by James Carver
“No. Not this time. I ran into your brother, Earl, last night, and he was out looking to give me a hiding.”
A light went on in Clay’s eyes. “Right. Oh boy. I’m so sorry, Father. Greg will tell you that I’ve pulled Earl out of more scrapes than we’ve all had hot dinners. Is this what this is about?”
“No,” said Devlin firmly. “What happened between me and Earl was private, not a police matter, and I’m not looking to make it one.”
“Clay, this is much more serious. But it is about Earl. We have information that puts Earl at the scene of last night’s homicide at around one in the morning. Brendan died at three.”
“Jesus… No… That can’t be… That just can’t be…” Clay stuttered and then fell silent. For once the congressman was speechless.
“Yeah. I’m afraid so. We really need to know where Earl is. We need to question him urgently.”
“He’s…he’s out at a cattle auction in Hillsboro. I can call him?”
“No. Don’t call him, Clay. We’ll send a unit out there to pick him up right away,” said Stevens. “If by any chance he comes back in the meantime, call me immediately.”
“Of course…absolutely.” Clay’s reply was faltering. He was stunned, like all that wind and charm had been taken out of him.
“Clay, did you know Earl was in a relationship with the boy who was killed last night?” asked Stevens.
“What? No…I had no idea…”
“But you knew he was gay?”
“I…yeah. I knew. Sort of…”
“Sort of?”
“I knew. I knew. We just never, ever acknowledged it. Ever.”
“I don’t need to tell you how bad this looks, Clay. Earl has a relationship to the victim, and there’s strong evidence he was at the scene of the crime shortly before the murder. That’s before we take his track record into account. There are also strong parallels with the Long Pine murder. So we need as a matter of urgency to question Earl about that too.”
“Jesus. Yeah, of course. I can’t believe it’s Earl. I know all about his temper and…but two murders? Like those two people were murdered?” Clay suddenly looked at Stevens, with a directness Devlin hadn’t seen before. “But I’ll do everything in my power to do what’s right. If Earl did do these terrible things, then I’ll do what needs to be done to make him face the consequences.”
“We’ll need to conduct a search of Earl’s quarters.”
“Whatever you need. Absolutely, Greg. Anything. Anything.”
24
Katy Fox had been traveling along a lonely stretch of Route 40 for a while before she spotted what looked like her destination. Just south of the two-lane was an old building twinkling in the hard early sun. It looked deserted and in need of a fresh paint of coat, like an old gas station without any pumps. The only sign of life was a pink neon Open sign hung in the window. Fox took the exit and rolled up in front of the entrance, a small faded gray door.
When she got inside, she was relieved to see the interior was in much better condition than the exterior. It was sort of homely with wood-paneled walls and checked tablecloths. Apart from an elderly couple eating in the corner, it was empty. The only staff were one kitchen cook and the waitress who brought over menus. Fox ordered black coffee and apple pie and waited.
Ten minutes later, a thin gray-haired man in green-tinted aviators entered. He looked in need of a haircut and a shave, and his tweed jacket and trousers were worn and rumpled. He immediately recognized Fox and joined her, ordering a coffee for himself. As he sat down, Fox caught a whiff of liquor and cheap aftershave.
“Fox.” The man nodded. He kept his aviators on.
“Well, well. Roger Webb, long time no see. Nice place. Your regular haunt?”
“It’s cozy and not many people know it’s here.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s like it doesn’t want anyone to know it’s here.”
“I hear you’ve been busy since we last met. Divorced, aren’t you?”
“Jesus. Does everybody know my business?”
“Best thing for people like us. Marriage is an unnatural state.” Roger adjusted his aviators and chuckled. “I saw the Long Pine story by the way. Well, who didn’t? Great stuff. About time someone double fucked Walker and Cutter. Couple of prize assholes. Well done, Fox.”
“Thanks, Roger.” The waitress brought over coffee and filled both their cups up.
“So,” said Fox, “how you keeping?”
