Down the short hallway that leads to the suite’s main room, Jay’s and Sam’s eyes meet. Sam smiles stiffly.
“Come in,” Vivian says.
Jay follows her down the hallway into the suite, passing a guest bathroom and a kitchenette before entering the main room. The suite is bigger than his first apartment, the one-bedroom in Third Ward where he and Bernie started a family, Ellie sharing a room with them for the first two years of her life. There’s a private bedroom on the suite’s lower floor, and a short, curved staircase leading to another upstairs. In the living room, furniture has been pushed off to the sides. The TV has been turned to face a back corner of the room. There’s a mess of wires coming out of the back of it, one of them leading to a video camera set up on a tripod in the middle of the room, facing a mock debate setup. Axel Hathorne, all six feet of him, stands behind the lectern on the left. He’s in a Rice University sweatshirt, a bib of paper towels around the neck and two different shades of brown powder and foundation on each cheek. Behind the second lectern, Russell Weingate, a University of Texas political science professor and campaign consultant, is playing the part of Axel’s rival. The wall of glass behind them offers a postcard picture of Houston’s glittering skyline. Across the room, a young white guy wearing a Blues Traveler T-shirt sits in front of a television screen, a pair of headphones resting on his neck, next to a young woman wearing a nose ring and a tool belt filled with cosmetics. She’s checking her work on-screen. Neal stands behind her, his arms crossed tightly.
“Let’s go through that last bit again,” he says.
Russell Weingate is wearing a sweater vest over his button-down shirt, jeans, and black sneakers. He takes off his glasses, wiping them with the untucked tail of his shirt. “The projections for tax revenue from Kingwood in the next year alone have changed even the hardest hard-liners on this issue,” he says. “Wolcott has always supported pulling the town of Kingwood into Houston, which is on message for her. ‘Smart, low-risk growth.’ You’re weak here, Axe.”
“I still say it’s spreading the city’s infrastructure too thin.”
“Can I get you a drink, Mr. Porter?” Vivian says.
“No, that’s fine.”
Sam takes a last pull on the cigarette in his hand. He grinds it out in a crystal ashtray resting on a nearby table. “Bring me a Coke, would you, Viv?”
“Axel?”
“No, I’m fine, Mama.”
Neal turns from the TV screen and sees Jay for the first time. Axel is already walking from behind the lectern, yanking the paper towels from his collar.
“Jay Porter,” he says. He pats Jay on the back, shaking his hand. He’s got a good three inches on Jay but never seems to tower. His manner is affable and open, a practiced demeanor meant to mitigate the power of his height. He’s relaxed in his later years, a long way from the stern and unforgiving cop with the cutting nickname. He seems happy to be away from the lectern.
“Nice to see you, Axe,” Jay says. He, after all these years, remembers the man fondly, remembers when Hathorne was the only name he trusted on a police force filled with good ol’ boys. Axe went easy on Jay a few times, and on Bumpy Williams and Lloyd Mackalvy, even one time declining to arrest them during an anti–police brutality march through Fifth Ward, despite pressure from higher-ups to come down hard. “They’re just walking,” he’d said to his superiors.
“You too, man,” Axel says to Jay. “How’re your kids?”
Neal sighs. “Guess this means we’re taking a break.”
Vivian returns from the small kitchen. She hands a can of Coke to Sam, and presents Jay with a glass of water he never asked for. Resting a thin hand on his forearm, she again asks if they’ve found the girl. Sam shakes his head matter-of-factly. “Jim would have called.” Frankie, Sam’s driver, enters the hotel suite next, cradling two greasy take-out bags. Sam clears a space to set down the food, Styrofoam containers of catfish and slices of white bread, damp with steam.
“Viv, honey, check if they got some hot sauce in the kitchen.”
“She didn’t work for us, by the way,” Neal says to Jay.
“It’s true,” Axel says. “Neal and Tonya did a top-to-bottom search, and there’s no paper, no eyewitnesses that put her anywhere near our offices or our campaign. No one in the organization remembers her. The description of her clothing on the day in question, it’s likely just a coincidence.”
“Axe is on top of it,” Neal says. “We’ve talked to the lead detective.”
“Detective Moore,” Jay says offhand.
“That’s right,” Axel says, a little surprised to hear the name coming out of Jay’s mouth. “He’s heading the case out of the Northeast Division.”
“We’re cooperating fully. We turned over records, answered all their questions,” Neal says. And yet, Jay thinks, Detective Moore is this morning on his way back to campaign headquarters, hunting that schedule, a copy of which rests in Jay’s pocket right now. “They know about the planned search. We made them aware of the residents’ concerns, to say nothing of Alicia Nowell’s family.”
Axel sighs heavily. “I told her parents to call night or day.”
“I still don’t know why we can’t put this on the current police chief somehow,” Neal says. “The other girls went missing on his watch too.”
Sam shakes his head. Russell too.
“It nullifies the department’s endorsement if we tear them down publicly,” he says. “It’s a fine line to walk. But HPD is key for us.”
“Plus, I don’t want to go negative,” Axel says.
“Well, the chief’s not the one running,” Neal says, glancing at his grandfather. He has the same nut-brown coloring as Neal, but the Hathorne similarity stops there. For the life of him, Jay still can’t tell where the boy came from. “Don’t think Wolcott’s not storing up a reserve on you. I’m telling you, it’s a mistake to not strike her first. We’ve got her affair, just say the word.”