by Scott Blade
Talbern took a seat without me. I stayed standing. I was a tall guy and I found most people were intimidated by my size when they first meet me. I wanted Dayard to see my size. I didn’t want him to see me sitting and lose a major advantage that I have over most people.
We waited for about five minutes and then we saw the door on the inside of the room dribble open in an overly slow pace.
In walked James Dayard. He stood a whole hell of a lot shorter than I had imagined. He was about five-four, a whole foot shorter than me, and within an inch of Talbern.
He had a tall crop of hair, platinum blond. The sides were shaved to his skin, but the top was one of those old fedora style cuts, where it waves up and over, like a comic book superhero.
His hair had tremendous depth. He looked like he had just walked out of a salon, instead of a high-security prison.
He wore black, square glasses with ultra-thin lenses.
Dayard was a serious smoker, or he was hanging out with one, because I could smell fresh cigarette smoke on his clothes from across the room.
He wore the traditional orange jumpsuit.
I saw a guard behind him shove him through the door and retreat back into the hall, shut the door.
Dayard wasn’t shackled or restrained.
He entered and nodded at us.
He said, “I hear that you’re here to save me?”
CHAPTER 30
DAYARD SAT DOWN across from Talbern and smiled crookedly at her. One of his front teeth was chipped, but he seemed nice enough.
“How did you hear that?” I asked.
“I’m sure you know.”
I walked over and pulled the chair out next to Talbern, dumped myself down in it.
“We need to know the truth,” Talbern said. She didn’t seem nervous, but I sensed that she might’ve been. I imagined that it wasn’t everyday a sophomore FBI agent gets this close to a convicted serial killer.
“The truth?” he asked. I sensed some emotion in his response. Not anger, not flat out anyway, but it was more like sadness.
I stayed quiet.
“Do you know who has picked up your mantle?”
Dayard’s face went flush. He looked at the back of his hands. They were white and clean, like a man who had never worked before in his life. Which amazed me. He had been in the Army, made it through officer school, and worked his way up to the rank of major. I didn’t see how it was possible for him to have such unmarked hands.
“No one has picked up my mantle. He’s just continuing his own work.”
“So you still claim that you’re innocent?”
He slammed his hands down on the table.
“I am innocent!”
I paused a beat, stared into his eyes. He was convincing.
“Calm down,” I commanded in my old cop voice.
He stayed quiet.
“We need your help. Who is this guy? Who’s killing now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Tell us the truth,” Talbern said.
“I am telling you the truth.”
Talbern waited for a moment and then she said, “James, if you help us, we can help you?”
“Help me what?”
“We can talk to the Army. Get you off death row.”
He laughed.
“Lady, I could get me off death row now.”
“How’s that?”
“I got enough proof to produce doubt. I could tell a judge that you came to see me. I can tell them that there’s been a new murder victim. How could I kill anyone if I’m locked up in here?”
He knows there’s a victim, which didn’t really surprise me. I’m sure Clayton or his father has been getting updates from someone.
A look of checkmate came over his face, like he still had an ace up his sleeve.
Talbern caught onto it. I could see it.
She asked, “What’s that look for?”
“I want you to believe me. That I’m innocent. I never killed anyone.”
Silence.
“I have proof.”
“What proof?”
“I have actual proof,” he said.
I asked, “What is it?”
Dayard leaned forward and stood up.
Talbern reached into her coat, fast, unsnapped the safety button on her holster, and grabbed the hilt of her Glock. She was ready to brandish it and shoot Dayard dead. All a quick precaution in case he tried to attack us with a concealed weapon. But he didn’t pull a weapon out.
Instead, he slowed his movement and reached into the inside of his shirt, pulled out a thin stack of cards. They looked like postcards.
He tossed them onto the table in front of us.
Talbern relaxed her hand and asked, “What’re these?”
“Take a look.”
Talbern picked up the stack of cards and looked them over.
I kept my eyes on Dayard, in case this was a trick. Easily, he could show us a bunch of nonsense cards, and leap at us, going for Talbern’s Glock. Now he knew where it was and he had seen her unsnap the safety button on it.
Talbern kept her eyes locked on the cards.
I took a quick glance down, to confirm what they were. Then I looked back at Dayard.
They were postcards.
“Widow, look at this.”
Talbern shoved the postcards at me.
I took them and looked them over.
There were maybe a dozen or so.
I stared down at them. Each was stamped from different parts of Mexico and South America. All except for the most recent one. It was postmarked out of Miami.
Each one had a short, handwritten phrase. The first was “How’s prison?”
The second was “How’s the food?”
The third was “Made any friends?”
I breezed through the next several. They were all short taunts, like the first three. I scanned them until I got to the most recent one.
It was dated with yesterday’s date, like it had come in the mail just now.
It read “I couldn’t help myself.”
