by Sandra Brown
Besides, if he went back to say a proper goodbye, he didn’t trust himself to walk out a second time.
Between Kerra’s condo and Trapper’s office building, not a word passed between him and the driver of the hired car.
After being dropped at the address, in order to get to the entrance, he had to step over the parking meter, which still lay flat against the sidewalk. It crossed his mind to wonder about the status of his car, but he couldn’t work up any real interest or concern over it.
He entered the building, and immediately the door to the law office was jerked open. Carson took one look at him. “I guess you’ve heard.”
“Who told you?”
“Kerra was on TV doing a standup outside Wilcox’s gate.”
“That didn’t take long,” Trapper muttered. Then to Carson, “I ought to strangle you with that brassiere you bought her.”
“I didn’t buy it for her, I bought it for you. Like it?”
Trapper gave him a scornful look and tried to go around him so he could get to the elevator, but Carson sidestepped and blocked him. “They cleaned up your office.”
“Who?”
“I authorized the janitor only to change the lock and replace the glass, but I guess he saw a chance to make some extra coin. Couple of guys were banging around up there yesterday afternoon. I took a peek. Looks good. I settled the bill for you.” He fished in his pants pocket for a key and handed it to Trapper. “It goes in with teeth side down.”
“Thanks.”
“Of course I’ll have to tack those charges onto your bill.”
“Whatever, Carson, just let me by, okay?”
Carson stopped him this time by placing his hand on Trapper’s chest. “Wilcox getting iced sucks for you. Right?”
“Genius deduction.”
“They’re saying his old lady killed him with his own fancy six-shooter.”
“Jesus.” Trapper had replaced the revolver in the drawer, but apparently Mrs. Wilcox had known where to find it. “Have they estimated time of death?”
“Around two o’clock this morning.”
Shortly after he and Kerra had left.
Carson said, “They got a sound bite from one of the wife’s friends saying she’d suffered from severe depression since they lost their kid. So, you know, all things considered, Trapper, maybe this ending is for the best.”
Trapper’s eyes narrowed in anger. “Don’t make me hit you, Carson.” He pushed the lawyer’s hand off his chest. Carson judiciously backed away. Trapper continued on to the elevator.
As soon as he stepped off on his floor, he smelled fresh paint. The frosted glass pane in the door had been replaced, but no stenciling had been done yet. Which was just as well. It would save the new tenant the hassle of having it redone.
Trapper planned to move out as soon as he had the wherewithal to go through the necessary motions. He didn’t know what he was going to do or where he was going to go, but he knew he was finished here.
It wasn’t the finish he’d hoped for. He had wanted it to end with clarity and absoluteness. He’d wanted vindication, yes, but, more than that, he’d wanted closure. Solid closure, which, either way, left no niggling ambiguity or debilitating doubt.
As it was, he would remain in limbo. Limbo for life.
And although he’d told Wilcox that he was fine with that, he wasn’t. Especially after this week. After Kerra.
The floor of his office had been swept clean of broken glass. He checked the file cabinet. The meaningless paperwork that had been scattered about the office had been arranged into meaningless stacks inside the drawers. The sofa was a carcass, but the stuffing that had been pulled out of the cushions had been gathered and removed. All the furniture was upright.
He hung his coat on the rack behind the door, walked over to his desk, and sat down behind it. The surface of it gleamed with polish, which was, to his knowledge, a first. He opened the drawers one by one. The bottom one contained basic office supplies. The middle held empty file folders and a roll of the plastic bags he used to preserve the photos he took of illicit rendezvous. The only thing remaining in the lap drawer was the magnifying glass.
He left it where it was and closed the drawer.
Swiveling his chair around, he noticed that the electrical outlet plate had been replaced, the Sheetrock patched and repainted.
He wondered who had watched the dirty videos on the flash drive. Jenks? Glenn? Wilcox himself? Wilcox had pretended not to know what the flash drive had on it, but Trapper trusted nothing anymore.
He stretched out his leg and dug in his jeans pocket for the other flash drive. He bounced it in his palm, thinking with self-deprecation how clever he’d believed himself to be, shipping it to Marianne and then pretending to Wilcox that his hidey-hole had been discovered and his own insurance policy heisted.
He’d played it up big, but just subtly enough to make the ruse convincing. Wilcox had been fooled. Even Kerra had fallen for the bluff.
Trapper bounced the flash drive one time more, then his hand fell still. He went still all over. He even stopped breathing.
Seconds later, he came out of his chair as though it had launched him. He left it spinning as he dashed from the office, barreled through the fire stairs door, and leaped the treads three at a time until he reached the first floor.
He barged into Carson’s office, startling his former stripper-turned-receptionist. “He’s with a client,” she said.
But Trapper was already pushing through the door into Carson’s private office. “What couple of guys?”
Carson’s client had the reflexes of the guilty. He sprang from his chair, whipped a knife from his coat sleeve, and brandished it.
Carson stood up and patted the air. “Put the blade away. He’s harmless.”
“Long way from harmless,” Trapper told the sneering miscreant. “Get that knife out of my face or I’ll break your arm.” The client obviously believed him. He did as told. Trapper went back to Carson. “The repair to my office. You said a couple of guys. Who were they?”
