Storm Gathering (18 page)

“Fine. He’s not here, Crawford. Give me a break. You’ve had a car out there night and day. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to come here anyway.”

“Mind if we check your truck out there?”

Aaron hung his head. This was impossible. “Whatever. It’s unlocked. Go ahead.”

Crawford nodded toward Prescott, who rose and went outside.

“Should lock your truck, you know,” Crawford mumbled.

Aaron stood, his legs restless with anxiety.

Crawford stood as well, glancing out the front window toward Prescott before he said, “I don’t think he did it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What else? Your brother. I’ve looked over all the evidence from the crime scene. I think there are things pointing to the fact that your brother
didn’t
do it. Like leaving his phone number.”

“Nobody else is seeing it that way.”

“It’s because he’s an easy target. He was there, and he’s had problems in the past.”

Aaron watched Prescott rummage through his pickup. He looked at Crawford. “What’s going on here?”

Crawford sighed, scratching at his messy hair. “Look, Kline, the best thing your brother could do is turn himself in so I can use my manpower to figure out what really happened. Instead, I’ve got everybody looking for him. And as you’re well aware, we never had this conversation.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“If he contacts you, urge him to turn himself in.”

“He won’t contact me.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Aaron looked away from Crawford’s concentrated stare. “We don’t see eye to eye on things. We don’t speak much anymore.”

“Is that so?” Crawford’s fidgety mannerisms were making Aaron nervous. He’d never seen a man with more tics.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing here,” Aaron said, “but I don’t like it.”

“You think this is a game?” Crawford stared at Aaron in the most uncanny way.

Aaron forced himself to stare back.

“I am trying to help you out here.” Crawford was nearly shouting. “I am trying to tell you that I may be the only one who can help your brother!”

“Nobody is helping my brother! You issued an arrest warrant! What is he supposed to think about that? Why didn’t you sit on this a little longer, investigate Earle more?”

At Earle’s name, Crawford’s entire expression changed. The intensity froze on his face. His fire-flashing eyes turned ice-cold. And then in a rare self-conscious manner, Crawford swallowed and glanced at Aaron. “That man . . .”

Aaron waited for more, studying Crawford’s telling eyes.

“. . . beat Taylor Franks, played emotional mind games with her. Used her.” He rattled off these facts quietly.

“So why aren’t they arresting him? He seems a much better suspect.”

“He wasn’t there,” Crawford said. “Your brother was.”

“What about the flowers?”

“Not enough.”

“Not enough? They show Earle had her on his mind the day before she was kidnapped!”

Crawford took a step closer to Aaron, sticking his neck out in a socially awkward manner that nearly invaded Aaron’s space. Aaron didn’t budge. “But you’ve been snooping around, haven’t you, Kline? And you know that there are some discrepancies about who actually sent those flowers. You traced it up to Maine, just like we did.”

Aaron wordlessly acknowledged it with a long blink.

Crawford’s eyes shifted again, but this time impassively scanning the room.

Aaron shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead, trying to get ahold of the situation . . . and what Crawford’s intentions were.

Crawford was back to acknowledging Aaron. “My superiors bought into Fiscall’s idea that justice for the people was more important than justice for the victim.”

“The town wanted an arrest so he gave them one.”

Crawford said, “I’ve got a hard enough job solving a murder case without all this other mess. I’m telling you that the more you get in the way, the worse off your brother is going to be. The whole town and every law-enforcement officer this city’s got think he’s at the very least a kidnapper.”

“There’s always hope. And truth.”

“Truth.” Crawford carved out a laugh from the disdain in his voice. “Yeah. Truth. I hope your brother makes a smart decision and turns himself in. And I hope you figure out that the more you interfere, the better chance your brother has of spending the rest of his life in jail. That’s simply if the body doesn’t turn up. If it does, he’s looking at the death penalty. But, of course, you already know all of this.”

Prescott walked in, hands on his hips in an authoritative manner. He was about to say something when Aaron asked, “You find him hiding out in my cab?”

Prescott smirked, noticed Crawford, and dropped the grin.

A mix of mustered cordialness and intense scrutiny read like a warning sign on Crawford’s face.

Aaron held his own expression steady until the detectives left.

It amazed him how freely he could move. For two hours, completely unnoticed, Mick had been at the library, going through archives, trying to find as much information on Sammy Earle as he could, resisting the urge to repeatedly rub his bald head.

Earle was in the headlines frequently, and Mick sorted through the various cases and suspects he’d defended. By all appearances, he was a smooth-talking, sharp-dressing Southerner, whose thick accent was mentioned in the press nearly as much as his victories.

