Dead Bang (13 page)

“C'mon,” said Harkness. “Walk with me.” We started across the lobby toward the guard station at the entrance to the Channel Six News studio. “The prosecutor just said no one is being charged,” said Harkness. “That's what Robby has in the camera.”

“I still have to worry about the wrongful death suit.”

“The only family Peggy Shatner had was her mother. She had a son, but he blew his brains out. She used the same gun on her mother and died with it in her hand at the restaurant.”

We approached the guard. Harkness said, “Hey, Lenny,” and waved.

Lenny, Leonard Stanton, had retired from the Kent County Sheriff's Office and now wore a state police uniform with private security patches.
Leonard and I had bumped noggins for a decade while he'd been a road patrolman. He felt required to roust me anytime he found me on a surveillance job. His attitude toward the private sector took a definite uptick after he retired and took command of the security operation for Channel Six. Now we shared membership in the same security industry-related organizations.

“He's with us,” said Harkness.

“Art,” said Leonard, rocking his chair back. “Been reading about you in the newspaper again.” A smug smile etched wrinkles in the corners of his eyes.

“Shouldn't oughta believe everything you read, Sarge,” I said.

“Hell,” said Leonard, “I only believe half of what I see. You going to be on
The Mark Behler Show
tonight?”

“Can't,” I said, “I'm taking my wife to dinner.”

“Hey, we're live at five,” said Harkness. “It's all over by five-thirty. Plenty of time for dinner.”

“No way I'm going on television and talking about the shooting,” I said. “Be like waving a red blanket at the prosecutor.”

Harkness gave me a follow-me wave. “We've got coffee in the editing room. I'll show you what the prosecutor had to say.”

I looked at my watch—a little after one. “I'll come in and look at the tape,” I said.

“Hardin,” said Leonard as he extended a square of white adhesive-backed paper stuck to the end of his middle finger. “You gotta have a visitor tag.” Leonard had scrawled a misshapen five-pointed star and the word “Shamus” in black felt marker. “Now you got a paper badge to go with your plastic one.”

“Thanks, Lenny,” I said, and smacked it onto the breast pocket of my suit coat. “At least it ain't sewn to my shirt like yours.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Leonard. A sheepish smile leapt over his face. “If you're at the next ASIS meeting, there's a guy I want you to talk to.”

“ASIS?” asked Harkness.

“American Society for Industrial Security,” I said. “Leonard and I are on the speakers' committee.”

Robby, the cameraman, shoved by us and we followed him up a wide hallway past a Eurasian woman parked on a red settee next to a plastic fern. She wore a black business suit with a white blouse that made a ruffle around her neck. Her badge said “Lily.” I smiled and nodded. She ignored us.

Robby turned into a doorway and parked himself at a machine that looked like a computer but had two screens and a console crowded with
levers and sliding knobs. He slapped a tape in, and we watched the prosecutor read a prepared statement.

The incident in the pizzeria was a “tragedy” that “shocked the whole community.” The private citizen who shot the assailant had “acted in self-defense” and had been “lawfully in possession of a firearm.” However, the incident had focused his attention on the “proliferation of firearms in the community,” and he was “reconsidering his policies for the county gun board.”

“See?” asked Harkness. “You're home free.”

“Is that right?” I asked. “Let me fill you in, stud. The prosecutor's office has to sign my detective license application. And no concealed carry permits are issued without his consent.”

“He said you were ‘lawfully in possession,'” said Harkness.

“You need to listen to that last bit again. I don't want to sell my house and move to another county just to keep my detective license and concealed pistols permit.”

“Maybe you could just come on the show and defend the Second Amendment again,” said Harkness. “Four minutes, how much trouble could you get into? Mark'll hardly let you get a word in, anyway.”

Behler's antigun pontification, buttressed by self-assured ignorance of the subject, had me screaming at the TV set twice a week. “Behler says anything about Peggy Shatner, and I walk off the set.”

