Dead Watch

lights behind him, saw one car getting off. Took another left, and another quick one, waited, then headed back to the interstate. If they had a team, they could still be with him. If they were in the air, they could still be with him.
    But he could do more loops on country roads all the way up, and even, in the last few miles, maybe wrap up a trailing team in the streets of Eau Claire. Whatever: it’d have to be good enough.
    All the way north, whenever his headlights swept across the black backdrop of trees, like a projector’s light in a darkened theater, he could see the flickering face of the dead secretary. The face would stay with him for a while, he thought. Cruelly, he found himself wishing she’d fallen facedown, so he wouldn’t have to see it.

    Darrell Goodman, worn and scared, put a finger to his lips, hooked Arlo Goodman’s arm, and pulled him toward the staircase. Arlo Goodman followed him down and around to the concrete tunnel in the basement.
    “We had a big problem in Wisconsin,” Darrell whispered.
    “Not too big,” Arlo said.
    “Pretty big. The Green guy went after me, and George shot him. The secretary . . . we had no choice with the secretary. We had no choice.”
    Goodman peered at his brother as though he’d gone crazy. “Are you telling me you killed them?”
    “There was no choice,” Darrell protested.
    “Sweet bleedin’ Jesus.” Arlo stared for another few seconds, trying to grasp it. “I should have strangled you when you were a kid.”
    “Listen. Nobody knows,” Darrell said. “We rented the car in Chicago. We put a little mud on the plates, so they’re not on any camera. We went into a parking lot at the back of the building, and nothing faces the back except a brick wall and a door. We went up, nobody saw us. No cameras, we checked. We went in. We put the guns on them to scare them, I slapped Green a couple of times, and the next thing I know, he’s all over me. Then the chick . . . but we got out. Not a sign of anybody looking at us. Went right straight back to Chicago, fast as we could, dumped the weapons on the way, turned in the car and got out of there. I’m going to root the IDs out of the license bureau, nobody’ll ever know.”
    “You dumb sonofabitch,” Arlo groaned. “No guns, no guns. Why’d you take guns? You were supposed to blackmail him, for Christ’s sake.”
    “He came after me, man. And then George . . .”
    Arlo waved him silent. “Where’s George?”
    “Sitting in my office.”
    “George has to go away,” Arlo said.
    Darrell licked his lower lip. “That can happen.”
    “Make it happen soon. The next few days. I don’t want to see him anymore.”
    “Don’t worry about that . . .”
    Arlo slapped his brother on the side of the head with his good hand. “This might screw us for good, dummy. I take it you didn’t get even a sniff of the package?”
    “Not a sniff. But Green knew something, I think. We might’ve had a chance, until he came after me. Things just got out of control, you know?”
    Goodman said, “Ah, jeez . . .”
    “There’s something else—good news,” Darrell said. “We’ve been listening to the tapes again. Howard Barber told Madison Bowe that he was the one who shot Lincoln.”
    “What?”
    “I just found out. I don’t know what’s happening in Madison—maybe we can find some way to point the cops at Jake Winter. We know he was there in the morning. And then, if we leak the news about Bowe being gay, and if we leak Barber to the FBI . . .”
    “Fuck the FBI. You always want to stick a battery up somebody’s ass. Okay. Check around, find out who Barber’s three closest pals are. Pick one. If he confirms it, we’ll nail Barber ourselves. Nail him to a cross. Maybe we can find a way to get Bowe at the same time.”
    “I don’t think she knew.”
    “Who cares? She knows it now,” Arlo said. “She’s obstructing justice by not telling the FBI. You just get that going. Figure out who Barber’s pals are. When we pick him up, nobody’ll sweat a couple of dead people in Wisconsin—or they’ll figure Barber did it.”

    At a gas station just south of Eau Claire, Jake stopped for coffee and to plug Sarah Levine’s address into the car’s navigation system. After a few loops and dodges, seeing nothing unusual, he followed it to her house behind the Eau Claire Country Club. Still before seven o’clock. Prayed that she was home. Looked up in the sky, for airplanes.
    Paranoid,