by Mike Lawson
Carmody looked around, made sure there were no cars coming from either direction, and dropped the chessboard into the water below him. He had thought about just hiding the laptop but had decided not to take the risk. He’d get another when they needed one, which probably wouldn’t be for quite a while.
He placed his forearms on the bridge rail and looked down into the water.
This whole thing was coming apart; it was time to shut it down. But he knew she wouldn’t do that. He looked at his watch. He had to get going. The rendezvous was in less than two hours.
* * *
SHE MADE HIM drive a long way from Bremerton for the meeting, past Green Mountain, up a winding road that changed from pavement to gravel and ended at a clear-cut section of forest surrounded by a lonely ring of still-standing trees. She also kept him waiting longer than normal before she approached his car, taking twice as much time to make sure he hadn’t been followed.
She entered the car and he was surprised at the way she was dressed. She normally wore the sort of clothes a cat burglar would wear, dark jeans and a long-sleeved dark T-shirt. But tonight she was wearing a low-cut black cocktail dress, a dress which showed off very good legs. On her feet were sexy, impractical high heels that must have been tough to walk in in the area where they were parked. She even had on perfume. The rendezvous must have caused her to interrupt or cancel whatever plans she’d had for the evening, but Carmody couldn’t imagine her having a social life. He had no idea what she did when they were apart; he had always thought of her as a beautiful vampire lying in a coffin waiting until the sun disappeared.
As usual she began without any sort of greeting. “What will you do now?” she said.
“Wait. Just lay back and wait.”
She stared at him a moment then nodded.
“Did he talk to anyone before he left the shipyard?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have to control those fools,” she said.
“Hey! I didn’t recruit them,” Carmody said.
“They’re your responsibility,” she snapped.
She was right about that.
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?”
Carmody shrugged. “Maybe a month.”
She paused a beat then nodded. One thing Carmody liked about her— maybe the only thing— is that she didn’t waste time nagging at him, telling him that she wasn’t happy with the delay.
Apparently having nothing more to ask him, or further instructions to give him, she opened the door and started to leave the car.
“There’s something else you need to know,” Carmody said.
10
Dave Whitfield had been stabbed to death.
He had called DeMarco’s cell phone at exactly 8:10 a.m. and had left the shipyard twenty-eight minutes later. No one knew for sure why he had left when he did or where he was going, but DeMarco had an idea. DeMarco figured that when Whitfield had not been able to communicate with him by cell phone when he was on the fishing boat, Whitfield had left the shipyard to go to DeMarco’s motel, thinking that at that hour DeMarco might still be there, if not in his room, then maybe having breakfast.
Whitfield’s car had been parked in a small lot three blocks from the shipyard. The lot had space for six or seven cars, and to reach the lot, Whitfield had to walk down an alley. The parking lot itself was the backyard of a private home; the home owner had concluded long ago that charging shipyard workers eight bucks a day for parking was more enjoyable than mowing a lawn. The parking lot was visible only to people walking down the alley and to the owner of the lot if he happened to be looking out one of his back windows.
Whitfield had been killed in the parking lot, and based on the temperature of his liver and other factors that came to light later, the time of death was established at approximately nine a.m. He had been stabbed once and the weapon used, presumably a long-bladed knife, had entered his rib cage, slid between his ribs, and severed his aorta. After he was killed, his wallet and watch were taken and his body was shoved under his car. The body wasn’t discovered until noon when another shipyard worker went to the parking lot during his lunch break.
In the two days following the killing, Frank Hathaway showed exactly how much muscle an angry Secretary of the Navy could flex. A squad of investigators from NCIS descended on the shipyard like winged furies and a large navy poker was jammed up the local police chief’s ass to prod him into action. Two FBI agents were also diverted from the Bureau’s Seattle office to Bremerton. The FBI’s jurisdiction was questionable as the killing had occurred on city— vice federal— property, but since Hathaway was the one demanding action they had decided to engage.
DeMarco and Emma were interviewed several times. As they had no reason not to cooperate they told the assorted groups of cops what they knew. The last phone call DeMarco had received from Whitfield was naturally of particular interest but the only thing DeMarco could tell them was that he thought Whitfield had been talking about Norton and Mulherin, but nothing Whitfield had said, or that DeMarco had heard over the poor connection, had led him to conclude that Whitfield had discovered anything that would be a motive for murder.
“Look,” DeMarco told the investigators, “this whole thing with Whitfield was him thinking these two guys were doing a shitty job and making more money than they should have. I don’t know why he called me, but we didn’t find any evidence that anything illegal was going on, and we sure as hell didn’t find anything worth killing somebody over.”
Norton, Mulherin, and Carmody were interrogated by navy and federal investigators and by city detectives. Alibis were asked for and verified. Whitfield’s coworkers and neighbors were questioned, evidence was collected from the scene of the crime, and the neighborhood where Whitfield had been killed was canvassed by teams of cynical cops.
