The McCone Files (39 page)

“No. Initially she agreed that it wouldn't be a good idea. But now…” He shrugged.

“I'll need to speak with Mrs. Shoemaker. Maybe I can reason with her, persuade her not to go until we've identified John. Or maybe she'll allow me to go along as her bodyguard.”

“You can speak with her if you like, but she's beyond reasoning with. And there's no way you can stop her or force her to allow you to accompany her. My wife is a strong-willed woman; that interior decorating firm across the courtyard is hers, she built it from the ground up. When Andrea decides to do something, she does it. And asks permission from no one.”

“Still, I'd like to try reasoning. This trip to the cabin—that's the urgency you mentioned on the phone. Two days to find the man behind the harassment before she goes out there and perhaps makes a target of herself.”

“Yes.”

“Then I'd better get started. That funeral arrangement—what florist did it come from?”

Shoemaker shook his head. “It arrived at least five weeks ago, before either of us noticed a pattern to the harassment. Andrea just shrugged it off, threw the wrappings and card away.”

“Let's go look at the notes, then. They're my only lead.”

Vengeance will be mine. The sudden blow. The quick attack.

Vengeance is the price of silence.

Mute testimony paves the way to an early grave. The rest is silence.

A freshly tuned grave is silent testimony to an old wrong and its avenger.

There was more in the same vein—slightly biblical-flavored and stilted. But chilling to me, even though the safety-deposit booth at Shoemaker's bank was overly warm. If that was my reaction, what had these notes done to Andrea Shoemaker? No wonder she was thinking of leaving a husband who cared more for the electoral opinion than his wife's life and safety.

The notes had been typed without error on an electric machine that had left no such obvious clues as chipped or skewed keys. The paper and envelopes were pale and cheap, purchasable at any discount store. They had been handled, I was sure, by nothing more than gloved hands. No signature—just the typed name “John.”

But the writer had wanted the Shoemakers—one of them, anyway—to know who he was. Thus the theme that ran through them all: silence and revenge.

I said, “I take it your contact at the E.P.D. had their lab go over these?”

“Yes. There was nothing. That's why he wanted to probe further—something I couldn't permit him to do.”

“Because of this revenge-and-silence business. Tell me about it.”

Shoemaker looked around furtively. My God, did he think bank employees had nothing better to do with their time than to eavesdrop on our conversation?

“We'll go have drink,” he said. “I know a place that's private.”

We went to a restaurant a few blocks away, where Shoemaker had bourbon and I toyed with a glass of iced tea. After some prodding, he told me his story; it didn't enhance him in my eyes.

Seventeen years ago Shoemaker had been interviewing for a staff attorney's position at a large lumber company. While on a tour of the mills, he witnessed an accident in which a worker named Sam Carding was severely mangled while trying to clear a jam in the bark-stripping machine. Shoemaker, who had worked in the mills summers to pay for his education, knew the accident was due to company negligence, but accepted a handsome job offer in exchange for not testifying for the plaintiff in the ensuing lawsuit. The court ruled against Carding, confined to a wheelchair and in constant pain; a year later, while the case was still under appeal, Carding shot his wife and himself. The couple's three children were given token settlements in exchange for dropping the suit and then were adopted by relatives in a different part of the country.

“It's not a pretty story, Mr. Shoemaker,” I said, “and I can see why the wording of the notes might make you suspect there's a connection between it and this harassment. But who do you think John is?”

“Carding's oldest boy. Carding and his family knew I'd witnessed the accident; one of his coworkers saw me watching from the catwalk and told him. Later, when I turned up as a senior counsel…” He shrugged.

“But why, after all this time—”

“Why not? People nurse grudges. John Carding was sixteen at the time of the lawsuit; there were some ugly scenes with him, both at my home and my office at the mill. By now he'd be in his forties. Maybe it's his way of acting out some sort of midlife crisis.”

“Well, I'll call my office and have my assistant run a check on all three Carding kids. And I want to speak with Mrs. Shoemaker—preferably in your presence.”

He glanced at his watch. “It can't be tonight. She's got a meeting of her professional organization, and I'm dining with my campaign manager.”

A potentially psychotic man was threatening Andrea's life, yet they both carried on as usual. Well, who was I to question it? Maybe it was their way of coping.

