David Ellis - The Wrong Man

It was the first time I’d seen her get her back up about something. She was basically a cool customer, aloof, in control. Something had put her on edge.

Our relationship was odd. I really didn’t know that much about her, and she didn’t know much about me. We kept the topics safe. We kept each other at arm’s length. All I knew was that the more time I spent with her, the more time I wanted to spend with her. Maybe it was her aloofness itself. I’d considered that possibility. I’d never been in a relationship where I was the pursuer. When I was in school, I was a jock, and girls followed athletic success like day followed night. Not necessarily the kind of girls you’d settle down with, but who the hell wanted to settle down?

Then there was Shauna, but she’d started as a pal, so that just sort of happened for a brief spell before we decided that our friendship worked better than romance. And then there was Talia. Even Talia took the first step with me.

I’d never felt like I was more interested than the lady. Until now.

Tori said, “I was working on your case, if you want to know what I was doing. And I found something.”

“Okay, great. What?”

“Kathy Rubinkowski has a Facebook page.”

“Oh-okay. Facebook. Okay. Did you find anything interesting?”

“No, because we’re not ‘friends.’”

“Well, obviously you and Kathy weren’t friends.” I looked over at her as I drove.

“Do you know anything about Facebook?” she asked.

“Sure. I know some shithead stole the idea from two other shitheads, or something like that. And there was a movie about it where everybody spoke in incredibly intelligent, fluid sentences.”

“You are hopeless. She has to invite me to her page, and she obviously can’t now. So I can’t get on her page, is my point. But if someone could find a way in, I’ll bet you could find her e-mail address on her ‘information’ page.”

“Ah, e-mail. I know e-mail. Okay, I get it. If we can get her e-mail address, we can hack her e-mail and see if anything was on her mind.”

“That’s what I was thinking. You think Joel is able to do something like that?”

Interesting. He probably could. “There might be some ethical challenges there, yes?”

“Technically,” she conceded.

“Technically? Tori, I’m seeing another side of you.”

“You’re seeing a side that doesn’t want some poor, sick kid to take the fall for something he didn’t do. That’s what you’re seeing. This is hardball, not softball-isn’t that what you always say?”

It was. I hated it when people used my words against me.

“Shit, where are those Mapquest directions?” I patted the seat around me and looked down at the floor. “Look in the back,” I said.

She did. “I don’t see it. There’s some big file.”

“That’s the Gin Rummy dossier Joel put together.”

“You’re still spending time on that?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “You were right. It’s a waste of time. Even if I find Gin Rummy, he won’t admit to anything. But Joel went to all this trouble, and I’m not even paying him for this shit. So I’ll try to read it. I mean, he has biographies and background material. It’s like an encyclopedia. I’ll get to it at some point.”

“Whatever,” she said. “I’ll just pull the directions up on my iPhone.”

“You can do that?”

“You’re really a dinosaur, aren’t you?”

“I prefer ‘old school,’ Tori. You can pull up directions on that thing?”

“Sure. I’ll just type in the name, get an address, and then set the GPS.”

“Great,” I said. “So type in the name ‘Summerset Farms.’”

“Tell me, Bruce,” said Randall Manning.

“Nothing’s wrong.” McCabe shrugged. “Just general nerves, I guess.”

“Identify it, Bruce. Tell me specifically.”

Below them, inside the dome, the cleanup was already under way. Shell casings were being collected, dust was being swept, the bulletproof tarp was being pulled down.

McCabe looked at Manning. “It’s the lawyer, Kolarich. The whole thing.”

Manning nodded. “He won’t figure this out in time, Bruce.”

“But he’ll figure it out eventually. He’ll connect us to this. And if we take him out now, isn’t that a red flag? He clearly has his sights trained on us, and suddenly he winds up dead? We thought we had complete anonymity, Randy. There was no way any of this was going to connect to us.”

That was never a certainty in Manning’s mind, or anywhere close to it. He had planned this well and chosen the operatives well, but he had no illusions. He knew that the odds were quite decent that he, personally, would be caught. He’d always told his men that they had to be willing to die for this mission. He preached it to them. McCabe was part of the Circle, of course, but he wasn’t one of the operatives. He did the necessary legal work to get everything set up to put the mission in place. But that was all.

And now things were coming to a head. It wasn’t just an idea now. It was happening.

“I think we’ll get away with it,” said Manning. “And then we’ll lie low and wait for another opportunity. But yes, Bruce, there are risks. Surely this isn’t the first time you’re realizing this?”

McCabe wasn’t dumb. Of course, he had to have been aware of the risks. But he’d placed trust in Manning, perhaps more than Manning had realized. And he hadn’t had to get his hands dirty. He wouldn’t be putting his life on the line on December 7. Maybe it was only now dawning on him what, exactly, they were going to do.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring Bruce here today, to see up close a dry run of the operation.

Or maybe it had been a good thing, in the end. If McCabe was going to go south on them, better that Manning knew that now, not afterward.

“I think we should abort,” said McCabe.

Manning put a hand on McCabe’s shoulder. “Let’s go eat, Bruce. Everyone’s tired and stressed and hungry. Let’s have some turkey and think this over. Go on ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Manning watched his lawyer walk out the door. Then he dialed his cell phone.

“Patrick,” he said, “wait five minutes and then come up to see me.”

Traffic was nonexistent on Thanksgiving afternoon. We got off the interstate and followed the local roads. The housing was sparse and modest, and there wasn’t much for commerce besides gas stations, bait shops, and an occasional diner. Nothing was open today.

We found the street we were looking for, aided by a small sign that said SUMMERSET FARMS with an arrow pointing to the right. I turned right and drove down a paved road.

We pulled up to a long metal gate blocking the road. On the gate was a sign reading SUMMERSET FARMS IS CLOSED.

We got out of the SUV, if for no other reason than to stretch our legs after more than two hours in the car, and walked up to the gate. Down the road, there was a long ranch-style house and a gigantic barn, all painted red. And behind that housing was farmland as far as the eye could see. Shauna had mentioned that when Global Harvest purchased the farm, it bought up neighboring farmland.

“You didn’t expect it to be open, did you?” Tori asked me. She looked like a fish out of water, a well-dressed, cosmopolitan woman in farm country. I suppose I didn’t look much like the town, either.

And no, I didn’t expect Summerset Farms to be open on Thanksgiving.

“Why the gate?” I asked.

“Who knows? Maybe vandals or robbers.”

“Yeah, maybe.” The gate was fastened to a post. It didn’t appear to be hydraulic. I pushed on it, and it moved. So I kept pushing, and it kept moving, until I had cleared a path for my vehicle.