Tuesday, February 28, 2017

The Clearing - Chapter 24

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CHAPTER 24

As the door closed behind Henry Smith, the case ran out of paths to follow. Dean could continue to poke at Josh’s and Corey’s statements, but the threat of a lie detector, the whole staging of the three at the station at the same time had not produced—had never had time—the necessary cracks to wedge open the wider story. The detectives would not be able to shock them again, and now they had practice.
Dean wrote up his reports on the interviews, answering Barry Archer’s return call during that task and telling him not to bother. Guthrie and Dean looked through the small amount of information Laura was able to obtain. McCord had a few speeding tickets over the years but no other arrests. The State Police had never investigated McCord or McCord’s Body Shop. After a quick lunch from Burger Palace, Guthrie and Dean extended their working Sunday and drove over to McCord’s estate. They pulled into the the long driveway and walked to the covered porch. As Dean raised his hand to knock, the door opened. McCord held it with one hand and smiled at the two detectives. He wore gray slacks, black dress shoes, and a white button up shirt, loosened at the collar and exposing the white undershirt.
McCord coughed into his hand and then said, “Good afternoon. What are you doing here?”
Dean extended his hand and held it for a second before pulling it back. McCord had not even thought about shaking it. Dean said, “Sorry to bother you, but we wanted to ask a few more questions about William.”
“Okay.”
“May we come in?” asked Guthrie.
McCord’s eyes brightened and his smile changed to a smirk. “I’m afraid not. We’ll have to do it here.” He gestured back into the house. “The wife’s cooking Sunday dinner, and some family are over.”
Dean glanced back at the driveway. His Nova was the only car in it. “It’s damned cold out here. We can be quiet.”
“Sorry fellas.” McCord stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind him. “I’ll stand out here with you though.”
“Sure. Sure. We’ll try to make this quick.” Dean had to go along with it. It turned up his suspicions of McCord, but he got the sense that did not matter to the body shop owner. “I’ll just come out and say it, then. Were you aware of any illegal drug activities that William was engaged in?”
“Billy and drugs?” McCord tilted his head back and looked down at Dean. “Seriously. Billy was about as clean as they come. Nice kid. Tried to do the right thing. If that kid was involved in illegal drug stuff, then my mom’s the godfather of Zion.”
“What about Alex, Alex Smith?”
“What about him?”
“Do you know him?”
“Course I do. Small town. He’s a brat.”
“Did he ever stop by the shop?”
“Yeah. He and Billy were friends. Why I don’t know. I guess when you’re making friends at that age, you don’t think of what assholes they’ll become later.”
Guthrie started bouncing up and down on his toes. “Seems like you know Alex a lot better than just in passing?”
McCord looked over at Guthrie. He sniffed. His nose was turning red. “You remember jerks like that.”
“Was he in the drug trade?” asked Dean.
“Why all these questions about drugs?”
The authenticity of McCord’s question fell flat. Dean was convinced right then and there that Zorn was not the only trafficker in town. He may not have had anything to do with Billy’s murder, but he had bought this mansion with drug money. Dean ignored McCord’s question. “When we saw you a few days ago, we forgot to ask about where you were at the night William disappeared. So where were you?”
McCord raised his hand and pointed to the door behind him. “I come home every night. The wife and I were probably watching TV. We usually do.”
“Did Billy have any trouble with any of the other employees?”
“No. We all liked him.”
Dean knew the momentum in the interview had shifted to McCord, and he was not going to get it back. “Did you have a fight with Alex on Friday?”
“I’m done. I’m cold, and I need to get inside.” McCord turned his back on them and took two steps to the door. He looked back and said, “Be safe out there.”
Dean knew he had scored a hit of some kind, but what it meant was still a mystery. The door closed, the weather stripping sliding across the stone entryway. The two detectives hustled back to the car and drove away.
As he warmed up, Dean was even more frustrated. He had learned new information, but how it meshed—if at all—to the murder of Billy was unclear. They had the car. The gun, which the lab confirmed launched the bullet lodged in the tree behind Billy’s bloody skull. The money. The Communist Manifesto. Pawned jewelry. Two drug traffickers. It all added up to a bunch of questions.
