by Robin Spano
“Yeah.”
“Then you can probably guess what I think.”
Clare saw the pain Noah was in, and for a moment she felt terrible for causing it. She wanted to cross the room and touch him, make it better. But she remembered that he was the one who wouldn’t make their relationship exclusive, and she scowled.
“Would you feel weird helping me write a post about Chopper?”
“No.” Clare was annoyed by the question. “I’m investigating Chopper like I’m investigating everyone else. The fact that we have good chemistry is a bonus.” She supposed she could have left the chemistry part out, but she wanted Noah to be jealous, to realize that they should be exclusive, outside of work.
“Clare . . .” Noah’s forehead creased. He sank into one of the armchairs across the coffee table from her.
Clare barreled forward. “But I think we should write about Norris.”
“Fuck, I’d love that.” Noah’s mouth corners shot up, like the thought of exposing a dirty cop excited him. “Before I wrote Wade’s post, my suggestion was the Band of Brothers — a look at Wade, Chopper, and Norris, and how their friendship turned to crime.”
“That’s actually good,” Clare said. “Especially since they were in an actual band together. Why didn’t you write it?”
“Worthington and Bert want to leave Norris alone for a while. He’s losing his job at the end of all this, obviously, but they think it would be too disruptive — all the suspects would scatter — if he gets exposed too soon.”
“Fair enough. So we’re writing about Chopper?”
“Yeah,” Noah said. “You have his phone number?”
“Um. You want to call him?”
“Yeah. That’s how the posts work.”
Right. Of course it was. “What are you going to ask him?”
Noah shrugged. “That’s where you come in. What do you think I should ask him?”
Clare took her lower lip between three fingers and started playing with it, strumming it like a guitar. She pulled her fingers away to say, “You want to expose his drug manufacturing, right?”
“If you think it will lead to good comments. You want me to grab you a T-shirt or something? You can’t be comfortable in that awful work uniform.”
“Thanks,” Clare said. “I don’t think I’ll stay overnight, though.”
“Why not? We’ve got it covered so it looks natural.” Noah’s eyes flickered down to his hands and stayed there.
“Because.” Clare tried hard not to notice how sad he was. “I need you to be in love with me — to want a real relationship. Otherwise we’re just going to keep fighting.”
“You know I want a real relationship.”
“Yeah,” Clare said. “But you want it with someone I’m not. Come on, let’s work on this post. Let’s nail Chopper.” She managed a small grin. “You know you want to take him down.”
Noah gave her an even smaller grin back.
“Make sure you block your number. I think we should lie with the truth.”
SIXTY-FOUR
WADE
Man, it was late. Wade’s eyes were glazing over while looking at the poster of Jim Morrison on his office wall. For a minute he thought Jim was coming out of the poster to pour him another drink. But when Wade looked into his Scotch glass, it was empty.
“You heard from Richie?” Wade asked Chopper.
“No. Norris has his phone.”
Wade found that odd. “What? Why?”
Chopper laughed and stopped twisting his dreads long enough to wave a hand dismissively. “They have some weird power play going on. It’ll work itself out.”
“I don’t get it.” Wade pulled a whiskey bottle from his desk drawer. Empty.
“It’s stress, man. We’re all stressed.” Chopper reached into his banana-yellow ski jacket and pulled out a memory stick. “I came to loop you in to what the girls found in Jules.”
Wade’s eyebrows popped. “Sacha’s teddy bear, Jules?”
Chopper nodded. “Sacha was — get this — only friends with us so she could make a documentary. There’s a whackload of footage. I’ve been watching it all day, and I haven’t even scratched the surface. I’m thinking we should split it up, see what’s incriminating. And then destroy it.”
Wade wondered if he was implicated.
“And yes,” Chopper said. “Jules was sitting in your office for a few of our meetings. We’d all go to jail if this got out. Even you. Fucking Sacha.” He shook his head. “She really knew how to fool a guy into letting her in.”
Wade didn’t like Chopper’s implication, like Wade had been played for a fool. Even if Sacha had seduced him with an ulterior motive, the relationship had been real — you couldn’t fake that shit. Wade checked his other drawer and found a bottle of CC with a couple of ounces left. He poured it into his tumbler before Chopper could ask for a swig.
Chopper smirked — at what, Wade wasn’t sure. “So can I use your computer? Give you some files?”
“I guess.” Wade shuffled some papers aside and stood up to trade places with Chopper.
Chopper slid the stick into the USB drive and clicked the mouse a couple of times. “Okay, I’ve given you clips sixty-nine through one hundred. I can’t find a pattern for what order they’re in. They’re not chronological. And they’re not grouped by location or people in them or anything I can identify.”
Wade smiled. “She’s telling a story.”
“Huh?”
“Sacha was putting it in the order she wanted it watched. Telling a story out of sequence because she thinks it tells better that way. It’s how I write my music — we had long conversations about it.” See, Wade felt like saying, I wasn’t trivial to her. Maybe you were, but not me.
“Okay, that’s really sweet, Wade. But unless you want to contemplate story sequence in jail, we’re gonna need to get serious.”
