Power Play (22 page)

He walked up the steps with her to her second-floor apartment. It was a neat, no-nonsense place: sitting room, kitchen, bedroom. Everything tidy and clean. A slinky gray cat took one look at Jake and scampered into the kitchen.

Glynis went straight to the bedroom, pulling off her coat and letting it slip to the floor. She sat on the edge of the bed and curled into a fetal crouch and began quietly weeping again. Jake fidgeted in the sitting room, watching her through the open bedroom door, feeling helpless, useless.

He went into the bedroom, sat beside her, and put his arms around her.

“I loved him, Jake,” she sobbed. “He loved me. He was so gentle … so…” The rest was lost in tears.

He held her close and she buried her face in his shoulder. He wished that he could cry, that he could let all the remorse and loneliness inside him wash itself away.

Resting his cheek on her head he whispered, “It’s all right, Glyn. It’s all right. I know what it is to lose somebody you love. I know the pain.”

Jake realized he couldn’t leave her. Not like this. He held her close, felt her body shuddering from the sobs, held her until his arms ached. Until her crying finally stopped.

“I’ll stay here tonight,” he told her. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

Glynis looked up at him.

Jake got up and went to the sofa in the sitting room. It looked comfortable enough. Then Glynis came in and handed him a pillow and a nubby blue blanket with a crocheted edge.

“Thank you, Jake,” she said. “I … it’s good of you to stay.”

“Nothing to it,” he said, taking the blanket from her hands.

“I must look a mess,” she said. She turned and headed back to the bedroom. At the doorway she stopped. “The bathroom’s in here.”

Jake went in, did his business, and went back to the sitting room. Glynis was sitting on the bed, silent, lost in her thoughts.

As Jake sat on the sofa and began to take off his shoes she called from the bedroom, “Tomorrow we go to Vernon, remember.”

CAPTAIN PETER HARRAWAY

Captain Harraway was not pleased to see Jake again. Jake got the feeling that Harraway somehow blamed him for the double murder. But the Vernon police captain was stiffly polite toward Glynis, in a strictly professional manner.

Jake and Glynis sat before Captain Harraway’s desk, in the Vernon Police Department station house. The police captain was standing between his desk and a row of filing cabinets, looming over them like a dark mountain.

“It’s open and shut,” said Harraway to Glynis. “We found them in the living room. She was shot through the chest at point-blank range. Powder burns on her blouse. Then he shot himself through the right temple, scorched his hair.”

“Who found them?” Glynis asked. She was all business now; the tears and misery of the night before had been replaced by dry-eyed, iron-hard determination.

Harraway frowned at her. “What’s your interest here? Why’ve you come up here?”

“Ms. Colwyn worked directly with Professor Sinclair at the university,” Jake said before Glynis could reply. “Naturally, the administration wants to know as much as possible about the circumstances of Professor Sinclair’s death.” Then Jake added, “He had many friends among the faculty and students, you know.”

Harraway nodded minimally. “I guess he did.”

Glynis repeated, “Who found the bodies?”

“The cleaning woman. She came in in the morning and found them in the living room. She called us.”

Jake asked, “Where’d the gun come from?”

With a patient sigh, Harraway replied, “Apparently Mr. Sinclair bought it for his wife’s protection, several months ago. It’s registered in her name. Twenty-two caliber automatic. A woman’s gun.”

So it went, for nearly an hour. Harraway answered every question Glynis threw at him. He pulled photos of the dead bodies from a file drawer and spread them over his desk for Jake and Glynis to inspect.

“But why would he do this?” Glynis demanded. “Why would he drive up here and kill his wife and then himself?”

Harraway huffed like an old steam engine coming to a reluctant stop. Settling his bulk in his squeaking swivel chair, he clasped his massive hands together and stared at Glynis for a long moment. Jake thought he looked nettled, almost angry.

“I don’t like having strangers poking around in the town’s business,” he said.

Jake felt surprised. “The town’s business?”

“Mrs. Sinclair was one of this town’s most important citizens. We went out of our way to take care of her, to protect her.”

Yeah, Jake thought. Some protection.

“She had cancer,” Harraway said, so softly that Jake wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard correctly.

“Cancer?” Glynis asked.

