Very Bad Men

by Harry Dolan

  “And that doesn’t bother you? As a journalist?”

  A bit of mischief returned to her expression. “You don’t know what he’s been giving me. In a few years no one will remember the Great Lakes robbery. But this,” she said, pointing to the stacks of pages, “this is history.”

  I tipped back in my chair. A breeze came through the screen behind me.

  “Have you thought about the senator’s motives, about why he agreed to give you all this?”

  She shrugged. “There must be some truth in something Terry Dawtrey or Henry Kormoran told me. Something that would reflect badly on Callie Spencer.”

  “So he just wants to make sure his daughter-in-law gets elected?”

  “What else could it be?” she said. “Do you know something?”

  I let the chair fall forward. “I don’t know anything.”

  “What about Lark’s doctor—Kenneally? Is there a story there?”

  I drummed my fingers carelessly along the edge of the table. “If there is, I’m sure it’s nothing big. It’s not history. What do the senator’s people think of your arrangement?”

  “Alan Beckett isn’t happy. He thinks I can’t be trusted to hold up my end.” She waved the matter away. “There’s not much he can do.”

  “You don’t think he’ll try to stop you?” I said. “Beckett likes to be in control.”

  “Let him try.”

  “I’d say he’s already trying. The senator’s resignation last week—don’t you think Beckett was behind that? It’s his way of reasserting his authority.”

  “That’s not the way I saw it. I think it was more the senator’s idea. He’s been playing a role for a long time. He’s tired of it.”

  I nodded toward the interior of the house. “Where is he now? Is he here?”

  She shook her head. “He was here most of last week. Working with me. This week he’s been coming and going. I haven’t seen him for two days.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Down your way, I imagine.”

  I didn’t feel the need to correct her.

  “He’s letting me stay here to work on the book,” she said. “I don’t expect him to tell me where he goes.” She was quiet for a moment, reaching across the table to put her hand over mine. “It’s good to see you, Loogan. How did you know where to find me?”

  “I didn’t.”

  The wind picked up. The leaves of the white oak whispered. Lucy drew her hand back. “You didn’t come here to find me. You were looking for the senator. He’s not in Ann Arbor?”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What are you up to, Loogan?”

  “I’m not up to anything. Lizzie and I are on vacation.”

  She looked uncertain. “You’re not mad at me, are you? You’re not holding out on me?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “I really am sorry about what happened. You understand why I did it, don’t you?”

  I patted her hand gently. Picked up the bullet.

  “Sure,” I said.

  CHAPTER 53

  Elizabeth drove us back to I-75 and out of Saint Ignace. I sat beside her and recounted everything Lucy had told me. I was restless, turning the bullet end over end with my fingers. Elizabeth saw it, but she didn’t say anything about it. She’d glimpsed the revolver in the glove compartment earlier, but she hadn’t said anything about that either.

  “What do you think of this deal Lucy made with the senator?” she asked when I finished my story. “Does she really believe he would agree to give away national secrets just to save Callie Spencer some embarrassment?”

  I worried my thumb over the surface of the bullet. “I think in her eyes he’s an old man whose judgment is failing him. And she’s willing to take advantage.”

  “Does she intend to honor her part of the deal? To forget about the Great Lakes robbery?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure she knows. But if she found out Matthew Kenneally was the senator’s son and the fifth robber—I think she might decide that belongs in her book.”

  WE REACHED BRIMLEY around quarter to six and checked into a hotel with a view of Lake Superior. Forty minutes later, after a shower and a change of clothes, we drove to Madelyn Turner’s converted farmhouse. The sunlight spread the shadow of the house over the side yard. The tire swing hung perfectly still from the bough of the elm.

  There was a rusted pickup truck in the driveway, but no other car and no sign of Nick’s bike. No one answered our knock.

