People had always told him he was a quick, clever guy, and that cleverness was something he figured made him good at his job, but reaching this particular conclusion in such a short time startled him. Willa had reaffixed that flat indifference to her face, which blended with his astonishment. The iciness that had encased him shattered. Lit by a sudden explosive flame, he swore and then swore some more. He followed that up with even more swearing, using words even he found offensive. “Son of a mother fucker. Son of a moth—You want to make sure he’s not arrested, which means you’re trying to cover this up. You’re manipulating your investigation, steering it away from Dominic. Christ almighty, Willa, that’s illegal!”
“I thought you said you didn’t yell.”
John took a deep breath. “It’s illegal.”
“Which is why I didn’t tell you, Detective.”
Exhaling heavily through his teeth, John ground his palms into his eyes and ground his back molars together as well. “You should have told me. You should have trusted me. Maybe I could’ve helped.”
“How? How could you have helped? He’s your friend. His wife—your best friend—is your cousin. I couldn’t involve you.”
“You should have trusted me.”
“The way you trusted me? I couldn’t involve you in any way.”
His hands fell away from his face. “Well, guess what, Your Highness. I’m involved.”
“What are you going to do?” she said in a dull voice.
“What do you think I’m going to do?” For a long moment, he looked at her. Then he opened the car door and retrieved the jacket he’d left inside. He straightened, donned the coat, and adjusted it around the shoulder harness of his service weapon. After another deep breath, he glanced at the entrance of the police station, pulled his shirtsleeves through his cuffs, and exhaled, fixing his attention on her again. “Are you really a widow? Is Alicia really your stepdaughter? Did you ever love me? In the time we’ve spent together this week is there one goddamned you’ve told me the truth about?”
Eyes, flat, expression flatter, she held his gaze.
He stared back at her just as flatly. “Let’s get this over with.”
A young man with pimples and an expensive black suit met them as soon as they entered the station. “Ms Grafton’s ready and Binney’s waiting for your instructions, Agent Heston,” he said, glancing at John.
”Detective Tilbrook, this is Special Agent Adams,” she said and waited, hands out, palms up.
It took a second before John understood she had expected him to pull out his handcuffs, arrest her, and hand her over to the FBI agent she’d just introduced.
It took her just as long to understand that wasn’t going to happen and she looked at him, her mouth opening very slightly in surprise as he offered his hand to Adams and Adams shook it.
“Um … uh … the…” she stammered and regained the composure she’d dropped. “The detective is going to sit in with us while Officer Binney looks after Ms Grafton.”
Adams ran his index finger over a line of bumps along his jaw. “It’s that way. Third door.” He pointed down a hall and let Willa take the lead. “You local PD?” he asked as they walked behind her.
“Mm-hm.”
A familiar face was waiting outside Interview 3, the observation and interrogation room. John tapped Officer Michaela Binney’s shoulder. “Hey, Mike.”
On the job, Mike was serious, reserved, and painfully methodical. Off the job, she was a goofy, livewire chatterbox. They’d worked together numerous times. Their rapport was friendly, professional, and Madam Meatfork had been their last case. Binney turned and gave him a quick hug. “John. Heard you were back. How’s the arm?”
“Better every day.”
“Captain pull you in on this too?”
“Nope,” John tipped his head in Willa’s direction. “She did. She thinks our investigations might be related.”
Binney followed his chin. “Oh.” She gave Willa a nod. “Ma’am, Agent Adams.”
“Hell of a coincidence, innit?” Adams smiled at the uniformed officer.
“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” Willa snapped.
Binney led them into a dim, little room with the one-way mirror. Jackie Grafton, clad in the orange and white striped prison-wear that she made look good, sat at a small table on the other side of the glass. Her room was brightly lit.
“So, Michaela,” Adams said as he sidled beside Binney, “you give any more thought about having dinner with me?”
Willa slapped the folder she’d been carrying against the desk in the corner, away from the mirror. “Not now, Agent Adams.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t call me ma’am.” Folder open, Willa withdrew the yellow page. “Thank you for your assistance, Officer Binney, especially on a Sunday.” Holding the paper under a small circle of light from a tiny desk lamp, she drew Binney’s attention to the illustrations in the margins. “Ask her what this is, if it’s a mathematical formula. Ask if it means anything to her.”