Prosecutors referred to him in media-acceptable derogatory language, citing his promiscuous tendencies toward cheating in the courtroom. Once, in a rape case against a well-known area CFO, Earle had leaked the victim’s name by an “accidental” slip of the tongue.

His tactics were shady, but his success rate was high. And rumor had it that the Kellan Johannsen case had brought him at least a two-million-dollar paycheck.

Mick had even found several society-page pictures in which Taylor was on his arm, looking charmingly rich but decidedly out of place.

What interested Mick the most was a small article in which Earle’s name appeared concerning local Vietnam veterans. It showed Earle looking particularly uncomfortable among the three other vets who were being photographed, his crooked, insincere smile offered to the camera lens.

The local vets met for coffee on Monday nights at seven at an old-timer café between Irving and Fort Worth. Mick wondered if Sammy still attended. To get an up-close look at him might be worth something.

Inside the library bathroom, Mick splashed his face and took wet paper towels, bathing his torso with them inside one of the stalls. It was a little before five. He knew his destination for this evening, at least partly. But the question was where he would sleep.
If
he could sleep.

A man who had come in the bathroom finished washing his hands and left. Mick opened the stall door, listening for signs of another person. The bathroom was quiet, so Mick went to the mirror again, gazing at his new appearance. With the shaved hair, he really did look amazingly different. Dark eyebrows still framed his eyes, and there was no getting around his distinct blue eyes, but most people hardly looked you in the eye anymore.

Mick folded the notes he’d taken about the vets’ meeting and shoved them in his duffel bag. He opened the door and stepped out before he saw the two police officers. Mick retreated into the bathroom, cracking the door enough so he could watch them. They were at the front desk talking to a librarian. She was pointing in the direction he’d been sitting earlier.

And now a man was walking toward the bathroom. Mick swung the door open and acted like he was walking out, allowing for the man to come in. Mick grabbed the pay phone next to the bathroom and pretended to dial a number, his back turned to the officers.

Glancing over his shoulder, he watched the two cops smile and joke with one another while the librarian disappeared momentarily. When she returned with a book in her hand, Mick relaxed. He hung up the phone as the officers left the library.

He waited five minutes, then left as well.

Now he would have to figure out how to get all the way across Irving on a dirt bike.

The diner was nostalgic, a modern restaurant with a fifties theme. Elvis bellowed through a state-of-the-art jukebox that flipped CDs rather than records. The waitresses wore wireless mics, communicating through them to the kitchen.

Relieved to find the Seat Yourself sign greeting him, Mick took a corner booth. He was about ten minutes early. His stomach grumbled, but he ordered only a basket of fries for three dollars. And a water.

He was beginning to feel the fatigue of sleeping only two hours and most of that lightly. He sat in the booth, his body hunched over his water, keeping an eye on the customer activity while fighting menacing thoughts. Without much to do other than wait for his French fries, his mind drifted to Taylor, and soon her voice uttered words in his mind.

“I guess nobody is really who they seem to be, when you come down to it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“A beautiful woman. You have a kind spirit. You’re bold and I sense a toughness about you.”

“Like a boxer?”

“Not enough muscles.”

“A lot of cowards look tough. But they’ll always be cowards. And eventually somebody will find out.”

“You’re not a coward.”

“I’ve known a few. Who are you?”

“Football coach, former part-time accountant, lover of storms.”

“Storms?”

“Don’t you love them?”

“I don’t think about them too much.”

“I think about them all the time. A perfect mix of power and beauty. Like you.”

“I’m not powerful.”

“You got my attention, didn’t you?”

“Hmm. I’m only surviving.”

“Surviving what?”

“Life. It’s all about survival.”

“Don’t you think there’s more?”

“No. I want there to be more, but in the end, there isn’t anything more.”

“How can you believe that?”

“You’re telling me you believe there’s more?”

“I believe we all have a special identity, something we’re supposed to fulfill, some reason we were created.”

“Created. Sounds like the alcohol talking. I didn’t realize you were religious.”

“I’m not.”

“Sounds like it to me.”

“I guess I believe there are no accidents.”

“Right. No accidents. Only purpose in everything.”

“You think it’s all arbitrary?”

“I think it’s what you make it to be.”

Her voice faded, her eyes diminishing in his mind. He noticed three men walking in together, each dressed casually, looking between fifty and sixty years old. They waved at a nearby waitress and crowded two tables together. Two more men arrived, jovial and chatty. And then a sixth straggled in. There were places for three more people, but ten minutes went by without anyone else joining them.

