The Next President (31 page)

As a visiting federal officer, he expected prompt, courteous cooperation from the locals, and the chief did extend his hand in greeting when DeVito was ushered into his office, but the man looked decidedly edgy about receiving him.

“Something wrong, Chief?” DeVito asked, taking the chair he’d been offered.

“More than usual.”

“And you’re wondering if I’m more bad news.”

Billy Edwards nodded.

“You told my sergeant you’re here to talk about J. D. Cade?”

“That’s right. You know Mr. Cade?”

“Not personally, no.”

“But you’re holding his son for murder?”

“Not any longer. The charge was dismissed this morning.”

DeVito frowned.

“Why was that?”

“Judge said insufficient evidence.”

DeVito—the outsider—knew he was about to tread on dangerous ground, but he asked anyway.

“The judge an honest man? Not somebody who might be swayed by an unexpected contribution to his retirement plan?”

A sour look spread across the chief’s face.

“Who can say what’s in a man’s heart? You want, I’ll take you over to Murphysboro and you can repeat your questions to the judge himself.”

DeVito snorted. He’d pass on that one.

“If you don’t know about Mr. Cade personally, what about professionally?”

“He left town a very long time ago. Back when I was in grade school.”

“Chief, you liked J. D. Cade’s son as a killer. You liked him enough to go out and arrest him, whatever some judge said after the fact. You

mean to tell me you didn’t even check your files to see if maybe his father didn’t pass along some bad blood to him?”

“Yeah,” the chief admitted, “I did.”

“And?”

” J. D. Cade has no criminal record.”

Which DeVito already knew.

“All that means is he was never charged with anything. What about any run-ins your department had with Mr. Cade that stopped short of arrest? Was there ever anything like that?”

Chief Edwards didn’t like this fed at all. But he knew the easiest way to get rid of him was to cooperate an attitude he wished his damn in-law Blair McCray would take up.

“Well, I found one old report that didn’t involve any charges but had to be filed for property insurance purposes. Mr. Cade was involved in a bar fight shortly after returning home from the army.”

“What, two drunks slugging it out? Who got the better of it?”

“It’s more complicated than that. You have to know some local history to really understand. But the gist of it is, this fellow name of Alvy McCray started up with J. D. Cade and Cade purely beat the hell out of him.”

“With his hands?”

“That’s what the report says, but I talked to the old-timer who took the report and he told me he heard stories at the time that Cade pistol-whipped McCray.”

“And there were no charges for that?”

“It could never be confirmed.”

“Why not?”

The chief sighed and launched into a brief account of the Cade-McCray feud, how Alvy McCray had initiated assaults on various Cades, and how most people on the Illinois side of the dispute were not about to say anything that would help one of their Kentucky enemies.

“Huh,” DeVito grunted.

“So this bad-ass hillbilly goes up against J. D. Cade and it’s like he ran into a buzz saw Is that the end of the story? Nobody tried to get revenge?”

The chief didn’t care to hear his in-laws characterized as hillbillies but kept his temper in check.

“Mr. Cade thought it best to leave the state just after the fight.”

DeVito rubbed his chin, thinking.

“And this McCray character, he didn’t try to even the score on someone else in the Cade family?”

“He might have wanted to, but he died.”

“Died? Violently?”

“You could say that. He rolled his pickup truck three times after it struck a deer.”

The story slithered through DeVito labyrinthine thought process.

“So it was an accident—after J. D. Cade had left the area—but it was awfully fucking convenient.”

“For the Cades, the McCrays, and the general welfare, yes, it was. Nobody except Alvy McCray wanted to see the feud start up again.”

DeVito had an insight.

“This person J. D. Cade’s son is supposed to have killed, another McCray?”

The chief nodded.

“Ivar McCray.”

“That stirring up all the old hostilities?”

“Not so far. But it might. Alvy McCray’s son, Blair—he’s a police officer down in Paducah—he’s come up to look into the matter on an unofficial basis,” “No shit?” A thought struck DeVito

“Better tell him to watch out for stray deer.”