Harkness smiled. “If Mark Behler says anything about Peggy Shatner, I'll kiss your ass on Caulder Plaza for the six o'clock news.”

• • •

“This isn't a collect call,” said Wendy. “I guess you're not in custody yet.”

“We had plans for the evening,” I said.

“The state police left right after I talked to you.”

“I called them. We met at Finney's office. Van Huis came down from Kentwood.”

“All this about Karen?” asked Wendy.

“No, it's about some pictures I took in Detroit thirty years ago.”

“Pictures of what?”

“Some Mob guy and his associates,” I said.

“Has to be more to it than that,” said Wendy. “They weren't here to chat.”

“One of the Mob guys was dead. They thought the picture was some kind of sick trophy—my thumbprint was on it. I told them I'd turned the picture over to the local police thirty years ago, and they went back to check their notes.”

“Took ‘em thirty years to notice your thumbprint?”

“Thirty years ago they didn't have a computer to sort out fingerprints. Did you make reservations at Roberto's?”

“Eight o'clock.”

“That should work. I'm on
The Mark Behler Show.”

“What?” asked Wendy. Before I could reply she added, “You've lost your mind!”

“They agreed to drop a segment about the restaurant shooting if I agreed to argue the Second Amendment with Behler—four minutes at the end of the show.”

“I can't believe you trust those people.”

“I don't,” I said. “That's the point. I told them I'd walk off the show if they mentioned the Shatner woman.”

“Art, that's not enough. You have a family to think about.”

“Being on the show is the only control I have.”

“You need some control over
you,”
said Wendy.

“Honey,” I said, “I'm sorry you're angry.”

“What did you find out about Karen?”

“All the feds would say was that Agent Svenson went to pick up a witness at the Wyoming Police Department. I can't see that being anyone but Karen. I'm on my way back to find out.”

“I need to know if she's going to be at dinner.”

“Include her in the reservation,” I said. “If she's still locked up, we'll get her some take-out.”

“I'll check the menu,” said Wendy.

“Don't you always?”

“Only when I'm thinking I'd like to try something new.”

“But you don't,” I said.

“That's because there's nothing else on the menu I want,” said Wendy.

“You wouldn't know that unless you looked.”

“We need a loaf of bread, and don't forget the soda,” said Wendy, stringing her words together in a monotone. “Daniel should be home to go to dinner with us.”

“Lilies?” I asked.

“We're going to dinner, not a funeral,” said Wendy.

• • •

The white Oldsmobile roared up from the parking ramp under the federal building and screeched to a halt across the sidewalk. Matty Svenson let the driver's window down. She had her hair in a pageboy and wore a charcoal blazer over a white shell.

“Get in,” she said. “The state police want to talk to you.”

“Archer Flynt from the state attorney general's office?”

“That's the one,” said Matty.

The agent I'd met at the reception desk sat on the passenger side of the front seat wearing sunglasses and ignoring me. Karen sat on the passenger side of the back seat, still wearing Wendy's brown sweats from the night before. She'd unbraided and combed her hair, but it stood out from her head in all directions like it was afraid of her scalp.

“Hey, Art,” she said, all smiles.

“I just talked to Flynt over at my attorney's office.”

“Great,” said Matty as she started to roll the window back up and took her foot off the brake.

“Wait,” I said.

“What?”

“I came here to find out about Karen,” I said.

“I'm driving her to her house,” said Matty. “She wants to pick up some clothes. I have to see what she takes out of the house.”

“You wouldn't mind giving me a ride?” I said. “My car is in for an oil change.”

“This is business, Art,” said Matty. “Not public transportation.”

“I can identify the van and the men who were in it,” I said.

“So can Karen,” said Matty.

“Two heads are always thicker than one,” I said.

Matty made a sigh spiked with gravel. “Get in. I'll take you as far as Karen's house. After that you are on your own.”

“Wendy's car is at my house,” said Karen. “I can give him a ride.”

