Barack craned around to see if I was serious. “You sure we shouldn’t wait for Esposito?”
“The cops and the transportation board have raked this guy’s chestnuts over the open fire. But if there’s even the slightest chance he’s holding something back, who’s he going to talk to? Another cop, or Amtrak Joe?”
“You make an excellent point.”
“Maybe they haven’t asked the right questions. He knows something. He has to. Two men work that closely for that long, they’re bound to open up to each other. They’re bound to forge a close bond.”
“Hey, Steve, that sounds like us, right?” Barack said, patting Steve on the back.
Steve started the car. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. We started backing up, then abruptly stopped.
“We have company,” Barack said.
I opened my eyes. Red and blue lights were flashing in the rearview mirror. A police car was blocking our exit; on either side of us were more police cars. We were boxed in.
“Nobody has anything illegal, do they?” I asked. “No guns, no…”
“We’re clean,” Barack said.
“No marijuana cigarettes? I know that stuff is legal in DC now, but this isn’t DC.”
“They’re called joints, Joe,” Barack said. “And, no, I don’t have any on me. I left all my pot back in my man cave.”
Before I could ask if he was kidding—he’d never said a word about having a man cave before—there was a tap on Steve’s window. It was Esposito. She wasn’t smiling.
22
Steve rolled down his window, but he didn’t say a word. His hands were at ten and two on the wheel, just like we all learned in driver’s ed. Esposito glanced at the well-dressed man in the passenger seat. Her eyes went wide when she realized this was Barack Hussein Obama, but she quickly regained her cool.
She spied me in the back. “So it’s true, huh? Y’all really are best friends?”
“Something like that,” I said.
Barack glanced in the mirror at me. It looked like he wanted to say something, but it wasn’t the time or the place.
I cleared my throat. “We’re on our way to the golf course.”
Esposito scanned the endless blue sky. “Supposed to be a storm coming.”
“They say you’re more likely to hit a hole in one than get hit by lightning.”
“I don’t play golf, so I wouldn’t know,” she said, shifting her belt. “But I’m not here to talk sports.” She rested a forearm on the open window and leaned in, encroaching on Steve’s personal space. He didn’t flinch. “You guys know that I put my best detectives on Mr. Donnelly’s case—at great cost to the city, I should add. We’re under siege. We don’t have the manpower to assign detectives willy-nilly. But apparently that’s not enough, because I get a voicemail last night saying we need to talk. A voicemail that says you ‘found something.’ You’re damn right we need to talk.”
“Well,” I stammered, “the motel where he was staying—”
“What did you find?”
“There’s a section of carpet missing in his room. Someone ripped it up, but there’s a bloodstain on the floor underneath. Thought you could send someone over to test it.”
“A bloodstain.”
“And his car is still there.”
She crossed her arms. “And what did you find in his car? Another bloodstain?”
I started to sputter something about Styrofoam cups, but she cut me off. “I’ll tell you what you found: nothing. It’s the same thing we found. And you know why we found nothing? Because there’s nothing to find. One of my detectives noticed the missing carpet. Called out forensics. Whatever the stain was, we’ll never know—it was treated with oxygen bleach. Now before you run with that, we checked the housekeeping supply closet and found gallons of oxygen bleach. Somebody made a mess. Somebody else cleaned it up. Nobody that worked there knew how long the carpet had been ripped up, even. It’s not enough to build a case on.”
“But when you consider the break-in at Finn’s home—”
She cut me off. “We apprehended the burglars responsible, the ones who hit up homes while people were away at funerals. They’re a couple of real lowlifes.”
“Did they confess?”
“They will. We’re still building our case. In the meantime, they’re not going anywhere.” She shifted her belt. “Listen, I understand if you’re still spooked by the map with the address on it. But unless your buddies at the Secret Service have any evidence they’re withholding from us, the case is all but closed.”
“What happens if the toxicology results show he wasn’t on drugs?”
“Then he had a heart attack or a stroke. Perhaps he took his own life. Unless somebody steps forward with a firsthand account of his final hours, we may never know why he was out there, and what really happened.” She paused, then added, “I’ve seen this a thousand times.”
“Mysterious deaths?”
She shook her head. “This. What you’re doing. You’re trying to piece together meaning from randomness. It’s a path with no end. You’re going down a dark road. I’ve seen families spend years and years looking for meaning in a loved one’s death. They get the idea from TV shows that every death is a crime, and that crimes are solved over the course of an hour with commercial breaks in between. That’s not real life. This is.”
“I hear what you’re saying. But—”
“It’s better if we all move on,” she said. “For you and Finn’s family. Enjoy the day. Maybe you can get a few holes in before the rain begins.”
“We’ll try,” I croaked.
After the cops left, I turned to Barack. “You have a man cave?”
Barack rolled his eyes. “Boy, you weren’t kidding about her. What’s her deal?”
“She’s a Republican.”
“Seriously.”
“I get the feeling she’s trying to divert us for some other reason. That she knows more than she’s telling us. And maybe covering something up.”
