Smoke Screen

CHAPTER 23

RALEY’S PARANOIA WAS CONTAGIOUS.

Britt didn’t argue when he suggested that they move again. After his call to Judge Mellors, they returned to the motor court only long enough to gather their things. It took less than ten minutes. Raley drove into the urban area of Charleston, then beyond it, crossing the Cooper River before he found another suitable motel. Combined with an RV park, it had individual cabins lining the edge of a pretty marsh.

Raley used an alias to check them in, paid for a couple of days in cash, and parked the car behind their cabin. “I asked for this one. Easy in, easy out,” he said as he ushered her into their new quarters, which were furnished similarly to the previous place but were much nicer and newer. They kept the curtains over the front window tightly drawn, although Raley peered through them at regular intervals to check for anyone encroaching on their bolted door.

“Did the judge give you a time frame?”

“She asked for several hours. Then I’ll go out and find another pay phone.”

“What do you think Fordyce will say?”

Killing time, Raley was lying on his back on the double bed next to the one on which she was reclined. He’d bunched up the flat pillows beneath his head. His forearm was resting on his forehead. “I don’t know. But Candy was my best and last resort. I laid it on pretty thick, the obligation factor and her belief in the law. It was crass manipulation, but at least she promised to try to talk him into seeing me.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been so brutally honest.”

Keeping his arm on his forehead, he looked at her across the narrow space separating the beds.

She said, “What I mean is, you told her you suspected him of several felonies. Maybe you should have fudged a little.”

“Maybe I should have let you ask her. You’re all about fudging.”

“Some would call it diplomacy.”

“Some would call it lying.”

Her breath gusted out in frustration. “God, you’re unbending.”

“Candy called it tenacious.”

“Call it by any name you like, you’re unforgiving. That’s probably why Hallie-” She broke off, then mumbled, “Never mind.”

“Oh no,” he said, turning onto his side and propping himself on his elbow. “You opened that can of worms. That’s probably why Hallie what?”

She watched him closely, half out of curiosity to see how he would react, half out of wariness of his reaction. “Your unforgiving nature is probably why she didn’t come back to you.”

“After Jay, you mean. After he threw her over for the next flavor of the month.”

“If she had crawled back, full of contrition, would you have resumed your relationship with her?”

“After Suzi Monroe, I couldn’t very well condemn anybody on faithfulness issues, could I? I would have forgiven Hallie on a cerebral level. But, no, I wouldn’t have taken her back.”

“Because it was Jay she turned to.”

“Because she turned to him so easily. She knew how he was, how shallow and self-serving he could be. We’d talked about his character flaws. Even laughed about how he’d made egomania an art form. And still she chose him over me.”

Britt considered letting it drop there, but prodded by curiosity, she said, “But you sort of…”

“What?”

“Nudged her away. Didn’t you? When you offered her time and space, were you testing her love and devotion?”

“Maybe.” He flopped onto his back again. “If it was a test, she failed. You said I hadn’t fought for her, but she didn’t fight for me, either.”

“Then why did you try to contact her years later?”

He gave a harsh laugh. “Good question, Ms. Shelley. I’ve asked it of myself a few thousand times. Self-flagellation? I wasn’t quite miserable enough? Curiosity? Loneliness? Maybe a combination of all those reasons.

“Anyway, I got extremely upset when I heard that she’d married and was having a baby. But not out of jealousy. I didn’t love her anymore, but I cared enough about her to be glad that she’d survived Jay.”

“Then why did you get upset?”

“Because her newfound happiness underscored how crappy my life was. It made me furious. She, Jay, Fordyce, all of them were flourishing. Suzi Monroe had been nothing more hazardous than a speed bump in their lives. They were past it, moving forward and upward. I was stuck in neutral and couldn’t do anything about it.”

“You could have gone to another city, applied at the fire department and-”

“And been told thanks but no thanks. Soon as my previous employment was checked, I’d’ve been turned down on character issues.”

“You could have done something else. Changed careers.”

“I wanted to be a firefighter. That’s what I’d spent years training for. That’s what I did and wanted to do. Besides, my job here wasn’t finished.”

“To unforgiving, add stubborn.”

She’d meant it as a gibe, but he didn’t respond, so she figured he’d taken it as another criticism of his character. For several minutes, silence simmered between them. He was the first to speak. “Candy thinks this is about the Suzi Monroe thing. Hallie and Jay. All that. She said it’s futile for me to hold a grudge against him because you can never come to a reconciliation with a dead man.”

“Very perceptive of her. You told me you’ve spent the last five years plotting your revenge.”

“Yes, I did, but that’s not what it’s about now.”

“What’s it about now?”

“It’s about the seven people who died. Eight, if you count Suzi.”

