Smoke Screen

CHAPTER 18

HE WASN’T LATE, BUT HE WAS AMONG THE LAST TO SLIP into the funeral home chapel before the service began. The entire left side had been reserved for policemen, and every seat was occupied. The other side was filled to capacity with civilians.

Raley stood against the back wall, along with dozens of others who’d arrived too late to get a seat. Hymns were piped through invisible speakers, but the service was more secular than religious. Indeed, if Jay had had a spiritual conviction of any kind, Raley was unaware of it. Raley had been required by his parents to attend church with them regularly. Jay had always ribbed him about it.

Familiar scriptures were read from both the Old and New Testaments, and the Protestant chaplain of the police department said a prayer. But most of the service was given over to eulogies that extolled Jay’s virtues and wit, his commitment to law enforcement, and of course, his heroism on the day of the police station fire.

The overriding theme of each speech was that the police department and the community as a whole had been robbed of one of their finest members and that the world was severely diminished by Jay Burgess’s departure from it.

One of the last and most touching eulogies was written by Judge Cassandra Mellors. It was read by the funeral director in her absence. Pressing matters and professional obligations prevented her from attending the service, he explained, and she deeply regretted not being there to express, in person, her affection for Jay Burgess and sorrow over his passing and the unfortunate circumstances surrounding it.

Ever since his arrival, Raley had been scanning the sea of heads looking for Candy. It was sorely disappointing to learn that she wasn’t there and that he wouldn’t have an opportunity to reestablish contact with her face-to-face.

Naturally he wouldn’t have broached the subject of the fire. Nor would he have mentioned Britt. Candy would be under the misconception that Britt was a fugitive from justice. But if it became necessary later on to seek Candy’s help, a prior personal meeting would have made it less awkward to contact her after such a long absence.

At the conclusion of the service, everyone stood. A bagpiper played “Amazing Grace” as the casket was carried up the center aisle and out the wide doors to the waiting hearse. Burial was to be private, with only Jay’s surviving kin-a smattering of cousins and one uncle-in attendance. Once the coffin had cleared the door, the congregation was ushered out by funeral home staff, a row at a time, starting with the first rows and working backward.

Among the first up the aisle was Cobb Fordyce, walking arm in arm with an attractive woman whom Raley assumed was his wife. Both wore stoic, solemn expressions, the standard visage of dignitaries at funerals. If the attorney general picked Raley out in the crowd, he gave no sign of it.

But George McGowan did. He wasn’t far behind Fordyce, and when he saw Raley, he did a double take and came to a dead stop, causing Miranda to look at him with consternation. His father-in-law, coming up behind him, gave him a slight push.

George averted his head and continued up the aisle and out the doors. Not wanting George to get away, Raley flouted protocol, maneuvered his way through the crowd along the back wall, and fell in with those who were exiting.

It was a hot, airless afternoon, heavy with humidity. Men not dressed in police uniform were discarding their suit jackets as they stood in groups, talking. A few were lighting up cigarettes. No one was really looking toward the hearse, but everyone was respectfully mindful of it and seemed reluctant to leave before it did.

Raley scanned the crowd that had spread out onto the chapel lawn. Fordyce and his missus were already being assisted into a limousine. But George McGowan was standing with his wife, father-in-law, and several people Raley didn’t know.

He made a beeline for the group.

George, seeing him, separated himself from the others and met him halfway. His smile was broad and guileless, his voice as big as his barrel chest. “Raley Gannon. I thought I spotted you in there. Christ, how long has it been?”

“Five years. Hello, George.” He played along with George’s blatant bullshit and pumped the hand extended to him.

George clapped him on the back as he looked him over. “Lookin’ good, Raley. Still fit. A few gray hairs, but hell.”

“Thanks.”

“Me?” he said, slapping his gut. “I’ve put on a few.”

There was nothing to say to that. He had. More than a few.

“I got married.”

“I heard.”

“I left the PD and went to work for my father-in-law.”

Raley acknowledged that this wasn’t news, either.

“You know my daddy worked for Les up till the day he keeled over,” George said. “I thought marrying the boss’s daughter would give me privileges. Don’t you believe it.” He socked Raley’s shoulder and laughed, but his laughter sounded hollow and forced.

Underneath the affected bonhomie, George was nervous. He kept wetting his lips; his eyes darted about. He wasn’t glad to see Raley, making Raley all the more convinced that George had good reason to be jittery. Had it already been reported to him that it appeared Britt Shelley was camped out at Raley’s cabin in the woods, not at the bottom of the river as believed?

“Enough about me,” he said, “what are you doing these days?”

“Well, today, I’m attending a funeral.”