“You want me to ask her…” Binney blinked in surprise. “Aren’t you going in there?”
“No. You have to because I have to maintain—”
“Cover, in case you’re wrong.” Binney pressed her lips together for a moment. “All right. Anything else?”
“Just that for now,” Willa nodded. “In case I’m wrong.”
“Okay.” Before she went through the door separating the two rooms, Officer Binney rolled her shoulders back and forth. Then she went inside.
As the trio on the dark side watched the two women in the other, bright room, the cold sweat Willa felt the other day had returned. Her palms were wet. The back of her neck was damp. Moisture had pooled beneath her breasts and her mouth had gone dry.
She did not want to be right about this.
She crossed her arms, shut her eyes, and sat on the edge of the desk, her back against the concrete block wall. A minute or two passed before the door opened and Binney’s rubber soled shoes squeaked on the floor. Willa opened her eyes and came off the desk.
Binney handed back the sheet of paper. “You’re right. It’s no mathematical formula. It’s the Korean symbol for Jesus.”
“Korean?” Adams said.
Binney barely glanced at the junior agent. “The Jesus is the only part Ms Grafton knows how to write. She said drawing it reminds her that Jesus and her boyfriend love her. Her boyfriend has Jesus loves me tattooed on his chest. Do you need details on the boyfriend?”
Willa felt as if the world had shifted into slow motion.
It took two weeks to turn around and an entire month to watch John’s dawdling nod.
In three years, her eyes shifted to Jerry Adams and the flakes of dandruff he brushed from his shoulder floated to the ground in five.
At a decade, the young agent opened a notebook and reality snapped back into place. “Here’s what we’ve got on the boyfriend, JS Carl,” he said. “He’s employed by Westerncare.”
John had his own little notebook in hand and he scribbled in it. “And that’s what, health insurance?”
“No, visiting and live-in healthcare. He’s a registered nurse.”
“What’s the JS stand for?”
“Jason.”
“J-a-s-o-n or is it J-a-y-s-o-n?”
“Neither. Two words: J-a-e, S-u-n. Carl is spelled like you think. It’s a very common Korean last name. Did you know that?”
“No, Agent Adams,” John said, “I did not know ‘Carl’ is a common Korean last name.”
Adams scratched his head and flurries dusted his dark jacket ever so lightly. “Think his being Korean is significant? You think Chandra and Carl have been stealing and selling secrets to North Korea?”
God help her. Willa knew it was wrong to pray that Chandra and Sunny Carl had stolen and sold government secrets to North Korea because if they had, however heartbreaking for Jackie, it completely directed the investigation away from Dominic. Immoral as it was, she prayed that’s
what had happened and rubbed her temples. “Anything is possible. We can speculate all we want, but can’t run with the ball until we confirm Sunny’s whereabouts. Can we do that? Have we heard from the local PD in Florida?”
“The place they went to was vacant.”
“Because he was helping his aunt travel back here.” Willa stopped massaging her temples. “Officer Binney, I need you to go back in and ask Jackie how we could contact Sunny. Tell her it’s regarding her bail and the woman she shared the cell with the other day. See if you can find out what his travel schedule was like.”
With a nod, Binney went back into the little room. They watched her through the glass and this time, they listened as she posed a few broad questions to Jackie before getting to the point. “There was one more thing,” Binney said. “We’re not supposed to do this, but there was a woman who was in here with you the other day, she had white hair…”
“The drunk lady with the white hair?” Jackie shifted in her seat. “What about her?”
Binney cleared her throat. “Well, she wanted to talk to your boyfriend about your bail, but didn’t know how to get in touch. You know where he is, or how she can contact him?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. I mean wow!” A wide smile spread across Jackie’s face and then disappeared. “Ohhh. He’s with his Aunt and I don’t remember his cell number off hand.”
“You don’t know his phone number?”
