CHAPTER 42
May 31-July 31, 1979
The Chief avoided Dean for the next several days, even when his son arrived at their house on Friday evening to pick up Jenny. His mom appeared briefly on the porch and nudged Jenny out, giving her a kiss on the forehead before turning and closing the door behind her. Dean walked up to the porch, grabbed his daughter’s hand and led her to his car. Whether Jessica shunned her son at her husband’s request or of her own volition, Dean did not know, though he chose to believe the former.
He drove Jenny down to the city on Saturday, dropping her off at Cindy’s Manhattan townhouse. As he drove away, he could not help wondering if these moments he had had with his daughter in 1979 would be the last of their kind. He knew, of course, that he could never have the same experiences, but his daughter was getting older, had city friends, and he, her dad, was far away in a small town near Canada. How could that compete with New York City? How could he compete against a townhouse in Manhattan and friends?
Unable to leave so quickly, he drove by his old precinct and stopped by the cops’ bar just down the street. A string of unknown faces were interrupted by familiar ones. Lance O’Shea, Nathan Deroni, Mike Bullard, all fellow detectives. All had forgiven him long ago for his failures and mistakes. They knew enough of his story—of the many stories like his—to know Dean had been and probably was a man in pain, so they did not talk about the past. They talked as if no time had passed. In some sense, none had. People were still killing people, and they still sought the perps.
They had heard about Tony’s arrest. Mike had heard it from a fellow Albany detective, who had a friend in the Bureau, who had mentioned the nabbing of an FBI lawyer who confronted an American-born Soviet spy in the woods. The chase when Billy ran. A chase Billy would have won had he not stepped into a hole or tripped and twisted his knee.
The story, of course, had gathered color along the way, but its essentials were the same, and Dean did not bother to correct. He preferred this alternate version of his brother than the one he knew. Lost in the story was the plight of a forgotten son seeking recognition and the twisted depths he would go.
Why Tony had pulled the trigger instead of taking Billy in was left to speculation. Dean thought he had done it when Tony realized that instead of helping an investigation along, he may have hampered it, may have undercut it mortally. Dean did not particularly like that theory, but he preferred it over satisfying some familial bloodlust, to make them all killers in war.
Too drunk to drive home, he spent the night on Lance’s couch, departing the next morning. On Monday, he returned to work, to pick up the next case. His dad had shown up as well but stayed behind the closed door of his office. Neither Dean nor Tony had stated that the Chief had been an accessory after the fact. That would remain undocumented. Unreported.
At noon, Dean’s phone rang. “Hello?”
“Detective Wallace?”
“Yes.”
“This is Special Agent Pryce. We have what we need to arrest Guthrie. Do you want to do it? I’ll even let you in on the interrogation, which we can do there.”
“Hell yeah.”
An hour and fifteen minutes later, Pryce walked into the Zion police station. He looked at Guthrie, who sat at his desk holding a half-finished pastrami sandwich, and the detective knew the gig was up, even though he knew he would play it out to the bitter end.
Pryce and Dean sat across from Guthrie in the interview room. The FBI agent clicked the record button on a cassette recorder. “Detective Jeremy Guthrie, I am going to record this interview. Okay?”
Guthrie nodded.
“I need you to reply in the affirmative or negative.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s okay.”
“Good.” Pryce then exposed the trap he had sprung with the assistance of Dean. When Guthrie learned the weapons were being sent to ballistics, he panicked that he had forgotten to remove the M16 from the items handed over to the FBI. The M16 that tied Sam Darwish to Zorn and to the ambush at the meth lab. The FBI had set up hidden microphones in the Grim Devils clubhouse. He played the crackling tape for Guthrie.
“Yeah, what’s up?” said a voice that sounded like Zorn.
“I just heard that all of Sam’s weapons are being tested now by the FBI,” said the second voice. One that Dean recognized as Guthrie’s.