George’s affability deflated like a punctured balloon. Without the balancing smile of large, white teeth, his facial features looked heavier. The flesh sagged, forming crevasses of dissipation and unhappiness.

He glanced toward the hearse still parked in front of the chapel. “Hell of a thing, wasn’t it?”

“Um-huh.”

“A total shock. Like the cancer. Did you know about that?”

“Not until after he was murdered.”

George took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and blotted his sweating upper lip. “First the big c, then…that.”

He was regarding Raley closely, as though gauging his reaction. Raley kept his features carefully schooled.

“You and Jay had been friends for a long time.”

“All our lives. Until five years ago.”

George shifted his big feet, rolled his shoulders, cleared his throat. Obvious signs of general discomfort, which an ex-cop should know how to conceal.

“Aw, Raley, you know how Jay was about women,” he said, deliberately skipping over any reference to Suzi Monroe. “He could have slept with a thousand and it wouldn’t have been enough. Always on the scent of fresh meat, and he’d had a lech for your lady for a long time. Besides, by the time they hooked up, you’d sorta moved on, hadn’t you?”

“No, I’d got kicked out. Disgraced, discredited, and fired.”

George was about to respond when he was interrupted. “George?”

He turned, looking grateful for the interruption. “Honey, come here.” He took his wife’s arm and pulled her forward. Miranda was wearing a snug black dress and high heels, a wide-brimmed, black straw hat, and dark sunglasses. Funeral attire gone glam. “Do you remember Raley Gannon? He was an old pal of Jay’s. From when they were kids.”

“The fireman. Of course I remember.” She removed her sunglasses and gave Raley a smile that suggested he was the only man on the planet and he had a twelve-inch dick she was just dying to treat like a lollipop.

“Hello, Miranda.”

“Where’ve you been keeping yourself all this time?”

“Here and there. Nowhere.”

Her laugh was throaty and sexy. “That sounds like an ideal place to be.” She paused, then said, “It’s good to see you. Shame about the circumstances, though.”

He nodded.

“But Jay wouldn’t want us to grieve, would he? And it’s so mother-lovin’ hot out here.” She dragged her finger down her throat as though to call attention to the dewy skin above the neckline of her black dress. Not that she needed to. If you were a man, and breathing, you’d have already noticed.

Keeping her gaze on Raley, she addressed her husband. “Daddy suggested we go to the club and have a drink.”

“Great idea,” George said, mopping his face with the handkerchief.

“Please join us, Raley. You can ride with George. He and I came in separate cars.” She put one earpiece of her sunglasses between her lips and sucked on it. “You will come, won’t you?”

He wondered if the double meaning of her phrasing was intentional, but he didn’t have to wonder much. “Sorry, I can’t. I have plans.”

“Oh, shoot.” Her lips formed a pout. “That’s too bad.”

“But I would like to talk to George for a minute.”

“Well then…” She reached out and laid her hand on his arm. “So nice seeing you. Don’t be a stranger. Bye.” She dropped her hand and said to George, “See you there, sweetheart.”

George and Raley watched as she rejoined her father, who was bidding good-bye to the group he’d been chatting with. Together she and Les walked down the incline toward a shiny red Corvette convertible. George came back around to Raley. “What do you think?”

“I think you did very well for yourself.”

The other man laughed, ducking his head and looking abashed. “You could say that, yeah.” Then he looked up at Raley from beneath his eyebrows. “Did you ever fuck her?”

Raley was taken aback. “Jesus, George. That’s your wife.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Did Jay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter if you tell me now. He’s dead.”

“I don’t know,” Raley repeated.

George held his stare for several seconds, then muttered, “I never got a straight answer from him about it, either.” He looked away, but when he did, something caught his eye that caused him to wince. Raley turned to see what had caused the facial tic.

Clusters of people were still standing around talking, fanning themselves with their service programs, waiting for the hearse to leave before they did. The circumstances were somber, but Raley didn’t detect anything sinister about the scene, nothing to make George any jumpier than he was.

But then he noted one couple among the crowd, his attention drawn to them because the man’s gaze was fixed on George and Raley while the woman with him was involved in conversation with other people.

When Raley caught the stranger staring, he quickly turned away. Raley looked back at George, sensing the other man’s increased agitation. He asked, “Who’s that?”

“Who?”

“The guy, George. The one who had a bead on us.”

“You mean Pat?”

Raley didn’t buy George’s dumb act, especially when he identified the man. “That’s Pat Wickham?”

“Junior.”

Raley wouldn’t have recognized him. Of course he was older now than when Raley had last seen him-and he couldn’t remember how long that had been. But the drastic change in Wickham’s appearance hadn’t been caused by aging. “What happened to his face?”

