Midnight Haul by Max Allan Collins Page A

have to dump.”
    “Yeah. Okay.”
    “Something’s wrong, isn’t it, Crane?”
    “No. Yes. I’m just… trying not to get caught up in your… crusade. It’s dangerous, what you’re doing. It’s not what a journalist does.”
    “What does a journalist do?”
    “You keep an open mind when you look into something. You don’t set out to prove something. You set out to find the facts, whatever they are.”
    “Yes, and your problem is you can’t face facts, when you find ’em.”
    “No! My problem is keeping myself reminded, in the midst of your leftist hysteria, that there are two sides to everything. Even to Kemco.”
    “It’s that talk you had with Mrs. Woll, isn’t it? That’s what’s bothering you.”
    “No.”
    “I think we should talk about that.”
    “I told you what she told me.”
    “But you can’t handle it, can you?”
    The windshield was fogged up from their talking; that was okay, because if anyone drove by, it would reinforce the idea that he and Boone were making out. Which was hardly the case at the moment. He turned to her. Calm. Rational.
    He said, “Mrs. Woll opened up to me, a little bit, possibly because I’m male, and also because I know how to interview better than you. But for the most part, she didn’t say anything that wasn’t on the tape of your conversation with her, a year ago.”
    “There was the news that she worked with Mary Beth at Kemco.”
    “News to
me
. You knew about it, ’cause Mary Beth would’ve told you. You just wanted me to find out for myself.”
    “Maybe,” she smiled. “When I interviewed her originally, not long after her husband’s ‘suicide,’ she was a secretary at City Hall. Had been for some years. Since then, she’s been given a, shall we say, enviable position at Kemco. Head of the secretarial pool, no less.”
    “And into that, I suppose, you read all kinds of conspiratorial under- and overtones. Tell me, did Kemco kill Kennedy?”
    “Which one?”
    “Boone, Kemco offering an employee’s widow a position with the company could be a strictly benevolent act on their part. It isn’t necessarily anything sinister.”
    “She was qualified for the job, I grant you. But surely you find it slightly suspicious…”
    Crane looked away from her. Said nothing.
    “Of course you do,” Boone said. “That’s what’s bothering you. Isn’t it?”
    He sighed, shook his head. Turned and looked at her.
    “Yes,” he admitted. “That, and that we’ve made a connection between Mary Beth and one of the other ‘suicide’ victims. An indirect connection, but a connection.”
    Boone nodded. “She’s connected to another victim, too: Paul Meyer. He was an exec, and Mary Beth was the darling of the secretarial pool, where the execs were concerned.”
    “Which could explain how she stumbled onto some high-level shenanigans. Well. Anyway, I’ll be talking to Meyer’s wife tomorrow; we might get some insights, there. This is all very flimsy, from an evidence standpoint, you know.”
    “Maybe. But maybe we should both try to keep an open mind.”
    “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
    “A truck.”
    “Huh?”
    “That could be a truck.”
    Light caught the corner of Crane’s eye and he turned. Down the road, about a mile, were the high-beams of what appeared to be a truck, approaching Kemco.
    “Get in the back seat,” Boone told him.
    He did. She passed the Nikon to him.
    The truck—it
was
a truck—came into view. It was a big flatbed with the sides built up; a tarp was flung over the back of it, tied on. This they saw as it pulled into the graveled loading area.
    “Did you notice the clearing booth was empty tonight?” Boone asked him.
    Crane, in the back seat, feeling nervous, said, “No I didn’t.”
    “Well it was.”
    “That isn’t one of Kemco’s trucks, is it.”
    “It sure isn’t,” Boone said. She was smiling. “It’s an independent. Come to pick something up.”

Chapter Thirteen
    Boone drove by the loading-dock area