Midas

by Russell Andrews

  With lists.

  He began with the first man killed—Bradford Collins. To the right of his name, Justin put the date of his death, the date of the Harper’s bombing. Next to that, Justin began to list all the scraps of information he had about Collins. He was the CEO of the Texas energy company EGenco. Justin realized he had only a vague idea of what EGenco did—it was in the oil and energy business—and that what he mostly knew was that the company was immersed in a burgeoning scandal rivaling that of Enron. So he skipped over to the right and wrote in, “Understand EGenco.” Beneath that he added, “Details of corporate scandal.” And underneath that, he added, “Follow the money.” He underlined that last phrase for emphasis. Going back to the third column, Justin quickly scribbled everything else he knew: that Collins was a friend of the vice president of the United States, Phil Dandridge, and of the attorney general, Jeffrey Stuller; that Collins was sitting at or very near to the detonation point of the Harper’s explosion; that it was possible that the briefcase that contained the explosives had been given to Collins or someone else having lunch at his table. That reminded him of something else he needed to check, and he added this question: “Who was Collins having lunch with at Harper’s?” He stared at his own handwriting for a moment, not the worst he’d ever seen but not the most legible either, and finally he added two more questions: “Who the hell is Bradford Collins?” and “Why would anyone want him dead?”

  He decided to stick with chronological order, so next on his list was Hutchinson Cooke. Justin put down the date the small plane crashed, November 7—the day of Jimmy Leggett’s funeral—and added the following information: the make of the plane, a Piper Saratoga, and its tail number: NOV 6909 Juliet. He scribbled in a few comments about his conversation with the ditzy Cherry Flynn—the name she’d given him, Martha Peck, the head of the FAA, and the fact that Cooke’s files had been removed prior to the crash, indicating that someone knew the crash was going to happen. He added the info that Wanda Chinkle had given him, about Cooke’s Air Force background, that he flew government officials, that for the previous eighteen months he seemed to have disappeared from the Air Force and had been collecting a salary from a company called Midas Ltd. Justin’s pen hovered over his yellow legal pad as he hesitated about making a first but very tenuous link: victim number one was a friend of Vice President Dandridge; victim number two had piloted government officials. To get a private pilot, one had to be fairly high up in the government—but as high up as the vice president? Justin added a new page to his list, with the heading “Connections.” And he added that one—followed by quite a few question marks. Even if the link was a legitimate one, he didn’t know what it could mean. But he left it on the page.

  Chuck Billings was next and Justin had to put his emotions aside. He needed to be objective here, and the fact that Chuck had been his friend was irrelevant to the investigation. So he narrowed his known information about Chuck to this: the head of the Providence bomb squad had a meeting with someone from the FBI the day he was killed. He had anticipated danger because he’d sent Justin all his notes on the Harper’s bombing for safekeeping. Chuck suspected that the first bombing wasn’t a suicide bombing—and the key information was the sound of the cell phone ringing. Chuck believed the FBI was covering up the truth. He had a meeting scheduled with Wanda Chinkle for the day after he died. Justin closed his eyes, reached into his brain to see if he could come up with anything else of importance, but he didn’t think there were any more key facts. So, in the far right column, for the things he needed to know, he wrote:

  “Who did Chuck meet with the day he died?”

  and

  “Read his notebook again.”

  and

  “If not suicide bombing, who made the cell phone call to detonate the bomb?”

  and

  “Sound of cell phone at La Cucina?”

  and

  “Jacks—were they found at the La Cucina bombing? How can signature be used to identify suspect?”

  There were two names left. First was Martin Heffernan. Known info: “Works for FAA. Probably responsible for murdering Hutch Cooke.” Under “Need to Know,” Justin wrote, “Who was his direct boss? Who gave him the order to kill Cooke? Why was he killed—to stop him from talking?”