He was still staring up at the ceiling, so his profile was all she could see of his face, but the tenor of his voice had changed. “Those people were murdered, Britt. No one knows that a killer or killers went free. No one even suspects. There’s been no accountability for those crimes. Call me unforgiving and unbending, that’s okay. I won’t forgive and I won’t bend because even Cleveland Jones, who by all accounts was irredeemable, deserves justice.”

After a moment, she said, “You’re passionate about this.”

He turned and looked at her, then gave a small shrug. “Passionate? Yeah, I guess. When I was a kid, I had this dream of becoming a fireman so I could save lives and property, put my life on the line to rescue others, see that arsonists were caught and punished. Very idealistic. Even arrogant. But that’s how I felt.”

“Most little boys want to become firemen so they can ride on the fire truck.”

“Well, there was that,” he admitted with a flash of a grin. “Not to mention the cool-looking, badass gear, and sliding down the pole, and getting to hang out at the firehouse. All that macho, male bonding stuff.” They smiled across at each other.

“What’s your most memorable experience as a fireman?”

He didn’t have to think about it but said instantly, “I rescued a man who was pinned in his wrecked car.”

“Tell me about it.”

“When we arrived, he was screaming, hysterical, but he wasn’t hurt all that badly. I calmed him down, told him we’d get him out and that he’d be all right. A half hour later he was in an ambulance on his way to the hospital, a little beat up, but fixable.”

“That’s a good story with a happy ending.”

He looked over at her, then back at the ceiling. “Not really. After we got him into the ambulance, we had to go back and cut his four-year-old son out of the wreckage. His body was crammed up under the engine block, and when we tried to pull it out…” He stopped, waited, started again. “Nothing held together. He was in pieces.” He paused again and cleared his throat.

“See, his dad had taken him to the supermarket with him. When they came out, the kid set up a howl about getting back into his car seat. His dad was embarrassed because the kid was yelling, everybody in the parking lot was staring, he didn’t know how to deal with a tantrum.

“So he gave in and told the kid okay, he could ride in the front seat. They weren’t that far from home. And it was just for this one time that he’d be allowed to sit there. But it only took one time, one bad decision. A truck ran a red light and T-boned the car.” After several seconds, he added, “That kid would be eleven or twelve now. I imagine his dad thinks about that a lot.”

Britt let moments pass, then said, “Have you had many experiences like that?”

“No. Thank God. But you asked me my most memorable. That’s it. By far.” Turning his head, he said, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Are you passionate for your work?”

Her reply was slow in coming. “Yes.”

Her hesitancy raised his eyebrows. “I know what passion sounds like, and that’s not it.” He gave her a long look, and she remembered the hungry, sexy sounds that had filled his bedroom the night before last.

She looked away and in a quiet voice asked, “Want to know a secret, Raley?”

“Hmm.”

“Are you sure? If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”

He smiled.

“Shelley Britt Hagen.”

He looked at her blankly. “Okay.”

“That’s my real name. But sometimes even I forget I wasn’t born Britt Shelley, because I adopted it as my professional name even before I graduated college.”

“You don’t have to kill me to protect that secret.”

“Well, that’s not the big one.”

“Oh. You have a darker one?”

“Um-huh.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s safe with me.”

He said it in all seriousness. Meeting his gaze full-on, she said, “I’m certain of that.”

She thought that loyalty was probably one of his strongest qualities. In that regard, being muleheaded was an attribute, not a flaw. If someone told him a secret, he would take it to his grave. If he made you a promise, he would keep it. A commitment would be a commitment for life. He would be faithful to a woman.

Frankly she thought Hallie was a fool for doubting, even for an instant, that he wasn’t in control of his faculties when he was with Suzi Monroe. His body had functioned as conditioned, but his brain was shut down. Certainly his heart hadn’t been involved. If his fiancée truly had loved him, if she had known him at all, she would have accepted his explanation without question.

But she herself had deemed him guilty, hadn’t she? She’d doubted nothing Jay told her, but had believed the worst of Raley Gannon without so much as a single meeting. When he dodged her microphones and cameras, she had concluded that his avoidance was as good as an admission, and taking it one step further, she had swayed her viewing audience into believing likewise.

For five years, his unfinished investigation had haunted him. He’d borne the weight of eight murders that had gone unaccounted for. With sadness and shame, Britt acknowledged that she was partially responsible for that.

“I’m sorry, Raley.”

“For what?”

“For my partial reporting.”

“You already apologized.”

“Yes, but when I did, I was still working an angle. I was trying to weasel more information from you. I wanted this new, bigger story, and I wanted to stay with you until I got it. This time I mean my apology sincerely.”

After a beat or two, he said, “That’s your secret?”

