Death of Secrets
Authors: Bowen Greenwood
DEATH OF SECRETS
A Novel
By Bowen Greenwood
Copyright © 2014 by Bowen Greenwood.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All the
characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious, or are used
fictitiously.
Backers' Page
The following individuals generously
supported the launch of
Death of Secrets
Errol & Sharrie Galt
Donald Rodriguez
Rietta Goodglick
Representative Lee Randall
Chairman Will Deschamps
The Honorable Rick & Betti Hill
Scott McClellan
Robert Zirpoli
Thank you. Thank you all, and all
the other backers as well.
This book is dedicated to my best
friend. He changed my life. He changed it more than I can ever recount. He
saved my life, in fact. He's an author too, but in His case, His book is the
bestselling work of non-fiction in all of human history.
1
The moon hid behind a reef of dark clouds. A young woman named
Kathy Kelver walked back to campus very late at night.
She saw a man get murdered.
There he stood, on the sidewalk, looking like he might go in to
a basement apartment. And then he spun around, and screamed, and flung his arm
out at a crazy angle until he landed on the ground.
A thundering report reached Kathy’s ears at almost exactly the
same time. The gunshot sounded much louder than Hollywood made them out to be.
She did what most people would do, and screamed.
When she recovered her senses, she ran toward the man to see if
she could help. She was a young and athletic woman; her strong legs carried her
slender frame quickly. The dash caused her loose brown ponytail to flop behind
her.
Wind howled down the narrow cobblestone street in Georgetown.
It made the man’s words hard to hear. "Please…" He stretched out a
hand to her. His voice was weak and his word was dragged out and barely
audible.
She could only pray. Kathy grew up in the rural Rocky
Mountains, and to her violent death was something that happened to deer in the
fall, not to people.
He reached to her again, this time with the other hand. The
hand was not empty.
It was a programmed response, not a choice. He wanted to give
her something and Kathy accepted it before she even knew what she was doing.
Her fingers brushed his, and she nearly recoiled at how cold
they were. But before her hand jerked back, the object passed to her. She
recognized it right away; she had a few of them rattling around the drawer in
her desk. It was a thumb drive.
"Jakarta," the man croaked. "Get it to
Jakarta." A long, weak sigh slipped out of his mouth, and he repeated the
word once more. His facial muscles went slack, and his head hit the sidewalk
with a thump.
Kathy knelt there by the body, heart racing and lips trembling.
"God help me…" she breathed, her voice trembling and on the verge of
tears. She bolted to her feet and ran for the campus, intent on calling 911.
The college senior was nearly as close to her dormitory as she was to any of
the nearby houses, and fear drove her toward her own home, rather than a
stranger’s. Her hand unconsciously clung to the flash drive.
Her dash back to her room teetered on the edge of panic. She
pounded on the button for the elevator, paced back and forth through the whole
ride, and tore open the door to her room as soon as she was inside. Ignoring
her roommate’s distracted greeting, Kathy grabbed her phone from where she left
it before work and dialed 911.
When the dispatcher answered, she blurted out her plight with
words that ran together and tumbled over each other. After a promise that an
ambulance had been dispatched to the scene, she was told to go back and meet
them.
Handing the problem over to someone else did a world of good
for Kathy’s mental state. She finally responded to her roommate’s agitated
inquiries about what was going on.
"I found this guy on the way home from work," she
panted. "Shot. Dead, I think. I’ve got to go back there and tell the
police what I saw."
"No joke? Dead? That’s … Let me come with you, Kathy.
You’ll need someone to hold your hand."
Together the two young women returned to the scene at a much
more rational pace. After meeting in their freshman year at Georgetown, they’d
chosen to live together because they were both night owls, dramatically
reducing the traditional roommate conflicts over when to turn the lights out.
But in other ways they could not have been more opposite.
Kathy’s long legs meant that each of her strides covered nearly twice the
distance of her roommate, Colleen's. The shorter girl had blonde hair versus
Kathy’s brown, cut in a bob above her neck while Kathy’s hung below her
shoulders when it wasn’t up in a ponytail. Kathy was a performing arts major
whose every step was graceful and efficient; Colleen studied computer science
and always seemed a bit awkward when she moved. She had interrupted an online
Call of Duty deathmatch to accompany her roommate to the body.