“It’s a possibility,” Barack said. “The other angle is that she’s being straight with us. That she has seen friends and family get obsessed with cases before and refuse to let go.”
“If she knew what we knew—”
“You could have told her about the woman in the motel room,” Barack said. “You didn’t. You could have mentioned the duffel bag. You didn’t.”
“We never found a shred of evidence to directly tie the woman to Finn. And the duffel bag? I’m not sure it would matter. Esposito has her mind made up. All the evidence in the world won’t be enough to get her off her ass. Dan has probably been reassigned to traffic control for a few weeks. And if he’s not, I’m not sure if he’ll risk his job to help me again. And I wouldn’t ask him to, either.”
Barack didn’t dispute this. I knew he’d already come to the same conclusions.
“I have a bad feeling about all of this,” I said.
“You didn’t before?” Steve asked.
“Nobody asked you,” I snipped.
Barack folded the newspaper he’d been skimming. “Step back and look at what we have so far, Joe. Nothing we’ve found even remotely ties together. I can see that. I think you can too. What if Esposito is right? What if we’re just trying to piece together a bunch of random events? The reason we haven’t found anything to tie them together could be because they don’t tie together. There’s no hard evidence, because there isn’t some vast conspiracy.”
“People don’t just die for no reason.”
“I’m not saying they do,” Barack said. “I’m just saying we may be trying to assign meaning where meaning doesn’t exist. If we wait for the toxicology results to be returned, we may have a better picture of what happened.”
“If we wait that long, this thing will have blown up in the papers. Somebody’s bound
to leak the details. The map, the heroin…”
“They will,” Barack said. “But it will blow over. The news cycle is getting shorter and shorter. There are plenty of more important things going on. People will talk, and then they’ll forget about it twenty-four hours later.”
I stared sharp daggers at him. “For me, this is the most important thing going on. For Grace Donnelly, this is the most important thing going on.”
“Chill, Joe. I didn’t mean it that way.”
I sighed. “As a man of faith, I refuse to believe in coincidences. It’s either God’s plan, or someone else’s. And I don’t think God has anything to do with what’s happening in this town.”
Barack kept his own religious beliefs closely guarded, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that I’d struck a chord. I gave Steve the address of Alvin Harrison to punch into the GPS. If anybody knew what was really going on with Finn Donnelly, it would be Alvin.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Barack asked.
“The only bad ideas are the ones that don’t work.”
He didn’t say a word. He knew, same as me, that even if we were on the wrong path, we were too far along to turn back now.
23
Alvin Harrison lived in Brandywine Hills in northern Wilmington. The neighborhood was resplendent with old-world charm. Most of the homes were built in the thirties and forties, before the suburban boom kicked in and everything started looking like copies of copies. Beautiful, historic stone houses lined the streets of the hilltop neighborhood. Even the streets were old-timey, with author names like Byron, Milton, and Hawthorne.
We parked around the corner from Alvin’s apartment building, in front of an elementary schoolyard. There were three kids shooting hoops. Otherwise the neighborhood was dead. There weren’t many cars on the street. Nobody was out walking their dogs or jogging on the sidewalks. Everyone was probably still out to brunch.
Barack began to open his door, but I held up a palm. “This guy’s been through a lot. What do you think is going to happen if the Secret Service comes knocking on his door?”
“Steve can wait in the car,” Barack offered.
“And let you guys slip away again?” Steve said.
“What would you do if I just ran for it?” Barack said. “I mean, if I just took off—zoom, down the sidewalk. Led you on a footrace through the middle of town.”
“I’d chase you.”
“You couldn’t keep up,” Barack said.
“Don’t try me.”
Barack smirked. “If you couldn’t catch me, what would you do? Shoot out my kneecaps? That would be worse than losing me.”
Steve did not look amused. Then again, he never looked amused.
“Let him be,” I said. “He spent half the night sleeping on the floor of a Waffle Depot bathroom. I think he’s been through enough.”
Barack relented and agreed to sit this one out with Steve. I didn’t blame him for wanting to run for it, to be free for just a few minutes. Unless the Obamas hired their own private security, they would be under Service protection for the rest of their lives. They would never know the simple pleasures of, say, going grocery shopping without an escort. Of course, Jill did all the grocery shopping in our family, but I imagined it was a simple pleasure. Maybe I’d go with her sometime to find out.
Alvin Harrison lived in a two-story brick apartment complex. Unlike the street names, there was nothing quaint about his building. Someone had just plopped a pile of bricks down in the middle of all the Mid-Atlantic charm. Judging by the rusted guardrails and faded everything, whoever had built it had also forgotten about it.
I scanned a row of mailboxes near the staircase. When Grant dropped Alvin off at the complex, I hadn’t seen which apartment he’d gone into. That’s where the mailboxes came in. “Harrison” was penciled in under 23.
I slipped on my Ray-Bans and climbed the stairs, which zigzagged up the side of the building. The sky was bright and sunny, with no signs of the clouds the lieutenant had warned us about.
