Tuesday, December 27, 2016

The Clearing - Chapter 15

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CHAPTER 15

Over burgers and fries at Burger Palace at the edge of town heading west, Dean and Guthrie reviewed their interview with Sarah.
“What do you think?” asked Dean before dragging two crinkle-cut fries through a dollop of ketchup in a small plastic cup.
Guthrie shrugged. “Now Billy’s buying back pawned jewelry. Seven hundred worth. I don’t know where he’s getting his money.” He scratched his cheek with the backside of his thumb. “But she seemed to care for him. Young love and all.”
Dean let half a smile cross his face before dropping it. “Something’s bothering me. She protested about Alex too much. Too quick to call him an asshole. The photo on the bookshelf—well—it was off. I don’t know. But you’re right. Where’s this money coming from?”
“The way I see it, we’ve got more motives now.” Guthrie raised his index finger. “He’s doing something illegal to get the money.Taking it from Charlie maybe. He’s crossed somebody. Bam.” He raised his middle finger alongside his index finger. “There’s also something going on in that circle of friends. Seems you’re implying an affair. Perhaps Alex and Billy had it out and Billy came up short.” He lifted a third finger. “You keep bringing up his politics. Maybe someone didn’t like them.”
Dean nodded. They finished their lunches, paid the waitress, and went back to the station. He had just taken off his coat, sat down, and slid a standard interview form into his typewriter when the phone rang. He picked it up to hear, “Bonjour, this is Lieutenant Renard Desplains of Sûreté du Québec.”
“Renard, yes, this is Dean.”
“Oui. So I’m calling about this case you, uh, called about yesterday. Something about a murder case, oui?”
“Yes. A young man, Billy Nimitz was murdered, and we think the killer might have come or went to or both from Canada. The scene was a half mile from the border.”
“Oui. Usually your FBI handles these so I recommended them and that was that. I was not expecting to, ah, hear anything but it seems we do have something. Eh?”
“What’ve you got?”
“We got a call a yesterday ago. A man was shot and killed in a flat in Montreal. He had, ah, a collection of passports and cash. Seems he was going back and forth across the border.”
“Okay, and where’s the connection.”
“Ah, oui, the connection is he had several passports for this William Nimitz. Among many others, but him. I thought I recognized the name.”
“What do you mean several?”
“Un moment.” Renard set the phone down and grabbed a folder, which he opened, flipped a few pages, and found what he wanted. He picked up the phone and held it against his ear with his shoulder. “We found four total. One Canadian, one French, one Spanish, and one Swiss.”
“Why did he have them?”
“I do not have that information yet.”
“Can I see these?”
“Oui. You can come up and look at the case file, if you would like.”
“Very much.”
Dean hung up the phone and walked to Guthrie’s desk. He told him Josh would have to wait until tomorrow. Instead, he told Guthrie to drive to Plattsburgh and verify Sarah’s story about the necklace and bracelet. “Take a picture of both of them and show it to the clerks. Leave copies if you have to. I want to know that the real Sarah and William were there.”
* * *
With the traffic, it took almost two hours to get to the Sûreté du Québec’s station in Montreal. Despite the relatively short distance between Zion and Montreal, Dean had rarely ventured there. The big metropolis felt like a foreign country with so much in French.
The headquarters was a fourteen-story T-shaped building, just across the St. Lawrence Seaway on rue Parthenais. Dean parked in the visitor’s parking lot and walked through the glass door main entrance and into the wide, sunlit lobby. At the main desk, he asked a uniformed officer where to find Renard Desplains. She looked up his name and directed Dean to the third floor.
The elevator dinged open, and he and a couple of other officers stepped onto the third floor, its light brown carpet and beige walls drove home the institutional feel. A string of like desks—silver legs and dark brown tops—stood in two rows down a lengthy part of the building. Dean paused and looked around, confused. A man spun in his chair next to him. “Puis-je vous aider?” But he said it so fast, Dean was not able to even begin to understand what he said. The man asked again: “Puis-je vous aider?”
Dean nodded and said, “Renard Desplains?”
The man squinted at him. “Pourquois?”
Dean reached into his sport coat inside pocket and pulled out his Zion Police badge. The man looked it over and pointed in the direction Dean had been walking. He rattled off a couple of sentences that Dean could not comprehend. When the man had finished, Dean had the good sense to say, “Merci,” and walk in what he believed to be the direction the officer had given him.
The place hummed with activity. People talking, phones ringing, walking to and from. It all reminded him of his days in the NYPD and that itch for that buzz crept into him. He had loved being an NYPD officer and then detective.
He reached the end of the desks and at a set of offices divided by a narrow hall. He walked down it, looking at the name plates, and passed a turn. When none of the rest had Renard’s name, he went back to the turn and walked down it. On the fifth one down, he found Lieutenant Renard Desplains. The door was slightly ajar, so he knocked.
