Tunnel Vision

by Sara Paretsky

  I was halfway convinced Fabian had sent my escort, thinking I’d lead him to his daughter. It did look like someone who wanted to keep track of me, rather than menace me: if it weren’t for the fluke of Ken’s coming after me I might not even have noticed they were behind me. And even suspecting it as I drove home I hadn’t spotted them for sure.

  Maybe it was in Ken’s imagination. Still ... I went to my closet and took the Smith & Wesson out of the safe. The clip was loaded. I inserted it into the gun and climbed into bed.

  The best thing to do with a tracking tail is confront it. The second best is to lose it. Which meant driving something other than the Trans Am. I couldn’t afford to rent anything, though, and I couldn’t afford to risk any of my friends’ safety by borrowing their cars.

  I turned out the light and prowled through the apartment, checking all the windows as well as the back door. I’d installed an alarm system last year. I knew it would be hard for anyone to come in after me, but it didn’t make it any easier for me to relax: I hate being under siege in my own home.

  As I pulled my jeans off in my dark bedroom I heard paper rustling and remembered the letter from Senator Gantner I’d pulled from Fabian’s desk. I turned on the bedside lamp to read it.

  The senator thanked Fabian—“Professor Messenger”—for his advice on the Boland Amendment. And he asked if Fabian could recommend someone knowledgeable about tax law respecting loans from offshore banks.

  Fabian would have leapt to respond to the wish of the man who could get him his judgeship. But the letter had nothing to do with his wife’s death, or with Home Free’s reluctance to talk to me, or Lamia, or any of the other questions I was trying to answer. In short, I had been not just nosy but stupid to take it. How on earth could I get it back to him?

  It was past two before I fell into a light, restless sleep, filled with feverish dreams. I was chasing Emily but I had gone blind and had no idea how far ahead of me she was, or even where we were. The remote spectator who inhabits dreams showed me the action laid bare like a Dutch interior. I was following Emily down endless flights of stairs while Phoebe, Lotty, and my mother stood in doorways along the way mocking my blindness.

  30

  Files for Thought

  I staggered through work on Friday, punch-drunk from sleeplessness. After checking in with Alice Cottingham, who predictably had not found any teachers sheltering Emily, I drove down to the Herald-Star. I didn’t make any effort to hide my route: my destination didn’t have to be a secret, and it wasn’t likely anyone would jump me downtown in broad daylight. Still, the back of my neck prickled all the way to the Loop.

  The stories on Alec Gantner filled a large box. A piece of paper on top of Murray’s desk showed an arrow to the box underneath, along with a message informing me that all material would be sent to the recycler if I wasn’t there to claim it by day’s end.

  “P.S.,” he had added. “I’ve looked through it but didn’t see anything I didn’t already know.”

  Murray was out somewhere putting some politician’s feet to the fire—or perhaps a beer mug to his own lips. I helped myself to his desk and started to read. We hadn’t been able to distinguish between Alec the senator and his son in the search; most of the material discussed the father.

  Senator Gantner had spoken to the American Jewish Congress in November, assuring them of his respect for Israel’s integrity. He’d spoken for an hour in the Senate on the importance of crop price supports, and sponsored a measure along with Jesse Helms to guarantee them. CORN LIKKER AND TOBACCY, an accompanying cartoon had lampooned the two men.

  Gantner went to Carbondale for a town meeting, Peoria to help Caterpillar with an international contract, Chicago to welcome the president. He was heading the president’s Illinois Reelection Committee.

  I skimmed the articles faster. Gantner testified before a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Gant-Ag had not violated trade sanctions with Iraq in the fall of 1990. The senator’s brother Craig was running Gant-Ag by then to free Big Alec for his senate work. No conflict of interest there, of course.

  Young Alec came in for his own share of press, but on a more modest scale. He, too, had testified before the Senate on Gant-Ag’s clean hands and pure heart—that had been in the Wall Street Journal. The Sun-Times had covered his joining the Home Free board. They hadn’t done a story—just one of those “who’s in the news” blurbs, announcing Gantner and Blakely agreeing to serve on the board shortly after Jasper Heccomb had started to head it.

