Glass Tiger (15 page)

He heard a key in the front door lock and turned just as Jewel came from the rear of the house carrying an ornate silver tray with a plate of shortbread cookies and a silver coffee urn and Meissen cups and saucers on it.

‘Here’s Nate now!’ She talked in exclamation points.

Nate Bemel was a slight gentle-faced man in his sixties, six inches shorter than his wife, wearing an expensive wool suit, conservative tie, and gleaming shoes. Jewel briefly hugged him.

‘Nate, this is Mr…’ She trailed off. ‘Oh dear, I didn’t even get your name!’

‘Brendan Thorne.’

‘Mr. Thorne is from the FBI. They’re finally doing something about Nisa’s death!’ She turned to Thorne. ‘Don’t think I’m callous, we liked Damon. But he just rode her coattails! Rode her coattails.’

Thorne and Nate shook hands. When they were all seated and coffee had been poured, Thorne made an almost placating gesture.

‘I hope my coming here today doesn’t raise false hopes. We are still investigating their deaths, but the case is ongoing so I can’t really…’

‘Can’t talk about it.’ Nate gave little bird-like nods of his head, a sweet smile illuminating his face. ‘Just what I tell the authorities when they come around asking questions
about my patients. I don’t keep notes of my sessions, so I tell them, Go get a court order, and we’ll talk again. They never do. Verbal reports without written back-up are hearsay. When you go to a shrink you should get confidentiality.’

Unless the FBI invokes National Security, Thorne thought. Then even the shrink didn’t get confidentiality.

He said, ‘How did you and Nisa meet, Mrs. Bem… Jewel?’

‘She was running Gus Wallberg’s campaign for governor—’

‘Hardly running it, Jewel love.’

‘Well, she was too! In everything except title! I was publicity director for Dayton’s, Minneapolis, and she was looking for contributions to Gus’s campaign. We hit it off right away!’

‘Jewel raised a lot of money for the governor,’ Nate said fondly. ‘She knows how to work public companies for donations.’

Jewel gave a wide-open laugh. ‘I grew up on a ranch in Texas, and got my fill of the outdoors early on! The only wide-open space I like is the main floor at Nieman-Marcus. Hiking is what you do between Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor!’

‘Have you spoken with Nisa’s dad?’ asked Nate, doing Thorne’s work for him. ‘We met him only once, but we liked him a lot and sort of hoped he’d come to see us here after they were murdered. But…’ He shrugged.

‘That’s actually one of the questions I came to ask, where is Mr. Corwin? Also, although I don’t have a court order, I’m hoping you might be willing to let me see any diaries, notebooks, memos, calendars, things like that – anything Nisa kept when she worked on the president’s election campaign. I’m sure the other special agents took most of it away with them, but—’

‘They took nothing! Just asked a few questions and left!’

Even though Johnny Doyle had given him the probable answer, Thorne wanted their take on a final question.

‘Do you know why Nisa didn’t join Wallberg’s campaign at first, then signed on just before he was nominated?’

‘She wanted to get pregnant,’ said Jewel promptly. ‘She felt the clock was ticking! But Damon had a low sperm count, and wouldn’t hear of artificial insemination. So she went back to the campaign. Just couldn’t stay away from politics!’

Nate started to remonstrate, ‘Jewel, that’s just—’

‘That’s what she told me. And what difference does it make now, anyway? They’re both dead.’

‘Did you notice anything in her papers that might—’

‘Oh, we never looked at them!’ said Jewel. ‘Just too sad!’

‘They’re in my workroom in the garage,’ said Nate. ‘I restore antique clocks as a hobby.’ He gestured at the man-high clock in the corner. ‘A work of art, that one. Pine-faced grandfather, roller-pinion, eight-day wooden movement. American, not German. Early American clockworks were made of wood because they couldn’t get iron, and the brass industry hadn’t started yet.’ Again that shy, sweet smile that Thorne had come to find endearing. Nate got carefully out of his chair. ‘Come on, I’ll give you those papers.’ He added almost wistully, ‘You can fix a damaged clock a lot easier than you can a damaged psyche.’

‘Just too sad!’ exclaimed Jewel Bemel.

