Snapshot

by Lis Wiehl

  James didn’t want to say good-bye to his daughter and Rosalyn, or even to Molly. Rosalyn laughed at his concerns. She’d taken care of herself through stickier situations, and she could do it now—or so she said.

  He’d hardly slept the night before. For hours he’d tried finding the car that kept following them. When he left Lisa’s hotel and returned home, the car didn’t follow. He hadn’t seen it in Lisa’s hotel parking lot. James even drove by Molly’s house but found nothing. Perhaps after breaking into Lisa’s hotel, the person had found what he was looking for and that was the end of it.

  Lisa also assured him that they were safe. The intrusions into her hotel room and home in Boston were unsettling, but there’d been no actual threat to her. Whatever the person wanted, he didn’t intend harm, it seemed.

  Molly reacted by praying for their protection. She made them all hold hands in a circle as she prayed aloud. James had never experienced that before, and he’d stood unmoving when she asked if anyone else wanted to pray. Rosalyn jumped in with some words about God’s favor upon them—where her prayer came from, he didn’t know—then he and Lisa stood in the awkward quiet until Molly wrapped it up. Leaving the three women behind after the breakins and their being followed, he found that the prayer brought a surprising measure of relief as he said good-bye.

  After he arrived at the chain hotel decorated to look like a country inn, James checked in at the front desk, grabbed a few cookies from the welcome tray, and rolled his suitcase into the room that smelled just a hint like cigarette smoke. He sat on the flowery bedcover, still unsure if leaving Dallas had been the right decision. His instincts were out of sorts. He couldn’t tell if his apprehension was reasonable or emotional.

  Pulling out his cell phone, he saw a missed call and message. His fingers fumbled with the buttons, then he heard the voice.

  “Waldren, this is William O’Ryan. I had the boxes delivered to my office here in Manhattan. It’ll be easier than your trekking out to the house. We can meet tomorrow afternoon when I’m off the air. Then I leave the next morning for ten days. Hope your flight came in all right. See you tomorrow.”

  James hung up and slowly tapped out a text to Rosalyn telling her he’d arrived. He wished he knew how to add one of those funny faces Rosalyn would send to him, but she’d get a kick out of the message regardless. He rarely did the text message thing.

  His phone beeped a new message back within seconds.

  Was just sending you a mental message to let me know you arrived or not. Since you don’t answer your phone, I used telepathy. And it worked!

  James chuckled aloud. Another beep sounded.

  My gut tells me you’re going to uncover something big. So quit worrying about us, enjoy NYC a little. Go eat a hot dog for me with extra onions and mustard.

  James typed back, OK.

  Rosalyn was right. With William O’Ryan leaving on a book tour, this trip was James’s best shot to go through Peter’s belongings. They didn’t have any time to waste, with Dubois’s execution date approaching.

  The prison visit had only brought that into sharper reality. It also sharpened the sting of guilt. James had backed off from the investigation in the 1960s as instructed, as threatened, and for good reason. But regardless, Leonard Dubois had spent every moment since his arrest in 1965 locked behind the razor wire. A man had only one life.

  James paced the room, flipped through the television channels, and finally pulled on his coat. The smells of New York changed at every turn. Espresso, pizza, car exhaust, sea air, sewer, and fragrant flowers took turns assaulting his nose. The scent of hot dogs drew him to a stand at the corner of a park.

  “With mustard and extra onions, please,” he said.

  The next afternoon James climbed out of a taxi in front of the Manhattan skyscraper that housed the international news network and cable channel where O’Ryan worked. He opened the glass doors and approached the long reception counter with numerous people working at the desk.

  “James Waldren here for William O’Ryan. He’s expecting me,” he told the woman who greeted him. She asked for his identification, which she then scanned on a computer screen. Post-9/11 New York was a different world from his days in the Bureau.

  “He’ll be right down,” the woman said as she hung up a telephone.

  James looked out onto busy Sixth Avenue swarming with taxis, vehicles, and people walking quickly beneath the drizzly afternoon.

