Injustice (42 page)

I call Sabin. “I'm at a scene, Nick,” she says. “Can I call you back?”

“I think I've found Lydia's secret lover,” I say.

It takes her a moment to make the mental leap from whatever she'd dealing with, back to Lydia's murder. She says she'll hand off what she's doing as quickly as possible and be right over.

“Is Philbin with you?” I ask.

“Philly,” she says sadly. “He's really shook, Nick, getting accused like that. He's taking a few days off.”

We hang up. I get Upton's whiteboard and set it up in my office. I try writing out hypotheses and conclusions, but that doesn't work, so I start listing things I know, but I end up with a forest of seemingly unrelated bits. I wish Isler were available. He's the analytical thinker.

I erase the board and write at the top: “Assumptions: Calvin is secret lover.” Then underneath: “Evidence: 1) Calvin and Lydia worked in legislature at same time,” and “2) Lydia's CD reference.” Under this I write: “Questions: If Calvin and Lydia were lovers, did he kill her, and if so, why?”

Then I stare at the board. Dead end.

I write: “Things about Calvin.”

This time I get further. I write: “1) Legislator; 2) Insurance agent; 3) Remorseful about Subsurface bribe.” I stand back and look a moment, then add quotes around the word “bribe,” because I still don't think he really did anything for the money. Then I continue listing everything I know, going through all our information about him and through my notes: “Veteran; political centrist.”

I stop and think. I don't know much about him at all. I flip through the files again. I read Lizzy's reports: “Chair of House Appropriations Committee; former airplane mechanic.”

I go back to the file.

Scuba diver . . .

I stare at the board some more. Nothing.

Janice buzzes me. “Detective Sabin here to see you, Nick.”

I go out and meet her. As always, Sabin wears a scarf that looks nice with her dark, wavy hair. I lay a hand on her shoulder. We go into my office. I don't think the hand on the shoulder would seem inappropriate if I did it to Upton or Dorsey or Janis, but I worry that maybe it was inappropriate, and now I'm wondering if I want to be appropriate. I say, “How is your morning so far, Rachel?”

“Sad,” she says. “I just came from an apparent suicide. Guy all alone in a motel room.”

“Yes,” I say. “That is sad. How did he . . . you know?”

Sabin sticks a finger in her mouth like a gun.

“Family or anything?” I ask.

“We don't know. He isn't identified yet. He checked in under a fake name. Been dead a few days.”

“Coffee?”

She says she'd like some, so we walk out to the coffeepot and I pour us both a cup, and we go back into my office. I bring her up to date on everything, then we stand drinking coffee and staring at the whiteboard.

“Well, I don't have any great theories,” she says, “but I do have a plan.”

“Being?”

“I think it's time to go talk with Calvin Dunbar. Want to come?”

We go together in her unmarked police car. Calvin and his wife live in a town about thirty miles east of the city. It's the next town beyond Turner, the kind of community that elects people like Calvin: pleasant, not flamboyant, middle-of-the-road. Outgoing but not effusive. The insurance agency is in his home. Sabin wants to show up without warning, hoping he'll be more candid.

The door to Dunbar Insurance is locked and the lights are off, so we ring the doorbell. Kelly Dunbar comes to the door. I remember her from when she and Calvin came for that first interview following his unprompted confession to accepting money from Subsurface: slender, pretty, blond. She tells us Calvin isn't here. She doesn't know where he is.

“Mrs. Dunbar, could we come in and look around?” Sabin asks.

“Gosh. Yeah, no, I don't think so. I mean, not without me talking to Cal first,” she says.

“Please have him call me,” Sabin says. She hands Kelly a card and we leave.

Sabin and I drive back toward town. Her phone rings and she answers it hands-free. “Sabin,” she says.

“Hi, Detective. Captain Dorsey here.”

“Hello, Captain. I have Nick Davis with me.”

This catches Dorsey off guard. Nothing wrong with it, it's just unexpected. Dorsey and I exchange niceties, then he says, “Convenient, actually—this will be of interest to you, too, Nick. We've identified that possible suicide you covered over at Mill Town Motel, Detective.”

“Go ahead.”

“He was
somebody
,” Dorsey says. “A state representative. The guy's name is—um, was—Representative Ted Porter.”

“Porter?” I say, except it comes out as a yell. “Lizzy interviewed the guy. Or maybe she never did. I don't remember.”

I explain to them what I know—how Porter was the one to hang an amendment on the gas tax legislation two years in a row, thus effectively delaying the tax those two years.

“Was the guy in trouble?” Dorsey asks. “Financial, legal, marital?”

“I'll ask Lizzy,” I say. “Maybe she'll know something.”

Sabin says, “Has the ME said anything yet? Are we sure it was suicide?”

“I don't know,” Dorsey says. “We should have a report tomorrow.”

We end the call. We're coming up on Turner, where Flora and Chip and Lizzy live, so I know the area well and I know we're about to enter a cell phone dead zone. I want to talk to Isler again, so I say, “I'll buy you lunch, Rachel. There's a cool little diner right up here.”

I direct her to the Shipwreck Diner, one of those old bus-shaped diners. It has a menu tailored to Turner's more moneyed residents.

We get a booth. Rachel orders the pear salad. I get the seafood stew. I reach Isler on the phone, and since the place isn't crowded, I put him on speaker in the middle of the table. We lean in close.

