7 - Rogue: Ike Schwartz Mystery 7 (4 page)

Chapter Six

Charlie Garland had been Ike’s friend for years. First, when Ike was a new recruit at the CIA, and later, after Ike’s wife died and he’d left the Company and buried himself in the Shenandoah Valley.
Dying
was an egregious understatement for what happened to Ike’s wife, Eloise, which remained a continuing sore point in Langley. Charlie still worked for the Company. He had an ambiguous job description no one dared question. Few people in the organization knew what he did, some suspected, the rest preferred to remain ignorant. By so doing they only had to guard their speech a bit more carefully than elsewhere. In the corridors of the gray building in Langley and in its numerous and anonymous satellites, candor did not always play well.

After visiting hours ended, and Ike had been ushered out of Ruth’s room, he returned to Charlie’s place and found him sitting in a battered Eames chair, a TV remote in his hand, but with the television screen blank.

“You didn’t have to wait up for me,” Ike tossed his raincoat on a deacon’s bench in the foyer. He sniffed. “Is that coffee?”

“It is, help yourself. It’s not that late and do not flatter yourself. As a rule I wait up for no one. But I do have more news.”

Ike poured a cup of coffee and collapsed in a chair. “What kind of news? Good, I hope. I could use some good news about now.”

“Pretty good, I think, certainly useful. On their own, or at the direction of the boss, I don’t know which, the techs in the communications department accessed the city’s tapes from the traffic surveillance cameras for last night. They found a bit of footage of the accident.”

“Where? How? Can I see it?”

“Easy. First I have to tell you it is very blurry, nighttime, and therefore dark, and remember also that it was raining so there is a lot of glare on the road from the lights— headlights, streetlights. It’s not much, but suggestive.”

He clicked the TV remote and pulled up My Computer on the menu. He scrolled through a half-dozen entries and clicked on one filed under “Today” and then “RH/Accident.” The street that Ike had photographed and paced off the night before appeared on the screen. Charlie was right, it was blurry and the reflected light from the rain-covered paving shimmered so that most of the detail was lost. Ike watched as his car appeared in the distance closely followed by a truck and, at a distance farther back, a few other vehicles. All of their headlights shone and from time to time glared out the camera. Then in the next split second, the truck sped up, pulled behind the Buick, swerved to the right and then to the left. Its front bumper caught the right rear of the car and spun it sideways. The truck bore down on the car’s side panel, accelerating it even as the tires on the car locked. Ruth had to be standing on the brakes. Stunned, he watched as the car, shoved by the truck, slued crosswise, jumped the curb, and crashed against the pole. The truck careened on down the street and out of sight. The whole played out soundlessly but Ike could almost hear the squeal of the brakes, the crunch of metal, the shattering of glass. The two men sat in silence for a moment.

“Ike, before you ask, no they could not lift the license plate number from the truck. Question, do you want us to send a copy of this to the Metro Police for review?”

“It can’t hurt, I suppose, but what will they do with it?”

“My guess, nothing much. We live in an age of severe budget cuts and short staffing. It has become a time, for example, when burglaries are handled by filling out a form with an inventory sheet of items stolen. You may or may not see your burglars caught and your stuff returned, but only if they happen to fence it to the wrong people. If police departments around the country were spread any thinner, they’d disappear. Will they have the time or personnel to track down the truck? Not likely.”

“Send it on, anyway. If the idiot who did that is caught, that is evidence, blurry as it is, and I’m on record as objecting to them having dropped this as a possible hit and run or worse.”

“I can do that. They will be annoyed you pushed, not your jurisdiction and all that, they will insist, but you’re right. Ruth’s accident should be an open case whether they want it to be or not.”

“It is clear to me, and should be to you, that it was no accident. That truck deliberately caught the rear of the car and then pushed her into that pole.’

“I have to admit it, you’re probably right. No accident. But who and why?”

“Run it again and stop when you get the best view of that truck. We’ll save a still of it. Who knows, we might just find it.”

Charlie ran the scene again, paused when the truck appeared, slow-clicked the scene until he found the clearest image of the truck, and saved it to a new file.

“What kind of vehicle is that?” he asked.

“It appears to be a standard-looking stake-body utility truck. I can’t be sure but my guess is a General Motors product.”

Ike opened his laptop and booted it up. He handed Charlie a new flash drive. “Save all that stuff on this and then point me to your scanner/copier.”

