Death's Last Run (25 page)

MARTHA

Ted rushed up to Martha as she was about to walk onto the Battle Creek town hall meeting stage. His voice was tinnier than usual. Maybe he'd been ingesting aluminum shavings from his Red Bull cans. “The
FBI
called with a change of plans.”

“Again?” Martha felt chai-flavored milk froth on her upper lip and dabbed it off with her finger. She slipped off her microphone and made sure the switch was turned off.

“They're pulling the Whistler operative.”

What?
Martha would get on the phone with Paul Worthington as soon as this production was over. If his favor had expired, so had her need to politely let him do his job.

“It's good news, I think.” Ted had the decency to soften his voice, to take the tin out. “Now that the
RCMP
is treating this as a murder investigation, the
FBI
is confident Sacha's killer will be caught. So their efforts would be superfluous, even invasive.”

That didn't sound like any
FBI
Martha had ever worked with. They loved invasive. She double-checked her microphone before saying, “Did they say if their operative had found anything while he was in place?”

“No. They're being irritatingly tight-lipped.”

“Better than loose. Has your . . . other friend learned anything?” She disconnected the microphone from the wire, just in case. “The cop?”

“He's not sure.”

“So there's something.”

Ted frowned. “Maybe we should ignore the investigation, now that it seems to be proceeding in a good direction.”

Martha's head throbbed. She could take an Advil, but there was no point. The headache would just be there waiting in four to six hours.

“You're on in five minutes,” Ted said.

“So I have four to talk. What did your source say?”

Ted smoothed his suit jacket. “He thinks maybe Kearnes was involved.”

“Geoffrey?” Martha said Kearnes' first name in full without thinking. God, it would be brutal irony if he had anything to do with Sacha's murder. “Involved how?”

Ted looked at her, like
Do I have to say it out loud?
“Involved in arranging the murder.”

Martha nodded to the interviewer who was waiting for her onstage. She returned the woman's smile and removed the smile to face Ted. “Is this more speculation, or does your friend have any facts?”

“He found some phone calls from Kearnes' campaign office to Whistler and Washington State. Where the, um, drugs were being smuggled into.”

“Washington State is hardly a surprise — the caucus is two weeks away. But Whistler? Have you told the
FBI
?”

“I will,” Ted said. “You want that, right?”

“Of course I want that. Maybe this will make them think it's worth their precious resources to keep their man in Whistler.”

“Okay.”

“I have to get onstage. Was there anything else?”

Ted nodded. “You've fallen to last in the Michigan polls. The legalization platform seems to be having purely negative impact. I think we should blow open the story about Sacha and the smuggling — make it clear that you're not pro-drug, not at all. That your desire to get creative with policy is actually you fighting harder for the eradication of drugs from our society.”

“We need to talk about this now?” Martha lifted her eyebrows once more at the host, who was standing onstage tapping her wrist.

“Christy and Melissa wrote a blog post that's ready to take it live. All it needs is your final edit, so when we post it will be in your voice. The angle will be a mother's remorse for not knowing what was going on in her daughter's life.”

Martha's neck and shoulders joined her head with their tension pain. “Look, I understand that Washington culture forces people barely out of college to think faster than you're emotionally capable of. But please don't turn my daughter into political leverage.”

Ted was silent.

“You're a smart kid,” Martha said, one foot on the stairs to the stage. “Hell, when I was your age, I had to fight sexism
and
ageism, and I'm sure I was twice the brat you are.”

Ted's small voice exploded out of him. “Your career is my life. I wake up at five-thirty every morning and I've often fallen asleep with my head on my keyboard because I'm that devoted to your success.”

Shit. Martha had been way too harsh. Just like she'd been too harsh with Sacha all her life. She didn't mean to be unkind; it was the way things came out of her mouth, like she was missing the softening filter that everyone else seemed to have been given at birth. Which was strange, because on camera, she found it easy to turn on the charm.

“Send me the blog post,” she said. “I'll read it, but my strong guess is that I won't agree to publish. Okay? I'm on.” Martha climbed the stairs to join the event host onstage.

WADE

In his claustrophobic office, Wade shook his head at Norris, then at his computer screen. Today's blog post was odd.

Charity and Resentment

by Lorenzo Barilla

I spent my childhood hating Sacha Westlake. I needed her money. I did not need colorful letters filled with stories about Central Park and snobby schoolgirls and Jules the Bear.

For two years, she wrote me. I was learning English so I could write back with intelligence, to tell her I was not a charity case. I need not have bothered — her letters stopped coming two weeks after my twelfth birthday. The money still came, but Sacha's heart had moved on to more interesting causes than poor Lorenzo Barilla.

I came to America to get my revenge. I planned to become so wealthy in this Land of Opportunity that I could squish Sacha Westlake with my power, then give
her
a helping hand up. Show her how that felt.

But when I arrived in New York, she was dead.

I instantly hated myself for all those years of rage. Sacha had been kind to me, and I was so self-obsessed I could not see it.

I wanted to turn back time, to write back even in imperfect English, to say thank you to this sweet little girl who shared her allowance and her world with me, in letters.

But I could not — cannot — because some senseless idiot killed her.

My penance is to find Sacha Westlake's killer and bring that person to justice.

