Midas

“Killed between 7 and 8 P.M., same night as La Cucina bombing.” When he put in the information about Bradford Collins, he realized that people murdered other people for three basic reasons: passion, money, and protection. With Collins, it was fairly safe to rule out the first category-a jilted lover might shoot someone, but blow up a roomful of strangers? — but the last two could be valid. So he added: “Money?” and then: “What did he know? What could he tell? Who could he hurt?” For Cooke, he typed in: “Where was he going? Where had he come from?” And then: “Passenger?” and “Cargo?” and, thinking back to Chuck Billings’s notes, “Connection to Semtex?”

He ran the cursor back over to Bradford Collins’s name, let it linger there for a moment, waiting for the thought he knew was going to emerge. It did and he threw his hands up, wondering why he hadn’t thought of this before. He quickly went online, went to the New York Times Web site, because he knew they’d kept a running track of the bombing victims, and ran down the list of all those known to be killed at Harper’s. There were a few names he recognized, Jimmy Leggett’s among them. When he came to Jimmy’s listing he almost did a double take. Jimmy’s death already seemed disconnected from what he was investigating, and for a moment Justin was actually surprised to see it there, but then he realized that he was only making this list because Marjorie had asked him to find out what had happened to her husband. He shivered involuntarily, yet again surprised at the brain’s ability to make wounds that seem so raw recede into the background, then he kept scrolling through the names. He didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but whatever it was wasn’t there. He saw the name of a local contractor he knew, a big guy with a bad temper who once, while installing storm windows in Justin’s East End house, had taken a swing at Justin after listening to a complaint about some of the workmanship. Justin hadn’t taken kindly to the contractor’s attempt to remove his head from his neck. While the guy was off balance after Justin ducked his punch, Justin grabbed a lamp and used it in one swift and compact motion to break the contractor’s nose. There was a lot of blood and a lot of swearing, neither of which had particularly bothered Justin. Nor did it bother him to find out the guy was now dead. Justin was not big on grudges. But on the other hand, he found no real reason to grieve over assholes.

Going through the rest of the names, Justin saw an array of businessmen and — women who had died that day, none of whom seemed overtly connected to Bradford Collins in any relevant way. There was a writer whom Justin had heard of but had never read, a literary agent who’d been visiting from London, the comptroller for the City of New York, whom the Times praised lavishly, a yoga teacher, a gourmet caterer, busboys, waiters, hostesses. A lot of innocent people who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there was no one who jumped out at Justin as useful to his investigation. So he went offline, switched back to the word processing program and his list, and under “Need to Know” he wrote, “Who was Brad Collins having lunch with?” And that sparked one more thing, so he scrolled down to Martin Heffernan’s name and wrote the same thing: “Who was he meeting at La Cucina?”

He’d had it. He could tell his brain was turning off, so he clicked on the print option, heard the quiet whirr of the printer preparing to do its work, and he sat at what was now his desk, his hands cupped together, his head resting on the edges of his fingers. As the two-page document printed, Justin breathed deeply, letting his mind go blank, allowing his instincts to tell him where to start, what to do first. When he decided, he nodded a firm, crisp nod, pleased with the decision, and as he reached over to pick up his notes he was surprised to find that Reggie Bokkenheuser was standing in front of his desk, looking at him with the faintest curl of a smile on her lips.

“Trying to see into the future?” she said.

“The past,” he told her. “With cops it’s always the past.”

She nodded, as if he’d just revealed something valuable. There was a moment of silence that hung thickly in the air, then she said, “Is there anything I can help you with?” When he didn’t answer right away, she sat down in the chair across the desk from him. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, or what exactly you’re trying to figure out, but I know there’s a lot of shit going down. Maybe you shouldn’t be trying to do it all by yourself.” He still didn’t respond, so she said, “If not me, then some of those guys.” She waved her hand in the direction of the cops in the main station room.

“I have two of them working on something.”

She waited but he didn’t say anything further, so she stood back up and said, “I’ll go back to my parking tickets.”

Reggie turned around, took a step toward the door, but Justin said her name out loud and she stopped.

“Ray Lockhardt,” he said.

“What about him?”

“I want you to handle the investigation.” Her eyes widened a bit. He thought she looked pleased. He’d definitely managed to surprise her.

“Um. .,” she said, “what are you going to be doing while I’m looking into only the second murder in this town in twenty-six years.” Now it was his turn to look surprised, and she said, “I do my homework.”

“Time to graduate from homework,” Justin told her. “It’s the real world now.”

“I’m ready for it,” she said.

“I know you are.”

“But you still didn’t answer my question. What are you going to be doing?”

“There are a lot of pieces to this thing. I think you’re better off not knowing what all of them are. At least for now. But you’ll be working on one piece. Gary and Tom are working on another one.”

“And you’ll be working on another one.”

“Yup.”

“And putting all the pieces together so they make a nice, coherent whole?”

“See?” he said, nodding. “You’re already putting your crack investigative skills to work.”

He told her to sit back down, then he spent a few minutes going over the details of Ray Lockhardt’s murder and pointing Reggie in several right directions. He told her to begin by looking for anyone with a registered.38 on the east end of Long Island. If that didn’t lead anywhere, find out if any registered.38s had been reported stolen. Said she should track Ray’s movements for the day he died, and to check with airport employees and pilots to find out if anyone saw anything suspicious. Told her the results from fingerprinting Ray’s office should be back momentarily and gave her the name of the officer on the Southampton force she should contact to get them. That would be enough to keep her busy for a while. Then he told her to report in at the end of every day or anytime something interesting occurred, day or night. He saw her eyes flicker when he said the word “night,” and he almost said something, something like, “Come on, sex is one thing, a murder investigation’s something else, cut the crap,” but the flicker wasn’t really that blatant and it seemed better to leave the whole thing alone. Besides, he’d felt the change in his voice when he said the same phrase. It wasn’t much of a change, he doubted she’d even heard it. But he had.

When Reggie left the office, he hesitated for just a moment, then picked up the phone and dialed.

He gave his name to the secretary who answered the phone, and she immediately put him through to her boss. When the man came on the line, Justin took a deep breath and said, “Dad?” Then he explained to his father what he needed and what he wanted and when his father said, “Okay,” Justin said, “See you Saturday.” Before he could even hang up the phone, Gary and Thomas burst into his office. They looked like little schoolkids who couldn’t wait to show the teacher they had the right answer to a tough question.

“We found him,” Gary said.

“Hutchinson Cooke,” Thomas added.

“Yeah.” This was Gary. Justin wondered if they’d actually rehearsed who would get to tell him what information. “We have his home address and the name of his commanding officer at Andrews Air Force Base.”

Thomas stepped in now. “That’s where he was based.”

“Where’s the house?” Justin asked.

“In Silver Spring, Maryland. It’s right outside of D.C.”

“And it’s up for sale,” Gary said. He couldn’t resist a slight boast. “I spoke to the Realtor.”

“Who’s selling it?” Justin wanted to know.

“Cooke’s wife.” That was Thomas. “They were married for sixteen years. Her name’s Theresa. They have two kids.”

Gary shot his fellow cop a sharp look. Justin wondered if it was Gary who was supposed to spill the news about the kids. “The oldest one’s Reysa. She’s twelve. And the younger one’s Hannah. Nine.”

“Here,” Thomas said, handing over a piece of paper. “That’s got all the info on it.”

“Thank you,” Justin said. “Good work.”