Gathering String Read online

  “But he didn’t get you to slow down,” Sam looked up from his writing, to see Jack grimace. “That accident you had a little over a year ago; you were lucky to walk away from it. You fell asleep?”

  “I must have. To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember. I cracked my head pretty good.”

  Sam nodded. “Looked to me like you were coming from Des Moines?” Jack didn’t answer that, just smiled vaguely. “You know, it said in the Record’s story that you were ticketed with failure to control the vehicle and …”

  “Excessive speed,” Jack said it with him, nodding his head.

  “So whatever happened with that?”

  “What do you mean?” Jack looked down into his empty coffee cup.

  “I mean there was no follow-up. No charges, no fines paid. What happened to those tickets?”

  Jack frowned, as if trying to remember. “You’re sure they weren’t paid?”

  “There’s no record of it.”

  Jack made a helpless gesture with his hand. “Beats me. Like I said, I’ve got some pretty big blank spots about the whole thing.”

  Sam’s grin was lopsided. “I see. Isn’t that about the time you got married too? Or is that not real clear either?”

  Jack laughed abruptly. “No, no, that I remember. I guess it’s true, what people say. We remember the good things and let the other stuff go. But what’s my accident got to do with Swede?”

  Sam just smiled, that wiseass grin that put Jack on edge.

  The interview went on from there, finally focused on the governor. They spent a long time talking about Swede’s successful school consolidation plan and the Erickson family, Jack still reticent, Sam still probing, small points of humor and large stretches of strain taking them a long way. It was after noon when Sam finally rose, flipping the notebook shut, surprised at the fatigue he felt. “Well, I guess that covers it,” he sighed and held out his hand. Jack shook it briefly, looking worn from the give and take as well.

  “Great.” Jack didn’t even try to cover his relief at wrapping up, handing Sam his recorder and pocketing his own. “Think you can find your way back to town OK?” He started back toward the kitchen.

  “Sure.” Sam glanced up the stairs as they passed. “You know, I just remembered something I meant to ask Tess. If it’s not too much trouble?” He nodded up at the landing.

  Jack was hard pressed to keep the annoyance off his face, so anxious was he for Waterman to finally leave. “Tess,” he called up the stairs. “Sam’s taking off, and wants to see you a minute.”

  She came to the top of the stairs, a coffee cup in her hand, her clothes covered by

  a worn, man’s white dress shirt, several paint brushes sticking up from its pocket. “So long, Sam.” She clearly meant to just give him a wave from there and go back to what she was doing.

  Sam smiled, and crooked his finger at her. “Come on down. I meant to tell you that Dodson has a business proposition for you.” He looked back at Jack and explained, “Mike Dodson is Politifix’s chief.”

  “Yeah,” Jack frowned, offended that Sam apparently thought Jack wouldn’t know the name of one of the top editors in the country.

  Slowly she came down the stairs, a cautious look on her face. Sam said, “I’ve got the big interview lined up with Erickson and his wife in Des Moines on Wednesday morning at the mansion. What’s it called?”

  He looked over at Jack who supplied, “Terrace Hill.”

  “Right, Terrace Hill. When Steve Johnson mentioned that Stretch here is married to a former Trib photographer, Dodson thought it would be great if you’d do the art for us. And I’d appreciate it. It would save me the hassle of hunting up another freelancer.”

  Standing a few steps above them, her eyes narrowed to a glare, but when Jack turned toward her, she looked down at her paint-spotted shirt, and murmured, “I don’t think so. I’m really rolling on this project now …”

  “Oh come on,” Sam gave her his most ingratiating smile. “It’ll be like old times.” Her eyes came up at that, flashing dangerously, and he added with a small chuckle, “Christmas is right around the corner, and it’s top dollar. Why wouldn’t you do it?”

  Looking at Sam’s laughing eyes Tess drew a flat blank for a plausible answer. Jack knew she would normally grab at the chance to do a simple shoot for a site that paid as well as Politifix. She answered grudgingly, “I guess I can fit it in.”