Nisa had not kept a diary as such, but Thorne found her notebook had served much the same function: shopping lists, notes to herself, strategies for Wallberg’s campaign all jumbled together. There was also a manila folder with two pages of hand-written notes confirming that she had helped Corwin look for the shooter. Thorne went there first.

As Thorne had surmised, Corwin had dug slugs out of the spruce from the sighting-in of the shooter’s rifle. Then he had found eight spent cartridge cases at the ambush site up on the hillside that Thorne had uncovered the day before. He took the brass to a hand-loader for analysis and anything distinctive, then canvassed Portage for info on the shooter.

On February 25th, the day after the first Democratic primary in New Hampshire, Corwin learned at the
Portage airfield that All-Weather Charter Tours of Robbinsdale had flown in a man on the day he had been shot, had flown him back out after dark.

Corwin talked to the ex-bush pilot who owned All-Weather. The Portage client’s name was Hopkins and he had paid with a credit card from Primary Power, Inc.

Gerard Hopkins? As in Gerard Manley Hopkins, the poet? Thorne thought, reading the notes, an obvious ringer. But Corwin dismissed Hopkins out of hand. Corwin hadn’t seen or spoken with Wallberg for forty years, why would anyone attached to Wallberg’s campaign want to kill him? But Nisa wasn’t giving up. Somebody thought that killing Corwin was the way to money, power and leverage if Wallberg became president. And why had he come disguised, unless he was known in Portage from before the shooting? Corwin finally agreed to try and get the number the man had called from Dutch’s Tavern, but Dutch didn’t have it.

The last entry in her slim folder was made by Nisa on her return from what must have been her final stay at Corwin’s cabin.

The first, the bush pilot, had a check-mark beside it. All-Weather Tours. Been there, done that.

Next, drama costume houses. Try to find where the shooter bought the mustache and goatee. No check mark.

Last, shooting ranges. Someone probably had coached the shooter, not knowing what he was planning. No check mark.

Mather fit on all counts. He was not ex-military, would have been an amateur, would have needed a disguise – no matter what Hernild said, he had to have been known in Portage. But in their search for the shooter, it never occurred to either Nisa or Corwin that the man they sought might be Nisa’s husband.

Frustrated, Thorne put the folder aside and turned to her pocketbook-size notebook. Shopping lists, appointments, ideas for Wallberg’s campaign strategies to give to her husband since she was not with the entourage. The ideas looked extremely sound to Thorne. Then, among voluminous political notes on Wallberg’s Florida win, a note handwritten, underlined, in caps: OH MY GOD! IT’S DAMON!!!

Finally! Two solid FACTS in a morass of speculation.

One. Damon Mather was indeed the shooter.

Two. Until this entry, Nisa had no idea that he was.

The following entries started almost three months later, shortly before the Democratic convention chose Wallberg as their presidential candidate. Once again they were totally political in nature: Nisa had thrown herself into the camapign.

Not a word about Corwin. Not a word about how she reacted to her husband’s guilt, or about how she had discovered it. Obviously, she had let Mather know she had found him out: the day after the OH MY GOD! IT’S DAMON!!! notebook entry he had bought the .357 Magnum. Just as obviously, she had not told Corwin that
it was Mather who tried to kill him. If she had, she would not have been killed along with Damon. Maybe. Perhaps.

Which left Thorne out of the loop, reporting his movements to a man who hated his guts for reasons really not clear, and being lied to besides. Well, the first thing you learned as a Ranger scout/sniper was to always give yourself a back door. He got a cab and told the driver to take him downtown.

The Oasis was a no-frills drinkers’ joint, the back-bar mirror clouded, the usual stale beer smell mixed with stale smoke, the varnish worn down to the bare wood along the rolled edge of the bar where drinkers had rested their forearms and elbows. A backwards neon Bud Light sign was in the front window; a faded HAMM’S, THE BEER REFRESHING! banner was scrolled along the top of the backbar. The TV above the bar showed an NBA elimination game with the sound turned down.

From a quick look around, Thorne knew that none of the three drinkers was the kind of man he was looking for. But then the door opened, outside light laying someone’s entering shadow across the front of the bar. This man was a definite prospect. Thorne immediately took a stool and laid down a twenty.

‘Shot and a beer,’ he said to the bartender.