  We rode back through the center of Brimley and found the Cozy Inn. A waitress seated us at a table in a corner of the dining room, away from the noise of the bar. She brought us sweet tea and we let her talk us into ordering the shrimp cocktail. We followed that with beer-battered perch, seasoned fries, coleslaw. We were thinking about apple pie when Madelyn Turner came in.

  I had my back to the wall, so I saw her entrance. “Don’t look now,” I said to Elizabeth.

  She kept her eyes on me. “Madelyn?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Is she alone?”

  “She’s alone,” I said. “She’s heading for the bar. How should we handle this?”

  “We don’t want to talk to her here. Let her be.”

  I watched the bartender put a drink in front of her. “Could be a long night,” I said.

  “I don’t think so. What’s she wearing? A skirt?”

  “Slacks.”

  “Tight blouse, or something loose?”

  “Loose,” I said. Her clothes were casual. She had her hair pinned up. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone or to hide her age.

  “She’ll have one drink,” Elizabeth said. “And dinner to go.”

  We passed on the pie and asked the waitress for the bill. Ten minutes later, Madelyn Turner left carrying two Styrofoam take-out boxes. We followed her.

  Out in the parking lot the day had begun to fade. Madelyn’s car stirred up dust when she drove out. We tailed her east to an intersection and waited behind her at the light. From here she would need to turn south to go home.

  “She’s not going home,” Elizabeth said.

  She went straight for half a mile and then turned north. She got off the main road and onto a lane that wound through the shade of tall birches and pines. We lost sight of her, and when we came around a bend we saw her pulling onto a patch of grass in front of a cabin. She parked beside a long car covered with a canvas tarp.

  I pressed the brake reflexively, but Elizabeth told me to go on past.

  “Eyes ahead. Act natural.”

  I acted natural and rolled on another hundred feet. Beyond that, the lane curved and the cabin would have been out of sight. I shifted into park and watched the scene unfold in the rearview mirror. Madelyn got out of her car with the take-out and walked toward the porch. The door of the cabin opened and a man came out to meet her. If I hadn’t been expecting to see him I might not have recognized him. He wore khakis and a linen shirt, and his silver hair had been cropped short like a Roman emperor’s. John Casterbridge.

  He collected the take-out boxes from Madelyn and they went inside. I turned to Elizabeth, who had been watching over her shoulder.

  “What are they doing out here?” I asked her.

  She touched the glass beads at her throat absently. “That’s Charlie Dawtrey’s cabin. It’s been empty since he died.”

  I gave her an appraising look. “Did you know Madelyn would come here?”

  “I thought she might. It’s not ideal for a rendezvous, but at least it’s out of the way. She can’t parade him around town. And she can’t bring him home, or she’d have to explain him to Nick.”

  I looked in the mirror again at the cabin and thought of the two of them sharing dinner. A simple act, but the senator had come a long way for it. I thought about what Lucy had said—that she thought the resignation was the senator’s idea. Was this why he’d done it? Was being with Madelyn Turner what he wanted?

&nb
sp; A subtle change in the idle of the engine broke my reverie. I switched it off, popped the door, and climbed out. Elizabeth did the same.

  “We’re going in?” she said.

  “Sure. I thought that was the point.”

  She looked across the roof of the car at me. “We came here to confirm that the senator had a relationship with Madelyn Turner, that he’s the father of Matthew Kenneally.” She tipped her head in the direction of the cabin. “I think this more or less confirms it. But it’s another thing to get them to admit it.”

  I laid a hand on the warm metal of the roof. “But if they know we’ve caught them here together—that’ll make it harder for them to deny it. Won’t it?”

  “Maybe. But even if they admit that Kenneally is the senator’s son, we can’t prove any wrongdoing. Not yet. We can’t prove that Kenneally was involved in the Great Lakes robbery or that the senator covered it up.”

  “Are you saying we should walk away?”

  She stared off toward the cabin. “I’m saying we should think about what we hope to accomplish. I’m saying—”

  She didn’t finish, and I could tell something had caught her eye. I turned and saw a figure crouched by the side of Madelyn’s car. Even from a distance I knew it was Nick Dawtrey.