“. . . falling into place,” he says. “In this whole corruption investigation, who has gotten the least attention? Whose dirty laundry never got looked into because he packaged it all up and brought it to us?”

“Dunbar?” I say.

“Right. He came to us confessing his guts out, copping to an illicit fifteen K, so we never dissected his finances and personal life like we did with everyone else. Basically, all we know about Dunbar is what he has told us.”

As Isler talks, I'm staring at an art print on the wall at one end of the diner. I used to eat here when Lizzy was young and we'd transport her between Flora's house in Turner and mine in town. I've always found the painting mesmerizing. Up close, it looks like meaningless and random splotches of color: white, yellowish white, gray and yellow, gray and brown. But when you back up enough, it resolves into the frenzied and motion-filled image of a ship dashed on the rocks in a storm.

“What was he trying to hide?” I ask.

“How about five point two million?” Isler says. “Here's how it works: Dunbar was chair of the house appropriations committee. He's the one who got to dole out pork projects. And let's say there's this weak legislator who's in constant danger of getting voted out of office, and the only way for him to hold on to his seat is to keep bringing his voters truckloads of pork.”

“You mean Representative Porter?” Sabin says.

“Yes. Porter. All Porter has to do to get this pork—all those special projects for his district—is to keep hanging his anti-fracking amendment on the gas tax legislation.”

“And nobody thinks it's strange because Porter is a greenie anyhow.”

“Right,” Isler says. “So all the amendment accomplishes is it keeps delaying the tax legislation.”

The waitress brings our lunch plates. She eyes the phone and listens for a second; the speaker is loud enough for others to hear. She says, “We don't really allow . . .” but Sabin and I both smack our badges down on the tabletop before she can finish her sentence. She retreats, and I see her whispering to the manager.

The phone beeps for a waiting call. It's Lizzy. Good. I'll call her back as soon as I finish with Isler.

“. . . saving the industry and Subsurface hundreds of millions of dollars,” Isler says.

“And Calvin Dunbar, as chair of the appropriations committee, was the only one in the state who could offer Porter those pork projects. So Billman slipped Calvin Dunbar five mil, and Dunbar gave Porter the pork projects in exchange for killing the gas tax with his amendments. Everybody comes out looking clean,” I say. “But where's the five and a half mil?”

“My guess,” Isler says, “is that it's in the Seychelles.”

Of course it is. It all makes sense.

“We're getting the warrant,” Isler says. “Then Chip and I are going to get Dunbar.”

“He's not home,” I say. “Sabin and I were just there.”

“We'll find him.”

“How's the salad?” I whisper to Sabin. She gives it a thumbs-up and puts a pear slice on my bread plate. I motion for her to try some of the stew if she wants. It's really good. Spicy.

“. . . killed Lydia,” Isler says. I snap back into the moment. Like Henry Tatlock, Dunbar seems too gentle for all of this. My subconscious must have resisted following Isler's theory out to its obvious conclusions.

“It all would have worked out for him if we hadn't started the corruption probe,” Isler said. “Dunbar wasn't even on our radar. But as things started unspooling, he must have panicked and decided to eliminate anyone who knew about the deal.”

“Mailing,” I said.

“And now Porter,” Sabin said. “I'm betting the ME declares Porter's death as a homicide.”

“And Lydia must have discovered something,” Isler said. “Maybe a balance sheet or maybe an overheard phone call. Or maybe Calvin told her. Pillow talk, you know? Maybe he whispered his secret, hoping she'd sail away with him or whatever.”

“But Lydia freaked,” I say. “She went running off, and Calvin went after her.”

We discuss the particulars a while longer, then Isler speaks to
someone who must have come into his office. Then he's back: “Oh, good. We have the warrant,” he says. “Now I've just got to go find the son of a bitch.”

The phone call ends. Sabin and I sit in silence. The soup is really too spicy, and I have to keep taking breaks to let my taste buds recover. I stare at the shipwreck painting: horror and death painted in such soul-stirring beauty.

“You okay, Nick?” Sabin says.

“How could I be so wrong about people? First Henry. Now Calvin Dunbar.”

“Yes, hard to believe.”

“He seemed so normal last night.”

“Last night?” Sabin says.

I tell her about seeing Calvin last night at Friendly City. As I narrate the details of our brief crossing of paths, Rachel stares at me more and more intently. “But when you saw him, he wasn't coming
from
the building?”

“No,” I say. “He'd already left. He just happened to see me as he was leaving to drive home.”

“He didn't go back inside with you when you ran in to piss?”

“No.”

Her dark eyes are fierce. Everything about her just changed. She stares at me, and I wait for her to say something. She is making me uncomfortable.

“Rachel?”

“Nick, Calvin Dunbar had not been in the lounge having a drink, and he had no documents to give you. He was there in the parking lot waiting for you, to ambush you, to get you to his car without being seen, and to kill you. If you hadn't run inside to piss, you'd be dead now. And probably if you hadn't been on the phone with your wife when you came out, you'd be dead.”

“Bullshit,” I say. But it's a hollow response, and it comes out sounding shrill. Sabin is right. It's so obvious. Like Lydia, like Mailing, like Porter, maybe even like Bud Billman, I know too much. I
threaten his millions. Rachel is right. If not for my full bladder and a call from Tina, I'd be gone.