* * *
And the days passed. Winter’s clutch loosened, and Jenny went back to her mom’s and her “real” life in the city. The town quietly forgot about Billy, except his parents, who called every Wednesday at nine a.m. to see if any new developments had happened since the last call. Dean told them every time, “No.” He said it wearingly, worried that he would always have to say, “No,” to answers in this case. He drank extra on Wednesday mornings.
As the town thawed, so too did the crime. Guthrie investigated several more break-ins as they entered March. Dean pitched in, but his heart was not in it. He kept going back to Billy, his body left just after the new year began out in that clearing at the Pratt farm.
He drove by the farm at least once a week, slowing down and contemplating the lonely death, knowing all deaths were in the end lonely, but not being any sadder by that fact. He walked and searched the spot and the clearing where Billy died, hoping for a new clue, a new thread that might lead him to the killer.
He had driven by the Pratt farm in high school, when he was courting Cindy. One night, she had even snuck out of the house and met him, and they drove to a teenage hideout in the woods. They may have even been in Canada, which they joked about for years until their marriage fell apart. They made love—the first time for both of them. They were young, amateurs, awkward, but it was the best night of his life. Everything after was compared to that. He learned only years later that the site was not secret from the police, and Cindy had confessed to her parents within days. Wayne turned cold to him, but never told him he knew or why.
Then the war wrecked it. His life, his marriage, his country. Like the huts of nameless people in Vietnam, his life caught fire, and he was left with only ash.
He buried his grief in drink and Sadie. She smiled at him and told him he was perfect, and he ignored that he paid her, tried to believe what she said was real. The drink helped with that.
Tony visited one night. They sat on the front porch in the first evening warm enough to be comfortable, or force themselves to be comfortable wearing jackets and hats.
“I’m surprised to see you,” said Dean. “I mean, it’s what, weeks since you’ve been here.”
Tony shrugged. He seemed much younger to Dean than he actually was. He still had his athletic build. His face unmarked by gravity, where Dean’s had begun to show, if only just. Tony smiled and drank from the Pabst Blue Ribbon can. “I avoid Zion if I can.” The age difference was not about the churn of time, the incessant pull of gravity, or blind luck. Instead, it was in their experiences that told on them somehow, that served as a map of their paths through life.
Dean nodded. “I wish I could.” He rocked in the aluminum, blue and white plastic lawn chair. “You avoid Dad, though, that’s what you’re doing.”
“Isn’t he Zion? But you know we have détente there.” A thaw had been underway for some weeks.
They talked about work. Tony was cryptic, as most FBI guys are about their cases. He was a lot like the other G-men Dean had worked with in the past, particularly New York, but he lacked the superiority complex. “Do you know what I do?”
Dean cracked open another beer he pulled from the cooler beside him and handed it to Tony and then opened another for himself. “You’re a lawyer for the FBI.”
“Well, yeah, dip shit. But do you know what I do for them?”
“I assumed you helped ready the cases they brought to trial.”
“Yeah, that’s the gist of it. But I guess I’m not making myself clear. I work with the counter-intelligence team. I help prepare cases against Americans or foreign agents working on American soil. Make sure they get to the prosecutors ready to go.”
“Huh. Does it keep you busy?”
“More than you’d like. But I wish I were in the field.”
Dean sat with this, wondering about how many foreign agents—spies—were in the U.S. “Like spy stuff?”
Tony nodded. “We’ve got more than enough people in this country willing to betray it to the Soviets.”
“No surprise there.”
“Maybe.” Tony got up and walked inside.
Dean sat there until he returned, contemplating his brother. The middle child scorned by his parents, though the scorn was really only their father’s. Now working for the government, living not far from their hometown, but far enough. After Tony came back out and sat down, Dean asked, “Seriously, though, why today? Why are you on my porch right now?”
Tony took a drink. “Last week, a mentor of mine at the Bureau had a heart attack in the office.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. It was awful. Died right there on the spot. Died surrounded by work and broken relationships. I thought to myself that’s not how I want to go. I don’t want broken things in my life.” Tony tugged at his pants. “I don’t want that.”
Dean waited for his brother to continue, but the pause was long and he began to think about it in terms of a police interview. He decided to ride it out, to let Tony tell him whatever it was that was still lingering there at his own pace.
