32

“Go on up,” Mars said to Nettie and DeeDee, meeting them in the condo lobby. “I’m going to get the mail.”

Mars smelled the perfume a fraction of a second after the elevator door closed behind him. In another heartbeat, he heard the evening office manager calling his name.

“Marshall?”

Mars stood still, his eyes closed as he heard Connie Babb’s four-inch heels clicking across the tile lobby from the office. One of the condominium’s attractions for Mars had been that in addition to the code-controlled entrance, the building’s glass-fronted office was located in the lobby and was staffed twenty-four hours a day. It was a significantly more secure living situation than a house, a factor that was important to Mars with Chris on his own more.

But there was this maddening balance in human existence. For everything you got that was good, there was a downside trade-off.

In this case, the downside trade-off for having a human being keeping watch over the lobby was that the human being was often Connie Babb.

“I thought it was you,” Connie Babb said, her brilliant red lips spread in an enormous smile as she approached. “I’ve been looking out for you. The building manager asked me to remind you to let us know when you have service people coming in…”

Mars looked at Connie Babb. “I’m aware of that. It hasn’t been necessary, but if we have someone coming in, I’ll be sure to…”

Connie Babb frowned. “I was sure he said Time-Warner Cable came for your unit the other day. He had your request order, so they let him up—the manager buzzed but didn’t get an answer…”

“Wrong unit,” Mars said. “I didn’t schedule anything.”

“Maybe I’m not remembering the right unit number,” Connie said. “You’re in—oh, no. That’s right. You’re in 802 and now that I think about it, the note the manager gave me was 602. I always confuse even numbers. 802, 602, all even numbers. Impossible to remember.”

She waited expectantly. Mars edged toward the mailbox. “Not a problem. Have a nice night.”

She followed him to the mailboxes. “I know what I’m thinking about. We had a note from Mrs. Dorphy, the association president. She said you had permission to have a dog in your unit that doesn’t conform to the by-laws while the board reviews the rules. Your son is home now?”

“Got home a couple days ago,” Mars said, relocking the mailbox and moving back toward the elevators.

“He’s a darling boy,” Connie said, smiling at Mars as if this observation were a shared intimacy between them.

“He’s a good kid,” Mars said, giving another punch to the elevator up button. The elevator dinged behind him. He gave Connie a little salute with his handful of mail and made his escape.

He had to get a handle on Connie Babb’s schedule. Chris could do mail pickup the evenings Connie was on.

*   *   *

As he entered the apartment, Gunner approached him in a friendly, if not enthusiastic spirit, accepted a quick head rub, then trotted back to the kitchen, where Chris was making a sandwich. DeeDee Kipp was on a chair, watching Chris and Gunner.

It was then that Mars noticed that Gunner was wearing a wristwatch.

“Am I hallucinating, or is Gunner wearing a watch?”

“I’m training him,” Chris said, then changed the subject. “You’ve gotta see this, Dad. I gave Gunner part of my sandwich. It was sourdough bread with tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, and salami. He chewed and chewed, and when he was done, he spit out the piece of lettuce. It was perfect, Dad. I mean, no tooth marks or anything. So now I’m making him a sandwich with all this other stuff, and I’ve put in this little piece of lettuce. I want to see if…”

While addressing Mars, Chris kept glancing over at DeeDee, who was holding Teddy Nelson, a small, white bichon frise. Chris was showing off for the benefit of the lovely DeeDee.

“Teddy staying overnight?” Mars said, walking over and giving Teddy a pat.

Chris shook his head. “I’m going to take him back to Mark and Marcie’s when I take Gunner out.” He looked over at DeeDee. “You want to come with? We can go down to the river. I’ll show you the falls…”

DeeDee looked up at Mars. “Can I?” she said.

It was feeling to Mars like he had suddenly become the father of two kids. It made him think that if he’d had a child when he was eighteen, nineteen years old, he would now have a kid DeeDee’s age.

Mars looked at his watch. “Sure.” Then to Chris, “What’s in the oven?”

“I’m making pot roast for dinner…”

“I could smell it as soon as I got off the elevator.”

“Are you hungry for pot roast?”

“Not a typical hot summer night dinner, but I’m always hungry for pot roast,” Mars said.

“Yeah, but it’s supposed to cool off tonight and rain.”

Mars gave Gunner another look. “I’m still trying to figure out the wristwatch.”

