I got back into the Mustang, trying to figure out what I could do or who I could do it to. My most pressing thought as I drove to town was how bad my shoes smelled and how much my feet hurt. Underneath that discomfort I wondered how Gisborne had known I was at the silo. My best guess was that when I touched the Sea-2-Sea fence, besides zapping me it sent a message to the company’s computers. They might have cameras in the fence posts—I’d been so startled that I hadn’t taken the time to check for surveillance.
Back at the B and B, I bundled all my filthy clothes into the washing machine the owner provided her guests, scraped the mud off my shoes, then took a long, hot shower. After that it seemed like a good idea to draw the curtains and lie down. I was dozing off when I started thinking about Colonel Baggetto: What had really brought him to Lawrence, and then to the missile silo?
Lying in the darkened room, I called the university’s military office, identifying myself as a freelance writer for the Douglas County Herald.
“We heard that a colonel from Fort Riley gave a guest lecture to the cadets this morning. Is he still on campus? His name is . . .” I pretended to be looking at notes. “Baggetto. Dante Baggetto. We’d love to do an interview with him, find out what he thinks about—”
The secretary who’d answered cut me off. “We didn’t have any special lectures here this morning. Maybe the colonel was meeting privately with the staff. If you’ll hold for a minute, I’ll check. What did you say your name was?”
“Martha Gellhorn.” It was the first journalist’s name to pop into my head. Fortunately, the secretary didn’t seem to be a student of women’s history.
I drowsed while she checked. “Sorry, Martha, but none of the girls report any visiting birds in their logbooks today. Who told you he was here?”
“One of the cadets.” I burrowed deep in my mind for the kid who’d been with Baggetto at the hotel last night. “Marlon. Marlon Pinsen.”
I could hear the woman typing at the other end, and then she said sharply, “Martha, you need to start double-checking your sources. We don’t have anyone enrolled in the ROTC program named that, and I don’t even find him in the university’s student database. This is sloppy journalism, and it doesn’t help either of us.”
“And you should always call back a paper before volunteering information to strangers.” I hung up.
I sat up, no longer sleepy, and turned on my bedside lamp. Colonel Baggetto had gone out of his way to lie to me last night. He could have let me walk away with nothing but a smile—last night I hadn’t cared who he had drinks with or what had brought him to Lawrence.
I logged on to my subscription search engines, but they couldn’t tell me much about Baggetto. He’d been born in Providence, Rhode Island, attended a science-and-math academy, and gone from there to West Point. He’d graduated nineteenth in his class, done three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of army intelligence.
After the third tour, he’d undergone advanced training at the Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth—only forty miles from Lawrence—and completed a master’s in computer engineering at Columbia in New York. He’d been sent to Fort Riley three months ago, right after his promotion to colonel. That was it. Nothing personal, other than that he’d never married anyone of any sex.
I’m bone ignorant about the military, but it looked like Baggetto was being groomed for great things. Which meant he wouldn’t be in Lawrence, or talking to me, if it was trivial. Or if it might hurt his career.
Which meant it was somehow tied to Sea-2-Sea, because he’d been at the hotel with Bram somebody along with the bogus cadet. I couldn’t remember Bram’s last name—I kept thinking Stoker, naturally—but the Net found it for me. Bram Roswell, head of R&D. M.B.A. from Wharton, undergraduate degree in agribusiness from Kansas State University, which happened to be near Fort Riley. I wondered if that was significant, if Roswell returned to his alma mater to root for football games and then got together with army intelligence officers at night to plan . . . what?
A search of news stories reported Roswell’s appearance at various charity functions in Lawrence, Kansas City, and Dallas. Another story revealed that Roswell was active in Patriots CARE-NOW—Concerned Americans for Rearmament Now. He was shown with a former undersecretary of defense for nuclear arms getting a medal at their annual dinner.
Was whatever brought Baggetto and Roswell together somehow connected to Doris McKinnon and the digging she’d been doing? Had McKinnon’s decision to dig brought Emerald Ferring to Kansas so hastily? Ferring had relied on Troy Hempel since he was seven and began cutting her lawn for her, but she turned to August Veriden, a stranger, because she couldn’t wait five extra days for Troy Hempel to come home.
