Smoke Screen

CHAPTER 3

GEORGE MCGOWAN OPENED HIS BEDROOM DOOR IN TIME to see his wife of four years, Miranda, slipping a terry-cloth robe over her nakedness. The young man in the room with her was zipping the cover around his portable massage table.

Unruffled by the unexpected appearance of her husband, she said, “Oh, darling, hi. I didn’t know you were home. Would you like Drake to stay? He just finished with me.” Her eyelids lowered drowsily. “He was particularly magic today.”

George felt his face grow hot. His fingers tightened around his glass of Bloody Mary. “No thanks.”

Drake hefted his table, essentially doing a biceps curl with it. “Wednesday, Mrs. McGowan?”

“Let’s make it ninety minutes instead of the usual sixty.”

He smiled suggestively. “I can extend it as long as you like.”

Drake’s double entendre wasn’t lost on George. Neither was the hot, musky smell of sex that permeated the room, or the rumpled satin sheets on the king-size bed. Drake hadn’t done his work on the massage table, and the sly look he shot George as he sidled past him on his way out said as much.

He should follow the smarmy bastard, break him over his knee, shatter the bones of his hands, ruin his face, and put him out of business. The oily, Mediterranean-looking prick was beefed up, but George could whip his ass. Maybe he’d gone a little soft around the middle, but he could still make this guy wish his ancestors had stayed in Sicily or wherever the hell they were from.

Instead, he soundly closed the bedroom door and turned to glare at his wife. The silent rebuke was wasted, however, because she didn’t see it. She had moved to her dressing table and was pulling a brush through her mane of auburn hair as she admired her reflection in the mirror.

She would dearly love for him to take issue with her screwing her masseur in their bedroom. So damned if he would give her that satisfaction. Besides, something else took priority.

“You need to see this.” He opened the doors of the tall armoire and turned on the television set inside. “Britt Shelley is about to conduct a press conference about her and Jay.”

“This should be interesting.”

“It is. She claims she was given a date rape drug.”

Miranda McGowan’s upraised arm was arrested in motion. She lowered it slowly. “By Jay?”

George shrugged and turned up the volume just as the local newswoman addressed a question about her relationship with the recently deceased Jay Burgess. “He and I were friends.”

“I’ll bet,” Miranda remarked as she moved from her dressing table to the end of the unmade bed and sat down.

“Shh!”

“Don’t shush me.”

“Will you just shut up and listen?”

George remained standing, the remote control in his hand, his attention riveted on the plasma screen and the close-up of Britt Shelley as she averred that she had no memory of the events immediately preceding Jay’s death. “I have a vague recollection of entering his town house with him. Nothing beyond that.”

“Are you accusing Jay Burgess of giving you the date rape drug?” a reporter asked.

“No. But I believe that someone did. My experience matches that of other women who have been given them.” George turned and looked at his wife. She shifted her gaze away from the TV and locked eyes with him, but neither said anything.

George turned back to the set in time to hear Britt Shelley’s lawyer reply to a question. The man held his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. As a former policeman, George knew the gesture was a dead giveaway of uneasiness. The man was about to either hedge on something he was unsure of or blatantly lie.

“Ms. Shelley has submitted a urine specimen to be tested for these various substances. However, they disappear from the system relatively quickly. Depending on which drug Ms. Shelley was given, it’s possible that too much time has elapsed for it to be detected.”

A reporter in the front row said, “So you can’t prove that she was given one of these date rape drugs.”

“I can’t comment until I know the result of the urinalysis.”

“Regrettably, I did everything wrong,” Britt Shelley interjected, much to the consternation of her lawyer, who frowned at her.

He jumped in before she could say more. “Ms. Shelley didn’t at first realize that she’d been victimized. Had she, she wouldn’t have showered, wouldn’t have used the bathroom until after she’d submitted a specimen for testing.”

“In other words,” Miranda said, “she’s making claims she can’t prove.”

Without turning, George waved at her to be quiet.

