The Separatists Read online

  “Yes, it’s strong. I also like the idea of ‘Infrastructure in Crisis.’ It’s compelling—and a needed call to arms. But it does lack some of the human interest. Then there’s Zika. Which is almost too full of human interest.”

  “It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it? And terrifying.”

  “I’m thinking Zika is our strongest choice. It’s a horrific threat to hundreds of millions of people, and is also related to climate change. Yes, let’s go with Zika.”

  “I like the way your mind works,” Gloria says. Then she lowers her voice. “Listen, I have a doctor’s appointment and was going to take the afternoon off. I’ll put some Zika research in motion before I leave.”

  Oh, so she dressed up for her doctor. “Sounds good.”

  Gloria stands up and is heading out the door when she turns and asks, “Oh, any follow-up on your trip to Winnipeg?”

  Erica hesitates before saying, “No, not really. George Lundy was definitely a marginal and shady character, but how and why he ended up in Bismarck is still a mystery.”

  Gloria nods and leaves.

  Erica stands up and paces; she suddenly feels uneasy. She was evasive with Gloria, probably because she’s learned about loose lips the hard way. And the trip to Winnipeg unnerved her. Her instincts tell her she’s dealing with the tip of the iceberg here, and what’s submerged is deadly indeed.

  She picks up her phone and calls Eileen McDermott. “Listen, I think I should head out to Bismarck again on Thursday or Friday for an update on the recall. It’s the number one story in the nation.”

  “You mean hosting The Erica Sparks Effect from Bismarck?”

  “Yes.”

  There’s a pause and then Eileen says, “That’s a big undertaking, and you want to do it in a couple of days. We have to find the right studio, hire local techs, book long-distance guests, bring out at least a dozen staffers. The expense will be through the roof. If you want updates, well, we’ve got field reporters for that.”

  As executive producer of Erica’s show, Eileen has the right, the responsibility even, to raise these issues. Still, Erica doesn’t like hearing them. Her mind races as she tries to make a decision. She can hardly admit her ulterior motive: to continue investigating the murders. If need be, she supposes she can fly out on the weekend and file reports on the weekend shows. Which will also leave her time to poke around.

  “Your points are well taken, Eileen. If I feel absolutely compelled to go out there, I’ll go on the weekend.”

  “I really appreciate this, Erica. I hope you don’t think I’m being hard-nosed.”

  “Sometimes hard-nosed is needed.”

  Erica hangs up and starts to focus on her notes for tonight’s show. After all, North Dakota isn’t the only story on the nation’s radar. There’s the unprecedented flooding in Miami Beach, with talk of a partial evacuation. There’s the moralistic senator just arrested for lewd conduct in a men’s room. There’s the profile on London’s popular Muslim mayor and how his success is impacting global Islamophobia.

  Shirley Stamos appears in her doorway.

  “What is it, Shirley?”

  “You just got a call from a woman who says it’s crucial that she talk to you. She sounds a little unhinged. Or maybe distraught is a better word. I have her on hold.”

  “She didn’t give you any other information? Her name?”

  “Her name is Janine McDougal. She says you knew her husband.”

  “Put her through.” Shirley leaves and Erica picks up her phone.

  “Is this Erica Sparks?” The voice is quavering, as if her whole body is shaking.

  “It is. And this is Janine McDougal?”

  “You met my husband on Saturday morning. The same day he—” And she starts to weep, heaving bitter sobs.

  “I’m so sorry about his death. He was a charming, dynamic man.”

  “Oh, he was one heck of a man, let me tell you. Came from nothing. Earned every penny through hard work.” There’s a pause and the sobs subside. “Well, most every penny,” Janine says in a tone inflected with insinuation and bitterness.

  These are the pennies Erica wants to hear about, so she says nothing, knowing that silence can trigger an unburdening.

  “I warned him a thousand times.”

  “Warned him about what?”

  “About some of those . . . scumbags he was associating with. Oh, they cleaned up pretty as a picture in their fancy suits and cars. But they were bad men. Bad men. They did this to my Freddy.”

