Dead Watch (37 page)

“They did it,” Madison said. “You think his brother . . . ?”

“Yeah. Darrell.”

“Is that who we’re going to murder?”

“Let me tell you about my idea for a play,” Jake said. “For a pageant . . .”

“You mentioned that, but you didn’t tell me what you were talking about.”

“That’s before I hired you as a wheelman,” Jake said.

He told her about it, about the drama that he was planning for her living room. “If you do this, and I’m not telling you not to, you have to think it out like a chess game,” Madison said. “Right down to the last little move. You have to have a backup story in case anything goes wrong . . .”

“But you’re not saying ‘no,’ ” Jake said. “You’re not arguing against it.”

“No, I’m not,” she said. “Sometimes, justice isn’t enough. You need revenge.”

“So. You’ll do it.”

“Yes.”

They stared at each other for a moment, then Jake said, “Call Johnson Black, have him come here to pick you up. You stand on your porch, make a brief statement about the gay stories. You go inside and talk to Black about whatever. When the TV people are gone, probably after the evening news, you call me. I’ll come over and we’ll do the drama.”

She nodded. “Now I’m scared again. That’s twice in a day.”

“We’re all in trouble here, Maddy,” Jake said. “This whole thing has been so complicated. But if there’s a bug—and there’s gotta be a bug, I’d bet on it now—Goodman knows that you know what Barber did to your husband. If he can find a way to make the tape public, you could go to prison. Maybe for a long time. You know what judges do to celebrities, just to prove that they’re not above the law . . . And if I don’t get that package to the FBI, I’m in trouble for the Madison shootings, myself. The drama might settle it.”

“But we’re going to kill somebody. We’re premeditating.”

“Yeah.” Again, they stared at each other for a bit, then Jake said, “Look. We’ve got a huge problem: we’ve got a psycho on our asses—or on yours, anyway. I might still skate. Sooner or later, though, they’ll have to do something about you. The new vice president can’t have any vocal opposition that alleges any kind of scandal, any kind of problem. If they’re thinking about Goodman, and you’re out here screaming that Goodman is a killer and a Nazi . . . it’s easy enough to choose somebody else. Arlo Goodman needs for you to go away, or to be discredited, or humiliated. And they’ve got a psychotic killer willing to do the heavy work.”

“But there’s a hole in your idea. The way you set it out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. What are you going to do with the other car?”

Jake blinked. Then, “God. I’m a moron.”

“You’re not a moron. You just need somebody to go with you. You need a wheelman, again.”

He blinked again. “Oh, no. No, no, no . . .”

“Oh, yes. It’s the only way.”

They argued, went around and around, and finally she said, “I’m going, and that’s it; I’m going, or you’re not.” Then she called Johnson Black. Black arrived an hour later, took her away.

Ten minutes later, Jake watched CNN as Madison made her statement from the front porch. She said that there had been an assumption that sexuality was private, but that the FBI were apprised of the situation with Lincoln Bowe, and that it was part of their investigation. That she was distressed that people were pounding on her door, hounding her, and that one certain way of NOT getting any information was to pound on her door.

She would refuse to answer anyone who came to the door, and the thrill-seeking reporters should be ashamed of themselves. More information would be made public at an early date.

With a bunch of reporters yelling “When?” at her, she went inside. Then a ranking D.C. cop took the microphone and said that anyone who stepped on Mrs. Bowe’s yard or any of the other yards down the block, without permission, would be arrested for trespassing. That all the TV trucks were a hazard in case of emergency, and they would have to leave the street. That anyone not leaving would be ticketed and the trucks would be towed, and the bill would have to be paid before the trucks were released. That towing a big truck would cost upward of $2,000. He added that once the tow truck was there, as in all police tows, there would be no last-minute decision to leave—if the tow truck showed up, the TV trucks would be towed.

After a flurry of cell-phone calls, the trucks began leaving. An hour after the porch statement, a reporter from the
Post
stood alone on the sidewalk, shifting from foot to foot.