“Oh,” Chris said. “I got him a watch that’s got an alarm. I set the alarm to go off in five minutes, then I told Gunner to stay. I went out, and when the alarm went off, I came back in. Then I set it for ten minutes, then for a half hour. He’s already got it, Dad. When I went to get stuff for the sandwich, I was gone an hour. He was fine. Now, watch this…”

Chris bent down, giving Gunner a command to sit, which the dog did promptly, never taking his eyes from a hunk of sandwich that would have fed a multitude. Then Chris offered Gunner the sandwich, which Gunner took with the gentle grace only a dog bred for generations to retrieve with a soft mouth could have managed.

Just as advertised, Gunner chewed prodigiously, never dropping a morsel. After a final gulping swallow, he hesitated momentarily, then spat out an untouched piece of lettuce.

Chris howled with satisfaction. “You know what? I’m going to videotape this. I’m going to send it in to Stupid Pet Tricks…”

“Stupid Human Tricks might be a better option,” Mars said. “Listen. You and DeeDee need to be back by six. The pot roast will be ready when?”

“Six-thirty.”

“And Aunt Gwen is picking you up at…?”

“I’m supposed to call her as soon as I’m through with dinner.”

“That’ll work,” Mars said.

*   *   *

After Chris and DeeDee left with the dogs, Mars walked out to the living room. Nettie was on the futon couch, reading a paper. He dropped down next to her.

“I’m thinking I should drive down to Mankato with you. Or you could stay here and I could take DeeDee back.”

Nettie drew the pages of the paper together and folded it on her lap. “I thought you left a message with The Get List producer to call you tonight?”

“Yeah. I did. But I gave him my cell and home number.”

Nettie stretched and shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense for both of us to go. It’s only what—seventy, eighty miles? No traffic this time of night…” She sat up, leaning toward Mars. “Besides. For once, I’m the one who’s got a bond with a—what do we call DeeDee—she’s not a victim, not just a family member—whatever, there’s a real connection between us. She’s been through a lot, and I think my support means something to her.”

“If you’re okay with it, fine. Just feels like breaking the deal we made when you became my partner…”

“Our deal?”

“That you’d never have to be a street investigator, dealing with the scum of the earth.”

“Whatever DeeDee is, she’s not the scum of the earth, Mars.”

“Agreed.”

Nettie continued to stare at Mars. “So what you’re thinking about is it’s time to go public. How are you thinking about doing that.”

“It’s what I said before,” Mars said. “Timing will be everything. We’ve got to pull off a full court press on a single day, no advance notice, with local and national media coverage, and we’ve got to have everything we know in place to smoke out Campbell and the Green Man. DNA from DeeDee, Campbell’s and the Green Man’s connection in Vietnam, the stuff about what happened to Campbell’s political opponent…”

“We’re going to have proof of that anytime soon?”

“No. It’s going to be a bluff. We’ll challenge Campbell to take a DNA test. That’s our ace. Once we’re out there, once DeeDee is out there—I think there’s a chance the Green Man will back off. The other thing we’ll have is Jim Baker. I think he’ll be credible. He’s got nothing to gain by coming forward at this point other than a clear conscience. That will come across. Who knows what else will come out when Baker tells his story. Baker can’t be the only guy who was in Vietnam in 1971 who knows about Campbell.”

“And Baker’s willing to do it? You’re sure about that?”

“I don’t have any doubt,” Mars said. “I think he’s been waiting for thirty-two years to tell this story in public.”

“And our soup can and golden oldie?”

“We’ll use everything we’ve got, Nettie. If Campbell doesn’t like it, he can sue us.”

Nettie thought it over. “And what you want to ask DeeDee tonight is if she’s willing to take the risk and go public.”

“Exactly.”

*   *   *

They heard Chris and DeeDee come in, Gunner panting ahead of them. Chris went straight into the kitchen to check the pot roast.

“It’s starting to rain,” he announced, coming into the living room. “And the pot roast is ready.”

Gunner sat near Chris at the table. Mars caught a glimpse of Chris’s hand moving from his plate to below the table. Then Gunner’s head would drop down, popping up again in seconds, his gimlet eyes fixed on Chris in some sort of canine mind-control exercise.

“It’s good he gets along with other dogs,” DeeDee said. “But he sure doesn’t much trust strangers.”

“He’s protective,” Chris said. “And it’s like he’s got a lot of rules about how people should look. He doesn’t like hats and umbrellas and he doesn’t like people carrying bags.”

“My baseball cap didn’t bother him,” DeeDee said.