“Entrez.”
Dean pushed on the door until it was fully open. The space was small and had no exterior windows and thus bathed in the bluish fluorescent light. A small desk that matched the ones in the open area, two chairs with a leather seat in front of that, and a short bookshelf with binders. A small green cactus sat on top of the shelf alongside a photograph of Renard and a young woman. On the wall, a certificate of some sort in French, an official portrait of Renard in dress uniform, and a photograph of Renard, the same young woman, and an woman nearer Renard’s age, which seemed to be in the mid-fifties.
Renard stood up, setting his black-framed reading glasses on the papers in front of him on the desk. He had a full head of grey hair with wisps of the former dark brown color, a matching thick mustache that ended at the corners of the mouth, and a deeply lined face, the results of years of tireless work and gravity and time. He wore a pair of light red and yellow plaid slacks, a blue jacket, a light blue shirt with a long, thin collar, and a thick red tie loosened at the neck. “Bonjour, Detective.”
Dean shook his hand. “Bonjour.”
Renard gestured to Dean to sit and closed the door behind them. He then walked back to the desk, leaned down, and picked up a box, which he put on the desk close to Dean. “The case file and evidence. We processed everything, so ah, you can look at it.”
Dean opened the box and found a manila folder, thick with papers.
“May I offer you café?”
“Yes, please.”
Renard stepped out and closed the door behind him. Dean pulled out the folder and flipped it open. He looked at the blocks of French. No English translations. The evidence bag contained a variety of IDs, including passports, New York State driver’s licenses, and Quebec driver’s licenses. As Renard indicated, several of the passports were made out for William Nimitz. Several included his photograph and real name. Others had his photograph but listed him as William Conroy or William Sutton. The details of Billy’s birth were accurate as well. All indicated different places of birth that conformed with the country of the passport. All also had the exact same issue date: 1 December 1978. Just a few weeks before his death. Passports and IDs for Julie Clarendon and Stephen Valosz were also in the box. He did not recognize the people in those photos.
Renard opened the door, set a cup of coffee in a paper cup in front of Dean, closed the door, and sat behind his desk, holding a steaming cup himself.
“This Julie and Stephen,” said Dean.
“Oui?”
“Are they real people like my victim?”
Renard shrugged. “The Mounties are not telling us anything. We had to fight to keep that evidence, though they could swipe it up.”
“Why are the Mounties interested? I thought this was a murder case.”
“Oui, it is. They have not told us why they are interested. But with passports and IDs, we think—I think—they are doing counterintelligence work.”
“Spies?”
“Perhaps. Or the Quebecois. But, ah, the FLQ is long gone.” Noticing the puzzled look on Dean’s face, Renard continued, “The Front de libération du Québec. The October Crisis?” Still not seeing recognition pass across Dean’s face, he clarified more. “The kidnapping of James Cross and the murder of Pierre Laporte. These happened in 1970.”
“Sorry, Renard. I don’t remember. I was still in New York at the time trying to be a good cop.”
“Trying?”
“Um, working at doing a good job.”
“Ah. Oui. New York City?”
“Yes. I was an officer and detective there.”
“And now in Zion?”
“Yes.” Dean saw that Renard wanted more of an explanation, but he ignored it. “My apologies, I don’t read French.”
Renard said, “Bien sûr.” He gestured for the report.
Dean handed it to him.
Renard flipped it open and pulled out the photographs, which he handed to Dean.
The first showed a man, dressed in light blue pajamas sitting in a chair, his head slumped forward, but his body held in place by duct tape wrapped around his chest, wrists, and ankles. Blood down the front of his pajamas and pooled at the base of the chair. Another photo of blood splatter on the wall behind the chair.
Renard licked his thumb and flipped a page. “The victim is Marcel Lorrain. Aged fifty. Former FLQ member. Ah, see? Eh? Neighbor reported the gun shot. Found Monsieur Lorrain twenty minutes later. The passports and IDs were found in his closet. Witnesses recall a light tan or white or yellow sedan or sports car leaving the scene around the time the gun shot was reported. Eh?” He shrugged. “The Mounties showed up the day after. Since then, it is their case.”
“You said cash was in the closet as well.”
“Oui.” Renard flipped more pages. Licked his thumb. Flipped more. “Here. Passports. IDs. Cash in American dollars and Canadian dollars. American was fifty thousand. Canadian was thirty thousand. And copies of The Communist Manifesto.”
“What?”
“American dollars was fifty thousand.”
Dean waved his hand. “No not that. The Communist Manifesto?”
“Oui. Found eighteen copies of it. There was other literature also. Pamphlets, ah, brochures. Some in French. Most in English.”
Dean shook his head.
“Is something wrong?” asked Renard, setting the folder down on his desk, open.
“My vic had a load of cash and a copy of that book in his closet.”
“Perhaps, he was a spy, oui?”

