Very Bad Men (26 page)

“You're making a lot of assumptions.”

“I'm really only making one—that all you people talk to each other. Elizabeth wanted Delacorte to take the manuscript seriously, so she had to tell him where it came from, and he would have passed that information along. So you knew it had been left at my door. But you didn't know why. If the killer wanted it to go to the police, he could have sent it to them directly. If he was looking for notoriety, he could have sent it to the
Ann Arbor News,
or one of the Detroit TV stations.”

“So you think I broke in here to find out why the killer delivered his manuscript to
Gray Streets
.”

“Not quite. I think you found the answer to that without breaking in. It's not hard to figure out. Something attracted the killer to
Gray Streets
. We know he's fixated on the Great Lakes Bank robbery.
Gray Streets
published a story about a bank robbery earlier this year—‘Only Paper' by Peter Fletcher. It's based, very loosely, on the Great Lakes robbery. It's told from the point of view of the driver, and it's the story of his revenge on the other robbers. The details don't matter. What's important is that it's on our website. Anyone looking for a connection between
Gray Streets
and the Great Lakes robbery could have found it. Just like you found it.”

“So you say.”

“So I say. You found it and you got curious about the author, Peter Fletcher. The bio note that accompanies the story says he's from Hell, Michigan. You would have discovered that while there is a town called Hell in Michigan, no one named Peter Fletcher lives there. So it must be a pseudonym. That's why you broke in here—to find out the author's real name.”

“And why would I care enough about the author to go to such lengths?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “I've got a couple of ideas, but you'll think they're outlandish. One is that you thought the story had been written by the real driver from the Great Lakes robbery, and you wanted to see to it he didn't make a nuisance of himself and interfere with Callie Spencer's run for the Senate.”

“You're right,” said Beckett. “That's outlandish. What's your other idea?”

“I'm not sure I want to say.”

“Oh, come.”

“All right, but you have to tell me something first. How old are you?”

I was echoing a question he had asked me, and it threw him. But he answered.

“Forty-three.”

I didn't try to hide my surprise. “All along I've been thinking fifty,” I said. “But if you're only forty-three, then it's possible.”

“What's possible?”

“That you were the driver in the Great Lakes robbery. You would have been twenty-six at the time, a little older than Bell and the others, but in the ballpark.”

He let out a short bark of a laugh. “You're an amusing man, Mr. Loogan.”

“I'm glad you think so,” I said. “If you were the driver, you might have read something in the story that bothered you, some detail that cut too close to the bone. You might have wondered if your secret was safe. That might have prompted you to break in here looking for the identity of the author.”

“Amusing, as I said. But I'm not the driver from the Great Lakes robbery.”

“What were you doing back then, seventeen years ago?”

“That would have been just after I lost my bid for the city council.”

“You must have been disappointed.”

“Yes.”

“That might have made it easier for Floyd Lambeau to recruit you.”

“I never met the man,” Beckett said. “That autumn was when I first began working for the senator. I didn't have time to rob any banks.”

“Well, it was just a thought,” I said. “The bottom line is, I don't know why you broke in here this weekend, but I know you didn't learn anything about Peter Fletcher.”

“No?”

“No. We don't even have a file on him. The man doesn't exist.”

“Then who wrote the story I was supposed to be so interested in?”

“I wrote it. But I never publish in
Gray Streets
under my own name. I'm the editor-in-chief; it wouldn't look right. I always use the name Peter Fletcher.”

Beckett rubbed his palm over his scalp. “That's fascinating. But of course I never had any interest in Peter Fletcher, and I'm not the one who broke into your office.”

“If that's the way you want it, it's fine with me,” I said. “As long as we understand each other. I don't want to find out later that some poor bastard named Peter Fletcher got run off the road on a dark night because I wrote a story under his name.”

“You have a very active imagination, Mr. Loogan.”

“Yes, I do. And as for Lucy Navarro, I can see how she might be a thorn in your side, but I confess I've grown a little fond of her. Whether she goes ahead with her investigation or not is up to her—I don't intend to advise her one way or the other. But if anything should happen to her, I'm afraid my imagination might get the better of me. I might imagine that there's an elaborate conspiracy at work, and that you're at the center of it.”

“I think perhaps you've read too many stories, Mr. Loogan.”

“I'm just telling you how it is. What was it you said about the senator—you feel responsible for him? It's the same with me and Lucy Navarro. As far as you're concerned, she's under my protection.”

Beckett braced his hands on his knees and pushed himself up from his chair. “That's a noble sentiment,” he said, “but I can assure you Ms. Navarro has nothing to fear from me. I'd like to persuade you of that, but I won't take up more of your time.”

He nodded his farewell and turned to go. I got up to see him off. He had only taken a few steps when I noticed he'd left his book behind.

“You forgot something,” I said.

He paused midstride and looked back. “No, I brought that for you. Think of it as one last argument to convince you to help me.”

I came out from behind the desk and watched him cross the outer office. When the hallway door closed behind him I reached for the book. The cover felt dry and slightly rough. A glance at the spine told me the title—
Stakes
—and the name of the author: E. L. Navarro.

E
lena Lucia Navarro,” I said.

“You got me, Loogan. You've discovered my dark secret.”

We were sitting in her yellow Beetle with a view of Callie Spencer's Ford—a distant patch of silver parked beside the cottage. I had the book in my lap.

“It's really good,” I said.

“Oh, go on,” said Lucy.