Tony downed the rest of the can. “Another?”
“Only if you spend the night here.”
Tony nodded and Dean opened the cooler and grabbed another, which he handed to him. His brother cracked it open. “Thanks.”
Dean acknowledged the thought by raising his can.
“So I’ve got broken relationships. Some bad. Some worse than that. I started trying to fix them with Mom and Dad, but I want to get there faster. So you’re next.”
“Me? Why me?”
His brother laughed.
“Ours is the least broken.” Dean leaned back in the chair.
Tony tipped his can in salute. “Glad you feel that way. I always worried you thought like Dad.”
“Shit. You had a better understanding than I did of what was going on over there. Anyone with a lick of sense would’ve stayed out of that jungle.”
They continued to talk, moving inside as the cool became cold. Dean shared with Tony some of his experiences, which he only loosened up about with the addition of whiskey. He told him of his unit’s long hump across the Long Ho Valley and up the Quang Ho ridge. Told him about Lee and Rider and Stitch and Paxton. How they had marched and macheted their way from map point to map point, directed by commanders who seemed to have no sense of the reality of the terrain, of how hard and long it took to march a mile.
He told him of the battle of Quang Ho, on a hill designated 425. It was a battle like so many battles, but it was his battle. And all along, as he was telling Tony, he could not think of why, after all these years, his brother would be the first family member to hear this story. He had shared it a number of times with other Vietnam vets, ones who had been in the thick of things, knew what combat in those jungles and on those hills meant. Not Cindy. Not his dad. No, his brother Tony, the one who had deferred service.
Dean had never been more alive than during that battle. An army company had been ambushed as they were in the valley between hills 425 and 427. The company had established a perimeter to hold off the attacks. More importantly, low cloud cover prevented any air support. Only the marines were close enough to come to their aid until the Hueys and Phantoms could fly in.
And so Dean and his pals, Kilo Company, marched and then charged hill 425, which turned out to have an entrenched ring of NVA bunkers. Machine gun by machine gun they grenaded and shot and stabbed their way to the top. Losing Stitch and Paxton and others. Dean’s platoon, the first, and was told to hold the mountain top while second and third platoons worked their way to the army guys still down in the valley. Before they got there, the cloud cover lifted—at least long enough for the helicopters to evacuate the army and drop off artillery on hill 425 while the napalm burned the enemy on 427. Dean’s platoon had blown the top off the mountain to flatten it for that artillery.
Kilo Company held the hill for two days against counterattacks, were bombed mercilessly with mortar fire, watched jets—two times the cloud cover lifted to allow them—napalm again the NVA lines, and heard the screaming of burning men alive above the roar of jets and fire. Dean held the hands of his comrades dying before the helicopters could swoop in and save them.
Drunk, the two brothers eventually wearied themselves into silence. When Dean woke the next morning, heart throbbing and mouth dry, Tony was gone. A small note on the kitchen counter read, “Thanks.”

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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

The Clearing - Chapter 23

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CHAPTER 23

January 14, 1979
The station had only one usable interview room. The wooden table legs were bolted to the floor and the top of it was a rich tableau of nicks, cuts, and scars from years of subjects, often left alone, or cops themselves. Three wooden chairs, one with a short leg courtesy of Sergeant Benjamin Sidesdale, now retired. In it sat Josh, his forehead beaded with sweat and him thumping his foot lightly, occasionally forgetting the lopsided chair and catching himself.
Dean was pleased with the orchestrated arrival of Corey, Alex, and Josh. Etheridge had picked up Alex, while Zach picked up Corey. Both were brought to the station and seated across the room from each other. Guthrie and Dean walked in a few minutes later with Josh, who they marched into the main area before turning into the short hall with the file room and the interview room beside it.
Dean knew, with what they had, it was their best shot for rattling anything loose.
“What do you want?” asked Josh. He put his hands on the table. “Why did you have to drag me out of work?”
Guthrie slapped the table, not hard, but enough. “We’re trying to solve your friend’s murder.”
“You’ve already talked to me. I told you everything I know.”
“Did you?” asked Dean, his arms across his chest. “Did you?”
Josh blinked at him.
