Very Bad Men

by Harry Dolan

  “ADVERBS,” ELIZABETH SAID to Callie Spencer. “He doesn’t use them. There’s not one in the entire manuscript.”

  Callie gave her a wry look. “Are you serious? You want to search my files for letters from constituents that don’t have any adverbs?”

  “I know it’s unusual.”

  “It’s absurd. Even if I could set aside the privacy issues—and I can’t—a lot of people keep things brief when they’re writing to their representatives. If they only write a few lines, they’re probably not going to use any adverbs.”

  “The man we’re looking for goes out of his way not to use them,” Elizabeth said. “He writes ‘in a rough manner’ instead of ‘roughly.’ ‘Without much sound’ instead of ‘quietly.’ If you got a letter from him, it would stand out.”

  From the doorway I thought I could see a change in Callie Spencer’s expression—she seemed to waver. Harlan Spencer must have seen it too.

  “You’d have to be very discreet,” he said to Elizabeth.

  “Naturally,” she said.

  “Maybe you should consider it,” Spencer said to his daughter.

  Callie glanced at Jay Casterbridge, who tapped an empty glass on his knee.

  “Do what you think is right,” he said.

  She looked around at Alan Beckett. He slouched in his club chair with his chin resting on the knuckles of one hand.

  “It would have to be done just so,” he said. “If word got out, it could look awful.”

  Callie turned to face Elizabeth again. Spine straight, chin raised. It was a transformation I had seen before. She put away her doubts, locked them down.

  “No,” she said. “Never mind how it looks. The people who write to me have to be able to trust that I’m not going to turn their letters over to the police without cause. I can’t have you knocking on people’s doors and questioning them because they wrote a letter with an odd turn of phrase.”

  She got to her feet. Elizabeth did the same, gathering the manuscript and the sketches of the man in plaid.

  “I’m sorry,” Callie Spencer said. “I wish I could be of more help. I’ll make sure you have access to our threat file. But that’s the best I can do. There have to be limits.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Some nights I have the kind of dreams that make you sit up suddenly awake, casting around to get your bearings in the dark. The kind that make you wonder if that window you’re seeing has always been there, in precisely that place, if it was open when you went to sleep, if that patch of grainy black is a doorway, and if there’s someone waiting in the hallway outside it.

  They’re not nightmares, not exactly. Though I have those too. Every few months I have one where I’m running through an old house full of stairs and twisted corridors. There are men with guns chasing me—though I’ve never once in real life been chased by a man with a gun. Sometimes in the dream I have a gun myself, but when I pull the trigger nothing happens. And sometimes the gun fires and the bullets find their marks, but the men keep coming.

  But I’m not talking about nightmares. The dreams I have most often are what I call clearing dreams: I’m in a clearing in the woods at night, stars and moon suspended over the bare branches of the encircling trees. Usually I have a friend with me, and we’re digging a grave.

  Something I have done in real life.

  The friend has dark hair and pale skin. He and I trade off with the shovel. When he’s working I stay close to him, sitting on the edge of the grave with my feet dangling. When I’m working he rests nearby with his back against the smooth bark of a beech tree. I try to keep my eyes on him, but as we dig, the wall of the grave obscures my line of sight. As the grave grows deep, I see something pale at the bottom and I set the shovel aside. I crouch down and brush the earth away with my fingertips to reveal my friend’s face: brow smooth, eyes closed, mouth in a peaceful line.

  When I climb out and look to the beech tree he’s always gone.

  I had a clearing dream that night after the party at the Spencer house. I came awake in the dark, and the doorway of Elizabeth’s bedroom was a black rectangle like the mouth of a grave. I sat up and let my heart settle into a slow rhythm and let the black shape resolve itself into a doorway again.

  I tried to go back to sleep, but twenty minutes later I found myself dressing in a polo shirt and jeans, gathering my wallet, cell phone, and keys. I knelt beside the bed and put my palm against Elizabeth’s back to feel the rise and fall. Her eyes opened.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Office,” I said. “Can’t sleep.”

