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“Sure. You could tell me to go fly a kite, which is pretty much what you did the last time I tried to talk to you. You could walk away right now, and I couldn’t stop you. Butyou’re not going to walk away.” His turn to smirk. “You want to know what I’m thinking.”
Maybe she’s underestimated this guy. Probably her bias as a city girl, making this guy for a lightweight, a small-town hayseed. Kyle Janowski looks the part through and through — born and raised here, a varsity football player and decent student who never dreamed of venturing far from the place he’s always called home. But who is she to judge or make assumptions? Any woman who has had to make it in the professional world should know about stereotypes. That’s her mistake. She won’t make it again.
“It’s a free country,” she says. “I’ve got a minute.”
“That’s what I thought.” The sergeant nods. “Something is happening to the Bowers family. Little things at first. Things being moved around their house. Their dog was stolen but then returned a few hours later. Someone started their barbecue grill one night. Someone dropped a dead rat in the little boy’s Halloween bag. Someone’s screwing with them, basically. Not hurting them. But screwing with them. Right?”
“Go on.”
“Then it escalates to break-ins. Break-ins to their house. This last one, this morning — they sent the Bowers family a message.”
“What message?” She catches herself, seeming too eager.
“Oh, I think you know what the message was,” says Janowski. He gives her a moment to comment, then continues. “Anyway, this theory of mine — I asked you before if you ever heard the name Silas Renfrow. Care to answer that question this time?”
“No.”
“Well, he’s a hitman for the mob. Specifically, a hitman for Michael Cagnina. The authorities believe that Silas Renfrow was murdered before he could testify against Cagnina. But there’s kind of an unofficial theory circulating that Silas Renfrow didn’t die in that detention center. He staged the whole thing and escaped. And my theory? My theory is that Silas Renfrow is alive and well and living in Hemingway Grove.”
Jesus,she thinks.I really did underestimate this guy.
She looks out over 1st Street. Light traffic, cars on their way to pick up children from school, maybe do some shopping or go to a medical appointment. All oblivious to what’s happening in this town.
“My theory says that David Bowers is Silas Renfrow,” he continues. “And if there’s a wanted assassin living in my town, I kinda want to know that. You understand.”
She doesn’t answer. She’s wondering how good a poker face she has.
“Now, if my sources at the FBI are correct — and I’m pretty sure they are — the word is that Silas Renfrow had a sweetheart. A woman whose ballpark age now would be about forty. Just like you.”
She zips up her jacket as the wind picks up. More than anything, it’s something to take the focus off her expression. It’s getting harder to seem unaffected by what he’s saying.
“Forty and never married,” he adds.
“Sounds like quite a story you have there, Officer. I’mforty and single, so I must be the girlfriend of some hitman who’s believed to be dead.”
Now Janowski goes quiet for a time, waiting for her to elaborate. But she won’t. She won’t say anything more than necessary.
“Y’know, the feds could never figure it out, how that detention center got raided and all those US marshals and witnesses got killed. It was a top-secret location. Everyone thought there was someone on the inside. A mole. In fact, way I hear it, every agent involved got questioned, and a lot of reputations and careers were destroyed.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?” He angles his head. “Camille, your background is tech support. You’re a computer girl, right?”
“Used to be, yeah.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t work for some big company or some freak internet startup. All that high-tech stuff you did? You did it for the US Marshals Service in Chicago.”
She breaks eye contact. She will never look at a small-town cop the same way again.
“All those agents being investigated to see who the mole was, the one who helped Cagnina’s boys attack that secret detention facility,” says the sergeant. “I’ll bet they never once looked at some bureaucrat sitting in a little cubicle in front of a computer in a building on South Dearborn in Chicago.”
She finds herself shaking her head.
“You helped him, Camille,” he says. “You used all your tricky tech skills, unlocking back doors and breaking throughpasswords and all that computer stuff — you found the secret location, didn’t you? And you told Cagnina. You helped your boyfriend escape. And you found a spot for him to relocate, not too close to Chicago but close enough.”
“No,” she whispers.
“Why he married Marcie I don’t know yet. Good cover, I suppose. And it worked, right? For years. Until David goes and rescues that drowning man and his face goes viral. Some facial-rec software hits on the image. Your boyfriend, Silas, is suddenly exposed — among others, to Michael Cagnina, fresh out of prison. How’m I doing so far?”
