Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

For Primo, this was the real benefit of having a councilman in his pocket. Generally speaking, if one councilman wanted a land sale approved, his colleagues would stay out of the way and allow it to happen. Professional courtesy ruled.

Again, Primo started small, with a parcel here or there, then built up to larger chunks of contiguous land. With the way Primo had his business set up-in an endless chain of seemingly unconnected LLCs-no one even realized Councilman Byers was always recommending sweetheart land sales to the same person.

It allowed Primo an abundant supply of nearly free land on which to build houses. And in the most densely populated state in America, where land was always at a premium, it gave Primo an enormous edge on the other developers. It was basic economics. Getting one of your chief raw materials for virtually nothing did wonderful things for the bottom line.

Primo paid for the privilege, yes. But the cost was nothing compared to the benefit.

As I drove back toward the office, I could feel one of those wiggling, niggling suspicions trying to work itself free from deep underneath my skullbones. Except, of course, the moment I became aware of it, my conscious brain began doing a little dance all over it. Whatever small hint of genius may have been forthcoming was stomped back down, hopefully to resurface at a later time.

Clearly, it was something about Rhonda Byers. Had she been too cool? Or too melodramatic with the near-tears? Had she given away anything I hadn’t noticed?

Nothing came to me. And Kevin Raines wasn’t going to be any immediate help-his cell phone went straight through to voice mail.

“Sergeant, it’s your confidential informant. Give me a call when you have a moment,” I said, then left my number.

By the time I got back, it was six o’clock and there was some serious typing going on in the newsroom. Tommy looked like he was holding a staring contest with his computer screen. Tina had her shoes off and feet curled underneath her, a sure sign she was rewriting someone’s lede. Buster Hays was banging on his keyboard with his usual vigor-having been raised on a manual typewriter, he still hit the keys like he was making sure his letters stood out nice and crisp.

I had barely sat down at my desk when Sweet Thang slid up to me and sat in an empty chair across from me, smiling. Somehow, despite a long day, she still smelled fresh and soapy.

“Oh, my goodness, I had the most amazing afternoon,” she gushed. “And I’m actually talking about the part after I left you. I mean, the part before that was great, too. But then it got better. Well, I mean, not better better, but really good, you know? You won’t believe what I learned.”

This was the first time I had seen her since I read her Twitter post, with all its CR consumption and floorboard grinding. I wondered if she put it there in the hope I’d trip across it, because it would embolden me to make a move. Or maybe she just figured it was one little tweet, and since I wasn’t following her, I’d never see it.

Or maybe I should get this silly girl out of my head, especially when she was right in front of me, still babbling in my direction at speeds faster than the human ear was trained to perceive. I was already four or five paragraphs behind.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t paying attention. Could you start over again?”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes-like, what was my problem? — then went back to full speed ahead.

“I was SAY-ing, I couldn’t get a hold of Akilah’s sister. So I didn’t know what else to do and I didn’t want to bother you, because I bother you enough already, you know? So I tracked down the guy who sent us that e-mail instead.”

“Uh, what e-mail?”

“The concerned citizen e-mail. Didn’t you get a copy?”

“Oh, right,” I said. With everything else going on, I had just forgotten about it. “How’d you track him down? It was anonymous.”

“I thought it was pretty obvious,” she said.

“Sorry. Still not with you.”

“Chuck-sorry, concerned citizen-said something in his message like, ‘I know why you couldn’t find the mortgage.’ And I’m like, hel-LOOO! We never mentioned that we couldn’t find the mortgage in the story. There are only two people who knew that. There was that title searcher, but I’m sure he was too busy getting stoned to read the paper. And then there was that clerk guy. So I went and found him.”

“Oh,” I said, impressed. “I thought he was worried about losing his job. How did you get him to talk to you?”

“I just flirted with him,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing this side of making toast.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Flirting.”

“You don’t think that’s bad, do you?”

“No. Flirting is good.”

She flashed me a knowing smile.

“Anyhow, Chuck-his name is Chuck-was all nervous at first. He was like, ‘I can’t talk to you.’ And then I flirted with him a little more and he was like, ‘I meant I can’t talk to you here .’ ”

“Well done,” I said.

She smiled quickly. “Hold off on your compliments until the end. It gets better.”

“Sorry,” I said, but she was already going.

“So we agreed to meet outside the courthouse at four-I accept your apology, by the way-and take a walk. At first he was like, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s too deep, you can’t handle the truth, blah, blah, blah.’ So he was like, ‘You have to guess, and if you guess right I’ll tell you.’ I couldn’t guess it, but he told me anyway.”

“Why, more flirting?”

“No, actually we were sitting on a bench at that point so I kept crossing and uncrossing my legs.”

“You realize you’re pure evil,” I said, but couldn’t stop myself from grinning.

“Well, I thought about what my journalism professors would say about it. And they would probably tell me all the reasons I shouldn’t do it. And then I thought about what you would say about it. And I knew you would tell me all the reasons I should. So I thought about what would ultimately have the greatest public benefit and I decided you were right.”

“I am,” I assured her. “Just remember to use your powers for good.”

“I will, don’t worry. Anyhow, Chuck said that his boss came up to him this one time and told him to erase this mortgage from the computer. Chuck said he didn’t want to do it, but the boss told him if he didn’t do it, he’d just find someone else who would, so it was like he didn’t have a choice. Chuck thought the orders were coming from somewhere up high-someone with a lot of pull.”

I nodded.

“Anyhow,” she continued. “Chuck said he had sort of forgotten about it, but when I came along and couldn’t find a mortgage, he thought I was just being a ditz at first”-imagine that-“but then he looked into it and he realized it was the mortgage he had been told to erase. Ex-CEPT he didn’t totally erase it. He wiped it from the computer but kept a hard copy and put it in a folder in his house.”

“And so you accompanied him back to his house to get it?” I prompted.

“Well, he said he just moved, so he wasn’t quite sure where it was. But he said he’d look for it when he got home.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “So why did he think he was erasing it?”

“He said he didn’t know, but he got the sense it was political or something.”

Of course it was. If you’re Windy Byers, you’re probably quite keen to make sure no one discovers you’ve bought a house for your girlfriend. So you yank some strings in the clerk’s office and get the mortgage removed lest it fall into the hands of your political enemies.