The Silent Places

by James Patrick Hunt

She came forward and extended a hand to Hastings, perhaps because he was the one standing closest to her.

  Hastings introduced himself and the senator told her that these were the policemen who would be watching him.

  Mrs. Preston looked into Hastings’s eyes as she said, “Oh?”

  Hastings said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She said, “And do you think you’ll be able to catch this man, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t know,” Hastings said.

  She dropped her hand to her side, as if taken aback by his frankness. She kept her focus on Hastings, openly appraising him, as she said, “Don’t you?” Her voice a little dry.

  She’s being tough, Hastings thought. Maybe she sensed something in him. A toughness to match her own. Or maybe she wanted to make him uncomfortable. Hastings debated answering her.

  But Captain Anthony said, “We’ve got our best people working on it, Mrs. Preston.”

  Mrs. Preston said, “And I suppose that would include you two.”

  Anthony gave a sort of uncomfortable laugh.

  Hastings said, “If he appears, Mrs. Preston. We don’t know that he will.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Preston said. “Well, at least you’re honest.”

  This elicited more nervous laughter, from both Captain Anthony and Martin Keough. Hastings noticed, though, that the senator did not join in.

  FOURTEEN

  Klosterman said, “He said he’s requesting police protection because of his wife?”

  “Yeah,” Hastings said.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s lying.”

  Hastings and Klosterman were in Hastings’s Jaguar, heading west on the Forest Park Parkway, downtown fading behind them as the car dipped down the incline underneath Grand Boulevard and came up and out on the other side.

  Hastings said, “Not about everything. I mean, I met the wife and, yeah, she’s concerned. But I don’t buy it when Preston says he’s not worried. I could see that he is worried. So this notion about he’s only doing this because his wife wants him to, that’s a lot of shit.”

  “Maybe,” Klosterman said, “but he’s not going to admit that.”

  Hastings said, “Did I tell you about why he said he didn’t want feds involved?”

  “Yeah, you told me.”

  “That’s fishy, too. If it were me and my family, I’d call in every man possible to guard me. I wouldn’t care what anyone said.”

  “No,” Klosterman said, “but you’re not a politician. And you don’t have anything to prove, either.”

  “What’s he got to prove?”

  “I don’t know. He said something about enemies wanting to embarrass him?”

  “Yeah. He said if he had federal agents guarding him, he would be ‘compromised,’ or some nonsense.”

  “Didn’t Anthony tell you he might run for president?”

  “Yeah, that’s what Anthony says. I don’t know. Maybe he will. If that’s the case, he’s probably more concerned about his political livelihood than anything else.”

  “You met the wife?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s all right,” Hastings said.

  Hastings slowed the Jaguar for a light, coming to a stop behind an SUV. He thought of the cool blonde in her upscale dress, wondering if she had been a model when she was younger. Looking directly in his eyes, trying to push him around …

  “I think she’s all right,” Hastings said again. “She was the first person in that house who didn’t talk to me like I was there to cut the lawn.”

  Klosterman said, “You remember Bill Malone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He got on with the Secret Service a few years ago. He guarded that little guy who ran for president.”

  “Edwards?”

  “No, the little guy with that good-looking young wife.”

  “Kucinich.”

  “Yeah. Bill said that the old hands talked about the best presidents to guard. Apparently, Ford was a real nice guy. Used to bring coffee to the agents when they had to stand out in the cold. Reagan liked to tan himself at his ranch, using one of those reflector thingies. Nixon was weird but okay. They said Carter was one of the worst.”

  “How so?”

  “You know, looked down his nose at them. Treated them like they didn’t exist.”

  “That right?”

  “Yeah. Funny, don’t you think? Him being a Democrat and all.”

  “Why should that be unusual?”

  “Well, don’t you remember? When Carter ran, he said he was a simple peanut farmer and all that crap. He used to wear those sweaters and he carried his own suitcases into the White House.”