  “Where did he come from?” I said in a quiet voice.

  Elizabeth answered in kind. “The woods on the other side of the cabin.” We watched him creep toward the second car, the one covered with a tarp—the senator’s Mercury. He circled it, reaching beneath the canvas to try each of the doors. They must have been locked. He straightened, peering toward the cabin, then glancing in our direction. He did a double take and in the next moment moved swiftly around the car and into the woods.

  Elizabeth and I stood motionless, straining to catch sight of him again. Somewhere in the trees above us a bird sang out. Elizabeth took a step toward the cabin, as if she intended to go looking for Nick. As I made up my mind to join her I heard sounds behind me: the snap of a twig, the stirring of old leaves. I spun around to see Nick stepping out of the woods.

  “What’re you doing here, sport?”

  Elizabeth answered before I could. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  “YOU’RE GONNA THINK this is crazy,” Nick said.

  We were driving south through Brimley. His bike was in the trunk; we had stopped to pick it up from a hollow by the roadside. Nick sat in the backseat, leaning forward to talk to us.

  “That guy with my mom, I think he’s somebody.”

  Elizabeth and I exchanged a look.

  “Is that why you were sneaking around his car?” she asked.

  Nick shrugged. “I thought there might be something in there with his name on it, but it was locked. You know who he is, don’t you?”

  I looked in the rearview mirror and saw his dark eyes staring back at me.

  “Put your seat belt on,” I said.

  “You’re killing me, sport.”

  Elizabeth gestured for him to sit back. After a moment I heard the click of the belt.

  “How long has that man been involved with your mother?” she asked him.

  “They been talking the last two weeks. Maybe longer. I answered the phone once or twice when he called.”

  “What has your mother told you about him?”

  “She says he’s an old friend. His name is Johnny.”

  “And she’s been seeing him?”

  “She doesn’t admit it—she just tells me she’s going out.” In the mirror I saw him sneer. “‘Going out’ used to mean the Cozy Inn,” he said. “That’s where she used to meet up with Kyle Scudder. But she broke it off with him.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Two weeks ago, same time she started going out with Johnny. I been trying to figure out where she meets him. Not at the Cozy, I checked there. Today’s the first time I thought of the cabin.” He looked from me to Elizabeth. “You didn’t answer me. Do you know who he is?”

  “He’s exactly who you think he is,” I said. “John Casterbridge, the senator.”

  Nick scrunched his face into a frown. “What’s he doing in Brimley?”

  An excellent question. I wasn’t about to tell him the truth: that Casterbridge had come here to see the woman who had given him a son thirty-seven years ago. I tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t be a lie, but Elizabeth saved me the trouble.

  “It’s like your mother said,” she told him. “They’re old friends.”

  WHEN WE REACHED the farmhouse, the sky was darkening into evening. I parked beside the rusted pickup and helped Nick haul his bike out of the trunk.

  We went inside and Elizabeth asked him if he’d eaten dinner. He hadn’t, so we retreated to the kitchen and fixed him a sandwich and a bowl of soup. I kept him company while he ate, and Elizabeth wandered into the living room. We found her there a short while later, standing by the fireplace. A collection of framed photographs lined the mantel—most of them of Nick, one of old Charlie Dawtrey, and one that looked like a high school portrait of Matthew Kenneally.

  Kenneally’s name had been in the news, and one or two stations had carried footage of him leaving City Hall on the night he was questioned about shooting Anthony Lark. I knew Nick had followed the news about Lark’s death, so I wondered why he hadn’t made a connection between Lark’s doctor and the boy in the picture on his mother’s mantel.

  Elizabeth must have wondered too. She reached the picture down and showed it to Nick.

  “Who’s this?”

  He frowned. “That’s supposed to be my brother.”

  “Supposed to be?”