“That’s because he knows you. He knows your scent. You can wear a hat, open an umbrella, and carry a bag all at the same time if he’s met you once. Then he knows your scent. That’s all it takes.”

“Pot roast on a summer night,” Nettie said. “A neglected pleasure.”

Nobody had much to say while they ate. By unspoken agreement, Mars and Nettie didn’t want to discuss the case while Chris was around.

Chris started to clear the table, but Mars waved him off. “Call Aunt Gwen. She’ll be waiting to hear from you. I’ll catch the dishes after Nettie and DeeDee leave.”

“I should probably take Gunner out again,” Chris said. “I gave him a little bit of pot roast.”

Gunner looked sideways at Mars, with exactly the same expression Mars had seen on the faces of partners in crime when one of the partners admits to something the other wanted to keep quiet.

“I’ll take him when I walk you down to meet Aunt Gwen. And he can go out again with me when I go out with Nettie and DeeDee.”

*   *   *

Gunner had a sixth sense that Chris was leaving. He started worrying about the prospect as soon as Gwen’s car pulled up. It took all of Mars’s strength to drag Gunner back into the apartment. Once upstairs, Gunner stayed by the front door, pacing and occasionally letting loose a low whine. From time to time he’d walk back into the living room, staring plaintively at Mars.

“Ignore him,” Mars said. Then he turned to DeeDee.

“We have two options. Which option we choose is totally up to you.”

DeeDee looked taken aback. “Why just me?”

Mars fixed DeeDee with a hard look. “Let me explain the choices. Then I think you’ll understand why ‘just you.’

“The first choice is that we do nothing. That we walk away from the investigation of your mother’s death and that we let people know that’s what we’ve decided to do. That might be the safest option. The person who killed your mother is, for the most part, rational and efficient. He doesn’t kill unless he has to. At this point, there’s no evidence he even knows you exist…”

“How can you be sure?”

“This is going to be hard to hear, DeeDee. But you need to hear it, so when you make a choice, you understand the risks…”

Mars waited before he went on, wanting to be sure he had DeeDee’s attention. When her eyes met his, and held his gaze, he said, “We’re pretty sure he doesn’t know about you because you’ve stayed alive for nineteen years.”

DeeDee didn’t flinch. Then she made a statement that contained a question. “You found me.”

“Only when we were looking for something else.”

DeeDee thought about what Mars had said. “I’ll never know for sure, will I? I’ll never be sure that if he’s looking for something else, he won’t find me.”

Nettie said, “No. You’ll never be sure. But how much certainty do we get about anything? Not being sure has a name, DeeDee. It’s called life.” Nettie let DeeDee think about what she had said before she added, “We can’t tell you for sure you’ll be safe if this is the choice you make. We can only tell you we think it is the choice that has the least risk. Mars? Do you agree?”

Mars nodded.

DeeDee said, “Okay. Tell me about the second choice.”

Mars said, “It’s what I started to say at the office. That we protect ourselves by announcing publicly everything we know and everything we suspect about your father and about the man he hired to kill your mother. That we put you front stage and center as your father’s daughter. And we hope that by doing that, they’ll decide that coming after you will only prove the point that they’re guilty. It is kind of like getting a vaccination. You expose yourself to risk and that makes you immune to the risk.”

DeeDee looked between Mars and Nettie. “Why is that riskier than doing nothing?”

“Because,” Mars said, “there’s one thing about the man who killed your mother that worries me. I’ve said he’s rational and efficient and he only kills when he has to. But there’s something else about him. The way he killed your mother worries me. He didn’t attempt to make it look like an accident. He shot her in a public place. That tells me that he’s a man who is vengeful and does not tolerate being beaten.”

“But why can’t you catch him? Then I could be sure I’d be safe—” She stopped herself, acknowledging what Nettie had said before. “Not safe from everything. But safe from this man…”

“Maybe the best thing about the second choice, DeeDee, is that it would allow us a chance to do just that. But I have to tell you. This is a man with extraordinary resources that could prevent his being caught. I can’t promise you that he would be caught. I guess what I’m saying is, I think there’s a smaller chance that he will find out about you than there is a chance he could find you if we don’t catch him.”

DeeDee sat silent for a long time after Mars stopped talking. Finally, she asked the question Mars had been expecting.

“Who are they? My father, and the man he hired. Who are they?”

Nettie and Mars exchanged a glance.

Nettie said, “Your father is Alan Campbell, DeeDee. Minnesota’s junior senator.”