  “Shit,” Hastings said. “That was all show. I put more stock in what the people say who had to work with him.”

  “You ever think about something like that? Secret Service?”

  “God no. I’d die of boredom.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Bill said it was boring but pretty stressful, too. I mean, a lot of doing nothing, and then when you’re in crowds with the president or whoever, you’re anxious as hell. Looking out there to see if there’s a Hinckley or a Travis Bickle.”

  “Travis Bickle? That’s not a real guy. That’s from a movie, isn’tit?”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah, Joe. Don’t you remember? ‘You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?’”

  Klosterman pointed a finger at him and said, “Dustin Hoffman.”

  “Robert De Niro.”

  “James Caan.”

  “No. It was De Niro,” Hastings said, then realized that Klosterman knew it all along.

  Joe Klosterman rolled his shoulders, acting out the rest of the scene. “‘I don’t see no one else here. Who the fuck you talking to?’”

  “Okay,” Hastings said, hoping that would shut it down.

  But then he was doing Scorsese’s lines from the film, saying, “‘Have you ever seen what a forty-four Magnum would do to a woman’s face? Fucking destroy it. Have you ever seen what a forty-four Magnum would do to a woman’s—’”

  “Enough,” Hastings said.

  “Okay,” Klosterman said. “Yeah, I guess it would be pretty boring. Better pay, though. Say, do you think Amy Carter still has Secret Service agents protecting her?”

  “I have no fucking idea.”

  Hastings made a left turn onto Kingshighway Boulevard, crossed over I-64, then made a right turn onto Oakland Avenue.

  Klosterman said, “Preston’s a Republican, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. But he seemed a bit Carteresque to me today.” Hastings shrugged. Screw it. He hadn’t gone into police work to get the Alan Prestons of the world to like him. It was too much work, to begin with.

  Klosterman said, “Did you vote for him?”

  “I did once,” Hastings said. “Not the second time.”

  “How come?”

  “The war in Iraq, mostly. Which he supports, even now. I thought it was a good idea at first. Later I realized I was wrong.”

  “I told you,” Klosterman said. Klosterman had said invading Iraq was a mistake from the beginning.

  “Yeah,” Hastings said. “You told me.”

  Hastings pulled the Jag into the parking lot of Imo’s Pizza. He got out of the car and dialed Howard Rhodes’s number.

  “George?” Rhodes said.

  “Hi, Howard. Joe and I will be there in about thirty minutes. We’re picking up a pizza at Imo’s. You guys want anything?”

  “Hold on,” Rhodes said. “Murph, you want anything from Imo’s?”

  A moment later, Rhodes said, “Yeah, he wants a medium pepperoni and sausage. He’ll take it home with him.”

  “All right,” Hastings said. “Anything happen?”

  Rhodes said, “Not a damn thing.”

  FIFTEEN

  They were given access to the house across the street. It wasn’t for sale, but it was empty. The house was a three-story English
Tudor with arched windows on the top floor. In the backyard, there was a crumbling, empty fish pond and fountain, along with a rusted swing set no one had bothered to remove. The house had been purchased by a man who made a fortune in auto parts. He died in the nineties and left his entire estate, worth around six million dollars, to his adult son, who spent the next few years snorting it away. Now the son owned the house but couldn’t afford to furnish it or even have it fixed up so that it could be put on the market. The son, now in his forties, was on probation for possession of controlled substances. Accordingly, he was amenable to Captain Anthony’s request to use the house for official police purposes.

  From the top floor, the police officers had a good view of Senator Preston’s house. There were no furnishings, so they had to bring cots and a couple of lawn chairs. They had a television but no cable. Murph had brought a rectangular boom box he had owned for fifteen years. When the television wasn’t on, he liked to listen to classic rock on KSHE 95.