“No, I don’t have any idea what caused Jay Burgess’s death,” Britt Shelley was saying in reply to another reporter’s question. “He’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which he’d been told was terminal. It’s assumed his death is cancer related, but an autopsy will be conducted-”

“Do you know when?”

“That’s a question for the medical examiner. I hope sooner rather than later. I want an explanation for Jay’s death, just as everyone else does.”

“Do the police suspect foul play?”

Before Britt Shelley could respond, her attorney whispered something in her ear, and she nodded at him. “That’s all I have to say at this time.”

“Are the police-”

“Did you and Burgess-”

“What did you drink at The Wheelhouse?”

The reporters continued to shout questions at her and her lawyer as they retreated from the podium.

“Turn it off.”

George did as Miranda asked. In the instant silence, ice cubes rattled in his glass as he took a drink of his Bloody Mary. “How many does that make so far today?” Miranda asked.

“You care?”

“You’re damn right I care!” she fired back. “I care because you’ve been drunk ever since we got the news.”

“Jay was my friend. Drinking is part of my grieving process.”

“It doesn’t look good.”

“To who?”

“To anybody who happens to be interested and is paying attention,” she said, angrily emphasizing each word.

“Everybody is interested and paying attention. Jay’s dying is news. He was a hero.”

“So were you.”

He stared down into his glass for several moments, then shot the last of the drink. “Yeah. A big hero. Which is why you married me.”

She laughed softly. “That’s right, sweetheart. I wanted a hero”-she spread her robe open from the waist down-“and you wanted this.”

There was a time when he would have dropped to his knees, crawled to her, and planted his face in her lap. He would have sent his tongue burrowing into her sex in search of the tiny gold charm that pierced her flesh, a tantalizing trinket that remained hidden until she was aroused. He used to make her crazy doing that.

But then he’d found out who had suggested she get the charm. That had ruined the pleasure for him.

She laughed and covered herself. “Poor George. So upset over Jay’s demise he can’t even make love to his wife.”

“Not when she still reeks of Drake.”

“Oh, please. Don’t take a self-righteous posture with me. You’re in the throes of a ridiculous affair with the teenybopper who hustles drinks at the country club.”

“She’s twenty-six. She only looks eighteen.”

If anything could hurt Miranda-and he had a powerful need to hurt her just now-it was a reminder that she wasn’t getting any younger. Thirty had come and gone. Forty loomed. It was still a long way off, but she was terrified of it.

In her youth, she’d been Miss Charleston County, Miss South Carolina, Miss This and Miss That. She had more tiaras and trophies than the housekeeper could keep polished. Other girls were winning those titles now. Girls with firmer thighs and perkier tits. Girls who didn’t get Botox injections as regularly as pedicures.

Idly, painfully, he wondered if the current Miss Charleston County would have an abortion just to keep her tummy tight.

Miranda’s rich laughter interrupted that dark thought. “Does your tacky little affair explain why you’re popping Viagra these days?” He gave her a sharp look. “Oh, yes. I found it in the medicine cabinet.”

“I’m amazed you could locate it among all the pills you keep in there.” He set his empty glass on the portable bar and considered pouring another shot of vodka but talked himself out of it. He’d kept a buzz going for the last thirty-six hours. Miranda was right; it didn’t look good.

“If you need a pill in order to keep it up for your new, young girlfriend, you’re more pathetic than I thought.”

She was trying her best to rile him, to start something or, rather, continue it. Usually he’d get right into it with her and keep it going until she won. Miranda always won.

But today, he didn’t want to play their game. He had other things on his mind, life-and-death issues that were weightier than their ongoing contest to see who could inflict the most painful wound.

“We’re both pathetic, Miranda.”

He went to the window and moved aside the drape, which had been pulled closed, no doubt to create a more romantic ambience for her and Drake. From this second-story vantage point, George could see down onto the back lawn of the estate, where a crew of men were mowing, weeding, clipping. Separated from the formal lawn by a stone-wall border, the irrigated acreage spread out like a green apron. A white wood fence enclosed a pasture where their racehorses grazed.