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Tuesday, December 20, 2016

The Clearing - Chapter 14

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CHAPTER 14

January 10, 1979
Dean and Guthrie met at the station. After confirming with the Adamson’s receptionist that Sarah had taken a personal day, the two of them drove back through town to the Ashbury Court Apartments. Three buildings with a red brick first story and Tudor Revival second story stood in a horseshoe pattern around a central parking lot. Four main entrances equidistantly spaced led to an open stairwell.
They climbed to the second floor in the building anchoring the horseshoe. Clumps of snow had drifted into the entryways and found corners of shadow to hide. Guthrie knocked on the door. After what seemed like a long enough wait, Dean pounded three times on the door. They heard shuffling inside. The slip of the chain. The click of the deadbolt.
In the half-open doorway, Sarah stood dressed in a long white robe. Her shoulder-length, black hair was parted in the center but strands stuck out at odd angles. Her nose was red and she held a tissue in her hand, crumpled and moist.
“What?” she asked. Then she recognized Guthrie. “Oh. You’re the detective.”
Guthrie nodded once.
Sarah stepped back from the door, pulling it open to let the two of them in. The entryway led directly into the living room. A TV stood on a small stand. A coffee table sat between the TV and a tan couch with large dark brown throw pillows. A box of tissue and a mug with dark stains on the inside sat on the table. A checkered blanket of browns and tans was piled up on the couch. Beyond the living room, a small kitchen and a hallway leading to two closed doors. Bedroom and bathroom, Dean supposed. The room smelled of incense. Two sticks pointing at the ceiling in a small bowl sat on the coffee table. The pungent smell of marijuana lingered in the background.
Sarah flopped down on the couch and pulled the blanket over her. “Here about Billy, right?”
Dean stood across the coffee table from her. “That’s right. Can we make you some coffee?”
She waved her hand in an I-don’t-care fashion.
Dean nodded to Guthrie who walked to the kitchen. Dean looked at the TV stand, its antenna, and the wall behind it. A large picture of the moon and waves made with thread hung askew. A small framed photo stood on the only space on the TV stand—the TV had been shifted to the far right to offer the space. A palm tree and three teens stood near a beach. Dean picked it up.
“That’s me and my two brothers.” Sarah blew her nose. She sounded as if she had been doing that most of the morning.
Guthrie opened and closed the cabinet doors until he found the tin of coffee.
“Where’s it taken at?” asked Dean.
“San Juan.” She looked at him. “Puerto Rico. That’s where my brothers are now.”
“How long have you known Billy?”
“Since high school. Since we moved here.”
“You been dating him the entire time?”
“No. Off and on. Mostly off.”
“Recently.”
“On. We’d been dating for a year now. Our longest stretch ever.”
“What caused the break ups?”
She sighed and tucked her legs beneath her. “Many things. Nothing sometimes.”
Dean pulled out his notepad and jotted a few notes. He tapped the pen on the metal spiral binder. “Did you see Billy the day he disappeared?”
“No. I was working. He went out with Corey and Josh after. We talked. He called me from the bar. I saw him the day before. New Year’s Day.”
Guthrie walked back in. “What’d you talk about?”
“I don’t remember. Usual stuff probably.”
“The last conversation you had with your boyfriend and you don’t remember?” Guthrie sat himself in the chair beside the couch.
She glared at Guthrie. “I didn’t know it was going to be my last conversation with him.”
The clicks and knocks of the water heating in the coffee maker came from the kitchen. Dean studied her. She was distraught. Over the years, he had come to understand that every person reacts differently to death and that reaction was not indicative of anything, but something about Sarah’s response troubled him. She seemed too distraught. He fought against his initial reaction, but he could not bury it.
