Deadline (9 page)

The thought had haunted him, for a full two years, that she had fallen in love not with him but with the FBI. She had had it from the start, that look that he hadn’t seen from a woman since the old days. She thought the FBI was okay, really okay, and not just a necessary evil. That figured. She was an only child, daughter of a man who would serve a dozen terms as Republican congressman from the state of New York. Her politics, like his, were right of center, though she was in the middle of some deep shift, and God only knew where that would end. A year ago she couldn’t abide people who wanted everything handed to them by the government, and just last week she said she finally understood what welfare was about. Donovan had been afraid to ask. She had started questioning everything: her country, her father, the existence of God, all the rules she had learned in school and now the infallibility of the great FBI. Somehow that scared Donovan more than a hundred men chasing after her lovely tail would have.

The thought occurred to Donovan, as it must have occurred to Walker, that they were a strange group. The dancer, Diana, had made an instant hit with Kim, but to Donovan she was an odd person, moody and deep. He liked her the same way you like your commanding officer in the Army, if you like him at all. With an uneasiness growing out of the vast separation of your life-styles. With the feeling that, no matter what was said, much more was unsaid. With a hunch that a man might live with this woman thirty years and still never know what went on inside her head.

But he loved playing host. Donovan was the only man in the Bureau, to his knowledge, who invited reporters to his home. Most agents had such a fear of the printed word that they constantly tottered on paranoia. The sight of Donovan stoking the fire in his backyard and chatting easily with Walker would have horrified them. Donovan believed that good food bridged any gap, and the food was always good when Kim made it. He grilled the steaks and she provided the fine touches from her oven. Diana Yoder refused alcohol, but had some spiced cider. They talked about Radio City and being a Rockette. At Kim’s request, she even did a few high kicks for them on the grass beside the barbecue pit. They all laughed.

They talked about the women’s movement, and again Donovan was surprised at how much his wife agreed with the progressive thinking of Diana Yoder. By then a cold wind had come up. They retired to Donovan’s den for some brandy and, for the girl, a touch of hot tea. She moved along his rows of books, picking out one occasionally, leafing through it, reading the first page with surprising speed, then putting it back. She stared for a long time at his framed picture of J. Edgar Hoover. It had been taken at a special function in 1969, honoring Special Agents who had served thirty years. Hoover had shaken Donovan’s hand for the camera, and later signed the picture and sent it by messenger to Donovan’s home.

The girl was intrigued by Hoover. After a while, Donovan told them about his dealings with Hoover. They talked about the revelations of recent years, and Donovan told them what he thought was true and when he thought the press was just having fun. Walker didn’t say anything.

In all, it was a highly successful evening. Until ten o’clock.

The phone rang.

Donovan listened without saying more than two words. He hung up the phone and his face was white.

“Al?”

He blinked as he realized that Kim had spoken.

“What’s the matter?”

“That was Virgil Craig.”

The name meant nothing to Walker. But he noticed that the strange look in Donovan’s eyes had spread to his wife.

“I’m sorry,” Donovan said, rising. “I’m going to have to go out.”

“Oh, dear,” Kim said.

“It can’t be helped. You’ve been a lovely guest, Miss Yoder. I’m happy Walker could bring you, and I can’t apologize enough for having to run out like this.”

She smiled and took his hand as he offered it.

“You and Walker stay a while, keep Kim company.”

“Will you be back?” Kim said.

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

He put on his coat and hurried out. But a moment later he was back, apparently confused. He stood in the doorway in indecision.

“Al?” Now Kim was concerned. “Is there something I can do? Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s not that. I need to talk to Walker.”

Walker excused himself and followed Donovan out onto the walk. They stopped just outside the circle of light.

“Those pictures you gave me.”

Walker waited.

“I wasn’t going to tell you this, but you and I have never played that way before. Just remember, it didn’t come from me.”

Walker nodded.

“The Gunthers are dead,” Donovan said.

“How?”

“From what I know, apparently he went nuts. Killed his wife, then shot himself.”