“Unemployed is how I’m keeping. Man of my age getting a job is very fucking unlikely.”
“Sorry. If I hear anything…”
“You won’t. Nobody does.” Roger took a sip of coffee and sighed. “Sorry, Fox. I get bitter, can’t help it.”
“That’s okay. I understand.”
“You were always one of the good ones though. Not a lick-ass like the rest of them. Speaking of which, how’s Linda Chambers, the queen bitch of the Dayton Sun?”
“She’s the same. Half-boss, half-bitch.”
“All bitch I’d say.”
“You want some pie, Roger? My treat.” Fox glanced down at her plate strewn with crumbs. “Gotta say, the apple pie here’s pretty good.”
Roger smacked his lips. “Yeah, that would be nice.”
Fox ordered over another plate of pie, and Roger shoveled it down.
“So, Fox, I’m intrigued. I get a call from you, and of all things, it’s about Trayder Stein.”
“Yeah. I’m just dipping my toe really. Feeling my way around the subject.”
“What’s the interest?”
“Nothing very firm. Someone I ran into gave me a very loose lead, nothing more than vague rumor actually, that Stein might be into…something. That’s all. That’s all I got. And I don’t think the guy who told me this has any idea what it might be. So I looked into any past stuff on Stein, and I saw you had something going on him just before you left. Must have been something pretty juicy ’cause it had been put on the legal risk list. But I couldn’t find any evidence of an actual article by you.”
Roger looked over the top of his aviators, his default pose as he sat stooped over his coffee. Always furtive, like someone might come looking for him at any time.
“Yeah. I had something. But someone on the editorial board got a call from Stein’s lawyers telling us to back off.”
“Really?”
“Really. And the paper and Linda Chambers were only too happy to let it drop. Everyone knew I was headed out of the building anyways. Didn’t know they’d junked all the copies of the piece though. That’s fuckin’ news to me.”
“What was the story?”
Roger looked thoughtful and traced the rim of his cup with a finger. “It was about money. Money going from Freedom Medical to Logan Enterprises. Stein is the financial advisor who oversaw it. There were really huge sums transferring out into an offshore fund and then back across to Logan Enterprises.”
“How did you find this out?”
“I got a lead from a friend in the Secret Service. It stunk of tax evasion or maybe outright corporate theft. They were looking into it but got shut down by the Secretary of State’s Office. So he let me feed from the trough for a while. But I couldn’t make anything out of it either. Whatever Stein has got going on, it’s like a fucking fortress.”
“So, you let the story go?”
Roger clenched his jaw and glanced sideways over his frames out of the window. “I had to.”
“That’s not like you, Roger.”
“You don’t understand, Fox, I had to let it all go. The story, the job. I’m hangin’ on, baby.” He looked back at Fox and pointed a finger at his temple. “I got mental issues. I’m on medication. Heaps of fuckin’ medication. I got paranoid. Kept having all sorts of crazy fears. Thought people were following me and shit… Turns out I’m too fragile for the job, Fox.”
“I’m sorry, Roger.”
“S’okay. All helped with my payoff. Anyway, I couldn’t find anything, and I do
ubt you could either. It looked to me like one big dead end. So my advice would be to let it drop too. I wasted too much of my time on Stein; you shouldn’t waste any of yours. Tell your friend the same. Besides, you’ve already started hunting bigger game: Halton PD and the mayor.”
“Okay. If that’s your advice, Roger…”
“It is.”
The two talked for a while more and reminisced over the good times at the Dayton Sun. Then Roger said goodbye, leaving a disappointed Fox stirring her black coffee. She was sad to see a once talented and determined investigative journalist now a shadow of his former self and wondered why she was wasting time chasing down shapeless rumors. She heard Roger’s car exit the lot and paid the bill.
As she made for the door, the waitress called after her.
“Excuse me, miss. You’ve left something.” Fox looked back and saw she was holding an envelope.
“Oh, no…that’s not mine...”
