T. Bunn - The Great Divide

The wrath and the frustration Randall had been forced to absorb from Logan emerged now in heaving breaths and thumping rage. “Then I guess we can all just wrap ourselves up in our warm fuzzy blankets and nestle down deep in our beds. ’Cause Hamper Caisse has gone out and made the world safe for democracy.”

This was clearly not the tone Hamper Caisse was used to hearing. He had a lifetime’s reputation for being the best. The man nobody saw. “We’re not on the same wavelength here.”

“Buster, we’re not even on the same planet. Do you know what just happened to me? Well, sir, I’ll tell you. I’ve just endured the worst day of my entire professional career.” The power of his ire lifted Randall from his padded leather chair. “That lawyer you called no-account, the one you claimed couldn’t find his own front door without a guide dog and a compass, remember him?”

“Marcus Glenwood, sure.”

“The very one. He marches into the federal magistrate’s chambers armed with nothing but what that little spiky-headed blond gave him. You know who I’m talking about, sure you do.”

“I was the one who told you Kirsten was making the trip down. But-”

“Wait, now, you just hold on! It gets way better.” Randall knew his voice was loud enough to echo down the outside corridor and ring the marble tiles of the reception-room floor. Which perversely made him feel the best he had felt all day. He had already endured a public shaming, the worst since he had hung up his law degree in an office so tiny he and a broom couldn’t have fitted in there together. Randall Walker had come a long way in his climb to the top of the legal dunghill. And the top was where he intended to stay.

He took a breath big enough to carry the shout one notch higher. The effort crouched him down over his polished walnut desk. The red-hued reflection that stared up at him was not a pretty sight. “So, does that no-’count lawyer roll over and play dead like you predicted? Noooo sir! Not him! He uses the machete that spiky-headed girl handed him, the one you said she didn’t have, and he proceeds to disembowel my lawyers!”

“That can’t be.”

“Don’t you tell me that! You didn’t have to sit in my conference room and listen to how our attorney got skinned alive!”

“No.” A hint of nerves entered that drab voice. The first Randall had ever detected. “I mean the information must have come from somewhere else.”

“You want to tell me where? Gloria’s momma?” The shouts served a second purpose, in that others would now know someone else had been responsible for Randall’s debacle. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had. “Then why didn’t the woman give it to the first lawyer? The one we could control! Or maybe you think this Glenwood managed to sift through three years of confidential in-house corporate memos and ferreted this out himself?”

“No. You’re right. It had to be the roommate.” A pause. “He was armed with confidential memoranda dating back three years?”

“Longer.” Randall collapsed into his chair. His heart felt like it was going to explode.

“Maybe she put the information in her trunk earlier. You know, before our first search.”

“You want to take that risk? Worry maybe she’s got another trick up her sleeve we don’t even know she’s got?”

“But I’m telling you that place of hers was clean.” For the little man, it was a desperate plea. “Not only that, I’ve been listening to her conversations ever since she got back up here. And I’m telling you Kirsten Stanstead is clueless. She’s a spoiled rich kid putting in her time with a Washington charity. She talks about guys. She talks about who’s been invited to what cocktail party. She talks about Cosmo articles and-”

“We’re missing something here.”

“I don’t see how. I’ve got every room of the house wired. And now her car’s bugged.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Randall Walker pulled out his handkerchief, grimaced at the need to use it a second time in one afternoon, mopped his face. The problem was he didn’t know what he meant either. “Get back in there and look again.”

“All right.” Resigned now. “But it’ll be riskier now that she’s back.”

“You said yourself she puts in time with that charity. Do it then. Tomorrow. Tear the place apart. Look for trapdoors, hidden safes.”

“I already have.”

“Then look again.” Randall swiped his face again. “My gut tells me we’re missing something major.”

Oathell was down to the county lockup. Again. There to bail out his younger brother, Darren. Again. Darren had called him at ten minutes past the midnight hour and begged him to come get him out. Again. Darren didn’t dare call their momma. Darren knew his momma wouldn’t pay any mind to his pleas of innocence. She’d thrash him and trash him. Kick him out of the house. Been promising it ever since Darren hit that man in the bar and broke every bone in his face. Didn’t matter that the man had come at Darren with a bottle in one hand and a chair leg in the other. Darren had no business being in that bar in the first place. One more time in trouble, their momma had warned Darren, just one, and the boy wouldn’t have a home to come home to. Which was why Darren had woken him up. Again.

But Oathell had a soft spot for the boy, always had. And there’d been something in Darren’s voice, something other than the panic of being held by the Rocky Mount police. Or at least Oathell wanted to believe there was.

The county lockup was attached to the back of the central police station. Which, like everything else bought and paid for with tax dollars in Rocky Mount, stood on the Nash County side of the Tar River. It didn’t matter that 60 percent of the town’s population lived east of the river. No. The only things you could buy on the Edgecombe County side of Rocky Mount were burgers and booze. The biggest grossing Hardees in the whole United States was located two blocks from Oathell’s home-a statistic that Hardees managed to bury deep.

The lockup was grim as grim could be, a series of metal cages with no interior walls, none at all. Just big old cages built inside what had been a tobacco warehouse. The building’s north wall still bore the old name, SMITH BROTHERS AUCTIONEERS, SINCE 1887. The din, even inside the police-station waiting room, was just plain awful. Oathell leaned his head on the brick wall behind his bench and pretended to a patience he did not feel. Almost all the people in uniform were white, almost all the people waiting in that decrepit hole were black.

Darren was not a bad boy. Oathell truly believed that. Otherwise he would have given up on his younger brother a long time ago. The problem was that Darren wasn’t smart enough or ambitious enough to get what Darren wanted, which was out .

Oathell turned his head, and straightened in alarm. For who should walk through the police station’s front doors but Deacon Wilbur. And with him was that grim-faced white lawyer Glenwood. They walked straight over and sat down before Oathell could even manage to get his jaw shut up proper.

The reverend asked, “How you doing, son?”

“Okay.” Oathell glanced back toward the doors, expecting to see his momma come storming through any minute now.

“She doesn’t know we’re here,” Deacon said, understanding him perfectly.

Oathell relaxed a fraction. “How’d you find out about this mess?”

“Friend on the force.” Deacon sighed long and hard. “Don’t know why I didn’t call your house. Not sure I did right there.”

“Don’t tell her nothing. Not a thing.” Oathell looked over to where the white man sat on the reverend’s other side. Weird. Guy was dressed for Raleigh downtown in a nice suit and silk tie. In a Rocky Mount jail. At two o’clock in the morning. “What you doing here, man?”