“Inoperable. From what Dr. McGruder told me, she’d been on chemotherapy for more than two years, but it wasn’t working. She was going to die. In a lot of pain.”

“So Sinclair ended it for her,” Jake said.

“And himself.”

Jake turned to Glynis. “That’s the motivation.”

“I see,” she said. Abruptly, Glynis stood up. “Thank you, Captain Harraway. We appreciate your taking the time to talk with us.”

Harraway got up, too, slowly, like a tidal wave rising. “Just doing my job, Miss.”

Jake got to his feet and walked with Glynis out of the office, through the quietly busy station, and out onto the street where his Mustang was parked next to a Vernon police cruiser. It was bitingly cold, thin gray clouds hiding the sun.

He helped Glynis into the car, then went around and slid in behind the wheel.

It wasn’t until they were well out of town that Glynis hissed, “He’s lying through his teeth.”

“What?”

“Captain Harraway is a liar. Arlan didn’t shoot his wife. He couldn’t have. And he certainly didn’t kill himself.”

Jake kept his eyes on the highway, remembering Nacho Perez’s threat about icy roads and accidents. But he could hear the absolute certainty in Glynis’s voice.

“Don’t you think you might be a little biased about all this?” he asked.

“Why would Arlan buy a pistol for his wife? What did she need to be protected from? The whole town was watching out for her, from what you’ve told me.”

Jake had to admit, “Yeah, that’s true.”

“And how could Arlan shoot himself in the right temple? He was left-handed.”

“He was?”

“He was.”

Jake drove for more than a mile before he heard himself ask, “You think Harraway’s claim that Mrs. Sinclair had cancer was a lie?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Before Jake could think of anything more to say, Glynis told him, “We’ve got to get to this Dr. McGruder, whoever he is.”

THE BIG RIG

The weeks flew by. Jake hardly saw Glynis; she was grimly trying to track down Dr. Ernest McGruder. Apparently he no longer lived in Vernon, not even in the state. He’d been a general practitioner, not an oncologist, and had retired a few months earlier to Florida.

As spring approached, Tomlinson’s primary campaign swung into high gear. All the local radio stations were saturated with spot ads for him, as were the TV stations. Money talks, Jake thought, as Tomlinson pulled steadily ahead in the polls. Tomlinson’s father talked grimly about how much this campaign was costing him, but Jake knew that the family money was augmented heavily by contributions from the family’s wealthy friends. Amy complained that the mining and utilities industries “aren’t putting their money where their mouths are,” but Jake thought that finances were the least of Tomlinson’s worries.

The MHD concept was all but lost in the candidate’s new emphasis on women’s rights, although Tomlinson did hammer on the point that the best way to keep taxes low was to create more jobs in the state.

Jake saw plenty of Amy Wexler, but always with Tomlinson or others. There were a couple of occasions when he might have asked her to bed, but he found that he couldn’t. I’m not into sharing, he told himself. That didn’t help much during the long nights of late winter, alone in his apartment or some dingy motel on the campaign trail.

Harmon Dant had carved out an impressive challenge at first, but as February gave way to March and the April primary elections edged nearer, Tomlinson’s numbers climbed steadily. The analysts that Tomlinson’s father had hired claimed that Dant had a solid base among the far-right segment of the party, but Tomlinson was holding his own within the party and drawing most of the independents to him.

“It’s the women,” Amy crowed. “Keep smiling at them, Franklin. They’ll win this election for you.”

Jake didn’t know what was happening between Glynis and Tim Younger, but the long-duration tests at the big rig were gradually progressing. Seven hours without stopping. Then fifteen. Twenty-eight. Forty.

It was the last day of March when Jake returned to his office after his afternoon class just as his phone began to ring.

It was Amy. “Can you come with us to the big rig tomorrow afternoon?” Her voice sounded excited.

“What’s happening?”

“Franklin’s going to show the generator to Francis X. O’Brien!”

His brows nettling slightly, Jake asked, “Who’s Francis X. O’Brien?”

“He’s
merely
the chairman of the National Association of Electric Utilities,” Amy said, as if she were pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

“So they’ve agreed to come out for MHD.”

“They’ve agreed to come out and look,” Amy said, more guardedly. “But, Jake, if he speaks up in favor of MHD it’ll bring national recognition to Franklin! It’ll cinch the primary!”