“See, we’ve got this issue. We talked to you, but you were, well, a bit cagey. I mean, why are you making sure you remember your story the same as Corey?”
“What’s that about?” Guthrie lit a cigarette, shaking out the match and tossing it into a styrofoam cup with water.
“I’ve been thinking about that. I think you guys misunderstood me.”
Guthrie looked at Dean and shrugged. They both looked at Josh, who blinked his eyes rapidly.
“You misunderstood me,” he said. “I mean, how often does something like that happen in this town. That’s big city stuff. And he was our friend, so we compared notes. ‘When did you last see him? Same as you.’ That kind of stuff.” He rubbed his temple. He looked pale, like he would pass out at any moment.
“You seem awfully nervous,” said Guthrie, who stood up. He walked toward the back wall, forcing Josh to look back and forth between him and Dean.
“My partner has a point. You’re acting like you did something wrong. You look terrible.”
Josh shook his head. “I didn’t I’m telling you.”
“Hmmm.” Dean tapped his chin. “Would you be willing to take a lie detector?”
Josh looked at Dean.
Dean scratched the back of his neck. “I mean, let’s clear this up real quick. If you’ve got nothing to hide that is. If you’re telling the truth.”
Josh looked back at Guthrie. Looked back at Dean. The kid somehow went even more pale. “Yeah. Yeah. Yes.”
Dean held his surprise back and instead nodded. “That should clear things up. It’ll have to come from a town over. Let me make the call.” He left Josh and Guthrie in the interview room and walked out to his desk. Usually when police bring up a lie detector, the suspect goes on the defensive, and those defenses can take time to break down, if lawyers have not been brought in. He had not expected Josh to embrace the idea so quickly, though it fed into the plan he had. Did that mean Josh was innocent, that Dean had gone down the wrong path? He shook his head. No, Josh was weak, he told himself.
Alex and Corey were still sitting across the room from each other. Etheridge was sitting in his chair, typing a report and giving both of the men accusatory glances every once in a while. Dean picked up the phone and dialed the number of Barry Archer, the area’s primary lie detector provider. He worked many of the towns in northeast New York.
“Barry Archer Security Services,” said the woman who answered the phone.
“This is Detective Dean Wallace with the Zion police. Is Barry in?”
“He’s not. May I take a message?”
“Yes,” said Dean, who then elevated the volume of his voice, hoping that Corey would hear it at the far end of the room, “Tell him I’d like him to give me a call. He has my number. I’m in need of his lie detector. Today if possible.” He had to hold back from looking at Alex’s and Corey’s reactions.
“I’ll let him know. What’s the number?”
“He has it. Thanks.” Dean hung up and walked back to the interview room, smiling at Corey and Alex as he went. He found Guthrie still standing against the wall behind Josh, who was leaning over with his hands around his stomach. Dean looked at Guthrie, who shrugged. He told Josh he had called the lie detector services and it would be a while, so he needed to wait out in the station while they talked to his friends. Josh stood up and walked through the door Dean held open. Guthrie followed them out and called Corey to the interview room. Josh and Corey passed but did not acknowledge each other. Dean patted Josh on the shoulder after he was seated. “Officer Stone here will get you a coffee or water or soda if you want it.”
Dean walked back into the interview room, where Guthrie had set Corey up much in the same way they had Josh.
Corey glared at them and ground his front teeth together. “What’s this all about?”
“What do you think, numbskull?” asked Guthrie.
“Billy?”
Guthrie punched Dean in the shoulder and pointed his finger at Corey. “What a bright young man we have here. He figured out we wanted to talk to him about his murdered friend.”
“He’s the smart one,” said Dean.
“What else can I tell you? What did Josh say?”
“Did Josh have something to tell?” asked Dean. Interrogations were like the shell game, he thought. When in New York City, he would play with the young boys on the streets, knowing it was a hustle but feeling bad for them and letting them take a dollar here or there. Detectives want the people on the other side of the table to feel they are honest brokers but not see the trick. In this case, Dean knew he was playing the game with a hand tied behind his back.
“I don’t know, man. This is bullshit.”
“You’re free to go,” said Dean.
Corey froze in surprise. “What?”
“You’re not under arrest, so you can go anytime.”