  My head felt like a plastic bubble someone had pumped full of helium. It floated remote above my body, making it hard for me to concentrate on what I was reading. I kept skimming the material, hoping for more mention of Heccomb or Blakely. A piece was missing, but what? I shut my eyes, which made the floating sensation worse.

  What tied Gantner to Blakely? I presumed some of Gant-Ag’s accounts were at Gateway—a huge corporation like that spreads them around. But Blakely and Gantner seemed more than just banking acquaintances. For that matter, what tied the two of them to Jasper Heccomb?

  I used Murray’s password to dial up Lexis on his computer and checked the Gateway board of directors. Young Alec was one of their outside directors. And so was Heccomb. I didn’t feel like taking off my clothes to run down Wabash shouting “Eureka!” It wasn’t unusual for heads of not-for-profits to sit on corporation boards. In fact, since the hue and cry over social responsibility in the seventies most companies have their token do-gooder. Neither was it surprising, if the three were pals, that they all sat at each other’s tables.

  Out of idle curiosity I dialed up Gant-Ag. Blakely served on that board. So did the chairs of the Ft. Dearborn Trust and Chicago’s other giant banks. Heccomb wasn’t listed, but that didn’t prove anything—maybe young Alec hadn’t been able to sell his uncle on the third musketeer as a Gant-Ag board member.

  Nothing in the stack of print told me what drew Blakely and young Alec to Jasper Heccomb. I hadn’t read everything, but what I’d sampled made me agree with Murray—nothing startling popped out. I fanned the remaining pages. I was so tired I saw the name without thinking and was about to drop the whole stack back into the box when it hit me.

  Feverishly I went back through the printout a page at a time. The story had run inside the Wall Street Journal last year: Craig Gantner assured a Senate Select Committee on Banking and Narcotics that Gant-Ag had nothing to do with Century Bank or JAD Holdings.

  The article didn’t say why the Senate had been questioning their distinguished colleague’s brother on a connection. And why did it matter? I propped the story on Murray’s keyboard and studied it. When I did my search on Century Bank last week I had learned that the JAD Holdings Group had bought Century, but I hadn’t bothered to find out what JAD was. Now ... now I was clutching at straws just because they were mentioned in the same paragraph as the Gantner family. Still, the letter I’d taken from Fabian’s home last night had been in a file labeled JAD. I asked Lexis for the JAD board, but was referred to a dummy managing agent.

  Of course, there was one remaining question about Century Bank—besides their abrupt withdrawal from the Lamia project, that is. Why had Donald Blakely disclaimed all knowledge of Century, when his right-hand woman sat on their board?

  I rubbed my forehead in frustration. If I got a good night’s sleep maybe I could make better sense out of the paper thicket in the morning. I stacked all the paper in the box and hoisted it up. Paper weighs a ton: carrying it to the elevator and out of the building I could feel the veins bulging in my forearms.

  “Now I know something else about you: you’re strong as well as beautiful.”

  Bent forward with my load I hadn’t seen MacKenzie Graham as I came out of the Herald-Star building. I looked up to see him grinning with the same imbecilic self-satisfaction he’d displayed last night when I stopped his car. I thought after our late-night session he would move away from proving what a prize jerk he could be.

  “Why don�
��t we see if you’re as strong as you are smart ... alecky.” I dumped the box into his arms.

  It gave me a small twitch of satisfaction to see him stagger as he assumed the load. It was only a slight twitch, though—it couldn’t make up for my annoyance at not noticing him on my tail this morning. That’s how you get killed in this business.

  “You collecting scrap on the side?” Ken asked.

  “Yep. That’s how I picked you up.” I opened the Trans Am’s trunk for him to stow the box.

  He gave me a sidelong glance. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Umph. So you came back to my place early this morning and tagged along behind me. Not in the Spider, I take it?”

  “Dad let me borrow the Lincoln. I told him I had a lead on a job. He was too excited to wonder why I couldn’t drive my own car to it.”

  I chucked him under the chin. “I’m touched. I hate to think of you lying to your papa.”