  “Special Agent Waldren. It’s been a long time.” William O’Ryan strode toward him. The kid journalist was middle-aged now, fit, well groomed, and sharply dressed in a tailored suit. They shook hands heartily.

  “I’m retired Special Agent Waldren now,” James said with a chuckle.

  “You don’t act it. Retirement is supposed to be about fishing trips, not digging into an old investigation, am I right?”

  “I tried that and some woodworking, but this case wouldn’t leave me alone.”

  O’Ryan motioned for James to follow him. They went through security and up an escalator.

  “I can appreciate that. I don’t have time for a dozen or more stories that I’m dying to track down. Let’s hope you have some progress today. I’m having a hard time leaving you to this. It’s one of my unresolved stories as well, you know.”

  “Yes, I remember that green reporter out to make his mark. Time has been good to you.”

  O’Ryan laughed as James followed him through a series of elevators and doorways that opened with his security badge.

  “We try to fight time, but she never loses. Can I get you anything?” O’Ryan paused at a small kitchen area.

  “I’m good, maybe later.”

  “Help yourself. There’s coffee, tea, a vending machine around the corner, and a few sandwiches in the refrigerator left over from lunch. You’re going to be here for a while,” O’Ryan said, turning down a long hallway.

  They stopped at an unmarked door, and James noticed the names across the hall for offices of news personalities he’d watched on television. O’Ryan unlocked the door and flipped on the light.

  “Here we are,” he said. “I didn’t open the boxes yet, but I wiped them down. They’ve been in the back of my storage since Peter’s sister died. By then I’d long since closed that case and moved on. No reason or time for me to go through a dead man’s old notes.”

  “But you couldn’t get rid of it?” James said, looking at the white storage boxes neatly stacked on the floor with the name P. Hughes written across the front. There were several chairs and a long empty table in the windowless room. Against one wall a large copy machine sat idling beneath a shelf of office supplies.

  “Possibilities can’t be tossed away. You should see my storage area. Someday I would’ve opened these up—maybe instead of fishing. I’m glad you can get to it before then. You have me intrigued; it’s tough not to stay, but I have quite a bit to wrap up before I leave the office. Remember, if there’s a story here, you come to me first.”

  James was struck by the opportunity standing before him.

  “Well, actually, I do have a story for you. One that involves a man about to be executed in Texas.”

  O’Ryan paused at the door. “You have my attention. What’s up?”

  “He didn’t commit the crime. My daughter serves as a federal prosecutor in Boston; she’s helping me with it. I’m hoping the evidence is in here perhaps.”

  “So you aren’t here about Peter—what he was doing behind the scenes, what made Hoover so furious at him.”

  “Hoover? What are you talking about?” James asked.

  O’Ryan glanced at his watch. “Hate to do this, but I need to get downstairs for some quick shots, and I have some calls to make before the end of the day. Then I’ll come back, and we’ll get this ironed out. For now, see what you can find.”

  As he heard O’Ryan’s footsteps disappear down the hall, James stared at the storage boxes.

  In the years after Peter’s disgrace from the Bureau and exit fro
m the Waldrens’ lives, James entertained all manner of reprehensible thoughts about the man. Maybe he’d been a double agent, working for the Communists. Had he been bought by the Mafia? Or was he a traitor to his country in one way or another? Now O’Ryan mentioned the head of the FBI himself, J. Edgar Hoover, being furious at Peter. Hoover was certainly not an enemy anyone wanted to have. Even US presidents, world leaders, and A-list actors and actresses were terrified of the man.

  Perhaps all the answers lay within these boxes.

  James found a pair of scissors on a shelf by the copy machine and cut through the tape on each box, freeing the lids.

  The first storage box was filled with packets of photographs. The next one was cushioned with foam bubbles and appeared filled with framed images, awards, and degrees.

  Another box looked as if Peter’s sister had simply dumped the contents of his desk inside. There were notes, writing instruments, paper clips, gambling chips, beer caps, candy bar wrappers, and several yo-yos.