“But you picked me up.”
“Yeah, that was a courtesy. We can get you back to the store.” Dean rubbed the top of the table with his thumb. “But I got to tell you, if you do leave, you’ll seem uncooperative. I mean, Billy was your friend, right?”
Corey nodded. “He was my friend, but last I saw him was about eleven-thirty the night he disappeared.”
“Hmmm. Seems that’s the last anybody saw him. Where was he going?”
“He didn’t say. I presumed home. He usually went home. We all did.”
Dean looked up at the ceiling, rubbed his neck. “So you’re out drinking. You guys decide to call it a night. And that’s it.”
“Yep.”
“What’s this about having to compare your stories and get them to match up?” asked Guthrie.
Corey twisted his lips and looked at the detective. “Josh tell you that?” Guthrie shrugged. When Corey looked back at Dean, he received no acknowledgement. Corey sighed and looked down at the table. “It sounds worse than it is. We were just comparing notes. Seeing if Billy said something or did something that was odd. Nothing came up.”
Dean nodded once, clasped his hands together, and set his elbows on the table. Both Josh and Corey had given the same explanation, and it made sense. “So tell us about Alex and Sarah and the fighting between them and Billy.”
“Fighting’s too strong a word. Sarah was after his money. I let it be known I didn’t like that. Alex? Well, I’ll let him tell you what his issue was.”
“Did Billy own a gun?” asked Guthrie.
Corey shook his head. “I loaned him one.”
Dean leaned backward. “Thirty-eight?”
“Yep. I’ve had it for years. My grandpa gave it to me to kill raccoons.”
“Why’d you loan it to him?”
“We took the thing out in the woods occasionally and shot bottles and shit. He asked to borrow it. So I gave it to him.”
“When was this?”
“After Christmas. Why?”
“We found it in his coat pocket when we found him in the woods.”
Guthrie and Dean talked to Corey for another hour but obtained nothing more than he had already told them. He scratched his chin, repeated himself, and said he hoped they would catch Billy’s killer. Still, Dean thought he was hiding something. Maybe not related to Billy’s murder, but something, and he could not put his finger on it, but his instincts had helped him get out of Vietnam alive and survive the New York streets on patrol, and he trusted them here. He considered bringing up the cash found in Billy’s closet, but stopped himself. He decided to wait to spring that on Alex. Guthrie walked Corey out and escorted Alex in.
After he was seated across from Dean in the interview room, Alex maintained a casual, relaxed air, often twisting his thumbnail into the table. His face looked worse than the previous day, the bruises beginning to turn ugly colors.
“So tell us your issue with Billy and Sarah. Were you sweet on his girl?” asked Guthrie.
“Please. She’s not that hot.” He tapped a finger in the air at Guthrie. “But she’s got some fine features.”
Dean leaned forward. “We talked to Sarah first, you know?”
Alex’s eyes darted away from Dean’s. He brought them back but could not hold them there.
Dean continued, “We know. And if we don’t know something we will. Hiding information, not cooperating—”
Alex brought his fist down on the table. “Goddamnit!” He breathed in and out once. “Fine. Fine. We slept together. Happened a few times.”
Dean was pleased his instincts were still on. “When?”
“Ah man. You got to believe me. The first time, they weren’t together. They had broken up. It was a couple of years ago. They were always breaking up.”
“And getting back together,” said Guthrie.
“Yeah, I’m an asshole. I get it. I already knew it.”
If Guthrie took the moral high ground, Dean decided to sympathize with Alex. “But she is that hot. I’ve seen her. She’s a fine piece of tail. And that Puerto Rican vibe. I can see why you fell to her seductions.”
“She did start it.” Alex paused and gazed into nowhere, living in his memory palace, seeing her body. Dean did the same with Sadie. Imagined her in various states of undress.
“When was the most recent?” asked Dean.
“October last year. A few nights.”
“Did Billy find out?”
Alex shrugged.
“What does that mean?”
“Means, ‘I don’t know.’ Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.”
“That the reason you weren’t hanging out with your friends the night William disappeared, right?” Dean crossed his arms. He watched Alex frown and knew he had gone back to the reason they were in the interview room too quickly.
