by G. M. Ford
Leo ambled back through the boat to Corso’s side. “Just for my peace of mind, Frank, who owns the Datsun?”
“Why?”
“’Cause you don’t. You don’t even have a Washington driver’s license. If you owned a car or had a license, I’d have been here two hours ago.”
“It’s a dock car. Parking got to be so damn bad a bunch of us chipped in and bought it. You just sign up to use it whenever you need it. I need a car for anything serious, I rent one.”
“No phone number, listed or not. No utility bills under your own name. No library card. No traffic tickets. No tax bills. You don’t take any of the papers. No magazine subscriptions. No cable TV. You’re not on-line with any of the local Internet providers. You’re a regular Ted Kaczynski, you know that, Corso?”
Corso grinned. “So…just for my peace of mind, how did you find me?”
“Pizza,” Leo said. “Pagliacci’s has everybody in town who’s ever ordered a pizza in their database.” He eyed Corso. “Anchovy…Jesus, man.”
Corso washed his hands in the sink and then dried them with a paper towel.
“Since you just fucked up my fishing plans and quite possibly my life, how about you giving me a ride down to the Sun? Somebody else is signed up for the car this afternoon.” His tone had a resigned quality Leo had never heard before.
Leo held up a moderating hand. “I don’t know what this is about, Frank, and quite honestly, I don’t give a shit, but whatever it is—if you don’t want to do it, then don’t.”
“Easier said than done.”
“I gave up guilt for Lent,” Leo said. “Maybe you ought to do the same.”
“What if you’re actually guilty?” Corso asked.
“There’s always denial.”
“Let’s go,” Corso said.
They were halfway back to the gate when Leo said, “Whaddya think, Frank? You figure gynecologists—you know—know stuff that the rest of us don’t?”
Corso pulled open the gate. “What kind of stuff?”
Leo waved a big hand. “You know…techniques…” He shot Corso a quick glance. “You know…like in bed.”
“How long did you say it took you to find me?”
“Couple hours. Why?”
“How long do you think it would have taken Brendan the gynecologist?”
Leo gave the question serious consideration.
“Sorry I asked,” the big guy said.
Chapter 3
Monday, September 17
2:58 P.M. Day 1 of 6
Looked kinda like an older version of that karate movie guy. Steven Somethingorother. The guy with the long black ponytail. Bill Post tried to recall the actor’s name. Yeah…Steven Something. The guy pulled the door open and strode into the lobby. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he took a hard left and headed for the elevator. What the hell…
Post scrambled out from behind the desk. “Hey…hey…there,” he said. “This is a full security area, you can’t just…” Bill Post reached out and grabbed the guy by the shoulder. Next thing he knew, ponytail had ahold of his hand. With his thumb, the guy found some pressure point in the soft meat between Post’s thumb and forefinger, sending an electric shock up the length of the old man’s arm. The arm dropped uselessly to Post’s side. “Damn.” Post flapped his wing like an injured bird.
“Now there’s no cause to be…,” the old man sputtered. Rubbing his hand and trying to shake some feeling back into his palsied arm. “I can get the cops down here, if you want. You think you’re Mr.—”
Ponytail pulled something out of the pocket of his black overcoat with one hand and pushed the elevator button with the other. A press credential. With his working arm, Post reached for the laminated card but the guy pulled it back, out of reach. A muted ding announced the elevator’s arrival. He tilted his head back, squinted at the card: THE SEATTLE SUN. Frank Corso. The picture had short hair, but it was him all right.
Post began to stammer. “Oh…well, then…yes…sorry, Mr. Corso.”
Corso stepped into the elevator.
“I’m supposed to send you to the second-floor lunchroom,” Post said.
The door slid shut.
Post turned and headed back to his desk. The elevator bell sounded again.
“Hey,” a voice called.
Post turned back. Corso again.
“Sorry about the hand,” he said. “You okay?”
Post stopped trying to shake the feeling back into his arm.
“It’s nothin’,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m a little jumpy sometimes,” Corso explained. “I think maybe I spend a little too much time alone.”
