Austin Camacho - Collateral damage

“You going to take care of her? Instead of her taking care of you?”

“I’m not Dean, if that’s what you mean,” Hannibal said in conspiratorial tones.

Murray worked the chrome of the door handle with more concentration than necessary. “He left around ten-thirty. Right behind the woman.”

“Woman?” Hannibal asked. “Are you saying he had another woman here?” He didn’t have to fake his indignation. Bea deserved better.

“White woman,” Murray said, as if that was significant. “Skinny blonde dame, older than him by a ways. She hit that door as soon as Miss Collins rounded the corner.” Murray glanced around as if he was looking for someplace to spit.

Hannibal nodded in agreement with his sentiments. “How long was she in there?”

“Maybe half an hour. Just about long enough, if you know what I mean.”

“And Dean came out five or ten minutes later,” Hannibal said aloud but to himself. That was just time enough to pack if he was in a hurry. So who was the woman? Certainly not a lover despite Murray’s obvious assumption. “He was carrying a suitcase. Did he leave on foot? Which way did he head?”

Murray sat back on his haunches. “What are you, some kind of a detective?”

“Something like that. Just trying to help Bea out. Which way?”

“He was walking when he left,” Murray said, glancing over at Bea in Hannibal’s car. “Never looked left or right, just headed up toward Washington Street. Looked like he was in an awful hurry to get away from here. Can’t understand it myself. She’s a peach, that girl.”

Hannibal nodded again. “Thanks for the help, mister. I think maybe the only way for her to understand what this guy was, is to face him again. If I can find him, then maybe…”

Hannibal shook Murray’s hand just as Bea’s silver Lexus pulled into the parking lot beside Hannibal’s car. He reached it in time to see Cindy hand Bea her keys.

“That was fun,” Cindy said. “Might have to get myself a car one of these days.”

“You don’t own a car?” Bea asked, as if Cindy had just revealed she didn’t wear underwear.

“She prefers to hand her money to cab drivers,” Hannibal said, “or ride around with me.”

Cindy slipped a possessive arm around Hannibal’s waist. “Yep, this is my favorite cabby right here. So, did you get anywhere, honey?”

Honey was what Cindy called Hannibal in the presence of unattached women. He considered it only marginally more subtle than the method dogs use to mark their territory. “I was just getting the lay of the land here, Cindy. The work will start after I get some pictures to distribute.”

“When can we get started with that?” Bea asked.

“If the reporter or cameraman who covered the event you and Dean attended is at work today I should get them pretty quickly,” Hannibal said. “I, not we.”

“I want to come with you.”

“Bea,” Hannibal said in his gentlest voice, “I’m sorry but we can’t do this together. I can do this. Or you can do this. The choice, of course, is up to you.”

The woman actually pouted. “But I want to do something.”

“Then stay by the phone,” Hannibal said. “He might call or send a message. But leave the searching to me, all right? That’s what you’re paying me for.”

News Channel 8 was all local and all news and, as expected, a twenty-four hour operation. But despite what Hannibal told Bea, he was surprised to find the reporter he needed to talk to at work on a Sunday evening. Yet there she stood, not as perky as she appeared on screen, standing over the young man at the controls in a darkened editing room, directing the construction of another video story.

Hannibal had called the station soon after driving away from Bea’s house. He had learned that the girl in question, Kate Andrews, was the newest television reporter on staff. That being the case, it was no surprise that she drew many of the weekend fluff assignments. He also learned that she would be in-house on that Sunday evening, helping a videotape editor turn her latest script into two or three minutes of video news.

After placing that call, he had joined Cindy for dinner at the Blue Pointe Grill, a seafood haven on Washington Street, Alexandria’s main thoroughfare. It had become Cindy’s favorite eating spot since the day they found themselves two tables away from John Ashcroft. As far as lawyers go, this was a celebrity just short of a Supreme Court justice. Hannibal’s only memory of that night was that for an Attorney General, he seemed to be a pretty poor tipper.

Hannibal told Cindy what he learned from Murray over swordfish marinated with rosemary.

“A woman?” she asked between bites. “How terrible for Bea. Another lover you think?”

“Actually, I’m thinking an accomplice. Maybe his partner, come to tell him it was time to move on to the next vulnerable mark.”

“Hannibal, if you think this Dean guy is a con man just getting close to her to get into her bank account, then why’d he run?”

Hannibal considered the question while he chewed. “Who knows? Maybe the woman’s a spotter who has an even better mark set up for him. Or maybe the police are on his trail and getting a little too close for comfort. He might need to just disappear for while. Lots of possible reasons.”

“Okay,” she said, not willing to let it go and just enjoy dinner. “Suppose you’re right. He’s just a con man. She’s in love with him, and he’s gone for good. In that case, why find him at all?”

“Because, Cindy dear, that is what I’m being paid to do.”

Less than a thirty-minute drive took Hannibal to the offices of NWS8 in Springfield, Virginia. Five minutes of friendly chat with several members of the skeleton staff on duty got him to what they called the edit tank where Kate Andrews was working.

“Ms. Andrews?” Hannibal called, reluctant to break her concentration.

When she turned to face him, her piercing eyes moved over his entire body, from top to bottom, scanning him into her memory banks. The soft, open persona she projected on television was totally absent. In this woman’s out-thrust jaw and pointed nose he read the kind of dogged determination that so often makes a good detective. And he supposed that in some ways, that was what a good reporter was.

“And you’re Hannibal Jones,” Kate said, “and you need my help and it has to do with the feature I made last weekend which first aired Monday morning. You’re not police. I don’t think a lawyer. Maybe related to someone I interviewed but… no. A private detective?”

Her stately frame leaned naturally forward and her eyes didn’t blink as often as they should. It was a rare person who could put Hannibal off balance, but here stood one of them. “Private, yes,” he said. “I can see you’re busy, but I’m hoping you’ll take a minute to print me out a still photo from that video.”

Kate looked over her shoulder at her editor, who waved her on. She tossed her scarlet locks and motioned for Hannibal to follow her. Her strut seemed exaggerated to him, and accented by the tightness of her jeans, but her walk was so forceful and aggressive it lost all sensuousness. Under her breath she mumbled, “I wish you guys would all get together on these things.”

They entered another edit cell, smaller than eight by ten feet, the two long walls lined with lights, levers and buttons that reminded Hannibal of the controls of the Starship Enterprise. Kate handed Hannibal a pad of preprinted forms and a pen.

“You’ll have to fill that out when I give you the picture,” she said. Then she pulled a videotape from a wall rack and dropped into a chair. She pushed the tape, thinner but longer and wider than a VHS cassette, into a machine and her fingers began to play over a bank of controls, shuttling around the tape, looking for the right story.