“I don’t know. Guys. In coveralls. With tools and paint cans and shit.”
“Whose name was on the invoice for the job?”
“No invoice. Cash got me a ten percent discount.”
“Do you have a hammer?”
Carson looked at him like he’d asked for the tail of a mermaid.
“A hammer, a hammer.”
“What would I need with a hammer?”
Trapper left three stunned people behind as he left as rapidly as he’d appeared and ran back up the stairs to his office. He gave his desk chair a shove that sent it rolling out of his way, then kicked the wall just above the outlet plate, striking it with his boot heel until it caved in.
But the hole he’d made wasn’t large enough to get his hand through.
He opened his lap drawer, got the magnifying glass, and wielded it as he would have a hammer, beating the metal casing of it against the Sheetrock until chalky hunks of it were chipped away and he had an opening large enough to work his hand inside and up to his elbow.
The cell phone was duct-taped to one of the studs.
After pulling it out, he tapped it against his forehead in time to his whispered chant, sonofabitch, sonofabitch, sonofabitch. Wilcox’s contingency.
He allowed himself about ten seconds to be overjoyed.
And thirty seconds to be terrified of how he would be impacted by what he held in his hand.
He had to know.
He turned on the phone and was relieved that it didn’t require a code to open. He accessed photos. There were five in the folder.
Heart thudding, he opened the first. It required magnification before he could read the names. He scanned them. Some celebrity names jumped out at him. He recognized the names of politicians, living and dead. Names that had “Dr.” in front, names with “The Honorable” before them, names with distinguishing ranks.
The list having been alphabetized, Glenn Addiso
n’s was near the top.
He went to the next photo, then the next. He had expected to find a few names there that weren’t.
Heart near to bursting with dread, he ran down the list of names beginning with the letter T. Trapper wasn’t there.
A dry, harsh cry of gladness escaped him. His knees gave way with relief, and he sank to the floor. He sighed an inarticulate prayer.
He sat there clutching the phone, giving his heart time to stop racing and his breathing to return to normal before going through the remainder of the list. The alphabet gave out in the center of the fourth photo.
Trapper tapped on the fifth and final. In the dead center of the page, there was only one name. Not typed. A signature.
Major Franklin Trapper.
There could be no mistake. The signature was too distinctive to have been forged. It was his father’s.
Trapper fell back against the wall, his shoulder blades banging hard against it, but he didn’t feel it. He raised his knees, bent his head over them, and heaved a series of dry sobs so wrenching they made his breastbone ache.
This was what he had lived in fear of finding at the end of his quest for truth. He wasn’t shocked or disillusioned. He had suspected it. Expected it. What he hadn’t anticipated was that it would hurt this bad to know for certain.
It was clear now why Wilcox had put the list into Trapper’s hands. It hadn’t been because he feared prosecution or assassination by one of his own, or because Trapper had intimidated him into surrendering it. It wasn’t even to bring his daughter’s murderers to justice, although if he were alive, Wilcox surely would have assigned Trapper to eliminate them.
The list was Trapper’s heart’s desire.
Wilcox had given Trapper what he most wanted, proof of his years of corruption and bloodletting, but Trapper couldn’t use it to incriminate Wilcox without incriminating his own father.
He must drop the investigation, stop asking questions and making a pest of himself, tell the federal agents, “Just kidding,” and bury any lingering suspicion of the Pegasus bombing. His conviction about a conspiracy would never be vindicated or validated. He would remain a burnout who couldn’t hack it, and people would continue to roll their eyes whenever his name cropped up.
He could delete photo number five, but The Major’s signature would still be on the original pledge. Even though the authorities didn’t know of its existence, Trapper did. He would live each day knowing that he was breaking the law by obstructing justice. Wilcox had known how onerous that would be to him. How had he kept from laughing out loud?
It didn’t even matter that Wilcox was dead. In order for The Major to remain a hero in the eyes of the world, Trapper would have to abandon his crusade.
Forever and ever. Amen.
He sat there on the floor, gripping the phone so tightly his fingers turned white, staring at his father’s signature through a glossing of tears.
Then he wiped them from his eyes and stood up.
“Fuck you, Wilcox.”
Chapter 35
The law secretary was only slightly less startled than before when Trapper strode in again and went straight into Carson’s office. The client was still there, slumped and sullen, looking pessimistic about his future.
Trapper said, “I need to borrow—”
Carson pitched him a set of car keys. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Carson came to his feet. “You sure? ’Cause you look—”
“Which car do these keys go to?”
“Yours. Remember it? It’s parked out back looking as good as new.”
“Thanks. I owe you.”
“Trapper?”
But he was already out the door.
In his car, he checked the console cubby and the glove box for his phone charger. Missing. Carson’s shop guy must’ve helped himself to it. Trapper patted down his coat pockets until he found a phone that still had battery life and used it to call one of the ATF colleagues to whom he’d spoken earlier. “Meet me at the curb outside your office in three minutes.”
It took him four, but when he arrived the agent was there. No doubt he’d heard the news about Wilcox, because he practically had steam coming out his ears.
