Sandy Wolcott, sitting on the other side of Parker, leans forward, her hand on the back of Rolly’s seat. “What are you doing?” she shrieks. “Stop this car.”
Rolly turns up the radio, pretending not to hear.
Parker reaches into her leather tote bag for a cell phone.
Jay puts a hand on hers to stop her. “He has an alibi, you know.”
Parker shakes him off and starts dialing.
Into the phone, she says, “Tell Tom we’re running a few minutes late.” She hangs up the phone, dropping it into her bag. Then to Jay she barks, “Talk.”
“You ought to drop this whole thing before you make a fool of yourself and lose the election anyway,” Jay says. “Neal Hathorne wasn’t in Pleasantville Tuesday night. He had absolutely nothing to do with killing Alicia Nowell.”
“You so sure?”
“He has an alibi.”
“Tell it to Matt Nichols, the A.D.A.,” Wolcott says. “I told Sam, I told the paper, I’ll tell you . . . I’ve recused myself from this case, don’t have a thing to do with it. I shouldn’t even be hearing this right now. Stop this car.”
“She’s right,” Parker says, tapping the back of the driver’s seat.
Rolly, glancing at Jay in the rearview mirror, slows the car.
Parker reaches across the seat to manually unlock the back passenger door. “Get out,” she says to Wolcott. “Let her go,” she tells Jay, “and we’ll talk.”
Jay nods to Rolly, who pulls the car over, about a block from the University of St. Thomas, where Wolcott gets out on the left side, almost walking into street traffic. “Fix this,” she says to Parker before slamming the door.
“So this is all your doing?” Jay says to Parker when she’s gone.
“Much as I would like to take credit for this unfortunate set of circumstances for the Hathorne family and campaign, I’m afraid getting the captain of the other team arrested for murder is above my pay grade,” Parker says, reaching down to the car’s carpeted floor to lift her leather tote to her lap. From inside, she pulls a pack of cherry Trident, unwrapping a single piece and popping it into her wide mouth, before retrieving a compact from her purse so she can check her acid-blond hair. She’s in a bulky red pantsuit, the fabric bunching at her shoulders. “I’m afraid Neal Hathorne made this mess on his own.”
“I know she was working for you.”
Parker smiles, maybe the teeniest bit impressed. “Even if she was,” she says, snapping the compact closed, “what does that have to do with murder?”
“You set him up.”
“I didn’t put his number in that girl’s pager.”
“But interesting that you know about it.”
Evidence, he thinks, that despite Wolcott’s profession of having had no hand in the case, someone is sharing inside information with her campaign.
Parker waves that off. “That was in the paper.”
“You and I both know there isn’t enough evidence to take this to trial, not without someone pushing it from the inside. You don’t think everyone’s going to see that before this is all said and done? He has an alibi,” Jay says again.
“One that he conveniently forgot to tell the cops about.”
“It’s all going to come out, including the failure of the D.A.’s office to prosecute the only suspect in the murders of Deanne Duchon and Tina Wells. Putting Neal on trial for the third girl, it looks like Wolcott’s covering her butt.”
“Those cases aren’t connected.”
“Says who?”
“The Chronicle, in black and white,” she says with a knowing smile.
“This comes dangerously close to rigging an election.”
“Don’t insult me,” Parker says, wrenching around in her seat to face him head-on. “You have any idea what I get paid, the kinds of people I work with? I don’t need to rig some Podunk mayor’s race in south Texas.”
“You can’t win without Pleasantville.”
“If I want Pleasantville, I’ll reach right out and take it.”
“It’s Sam’s, and you know it.”
“Sam’s day is done.”
“You think it’s so easy to get around him? They love him out there.”
“And he’s done a lot for that community, he has,” Parker says. “He built that precinct with his bare hands. But even Pleasantville, as anyone knew it, has an expiration date. And why shouldn’t it? The circumstances that created it no longer exist. Wasn’t that what you, of all people, were fighting for, ‘back in the day,’ as the kids say? The rules of the game have changed. The voting maps have changed. The whole math of how people win elections has changed. From here on out, every vote counts. And I, for one, am not willing to concede an entire precinct on Sam’s say-so. People can make up their own minds. It’s their vote, not Sam Hathorne’s. All that paternalistic crap, it’s a thing of the past.”
“They know Axel out there, they trust him,” Jay says. “At least they did before you and Wolcott started putting those flyers all across the neighborhood.”
“Axel, God bless him, isn’t a politician. He’d do his legacy a favor to stay in the role of beloved former cop, city’s first black chief. You can tell him I said that. He’s not cut out for the mayor’s office. He’s trading on a last name.”
“Interesting coming from the woman who helped put Bush junior in the governor’s office.”
“You’re wrong to underestimate him,” she says.
Then, tapping the back of Rolly’s seat, she announces, “I’m not walking all the way the fuck back.” Rolly doesn’t move, not without Jay’s explicit instruction. Jay, running out of time, reaches into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a sheaf of papers. “Last chance to end this,” he says. “Tell Wolcott to drop this case.”
“I believe she told you she doesn’t have a thing to do with it.”
“Bullshit.”
But Parker doesn’t budge.