Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

Sully nodded and stepped aside to call in a couple of paragraphs on the scene. Patrick said yeah, yeah, typing it in, but hang on, Eddie wants to talk to you.

Edward came on the line. “So what’s this about the manhunt, the suspects?”

“What I told Patrick earlier. I got a heads-up it might go down today.”

“Chris says he hasn’t heard anything.”

“That surprises you?”

“Take the high road, Sullivan. Can you work it some more?”

“I can try. No promises. You want any more on this out here?”

“No. I was watching. Reese was very effective. We write a scene-setter on a bereaved father asking to be left alone, we look like cocksuckers.”

“So-so you want me going on the suspects now?”

“Yes. I don’t have to tell you how important this is.”

He clicked off, and be damned if some of the reporters were not already drifting back to their cars, pulling out. Television trucks were striking tripods, loading up. Dave’s crew was dragging, but they were wrapping up, too. Dave was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, wrestling the tie off his neck.

“Hey,” he said, looking up at Sully. “There’s an honest-to-Christ seafood place about two miles up. They got a bar. Want in? We’re killing time till the six o’clock stand-up.”

“Maybe I’ll catch you up down there.”

“The Chesapeake. Two miles west, on the right.”

Sully nodded and walked back to the bike, sitting astride it in the shade. He sat, thinking about it, watching the trucks pull out. After twenty minutes, when it was deserted, he went limping back toward the house, turning down the driveway like he owned the place.

An officer stepped out of his patrol car, stringy, incredulous. A U.S. Marshal came out of the garage and the pair began walking rapidly toward him. Sully kept walking, his hands up and away from his body, a business card between two fingers of his left hand.

“Please give this to the judge,” he said, looking at the officer, extending the card, “and tell him he wants to talk to me for a few minutes. But right now. He needs to talk to me right now.”

“You know my orders are to arrest the first reporter who tries some shit like this?” the cop said, almost chest-bumping him, sweating in a bulletproof vest.

“’s why I said please.”

The cop took the card, looked down at it, and motioned to the marshal. The man took it and walked back into the house. He reemerged a few minutes later, flicked his finger at Sully, and escorted him into the foyer. It was high ceilinged, spacious with stone floors, a mirror in a heavy frame on the wall and a small credenza. Thick carpet started in each room off the foyer, and the staircase was just ahead. It was oppressively quiet.

“You are in a world of shit,” the marshal whispered to him. He was a tall, chubby man, his black suit coat buttoned, his brown eyes bright and harsh. He stood about nine inches from Sully’s face, leaning in from the waist. It was the stance and position of men in authority, and Sully resented it as much as he recognized it.

He pursed his lips as if to kiss the agent on the lips, and the man recoiled, stepping back.

“Thought so, tough guy.”

The agent glared and motioned him to follow down the carpeted hallway. At the end, he knocked softly on a door, swung it open, and motioned for Sully to enter. It was the judge’s home office. David Reese sat behind a heavy desk. His tie was still knotted at his throat and his jacket was still on. There were framed diplomas on the wall. The place had the air of a funeral parlor.

“I honestly cannot believe your temerity,” Reese said, as soon as the agent closed the door. “I cannot believe you would send some sort of cryptic note to my family at this hour. The only reason I allowed you in was so I could document your behavior to your employers, who will be informed of this, at the highest level, within the hour. I can assure you that my graciousness will not be so profound this time.”

“The last time we had dealings, David, you lied about what you told me, then tried to get me fired, so let’s cut the foreplay,” Sully said, sitting down, uninvited. “I am truly sorry about your daughter. Honest to Christ. Now. If you’re going to call my bosses and tell them I’m the only hack who got into your house today by handing a cop a business card and telling him it was important, they’re going to be more impressed than pissed. But go ahead. Eddie Winters’ll take your call. I just talked to him. The phone’s right there.”

They looked at each other.

“Go ahead,” Sully said. “I’n wait.”

“There is some point to this,” Reese said.

“Yeah. There is. It’s an off-the-record visit. I’m not reporting anything about coming to your house or what it looks or sounds like in here. I’ll report what you said in the driveway and that’s it. I came to tell you that apparently at some point today, or perhaps early tomorrow, police are going to arrest the three men or boys who were in Doyle’s Market when Sarah was there.”

The man rocketed to his feet, knocking his chair back. “How do you know that? No one has told me any such thing.”

“It’s going to happen very soon. But that’s not the point. The point is that, as a matter of decency, I did not want your family to put much faith in those arrests. They’re not going to stand. You’re a prick, David, but I thought it was the decent thing to do, for your wife if nobody else, to let her know to condition her expectations.”

“How could you even know about the arrests, much less if they’ll stand?”

“It’s a long story.”

Reese shook his head. “I don’t trust a goddamn thing you’re saying.”

Sully stood up and nodded. “Doubt I would if I was you, either. But I wanted to let you know. It seemed right to me. Do with it what you want. I am sorry for your wife. I mean that.”

He backed out of the room, opened the door, and was escorted to the edge of the property by the marshal.

“Soon, and very soon,” the agent said.

“Blow it out your ass,” Sully said.

Sully took the bike back downtown, feeling the energy, the adrenaline coming up now. By the time he peeled off 395 and onto South Capitol, the building itself in his rearview, he was where he needed to be, ready for the shit to start.

He turned right onto O Street SW, one block short of his destination, maybe a mile from the waterfront docks and clubs and restaurants, and a good cannon shot from tourist country. He passed Half Street and then turned south on First, approaching the intersection John had given him. Two white Chevy Caprice Classics, parked illegally, four men in each, screamed that he was in the right place. He went back up to the McDonald’s on East Capitol, got a Coke and called John Parker again, getting the answering machine.

A blue Olds Cutlass sat in the parking lot, the engine running. He would have sworn he’d seen it in his rearview on the GW Parkway. “You got to be kidding,” he said out loud.

After twenty minutes without a call back from John, the blue Olds still in the parking lot, he went back outside. He went to his bike, helmet in hand, then turned and walked rapidly to the Olds. There were two men inside, both white, jeans and sweatshirts. In this part of town.

“Hey,” he said, rapping on the passenger-side window, leaning in.

The window came partway down, the guy not saying anything.

“You should try the burgers,” he said. “I think this place, it’s gonna catch on.”

The window went back up.

A few minutes later, he ripped the bike back onto South Cap, giving it full throttle, up to ninety in less than two hundred yards, no way anything on four wheels could keep up, and then he braked and leaned hard to make the right onto M, took two other turns, blowing the stop signs and, less than three minutes later, was on P, the tail gone.