“There’s a good reason for that.”
“It’s fast, it’s crowded, it’s under ground and in a tight space. Four good reasons to try.”
Dr. Young thought about it. “You’ll need time. You will not be able to do it today. It will require planning, maybe a couple of trips down there. Can you afford another night or even two?”
“He couldn’t say. We might get additional help, though. He did say that.”
Lloyd wasn’t looking at the doctor when he said that, and he sounded neither reassuring, nor reassured. Dr. Young only nodded. He turned to us.
“We will stay at my place today,” he said. “It’s a short walk from here.”
”What was that about?” I asked.
“Mr. Freud is worried there might be dogs on your trail soon.”
“Dogs? It’s the thirties. Who uses dogs?”
“Come, come.” Dr. Young urged us out of the door into the empty nave. In a softer voice he added a ridiculous phrase, but something in the way he said it made me pretend I didn’t hear. The phrase was: “These are pooches you don’t want to meet, Mr. Whales.”
Chapter Ten
Brome didn’t like to admit it, but tying the fat cop in civvies and the marshal together was a good move. Punching the marshal’s image into the surveillance search was, of course, a no-brainer after that, but that first idea the two were one and the same had been sound. He might have come up with it himself if his head wasn’t full of static all the time. Or maybe not. Maybe Brighton really was better at it than he.
Shortly after they received the initial image, the car in the picture was identified, and the home team sent over the address. Brighton adjusted the course without interrupting his monologue. He had just finished a detailed explanation of how it all occurred to him and moved on to the new version of the crime.
“So this is how I see it,” he said. “Whales receives the draft notice. He’s off his meds. He panics. Calls his producer. Has a fight with his wife. He’s desperate. He comes home to be confronted by the two marshals. The first thing that comes to his mind is to pay the cops off. He offers something insane, a couple of million in cash, maybe. There are a few possibilities here for what happened next, but my version is: an argument ensues, it heats up, Whales pulls out a gun and shoots one of the marshals. The other one, Freud, agrees to take the money, though now Whales feels that he’s in too much trouble, and hires Freud to assist him in getting out of the city. He probably gives him a deposit. They split up and meet later at the gay bar. They escape through the stage — that bartender probably abetting, since I see no reason for either Whales or Freud to know about the secret door — and later, when Whales runs away from the cops at the service station, Freud covers his escape by shooting at the police.”
“And they come here, spending the night.”
He drove into a fenced courtyard. The building loomed before them like a gray ship with a sharp bow. A lone police officer stood guard at the door.
“And the girl? The car?” Brome asked.
“Belong together, I think. Knows either Freud or Whales. Probably Freud. Hard to imagine Whales having friends in this part of town.”
Brome thought that knowing someone wasn’t quite enough to give rides and lodging to the most wanted man in the country, but he said nothing. After all, she could have been paid, and he didn’t want to hear it from Brighton.
They went inside and spoke to tenants, all of whom were sleepy, despite it being noon. It was funny, Brome thought, how none of them saw anything, while in the suburb they’d just returned from, neighbors from five surrounding houses came out to give the federal agents detailed statements regarding Whales’s last visit to his ex-wife without being asked.
Still, they did manage to get the girl’s name from a very reluctant and apparently myopic gentleman in a tank top, but only due to Brighton’s intimidating glare.
“Scumbags,” Brighton said later, as they examined Iris’s apartment. “They hate to answer the questions, because, you know, we — the government — oppress them, but they’re too chickenshit not to answer. So they tell some truth, and get vague, and get stupid and add some bullshit and act like they don’t give a damn, so that they could tell themselves later that they fucked over the law.”
The man only had the girl’s first name, but that was more than their database was able to provide. The image from surveillance cameras matched nothing. Her apartment revealed little of its primary tenant, though they did find signs of recent occupancy by more than one person, and the crime scene techs got plenty of prints. The landlord did not have a copy of the lease. It was a pay monthly arrangement. In his books, such as they were, she was listed as Iris Smith. He assured them the name was provided by her.
The Honda was registered to a fellow named Emmanuel. The registration had not been renewed in four years, which coincided with the time Emmanuel had died of old age. The car was left for the tenants’ use. The keys hung on a nail in the kitchen.
They returned to the office at around three. The surveillance team was combing the morning’s footage for the right Civic. The picture of Lloyd Freud was transmitted to various law enforcement agencies and media outlets.
“I want every goddamn cop in the world to have those within the hour,” Brighton barked into the microphone, as though the person on the other end of the line was insolent enough to dispute his directives. Glancing at Brome, he shook his head in apparent exasperation.
Government agencies, including the Bureau, had the policy of not installing cameras in their phones. Protection, or something. Probably recommended by the Psycho Department, as well. When you got a call from the government, instead of a face, which not everyone possessed as impeccable and intimidating as Brighton, an emotionless, imposing seal glared at you from the screen. In this case, though, the face would work just fine.
“Good, so do it.” Brighton dropped the call and switched to the receptionist. “Give me Washington.”
While Brighton reported his progress to The Man, Brome browsed through the electronic file on the desk. It was a standard FBI dossier on Lloyd Freud. Brighton had passed it to him absently, busy as he was.
Flipping the pages, Brome skimmed through the multitude of data concerning the marshal’s life, starting from high school graduation. The information was sorted in chronological order within subdivisions: “Photos,” “Medical,” including copies of various lab test results and prescriptions, “Employment,” complete with resumes and pay stubs, “Personality,” and so on and so forth. Nothing unusual about it, either. “Family.” Parents deceased. Married one Linda Augusta Heisenstutter at the Church of the Illustrious Saints in Galena, Illinois on October the 23rd, 2015. Divorced, February 3rd, 2021. No children. No friends.
The next page referenced Freud’s military service. It caught Brome’s eye. Marine Corps. Two tours of duty in the Middle East. Honorably discharged… Two tours of duty, Brome read again, moving on after a brief pause. A note at the bottom of the page stood out.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (look “Medical,” pages M12-13.)
“Anything interesting?” Brighton inquired without interest.
“The guy has no present,” Brome replied, scrolling back to medical history.
“Probably no future, either.”
“Here’s something,” Brome said. “PTSD patient since 2020.”
“Post Traumatic Stress?”
“Two tours of duty in the Middle East some fifteen years ago.”
“I heard those were the worst days. The Guard?”
“The Marines.”
“Hmm. Got his doctor in there?”
“Yeah, I’m going to give him a call.”