“No.” She took a deep breath as she turned onto her back. “My secret is that I’ve had job offers in larger TV markets. One was even a network job. A contributing reporter on weekends, but it would have been a good start. I’ve turned them all down.”

“How come?”

“Fear of failure.”

She glanced at him but quickly cast her eyes back toward the ceiling. “I called you a coward, but the truth is, I’m the coward. I’m afraid to leave my small pond here, where I’m a big fish. In a larger market, the competition would be tougher. The expectations would be greater. What if I couldn’t hack it? What if I made a colossal fool of myself? So every time my agent came to me with an offer, I turned it down.

“I always had a reasonably valid excuse, but the bottom line was that I was afraid to give up my star status here. Anywhere else, I may discover I’m only average, and then what?

“I’ve been working without a net since I was eighteen, and it’s been good for me. I’m independent and self-sufficient. When everything is going well, I tell myself I’m capable of anything. But if things were to go terribly wrong, I don’t have anything or anyone to fall back on, even temporarily, even long enough for me to get back on my feet and dust myself off and try again. That frightens me.

“When I was younger, I could afford a career setback or two. I moved frequently, and the risks always worked out in my favor. But I’m not so young now. I’m no longer the fresh face. I’ve got more to lose and can’t afford a major setback. So I don’t gamble with my career. I stay well within my comfort zone.” She took a deep breath and looked over at him, expecting a comment. When he didn’t say anything, she said, “That’s it. That’s my secret.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“What?”

“You’re not giving yourself enough credit.” He looked almost angry as he swung his feet to the floor and stood up. “First of all, your face is fresh enough. You could take it anywhere and become a star.” Turning away, he stalked to the window and parted the curtains, looked out, drew the curtains together again, came back around.

“Second, you’re alone because that’s your choice. You could have a safety net if you wanted one. You may not want to leave this TV market for a larger one, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t, and do it successfully.”

Britt angled herself up, supporting herself on her elbows. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I’m not sure I can trust the opinion of a man who doesn’t even own a television.”

“I’ve seen you enough times to know you’re good. I saw a replay of your press conference. You had them eating out of your hand. You convinced me of your innocence, and I was your most skeptical viewer.”

“The police weren’t convinced, though, were they? Clark and Javier believe I killed Jay. Pat Junior believes I did.”

“Does he?” His eyes moved down to her chest, and he stared at it hard enough to make her uncomfortably aware of the snug fit of her T-shirt. Then his eyes snapped up to hers. “Does he believe you killed Jay? He accused you of it, but…” Muttering an expletive, he began to pace. “That whole scene with him was off. I don’t know how, just off.”

“I know what you mean. You said he was squirrelly. Maybe that’s what we’re picking up on.”

“Maybe.” Suddenly he checked his wristwatch, then, moving quickly, he worked his feet into his sneakers. “This should time out about right. Come on. Hurry. Put your shoes on. Get your cap.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the police station.”

“Anyone who passes this way could spot this car,” Britt said. She was hunkered down in the passenger seat, her hair tucked up underneath the baseball cap.

The central police station sat atop a rise overlooking the Ashley River. Adjacent to the campus, which also housed the DMV, was a Marriott hotel. It was in the parking lot of the hotel that they were parked beneath a row of young live oak trees. From there, they could see the police department employee parking lot.

“I don’t think anyone in that building knows to look for this car,” Raley said.

“Except Pat Wickham.”

“And I’m almost positive he kept the information to himself.”

“You don’t think he called the police after we left?”

He shook his head. “We would have known it. Patrol cars would have been converging on that area in a matter of minutes. Even if we hadn’t seen them, we would have heard sirens. They would have formed a blockade around the vicinity. They probably would have put up a chopper, too.”

“And media would have been racing to the scene.”

“As you would know. No, I’m betting Pat Junior didn’t tell anybody that a fugitive from the law came to visit.”

“So why not?”

“That’s why we’re here.”

Although they were a safe distance from Pat Wickham’s car, which they could single out because they’d seen it in his driveway earlier that day, they had a clear view of it. His shift was almost over. He couldn’t leave without their seeing him. They hoped he wouldn’t notice the gray sedan. Raley doubted Pat Jr. would be looking. The last place anyone would expect to find Britt was within shouting distance of police headquarters.

“He was scared of you today,” she said.

“I wasn’t that scary.”

“He saw the pistol and went pale.”

“Yeah, but it was more than me and the pistol that had him about to pee his pants.”

“He was afraid of what Jay had told me.”

“Or would have told you if he had lived long enough.”

“Why would Jay’s deathbed confession be a threat to Pat Junior?”

“Maybe we’ll have an opportunity to ask him. There he is.”