“This make any sense to you?” Wade asked Norris, who was still staring blankly at the screen.

Norris shook his head, sipped coffee from the ceramic mug Wade had given him. “The kid was right the first time. People like Sacha think they can fix the world's problems by patting their heads and throwing money at them. They consider themselves the ruling class. Like we commoners couldn't possibly know what's good for us.”

Wade poured some brandy into his coffee, held the bottle for Norris, who lifted one shoulder and said, “Why the fuck not?” before setting his cup down on Wade's desk. “God, this is bad.”

“I know. Sorry. I had to switch to a cheaper coffee. Want some more brandy?”

“I don't give a shit about the coffee. I'm swimming in fucking chaos, if you haven't noticed. Actually, fuck swimming. I'm drowning in chaos.”

Norris wasn't usually metaphorical, not at all. It worried Wade.

“Did you . . .” Wade wasn't sure how to say this. For better or worse, the booze eased the question out of him. “Did you have something to do with Sacha's murder?”

Norris' eyes shot wide open. “God, no!”

Wade relaxed. “Okay. Then it really can't be that bad.”

Norris said, “I'm going to run the Snow down to Seattle. I don't feel like I owe Chopper that — and I certainly don't owe Richie that, like he keeps trying to tell me I do — but I know I screwed this up. If I leave them with their shit sorted, I'll feel okay about things.”

“Leave them?” Wade peered at his friend.

“I'm taking my family out of here. Permanently. Will you be okay?”

Wade didn't know why the thought of Norris leaving Whistler made him feel orphaned. “Of course,” Wade said. “I'll be fine.”

CLARE

Amanda sat across from Clare, staring her down like they were strangers on opposite teams. Across the playing field of the orange shag carpet, the blond wood coffee table sat between them like a referee. It wasn't even three hours since their previous meeting, but apparently all had been decided.

“You're officially being sent home.” Amanda closed her sentence with a brief nod.

“Cool. I'll go pack.” Clare matched her even tone, tried to replicated the nod.

“Cool?” Amanda's eyebrows lifted. “Does your job mean so little to you?”

“My job means everything to me. But I'll take this up with Bert, or someone reasonable, once I'm back in New York.”

“What makes you think that your job in New York will be waiting for you?”

“Because Bert will hear my side before he makes a rash decision. And by hear, I mean he'll listen to it and process it like an intelligent human, not a robot who needs a rule book to get out of bed each morning.”

“I don't . . .”

“And when he hears my reasoning,” Clare said, “he might agree or disagree — he might be damn mad, who knows? — but he'll be more interested in why I dropped
LSD
than in the fact that it went against the bylaws of the job.”

“This isn't about . . .” Amanda's jaw was moving wildly, like her words were stuck in there, trying to escape.

“What
is
it about, Amanda? What did I do that's so unforgivable?”

Amanda shook her head. “You could be so good at this job — so good — if you just opened your mind and saw that the rules are here to help you.”

“Oh wow, that's funny. You telling me to open my mind. Are you saying you wish I hadn't found Sacha's documentary?”

“Of course not.” Amanda folded her hands gently in her lap. “I'm saying I'm not equipped to handle you.”

Clare wanted to tell Amanda that she was a human, not a horse. Instead she said, “I think we work together well. We closed the poker case together, and we've made great progress here.” Clare couldn't believe she'd just pleaded a case
for
working with Amanda.

“It's not you, Clare. It's me.”

Clare did her best not to laugh at the line that made her feel like she was in a teenage sitcom.

“You're right,” Amanda said. “I need rules, I need order. That's why I'm an excellent administrator, an okay handler, and I could never be an operative like you — you dive into a world where it's all so muddy, and you have to make it clear.”

Clare wrinkled her mouth.

“So no hard feelings?” Amanda said.

“You're still dropping me?”

“Look, maybe one day, when you've matured and I've mellowed, we'll find some common ground on a case. But right now . . . we'll just be at cross-purposes. Conflicts like this will arise again and again.”

“But . . . this is going to mess up my career big time. Paul Worthington is watching the case. I know in a way it's my fault if I'm leaving, but can't you just give me one more chance?”

“Right. I said you're officially being sent home. In fact — and unofficially — you're staying.”

“What?” A tracer went by, as if to remind Clare that everything was fucked.

“The recording you took from the bar impressed my colleagues. They've decided that — gross negligence aside — you're still an asset to the case because of all the inroads you've made.” Amanda's jaw clenched and unclenched as she spoke, like she couldn't decide if she was still angry. “We're not sure why Inspector Norris has suddenly changed his verdict from suicide to murder, but the timing works perfectly for us to make a strategic shift.”

Clare leaned forward in her comfortable plaid armchair. “What's the shift?”

“We've told Norris that the
FBI
is pleased with his changing the investigation to murder and no longer feels the need for their agent to be here — which Norris will believe, because I'll be back in Ottawa instead of here in a handler capacity.”Amanda brushed a strand of her straight blond hair behind her ear. It was fuller now; she must have washed it in the three hours since Clare had seen her. “Clare . . . I . . .”

“What?”

“I've liked a lot about working with you. I wish this could have gone differently.”

“I liked you, too, sometimes.” Clare stood up, trying not to let Amanda see how shaken she was by what was really only a professional parting of ways. “I should get back to work.”