“Then it must have been the gentleman you were with. It was on the seat where he was sitting.”
“Oh, okay. I guess he must have left it. Thank you.” The waitress handed it to Fox. To her surprise the envelope had her name written on it. She opened it and pulled out the contents. There was a note inside that said, “I never did give you a wedding present. Love, Roger.” And wrapped in the note was a USB stick.
25
Stevens had slept on the floor in his office in a sleeping bag he’d pulled from the equipment room. He was woken by Officer Miller knocking on his door to tell him a mixed bag of news. Earl had not been found at Hillsboro despite an extensive search, nor had he returned to the bunkhouse or the ranch house that evening. He had failed to respond to Halton PD’s attempts to contact him, and no one on the ranch had reported seeing him. However, a search of Earl’s living quarters had turned up a .22 revolver with his prints on. And, most importantly, Miami Valley Crime Lab had come back with a positive ID on Earl’s DNA found in the blood at the crime scene.
As Stevens, aching just about everywhere from a night on a hard floor, pulled on the uniform he’d worn the day before, his cell went off.
“Hi, Greg, it’s Clay.”
“Hi, Clay. This is an early morning call.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s important. We think we know where Earl is. Come down to the ranch. Oh, and bring a big search team.”
Clay finished on the phone with Stevens and turned to Packer. They were standing in a pasture in the soft haze of the early-morning sun. Drizzle and mist hung in the air around them.
“This is turning out to be one unholy shitstorm,” said Clay as both men looked on at an abandoned all-terrain vehicle sitting by a stretch of broken fence. On the other side of the fence, a narrow dusty track led off into Long Pine.
“Crazy bastard’s gone off into the forest. What the hell is he playing at?”
“Maybe he’s planning to do himself some harm,” said Packer in his matter-of-fact manner.
“Y’know, he used to head off into Long Pine when he was a boy and Dad was out to give him a beating. Did him no good then, won’t do him any good now. Poor son of a bitch.”
26
As soon as Devlin had got Fox’s text, he raced out of Halton and east toward Columbus. The text she had sent just said, “Have got something. Unexpected” with the address of a diner in West Jefferson. Devlin found the turnoff from Route 40 and, like Fox before him, thought he’d come to the wrong place when he saw what looked to be a condemned building. He parked by the pink neon Open sign and walked in. It was early afternoon, and the place had got a little busier since Fox had first arrived that morning.
“Hello.” The deep, rumbling voice shook Fox out of her trancelike state, and she peered up from her laptop to find Devlin standing over her.
“Hello, Devlin.”
“Well, this is off the beaten path.”
“Yeah, not my usual choice.” Devlin sat, and Fox took off her reading glasses.
“You got here fast,” she said.
“Your text got me here fast. What have you found?”
“I found something. I definitely found something. I did what I promised and went back over any stories we’d got on Stein.” Fox stopped dead when she saw the waitress come over. Devlin ordered coffee, and Fox had a refill. Then, when the waitress was out of earshot, she continued in a kind of urgent whisper, like she was afraid they were being bugged or in danger of being overheard. Like Roger Webb’s paranoia had rubbed off on her.
“I found this one story we’d dropped about six months ago. It was looking into a financial link between Freedom Medical and Logan Enterprises. Stein is the financial advisor for both companies, so that’s how he came into it. I spoke to the reporter who was investigating it; apparently massive and irregular funds were crossing from Freedom into an offshore account. He’d got Stein’s copy of the Logan Enterprise accounts from a contact in the Secret Service who’d investigated but couldn’t nail anything down. My friend was looking into it too, but the Dayton Sun board came under pressure from Stein’s lawyers and dropped it. But he slipped me Stein’s copy of the Logan accounts. And the accounts show the funds turning up on their books.”
“What’s bad about that?”
“There are only two reasons companies go through an offshore: taxes and transparency. And then there’s the amount of money. Fifty million.”
“Fifty million?”