In the mirror he watched the newcomer look around appraisingly. Then he sidled up beside Thorne as the bartender came back with Thorne’s beer and shot.

‘Benny the Boozer,’ the bartender said to Thorne in a flat voice, and left.

Benny eyed Thorne’s shot, licked his lips. Borderline alcoholic but not yet homeless. Fifty-five, maybe, with a too-lined face and a tattered gray cardigan three sizes too big. Vietnam vet, tiny military disability pension,
sleeping in the back seat of a beater or in a rented room somewhere.

‘How goes the battle, Benny?’

‘I lost.’

Thorne slid his untouched shot Benny’s way. Benny’s hand shook picking it up. He drank. Thorne gestured for another.

Benny cast him a shrewd eye. ‘Why?’

‘I know a Vietnam vet down on his luck when I see one.’

Benny laid the second shot down. His hand no longer shook.

‘First Combat Infantry Division. We saw some shit.’

‘The Big Red One,’ Thorne agreed. He slid off his stool, leaving his beer and the twenty. ‘I’m hungry. You coming?’

They sat at the high counter in a gleaming, white-tile, glass and chrome White Castle, Thorne drinking coffee and Benny gobbling little yellow-wrapped hamburgers. Finally Benny leaned back and belched with his mouth open. His teeth were bad. His eyes were not so far back in his head.

‘So whadda ya want? My fair white body?’

‘Your wallet.’

‘You think I got the crown jools in there?’ But he took out the worn leather and flopped it almost defiantly on the counter. Thorne fingered through it, took what he wanted, held the items up for Benny’s appraisal, gave the wallet back.

‘You can get replacements.’ He laid two hundred-dollar bills on the counter. ‘This’ll buy you a couple months rent, groceries. Maybe even let you get off the sauce. Who knows?’

He shook Benny’s hand and walked out into the night.

Benny, staring after him, said softly, ‘Who knows indeed?’

Thorne made one more stop, at a bank’s all-night teller machine to start what he had decided would be his daily routine: drawing out his debit card’s maximum daily amount of cash for the moneybelt around his waist. His back door should he need one.

After clearing airport security at 7:15 a.m., he stopped at a bank of payphones before going on to the gate for his flight to D.C. A tinny computer-generated voice gave him the long-distance charges. He shoved coins into the slot. The phone was picked up on the second ring.

‘Doctor’s office.’

‘You’re up bright and early, Ingrid. This is Thorne.’

‘Oh. You.’ Her tone was scolding, but with a hint of amusement. ‘He’s free, but don’t keep him too long. He’s got to go make house calls at eight o’clock.’

After a pause, Hernild’s voice came on. ‘The bad penny.’

‘I know Corwin was living in his cabin until you warned him off the night before I went out there. I need to ask you—’

‘I don’t know where he went.’

‘I know. I need to ask you why he sold the cabin and took off. I know Mather shot him. I know he killed Mather and Nisa. Now he plans to kill the president of the United States. I can’t let that happen. Can you help me out on any of this?’

‘Apart from Ingrid, Hal Corwin is the best friend I’ve ever had.’ A long silence. ‘Okay, he told me he couldn’t get the phone number the shooter called from Dutch’s payphone. But being the old country doctor type, I could. It was an unlisted Minneapolis number. I told Hal. The next day he sold the cabin and left for good.’

‘Why did you think it was for good? He came back.’

‘Because he took his bearskin. Old John, the Indian who trained him to be a hunter and woodsman, gave it to him when he was a kid.’ Corwin’s mentor, as Morengaru was Thorne’s. ‘When I saw it was gone, I called the number.’ Another pause. ‘Nisa answered. I hope I don’t live to regret this.’

‘Nisa didn’t,’ said Thorne, irritated, and hung up.

All the work and time he would have been saved if Hernild had told him this the first time they had talked! Hernild had known all along that Mather was the shooter. Mather had called Nisa after shooting her father, using her as an alibi – ‘Hi, honey, I’ll be home late…’

A betrayal. Despite it, she had sided with him. In June, Corwin got Nisa’s unlisted number from Hernild. He left Portage the next day, obviously thinking it was for good. But then he kept stewing about it. Mather shooting him, Nisa hiding that fact from him. Then five months later, in the Delta, he murdered them both.