Collateral Damage (21 page)

“Her whole family's out here someplace,” Hannibal said. “Or at least was here. My dad is one of the few Americans here, even though that's the America Memorial Library up there on Blücher Square. Actually, I understand when they built Blücher Street on the northern parts of the cemetery in the seventies, that's when they tore down the north wall and some of the memorials and graves were destroyed.”

Cindy remained silent. Hannibal wondered if she thought his ramblings were some sort of avoidance technique. Well, it didn't matter what she thought. He saw no purpose in grief. It was merely respect for those you loved to visit them once in a while and honor their names. He lowered himself onto his haunches and looked closely at the stone. Funny. Both their names were there, but he always thought of this as visiting his mother. Maybe that was because he had twenty years of memories of her, and so very few clear memories of his father. That void, that emptiness, still ached from time to time
like a node of poison in his body. As if someday that poison sack could rupture and kill him if he disturbed it too much.

So when he gently laid the flowers down on the grave, he imagined handing them to his mother, and could again see her face light up as it always did when he offered any small gesture of his love. When he stood he was aware of passersby, here to acknowledge their own loved ones. Germans never looked at others in these places. They respected the privacy of other people's feelings. He stood before the stone, alone in his silence, except for the small hand squeezing his.

“I think I finally understand,” Cindy whispered. “War took your father, but your mother's life, and yours, were no less destroyed. You were … what did you call it?”

“Collateral damage,” Hannibal said. “Father was a casualty, and our lives were part of the collateral damage.”

Cindy nodded and returned to silence. After a time he turned to her and said, “We've got a plane to catch at twelve-fifteen.” They returned to the car but Hannibal sat a moment before starting it. He opened his mouth to speak a couple of times. A nearby tree moved with the soft breeze, its leaves casting shadows across his face. He licked his lips and gripped the steering wheel.

“Thank you,” he finally said. “Thank you for coming here with me. I don't know if I was alone…”

Cindy wrapped her hand around his. “Oh no, baby. Thank you. Thank you for bringing me, for letting me see it. And letting me see you, this way.”

He looked up at her, wanting to tell her he loved her, wondering why that was so hard sometimes. Cindy nodded and smiled and just said, “I know.”

The flight home was direct from Frankfurt to National Airport. Flying westward they had watched the sun and almost kept up with it for nine hours, holding hands much of the time. Between long naps they sat wrapped in their own
private thoughts. Thanks to the time zones it was only three o'clock in the afternoon when they touched down. Between the arrival gate and the car Hannibal related his plans for the day to Cindy. It was time for action to prove Dean's innocence, and he was asking Cindy to get the ball rolling while he took care of one social obligation first.

At Cindy's townhouse, Hannibal took a quick shower and changed clothes. Of course he pulled on another black suit, indicating he was still at work. Then he left her to make phone calls while he drove to the Hyatt Regency. After a short elevator ride, he tapped on the door softly, almost hoping he had made the trip for nothing. But it was only seconds before he heard Emma Peters' soft steps approach the door. When she opened the door he saw the expectant look lift from her face like a mist when the sun hits the land. She nodded twice and smiled wistfully.

“Well Mister Jones,” she said. “Good afternoon. What brings you here this afternoon?”

He had simply wanted to end her suspense. Now he wanted to ease her loneliness. “Well I rather suspected you were sitting up here in your room. I thought you might want to go downstairs and have a cup of tea or something.”

In the elevator, Hannibal learned that Emma had not bothered to eat lunch that day, so once they were seated in the hotel restaurant he ordered a small salad and a cup of soup for each of them. Only three other people sat in the room with them, two older couples dressed as tourists and a woman who may have been working the hotel but doing it quietly. Emma looked at each of them closely. She seemed to look at everyone closely.

“I wanted to thank you, young man,” she said after their food arrived. “Thank you for coming in person to tell me what I already knew would happen. What did Foster actually tell you?”

“Ma'am?”

“His reason,” she pressed, pouring vinaigrette on her salad. “What reason did he give you for not coming to his own son's funeral?”

Hannibal looked down into his clam chowder. “He kind of said it was too late. I think maybe he doesn't want to deal with the loss.”

“Oh no,” she said, chewing each bit of lettuce slowly but completely. “He can't face it. He's been waiting for an apology for fifteen years and now he knows Oscar was as proud and stubborn as he is, and he'll never be back to say he's sorry.”

It could have been a hard statement, but Emma's grief was so heavy it would not even let her anger push out from under it.

“Whatever his other feeling, he misses his son,” Hannibal said. “While I was there he was leafing through Oscar's high school yearbook.” He almost mentioned that he had it now, but thought it might be hurtful to her to know he parted with it so easily. “Mrs. Peters, could Oscar's attacks on your husband have been part of a cry for attention?”

“Oh, I don't think so,” Emma said. “Oscar was a real conspiracy theorist, even at his young age. He started to hate the American government, to think everything it did was wrong. And his father symbolized all that to him.”

Hannibal sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “Not so unusual. But most kids don't believe strongly enough to run away from home.”

“I think maybe he fell in with a bad crowd,” Emma said. Then she started rummaging around in her purse. “He ended up in Las Vegas for a while, and oddly enough, that seemed to straighten him up some. Maybe coming face to face with all that sin did something. Anyway, he met a girl out there. Here, take a look.”