  James pulled out a yo-yo, wound it, and flipped it down and back up. He’d forgotten how much his friend liked yo-yos. Peter had tried teaching Lisa once, but she was too young and ended up pulling it around the room by the string. They’d laughed watching her until she swung it around and nearly broke the television.

  Beneath the next lid, James found perfectly organized files with marked tabs with Peter’s personals: insurance, utility bills, social security benefits, investments, rental agreements … Nothing out of the ordinary that James could see.

  The fifth box had more files. When James read the tabs, he realized these weren’t personal documents but Peter’s investigations. The tabs were neatly organized and alphabetized.

  One caught his eye: Gray, B. (1965).

  James pulled out the file and felt his heart rate increase.

  Inside the file folder James found a packet of photographs and moved to the table to set each image out. They were photos from the civil rights rally, but completely out of order.

  He stopped when he saw himself and Lisa through the crowd. The image reminded him of his photographs of Lisa and Molly, only these had been taken from farther away. In this picture, he and Lisa had just arrived and were holding hands.

  The film negatives fluttered out of the pack and onto the table. They were cut in several pieces but were numbered along the bottom. James rearranged the photos by matching them to the negatives, raising the negative to the light to see the silhouetted image. Picture after picture, he laid them into a timeline that led up to Benjamin Gray’s death.

  Something was wrong with the numbering. Then James realized that some of the negatives had been removed; that’s why they were cut into so many pieces. The matching photographs were missing as well.

  James studied the progression and contents of each photograph. In one he saw the entourage of Benjamin Gray moving up the street. But that was the only photo including the man. Most were random shots of the crowd along the sidewalk and marchers with their placards.

  On the outside of the photo sleeve, James read his friend’s handwriting from when he filled out the information for developing the film. Single prints, 35mm film, 28 images.

  James counted twenty-two photos on the table. Six images were missing from the negatives, and the printed pictures were gone too. Someone, perhaps Peter, had made sure the photographs would never be seen. Most of the missing photos were at the end of the roll, near the time of Benjamin Gray’s death. Two pictures were cut from earlier shots of the rally.

  Where were the missing photographs? And what did they show?

  James studied the images but finally conceded that he’d hit a dead end. He moved to the rest of the documents in the file.

  His impulse was to dig through the file and every storage box to find something, anything, but he knew better. By going through every piece carefully and methodically, he’d have less risk of missing something. He needed to be as thorough and precise as the time allowed.

  James found an official FBI report cover as if Peter had filed a report, but the report itself was missing.

  The date he’d typed was that of the civil rights rally. The time was late afternoon. The reporting officer was their old superior, Hartgraves. It noted that four pages were included, but the cover was the only page in the folder. James flipped through the rest of the folder but only found newspaper clippings about the shooting.

  He closed the folder. But if Peter had filed an official report with the FBI, why wasn’t anything done to save Leonard Dubois?

  James’s eyes moved to the display of photographs lined up across the table.

  Why would Peter save the entire roll of film from the day of the parade except for those six photographs? Peter had to know about a cover-up. And from the looks of it, that extended beyond the Fort Worth PD and included James’s own Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I hope you’re hungry,” Molly said as she drove up to a two-story home overlooking a sparkling lake. The driveway and street in the exclusive subdivision were lined with vehicles.

  “Are we intruding on a party?” Lisa asked as she took in the cars. This was supposed to be an intimate meeting with Molly’s mother. It looked more like a family reunion.

  “That would be my sister’s doing,” Molly said with a sigh. “I bet she told our cousin Lacy we were coming out and Lacy wanted to say hello, then Lacy told Aunt Miranda, and before long they were talking about food and who else would be hurt if they weren’t invited, and here we have it.”

  Lisa counted more than ten cars.

  “I always wanted a big family, but this is a lot,” Lisa said as Molly drove past the cars and up to the house. “As a child I begged my mom for a brother or a sister. Unsuccessfully. I swore that when I grew up I’d have six children. Or a dozen.”