True, August was filming her origin story: they’d stopped at Fort Riley and taken pictures, they’d gone to her childhood home in North Lawrence, but the real reason they’d come to Kansas was to help Doris McKinnon. I felt sure of it, but I’d love to have confirmation. Especially an e-mail or tree-mail that laid out what had worried Doris so much she’d turned to her old friend’s daughter for help.
I called Free State Dogs to check on Peppy, who was having way more fun than I was, and got dressed again—wool slacks instead of jeans, a cashmere knit top in my favorite rose, and the one good jacket I’d brought with me. All I needed was lunch and a burner phone and I’d be ready for action.
I found the phone store first. Three disposable phones, which I could rotate, each with six hundred minutes. I drove on into town and stopped at one of the zillion student cafés downtown for a sandwich. Hummus on homemade bread, delicious. Coffee, mediocre. I poured it out and walked over to the Hippo.
A handful of what looked like regulars were chatting with the bartender. I took my coffee into a corner and called Troy’s mother.
“Ms. Hempel, I don’t know how much Troy has told you about what I’ve encountered in Lawrence, but it’s a worrying situation,” I said when we’d covered the preliminaries—Troy was at work, I knew; it was she I was looking for. “Did Ms. Ferring ever talk to you about a woman named Doris McKinnon?”
“Troy told me you found her—found her dead yesterday.”
“Did he also tell you the police think young August Veriden is the likely culprit?”
“Oh, yes.” She didn’t try to keep bitterness out of her voice. “And you, what do you think?”
“I don’t think anything. I don’t have any facts. I hope I find August before some trigger-happy local LEOs do. Have you heard from Ms. Ferring? I think you are one person she might consult.”
“I don’t know. God’s truth.” Ms. Hempel sighed heavily. “She’s known me for twenty years, and I think she trusts me, so it scares me that I haven’t heard from her.”
“Could she have gone back home, back to Chicago?”
There was a pause on Hempel’s end before she said, “If Ms. Emerald came home, she’s kept it quiet. There aren’t any lights on in the house.”
I wished I were face-to-face with her: interrogations by phone leave out the cues of truth and lies and the shaded areas in between. Ms. Hempel could be telling the literal truth—no lights in Emerald’s basement—all the while shielding her neighbor in her own home.
“What about the real reason she decided to go to Kansas?” I asked.
“To make a documentary about her life. We told you that when Troy decided you were the best person to look for her.” Her voice was still bitter, the subtext demanding what I could possibly do to merit Troy’s confidence.
“I’m sure Ms. Ferring and August have been in Lawrence, as recently as last week, but I haven’t found any trace of them since. It looks as though Ms. McKinnon took them out with her to dig up a field in the middle of the night. Something troubled Ms. McKinnon, something important enough that she wanted August to film it. In the middle of filming, an SUV drove into their midst. I don’t know if they were chased away or captured.”
There was a longer pause, and then Hempel bur
st out, “I wondered why Emerald was in such a rush to go down there. Troy would have taken her as soon as he got back from Israel, I told her that. He’d make sure she traveled in comfort. She didn’t need to go off with some stranger who couldn’t look after her. But all she’d say was she had the urge to go now, that she wasn’t going to impose on Troy, make him drive all over the country when he had an important job to do.”
There was a history buried in the long comment, hurt feelings, perhaps injured pride that Emerald hadn’t confided in her, but I didn’t try to sort that out, just asked if the Hempels had a key to Ferring’s house. “Can you go in and see if you can find anything, a letter, an e-mail, from Doris McKinnon?”
Hempel was taken aback: What kind of person did I think she was, breaking into a neighbor’s house and going through her things?
“You’re the kind of person who would do a great deal if you feared for a friend’s life,” I said quietly. “And I’m afraid for Ms. Ferring’s life.”