Emma produced a photograph that looked as if it had been riding in her purse for longer than a mere year. Hannibal indulged her by looking at it, but in seconds his face dropped. It featured Oscar standing in a park with a woman beside him, half her face cut off by the sloppy photographer. On Oscar's left, a young man was reaching around Oscar to slap playfully at the woman. Pulling out of range of that slap would be the reason she was mostly out of the picture.

The young man beside Oscar was tall and thin with long, dark, stringy hair, and dressed in dark clothes. Something about him, the shape of his head, the angle of his shoulders, was too familiar for comfort. Hannibal guessed this man was a hell of a fast runner and drove a dark, four-door sedan.

Sliding wooden doors whose top halves contained a dozen small windows separated Hannibal's office from the next room. By pushing the doors back into the walls he had effectively doubled his office space.

Hannibal stood leaning back against the wall behind his desk. His seven guests sat around the room, mostly in folding chairs brought in for them. All held cups of coffee or tea, except Monty whose coffee Cindy had taken rather briskly, replacing it with cocoa before sitting beside Hannibal. It was a lot of people for the room to hold, including one who had only been there once before.

“I guess before we start, some introductions are in order,” Hannibal said. “If you watch the news on Channel 8 you might recognize the redhead on my far right as Irma Andrews. She's involved in the case I've asked you all to help me with. I've promised her an exclusive on the story. In exchange, she's agreed not to mention any of you without your express permission.”

He turned to the four men seated in a group on his left. “These guys are my neighbors in the building here, and they sometimes help me on cases. That's Virgil,” Hannibal said, indicating the tall black man with yellowed eyes. “The white guy is Quaker, Sarge is the big guy with the Marine Corps tattoo on his arm, and the little baldheaded troublemaker is Cindy's father, Ray.”

“Hey,” Ray snapped, “Watch your mouth. I ain't quite bald.”

Everyone chuckled and Hannibal continued. “The twelve year old who thinks he's grown is Gabriel Washington, but
he'll only answer to Monty, as in three card. He's a little hustler, so watch yourself.”

“So this is the part,” Monty said, “where you're supposed to say ‘I suppose you're wondering why I called you all here,' right?”

“I guess it is,” Hannibal said, hands in pockets. “By now I think everybody knows about this Dean Edwards case I'm working on. He's the likely suspect in the murder of a guy called Oscar Peters. I was at the scene of that murder soon after it, and spotted a real suspect. He got away from me, but he was driving his own car, and I've traced it to Las Vegas. The fact that he drove all the way from there implies he didn't want to make it easy for anyone to trace his visit here through airline records. I've got a partial license plate to go on, and I want to find this guy in a bad way.”

Watching the faces aimed at him, Hannibal figured he was the only one who noticed Irma pushing the record button on a palm-sized tape recorder. He cleared his throat, hoping he could construct decent sentences in case he was to be quoted later in the press.

“When I spoke with Oscar's mother Irma today she showed me a photograph of her son with a friend who could well be the man I chased. So I just might recognize him when we see him.”

“When we see him?” Sarge repeated.

“That's right, Sarge,” Hannibal said. “I'm going to ask you, Virgil and Quaker to fly to Vegas with me. We can split up a list of possible license plates and the addresses they're registered to, and hunt this guy down.”

“Do the police have the partial plate?” Irma asked.

“They have no interest in leads when they've already got their suspect,” Hannibal said.

“Las Vegas!” Monty said, the way most people his age might be expected to refer to Disney World or the Superbowl. “I really think you'll need more help out there, Hannibal. I can scout cars real good.”

“Appreciate the offer, Monty,” Hannibal said, holding a palm toward his young friend, “but I need you here for
another important job. See, I think there might be a conspiracy going on here involving something Oscar knew about a previous crime, maybe about a couple of previous crimes. Something somebody didn't want him to know. And whatever he knew, his mother might also know. So I'm going to ask you and Ray to keep an eye on Emma Peters while I'm gone. Between you, you can be inconspicuous. Even alert people often don't notice kids, or taxis.”

“You'll call me if you find this guy?” Irma asked.

“Of course, but I hope you won't be just sitting and waiting to hear from me,” Hannibal said. “I figure you can help figure this whole thing out.”

“And just how do you expect me to do that?”

“Well, I'm not sure I've got a handle on this entire mystery,” Hannibal said, “but I've got a feeling Joan Kitteridge is very much in the middle of it. The day after we discovered Oscar's body she left town. Headed for Las Vegas, coincidentally enough. If you believe in coincidences.”

“Really?” Irma looked up, her piercing blue eyes widening as her mind raced. “She strikes me as a cold one, capable of anything. I understand she had been to Oscar's house before. And she did turn up rather suddenly, right after we got to Dean Edwards' place. Where was she right before that, while Oscar was being murdered?”

“You're the reporter pursuing this story,” Hannibal said with a smile. “I figure you can find that out more easily than anyone else.”

“Sounds like tomorrow's going to be a busy day,” Cindy said. “Sure wish I could join you on the scavenger hunt in Nevada. But I better hang here to protect Dean from the police.”