Dead Watch

made sure the gate locked behind her, then went into the house, dropped into the living-room chair, and over a couple of hours, had a couple of beers.
    He didn’t drink much, and he didn’t drink often, and the beer left him a bit loopy.
    He thought, I could end it right now.
    If he called CNN anonymously, or Fox, or any of the large newspaper chains, and simply said the word gay, they’d find out the truth in a matter of hours. And once that word was out there, the investigation would go in an entirely different direction. Politics would be out of it: the press would be hunting for a former lover, or a gay-hater, or somebody trying to cover up something else. . . .
    But Madison wanted something “civilized,” if that was possible. He could feel the request twisting in him.
    He owed a certain loyalty to Danzig, and through him to the president. But they wouldn’t care about civilized. If they found out that Lincoln Bowe was gay, their immediate instinct would be to get the word out, to create the greatest possible spectacle. The investigation of Lincoln Bowe’s death would lurch into a ditch—a gay thing, a sex killing—and both Goodman and the president would be off the hook.
    It would no longer matter if Goodman or his friends were guilty of the killing, because nobody would be looking anymore . . .
    He thought about Madison.
    As they’d walked along through the evening, he’d felt the beginning of an intimacy. Not only had they told each other a few truths, he could remember the feel of her arm brushing along his, and the smell of her. He wished he’d kissed her good night; wished he had that kind of relationship with her.
    Since his grandparents had died almost twenty years before, he’d been alone. Alone even in his marriage. He sensed a similar loneliness in Madison Bowe.
    He was caught; torn. Decided that he didn’t have to release the information immediately, in either a civilized way or an uncivilized way. He could hold it for a while. Talk to Barber. See where the FBI investigation went.
    Think about Madison some more.

7 

    The call came in two minutes after he’d gotten in bed. A male voice: “Mr. Winter? I understand you’re trying to find out what happened to Senator Bowe.”
    “Yes, I am. Who is this?” He checked his caller ID, found the same number he’d seen on the hang-ups, but no name.
    “I really can’t tell you that. I’m sure you understand.” Jake did understand—a whistle-blower, a backstabber, a do-gooder. The voice was soft, well modulated. A bureaucrat somewhere, or maybe a politician, somebody with a little authority. “I apologize for calling so late, I tried to call a few times earlier, but there was no answer. If you want to know about Senator Bowe, talk to Barbara Packer. She’s staff with the Republican National Committee. Ask her what she and Tony Patterson discussed three weeks ago in their meeting at the Watergate.”
    “What’d they discuss?”
    “They talked about nonconventional means of destabilizing the administration. By nonconventional, I mean criminal.”
    “Give me one specific,” Jake said. “Give me a can opener.”
    The man laughed. “You mean, for the can of worms? Okay. Tell her, ‘We know all about the Wisconsin thing.’ See what she says.”
    “You’ve got to . . .”
    “What I’ve got to do is, I’ve got to go. Don’t bother to trace the call. Or, for that matter, go ahead. I’m calling from a prepay cell phone. There’s no name on it.”
    The man was gone.
    Jake thought about calling Novatny to see if a trace might be possible. Maybe there’d be some weird way of figuring out who it was—security cameras over the cash register when the man bought the phone. Something tricky . . . and he thought, Later. Better to find Barbara Packer first, see what she had to say. Whatever it was, it’d be political, and usually it was a good idea to keep politics away from the FBI.
    First thing in the morning . . .
    He went back to bed, thought about his walk with Madison, and then drifted way.

    His eyes snapped open four and a half hours later, and he was up. One benefit of a short night—short nights all his life—was that Jake got in a half day’s work before anybody else was moving. He was in his office by five-thirty, NPR’s Sunrise Classical running in the background, searching the federal databases for Packer, the Republican National Committee staff member, Tony Patterson, who apparently worked for ALERT!,