  “Who? Who are they?”

  “He never told me their names, but they’d pick him up, take him off to meetings late at night. Then a month or so later he’d have some construction permit he needed, or some alcohol permit, or some such.”

  “So you think your husband was doing favors for the men he was meeting with?”

  “What do you think? Stupid fool he was! I told him a hundred times to keep his hands clean. What goes around comes around. In the form of a black pickup truck. He looked like a broken doll lying there on the sidewalk. I’ll never get the picture out of my mind. His head split open, the blood coming out of his ears. Oh, my Freddy, my poor Freddy.” And then she starts to sob again.

  “Listen, Janine, please calm down and listen to me a minute.” The sobbing continues. “Calm down and listen!”

  Janine McDougal goes silent. There’s a long pause and then she asks, in a tiny terrified voice, “What?”

  “I want you to get out of Winnipeg. Today. Pack some things, go to the airport, and get on a flight.”

  “But where would I go?”

  “Not to a relative’s. If you can, fly to Europe, or at least to the US. Get out of Canada. Register at a nice hotel and just lie low for a couple of weeks. Will you promise me you’ll do that?”

  “I . . . I . . .” Erica can hear her sucking air.

  “I’m serious, Janine. Your life is in danger. You must get out of Winnipeg.”

  “Okay . . . okay.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about these men your husband met with? Anything at all?”

  “He . . . he said they were fancy men. Big shots. One time we were watching TV and the premier of Manitoba came on, Pearce Johnson, and Freddy said, ‘There’s my buddy.’ I thought he was joking, didn’t give it a second thought. But a lot of those permits and such came from the province, eh.”

  “So you think your husband was doing favors for the premier?”

  “Freddy came up through the streets. He knew some dicey characters. If you needed dirty work done, well . . . you know what I’m saying.”

  “I do know what you’re saying,” Erica says. She hangs up, stands, and walks over to the window, then suddenly imagines what it would be like to fall out and tumble through the sky to the sidewalk below.

  CHAPTER 43

  CARRIED ON THE WAVE OF her desire—cut with fear, fear that only heightens her senses—Gloria rushes across town.

  She feels guilty—kinda, sorta—about Erica. She’s so nice and supportive, really an upstanding person. But she’s strangely naïve, too, believing in goodness and the power of journalism to make the world a better place and all that blah-blah-blah. Give me a break. Gloria saw it a thousand times in DC. Fighting greed, corruption, subterfuge, even evil, was a waste of time, an exercise in futility, the ultimate game of whack-a-mole. You knock it out somewhere and it pops up somewhere else. The world is a cesspool, and once you understand that, well, they say that the truth sets you free.

  Gloria reaches Second Avenue and turns north for several blocks before reaching the undistinguished white brick postwar apartment building. She scans the street before ducking inside. The doorman nods discreetly, of course he’s been informed that she’s coming. To this strange, anonymous apartment that belongs to . . . who? Who cares?

  In the elevator heading up, she pulls out her compact, checks her lipstick and hair, her whole body almost vibrating with expectation. It’s been six weeks since she’s seen him, six endless, ago
nizing weeks.

  The elevator doors open and Gloria steps off, throws back her shoulders, takes a deep breath, and wills herself to cool it. She doesn’t want to come off like some goo-goo-eyed teenager. She’s a career woman, a woman of accomplishment, for goodness’ sake. This delusion lasts as long as it takes her to think it. Then the truth comes pouring out: she is insanely in love with this man, this man who took her—an uptight, goody two-shoes bundle of repression—and led her into womanhood, one ecstatic evening after another.

  They met at that bar on Dupont Circle where she sometimes went after work, alone—she’s always been a loner, too busy working to nurture friendships—and nursed her Chablis at the far end of the bar. She saw him first, who could miss him—he looks like a movie star, a young Harry Belafonte, with that proud Pentagon posture—he just took her breath away. And he saw her watching him and he smiled at her. No man had ever smiled at her like that before, and she was gone, just gone, gone baby gone.