“It got fucked up in an accident. Long time ago.”

“Who’s that with him?”

“His wife.”

“He’s married?”

“Got a coupla kids. He joined the department, but he’s a desk jockey. Computers and shit. Not a real cop like his old man was.”

Raley gave Pat Wickham, Jr., a long, considering look, then came back around to George. “Do you two stay in close touch?”

“Not at all.”

“Huh. You and Pat Senior were best friends.”

“True. But after he died, you know how it is.” George looked around as though searching for rescue. “Look, Raley, it’s been great seeing you. But Miranda and Les will be-”

“Has it struck you as odd, George?”

George’s wandering eyes snapped him into focus. “What?”

“Come on. Cut the crap. You know what I’m talking about. The similarity between the night Jay died and the night Suzi Monroe overdosed.”

“Jay didn’t overdose. He was smothered by that newswoman.”

“Was he?”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s the allegation. That’s what I hear.”

“Did you also hear her say that she was drugged? Weird, don’t you think? Britt Shelley echoed exactly what I said the morning I woke up in bed with a naked dead girl and couldn’t remember how I got there.”

George was getting increasingly hot under the collar. He assumed a belligerent stance. “I didn’t mention that ’cause I figured you’d just as soon not talk about it.”

Raley smiled and said softly, “No, George, you’d just as soon not talk about it. See, I don’t think you’d want anybody to know that I told you, Jay, Pat Wickham, and Cobb Fordyce that I’d been given a drug in my drink to wipe clean my memory of that night. Because it might strike them as strange that Britt Shelley has said the same thing about the night Jay died.”

“Date rape drug, my ass,” George said, bringing his florid face closer to Raley’s. “That’s a real convenient defense that can’t be proven.”

“Something I know all too well.”

“Look, she and Jay had a lovers’ quarrel. End of story.”

“She claimed they weren’t lovers.”

George guffawed. Or tried. It sounded more like choking.

“Besides,” Raley continued, “Jay didn’t quarrel with women. Never. He spared himself such scenes. When he wanted to end a fling with a woman, he just stopped calling her. No fuss, no muss.”

“Maybe this gal didn’t know that. Maybe-”

“Jay had only weeks to live. I wonder what it was he wanted to tell a celebrated newswoman that night. Have you thought about that?”

George fumed for several seconds, then said, “He might have wanted to tell her how easy it was for him to get in your fiancée’s pants.”

Raley didn’t flinch. “I think he wanted to give Britt Shelley a big news story with his deathbed confession built in.”

George took another aggressive half step forward. “What would Jay have to confess?”

“You tell me.”

“You’re full of shit, Gannon. You’re holding a grudge against Jay for taking Hallie away from you. If I was still a cop, you know what I’d be thinking? I’d be thinking that maybe you sneaked into his place that night and held a pillow over his face.”

“If I was going to kill him, it wouldn’t have taken me five years to do it. This isn’t about him and Hallie.”

“No?” George sneered. “You know, a few months after you left town, I went by Jay’s place one day. Middle of the day. Broad daylight.”

“Somebody’s going to connect the dots, George. You, Fordyce, Pat Wickham, Jay, Suzi Monroe, me, Britt Shelley.”

“I was about to ring Jay’s doorbell when I saw them through the window.”

“Somebody’s going to make that connection, George, and the common thread is the fire.”

“Your girl’s legs were draped over the arms of a chair, and Jay was on his knees, his face buried in her pussy, and she was loving it.”

“This cast of characters originated with the fire.”

Raley said it loud enough to draw attention to them and halt the conversations taking place nearby. George, his face suffused with heat, looked around, smiling, but his worry of being overheard was apparent.

In that moment of suspended animation, the hearse pulled away. Raley and George, like the others, solemnly watched its slow progress down the hill. No one moved or said anything until it turned at the end of the lane and disappeared behind a dense hedge of evergreens, then a collective sigh of relief could be heard among the last of the mourners.

George mumbled, “Well, that’s that.”

“You wish.” Raley turned back to George and thumped him softly in the chest. “You’d better go have that drink, George. Have two. I think you need them.” Then he smiled. “See you around.”

“But if he’s any judge of smiles at all,” Raley told Britt an hour later, “he’ll know mine wasn’t for grins.”

“I’ve seen that smile.” She dunked a French fry into a puddle of ketchup. “It’s wicked.”

“Wicked?”

“Villainous. Hungry. Wolfish.”

Raley scoffed. “I don’t think any of those descriptions fit me. Especially now that I’ve shaved off my beard.”