Post said he understood. Watched as Corso got back in the elevator and the steel door again slid closed. Post went back to massaging his arm as he stood and stared at the door for a moment. “Seagal. That’s it, damnit. He looks like Steven Seagal.”
He smiled as he started back toward his desk. “Nothin’ wrong with my memory. No, sir. Nothin’ at all.”
The minute he pulled open the door, Corso knew what was going on. Six days before Walter Leroy Himes’s scheduled execution and she’d changed her tune. What he couldn’t fathom, however, was what it had to do with him. Sure, he’d covered the trial for the Sun. His first big story in Seattle and damn near his last. He’d spoken to Leanne a couple of times. Interviewed her once. So what?
Fresh from the debacle in New York, Corso had found himself the only person in the Pacific Northwest who thought Himes had gotten the shaft and had insisted on writing a dissent. It started: “If Walter Leroy Himes hadn’t existed, local law enforcement surely would have invented him.” Hawes, on the other hand, quite rightly saw any dissent whatsoever as a public relations nightmare and had refused the piece. Corso went upstairs. Reminded Mrs. V. of their agreement. Mrs. V. said, “Run it,” and the most unpopular piece of journalism in the city’s history had appeared on page one the next morning.
Public furor had been costly. From Corso’s end, the piece had motivated a couple of outraged rednecks from Kent to damn near beat him to death with tire irons. As for the paper, the Seattle Sun lost four thousand subscribers, 8 percent of its advertising revenue, and thus was forced to abandon its century-old broad-sheet format. If Hawes had had his way, it would have cost Corso his job. Maybe his life. Corso was amazed when Mrs. V. chalked it off to experience. He’d gone to her office and handed her his handwritten IOU. “I owe you another one,” he’d said. She’d agreed and tucked the slip of paper away for a rainy day. Like today.
Hawes read the girl’s startled expression. Looked back over his shoulder and then got to his feet. He said something to Leanne. She nodded. Hawes crossed the room to Corso’s side. He gestured with his head and then led Corso over to an uninhabited corner of the room.
“She says she lied at the Himes trial.”
“So what?”
“That’s all she’ll say. She insists on talking to you.”
“Why me?”
Hawes sneered at him. “Funny, but I’ve been asking myself that very question.”
“I don’t need this shit,” Corso said.
Hawes had his jaw clamped so hard he looked like a largemouth bass.
Corso removed his coat and folded it over his left arm. “Tell Mrs. V. I’ll be up when I get through chatting with Leanne.” Hawes nodded. Corso excused himself and walked across the room. Leanne squirmed in her seat. From six feet away, Corso could see that the rim of the paper Pepsi cup in front of her had been picked to shreds. Two other similarly shredded cups leaned against the wall. Bits of waxed paper littered the table.
Instead of taking Hawes’s seat across the table from Leanne, Corso slid onto the bench next to her. Eyes wide, she scooted over by the wall. “Long time no see, Miss Samples,” he said. She nodded. “It is still Miss Samples, isn’t it?”
Leanne managed an uncertain smile and said why of course it was still Miss.
“I thought maybe some young man
might have spirited you away by now,” he said. “Off to the Casbah or something.”
The young woman reddened and hid her face with her hands.
“Stop it,” she said with a giggle.
She hadn’t changed a great deal. Same wide-open face and deep-set eyes. Her brown hair was, if anything, thicker, and she might have lost a little weight. She was, what? Twenty-one or so now. She’d been something like eighteen at the time. Probably not the PC nomenclature anymore, but, back then, Corso had decided that “slow” was the proper term for Leanne Samples. Eventually, Leanne got to the right answer. It just took her a bit longer than it did most folks.
“Leanne…,” Corso began. “I hope you won’t mind if we get right down to business here.” She nodded. “Did you tell Mr. Hawes that Mr. Himes did not attempt to rape you? Is that what you told him?” Before she could answer, Corso waved a finger in her face. “Because…if you are…I mean, girl, I’ve got to tell you right up front what a serious matter you’re getting yourself into here.”
She was chewing her thumb. Moving her head up and down.
