Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“You mean he’d hide the car,” Pace said.

“No,” said Helm. “I mean he’d destroy the car. We think that’s what happened to your blue Ford van.”

Pace hadn’t thought of the van in days. “You lost me,” he said.

“Look, your reporter, what’s her name, the one who spotted the van on the Hill—”

“Jill Hughes.”

“Jill, right. She found the van parked outside the same building where Chappy Davis’s office is. We tell Davis that. Then we tell him an FBI informant says a late-model blue Ford van matching the description of the one Hughes saw, damage and all, was driven into a junkyard outside Baltimore. It was brought in by two men who fit the descriptions you gave us of the two who assaulted you. The driver, who was the owner, paid to have the van destroyed, compacted in one of those hydraulic presses that turns a two-ton vehicle into a two-ton block of steel. The junkyard owner remembered the case because the van was in good condition overall and he wanted to buy it for parts. But the owner wouldn’t hear of it. The FBI’s trying to find that block of steel now. We could still reconstruct some evidence if we could pull the mess apart. But it’s not in the junkyard anymore.”

“And you don’t want the same thing happening to the T-Bird,” Pace concluded.

“That’s it. Do you know where this Chapman Davis lives?”

“Uh, Maryland, I think, but I’m not sure. Maybe I can find him in the Congressional Staff Directory. Let me look.”

Pace thumbed through the thick volume. “Here it is,” he said and gave Helm an address in Silver Spring. “What if you don’t find Parkhall’s prints?”

“A lot would depend on the circumstances. If it appears the car’s been wiped, then that’s suspicious in itself. If there are a lot of prints all over the place and none of them is Parkhall’s, we go off to look for another silver Thunderbird.”

Helm paused for a moment. “I’ve given you enough information to keep you in exclusive stories for a week. But your gain could be our loss forever, if you get my drift.”

“I’ve never gone back on my word in my life.”

“I’ll let you have it all as soon as I can.”

The wheels of justice were spinning fast. Clay Helm got his search warrant, coordinated with Silver Spring police, and planned to move on Chappy Davis before work this morning.

Pace was tempted to stake out Davis’s house and watch the police proceedings, but Paul Wister advised him not to. So he spent the morning trying to concentrate on last Sunday’s New York Times crossword puzzle.

Twenty-four across: former slave. Easy. That was “esne.” A perfect crossword-puzzle word. Novices wouldn’t know it; veteran puzzle addicts knew it well. And it contained four letters that would fit easily into intersecting words. Like twenty-four down: formerly. Easy again. “Erst.” Pace wondered idly if American slaves, once freed, thought of themselves as “erst esnes.”

He’d completed most of the puzzle—except for the top right and the middle left—when his phone rang. He attached no particular significance to the ring, since he’d been on and off the phone all morning. So he was still racking his brain for the name of a city in western Algeria as he fumbled for the receiver.

“National desk. Steve Pace.”

“This is your friend with subpoena power. Thanks for no story this morning. We executed the search warrant in the company of the Silver Spring police at six this morning,” Helm said. “Davis absolutely freaked. We hadn’t even told him what we’d come to search for, but his eyes immediately went to the garage. That’s when I knew we had him.”

“That’s conjecture, Counselor.”

“So the CID team dusted the car and came up with Elliott Parkhall’s prints all over it in areas where you’d expect a passenger to leave prints. There were other prints on the passenger side, too, including Harold Marshall’s. Davis’s were the only prints on the driver’s side. And there was no evidence the car had been wiped clean at any point.”

“What did Davis say?”

“Very little, actually. He said he wouldn’t talk to us without a lawyer present, which was a very good decision on his part. Except for one thing.” Helm paused.

“What, for God’s sake? I could have a heart attack here any moment and die without knowing what you’re talking about.”

“He admitted he’s the one who picked up Parkhall on the night he vanished.”

“Bingo.”

“He claims, however, that he merely drove around with Parkhall and talked about the new investigation of the ConPac accident, specifically its relevance to the Converse engine. He said he did it because Harold Marshall asked him to find out what he could. He said Parkhall was reluctant to talk about it since the engine was still the subject of an NTSB investigation. After finding out very little of any use, Davis said he dropped Parkhall back at his apartment shortly after 1 A.M. He swears Parkhall went back into the building and that was the last he saw of him. Claims not to know anything about where Parkhall is today.”

“I thought you said he wouldn’t talk without an attorney present.”

“I did. And that’s what he said. But he talked anyhow.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Not for a minute. Oh, I believe he picked up Parkhall, and I believe they probably talked about the crash investigation. I even believe he’s been operating under orders from Senator Marshall. After all, he’s Marshall’s man. What I don’t believe is that he returned Parkhall to his apartment building or, for that matter, that Parkhall ever will return.”

“How can you prove it?”

“Tough. But we have ways. We’re holding Davis as a material witness, and we’ve got his wallet with all his credit cards. If he drove around from 9 P.M. until 1 A.M., or even close to it, he might have needed to stop for gas someplace. He’s got three oil-company cards in his wallet. We’ve asked the companies to check for charges to his account on Monday, the 19th, or early on Tuesday, the 20th.”

“What if he charged gas but the station hasn’t submitted the bill yet?”

“Possible, but most stations operate on such close margins the owners don’t waste any time. I’m trying to think positively.”

“Have you brought him back to Virginia?”

“Can’t. Have to extradite him unless he waives it.”

“So how much of this can I use?”

“Almost any of it,” said Helm, “as long as I’m not a part of the story and the state police aren’t mentioned except as a party to the search of the premises.”

Pace rolled a chair up to Paul Wister’s desk and told him what he’d learned. Wister nodded his head a couple of times but otherwise did nothing to break the narrative.

“This is treacherous, Steve,” he said when Pace finished. “When we wrote about police looking for a late-model silver Thunderbird, we were safe. There are so many of them around we couldn’t be accused of pointing a finger at anybody in particular. Now we’re dealing with an individual whose reputation will be sullied even if he’s innocent.”

“I don’t see how we avoid it unless we withhold the story.”

“No, we have to write the story. But it never hurts to discuss the implications for fairness. And there’s another issue. How do you protect your source?”

“I don’t name him.”

“You need to do more than that. The information you’ve got is too closely held, and too many people know you and Helm are thick.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Call every cop who has anything to do with the Parkhall investigation—D.C., Maryland, Virginia, FBI, everybody, even the NTSB—and try to get a second source to confirm what Helm told you. Let everybody know you’re calling everybody else. You’ll cover Helm’s tracks.”