Norton and Mulherin were cleared almost immediately. At the time of Whitfield’s death, they had been inside the shipyard and were seen by approximately twenty people. On top of alibis provided by multiple eyewitnesses, the two men also had an electronic alibi: to enter or exit the shipyard, employees had to swipe their badges through bar-code readers installed at all the shipyard gates. The bar-code readers provided the exact time Whitfield had left the shipyard and verified that Mulherin and Norton had entered the shipyard at 7:00 a.m. and remained there all day, Mulherin leaving at 3:59 p.m. and Norton at 5:30 p.m.
Phil Carmody was also eliminated as a murder suspect, although his alibi was not as airtight as that of his employees. He had been having breakfast at the time of the killing and the restaurant where he had eaten was only five minutes by car from the parking lot where Dave Whitfield had died. But for Carmody to have killed Whitfield, he would have to have been missing from the restaurant for almost fifteen minutes— five minutes to get to the parking lot, two or three minutes to kill Whitfield and hide his body, and five minutes to get back to the restaurant. The waitress who had waited on Carmody didn’t think there was any fifteen-minute period when he was out of her sight, and she remembered refilling his coffee cup at least twice while he was eating. The waitress did say that Carmody had been seated near the rear exit of the restaurant.
Mahoney, as DeMarco had expected, irrationally blamed him for Whitfield’s death.
“What the fuck did you do, Joe?” Mahoney had screamed. “Goddamnit, all Hathaway wanted was for you to check out some pissant navy contract thing, and the next thing you know, his nephew’s dead. You musta done something.”
DeMarco wasn’t sure that he’d done anything to cause Whitfield’s death, but not returning Whitfield’s phone call that morning had been a mistake. As he had told the cops, he had no facts to connect Whitfield’s death with Norton’s and Mulherin’s activities, but the timing of the phone call was disturbing. DeMarco couldn’t leave Bremerton until he could explain why Dave Whitfield had been killed.
Emma, who could have left had she wanted to, also decided to stay. Something was bothering her— something other than
the fact that Dave Whitfield had been killed— but she wouldn’t tell DeMarco what it was.
Forty-eight hours after Dave Whitfield died, the Bremerton cops arrested a man for his murder.
11
Jerry Brunstad, Bremerton’s chief of police, was a paunchy man with a sunburned face, too much dyed-black hair, and long sideburns; DeMarco thought he looked like an Elvis impersonator with a badge. Brunstad’s blue uniform shirt was snug across his belly and when he raised his right arm to use the pointer, a shirttail came out the back of his pants. He was using the pointer to direct attention to a white board that listed the evidence his men had acquired on Dave Whitfield’s killer. His audience consisted of seven people: Richard Miller, who was in charge of security at the shipyard; two FBI agents; two NCIS agents; and Emma and DeMarco. It had taken a phone call from the Speaker’s office for Emma and DeMarco to be allowed to attend the briefing.
According to Chief Brunstad, Whitfield had been murdered by a man named Thomas “Cowboy” Conran. Conran was an easily recognizable, thirty-nine-year-old street person. He was six foot four, scarecrow thin, and always wore a battered black cowboy hat pulled down low on his forehead, making him look like a demented, undernourished Tim McGraw. Conran had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic in his teens and when he was off his meds— which was almost all the time— was known to act in an irrational, often violent manner.
“Shipyard badge readers,” Brunstad said, “recorded Whitfield going out the State Street gate at 8:38 and it takes about ten minutes to walk from the gate to where his car was parked. We walked the route. A witness saw Cowboy walking down the alley at 8:55. The witness said he was sure of the time because he was waiting for a buddy to pick him up and his buddy was late. From the window of his house, the witness couldn’t see the parking lot where Whitfield was killed, but he could see Cowboy leaving the alley.”
“Who was the witness?” an FBI agent asked. The agent was a woman with short dark hair, warm brown eyes, and a trim figure. She was as cute as a button, DeMarco thought, and she had outstanding ankles. And the lady agent had noticed DeMarco, too. When she first came into the conference room she’d glanced at everybody, the way a person does when entering a room filled with strangers, but it had seemed to DeMarco that her gaze had lingered longer on him. DeMarco wondered if the lingering look was because she found him devilishly handsome.
“A guy named Mark Berg,” Brunstad said, answering the FBI lady’s question. “He’s an out-of-work carpenter.”
The agent wrote this down. “Why did Mr. Berg wait until now to tell you about Conran?” she asked.
“He was over in Spokane visiting a cousin. Like I said, he was waiting for his ride the day he saw Cowboy and he left for Spokane right after he saw him. He didn’t hear about Whitfield’s murder until he got back last night.”
The FBI agent also included this information in her notebook. She had written down virtually every word that Brunstad had uttered, making DeMarco conclude: great ankles but maybe just a little anal.
“Anyway,” Brunstad said, “after we interviewed the witness, we went looking for Cowboy and in his backpack we found Whitfield’s wallet and watch. We also found a knife with a six-inch blade. There was blood on the blade and the ME says the shape of the blade matches Whitfield’s wound. We’ve sent the knife to a lab to see if the blood matches Whitfield’s DNA. We’ll know in a couple of days.”
