Injustice (21 page)

Chip and I left. I said, “That was a god-awful waste of time.”

“Do you think so?” Chip asked.

“Don't you?”

“I thought it was valuable. I learned a ton.”

If Chip had been anybody else, I'd have thought he was joking. But he isn't one for irony. “Learned what?” I asked.

“I learned that Mr. Smeltzer is able to command fear and/or respect. That he's a serious person.”

“Serious how?”

“Think about it,” Chip said. “The guy was willing to tell us that Smeltzer has a broken shoulder, but nothing about his actual behavior. Obviously, the guy wasn't going to tell us anything important about Smeltzer. He could have said, like, Smeltzer loved watching football, or Smeltzer read novels, or Smeltzer loved to go fishing. But no. The only thing the cellmate would comment on was physical description. It tells me that saying anything about who Smeltzer really is, how he acts, what he likes or hates, is off-limits—no matter how unimportant it seems.”

“Okay. So what does this mean?” I said.

“I'm not a profiler, right? But what I see is a guy who is good at controlling his environment and controlling his image. He's in charge, and people aren't likely to cross him.”

“And?”

“And so he takes things pretty seriously. I'd say he definitely
could have held on to a bit of homicidal rage for the past seven years.”

Morning. At the office, everything felt relatively normal until I settled in at my desk and the phone rang. It was Tina. “I guess things have calmed down,” she said. “But they're still not sure if it was him last night.”

“If what was him? If he was who?”

“The prowler.”

I waited.

“Are you telling me you didn't hear about it?”

“About what? What prowler?”

“Oh my God. No wonder you didn't come over. I thought you were just being you: roaming the village with a torch instead of coming over to be with me. Henry got up in the night to go to the bathroom and he saw somebody in the backyard. He woke Agent Agnew, and she got on her radio, and next thing you know, there were cops and agents everywhere.”

“Why didn't
you
call me?” I said.

“Like I said, Nick, I thought—”

“You have my son with you. You're my wife and you have my son, and you didn't even bother checking in with me?”

Tina hesitated a few seconds, and then laughed. “I thought the same of you. I couldn't believe you hadn't bothered to come touch base with me.”

I was silent.

“Nick?”

“Goddammit,” I yelled. “If you were living with me, I wouldn't have to touch base, would I?”

“Nick, calm down, I—”

“Don't tell me to calm down. I don't . . . You don't . . . Don't even think about telling me to calm down.”

“Nickie, relax, it's okay . . .”

“Go to hell,” I shouted. I slammed the phone down. My office
door was open. I got up and slammed it, shaking the wall, maybe the whole room. I wished I were at home instead of my office, because I wanted to smash something: some plates, maybe, or put my foot through a wall or window. I wanted to rampage. At the office, my options were limited. I picked up Tina's picture, a five-by-seven behind glass in a fancy frame, and threw it against the wall. Broken glass went everywhere. I stood in the middle of the room, panting. There was a knock on the door.

“Nick, you okay, buddy?” Upton said.

“Fine. Go away.”

“Okay. I'll check back.”

I picked Tina's photo out of the wreckage. It was torn, but I flattened it on the desk and taped up the tear on the back, where it wouldn't show.

T
he Bureau gave us two cars for the trip. No one thought Smeltzer was actively tracking Tina; rather, that he was waiting for an opportunity. He was probably on his own, without much money or technical sophistication. But to be cautious, we drove to the FBI building, left our cars there, and took the cars they offered. Henry drove one; Tina, Barnaby, and I went in the other. Agnew followed in a third.

The Bureau had been looking for Tony Smeltzer for a week without success. The midnight prowler had never been identified or located. Chip and Isler thought it would be best if Tina stayed out of sight for a while. They talked about using a Tina look-alike (a law enforcement professional, carefully surveiled) to lure him into the open.

We thought of going to our cabin, but if Smeltzer had done any research at all, he already knew about that getaway. The Bureau was taking the guy pretty seriously. They considered him a lone wolf and a little psycho, but they also believed he was organized enough, smart enough, angry enough, and vicious enough to, say, go after one of Tina's friends or coworkers, violently extract information on Tina's whereabouts, shoot the informant, and come after Tina. Thus, Tina's whereabouts would be need-to-know only.