  The final name was Ray Lockhardt. Justin kept his notes brief for Ray. What he knew was: “Shot at point-blank range. Threatened by Heffernan in name of FAA. Knew that Cooke was murdered by rigging plane.” In the far right column, he wrote, “Who killed him?” then “Why was he killed?” After that, he hesitated, held his pen in the air, frozen, and finally wrote, “Because I fucked up.”

  Justin put the pen down on the desk, went to the computer, and began tapping at the keyboard to enter his list. He didn’t do this just because he liked things neat and clean—although he did; his life might be chaotic and raw but he preferred his investigations to have all their edges rounded off and smooth—but rather because he found that when he transferred his notes, when he typed, he usually found something new to add to the equation. Just one more step in the thinking process. He’d been doing it long enough, and successfully enough, that he knew the process wasn’t always rational. Subliminal thoughts crept in, and, while he didn’t always know what they meant or why he was asking the questions he asked, he trusted those instincts. And he trusted his questions. It was a lot like doing a crossword puzzle, Justin always thought. You could stare and stare at a clue and draw a total blank on the answer. Then you could put the puzzle aside, take a nap, do anything to keep from thinking about the specifics, and you’d pick it back up again later, look at the same clue, and the answer would be right there. It was hard to stop the brain from working once it latched onto something. He knew that well. It was why he drank so much and kept a nice little cache of grass at all times. Sometimes he needed his brain to stop working. Sometimes he had to stop it from working.

  Sure enough, his ritualized process was successful again. Sitting at Jimmy’s old desk, Justin wound up typing in several new entries. By Ray Lockhardt’s name, he added that he’d been shot with a .38. He also added a notation: “Killed between 7 and 8 P.M., same night as La Cucina bombing.” When he put in the information about Bradford Collins, he realized that people murdered other people for three basic reasons: passion, money, and protection. With Collins, it was fairly safe to rule out the first category—a jilted lover might shoot someone, but blow up a roomful of strangers?—but the last two could be valid. So he added: “Money?” and then: “What did he know? What could he tell? Who could he hurt?” For Cooke, he typed in: “Where was he going? Where had he come from?” And then: “Passenger?” and “Cargo?” and, thinking back to Chuck Billings’s notes, “Connection to Semtex?”

  He ran the cursor back over to Bradford Collins’s name, let it linger there for a moment, waiting for the thought he knew was going to emerge. It did and he threw his hands up, wondering why he hadn’t thought of this before. He quickly went online, went to the New York Times Web site, because he knew they’d kept a running track of the bombing victims, and ran down the list of all those known to be killed at Harper’s. There were a few names he recognized, Jimmy Leggett’s among them. When he came to Jimmy’s listing he almost did a double take. Jimmy’s death already seemed disconnected from what he was investigating, and for a moment Justin was actually surprised to see it there, but then he realized that he was only making this list because Marjorie had asked him to find out what had happened to her husband. He shivered involuntarily, yet again surprised at the brain’s ability to make wounds that seem so raw recede into the background, then he kept scrolling through the names. He didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but whatever it was wasn’t there. He saw the name of a local contractor he knew, a big guy with a bad temper who once, while installing storm windows in Justin’s East End house, had taken a swing at Justin after listening to a complaint about some of the workmanship. Justin hadn’t taken kindly to the contractor’s attempt to remov
e his head from his neck. While the guy was off balance after Justin ducked his punch, Justin grabbed a lamp and used it in one swift and compact motion to break the contractor’s nose. There was a lot of blood and a lot of swearing, neither of which had particularly bothered Justin. Nor did it bother him to find out the guy was now dead. Justin was not big on grudges. But on the other hand, he found no real reason to grieve over assholes.

  Going through the rest of the names, Justin saw an array of businessmen and -women who had died that day, none of whom seemed overtly connected to Bradford Collins in any relevant way. There was a writer whom Justin had heard of but had never read, a literary agent who’d been visiting from London, the comptroller for the City of New York, whom the Times praised lavishly, a yoga teacher, a gourmet caterer, busboys, waiters, hostesses. A lot of innocent people who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there was no one who jumped out at Justin as useful to his investigation. So he went offline, switched back to the word processing program and his list, and under “Need to Know” he wrote, “Who was Brad Collins having lunch with?” And that sparked one more thing, so he scrolled down to Martin Heffernan’s name and wrote the same thing: “Who was he meeting at La Cucina?”

