Russell Andrews - Midas

Okay, go to the next step. It’s related. It’ll help pull you up the mountain.

Step Two:. .

The door to the room opened, Justin was so absorbed in his thought process that he didn’t hear the initial sound, but when he realized that someone was coming in, before he even looked up, he stretched out casually on the floor, obliterating his scribblings in the dirt. As he slowly stood, he dragged his foot over the same area, further obscuring any trace that he’d been doing something other than staring blankly off into space.

His interrogator stood just inside the doorway. He was still wearing fatigues. They’d been washed and newly pressed.

“Tell me about Hutchinson Cooke,” he said.

Justin nodded accommodatingly. “What do you want to know?”

“Why were you talking to Martha Peck?”

“Looking for information.”

“What information?”

“Cooke was killed in my town. I was trying to solve the case.”

“Who killed him?”

He thought about his answer, decided to go with the truth. He had nothing to gain by lying. Not now. “I’m not positive. I didn’t get far enough. But I think it was someone who worked for Martha Peck. Someone named Martin Heffernan. He either rigged the plane or knew who did it and decided to cover it up, I don’t know which.”

“Did you kill Hutchinson Cooke?”

“For Christ’s sake.” He would have screamed but his throat was still too raw. Then he just nodded and said, “Yeah. I killed Hutch Cooke, and to throw everyone off the track, I decided to spend the rest of my life pretending to find out who did it. I arranged for myself to get thrown in here ’cause I knew that would really confuse the hell out of everybody.”

Justin waited for the attack, but it didn’t come. The man in the fatigues didn’t change his expression, just waited a moment or two, then said, “Tell me everything you know about Midas.”

For a moment, Justin thought he might burst into tears. Forget the pain and the horrendous conditions. He was being driven mad by the idiotic repetition, the boredom. “Look,” he said, “I’d like to tell you about Midas. I’d really like to tell you about Midas. But I don’t know what it is, where it is, or who it is. All I know is they paid Hutch Cooke’s salary. That’s it. I swear to God.”

“Who runs Midas?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who owns it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where does their money come from?”

Justin shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

“Tell me about Theresa Cooke.”

Justin closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them before answering. “Some stupid bastard killed her because he thought she told me something. That’s all I know about her.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“What did Theresa Cooke tell you?”

“She didn’t tell me a goddamn thing.”

“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If you knew something, you’d tell me.”

“Yes.”

“Because you want to get out of here.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t want to be beaten anymore, do you?”

“No,” Justin said quietly. “I don’t.”

“And you’d like to be clean. And have a good meal.”

“Yes,” he breathed. “I would like that very much.”

“Then just tell me what you know.”

Justin took a deep, long breath. The air that came in through his mouth and his nostrils felt particularly tropical. Warm and wet. “I don’t know anything,” he said. “I don’t know a thing.”

The man in the crisp, starched fatigues looked at Justin, who’d stayed standing during the entire conversation, and said, “I almost believe you.”

Then he left Justin alone again. From the world outside his tiny window, Justin thought he heard a bird screeching. It was a high-pitched noise, piercing and mournful. When the sound came again, Justin wasn’t quite so sure of its source. It was piercing enough to be a bird. But it was also mournful enough to be a human being.

He scribbled all the names into the floor again. He’d done it so often by now, he didn’t have to think or pause while pushing his finger through the dirt. As he’d done each time, he rearranged them in a slightly different order than the previous time. Looking for patterns and connections. To the left he kept the victims in one column. For the first time, he added Elliot Brown’s name to that column. Next he organized any of the names connected to either the military or the FBI-anyone with a connection to the government’s investigation of terrorism. To the right of that column he listed all government officials. In a column all by itself, he listed the Saudi connection and, after a bit of hesitation, added a final column: Midas. At first he left it blank under the company name, then he added Cooke, who worked for them, and then he remembered that Colonel Zanesworth had told him that it was the vice president, Dandridge, who had made the call asking Cooke to be assigned to Midas as a pilot, so he put Dandridge’s name under that column, too.

Collins Zanesworth Stuller Mishari MidasCookeSchrader Dandridge CookeBrown Stuller Anderson Dandridge Heffernan CookePeck Billings Ingles Lockhardt Heffernan T. Cooke R. Cooke H. Cooke

He stared at the columns, saw no new connections to be made. Took a deep breath-almost reveling in the horrible smell; he’d seen how repulsed Mr. Starched Fatigues had been this last time and somehow it gave him a kind of strength to know he was used to it, was no longer overpowered by it-and he went back to the puzzle. .

Step Two: Hutchinson Cooke’s plane is rigged and he is murdered.

Theory: Cooke was on non-Air Force business. He was working for a company called Midas. Cooke flew into East End airport before the Harper’s explosion. Cooke was killed because he’d made a connection between his cargo on the plane and the explosion. He was killed so he couldn’t make that connection public.

Thought Process: What was the cargo? Two choices: the explosives used to destroy the restaurant or the man who used the explosives-the man who made the cell phone call. Or perhaps both.

Where was Cooke flying from? Unknown. Find that out and it should help to know who or what he was carrying.

Why was Cooke killed? Again, find out exactly who or what he was carrying and find out exactly why he was killed. Best bet: Cooke had been suckered into the flight-he didn’t realize quite what he was doing; when he realized the connection between his cargo and Harper’s, he panicked, maybe threatened to expose his bosses-the people who ran Midas? — and so he was killed.

Who killed Cooke? Heffernan either killed him or covered up the killing.

Justin looked at the list he’d drawn into the dirt. He’d put Heffernan down as a government official. True-he worked for the FAA. That counted. One more government connection. One more signal that this whole thing had to be government-connected. . and high up in the government to reach this level of manipulation.

Okay. Time to take a breath.

Plateau Two: Cooke was killed because he was a link to Collins’s murder and to the explosion at Harper’s. The link is the cargo. The key questions: Who or what was Cooke flying into East End Harbor? And for whom? If he was flying for Midas, what is Midas and who is behind it?

Time to start climbing again. .

Step Three: Martin Heffernan is killed in the explosion at La Cucina restaurant.

Theory One: Same as Harper’s. The explosion is an elaborate and deadly cover-up to mask the murder of one man: Heffernan.

Question: What did Heffernan know that got him killed?

Thought Process: He knew about Hutchinson Cooke. If Cooke was the link to Midas-and had to be eliminated to remove the link-then Heffernan was the link to the government. Heffernan had called the Justice Department to pass along information about Cooke’s death. But Cooke didn’t work for Justice-his boss was Martha Peck, FAA. She didn’t seem to be tied in to this. Although. . she was a link to the murderer or murderers. Despite Martha’s protestation, she knew who removed Heffernan’s file from the FAA office in Oklahoma City. She had to know. She had probably removed the file herself at the person’s request. Find that person, find a closer connection to the murderer.