CHAPTER 31
“THEY’RE FROM THE REAL KILLER,” Dayard said.
I looked them over again, more closely this time. Kept my fingers along the edges, in case there was forensics evidence. The earliest one was dated a year ago.
“That’s your real killer.”
“How long have you gotten these?” Talbern asked.
“A year,” I said. “That’s the oldest one.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Dayard slammed his palms down on the table again.
“I did! I showed my lawyer! I showed the warden! They don’t believe me!”
“Why didn’t you demand that your lawyer give this to the FBI?” Talbern asked.
“He says he did!”
I stared at Dayard, tried to read him. I was getting the same impression. He was convincing.
I asked, “Did they look at them for fingerprints?”
He shook his head, then he turned his attention to Talbern. He pointed his finger at her. “It’s that Agent Marksy! She dismissed them!”
He paused a beat and then he said, “She’s the reason that I’m in here! She framed me!”
Silence.
Talbern asked, “You don’t believe that?”
“It’s true! The witness that supposedly saw me with his wife! That was bullshit! He never even knew about us until she told him!”
“How did you get these back?” I asked.
“Marksy sent them all back in a folder. No message. No word about any fingerprints. Nothing.”
I nodded.
We were quiet for a long moment.
Talbern said, “Mr. Dayard, thanks for cooperating. We need to discuss all this.”
“Thank you,” he responded.
We stood up first. Dayard stayed seated.
Talbern asked, “Mind if we take these?”
“Take them.”
We started to walk out, but Dayard cleared his throat
and said, “Agent lady.”
We turned back to him.
“Work fast. I ain’t got but two days left.”
Talbern nodded and we knocked on the door.
Pines opened it and led us out of the room and down the long hall, back out of the prison.
CHAPTER 32
WE DIDN’T TALK ABOUT the postcards until we were back out of the gate. Pines seemed disappointed. She kept asking us questions, but we didn’t answer them. I said nothing the whole ride back out. And Talbern just answered with pleasantries.
Outside the gate and back in the rented car, Talbern said, “Widow, no one at the FBI knows about these postcards.”
“That’s not surprising. If Dayard handed them to his lawyer and they actually did give them to the FBI, it would’ve been to the agent in charge of the investigation. That’d be Marksy. She wanted him dead for killing her husband. She would’ve sent them straight back to him. She probably never even scanned them or logged them in.”
“What do we do?”
“I doubt that she knows about the latest one. And I can’t blame her for ignoring them before.”
“And now?”
“It’s compelling.”
Talbern nodded, said, “We’ve gotta call Pawn.”
“I think you should call Marksy first. Tell her about the new one.”
“You think she’ll take them seriously this time?”
“This time is different. We got a dead body now.”
Talbern nodded.
We drove through the cozy town of Leavenworth for a long time until we stopped at a red light. Talbern asked, “Where to now? The airport?”
“Let’s make the phone calls first. Then we’ll know where to go.”
“Let me guess, you want coffee?”
“Coffee is always a good idea.”
She nodded and we drove around looking for a diner, but Talbern saw a Starbucks.
We went in and stood in line for what seemed like forever. The store was like many of the ones I had seen before, overcrowded and far too small.
It was a nice day outside, so we ended up taking a coffee and a bottle of some kind of juice, and we sat on the hood of the car in the parking lot. We faced the highway.
There was an overpass that whirred every few seconds from cars passing over it.
“Do you believe his story?” she asked.
“Do you?”
“I’m asking you.”
I shrugged.
“I wasn’t totally convinced.”
“About which part? The postcards?”
“I don’t know. That seems very menacing and sinister. Like it’s out of a Lee Grisham novel.”
“Who?”
“Isn’t that the name of the writer who does those thrillers?”
“I don’t know?”
“He’s from your state?”
“John Grisham.”
“Right. Sorry.”
I shrugged.
She drank half of her bottle of green juice. I wasn’t sure what the hell it was.
Then she got up and pulled out her cellphone. It was ringing on vibrate. She must’ve turned it on vibrate in the prison.
“It’s Marksy,” she said, and she answered it and stepped a couple of paces toward the highway.
“We’re still here,” she said.
Then Marksy must’ve spoken because she listened.
“He told us about the postcards.”
Silence.
“I don’t know. There’s a new one. I think we need to take it seriously.”
She was quiet again.
“Listen, the new one is from Miami.”
Talbern said nothing else, just nodded along like Marksy was here looking at her.
She clicked off the phone.
“That was fast,” I said.
“She brought up the postcards, right off.”
“And?”
“And you’re right. She knew about them and dismissed them. She really has it in for Dayard.”
“What did she say now?”
“She agrees we should take them seriously.”
I asked, “So what’s the next move?”
“She said to hang tight. She’s going to call Pawn. See what he wants us to do.”
I nodded, finished my coffee and crumbled up the cup. I slid off the hood of the car and started walking away, looking for a waste basket.
