‘I have no idea. He just wants me to set up a time and place to meet. There’s a state park about six miles outside the northern city limits. Washburn is the name of it. He says if you pull in the entrance and then turn your headlights off, he’ll come out. This would be at ten o’clock tonight. All of this — it’s so insane. And he’s so afraid. He’s almost hysterical.’
I tried to puzzle through the setup. I couldn’t see any danger for me. I wasn’t important enough to be a player in Ruskin’s games. I wasn’t significant enough to bother with. But he was obviously in trouble and scared.
And so he wanted me to help him. Not because I mattered at all in the scheme of things, but because I was close by and because I had enough connections that I could lead him to the kind of protection he needed. What needed to be negotiated at this point was how much he was willing to tell me about his whole operation while I recorder-immortalized his every word.
‘Please say you’ll meet him. Please.’
‘All right.’
‘Oh, thank God.’ Her relief brought tears. ‘You don’t know how happy you’ve made me. I am so afraid for him — for us.’
‘Is he armed?’
She sniffled up tears. ‘Yes. He’s always armed. He has a Glock. I don’t know anything about guns — I hate guns — but that’s what he told me it is. But you don’t have any reason to be afraid of him.’
‘Why’s that?’
Without any humor at all, she said, ‘Because he wants something from you. That means he has to be nice.’
Sixteen
I sat in a near-deserted Burger King parking lot and made calls to Jane — who’d been wondering what had happened to our supposed dinner — and to Michael Hawkins. I didn’t tell him much except that I was working on a strong lead and planned to call him with more information later. He suggested that we meet up and work on this lead together. I remembered what Tom Neil had told me: how Hawkins liked to be the star of all investigations. I told him it would go better if I worked alone. He didn’t try very hard to keep the disappointment from his voice.
There wasn’t much traffic on the highway to the state park. On the curves my headlights took snapshots of fall trees and farm fields and a lone isolated convenience store. But on the straight stretches there was just my beams piercing the night.
On the left side of the park entrance was a life-size bronze statue of a Native American and on the right a bronze life-size statue of a man in the uniform of the northern army during the Civil War. A splash of headlights revealed both to be covered heavily with bird shit. Then total darkness, the road into the park dark with only a few signs to guide me. I pulled over to the side and waited.
I unlocked my glove compartment and reached in for my Glock. I kept it in my hand as I sat there. There was no reason for Ruskin to try to hurt me that I could understand. But maybe he had a reason he could understand. And this could be a trap, after all.
I was far enough in that the occasional cars and trucks on the highway sounded remote, far enough in that when I clipped off my headlights and sat in silence the sound of my engine was enormous, as if it had the power of a racing vehicle. I kept checking my rearview as well as left and right windows. I gripped my Glock tighter.
I was impatient so my sense of time passing was exaggerated. I kept checking my watch, certain that ten, even fifteen minutes had passed. No such luck. Five, six, seven minutes only.
I resented being made this vulnerable. Sitting in this deep a darkness anything could come at me from anywhere and surprise me so completely my gun may be useless. Strong wind rattled the leafy trees now and somewhere ahead of me I could hear a car engine. Then I saw headlights through the trees as the vehicle made its way around curves toward me.
The highway patrol car appeared and when it reached me it stopped. Of course. A highway patrol car would check the park at least once a night. The darkness vibrated with the red and blue of his emergency lights.
And just as it did, way back at the entrance, I saw the headlights of another vehicle pull in and then quickly back up and start to disappear. Had that been Ruskin?
The officer, a tall and heavy man, stepped out of his vehicle. Tan uniform, campaign hat. The motor was still running. I’d already pulled my license out.
‘The park is officially closed,’ he said, taking my license. ‘There’s a sign right at the front.’
‘I guess I didn’t see it.’
‘Any special reason you’re sitting in the dark?’
I knew a number of variations on the standard shit-eating smile. I used number six-B. ‘This is kind of embarrassing.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Umm-hmm. I’m, uh, meeting someone here.’
‘A woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Married?’
‘Do I have to answer that?’
‘No.’
‘Well, what the hell, I’ll tell you. No, she’s not married but she’s got an ex-boyfriend who follows her everywhere she goes.’
‘Tell her about this new invention called a restraining order.’
‘She’s had two of them.’
‘Then somebody should bust his ass.’
‘He’s clever and has a good lawyer.’
‘You’re clever, too, or trying to be. I don’t buy anything you just told me. I’d like you to step out of your vehicle.’
Shit.
He stepped back and to emphasize how serious he was, his left hand dropped to his holster.
Wind and the scent of coming rain. The first thing I did when I got out of the Jeep was look straight back at the highway. All I could do was try to hurry this along.
The first thing he did was shine his light inside the Jeep. ‘That a Glock?’ This close he smelled of pipe tobacco, which always reminds me of my father. Instant image: him sitting in his easy chair with a glass of Burgundy, his pipe and his British detective novels from the forties and fifties. He hated everything that came after that.
‘Yes. A Glock.’
‘You have a permit to carry?’
‘Yes. You have my billfold. Look in where the folding money goes.’
He brought his small but intense light on the wallet and lifted the permit out. He studied it as if he was going to be quizzed on it in the morning. ‘Why would you need to carry?’
‘My business.’
‘What kind of business?’
‘I’m a political consultant. Things happen these days. I might have to protect my client.’
‘You call them “clients”?’
‘Yes. That’s what they are. I do work for hire.’
‘Who’s your client around here?’
Here we go, I thought. He’d have a little fun at my expense. ‘Senator Logan.’ But instead of following up he said, ‘Why do you keep looking at the highway?’
‘To see if the woman I’m supposed to meet got here yet.’
‘There is no woman. Not the kind you’re talking about anyway.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He sighed deeply, then put everything back in the wallet and returned it to me. ‘You’re meeting somebody. That I buy. And maybe it’s a woman. But what I don’t buy is that this is about getting laid or anything. As soon as you said Senator Logan I knew this had something to do with politics. And if it’s a woman that’s why she’s coming here. Now I’m ordering you out of this park. You’re breaking the law. Do you understand?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘You pull out. I’ll follow you.’
This was one highway patrolman who really didn’t like Senator Logan.
‘Next time read the sign before you come in here.’
‘Will do.’
‘I’d say the same thing if you were working for the guy I’m voting for.’