by David Ellis
She gets up and turns to leave. A flashlight shines in her face. There is illumination out here but it’s still relatively dark. The flashlight blinds her. She freezes. Her body goes cold. But if it has to start right here, so be it.
“I’m a federal agent, Mrs. Pagone. Please put down that shovel.”
A federal agent?
“Mrs. Pagone, you didn’t kill Sam Dillon with that trophy and I assume you won’t try to kill me with that shovel. Now please, put down the shovel and back up ten steps.”
Allison complies, dropping the shovel and back-pedaling.
“I’m Special Agent Jane McCoy.” The agent shines the flashlight on her credentials, which she holds out. “FBI.”
“I don’t understand what this is about,” Allison says. “I don’t understand what you mean about Sam Dillon.”
“No?” McCoy asks. “And that trophy from the Midwest Manufacturers’ Association you just buried? No idea what that is, either?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Let me see your hands, please.”
Allison raises her hands.
“Turn them around, palms facing you.”
Allison reverses her hands.
“I wonder if that broken fingernail matches a nail my partner just found by Sam Dillon’s body,” McCoy says. “What other clues did you leave, Mrs. Pagone? A business card on the kitchen table?”
“Whoever you are, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know about Jessica, Mrs. Pagone. I know what happened. I was there.”
Allison closes her eyes. They even know her name.
“You broke a nail, you moved that earring next to Sam’s body. You disposed of the murder weapon.”
“She didn’t mean to kill him,” Allison says.
The federal agent is silent.
“Please,” Allison says, realizing how ridiculous her plea must sound.
“Mrs. Pagone, we have a lot to talk about. We can help each other.”
Allison’s heart pounds. What is happening?
“We have a lot to discuss. Will you come with me to my car around the corner, so I don’t freeze my butt off out here?”
Allison slowly moves toward the federal agent. The agent is trying to put her at ease. “What about the shovel?” she asks.
“I’ll take it. Please walk past me and stop.”
Allison passes the shovel, passes the federal agent, who moves well out of her way, and stops. She hears the agent pick up the shovel, iron scraping against pavement.
“Mrs. Pagone,” the agent says, “I’m prepared to agree with you. I’m prepared to swear that your daughter didn’t kill Sam Dillon. But I need your help.”
2:57 A.M.
Allison drives around Jessica’s two-door coupe parked on the driveway and parks her own car in the garage. She leaves the garage door open and stands next to her car.
She looks at her watch. It’s almost three in the morning. She spent over an hour talking with Agent McCoy. Almost three in the morning, Jessica could very well have fallen asleep, overwhelmed emotionally.
Allison is hoping not.
She waits one, two minutes. Maybe Jessica did fall asleep. That will make this tougher.
The interior door from the garage opens. Jessica sticks her head out.
Allison brings a finger to her mouth, shakes her head slowly.
Jessica doesn’t speak, which is the point here. She waits a moment, trying to understand.
Allison backs up onto the driveway and waves a cupped hand to Jessica.
Jessica slowly closes the door and walks out to her mother. She looks Allison over as she gets closer, her eyes slowly growing in horror.
“Mother—what did you do?” Jessica whispers.
“Everything’s fine,” Allison says, drawing close to her daughter but not touching her. “Something is going on that neither of us knew about. Something about Sam.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, Jess, and you can’t—”
“Tell me, Mother. Tell me what happened.”
“This is what I can tell you. Nobody is going to connect you to this. Sam was—there was something we know nothing about. Sam was involved.”
“Sam was involved in what? How do you know this?”
“Jess, I don’t know, either, not the details. I just—you have to understand. I talked to somebody. Don’t ask me who because I won’t tell you. No one is going to say you killed him.”
“I didn’t kill him, Mother.” Jessica stands back. “You don’t believe me.”
“Of course, I believe you.”
Allison believes Jessica because she has to believe her. She cannot fathom not believing in Jessica’s innocence. There is no other acceptable alternative.
“I’m prepared to have three federal agents swear, under oath, that Jessica didn’t kill Sam Dillon,” the agent, McCoy, told her an hour ago. “We’re prepared to say that this other man did it.”
Allison had been in no position to protest, because the federal agent was agreeing with her—Jessica didn’t kill Sam. But her mind told her what her heart tried desperately to ignore: Jane McCoy wasn’t agreeing with Allison, exactly. She was saying she was willing to agree, if Allison helped her.
“Of course I believe you,” Allison repeats.
“Did you go to the house?” Jessica asks.
“Yes.”
“Did you get the earring?”
“I left it there, Jess.”
“You left it—”
“It’s my earring, Jessica. Mine, not yours. And you have never, ever borrowed them. Okay?”
“I don’t understand what you’re doing, Mother. I don’t understand who you talked to or what they told you. I don’t understand why we’re standing outside instead of going inside.”
Yes, it is cold, very cold outside, and Jessica is only wearing a blouse.
