Carnival of Shadows (39 page)

Travis brought his hand down on the small table. The sound was deafening within the confines of the caravan.

“Enough!”

Doyle fell silent, and yet there was something in his eyes that seemed satisfied, as if this kind of forceful reaction was precisely the thing he had wished to see.

“How dare you?” Travis said. “You honestly believe that you can challenge me in this way, Mr. Doyle? You honestly think I will stand for this kind of thing?” He looked at Doyle with disgust. “You think you have the right to say just whatever you wish? Well, you don’t. This is tantamount to slander. I know exactly what it is that you’re trying to do. I see through you, Mr. Doyle. I see right through and I do not like what I see. This is not a game, sir. The Bureau has the right to take whatever action it feels is necessary to—”

“To what, Agent Travis? To serve its own ends and—”

“You say one more word, Mr. Doyle, and I am arresting you.”

“For what, might I ask?”

“Complicity in murder, Mr. Doyle.”

“Prove it.”

“I will.”

“Then do it, Agent Travis. If you can prove that he was murdered here, then I will turn myself in to the sheriff of Seneca Falls, and I will make a full and detailed confession of how I killed him.”

“I have one further question for you, Mr. Doyle.”

“Fire away, G-man.”

“What was it that you did in the final two years of the war?”

Doyle frowned. “And this possesses relevance because?”

“Because I want to know, Mr. Doyle. Because I am asking you. Tell me that you were not in Germany.”

“I was in Germany, Agent Travis.”

“As I thought.”

“And that is all you want to know?”

“For now, yes.” Travis stood up. “You people are unbelievable,” he said.

“I would hope so,” Doyle replied.

Travis shook his head resignedly, and then he walked to the door.

34

Travis did not think. He got in his car and drove out to the Greenwood County Morgue. He wanted to see the dead man again. The dead man was a single anchor in this storm of insanity, and he needed a clear and uncertain reminder of why he was even here in this godforsaken place.

There were so many things he could have said to Edgar Doyle, but he knew that they would count for nothing. The man possessed a viewpoint all his own. The man was a subversive, more than likely a Communist, and precisely the kind of individual that was undermining the very stability of the society that good and decent people like himself were trying to create and maintain. A few questions before the House Un-American Activities Commission would not go amiss on Doyle and his freak show. As for whatever he might have been involved in during the final years of the war, well, that would be another line to vigorously pursue once the immediate investigation was complete.

Travis pulled up before the low building outside of Seneca Falls. Wolf was nowhere to be seen, and the place looked deserted. He knocked on the door repeatedly, remembering that Jack Farley was somewhat deaf, and that last time he and Rourke had visited he had not heard them. There was no answer, the door was firmly locked, and even at the back of the building there was no sign that anyone was present.

Travis headed back into town, went directly to the sheriff’s office, and there he found Rourke.

“Sheriff Rourke, good afternoon,” Travis said as he was shown into Rourke’s office.

Rourke rose from his desk, shook Travis’s hand. “So, what can I do for you this afternoon?”

“I need to speak with Jack Farley.”

“On the phone or in person?”

“In person, preferably. I want to see the corpse again.”

“Good enough,” Rourke said. He took a piece of paper from a scratch pad on his desk and scribbled down the address. “It’s not far,” he said. “Down here to the right, take your first left, keep going on past the convenience store, and then second on the right beyond that you’ll find a large white house on the corner of Elm and Warren. That’s Farley’s place.”

“One other thing,” Travis said.

“Sure.”

“Last night…”

Rourke grinned. “That sure was something, wasn’t it? Hell of thing, that. Near as damnit gave me a heart attack when he mentioned that name. Have thought of that kid I don’t know how many times.” Rourke shook his head, seemingly still bemused. “Bobby Alberstein, of all people. Absolutely amazing.”

“Who did you tell about what happened between you and this Alberstein boy?”

“How do you mean, who did I tell?”

“Well, your friends, you know? Members of your family. Who did you discuss those events with prior to last night?”

Rourke seemed puzzled. “I didn’t discuss them with anyone, Agent Travis. To be completely honest, I didn’t even want to remember it myself. I was such an asshole to that kid. Looking back on it now, I was an asshole to a good number of kids, but he was by far and away the worst. Couldn’t even imagine what was inside of me to want to behave like that toward someone.”