I took the back seat behind Matty. Matty took Division Avenue south. “Art Hardin, Agent Azzara,” said Matty.

Agent Azzara nodded once but didn't turn to look at me.

“We met,” I said. “You from Washington?”

“Quantico,” said Azzara, still not looking back.

“This is Agent Azzara's first office assignment,” said Matty. “Keep your eye out for that van.” She glanced up to look at me in the rearview mirror. “You jammed up with the state police?”

“What happened?” asked Karen.

“Took some surveillance pictures of some Mob guy thirty years ago,” I said. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Jesus, Art,” said Karen. “What did you take pictures of?”

“I don't want to hear any more,” said Matty.

“But—” said Karen.

“Look for the van,” said Matty.

“They all look alike,” said Karen.

“Look hard,” said Matty.

We cranked our way through parking lots as we made our way south on Division Avenue. At a grocery store at Burton and Division we found a green minivan with a coat of dust that made it look right to me. The license plate, while not the right number, was clean, like it had been changed. We settled in to watch for the driver of the van.

“What if we see ‘em?” asked Karen, her voice tight.

“Stay in the car,” said Matty.

“So what brings you to the FBI, Agent Azzara?” I asked, by way of trying to lighten the mood.

“A master's degree in accounting,” he said.

“Tired of the bean-counting business?”

“I find accounting fascinating,” said Azzara. He removed his sunglasses and turned to look at me. “Actually, I was hoping to be made a fool of by a man hiding behind a door.”

“Detective Van Huis wouldn't tell you who he was looking for. Hell, he wouldn't come all the way in the door. How's that make you a fool?”

“You knew he was looking for you,” said Azzara with a flourish of the leg of his sunglasses.

“Yeah,” I said. “But not because he told you—or me, for that matter.”

“That's not the point.”

“What's the point?” I asked. “Which one of us is supposed to be the psychic? And as I remember, you wouldn't tell Van Huis what Matty was doing—not specifically.”

“Best not have,” said Matty.

“Maybe that's the point,” I said. “Until local and federal authorities start to trust each other, you guys are never going to know what's behind the door.”

“Heads up,” said Matty.

A woman wearing a Muslim head scarf and pushing a grocery cart with two small boys and a bag of groceries approached the van. She unlocked the doors by aiming a tab on her key ring at the vehicle. Matty started the Olds, and we pulled out of the lot.

“Shouldn't we follow them?” asked Karen.

“She wasn't there, and you can't feed five men and two small boys with one bag of groceries,” I said.

Agent Azzara turned to glance at me sideways and show me a puzzled face. He slid his sunglasses on and faced the front to look out the window.

“So did they track down the owner of that AKR?” I asked.

“Not in the system,” said Matty. “ATF says it was smuggled in from
the Middle East. Customs caught a couple of containers. Guess they didn't get them all.”

Wendy's old Cadillac took up the space at the curb. Matty nosed into the drive but couldn't get all the way in because of Karen's Monte Carlo.

Yellow crime-scene tape festooned Karen's house with the generosity of a Halloween prank. The Wyoming Police had installed a plywood front door and secured it with a padlock.

“Good Lord,” I said. “How'd you get in this morning?”

“The side door is warped,” said Karen. “It doesn't lock. It's just jammed shut.”

“So where are your suitcases?” asked Matty.

“They're in the den by the side door,” said Karen. “I was carrying them out when the cops showed up and arrested me for being in my own house.”

“You missed all the yellow tape?” asked Matty, with narrow eyes and a wrinkled nose.

“It's still my house,” said Karen.

“Until we're done here, you can't disturb anything,” said Matty. “I'll go in and get the bags.” Matty turned off the car, flopped the keys on the dash, and said, “Wait here.”

“I need my car, too,” said Karen. “I can't keep driving Wendy's car. She has a business to run.”

“The evidence team is flying in today,” said Matty. “We'll see.”