“Let it rest, Jay,” Wanda said. “It’s over.”
“Probably,” he said. “But if I need you to run something for me, I’d like to know I can do it.”
When neither of them answered, Justin said, “Then let me ask you something right now.” He turned to Wanda, waited until she met his gaze head-on, and said, “You arranged for me to get out of Gitmo.”
She nodded and said, “I helped.”
“How?” he asked.
“I went to the attorney general. Told him what had happened, that Ackland had ordered you to be picked up. Attorney General Stuller intervened directly, made it clear that there was a lot of political pressure being applied and that if you did not emerge unscathed there would be repercussions.”
“Unscathed. You mean alive? They would have killed me otherwise, once they found out what they needed to know?”
“Yes.”
“So they let me go after that.”
“Yes,” Wanda said quietly.
“But not immediately after that.”
Neither Wanda nor Stuller spoke.
“You let them keep me down there,” Justin said to Wanda. “You let them keep me until you needed me back.”
Wanda turned away from him, could no longer look him in the eye. “Yes,” she said. “You told me once that good cops are the ones that make the right connections. And I know you’re a good cop.”
“So you let them keep me there. .”
“. . until I knew you’d figure it out. And would have to help us out.”
“Until you could play me and send me in to do your dirty work, to set up Ackland and Schrader.”
She nodded stiffly. Her mouth was too dry to speak.
Justin held his gaze until her head hung even lower, then he turned back to the attorney general. “About that favor I might be needing,” he said.
“Agent Chinkle will be available for that,” Jeff Stuller said, and his words were meant for both of them.
“Then I’d like to get the hell out of here,” Justin told him.
“One more thing,” Stuller said. “There is going to be an unprecedented uproar when this becomes public. There are going to be resignations and prison terms. The future course of the country will in all likelihood be altered.”
“Is this a question or a statement?”
“It’s a question. I’d like to know what your involvement will be. Will you be talking to the media? You could be lionized as quite the hero. And you can reveal things I’m not positive yet that I wish to reveal. I’m also sure you will be able to capitalize on this financially if you want.”
“Do you have a preference?” Justin asked.
“I’m sure you’re aware of my preference,” Stuller responded. “But I have no right to impose that upon you.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Justin said. “My preference is to keep as quiet as possible. I’d like no one to ever even know I was involved.”
Stuller nodded, relieved.
“Unless,” Justin said, and Stuller immediately stiffened. “Unless you screw up. Unless I think these scumbags aren’t getting what they deserve to get.”
“And then you talk?”
“And once I start it’s really hard to shut me up.”
Jeff Stuller stuck his hand out awkwardly. Justin Westwood shook it.
And then he asked if Wanda would call for the nurse. The friendly redhead, not the scary brunette. He said he wanted a little more morphine. That as long as he was going to spend the rest of the day there, he might as well enjoy it.
Justin was released the next day and spent the two days after that sleeping. The pain wasn’t bad, he was just exhausted. Drained. He barely ate, and he moved as infrequently as possible. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t crave alcohol. His system wanted to be left alone. By everything. And everyone.
He spoke to Reggie on the phone several times but he needed to be apart from her, too, just now. She obviously felt the same way. What they’d shared in the Southampton mansion had been too intense, both intimate and redolent of mortality, and neither of them wanted to relive it just yet. So Reggie went to work and ran the East End station, still in her position of interim chief, and Justin stayed home, sleeping and thinking and listening to music.
On the third day, he called Gary Jenkins and asked him to bring over some reports that Justin had been keeping in his desk at the station. Gary asked if there was a rush, he was heading out to lunch, and Justin said no rush whatsoever. So Gary showed up around two and handed over the folders.
Justin read through the report he wanted to focus on. When he was done, he took a bath, filling the tub with only a few inches of water-his bandages still prevented him from showering-and got dressed. Then he drove toward the East End airport, turning onto a side street about half a mile before the airport entrance. The street had been cut into the surrounding woods. A strange location, Justin thought. It didn’t look natural. It seemed as if nature should close back in on the new, pristine houses and swallow them up.
He pulled into the driveway of the third pristine house on the left and knocked on the door. He spent fifteen minutes inside talking to the owner, had a glass of water, and asked a few questions. All very easy and pleasant. Then he left.
At five o’clock he knocked on the door to Leona Krill’s office.
“Justin,” she said, “this is a surprise.”
He gave her the friendliest smile he could muster.
