Chapter 26
Now
quinn
‘You don’t have a corpse,’ Phil says.
‘Doesn’t mean there isn’t one,’ Quinn says.
He reaches across the table for a fistful of tortilla chips.
Quinn has only ever seen him eat three things: chips, fried chicken, and cheese pizza.
He says he prefers clogged arteries to food poisoning; and to be fair, no self-respecting salmonella virus would be seen dead hiding in the crap he eats.
‘OK. Talk me through this one more time.’
‘The cops wouldn’t even log Luke Connelly as a missing person,’ Quinn says. ‘Still haven’t. But he’s been gone fifteen months without a word, and everyone I’ve spoken to says he was a devoted family man. He might’ve left his wife, but the kids?’
‘Happens.’
‘All this time, no one’s used his bank accounts, his social security number, nothing. Do you know how hard it is to disappear without a trace these days?’
‘Right. OK. Let’s assume he is missing, not shacked up with Miss Vermont somewhere. So you talk to the grieving . . . what is she, if there isn’t a body? Widow? Whatever. And she confirms the missing husband—’
‘Luke.’
‘Was investigating some lake pollution thing when he disappeared.’
Quinn takes a swallow of shitty ginger ale. ‘Yep.’
‘That’s it?’
‘His wife said he’d been on edge lately,’ she says.
‘Getting calls at odd times of night, and when she quizzed him about it, he bit her head off. A couple of weeks before he vanished, a car appeared at the bottom of their driveway one night, just sat there with its lights off. When Luke went out to see what was going on, he took his gun.’
‘Gotta love the second amendment.’
‘He was obviously shit-scared of something.’
‘Maybe he knew there was a jealous husband out there.’
‘I don’t believe in coincidence,’ Quinn says, ignoring him.
‘Luke was studying lake health and the toxic effects of agricultural run-off. His wife says he told her, quote, a lot of people in town wouldn’t be happy when the truth came out, end quote.
Just before he died, he was trying to persuade someone to get hold of some documents for him – some sort of whistleblower, at a guess, though he never gave his wife a name.
Then he goes missing a week before the Lady has a mysterious accident on the lake – we still don’t know what caused it, by the way – and you’re telling me it isn’t all connected? ’
‘Unless your toxic waste was radioactive and there’s a Loch Ness monster in that lake, I’m still not buying it,’ Phil says.
‘The safety systems on the Lady were sketchy at best, and she hit debris from the hurricane during a massive power outage. The boat should never have been out on the lake that night, end of. Amy Gray made a bad call.’
‘Or she was a convenient fall guy.’
‘It’s a serious reach, Quinn.’
‘I’m telling you—’
‘Yeah, yeah. Your spidey senses. I know.’ Phil takes another handful of chips.
‘Look. I’m playing devil’s advocate, Quinn, but my honest opinion?
You’re looking for a connection that isn’t there.
Even if some company’s dumping shit in the lake, what’s the link to the Lady?
Our story’s with that kid in the hospital.
And until she actually says something, we don’t even have that. ’
Quinn can smell the Kentucky Rye two tables away. She can taste its spicy, peppery flavour on her tongue. Hints of pear, apple and almond dance in her nose.
She needs this story.
‘This is bigger than one kid,’ she says. ‘There’s something rotten in this town. I’m telling you, Phil.’
‘Ollie isn’t going to sign off on an open-ended stay here without a little more than your gut to go on,’ Phil says. ‘You gotta tread lightly, especially after Italy.’
Quinn doesn’t often listen to anyone, but Phil’s followed her to and through the gates of hell: on the rare occasions he pulls her up with a warning, she’s learned to take it seriously.
They’ve worked together for close to a decade, on and off.
It was pure chance he wasn’t in the Jeep with her when it was blown up by the IED in Syria; his wife had been expecting her first baby, and Phil had rotated out on a month’s paternity leave just two days earlier.
The cameraman who’d replaced him was killed in the roadside bomb, along with Quinn’s fixer, translator, and two US troops.
Quinn had “just” lost an eye, her right lower jaw, and ninety per cent of the use of her right arm.
When Quinn had been “promoted” to the Washington Bureau, Phil had taken himself off the International Desk roster and moved his family to the States to join the DC bureau with her.
She hadn’t asked him to do it – had strongly objected, in fact – but you formed a special kind of bond when you were on the road risking your life with someone, whether you liked it or not, and he’d refused to listen to her.
Instead, he’d moved to Washington and watched her climb into a bottle of bourbon and almost screw up his career along with her own.
She hadn’t earned either his friendship or his trust; but he’d given her both.
Phil hadn’t been there in Italy, but he knew what Quinn had done.
She’d told him: of course she’d told him.
They’d worked together in some of the most dangerous places on earth. Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen. She literally trusted him with her life. She knew he could keep her secrets.
‘Look, I just need you to back my play,’ Quinn says now. ‘Keep the news desk off my arse till I can come up with something concrete. At some point, Christie’s going to give you a call—’ She breaks off, correctly reading Phil’s expression. ‘Fuck. She already has, hasn’t she?’
‘She’s the bloody editor of INN,’ Phil says. ‘It’s not like I can ignore her.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told her you’d scored an off-record interview with Amy Gray and were trying to get her to speak on camera,’ he says.
‘I reminded her that she hasn’t spoken to a single journalist in fifteen months.
Christie was practically salivating. I didn’t tell her the woman threw you out of the house and threatened to call the cops if you ever came back. ’
‘Appreciate that.’
‘I’ve bought us a few days, but if you don’t get something soon, she’s gonna pull the plug,’ Phil warns.
‘Hold that thought,’ Quinn says, as her phone beeps with an incoming text.
She narrows her good eye, scrolling through the message with her left thumb.
Phil waits. He’s worked with Quinn long enough to recognise when she has the scent of blood in her nostrils. This is why he trusts her gut, even when it leads to trouble. She always gets her story.
As she always says, it only takes one loose thread.
And when she looks up from her screen, he knows she’s found it.