by Lis Wiehl
“Great, and you can use my computer if you need it. I’ll get dressed and go downstairs. Just lock the door behind me, and don’t let anyone in.”
When the manager heard Lisa’s concerns, he went above and beyond helping out. He and the head of security located the recordings of her hallway from the day before. They viewed Lisa leaving the room and the maid coming in to clean. After she moved to another room, a well-dressed man came down the hall and found the housekeeper. The man spoke to the woman, pointing to himself, raising his hands as if frustrated, then looking at his watch and seeming to plead by folding his hands in a prayer and holding up a finger as if to say it would be only a minute. That was Lisa’s interpretation anyway, and the housekeeper opened the door.
“She let him in,” the hotel manager said angrily, grabbing up his phone. “We have a strict policy about our guests’ privacy and safety. She’s done here.”
“She made a mistake. Please don’t fire her,” Lisa said. “This guy was probably very convincing.”
The older black woman appeared close to retirement. The recording showed her standing for a moment at the door as the man went inside. She moved back to clean the other room, then returned and knocked on Lisa’s door. The man came out, smiling and chatting with her, then he hurried off.
The hotel manager was livid, but once he realized Lisa wasn’t holding him or the hotel responsible, he calmed considerably.
Lisa returned to Molly and updated her, then called Dad. She told him about her house in Boston and now her hotel room.
“I’ll be right there,” Dad said and hung up the phone.
“So what now?” Molly said.
“I don’t want to scare you, but do you live alone?” Lisa asked.
“I’ve got two large Labs. Sweetest guys, but not so sweet to intruders. And why would I be in danger?”
“You probably aren’t, but we should be careful.”
Molly and Lisa made plans to visit Molly’s family. As they talked, Lisa’s thoughts jumped around to the numerous elements they were dealing with.
Leonard Dubois was hiding something. Now someone wanted him dead, most likely so he wouldn’t talk. But about what?
Sweeney and the reaction from the Fort Worth PD made it appear likely that some kind of a cover-up had occurred.
Someone from a company in Florida had released the image of Benjamin Gray’s corpse onto the Internet for no apparent reason. Lisa wrote herself a note to ask Rosalyn to search other websites to see if more pictures had been posted.
There was Dad’s hunch about some historic missing key that once belonged to JFK or Bobby Kennedy. That piece seemed too far from what they were doing to matter, but she wasn’t disregarding anything at this point.
And in their digging, they’d touched a nerve with someone. It seemed that person wanted to find out what Lisa had uncovered. Why else the double breakins? Since her arrival, she’d only uncovered more questions and no concrete answers.
It hit Lisa again that a stranger had been in the room. He’d riffled through her belongings, and what if she’d come back when he was there? She had a bedtime routine that included locking doors and checking closets and under the bed. After the horrific crimes she’d prosecuted over the years, this routine helped her sleep. At home, her advanced security system was another nightly sleep aid.
“You do a good job of hiding it,” Molly said, studying her.
“Hiding what?”
“When you’re worried about something,” Molly said with a kind smile.
“Worried? I suppose a little,” Lisa said, realizing she wasn’t the best at gauging her own emotions. She dealt with the issue or problem that presented itself. How she felt was further down her list of concerns. “But then, I’m not the only one good at hiding my worries.”
“I’m a pastor, so I try not to worry but to pray instead.”
“Does it work?”
Molly smiled. “When I remember to do it. I prayed last night about this digging up the past. You want to know what happened in Fort Worth when your dad started taking our pictures?”
“Yes. Did you remember something?”
“When your father started clicking the camera, I felt the fear from that day come back over me. I may have seen Benjamin Gray get shot. I remembered blood. Blood on more than one person. But I can’t be sure. And I couldn’t testify to it in court. Isn’t that all that matters right now?”
Dad arrived in a fluster, looking around the room as if the intruder were still lurking in a corner. “We should dust for fingerprints.”
“He wore gloves. I already viewed the security tapes. The hotel has been very helpful, and they’re giving me a copy.”
“You’re staying at the house,” he said firmly. “Molly, you can stay there too. We have plenty of room.”
“I’m perfectly safe here,” Lisa said. “Anyway, Molly and I are taking a drive to visit her family, probably tomorrow. And you are going to New York.”
“I’ll go later.”
“Dad, calm down. My security system at home did its job. If I’d been here, no one would’ve gotten in—I always use the latch when I’m in my room. Molly has dogs. She can also stay here if she gets nervous.”
“Nobody’s stalking me. I’m a harmless pastor,” Molly said with a grin. “I have divine protection, my dogs, and I didn’t mention my handy .357. I’m a Texas girl, you know.”
“I’m sorry we pulled you into this, both of you,” Dad said.
“Don’t worry. I was pulled into this back in 1965. I’m fine,” Molly said.
“We’re okay.” Lisa reached her arm over her father’s shoulder, and he grabbed her into a hug that took her breath away.
“If anything happened to you,” he said with a sharp intake of breath.