Trapper lowered his driver’s window and thrust a sealed plastic bag at him. “I know I let you down. I’m sorry I can’t hand over Wilcox, but here’s the cell phone I told you about. The photos of the list are on it, and it’s a hell of a list. The flash drive has my stuff on it, the Johnson video, the phone-recorded conversation with Wilcox. The password to open it is ‘RED,’ all caps. Give it to the FBI.”
Trapper sped away before the flustered agent got a word in edgewise.
Next, Trapper called Kerra. Her phone rang twice before going to voice mail. He didn’t leave a message, but he called three more times in as many minutes with no success. At a stoplight, he asked Siri to dial the TV station’s number. He went through the unending recorded list of options and finally reached a human being in the newsroom.
Trapper asked for Gracie and was put through. He identified himself. “I need to speak to Kerra.”
“She’s on location, about to do a live report.”
“It’s an emergency.”
“Your emergencies have almost cost Kerra her job. I’d bet good money you’re the reason she looks like her pet just died and her eyes are red and puffy.”
“I need to talk to her. Get that message to her.”
“She’s busy. You’ll have to ask forgiveness for whatever you did some other time.”
“This isn’t about that. About us. It’s—”
“They’re going live in sixty. I have to go.”
“Tell her—”
“I will. Goodbye.”
“Listen to me, goddammit!” He took a breath. “Granted, I’m a shit.”
“John Trapper is a shit. I’m writing that down.”
“Write this down. It’s the number she needs to call.” Twice he repeated the number of the phone he was using. “Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Tell her that the cell phone wasn’t behind the painting.”
“Are you drunk?”
“It’ll make sense to Kerra. Tell her it was a bluff. Like the wall outlet.”
“Okay.”
“Tell her I got the list.”
“You got the list.”
“Can you remember all that?”
“They’re down to thirty. I have to go.”
The producer clicked off.
“We’ll bring you updates as they occur. This is Kerra Bailey reporting.”
The cameraman signaled her when they were off the air. The microphone felt like a fifty-pound weight in her hand as she lowered it to her side.
The scene was familiar: she and colleagues jockeying for position at the site of a major news story; a row of vans with satellite dishes on top; cameramen practicing their panning shots; sound techs testing mike levels; reporters adjusting earpieces and checking their appearance in whatever reflective surface was available within seconds of being told to stand by.
This is what she thrived on. Today she felt removed from it. She was going through the motions, but her heart wasn’t in it. She had threatened Thomas Wilcox that she would show up with a cameraman at his gate, but she hadn’t expected to be reporting a murder-suicide. His pitiless disregard for the lives he’d taken was repugnant. But wouldn’t she be as despicable if she weren’t saddened by the desperate action that had ended his life?
Any of her colleagues would give an eyetooth to know that shortly before Wilcox’s wife fatally shot him, Kerra had been face-to-face with him inside the barricaded mansion. It would be a scoop to top all scoops, but she wouldn’t be the one to tell it. She wouldn’t exploit the man’s tragic death, no matter how evil he’d been, nor that of the pathetic Mrs. Wilcox.
She also wouldn’t break her promise to Trapper that she wouldn’t tell the whole story before getting his okay.
“Ke
rra, Gracie needs to talk to you.”
Given her thoughts, Kerra wondered if Gracie had somehow learned of Trapper’s and her visit with Wilcox last night. God, she hoped not. Gracie would fire her on the spot.
She thanked the production assistant who’d delivered the message and made her way back to the van. She climbed into the passenger seat, took her phone from her handbag, and hit speed dial.
Gracie answered on the first ring. “Your eyes still look red on camera.”
“Allergies.”
“Right. Well, the allergen called.”
Kerra’s heart bumped, but she didn’t say anything.
“He was in a breathless rush, of course. Emphatic that he needs to talk to you, but not about ‘us.’ Said to tell you the cell phone wasn’t behind the painting. It was a bluff like the wall outlet. He has the list.”
“He has the list?”
“I accused him of being drunk. ”
Kerra’s lethargy had dissolved, and now she was charged. “Did he say where he is?”
“No, but he left a phone number.”
“Text it to me. I’ll call him right now.”
“Hold on, I’ve got another assignment for you.”
“Gracie, for the time being we’ve gotten all we’re going to get out of the PD. The spokesperson will say nothing except that they’re investigating. They’ve sequestered the housekeeper, so I can’t even get near her. The lead homicide detective dodged me. All I’m doing is repeating myself.”
“I’m sending Bill to take over there. I need you to get to Lodal.”
“What for?”
“The Major’s being released from the hospital.”
“What? Today? That has to be a rumor.”
“I have a reliable source. While up there, I bribed a hospital orderly to call me with any updates or hearsay. I just talked to him. That’s still your story, Kerra, and if you hurry, it’ll be an exclusive for the evening news.”
After a short pause to take a breath, she continued. “Assuming you won’t be an idiot and pass this up, if you could possibly, pretty please with sugar on top, get a shot of you and The Major together, that would be fantastic. A sound bite from him would give me an orgasm. And need I spell this out? You’d be the network’s reigning princess.”