  When Hastings and Klosterman came to relieve them, it was apparent that Murph and Rhodes were getting on each other’s nerves. Murph was listening to a promo for a radio talk-show, the host saying that Miley Cyrus’s dad was a jack off. Murph laughing at it, Rhodes saying, “It’s not funny. I don’t know why you think it’s funny.”

  “Evening, ladies,” Klosterman said as they came up the stairs.

  Rhodes’s shoulders sagged in relief. Grateful he would be getting out of there but depressingly aware he would have to come back in twelve hours.

  Murph said, “Got a man here who doesn’t like Howard Stern.”

  “He’s not funny,” Rhodes said as he set the binoculars on a table and moved across the room to get his jacket and coat.

  They were different, the two of them. Howard Rhodes was tall and broad across the shoulders. Handsome, refined, and smooth. Many people at the department, including Hastings, thought he would rise quickly. Unfortunately, many would also credit such a rise to affirmative action, as Rhodes was an African-American. But the people who worked closely with Howard knew he was very capable, hardworking, and conscientious and that he would deserve a promotion in time, irrespective of appearances. Howard Rhodes had been a detective for only a few years, most of them under the supervision of Hastings. Like many homicide detectives, Rhodes was a bit of an elitist. There was an aristocratic air about him. This was natural, not feigned. He was not an overconfident man, but he was confident.

  Tim “Murph” Murphy, in contrast, was not physically big. He had the size and build of a bantamweight fighter. He wore knit ties and short-sleeve shirts and tweed jackets. After a heavy lunch, he might weigh 150 pounds. But there was a wild-eyed fearsomeness to Murph, an Irish cop air of menace and intimidation that could, as Klosterman said, make a perp piss down both legs. When Murph and Rhodes did the good cop/bad cop act (which is effective even when the suspect knows it is being done), it was usually Rhodes who played the good cop. It’s difficult for a pit bull to act nice.

  They were like brothers, in a way—bickering and fighting but confiding and sharing, too. Murph was what some would call a typical South St. Louis “hoosier.” An uncultivated yokel. And to all outward appearances, that was indeed what he looked like and, to a degree, took pride in. He was a snob, too, in his way. Yet a career in law enforcement had made him tribal, uncomfortable around people who weren’t police officers. The same thing had happened to Rhodes, who could now count on one hand the number of good friends he had who were black.

  Murph had once told Hastings he had grown up in a household where the word nigger was used frequently by both his parents. When he matured and made his own decisions about life, he said this was not something he could write his parents off for. They were, in his mind, otherwise decent people. He told Hastings that was how people talked in that time and in that place. Certainly, as a child, Murph had never imagined that one of his closest friends would be black. Indeed, after working with Howard for a while, Murph sort of forgot that Howard was black. Or rather, he forgot and he didn’t forget. The two of them could have the most candid discussions about race one could imagine. Perhaps this was because Murph felt little, if any, of the discomfort or guilt that whites often feel around black people. Or perhaps it was because both Murph and Rhodes thought of themselves as more blue than black or white.

  Now Murph gestured to the police-issue Ithaca pump shotgun propped up in the corner. He said to Hastings, “I’m going to leave that here, if it’s all right.”

  “Yeah,” Hastings said. He had the same model shotgun in the trunk of his car.

  Hastings handed Murph his pizza.

  “Smells great,” Murph said. “You want a slice, Howard?”

  “No.”

  Howard Rhodes descended the stairs, Murph calling out “Okay” to him, patronizing him.

  Murph said, “He’s not enjoying this detail.”

  “At least he got the day shift,” Klosterman said.

  Murph said, “Well, there’s a game on the NFL network tonight, if you get bored. But then, there’s no cable here. Well, enjoy yourself, boys.”

  Murph went down the stairs. Klosterman picked up the binoculars and moved to the window.

  A minute or so later, he said, “Did you say the senator’s wife is good-looking?”

  “I might have,” Hastings said.

  “I wonder if she leaves her shades up.”