Charlie did and handed the drive back to Ike. “It’s in the corner of the dining area.” He pointed to the small room adjacent to the kitchen where what would have been a dinette table was buried in a mountain of paper.

“Next to you, Charlie, I am a neatnick.”

He found the device and spent the next half hour scanning the files from the forensics lab into his computer. He then moved them all to the flash drive with the accident video. He erased any trace of the copied files from his laptop and disconnected the thumb drive.

“Tomorrow, I will send this to Frank to transfer to his friends in the Highway Patrol. Maybe they can make something more from it.”

“You have a vicious hit and run, possibly premeditated. You suspected that all along. Again I ask, why?”

“I am a very suspicious person. You, or rather the people you work for, made me that way. The Company teaches that things are not to be accepted on the basis of how they appear on the surface, right?”

“Yes, but we’re not doing some field op in Herzegovina here, Ike.”

“No, we’re not. We are tucked up safely in the nation’s capitol where, as everyone knows, there are no intrigues, plots, plans, or malodorous conspiracies flourishing at either national, international, or personal levels. Let’s face it, only in this city, as far as I can determine, does the necessity of using a gun to steal characterize lower-class criminals. The upper-class ones don’t need them. They use power and influence instead and are probably responsible for more mayhem than the ones with the guns. We call those guys congressmen. Give me a break, Charlie.”

“Okay, okay, you win. I just don’t want to see you bogged down in some kind of quixotic quest. I know you’re angry and…but you do have a life, and Ruth will pull through. Don’t you think it would be better to concentrate on that for now and look for the driver of that truck later when you’re calmer?”

“You’re right, no doubt about it, but I can’t be anything more than what I am, Charlie. I have to do something or I will go crazy. I will pursue this until it dead-ends. I need to know if this is just random violence in spite of what we’ve seen, or a deliberate attempt to hurt Ruth. I need—”

“You need to be occupied or, as you say, you will go crazy.”

“Something like that, yes.”

“You think it was Ruth? What about someone wanting to hurt you? Had you thought of that?”

“Me? You mean like before? No, I hadn’t. That opens a whole new can, doesn’t it? Either way, I won’t know unless and until I find the idiot behind the wheel of that truck.”

Chapter Seven

When Ike woke the next morning Charlie had already left for work. He showered and hurriedly dressed. He found a half-filled coffee pot, reheated a cup in the microwave, made some toast, and settled in to eat what would pass for his breakfast while he made some phone calls. He knew he needed to answer his father’s dozen or so attempts to reach him and he had to contact Frank with the data on his flash drive. His father, he knew, had become an early riser. “When you achieve your promised three score and ten,” he’d said, “much as you might wish it otherwise, the Good Lord don’t need you to sleep late no more.” Ike had replied that he was in no hurry to test that assumption.

Abe answered on the first ring. Apparently he’d been waiting for the call. “Ike, how’re you making out? You need anything? I don’t know the crowd up there in Washington like I used to, all them young Turks coming into government nowadays, but I maybe could make a call or two.”

“Thanks. I think everything that can be done is being managed here. Now it’s a matter of wait and see. So, were you able to handle the Rotary Club okay?”

“Oh yeah. Shoot, those are votes you got in your pocket anyway, but I have to tell you the other fellah is sure making a push out at the university. Faculty types mostly.”

“I’m not surprised. I am much too politically incorrect for that crowd and I think they don’t like the fact that Ruth and I…” Ike’s voice faltered.

“Yeah, well, can’t do anything about either of them things. But you need to get back here quick as you can. This election could be close.”

“Pop, right now the election is on the bottom of my to-do list. I have good evidence that Ruth’s smash-up wasn’t an accident. I intend to focus on that for now. The election will have to take care of itself.”

“Well, okay. You know I thought you should be looking at something bigger than sheriff but still, I hate losing.”

“You’re not running, you can’t lose.”

“I’m managing. I’m working at it and you’re my son. If Ike Schwartz loses, Abe Schwartz loses. That’s the way it is in politics. You ought to know that.”

“You’re right, I ought to. I’m sorry but it can’t be helped. I have bigger fish to fry right at the moment.”

Ike said his goodbyes, adding a “Say hello to Dolly,” Abe’s recent bride, and booted up his laptop. He inserted the flash drive with the crash scene data and then called Frank Sutherlin.

“Ike. How are you?”

“I’m managing, Frank, thank you. I have some data that I thought you might shoot over to your friends at the Highway Patrol. Shall I attach it as an e-mail or what? I am learning this computer business but it’s still a steep learning curve for me. Some of the files are video, some are text.”

