Dead Watch

already is. We want it to end.”
    Her mouth turned down and she said, “It can’t get much bigger. Did you see Madison Bowe on television?”
    “Yes. I talked to her last night.”
    She looked at him for a moment, sighed, and said, “All right. I’ll talk to the director.”
    “And he’ll go along.”
    “Yeah. If you stand him in a half-mile-an-hour wind, he can tell you which way it’s blowing.”
    “And we get Novatny.”
    “Something can be worked,” she agreed.
    “Terrific,” Jake said. He pushed himself out of the chair. “I won’t bother you any longer.”
    “You’ll mention my name to the guy?”
    “Absolutely,” Jake said. “You’ll be an ambassador in two weeks. What country do you want?”
    “Fuck you.”
    “Thanks, Mavis. Who do I talk to about the files?”

    She found an empty conference room for him, and a clerk brought him a short stack of paper, computer printouts. Too short, he thought, when he saw it. The federal investigation was being run out of the FBI’s Richmond office, but the feds hadn’t actually taken control of it. Most of the work was being done by the Virginia Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which was treating Bowe’s disappearance as a missing-persons incident.
    But not a routine one.
    From paperwork copied from the state cops to the FBI, Jake understood that the cops thought they were on a murder hunt, or possibly some kind of fraud. The police had interviewed the last few friends who’d spoken to Bowe, the people who’d attended the speech he’d given at the law school, and had collected a half dozen interviews done by the NYPD, including the maid who’d found that the cats had gone hungry.
    One comment had been repeated a couple of times: Bowe had been drunk in public on at least two occasions before he disappeared. Personal problems? Another woman he was hiding from Madison? But would that have him drinking during the day, on the way to public appearances? He’d have to be a far-gone alky to do that.
    And a close friend of his, asked by the FBI if Bowe drank, said that he’d never seen Bowe take more than two drinks in an evening.
    Maybe he’d just started? Something had just happened?
    Besides, Jake thought, speculations on alcoholism were pointless. Whatever had happened to Bowe had happened in the presence of a number of short-haired men with ear-bugs. He hadn’t gotten blind drunk and put the car in the river; he’d disappeared during the middle of the day.

    Jake was still going through the paper when Chuck Novatny stuck his head in the door. He was trailed by his partner, George Parker.
    “Man, you’re gonna get us in trouble,” Novatny said, without preamble.
    “Ah, you enjoy your access to us elite guys,” Jake said. He stood up and shook hands with Novatny, then reached past him to shake with Parker. “Look what it’s done for your career.”
    “Yeah. Fifteen minutes ago, I was in the canteen eating a salmonella-infected chicken salad on a three-day-old hamburger bun,” Parker said. “I can barely stand the eliteness.”
    Novatny was wiry, sandy haired, fifteen years into his FBI career, a maker of model airplanes that he flew with his sons. Parker was tall, thick, and dark, with a lantern jaw and fifteen-inch-long shoes; a golfer. They both wore blue suits, and Jake had a feeling that the suits reflected a shared sense of humor, rather than the FBI culture. They were competent, and even better than that.
    “Lincoln Bowe,” Novatny said.
    “Yes. This is what you’ve got,” Jake said, waving at the paper on the conference table. “Mostly secondhand crap from the Virginia cops.”
    “You need us to . . . ?”
    “Kick ass. Take names. Threaten people. Push anybody who might know anything. Starting . . .” Jake looked up at the wall clock. “Now.”
    “We’ve got some things to clean up,” Novatny said. “Send the paper down to us when you’re through, we’ll be on it in a couple of hours. We’ve been wondering when somebody would start to push.”
    “When Madison Bowe went on the noon news,” Jake said.
    “What a coincidence. That’s when we started wondering,” Novatny said.
    They left, and Jake went back to the paper, typing notes into his laptop.
    The witnesses who’d seen Lincoln Bowe get in the car with the men with ear-bugs said he hadn’t seemed under duress. He’d seemed to expect the ride, and he had no other ride waiting. The men were described as large, white, with business haircuts,