When I reached the second floor of apartments, my knee was killing me. I wondered if I couldn’t get an injection to temporarily kill the pain. Sports stars did that all the time. A cortisone shot, I think is what they call it. Unfortunately, it would take too long to find a doctor who could shoot me up on a weekend. I wasn’t about to burden emergency room staff with my sorry behind.
I pounded once on Alvin’s door. Before I could knock a second time, it swung inward a few inches. It hadn’t been shut all the way.
“Hello?” I called out. “Alvin?”
No answer.
“Anybody home? It’s…Joe. Amtrak Joe.”
No answer.
I pushed the door open a little wider, just enough so I could get a better look inside. There weren’t any lights on, and the blinds were pulled shut. I could see the back of a couch from where I was standing.
A fat orange tabby rubbed up against my leg.
“Hey there, little…er, big guy,” I said.
The cat had to weigh twenty pounds. It circled my legs, brushing against me, making little whimpering noises like a hungry dog. I reached down to pet it, and the cat hissed at me before scampering back into the apartment.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said.
Alvin didn’t appear to be home, but the open door had me on edge. I stepped inside the apartment, calling Alvin’s name. The cat whined again, louder this time. The fat bastard was sitting on the floor beside the couch, next to an orange prescription bottle.
And a shoe. I stepped closer and saw there was a leg in the shoe. And the leg was attached to a person, and the person was sprawled out on the shag rug.
Alvin was dead.
24
When I returned to the Escalade, it was locked. Barack probably stepped out for a coffin nail. He rarely smoked around me because he knew my views on tobacco. I’d always detested cigarettes, even before I launched the cancer moonshot.
“S!”
I whipped my head around at the sound of Barack’s voice. He hadn’t gotten very far. He was playing basketball with the three boys we’d seen earlier. Steve was watching from the edge of the court. Barack had removed his jacket, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up. Back in the White House, this always meant it was time for serious business. But right now, he was playing basketball with a group of third- and fourth-graders.
“Where’s your baseball cap?” I hissed.
“You don’t wear baseball caps when you’re shooting hoops,” he said.
One of the boys, a skinny kid with curly hair, shot a basket. It went through the hoop—actually the rim, because there wasn’t much left of the hoop—and bounced away. Another boy chased it down.
“E!” the curly-haired boy screamed.
Barack fist-bumped him. “Nice shooting, kid. Keep it up and you could be the next Michael Jordan.”
The boy scrunched up his face. “I don’t want to make shoes, I want to play basketball.”
“Look him up on the YouTubes.”
The other boy tossed the ball to Barack. “Another round?”
Barack told them he’d be back sometime to stump for Delaware’s Democratic candidates. “Your parents are all registered to vote, right?”
I tugged at his sleeve. “We’ve got a situation,” I whispered. “Alvin is D-E-A—”
“We’ll see you kids later!” Barack said, waving to them. Steve gave them one last glare for good measure and trailed us back to the SUV.
Barack unrolled his sleeves and buttoned his cuffs. “Those kids were like ten years old, Joe. They know how to spell.”
“Sorry, I’m a little out of sorts.” I told Barack the whole story. Steve sat up front, listening intently. Or maybe he was napping behind those sunglasses.
“And you’re sure Alvin was dead?” Barack said. “Somet
imes, the pulse can be so faint that you can’t feel it on the wrist or neck.”
“He was blue as a Smurf.”
“Okay, okay,” Barack said. “We need to figure out what to do. Let me think…”
“It’s obvious what we do,” I said. “Call the cops.”
Barack was doing that pyramid thing with his fingers pressed up to his lips, which meant the wheels in his brain were spinning. As if they ever stopped spinning.
“Did you feed the cat?” Barack asked.
“You’re worried about the cat?”
“I’m just trying to cover all of our bases. If you fed the cat, your fingerprints might be on the cabinets or the food bowl.”
“I didn’t touch anything, not even to feed the cat. He’s big enough as it is. On my way out, I wiped my fingerprints off the door knob and got the H-E-double hockey sticks out of there.”
“Good,” Barack said. “Let’s find a pay phone and call it in.”
“That’s going to be a little difficult to do,” I said.
“Pay phones are kind of a rarity these days. We’ll find one, though.”
I crossed my arms. “That’s not what I’m talking about. You’ve been spotted here. Those kids are probably telling their parents right now, or Twittering to their friends.”
“Who’s going to believe them?”
“Who’s going to believe them?” I growled. “Esposito, for starters. She knows you’re in town. If she hears some kids bragging that they played ball with the ex-commander-in-chief a block away from a crime scene connected to Finn, she’ll put two and two together.”
“By the time Esposito realizes we were in the vicinity of the crime scene, we’ll be long gone. We’ve not broken any laws. I don’t think we’re going to be hauled off down to the local precinct and questioned. Can you imagine the negative press? Esposito will need time to build a case, and the city board isn’t going to let her drag us in without a very, very good reason. By that time, we should either know what’s going on or…”
Hope Never Dies Page 11