Andrew Gross - 15 Seconds

“It’s making the rounds here,” Carrie said. “Thought you’d get a laugh.”

“Hey, Car, I was just thinking of you.”

She and her brother didn’t talk as much as they used to. Mostly they just traded e-mails a couple of times a week on family matters. Jack was two years older; he and his wife, Polly, had two young kids of their own, and half the time he was off on assignment somewhere. So they took a minute now to catch up, about how she was feeling back on the job. And about Raef.

“Pop says he’s about ready to get back to school again?”

“Definitely after the summer. He’s really doing great, Jack. Listen…” She switched from the small talk. “There’s a reason why I called…”

“I knew that,” her brother said. “The joke wasn’t that good!”

“I need a favor, Jack.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to ask me about it. About why I need it. I just need you to do it for me. I need you to track down a license-plate number for me.”

“Plate number? You guys don’t have people down there who do that kind of thing?” His tone was both jocular and a bit suspicious.

“What can I say, dude, budget cutbacks.” Carrie sighed, playing along. They always had the kind of relationship where they shared everything with each other. Though Jack was always the great pontificator. Captain of the wrestling team in high school. Debate team. Villanova Law. But this time she wasn’t volunteering anything more. But Jack was no dummy. He knew they could get that kind of information in thirty seconds down in Jacksonville. Why would she be asking him to trace the plates other than some reason to keep it out of the office? No doubt his next call would probably be to their father.

“I have confidence you wouldn’t be getting the FBI into something they ought not to be in, right, little sister?” Maybe he’d already spoken with Nate, she suddenly found herself thinking. “We’re all sorry to hear about what’s happened there, that officer of yours? The town must be turned on its heels…”

“Yeah,” she answered, “it definitely is.”

“Crazy about this guy… Steadman? That his name? He must’ve just flipped…”

She didn’t answer directly. Not this time. Instead, after a pause, she just said, “I’m simply asking my big brother for a favor, that’s all. If you worked at GE, I might be calling for a toaster.”

“Carrie…” She was sure he was about to say something big brotherly (and probably smart), like, Just be careful what you’re getting into, sis . Or, You can’t use the FBI for your own private purposes, however justified they may seem to you.

Instead, he just drew in a wistful breath. “Budget cuts, huh?” He chuckled dubiously. “We’re all deep in ’em. All right, give me the plate number. I’ll see what I can do. And, Carrie…”

Here it comes, she thought, readying herself.

“Thanks for the joke.”

The fax came in a couple of hours later. With a note attached:

“Here’s your favor, sis. How about we say 48 hours-and then I might be asking if I should look into this myself.”

The name behind the plate she was looking for. From the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles.

ADJ-4392.

She stared at it awhile, glancing at the photos of Rick and Raef on her desk, until a drumming started up in her heart and in her blood, and she knew she was doing the right thing.

Her next stop was Akers’s office.

“Bill, I need a little more time,” she said, catching him as he was about to leave. “Raef needs some more tests. I know this is all bad timing. It’s just that maybe I wasn’t quite as ready as I thought…”

“How much time are we talking about?” her boss asked, surprised.

“Three or four days.” She shrugged. “Maybe a week.”

She could see he was disappointed; maybe even annoyed. It had been that way since she went in to talk about her doubts about Steadman the other day. But he put his sport coat on and nodded. “I’ll work it out with personnel. But, Carrie…” He sat back on his desk. “Get done what you need to get done. Then come back for good. We’ve held your job open a long time. I can’t promise I can give you any more sway.”

She grabbed a few files she could work on and was almost on her way out the door when she heard the sound of an e-mail coming in .

It was from an address she didn’t recognize. Mpkunin119@hotmail.com.

The subject line read, “March 2.”

Carrie clicked on it and there was no message, only a document attached. It looked like a page out of an appointment calendar that someone had scanned in.

Suddenly she realized it was Henry Steadman’s calendar.

There were a bunch of handwritten notations. “Discuss with Mark!” “Heat tickets 4/10 for JP.”

The rest was just his schedule for that day:

7:30-10:00 A.M.: OR-Lynda Fields

12:30: lunch, Paul Dipalo, U of M board

2:30: Patient consult: Andrea Wasserman

4:00-5:00: Conf call, Diamond-Murdoch

A routine day, Carrie thought, quizzically, why would he-

But then she realized just what the date was and what it meant-and a warm surge of triumph and vindication ran through her. And she found herself totally unable to hold back her smile.

March 2.

That was what Steadman was trying to tell her the other day, about proving his innocence.

March 2 was the day he was supposedly in North Carolina buying the 9mm gun.

Vance found John Schmeltzer at a bar in Dania, Florida, just north of Hollywood. It was a dark, sleazy, sixties-style place, set between a Jiffy Lube and a debt company, with a heavily tattooed Hispanic behind the bar. Dog races were on the TV.

Vance wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a more depressing place as he stepped in, in his sweaty shirt and rumpled pants, removing his hat.

Schmeltzer was at a table drinking a beer in a wifebeater T-shirt and pink shorts. He was thin, with coarse, curly hair, bald on top, and sideburns clear down to his chin. Maybe forty. He was with a couple of other lowlifes who, Vance thought, might have recently crawled their way out of the Everglades, and didn’t look a whole lot higher up the food chain than Schmeltzer himself.

Vance walked up to his table. “Dexter Vaughn said I could find you here. He said you could help me with my back. Hurts like the devil. Show me how it works down here.”

“Dexter, huh?” Schmeltzer looked at him a bit skeptically, squinting over his shades. “He said that. Not that it really matters…” The guy grinned, clearly not sizing Vance up as much of a threat. “That’s the beauty of it down here. I know what you’ve come for and welcome to the Promised Land.”

He proceeded to try to raise Dexter by phone, just to be sure, but failing to for obvious reasons, Vance knew-Schmeltzer just said, “Ah, hell with it,” and offered to take Vance around. They climbed into a silver Mercedes convertible, Schmeltzer saying how he had to do a little business anyhow, so why not climb on in. “So how you know Dex?” he asked casually.

Vance pressed his fingers against the fancy leather console. He felt the gun in his belt dig into his back as he pressed against the seat. “Through his cousin. Del. From South Carolina.”

“That’s where you’re from?”

Vance shrugged. Didn’t really matter much if he told him the truth. . . So he simply nodded.

“ Del? Not sure I know any Del,” Schmeltzer said, squinting over his shades.

“No matter.” Vance shrugged, looking ahead. “You probably never will.”