“I did,” she said softly.
The bench squeaked as Corso leaned back against the wall. His scalp tingled.
“Now why would a nice girl like you want to do a thing like that, Leanne? Why would you want to go and tell a lie about something so important?”
She thought it over. “I was scared,” she said finally.
“Scared of what?”
“Of my parents.”
“Why would you be afraid of your parents?”
“I thought I was pregnant.”
“Pregnant by whom?”
She shrugged. “Some boy from school.” She pulled her hand from her mouth and waved it as if she were shooing a fly. “You remember my parents…” She looked pleadingly at Corso. He nodded. “They’d go crazy,” she said. “They’d…”
“So you…”
“So I went to the park. I tore up my clothes…scratched myself…” Unconsciously, she brought her fingertips to her cheek. “You know, to make it look like I was attacked. So…you know…in case I turned out to be pregnant…I could say I’d been…”
“What did you think the cops would do?” he pressed.
“There weren’t supposed to be any police,” she blurted out.
The lunchroom fell silent around them. She looked around. She started her thumb to her mouth, caught herself, jammed it back in her lap.
“I was just going to go home and tell my parents. That was all,” she whispered. “They’d keep the shame in the family. It’s their way.” She waved her hand again. “The policemen just drove up. I didn’t—”
“You identified a picture of Mr. Himes.”
“They kept asking me to look again and look again and look again. I didn’t know what else to do,” she whined.
“You picked him out of a lineup.”
“He was the man in the picture,” she said. “I thought—”
“You testified in court,” Corso interrupted.
She began to cry. “They’re going to kill him. I never thought…I thought—”
“You thought what?” Corso pushed.
Her shoulders shook as she began to sob. “I thought he was a bad man and that they would put him away where he could get better and not hurt anybody.”
Over the top of her head, he could see that the room had nearly stopped again as people realized who they were. The air was still and electrically charged, like in the seconds before a cloudburst.
“Have you been to the authorities?”
Her eyes again filled with tears. When she nodded, droplets rolled down her cheeks. “They didn’t believe me. They said I’d have to go to jail.”
Corso wasn’t surprised. Recanting testimony was nearly impossible. Careers were at stake even in low-profile cases. In a case as emotionally charged as Walter Leroy Himes’s, God only knew how far they’d go to cover their collective asses.
“Who did you talk to?” he asked.
She picked her purse up from the floor. Her hand came out with a business card. County seal. Assistant District Attorney. Timothy Beal.
“And then they brought some other men in. They said I was a liar.”
She began to cry in earnest now. Corso waited as she found a twisted Kleenex in her coat pocket and applied it to her dripping nose. With the other hand, she fumbled in her purse and produced a yellowed and much-fingered piece of newsprint. “I showed them your article about how Mr. Himes was innocent. And you know what?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “They said you were a liar too. That you got fired for printing lies. And that was why you were working here instead of wherever you used to work.”
Corso kept his mouth shut.
“Did you?” she insisted.
“Did I what? Get fired for fabricating a story? Yes, I did.”
“Not that,” she whined. “Did you lie?”
“Not on purpose,” he said.
“You made a mistake?”
He grudgingly nodded. “In some way I still don’t understand, I must have gotten sloppy. Overconfident, maybe…something like that.”
Corso recalled Cynthia’s face, watching it melt like a cake in the rain as he told her the real story of what he thought had happened. And then the silence and the look of pity as she asked, “You don’t really think anyone is going to believe that, do you?” After that she began to rave about how if he’d just admit to making a mistake, maybe he could salvage what was left of his career. About how telling the story he’d just told her would accomplish nothing except to get him branded as not only a liar but as a paranoid schizophrenic as well. Corso had never told the story again. Not to Ben Gardner, his editor at the New York Times who fired him, and not to Mrs. V. here at the Seattle Sun when she hired him. So why, he wondered, did he feel compelled to tell Leanne Samples?
“Leanne,” he said, “what happened to me back in New York is a very complicated story.” He looked into her eyes. They were nearly black. “I say that not because I think you’ll have any trouble understanding it. I say it because I don’t understand the details of it myself. All I know for sure is that it happened.”
