“But the government denied he’d ever been in the CIA.”
I crack a smile. “They would, wouldn’t they?”
Judging from the Internet printouts, the usual conspiracy theories must have started proliferating the moment the story broke. Ford tacked up a forum post providing an ersatz history of the former spook’s club in Houston, claiming that dozens of high-ranking officers have retired to the oil capital over the years, putting their experience to good use advising on overseas operations. According to one blog, Nesbitt was a prime recipient of drilling dollars, while according to another he had a well-documented history of mental-health issues. The Houston Press had run a feature that summarized all the possibilities, and the annotated spread made up the center of Ford’s psycho wall.
“This is all pretty interesting, Jerry, but I don’t see why I had to come down and view it in person. I’ve heard of this shooting. I’ve seen the video. Our guys were in the right. No matter who this Nesbitt dude was, he drew down on a cop. End of story.”
Lorenz goes to one of the open cabinets and pulls out an orange-covered, spiral-bound Key Map. A scrap of paper marks one of the laminated pages. He opens it on the desk and turns the map to face me. His finger thumps down to a green patch near the middle.
“That’s the park where we found Ford’s body,” he says.
“Let me see that.” I study the map. “And it was marked like that when you got here?”
He nods his head.
“So Brandon Ford marked the page where his body was dumped? Like he knew in advance that’s where he’d end up.”
“You’d think so, right? But no, that’s not what it is. Here-” he takes the book back-“this is why he marked it.”
I lean closer. He taps on a section of Allen Parkway curving through the map grid. When he moves his hand, I can see an X drawn over the road.
“That’s where Andrew Nesbitt was shot?” I ask.
He nods again. “And that’s not all, March. Remember when I sent you out into the woods and you had your fall? I thought if we followed the direction that finger was pointing, we’d find the severed head. But I was wrong. The fact is, if you follow that pointing finger-”
“You end up on Allen Parkway.”
And I’d seen it, looking through the weedy hurricane fence that night. I’d seen it without realizing the significance. The pointing finger had not led me astray; it guided me. I just didn’t know enough to make the connection.
Now I’m beginning to.
What I have is this: an unorthodox FBI agent telling me lies about the death of a man whose skinned finger, when his body was discovered, pointed straight to the site where another man, claiming to work for the CIA, had died in a gunfight with the Houston Police.
“So what’s the next step?” he asks.
“Let me think.”
The guns in the safe. The story that Ford was down in Corpus Christi. Bea Kuykendahl, a.k.a. Trixie, riding shotgun while he dropped off his kids. While that was going on, he kept a room here at his office dedicated to the shooting death of Andrew Nesbitt and the many conspiracy theories swirling around the event.
It all fits together somehow, assuming I have enough of the pieces. The bloody finger is pointing, the finger is guiding, the only question is where. I have to follow it. I have to think. It all fits together if I can only figure out how.
CHAPTER 8
Camped in Brandon Ford’s office, I tell Jerry everything: the early morning meeting with the FBI, my suspicions about the match on Ford, the ex-wife’s description of Bea. He listens silently and doesn’t ask any questions. When I’m done, he just looks at me.
“Well?” I ask.
“I feel like you just showed me your psycho wall. No offense. It just sounds a little crazy, that’s all.” He cocks his head toward the clippings. “And this is crazy enough.”
“This doesn’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up?”
He smiles. “It does now. Look-are you hungry? ’Cause I’m starving. I skipped lunch coming out here.”
“Jerry, will you stop and think a minute? I need your help putting all this together. This Agent Kuykendahl, my gut tells me she’s trying to hide something big.”
“Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. I can’t do this on an empty stomach. Lemme run down the street and pick us something up, okay? I think there’s a Five Guys-”
“Not again.”
“Come on,” he says. “You can choose the next place.”
There’s no chance of getting him to focus, so I let him go. He promises not to take long, and I can hear him chuckling to himself as he heads down the hall. Like he’s happy to get away. It occurs to me he hasn’t had a sit-down with Hedges yet. He doesn’t know there’s already a cloud over the day.
The door shuts behind him and I get down to work. I left my briefcase at the office, so I have to use my new phone to take pictures of the wall. They come out good, better than my three-year-old point-and-shoot, in fact. Maybe it’s time to upgrade.
With that done, I start pulling the clippings down one at a time. I read through the content, especially where Ford underlined and highlighted things, then stack pieces on the desk. Lorenz had called this a psycho wall, but it’s really a mind map, a visual scheme illustrating Brandon Ford’s obsession. Or to be more precise, his investigation. He was compiling information about the Nesbitt shooting, about the man’s alleged background-but why? Whatever his motives, this inquiry of his must have led to his death. Which means that if I can understand the wall, it might lead me to his killer or killers.
Once the wall is dismantled and stacked, I go to the computer. We have an excellent forensic computer specialist named Hanford, and he’d probably want me to leave this to him. I take a look anyway. The screen comes to life with a shake of the mouse. In Ford’s email inbox, there are more than fifty unopened messages. I scan them quickly. Mostly junk. Nothing from Bea Kuykendahl.
There is, however, an email from Sam Dearborn, sent after my visit to him, asking Ford to give him a call. Strange, since he already knew that Ford was dead. Reviewing the conversation in my head, though, I realize I never made my interest in Ford clear to Dearborn. A sign of my misgivings about the case? Perhaps.
The door opens down the hall.
I check my watch and call out: “I thought you were coming right back.”
Silence.
I wheel around in Brandon Ford’s chair, my hand moving to my holster.
“Don’t,” a voice says.
The only things visible in the doorframe are part of a man’s head-mostly hidden by a black balaclava, only an eye showing-and the barrel of a pump shotgun.
“Draw that gun and you’re dead,” he says.
My hand wants to move. My heart’s racing, my vision tunneling, my aim fixing on him. The voice in my head saying Go, go, go.
But he’s holding that shotgun steady, using cover like he knows what he’s doing. I will my hand to relax. I move it away from my side arm.
He leans further into the doorway. The fluorescents raise a shine on his synthetic mask.
“Stay calm,” he says. “Lift your hands. Put them flat on the desk in front of you.”
As he speaks, a second man crosses behind him and enters the room. He levels a black pistol in my face, circling to my left so as to leave the shotgun’s line of fire open. If I drew now, there’d be no way of taking them both, assuming I could beat the twelve-gauge in the first place, which is unlikely.
“I’m a cop,” I say.
“Do what I tell you and you’ll still be a cop when we walk out of here.”
“You’re in charge.”
“Good. Now, keep your hands flat on the desk, and without lifting them I want you to stand up. If you lift your hands, you’re dead.”