  A huge smile spread over Sam’s face. “I knew you wouldn’t turn me down. I assume you’ve been to Terrace Hill before, so you can drive. I’ll be at the downtown Marriott. Why don’t you pick me up there, about 8:30?” Tess only nodded, and both men turned back toward the kitchen. She trailed behind, trying to compose her face and her anger. When Jack pulled the door open, Rover burst in, grabbing his chance to get into the warm house. As he skittered across the polished kitchen floor, he barked stridently at the sight of Sam.

  Tess grabbed his collar, and Sam shook his head. “Well, I guess that’s my cue to get a move on. Thanks again, both of you.”

  As the door closed after him, Tess could just make out the faint sound of his laughter. She let go of the dog, which scrambled to the door and sniffed, whining unhappily.

  “I’ve never seen Rover get so riled up over someone before,” Jack said. “And to tell you the truth, that guy bothers me too.”

  “Really?” she looked away, avoiding his eyes. “How come?”

  “I’m not sure, but I catch him looking at me sometimes, and it’s like looking across the basketball court at a guy I just beat to the basket. Like he can’t wait to slam an elbow in my ribs next time we go up for the ball together. It’s not pleasant.”

  “Well,” she started back toward the stairs. “Pleasant isn’t used to describe Waterman often.” She stopped at the bottom step and looked back at him. “Why’d you change your mind about the interview?”

  “Swede asked me to do it. He’s worried about how his relationship with Carl is going to play. I think he wanted me to spin it a little for him. I’d just turned down Donnelly’s job, and I figured I could at least give him that.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Donnelly’s job? You weren’t even tempted?”

  Jack shook his head, walking to her, and putting his arm around her shoulders they started up the stairs together. “Why don’t you like him?”

  “Who?” She stopped, surprised. “Sam?” At his nod, she spoke around a nervous little laugh, “He’s OK. Just kind of a prima donna. What makes you think I don’t like him?”

  Jack shrugged as they continued up the stairs. “You seem different around him. Tense. Why didn’t you want to do the shoot on Wednesday?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide and troubled, and for the second time that day he waited, unreasonably apprehensive at what was coming next. And then she sighed. “I don’t know. Going down to Des Moines just seems like a hassle, I suppose. But the money will be nice. Did he ask you why you changed your mind about talking to him?”

  They turned toward her workroom. “Yeah. I told him you asked me to do it because you used to work with him.” Reaching up, she pressed between her eyes, as if she had a sudden headache.

  Chapter 19

  The Last Drop In was a shack of a bar, drafty and thick with cigarette smoke. It amused Sam that the dump was so far out on the fringe it was possible to get away with simply ignoring Iowa’s ban on smoking in bars. As he sat back from finishing a salty bowl of watery chili, he breathed deeply, actually enjoying the heavy atmosphere. It brought back his childhood, silently eating bad food while his father watched TV, chain-smoking until the cheap tiles of the drop ceiling in the kitchen were stained yellow.

  He’d left Lindsborg that morning. He'd probed and probed hard while he was there. Having observed the man's laminated wife, he figured it might be a woman, or women, that Erickson was trying to hide, but there'd been no hint of anything like that. No, there seemed to be only one chink in Swede Erickson's smoothly polished, all-American armo
r, and that was his alcoholic father. Everyone in Lindsborg had been diffident in talking about Carl, usually turning the conversation to how Swede had looked up to Jim Westphal. Jack Westphal's "strength of character" line sounded like the candidate himself had planted it. And that told Sam that Carl was the most likely place to dig.