“And because I wasn’t there, you think I had something to do with his death? Over a girl?”
“I’ve seen murders for a lot less. Decided you wanted to be the lone man in Sarah’s life? Or William found out. Confronted you. You had to defend yourself?”
“No man. No.”
“Was there something else you were arguing about? Money perhaps?”
“Money. Hell, man, Billy didn’t have any money.”
Dean smiled. “Oh, but he did. Found nearly twenty thousand in his closet. Cash.”
Alex’s eyes darted a look at Dean and then Guthrie. He pushed and rubbed his thumb on the table. “News to me. I should’ve had him pick up the tab more often.”
The knocking on the door broke the conversation. Guthrie got up, opened the door, leaned out, and then leaned back in. To Dean, he said, “We’re needed.”
Dean nodded. He looked at Alex. “Something’s still not right about your story. I’ll find it out.” He got up and walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. He found himself face-to-face with tall and heavy-set District Attorney Henry D. Smith, Alex’s father.
A full head of dark brown hair, vibrant green-brown eyes, and a mustache that cascaded down the side of his lips, Henry wore a gray suit, white shirt, and red tie with tiny gray anchors. He gestured to the door. “Let my son out. He’s not to talk to you without a lawyer. Me. Did you read him his rights?”
Dean looked at his father, who stood beside Henry. Eric shrugged. Guthrie had taken up a spot outside the triangle. Dean scratched his head. “Your son’s not under arrest. He’s cooperating in the William Nimitz murder investigation.”
“So that’s a no.”
Dean nodded. “Are you here as the DA or as his father?”
Eric said, “He’s here as a concerned father.”
“Okay, then, but Alex is an adult, and he can talk to us if he wants.”
Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Then I’m here as the DA. Let him go. He’s not your guy.”
“Have you reviewed the case file?”
Henry ignored the question and walked past Dean and opened the interview room door. “Come on. You’re done here.”
Alex walked out and down the hallway, followed by his father. Dean grabbed Alex’s arm as he passed. “What happened to your face?”
He pulled his arm from Dean’s grip.
“So why’d you show up at the Shambles the night of Billy’s death at near midnight?”
Alex’s eyes snapped up and met Dean’s. Henry grabbed his son’s arm and jerked him away.
Dean felt the cold January air rush through as father and son exited the station. Josh and Corey were absent. Etheridge shrugged and pointed in the direction Henry and Alex had just followed.
To Dean, it felt as if his case—as meager and absent as it was—walked out behind them.

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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

The Clearing - Chapter 22

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CHAPTER 22

The Chief called Guthrie and Dean over the radio and asked to get an update on the investigation. They drove the short distance back to the station and dropped off their coats at their desks before entering Eric’s office. He sat in his chair tamping the tobacco in his pipe. He only brought the pipe with him on weekends. “So I just talked to the mayor boys. He wants a status on this Nimitz investigation.”
Dean nodded to Guthrie, who sat up straighter in his chair. “We’ve re-interviewed the witnesses from when this was a missing persons case. His friends. His family. His employer. We’ve interviewed additional people, including his girlfriend’s parents and Paul Zorn.”
Eric grunted at the name and chewed more vigorously on the pipe stem.
Guthrie continued, “Even interviewed the Pratts. Regarding physical evidence: We have the pistols found at the scene. The thirty-eight, fully loaded, deep in the victim’s coat pocket and unfired. The Remington, a forty-five, and likely the weapon that killed Billy—I mean our victim. That gun and bullet are at the crime lab downstate waiting to be examined. We just found the victim’s car, which is in the impound lot. Interior was clean as a whistle except for some cassettes. It’s been exposed to the elements. We’ll lift some fingerprints if we find them, but I wouldn’t hold out hope. Even if we found them, could’ve been anyone that touched the car. My gut tells me Billy parked it there and that’s the end of the story for the car. We don’t yet know what the stash of cash in the closet or the copy of the commie book mean to the investigation, if anything. Though that much cash seems connected.”
“I fought to stop those commies.”
Dean did not bother to correct his father, who had fought with those commies against the fascists. Nor did he remind himself of his own war’s convenient lies.
Guthrie nodded. “Yes.” He paused to see if the Chief had anything to add and looked at Dean when it seemed he did not.
