Dead Watch

over to Macy’s and pick me up a dress shirt, white or blue? I’ll give you cash . . .”
    “You mean, right now?”
    “If you could,” Barber said. “I’ve gotten my ass in a bind, I’m going to have to run out of town tonight . . .” He fumbled four hundred dollars out of his wallet and gave it to her.
    “But you’ve got the Thirty-first Project Managers at ten o’clock tomorrow.”
    “I should be back,” he said. “Just get the shirt, huh? If you’ve got stuff that has to be done here, I’ll pay overtime anytime you have to stay late.”
    “That’s not necessary . . .” She got her sweater and purse and went mumbling off, and Barber went back to his office windows just in time to see the cops arrive. There were two cars, both state police. Not FBI. The Goodmans, for sure.
    He could go with them, stick with the story. Another guy was going to pick up Lincoln Bowe, so he merely transferred him . . . but the other three, Creasy, Sands, and White, all knew bits and pieces of the story, and the cops would play them off against one another, and sooner or later, one of them would fold.
    Barber had always been an outside guy, a guy who liked to move around. A cell the size of a bathroom. He rubbed his face with his open hands and looked back into the parking lot. Had an idea, smiled at it. He wore a gold Rolex on his left wrist. He reached into his desk drawer, took out a paper clip, straightened it, and using the edge of the Rolex bracelet as a guide, scratched his wrist until it bled, in two small scratches both back and front. He changed the watch to the other wrist and did the same thing.
    He was putting the watch back on his left wrist when he heard the voices in the outer room: cops asking for his office. He walked around and sat behind his desk. Calm. More than calm: cold.
    A plainclothes cop stuck his head in the office door and asked, “Mr. Barber?”
    “Come in. Close the door, please.”
    Three cops. One of them pushed the door closed with his foot. The plainclothesman said, “Mr. Barber, I’m Lieutenant Clayton Bell, Virginia State Police . . .”
    Barber stood up.

    In the outer office, a saleswoman named Cheryl Pence was standing in her office pod when the screaming started: “No, no, don’t, don’t, help, help . . .”
    There was an impact like an explosion, and without thinking, Pence ran to Barber’s office door and yanked it open, the other five office employees all standing, staring. When the door came open they saw three Virginia state cops looking out through a broken window. Pence screamed at them, “What did you do, what did you do . . . ?”
    Bell, shocked, white-faced, turned and muttered, “We didn’t do anything. We didn’t do anything.”
    He was talking to air. Pence had backed away and then started to run for the outer door, the other five stampeding behind her. Bell said to the other two cops, “We didn’t do anything.”

    Outside, three television crews, tipped by what they believed to be local police, had been waiting to film the arrest. They hadn’t been ready for a man to come hurtling out through the wall of glass, five stories above them. One cameraman, saddled up and ready to roll, got a shot of the three cops at the window, looking down.
    The three reporters stood there openmouthed, and then one of them said, “Holy shit.” He turned toward his cameraman: “You get that? Tell me you got that?”
    “I got the cops,” the cameraman said.

    A hundred miles away, Arlo Goodman screamed, “What? What?”

19 

    Madison Bowe heard about Howard Barber’s death from Johnson Black, who heard about it from a television reporter who was calling Black to ask him to call Madison for a comment. She turned on the television, watched for a moment, then found the maid and said, “Harriet, I’m going shopping for a few minutes. I’ll just run down the hill, I’ll be back in half an hour.”
    Afraid reporters might already be lurking, she put on a hat, went out through the back door, cut through the yards of a half dozen neighbors, then out to the street, not quite running.

    Jake was working on the script for the evening’s drama when Madison called. “I’m down on M Street. Did you hear about Howard?”
    “What about Howard?”
    “He’s dead.” Her voice was hushed, nervous. “Three of Goodman’s cops went to arrest him, they supposedly got some information that he was involved in Linc’s disappearance. But something