“You think so?”

“Really!” she enthused. “Be at Bob Rogers’s office at noon tomorrow. We’ll have a picnic lunch on the way to Lignite.”

“I’ll be there.” As Jake hung up the phone he remembered Lev Cardwell’s advice:
Make the victim a party to the crime.
That’s what they’re doing: The electric utilities will benefit from MHD, so make them support us publicly. Make them a party to the crime.

*   *   *

Amy’s “we” turned out to be Tomlinson, Amy herself, one of the publicists from the campaign staff, Bob Rogers, and Francis X. O’Brien—with two of his own public relations men, all crammed into a monstrously long black stretch limousine.

The others were already in the limo when Jake crawled in behind Bob Rogers. Tomlinson introduced them both to O’Brien and ignored the man’s two PR aides and his own publicist.

Francis X. O’Brien was a tiny man, lean and narrow-jawed, with a hooked nose and a toothy smile. A rat’s face, Jake thought. His hair was so luxuriantly dark and perfectly coiffed that Jake thought it had to be a toupeé. It didn’t match the wrinkled, faded pallor of his face, nor his cold gray eyes. He had a reedy nasal voice with a flat midwestern accent. Jake got the feeling that despite his pasted-on smile, O’Brien probably had a volcanic temper. He wore a dark three-piece suit with a pale blue tie knotted perfectly. His two PR flacks were in identical dark suits, although their ties were striped burgundy and pearl gray, respectively.

Despite the limo’s size, Jake felt uncomfortable, wedged in between Rogers and Tomlinson’s publicity guy—who was in a suede sports jacket, not much different from the one Jake was wearing. Tomlinson and O’Brien sat on the rear bench, with Amy between them, showing plenty of leg in a mid-length slitted skirt.

Lunch was awkward. Amy asked the PR man sitting closest to the raised partition that sealed off the limo’s driver to hand her the wicker basket and plastic cooler that had been stowed by the partition. He passed it from one set of hands to another until they were resting at Amy’s feet. It was difficult to eat the sandwiches she pulled out of the basket without getting crumbs everywhere, despite the checkered paper napkins Amy handed out. The cooler was deposited between Jake and Rogers, and the men pulled out cans of beer and soft drinks.

One of O’Brien’s aides lifted a cut-glass tumbler and a decanter from the rack on the side of the limousine’s compartment. The other hauled out an ice bucket. Between them they poured a stiff shot of whiskey for O’Brien. They offered the same to Tomlinson, but he shook his head and asked for a beer, instead.

By the time they had rolled through the town of Lignite, Jake was swabbing his hands with a weird-smelling moist paper towelette and trying hard to suppress a burp.

They could hear the roar from the big rig even through the limo’s closed windows while they were still more than half a mile away from the test facility.

Rogers grinned and looked at his wristwatch. “Approaching seventy-five hours,” he said, beaming.

Francis X. O’Brien nodded vacantly.

Tomlinson said, “They’re aiming for a hundred hours of continuous operation.”

“At fifty megawatts,” Rogers added.

O’Brien nodded again.

Inside the test cell they all wore earphones as they crowded into the control booth. Tim Younger was all business; he barely shook hands with O’Brien and Tomlinson. From the strained expression on his face it looked clear to Jake that Tim regarded them as an interruption, tourists poking their noses into the very serious business of making the MHD generator run properly.

The trouble was, Jake quickly realized, that there was nothing much to see. The big rig was running smoothly and once the visitors had been shown the dials that indicated all was going well they quickly lost interest. When everything’s going right, it’s dull, Jake thought. Disasters are where the excitement is. After less than ten minutes Tomlinson led them all back outside again.

Younger looked relieved to see them go. Amy seemed subdued, almost worried.

Outside, it was cold despite the pale March sunshine. O’Brien made a beeline for the waiting limousine. Tomlinson trailed after him.

Once they were all jammed in and the limo started the long ride back to the city, O’Brien’s flacks poured him another shot of whiskey.

Tomlinson put on his best smile and asked, “Well, Mr. O’Brien, what do you think?”

O’Brien took a gulp of his drink. “Seems to be running all right.”

“The goal is one hundred hours of continuous operation,” Amy said, still sitting between the two men.

“At fifty megawatts,” Rogers added once again.