Bennett stared at her but said nothing. He appeared to have cut himself shaving.
“The informant shot Joe, and Joe shot him before he died,” she said. “You’re sticking to that story?”
“Those are the facts.”
Mary let it go for the moment. The waiter came and handed them menus. Mary put hers down. Threadgill’s stock-in-trade was down-home cooking: fried chicken, catfish, collard greens. She and Joe always ordered the same thing: chicken fried steak. She grabbed a biscuit out of the basket and spread a dollop of honey butter across it. It no longer mattered if she fit into the LBD.
Bennett set down his menu. “How can I help?” he asked.
“I’d like you to take a look at my phone,” said Mary. “If you’re still interested, that is.”
“That won’t be necessary,” answered Bennett.
“For you or for me? I’m asking a favor.”
“I can’t extend the Bureau’s services to a civilian.”
“I didn’t leave the message. My husband did-minutes before he was killed in the line of duty. I’d think you’d be damned interested.”
“I’m sorry, Mary, but the Bureau cannot assist you.”
“Cannot or will not?”
Bennett leaned closer. “Mary, your husband died twenty hours ago. The Bureau extends its condolences. I’m happy to talk to you about his final pay package, insurance, and all benefits due to you and your family. But that’s all. Now go home. Be with your daughters. Grieve.”
“You’re not telling me what happened,” Mary said.
“The incident is closed.”
Mary took the front page of the morning paper from her purse and unfolded it on the table, turning it so that it faced Bennett. “I looked at this for a long time. Right away I knew something was wrong, but it took me a while to figure out just what. You see, Don, you said the informant got in the car and neither of them got out. But look, there he is on the ground. Fine-I’ll let that go. Maybe a question of semantics, you picking the wrong words. But tell me this: when exactly did the informant shoot Joe? Was it when he was already outside the car? Did his first shot miss and take out the windshield, or did he fire again after Joe shot him? See all that blood on the sheet by his head? I’d say the informant’s first shot had to hit Joe, because he sure as shit didn’t shoot him after Joe shot him in the head. I’m asking because yesterday at the hospital, the surgeon, Dr. Alexander, said that Joe was shot point-blank and that the bullet severed his spinal cord. The informant isn’t anywhere near to point-blank, and Joe couldn’t have pulled the trigger once he was shot. Joe would have called that ‘a problem of chronology.’ So tell me again, Don, what happened out there?”
Bennett said nothing.
“I’m waiting,” Mary said.
“Please, Mary.”
“Don’t ‘please’ me.” Mary pushed her phone across the table. “Are you afraid of what you might hear?”
Bennett blinked, his eyes holding hers, avoiding the phone. “Anything else I can help you with?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Who exactly called 911? If Joe was all alone out there in Dripping Springs, it seems to me that no one would have found him for hours. No backup, right? That’s what you said. But the EMTs got there twenty minutes after he was shot.”
“The investigation is closed.”
“Yours, maybe.”
Bennett rose from the booth. “Are we done here?”
“No,” said Mary. “Not by a long shot.”
14
Don Bennett, age forty-eight, twenty-three-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, special agent in charge of the Austin residency, former navy corpsman, winner of the Bronze Star, veteran of the first Gulf War, rabid Cowboys fan, lover of Elvis Presley, and father of five, stood in the blazing sun, phone to his ear, asking himself what he was going to say.
It was a few minutes past one in the afternoon, and Bennett was drunk. He’d waited for Mary Grant to pull out of the lot, then marched back into the restaurant, ordered a Jack on the rocks, and drunk it down in a single draft. Then he did it again. The alcohol did little to quiet his mind. Mary Grant’s questions were his own, if more crudely put. He possessed information she did not. He had answers to her questions. Some…not all…but enough to trouble his obedient self.
Bennett gazed up at the sky. It was white with heat, the sun a blinding abstraction. He asked himself the question again, the question he knew his master would ask, and he had his answer. Bennett considered himself a fine judge of character. He recognized a fighter when he saw one. A scrapper. Mary Grant was the kind of person who did something just because you told her she couldn’t, the kind who’d continue even if it brought harm to herself. It was not the answer he desired, but it was the truth.
The phone rang a third time.
Bennett was a fighter, too, he reminded himself. A scrapper. He’d made it out of situations his brethren had not. Still, there were rules, and rules had to be followed. He believed in the chain of command and in obedience to your superiors. He’d built his life on doing as he was told. It was a successful life. A happy life. There was no reason to change now.
“Yes, Don,” his master answered.
“She’s asking questions.”
“You couldn’t convince her otherwise?”
“She doesn’t buy the official version. He called her before the incident. Apparently he knew something was up.”
“What did he say?”
“I’m not sure. He left her a message, but she deleted it. She asked for our help to retrieve it. I declined.”
“Best we didn’t know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you keep your mouth shut?”
“I did.”
“Of course you did,” said his master. “You’re a reliable man, Don. I appreciate that.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“One last question…”
“Sir?”
“Will she be a bother?”
There it was. The question he’d seen coming. It would be easy to lie. But Don Bennett followed orders. He believed in the chain of command.
“Will she continue to ask questions?” his master repeated.
“Yes, sir. I believe she won’t stop until she finds out the truth.”
A lengthy pause followed. Bennett could sense his master’s anxiety, and it quickly became his own. “Sir?” said Bennett.
“That’s all, Don. Take the rest of the day off. See the family. Consider it an order.”
Bennett hung up.
There was truth and there was honor. He had never known them to war with each other.
15
It worked.
Ian stood in the center of his office, feeling the perspiration dry on his forehead. His nerves were gratifyingly becalmed. His heart had stopped doing the quickstep. Titan’s cacophonous clatter was a distant memory.
“It worked.”
He turned over the words in his mouth like a piece of candy. The maximum internal temperature recorded at the peak of Titan’s frenzied, divinely ordered calculations-when each and every one of the machine’s 50,000 CPUs and GPUs had been pressed to their limit, straining to solve one of the world’s most complex equations, and in reaction generating their own “cybersweat” in the form of radiated heat-was 206° Fahrenheit, fifty degrees lower than previously measured.
Ian walked to his desk and sat down in his chair. He sat solemnly, aware of the occasion.
It worked.
Two words that unlocked the future…and might unlock the past.
His assistant’s voice came over the speakerphone. “Mr. Briggs to see you. You have calls from Mr. Roarke in New York and from Ms. Taggart in Hollywood. You need to leave in fifteen minutes to make it to your meeting downtown.”