The waitress arrived at his booth carrying French fries glowing with grease. A thick ribbon of steam climbed the air in front of his face, and Mick thought twice before touching them. “Right out of the fryer. That all you want?”

Mick pointed to the pad in her hand. “Can I borrow that? And your pencil too?”

“I don’t know. Do you tip 10 or 15 percent?” She offered a smoker’s grin.

“Twenty.”

“Keep ’em,” she said and walked off.

Mick flipped open the small notepad and let his fries cool. Outside, the streetlights blinked on, and daylight dimmed.

The men were engaged in their conversation, oblivious to staring eyes. With every fry, Mick found a bit more inspiration, a slightly greater urge, and an increasing resoluteness that created a strange boldness inside.

Soon, greasy, salted wax paper was all that was left of his dinner. Mick wiped his fingers on his napkin and observed the men individually. He wondered if Earle would be coming in. Should he go talk to these men or wait for Earle to show up?

Mick fingered the notepad and tapped the pencil, wondering how to engage in a useful conversation with them. There was no time like the present.

He paid for his dinner, leaving a nice tip for the waitress, then approached the men, none of whom had noticed him amongst the increasing dinner crowd.

A short, stubby man spotted him first, stopping his conversation and making the others look in Mick’s direction.

Mick smiled. “Hi there.”

The men nodded, curiosity sweeping their faces.

“I’m Trent,” Mick said.

The stubby man said, “Hi, Trent. What can we do for you?” There was a bit of a sarcastic edge to his voice, a simulated congeniality.

“I’m with
Time
magazine, and I read in the paper that you all meet here every Monday night.”

“What? You doin’ a story on a bunch of middle-aged men teetering on the edge of divorce and financial bankruptcy?”

The crowd laughed nervously at the self-deprecating, tall, bald man with the short list of personal problems.

“Actually,” Mick said, portraying himself as self-important, “I’m writing an article on Sammy Earle, the attorney.”

The laughter died down a little, and the men glanced around the table at each other.

“I’m doing a piece on the Kellan Johannsen trial, and my editors wanted more insight into the attorney who made the magic happen. You soldiers up for answering a few questions?”

A few shrugged.

Mick sat down, already forgetting what he’d called himself. Brent? Trent? He was not a man used to disguises. Not of this nature, anyway.

When he pulled out the notepad, a large man with curly, bushy hair said, “Don’t you all have those fancy computers you use these days?”

“Or a tape recorder?” Pudgy asked.

Mick smiled. “I come from a long line of journalists who believe shorthand is the way to go. Now why don’t you six introduce yourselves?”

They went around the table, giving their name, rank, serial number, and their current occupation. There seemed to be some excitement building as they realized they were going to be quoted. If they only knew.

“So,” Mick said after the introductions, “does Earle come meet you here anymore?”

They shook their heads. Horton, the financial adviser, said, “Hasn’t been here in several years. Maybe four or so.”

“Why’d he stop coming?”

“Who knows. We’ve had as many as twenty-five and as few as four. We just keep meeting. Whoever wants to come can come, as long as they served in Vietnam and live in the great city of Irving.”

“There’s not an organized local chapter?”

“Yeah, but we like to just chew the fat,” said Arnie, the oldest-looking member. “We like gettin’ together and talkin’. And not about the war. Though we’ve done that too.”

“What kind of man is Sammy Earle?”

The group hesitated, and Mick watched their eyes carefully avoid his. Mick cleared his throat. “Look, this is off the record, okay?”

Worried glances subsided. The pudgy man, Lenny, said, “Sammy was a soldier just like the rest of us.”

“What kind of soldier?”

“The kind that goes and risks his life fighting a war none of us should’ve been in,” Lenny said. His eyes told an unvoiced story.

Mick scribbled down notes. “He’s a high-profile attorney now. What kind of man was he to be around?”

Again, the apprehension. Mick tried to look at each of them, unscrambling the code of honor they surely upheld for one another. But nobody had to tell Mick that there was something else going on.

“You know,” Mick began, after nobody answered, “there’s a lot of rumors that float around, and many times these rumors are reported as fact and believed as fact. If there’s something you can do to set the record straight about Mr. Earle, I’m sure he would appreciate it.”

Arnie spoke up. “Are you talking about what happened to him over in—?”

Mick kept a steady eye on the notes he wasn’t really writing. “Is there something more I need to know?” he asked when Arnie didn’t finish.

“Shut up, Arnie,” Horton said. “It’s nobody’s business.”

Mick glanced up. “It’ll be reported, regardless of what is said here. You’d be able to make a difference in how it is reported.”