“So you never spoke of it?”

“Well, all I can say, Agent Travis, is that sometimes you do things you’re ashamed of, and the last thing you’re gonna do is talk about them.”

“You’re absolutely sure you never mentioned it to anyone?”

“Sure as daylight is daylight, I never said a word to anyone. Why? You think there was some kind of trick going on there?”

Travis looked at Rourke with an expression of slight disbelief. “Well, there had to be a trick, didn’t there, Sheriff Rourke? I mean, it’s not possible for someone to be able to look inside someone’s head and determine what they’re thinking, is it?”

“Well, before last night I would have agreed with you, Agent Travis. But… well, it goes without saying that I was the most shocked of all when that little man said Bobby Alberstein’s name. Never in a million years did I expect that to happen.”

“I can appreciate that,” Travis replied. “Well, let me ask you this. How do you feel about it? Do you not feel as though this was an invasion of your privacy, that your rights as a private citizen were somehow violated?”

“Hell, no,” Rourke said, smiling. “To be frank, I feel like I have taken a load off. It was like I hid that all the way down deep inside of me, and to have it brought out into the open like that, to find out that the guy was actually okay, that he even remembers me, that he talks about me like I did him some kind of favor… well, I have to say that I feel a good deal better about myself.”

“Are you going to make any effort to find out if Greene was telling the truth?”

“Not a hope, Agent Travis. What purpose would it serve? The fact that Greene even knew about it tells me all I need to know. If he knew the guy’s name, if he knew what I did back then, then there’s no reason for me to question what he says about where he is now.”

“You’re just going to trust his word on this?”

“He didn’t need to tell me anything,” Rourke replied. “It didn’t cost me anything, did it? No, I don’t need to go chasing ghosts, Agent Travis. The past is the past. Leave it where it is.”

Travis had no further questions for now. He was a little surprised at Rourke’s naïveté, but he had neither the time nor the interest to challenge him on it. He went out back to the car. He followed Rourke’s directions and wound up outside Jack Farley’s house within five minutes. Wolf was on the porch, and raised his head as Travis made his way up the steps.

“Hey, boy,” Travis said, and extended a hand toward the dog’s muzzle.

The dog seemed insufficiently enthused to respond and laid his head down once more.

Travis knocked on the screen door, and within moments a woman appeared, drying her hands on her apron as she came down the hallway.

“You must be that federal agent feller,” she said. “You here to see Jack?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am,” Travis replied.

“Well, come on in, then. He’s tinkering in back with something or other. I’ll fetch him out. Can I get you a drink or something?”

Travis stepped into the cool and shadowed hallway.

“I’m Mrs. Farley, by the way,” she said. “Jack’s wife.”

“A pleasure, Mrs. Farley.”

“Some lemonade, I think,” the woman said. She nodded toward the doorway on Travis’s right. “You go on in there, make yourself at home, and I’ll bring you a glass of lemonade.”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” Travis said.

“Lemonade ain’t trouble,” Mrs. Farley said, smiling. “I’ve seen plenty of trouble in my time, and it sure as hell ain’t a glass of lemonade.”

Travis went into the front room and took a seat.

The lemonade came, as did Jack Farley, and Farley seemed surprised to see Travis in his house.

“Do for you?” he asked.

“I came to view the body again, Mr. Farley,” Travis explained.

Farley seemed confused. “I don’t know what I can do to help you with that, Agent Travis,” he said. “Whoever your boy is, he’s been gone three days now.”

“Three days? The body has gone? Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.” Farley settled back in his armchair. “Heard rumor he was a bad ’un. A killer from Europe or someplace. Is that right?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Farley. Are you saying that the corpse was removed from your morgue?”

“ ’S what I just said, isn’t it? And it was your people that took him. Day after you arrived, Wednesday lunchtime. Couple of suits showed up, all official, said they were from your gang, took him away in an ambulance. Well, I say it was an ambulance, but it was black and it didn’t have any official markings on it.”

“Do you remember their names, Mr. Farley?”

“Lord, no. Sometimes I struggle to remember my own.”

“Try, Mr. Farley. Did they say their names, or did they just show you their identification cards?”

“No, I’m pretty sure the first one said his name. He had another man with him, a younger man, and I don’t know if he actually said anything at all. They were only there for a few minutes. They came in, showed their IDs, said they were taking the body, and off they went.”