An hour after that, the sidewalk was empty.

Darrell Goodman stepped into the governor’s office, around the departing maids. The first maid was carrying a silver coffee service, the second a basket of scones, the remnants of an appropriations meeting with the leaders of the statehouse and senate. Darrell hooked one of the scones out of the basket and said to his brother, “Rank has its privileges. Free bakery.”

Arlo Goodman made a flapping gesture at the door. Darrell closed it, and Arlo made a “What?” gesture with his open hands.

Darrell held up a finger, said, “I’ve been talking to Patricia, the numbers of the Watchmen are up pretty strong this month. We’re starting a new chapter in D.C.”

“That’s great,” Arlo said. “There’s a chapter out in California now, I just saw it on the Internet.”

“Yeah. The leader over there, in D.C., may have been in Syria at the same time you were . . .” He rambled on about D.C. numbers as he opened his briefcase, took out a folded piece of paper, and pushed it at Arlo. Arlo took it, looked at it. A laser printout, a letter:

I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I was one of the four people who helped take Lincoln Bowe away. The other three are Howard Barber, Donald S. Creasey, and Roald M. Sands. I thought it was a complicated political joke on Arlo Goodman. We were supposed to look like Goodman’s hit men. I didn’t know that they were going to shoot Linc. Now I read in the newspapers that he was still alive when he was killed. I don’t know. He was supposed to commit suicide, not be shot. I don’t know what happened to his head. Howard Barber would know. Howard Barber organized this. He’s responsible. Roald and Don don’t know anything. Now everything is coming apart. I’m so sorry, but I can’t stand the thought of prison. I know what would happen in there.

—Dan White

Arlo read it and his eyebrows went up. Darrell bent over the desk and whispered in his brother’s ear, “He committed suicide with his own gun after writing the note. The original is signed with his own pen. The pen’s in his coat pocket. An anonymous call went to the Fairfax cops, and Clayton Bell got another anonymous call, supposedly from a Fairfax cop, and he’s there now. Bell will almost certainly call us. He’ll want some guidance.”

Arlo nodded and pulled his brother’s head down, whispered back, “Nobody else knows anything?”

“George was there with me—but next week, I’ll settle that.”

“He can’t feel it coming,” Arlo whispered. “I don’t want him to leave an envelope somewhere.”

“We’re okay,” Darrell whispered. “After I take him, I’ll go through everything he’s got, just to double-check. But there’s nothing. One thing he is, is loyal.”

Arlo breathed, “Excellent.”

Lt. Clayton Bell, a state police officer who’d been running the Bowe investigation, read the note through a plastic envelope put on by the crime-scene people; he was reading it for the third time.

“I’ll need some advice on how to proceed,” he told the Annandale chief. “I think we pick up the three of them, handle them separately, see what their stories are. But I’m going to talk to the prosecutor’s office first. Maybe call . . . I don’t know, maybe the governor.”

“That’s up to you, Clay. We don’t have a crime here, so there’s nothing for us. If you just want to handle it . . .”

Bell nodded. “We’ll handle it. I’ll get a crime-scene crew here, just in case. If you guys can keep the scene sealed off, I’d appreciate it.”

“We can do that.”

Roald Sands called Howard Barber on his cell phone.

“Yes—Barber.”

Sands was screaming. “Howard, Howard. I just went by Dan’s place, there are cops everywhere. There’s a crime-scene truck there, the state police, the local police. Something’s happened.”

“Whoa, whoa . . . take it easy.” But even as he said it, Barber’s heart sank. “Where are you?”

“I’m headed home. I’m afraid the police will be there. I think they know.”

“How far are you from home?”

“Five minutes,” Sands said.

“Call me just before you get there. Let me know if the police are there: I’ll be at this number, just hit redial. If they’re there, remember your story. That it was voluntary, you were just picking him up and dropping him with me. You were bodyguards . . . Bring it back to me. I’ll handle it.”

“Okay, okay. Jesus Christ, Howard, I’m scared.”