The chief wasn’t amused “I’ll be sure to do that. Couldn’t blame it on Mr.

Cade even if it happened again, though.”

“Why not?”

“He left town this morning.”

“What?”

“Word I received was he was in court this morning to make sure his boy got off, visited him at the hospital, and took off in his plane probably about the same time yours was landing.”

“Sonofabitch,” DeVito muttered. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Cade was going straight back to the campaign. DeVito also sensed he’d learned as much as he needed to know, or was going to find out from this grumpy cop, about J. D. Cade’s early years: a pistol-whipping, a blood feud, and an accidental…

Death. Alvy McCray messed with Cade, his pickup truck hit a deer. Roth and Danby annoyed Cade, they were almost killed in a rock slide. Nobody got that lucky with his enemies.

“How soon can I get a flight out of here?” DeVito asked Billy Edwards.

The chief looked out his window, where the rain was coming down in such volume he seemed to have a view of Niagara Falls.

“Not soon would be my guess.”

Blair McCray called Evan from the lobby of the hospital and asked if it was safe for him to come up and visit.

“Yeah. I’m alone right now.” Then Evan told him, “Pru Laney died.”

“I’m truly sorry to hear that.”

When the Kentucky lawman reached his room, Evan told him, “I feel like such a shit.”

Blair sat in the visitor’s chair.

“I can’t see where you did anything wrong.”

“It’s what I didn’t do right that bothers me. I never even tried to talk to Pru.

It wasn’t like her to just turn and walk away because some lawyer said don’t talk to me. We were… close. I should have demanded the truth from her.”

“Truth can be in short supply a lot of the time.”

Evan made sure he met Blair’s eyes.

“Yeah, it can.”

“Your daddy tell you who my daddy was?”

Evan said yes, but nothing more.

“That was part of the reason I came up this way. I mean, mostly it was for Ivar, but when I heard it was J. D. Cade’s son who looked like the guilty party, I just had to get involved.”

Blair hung his head in reminiscence.

“I never knew my daddy. He died before I was born. Before he even knew Mama was pregnant with me, I was told. The only image I had of him was this photograph where he was wearing his Marine Corps dress uniform. The man sure cut an imposing figure for a young boy to look at.”

Blair looked up at Evan.

“My mama said, though, it was just as well he died. For both of us. She’d been taken with Daddy’s looks, too. But she soon learned he was really an ignorant, violent man. He’d taken to beating her the second week they were married. She said she doubted he’d have allowed her to divorce him. She thought they’d have wound up killing each other, and if I’d been alive when the dam broke, I could have been killed, too.

“I’ve never had reason to doubt a single word my mother has told me. But I wanted to believe that maybe she just wasn’t remembering things right.

How could a man who looked like my daddy be anything less than an American hero? And who the hell was this J. D. Cade to lay him low so soon be fore he died?

“So when I heard about Ivar and you, I wanted to come up here and set everything right. Only you turned out to be anything but what I expected And for some reason, or maybe no reason at all, the more things looked like you weren’t the one who killed Ivar, the more I had to accept that maybe I was lucky my daddy had died before he could lay a hand on me.”

“Sometimes life’s harder when you do learn the truth,” Evan suggested.

“Like realizing Ivar and Barton Laney were connected in some kind of

scheme,” Blair said.

“Or else why would the same sonofabitch kill them both? And Pru—the way she broke up with you and the fact that she was also killed implies she knew what her father was doing.”

“She was used. They were all used,” Evan said bitterly.

“Yes, they were. And now, I believe, it’s time to get back some of our own.”

Blair told Evan what Deena Nokes had seen and done. He told him how he’d given the killer’s likeness to the police for dissemination just in case the man was on the run.

Evan shook his head.

“I don’t think he is. This thing isn’t finished yet.”

“No, it’s not.”

J. D. sat in the bar of the Royale Hotel on Union Square in San Francisco sipping a glass of mineral water, still debating with himself whether Donnel Timmons was a second assassin. He thought it must have been relatively easy for Donnel to get close to Del Rawley at the beginning of the primary campaign.