“Yeah. From Freedom through a shady offshore and ending up in Logan Enterprises.”
“Why couldn’t the Secret Service nail this?”
“Because the Secretary of State’s Office intervened and shut the investigation down.”
As interesting as that all sounded, Devlin was more focused on one question. “What about Ed?”
“He’s mentioned here.” Fox clicked up a spreadsheet and scanned down it. “I’ve got a payroll with your friend Ed James down as employed by Freedom, not Logan Enterprises, as a chauffeur and delivery driver.”
“A chauffeur? Of course. That’s why he took the ticket for Dr. Lazard.”
“Dr. Lazard? I know that name.” Fox put her reading glasses back on, stared at her laptop, and scrolled through the file. “He’s down as a consultant for Freedom Medical and works at the Halton Medical Center.”
“Yeah, I knew about that.”
“Well, the financial arrangement of the medical center is a bit unusual. It was set up the end of last tax year, a gift to the town from Freedom and Logan Enterprises. But it’s just sitting there on the books, a joint liability with Freedom.”
“What’s unusual about that?”
“It could be tax exempt; it should be tax exempt. Given its purpose, it would be a shoo-in for status as a nonprofit organization. There’s no earthly reason why it couldn’t be set up that way. Any accountant worth their salt would advise it should be.”
“So why isn’t it?”
“There’s only one reason I can think of: because then they’d be obliged to open their accounts for public inspection. They’d have to be completely transparent. Dr. Lazard is on the board of the medical center. In fact, I looked him up and he runs practices in LA, London, and Mumbai. Yet he’s providing his services pro bono a couple of days a week seeing patients at the center.”
“What’s a rich, comfortable doctor with a lucrative international private practice doing bumming it in a free clinic in Ohio?”
“He’s got form too. He’s been up in front of the Medical Council of India three times on suspicion of taking money from pharmaceutical companies. Got off the hook each time.”
“And Ed chauffeured for this guy? It’s like Ed found himself in the middle of something that he didn’t understand.”
“Devlin, there’s all this smoke here. There has gotta be some fire. I don’t know why the secretary of state halted an investigation. And without Freedom and that fifty million, I doubt there’d be a Logan Ranch. In 2010 the Logan Ranch was close to bankrupt. The margins were really tight, and they couldn’t have gone on like th
ey were for long. It would have been curtains. Then Freedom starts pumping all this money into the ranch via the offshore company, expanding Logan Enterprises and the cattle fertilization part of the business. But what’s in it for Freedom is anybody’s guess.”
Devlin sat back and sighed. He didn’t look overjoyed.
“What’s wrong? You said get something on Stein, I got something on Stein,” Fox protested.
“You did a good job, Fox. Outstanding. But where’s Ed? Everywhere I look for him, I see hints of him and people acting strangely, behaving in ways that tell me they’re hiding something. Now I even see evidence of financial fraud on a huge scale. But I don’t see Ed.”
“You know what I think? I think you’re looking for someone who wants to stay missing. Finding someone like that is nearly impossible. Trust me, I’m a journalist—this I know.”
“It’s more than that. All the people who knew Ed, that he worked with, they’re all lying to me. Conspiring. I know it. I came here to catch a fish, and all I find are sharks.” Devlin was now deep in concentration, hunched over the table and propped up by his elbows. He’d taken out a cigar and held both ends rolling it over.
“So? What you gonna do, Devlin?”
Devlin looked up, bit the end of his cigar off, picked it out of his teeth, and said, “I tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna go see Lazard. Time me and the good doctor had a talk.”
27
The only sound in the room was the tick of the second hand on the wall clock and every few minutes the slow and careful turn of a page. In his surgery office at Halton Medical Center, Dr. Lazard sat perfectly still at his desk reading through documents. Extraordinarily still. Stick insect still. Aside from the occasional and shallowest of breaths, there was not a flicker of movement, so deep was his concentration. It was as if he were in the most minimal state of life—a state that was shattered by his next patient knocking on the door.