TWENTY-ONE

      When I reach the hotel, Caitlin is waiting for me with a cold can of Dr Pepper and a chicken sandwich. I’m starving. It took two hours to get back to Houston through the rain and traffic, but knowing that Annie might not go to sleep without me close kept me from stopping for food. I shouldn’t have worried. She is sound asleep in one of the double beds, while the television plays CNN in muted tones. Caitlin is wearing silk pajamas that somehow look demure and sexy at the same time. I collapse at the table by the window and devour the sandwich, then drink the Dr Pepper in a few gulps. Her instincts are as accurate as always; she says nothing while I eat.

      “Thank you,” I tell her, tossing the sandwich wrapper into the wastepaper can. “Really.”

      “I saw a clip of you coming out of the prison. Was it bad?”

      “Bad enough. That’s the last one I go to.”

      “Let’s change the subject, then. Annie only woke up once, and I rubbed her back till she fell asleep again.”

      “I really appreciate you staying with her.”

      “No problem. She’s great.” Caitlin reaches out and touches my knee. “You really look tired. You want me to go to my room so you can crash? Our flight to Gunnison leaves at eight-thirty.”

      We’re renting a Cherokee in Gunnison for the drive up to Crested Butte. “I don’t think I can get to sleep yet.”

      “Okay.” She scoots back in her chair and folds her legs beneath her. “Let’s talk business, then. Your assistant called. Your ATF friend called her and confirmed that Payton’s car was destroyed by C-4 plastic explosive. They found traces of something called RDX in the shrapnel. He said there should be plenty more embedded in the metal of Payton’s car. No problem to prove in court.”

      Half my fatigue disappears into the shot of adrenaline this produces. “So, Ray Presley planted the blasting caps and dynamite. And someone falsified the lab report.”

      She nods. “I’ve been studying your copy of the police report. It’s mostly gossip really. Wild theories. The interesting thing is that there were rumored suspects the detectives never talked to, local guys who had done other race crimes. Almost as if Creel and Temple knew those suspects weren’t guilty.”

      “Presley may well have planted that C-4 himself. He’s killed before. But for money usually. If he killed Payton, it wasn’t on his own hook.”

      “You think he killed Payton for Leo Marston?”

      “Yes.”

      “Where did you first get the idea Marston was involved?”

      “From the deputy who saved us the other night. Ike Ransom.”

      “Well … I hope you can trust him. Because I’ve got to tell you, everything my people have found on Marston indicates that he’s a liberal, as far as race goes, anyway.”

      “I know. I think the murder might not have been about race at all.”

      Her mouth opens slightly. “What else could it have been about?”

      “I don’t know yet. Have your people learned anything about Dwight Stone?”

      “Yes. One of our reporters in Alexandria, Virginia, says Stone was dismissed from the FBI in 1972 for alcohol-related problems.”

      “Anything else?”

      “He was second-generation law enforcement. His father was a state trooper in Colorado. Stone himself served with the marines in Korea and won a handful of medals I don’t know the significance of. He went to law school after he got out of the service, and joined the Bureau in 1956. He spent sixteen years in, and received several commendations before being dismissed.”

      “Althea Payton told me Stone was sympathetic to her, that he really wanted to solve the case. I wonder if the fact that they both served in Korea was the root of that?”

      “I guess it could be.”

      “Something strange happened at the prison tonight, Caitlin.”

      “What?”

      “The director of the FBI showed up.”

      “John Portman? Why would he show up at the Hanratty execution?”

      “To warn me to stay out of the Del Payton case.”

       “What?”

      “Portman and I have a history. When you asked about the Hanratty case on the plane, I left out some details. When Hanratty committed that first murder in Compton, he was seen by a dozen witnesses before he fled the scene, and they ID’d him from photographs under his real name. An LAPD detective remembered that Hanratty had been the star witness in a federal hate-crime trial a while back. His testimony put a half dozen white supremacists in jail and made a star out of the U.S. attorney of Los Angeles.”

      “Portman,” Caitlin says softly.

      “Exactly. The LAPD went to Portman, who told them Hanratty was under witness protection and couldn’t have committed the crime. Political pressure started building. The next day Hanratty ‘escaped’ from the program and wound up in Houston with his brothers. The rumor was, Portman tried to cover up the murder to keep his reputation clean. I’m pretty sure now that it’s true. Hanratty referred to it tonight in his deathbed statement. Anyway, Portman wanted to neutralize the rumor by throwing the book at Hanratty in the L.A. courts.”

      “And you stopped him.”

      “Exactly. The guy hates my guts.”

      “But what does that have to do with the Del Payton case?”

      “I’m not sure. But Portman just killed the career of an FBI agent who gave me a little help on the phone. He’s transferring him to Fargo, North Dakota. I don’t think there’s even a field office there. Just a resident agency. Whatever’s in the Del Payton file must be embarrassing as hell to the Bureau. I want you to get your people working on Portman immediately. I want to know everything there is to know about him.”

      “I’ll call our Alexandria guy before we fly out in the morning.”

      “I’m going to call that FBI agent right now. I owe him an apology.”

      “It’s the middle of the night. And it’s later in Washington.”