“They fit you more without the beard. The jaw, the eyes. Definitely lupine.”

He had returned to the motor court, bringing with him, along with a six-pack of Diet Coke and a can of Lysol spray, a sack of cheeseburgers and fries with a side order of fried shrimp, and two milk shakes. In the amount of time it had taken him to pull his shirttail from the waistband of his trousers and toe off his shoes, Britt had had the food unwrapped and on the table. They’d dug in.

While they ate, he recounted his conversation with George McGowan, trying to be as precise as possible. Britt didn’t allow anything to be glossed over or summarized. She demanded elaboration and details.

“Is she gorgeous?” she asked now.

“Miranda?”

She smiled wryly. “I see you didn’t have to pause and think about who I meant.”

“Yes. Gorgeous.”

“I’ve only seen pictures of her. Did Jay…you know?”

He raised one shoulder. “Maybe. Probably. Everybody else has.”

Britt stopped chewing, the unasked question evident in her expression.

He wiped his hands on a paper napkin. “The first time Miranda caught my eye, she was a high school cheerleader in a short skirt, doing high kicks on the sidelines. Jailbait. By the time she was old enough, I was away at school, and after that I was with Hallie.”

“I see. Lousy timing and lack of opportunity.”

He thought, Let her wonder, and reached for his milk shake. He took a long pull on the straw, then for the next several minutes they ate in silence.

“Raley?” When he looked across at her, her gaze was soft, earnest. “How did you feel? During the service, I mean. How was it for you, coming to grips with Jay’s death?”

“You’re not going to say the word closure, are you?”

She frowned at that. “Despite what he’d done to you, he was your oldest friend. Did you feel a loss? Were you able to mourn?”

He popped a shrimp into his mouth. “Always the interviewer, aren’t you?”

She yanked her head back as though he’d slapped her. Then she tossed down her last French fry and began gathering up the trash, stuffing it into the sack. “Forget it. I thought you might be feeling some conflicting emotions and would appreciate a sounding board to help you sort them out. My mistake.”

She moved back her chair and stood up. Raley caught her arm. “Okay, sorry.”

She pulled her arm from his grasp. “You’re still looking for an ulterior motive in everything I say and do. I thought we were past that.”

“I may never be past that.”

Angrily, she held his gaze for several moments, then expelled a long breath, her shoulders relaxing. “I deserve your mistrust, I guess. But I honestly thought you might want to talk about you and Jay.”

He hesitated, then with a small motion of his head, invited her to sit back down, which she did. He leaned back in the chair, which was much too small for his tall frame, and stretched his legs out in front of him. “You’re not a reporter for nothing, and I mean that as a compliment. Your instincts are excellent. Your questions about the funeral struck a nerve. That’s why I said what I did.”

He shot her a quick glance but found it difficult to look her in the eye while he verbalized these particular thoughts, so he focused on the happy face printed on the cup of his milk shake. “Jay was one of those people you make excuses for. Excuses to yourself.”

“How do you mean?”

“We’d make plans. To go to a ball game. To water-ski. Whatever. He’d arrive an hour late. I’d be furious. He’d be apologetic and penitent. ‘You have every right to be sore,’ he’d say. And even though I did have every right to be mad as hell, I’d let it go. I’d excuse him.

“He’d borrow my car and return it with an empty gas tank. I’d be steamed, but I’d never say anything. We’d be out to dinner. He’d let me pick up the check, saying he would get it the next time, but ‘next time’ never came. It wasn’t a matter of money. That’s not what I resented. It was his taking for granted that I’d pay and never make an issue of it.

“He treated all his friends like that. With a casual disregard that would piss people off if it was anybody else besides Jay.” He sliced the air with the back of his hand. “No matter what the offense, people excused him, saying, ‘That’s just Jay.’

“But-and that’s a big word here-he also had a talent for cheering you up when you were having a crummy day. He could get you to laugh when you felt like crushing something. He was the life of the party. He was never in a bad mood. He was affectionate and fun. That’s why people were drawn to him. Everybody wanted to be near Jay, inside his energy field. Because it was electric and exciting. The air around him crackled. From the outside looking in, it seemed like he had a thousand friends.”

He paused and thoughtfully uncrossed his ankles, pulling his legs in and setting his elbows on his thighs, leaning forward. “But I wonder. Did he have friends, or just acquaintances he could manipulate and get away with it? Was he a friend, or a man who could use you with such finesse you didn’t even realize you were being used?”