Horton didn’t look like he was buying it, but the man sitting next to Lenny, who had introduced himself as George, a helicopter pilot, said, “Why are we protecting him?” He looked around the bunch. “You all know as well as I do that Sammy Earle would sell us out in a heartbeat if it meant he might get some extra television exposure.”

A few agreed.

Horton stayed his ground. “What happened over there doesn’t have anything to do with what happens here.”

Lenny said, “You all are acting like it’s something he should hide. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something he wanted to forget, that’s all.” He cast his eyes down.

After a few moments of silence, Mick said, “I’m sensing some of you aren’t fond of Earle.”

“He’s a loudmouth know-it-all,” said Arnie. “But that’s just me. Maybe some of the other fellas were impressed with his expensive suits and elaborate language.”

“He never fit in,” Horton explained mildly, eyeing the others in an attempt to take control of the conversation. As he continued, he looked at Mick. “He tried, I guess. But he always had that better-than-you attitude. Just rubbed some of us the wrong way. But we didn’t think too much about it. He wasn’t a regular, came every once in a while, and we haven’t seen him in years except on the television.”

“Big case he won,” Mick said.

Horton sighed, fingering his coffee cup. “Sure. Big case. But that’s the kind of guy Earle is. He’s going to go for the big guns, and morals aren’t necessarily his main objective.”

“You believe this is because of what happened over there in Vietnam?”

The others waited for Horton to respond. He took his time thinking over his answer. “I don’t know. He talked about it in very vague terms.”

“How vague?”

“You know, sort of treated it as no big deal. He’d talk about the court case a little, mostly from the point of view of a haughty lawyer.”

“What’d he say about it?”

Horton hesitated. “He said he believes in the court system. Even the military court system.”

“I always thought it was strange,” said Lenny. “I had some buddies die over there. And I can hardly talk about them without choking up. I hardly talk about it anyway. But Earle, he’d tell the story like he was recounting a scene from a movie.”

“In what way?”

“You know, something like, ‘I was under the bushes, saw Matty get shot. Tried to revive him.’ ”

Mick tried to be patient with his questions, but he couldn’t understand what a trial had to do with all of this.

Arnie soon answered his question. “Well, I’d say it could mess you up going through all that. I mean, a fellow soldier shooting your best friend. That’s crazy.”

“How’d it happen?” Mick asked, forgetting he was supposed to know the story.

“According to Sammy, he was under some brush, hiding out from ‘the enemy.’ That’s what he called them. Always. Never used another name. Anyway, he heard somebody behind him, rolled around, heard a shot, and his buddy, Matty Lasatter, I think was his name, was shot dead.”

Mick was writing real notes now. The men forgot their apprehension, relishing a good war story. “By another American soldier.”

They all nodded, as if they were hardly able to fathom the scene. “The other soldier . . . what was his name again?” asked George.

“Delano, wasn’t it?” Lenny asked. The others nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. Patrick Delano.”

“Staff sergeant. Shot another soldier,” Horton said in nearly a whisper.

“It was an accident, I’m assuming?” Mick asked.

Horton shook his head. “This was no accident. Delano shot Lasatter on purpose, claiming he was about to shoot Earle.”

Mick looked up from his notes. “I’m sorry. I’m not following.”

“According to Earle, Delano said that it looked as if Matty Lassater had mistaken Earle for the enemy in the bushes. Lassater was getting ready to shoot Earle when Delano took him out.”

“Saving one soldier’s life by killing another,” Mick said.

Horton nodded. “At trial, Delano claimed he made a split-second decision and had not intended to kill Lassater. But when he raised his gun to shoot, his arm hit the tree next to him, and it bumped his aim up, hitting Lassater in the chest.”

“And Delano probably would’ve gotten off if it hadn’t been for his mouth,” added George.

“Oh?”

Arnie said, “Earle says that Delano pontificated himself to death on the stand, claiming Lassater was a useless soldier anyway. Earle said it was horrifying to hear. Basically Delano claimed he saved the better soldier, which meant he made a more deliberate choice than he originally admitted. And then he kept going, telling Earle that he wasn’t being appreciative of Delano’s sacrifice for him.”

“Earle tells it like the guy turned on a gigantic messiah complex,” said Lenny. “I guess nobody had ever seen anything like that. Earle said it was like the guy went insane right on the stand. Shouting. Screaming at Earle, asking him why he wasn’t standing up for the man who saved his life.”

“Said it was like everything from the war culminated right there in the courtroom.”

George snickered. “It’s really something else to hear Sammy tell it, though. He sort of ruffles up his hair and makes his eyes all wide and crazy, pretending to be this Delano fellow.”