“What about Melinda Baker?”

“Nobody knows where she is.”

They looked at each other. Then Donovan said, “You’ll have to take your own car. Tell your date she’ll have to find her own way home. And for Christ’s sake don’t get there too soon after me.”

T
HE QUIET STREET WHERE
the Gunthers had lived was full of cops. People were at their front doors on both sides of the street to watch the passing parade of lights and black cars. Men in dark suits trampled the grass around the house and into the backyard. Walker got there a full forty minutes after Donovan arrived. He knew the cops would be there for at least another hour, so he took Diana home first. Even death, even a story, wouldn’t make him push that lady into a subway late at night.

In his youth he had covered many murders, and they all looked alike from the street. The windows blazed with the lights of the police photographer, and shadows moved beyond the curtains. Measuring. Talking. Shooting flash pictures. Some reporters had arrived, a nightside crew from the Newark paper and a couple of guys Walker knew from the
Tribune.
To them it was just another suicide-murder. In and around New York, it happened all the time. It would rate a couple of lines at best. The photog would turn in a few prints and none of them would make the paper.

Under ordinary circumstances.

Walker moved over toward the
Tribune
team. The reporter was Jerry Wayne, still one of Walker’s admirers in the split that had marked his early months at the paper.

“Hi, Jerry.”

“Oh…hi.”

“Better tell your photog not to shortchange this one, Jerry. I’ve got a hunch it’ll see some big action tomorrow.”

Wayne’s eyes widened. “You working on it?”

“Yeah. I have been for a long time.”

“Oh.”

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it. You just keep doing whatever you want to do. We’ll work it out together when we get back to the office.”

Wayne eased away and began talking with his photographer. The photog looked sourly at Walker. Naturally, he argued about it. But he looked livelier after that, and took more care about what he did.

After a while another car drove up. In it were three men in suits, looking for all the world as though they had just stepped out of an air-conditioned office. Walker knew two of them on sight, from the old days. The man in the back seat, and obviously the one in charge, was Roland Simon, head of the New York field office. Next to him was a guy named Armstrong. Walker didn’t remember Armstrong’s first name, wasn’t sure he ever knew it. A grim man; Walker thought he would have made a fine photog. The third man was much younger, probably still in his late twenties. Walker had never seen him, but two out of three wasn’t bad.

The Feds took command almost at once. Roland Simon had some words with the lieutenant from the local police, and the cops fell back and became, with the growing crowd on the sidewalk, mere spectators. Walker knew then that the investigation, whatever it might become in the next few hours, was just getting started. The press would get nothing until the Feds had sorted through it and decided exactly how they wanted to play it. Walker drifted down the street and around the corner. Halfway up the next block, Melinda Baker’s house was dark. The whole block was dark. The trees screened out the streetlights on each corner, and in Melinda Baker’s yard deep pockets of darkness melted into total darkness at the sides and behind the house. Walker stopped and unhooked the gate. He went up the steps to the front door and rang the bell, but the house had a feeling of emptiness about it. There wasn’t even a creak of a floorboard while he stood there. He knocked, and as he did, two men came around the edges of the porch and stood watching him from either side.

“Who are you?” one of the men said.

“I’m looking for Mrs. Baker.”

They came around the porch and up the steps. “We didn’t ask you that.”

“Dalton Walker. I’m a reporter for the
Tribune.
Who are you?”

They didn’t answer. The one with the voice said, “You got some identification?”

“Have you?” Walker said.

“You can show it here or in jail. Suit yourself.”

Walker took out his press card. The one without a voice held a flashlight and they looked it over.

“Mrs. Baker isn’t home,” the voice said, handing the card back to Walker.

“I can see that. What’s going on?”

“We have no statement, Mr. Walker. If you want a statement, ask for Special Agent Simon. He’s …”

“Yeah, right. I know where he is.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Walker.”

They escorted him to the sidewalk. When he looked back at the Baker house, from a half a block away, they had disappeared.