Chip proposed some locations; the Bureau kept a few places around the country for this type of situation. Tina kept vetoing every place he proposed. In the end, she settled on a cabin in the lake system several hundred miles northwest of the city. Tina's cousins owned it. In summer the region was bustling with canoe campers, but in early November, with freeze-up imminent, the place was perfect. Tina would feel right at home because the environment was similar to that of our own cabin. In fact, she seemed excited.
There'd be wood fires, flapjacks, canoeing on the lake—at least until freeze-up—and long evenings of contemplative silence. There would be red plaid wool jackets, rubber boots and hiking shoes, and if she got lucky, she'd hear loons calling across the lake at sunset and maybe, just maybe, the far-off song of wolves howling at the moon. Tina loved that stuff.

I wouldn't be going into hiding with Tina and Barn. There was too much to do at my office, and we didn't know how long this would last. Besides, the simple threat of a vengeance-fueled assassination wasn't enough to overcome Tina's need for a marital time-out. I did go along on the trip to get them settled. I refused to let her take Barnaby off into exile without having some part in it.

We left from the FBI early on Friday morning. I promised myself that on the long drive, I wouldn't keep asking her about “us.” Instead I would focus on being the perfect coparent and traveling companion. We'd sing “Old MacDonald” and “Baby Beluga” and we'd read
Henry Hikes to Fitchburg
and
A Light in the Attic.
I felt if I could just chill, then our conversation would quietly and lovingly and organically stretch out into a map of the next thirty or forty years—about work and play and kids and grandkids; about places we hoped to travel, books we wanted to read (and write), and all the other unconquered items on the to-do list of life. I knew Tina wanted to remove the partition between the kitchen and dining room in our home to give it a more open and airy feel. We'd talk about that. I wanted a sailboat. We'd talk about that.

The drive takes seven hours without a four-year-old. With a four-year-old, it took ten. Barnaby needed to pee. He had to poop. He got carsick. He cried. He was hungry. Tina rode in the backseat with him for hours. We never got to talk. When Barn finally fell asleep, Tina said, “Pull over at the next wayside. I'll ride with Henry for a while. I need a break.”

Henry would be staying with Tina and Barn as my stand-in. He had nothing better to do, having been put on suspension by Pleasant Holly. There was a second cabin he could live in, and now that he'd been so decisively delivered from the role of prime murder suspect, he was the natural choice. Also, since he'd been engaged to Lydia, he was family. Henry had grown up in the rural country around Renfield. He knew the rural lifestyle, and as an AUSA, he was a law enforcement professional. Barnaby loved him, and Tina was comfortable around him.

It was dark when we arrived. The night sky was an explosion of stars. It was well below freezing. The cabins were great; actually, the big one was more of a small log house than a cabin. Agnew and Henry went to claim spots in the little cabin behind the main house. The bedroom of the main house had a double bed and a bunk bed. I got Barnaby snuggled into a sleeping bag on the bottom bunk. Tina looked at the double bed and at the top bunk of the bunk bed and weighed her options. We shared the double.

Saturday was fun. We all slept late. We had breakfast and then went out canoeing. Agnew was a solid young woman with her hair in a French braid, and she seemed dour, like enforcement people do sometimes.

“Agent Agnew,” I said, “how do you like working for the Bureau?”

“I like it,” she said.

I waited for more, but there was no more. We were in two canoes, paddling side by side. Agnew and Henry and ZZ were in one; Tina, Barn, and I in the other. The day was gorgeous: blue sky, no wind, golden leaves lying on the surface along the shoreline. The lake had a feeling of unboundedness. Vastness. It felt like it beckoned us into the great beyond, and I imagined that Agnew was not Agnew but Lydia or some other woman—Henry's girlfriend or wife. Without meaning to, I imagined her pregnant and we two
couples and Barnaby bravely and exuberantly paddling into the vastness.