Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

“You were mentioned, sir,” she’d said. “They showed that famous picture of the four of you with the fire blazing in the background.”

That fucking photograph. That fucking fire.

Since that day, there had been many times that Cobb wished he could roll back the clock, that he had an opportunity to opt against going to the meeting that had placed him at the police station that particular day at that particular time. On any other day, he would have been in his office at the courthouse, or on his way home. That day had been an exception, and he had rued it ever since.

But there had been just as many times-possibly even more-that he was grateful for the instant fame he’d received as a consequence of the fire. His political career would eventually have been launched, probably with success. But not with the velocity with which it had been. And he’d been awfully impatient to experience that soar to the AG’s office, hadn’t he?

He’d benefited from the fire, and consequently from the deaths of the seven people who’d perished in it. And, in the depths of his soul, where one must be brutally honest, he wasn’t all that sorry about it. What kind of man did that make him?

But thinking in those terms was an exercise in futility. Fate was fate, and there was no cheating it. When it was a person’s time to go, it was his time to go. He and his ambition were of infinitesimal significance when gauged against cosmic forces or, if one were religious, predestination.

That was what he told himself. That was the credo that allowed him to sleep nights. He’d made his peace with it. He could live with it, if everybody else could, if everybody else could just forget about the fire and move on.

It seemed, however, that it would never be extinguished. If Jay Burgess had gone out quietly, dying gracefully of cancer…

But, no, that wasn’t Jay’s style, was it?

Now an investigation was under way, the same excitement surrounding it as when Patrick Wickham was killed. Wickham’s assailant had never been identified, or caught. Eventually his murder ceased to be the lead story and then faded until it was no longer a story at all.

After honoring his fellow hero at his funeral, as was only proper, Cobb had let Wickham’s murder gradually fade from the voting public’s attention. As a candidate to become the chief law enforcement officer of the state, he could have spoon-fed the voters daily reminders of the policeman’s bloody slaying and used it to strengthen his campaign. He could have encouraged a full-fledged investigation until the cop killer was caught and brought to justice.

But he hadn’t. He couldn’t.

Staring at himself in the mirror above the basin where the cold water continued to splash over his hands, he saw reflected back at him a reasonably handsome face, graying temples, a physique kept trim with daily workouts. A face that bespoke clean living and integrity. Faithful husband, good father, churchgoer. That was what the public saw, too. A man who looked his role and inspired confidence in the judicial system, freedom and justice for all. But then people saw only what was exposed to them, didn’t they?

He doubted anyone hearing the circumstances surrounding Jay Burgess’s death would look beyond what appeared to be obvious: his philandering had caught up with him and he’d been smothered with his own pillow by a scorned woman.

Would anyone, he wondered, recall a man named Raley Gannon and the accusations made against him five years ago?

Avoiding his own eyes in the mirror, Attorney General Cobb Fordyce bent over the sink and splashed cold water onto his face.

Pat Wickham, Jr., worked up his courage and punched in the telephone number.

“ Conway Construction.”

“Is, uh, is George there?”

“I’m sorry. He’s out until later this afternoon.”

“Oh.” Pat’s forehead broke out in sweat. He blotted it with his folded pocket handkerchief.

“Is there a message I can give him?”

“Uh, no. I’ll try back later.”

Pat hung up quickly and peered over the wall of his cubicle, on the lookout for other officers, desk jockeys like him. His beat was a computer. He was a glorified file clerk. Guns scared him. Criminals revolted him. He carried a badge, but he wasn’t cut out to be a policeman. He’d never wanted to be, and he looked upon the next twenty-two years before he could retire as a sentence he must serve.

The coast being clear, Pat dialed a cell phone number. The phone rang three times before it was answered with a brusque hello.

“George? Pat Wickham.”

He could sense George McGowan’s displeasure, and for a moment he thought the other man would hang up on him. But then he grumbled, “Hold on.”

Pat heard a muffled conversation where George excused himself, followed by several seconds of silence while he sought privacy. Then, “How’d you get this number?”

“I’m a cop.”

A sound of derision, then, “I’m in the middle of an important meeting. My father-in-law is about to wrap up a contract to build the new athletic complex. You couldn’t have called at a worse time.”

“We need to talk about Jay.”

“Fuck we do,” George said under his breath.

“They know how he was murdered.”

“I heard.”

“That newswoman is saying she was given a date rape drug.”

“Heard that, too.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

Pat estimated that George McGowan outweighed him by seventy-five pounds. But at that moment, he wished for the physical strength to match his anger. He’d bash the other man’s beefy head into the wall for being so obtuse.

“Aren’t you worried?”

“Yeah, I’m worried. I had to play eighteen holes of golf and lose, then suffer through a two-hour lunch followed by a ninety-minute sales pitch. After all that, if this contract negotiation goes south, Les is going to blame me for interrupting his closing sales pitch to take this call.”

Pat saw through the other man’s bluster. George was just as concerned over their situation as he was. “Now Britt Shelley has gone missing.”

“Missing? What do you mean, missing?”

“Just what I said,” Pat replied irritably. “She wasn’t at home when Clark and Javier went to serve the warrant. She’s not at the TV station. She hasn’t been seen since yesterday afternoon. There’s an APB out on her car.”

George silently digested all that, then asked, “What do you expect me to do about it? Go beating the bushes looking for her?”

“What do you think it means, her vanishing like that?”

“How the hell should I know, Pat? First thing that springs to mind is that she didn’t want to be arrested.”

There was an implied duh at the end of that, which Pat ignored. “How much do you think Jay told her?”

In a different tone, one rife with uncertainty, George said, “I don’t know.”

The other man’s anxiety increased Pat’s own. “Oh, Jesus.”

“For crissake, will you get a grip? Don’t fall apart.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing. We’re going to do nothing except act as though everything is normal. Do nothing, Pat, you understand me?”

Pat resented the other man’s bullying tone. Who did he think he was, talking down to him like that? He, who everybody knew was his father-in-law’s whipping boy. He, who had a wife with a leg problem-she couldn’t keep them closed.

George had been one of Pat Sr.’s best friends when they were fellow police officers. By extension, he became a family friend and was often a guest at their house for dinner. Pat could remember George socking him playfully on the arm, teasing him about girls, talking to him about baseball, and playing video games with him. He was loud and rambunctious and fun.