  He’d had it. He could tell his brain was turning off, so he clicked on the print option, heard the quiet whirr of the printer preparing to do its work, and he sat at what was now his desk, his hands cupped together, his head resting on the edges of his fingers. As the two-page document printed, Justin breathed deeply, letting his mind go blank, allowing his instincts to tell him where to start, what to do first. When he decided, he nodded a firm, crisp nod, pleased with the decision, and as he reached over to pick up his notes he was surprised to find that Reggie Bokkenheuser was standing in front of his desk, looking at him with the faintest curl of a smile on her lips.

  “Trying to see into the future?” she said.

  “The past,” he told her. “With cops it’s always the past.”

  She nodded, as if he’d just revealed something valuable. There was a moment of silence that hung thickly in the air, then she said, “Is there anything I can help you with?” When he didn’t answer right away, she sat down in the chair across the desk from him. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, or what exactly you’re trying to figure out, but I know there’s a lot of shit going down. Maybe you shouldn’t be trying to do it all by yourself.” He still didn’t respond, so she said, “If not me, then some of those guys.” She waved her hand in the direction of the cops in the main station room.

  “I have two of them working on something.”

  She waited but he didn’t say anything further, so she stood back up and said, “I’ll go back to my parking tickets.”

  Reggie turned around, took a step toward the door, but Justin said her name out loud and she stopped.

  “Ray Lockhardt,” he said.

  “What about him?”

  “I want you to handle the investigation.” Her eyes widened a bit. He thought she looked pleased. He’d definitely managed to surprise her.

  “Um . . . ,” she said, “what are you going to be doing while I’m looking into only the second murder in this town in twenty-six years.” Now it was his turn to look surprised, and she said, “I do my homework.”

  “Time to graduate from homework,” Justin told her. “It’s the real world now.”

  “I’m ready for it,” she said.

  “I know you are.”

  “But you still didn’t answer my question. What are you going to be doing?”

  “There are a lot of pieces to this thing. I think you’re better off not knowing what all of them are. At least for now. But you’ll be working on one piece. Gary and Tom are working on another one.”

  “And you’ll be working on another one.”

  “Yup.”

  “And putting all the pieces together so they make a nice, coherent whole?”

  “See?” he said, nodding. “You’re already putting your crack investigative skills to work.”

  He told her to sit back down, then he spent a few minutes going over the details of Ray Lockhardt’s murder and pointing Reggie in several right directions. He told her to begin by looking for anyone with a registered .38 on the east end of Long Island. If that didn’t lead anywhere, find out if any registered .38s had been reported stolen. Said she should track Ray’s movements for the day he died, and to check with airport employees and pilots to find out if anyone saw anything suspicious. Told her the results from fingerprinting Ray’s office should be back momentarily and gave her the name of the officer on the Southampton force she should contact to get them. That would be enough to keep her busy for a while. Then he told her to report in at the end of every day or anytime something interesting occurred, day or night. He saw her eyes flicker when he said the word “night,” and he almost said something, something like, “Come on, sex is one thing, a murder investigation’s something else, cut the crap,” but the flicker wasn’t really that blatant and it seemed better to leave the whole thing alone. Besides, he’d felt the change in his voice when he said the same phrase. It wasn’t much of a change, he doubted she’d even heard it. But he had.

  When Reggie left the office, he hesitated for just a moment, then picked up the phone and dialed.

  He gave his name to the secretary who answered the phone, and she immediately put him through to her boss. When the man came on the line, Justin took a deep breath and said, “Dad?” Then he explained to his father what he needed and what he wanted and when his father said, “Okay,” Justin said, “See you Saturday.” Before he could even hang up the phone, Gary and Thomas burst into his office. They looked like little schoolkids who couldn’t wait to show the teacher they had the right answer to a tough question.