  Molly glanced her way, then sighed dramatically. “I thank the good Lord for my family, I really do, but they can’t leave anything alone. It’s bad enough that I’m single, and though I need to lose fifteen pounds, my aunts will say I’m too thin and try stuffing me full of food. They’ll be stuffing it into you too when they see that figure.”

  “So I’ll be leaving here with my pants unbuttoned?”

  “Maybe unzipped too. We should have worn stretch pants.” Molly turned off the engine.

  On the drive, Molly had told Lisa stories of her family. The initial discomfort between them had flipped like a light switch since yesterday in Lisa’s hotel room. It seemed the attempt on Dubois’s life and the intruder in her room had lifted any lasting suspicions Molly had about Lisa and her father, and Lisa’s impairing awkwardness had dissipated.

  Molly told Lisa that her mother had recently moved from an apartment into the house of Molly’s sister and brother-in-law ninety minutes north of Dallas. Lisa wasn’t sure why she’d expected a more modest home, and it bothered her that she’d made an assumption. Molly didn’t display a sense of prosperity, but her sister was certainly more affluent than the usual minister’s lifestyle.

  “It’s beautiful here,” Lisa said as they stepped out of the car. The warm spring day was filled with the scent of rain and sweet flowering jasmine. Children shouted happily as they played down at the sparkling lake that was dressed with tall green trees. Lisa caught the rich smell of food drifting from the house.

  Molly reached into the backseat and pulled out a covered pie dish.

  “Mom’s favorite sweet potato pie, but I think a feast awaits us.”

  The red front door swung open as they approached, and Lisa and Molly were swept into a ruckus of hugs and greetings. Lisa couldn’t remember any of the names; there were too many at once. Molly’s family encompassed every age from baby to elderly, and they peppered her with questions about herself until Lisa felt the urge to bolt. She was accustomed to polite social events, not family parties overcome with noise, laughter, and personal questions.

  “Did you leave your husband back in Boston?”

  “Do you work a
t that Pentagon? What is a federal prosecutor?”

  “I know a lady in Boston. Ellen Robins. She cuts hair, do you know her?”

  Molly steered Lisa through her family, apologizing at times for various comments, and around the house, decorated in a Southern style with peach and turquoise accents. Tall windows offered views of the lake at every turn. Lisa kept meeting people until they reached a kitchen laden with dishes of food and more cooking on the stovetop.

  “You had to turn this into a family reunion, really, Evelyn?” Molly said after Lisa was introduced to Molly’s sister. Evelyn wore an apron and red dress with matching red lipstick and heels. Lisa felt underdressed in her jeans, designer T-shirt, and cardigan sweater.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen. Once I told Aunt Miranda you were bringing someone from Boston, she wanted to pop by and meet her, then she told Lacy, Eva May, Jennica, and Auntie Peeps. It moved on from there,” Evelyn said with a roll of her eyes that reminded Lisa of Molly. Evelyn grabbed up oven mitts and pulled out a large ham that appeared worthy of Christmas dinner.

  “I can’t believe all this food,” Lisa said. Her family gatherings often centered on food from favorite bistros and bakeries. This was all home cooking, and enough to feed a small homeless shelter.

  “This is a normal family get-together. You should see the food at weddings and funerals.” Evelyn laughed as she checked the meat thermometer on the ham.

  “Where’s Mama?” Molly asked.

  “Getting some fresh air on the back porch. Go on out and say hello. She’s having a good day. She’ll be pleased you arrived. That’s all she’s talked about all morning. But food is served in fifteen minutes.”

  Lisa followed Molly toward the large glass doors. They stopped to greet a couple with an adorable baby boy in the father’s arms, and it took another few minutes to pull away.

  Then Molly opened the French doors to a long back porch that overlooked the lake. A petite older woman wrapped in a crocheted blanket sat at the far end with her face upturned toward the bit of sunlight shining through the trees.