Chuck Billings was next and Justin had to put his emotions aside. He needed to be objective here, and the fact that Chuck had been his friend was irrelevant to the investigation. So he narrowed his known information about Chuck to this: the head of the Providence bomb squad had a meeting with someone from the FBI the day he was killed. He had anticipated danger because he’d sent Justin all his notes on the Harper’s bombing for safekeeping. Chuck suspected that the first bombing wasn’t a suicide bombing-and the key information was the sound of the cell phone ringing. Chuck believed the FBI was covering up the truth. He had a meeting scheduled with Wanda Chinkle for the day after he died. Justin closed his eyes, reached into his brain to see if he could come up with anything else of importance, but he didn’t think there were any more key facts. So, in the far right column, for the things he needed to know, he wrote:
“Who did Chuck meet with the day he died?”
and
“Read his notebook again.”
and
“If not suicide bombing, who made the cell phone call to detonate the bomb?”
and
“Sound of cell phone at La Cucina?”
and
“Jacks-were they found at the La Cucina bombing? How can signature be used to identify suspect?”
There were two names left. First was Martin Heffernan. Known info: “Works for FAA. Probably responsible for murdering Hutch Cooke.” Under “Need to Know,” Justin wrote, “Who was his direct boss? Who gave him the order to kill Cooke? Why was he killed-to stop him from talking?”
The final name was Ray Lockhardt. Justin kept his notes brief for Ray. What he knew was: “Shot at point-blank range. Threatened by Heffernan in name of FAA. Knew that Cooke was murdered by rigging plane.” In the far right column, he wrote, “Who killed him?” then “Why was he killed?” After that, he hesitated, held his pen in the air, frozen, and finally wrote, “Because I fucked up.”
Justin put the pen down on the desk, went to the computer, and began tapping at the keyboard to enter his list. He didn’t do this just because he liked things neat and clean-although he did; his life might be chaotic and raw but he preferred his investigations to have all their edges rounded off and smooth-but rather because he found that when he transferred his notes, when he typed, he usually found something new to add to the equation. Just one more step in the thinking process. He’d been doing it long enough, and successfully enough, that he knew the process wasn’t always rational. Subliminal thoughts crept in, and, while he didn’t always know what they meant or why he was asking the questions he asked, he trusted those instincts. And he trusted his questions. It was a lot like doing a crossword puzzle, Justin always thought. You could stare and stare at a clue and draw a total blank on the answer. Then you could put the puzzle aside, take a nap, do anything to keep from thinking about the specifics, and you’d pick it back up again later, look at the same clue, and the answer would be right there. It was hard to stop the brain from working once it latched onto something. He knew that well. It was why he drank so much and kept a nice little cache of grass at all times. Sometimes he needed his brain to stop working. Sometimes he had to stop it from working.
Sure enough, his ritualized process was successful again. Sitting at Jimmy’s old desk, Justin wound up typing in several new entries. By Ray Lockhardt’s name, he added that he’d been shot with a.38. He also added a notation: “Killed between 7 and 8 P.M., same night as La Cucina bombing.” When he put in the information about Bradford Collins, he realized that people murdered other people for three basic reasons: passion, money, and protection. With Collins, it was fairly safe to rule out the first category-a jilted lover might shoot someone, but blow up a roomful of strangers? — but the last two could be valid. So he added: “Money?” and then: “What did he know? What could he tell? Who could he hurt?” For Cooke, he typed in: “Where was he going? Where had he come from?” And then: “Passenger?” and “Cargo?” and, thinking back to Chuck Billings’s notes, “Connection to Semtex?”
He ran the cursor back over to Bradford Collins’s name, let it linger there for a moment, waiting for the thought he knew was going to emerge. It did and he threw his hands up, wondering why he hadn’t thought of this before. He quickly went online, went to the New York Times Web site, because he knew they’d kept a running track of the bombing victims, and ran down the list of all those known to be killed at Harper’s. There were a few names he recognized, Jimmy Leggett’s among them. When he came to Jimmy’s listing he almost did a double take. Jimmy’s death already seemed disconnected from what he was investigating, and for a moment Justin was actually surprised to see it there, but then he realized that he was only making this list because Marjorie had asked him to find out what had happened to her husband. He shivered involuntarily, yet again surprised at the brain’s ability to make wounds that seem so raw recede into the background, then he kept scrolling through the names. He didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but whatever it was wasn’t there. He saw the name of a local contractor he knew, a big guy with a bad temper who once, while installing storm windows in Justin’s East End house, had taken a swing at Justin after listening to a complaint about some of the workmanship. Justin hadn’t taken kindly to the contractor’s attempt to remove his head from his neck. While the guy was off balance after Justin ducked his punch, Justin grabbed a lamp and used it in one swift and compact motion to break the contractor’s nose. There was a lot of blood and a lot of swearing, neither of which had particularly bothered Justin. Nor did it bother him to find out the guy was now dead. Justin was not big on grudges. But on the other hand, he found no real reason to grieve over assholes.
Going through the rest of the names, Justin saw an array of businessmen and — women who had died that day, none of whom seemed overtly connected to Bradford Collins in any relevant way. There was a writer whom Justin had heard of but had never read, a literary agent who’d been visiting from London, the comptroller for the City of New York, whom the Times praised lavishly, a yoga teacher, a gourmet caterer, busboys, waiters, hostesses. A lot of innocent people who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there was no one who jumped out at Justin as useful to his investigation. So he went offline, switched back to the word processing program and his list, and under “Need to Know” he wrote, “Who was Brad Collins having lunch with?” And that sparked one more thing, so he scrolled down to Martin Heffernan’s name and wrote the same thing: “Who was he meeting at La Cucina?”
He’d had it. He could tell his brain was turning off, so he clicked on the print option, heard the quiet whirr of the printer preparing to do its work, and he sat at what was now his desk, his hands cupped together, his head resting on the edges of his fingers. As the two-page document printed, Justin breathed deeply, letting his mind go blank, allowing his instincts to tell him where to start, what to do first. When he decided, he nodded a firm, crisp nod, pleased with the decision, and as he reached over to pick up his notes he was surprised to find that Reggie Bokkenheuser was standing in front of his desk, looking at him with the faintest curl of a smile on her lips.