“There’s one other thing that’s weird,” Gary said. Justin could see that there’d been an internal struggle about whether or not to reveal this last chunk of info. “This guy Cooke was pulling down two paychecks. We finally found him using IRS records, that’s how come we know about it.”
Justin couldn’t help himself. “He was getting paid by a company called Midas, right?”
Both of the faces of the young cops fell nearly to the floor. Justin felt guilty. But, hell, they deserved it. They’d been just a little too eager to show off. Still, he could have been a little less show-offy himself.
“Did you get any information on Midas? I didn’t come up with a thing,” Justin said.
His ignorance on that score didn’t seem to make them feel any better. Gary looked down at his shoes and said, “No. We didn’t find nothing either. It’s weird. It’s kind of like the company doesn’t exist.”
“Well, keep working on it, would you? It might be nothing, it might be important. But see what you can find out, okay?”
They nodded, turned to go back to the main room.
“And I mean it, guys. That was good work. Thank you.”
They shrugged but were still pleased by the compliment. As soon as they were gone, Justin hunched forward and looked at his calendar for the next day, saw that other than a meeting with Leona Krill, he had a blank slate. He decided he could cancel Leona. He was sure she’d understand. So he made two quick calls. One to the travel agent at the end of Main Street, right on the pier. She booked him the round-trip flight he requested. The second call was to Leona. He got her secretary, told the woman to reschedule the next day’s meeting. When she asked for a time to reschedule, he said he’d get back to her, and hung up. He’d barely gotten his hand away from the receiver when his intercom buzzed. When he answered it, Dennis said, “Mayor Krill’s on the one-three-six-four line.” Justin nodded to himself, tapped down on the right button and said, “Leona, what can I do for you?”
“You cannot cancel your meeting with me just because you don’t feel like meeting. Not when we’ve got a murder investigation in this town. That’s what you can do for me.”
“I canceled it because of the investigation,” he said. “I have to go out of town. On business.”
“What time are you leaving?”
“Early,” he told her. “A nine A.M. plane, so I have to leave here around seven.”
“I’ll meet you at six-thirty,” she said. “I’ll even make it easy on you. We can meet at your place.” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Six-thirty tomorrow morning at your place, okay, Jay?”
“How do you like your coffee?” he said.
“Skim milk, no sugar.”
As he put the phone down, Justin sat back in his chair. He looked through his large plate glass window into the front room of the station house. Thomas had left to patrol the town. Gary was working on his computer. Reggie was putting on her coat and was on her way out. She glanced into his office on her way to the front door, saw that he was watching her. He was expecting a smile but it didn’t come. Their eyes met, but no smile. Then she was gone.
Still leaning back, Justin wondered if he really knew what the hell he was doing. He decided, as usual, that he didn’t, but he was damn sure going to go ahead and do it anyway.
18
The doorbell rang at exactly 6:30 A.M. Justin knew that Leona would be prompt; he’d planned on opening the door with a flourish seconds before she was due to arrive. But his timing was off. He chalked it up to a combination of the early hour, the icy chill that permeated his house, and the half a bottle of scotch he had consumed the night before. He hadn’t been able to sleep. He chalked that up to the phone conversation he’d had with Marjorie Leggett, in which he’d told her not to worry, that he’d tell her everything she wanted to know real soon; to the fact that he spent much of the night trying to force himself not to call Reggie Bokkenheuser, whose house he could see from one of his living room windows; and to the scotch. At some point he’d had the choice of sleeping or drinking. Sleep wasn’t nearly as delicious as the single malt.
“You look like hell,” Leona said as she stepped inside.
“It’s not my best time of day.”
“What is your best time of day, Jay?”
“Good point.” He shrugged. “I guess I don’t really have one.”
Leona Krill stood by his couch but didn’t sit. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“Are you going to want every detail of what I’m doing? ’Cause I don’t really work too well that way.”
“The town’s paying for this trip, I assume. Don’t you think that gives me the right to ask?”
“I’ll submit my expenses. If you don’t want to pay them, I’ll pay myself.”
“You’re an arrogant bastard sometimes, aren’t you?”
“I’m an arrogant bastard most of the time, Leona. It just comes out more when I have to get up before dawn. Plus I’ve got a few things on my mind.”
She shook her head. “Did you make coffee?”
“And bought skim milk.”
He disappeared into the kitchen, came back a moment later with a mug. Steam curled out of the top.
Leona thanked him, took a sip of the coffee, and said, “I don’t know anything about murder investigations, Jay.”
“No reason you should.”
“But I’m the mayor. And whatever happens, I’m going to be responsible.”
“Feel free to shift the blame to me. If that’s why you’re here, I give you my permission.”
“I’m here because I want to make sure that
He held back the laugh that wanted to come out. But he couldn’t hold it back entirely. “Leona, I don’t think you’re going to find anyone who’s gonna be much help on this one.”
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s a lot more going on than you should know about. I wasn’t really kidding about taking the blame. If I’m right, this is gonna get messy and dangerous. If I’m wrong, at least you can say you didn’t know anything about it.”
“And you don’t think maybe you could use some support? Some help?”
“Probably. But I’m not asking for any.”
“You know, I was meeting with Jimmy once and I asked him about you.”
“Was this before you decided to switch teams?”
“I was asking about you professionally, not personally. You want to know what he said?” When Justin shrugged, she took another sip of coffee and said, “Jimmy was a fairly solid guy. Nice, he cared about things, not exactly a philosopher. But what he said struck me as smart, not the kind of thing I ever would have thought of. He told me he thought you were the most trustworthy person he’d ever met. I said that was quite a compliment, and he said he didn’t really mean it that way. So I asked him what he meant and he said that most people were honest because they thought they’d get caught if they weren’t. If someone found a suitcase full of cash, and no one was around, he’d usually keep it. But if someone else was there, if someone was watching and could tell on him, he’d do the right thing and turn it in. Because he’d be afraid of what might happen to him if he didn’t. But Jimmy said that you didn’t care if anyone was watching. You’d do what you thought was right no matter the situation. If you thought it was right to keep it, you would. If you thought it was right to give it back, that’s what you’d do.” She took one more long sip of coffee. “He said the reason was you didn’t care about getting caught. He said you didn’t care at all about what happened to you. That’s why he said he trusted you. Because you’d tell him what you were going to do with that suitcase, and he knew you’d be telling the truth. Because you didn’t care. Interesting, don’t you think?”
“Well, like you said, Jimmy was a pretty good guy. He wasn’t a genius, though.”
Leona started to put the mug down, looked for a coaster, couldn’t find one, so she got up and took it to the