“I've only read the first few chapters, and I usually don't go in for urban fantasy—”

“Not so many caveats, Loogan,” she said. “You had me with ‘It's really good.' ”

I wasn't alone in my opinion. I'd done some searching online and found glowing profiles of the author in the
Los Angeles Times
and the
Chicago Tribune
. The piece in the
Tribune
had a picture of Lucy: younger, paler, with her hair dyed jet black. She looked vaguely Gothic, which must have been the point.
Stakes
was a novel about vampires.

I had picked up the essentials of the story: The protagonist dreams one night that his wife has been abducted from their bedroom by a shadowy intruder. In the dream he finds himself paralyzed, unable to react as his wife tries to fight off her captor. The struggle grows violent—sheets torn from the bed, mirror broken on the bureau. In the morning he wakes to find that the struggle was real, his wife is gone, and all he can remember about her abductor is that he had no reflection in the mirror.

The husband gets no help from the police. They think his story is nonsense and suspect he's done away with his wife, but they can't prove it. He's left to try to find her on his own.

Some of the critics found the plot melodramatic, the twists implausible. But they all agreed that the language was gorgeous, and that E. L. Navarro was a major new talent.

“The bio note says you were writing a second book,” I said to her.

“That's true. I was planning a trilogy.”

“So what happened?”

“The first one didn't sell,” Lucy said. “That's an achievement in itself, I think—writing a vampire novel that won't sell. In my defense, they tried to market it to twelve-year-olds. But that's not who I wrote it for.”

“I know a sixteen-year-old who loves it,” I said. I had talked to Sarah a short time before and learned that
Stakes
was one of her favorite books. That's why she had asked me if Lucy was any relation to E. L. Navarro. “She's waiting for the second book.”

“She'll have a long wait,” Lucy said.

I felt the rough cover beneath my fingers. “But that's what Beckett offered you, isn't it?”

“Beckett never offers anybody anything. I'm sure he told you so.”

“But someone made the offer.”

She nodded. “I got a call from my old editor this morning. She wants me to sign a contract for two more books. A nice advance. I'm supposed to drop everything and get to work.”

I tapped the book. “This was Beckett's last argument. He thought it would sway me. He thought I'd read it and try to convince you to forget your investigation. He was right. You're wasting your time working for the
Current
. You should be writing another novel.”

“I warned you about him, Loogan. You let him work his spell on you.”

“No, this is my own judgment. I know a writer when I see one. Callie Spencer's not your problem. No matter what she's done—if she drove the getaway car at the Great Lakes robbery herself, if she killed Henry Kormoran with her bare hands—it's not your responsibility to expose her. Let it go.”

“Don't tempt me, Loogan.”

“I'm serious. Let someone else at the
Current
take over.”

“You think I haven't thought of that?” she said. “You're assuming the publishing contract is real. But it's not. It's Beckett's creation, and if I don't do what he wants, it goes away. He wants the investigation to end.”

Lucy gazed down at the backs of her hands where they rested on the steering wheel. I had an idea of what she was seeing—a different future, something that might have been.

“No,” she said at last. “I wrote a book and it didn't sell. No regrets. I made a decision to move on. To try being a reporter. I'm not going to stop.”

I could have stayed and tried to change her mind, but it was her decision, and I had business of my own. I'd fallen behind on my editing. I needed to get back in my car and back to
Gray Streets
.

As I opened the door beside me, she brought a pen from her bag and held her hand out for the book. She found the title page and scribbled her name.

“There,” she said with a wan smile. “Now you've got a signed copy of E. L. Navarro's only novel. Hang on to it. It'll be worth something when I break this story about Callie Spencer.”

E
lizabeth sat cross-legged on the floor with the sofa at her back. On the coffee table in front of her she had spread the contents of Callie Spencer's loony file—letters from constituents that had been set aside because they contained threats or seemed to have been written by people who were mentally disturbed.

Callie Spencer had promised Elizabeth the file on Sunday night; her office had delivered it on Wednesday afternoon. Now, on Wednesday evening, with a glass of wine within reach and a Mahler symphony playing on the stereo, Elizabeth sorted through it, looking for a letter that went out of its way not to use adverbs, a letter that might have been written by the man in plaid.

Earlier, Sarah had fixed dinner for the two of them: pan-fried steaks served with cauliflower that had been tossed in olive oil and baked in the oven. As the twilight deepened into dark, she joined Elizabeth on the livingroom floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Police business,” Elizabeth said.

Sarah plucked a letter at random from the coffee table.

“If I read this, am I going to be scarred for life?”

“I don't think so.”

At one time, Elizabeth had tried to keep her home life strictly separate from her work life. She had gotten along fairly well until Sarah entered her teens and developed a strong curiosity about what her mother did for a living. Eventually, Elizabeth had given up on trying to keep the girl entirely out of police business. But she still tried to preserve some boundaries. “Scarred for life” was one of them: anything traumatic was off-limits, including things like autopsy reports and crime-scene photos. From what Elizabeth had seen, the letters from Callie Spencer's file seemed relatively harmless.

Sarah looked up from the letter she had chosen and said, “This one's about mourning doves.”

Elizabeth set aside a rambling note scrawled on a page torn from a phone book.

“What about them?” she asked.

“This guy wants Callie to vote to lift the ban on hunting them.”

“That's ill-advised, but not crazy. Maybe that one got misfiled.”

“He wants to be able to shoot them because he thinks they're travelers from another dimension,” Sarah said. “He can't get their cooing out of his head. He thinks they're trying to control his thoughts.”

“Interesting. But if they could control his thoughts, would they have let him write that letter?”

“Well, they're only trying so far. They haven't succeeded.”