Distemper (38 page)

“Benson Animal Anarchists. BAA.”

“Yeah, it crossed my mind. But the brains down at Quantico think it’s unlikely. Apparently that kind of conspicuous behavior
doesn’t fit the profile at all. Which brings me to something else I haven’t told you. It looks like the feds are taking over
the case.”

“Now? Why?”

“Because they’re saying if it really is Bobby Ray
Gravink, then he took his sister across state lines. And that makes it a federal offense.”

“But she was already in New York for her Benson interview. I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I. But the truth is they’ve been trying to grab the case for weeks. Now they at least have a reason to claim jurisdiction,
even if it’s a bunch of bullsh…”—he seemed to realize he was about to say a bad word in his mother’s kitchen—“even if it’s
a load of garbage.”

“What does the chief have to say about it?”

“He’s putting up a fight. I’m just not sure it’ll do any good.”

“But, Cody, what happens if we’re all on the totally wrong trail? What if Bobby Ray has nothing to do with this?”

“Well, we’re looking into some other possibilities too. We have to keep all the bases covered. But Bobby Ray is the closest
thing we’ve had to a suspect since…”

“Since my dear friend Jeffrey Vandebrandt?”

“Right.”

“What’s up with him, anyway?”

“He’s the court system’s problem now. I’m sure the D.A. will cut a deal, so you’re not going to have to testify at a trial
or anything.”

“Is he going to do time?”

“Definitely.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I told the D.A. that if that little creep’s butt didn’t end up behind bars, I was going to kill him.”

“Really?”

“No. I asked him to do it in the spirit of interdepartmental cooperation. But I also mentioned that if he didn’t,
the evidence for his big drug trial might go bye-bye, and the headlines along with it.”

“Wow. Whatever happened to my big Boy Scout?”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t really have done it. But that kid deserves to go away for a while.”

“Listen, Cody, I gotta ask you something else. Are you pissed about Texas?”

“That you went down there working on the story? Of course not. But I’m a little pissed that my girlfriend left town for four
days and I only heard about it from one lousy answering machine message.”

I stared at him for a second, wondering if he’d used the G-word accidentally or on purpose. I decided now wasn’t the best
time to bring it up. “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “It just happened so fast. One minute I was answering the phone in the
newsroom, and the next thing I knew I was packing my suitcase. It was kind of crazy.”

“The last I heard, they had phones down in Texas.”

I thought about making some stupid excuse, then opted for the plain vanilla truth. “I was afraid if I told you what I was
up to, you’d be furious.”

“Why?”

“I… Well, I…” I couldn’t put my finger on it. “I don’t know, I just didn’t think you’d appreciate a couple of reporters digging
around behind your back.”

He laughed then, a big raucous guffaw. “Alex, I’m fairly sure I don’t have to tell you this, but that’s what reporters do.
You don’t honestly think the
Boston Globe
used to call the precinct house and ask permission to go nosing around my cases, do you?”

“Well, no, but you weren’t dating the
Globe
at the time.”

“Alex, since we’ve been together, have I ever once asked you not to do your job?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Have I?”

“No.”

“So what makes you think I would? Just because you’ve got me pegged as some Neanderthal?”

“Come on, Cody. From the day we met, we’ve been butting heads about what the paper was or wasn’t going to publish.”

“Right. Because it’s part of my job to try and control what the public knows about the case. It’s not my favorite part, believe
me.”

“And you really think we can both just go about our business and not have it bug us at the end of the day?”

“Alex, haven’t we already had this conversation? More than once?”

“Yep. I guess I just need some massaging.”

“Then come home with me.”

So we drove the three miles to his apartment in separate cars, and spent the next couple of hours not talking about the case.
The sex was as athletic as ever, but there was also a kind of Zen about it too. I’m not sure how to describe it, except to
say that for the first time I got the feeling that maybe there might be a future in it after all. The phone rang just as we
were falling asleep, and when Cody answered it I could feel the muscles in his back tense up next to me. He talked for a long
time, then jumped out of bed and pulled on his boxers. I listened to the rest of the story as he was getting dressed, although
I’d pretty much figured out what was going on from his half of the conversation. He told me he’d probably be
gone all night, asked me to stay long enough to let his dog back in, and said he’d call when things got less crazy.

Then he kissed me good-bye. And the next time I saw him, he was dying.

Z
EKE CAME HOME TWENTY MINUTES AFTER
C
ODY LEFT
, and he seemed so happy to see me I didn’t have the heart to leave him in the empty apartment. So I scribbled a note that
I’d taken the dog to my place to play with Shakespeare, drove home, and called Mad. Then I crawled into bed, and when I woke
up the two dogs were curled next to each other in a yin-yang pattern, which was just about the cutest thing I’d ever seen.

When I got to the paper, Bill was already at one of the layout computers mocking up the next day’s page one—a good ten hours
earlier than usual. They’d obviously already heard. Unless the killer turned himself in before deadline, there was no doubt
about what the lead story was going to be.

“Nice of you to show up,” Bill said.

“It’s nine-thirty. The last thing I heard, this was still an
A.M.
paper.”

“Madison’s been here since seven.”

“Bully for him. Who do you think tipped him off last night?”

Bill stopped messing with the mouse. “How’d you find out so soon?”

“Reliable source.”

“Who?”

“Anonymous reliable source. Don’t worry about it. It was legitimate, am I right?”

“Yeah. Mad just got back from the house. Family’s going crazy.”