“So. I’ve got the M16. You got that out. That’s the only thing they had on Sam.”
“You have it. Shit. I thought I hadn’t got it in time.”
“You were pretty tanked when you gave it to me. Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much.”
Pryce clicked the stop button on the surveillance. “So we’ve got you talking to Zorn about missing evidence. The M16.”
“You can’t tell that’s me.”
Pryce pulled out a set of four photos and a journal with a time log. He pushed them toward Guthrie. “Here, we’ve got Paul Zorn going into the clubhouse. Here’s the one of you going in. Here’s you coming out. Here’s Zorn leaving. Each is tied to a time, which we’ve listed here. Which, in case you don’t get the drift, is timed to the recording. And we’ve got excellent chain of custody on all this. You’re done, Guthrie. We’ve got you.”
What had been beads of sweat along Guthrie’s forehead turned to rivers. “Look. I don’t think—”
Pryce tapped the photos of Guthrie. “We’ve got you. All you can do now is help yourself.”
Guthrie fell apart faster than most suspects he interviewed. He had been helping Zorn for years. For cash, Guthrie tipped him off on impending raids, helped disappear evidence, and arrested rivals. He was so far in the hole with the Grim Devils, he had no way to claw his way back out. When Zorn learned of Sam’s arrest, he had told Guthrie to grab the M16. It was too valuable to just toss, so the disgraced detective gave it to the club president. But first, distraught and guilty over Reggie’s death, Guthrie had drunk himself into a stupor, forgetting—at least clearly enough—that he had swiped the M16.
“What about Reggie?” asked Dean, who leaned over the table.
Guthrie shook his head. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. I didn’t. I thought they’d clear out before we even got there. I was as surprised as you when the buses were still there untorched. I just warned them and thought they’d clear out, but I found out Zorn didn’t like your meddling. He was hoping to take you out. But I swear I didn’t know about that until after.”
Pryce, with other FBI and DEA agents, arrested a number of the Grim Devils later that day, taking them all and Guthrie down to Plattsburgh. Dean never saw Guthrie again, something he was not too upset about.
The chief seemed unfazed by the arrests and made no mention of them to Dean. He tried to speak to his father, but Laura shook her head. He could see the sadness, the pity in her eyes as she did so.
Dean felt sadness too and then anger. He knew he had done the right thing. He knew it.
* * *
Later that summer, Dean borrowed a tent and backpack from Zach and entered the woods beyond the Pratt farm, walking a series of trails that led through a state and federal forest. He camped by streams, washing his face in the cool, shallow waters. He heated civilian versions of MCI rations. They tasted just as horrible as he remembered, the nastiness cut only by the liberal usage of Tabasco.
At night, he contemplated the sky and listened to the forests. After four nights, he was ready for why he had hiked out away from humanity. In a clearing near a stream at sunset, a fire was burning, the blue-speckled enamel coffee cup of whiskey sat by him. He pulled from his pack the journal he had kept in Vietnam. A small overstuffed thing with torn pages, different inks and pencils, drawings, random sayings, and photos. A journal beat up around the edges and the paper often stiff and fragile from the wet, the dampness that seemed to be the single constant of the bush.
He pulled out photos. And he tossed them into the fire. Slowly, and then more quickly. And then he ripped out pages and held them as the flames licked the corner and grew. He dropped them into the fire.
He said to no one or thing, “I know this. We all die. And it is always too soon. I wish you could have had the lives everyone intended for you. As for me. As for me, I will live on. I will try to live the life intended for me, as screwed up as that is.”
He tossed the journal onto the fire. And he said their names. “Lee. Rider. Paxton. Stitch. The NVA kid just outside the bunker. Nolan Wallace. Dean Wallace.” He stared at the journal as it burned. “Hell. Even Tony.”
The journal burned bright, crisping to a fine ash that a gentle wind crumpled into the heart of the blaze, and it captured some ash and lifted it into the air, where it hung before it floated away.
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