“Take it easy, man. Take it easy. Call me in five.”

Barber ran through the list on his cell phone, picked out Don Creasey’s number, touched it. Creasey’s secretary answered, and Barber said, “This is Howard Barber. Let me talk to Don, if you could.”

“Um, he’s indisposed at the moment . . .”

“You mean, in the bathroom?”

“No, I mean, I mean I just don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Barber. There’s just been some kind of trouble. I don’t think I’m supposed to talk to people about it.”

“Well . . . okay, I guess. I’ll catch him later.”

He kicked back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head, thought it out. The cops had broken it down somehow. He’d known it could happen. He’d taken every possible precaution, and nevertheless, here they were. He laughed, then looked around his office. Been good for a long time.

Sands called back, said, “There are cars across the street with people in them. I can see them from here, they’re looking down toward me.”

“Remember your story, Roald. Just remember the story.”

He hung up, thought about it some more, then opened the office blinds and looked down at the parking lot. Nothing yet. He ran through various permutations of the story: that Lincoln Bowe had been frightened of Arlo Goodman, and that he, Barber, had sent the other men to act as bodyguards, that they’d brought him north to Barber’s office, and that Barber had secretly driven him to New York, and he’d disappeared from there . . .

But that wouldn’t hold, he thought. Too many things didn’t happen. He couldn’t answer questions—what car had he taken, where had he stopped for gas, had they stopped to eat anything . . . He flashed to the last time he’d been to Rapid Oil; they’d put a mileage sticker on the window of his car, with a date. Maybe he could run down . . .

No. One way or another, they’d poke holes in it. They’d hang him. Huh.

And they might hang Madison Bowe along with him. Somehow, the Goodmans were involved in this—and if they pushed the cops to play Madison against him, the two of them would be stuck. Whatever else, Madison didn’t deserve to go to prison.

Barber went back to the window and cranked the blinds fully up, walked to his office door. His secretary sat in a bay off the main room; in the main room, four women and two men sat in cloth cubicles talking on phones and poking at computers, like high-tech mice in a maze. To his secretary, he said, “Jean, I need you to run an errand. Could you drive over to Macy’s and pick me up a dress shirt, white or blue? I’ll give you cash . . .”

“You mean, right now?”

“If you could,” Barber said. “I’ve gotten my ass in a bind, I’m going to have to run out of town tonight . . .” He fumbled four hundred dollars out of his wallet and gave it to her.

“But you’ve got the Thirty-first Project Managers at ten o’clock tomorrow.”

“I should be back,” he said. “Just get the shirt, huh? If you’ve got stuff that has to be done here, I’ll pay overtime anytime you have to stay late.”

“That’s not necessary . . .” She got her sweater and purse and went mumbling off, and Barber went back to his office windows just in time to see the cops arrive. There were two cars, both state police. Not FBI. The Goodmans, for sure.

He could go with them, stick with the story. Another guy was going to pick up Lincoln Bowe, so he merely transferred him . . . but the other three, Creasy, Sands, and White, all knew bits and pieces of the story, and the cops would play them off against one another, and sooner or later, one of them would fold.

Barber had always been an outside guy, a guy who liked to move around. A cell the size of a bathroom. He rubbed his face with his open hands and looked back into the parking lot. Had an idea, smiled at it. He wore a gold Rolex on his left wrist. He reached into his desk drawer, took out a paper clip, straightened it, and using the edge of the Rolex bracelet as a guide, scratched his wrist until it bled, in two small scratches both back and front. He changed the watch to the other wrist and did the same thing.

He was putting the watch back on his left wrist when he heard the voices in the outer room: cops asking for his office. He walked around and sat behind his desk. Calm. More than calm: cold.

A plainclothes cop stuck his head in the office door and asked, “Mr. Barber?”

“Come in. Close the door, please.”

Three cops. One of them pushed the door closed with his foot. The plainclothesman said, “Mr. Barber, I’m Lieutenant Clayton Bell, Virginia State Police . . .”

Barber stood up.