  “I’ve never met him. He’s way older than me and lives down south.”

  “In southern Michigan?”

  “Farther south than that,” Nick said. “I think he moved to get away from my mom. They don’t get along. He’s got some big important job—he never has time to visit.”

  “What’s his name?” Elizabeth asked, returning the picture to the mantel.

  Nick had to search his memory. “Chip,” he said at last.

  “What’s that short for?”

  He shrugged impatiently. “Whatever it’s usually short for. Are you gonna tell me what you’re doing up here?”

  The question was as much for me as for her, but I stood silently with my hands in my pockets, feeling the smooth metal of the bullet against the fingertips of my right hand. Elizabeth stared at the fieldstones of the fireplace. I knew she didn’t want to answer him.

  She couldn’t tell him the truth: that his mother had married his father at least partly out of guilt, because her son had escaped punishment for the Great Lakes robbery and his son had gone to prison. That he, Nick, was an act of penance, a replacement for his lost brother, Terry. She couldn’t tell him that his other brother, Matthew Kenneally, had manipulated Anthony Lark, sending him after Terry—an act that had led directly to Nick’s father’s death.

  She settled on an answer that didn’t really tell him anything.

  “We came to talk to some people up here. To ask some questions.”

  “What questions?” he said.

  “Just police business. Nothing you should worry about.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. The corners of Nick’s mouth tightened with contempt. He turned his back on Elizabeth and said to me, “You lied about her, sport.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said she wanted to find out the truth about what happened to my father. And Terry.”

  “She did. And she has.”

  “She’s just a cop,” he said, his voice rising. “Cops look out for other cops.”

  I answered him calmly. “We’ve talked about this, Nick. Anthony Lark killed your father. The cops had nothing to do with it.”

  “Paul Rhiner shot Terry. He was a cop.”

  “He was doing his job. Terry tried to run.”

  “They didn’t have to kill him.”

  The words tore out of him, his voice nearly a scream. I could see t
he tension in his shoulders, in his clenched hands. I thought he was close to tears.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “Take it easy.”

  Elizabeth came around so she could see him face to face. “It’s all right,” she said. “I know this is hard. You loved Terry. You shouldn’t have to deal with this alone. Have you talked to your mother? Does she know about . . . everything that happened?”

  Nick turned to me, bewildered. “What’s she trying to say?”

  I didn’t answer him right away. I was fiddling with the bullet, turning it over with my fingers. I thought I knew exactly what Elizabeth was trying to say. I should have seen it much sooner. Nick acted like an adult, but he was fifteen years old. He’d had a brother in prison, and had loved him enough to help him try to escape. But the attempt had failed. His brother had died.

  I watched the bullet turning between my fingers. Without realizing it, I had taken it out of my pocket. When I looked up I saw Nick staring at me. I slipped my hand back in my pocket and let the bullet drop.

  “What she’s saying,” I told him, “is that you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened to Terry. It’s not your fault. And if you want to talk about it—”

  I watched his lips tremble, his anger barely controlled. His dark eyes glared at me. “You a social worker now, sport? You want me to talk about my feelings? I’m not sorry about what I did for Terry. You don’t know anything. You want to help me? Find out why they killed him.”

  I shook my head sadly. “They killed him because he ran.”

  “That’s what you keep saying.” He whirled around toward Elizabeth. “You said you came up here to ask questions. You talk to Sam Tillman yet?”

  I had almost forgotten about Tillman. He was the other deputy who’d been guarding Terry Dawtrey. Paul Rhiner’s partner.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I haven’t talked to him.”

  “I’ve been watching his house,” Nick said. Pointing at me, he added, “Did he tell you?”

  “I told her,” I said. “But I thought you stopped. I asked you to stop.”

  Nick ignored me. “Sam Tillman spent the last two weeks sleeping on his couch. Then on Thursday his wife left him. She took the kids and the dog. Packed a lot of stuff in her car.”