Chopper lecturing Wade about getting serious? That was a good one. Wade reached over and shifted the computer screen so they could both see.
Chopper looked at Wade. “You ready to see her? It’s freaky, seeing her moving again, like she’s alive.”
Wade swallowed hard. He would never be ready. And he craved seeing Sacha in action more than anything. “Just play it.”
Chopper clicked the mouse again and Sacha came to life.
She was in a wood-paneled office, very old world traditional. The room was decorated with red ribbons and twinkling white strings of lights — a tasteful non-denominational holiday scene.
A young man — thin, eager — was seated behind the desk. He looked like he was playing make-believe, pretending he was somebody important.
“Why are you always in my mother’s chair?” Sacha asked him.
The young man leaned forward, his elbows resting on the wide black desk mat. He looked at Sacha and said, “You have to stop what you’re doing.”
Sacha laughed. “Ted, you’re adorable. When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself as a fifty-year-old man?”
Ted frowned. “The drugs, Sacha. The LSD. This could ruin your mother’s career.”
Sacha smirked, like she was well aware and fine with that.
“The game’s up, Sacha. I know about your smuggling. I’m afraid that after the holidays, you can’t return to Whistler.”
“Good one, Ted. That’s like the housekeeper telling her boss’s kid where she’s going to school in the fall.”
“I’m not the help.” Ted’s jaw tightened. “You’re the one breaking the law. I should report you, get you thrown in jail.”
“But you won’t.” Sacha laughed again. “It would ruin your chances of riding my mother’s coattails into the White House. Here, I got you something.”
Sacha pulled a wrapped gift from her shoulder bag.
“For Christmas?” Ted wrinkled his n
ose.
“Don’t worry. I don’t expect a gift from you.”
Ted took the small box and looked at it suspiciously.
“You don’t have to be miserable about the whole holiday season just because your family doesn’t celebrate it and you have to eat turkey with us. You’ve worked for my mom for three years — you, like, are family.”
Ted tugged at the red ribbon until it came off. He peeled off the silver wrapping — carefully, like he planned to use it again — and pulled out a tie.
“Goofy?” he sneered at the cartoon image on the material.
Sacha grinned. “Because you take yourself too seriously.”
“You’re making fun of me because I’m not frolicking off in the world on my trust fund, ruining their careers in my wake?”
“I’m not spending my trust fund. That’s gathering interest — it’s going to be my philanthropy fund when I figure out how to use it best. For now, I’m earning my own way.”
“Whatever.” Ted put the tie back in the box, pinching it with two fingers like it was a smelly old fish. “I don’t aspire to be less serious.”
“You’d live longer,” Sacha said. “Hell, you’d live, period.”
“What you call living, I call wasting a life. You’re smuggling drugs, Sacha. Surely you’re not suggesting I do the same.”
“No, the stress would kill you. Just wear the tie for Christmas dinner. Goofy’s dressed up as Rudolf, see?”
“I’m not wearing it. You can have it back, if you saved the receipt.”
The footage stopped abruptly. Wade downed his drink and stood up to get more from the bar. On his way out of the office, Chopper’s phone beeped.
“Jesus!” Chopper said before Wade was out the door. His eyes scanned his screen for a moment before he said, “That fucking blogger is talking about my mountain lab.”
Wade reluctantly sat back down. He wanted a shot of booze before reading or listening to anything, but if he prioritized drink, he’d look like an alcoholic.
“I should have known that fucking guy who called tonight wasn’t FBI. Why would FBI call me? They might bust me, but they’re not going to fucking phone first. Honestly, I’m such a moron.”
“You’re not a moron,” Wade said. “The blogger fooled me, too.” He followed Chopper’s eyes and read:
The Fool on the Hill
by Lorenzo Barilla
I got Chopper MacPherson on the phone. This one was good.
I said I was fbi.
I said I was interested in his mountain lair — the one where he makes lsd. I told him I knew he’d been in business with Sacha, that if he answered a few choice questions he’d have an easier time when it all got blown open later.
Chopper was cool. He was clearly stoned, but he’s no dummy. Until I said I knew he was trying to pay for my name.
“What are you talking about?” MacPherson said.
“You heard me. I’m here undercover in Whistler. I’ve seen you at Avalanche. We’ve ridden together in the Blackcomb gondola.”
“You what? Who are you? What do you look like?”
“My boss got a phone call. Someone offered him ten grand for my name. Said the money had been put up by Chopper MacPherson and Richie Lebar.”
MacPherson was quiet. I mean, what could he say?
I said, “You sure you don’t want to help me? Your friends are going down. From our point of view — the American side — what you did personally isn’t really that bad. You made some drugs you only intended for local Canadian consumption. It’s the importers we’re after. Now do you want to help, or do you want to hinder your own shot at freedom?”
Chopper’s breathing got heavy. “What do you want to know?”
“First,” I said, “I want to know who you think murdered Sacha Westlake.”
“That’s easy,” Chopper said. “I think she murdered herself.”