“Tomorrow, then,” I said. “Your home. At the noon hour.”

Shoemaker nodded. Then he gave me the address, as well as the names of John Carding's siblings.

I left him on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant: a handsome man whose shoulders now slumped inside his expensive suit coat, shivering in the brisk wind off Humboldt Bay. As we shook hands, I saw that shame made his gaze unsteady, the set of his mouth less than firm.

I knew that kind of shame. Over the course of my career, I'd committed some dreadful acts that years later woke me in the deep of the night to sudden panic. I'd also
not
committed certain acts—failure that woke me to regret an emptiness. My sins of omission were infinitely worse than those of commission, because I knew that if I'd acted, I could have made a difference. Could even have saved a life.

I wasn't able to reach Rae Kelleher, my assistant at All Souls, that evening, and by the time she got back to me the next morning—Thursday—I was definitely annoyed. Still, I tried to keep a lid on my irritation. Rae is young, attractive, and in love; I couldn't expect her to spend her evenings waiting to be of service to her workaholic boss.

I got her started on a computer check on all three Cardings, then took myself to the Eureka P.D. and spoke with Shoemaker's contact, Sergeant Bob Wolfe. Wolfe—a dark haired, sharp-featured man whose appearance was a good match for his surname—told me he'd had the notes processed by the lab, which had turned up no useful evidence.

“Then I started to probe, you know? When you got a harassment case like this, you look into the victims' private lives.”

“And that was when Shoemaker told you to back off.”

“Uh-huh.”

“When was this?”

“About five weeks ago.”

“I wonder why he waited so long to hire me. Did he, by any chance, ask you for a referral to a local investigator?”

Wolfe frowned. “Not this time.”

“Then you'd referred him to someone before?”

“Yeah, guy who used to be on the force—Dave Morrison. Last April.”

“Did Shoemaker tell you why he needed an investigator?”

“No, and I didn't ask. These politicians, they're always trying to get something on their rivals. I didn't want any part of it.”

“Do you have Morrison's address and phone number handy?”

Wolfe reached into his desk drawer, shuffled things, and flipped a business card across the blotter. “Dave gave me a stack of these when he set up shop,” he said. “Always glad to help an old pal.”

Morrison was out of town, the message on his answering machine said, but would be back tomorrow afternoon. I left a message of my own, asking him to call me at my motel then I headed for the Shoemaker's home, hoping I could talk some common sense into Andrea.

But Andrea wasn't having any common sense.

She strode around the parlor of their big Victorian—built by one of the city's lumber barons, her husband told me when I complimented them on it—arguing and waving her arms and making scathing statements punctuated by a good amount of profanity. And knocking back martinis, even though it was only a little past noon.

Yes, she was going to the cabin. No, neither her husband nor I was welcome there. No, she wouldn't postpone the trip; she was sick and tired of being cooped up like some kind of zoo animal because her husband had made a mistake years before she'd met him. All right, she realized this John person was dangerous. But she'd taken self-defense classes and owned a .32 revolver. Of course she knew how to use it. Practiced frequently, too. Women had to be prepared these days, and she was.

But, she added darkly, glaring at her husband, she'd just as soon not have to shoot John. She'd rather send him straight back to Steve and let them settle this score. May the best man win—and she was placing bets on John.

As far as I was concerned, Steve and Andrea Shoemaker deserved each other.

I tried to explain to her that self-defense classes don't fully prepare you for a paralyzing, heart-pounding encounter with an actual violent stranger. I tried to warn her that the ability to shoot well on a firing range doesn't fully prepare you for pumping a bullet into a human being who is advancing swiftly on you.

I wanted to tell her she was being an idiot.

Before I could, she slammed down her glass and stormed out of the house.

Her husband replenished his own drink and said, “Now do you see what I'm up against?”

I didn't respond to that. Instead I said, “I spoke with Sergeant Wolfe earlier.”

“And?”

“He told me he referred you to a local private investigator, Dave Morrison, last April.”

“So.”

“Why didn't you hire Morrison for this job?”

“As I told you yesterday, my—”

“Sensitive position, yes.”

Shoemaker scowled.

Before he could comment, I asked, “What was the job last April?”

“Nothing to do with this matter.”

“Something to do with politics?

“In a way.”