Lisa could feel the ragged breathing of his chest. “It’s okay, Dad. We’re okay,” she said as he held on tightly.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in her father’s arms like this. It felt awkward and frightening. But she didn’t want him to let her go.
That night Lisa sat in the hotel bed researching Benjamin Gray. In her experience, the victim of a crime was often sidelined in the hunt for justice. But if someone listened, the victim’s lost voice could speak more answers than questions and offer more evidence than silence.
Benjamin Gray had grown up in a small Louisiana town. His minister grandfather was Gray’s biggest influence, according to his speeches and writings, but most of the family labored in farming positions and never rose above poverty level.
As a young man Gray left school after his first year of college when his father was killed in an unspecified accident. In a speech Gray once implied that his father’s death had been a crime, and that he thought of his father’s nearly unrecognizable corpse whenever he considered backing down from his cause. His message, similar to that of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., spoke of nonviolent resistance. He sought to inspire the black community to create change by living lives of integrity, education, innovation, and morality. As Lisa read his speeches, she understood why he inspired people, and also why others would hate him.
Her phone lit up with a text from Molly.
Are you okay there alone? I can loan you a dog.
Lisa laughed at the thought. She preferred being by herself to most people’s company. But she was surprisingly comfortable with Molly and could easily have shared her hotel room with the woman, perhaps even with her dogs. Lisa rarely met people she liked to such an extent.
Your dog may not appreciate the offer. But I’m good. What about you?
No worries. See you in the morning. I’ll bring the coffee.
Lisa was about to respond when Molly wrote again.
Just kidding about the coffee, but I know a great juice bar on the way out of town.
Perfect. See you then.
Lisa returned to Benjamin Gray, writing down facts and thoughts as she read and tagging articles to print. The name of Gray’s hometown in Loui
siana sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Her research of the area didn’t turn up anything. It was a small town in the South, built along a waterway with nothing special to distinguish it from other Louisiana communities.
She read through the names in Gray’s entourage, running searches on each of them. Most had continued in the civil rights movement or become prominent leaders in their communities. Nothing suspicious caught her attention.
Next she searched for information about Gray’s love life. Before his death he was engaged to a beautiful young woman from New Orleans. Lisa wrote down the name Madeline Fitzgerald and was searching for more about her when Drew sent a text. She knew he was en route to Chicago where he was speaking at a media seminar in the morning.
I don’t like this. Time to come back.
She smiled at his concern. They were back to daily updates, though something was different between them now. Lisa hadn’t allowed herself to analyze whether that was good or bad, but he hadn’t taken the news of her breakins and Leonard’s poisoning well.
You aren’t even in Boston, she wrote.
I’ll be back tomorrow. You can stay with me.
Lisa bit the edge of her lip. What was he doing?
Purely platonic, if you insist, he added.
You told me to do this. I’d regret it if I didn’t help my father.
I take it back.
She could almost hear Drew’s voice saying it, and it made her miss him. Throughout the evening since her father finally dragged himself away, she’d felt surges of unexpected emotion.
Good night, Drew. Talk to you tomorrow. I’m going to try calling John.
Lisa stretched out on the bed, setting the research aside as she dialed her son in London. Throughout the day John had kept coming into her thoughts. They usually spoke several times a week, but since Lisa’s trek to Dallas they’d only communicated through quick messages.
“What’s wrong?” John said as he answered.
“Nothing. Why would you ask that?” Lisa asked, enjoying the sound of his voice.
“We make scheduled video calls. Sundays and Wednesdays most often. And my mother does very little spontaneously.”
Lisa heard the sound of laughter and music in the background. “Nothing’s wrong. Where are you?”
“Eating at a pub. I stepped outside so I can hear you. So everything is really okay?”
“Yes,” she said, missing her son with a deep physical ache that surprised her. “But …”
“What?”
“Nothing, never mind, go back to your friends. Let’s schedule a video call for this weekend.”
“Mom, what is it?”
Lisa closed her eyes for a moment as emotion filled her. “It’s, well … was I gone too much with my job?”
“What?”
“When you were growing up … do you feel like I hugged you enough, told you I love you?”
John laughed, not mockingly but with the laugh he used when she overly mothered him.
“My mommy misses me,” he said, teasing, but then in a lowered tone added, “I miss you too. Yes, you hugged me enough. And I love you, Mom.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They were fourteen stories up. Stanley peered over the edge of the rooftop and watched the gusty wind twist into dirt devils and run through the deserted building site.
A memory came to him of a man who had fallen nearly as far. Stanley hadn’t done the tossing, and he was only ten years old when he saw it. His father pulled him from bed in the middle of the night and brought him to the rooftop. Stanley had stared at the man twisted on the ground in a pool of blood so dark it appeared black instead of red.
“That is what happens to traitors,” his father had told him.
Later Stanley learned that the dead man was a family friend. They’d vacationed together, and Stanley often played with the man’s son.
Now, looking at the construction site below, he couldn’t remember any of their names, only that the newspapers reported the death as a suicide.