If DeeDee had any reaction to that news, she kept it to herself. “And the man he hired. The man who killed my mother. Who is that?”

Mars thought about how to answer the question. To this point he hadn’t told DeeDee that the Green Man had killed anyone other than her mother. Maybe, he thought, she needs to know the whole story before she makes a choice.

“He’s a man of many names,” Mars said. “The name we’ve known him by isn’t a name at all. He’s called the Green Man.”

*   *   *

After Mars had told DeeDee everything he knew about the Green Man, DeeDee said, “I don’t understand—all these things he’s done—why can’t you say you’re dropping the investigation about my mother and still find him because of the other things he’s done?”

It was a good question, a question to which Mars knew the answer in an implicit way. He wasn’t sure he could make a nineteen-year-old girl understand the answer.

“The Green Man, DeeDee, operates in a world most of us can live our lives without knowing it exists. He has connections in government, in the intelligence community, with the military, with foreign drug cartels—I don’t begin to know or understand all his connections. There are a lot of things that have made him invincible: powerful people who have a stake in making sure the Green Man is never held accountable for what he’s done, his own intelligence and skill, the fact that he’s had so many identities…”

DeeDee had folded her arms across her middle as Mars talked, hunching her shoulders forward as if preparing to withstand an unseen blow. She said, “That’s what I really hate. That he doesn’t have a name. He doesn’t even seem human without a real name.”

She was right. There was a mystique that attached to an unknown malevolent force. Mars expected that the Green Man knew that, too.

“I hadn’t thought about it before, but you’re right,” Nettie said. “He is scarier because he doesn’t have a real name.”

DeeDee said, “I guess I understand why you’re saying he’s dangerous and that it will be hard to find him. But I still don’t understand why that’s easier to do if you make this big public announcement about my mother’s case.”

“Only because I think what we can reveal about your father’s and the Green Man’s connection is so bad that people who protect him now will disassociate themselves from him. I think going public with what we know, what we suspect, will isolate him. And it will create political pressure to bring in other resources to find him and hold him accountable. We don’t begin to have the resources to do this without public support. When people know what he’s done, I think that support will come.”

Mars didn’t say it, but what he also knew was that DeeDee was important to the case not just because she provided a genetic link to Campbell. Almost more important, she put a real face to the Green Man’s victims. You can tell people about atrocities that affect millions, but what gives people the gumption to take action is usually a single sympathetic face. If it was a sympathetic face you were looking for, you couldn’t do better than this lovely, gentle, but ultimately tough-as-nails, brown-eyed girl.

DeeDee sat perfectly still, avoiding looking at Mars and Nettie. Then she said, “It’s just so weird to think that all this is connected to my mother. A teenager working at a convenience store.” Another long pause, then she straightened up. “I don’t want to live my life not knowing if the Green Man knows about me or not. You know what else? I don’t want to live my life knowing that he’s still doing this stuff. I’d rather go for it than let him get away.

“And I want to know his real name,” DeeDee said, her chin setting, her eyes looking straight on at Mars and Nettie.

*   *   *

It was just after eight-thirty when Mars walked Nettie and DeeDee out to Nettie’s car. There was a slow, gentle rain. Nothing that would make driving difficult, just enough to lower the temperature and make the summer night darker, sooner.

Gunner disapproved of Nettie and DeeDee leaving. His hackles raised and he kept up a low, grumbling growl of displeasure. Nettie opened the trunk to take out a jacket, dropping her big leather duffel purse into the trunk. DeeDee put on her jacket, then dropped down, butt on her heels, to give Gunner a hug.

Gunner whined plaintively, trying to convince her to stay.

“He’d want everybody he loves to live in one room, with him, for the rest of our lives,” Mars said. Then he was surprised by DeeDee, rising to give Mars a hug. The brim of her baseball cap brushed against Mars’s cheek, and she lifted one hand to keep it in place.

“Thank you,” DeeDee said. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to finally know something about my family. Both my families. And to know that I’ve got both of you to help keep me safe.”

Mars returned the hug, thinking at that moment he’d like to have a daughter. Provided she could be a clone of DeeDee Kipp.

“I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I have a schedule for the press conference,” Mars said. “Then we’ll bring you down here a couple days ahead of that and put you under protection.”

DeeDee nodded without saying anything. She got into Nettie’s car, giving Mars a final wave.

Mars did something he’d never done before. He gave Nettie a hug before she got in the car.

“Call me as soon as you’re back,” he said.