Back then, the candidate had been only one of many, without Secret Service protection, running for his party’s nomination and not the presidency. Doing a background check on a seemingly prosperous black businessman who was willing to donate both time and money to the cause would never have occurred to anyone. By the time Senator Rawley won the nomination, Donnel had already established himself as a loyalist. His cover was perfect.

But then why bring in J. D. if Donnel was already in place?

So that if one assassin failed, all would not be lost.

J. D. could see Colonel Townes thinking that way. He could also see Roth and Danby having the task of disposing of both him and Donnel. Whichever of them got Rawley would go first; the other would follow soon thereafter. No loose strings would be left dangling.

That was one possible scenario.

What J. D. was certain of, though, was that Townes was his blackmailer, and if he could devise a way to find him, he could kill him. That would free J. D. and Evan from his clutches.

Del Rawley wouldn’t have to die, either.

No sooner had he thought of the candidate than the Secret Service arrived.

A pair of agents entered the bar from the hotel lobby. A second pair moved in from the street entrance. A third pair appeared through the doors to the bar’s service area. One of the agents from the lobby whispered into his wrist mike.

Seconds later Del Rawley made his entrance with Jenny Crenshaw, the

two of them ringed by more agents. Patrons in the bar spontaneously stood and gave the candidate a round of applause. Del waved and offered his thanks. Jenny smiled. J. D. thought it best to get to his feet also and Jenny spotted him.

Arriving at his table, Jenny said, “The concierge told us you were here.

May we join you?”

“By all means.”

The three of them sat as the ring of bodyguards took up their positions.

Several people openly watched the gathering, craning their necks to get a peek, but none was close enough to overhear the conversation.

“How is your son, Mr. Cade?” Del Rawley asked.

“He’s fine, Senator. A bit shaken up but fine.”

“How was it that the police came to suspect him?”

J. D. thought how best to put it.

“It’s somewhat complicated, but it boils down to being too close to people who got caught up in an unfortunate situation.”

“Please, I’d like to know the details.” The implication was clear: Del would let J. D. back into the fold if he could find political cover; otherwise, so sorry.

“A man was believed to be trying to extort money from the father of my son’s girlfriend. When the alleged extortionist turned up dead, suspicion was cast on my son. I’m certain this was done to protect the real killer, but the police like to go the obvious route first.”

The candidate’s head bobbed in agreement, but for a moment his eyes lost focus as he was carried off by a memory. Stirring himself, he said, “I know what you mean about the police. In 1939 my grandfather was shot and killed by a state trooper in Indiana who couldn’t believe that a black man could be driving a new car unless he’d stolen it.”

Jenny put a hand over one of Del’s and gave it a brief squeeze.

Then the candidate continued.

“Well… we’re glad everything worked out for your son. Were you able to get a room here?”

J. D. shook his head.

“No room at the inn.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Jenny replied.

“It’s okay,” J. D. assured her.

“I’ll find a room someplace else for the night.

I just wanted to catch up with you and give you the news. I’m going back to L.A. in the morning.”

Jenny exchanged a look with Del Rawley. A silent message passed between them. Del said, “Why don’t you stay for the speech I’m giving in the morning, Mr. Cade? Be my guest, tell me how you think it’s received. Then I think I’ll have a moment and we can talk.”

Jenny told J. D.”

“We’re not done with our day yet. Del has a formal dinner to attend at city hall that Mayor Wu is giving in his honor.”

J. D. said, “They certainly make you earn your money, Senator.”

“That they do, Mr. Cade, that they do.” He stood and extended his hand to J. D.” who rose to take it.

“I’m happy about your son’s vindication. You must be very relieved.”

“I am. My son means everything to me.”

Del smiled and clapped J. D. on the shoulder. Then he was off. Jenny lingered with J. D. for a moment.

“I’ll get you a room here.”

J. D. nodded and looked closely at her.

“How are you doing? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m doing okay. It took a little while, I guess, but… I just hadn’t thought anyone would want to shoot me. But I told myself that if Del has to earn’ on, then so do I.”

“If you feel like company after your dinner…”