“When is the next building inspection?” Stanley asked, taking in the bulldozer and construction equipment parked where the multistory parking structure would stand in a few months.
His nephew approached hesitantly, keeping his distance.
“Week after next. We’re on target now that the lawsuit has been dropped. After we pull permits, we’ll move forward with the Hacienda Highland project.”
Stanley wondered what his former foe Arroyo looked like now, deteriorating in the ice cooler with his bullet-riddled face bloated from the seawater and eaten by sea creatures. The detective on the case continued to hound Stanley, an annoyance he hoped would soon disappear.
“Good. When do you estimate the ribbon cutting?”
“August,” Marcus said, sliding his hands into his pockets.
A long silence between them made Marcus squirm. Stanley breathed in the scent of fresh lumber and sawdust. He could smell the river, though it was half a mile off, and he could also smell Marcus’s fear. It was time to find out why he was so afraid.
Stanley sat on the raised ledge of the rooftop, fourteen stories of space behind his back, and motioned for Marcus to sit beside him.
Marcus looked ready to wet his pants, but he did as Stanley requested.
“I’m angry,” Stanley said after a few more drawn-out moments.
“If you could hear me out,” Marcus stuttered, jumping to his feet.
“Go on. Make your case.” Stanley folded his arms at his chest.
“You keep telling me to take some initiative. I’ve tried figuring out how to do that. Finally, this seemed like a great opportunity.”
“I have told you to take initiative, this is true. You are great with money, figures, and running a business. But you doubt yourself in other areas. You also don’t think through and look at the wider picture and consequences. Nor—”
Marcus cut in as if pleading for his life. “I thought it would solve everything. If that inmate died, then who would try finding out the real story? We had the contact inside the prison. He could make it look like an illness. The man is old, after all.”
Stanley hated incompetence. He hated explaining the obvious. If Marcus were not his own blood, his impatience with the man would’ve run out long ago.
“Think things through, Marcus. The prison would’ve ordered an autopsy. They most likely would have discovered the poisoning, which makes more people than just this Agent Waldren and his daughter start digging into things. And contacts are only loyal when it benefits them.”
“The contact has no knowledge of us. None of our negotiations can be linked to you or the company.” Marcus set his foot on the ledge as he peered over.
“That’s how it may appear, but it’s surprising what can be uncovered these days. All this new technology that I don’t quite understand. And we have another issue.”
“What is it?” Marcus said with a shaky tone.
“Our company files have been hacked, and some of my personal files from the plantation have turned up on the Internet.” Stanley rose from the ledge, stretching out his back.
“What?” Beads of sweat lined Marcus’s forehead.
“Ricky is going over the computer issues.”
“Our financials?”
“Possibly, but for certain my personal files. Yet what’s very strange is how photographs I kept in a safe at the plantation showed up on the Internet.”
“So someone broke into the safe?”
“They must have, because I’ve seen the images, but they put everything back. Nothing is missing as far as I know. I’ll be going out there tomorrow to be sure. Not only that, but the images were posted from our company—it was an IP address or something. Ricky can explain it better.”
Marcus appeared perplexed, but Stanley sometimes wondered if his nephew played up the nervous absentminded professor act. He’d lived long enough to know not to trust anyone, even a bumbling nephew.
“We have a traitor in the com
pany?” Marcus asked.
“Yes, we do.” He studied his nephew intently as the wind blew around them.
Marcus took two steps back. “Uncle Stanley. I would never, you know that. What would I have to gain?”
“No one has approached you for information? Perhaps in exchange for immunity?”
“Not since that time a few years ago. And I told you right away. I would never,” he repeated. “Really.”
Stanley grabbed Marcus’s arm, gripping hard. His nephew’s eyes bulged as he stared at Stanley, then looked to the ledge and back. Stanley’s heart raced with something other than fury. A rush of blood coursed through his veins when he faced fear in another man’s eyes. It was like a drug to him.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with this.”
“I didn’t, Uncle Stanley. I had nothing to do with this,” he stuttered, and his eyes were full of tears.
Stanley released him. His nephew stumbled back, rubbing his arm. He’d watch Marcus for the time being. Even with his father’s warning that night on the rooftop, Stanley had been fooled in the past by people he trusted. And even though Stanley had promised his sister when she was dying of cancer that he’d care for Marcus, disloyalty trumped a promise every time.
“Don’t ever make a move like the one at the prison again. Not only did it create an unnecessary investigation there, but now Leonard Dubois is under tightened security. And take care of your contact. It might cause more attention, but I’ll take that over having him alive. This is a mess, Marcus.”
“I know, and I’ll fix it. And if there’s anything I can do about the other problem …”
Stanley sighed. When he was young, it seemed there were a lot more men to get the job done. Now so many men were weak and whiny.
He put his arm around Marcus’s thin shoulder and walked with him toward the doorway to the downstairs.
“I’m not immune to such mistakes. In fact, I’m still dealing with the fallout of one all these years later. I’ll finally tell you the story about a young man who let his anger nearly destroy his life …”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The flight to New York was taking him away from the people he was supposed to protect.