to do. But what about all the loose ends? Was Rikia acting on his own? How did he set things up? And is he even still alive?”
“Those things will all be addressed in the series. But you and I both know there’s no way in hell that Rikia set things up all by himself. I’m thinking Dr. Takata was a one-trick pony, and his trick was the bomb. He was more than likely in on the Giles killing, but I’m betting he was just along for the ride.”
“So if he didn’t kill Giles, who did?”
“I don’t know yet, but whoever did had help. There’s no way any one person could have dragged a one-hundred-seventy-pound man and fifty pounds of block, chain, and tackle halfway across an abandoned missile-silo site, raised a 2,500-pound hatch cover, and dropped a body down the hatch on their own. To say nothing of the Sarah Goldbeck killing. How on earth could Rikia have killed her when he was either at a meeting for math eggheads in El Paso or already down here in New Mexico or Texas, and why?”
“The why’s easy,” said Bernadette. “If she was in on it, to keep her from spilling the beans about the Giles murder. And more importantly, to keep her from telling the world what Rikia was doing. Could be that when she found out what Rikia was really up to, which wasn’t simply a little revenge on Giles, for whatever reason she got cold feet and decided to come clean to someone.”
“Turns out a lot of people got used up by Sergeant Giles,” said Cozy. “Maybe they all had a hand in killing him. Rikia, Colbain, Rivers, maybe even Buford Kane.”
“Kane? Considering how hysterical he was when he called to say his wife was dead, that would surprise me.”
“Maybe he was faking it.”
“I don’t think so. It’s hard to fake that kind of emotion.”
“Pretty much leaves us with Kimiko as the straggler, then.”
“She’s a tough one,” said Bernadette. “It’s hard to figure out why she would’ve been involved in the Giles killing. Then again, she could have had an inkling of what Rikia was up to and figured that by going along with the Giles killing, she could stop him.”
“Reasonable speculation,” said Cozy.
“That’s the kind of response I’d expect from some highbrow attorney,” said Bernadette.
Looking exhausted, Cozy smiled and said, “And you, Major Cameron, are sounding like someone I’d like to go to bed with.”
“Only if your intentions are to sleep.”
“Trust me. They are,” Cozy said, lying back on the bed.
Five minutes later, naked and snuggled tightly against one another like fetal twins, they were both dead to the world.
“Defusing Fat Man II” hit the internet the next day. Within forty-eight hours of the story’s debut, it had been picked up by every major newspaper, TV station, and media outlet in the country. The most intriguing part of the story, seasoned media types agreed, wasn’t Elgin Coseia’s account of how he and Major Bernadette Cameron had thwarted a madman’s plan to trigger a nuclear weapon at Los Alamos but Coseia’s speculation about how that plan, set in motion by the murder of a retired air force sergeant at a desolate place called Tango-11, must of necessity have included yet unnamed persons.
His detailed discussion of the exact placement and depth of the five stab wounds in Giles’s back, gleaned from correspondence between Bernadette and Sheriff Bosack and secured in earnest by the two thousand dollars Freddy Dames had secretly paid Deputy Sykes, along with his account of the former sergeant’s penis mutilation, had the phones at Digital Registry News singing and Freddy an
nouncing to anyone within earshot that the bell had tolled for print journalism. Cozy’s discussion of the not-yet-released autopsy findings, in which he asserted that two of the five stab wounds were so superficial that they couldn’t possibly have killed Giles, was followed by a probing and problematic question: Who had actually delivered the fatal, deep-plunging stab wound that had severed two vital arteries in Giles’s lung?
Assuring readers that he would ultimately name names and define the role that each person had played in the murder and the attempted bombing, Cozy had ended the story with a single and powerful “stay tuned” assertion: Rikia Takata couldn’t have possibly engineered the murder of Thurmond Giles or orchestrated his plan to trigger a nuclear device on his own.
Cozy’s story had America’s media types scurrying to find out who the unnamed people might be. Two days after the story appeared, names began to surface, but two weeks after the leaking of Howard Colbain’s, Grant Rivers’s, and Kimiko Takata’s names, their lawyers and the U.S. government had built an impenetrable protective wall around the three. To further heighten public outrage, no one would verify whether Rikia Takata was dead or alive.