  “I hope not,” Hastings said. Then he dialed Carol’s number on his cell phone. Four rings and then he got her voice mail. Hastings left a message and clicked off the phone. He wondered if she was with someone else. Then he felt ashamed for wondering.

  A few minutes later, his cell phone rang. He picked it up but saw a number that was not Carol’s.

  “Hastings.”

  “Lieutenant? Martin Keough. The senator’s expecting a guest in about fifteen minutes. So don’t get all alarmed when you see a car at the gate.”

  Hastings took a breath, thought, Asshole. “I won’t,” he said. “Who’s the guest?”

  “A friend of the senator,” Keough said, and hung up.

  SIXTEEN

  A maid asked if Crittenden would like some tea or a drink. Crittenden said, no but that some ice water would be nice. The servant walked out of the room and Crittenden was left alone in the living room with Senator Preston and Keough.

  Crittenden said, “So you’re interested in running for president?”

  Preston said, “I’m exploring the idea, yes. I wanted to see what you thought.”

  “Why?”

  Preston said, “To be frank, I think you wouldn’t sign on with a candidate unless you thought he could win. Am I correct?”

  Crittenden smiled. “Perhaps,” he said.

  Jeff Crittenden was a nationally known political consultant and strategist. In the past ten years, he had built a formidable reputation managing campaigns for Republican candidates. He was considered one of the top three political strategists in the country. Though he lacked the charisma and flamboyance of a James Carville, he was just as effective, perhaps more so. He preferred to remain out of the limelight as much as possible. Indeed, there were times he denied having the influence he actually had. Surely, he would suggest, a mere Texas Tech dropout was incapable of being Machiavellian.

  People presumed Jeff Crittenden was a religious man. This was because he encouraged almost all of his candidates to appeal to religious conviction in their campaigns. Even the Democrats were doing that these days. But Crittenden was actually an atheist. This fact, he kept to himself. Despite his lack of faith, he did have a certain admiration for the Old Testament’s Joseph, counselor to the pharaohs.

  What he wanted to do was create a president.

  Crittenden said to Preston, “You don’t wish to persuade me?”

  “I’m not going to persuade you,” Preston said. “You either believe in the viability of my campaign or you don’t.”

  “Suppose I don’t?”

  “We shake hands and say good-bye.
And maybe I’ll find another consultant.”

  “Of course.”

  Keough said, “There are others.”

  Preston gave Keough a disapproving look. Then he said to Crittenden, “Yes, there are others. But frankly, I think you’re the best. I’d prefer to have you on board. So.”

  “So what?” Crittenden said.

  “So do you think I can win?”

  The maid returned with a glass of ice water on a tray. Crittenden took the water, sipped it, and sat back. The maid left the room.

  Crittenden said, “I think so.”

  He left it out there. The men grew uncomfortable with the shortness of the answer and Keough said, “You think so? That’s it, you think so?”

  “I’m an adviser,” Crittenden said, “not a seer. There are variables that we can’t predict.” Crittenden looked at the senator. He said, “You’re good-looking, you speak well, and you’re even-keeled. You’re still married to your first wife. Am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “No early marriages we’re unaware of?”

  “No.”

  “No girlfriends we’re unaware of?”

  Crittenden did not like using words like prostitute or mistress. They seemed dated to him and a little too French.

  “No,” Preston said. “That’s not my style.”

  Crittenden raised a conciliatory hand. “I don’t judge, Senator. But I don’t like being surprised, either. You understand that a senator has certain freedoms a president or presidential candidate does not have. The freedom to drink, carouse, lose his temper, perhaps even have reactionary views about race. You declare your candidacy for president, it all vanishes.”

  “You don’t think I’ve considered that already?”

  “You say you have. But have you? Have you really? Your wife, your daughter … they lose their privacy, too. Everything will be inspected, opened up. Everything. Past and present.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “And you’ve discussed it with them? You’ve discussed this with your wife and daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do they say?”

  “They’re all for it,” Preston said. “I suppose you have some concerns?”