AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We gotta find a way to put pressure on her,” Russo said. “Maybe I’ll park a car outside her house for a couple of days. You know, to protect her.”
“She could call the mayor, sic him on you,” Lucas said.
“Nah. He needs the Federation more than he needs her,” Russo said. “All she’s got is money, we got the votes. Most he’d do is call and ask a question.”
“Then we’re good,” Virgil said.
Russo looked up at Heath’s house, with a deep-set door inside a stone front. “Let’s do Heath. If you don’t mind, I’ll lead.”
Lucas: “Fine with us.”
They trooped up to the front door and Russo leaned on the doorbell. No answer. Leaned on it again and they felt a vibration from inside. Heath’s face appeared at the door window, then he cracked the door and asked, “What do you want?”
Russo identified the four of them, and said, “We need to interview you about your employees. One was murdered and the other disappeared. We’re aware that you’re a respected citizen, but we could use your help in working through this.”
Heath pointed at Lucas and Virgil, and said, “I don’t want these Nazis inside. They virtually attacked me at my office.”
Russo said, “Ah, well, you know, you don’t have to talk to any of us, if you don’t wish to. If you do decide to discuss this problem, Lucas and Virgil have information about your employees that you may not be aware of, and you may find interesting. And, sir... it may help you, help us, to determine what happened to them.”
“I don’t know... could I have an attorney monitor the conversation?” Heath asked.
The dreaded attorney question. “Of course,” Russo said. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, sir, if you think it’s necessary.” He started lying: “We got some funky video from Ms. Pollard’s apartment, camera was a piece of junk, but we’ve sent it off to the FBI lab and their techs think they can clear it up. That should help. But. Sure. A lawyer,if you think it’s necessary.”
As in,if you think it’s necessarybecause you’re guilty.
Heath worked his lips in and out, then said, “I’ll let you in, butyou ask me any questions with untoward implications, I swear to God I’ll throw the whole bunch of you out and I’ll sue all your butts into oblivion.”
He pulled the door open a couple of feet, turned away, and stepped back into the house. The four cops glanced at each other and simultaneously suppressed smiles: no lawyer.
Virgil muttered, “Well done,” as Russo led the way inside.
Heath’s living room was a carefully color-coordinated grouping of 1900s furniture of the mission kind; grainy oak tables with earth-colored sofas and cushioned chairs. Undistinguished hand-colored prints of British country scenes, usually with a red-colored dog, hung on the walls.
The walls were a dark oak-leaf green, the carpet a muted geometrical craftsman reproduction. The cops checked the room, looked at each other with tipped heads, and found chairs. Heath took a high-backed chair that, with a squint and a sense of humor, might have been mistaken for a throne.
“I have no idea what my employees do in their off-hours, or where they might have gotten to,” Heath said. “I believe it’s possible that Bob and Doreen may have... once had some kind of personal relationship. When you find Bob, you might ask him about that. I don’t approve of office relationships, but they were adults, and not even young ones, at that.”
“Was their relationship angry?” Russo asked.
“I believe it was over,” Heath answered. “That Bob had broken it off.”
“By Bob, you mean the man you knew as Bob Dahl, whose real name was Darrell Hinton,” Durey said.
“Yes, yes.” Heath waved the correction away, like a fly. “Thesetwo persons”—Heath gestured at Lucas and Virgil—“came to my office and accused me of abusing our charitable funding. I bitterly resent that. Bitterly...”
Heath departed into a goofy-sounding monologue, suggested that he was more a figurehead than a manager, that his job, as specified by the board of directors, was to use his social status to identify donors and encourage them to support the charities.
“That is a full-time job. More than full time. Bob’s job... this Hinton, you say—his job was to keep the books, make sure everybody got paid, and to inform the board about business concerns. He shared some of those duties with Doreen, who had a business school background. I personally paid little attention to that aspect of the work...”
They listened for a while, and when asked why Heart/Twin Cities had hired Hinton in the first place, he sputtered, “You want to know why? Because he seemed to have some qualifications and because he wascheap. You seem to be under the illusion that we’re a big-money operation. I can assure you, we’re not. We do wonderful work, but we do it on a shoestring.”
Russo: “We found Hinton’s van at the airport. We found Hinton’s blood in the back. We don’t think we’re going to find him unless we get very lucky. We suspect he’s in the Mississippi or in a hole out in the woods. We have more video of a man getting out of the van at the airport. He’s tall. About your size.”
“Is that an implication...”
“No, no, an observation,” Russo said.
“You’re observing that I could be a murderer,” Heath said. “Why couldn’t this guy be the murderer?” He pointed at Virgil. “Same shape and size as I am.”