  “You moral too?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Tell you what—I might have a job for you.” When his face lit up I said, “Grunt work only. Whoever killed Deirdre Messenger in my office last week erased my hard disk. They also dumped my paper files all over the floor, so reconstructing my accounts is going to be a major job. Since taxes are due next week I have to get those files rewritten—by hand. You up to that kind of manual labor?”

  “You didn’t back up your hard disk?” he demanded, like a dentist who can’t believe you haven’t flossed.

  “Yeah, but the murderer stole all my floppies. ... I know, I know, you should keep the copies off-site. They always give you these horror stories about fires and flood. They never say anything about brains on the disk drive.”

  “You have Mirror installed?”

  “Only over the bathroom sink.”

  “It’s a program. You use it for tracking files in times like this. Without it I don’t think I can execute ‘Undelete,’ especially not after the machine’s been down this long.”

  I snapped my thumb against my car keys. “You know I don’t understand a word you’re saying. Can I get my files back or not?”

  “We need to get you into the Nineties. Here’s where you need me, not that cop of yours. Everything depends on how he wiped out the disk. Or she,” he added with another of his sidelong glances. “If he reformatted it you’ll never see the files again. But if he was in a hurry, didn’t want to hang around to be caught while he executed a bunch of commands, he might’ve just deleted the files, you know, typed DEL star dot star. He could do that and go, in which case, if you haven’t written over them, I might be able to reconstruct your accounts. It would be a huge job, but not impossible.”

  “I couldn’t pay you what your time would be worth in that case. I’ll have to fling myself on the mercy of the IRS—a notoriously compassionate outfit.” I moved around to my car door.

  He came after me and grabbed my arm. “Hey—I have to do community service. Convince my probation officer you’re a 501-c(3) and we’re in business.”

  I had a feeling we’d never fly that kite: the court probably demanded to see some kind of tax return. But I’d worry about that problem later. If Ken really could reconstruct my accounts it would be such a big help I might bully one of my charitable friends into saying the work had been on their behalf.

  Ken wanted to buy me lunch to celebrate our new pact before we stopped at Eleventh Street for my machine. I vetoed using his father’s membership at the Athletic Club, but let him pick up the tab at the New Orleans Gumbo House on South Dearborn. Darraugh would probably pay that bill in the end, too, but it wasn’t quite as obvious a poke in Papa’s eye.

  At police headquarters I was in luck: Officer Neely was at the desk she shared with three other cops. She’d prepared the paperwork for me—when we got to the evidence room it was a simple matter of filling out a few hundred forms. I showed my driver’s license, she showed her badge, and the man behind the grille handed over my 386, along with the keyboard. Pushed, he dug up a box. I packed in the drive and monitor, balanced the keyboard on top, and handed the package to Ken. Manual labor would only build character in him.

  Ken looked at the machine and grimaced. “This thing is pretty dirty. I don’t know if the drives could even survive that much crud in them. I’ll do my best, though. When we’re done maybe I should steal you a 486—I hate a slick detective like you working on an obsolete chip.”

  He gave Neely his sidelong look to see if his comment would provoke her, but hassling by punks is all in a day’s work for a cop—especially a female cop. Ignoring him, she asked if I’d heard anything about the Messenger children.

  It was my turn to make a face. “I talked to Fabian last night. He seems very disconnected—not the brave bully of the court- or bedroom. I got the feeling that someone had been putting the screws to him. Has Terry been questioning him seriously about Deirdre’s death?”

  She snorted. “I wish! If he did beat her—if you were right, what you said on Saturday—then he could well have killed her. But it’s his daughter’s prints on the murder weapon. And he’s a good friend of the state’s attorney. ... ”

  Her voice trailed away. She flushed and bit her lip, embarrassed at betraying herself. She didn’t say anything further, but escorted us to the State Street exit at a clip that left Ken panting under the load of the computer.