Walker didn’t see Donovan until perhaps an hour later. He knew enough about FBI procedure to know that Donovan, because he had initiated the probe into the Gunthers’ background, would be the agent of record on the case. Donovan would get all the records, all correspondence relating to the Gunther matter, despite the fact that he was assigned to Brooklyn and the killings had happened in New Jersey. That was Bureau policy, and this time Walker was glad of it. At least he could talk to Donovan. But when Donovan did come out, one glance told Walker to keep his distance. Even that might work out well. The deaths had happened on everybody’s time but his, and it would be a full eleven hours before he could have his paper on the streets. So the less anyone said now the better.

After a while Roland Simon came to the door. The group of reporters had grown somewhat, from three to six. Walker didn’t see a New Yorker among them. Even the
Daily News
had passed up this one. The three newcomers were radio guys. No danger there. Half the time they didn’t know what year it was, let alone what questions to ask. The guy from Newark worried him. An older guy: around forty-five, with a dark moustache. Like Walker, he stayed in the background until Roland Simon was ready to talk.

Walker looked at Jerry Wayne’s watch. It said quarter to one, and he began to feel better. If the Newark paper was an
A.M.
, most of their deadlines had come and gone. Even if Simon laid the whole number on them, they would have to scramble like hell to get snatches of it into their final. Walker didn’t think the guy with the dark moustache was that sharp.

But he wasn’t any dummy, either. As the six of them crowded around Simon, the man from Newark said, “How come this is a federal case?” He went right to the point.

“We’re pursuing a lead that goes back to a federal case,” Simon said. “No one has called these deaths themselves a federal matter.”

“Then what are you guys doing here?”

“I told you.”

“Then what case are we talking about?”

“I have no comment on that. I may have one Monday morning.”

Walker let out his breath and smiled a little.

“Are you telling me these deaths aren’t of any official interest to you, but you’re working on something involving them that is?”

Simon gave the man from Newark an icy stare. “I thought that’s what I just said.”

“Then what…”

“I told you,” Simon said coldly. “Monday morning. Next question.”

Walker stood through it all, while the radio guys asked their dumb questions and Simon filled in the blanks. The dead man was going under the name of Harold Warren Gunther, age forty-nine, occupation laborer. He had worked in the shipping department at Bristol-Myers. His wife, Barbara, was thirty-nine. She had worked at Bristol-Myers too.

“What do you mean he was going under the name?” the man from Newark said. “Was that his name or wasn’t it?”

“That’s the name he was known by,” Simon said.

“Is that the name you know him by?”

“Yes. Next question.”

There were no next questions. If they were playing it for a two-graph filler, two graphs was what they would get.

Except in the
Tribune.

The reporters stepped back and the bodies were brought out. Flashbulbs popped all over the place, as the two stretchers were brought out and deposited in the meat wagon.

The man from Newark came close. “In a pig’s eye,” he said. “There’s more to this one than that.”

“You think so?”

“Goddamn right. Don’t you?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Walker said. “Maybe we’ll find out Monday morning.”

An hour later, he sat alone in the city room, facing a sheet of blank paper, hoping Donovan would call. Jerry Wayne came in and put a cup of coffee on his desk, then retired into a corner to wait and see what was shaking out of the trees. At Walker’s direction, Jerry had typed up a page of notes, giving him all the official quotes along with some firsthand observation. The kid had slipped around behind the house and peeped in through a side window before the bodies were covered. He wrote down what they looked like, where they were positioned and some gorgeous detail. Jerry noted the flecks of blood on the walls, the pistol still clenched in Gunther’s hand, and how the gray streaks in the dead man’s beard had turned bright red. The kid had a helluvan eye for detail.

Walker had been trying to reach Donovan by telephone since he returned to the paper. First he got Kim, who said Al hadn’t come home yet. Donovan had called her, and said he might be another hour or two, but he hadn’t indicated where he might be going. On a hunch, Walker called Donovan’s private number at the resident agency in Brooklyn. No one answered, but Walker had a strange vision of Donovan sitting alone in that dark office, watching the phone as it rang.