“You mean like the ‘Mission Impossible’ team?”
“Nothing so perfectly orchestrated as all that. No, I’ve never burned a tape in my life.” He smiled then and it was an attractive smile, Sherlock thought. He was a handsome man, well built, took care of himself. A bit younger than her father, but not much. Ah, but his eyes. They were filled with bleak, dark shadows, with secrets huddled deep, and there was pain there as well, pain there for so very long that it was now a part of him, burrowed deep. He was a complex man, but most important, he was alone, so very alone-now she saw that clearly-and he was afraid of something that went as deep as his soul. She didn’t think that being a Shadow Man was the reason for all that bleakness in his eyes.
She said, “It sounds like cloak-and-dagger stuff, sir, like it should have gone out of business when the Cold War ended.”
Thomas said, “Perhaps there’s a bit of cloak-and-dagger still in the mix. Actually, before the end of the Cold War things were a lot simpler. We knew the enemy. We knew exactly how the enemy operated, what to expect. However, now the projects we’re involved in are rarely so clean, so splendidly satisfying and clear-cut as that ‘Mission Impossible’ TV show.
“In my area, there is rarely an obvious and clean line between us and the bad guys, although Saddam and Qaddafi look like they’re going to be long-timers. An enemy of yesterday is a confederate of today. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true.
“This is more true today, of course. So many petty tyrants and greedy despots who want to rule, if not the world, then a larger portion of it than they do currently. China is the giant fist, more frightening than the USSR ever was. So many people, so many natural resources, such endless potential. Somehow we have to deal with all of them.”
Thomas looked off over Sherlock’s left shoulder, seeing into the past, into the future, she didn’t know. Then he said quietly, “There are always failures, mistakes, lives lost needlessly. But we try, Mrs. Savich. More often than not, thank God, we do succeed and perhaps make the world a bit safer. For the most part we’re not allowed to be nice people, so your husband is smart not to trust me. However, this is something entirely different. This isn’t business. This is entirely personal. I need help badly.”
She lowered her head and began weaving a packet of Equal through her fingers. Finally, she looked straight at him, picked up her iced tea glass, raised it toward him, and said, “Why don’t you call me Sherlock.”
Thomas clicked his glass to hers. Somehow, he knew, she and her husband had communicated, had agreed to hear him out. “Sherlock. It is a charming name. It goes very well with Savich.”
Savich sat forward then. “Let’s cut to the chase, Mr. Matlock. We give you our word that nothing you tell us today will go beyond this booth. We will accept the possibility of a conflict of interest, at least for the moment.”
Thomas felt the same sort of loosening in his gut that he’d felt when Adam had told him he’d already begun to protect Becca. He smiled at the two of them and said, “Why don’t you call me Thomas.”
13
Sheriff Gaffney said, “Well now, what we got was an anonymous tip, Mr. Carruthers.”
“That’s rather odd, don’t you think, Sheriff?” Adam had his arms folded over his chest and was leaning against Jacob Marley’s screened front porch. Sheriff Gaffney looked tired, he thought, a bit pasty in the face. He wanted to tell the sheriff to lose fifty pounds and start walking the treadmill.
“No, sir, not odd at all. Folk don’t like to get involved. They’d rather tattle in secret than come smartly forward and tell you what they know. Sometimes, truth be told, folk are just shits, Mr. Carruthers.”
That was true enough, Adam thought. “You said the girl’s name is Melissa Katzen?”
“That’s right. It was a woman with a real whispery voice who said it was Melissa. She didn’t want to tell who she was. She said everyone believed at the time that Melissa was going to elope right after high school graduation. So when she up and was just gone, everyone figured she’d done it. But she thinks now, what with the skeleton, that Melissa didn’t go anywhere.”
“Who was the boyfriend?” Adam asked.
“No one knew, since Melissa wouldn’t tell anyone. Her folks didn’t know what to think after she was gone. They didn’t know about any elopement talk, came as a shock to them. I’m thinking that maybe one of Melissa’s family called in this tip, or a friend and that friend is afraid she’s in danger if she tells us who she is. Now, if that skeleton is Melissa Katzen, then she didn’t elope. She stayed right here and got herself murdered.”
“Maybe,” Becca said, “she decided she didn’t want to elope after all and the boy killed her.”
“Could be,” said Sheriff Gaffney, shaking his head. “A bad way to end up.”
He got no argument.
The sheriff adjusted his thick leather belt that was digging into his belly and said on a sigh, “As the years passed, most folk just forgot about her, figured she was in another state with six kids now. And maybe she is. We’ll find out. We’re talking to all the people who remember her, went to school with her, things like that.”
“You don’t have any idea who called this in, Sheriff?”
“Nope. Mrs. Ella took the call, said it sounded like someone with a doughnut in her mouth. Mrs. Ella believes it’s a relative, or a chicken-shit friend.”
“You’ll do DNA tests now?”
“As soon as we can locate Melissa’s parents and see if they have anything of hers we could use to get her DNA to match against what they have in the bones. It’s going to take a while. Science-all this newfangled stuff-it’s all iffy as far as I’m concerned. Just look at how poor O.J. was nearly sent away because of all that flaky so-called DNA evidence. But the jury was smart. They didn’t believe any of that stuff for a minute. Well, it’s something to do. We’ll know in a couple of weeks.”
“Sheriff,” Becca said mildly, “DNA is the most scientifically solid tool that law enforcement has going for it today. It’s not flaky at all. It will clear innocent people and, hopefully, in most cases, put monsters in jail.”
“So you think, Ms. Powell, but you force me to tell you that yours is an Uninformed Opinion. Mrs. Ella doesn’t like all this fancy stuff, either. But she thinks it’s real possible that the skeleton is poor little Melissa, even though she remembers Melissa as being all sorts of shy and sweet and so quiet you’d have thought her a little ghost. Who’d want to kill a sweet kid like that? Even old Jacob Marley, who didn’t like anybody.”
Adam shook his head. “I don’t know, Sheriff. I go for the boyfriend. Hey, at least there’s something to go on now. Won’t you come in?”
“Nah. I just wanted to fill in you and Ms. Powell. I gotta go talk to the power company, hear they accidentally cut a sewage pipe. That’d be no good. You pray the wind doesn’t blow in this direction. Now, Mr. Carruthers, you going to hang around with Ms. Powell much longer?”
“Oh yeah,” Adam said easily, looking over at Becca, who hadn’t said a single word since Sheriff Gaffney, button sewn back on, bemoaned poor O.J.’s treatment. “She’s still real jittery, Sheriff, jumps whenever there’s a sound in this old house. You know how women are-so sensitive it makes a man want to coddle them until the sun’s shining again.”
“That was well said, Mr. Carruthers. We got us one of our perfect summer days. Just smell the air. All salty ocean and wildflowers, and that sun smell. Nothing like it.
“Ah, here’s Tyler and little Sam. Good morning. Just running down possibilities on Ms. Powell’s skeleton. Could have been Melissa Katzen. Don’t suppose you disguised your voice like a woman’s and called in the tip?”