Stephen White - Cold Case

"Sorry," I said.

"Why were you still hanging around? You said your meeting with Welle was before this campaign thing."

"A reporter kind of hijacked me. Thought I might know something about illegal fund-raising practices she's investigating."

"Regarding Welle?"

"Yes."

His eyebrows elevated a smidgen.

"Do you?"

"Nope."

Sam cracked the knuckles on the little finger of his left hand. Then he did the right.

His silence made me nervous. I said, "Lauren's helping out, too. With Locard.

She's the local legal connection."

The French door opened behind us and Emily barked once until she recognized our guest. The dog loved Sam Purdy and almost knocked him over while displaying her affection. Lauren told her to get off of him and said, "Here's your beer, Sam," and handed him a bottle with a cutthroat trout on the label.

He gazed at the bottle with some curiosity. He shook his head and mused, "Never thought I'd prefer one of your froufrou beers to a Bud. Wonder what's happening to me." I said, "I was just telling Sam about Locard."

We were still standing at the rail of the deck. The pastels had totally dissolved from the clouds and the western parts of the valley were starting to be soaked in dusty black. Behind us, Lauren lowered herself to the end of a weathered teak chaise. She said, "Ah."

Lauren had made an angel food cake before dinner. She excused herself and went inside to whip up a fresh strawberry sauce for it. I asked, "When you made your calls today, Sam, did you hear anything about threats? Against Raymond Welle?

There seemed to be a lot of security around when I was there."

He shook his head.

"Nobody said anything to me about any threats. But a lot of security doesn't mean much. Controversial politicians travel with plenty of muscle these days.

They need to. And Welle's a controversial politician. You know something specific about that? About threats?"

"No."

He sipped some beer.

"Do you wonder about a connection? Between what you're doing for Locard and the shooting?"

I was surprised at the question.

"No. Of course not. Not at all."

"Why not?"

"Just don't see any relevance."

He swallowed a yawn.

"You have to admit it was a pitiful assassination attempt.

I mean-a major amateur act. A nine-millimeter handgun at over a hundred feet?

The target not even in clear sight?"

"That's not totally accurate, Sam. There was a guy at the door who looked kind of like Welle. And who's to say it wasn't an amateur? As you just pointed out, Welle is plenty controversial. I'm sure he stirs up some resentment among that segment of the citizenry that is fond of guns and struggles with impulse-control problems."

He tapped his fingernail on the edge of his chair.

"And my guess is that reopening old murder investigations tends to stir up resentment among those people who are not only fond of guns but also have old homicide problems. You know what they say about sleeping dogs."

He was being obtuse, making me guess at things. It was his way of telling me what a pain in the ass I was being.

"You think somebody was trying to keep Welle from talking to me because of some old murders?"

Sam shrugged. His eyes were locked on the prairie grasses below the deck. It was apparent to me that my arguments were weighing on him with all the gravity of a slight fluctuation in atmospheric pressure. He said, "You're sure this out-of-town reporter you were talking to doesn't know anything about the Locard investigation?"

"Not unless she's lying to me."

He found that denial particularly amusing.

"God, that would be a first. A reporter misleading a source. Wow."

I smiled.

"She doesn't seem to know anything."

"And Welle wasn't evasive with you?"

I thought back on the interview.

"Sure he was, a little. But he's a politician.

He's evasive by nature."

Sam's smile was cunning.

"That's the facile explanation. It's also possible that he knows something he'd rather you not know he knows. Being linked to an old murder of teenage girls, even tangentially, is not exactly the stuff of a politician's dreams while he's running for the Senate."

I thought about it before responding.

"Raymond Welle rode the crest of his wife's murder pretty well, Sam, if you remember. Rode it all the way to national prominence on the radio, then to a seat in Congress. I don't think this investigation would swamp him, even if news about it got out. He'd probably use it to try to prove his point about our degenerate society."

"You done with him? Welle?"

I thought of the case notes I'd requested.

"No, probably not. If I had to guess I'd say I'll probably talk with him again."

"Some advice? Keep an eye out when you do. Things may not be what they seem."

"And sometimes," I said, "a cigar is just a cigar."

He shook his head a little to let me know I wasn't really getting it.

"These cold cases… they aren't really ever very cold, especially not to the people who might get burned by them. The more you stir up the embers, the more dangerous everything becomes. Sleeping dogs," is how he concluded.

"Sleeping dogs."

"Are you suggesting you don't like what Locard is doing?"

"No, no. Not at all.

What I'm suggesting-no, what I'm guaranteeing-is that whoever murdered those two girls isn't going to like what Locard is doing. Don't forget it."

Lauren arrived with the news that dessert was ready. Sam finished his beer in one long pull and stood to go inside.

After Sam left to go home, I called A. J. Simes. It was almost eleven on the East Coast. A. J. sounded exhausted. I asked if she was feeling okay.

"Good enough," was her reply.

She'd heard about the shooting at the tennis house, of course; it was one of the lead stories on the national news. She didn't know I'd been a witness at the event. Her curiosity about the ambush was cursory, however. She implied that the FBI members of Locard would funnel any necessary information into the pipeline, information more reliable than my impressions. The questions that were foremost on A. J."s mind had to do with my interviews with Taro Hamamoto and Raymond Welle and my impressions of the psychotherapy Welle had done with Mariko Hamamoto.

I shared my conclusions, told A. J. that it looked like Welle had done a decent enough job with Mariko and that his story about her presenting problems and the therapy outcome was consistent with Taro Hamamoto's account.

"Hamamoto didn't tell me anything about his daughter that we didn't already know. He's still trying to come to terms with it, A. J. With the murder."

"Wouldn't you be?" she replied.

"I'm sure I would." I informed A. J. that I was about to fax her a detailed report about my trip to Vancouver to see Mariko's father. I asked, "Does Locard have any information about a drug arrest in Steamboat Springs involving Mariko and Tami maybe six, eight months prior to their disappearance?"

"No. Absolutely not. What kind of arrest?"

"Possession. According to Taro Hamamoto, the girls were picked up smoking dope with some tourists."

"And?"

"He says the charges were eventually dropped. Why doesn't Locard know about this?"

"I don't know. But I'll look into it."

I then told A. J. about the contacts I'd received from Dorothy Levin. A. J. peppered me for details about Levin's calls and questions, and asked twice for reassurance that Ms. Levin wasn't on to the Locard investigation.

Twice I gave her the reassurance. I also relayed my suspicion that Dorothy had a source inside Welle's Washington, D. C." office. A. J. seemed to concur with that impression.

We discussed strategies for what I should do next. She wanted me to write up what I had so far, then sit tight while some other avenues were being developed.