Clicks, pops, silence, at least no Muzak.
“Chandler.”
“Special Agent, this is Bob Lee Swagger-”
“Swagger! Where are you? Everybody’s trying to find you.”
Nick hadn’t told anyone. Would she have time to set up a trace on the call? He guessed not, then second-guessed himself and started to hang up, then third-guessed himself and decided he had to know and he could bail out fast if it came to that.
“Ma’am, I’d prefer not to say.”
“You have to come in. We need you here.”
“I am not out of control. I told Nick I wouldn’t do a thing without his say-so. I will stick to that. May I please speak with him?”
“I’ll call you back.”
“I’d prefer to call you back. You’re not tracking me? You’re not setting me up or nothing?”
“We don’t operate that way.”
“Give me a number and a time. I’ll call you tonight.”
“I won’t track you, Swagger. I have things to tell you and you have things to tell me. This is not a good place for a conversation.”
Christ, she was stubborn!
He hated being at the cusp of the decision, but he remembered his earlier conversation with her and how she’d seemed to adore Nick. So maybe she was still on Nick’s team.
He gave her his cell number, knowing that she’d already written it down from the caller ID feature.
He left the room, looked for a fire escape, found none. He went back to the room, went out on his balcony. The motel backed onto fencing and an alley, now deserted. Through trees, some kind of university structure was visible. But no one could see him. Groaning, remembering how the limberness had seemed to lessen with each day he aged, he pulled himself from the balcony railing by way of the gutter and got to the roof. His hip still ached a little from an old wound, then a bad cut in Japan, but he made it. No one saw him. He went to the front of the building, looking over the parking lot and the busy avenue. If cops came, he’d see them come and could maybe, somehow-
The cell rang, some absurd ringtone, out of vaudeville. Had to get a new one.
“Swagger.”
“Nick’s been benched,” she said.
“Jesus.”
“It’s not formal. He didn’t have to turn in his badge and gun. It’s not a suspension. The director said he would appreciate it as a ‘favor’ if Nick went home while the Times story was the big news in town. The idea was he would not be suspended and have to turn in his things, nothing goes on the record, but at the same time, he would take no part in Bureau business until the situation clarified. He turned in his cell phone and the key to his office and went home at three; he is officially out of the loop for now, while Professional Responsibility investigates these charges the Times has raised. He will be interviewed sometime next week. So he can’t be called, he can’t be consulted, he is officially out of the game, and if you reach him somehow and try to talk, you compromise him, and I know you don’t want to do that.”
“No, of course not. He’s not dirty. For God’s sake, you know that. He’s not dirty.”
“I agree. However, the Times claims its experts have matched fonts on two letters, proving the incriminating one came from this FN outfit in South Carolina. That’s why you have to come in. You may have to talk to our investigators and give a deposition on your arrangement with Nick and make them see that he can’t be dirty. If you avoid that, you do him no good at all.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“You won’t help?”
“It’s not that. It’s that I found a piece of evidence in Chicago that’s very suggestive. Unfortunately, because of that gunfight, it got taken out of the chain-of-custody linkage. That means you folks can’t never use it. I have to follow up on it, because only a rogue can do that, and I have to do it fast. This is a fluid situation, the people behind this are very clever, and now that they know I’ve made a connection to them, they will retrace their tracks, wipe them out, wipe the slate clean, make sure no evidence, no witnesses, no anything survives. I was trying to move against them before that could happen.”
“You cannot ‘move against’ anybody, Mr. Swagger. You are not authorized, you have no arrest powers, you are not an FBI agent. I know you’re a lone wolf type, but you will only screw things up. Please, for Nick’s sake, come in here and make yourself accessible. You have friends here, people who knew about and remember Bristol. Take advantage of that good will; don’t squander it on cowboy stuff.”
“What happens to the investigation during all this headquarters bullshit?”
She hesitated for a second, her silence a harbinger of bad news.
“A new temporary supervisor to Task Force Sniper has come aboard. He’s a headquarters guy, and his job is to smooth over things. We have been directed to prepare the report for release to the press. The report finding Carl Hitchcock and Carl Hitchcock alone responsible for the murders of Joan Flanders, Jack Strong and-”
Swagger felt the floor of his stomach give out. He had a dizzy flash, then a headache.
“I thought you’d agreed the baked paint debris on the weapon indicated-”
“There will be an appendix dealing with other possibilities. As yet, we’ve interviewed over seventy-five new persons of interest and come up with nothing concrete. We have Chicago and Ohio and now the New York State Police telling us to declare the case closed.”
“So he wins?”
“Who wins?”
“You know who.”
“No sir, I don’t.”
“Of course you do. Only one man connected to this thing has the power, the influence, the ruthlessness, the-”
“Swagger, listen to me very carefully. That kind of thinking has no place in modern law enforcement. We work from facts, not theories. We let the facts point to the guilty. If we have theories, they twist the way we see the facts. So far we have not turned up one fact indicating that someone else is behind this. No matter what you surmise or what seems conspiratorially logical to you by the rules of too many movies, we cannot and will not operate that way. Let me further warn you that any action you take to investigate or intimidate a private citizen, a rich one or a poor one, a violent one or a passive one, a professional or some Joe on the street, may well be viewed as assault, and it will be prosecuted extremely aggressively, if the Bureau has anything to do with it.”
“There’s a campaign to ruin Nick. You know it, I know it. To ruin him because he bought into my read on the case and made time to run it out. Someone hated that, couldn’t allow it, and set out to destroy him. So right now, ma’am, it looks like his only chance is me, not you. I don’t know what you headquarters people are doing. You’re just letting somebody railroad your best man, and it ain’t right. It is not right, I don’t care what the law says. Now tell me, please, confirm for me, who is behind this campaign against him? I know you’ve examined it.”
“I am not able to share any investigative product with you, Mr. Swagger. No names, no information. It’s for internal use only.”
“I have-”
“You don’t have anything, Swagger. The Bureau will take care of Nick fairly, I guarantee you. If you go off on some crusade, you lose our protection. As it is now, Nick’s last official act was to call the Cook County prosecutor’s office and inform them that the missing witness was undercover FBI and therefore should not be identified and pursued in alert bulletins. You’re a free man now because of that decision, which frankly I think is a bad one. Don’t do anything to hurt Nick, to make him look bad.”