Outside the front gates of Georgetown University, the two girls
made two turns on their way back to the corner where Kathy had found the man.
Flashing red and blue lights greeted them.
Kathy ran up to the first man in uniform she saw. "I’m so
glad you’re here. I was so scared. Is he dead?"
The officer turned to her with a chilly gaze and asked,
"Are you the young woman who called the dispatcher?"
She nodded. "Kathy Kelver. I found him on the way home
from work. Is he dead?"
"Miss, there was no one here. Are you sure you got the
location right?"
***
Back in their dorm room, Kathy and Colleen opened a bottle of
wine and poured two glasses. "I just can’t believe that," Kathy said,
for about the fifth time since they left the crime scene, or whatever it was.
"He was right there! It’s not like I hallucinated the whole thing."
Colleen gave her a long hard look. "Kathy, if you were
anyone else, I’d ask some serious questions about that."
"Colleen, don’t be a jerk. I’m telling you, I saw
him!"
"I know, I know, I believe you. But I’m making a big leap
to do it, OK?"
"How could he have gotten up and walked away?" Kathy
stood up and paced, nearly spilling her wine. "He was hurt way too bad to
walk. When I came home to call the cops, I thought he was dead."
"You’re just lucky MPD didn’t ticket you for a false
alarm," Colleen said.
"Oh, and
that
really made me mad," she fumed.
"I can’t even believe they were suggesting that. And they didn’t even
believe me when I told them about the flash drive. If only I hadn’t left it on
my desk! I could just…" Kathy finished with a sound that was part sigh and
part snarl.
"Look, maybe he wasn’t hurt as bad as it looked."
"Then why did he give me that flash drive?"
Kathy jumped as soon as she said it, and ran to her desk.
"The flash drive! See? Here’s the proof! I told you I didn’t imagine the
whole thing!"
Colleen followed her over and looked at the flash drive.
"There’s not a mark on it anywhere."
***
Detective Sam Franken settled his ample rump onto the bench
seat in his unmarked car. With a sigh, he put the sedan into gear and drove
off. False alarms ranked very near the top of his personal pantheon of
annoyances. Franken wasn’t lazy, exactly. If there was work to be done, he did
it. But he was a hefty man, nearer to 300 pounds than 200, and lifting his bulk
off the car seat involved a substantial effort. If he was going to exert that
effort, he wanted results. He grumbled to himself, thinking he should have
ticketed that little brat for calling in a false alarm.
But she possessed a certain quality of believability. He
supposed it might be a hunch – TV cop shows always seemed to show police
officers having those, after all – but whatever the reason he believed her
story. There had been a shooting victim on that spot. The victim was just no
longer there.
Oh, he was sure the girl had exaggerated a bit. Obviously there
couldn’t have been such a bloody carnage, or it would have left traces behind
when he left. To a young girl seeing her first gunshot, no doubt it looked much
gorier than it had actually been. Still, it took a real effort to keep walking
after being shot. Franken knew – a year ago he’d been shot on the job, and he
hadn’t been able to do anything but lay there and scream for help.
So whoever had been shot there had been strong as an ox. Or,
which seemed to Franken far more likely, the victim had been high as a kite when
it happened, and was able to keep walking because his brain just wasn’t feeling
the pain.
And that, in Franken’s eyes, practically closed the case. Well,
as closed as it would ever be. Druggies shooting each other didn’t exactly have
first claim on MPD resources. He’d open a file, notate it a couple times to
indicate that no new evidence had been found, and eventually it would fade from
memory.
But still, he thought as he turned onto Wisconsin Avenue, it
was awfully strange to find a drug shooting in Georgetown.
***
Three men stood on a sidewalk beside a parked car. Behind them,
the frantic rhythm of nightclub music made it through the doors they had left
behind.
"Come on, D.W. Let me drive. You drank too much."
"I’m fine, Mike."
"You’re not fine."
"You drank your fair share too."
"Not as much as you. Let me drive."
"Mike, this is a no-brainer. You’re a Congressman. I’m a
lobbyist. If I get a DUI, it’s an annoyance. If you get a DUI, it’s the end of
your career."
For the first time since they left the club, the third man
spoke, slurring his words. "Fair point."