Jackie moaned and began to speak quickly, her inflection rising at the end of every sentence. “Who remembers cell phone numbers? I just hit speed dial? The number’s in my phone? And my phone’s at home.? Or maybe you police took it with my purse and stuff? I have a number for his aunt on the fridge where I was housesitting. He’ll be on his way back here soon. He said he’d be gone two weeks or so, but it depends on how long his aunt wanted to stay with her friend in New Orleans. They always stop there on the way home from Florida.” Jackie moaned again.
Binney smoothed hair from her forehead. “Sorry,” she said and moved towards the door.
“Wait a second! Wait!”
Binney turned, hands on her hips. She glanced at the mirrored glass and then back at Jackie.
“You could ask Benny. Sunny calls him, just to keep things routine. Benny would know. Well, his sons would know. Then you could give the drunk the number.”
“Is Benny a relative of Sunny’s?”
“No, no. Benny Ivers is the man Sunny looks after.”
John had been leaning against the cement block wall, taking notes. He straightened. “Did she say Benny Ivers?”
“Yeah,” Willa looked at him. “You know him? Is he a local?”
John rubbed a palm over his short hair. “He’s Donald Farley’s stepfather. He has dementia.”
“Donald Farley? The Lab Director?” Adams chuckled.
Willa’s throat tightened as she looked at Jackie. They’d go to Farley’s to get Sunny’s number. Willa knew the odds were not good, but there was still a chance they could be wrong and a live thief was better than a dead one. Instead of being murdered by a couple of meth-cooking idiots or a tax avoiding molecular physicist, for the sake of the woman in orange on the other side of the one-way mirror, Willa hoped to God Sunny Carl was in New Orleans, sitting with his aunt in a jazz bar on Bourbon Street.
She turned back to Agent Adams. “Have Officer Binney bring Rory Grafton and Elroy Buck up here in an hour. And find out where Farley lives.”
“I know where Farley lives,” John said.
“Great. Give us the address. Agent Adams, Agent Mitchell, and I will meet you there.”
“Agent Mitchell is probably there by now.” Sheepish, Adams stroked an angry red bump on his jaw. “He … uh … went to have a little chat with him about sexual harassment.”
Willa growled. She actually growled and lifted her cell phone to her ear. She barely subdued the snarl at the back of her throat before Mitchell answered. “Tom? Was I not clear on how I wanted to handle this? We’re on our way to you, so, please, stay outside until we get there. Stay outside until you’re briefed. Stay outside and just stay… Did you just bark? Agent Mitchell, you have no idea how much of a bitch I can be.”
An elbow nudged into John’s side. Agent Adams grinned, his chin jutted in Willa’s direction. “She’s somethin,’ isn’t she?”
John looked down at the elbow prodding him, at the pimple-faced FBI agent, and at Willa.
“Yeah,” John muttered, squeezing the bridge of his nose, “she’s something all right.”
A white Jeep and Farley’s red BMW sat in the driveway of the Interim Lab Director’s home. Mitchell’s silver sedan was parked at the curb and he was leaning against it. Sunlight bouncing off the car’s metallic paint cast a halo around the handsome man. Willa pulled in behind the saintly looking Agent’s Chrysler and got out of Alicia’s hatchback. Adams climbed from the passenger side.
The chilly air was scented by piñon smoke and charcoal barbecue. It made Willa hungry. When this was all over she was going to go home, have a peanut butter sandwich and go to bed. Until then, she had to wait for John to arrive with the police officer he’d been working with on his case of an unidentified dead man. After that, it would be Goodbye John.
Stomach rumbling, heart aching, she turned to brief Mitchell on the recent events.
“I waited outside,” Mitchell said quickly, hands up in surrender, “like you asked.”
“Bad dog.” Adams chuckled.
“You want to wait in the car, Agent Adams?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You two are so funny, you’re real cartoons.” The kid needed a good slap upside his head as much a Mitchell did. Willa turned her attention back to the supposedly more mature man and kept her temper in check. “This is a little bit more delicate than Farley’s unwanted attention because it involves his elderly stepfather, Benny Ivers. The stepfather has dementia and the home care nurse who looks after him happens to be Jackie Grafton’s boyfriend, Sunny Carl. Mr Ivers is quite close to Sunny. Detective Tilbrook—you remember him from the other evening, don’t you, Tom—has reason to believe, and I’m inclined to agree, that Sunny may be dead. I think Rory Grafton, Elroy Buck, and quite possibly Himesh Chandra murdered him, and I think Chandra may be our leak. I don’t know how Sunny fits into this—”
“Oh, come on.” Adams snorted. “He’s selling the information to North Korea!”