“There’s one over there,” Talbern said and pointed at a pillar.
The trashcan was behind it. I tossed the coffee cup in and walked back to her.
“Want to check out the town?”
“I think we should go to the airport. We’ll need to fly out soon. I’m sure.”
I shrugged.
We got in the car and headed back to the airport.
CHAPTER 33
SITTING NEXT TO EACH OTHER on airport chairs, fused together by metal rails, we waited for Talbern’s phone to ring.
It was taking a while for Marksy to call us back. Like most airports across the country that I had ever been to, Kansas City International Airport was freezing. Talbern noticed that I was cold.
“You should buy some new clothes here.”
“I don’t know. Airport shops are overpriced beyond overpriced,” I said.
She smiled and pulled out a billfold. A tiny black thing that matched her shoes. She said, “Here. Let us pay for it.”
I stood up and turned back to her, took the end of a credit card that she had stretched out to me.
“Are you sure?”
She shrugged.
“Of course. It’s the least we can do.”
“Thanks. I’ll just try around the corner.”
“Take your time. I’ll come find you.”
I walked away and turned a corner. I passed people on cellphones, pulling carry-on travel bags, and trafficking along in hurried manners.
American airports were what shopping malls used to be twenty years ago. They were palaces of department stores, filled with varying groups of people who ignored each other.
I passed a Hudson News store, and a doughnut shop, and finally I found a store that had some clothing in it.
It was all top name brands.
I passed a man dressed in a suit. He must’ve been the store clerk because he looked me up and then down. He had a look of judgment on his face, which I couldn’t blame him for. I was walking around, sporting sneakers and surfer pants.
I looked around. Like most men, the first thing I looked at was the price tags. Everything was expensive. Glad I wasn’t paying for any of it.
Then I smiled because the thought of government funding came to mind.
Might as well splurge a little. Then I thought I might need something tactical.
I looked through the pants first. They were all nice trousers. To me, dress slacks are dress slacks. The only difference really is the fit.
I had another thought. I thought about Clayton. I thought about all those guys, dressed like Secret Service agents.
Why the hell did Dayard need so many agents?
I know I asked Clayton that question, back in the helicopter or the car. I couldn’t remember which. He had said that Secretary Dayard had a long career. He had made a lot of enemies.
I accepted that answer. But then I remembered seeing floodlights and cameras and some other security measures in the house.
Why all that?
I looked back across the store for a section with jeans. They didn’t have any. I settled for a pair of black chinos. Pulled them off the rack and checked the size and the fit. It looked good.
Then I walked over to undershirts. All they offered was black and white t-shirts. Each pair was singled out and folded. They weren’t in a package deal like I was used to.
I found an extra-large black one and scooped it up. Next to that I found black socks and single pairs of underwear, briefs.
I looked at the dress shirts and tried to find something in all black.
As I sifted throug
h their inventory, my mind raced back to that house.
What was Dayard afraid of?
The question nagged at me like a splinter.
For a moment, I thought, what if James Dayard was telling the truth? What if he had been framed for the murders? By whom?
“Would you like for me to start a fitting room for you, sir?”
I craned my head and looked back over my shoulder.
The store clerk was standing about a meter behind me. Now, he had a smile on his face. The reason for the smile was that he wasn’t alone.
Talbern stood behind him.
The clerk said, “Your wife said that you’d like to try those on first.”
My wife? I thought.
“Yes. I need a fitting room, please. Thanks for the suggestion, honey,” I said to Talbern.
“You’re welcome, dear. But, hey, we should hurry up.”
“Something up?”
“I got a text from Kelvin. He said that Marksy was going to call in a bit.”
I nodded.
She looked at the shirt I was holding and stepped close to me. She snatched it out of my hand and said, “Not that one.”
She put it back on the rack and picked up a short-sleeved black knit shirt instead. She handed it to me.
“Try this one.”
“Thanks.”
I gave it all to the store clerk who took it and vanished into a small, thin door in the back corner of the store. The fitting room, I figured.
He came back out and asked, “Do you need shoes?”
“Where are they?”
“Over there on the mannequin. We only have the one style. What size would you like?”
I looked at the display mannequin he was talking about. There was a pair of black, shiny loafers on its fake plastic feet.
I told him my size and his eyes opened wide.
“Not sure if we have that size. I’ll take a look. You can go into the fitting room. I’ll bring them back to you.”
I nodded and went back into the fitting room. It was the smallest fitting room that I had ever seen. There was no area for employees to fold or work. It was just a single stall with a lockless door on it.
I went in and put on the clothes. Everything was a perfect fit. I especially liked the pants. They were comfortable and had good quality.
The clerk returned with the shoes and passed them to me. He added a pair of socks.
Both fit well.
I walked out of the fitting room.
Talbern stared at me up and down.
“You look like a different man, Jack Widow.”