  “We found him,” Gary said.

  “Hutchinson Cooke,” Thomas added.

  “Yeah.” This was Gary. Justin wondered if they’d actually rehearsed who would get to tell him what information. “We have his home address and the name of his commanding officer at Andrews Air Force Base.”

  Thomas stepped in now. “That’s where he was based.”

  “Where’s the house?” Justin asked.

  “In Silver Spring, Maryland. It’s right outside of D.C.”

  “And it’s up for sale,” Gary said. He couldn’t resist a slight boast. “I spoke to the Realtor.”

  “Who’s selling it?” Justin wanted to know.

  “Cooke’s wife.” That was Thomas. “They were married for sixteen years. Her name’s Theresa. They have two kids.”

  Gary shot his fellow cop a sharp look. Justin wondered if it was Gary who was supposed to spill the news about the kids. “The oldest one’s Reysa. She’s twelve. And the younger one’s Hannah. Nine.”

  “Here,” Thomas said, handing over a piece of paper. “That’s got all the info on it.”

  “Thank you,” Justin said. “Good work.”

  “There’s one other thing that’s weird,” Gary said. Justin could see that there’d been an internal struggle about whether or not to reveal this last chunk of info. “This guy Cooke was pulling down two paychecks. We finally found him using IRS records, that’s how come we know about it.”

  Justin couldn’t help himself. “He was getting paid by a company called Midas, right?”

  Both of the faces of the young cops fell nearly to the floor. Justin felt guilty. But, hell, they deserved it. They’d been just a little too eager to show off. Still, he could have been a little less show-offy himself.

  “Did you get any information on Midas? I didn’t come up with a thing,” Justin said.

  His ignorance on that score didn’t seem to make them feel any better. Gary looked down at his shoes and said, “No. We didn’t find nothing either. It’s weird. It’s kind of like the company doesn’t exist.”

  “Well, keep working on it, would you? It might be nothing, it might be important. But see what you can find out, okay?”

  They nodded, turned
to go back to the main room.

  “And I mean it, guys. That was good work. Thank you.”

  They shrugged but were still pleased by the compliment. As soon as they were gone, Justin hunched forward and looked at his calendar for the next day, saw that other than a meeting with Leona Krill, he had a blank slate. He decided he could cancel Leona. He was sure she’d understand. So he made two quick calls. One to the travel agent at the end of Main Street, right on the pier. She booked him the round-trip flight he requested. The second call was to Leona. He got her secretary, told the woman to reschedule the next day’s meeting. When she asked for a time to reschedule, he said he’d get back to her, and hung up. He’d barely gotten his hand away from the receiver when his intercom buzzed. When he answered it, Dennis said, “Mayor Krill’s on the one-three-six-four line.” Justin nodded to himself, tapped down on the right button and said, “Leona, what can I do for you?”

  “You cannot cancel your meeting with me just because you don’t feel like meeting. Not when we’ve got a murder investigation in this town. That’s what you can do for me.”

  “I canceled it because of the investigation,” he said. “I have to go out of town. On business.”

  “What time are you leaving?”

  “Early,” he told her. “A nine A.M. plane, so I have to leave here around seven.”

  “I’ll meet you at six-thirty,” she said. “I’ll even make it easy on you. We can meet at your place.” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Six-thirty tomorrow morning at your place, okay, Jay?”

  “How do you like your coffee?” he said.

  “Skim milk, no sugar.”

  As he put the phone down, Justin sat back in his chair. He looked through his large plate glass window into the front room of the station house. Thomas had left to patrol the town. Gary was working on his computer. Reggie was putting on her coat and was on her way out. She glanced into his office on her way to the front door, saw that he was watching her. He was expecting a smile but it didn’t come. Their eyes met, but no smile. Then she was gone.