He hangs up when he sees Win, bolts up from his desk, blurts out, “Dammit, boy!” and hugs him the way men hug, more backslapping than anything else. “Sit, sit! I can’t believe it. Tell me what the hell’s going on.” He shuts the door, pulls a chair close. “I send you to Tennessee, best damn forensic training facility on the planet, right up your alley. Then what? What the hell you doing back up here and what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“You sent me?” Win sits, puzzled. “Thought it was Lamont. Thought it was her brilliant brainstorm to send me to the Academy, maybe so she could have me handy to work a small-town case, as she views it, that would make all us big-city folks up here look good.”
Huber pauses, as if considering what he’s going to say next, then, “You just killed somebody, Win. Let’s don’t talk politics.”
“I killed somebody because of politics. Politics are why I was ordered back up here to have dinner with her, Jessie.”
“I understand.”
“I’m glad somebody does.”
“You’re very angry.”
“I’m being used. Given nothing to work with. Can’t even find the damn case file.”
“Looks like you and me share the same opinion of this At Risk mess she’s gotten us into,” Huber says.
“I thought it was the governor’s initiative, that she’s just the quarterback. That’s how it was explained….”
“Yes and no,” Huber interrupts, leaning forward in his chair, lowering his voice. “This is all about her. She cooked it up, suggested it to Crawley, convinced him it would make the Commonwealth, make him look good. She might get most valuable player, but he’s the team owner, right? Not hard to talk a governor, especially Crawley, into something like this — you know how out of touch governors can be when it comes to minutiae. What do you mean you can’t find the case file?”
“Just what I said. The Finlay police case file — gone. Lost in space.”
Huber gets a disgusted look on his face, almost rolls his eyes, mutters, “Jesus, wouldn’t you suppose she would have had it sent to her office?” He picks up the phone, dials, glances up at him, adds, “Before she dragged you into this?”
“She says…” Win starts to reply.
“Hey,” Huber says to the person who answers the phone. “I got Win Garano here with me. The Finlay case file. You ever see it?” A pause, then Huber stares at Win, says, “No big surprise. Thanks,” and hangs up.
“What?” Win asks, a bad feeling fluttering in his stomach.
“Toby says he got it weeks ago, put it on Lamont’s desk.”
“She told me she’s never seen it. Knoxville PD’s never seen it, either. How ’bout giving me Toby’s phone number.”
Did Lamont lie? Did she lose the file? Did somebody take it before she ever saw it?
“Politics, my boy.” Huber is saying. “Maybe dirty politics,” he emphasizes with an ominous look in his eyes, writes down a phone number, hands it to him. “When she first told me about At Risk, I was emphatic she should never have talked Crawley into it and should try to talk him out of it. Any crime, any time. Jesus. What? We start doing DNA testing on every unsolved violent crime since the Great Flood? Meanwhile, we’ve got a backlog of some five hundred cases. Real cases with real people out there raping, killing.”
“I’m not sure I understand why you would send me to Knoxville.” Win can’t get past that, feels shaky, a little dazed.
“Thought I was doing you a service. Great place and great on your résumé.”
“I know you’ve always looked out for me… but it just seems coincidental I’m down there and then…”
“Look. It’s coincidental to a point,” Huber says. “Lamont was determined to work an old case that wasn’t local. You happened to be in Tennessee, Win, and happened to be the investigator she wanted involved.”
“What if I hadn’t been in Tennessee?”
“She would have found some other old case in some other distant town and probably loaned you out one way or another. You know, us enlightened New Englanders to the rescue,” he adds sarcastically. “Send in the Yankee troops from the land of MIT and Harvard. Easy to bury, too, right? If things don’t go so well down there in some quaint little Southern town, eventually — maybe even by election time — everyone up here forgets about it. Lot harder to bury some cold-case homicide that might have happened in Massachusetts, right?”
“Probably.”
Huber leans back in his chair, adds, “I hear you’re the star down there at the Academy.”
Win doesn’t reply, his thoughts stuck in multiple places. He’s sweating under his suit, a cold sweat.
“Your future, Win. I don’t think you want to work for her the rest of your life or run around all hours of the day and night working misdemeanor murders, one scumbag killing another. Not to mention the money. I sure as hell got tired of it. Training. The best. Grooming. You’re so damn talented. I’m thinking you’ll be replacing me as lab director when I retire, and I’m counting the days. All depending on the powers to be, who the governor is.” He gets a knowing look on his face. “You following me?”
Win isn’t following much. Stays silent, has a feeling about Huber. One he’s never felt before.
“You trust me?”
“Always have,” Win replies.
“You trust me now?” Huber says, his face very serious.
Win won’t go there, says, “Trust you enough to spend my mental-health day with you, Jessie. That’s the way we do things here in the land of Oz when we kill somebody on the job. How ’bout it?”
“I’m not in the stress unit anymore, my good friend. You know that.”
“Doesn’t matter. And you know that. I’m declaring this an official counseling session with the experienced counselor of my choice. Anybody inquires, I just had my mental-health day. Go on, ask me how I feel.”
“Tell me.”
“Regretful that deadly force was necessary,” Win mechanically recites. “All broken up about it, can’t sleep. Did everything I could to stop him, but he left me no choice. It’s tragic. Just a kid, maybe he could have been rehabilitated, added something positive to society.”
Huber stares at him for a long moment, then, “I’m gonna throw up.”
“All right then. Grateful he didn’t kill Lamont. Or me. Angry the worthless piece of shit did this to her, to me. Glad he’s dead so he doesn’t sue me. You mind if I borrow Rake for a little while?” Win holds up the envelope, the back of it sealed with yellow evidence tape initialed by him. “Maybe try out her ESDA magic box or that fancy image-enhancement software you just got or both on a letter? Reminds me, any prints on the money, the thousand dollars in Baptista’s pocket?”
“Already ran them in IAFIS. Nothing.” Huber gets up, goes back behind his desk, sits in his swivel chair.
“You got any thoughts about it?” Win then says. “Robbery gone bad or something else?”
Huber hesitates, says, “Enemies? The list is long, Win. I think by now you’re seeing the scary truth for yourself, and I’d be very careful what you tell her, what you ask her, very, very careful. A shame. A damn shame, because you know what? She wasn’t like that when she got started, was a real ballbuster, took down a lot of dirtbags, had my respect. Let’s just put it this way, the word ethics probably isn’t in her fancy vocabulary anymore.”
“I thought the two of you were buddies. Here she’s doing this little favor for your son.”
“Right, buddies.” He smiles ruefully. “In this business, never let people know what you really think of them. She certainly has no clue what Toby really thinks of her.”