He could see the roof of the multicar garage that housed his father-in-law’s collection of classic cars as well as his own fleet of automobiles, kept buffed and polished and gassed up, ready to roll at his whim.

George McGowan had come from the working class. Money, actually the lack of it, had been a constant worry to his folks. In order to provide for his family of seven, his daddy had worked overtime at Conway Concrete and Construction Company. It was hot and dusty work that killed him well before his time. He’d dropped dead one August afternoon while working an extra shift. The doctor said he hadn’t felt a thing.

Who would ever have guessed that his oldest son, George, would wind up marrying Miranda Conway, only child of the owner of the enterprise, the most desired girl around, because she was not only the most beautiful but also the richest. She was a debutante, a beauty queen, and an heiress. She could have had any man she wanted. She had wanted George McGowan.

“I can’t go back and undo it,” he said quietly as he watched the Thoroughbreds graze, taking their life of privilege as their due. As Miranda did. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. God help me, I couldn’t give all this up.” He let the drape fall back into place and turned toward her. “I couldn’t give you up.”

She tossed back her hair and looked at him with exasperation. “Stop being such a crybaby, George. For crissake. Jay Burgess died in bed with a naked lady beside him. Don’t you think he’d rather go that way than die of cancer?”

“Knowing Jay like I did, yeah, he probably would.”

She gave him her smile, the one that would make a man sell his soul to have her. “That’s my boy. That’s my hero. That’s my strong, handsome George.” She stood up and started walking toward him with a feline gait, slowly untying the belt of her robe and letting it slide off her.

When she reached him, she pressed her lush body against him and boldly began massaging him through his trousers. “Are you sad, baby? Worried? I know how to make you feel better. You’ve never needed Viagra with me, have you?”

She caressed him with a know-how that could only be achieved with practice. Lots of practice. He gritted his teeth and tried to reverse the rush of blood funneling toward her stroking fist, but resisting her was a lost cause. He cursed her to hell and back, but she only laughed and unzipped his trousers.

“Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie. Kissed the girls and made them…” Coming up on tiptoe, wrapping one long leg around him, she bit the lobe of his ear, then whispered, “Make me cry.”

His soul was lost already, too far gone to ever hope for redemption. So, what the hell did it matter?

Roughly, he thrust himself into her.

“Mr. Fordyce, they’re replaying it now.”

“Thank you.”

Attorney General Cobb Fordyce’s personal assistant withdrew, leaving him alone in his office. He’d asked her to alert him if Britt Shelley’s press conference was aired a second time.

He swiveled his chair around to face the walnut cabinetry behind his desk and used a remote to switch on the television set, to watch what had been broadcast live during the lunch hour, which he’d missed because of a meeting.

Cobb didn’t know Britt Shelley personally, only professionally. She’d been a fledgling reporter during the election that put him in this office, and she’d advanced just as he had. Often she covered the state capitol for the Charleston station, and he’d seen her on-air work there.

She was a tough but fair interviewer, far superior to the station’s other reporters, better than the station’s news operation altogether, and he’d often wondered why she hadn’t been snatched up by a larger TV market.

He’d also wondered if she purposefully downplayed her attractiveness so it wouldn’t be a distraction to the story or a drawback to her credibility. When a hurricane had been threatening Charleston last year, she’d covered it live, dressed in a jacket with the hood drawstring tied tightly beneath her chin, her face washed clean of makeup by the torrential rain. Hardly glamorous.

She was no prima donna and no pushover. She certainly didn’t look like one as she faced an audience of her colleagues and stated she didn’t remember anything beyond going into Jay Burgess’s town house. Then she alleged that she’d been given a date rape drug.

She was articulate, earnest, believable. But if her urinalysis came back negative, her attorney would have a hell of a hard time proving that she’d ingested a drug that would cause total memory loss.