“This is what you need to know,” Allison says. “And this is all you can know, for now. Sam was involved in something else. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, but he had some knowledge, or at least some people thought he did. And our government is interested in that other thing. They are willing to say that this is the reason he was killed. Nothing to do with you or me. They’re going to say that. But I have to help them out.”
“You’re going to help them how?”
“Keep your voice down,” Allison says. “They think my house might be bugged.”
“What?” Jessica shivers, looks back at the house.
“Voice down, Jessica. It’s okay. I’m going to be fine. I’m being protected.”
“This is—this is related to what Sam knew about?”
“Yes. They’re afraid that I might know, too. I don’t. But that’s why my house is bugged.”
“This is crazy, Mother.”
“It is what it is,” she tells her daughter. “We deal with it.” She reaches for her daughter’s shoulders but pulls back, doesn’t want to touch her with her dirty hands. “Jess, the police will probably think that I killed Sam.”
“No.”
“It’s okay. I’m covered. It’s all being worked out. But you have to understand what is going to happen. They’re going to come to me, the police. They’re probably going to charge me. People are going to think I’m a killer. It’s going to be tough for you. But I’m going to be okay. I’m not going to prison. You’ll have to trust me on that. It’s going to be hard.”
“Because you went to his house?” Jessica’s face deteriorates into tears. “Mother,” she manages, her voice breaking, “what did you do there?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to tell you anything else. You can’t know what’s going on, Jess. You can’t. You have to trust me. You trust me, don’t you?”
“I—of course.”
“Okay. Did you—have you spoken to anyone tonight? Make any calls or anything like—”
“No,” she says. “I’ve been sitting here freaked out. You were gone so l
ong.”
“I know, baby. I’m sorry.” She motions to the house. “We have to get back inside. Now, listen. I’m going to tell you inside, for the benefit of whoever’s listening, that I killed Sam. Just refuse to believe it. That’s fine. We’ll talk for a few minutes, then you’ll go to bed. Try to sleep, Jess. I promise you we’re going to be fine. Then, in the morning, you have to leave. You have to leave and not come back to this house until this thing is over. You can’t speak to your dad about this, either. I’m going to talk to him, okay? But you can’t. When this is over, you’ll understand why.”
Jessica looks back at the house. “We have to go in,” she says.
“Yes.” Allison steers her daughter, whispers in her ear. “This is going to turn out fine, Jess,” she promises.
ONE DAY EARLIER
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7
7:05P.M.
Secrets. She lived with them for over a decade, maybe since the day she and Mat married, though she cannot rewind and know this. She did not love him. She did not love the man she spent over twenty years with, with whom she had a daughter.
Secrets never stay secret. She couldn’t live with it forever, and once Jessica was in college, it seemed the time.
And secrets, now, with Sam. An ethical dilemma, he said twice over the phone during the last week, but he wouldn’t elaborate. Wouldn’t even discuss it with her face to face.
A secret. Sam wouldn’t tell her.
And neither had she told him. A secret. Probably the same secret. She knows, too.
The FBI already seems to know. They have already seized Mat’s bank records. Mat told her—in the way he does—over dinner, in January. They had promised to do it, to see each other, to keep in touch. Mat often drank too much but really overdid it on that occasion.
They think I bribed some senators, he said, spitting out the words as if they were poison.
It didn’t take Einstein to fill in the gaps. It had been a big victory for Mat, when he got that bill out of the Senate last year, the prescription-drug bill. A big but controversial victory, involving a sudden vote change on the part of three different senators. That kind of behind-the-scenes arm-twisting might look bad to the public, but it makes legends out of lobbyists. Mat was a big winner in that deal.
Allison had noticed it when they were settling up on the divorce in December, a month earlier. Several large withdrawals from their bank account. About thirty thousand dollars, withdrawn in cash, over the last several months. She decided that she wouldn’t care, wouldn’t mention it. Maybe he had a mistress. Maybe he was trying to protect himself financially, stealing from the pot before it was divided up. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She had plenty of her own money. If a peaceful resolution of the marriage cost her thirty thousand, it was the best money she had ever spent.
She didn’t know Mat was putting the cash in the hands of state legislators.
An ethical dilemma, Sam told her, twice in the last week, over the phone. He wouldn’t elaborate. A secret. He must have known.
She had the same secret, and neither of them wanted to tell the other because of who was involved.
Allison closes the book she’s reading. She’s hungry. It’s just after seven in the evening and she hasn’t eaten all day. Her stomach is in revolt.
Oh, she was so stupid, overreacting like a schoolgirl. Sam was admiring Jessica at the party, and she drives all the way down to the capital to make Sam fire her? Even accuses him of sleeping with Jess?
She had connected the three things like a paranoid, insecure child. Her daughter’s comment, that she was interested in a guy at work and Allison wouldn’t approve. Sam’s mention of an ethical dilemma. And then Sam’s look at Jessica at that party.
She covers her face with a hand. She wishes she could wipe yesterday off the calendar. Just remove Friday, February the sixth from the books, and explain to her daughter in a thoughtful, mature way that the man for whom she is carrying a torch is actually Mommy’s boyfriend now.
