The Wrong Man (23 page)

“That’s not it,” I said. “That’s just it for here.”

We returned to the SUV and retraced our steps past the gate. I closed it back up and drove down the road, following the fence line of the property. On the other side of the fence was a pretty weak-looking set of wheat crops, stubbly things, but I knew as much about wheat crops as I did astrophysics, so for all I knew the crop was doing quite well.

The land was pretty flat around here. I finally came upon a hill to my left. I followed a dirt path, which I was pretty sure was a road, up the hill and then stopped the SUV.

“Glove compartment,” I said to Tori.

She opened it and removed a fancy camera that I’d taken from Joel Lightner. She handed it to me.

I got out of the vehicle and climbed onto the hood. I helped Tori up, then helped her climb to the roof. Then I joined her.

“This is… unusual,” she noted.

The camera was something a good P. I. like Lightner would use, a
high-powered lens attached to the camera that could get a decent image from over a mile away.

Through the camera, I looked out over the Summerset Farms acreage. The crops were sparse, stubbly, and brownish-green, like a neglected summer lawn. As I moved beyond the borders of the property line, the crops became even more sporadic and then nonexistent, just a bunch of dirt as far as the eye, assisted with this high-powered device, could see.

“That’s a lot of acreage Global Harvest bought that they aren’t using for wheat,” I said.

“Let me look,” said Tori.

“Hang on.” There was a large metal structure with a domed top. I didn’t know what it was. Some kind of a warehouse or silo.

Then I saw something that didn’t look like farming at all.

It looked like a bunch of guys shooting assault rifles at targets. The distance was such that I could barely register the sound of gunfire, but my eyes didn’t lie.

“Check this out.” I kept the camera in position and motioned for Tori to take it. It moved a little when she grabbed it, but it didn’t take her long to find the same thing I found.

“Oh my God,” she said. “What are they doing? I mean, I know what they’re doing. But…”

In my peripheral vision I saw a pickup truck barreling down the road toward us with a yellow siren flashing on top. The truck skidded to a stop down the hill from us. The truck’s side panel was emblazoned with S
UMMERSET
F
ARMS
S
ECURITY
.

The man who got out was wearing a green uniform with a brown leather jacket over it. A firearm hung from his hip holster.

“Can I ask what you folks are doing?” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

He stared at me. I stared at him. We stared at each other.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“None of your business.”

“It’s our business, all right.”

“I’m exercising my First Amendment rights,” I said. Just like, apparently, they were exercising their Second Amendment rights, but I didn’t say that.

He didn’t think I was funny. He was built like a tank, plus he had a weapon.

“I want to see some identification,” he said.

“And I want to see peace in the Middle East, but neither one is going to happen today.”

“Get down, sir, and get into my vehicle.”

“As tempting as that sounds, I’m gonna pass,” I said.

The guard ably removed his sidearm and trained it on me.

“God, Jason,” Tori said to me under her breath. “Let’s get down.”

That made sense. The guy with the gun aimed at us wanted us to get down, so we got down. We climbed down to the hood, then I jumped off and helped Tori do the same.

“Get behind the wheel,” I whispered to her.

“Now get into my vehicle, both of you.” With the hand that wasn’t holding a gun, the guard snapped a photograph of us with his cell phone.

I walked toward him, showing the palm of my right hand (the camera was in the left) to indicate I was no threat. I put myself approximately between the sight line of his gun and Tori. I heard the SUV’s door open and close. Good. Tori had gotten in. The car was still running, so all she had to do was put the car in drive and take off if she were so inclined. If I were her, I might be tempted to do just that.

“She’s not going anywhere,” the guard said. “Neither of you are.”

“Take it easy, Deputy Fife,” I said. “Before you hurt somebody with that gun.”

“Hand over that camera and get in my vehicle.” The guard was beginning to understand that I wasn’t in a compliant mood.

“I’m a lawyer,” I said. “I’m an officer of the court trying to serve a subpoena. It’s against the law for you to interfere with me.”