  “Dream?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come back.”

  As if I might not. “Okay.”

  Our shorthand conversation done, she closed her eyes again.

  On my way down I passed Sarah’s room, and through the half-open door glimpsed dusky sheets and raven hair in the light that came up from a streetlamp. Downstairs I tried to close the front door as quietly as I could.

  I walked out to my car and drove off, east toward downtown. Came at last to a stoplight flashing red and went north on Main. Not much traffic on the streets, but even now there were students on the sidewalks. Somewhere a bar had let out. A group of frat boys crossed Main in the middle of a block, loud and careless. One of them tripped and set the others laughing. I slowed to let them pass.

  Café Felix was dark. I drove around behind the Gray Streets building and parked near the service entrance: a steel door beneath a yellow bulb in a metal cage. Often as not, someone leaves the door propped open with a brick. I found it that way now.

  The elevator took me to the sixth floor. A chime sounded my arrival and the doors rumbled open. Under the lights of the hallway I walked past an accounting office and a documentary production company and came to Gray Streets. I had my key in the lock before I noticed anything amiss.

  Someone had cut a neat square from the pebbled glass of the door.

  Thoughts occurred to me. The square was big enough to reach through and turn the dead bolt. Whoever cut it could still be inside. The sound of the elevator would have given them warning.

  I lingered in the hallway and pictured the dresser at home where I had picked up my wallet, phone, and keys. My Swiss Army knife had been there with them, but I didn’t remember taking it, and when I patted my pocket it wasn’t there.

  Leaving the door ajar, I drew my key from the lock and spent a moment thinking about the sensible thing to do. The prudent thing. I decided I should leave, go back down to the car. Call someone. No need to take chances.

  I let another moment pass before I eased the door open and stepped into the outer office. Prudence has never been my strong suit. I pocketed my keys and flipped the light switch. Fluorescents flickered on. No one leapt at me.

  The reception desk looked undisturbed. The door to the inner office was closed. Likewise the door to the storage room. I stood quiet for several seconds, listening.

  Nothing.

  The door to the inner office has a lock, but I rarely engage it. The knob turned and I went in, flipping on the lights. A coatrack on my right, empty except for a dusty black fedora. Filing cabinets, bookshelves. Gray gunmetal desk. Papers on the desk, neatly arranged. Maybe a little more neatly than I had left them.

  I went around behind the desk and opened the left-hand drawer. It has a false bottom with a compartment underneath; I had hidden a spare copy of the man in plaid’s manuscript there. I cleared away the pens and the stapler and lifted out the bottom. The compartment was empty.

  Slipping off my shoes, I padded to the outer office and stood for a few seconds listening at the door of the storage room. Heard nothing. I went back and slipped my shoes on again and walked past the reception desk to the photocopier. It was powered off. I lifted the document feeder slowly and laid my palm on the glass. It felt warm.

  I picked up the phone on the reception desk, touched nine-one-one on the keypad, and waited.

  “My name is David Loogan,” I said. “I’
ve had a break-in at my office.” I recited the address, then listened for a moment with my eyes on the storageroom door.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll come down to the lobby to let the officers in.”

  I replaced the receiver and picked up a ream of paper from beside the copier. With the paper under my arm I walked out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind me. Down the hall to the elevator. Pushed the button. The doors rumbled open. Seconds later they rumbled closed. Seconds after that I was back outside the door of Gray Streets, pressed against the wall to the left of the door frame, with the ream of paper held two-handed over my right shoulder.

  Before long I heard sounds from inside: the door of the storage room opening and closing, soft footsteps crossing the carpet. Then a delay, probably a detour into the inner office. Finally more footsteps, coming closer. The doorknob being turned. I watched the door sweep inward, shifted my weight to my left foot, and swung the ream of paper around.