They chatted for a few moments, he gave her some of the details of what had transpired in Guantanamo. Attorney General Stuller had called the mayor to tell her that Justin had been cleared of any and all accusations, that he had, in fact, acted in heroic fashion. She told Justin that she’d been asked not to talk about the matter further with him, so instead they discussed the arrest of Ted Ackland-the entire country was discussing the arrest of Ackland and the emerging scandal-but Justin gave no indication that he knew anything more than he’d read or seen on television. Leona asked when he’d be returning to work and he told her he thought it might be as soon as tomorrow. She said she was glad.
Justin said good-bye, stood up, and then said, “Oh, by the way, I do have one question for you.”
He asked it, a question he should have asked a long time ago, and she gave him the answer. He told her he’d definitely be returning to work the next day.
He had one last thing to do before nighttime.
Justin called Wanda, said he was cashing in the favor he’d requested. He could hear the shame in her voice, her awareness of the way she’d crossed the line and altered their relationship forever, but all she said was, “Okay, what do you want to know?”
“I want the ME’s report on Hubbell Schrader.”
“What the hell for, Jay? Christ, you saw what happened. Your girlfriend saved your bacon.”
“You want to fax it to me or e-mail it?” he asked.
She sighed. “Check your e-mail in ten minutes,” Wanda told him. And after a brief hesitation, she said, “And Jay. I. . I. .”
“I know,” he said. “You were doing your job.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I might have done the same thing,” he told her.
Neither of them said anything after that, they both wondered in silence whether what he said was true, and then they hung up.
That night, Reggie came over for dinner. He was staggered when she walked in the door. She wore a short black dress that clung tightly to her body. Instead of her scuffed boots or heavy work shoes, she wore an elegant pair of high heels. Despite the cold, she wasn’t wearing stockings. He could see little shivers of goose bumps running down her legs.
She kissed him before she even took her coat off, and he responded. They sat together on the couch and he poured a glass of red wine for each of them. He’d had the bottle for quite some time, a ’90 Haut-Brion.
“What’s for dinner?” she murmured.
He answered, “It depends.”
She smiled a
nd said, “On what?”
And Justin said, “Tell me about Ray Lockhardt.”
Her eyes squinted in confusion. “You want to talk about that now?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I was thinking this was going to be a little more romantic than that.” When he didn’t answer, she shrugged and said, “Okay. What do you want to know?”
“You interviewed a witness who saw a car parked on the road to the airport.”
“I’d hardly call him a witness. He bicycled past a car on his way home.”
“Your report says he ‘turned off the road on his way home.’”
“Okay. It probably does. So what?”
“It’s just odd phrasing. ‘Turned off the road’ is something you’d say if you saw it happen. It’s not a usual way of describing something.”
“I’m sure that’s just the way he told it to me. What are you trying to say, Jay, that I didn’t do my investigation properly?”
“No,” he said. “You did a really good job.”
The silence lingered between them. He broke it by saying, “I spoke to the witness, Reggie. It wasn’t exactly the way you wrote it up.”
“What did I get wrong?”
“He had a pretty good memory of the car he saw.”
“Did he?”
“The way he described it, it could have been your car.”
“What?”
“I talked to Leona today, too. I realized I’d never asked her who gave you such a good recommendation for the job.”
The expression on Reggie’s face didn’t change all that much. Just a little. “Oh?”
“I never would have thought to ask. Except when I met with Ted Ackland he said something that struck me.”
“What was it?”
“He was talking about possibly getting the vice presidential nomination. He said, ‘Not bad for a cop from Wisconsin.’ Just made me think. Suddenly I knew two people from Wisconsin.”
Reggie didn’t speak or move.
“Leona didn’t speak to him directly, she told me. But it was someone from Ackland’s office who recommended you. Who called her out of the blue and urged her to hire you. They needed someone on the inside. Someone to keep an eye on me.”
“Jay. .”
“It was Schrader who gave it away. It happened so fast and I tried to drive it out of my mind, but. . he was so damn confident that you weren’t going to shoot him. At first I thought he was too arrogant, or he was bluffing, or maybe he thought it because you were a woman. Then I realized no, he was way too much of a pro to take things that lightly. It was because he knew you. It was because he’s the one who told you to kill Ray Lockhardt.”
“Jay. . you have to listen to me. .”
“I went over the timing and it all worked out. You could have done it before you came over here that first time. Maybe it’s one of the reasons you were so upset. Killing can do that to some people. Then I got the FBI forensic report back, for the work done on Schrader. You shot him with a.38. The same gun that was used to kill Lockhardt.”
The silence was stifling. Reggie raised a finger to her eye. Justin wasn’t sure if it was a nervous response or if she was brushing away a tear. “I was recruited by the FBI,” she said quietly. “By Ackland. When I was still in Milwaukee. I didn’t know what was going on, I swear to God. They told me it was a question of national security. . I was working for the FBI and doing my job. That’s what I thought.”