She sat up straight, as if she were at school. Said she understood.
“I was writing a series about a very rich and powerful man.” Corso paused. Took a deep breath. “He invited me to his office one day. Real polite and everything. Had a catered lunch there for us.” Corso gathered himself. “After lunch—over coffee—he told me to stop. No more writing about him, he said.” Corso snapped his fingers. “Just like that. ‘Stop,’ he told me. He said he’d squash me like a bug if I didn’t.” Corso ground his thumb on the table for emphasis.
Leanne cringed. “But you didn’t stop, did you?” she said hopefully.
“No,” Corso said. “I didn’t. I kept picking at it.”
She looked at her own thumb. “And he—”
“Like a bug.” Corso sighed. “People got fired,” he said. “Some of them held me responsible for ruining their lives.”
“How?” she asked.
Yeah…that was the double jeopardy question, wasn’t it? How could such a thing have happened? To a raw rookie, maybe. But to a seasoned investigative reporter? He wakes up one day and a whole raft of otherwise respectable people are suddenly conspiring against him. Spare us. We wanna hear that crap, we’ll watch The X-Files.
“Money and pride,” Corso said after a moment. “He had enough money to be truly dangerous, and I had enough pride to be truly stupid.”
“Mama says money won’t buy happiness,” Leanne said.
“What’s your mama have to say about pride?” he asked.
“Mama always says that ‘pride goeth before a fall.’”
“I’m living proof your mama is right,” Corso said.
“I knew you wouldn’t lie on purpose.”
“Thanks,” Corso said with a chuckle. “You’re now executive vice president of the Frank Corso Fan Club.”
�
�Do you really have a fan club?” He’d forgotten how earnest she could be. Made a mental note to be careful about joking with her.
“Here we are,” Corso said. “All of us.”
She laughed again and used the Kleenex to dab at her eyes.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Leanne, why me?”
She shrugged but didn’t answer. She had an odd way of stepping back inside herself. Almost like she had a closet back there somewhere where she could go to hide.
“Well, then, I’ll have to assume it’s my boyish charm and rugged good looks,” Corso said. “You probably didn’t know this, Leanne, but women regularly swoon at the very sight of me. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty amazing that you’re still conscious.”
Leanne laughed behind her hand. Told him again to stop it. Then suddenly got serious. “You always treated me nice like this. Like I mattered. Always listened to me like I was somebody important. Not like I was a spaz, like the others do. So…will you, please?” she pleaded.
“Will I what?”
“Will you make them listen to me?”
Corso thought about it. With the exception of Himes’s ACLU lawyer, nobody but nobody was going to want any part of this story. In six days, dozens of heartbroken souls were finally scheduled to be granted some small measure of relief. A flawed but final resolution to a three-year-old nightmare and…what? Somebody was going to come along and say, Oops…waitaminute…there’s been a minor glitch here. Back to square one. Feel free to return to your grieving.
Corso’s insides suddenly had that sheet-metal feel. The feeling he’d first experienced in New York and had carried with him, on and off, ever since. A cold, dull ache in the pit of his stomach, as if he’d swallowed ball bearings. A pain that only subsided when he was floating alone on deep, green water.
He got to his feet and looked to the windows on the far side of the room. Outside, the steel-wool sky engulfed Queen Anne Hill. A steady rain coated the streets, leaving the cars to hiss along inside silver canopies of mist.
“Come on,” he said.
Halfway down the hall to the elevator, Blaine Newton came across the red-tile floor toward Corso and Leanne, holding his oversize lunch bag by his side. Newton was about thirty and already lapping over his belt. Blaine Newton had been, for the past few years, Hawes’s pet-reporter project. Another fancy dresser from the University of Washington journalism department, where Hawes moonlighted as an assistant professor. He was a better writer than a reporter. Next in line for the metro-crime beat, whenever Nathan Hopkins could be persuaded to retire. Corso disliked him on principle. When he recognized Corso, his big pink cheeks very nearly squeezed his eyes shut.