That changed her attitude at once. If Emerald’s life were in danger . . . well, why hadn’t I said so? She’d call around to some of the other people in the neighborhood, see if they’d heard from her.
“Do it in person, okay? I don’t know who or what we’re dealing with, but they went up to Chicago and trashed August Veriden’s workplace and apartment, looking for something they think he has. For all I know, they may be tapping your phone, although I hope not. I’m going to leave a message on Troy’s office line, with a number you can send a text to if you learn anything.”
I was feeling panicky. Not good. I wanted to be in Chicago, to check on Emerald’s acquaintances myself, but I needed to stay here until I got some inkling of what Baggetto and Sea-2-Sea and Sheriff Gisborne were doing.
27
Spiritual Adviser
As I put the burner phones in my day pack, I realized that if Baggetto cared enough about me to track me through my smartphone’s GPS, I should ditch it. Come to think of it, the car also had a GPS tracker. As did my tablet. For all I knew, so did my dressy boots. After all, Samsung sells refrigerators with computer chips embedded in their skins.
If the bartender was surprised at my request for aluminum foil, he didn’t show it. I took the roll into the toilet with me and lined the inside of my day pack with four layers of foil for a kind of DIY Faraday cage. I hoped it would work: if I locked my phone or computer in the car, it would be a cinch for Gisborne or Baggetto to get into the car and retrieve every detail of my private and business lives from my devices.
Assuming they were interested. Assuming I wasn’t being paranoid. Lining the pack reminded me uncomfortably of Stan Wolinsky, who’d lived across the street from us when I was a child. He drove a garbage truck for the city and covered his head in foil every morning before he went to work to block signals from outer space. Kids at school were merciless with his son, Stanley Jr.—“Tinhead” was only the most printable insult they used. Still, as Yossarian or Satchel Paige or someone said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t gaining on you.
It was about a mile from the Hippo to Nell Albritten’s house. Another outing in the cold November air would do me good, I firmly told my calves and hamstrings: they were a bit wobbly from hiking through the muddy ground around the silo. Paved roads all the way, so there wouldn’t be a risk to my treasured Lario boots.
I parked in the free lot attached to the library and headed for the river. Halfway across the bridge, I stopped to look down at the water and covertly glance behind me. I was alone on the footbridge. Someone was fishing on the far side—perhaps the same man who’d been there yesterday. On the town side, no one seemed to be lingering.
Below me the water tumbled brown and dirty over a dam. Gulls swooped in and out. Something moved on the top of a dead tree: an eagle. I’d never seen one in nature before and watched, fascinated, while it dove after a creature that wriggled helplessly in its claws. I shuddered, walked on across the bridge, over to Sixth Street, past the driveways laden with old furniture, and up to Nell Albritten’s house. A Nissan sat in front, old, but well cared for. Maybe the son’s, not the kind of car that drug dealers or dogfighters drove.
When I rang the bell, a curtain twitched in the front-room window, I heard indistinct voices, and then the door was opened by a man of perhaps fifty, wearing a clerical collar over a magenta clerical shirt. He smiled, but his eyes were wary.
“I’m V.I. Warshawski. I was with Ms. Albritten yesterday when she collapsed. I wanted to see how she’s doing.”
“Yes, Ms. V.I. Detective, you may come in.” Albritten’s voice came from the living room, quavery but decisive.
The minister held the door open, but I paused to ask whether Albritten knew that I’d found Doris McKinnon’s dead body.
“Oh, yes,” he murmured. “It’s been very hard for her, but it’s why she wants to talk to you.”
Nell Albritten was in the easy chair where she’d sat yesterday afternoon. Her face was drawn, a lock of gray hair hanging loose from the severely scraped bun. Yesterday’s ordeal had taken a toll.
“Where’s your friend?” she asked.
It took a moment to realize she meant Peppy. “Day care. It wasn’t fair to drag her all over the county. Although she did help yesterday: she knew something was wrong when we were at Doris McKinnon’s farm. It was the dog who insisted that I go into the house.”
