There were just the two of us. All the clamor of the cops and the emergency team and the crowd had faded, leaving just me and Hawkins. He’d listened to my accusations without moving but now he was facing me again. And smiling.
‘I hope you invite me to be in the room when you pitch your conspiracy theory to somebody. I want to watch their faces as your story gets wilder and wilder.’
‘It’s happened before. A group of billionaires plotted a coup to seize control of our government and get rid of FDR.’
‘Good. A history lesson. That’ll make your presentation even better. And I happen to know about that attempted coup, by the way. I’m a history buff. They weren’t very good at it. They needed to involve key generals and bungled it. But if you make a study of what they did then you can learn from their mistakes and not make those mistakes again. And today you have more generals who might be interested. Generals who don’t like what’s happened to this country.’ Something in my expression must have alarmed him; he was saying too much. ‘But that’s all theoretical. And crazy.’
He opened the car door now. ‘I’m due at the police station.’ The smile was back. ‘Maybe you can start with them — with Hammell, maybe. I’m told he likes a good story. And you’ve got a good one. It’d make a helluva good movie, in fact.’
He started his car, gave me a kind of half-salute and drove away. This time with a tiny smirk and look of superiority and mischief on his long, New-Englander face.
I was walking back to the Jeep where Jane was waiting when my cell phone interrupted my scattered thoughts. I connected to hear Ben’s voice. ‘Where are you?’
‘At the motel where Ruskin was killed.’
‘So it is Ruskin. Sonofabitch. I had something like that in the back of my mind. All we’re getting from TV is that there was trouble at this motel. Maybe a homicide. I’m at the senator’s. Naturally, we were curious. I doubt a town this size gets many murders. Is this something that could help us?’
‘Yes. But I don’t want to go into it on the phone.’
‘That’s all right. We want you to come out here anyway.’
‘See you soon.’
‘I saw you talking to Hawkins,’ Jane said when I got into the driver’s seat. ‘Any luck?’
‘He claims self-defense.’
‘Of course. Think he can get away with it?’
‘With Ruskin’s reputation for going armed and waving guns in people’s faces, Hawkins should have an easy go. Especially with no witnesses. Then there’s Ruskin drugging the bodyguard you got him.’
‘Oh, sure. In a trial the jury would see how unbalanced Ruskin was the day he was killed. And he was armed.’
‘Exactly. And Sarah herself told me that he ran out the door away from Hawkins. Hawkins is a federal investigator. He has a right to detain him and ask questions.’
‘Slick.’
‘How about going out to Robert’s with me?’
‘Fine.’
I was glad to get away from it all. I still didn’t have any warm feelings for the little prick but I was sorry for Sarah.
And speaking of Sarah...
Just as we were starting to pull out of the parking lot Detective Farnsworth appeared in my headlights, waving his arms for me to stop.
‘What the hell,’ I said, hitting the brakes.
He strode over to my Jeep. I had the window down waiting for him. When he leaned over and looked in, he said, ‘Evening, Jane.’ But he didn’t wait for a response. ‘Conrad, I’m going to pull my car around here so you can talk to Sarah. I promised her I’d set it up. I want to calm her down. I actually like her; that’s why I agreed. I don’t know what she saw in a scumbag like Ruskin.’
So Farnsworth was on our side after all. I pushed my luck. ‘Are you sure yet that Hawkins was justified in killing Ruskin?’
Surprise played on his face, then curiosity. ‘You have any particular reason to say that?’
‘No witnesses. Anything could have happened.’
‘You’re getting ahead of yourself, Conrad. We’ve got a whole investigation to go before we make any judgments. But he’s an investigator for a US Attorney and he had a right to find Ruskin and to ask him questions. Ruskin was a clown but he always made a big deal of carrying a gun and being so good with it.’
Between the lines of those sentences were two words: ‘Case closed.’
‘So wait here. You can get in the backseat with her. ’Night, Jane.’
‘’Night, William.’
After he was gone, I said, ‘See how fast he bought my story about how Hawkins maybe killed Ruskin in cold blood.’
She snapped her fingers. ‘Like that. You’ll get tired of telling your story, Dev.’
‘How about you? Do you believe it?’
‘I don’t not believe it. I’d like to learn more about it. You know, do the due diligence.’
‘Now there’s a vote of confidence.’ But I was smiling when I said it.
Farnsworth’s unmarked car pulled around and parked about fifteen feet from my Jeep. He pulled the emergency brake on and stepped outside.
‘Tell Sarah I said hello,’ Jane said.
‘Will do.’
I got out and walked over to Farnsworth.
‘Ten minutes. Detective Hammell is waiting for us.’
I nodded and walked to the door. As I slid in I saw that Sarah was huddled in the opposite corner as if she was trying to hide. I’d expected tears and panic. Maybe she’d run out of both.
After I had slammed the door and sat there for an interminable silent minute — I wondered if she’d gone into some kind of shock — she said, in a voice I barely recognized as hers, ‘He lied and exaggerated so much it was hard to know what was real sometimes. Until last night when somebody shot at him, I didn’t really believe any of this. And even then—’ For the first time she really looked at me; for the first time her eyes showed the warmth I usually found there. ‘It’s a terrible thing to admit, Dev, but when we were at the hospital I half wondered if he’d set this all up. You know, hired somebody to shoot at him. Every once in a while he’d do things that got him “press” as he always called it. Usually a few months before he had a book coming out or before he was giving a big speech somewhere. He knew how to promote himself. But this wasn’t one of those times.’ No tears, not even now. ‘So I’m alone and I don’t have any idea what to do, Dev. In a weird way I always thought of us as one person. He hated me saying that. We’d have big fights about it. Especially if he was having one of his little affairs. But I really do feel like half of me is gone now.’
‘You’re a whole person, Sarah. And a good person.’ I moved much closer to her.
‘They’re going to be rough on me, aren’t they? The police and the press, I mean.’
‘I doubt the police will be. I never read any of his books but I saw him say on TV one night that he never gave you the details about any of his activities. That he was the only one who knew them. That you only found out what they were after they’d happened. I think the police will believe that sooner than later. But the press is another matter. They’ll be after you for a couple of years. So will the supermarket tabloids and a few of the papers of note. Some people will write books about him. And you. And they’ll make up outlandish stories that the American press will take as fact. There’ll be absolutely no evidence whatsoever for them. But the people who write them will make a lot of money doing it. And now it’s fact quote unquote. So you can expect stories like that somewhere along the line about Howard.’