Willa held up a hand. “Whether or not that’s the case, we’re here to find out about Sunny. We don’t know the level of the Mr Ivers’ dementia, but he’s fond of Sunny. I think it best if we try not to upset him.”
All ears now, Mitchell straightened. “You think Rory Grafton, his buddy, and Chandra might have murdered Sunny Carl?”
“I don’t know. With the drugs and all the stolen goods, maybe Sunny saw something, maybe he was going to talk. Maybe he was part of the leak. Maybe he was selling to North Korea or China or Pakistan. The point is we don’t know yet. I hope for Jackie’s sake he’s still in Florida or on his way home. We’re here because Farley has his travel itinerary and sometimes Sunny calls Mr Ivers. We need to pin down Sunny first before we move on Grafton, Buck, and Chandra and how they got their hands on classified material.”
A moment later, they were ringing Farley’s bell. Twenty-five seconds after that, Donald Farley opened the door, red-faced and sweating, despite the nip in the air. “I thought we were done, Agent Mitchell. I understand I was…” he trailed off, his watery blue gaze flicking from Mitchell to Willa. “I see. I see,” he said, ears turning pink. “I see. I see. Willa … Dr Heston … I … um … your hair … oh, your hair … is … so pretty. I’m sorry. I … overstepping … um…”
“Dr Farley, I need to speak with you. May we come in?”
Farley glanced at Mitchell. “I’m surprised. I thought you, I thought… Agent Mitchell and you…” His tongue licked at the corner of his mouth and he nodded. “Okay. Okay. I know. This is more approp
riate. You’re very kind to do it this way. Yes, please come in.”
They followed him into the foyer and Willa grabbed the sleeve of Mitchell’s brown corduroy barn jacket. “Jesus, Tom, you went ahead and had a little chat, didn’t you?”
He pursed his mouth and waggled his head. “Yeah. So sue me.” He pulled from her grip. “Dr Farley, I know we’ve al—”
“Title seven of the 1964 Civil Rights Act—” Adams piped up.
“Dr Farley, may we talk, in private? This is a little delicate.” Willa shoved her way between the two men and moved to stand in front of the Acting Lab Director.
“Thank you. That might be better.” Beads of sweat had formed on his upper lip. “Out back, if you don’t mind. I could use some air.”
She glanced at the two agents, eyes narrowed. “You two…”
Mitchell huffed. “Stay. We got it.”
With a nod, Willa followed Farley. He led her farther into the house, along a path made of plastic carpet runner over pale green carpet, into a dining room with French Baroque furniture, and into a pink and gray kitchen stuck in 1986.
“Hello,” an elderly man said from behind the flamingo pink countertop. He plopped a peanut butter-laden knife into an open jar. “You must be Donnie’s new girlfriend. I’m Benny, Donnie’s dad.” The man leaned sideways, hand thrust out. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Willa shook his sticky hand. “Hello, Benny.”
“Would you like a sandwich or some steak? You ask me, it’s a little cold for it, but Gordon’s barbecuing out back. Don’t let him burn your T-bone like he did last time, Donnie.”
“Dad, why don’t you take your peanut butter to the living room. The TV’s on.”
“You mother doesn’t like it when I eat in there.”
“Mom’s not here, Dad.”
“I know. Bless her soul.”
“Two of my friends are in the front hall, Dad. They won’t want anything to eat either. Just let them be.”
“Right. I’ll leave you two love birds and go watch Law and Order.” Benny grabbed a dishtowel and a napkin from a holder and ambled out of the kitchen.
Farley gave a little cough and moved to open a sliding glass door. Willa followed him outside to a spectacular view of the Sange de Cristo Mountains and the Española Valley where the Rio Grande ran in places like a shallow little creek. Willa wanted to cry. The tears clogging up her nose were about unrequited love and lost love. She wanted to cry for Farley, for Jackie, for herself. But crying, like panicking, was something best left for later.
For Your Eyes Only Page 33