Relishing his pot-stirring role during the three weeks following the unsuccessful Los Alamos bombing, Freddy Dames posted a dozen stories about Digital Registry News’s role in the thwarted bombing, hammering home in most of them how easy it had been for Silas Breen, an unlucky pawn in the process, to transport radioactive cobalt-60 source material more than halfway across a continent.
The second story in Cozy’s proposed four-part series never saw the light of day, largely because Freddy, under threats of legal action against him and Digital Registry News on behalf of Howard Colbain, the Takatas, and Grant Rivers, was forced to pull the plug on the piece.
Kimiko Takata, Grant Rivers, Howard Colbain, and Buford Kane, who’d been dragged into the morass by no more than inference and circumstance, were denying through their lawyers any involvement whatsoever in the Giles or Sarah Goldbeck murders. Rikia Takata, presumed to be alive and the centerpiece in the government’s weapons of mass destruction investigation, wasn’t admitting to anything.
Threats of lawsuits eventually disappeared, and a month after those threats had first surfaced, with Rikia Takata incarcerated and very much alive and the government amassing its case against him, Cozy had settled back into a regular work routine. Bernadette had given the air force her resignation notice while still fending off court-martial proceedings, and Freddy, continuing to milk the “story of the century,” had turned Digital Registry News into a household name.
It was Buford Kane who ultimately brought final closure to the events triggered by Tango-11 when, seven weeks after the discovery of Thurmond Giles’s body, he walked into the offices of Digital Registry News, looking put-upon because of the government’s failed but lengthy attempts to link him to the Giles murder and the bombing at Los Alamos. He asked a surprised Lillian Griffith if he could speak with Elgin Coseia about who had killed his wife, Sarah Goldbeck.
When Cozy rounded a corner in search of a clean coffee cup and saw Kane standing in front of Lillian’s desk, looking haunted, Buford blurted out, “Kimiko Takata killed my Sarah, Mr. Coseia, and I’m pretty sure where she hid the murder weapon.”
Kane, who looked to have lost a good fifteen pounds since Cozy had last seen him, reeked of dried sweat and motor oil.
Looking Buford up and down, then glancing at Lillian, who was on the verge of holding her nose, Cozy said, “Why don’t we step into my office, Mr. Kane.”
Limping noticeably, Kane followed Cozy to his newly furnished office.
“What happened to your leg?” Cozy asked as they both took seats.
“Hurt it workin’ on an irrigation ditch at my place. But I ain’t here to talk about that. I’m hopin’ you can help me put the loony old broad who killed my wife behind bars. Ain’t you gonna ask me where Kimiko is?”
“Well, where is she?”
“At Heart Mountain, most likely. Where else? There to amp up her craziness. I’ve been followin’ her for weeks, doin’ some investigatin’ of my own. I owe it to Sarah to nail her killer. And when I do, I’ll need somebody to tell Sarah’s story. Somebody who’ll set the record straight and do her right.” He stared pleadingly at Cozy.
“So tell me what you’ve got,” Cozy said a bit reluctantly.
Looking invigorated, Buford rubbed his hands together. “Like I said, I’ve been followin’ the old half-wit around for weeks. Been glued to her like the stink on shit. Three days ago I finally got my break when I saw her buyin’ somethin’ at a UPS store in Laramie. She came walkin’ outta the store with a cardboard box like the kind you’d send long-stemmed roses in to your honey, except it was sturdier-lookin’ and a tad bit wider and longer. Heavy-gauge cardboard, if you know what I mean. When I checked the internet later that day to see if I could find the same kinda box, I found that very one at several outlets—UPS, U-Haul, Penske. Took me the longest while, but in the end I figured out what might fit into a box like that. A sawed-off shotgun like the one that killed my Sarah.”
“Why didn’t you confront her when you saw her leaving the UPS store?” Cozy asked, deciding not to offer much of a challenge to Buford’s purely circumstantial tale.
“Because I didn’t know what the hell the box was gonna be used for then. Besides, I was nervous. I didn’t want her knowin’ I was tailin’ her and maybe give her the chance to be lookin’ for me in the future. Besides, as far as I knew, she was plannin’ on makin’ that shotgun disappear that very day.”
“Do you think that maybe your grief has you imagining things, Mr. Kane?”