  So he had gone out of his way to come to this area rather than heading straight back to Des Moines. The drive from Lindsborg had been cold and long, and by late afternoon, Sam was reluctantly certain that his trip to Knoxville to visit the VA hospital where Carl Erickson died was pointless. He’d talked to hospital administrators, and even a couple of doctors who treated him. But between the restrictive privacy laws and an inbred loyalty to the governor, he came up with zip. Until he was almost out the hospital door. Halfway to the exit, an unmarked office door popped open, and a source he’d seen earlier stopped him with a jerk of his head, mutely telling Sam to step inside.

  Five minutes later, Sam unlocked the rental car, uneasy with the arrangements they’d made. Clandestine meetings had a shitty way of netting reporters nothing, and he wasn’t really sure what the guy wanted to show him. But it had been the only arrangement the tight-ass would agree to, and Sam was willing to spend extra time in this sinkhole if it meant a new lead.

  He checked into a sorry-looking motel off the interstate and spent the evening working on the draft of the profile, weaving in the interviews he’d done that day. When he came to the notebook with the initials T.L. scrawled across the top, he smiled. There were only a few pages used in it, and there wasn’t a single quote that would appear in his story, but it had been an interesting interview nevertheless.

  “Thelma with the traditional spelling?” he’d asked over his orange juice and coffee that morning in the Tall Corn’s dining room. The woman with the brassy hair, twisted into an oddly shaped funnel at the back of her head nodded. “And the last name?” Sam couldn’t remember how to pronounce it.

  “Liljedahl,” she said it carefully and then spelled it out, emphasizing each letter forcefully. Sam shook his head as he wrote it down. The woman had called him late the night before and offered to meet him for breakfast, telling him she’d heard he was working on a story about Swede Erickson, and that she was positive she could give him “boatloads” of information. As a rule, Sam steered clear of her type. Their interest in seeing their own names in the story usually outweighed their knowledge of relevant facts. But when she said she’d worked at the Lindsborg Journal for years, he changed his mind.

  From the get-go, Sam knew she wasn’t going to say one thing about Erickson that he didn’t already have. She nattered on for a bit about the drunkard father and then moved on to some speculation about Elizabeth Erickson’s personal wealth adding to the candidate’s attraction to her. As Sam starting working his way toward calling it quits, she must have sensed his restlessness and hurriedly moved on to what he was now certain was her real purpose for the meeting. She wanted to gossip about her boss, and fish for information on his wife.

  It had been easy to sidestep her mean-spirited questions about Tess, claiming they hadn’t work together much during their overlap at the Trib. And as far as the profile went, the interview had been a waste. But the crone had generously filled in some very large blank spots when it came to Tess and the almighty Thor. He didn’t regret a second of the time he’d spent with her.

  Thinking of time, Sam frowned suddenly and checked his watch. His guy had said he’d show sometime around eleven, and it was almost 20 past. Sam had the sinking feeling he was going to be stiffed.

  But the joint was jumping for an Iowa bar set out on a lonely stretch of highway on a bitter winter night. The front door kept opening, admitting greasy men from the Farmall plant down the road. The factory workers who just ended the swing shift and were beginning their evening pastimes took most of the seats at the bar. There were some hard-bitten older men, hunkered over their drinks and talking quietly enough. Their occasional, low-grunted laughs lent a sinister tone to their indistinguishable conversations.

  Some young bucks over at a large table were playing the coin-plink game, anteing up around a heavy beer mug with a thin layer of paper napkin stretched tight over the top, a quarter resting on the taut middle. With their cigarettes clenched between dirt-rimmed fingernails, they took turns just touching the paper with the glowing tips, trying to burn as small a hole as possible. Whichever one did it last without the coin falling through won the kitty to much shouting, laughing and cursing.

  The only woman in the place was a hefty dame behind the bar they all called “Rosie.” Sam figured that had something to do with the rose trellis tattoo crawling up her neck from the depths of her loosely hanging polyester blouse. He nodded his head at her now, as she looked over and pointed to his empty bottle of Pabst. As Sam watched her shamble over, he wondered what it was about seedy bars that always made him think about writing a novel someday.