  She had good reflexes. Lucy Navarro. Better than mine.

  She ducked her head and brought her right arm up to ward off the paper. I tried to check my swing, not enough, and the corner of the ream struck the pebbled glass of the door, sending shards across the carpet. Sending the door crashing into the wall.

  Lucy stepped back, both arms up now, covering her face.

  “Jesus, Loogan!”

  I tossed the paper on the floor. The door bounced off the wall and a long, jagged chunk of glass dropped out of the frame, like an icicle falling from an eave.

  “Jesus,” she said again.

  I took hold of her forearms and drew them away from her face. She had her eyes closed tight. She tried to pull away from me.

  “Hold still,” I said.

  I plucked a speck of glass from her hair and another from a spot just below the lower lid of her left eye. I moved her face gently from side to side, searching for more.

  Finally I said, “Open your eyes.”

  She opened them and blinked several times. Stared back at me, pupils huge, green irises. I didn’t see any glass.

  “You’re all right,” I said.

  I let go of her and walked past the reception desk, heading for the inner office. At the doorway I turned and saw her standing on the same spot, blinking. She wore a pale yellow summer dress with sandals, a handbag slung over her left shoulder.

  “Come on,” I said.

  I settled in behind the desk, opened the left-hand drawer, lifted the false bottom. My copy of the man in plaid’s manuscript was back in place. By the time I closed the drawer, Lucy had taken a seat in the guest chair across from me. She dropped her bag on the floor.

  “Let’s have it,” I said.

  “Have what?”

  “You know what I mean. The manuscript.”

  She pointed at the desk. “I put it back.”

  “You made a copy.”

  “I didn’t have time.”

  “I checked the copier. The glass is still warm.”

  “The glass is warm. You’re a trip, Loogan. What are you doing here this late?”

  “I come here sometimes when I can’t sleep.”

  “How come you can’t sleep?”

  “I get to thinking about all the troubles in the world. Are you going to give me the copy you made, or do I have to call the police?”

  “I thought you already called them.”

  I rolled my eyes at her.

  “So that was all an act?” she said. “Did you know it was me hiding in the storage room?”

  “If I’d known it was you, I wouldn’t have tried to slug you with five hundred sheets of recycled bond. Hand over the manuscript, Lucy.”

  “I told you, I never made a copy. I turned the machine on, but it was still warming up when I heard you get off the elevator. I barely had time to kill the power and duck into the storage room.”

  I almost let it go. I think it was the yellow dress. It made me want to give her the benefit of the doubt. What can you say about a woman who wears a yellow dress to break into an office at night? How bad can her intentions be?

  Still, I was reasonably certain she wasn’t telling the truth. Not that it bothered me. Not really. I watched her sitting there, bent slightly forward, the palm of her right hand open in her lap, her left hand rubbing her shoulder. Lips curled in a smile. Innocent eyes looking back at me. It was like being lied to by a basket of kittens.

  I shook my head. “You made a copy and it’s either in your bag or somewhere under that dress. I’d frisk you myself, but I like to think I’m a gentleman. I’ll leave it to the police.”

  I reached casually for the phone and laid the receiver on the desktop so we could both hear the dial tone. I pressed the nine. She tried to stare me down, but when I pressed the first one, she picked up her bag and took out several sheets of paper rolled into a cylinder.

  She tossed them on the desk. I flattened the pages and left them facedown between us. She returned the receiver to its place.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Hear what?”

  “Only a handful of people know about this manuscript. How did you find out about it?”

  “I can’t compromise my sources, Loogan. Journalistic ethics.”

  “Yes, I can see you’ve got journalistic ethics. It’s a shame you don’t have the regular kind.” I reached again for the phone.

  She put her hand on the receiver. “Arthur Sutherland,” she said. “Kyle Scudder’s lawyer in Sault Sainte Marie. I went to see him. He had a copy of the manuscript on his desk. He hid it away before I could read any more than the first line—but the first line is a real hook. ‘I killed Henry Kormoran.’ I knew I needed to see the rest.”