Dean leaned forward in the chair. “There’s almost no physical evidence right now that leads us anywhere. The serial number on the gun led us to the license. It was purchased in 1952 by Dennis Kowlowski. He died in sixty-three—same day as Kennedy. The trail stops there. We think there were steps in the snow leading north. There were steps from the car back in the general direction where the body was found.”
“One set?”
“Yeah. Lost them in the woods. Got a call from the Quebec police—”
Eric looked at Dean. “That Renard fellow?”
Dean nodded. “They landed on a murder there of a former terrorist. Had a bunch of cash, copies of The Communist Manifesto, and passports. Some with William’s photo under different names. Other passports too with different people. That’s pretty much it in the way of evidence.”
“That’s it,” said Guthrie, wiping his hands on his pants.
“That’s it? That’s squat. That’s less than squat.” Eric held the pipe in his right hand and rubbed his neck with his left. “What the hell boys?”
Dean lowered his head before looking directly at his father. “It is what it is. Almost no physical evidence to speak of. A body left exposed for days. The day he disappeared seems to be the day he was killed. No one knows where he went after eleven-thirty that night. No one knows why he was out in those woods. Or why he had that kind of cash. We’ve got a ton of dead ends. He did buy back some of the pawned jewelry his girlfriend took from her parents. Until today, they assumed the vic stole it. The only other thing we know is that Alex showed up sometime before midnight but after Billy and his friends left the Shambles.”
“The girlfriend’s father, Carlos, right?”
Guthrie gave Eric a thumbs up.
Dean said, “Motive…but a long time between knowing of the supposed theft and the killing. His wife alibis him anyways.”
“Shit, that’s about as good as no alibi. A sliver above when a parent provides an alibi.”
“Yeah, but there you have it. Carlos seems good but doesn’t account for the cash. Doesn’t account for the book.”
“It’s drug money. We know it is.” Guthrie held his hands in front of him and gestured something akin to “this is obvious.”
“Probably,” conceded Dean.
“So that’s Zorn.” The Chief stood up and started pacing behind his desk, his hands clasped tightly behind his back.
“Maybe,” said Dean. “I know you’ve been after Zorn for a while. I know and you know that he’s running H down from Canada. But we don’t have evidence. As far as we know, he didn’t even know Billy. And he’s not the only peddler of drugs in town. Smaller time guys, but others. Alex fingered Charlie McCord. Zorn pointed to Alex.”
Eric grunted. “Charlie wouldn’t know the sharp end of a butter knife if you asked him. So where does that leave us?”
“Have you seen his house?”
Eric shook his head.
Guthrie whistled. “It’s a beaut. A palace out in Highland Estates.”
“If that’s the kind of money he’s making,” said Dean, “we may have gone into the wrong business.”
“Charlie’s a respected businessman in this town.” Eric leaned back and crossed his legs. “That’s a pretty big accusation.”
“No more than calling Zorn a drug dealer. But it doesn’t matter. Given what we know, Alex is the center. We know he showed up late at the Shambles. Josh and Corey tell us he’s not getting along with William. I think there was something between Alex and Sarah. I think that’s the rift. You’ve got Paul fingering Alex. Alex fingered McCord. The common name in all of this is Alex. We’ve got to take a closer look at Alex.”
“The DA’s boy?”
Guthrie and Dean nodded.
“Hell.”
“I think…and it’s just a hunch…but I think Alex is running drugs, as well,” said Dean. “Small time stuff. But enough to piss off Zorn or McCord. Maybe both. Josh, Corey, Alex, and Billy were a group. If Zorn knows Alex was doing something, he might have gone at him by going after William. And Alex was all beat up today at the funeral. And McCord’s hand was red and tender.”
“The cash?”
“William was holding it for Alex?”
“Or Billy was a part of the operation,” said Guthrie. “They seemed tight. At least until the falling out over Sarah.”
“So back to love and not drugs?”
Dean shrugged. “Maybe it’s both. Maybe Alex is in love with Sarah and had started using William in his drug thing. And Sarah did mention she thought William was stealing the money from Charlie.”
“Damnit boys, this or that. Drugs or love or revenge. All you’ve given me is a bunch of maybes. This is squat. I can’t go back to the mayor with this.”
