And then boom, out of the blue, this FBI agent Barry Jenkins calls up and asks if he’d like to watch the interrogation of the private investigator, the grandstander who was refusing to name the source.
“Why me?” he asked, then wanted to kick himself. That wasn’t the comeback of a natural-born winner, all grateful and pathetic. Why me? He should have asked for the time and place, said he’d be there.
Jenkins, to his credit, didn’t bust balls. “I’m sort of the unofficial liaison on the Youssef matter. Collins at DEA told me you’d been challenging the, um, received wisdom on the murder before any of this broke. I asked your boss, and she said she could spare you on this.”
“Sure.” Trying now for the cool, hard-as-nails stoicism that he should have shown from the start. So Collins didn’t think he was a faggot after all. “I could fit it in.”
“We’re just going to watch, mind you. The state people don’t want us breathing down their necks. They want our help, but they want to run the show.”
“I’ve been thinking about this,” Gabe had said. “If Youssef is a kidnapping victim-”
“Who said that?”
“That’s my theory. It all goes to the E-ZPass, what I told Collins. I don’t think Youssef was at the wheel of his vehicle when it passed through the toll on its way south, but he wasn’t dead yet either, so it’s a kidnapping charge, which makes it a federal case even if you don’t know he’s a U.S. attorney-”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, young’un.” The guy actually said “young’un,” as if he were John Wayne and Gabe was some kid, Ron Howard in The Shootist or one of those boys from the movie about the cattle drive.
But that was okay. Those boys came through for the Duke in the end, proved they were men. And now Gabe was here in the Howard County public safety building, arms folded, eyes squinted, staring through the one-way glass at what appeared to be a remarkably average woman. She had wavy, almost shoulder-length hair that begged to be shaped and styled in some way, light hazel eyes, and a nice shape if you liked that buxom type, which Gabe usually did. Her voice was low, her words clipped, although Gabe sensed that this was not her natural way of speaking. With each question she glanced sideways at her lawyer, an old geezer in a wheelchair. Ironside and Perry Mason, all rolled into one. It was unclear why they made eye contact each time, as the lawyer didn’t seem to signal her in any way, didn’t so much as shake his head yes or no. She looked at him, then said, over and over again, “I’m sorry, but I consider that information confidential.” Gabe didn’t get that. She had volunteered to come in, presumably to cooperate. What was this shit?
“You have no standing to assert privilege,” the Howard County assistant state attorney reminded Tess.
“I’m not saying it’s privileged. I’m saying I made a promise, a binding oral contract. Breaking it would make me liable to civil action, which would be ruinous to my business. I literally can’t afford to tell you what you want to know.”
“And this promise is more important to you than solving the murder of an officer of the court?”
“Let me remind you,” Tyner put in, “that my client has already shown her willingness to do her civic duty by getting her source to share his-or her-information with reporters. It’s up to investigators to use this information as they wish.”
“A newspaper article is no substitute for a true criminal investigation. There are unanswered questions.”
“Such as?”
“The source didn’t name who provided the ATM card.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Tyner said. “Given that I was not present for the interview, I can’t speak to that.”
“She was present.”
“That hasn’t been established for the record,” Tyner said.
“Were you present?”
“Not for the entirety of the interview.” Tess had made the food run.
Detective Howard Johnson could not hide his exasperation. Tess didn’t blame him. Semantic games pissed her off, too. “Did the source tell the reporters who gave him the ATM card?”
“Or her.”
“Excuse me?”
“Him or her,” Tess said. “I’ve never put a gender to the source, nor did the reporters. I’d like to establish that for the record.”
Detective Johnson picked up a piece of paper. “The purchases-the Nikes, the North Face-they were men’s, according to the receipts.”
“I buy men’s shirts at the Gap,” Tess said. “I’m wearing one right now. At any rate, I’m not going to answer questions that imply the gender of the source is known.”
“Okay. Did he or she identify the person who gave him or her the ATM card?”
“Not to me.”
Tess was walking a very fine line here. Lloyd had not identified the source of the card at the time of the interview. But he had told Crow yesterday, prompting their flight. She didn’t know the name, but she knew it was gettable. All one had to do was look at who had been killed late Monday or early Tuesday-something that Tess had steadfastly avoided. With so many secrets to protect, a little genuine ignorance was bliss.
Poor redheaded Howard Johnson was beginning to sweat. “Your source is protecting a killer, which makes him-”
“Him or her,” Tess said.
“Him or her an accessory. Which means you are obstructing justice.”
“Charge her with that and we’ll proceed from there,” Tyner said. “Until then it’s an empty threat.”
“The source knew nothing about the murder of Gregory Youssef. The source believed the whole incident to be some kind of low-level scam. But-” Tess looked at Tyner. They had spent much of the morning trying to decide if they should share the new information that Crow had provided, brainstorming every ramification and possibility. It was hard to know sometimes how a piece of information would land. To Tess it was obvious that the murder buttressed her position. But it might not appear that way to the detectives and attorneys. “I do have some new information. New to me.”
She was aware of the anticipation in the room, the hope that she would tell them something significant, the worry that she was setting them up for the anticlimax.
“I still don’t know the name of my source’s contact. But I do know that the contact is dead.”
“Dead?”
“Homicide.”
“Who? When? How could you know this?”
“As I said, I don’t know his name. But I can give you some information about my source’s contact.”
Detective Howard Johnson leaned forward.
“The victim was one of the city’s sixty-some homicide victims since the beginning of the year. So you have a finite universe of cases to examine.”
“We will put you in front of the grand jury,” the detective said, his temper beyond lost. “We will hold you in contempt. We will let you sit in the detention center until you get over yourself and stop this stupid shit.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Tess said. “But the person I’m protecting honestly believes this to be a matter of life or death. Someone has already been killed. We don’t know for certain that it’s connected to the Youssef case, but it’s a possibility we have to consider.”
“Only, the person who was killed wasn’t in protective custody,” Johnson pointed out. “Your source would be a lot safer, coming to us.”
“You think? There’s a tradition of dead witnesses in Baltimore that belies your confidence. Besides, even though I could tell you who my client is, if I were so inclined, I can’t tell you where the client is. The source has created his-or her-own brand of protective custody. Has left the area and has no plans to return for the time being.”