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“Nope. Not a twinge of conscience. Never.”
He pushed away from the wet bar and sat down on an ottoman, facing her, but with distance between them. “In that upstairs room in the safe house, Compton planted the seed in my head that maybe one of my… victims… was out to get me.”
“That’s why you were so broody afterward.”
“That was one reason. The other was because you wouldn’t even look at me.” He waved his hand. “Another conversation.”
He reorganized his thoughts. “This morning, when I looked up the name that Perkins had dropped and learned that Arnold Draper had relocated from Iowa to Dallas just months after his severance, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Maybe Compton’s theory wasn’t so off the wall. Maybe Draper had moved here because he’d learned my headquarters is here. He’d been lying in wait, waiting for an opportunity to strike. I had to check it out. I had to nix their speculation that I was the intended target that day.”
“I see.”
“Draper’s situation is pathetic, Elle. Truly. Heart-wrenching. But when I learned that he couldn’t have engineered the shooting at the fairground, or last night’s, I can’t describe the relief I felt. Because if I had been his provocation, if something I’d done had caused you to lose Charlie, I could never forgive myself. Worse—ten thousand times worse—I knew you could never forgive me.”
Their long stare was interrupted when Compton walked in.
“Time’s up.”
Chapter 33
Calder had no choice but to end the conversation there. He couldn’t interpret Elle’s expression or discern what she was thinking. That bothered him, but for now there was no help for it.
As soon as the detectives were seated, Calder said to Perkins, “You said you didn’t pick Draper at random. Explain that.”
Perkins yielded the floor to his partner, an indication that it was going to be a somewhat lengthy explanation. She began. “Last night we were going through your files, running down the lists of people who’d been let go on your recommendation.”
“That covers a lot of years. How’d you know where to start? Or were you just shaking the trees to see what might fall?”
“Basically that. In desperation. But moments before you called and told us what was happening at the safe house, the name Arnold Draper grabbed Perkins’s attention.”
“Why?” Calder asked.
“At first I couldn’t remember,” Perkins said. “Then we had to drop everything and race to the safe house. It wasn’t until later, while we were on our way back, that it came to me where I’d seen that name. Maxwell Supply.”
“Supplier of what?” Elle asked.
“They manufacture steel pipe,” Calder told her. “Generational family business. A few years ago, some disgruntled employees started a movement to go union. They made converts and began causing disruptions in production, which resulted in delayed deliveries and pissed-off customers. It got increasingly ugly.
“I didn’t have a stance either way, but I was brought in by the owners, a pair of brothers, to try to quell the movement, smooth things over with the agitators, negotiate on some of their demands. If that didn’t work, I was to weed out anyone pro-union or even anyone leaning toward it.”
“How’d that go over?” Compton asked.
“I was subjected to sneers and jeers. A dead rat was left on the welcome mat of my hotel room. My car got keyed. Nothing violent, but that’s why I now have the nondisclosure clause in my contract and why I use an assumed name when on a job. No one knows what I’m there for, and everyone thinks I’m just another guy who got fired along with the rest of them and has moved on.”
He tried to gauge Elle’s reaction to hearing all that, but she was looking at Perkins, who opened his laptop and, after a few keystrokes, passed it to Calder. “This was in your file.”
On the screen was a picture that had appeared on the front page of the Des Moines newspaper. In the background was the foundry; in the forefront was a large group of people composed of both men and women. The pickets they carried distinguished which side they favored.
Lying on the ground between the two factions were three men. The caption said the three had been injured by bottles being thrown during the tense standoff. Only one had been identified.
“Arnold Draper,” Calder said aloud, still staring at the photo. “I remember the picture. I wouldn’t have remembered his name.”
“I’d noticed the photo in your file,” Perkins said. “Subconsciously, I guess I locked in the name, which is why it jumped out at me when I was going down that list.”
“I don’t even know which side he was on,” Calder said.
“Union. It was voted down.”
“In large part because of my influence.” Calder returned the laptop to Perkins and dragged both hands down his face. “So now what? In my wake are thousands of Arnold Drapers who aren’t afflicted with Alzheimer’s. I profited from each one of them being fired. Are you going to go through every list and check out all of them?”