  Then his source came through the door, looking around carefully before he moved to the back booth where Sam sat. He shook his head at Rosie when she asked if he wanted something and, as she moved off, he slapped a manila folder in front of Sam.

  “Here,” he nodded that Sam should take a look, perching on the edge of the bench seat, already impatient to leave.

  Sam flipped the folder open and frowned trying to read the finely printed report carefully in the poor lighting. A few paragraphs down, his brow knitted.

  “You got it?” The source noticed the drawing of his face.

  “I just got to the, um, stomach contents.” The guy gave an edgy sigh, and Sam said, “Look, I’m not a doctor, and autopsy reports aren’t light reading, OK? You’re going to have to give me a few minutes, or else point out what it is I’m looking for.”

  “Check the blood pathology, halfway down the page,” the source grunted, and Sam scanned downward. As he read, his eyebrows suddenly shot up. “See it?”

  Sam nodded now. “Yeah. Shit, how can this be?”

  “You mean compared to the death certificate?” Sam nodded again. “Well, isn't it obvious? It can only mean that someone pulled some strings.”

  “You’re sure this report is right?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” the guy’s face was grim. “I wrote it. I ran the blood alcohol myself.”

  “And this is the exact report you turned in?”

  The man looked uncomfortable. “It’s what I turned in, but …”

  “But?” Sam looked up sharply.

  “But it’s not what’s on file.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The guy sighed. “When I read in the Record that the death certificate listed cardiac arrest as the cause of death, I went to central files to pull the autopsy report I turned in. It wasn’t there. There’s no copy of this anywhere that I can find.”

  “So how do I happen to have one in my hands?” Sam sat back looking at the doctor closely.

  “Because I keep a copy of all my reports on my computer. When this one went missing, I downloaded the file and took it home. At the end of the week, I came in one morning and booted up the computer. All my autopsy reports were gone. A tech checked the backups and recovered all but the last two I wrote. One was Carl Erickson's. As far as the hospital goes, this report no longer exists.”

  Sam whistled softly, closing the folder. “You think Erickson’s behind it? How?”

  “You tell me. However he did it, it's damn scary. He’s got to have a high-placed hospital administrator in his pocket to pull this off.”

  “The coroner too,” Sam muttered.

  “Of course it had to be Erickson. Who else has the kind of sway to fuck with a document as important as a death certificate? And who else but him would care about this particular one?” The man leaned over the table slightly, his voice dropping to a lower whisper. “I can’t help wondering, if he’s pulling this shit as a governor, what will he be up to as president?”

  Sam shrugged. “Speaking of official documents, you realize you’re
violating the hell out of Iowa state law, and probably national HIPAA regulations too, giving me this?”

  The doctor looked blank. “Giving you? No, I agreed you could see it, that’s all.” He held out his hand, but Sam shook his head.

  “Sorry. I’ve got to have a copy. Editors have a nasty way of insisting I back up the facts in my stories.” He grinned into the man’s pale face. “Don’t sweat it. I don’t give up confidential sources.”

  With a dubious frown, the guy drew back his hand. “I’m gambling my medical license on that promise.”

  Sam put the folder on the bench beside him. “Relax, Doc,” he laughed softly. “You’re doing the right thing. I won’t throw you under the bus. Trust me.”

  The doctor stood, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I am. Don’t make me regret it. You’ll get to the bottom of this?”

  Sam shrugged. “I’m going to try. You can bet that Erickson’s going to be pretty fucking surprised when I bring it up.”

  “You’re just going to put it right out there and ask him?” Sam nodded. “Mr. Waterman, he might seem like an easy-going kind of guy, but trust me, Swede Erickson will make you pay for it.”

  Sam's mouth turned up with his lopsided grin. “Doc, it’s been my experience that politicians can’t do a hell of a lot about the media. I’m not worried.”

  “Good.” The man stepped away to go. “Just be sure to leave my name out of it.”