‘Whenever you get religious I know we’re in trouble.’
I kept thinking of Katherine’s sweet face; seeing it always tugged me back to my own daughter’s face over the years. I was old enough now to realize that I would die knowing that I’d cheated her out of my time and attention. I’d chosen the road over her. There was no way back. The most sacred relationship I’d ever had and I’d violated it. There were no windows in here to see the gathering dusk but, even unseen, it worked on me. I wanted to use one of my lie allotments on myself, convince myself that now it didn’t matter so much anymore because Sarah was about to be a new mother. But I knew better.
She came in quickly and captured many male gazes.
Tonight she presented herself in a becoming combination of blue blouse and gray skirt that fashionably favored her form. She also wore a look of anger.
A waiter tried to catch up with her but didn’t succeed. She had seated herself before he reached the table. ‘I haven’t been able to lose him.’
She wanted Scotch and soda and I wanted a refill on my coffee.
‘Who?’ She was spoiling the pleasure of enjoying her pert good looks.
‘Wade. The assistant chief of police.’
‘He’s following you?’
‘Showalter must have put him on me after I left the station today. I thought I’d lost him about half an hour ago. I ran him around in circles but somehow he found me again. That’s why I’m late — I was trying to lose him.’
‘What makes Showalter so suspicious of you?’
Instead of answering, she said, ‘There’s Wade.’
I don’t know what I expected, but whatever it was I didn’t get it. I must have assumed he was going to be the Showalter Marine type. Instead he was a pleasant-looking man in an inexpensive blue suit. He looked somewhat uncomfortable being in an upscale place like this.
‘Don’t let the next-door-neighbor act fool you, Dev.’
‘What act?’
‘Wade’s act. The friendly, helpful type. He’s the sharpest detective on the force and the best interrogator because he’s so quiet and polite. I enjoy watching him work. It’s like watching a great athlete.’
‘You like him?’
‘Let’s say I understand him. His grandfather and his father were both police chiefs here. He was supposed to be next. But the city council got all hot on Showalter when he sent in his app. Looked macho in the Marine uniform. They wanted Clint Eastwood.’
‘But Wade stayed on?’
‘I don’t know Wade that well — nobody does except his wife — but my sense of things is that he’s just waiting for Showalter to screw up. Then the job’ll be his.’
‘But he’s following you.’
‘He’s doing what Showalter tells him to. He’s very careful to be respectful to Showalter. When the council does turn on Showalter — and three of the six who voted for him now have second thoughts — Wade doesn’t want it to look as if he was anything but professional with Showalter.’
‘But again, he’s following you.’
She grinned with cute little white teeth. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’
When her Scotch came she drank half of it right off.
‘I’m not really a drunk.’ Then, ‘I’m wondering if Showalter somehow found out who I really am. Maybe that’s why Wade is following me.’
‘Who you really are? I’m shocked you’ve been holding out on me.’
‘Sure you are. And I’m shocked that you haven’t admitted that we’re both looking for the same recorder.’
‘How do you know about the recorder?’
A little more Scotch.
‘There are six of them in Showalter’s little group. I put an electronic device on one of their cars. They tavern hop a lot. And talk a lot.’ Then, ‘There were only four of them in the group when Showalter was in Peoria several years ago. One of them was my stepbrother.’
‘Now we’re getting to why you hate Showalter.’
She shrugged her slender shoulders and stared at the hands she’d folded on the table.
‘I don’t blame Showalter for recruiting Denny into his little group of cops. Denny had always been a bad cop. Beating up people. Ripping off drug dealers. He might even have tried a little blackmail.’
‘I can’t see why you liked him so much.’
‘I didn’t. But Showalter killed him and I promised my stepfather that I’d prove it someday. My own father was a miserable drunk. He used to pound on my mother two or three times a month. He hit her so hard one time that she permanently lost hearing in one ear and later on he beat her again so badly that she now has a limp. We finally ran away one night — to a small town in Colorado — and he was never able to find us. Then my mom met a policeman, Don Sheridan, and married him. He was the finest man — finest person besides my mother — I’ve ever met. My real father was a surgeon so we never had the creature comforts he’d given us, but from the time I was eleven I considered Don my real father.
‘I knew I needed to get into Showalter’s police department, so I joined a force in Montana and worked there for three years. In addition to that, I’d gone to college back east for four years so I wasn’t well known in the area anymore. I had a hacker help me create a different background for myself. It all worked out, even though it was a long shot. I just kept thinking of Don.
‘He could have had a happy life with my mother except he was saddled with Denny. There was something missing in my stepbrother. I didn’t learn until later on that it was called sociopathology. Whatever was good for Denny was good for the world. That’s how he thought and lived. He was four years older than me and didn’t like me at all. I think he was jealous of how much Don loved me. He could have turned that around. Don really loved him but Denny had broken his heart so many times by stealing from him, piling up his car and beating kids up. Denny scared me — his temper, I mean.
‘Right out of high school, Denny went into the Marines. Don had hopes they’d turn Denny into the son he’d always wanted. But when he came out he was even worse. He had a real swagger then and his temper was probably twice as bad as it had been. We were living in Peoria then and that was how Denny met Showalter. Oh, I forgot to mention that Denny was a real racist when he got out of the service. He had connections to all these groups. He was always telling Don about them, trying to get him to go to some of these meetings, but Don never would. He wasn’t like that.
‘Showalter told Denny he wanted to build some kind of compound so three of them started robbing banks in other parts of the state.’
‘Including Showalter?’
‘Of course not. He wanted to give them the “privilege” of serving the cause by themselves. They raised a fair amount of money. That’s where Showalter got involved. He “guarded” the money for them. It was a lie, of course. His whole thing with the racism and the compound was just a ruse to get them to collect money for him. They had close to three hundred thousand dollars when two of them got shot and killed during a robbery.’
‘Was Denny along?’
‘Yes. But he got away. Showalter said that they needed to lay low for a while. One day Denny asked him about the money and the compound. Denny was pretty sharp about most things but he hadn’t figured out that Showalter was a con artist. Until that day. Showalter planted some of the robbery money in his apartment and then claimed that he’d confronted Denny about it and Denny had drawn his weapon. Showalter didn’t have any choice but to kill him. That was the story he gave, anyway. It made the national news, then he got invited to this big police convention. I guess the speech he gave about dishonest cops was pretty good stuff. He even got interviewed on 60 Minutes.’
‘How did you learn about all this?’
‘Denny told Don about it a few days before he was killed. Don said Denny didn’t regret anything — not about the racist group or robbing banks, not even the bank teller who’d been shot pretty badly by one of the other men. He just wanted Don to know the truth. He said if he was killed it would be by Showalter. Don had to figure out some of it by himself after Denny died, but I’m sure he was right.’