comprehend the twist of fate she just gave witness to, or perhaps it was an effort to communicate to me that I was somehow at fault for every tragedy that crossed her path. She stared at me until I moved away from the window and sat down in my chair.
Sometimes you learn to trust your gut after it’s too late. A few minutes later when I got up, Amanda was gone, but the man still stood at the curb, his arms wrapped firmly around his dead dog, his shoulders rounded, his back to the world around him as a means to protect his pet even though fate had ensured it no longer mattered. Looking back though, I discovered that fate belongs to us all, and the event I witnessed out my window that day and the feelings I had were ones I should have given more thought. Had I done so, things may have turned out much different than they eventually did.
An hour or so later I was still at my desk when Agent Gibson knocked on the door jamb and walked into my office. He sat down in front of my desk, bit into the bottom corner of his lip then raised his eyebrows at me.
“So maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” he said.
“Heard you tried to brace the Governor,” I said. “How’d that work out for you?”
“Hey, I’m trying here. You want my help, or not?”
Good question, I thought. “What exactly do you want, Agent Gibson?”
“Bottom line? I want you to drop the charges against Pate. His arraignment is less than an hour from now.”
“You asked me if I wanted your help,” I said. “How exactly does my dropping charges against Pate help me?”
“Look, Detective. You’ve managed to drop a turd in the punch bowl and now I’m the one who has to clean it up. We’ve been monitoring Pate’s activities for months trying to put our case together. You’re getting in the way. And this penny ante charge of assault you’ve got hanging over him is going to hurt our chances. And while you’re doing that, I have to wonder, Detective, is it helping your case at all? Is it putting you any closer to solving the murders you’re working on?”
“Nice speech,” I said. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”
“How sure are you of Pate’s involvement in Dugan’s death?” he said.
“He’s our primary suspect.”
“Based on what?” When I didn’t answer, he went on. “Okay, here it is. I work out of the Houston office, but I guess you know that. It’s the Texas Department of Insurance that’s under investigation by our office for fraud. Not Pate. Pate torched his church in Houston and when the company who underwrote his policy started making waves about writing the check, the Texas DOI got involved and Pate walked away with a wad of cash before the building had stopped smoldering.”
“So what?” I said. “File charges on the Commissioner of the Texas DOI.”
“Oh, we did. But his lawyer cut a hell of a deal and now the commissioner is part of witness protection.”
“Witness protection? What for?”
Gibson half laughed at my questions. “You Midwestern guys are something, you know that?
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “You think the Catholic priests are the only ones tweaking the twangers on little boys?”
“How about you take the corn dog out of your mouth and tell me the whole story?” I said.
“Hey, great choice of words. When we took the commissioner down for fraud we discovered his personal computer was full of pictures of little kids with no clothes on. He cut a deal and put us onto Pate, who the commissioner says was supplying the photos. Our analysts compared the background of the photos to ones we could find of Pate’s church before he torched it. We think they match up. In any event, the Commissioner says Pate blackmailed him and had him lean on the insurance company to write the check or he’d start to squeal about the photos.”
“You’re saying Samuel Pate is a pedophile?”
“You tell me,” Gibson said. “I read your report on that dilapidated church he bought for five million bucks. What was he going to do with it? Knock it down and build a learning center for pre-school kids or something like that? But let me guess, when you searched the Pate complex and his home you didn’t find one scrap of evidence that ties him to your case or mine. And in the meantime, that old broken down building, the one that wasn’t included in your search warrant burns to a crisp along with any evidence that may or may not have been material to your case, let alone mine.” He stood from his chair and turned to leave. Then, as if I were slow and unable to make the connections he’d just laid out for me he added, “Someone is leading you around by your nose, Detective. Take the corn dog out of my mouth. I love it.”
I walked over to Cora’s office to fill her in on my conversation with Amanda Pate and the meeting I just had with Agent Gibson. She sat quietly and listened, but when I got to the part of Pate’s alleged involvement as a pedophile, her expression was one you might associate with someone staring out the window of an airliner at thirty thousand feet as they watch the rivets pop one at a time from the wing of a plane.
“What is it?” I asked.
“So we’ve got a suspected murderer and pedophile in custody and Gibson wants us to let him skate?”
“He’s going to get out anyway,” I said. “Besides, I think Gibson may be right. Someone is pulling our strings behind the curtain. I just don’t know who it is, or why. But I don’t think it has anything to do with Pate.”
Cora looked at me for a moment, then said something that made me think we were having two different conversations. “Is there something you’d like to tell me regarding the nature of your relationship with Detective Small?”
When I did not answer her right away, she said, “I see. What about Wheeler? What did Gibson tell you about him? You did ask, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Your personal life is interfering with your job, Jonesy. Clean it up.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, Cora.”
“I think you do,” she said, then stared at the paperwork on her desk until I got up and walked out.
My conversation with Cora left me confused and angry. I ate lunch by myself in a small diner I frequent a few miles from my office, and by the time I was finished, I had concluded that Cora was probably right. I was romantically involved with a co-worker who reports to me, and my lifelong friend, Murton Wheeler was somehow connected, at least on the periphery, with a serial murder investigation, and I, the chief investigative officer of the State of Indiana had put no more effort into his apprehension than I had a Sunday jaywalker late for morning Mass. I finished my sandwich, paid my tab, and got ready to leave when something occurred to me. It was something about my conversations with Agent Gibson, and with Cora. Somebody was pulling my strings. I realized I had been in possession of a large part of the answer to what’s been happening all along. Maybe not the entire answer, but a pretty damn big piece. And, I knew what I had to do next, or more specifically, who I had to see.
I walked out to my truck and just as I reached the driver’s door I heard the footsteps coming hard from behind me. I turned in time to see a club being swung at my head and I tried to bring my right arm up to block the blow, but the attacker made just enough contact with my arm to knock me off balance and I fell face first into the pavement. Before I could move or get up he hit me again, this time in the back of my head, and that’s the last thing I remember until I woke some time later, a thick blindfold across my eyes, my body bound with rope across a vertical steel support structure with my arms out from my sides and tied to a cross member as if I were being crucified.
I tried to pull free, but I knew it was pointless. I had no idea how long I had been unconscious and tied up, but I had virtually no feeling left in my arms and legs.
Or so I thought.
I let my head hang down, my chin against my chest. I heard myself whisper Sandy’s name.
CHAPTER TWENTY