  31

  Corn off the Cob

  The drive to Morris exhausted me. The suburbs west of town seem to replicate endlessly, here pushing up enormous fingers of pylons for new tollways, there churning out giant malls or new townships, all the while devouring farmland like an engorging dragon. Passing through this scarred landscape I felt like an antipioneer, traversing endless miles of concrete to find open country.

  I was so mesmerized by the road that I almost missed the turnoff to Morris. I pulled into the gas station at the corner of the junction to feed my steed and get directions to Gant-Ag’s headquarters. The attendant, a middle-aged man with stringy arms, interrupted a conversation with another man in overalls to direct me south along the highway.

  “You can’t miss ’em, ma’am. You go about fifteen miles and you’ll see all the signs—they own most of the land down there.”

  “And up here,” the man in overalls added. “The Lord knows they own me, that’s for sure.”

  The two laughed together, more in shared misery than humor, ignoring my parting thanks. I climbed back into the Trans Am and turned south. Even though the highway was a secondary road it had four lanes, the concrete surface spanking new with its lane markers freshly painted. It was Gantner’s town—the U.S. Highway Commission was happy to help out. “Build me a senator and the roads will follow,” I muttered.

  I shared my drive with dozens of semis, many sporting the Gant-Ag logo—a tasseled ear of corn with the legend: CORN FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE. The Trans Am felt like a tiny tug rocking in the wake of giant steamships.

  Behind well-tended fences new crops covered the fields with a faint green glaze. Every so often I’d see a small metal sign fixed to the fencing. Finally I pulled onto the shoulder and climbed across the drainage ditch to read one. It was scarcely worth the bother—beneath the logo lay an announcement that this was a Gant-Ag experimental cornfield. I bent down to look at the lacy plants. To my city eyes they didn’t look very different from any other corn. As a matter of fact to my city eyes they could just as well have been wheat or barley.

  As I started back to my car a helicopter appeared on the horizon. I stood, one hand on the door, and watched. It sailed purposefully over the field toward me, hovered above the Trans Am for a moment, and then receded. I waved and smiled in a parody of tourist friendliness, but the episode startled me. Somewhere along the roadside a camera was watching me. I looked around but couldn’t see it. I had nothing to hide but I still didn’t like it.

  When I got back on the road I deliberately moved into the slipstream of a giant truck. The cameras were probably built into the fence posts, wher
e they could see me from the side, but the semi gave me the illusion of cover. I followed it to a turnoff sign posted by the familiar corn tassel.

  A quarter mile down the road we came to a security booth with crossing rails lowered in front of it. The semi driver leaned out and spoke to the guard, who raised the rail for him to pass. It came down smartly in front of me. The guard demanded my business by mike, staying inside his cage—no doubt the windows were lined with bullet-proof glass.

  “I’m here to see Alec Gantner. Gantohol Alec, not Senator Alec,” I yelled back.

  “What’s your name?” the tinny voice asked.

  “Come, come,” I called. “Your helicopter scouted me: you’ve had time to run my license plate through the DMV. Just see if the guy’ll talk to me.”

  He wasn’t amused. After a further exchange I blinked first, pulling a business card from my wallet and handing it up. I half expected a metal arm to snatch it from me so the guard wouldn’t risk exposing his flesh to the air, but he slid back a glass panel and took it himself.

  After a few minutes on the phone he grunted at me to go in. “Follow the right-hand fork to the office block and park in one of the visitor slots. Someone will meet you at the entrance.”

  Six or seven trucks had lined up behind me by the time we finished these formalities. Figuring the guard would be busy for a few minutes I took the left-hand fork when the road divided. It led me past warehouses where trucks were busy and ended at a small but active airstrip: two helicopters, some crop dusters, and a baby jet were parked on the tarmac. As I watched, another helicopter landed—perhaps the guys who’d been spying on me. Just in case I waved at them before turning around and heading back to the right-hand fork in the road.

  The office block was a no-frills modern building with a short front. Smoked windows were the only concession to design—although they were probably utilitarian given the glare of the prairie sun. Carved into concrete around the portal was the ubiquitous CORN FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE. Crossing the threshold I felt as though I were entering a concentration camp—the Nazis went in for those cheery, chatty slogans too.