“What happened to Billy?” asked Sarah.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Dean walked toward the sliding door that led to the back porch. “Can you tell us about him? What was he like?”
“He was a great guy. He may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was a good guy and he had a lot of common sense. He loved baseball. He was pretty good himself.”
“What position did he play?”
“Second base mostly.”
“Hmmm.”
Sarah curled up her legs beneath her butt.
Guthrie asked, “Anyone you know want to hurt Billy?”
“No. No way. He was a nice guy. Nicest I ever met. I can’t think why anyone would hurt him.”
Dean walked back around and stood in front of her, interlocking his fingers and dropping his hands. “We heard Billy and Alex hadn’t been getting along.”
“Well, Alex is—. Alex is an asshole. Plain and simple. Spoiled rich kid thinks everything he does is gold. It’ll catch up with him some day.”
“So they weren’t getting along?”
“Billy didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t ask. But yeah, I get the sense he was upset about something. So it could’ve been with Alex.”
The sounds of the coffee pot sputtering the last of its hot water into the grounds called Guthrie back to the kitchen. He opened cabinet doors looking for a mug.
“Upset how?” Dean pulled his hand to behind his back. He walked over to the sliding patio door. The wood security rod was leaning upright against the frame. A small white bookshelf stood next to the door. A large plant with broad white and green leaves sat in the middle shelf. On the bottom shelf, Salem’s LotA Stranger in the Mirror,Chesapeake, and Eye of the Needle. The covers looked worn. On the top shelf, a photo of Sarah, Billy, Alex, Corey, and Josh. Where were the photos of her and her girlfriends? He stared at the photo.
Sarah said, “I just knew. He seemed edgy somehow. Anxious.”
“How long was this before he disappeared?”
“Not sure. Maybe around Thanksgiving or so. He was worried about his parents or something. But I don’t know.”
“Worried about them how?” asked Dean.
“It’s all in my head probably. I mean, they didn’t like me.”
“Why not?”
Guthrie set a blue and white mug of coffee on the table, using John Travolta’s face on People Weekly magazine as a coaster.
“Thanks.” She looked at the steam rising from the mug and left it on the table.
Dean said, “Don’t thank him yet. It’s probably policeman’s coffee.”
She let a smile flash across her face and then bit her lower lip.
“Why didn’t they like you?”
“Look at me. I’m a Puerto Rican girl in a town without a lot of us.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“They wanted Billy dating some nice Anglo-Saxon girl. Not me.”
“They said something to you?”
“No. No, not directly. It was how they acted around me. Always on pins and needles. And his mom, I would catch her sometimes glaring at me. I stopped visiting him at his home. I don’t need that.”
“How’d Billy feel about this?” Guthrie picked lint off his pants.
“Said I was overreacting.” She shrugged. “But what does he know?”
“How was yours and Billy’s relationship recently?”
“Good. Really good. We were on a good path.”
“Like getting married?”
“Yeah, I think that was in the future.”
“And your parents?”
“My dad was more—.” She bit her lower lip.
Dean kneeled down. “What about your dad?”
She let out a short breath. “Look, my dad is the Puerto Rican. My mom worked for the Navy for a while down at a base down there. At Roosevelt Roads Naval Station. Her parents got sick, so we moved up here. He thinks I should be dating a Puerto Rican. I know. Bullshit, right? And he definitely thinks I should be marrying someone whose parents at least are okay with my heritage. So he wasn’t particularly happy to have me dating and thinking about marrying Billy. But where am I going to find another Puerto Rican around here? And who the hell is he to talk?” She held out her hand to emphasize the point.
Guthrie gave her a sympathetic shrug.
Dean said, “I don’t see any photos around here of you with any girlfriends.”
“So?”
He frowned and looked around. “Just unusual is all.”