  And now here she is, doing such important work for him, she’s more valuable than she’s ever been. He needs her now too. The balance has shifted, hasn’t it? No, not really. Because in the end all that matters is being in his arms.

  She rings the buzzer and waits. He always keeps her waiting. She rings again. Still no answer. She feels sweat break out on her brow. Does she have time to get a tissue from her bag? What if he answers the door to find her wiping sweat from her forehead? Then another door opens at the far end of the hall, and she feels panic rising inside her; they can never be seen here together, that’s the rule.

  And then he opens the door and ushers her in and he’s standing there in his expensive slacks, shirtless, and his sculpted chest and abs and his arms and his smile and his bracing citrus smell and . . . and . . . and Gloria feels herself flooded with want, a want that overpowers reason, and she goes to him and he takes a step back and smiles.

  “Now, now, there’s no hurry.”

  She makes a hasty attempt to pull herself together, tries a casual laugh, brushes her dress. “No, no, of course not. We have all afternoon.”

  She follows him into the generic living room that looks like a model room at some second-rate suburban furniture store. All the shades are down; they’re linen shades and they cast the room with a sultry rosy glow and all Gloria wants to do is kiss him and touch his skin and . . .

  “How about a glass of wine?” he asks.

  “Yes, um, sure.” It’s early in the day, too early to drink, but he always likes her to have a drink or three. He never has one himself. He never loses control. She does. She can’t help it.

  She sits on the hard sofa and he brings her the glass of wine and looks down at her. She smiles up at him—is her mouth quavering?—and takes a sip. And then another and another.

  He walks across the room and sits in a straight-back chair. It was so cruel of him to take his shirt off, how can she concentrate on what she knows he’s going to ask?

  “What do you have for me?” he says in that voice that is both matter-of-fact and steely, that military voice.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t have that much.”

  He frowns.

  “You said I did a good job, getting the Winnipeg information, George Lundy and everything.”

  “That turned out to be actionable, yes. The old freak in Lundy’s hotel, Elmer, had an encounter with Ms. Sparks, he led her to McDougal. But is she still prying?”

  “I think so. She wants to go out to Bismarck this weekend. She says it’s for her show, but I think she wants to snoop around.”

  “But she hasn’t found anything new, has she?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  Gloria feels like she might burst into tears—he’s so demanding—and at the same time she can feel the wine loosening her up, its warmth flowing through her veins and muscles, all up and down her body. “I will, I promise I’ll do better. I’ll find out everything there is to know.”

  He stands up and crosses to her, refills her wine glass, looks down at her. “I’m counting on you, Gloria. We’re all counting on you.”

  She looks up at him and he smiles, that tight smile of his, and there is his body, glowing in the diffuse light, a beacon, calling her, she needs him, she needs him more than she’s ever needed anything in her life and longing surges through her and she wraps her arms around his torso and pulls him close and buries her face in his abdomen. “Please make love to me, please . . .”

  And he gently tilts her head back and smiles down at her and this time his smile is different. Why is it different, it is a smile, isn’t it? And he cups her face in his hands and then runs them down her shoulders to her breasts and her breath stops.

  But why, as he leads her into the bedroom, does he laugh?

  CHAPTER 44

  AS ERICA GETS OFF HER flight from New York to Boston and walks into the terminal, she gets the text from the limousine company:

  Your driver is waiting outside in Car 17

  She goes out to the curb and there’s the car. The driver, a middle-aged white man wearing a chauffeur’s cap and dark glasses, opens the door for her with a smile.

  It’s a lovely summer day in New England, and as they drive from Logan toward Cambridge, she looks out the window at the graceful Boston skyline and the Charles River with its scullers and bankside amblers. It’s such a pleasant place. But appearances can be deceiving. Boston has a dark, even nasty and brutish side—the Irish Mafia is no myth and its tactics are no fun. Plus, the town is staid and judgmental and classist and insular.