“The night we made love the first time,” Justin said, “the night they picked me up and took me away. . That’s why you went back to your house, wasn’t it? To tell them that you could keep me here.”
Reggie took a long time before answering. “It’s not why I made love to you,” she said.
Now it was Justin’s turn to stay silent. He took several sips of his red wine. He knew it was delicious, but it tasted bitter to him. He suspected that many things would taste bitter to him for quite a long while.
“Do you have your handcuffs?” he asked.
She smiled. Briefly, the gleam came back in her eye. “No,” she said. “But I can get them.”
“Never mind,” he told her. “I’ve got mine. Put your hands behind your back, please.”
It took her a moment to realize what was happening. The gleam disappeared as she felt the cuffs snap on her wrists.
“Jay,” she said, “I was working for the government. I thought I was under orders from the president of the United States. I thought I was doing the right thing!”
“You weren’t,” Justin Westwood said. Then he began to recite, “Regina Bokkenheuser, you’re under arrest for the murder of Ray Lockhardt. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you do say can and will be held against you. You have the right to an attorney. .”
And as he recited, he helped her up and marched her toward the front door. He was taking her to the East End police station.
He decided to return to work a day earlier than he’d planned.
37
Justin knew he had two more chores before he could say it was completely over.
The next day, at lunchtime, he drove over to Marge Leggett’s house, walked up the cement path that cut its way through an overgrown lawn and led to the front door. He knocked and saw the surprised look on Marge’s face when she opened the door to let him in.
She made him a cup of tea, which he didn’t really want, but she wanted to make it, so he let her dip the Lipton tea bag into the steaming hot water and then he drank from the caffeine-stained mug. While he sipped he told her what he knew. He didn’t give her all the details-she didn’t need to know most of it-but he told her what he could. Said it was confidential. But he said he’d made her a promise and he was keeping it. So he explained that while most of what she’d been reading in the paper and hearing on the news was accurate, some of it wasn’t, and he filled in a few more blanks.
When he was finished, she said, “Thank you,” and then she hesitated, looked very uncomfortable.
“Is there something else?” Justin asked.
“He was with that woman,” Marge said. “At Harper’s. He was having lunch with that woman.”
Justin closed his eyes for a second, tried to come up with a name. Something clicked in his brain and he had it. “Carolyn Helms.”
“That rich woman. The divorced one.”
“Right.”
“Was he cheating on me?” Marge Leggett asked.
Justin cocked his head. “Marge,” he said, “is that what you wanted to know? Is that what this was all about?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s all I can think about, Jay. All this other stuff, it’s horrible, I know, but-”
“But what you really wanted to know was if Jimmy was cheating on you.”
“Yeah.”
Justin took a last sip of the tea, which was now lukewarm. “No,” he said. “He wasn’t.”
“How do you know?” Marge asked.
“I knew Jimmy,” he said. “He was an honest guy. And I’m good at my job. You asked me to find out and I did. He was just having lunch.”
“You talked to people? You know that for sure?”
“I know it for sure,” Justin said.
Marge Leggett kissed him on the cheek and said, “Thank you.”
“It was nothing,” Justin said.
At St. Joseph’s Hospital, Justin stood in the doorway and looked in at the little girl lying in her bed.
“I’m doing one more skin graft,” Dr. Graham said. “That should be the last surgical procedure.”
“Painful?” Justin asked.
“Extremely,” the surgeon said. “But she’s strong. She’s very strong.”
Justin nodded, as if her strength was no surprise to him.
“So is it over?” Dr. Graham asked.
“Excuse me?”
“When you were here before, you said you’d talk to her when it was over. Is it over?”
“Yes,” Justin said. “It’s over.”
Th
e surgeon gave him a pat on the back-a half pat, half gentle shove into the room. Justin walked over to the bed, pulled up a chair and sat. He took the girl’s hand, the one not covered in bandages, and held it.
Hannah Cooke shifted her head so she could look in his direction.
“I remember you,” she said.
“I’m glad.”
Her eyes closed. And her head relaxed again on the pillow. But she didn’t attempt to pull her hand back. He could feel it soften in his grasp.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
“I can’t stay long,” Justin told her. “But I can come again if you’d like me to. I can come and visit and we can talk.”
Hannah didn’t say anything. For a long time, she didn’t move. But then Justin thought she smiled.
He wasn’t positive, so he just waited, her hand in his.
And then he saw it again. This time he was sure.
Definitely a smile.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-f93f9a-1b7e-874d-7da7-6271-c4d1-e166df
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 16.10.2012
Created using: calibre 0.9.2, Fiction Book Designer, Fiction Book Investigator, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Russell Andrews
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Midas w-2 Page 36