Part 19 (1/2)

”She told the Howard County police that her source feared for his life because his contact has been killed. Our office has been able to establish that the dead man was Le'andro Watkins, killed last Monday night in a drive-by shooting.”

”I don't know the contact's name,” Tess put in. She had gone to great lengths not to know it. ”It was never revealed to me, so I can't verify it one way or another.”

But she did know when he had died, and the timing was right. How had they pinpointed this? How could they be so sure? They must have a.s.sumed the murder was subsequent to the newspaper story and examined only those homicides that occurred in that five-day window, from when the story first appeared to her interview with the Howard County cops.

”Le'andro Watkins is a drug dealer,” Jenkins said. ”He was part of Bennie Tep's organization over on the East Side. Low-level, but he was rising up. So if he trusted your friend to do something for him, your friend was probably involved with drug dealing, too.”

”Not my ”friend,”” Tess said sharply. ”And your logic sucks. If Androcles took the thorn from the lion's paw and the lion turned out to be a drug dealer, would he be vulnerable to these seizure laws?”

”It's up to a federal grand jury to evaluate our logic,” Jenkins said, long past pretending to play second chair behind the young prosecutor. ”We're going to link you to a dead drug dealer. We're going to figure out if anyone ever connected with drugs worked out of your house or used your car. We're going to look into your father and your aunt, see if their businesses are used as fronts for drug money. And all because you insist on protecting someone who's almost certainly a criminal.”

Tess was speechless, her mouth shut tight in order to combat the instinct that was dying to scream ”Lloyd Jupiter” over and over again. She had every right to break the promise. They were probably on the verge of figuring it out themselves. They had identified the dead kid, Le'andro Watkins, with no help from her. With that lead they could definitely flush out the secret to Lloyd's ident.i.ty. So why didn't they do it? Why was it so important for them to get her to tell what she knew? It was childish to think of this as a battle of wills, but this had gotten personal in a way that Tess couldn't fathom.

”Bring Gail in,” Tyner said, ”and we'll do this properly. Tess is not telling you anything until we have her promise that all of this goes away. Forever. And we're going to want some a.s.surances about the rest of her family as well.”

”Your wife,” Mike Collins said, making the commonplace word sound uncommonly rude, and Tess knew that Tyner longed to strike him for insulting Kitty.

Instead he said, ”Everyone. Tess, her father, her aunt, her boyfriend, her friend Whitney.”

”We don't offer blanket immunity for life-” Gabe began, but Jenkins's voice rose over his. ”We'll get back to you.”

”Is she free to go?”

”Sure.” Jenkins paused in the doorway. ”We never have any problem finding her, do we?”

The trio left them alone in the room. It was only then that Tess noticed how odd she felt. Her face was flushed, feverish, as if she were a kid with a guilty conscience called to the princ.i.p.al's office. Her hands and feet were ice cold, as if no blood were getting to them, yet her palms were sweating, too.

But it was Tyner's hand, placed gently on her shoulder, that worried her the most. She must be in a lot of trouble if Tyner was being so kind to her.

”The thing about the office-how did you figure that out?” A trivial question, but she couldn't quite bring herself to form the more central one.

”I had thought the surroundings pretty bloodless, even by government standards. On a hunch I called a friend who does a lot of federal bankruptcy work, and he confirmed that they relocated across the street.”

”Am I...could they...I mean, s.h.i.+t, thirty years. How can that be?”

”The prosecutor's not particularly bright,” Tyner said. ”And he clearly jumped on this hobby horse without getting Gail's say-so. But I think she'll take his side and they'll charge you. That max really is thirty years. They use it all the time to squeeze people they can't get on anything else.”

”We could go to the press....” She must be desperate if she was considering trying to manipulate the local media.

”Thing is, I don't think we can win this public-relations war. The average citizen sees it their way-you're protecting a person of interest in the murder of a federal prosecutor. And if it drags on even a little while, the cost of defending yourself would be exorbitant. You'd have to hire someone else, for one thing, someone with more expertise in the federal system-a system in which more than ninety percent of all cases plead out, because more than ninety-five percent of the people who go to trial are found guilty.”

”Maybe I could borrow some money from Crow,” she said. ”Crow, with his secret money-market account. I still don't know what to make of that. I don't know what to make of any of this. And I've been terrified to speak to him on the phone, for fear he'll tell me something that these guys will ask about and then I'll be at risk for lying and incurring more federal charges.”

Tyner gave her shoulder another squeeze. She turned away from him, and using the wheeled chair to motor across the floor, like a toddler astride a Big Wheel, she rolled to the trash can in the corner and threw up.

25.

The afternoon was gray and overcast, a perfect complement to Crow's mood. Yet he kept postponing his departure, finding another ch.o.r.e to do for Ed, another errand to run. He dropped the Books on Tape in the library's off-hour boxes. He and Lloyd would never listen to Early Autumn now. On the way back to FunWorld, he stopped at Ed's trailer park and found the older man sitting on the screened-porch annex to his motor home, wearing shorts and clutching a beer.

”It's Opening Day,” Ed said. ”And on Opening Day I sit on my porch in shorts and drink beer.”

”I thought there was only one game and it's tonight on ESPN, the Red Sox at the Yankees. Everyone else plays Tuesday.”

”Tradition,” Ed said. ”You find the boy?”

Crow winced a little at the ”boy” part, conscious of how it would land on Lloyd if he were here. Then again, Lloyd was a very young sixteen. Maybe not a boy, but boyish, as evidenced by his disappearing act.

”No,” he said. ”And he doesn't know how to call me, because I switched burners last night, dumping the other phone. I suppose he could try to call FunWorld if he knew the number, or get your listing from directory a.s.sistance. But why would he call? He clearly wanted to get away.”

”You know I was a cop, right?”

”Yeah. A cop, but also a friend of Spike's. You held his liquor license, in fact. What was that about?”

”Spike has a past. The kind of past that keeps you from having a liquor license. Not even his family knows about it. He was...a little out of control as a young man. I locked him up.”

”You locked him up, but then you helped him get a liquor license when he got out?”

”What he did-Look, it's not my story to tell. One day you'll have a past and you'll want people to keep it to themselves. Trust me.”

”I already have a few mysteries in my life,” Crow said.

Ed snorted, as if Crow didn't know from secrets, and he had a point. Most people would think that Crow's secret was a cause for joy and celebration, but Crow felt marked by it, shamed and unsure. ”Anyway, let's just say I could see the bigger picture, see that maybe Spike didn't have any choices in what he did. So when he did his time and wanted a fresh start, I helped him out.”

”What's your point?”

”I don't know. I kind of lost it.” He scratched a pale, freckled calf. ”Oh, yeah. Like I said, I was a cop. The boy?”

”Lloyd.”

”Yeah, him. He's hiding something, too.”

”He was in hiding because he had stopped hiding something.”

”I get the distinction, but that's what I'm telling you. He ain't told you everything he knows. That's why he's so jumpy-like. There's another shoe going to drop with him. Maybe you're better off, not being around him. Someone wants to kill the kid, you're trying to protect him, and he's not straight with you. That means he's risking your life along with his.”

Crow wanted to indulge the older man, but he didn't think a retired cop's instincts were worth much.

”Well, I guess we'll never know. I don't think I'll ever see Lloyd Jupiter again.”

”You want a beer?”

Ed was drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, which had enjoyed a brief, strange vogue among the wannabe hipsters that came to the Point. Crow was pretty sure, however, that Ed had been drinking PBR since before those kids were born and would still be drinking it after some of them died.

”Sure.”