The family in question was the Kingman-Finkelsteins, some of Gabriel’s most celebrated loudmouths. I’d been covering them
for years, chronicling their crusades for social justice at home and abroad. The father, Joe Kingman, was a Benson law professor
who’d helped convince the university to found one of the nation’s first Peace Studies programs during the early seventies—or,
more accurately, helped drive the administration batty with protests and takeovers until it finally gave in. Mom was Shayna
Finkelstein, an antihunger activist who’d chucked a career as a nutrition researcher to start soup kitchens and food banks
around the country. They were always good for a quote on topics ranging from welfare cuts to CIA recruiting to the skyrocketing
price of quinoa.

I’d done a profile of Joe Kingman last summer when he’d been named to a vacant seat on the Gabriel city council, and I’d spoken
to his wife as recently as the week before. But the first time I’d ever met the family was shortly after I got on the city
beat, when the council was debating whether or not to revive Gabriel’s moribund curfew law. It’d been discovered during a
routine review of the city ordinances, and the cops (who’d had no
idea such a thing existed) started licking their chops at how handy it would be in making the streets safe from slackers.

It sounded sensible enough. No one under the age of sixteen could be out after eleven o’clock without an adult, except for
a list of special circumstances about a mile long. There were exceptions for going to and from arts events, sports games,
errands for their parents—just about everything but drug deals and drive-bys.

Still, a few people promptly went nuts. What everyone on the council (even the serious lefties) thought was going to be a
routine thing turned into a month-long debate. Protests were duly conducted, petitions circulated, open meetings held. By
the time it came to a vote, fifty kids and their parents stormed the council hall to exercise their fundamental right to shout
in public. And the most eloquent of them all—the one who gave a speech on the beauty of walking the city streets at two
A.M.
to commune with the wholesome quietude of Gabriel—was Justice Kingman-Finkelstein.

She was fifteen years old at the time, a sophomore at Gabriel High who’d been agitating for change (energy-saving lightbulbs
in the gym, vegan food in the cafeteria) since she was in the third grade. She was tall and pretty, with long legs and light
brown hair that flowed down her back. She was more poised than most people twice her age, and when the votes were counted
the anti-curfew people won 8–2.

And now, two years later, she was gone.

She was about to start her freshman year at Benson, where she planned to major in labor relations. Justice (yes, the name
on her birth certificate) was staying with
her parents during a break from a summer program in grassroots union organizing when she disappeared. She’d been out running
with the family dog at dusk, and she didn’t come home. Her parents might not have been concerned at first—might have figured
she was chasing her inner child around campus and lost track of time—if her dog hadn’t wandered home alone three hours later.

The Kingman-Finkelsteins immediately called the cops, the very folks who’d hauled them away in plastic handcuffs so many times
before. The next morning, with still no sign of Justice, their house had been turned into a command center. From what Mad
said, it sounded like every liberal activist in Gabriel had shown up to help print posters, work the phones, or just pray.
I made some lame crack about a candlelight vigil, whereupon Mad informed me there was already one set for that night.

The press releases started hitting the fax machine at ten-thirty. Justice’s parents had always been masters at working the
media, and getting their daughter back was the most important campaign they’d ever been on. They were clearly determined to
get her name and face out there, maybe in the hope that whoever took her might think of her as a human being rather than a
piece of meat. They issued statements about Justice, about the family, even about the damn dog. Although they’d already given
Mad an interview at their house, they came right to the phone when I called to ask a few more questions. They even got Chief
Hill himself to give a speech on their front steps; it was covered not only by local TV but affiliates from the three networks,
Fox, and CNN. The Kingman-Finkelsteins had been cultivating their media
contacts for two decades, and now they were calling them in.

Mad was writing the mainbar about the apparent abduction—that’s what the cops were calling it—and I was working on a sidebar
profile of Justice. I chronicled her various bouts of activism over the years, got a few quotes from her teachers and friends,
did a break-out box on all the awards she’d won. The whole thing would have been enough of a tearjerker even without the coup
de grace: her dog was terminally ill.

His name was Karl (as in the father of modern socialism), and he was a racing greyhound she’d adopted through a group based
in Gabriel that saves them from the track. He’d been with the family since he was three, but after he turned six last spring
he’d been diagnosed with cancer. He had a tumor in his left front leg, and when the vet wanted to amputate, Justice said no;
it wouldn’t have saved the dog’s life anyway, just bought him a little more time. So she did her homework and started treating
him herself. She cut all the preservatives out of his diet, bought homeopathic remedies at one of the co-ops, even found an
acupuncturist in town who was willing to work on him.

The vets were amazed at how well he did. They’d given him two months to live, and four months later he was still running around—apparently
fast enough to get away from whoever had abducted his owner. The tumor was still growing, though, and sooner or later the
cancer would spread to his internal organs and he’d have to be put down.

But the doctors had to admit that this time, alternative medicine had done a hell of a lot more for him than they
could have. And yes, those doctors worked at the Benson vet clinic.

I put all of this at the end of my profile of Justice, but I wasn’t sure that even Bill would have the stomach for something
that shameless. (Stupid question; of course he did.) But what happened with Karl seemed important for another reason: it broke
the pattern. As far as we knew, this was the first time one of the dogs had gotten away.

No one had any way of knowing how that might affect what happened to Justice. Would it somehow make her captor less willing
to kill her? Or—and as far as I was concerned, this was by far the more likely—would it piss him off so much, he’d strangle
her even sooner?