“That’s a helluva way to serve a subpoena, on the roof of a car.”

“I’m creative.” I turned so that my back was to the man. “I’m getting into my car,” I said. “You’re going to have to shoot me in the back to stop me.”

I moved slowly but without pause. They were ten of the longest steps I’d ever taken. But what could this guy do? How could he explain putting a bullet in my back?

“You’re not driving away!” he called out. “You’re not leaving with that camera.”

If only he knew what I knew. I’d screwed up. I hadn’t snapped any photos. I’d handed the camera over to Tori, and then Deputy Dawg here showed up. That was a miss on my part. A big miss. Lack of sleep = mistakes.

But at least I got into my car.

“Drive,” I told Tori.

And she did. She’d had time to adjust the seat so that she could reach the pedals. The gas pedal definitely worked. We took off over the hill in a burst. Smart move by Tori. She didn’t retrace our steps and risk passing the guy. She drove up over the hill and out of sight.

“He seemed like a nice guy,” I said to Tori as we headed back to the interstate.

Tori looked behind us through the rearview mirror. I shifted in my seat and turned around. Nobody followed us. Once we were on the interstate, Tori stopped looking behind us.

“You picked today because you thought you’d have some freedom to look around the place,” she gathered. “And because you thought if something illegal was going on here, today might be one of the days those illegal things would be happening.”

“Plus, it seemed like a nice day for a drive,” I said. “No, you’re right. Maybe now we know why Randall Manning is so sensitive about his sales records with Summerset Farms. Maybe fertilizer isn’t the only thing being transferred from Global Harvest International to Summerset. Maybe they’re running guns.”

“Is that all they were doing?” she asked. “Then why were they shooting them, too?”

“Maybe checking the merchandise. Making sure the weapons work okay.”

She looked at me. “Is that what you really think?”

I was trying to downplay what I’d just seen. But it wasn’t going to work. Tori saw it for what it was.

“No,” I admitted. “It looks like they’re training for something.”

Randall Manning and Bruce McCabe walked along the floor of the domed building. Everything had been restored to normal, the shell casings picked up, the farm machinery returned to its rightful place. The men were finishing up their shooting practice outside.

Manning had considered having the target practice inside to maintain cover, but decided against it. The operation would take place outside, and he wanted the men accustomed to the elements. If it was sunny, he wanted them used to shooting with the sun in their eyes. If it was raining, they had to be prepared for that. Today the sky was clear and the sunlight was strong. Three weeks ago, they’d practiced in wind and snow.

Everyone had eaten. It had been a full Thanksgiving feast that Manning had catered in. Like Manning himself, none of these men had anyplace else to be. None of them had family to speak of. That was no accident. It was why they’d been chosen. It had been a slow, methodical search for months, finding just the right candidates—disaffected, angry, violent individuals with no familial connections and either nationalistic or outright racist views. Finding them, to Manning’s surprise, had been the easy part. It was winnowing them down to the best among them that had taken more of his time.

“I need you to take me seriously,” said McCabe, a little looser after a couple glasses of wine. The soldiers hadn’t touched the alcohol, but McCabe and Manning had.

“I’m taking you very seriously, Bruce.”

“We have a chance to do this right, but this lawyer Kolarich is a threat.”

“Then we deal with the threat.”

“We deal with the threat and then we wait and let things pass,” McCabe insisted. “We can’t get rid of him and then turn around days later and carry out this thing.”

“We didn’t choose the timing, Bruce.”

“But we did, Randy. I understand the symbolism of December seventh. I do. But there are other dates that could work. We shouldn’t do this now.” McCabe stopped walking and waited for Manning to do the same. Manning turned to face him.

“I’m deadly serious, Randy.”

“What about your wife, Bruce? What about her?”

McCabe frowned. Color came to his face. “Don’t tell me about my wife. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do this. I’m saying
not now
.”

Behind McCabe, Manning saw movement. Patrick Cahill, one of Manning’s recruits, slipped out from behind a large tractor.

“Okay,” said Manning. “Okay, Bruce.”