  Erica has such mixed feelings about the place. It’s where she had her first big success. She was hired by WBZ as a writer pretty much straight out of Yale. Soon thereafter her boss asked her if she’d ever considered going on camera. Of course she had. She started as a substitute for sick or vacationing anchors and she just leapt off the screen, the station was flooded with e-mails from fans. Four months later she was named anchor of the 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. news, and quickly became the most popular newscaster in New England.

  Moira Connelly was an amazing mentor and hand-holder during Erica’s first year, but it was still too much too soon for a kid who’d left a big chunk of her psyche back in that moldy, rage-filled trailer up in Maine. She was wracked by self-doubt and felt as if she were carrying a sick secret. To the world she was one person, to herself another. At first the drinking was fun, a lark, she was the new kid in town, invited to all the best parties and benefits—the wine and then champagne and then vodka helped ease her nerves and ignite her wit.

  Then one Saturday when she and Moira were on a guided tour of a Cezanne show at the MFA, she met Dirk Loudon. He was so attractive, funny, smart, and idealistic, a high school history teacher who didn’t care about her fame and success, someone with whom she felt she could let her hair down. Marriage ensued and Jenny came along a year later. And then . . . and then the stresses of balancing work, baby, husband, all started to get to her and her drinking escalated. Slowly but steadily.

  Finally, she and Dirk separated, she was fired for on-air intoxication, and then it all went south in a big snowball, culminating in that awful night when—after downing six of those darling little nips of vodka—she spirited Jenny out of Dirk’s house under a babysitter’s nose and drove her to some anonymous motel in Framingham, where she left Jenny alone in the room while she went out to pick up some “ice cream.” Ha-ha. She was headed to the nearest liquor store when she rear-ended the pickup in front of her, sending herself first to the hospital, then to the courtroom, and finally to rehab.

  Now they’re on Storrow Drive right along the river and Erica feels a moment of trepidation, a sense of inadequacy. A symposium at the Kennedy School is something Leslie Burke Wilson should be doing. Yeah, Erica’s a good journalist, she cares about the truth, but she’s not an intellectual, not particularly articulate; she’s going to be out of her league, make a fool of herself. And it all might happen in front
of Jenny.

  The driver approaches the JFK Street exit, which will take them right across the bridge to the Kennedy School. But he keeps going, he doesn’t turn off; in fact, he speeds up.

  “Excuse me, that was our exit.”

  The driver says nothing, is completely impassive as he speeds down Storrow. Erica gets a text from Shirley:

  Are you at the airport? The driver can’t find you.

  Panic sweeps over her.

  “Turn around now, that was our exit!!” No response. She reaches for the door handle. There is none. “Let me out, let me out of this car!”

  A tiny smile plays at the corners of the driver’s mouth. Erica makes a move to climb into the front seat and at just that second the other half of the backseat flies down and a man in a ski mask slithers out from the trunk. Erica cries out in shock. He has something in his hand, fabric, black fabric, and his arms come up and then everything goes black. Erica grabs at the blindfold but then her arms are twisted behind her and her wrists are bound together. She screams and the man slaps her hard across the face. “Shut up!”

  “No marks!” the driver says.

  Erica swings her body sideways and starts to kick wildly, blindly. Both men laugh as she kicks at air and then one foot connects and the man yelps in pain and grabs both her legs and he’s strong, very strong, and he twists her body around and shoves her headfirst through the hole and into the trunk.

  Now she’s in the trunk and she hears the seat click back into place and she’s alone in the hollow blackness. The car takes a sharp turn and she’s tossed around and she struggles to break her wrists free but the binds are so tight, so tight and strong, and she gulps air and fights her growing claustrophobia. She’d scream but what’s the use? Is she going to die? Are these men going to take her somewhere and kill her? Slit her throat the way Joan Marcus was murdered? Put a bullet through the back of her head the way George Lundy died? Run her over? Strangle her?