The first man, Mike, bit his lip and looked like he wanted to
go on arguing. The teeth that showed as he worried his lower lip were gleaming
white and straight. His blond hair was moussed solidly into place. He was a
slender man, in good shape, and dressed well. But his politician’s trained
smile was absent at the moment. He was too uncomfortable about his friend D.W.
driving to smile.
Michael Vincent had been nursing two martinis all night. His friend
had rather more than two. But the other two men were right about the logic.
Mike tried one more time. "I only had two drinks all
night, D.W. I know you had more than that."
"Yeah, and I weigh more. Trust me Mike. I’m fine. You know
I’m right about this. I’m always right about political stuff. Putting you
behind the wheel is the more unacceptable risk."
D.W. Tilman was telling the truth about the weight issue. His
250 pounds were all sitting right on his waist. He had height to go with it,
but not enough to disguise the fact that he drank too much beer and ate too
much starch. His hair was far enough gone that he shaved his head bald. He
stood in a permanent slouch that hid a couple inches of his height. He had a
slightly pink tinted birthmark on the far right side of his forehead – like
Mikhail Gorbachev but smaller.
"He’s got a fair point," said the third man,
apparently too drunk to remember that he’d already said that once.
Mike shook his head and reluctantly opened the passenger side
door. Once they were all aboard, the car headed away from the nightclub and
into Georgetown. The third man’s home was there.
Tilman and Vincent shared over a decade of history. Their
friendship traced its roots to a time when they were both young idealists
working in the trenches of American politics. Tilman gave Vincent his first
campaign job, and taught him his first lessons about navigating the waters in a
very treacherous business. In the years that passed, the older man’s career hit
a rocky shoal, and he left politics to start his own company. But Vincent had
never forgotten his old teacher.
They still made time to socialize regularly, but this night was
about more than just catching up. Tilman’s company had a new electronic device
they wanted to sell to the federal government. Vincent was a member of the
House Intelligence Committee, which would authorize the funding to buy it.
"It’s a surveillance tool for the NSA, Tilman,"
Vincent said as they drove. "That’s not going to be politically…"
The Congressman’s words cut off mid-sentence as they turned a
corner. A driver coming the other direction was directly in front of them. The
cars were inches apart at best, it seemed to Mike. He started shouting,
"Holy…" but didn’t have time to finish as his friend slammed on the
breaks and the screech of rubber filled the air.
Amazingly, they didn’t collide. Mike sat catching his breath
for a moment. He was amazed to be uninjured, and tried to figure out what
happened.
The other car had apparently swerved to the left. Between
Tilman’s crash stop and the other car’s emergency turn, they had not hit each
other.
Unfortunately, the other car had hit a tree instead of them.
When he realized that, Vincent threw open his door and ran to
the other vehicle to see if he could help. He arrived at the driver’s side
door, and reached down for the handle.
That’s when he noticed the pistol aimed right at his face.
His jaw dropped open. For a few seconds he was simply frozen in
place, unable to move. Then he lifted his hands in the air and backed up slowly.
Tilman, just getting out of his car, saw what was happening and swore loud
enough to be heard, but stopped in place.
The man in the other car – the man holding the gun – stared at
Vincent. "Your car’s undamaged, right? No need to call the police then,
right? Trust me on this: if you call them, I
will
know. And I will kill
you."
With that he backed away from the tree and stomped on the gas
hard enough to make his tires squeal. He sped away.
Tilman ran up to his friend. "Mike… what just
happened?"
"No idea," the Congressman replied. "Not one
clue. That was crazy. Guy pulls a gun on me out of nowhere."
"The guy’s right about calling the cops. It’s like I said:
you
are
a Congressman."
"Yeah, and you should’ve let me…"
Tilman held up his hand to stop Mike. "No one likes a guy
who says ‘I told you so,’ Mike."
***
Kathy stood aside as Colleen popped the mysterious flash drive
into her desktop PC. For things like this, Kathy always yielded to her more
technical roommate. Her use of computers included social media, online videos,
and e-mail. She was aware they could do more, but wasn’t sure why anyone would
care.
Colleen, on the other hand, had built nearly a whole life
around them. A computer science major, she wrote most of her own software and
was perfectly secure in the knowledge that she’d have a high paying job in two
years writing code in California or Seattle. She had a much more active social
life online than she did on campus. Now, she settled back in her chair and
peered intently at the screen.