Albritten bowed her head, her eyes briefly closing. “Doris wasn’t a Christian. We used to argue about it, back when Lucinda first moved in with her. I was so righteous when I was young! I was sure Doris and her atheism would corrupt young Emerald. It shames me now, all that time wasted on a quarrel with a woman who was decent clear down to her bones. Whatever she did or didn’t believe, whatever she and Lucinda did or didn’t do, I know Doris is with Jesus now.”
“That’s right.” The minister bent over to take her hand. “Hold that thought, Sister Albritten. It will carry you through a time of trouble.”
I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable with the religious conversation.
The minister straightened and pulled a stool over next to Albritten. “Now you’ve seen that she’s doing well, you can let her rest.”
“I’d like to tell her something that I would hate anyone else overhearing. Ms. Albritten apparently knows you and trusts you, but I don’t even know your name or who you are.”
“Of course.” The minister kept his hand cupped over Albritten’s. “I’m Bayard Clements, Sister Albritten’s pastor at St. Silas AME Church. I hear you went over to look at the church, so I won’t waste time telling you where it is.”
I looked at him squarely. “I went there because I wondered if Emerald Ferring and August Veriden might be hiding in the church, but it was locked up tight.”
Clements laughed as if in delight, but again the amusement touched only his mouth. “It’s a small building, as you saw: sanctuary, minute office, a vestry room the size of a hall closet. Not a lot of places to hide. And much as I love my parishioners, I wouldn’t want them to carry the burden of a secret like that.”
“Historically important,” I said, my tone dreamy, musing on the past. “A refuge for free African-Americans during the Civil War. Those crypts or underground rooms, they’d be at high risk during the floods, I’m guessing.”
Clements’s eyes narrowed. “Good point, Detective Warshawski. We have a job preserving those historic spaces. Much too damp for anyone to hide in today, but I’ll be glad to show them to you when you’ve finished talking to Sister Albritten.”
I bowed my head, half ironic, and told him I would enjoy a tour. “I’m about to tell Ms. Albritten something that amounts to evidence tampering. I could be arrested, so if you don’t want another burden to carry on your own, you might step outside.”
“Unless you’re going to confess to a murder or something of that nature, I won’t call the Douglas County Herald,” Clements said. “Since you’re speaking in confidence to one of my parishioners, I’m even
willing to extend my pastoral exemption to you.”
I turned to Albritten. “Ma’am, when I went out to the farm yesterday, I found a thumb drive—a piece of computer equipment—that contains photos and videos that August took in the middle of the night. He was out in a field with Ms. McKinnon and Ms. Ferring. They apparently didn’t want anyone to know what they were doing, so he filmed without using a light. Ms. McKinnon was digging up soil samples. Do you know which field she might have been in?”
“I told you yesterday, I hadn’t seen Doris McKinnon in some time,” she said fretfully.
“Yes, ma’am. Forgive my putting it this way, but . . . I used to practice law before I became an investigator. That’s a ‘letter of the law’ response. I believe you hadn’t seen her, but did she phone you? Or you her? Or did Emerald—Ms. Ferring—talk to you about what they’d been doing?”
There was a long silence, during which she took her hand away from her pastor’s and clasped it with the other in her lap.
When she didn’t speak, I said as gently as I could, “Yesterday, when you collapsed, it was while you were trying to say that someone would have told you if Ms. McKinnon had died. I think you are such a truthful woman that you fainted rather than speak a lie: you already knew she was dead.”
“Detective! That is completely out of line.” Clements moved so that his whole body was between me and Albritten.
Albritten plucked at his sleeve. “Let it be, Bayard, let it be. She’s right, after all. I did hear, not from Emerald but from the young man. Doris had sent them away. He went back, maybe to collect that piece of computer. The thumb piece. He saw her body on the kitchen floor and ran. I told him to make himself scarce, him and Emerald, too. I didn’t want him turning up dead in the middle of Massachusetts Street, shot by the first white deputy to see him. I wanted to let them hide at St. Silas, but Bayard was right: those old cellar rooms, they’re full of mold and who knows what all.”
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