The lawyer seemed to realize that. He looked uneasy and uncertain about his client’s claim. He looked constipated. He appeared to be the kind of timid defender who actually helped prosecutors get convictions.

She, on the other hand, was confidence personified. Of course, she was adroit at playing to a camera. Cobb had experience with that himself. She knew how to evoke a self-serving emotion from her audience. He could relate to that, too.

The press conference ended with her saying that she wanted to learn the cause of Jay Burgess’s death. She said it with enough conviction that, despite his skeptical nature, Cobb Fordyce believed her.

He was about to switch off the TV when the local news station went live with a follow-up story. The Charleston PD public information officer had been asked if Britt Shelley was under arrest. “Absolutely not,” he replied. “Up to this point, there’s been no evidence of any wrongdoing.”

Standard-issue statement, Cobb thought.

“Jay Burgess died in his sleep. That’s all we know at this time.”

Cobb doubted that. That wasn’t all they knew. They had something. Maybe nothing more than a hunch. But something had spooked Britt Shelley, or she wouldn’t have made a preemptive strike by calling the press conference to claim friendship with Jay Burgess and express her deep regret over his untimely death-in effect to profess her innocence.

The CPD were fools for letting her get the jump on them. They should have kept her under wraps, or issued a gag order. That was a giant blunder on their part, letting her use her media advantage to state her defense before it even became a criminal case.

Again he was about to switch off the set when a local reporter was shown standing outside the state capitol. If Cobb looked out his office window, he’d probably see the news vans parked along the boulevard.

This was exactly what he’d dreaded and had hoped to avoid.

“We’ve tried to contact Attorney General Cobb Fordyce this afternoon for a statement on the unexplained death of Jay Burgess, but Mr. Fordyce was unavailable for comment. As many of you may recall, Fordyce and Burgess were two of the four men who valiantly saved lives, at tremendous risk to their own, during the Charleston police station fire five years ago.”

Cut to file footage of the building in full blaze, surrounded by fire trucks spraying water on an inferno that had burned out of control. Then, appearing on the screen was a photo of himself, Jay Burgess, Patrick Wickham, and George McGowan, oxygen masks strapped over their smoke-stained faces, their clothing charred, hair singed, heads bowed, and shoulders slumped in abject fatigue.

That picture had made the front page of The New York Times in addition to every newspaper in the South. National magazines had printed it with stories that extolled their bravery. The photographer had been nominated for a Pulitzer.

“Attorney General Fordyce was working for the Charleston County DA ’s office at that time,” the reporter explained when they came back to him on camera. “The other three men were police officers. Jay Burgess is the second hero of that day to die. Patrick Wickham, tragically, was killed in the line of duty barely a year following the fire.

“Yesterday, I spoke with George McGowan, now a businessman in Charleston. I asked him to comment on his fellow hero’s death. He declined to appear on camera but told me that Jay Burgess was the best friend a man could ever hope to have and that he will be missed by everyone who knew him.”

The reporter then pitched it back to the anchors in the studio, who commented on the poignant and dramatic elements of the story. The segment ended on the legendary photograph, the studio camera going in for a close-up on Jay Burgess’s face, where there was a reflection of the flames in his eyes and tear tracks in the soot and smoke stains on his cheeks.

Cobb clicked the remote, and the image blinked out. He loathed that damn photograph. Because of the boost it had given his career, people expected a framed copy of it to be prominently displayed in his office. And that was precisely why he didn’t have one.

He left his desk chair and moved to the window. As expected, news vans were lined up along the curb; reporters from various stations across the state were doing stand-ups with the capitol serving as backdrop.

The police station fire. It was like a recurring nightmare. Every so often it would come around again. This time, Jay Burgess’s death had resurrected interest in it. Cobb wished for nothing more than that it would never be mentioned again. He wanted it kept out of the media, which seemed to relish replaying footage, retelling the story, showing that damn immortalized picture. He wished for voters not to be reminded that, were it not for that fire, he might not occupy this office.

Most of all, he wished not to be reminded of that himself.