She’ll do it. She’ll call Sam and apologize for her childish behavior.
She’ll talk to Jessica and explain everything.
7:20 P.M.
Jane McCoy stands, silently, over the body of Sam Dillon. Owen Harrick walks out of the kitchen. “It’s clean,” he says. “We swept the whole place. The wire is gone.”
“Positive?” McCoy whispers.
“Positive. It’s clean, Jane.”
Other agents, two men and a woman, emerge from other parts of the house, all standing around the body of Sam Dillon.
“So we’re clean here,” McCoy confirms.
Every agent nods.
“Okay,” she says, her voice above a whisper for the first time—far above a whisper. “Then can someone tell me how the hell this happened?”
“Nobody thought he’d kill him,” says Owen Harrick. “He never gave any indication. You saw Haroon’s e-mail, Jane.”
Yes, she did. Since he first arrived in the U.S., Ram Haroon has had an e-mail address set up—[email protected]. Whenever Haroon needed to communicate with the U.S. government, he sent an e-mail to himself, secure in the knowledge that the government was monitoring the site and reading the message, too. He would have to be careful with the text, in the incredibly unlikely event that the Liberation Front was hacking into the site, too, but he would be able to get his message across to the feds.
It had been through this e-mail address that Haroon informed the FBI, a few months ago, that he had made contact with a front man who was now calling himself Larry Evans. It was through this e-mail address that Haroon informed them, last week, that Larry Evans was carefully watching two people, Sam Dillon and Allison Pagone, because there was some fear that Dillon had become wise to the operation at Flanagan-Maxx and had told his girlfriend, Allison, about it.
“Haroon said Evans was going to watch and wait,” Harrick agrees. “Not kill.”
“You guys didn’t see him come in?” McCoy asks, looking at the trio of agents assigned to watch the house.
“No. He slipped in when the food was delivered about six-twenty.”
They know this now. The Bureau has been watching and monitoring, by video, the property surrounding Sam Dillon’s house. Larry Evans was good. He snuck into the house when Sam Dillon was answering the front door. The problem is, Larry Evans not only escaped Sam Dillon’s attention; he faked out three federal agents.
“We saw him leaving, which was when we called you,” one of the agents says.
Yes, and then they went to the video and hit rewind, saw Larry Evans pick the lock through the back entrance at six-twenty—just as Sam Dillon was answering the front door—and saw him leave again about ten minutes after seven.
“I can’t believe this,” McCoy mumbles to herself. She looks at Harrick. “We’re good on Allison Pagone?”
“Yeah. We’ve got her covered.”
“Make sure of it, Owen. No one else is dying tonight.”
“What do we do now?” Harrick asks.
McCoy walks around the room delicately. “We don’t do anything, is what we do. We can’t be seen here. We have to go.”
“We leave this body here?” Agent Cline asks.
“Hell yes, we do. What do you suggest? We call the police? Maybe we should just call up Larry Evans and tell him we’re interested in him.”
“Okay, okay.” Harrick waves his hands. “Let’s get out of here, everyone.”
McCoy is the first to walk out. A voice comes through her earpiece.
“Agent McCoy?” It’s one of her team, watching the perimeter of the property.
“Yeah,” McCoy says into her collar.
“Someone’s driving down the street. A Mazda two-door coupe. I’ll run the plates.”
“How close?” McCoy asks.
“Very. You guys better clear out. Looks like it’s stopping at Dillon’s house.”
7:24 P.M.
“Jessica Pagone?” McCoy says into her collar microphone. “The dau
ghter?”
“Affirmative,” the voice comes back through her earpiece. “Allison Pagone’s daughter was just in his house. Less than three minutes. Just drove away.”
McCoy looks at Harrick, who is also listening through an earpiece.
“Go back in there in one minute,” McCoy says into her microphone. “Rear entry. Look around. Out.”
“Out.”
McCoy looks at her partner. “What the hell is that about?”
Harrick shakes his head. “Allison’s daughter? She knows Dillon?”
“Shit, I don’t know.” McCoy’s legs squirm in the car. McCoy and Harrick are parked the next street over from the street on which Sam Dillon lives, or lived, past tense.
“She was only there two minutes,” Harrick says. “She saw him lying there on the carpet and flipped out, presumably. But where’s she going now?”
“Who knows?”
“Do we do anything?” Harrick asks. “I’m not sure we do.”
“There’s nothing to do,” McCoy agrees, trying to calm herself. “So she found him dead. Someone was going to. It’s not like we’re going to hand Larry Evans over to the police or anything.”
“I wonder if Jessica called the cops.” Harrick pats the steering wheel.
McCoy shrugs. “Probably. Who knows? I’m sending our team back in, just to look over the place. I doubt Jessica did anything in there. She didn’t have the time. She probably saw him, wigged out, and got the hell out of Dodge.”
“That’s what I’d do,” Harrick agrees.
“Let’s just sit tight and wait a while. We’ll keep our guys in position after they look the place over. Sooner or later, the police will be coming, and you and I will have to get out.”
“We don’t tell them anything?”