He paused a moment, then said, “Looking at his casket today, I had to wonder if anything he had ever said to me, in our entire lives, was honest and real. When I was down or in doubt and he doled out encouragement, was it just so much rhetoric? When I shared my ambitions and dreams, was he bored? Secretly laughing up his sleeve? I think maybe his special gift was just knowing the right thing to say and when to say it, to make you think he was your friend.”

He sighed. “Did I feel a loss? Yeah, I did. I thought my friendship with Jay ended five years ago. Today I realized that it had never existed. We’d never had a true friendship. That’s what I mourned.” Feeling slightly embarrassed over the sentimentality, he slapped his thighs lightly and stood up. “Finished?”

She cleared her throat. “Yes. Thank you. It was delicious.”

He slipped on his sneakers and carried the debris to a trash can outside so as not to stink up their small quarters. As he headed back toward the cottage, he questioned whether or not to tell Britt about what had happened after he parted company with George McGowan. She deserved to know, but did she need to be any more frightened than she already was?

He scanned the parking lot, but there was only one other car parked outside a cabin, and it had been there when they checked in. He went back inside, making certain the door was locked and the dead bolt secured.

He turned to find Britt facing him squarely, hands on her hips. “When are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Why you’re walking around with that cannon tucked into your waistband.” She lifted his shirttail and pointed at the pistol grip. “Tell me why you got up to look out the window twice while we were eating. Why-”

“They were at the funeral.”

“Who?”

“Butch and Sundance. The two men who came to the cabin.”

She backed up until her knees hit the edge of the bed, then plopped down on it. “Did they see you?”

“Yes, but I pretended not to recognize them.”

“What happened?”

He’d left George looking ready to implode. Going down the incline toward his car, he’d spotted the maroon sedan out of the corner of his eye. He tried not to give any indication that he recognized the car or the man sitting behind the wheel, although he was sure it was the same man who’d searched his cabin. He was still wearing the pale blue shirt. There was another man in the passenger seat, and although Raley had never got a good look at him, he saw that he was wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses and had to assume it was the man who’d gone through his truck.

He had no choice but to drive away in the sedan he’d recently purchased for the express purpose of getting rid of an identifiable vehicle. “A wasted thirty-five hundred dollars, asshole.” Covertly he shot the finger at the driver of the maroon sedan.

He nosed his way into the line of cars leaving the funeral and was glad to see that the maroon sedan had to wait for another opening in the stream, which didn’t come until six more cars had passed. When Raley reached the exit, he turned onto the thoroughfare, going in the direction opposite from the motor court where he and Britt were registered. He drove as fast as he dared without risking getting stopped for speeding.

Nevertheless, the maroon sedan caught up with him at the second traffic light. It remained in his rearview mirror for the next few blocks, keeping several cars between them but matching Raley’s speed and shifting lanes whenever he did.

It took him five miles in heavy traffic to finally shake the other vehicle, but he couldn’t be certain that Butch didn’t have someone else bird-dogging him. He continued to weave through traffic on the boulevards, got on and off the expressway several times, and doubled back on his route so many times he didn’t think he could possibly have been followed.

That was what he told Britt now, and wished his voice held more conviction. “I think I evaded them, but I can’t be sure.”

“We won’t know until someone comes barging through the door, guns blazing.”

“I’ve got a gun, too.”

That didn’t seem to console her all that much. “You’re not always here, Raley. And now that they’ve seen the new car, they know what we’re driving.”

“I drove into a parking garage at the hospital and switched license plates with a minivan, then I got a felt marker and made an eight out of a three. And I chose this car because there are a lot of boxy gray sedans similar to it. So it’ll be hard for them to track us.”

“They’ve done okay so far.”

She was right, so he didn’t insult her with a lame contradiction. “You could still turn yourself in.”

“Not until I’m better equipped, ready to fight fire with fire. So to speak.” Reaching behind her, she took several copied documents off the bed, where she had obviously been reading them during his absence.

“You took pains to hide all this stuff. Why?”

“I wanted to be sure a copy of the original records existed. I was afraid that, after I left the department, they would be doctored or accidentally-on-purpose misplaced, never to be found.”

“When you were stonewalled by Jay, what specifically were you investigating?”

“The seven victims.”

“According to these reports, one was a file clerk.”

“Her body was found in a stairwell. She was trapped there when the ceiling collapsed. Cause of death, she was crushed, but she probably would have died of smoke inhalation anyway.”

“The jailer.”

“Was rescued but died two days later of burns and smoke inhalation. It wasn’t a merciful death,” Raley said grimly.

“Five prisoners died in the holding cell.”

“Four died in the holding cell. But there was a fifth detainee who also died.”

She glanced down at the sheets of paper in her hand. “You’ve circled a name in red.”

“Cleveland Jones.”