“I don’t, and I ain’t! But what if I am? Won’t hurt to check the old bag out. Since you and Major Cameron stopped that crazy cousin of hers from nukin’ us and contaminatin’ the whole damn Front Range of the Rockies, I figured I might as well start my search for help with the two of you.”
Cozy couldn’t help but smile. He’d had scores of insincere, buttkissing newshounds from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and Fox groveling to sit at his feet for over a month, and now he actually had someone in need of his knowledge and skills who might actually appreciate them.
“And it was the two of you who figured out that more than one person most likely stabbed that Sergeant Giles to death,” said Buford. “So naturally I figured you and the major could also help me pin Sarah’s murder on Kimiko.”
“I’m flattered, Mr. Kane, but as of yet no one has proven who or how many people killed Sergeant Giles.”
Kane looked surprised. “Well, hell. You pretty much said who it was in that article you wrote a few weeks back.”
“I’m afraid the article you’re referring to was pretty much a speculative piece, which means that, although I believe the facts in the article to be true, I can’t prove them to be. And they certainly wouldn’t carry any weight in a court of law.”
“Call it what you will, straight-out fact or just plain guessin’. I see it this way. Colbain, Rivers, and Kimiko might be out there free as the breeze right now because they’ve got themselves a bunch of publicity-seekin’ slick-assed, big-city lawyers who are good at milkin’ the shit outta the system. But in the end, the chickens are gonna roost my way. Trust me.”
“Let’s hope so. Just remember, justice doesn’t always play out the way you expect it to, Mr. Kane. Someone will have to convince a jury that Colbain; Rivers; the Takatas; and maybe even your own wife, Sarah, killed Sergeant Giles.”
“Yeah, I know all that. And to tell you the truth, I don’t really give a shit about who killed Giles. I’m interested in bringin’ the person who killed my Sarah to justice. And I’m sittin’ here tellin’ you it was Kimiko Takata. I warned Sarah to stay away from her for years, but they had some kind of spiritual ‘save the planet’ connection I couldn’t sever. Connection or not, though, sooner or later Kimiko’s gonna head back to Heart Mountain and do whatever she’s been doin’ in that godforsaken place for the pa
st fifty years. Sarah used to tell me about how when she was just a little girl followin’ her crazy-ass mother around from pillar to post, Kimiko would wig out after comin’ back from Heart Mountain. And about how Kimiko would cry on that Sergeant Giles’s shoulder and sometimes Sarah’s mother’s shoulder after a trip there. I should have told Major Cameron that the first time she interrogated me at Warren. But I didn’t, and you see what it ended up gettin’ my Sarah? A spot in the graveyard.”
Buford paused and cleared his throat, as if to make certain that what he had to say next came through loud and clear. “I ain’t proud or religious, Mr. Coseia, so I’ll tell you up front, what I’m after is my pound of flesh. And I’m only askin’ for you and Major Cameron to help me out a little bit. I’ll keep an eye on Kimiko. Even stay in a motel in Laramie and watch her every move till she strikes out for Heart Mountain again. But you might as well know that with or without your help, I’m gonna see that old witch either dead or behind bars.”
“Okay. Suppose you’re lucky enough to be there in Laramie when she strikes out for Heart Mountain again. Takes off all bold and unintimidated, carrying that shotgun you’re so certain she murdered your wife with. How do you expect me to get from Denver to either Laramie or Heart Mountain to help out on a moment’s notice?”
“That’s where Major Cameron comes in,” Buford said, grinning. “She flies you there in that plane you tracked Rikia down in. Should be easy.”
“Not quite. The plane you’re talking about doesn’t belong to either one of us. Major Cameron’s busy trying to wrap up her military career, and I’m up to my eyeballs with work.”
“Well, drop what the shit you’re doin’ and get with me on this, man. Look at it this way. You’ll help send Kimiko to prison, and you’ll have yourself one of them prizewinnin’ stories you folks in the news business like to brag about so much.”
Deciding it would be fruitless to offer Buford another civics lesson on the workings of the judicial system, Cozy nonetheless found himself intrigued. Sarah Goldbeck’s murder and her actual role in the events at Tango-11 were two things he hadn’t fully addressed. Eyeing Buford thoughtfully, he said, “Suppose you’re wrong about Kimiko and about the murder weapon. Suppose a plane trip to Heart Mountain turns out to be a huge waste of money and time.”