“It is—”
“Yeah, I know the goddamned phrase.” The Chief dropped into his chair. “We’ve got a murder. A murderer on the loose, and nothing.” He pulled at his right ear. “What’s next? Tell me how you’re going to solve this.”
“I think we need to probe deeper into Alex. And Josh and Corey. But Alex primarily. We’ll dig deeper into McCord as well.” Dean caught the glare from his father. “But nothing invasive. Light touch. I’d like to get surveillance on Alex as well.”
“What? This isn’t New York City. Surveillance?”
“If we can follow him, we can see what he’s up to.”
Eric waved it away. “We don’t have the money for that kind of operation and no way the DA approves surveillance on his son.”
“I think it’s our best bet.”
“Ain’t happening boys.”
“Then I say we bring all three of them in. Make it formal.”
“Do it.”
* * *
Dean drove to his parents’ house, going over in his head the plan the three of them agreed to. Get Billy’s three friends into the station and push a bit harder and see if something pops. They did not have much leverage; that was clear. Dean agreed with his father, at least in the bureaucratic reasons for not conducting surveillance on Alex: Money and the DA would not allow any surveillance, especially since it was an intuition unsupported by facts.
Jenny slid into the front seat with a large sheet of thick paper covered with a light blue mat. Without prompting, his daughter explained grandma had shown her how to paint with watercolors. Dean recognized the location. The long boarded walk to a pier and deck extending onto Lake Tonga. His parents’ summer house. Jenny’s version of it was very pastel and diaphanous and awkward in proportion and perspective. Still, she had done a good job for her first time at it. His mother was more accomplished, though far from professional—a hobby as she liked to point out.
Dean drove them to Burger Palace for dinner. The chain of six restaurants had opened its second store in Zion in the early seventies. It seemed like a treat for Jenny to go into the brightly lit building and sit across from her dad with her kid’s meal and vanilla milkshake. He asked her if she was having fun with grandma, and she said she was. And they talked about how she liked history at school. The past semester they had been studying the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They were due to learn about the Civil War this coming semester. And science class was okay, but she preferred history. Her stepdad, Spencer Jackson, was making her take piano lessons, and she hated practicing. She asked Dean if he could get her out of it.
“The lessons?” he asked.
“Yes. Urrrrr. I hate them.” She sucked on the straw.
“It’s good for you.” He smiled at her look of surprise. “I mean it. Face it, you’re not going to get any culture from me.” While she was in the bathroom, he let his mask fall and sighed. Sometimes he hated what his life had become, despised that he had so little influence over his daughter, that he was a bit of decoration at the margins of her life. And here she was, staying with him during the worst time he could think of: the first murder investigation since Sixty-Eight. He consoled himself that he had his evenings with her, and she was able to visit with her grandmother.
He drove them to the Pratt farm, where Cindy was waiting with her mother. Cindy told Jenny to use the bathroom before they began the long drive home. While in there, Dean updated Cindy on what Jenny had done all week. “We even saw Superman.”
“You did? She’s already seen that. With Spencer right after it came out.”
He could not hide the crestfallen look on his face. Cindy might as well have punched him.
“Oh,” she said. “She probably just didn’t want to tell you. Wanted to see it with you. Did you only get to spend evenings with her?”
He felt tears welling up, but the tone of her last question bothered him enough that he forced them away. “You know what happened earlier this week. I had a job to do.”
Cindy shook her head. They both heard Jenny come at a fast clip down the stairs.
Cindy said to Dean, “Being a father is your job.” She turned and said to Jenny, “Slow down. Say bye to your father.”
Dean knelt down and he and his daughter embraced. And tears, this time, did come. Not many, but enough. He told his daughter he loved her and they would go to an Expos game this summer. He walked out of the warm Pratt home into the January cold. He felt like a husk ready to be blown into the waiting fields.
On the way home he noticed the car tailing him. At least, he thought it was tailing him. Too distant to determine the make. A pair of lights that followed him—not a difficult task in the town. When he turned into his subdivision, they did not follow him, but he still triple-checked the locks on the doors and windows and sat in the living room, his revolver on the end table until early in the morning.

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