“Assuming that you’re telling us the truth—and I think you are, even if we’re not getting all of it—then the killer’s somebody from here in Madison,” Parker said. “Got to Green inside of an hour.”
Jake scrubbed at his hair with the palms of his hands, then said, “That doesn’t seem right. That just doesn’t seem right. But that’s what happened.”
“Have you figured out how it went down in Green’s office?” Jake asked.
Novatny frowned. “We think the killers were professional—nobody heard any shots, but the shots were probably fired from a .22. Those are not so quiet, so it must have been silenced.”
“How do you know it was a .22?”
“Took a slug out of a wall,” Parker said. “The base was intact, looks like a .22.”
“Could be a .22 mag. The damage was pretty big,” Novatny said.
“They were executed, then,” Jake said.
Novatny brightened: “Not exactly. We think that the secretary tried to resist, tried to fight them off, went after somebody with her nails. She got some skin and a little blood, so we’ve got DNA. If we can find the guy, we can nail him.”
“And Green . . .”
“He took it right in the back of the head. He was executed. We think the secretary tried to resist, that’s when she lost her shoes, got her hands on someone, and Green just stood there and boom.”
“What now?” Jake asked.
Novatny got a tape recorder, read Jake his rights, and got him to repeat the statement. Jake did, but insisted that most of what he said, other than the basics about Bowe’s sexuality and the cancer revelation, was speculation. “I just want out of this,” he said. “I’m a research guy, not a cop. I just want out.”
Novatny talked to the Madison chief, but didn’t tell Jake the outcome. They did cut Jake loose, at seven o’clock. “Are you going back to D.C.?” Novatny asked.
“Yes. But first, I’m going to check into a hotel and get some sleep,” Jake said. “I’m really screwed up.”
“One thing,” Novatny said. “Do not go back to Madison Bowe. She’s going to be a critical witness. Don’t mess with her.”
“Believe me. All I want is out,” Jake said.
Jake walked down to State Street, through a couple of alleys, in and out the back of a pizza place, and found a phone near the restrooms in a sports bar and called Johnson Black, Madison’s lawyer. He got lucky, made the connection, talked to Black for a moment, then ordered a beer at the bar and stood next to the phone. Madison called him back twenty minutes later from a phone in an M Street lounge. “Listen to me,” he said. “There’s been a disaster.”
He told her about it, then said, “So the feds are going to come to you. You confirm the homosexual angle and you tell them why you didn’t want that made public—that you were pushing the investigation into Goodman, and were afraid the homosexual angle would end it. You tell them that sexuality is a private matter, and you had no reason to think that it was involved in Lincoln’s death. You tell them that you had no idea that there was a setup . . .”
“I didn’t,” she said. “But now you’re telling me . . . I caused this girl’s death somehow. If I hadn’t sent you there . . .”
“You didn’t cause her death,” Jake said. “Somebody else did. You can’t anticipate the outcome of everything you do; you can go crazy trying. Somebody else killed them, not you.”
“But if I hadn’t sent you . . .”
“Madison, get a grip. It’s really critical right now. If you’re going to feel guilty, feel guilty about something you actually did.”
“But you don’t know . . .”
“Tell me later,” Jake said. “Not on the phone . . . Has anything happened there that I should know about? Is anybody pushing you?”
“One thing, but . . . ah, jeez, I can’t keep the girl out of my head.”
“Focus, goddamnit. What happened?”
“I talked to Howard, I confronted him. He killed Linc, but it was essentially a suicide. Linc had already taken an overdose. He claims that Schmidt is in Thailand, working as a bartender. That Schmidt is obsessed by brown hookers. Those are Howard’s words. He says that they can bring him back anytime they need to.”
“Ah, jeez. Listen, stay away from Barber. Stay away from him. He’s about to become the eye of a hurricane. He might be involved here . . .”
“Jake . . .”
“Tell the truth, but don’t tell them about the package,” Jake said. “Not yet. Just omit it. Don’t tell them what Barber said. And don’t tell them about this call. This never happened.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got to think. Listen, call me tomorrow, on my cell phone, from a public phone. At noon. If anything’s happened, I’ll let you know then. I can’t call you, because if there’s an investigation, they’re going to pull the phone records to see who was talking to whom.”
Off the line, Jake walked back to his car, found a Sheraton hotel, checked in, and began working Green’s cell phone. He’d been talking about a woman who had the package, and had automatically taken the cell phone out of his pocket, as though her number was there.
The phone was unfamiliar, but it took him only a minute to figure out the menu system. The call log showed one outgoing call after Jake’s arrival, lasting twenty-four minutes. The call was to the 715 area code.
Jake found a Yellow Pages in the closet, checked area codes. The 715 code covered most of the north half of Wisconsin. Now for the three-number prefix after the area code.
He signed on to the hotel’s wireless service, went out on the Net, found a listing for Wisconsin prefixes. The three-number prefix was in Eau Claire. He checked an online map: Eau Claire was probably three hours away by car. If the killers had gotten a name, somebody in Eau Claire might already be dead. In fact, if the killers had gotten either the phone number or the name, that person almost surely was dead . . .
He didn’t want to use the FBI search service to find the name behind the number; that could be tracked back to him.
But . . .
He lay on the bed, covered his eyes with his forearm, tried to think about it. If the killers had threatened Green and his secretary to get information on the package, did the killers get the information and then do the killing? Is that why the girl resisted, attacked a gun with her fingernails? Maybe she saw the bullet coming . . .
But if they’d killed the secretary to force the information from Green, there wouldn’t have been any percentage in giving it to them, because Green would have known at that point that he was doomed.
So maybe the killers didn’t have a name . . .
He needed to know whom Green had called without leaving obvious tracks. A thought popped into his head: the public library. Could it be that easy? He went back online, looking for an address of the local public library. When he found it, on the library website, he also found a list of telephone references available online. He worked through the menu, tracking the number: and found it. The Eau Claire number went to a Sarah Levine. He checked another directory and had an address. He said her name aloud, tripping a memory: “Sarah Levine, Sarah Levine . . .”
Lion Nerve. He picked up a pen, crossed out letters. He had Levine, plus o-n-r. Ron Levine.
Back online, using his government access to Social Security records. Ran Ronald Levine against ITEM: Got an immediate hit. Ronald Levine worked for ITEM for seventeen years. Retired, started collecting Social Security, then showed a change-in-status. He checked: Levine had died.