Raley spotted him as he exited through a rear door. They watched him enter the parking area and weave his way through the rows of cars. To Raley his movements seemed furtive, but he admitted that could be his imagination. The man was nervous by nature.

He didn’t look in their direction as he unlocked his car, tossed his jacket inside, and climbed in. “So far, so good,” Britt said.

Their plan was to follow Pat Jr. and see where he went after hours. Probably he would go straight home, and this would be another dead end. But Raley felt that the man was hiding something; Britt sensed it, too. Following him might provide them with a clue.

Besides, staying cooped up with Britt in the small cabin for hours on end was becoming an uncomfortable test of his endurance. The intimacy of sharing small spaces with her was getting to him. He was constantly aware of her nearness. Each time she moved, he knew it. He woke up every time she stirred in her sleep, even though she was in another bed.

For five years he’d had only fleeting contact with women, never being with one for more than an hour or two, certainly not long enough to start recognizing her habits and anticipating her reactions.

Now he was surrounded by Britt’s femininity. Inundated by it. He was conscious of those little things that were purely female-her vexation over a chipped fingernail, the daintiness with which she sipped from her can of Diet Coke, the meticulous way she tied her shoestrings by making the ends perfectly even. He was captivated by these and a hundred other manifestations of femininity. Furthermore, he was enjoying them.

He found himself watching her when she didn’t know it, in a kind of fascinated trance, his thoughts more often than not veering toward the prurient. He should never have put his hands on her. Because, try as he might, he couldn’t forget how she’d felt, how she’d moved, how she’d wanted him. He couldn’t look at her mouth without remembering kissing it, or her legs without remembering how tightly her thighs had hugged him.

He excused that night on the basis of him being lonely and horny. But he’d been lonely and horny before, and as soon as he said thanks and left a woman’s bed, it was forgotten.

Not this time.

His resolve not to touch her again was as strong as ever, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to enforce. A car was more public than a motel room. So part of this mission was to escape the confines of their compact room before he lost his mind, his temper, or his control. The main goal, however, was to try to discover the source of Pat Jr.’s jitters.

Raley waited until the policeman had driven out of the parking lot before starting the sedan and following. He kept well back and let several cars get between them. But not too many. There was a lot of traffic. There had been a break in the weather; the humidity wasn’t as high as it had been. The pleasant evening had brought people out. Luckily Pat Jr. stayed in one lane and drove the speed limit.

After ten minutes, Britt said, “Not too exciting so far.”

“No, but he’s not going in the direction of home.”

Pat Jr. kept driving, eventually making a large loop around the city before heading into downtown and the historic district, where the streets became narrower and even more congested with motor traffic and death-defying pedestrians, who crossed against lights and often took their chances on the street rather than the crowded sidewalks.

Pat Jr. turned onto a side street off the main drag of King, then in midblock he entered a driveway that ran along the side of a nightspot. Raley and Britt looked at each other but said nothing. They didn’t have to. The club was well known in the city.

Raley drove past the drive, but when he looked down it, he could see the policeman wedging his car between two others. Farther along the street, Raley spotted a car leaving a coveted parallel parking slot. He wheeled into it and cut their lights, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed by Pat Jr.

They weren’t. He had walked along the side of the building toward the entrance of the nightclub but had stopped short of the corner and remained in the sliver of shadow against the exterior wall. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and made a quick call.

Seconds after he clipped his phone back onto his belt, a young man emerged from the door of the club. He walked straight to the corner of the building and turned. Pat Jr. greeted him with a smile. They had a brief exchange, then together walked quickly back to the parking lot. They got into a car-not Pat Jr.’s-and left, pulling out onto the street in front of the club and driving away, unaware that they were being closely observed.

The silence between Raley and Britt was thick with all the implications of what they’d seen. Eventually he said, “I think I knew. In the back of my mind. From the time I knew who he was. That’s why I was surprised when George told me he was married. And then today, he didn’t look at you.”

Sensing her misapprehension, he turned toward her. “He didn’t look at you.” He looked down at her chest before meeting her gaze to make sure she’d got his point. She had. She lowered her head with apparent embarrassment.

Raley said, “Lewis Jones looked. Delno looked.” I’ve looked plenty. “Pat Junior didn’t. That should have tipped me off.”

“He’s leading a secret life.”

“The wife and kids are for show.”

“It must be misery.” She pulled off the baseball cap and shook her hair loose. “I feel just awful, spying. Let’s go.”

“We can’t.”

“Sure we can.”

“No. We can’t. Dammit!” He rubbed his eye sockets, feeling as awful as Britt about what they were doing, feeling even worse about what he knew they had to do. “We can’t go, Britt. Because I just figured out that the whole thing started with this poor bastard.”