  She tossed her shoulders carelessly. “Kormoran was killed here in town, so I assumed the killer must have sent his confession directly to the Ann Arbor police. I knew Detective Waishkey wouldn’t tell me anything, so I spent some time hanging around the watch commander’s desk at City Hall. Listening to gossip. Do you know who the cops talk about around the watch commander’s desk, Loogan?”

  “Who?”

  “You and Detective Waishkey. They said you came there to see her the night Kormoran’s body was discovered. And you had an envelope with you.”

  I laid a hand over the pages on my desk. “How much of this did you read?”

  “Enough to understand why you took your trip to Sault Sainte Marie, and what you and Detective Waishkey were doing on the hill at Whiteleaf Cemetery. Do you think this is true? He was there with his rifle? He took a shot at Terry Dawtrey?”

  I gave her a blank look and said nothing.

  “Stop being so cagey, Loogan. You and I can help each other. There’s something going on here. Something bigger than a nut with a rifle on a hill. What do you think of Callie Spencer?”

  “What do I think of her?”

  “You went to her party tonight,” Lucy said.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Gossip, Loogan. So what did you think? Did you talk to her?”

  “For a few minutes.”

  “What was your impression?”

  “She’s a politician. She wants to get elected.”

  “Does she want it bad enough to send a nut with a rifle to kill Terry Dawtrey? Bad enough to send him after Henry Kormoran and Sutton Bell?”

  I studied her face. Her pale green eyes gazed back at me. “You’re not serious,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Why would she want them dead?”

  “To get them out of the way.”

  “They were never in the way,” I said. “Dawtrey was in prison. Kormoran and Bell were leading unremarkable lives. They were a footnote in Callie Spencer’s story: the men who robbed the Great Lakes Bank and put her father in a wheelchair.”

  “But what if they were a threat to her?” Lucy asked.

  I studied her some more. Sat back and put my feet up on the desk.

  “What do you know?
” I said.

  “That’s better, Loogan. You’re starting to take me seriously. Tell me something. If you tried to contact Callie Spencer, would she take your call?”

  “Why?”

  “Because she won’t take mine. I’m starting to feel desperate. If I tell you what I know about Terry Dawtrey, will you try to get me a meeting with her?”

  I gave her my best hard stare. “What do you know about Dawtrey?”

  “You’ll call her?”

  “I doubt it’ll do any good.”

  “But you’ll try?”

  “Yes. Tell me about Dawtrey.”

  She turned her face away from me and her voice went quiet. “I think I got him killed.”

  CHAPTER 21

  She told me the story haltingly at first, her eyes wandering from the file cabinets to the bookshelves to the window. But soon she became animated, getting up from the chair and pacing the room.

  “I talked to Dawtrey this spring,” she told me, “a few weeks before he died. Right around the time Callie Spencer won her party’s primary. The Current wanted a story about the Great Lakes Bank robbery—it was the most sensational part of Spencer’s history. Solid tabloid material. They had sent reporters to interview Dawtrey before, but no one ever got in. He didn’t want to talk. At least that’s what the people at the prison said.”

  She didn’t let that stop her. She pretended she was his cousin and they let her see him. The visitation room at Kinross was a dreary place, she said. Crowded and noisy. She found Dawtrey sitting off in a corner. The first thing she noticed was that he had bruising around his left eye and a cut just above his eyebrow.

  “What happened to you?” she asked him.

  He started to bring a hand up to his face, then stopped and put it back on the table.

  “Nothing happened,” he said.

  “You can tell me,” she said. “I’m a reporter.”

  His eyes came to life. He almost smiled. “No kidding,” he said. “And I thought you were my cousin.”

  “If someone beat you up, I can help you,” she said.

  He really did smile then. “What you gonna do, cuz? Print it in the paper? Guy in prison got beat up—that’s not news.”