She shifted her feet beneath her. “I wasn’t too popular in school. So I don’t have any, really.” She sighed. “I got into fights a lot. That’s how Billy and I met. He jumped in one day to break up a fight between me and Tracy. Bitch.” She shook her head. “And Billy and his friends became like my posse. They’d protect me.”
“What about Corey and Josh?”
“What about them?”
“What was your relationship like with them?”
“Those four are thick as thieves, and I was allowed into their space. They’d protect me. But I was always Billy’s girl.”
“Corey says you were after Billy’s money.” Dean lifted the photo of Sarah and her posse. They were out at the Lance Field, where the Panthers played football, the large, unlit scoreboard serving as the backdrop. The balance was off. Off beyond the testosterone-heavy image. The boys were in front, kneeling or crouching down. Sarah was directly behind Billy. Her right hand was on his shoulder. Her left hand was on Alex’s back, just at the neck.
“Billy and money? He didn’t have any money.”
“Did Billy buy you stuff?”
“Occasionally, yeah.”
“A necklace and a bracelet, recently?”
Sarah shook her head. “Corey proves again he doesn’t know anything. Anything at all. Yes, Billy gave me those. But.” She looked to the side and shook her head. She grabbed a kleenex and touched the corners of her eyes. “I’m not sure how to say this.”
“Usually it’s easiest just to say it,” said Dean.
“My mom got sick last year. Money was tight. So I pawned a bracelet and necklace last summer. They belonged to my grandmother—on my dad’s side. I didn’t tell dad about it. He’d kill me. Just gave him the money and told him it was from my savings. But it tore me up. Those had been in the family for three or four generations. Billy bought them back.”
“With what money?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I was so happy to have them back.”
“You didn’t ask?” asked Guthrie. “Come on. You ain’t stupid. You had to wonder.”
“I did wonder, but I didn’t ask. And he never told me.” She swung her feet to the floor.
“Where did you think the money came from?”
“I don’t know.” She bit her lower lip and looked at Dean, who raised his eyebrows. “Fine. I thought he was stealing from Charlie.”
“Stealing from the register?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Dean nodded.
Guthrie twisted his lips. “Okay. Thanks. So how much did you pawn them for? And where?”
“The bracelet I pawned for two hundred. The necklace for five. A place in Plattsburgh.”
Dean asked for the name and address. He handed her his pen. She grabbed a copy of People magazine and wrote it down, tore off the corner where she wrote, and gave him the paper and pen. “Thanks. Where were you the night he disappeared?”
“You think—” She cut herself off. “I was here. I did my usual and slept.”
“Didn’t see Billy?”
“No.”
“What time did he call?”
“I don’t know. It was late. Probably midnight maybe.”
Dean stood up. “Thanks. We’ll check that against the phone records. How long did you two talk?”
She shrugged. “A few minutes. Not much.”
“Anyone who would want to hurt him?”
“God no. No. He was a nice guy.”
Dean pulled out the slip of envelope with “I love you” written on it, all still encased in plastic. “Yours?”
She leaned over and looked at it. She raised her hand to her mouth and tears welled up. She nodded.
Dean walked toward the front door. Guthrie stood up. “Thank you for your time and sorry for your loss.”
She nodded.
Dean opened the door. “What were Billy’s politics?”
She looked at him confusedly. “He said he voted Ford in the last election. Pretty conservative really. But we didn’t talk about it much.”
“Any reason why he’d have a copy of The Communist Manifesto in his possessions?”
“What?” She looked down at the floor, back up at them, and back down. “No, not really. He wasn’t usually interested in that kind of stuff. Politics and whatnot. But—”
Dean squinted at her. “But what?”

“When he called that night, after I told him I had to go to bed, he said something odd. I just thought he was drunk.” She paused and looked up at Dean, tears welling up along the outside edges of her eyes. “I only caught the first part. The rest of it sounded slurred. I thought he was drunk.” A tear from each eye hurtled down her cheeks. “‘Workers of the world.’ That’s what he said.”

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