“Really? You mean it?” McCabe breathed out. His posture relaxed.

Then Patrick Cahill moved in. He used a rope, snapping it over McCabe’s head and around his throat in one fluid motion. Manning heard a sickening crunch and desperate, gargling pleas from McCabe. McCabe struggled, his hands first going for the rope and then vainly swinging out behind him. But he was no match for Patrick Cahill, who lifted McCabe off his feet while he squeezed the life out of him.

Manning watched the whole time, until the last twitch of McCabe’s leg, until his body went entirely limp and Cahill dragged him away. He was surprised at the numbness he felt. Bruce had been a friend, after all. A friend who had sworn an oath to the cause and then gone back on it, but a friend no less.

Manning had come a long way in eighteen months.

Then his cell phone rang, and he answered it.

“Mr. Manning,” said the head of security. “We had visitors today.”

Tori and I went back to my law office and worked for most of the rest of the evening. She was doing research online while I worked through the witnesses and wrote up an outline of my closing argument at trial. A trial lawyer, after assessing the evidence, starts his case preparation with a closing argument. That’s the last thing you say to the jury, your final pitch, and you think about all the things you want to be able to say to them in that closing. Then you work backward, making sure that you put into evidence all the things you wanted to say, the individual bricks for the completed house you show them in closing.

My closing argument was now changing dramatically. This was no longer an insanity case. It was an innocence case. And most of the closing was going to be about things and people having nothing whatsoever to do with First Lieutenant Thomas Stoller. And most of it I didn’t yet know. So the whole exercise devolved into a series of questions that I had.

Which meant I was back to being pissed off and flustered at day’s end.

“I need more time,” I said to Tori as I drove her home. “I know there’s something here, but I don’t have the time to figure it out. I’m letting this kid down.”

“You’re not. You’re giving him your best, Jason.”

“It’s not enough. It’s not even close.”

She didn’t answer right away, but I sensed she was watching me.

“What?” I said, not hiding my irritation.

“A lawyer I know once said that you do your best for your client, and when you go to bed at night, you sleep, because all you can do is your best. And in the end, it’s your client, not you, that will do the time.”

“I don’t know what kind of an asshole would say that.” Again, she was quoting my words back to me. “I’m clocked out, Tori. I have a client who wants to go to prison, who wants to be punished, not for killing Kathy Rubinkowski but for shooting that girl in that tunnel in Mosul. He’s no help to me. He doesn’t remember anything about that night. So I’m left trying to convince a jury of something not even my own client will say, which is that someone else committed this murder and framed him. Isn’t that grand? My argument is my client was framed, but my client won’t even testify to it. And I have next to no proof of it. I have questions, and I have theories, but unless I can link them in some kind of tangible way, Judge Nash isn’t even going to let the jury hear about—”

“Jason, slow down. You’re feeling overwhelmed.” Tori touched my arm. “There’s still time. There’s still a chance.”

I took a deep breath and tried to relax. She was right. I was letting the situation get the better of me. It wasn’t like me. This was when I was usually at my best.

I made great time through the deserted city streets. I pulled up to her condo. Then I dropped my head against the steering wheel and closed my eyes. There had to be something I was missing.

Tori took my hand and held it. Her hand was small and warm, and it felt good to connect with her. We sat like that for what must have been ten, fifteen minutes. I was tired and wired. I needed sleep, I knew, but this case wasn’t going to give me that kind of peace. What lay ahead was nights of fitful sleep, eyes popping open in the middle of the night, tossing and turning.

“I used to be married,” Tori said to me.

I snapped out of my funk and looked at her. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me this right now. An intimate moment, I guess.

“When did it end?” I asked.

“Five years ago,” she said. “Five years ago today. November twenty-fifth, 2005. It was a Friday that year. The day after Thanksgiving.”

Funny that she’d know the date. But I guess it was tied to a holiday.

But a marriage ended with a court order dissolving the marriage. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a court open on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Tori let go of my hand and stared out the window of the car.

“That’s the day I killed him,” she told me.