“Whitfield was stabbed from the front,” Emma said. “Why would he let this street person get so close to him?”
“I don’t know,” Brunstad said. “Maybe Cowboy was asking Whitfield for a handout. He’s a big guy, he backs Whitfield up against his car, and when Whitfield doesn’t give him any money, he gets mad and stabs him.” One of Brunstad’s cops nodded in approval of his boss’s reasoning.
“Had Mr. Conran spent any of Whitfield’s money or used his credit cards?” Emma asked.
“He definitely didn’t use the credit cards,” the chief said. “We checked. As for the money that was in Whitfield’s wallet, we don’t know how much he had to begin with, but there was still cash in the wallet when we arrested Cowboy.”
“Humph,” Emma said.
“So what does this Cowboy character say?” one of the NCIS agents asked.
“He says gibberish,” Brunstad said. “We’ve questioned him but he just prattles on about weird stuff. You can’t get a direct answer to anything. We’re trying to get his lawyer to let us force-feed Cowboy his meds but his lawyer’s playin’ games with us. But right now, even without a confession, Cowboy looks pretty good for this thing.”
Brunstad’s presentation ended a few minutes later. Emma told DeMarco she needed to make a phone call and left him sitting there in the briefing room. DeMarco wondered who she was calling. He noticed the cute FBI agent had walked up to look at the crime scene photos taped on the wall near the white board. DeMarco decided he, too, was interested in the evidence.
“Gotta pretty good case against Mr. Cowboy,” DeMarco said to the agent.
“Yeah, almost too good,” the agent said.
It was the way she said “yeah.” Pure New York. “Brooklyn?” DeMarco said.
“No, smart guy. Queens. You don’t remember me, do you?”
“I know you?” DeMarco said.
“Sorta. My brother was Nick Carlucci.”
“You’re kidding!” DeMarco said. Nick Carlucci had been an acquaintance of DeMarco’s in high school. He’d never been a close friend because DeMarco’s mother wouldn’t allow DeMarco to pal around with him after Nick was arrested for stealing a car. DeMarco’s father may have worked for a mobster but that didn’t mean that Mrs. DeMarco would permit her son to associate with criminals.
“So how’s Nick doing?” DeMarco said.
“Never mind,” the agent said. DeMarco guessed that meant that ol’ Nick hadn’t gone on to Yale and become a doctor.
DeMarco vaguely remembered her now, recalling that Nick had a younger sister, a skinny little kid with a sharp mouth. What the hell was her name?
“My name’s Diane,” Diane said, apparently having the same ability all women had— which was to read DeMarco’s mind as if there was an electronic reader-board on his forehead.
“So what agency are you with?” she asked. “NCIS?”
“No. Congress.”
“Congress? What’s Congress got to do with this?”
Emma returned to the conference room before DeMarco could answer. She stood in the doorway and made an impatient come-on-let’s-go motion.
“It’s complicated,” DeMarco said to Diane Carlucci.
“Oh, yeah?” Diane said. Again, the New York “yeah,” this time communicating: like anything you had to say could be complicated.
Emma waved at DeMarco again; he could tell she was getting pissed.
“Yeah,” DeMarco said, “it’s so complicated it would take me a whole dinner to explain it to you.”
Diane Carlucci smiled. He liked that smile. She took a card out of the pocket of her suit jacket and said, “Why don’t you call me later today. If this thing’s under control, dinner tonight might be okay, you being from Congress and all.”
There was nothing like a girl from the old neighborhood.
DeMarco started over toward Emma, who was still standing in the doorway. He was halfway there when she said, “Hurry up!” then turned and walked away.
DeMarco hustled to catch up with her. “So you don’t think the bum did it,” DeMarco said to Emma.
“I think Mr. Conran’s only crime is being mentally ill,” Emma said.
“Who’d you call?” DeMarco asked.
“I noticed you talking to that young lady from the FBI,” Emma said. “Comparing case notes?”
“Funny thing,” DeMarco said. “She was raised in my old neighborhood. I knew her brother.”
“Yeah, funny thing,” Emma said. “Another funny thing is how she looks like your ex-wife.”
DeMarco’s wife had divorced him a few years ag
o. She’d had an affair with his cousin, and then stripped him of most of his assets. In spite of what she’d done, he still wasn’t completely over her and he had a tendency to be attracted to women who looked just like her. And Emma knew it.
“Aw, she does not,” DeMarco said.
12
Emma had decided that she wanted to see the facility where Mulherin and Norton worked when they were inside the shipyard— the area where Whitfield had been just before his death. Richard Miller, the shipyard’s head of security who had been at the briefing, had already left the police chief’s office and was just getting into his car when Emma stopped him.
Miller had a head like a stubby cinder block: a square-shaped face topped by brush-cut gray hair. He had probably been a burly guy in his youth but at age fifty all the muscles had collapsed into a tire of fat around his waist. When Emma told Miller what she wanted, he told her that he had better things to do than walk her around the shipyard, at which point Emma took a card out of her purse and handed it to him.