“Okay,” I said. “Second: who runs the transport operation?”
“Come again.”
“Which of your cohorts is connected to the Seattle crew, across the border?”
“That was Sacha,” Chopper said. Too quickly? Not sure.
Because I don’t think it was Sacha at all. I think Sacha wanted to expose this drug running just like I want to expose her killer.
Did Chopper chop up Sacha’s wrists to silence her?
Wade met Chopper’s eye.
“This blogger is trying to mind-fuck us.” Chopper held his matted blond head in his hands and rocked it back and forth slowly. “You think the Whistler undercover has been the blogger all along?”
Wade nodded. “Yeah, that actually makes sense.”
“I guess that’s a good thing.” Chopper let go of his head. His eyes, which normally looked on the verge of laughing, were dark and serious. “It means we have one enemy, not two. But if the cop’s still in town, does that mean Norris lied?”
Wade shook his head. “We can’t even start thinking that way.”
“But I can’t believe — do you really think Norris gave my name when he offered the bribe?”
“Of course not.” Wade was firm. “They’re trying to divide us. Divide and conquer.”
“You got any booze in this place? I could use another beer, and a stiff whiskey to go with it.”
“Let’s move to the bar.” Wade stood up, shut down his computer. He and Chopper would need several stiff drinks each to get to sleep that night.
SIXTY-FIVE
CLARE
Clare saw the police activity just below the Mid-Station. She had a gondola to herself, which was fairly luxurious considering that later in the day this same ride would be crowded with tourists. She pulled off her gloves and fished her phone from her pocket. She saw a missed call from Noah.
“Hey,” Clare said when she reached Noah. “What’s going on?”
“Richard Lebar has been murdered.”
“Shit — Richie?”
“Sorry. Forgot these are your friends now.”
Clare’s grip on her phone all but slipped away. She glanced down at the receding police scene. “Why haven’t they closed the hill?”
“I’m sure they will, but I don’t think anyone’s thinking clearly.”
“When was he found?” Clare asked.
“An hour ago. Looks like he’s been dead all night. His family in Toronto has only known for fifteen minutes.”
“Is anyone flying out here?”
“His mom asked for plane fare.”
“They could probably take that from his pocket,” Clare said. “Or is that not officially allowed?”
Clare remembered Jana the night before, cursing because Richie wouldn’t return her texts. Wade, too — he kept asking Jana where Richie was, for some meeting they had arranged. Had one of them been pretending? Had they both? “I’m nearly at the peak of Whistler. You think I should ride down to the body?”
“Yeah. I just got off the phone with Bert. He asked me to tell you to go to the scene. He wants you to study faces and reactions.”
“Our blog last night,” Clare said. “Do you think . . . could it have anything to do with . . .”
“Don’t think about that,” Noah said. “We’re not the guilty ones here.”
“Still . . .”
Though Clare was well wrapped in long underwear and snow clothes, the gondola felt a lot colder than it had a few minutes earlier. She found herself wishing there were tourists crammed in there with her. Or that Noah was.
SIXTY-SIX
MARTHA
Another airport. Another chai latte. And another death in Whistler.
Martha sat on the hard row seat near her gate, longing for the privacy of the first-class lounge — where even if she was recognized, she was unlikely to be bothered. But she’d already launched her new brand: accessibility. A camera catching her entering one airport lounge would throw
all that off.
So instead of reclining into a massage chair with a bad cappuccino and a great view of the runway, she was staring into a big fuzzy microphone that had materialized in front of her face.
“I’m intrigued by your blog, Senator Westlake,” a gray-haired woman said. “Particularly your post this morning about your daughter smuggling drugs into Washington State from Canada. Was that difficult to write?”
“Astonishingly, no.” Martha stood to meet the woman’s eyes; she couldn’t decide if she liked what she got back.
“Were you responding to the other blogger — the one who hinted at Sacha’s activity up in Whistler?”
“No,” Martha said. “My team and I have been working on my post for two full days.”
“In your post, you imply that Sacha was smuggling for a higher cause than money. Can you elaborate?”
“No. At the moment, there’s too much conjecture, not enough proof. We’ll share everything with the public once we’ve made sense of all the pieces.”
“Of course you will.” The woman’s eyebrows lifted. “I’ve heard that Geoffrey Kearnes has been known to resort to dirty politics. Do you think he might be implicated in the murders?”
Martha laughed mirthlessly. “Are you asking if I think my political opponent murdered my daughter?”
“No. I’m asking if you think your ex-boyfriend did.”
“Which news station did you say you worked for?”
“WKCR.”
“The Columbia University radio station?” Martha couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice. The woman seemed old for such a gig.
“A television station upstate.” She named a town Martha had never heard of.
“Ah. Well, to answer your insightful and sensitive query, I highly doubt Geoff Kearnes or any of my other opponents — or ex-boyfriends; god, that was so long ago — were involved in either murder.”
“Could the killer have been someone from your own campaign? Maybe someone who knew about Sacha’s smuggling and wanted to make sure that it didn’t hurt your campaign?”