“Did they have a warrant?”

“A warrant?”

“Yes, Mr. Farley. Did they have some sort of official paperwork authorizing them to take the body?”

“Hey, they were federal people, Agent Travis. You showed up on Tuesday, I’m informed by Sheriff Rourke that this is now a federal homicide investigation, that I have to cooperate with the FBI, and then less than a day later, another couple of G-men show up and say they are going to take the body away. I’m not arguing, right? I was getting tired of the stink o’ him, and besides, I was told to cooperate in every which way I could.”

“But they are supposed to have a warrant, Mr. Farley. In order to take a body out of a jurisdiction, they have to have a warrant.”

“Well, how the hell am I supposed to know that? I ain’t never been involved in a federal investigation before. Federal means that it crosses all state lines, all county lines, everything. Federal is a little bigger than Seneca Falls, right?”

Travis didn’t understand. Why would the body be removed by fellow agents without any preamble, without any attempt to inform him? What the hell was going on here?

“Okay,” Travis said. “So you’re at your office. You’re at the morgue, right? These two men appear. The first one, the older one, he shows you his ID, and he says what?”

“He shows me his ID. He says his name, says he’s here from…” Farley frowned. “He said he was from Kansas City. That’s right, yes. He said they’d come down from Kansas City and they needed to take the body back for further examination.”

“You’re sure now, Mr. Farley? He definitely said he was from Kansas City?”

“Yes, I’m sure.
The Wizard of Oz
, right? Dorothy and Toto and whatever.”

“Yes, exactly.
The Wizard of Oz
.”

“Anyway, they looked the part, they sounded the part, they showed their IDs, and based on what Chas Rourke told me the day before, well, it didn’t seem like I had any right to question what they were doing. They were FBI agents, right? They are government people, and you don’t argue with the government, not if you have any sense at all.”

Travis was not so sure, but he did not voice the thought.

“Okay, so back to their names,” Travis said. “Think, Mr. Farley. Just see if you can’t cast your mind back to the moment that the older man showed you his ID. Close your eyes; see if you can’t picture that moment… see if you can’t just get his face in your mind, and he’s holding up his card…”

“Car… Carvel…”

“Carvahlo?” Travis ventured.

“Carvahlo!” Farley exclaimed. “That’s the one! That’s the name right there.” He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s amazing, Agent Travis. They teach you to do that at the Bureau?”

Travis was shocked by the revelation. He knew Raymond Carvahlo. Carvahlo had been among the very first wave of Unit X draftees into Kansas after he himself had been assigned. He looked at Farley. “Teach me what?”

“Teach you how to get into people’s minds and make them remember things that they’d forgotten?”

Travis was still taken aback by the mention of Carvahlo’s name, and attendant to that feeling was a sense of being out of the loop. Was there some other agenda being played out here and played out by the very people for whom he worked?

“You okay, Agent Travis?” Farley asked.

“Yes, yes, of course. It’s nothing, Mr. Farley. I was just unaware that the body had been requisitioned by the Kansas office; that was all.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t be too worried about it,” Farley said. “If your Bureau is anything like County, then you only find out about new procedures and protocol six months after the fact.” Farley laughed. “So, seems if you want to visit with your dead man again, then you’re going to have to ask your Kansas buddies what they did with him.”

“Yes, it seems so,” Travis replied. He set the half-empty glass of lemonade down on the table to his right and rose to his feet.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Farley,” he said.

Farley rose too, walked out to the front with him.

“Just one more thing,” Travis said. “Your autopsy report, photographs, fingerprint records—”

“They took the lot, Agent Travis. Said it was federal property, seeing as how it was a federal investigation an’ all. Like I said, they looked the part, sounded the part, and I just did what I figured I was supposed to do based on what Chas Rourke had said the day before. They were here and gone within twenty minutes.”

“Understood,” Travis said. He shook hands with Farley. “Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome, Agent Travis, though I must say you look like you saw a ghost.”

“It’s fine, Mr. Farley. Perhaps just a little off-color, as they say.”

“Well, you take care, son,” Farley said.

“Tell your wife thank you for the lemonade.”

“Sure will.”

Farley closed the door and Travis walked down the path to his car.