“How about I put Grace on the phone and she can walk you through it. When you’re done, Essie wants to say hi, and I need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay. Let me have Grace.”

Grace White had joined the Sheriff’s Office during the summer. She was a transplant from Maine and the art of manipulating computers and all the bits and pieces involved turned out to be one of her more useful talents. She did not possess anywhere near the skills her predecessor, Samantha Ryder, but she was good enough to fill the needs of a country police operation. She walked him through the steps necessary to transfer the data from the flash drive to the Department’s mainframe. When she finished she turned the phone over to Essie Sutherlin.

“Ike, holy cow, are you okay? How’s Miz Harris? Lord, we’ve been praying. Well, me and Billy’s Ma have been praying. Billy ain’t too strong on talking to God, but I’m working on that. We are all so worried. Are you going to be alright?”

“Too many questions in one sentence, Essie, but Ruth’s condition remains unchanged, but stable. I’m as fine as can be expected. A word of advice—you and Billy keep each other safe, you hear?”

“You bet. I guess we forget sometimes, don’t we?”

“Forget?”

“You don’t get no extended warrantee with your birth certificate, do you?”

“No, none, and thanks for asking. What does Frank want to talk about?”

“Oh that. Well, seems like we got ourselves a murder here in town. We can handle it, no problem. You just sit tight up there and take care of your lady.”

Frank came back on the line. “Well, you heard it. I thought you’d want to know. We will process this one. No need for you to get involved.”

“Who was murdered?”

“Not sure it qualifies as a murder, Ike. Essie notwithstanding, it’s a suspicious death as of the moment. One of the maintenance workers up at the college. His co-workers found him in the cab of one of the school’s mini-vans. Motor running, garden hose from the exhaust pipe in the window, looks like a suicide.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“It could be, of course, but there’s no suicide note, and he had a nasty contusion on the back of his head. As I said, suspicious.”

“Stay on it, Frank. Your instincts are usually pretty good. If it looks suspicious to you, there must be something to it.”

“Okay. I’ll get on the data you sent off to the Highway Patrol lab today and let you know what they say ASAP. I reckon we should wipe this from the office computer when we’re done. You have all of the originals, I assume.”

“I do, so do that, yes.”

“I know it’s too soon to ask, but do you have any idea when you’ll be back?”

“I can’t say just now. I have to talk to the doctor and then we’ll see what happens next.”

“Take your time. We have everything under control. Oh, by the way, I almost forgot. Doctor Fiske’s secretary called. She said that Fiske was concerned and all that and wanted your cell phone number. I told him we didn’t give out personal numbers but if he’d leave his, I’d have you call him.”

“That’s Fiske as in the Acting President of Callend?”

“That’s the one. He wanted to check on Ruth. I guess that’s pretty normal.”

“I suppose so. Tell him, if he calls again, what I just told you and that I’ll call the university when I have some real news.”

Ike hung up and stared at his laptop. He tried and failed to conjure up an accurate face for Scott Fiske. Aside from being tallish, fair-haired, almost an art nouveau throwback look, all he could remember about Fiske was that Ruth had some questions about him. He couldn’t remember what they were at the moment. He might later. His absentminded musings were displaced by what transpired on the computer screen. A colleague from another jurisdiction that he’d met at a local police conference the previous year had given him a screen saver. He’d installed it out of curiosity and left it there out of laziness. It depicted a series of chase scenes from actual police footage, including the famous O.J. Simpson in a white Bronco caravanning through Los Angeles. He rarely watched the whole sequence because he either switched to an application or turned the computer off. At the moment he watched fascinated as a police car from somewhere in the Midwest, in pursuit of some baddie or other, pulled to the car’s right rear, hooked the bumper, and put it into a spin. Like Ruth’s vehicle the night of the accident, it slued sideways. Only this cop did not proceed to ram it as the truck had done to Ruth, and there was no utility pole for it to slam into.

That particular classic maneuver by a police chase car is learned by law enforcement officers on the job. Could an amateur, someone not experienced with it, have done it? Ike guessed not. Whoever smacked Ruth’s car that night knew what he was doing. That implied he or she had been, or still served, in a law enforcement capacity somewhere.

What had Charlie said last night?

“How about hurting you? Had you thought of that?”

Could he have misunderstood the message? Who would want him out of the way, and why? It wouldn’t be the first time.