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CHAPTER 37

April 7, 1979

Dean drove to the station the next morning and had Laura look up both Julie Darwish and Tim Upton. He had slept poorly and had not bothered to shave after he woke up. As he waited for the information about the niece or her boyfriend, he sat at his desk, shuffled the piled reports and memos, but barely registered their titles or purpose. Etheridge walked in after a while and sat down at his desk, tendering a wave as a hello. Dean nodded his hello.

Laura walked up to the desk and handed him a piece of notepad paper with addresses and phone numbers. “That’s what we can get on those two. No arrests. Upton has a couple of speeding tickets is all.”

“Thanks.” Tim’s address was on the south side of town, amongst the largely residential section that had built up after World War II around the now defunct piping factory. As he walked out of the station to his car, he passed Guthrie without saying a word.

The house at the address was a ranch, all brick house with white molding around the windows and a black-gray roof. The white wooden garage door needed a coat of paint.

He pulled the car to a stop in the driveway, half of which consisted of a white gravel and the other cement. He stepped out and walked up the gravel with the grass rising up in spots. When he got to the sidewalk bordered by evergreen shrubs, the front door opened. Through the screen door, Dean could make out a woman dressed in blue jeans and a Coca-Cola t-shirt. “Hello?” she asked.

“Hello.” Dean stopped. “I’m Detective Dean Wallace. Is Tim Upton home?”

“He’s getting ready for work. What’s this about?”

“Billy Nimitz.”

“Ah, I was wondering if you’d ever show up.” She pushed open the screen door as her invitation to step in.

Dean walked into the entry way, where a set of light jackets hung from the wall directly across from the door. An off-white wallpaper with brown stripes and small flowers covered the walls.

She pointed to the right. “He’s in the kitchen getting breakfast.”

Dean walked down the hallway. It opened to a family room with the same wallpaper, a sofa, lounge chair, coffee table covered with magazines, a TV, and a basket of more magazines. To the back of the family room, the kitchen sat with a built-in table, counters, appliances, and a pantry. The small window looked out onto the driveway.

“You’re looking at it like Julie does,” said the man with blond hair with a part on the far left and combed over with a looping bang hanging down. He had the rudiments of a mustache. He was dressed in the blue and white uniform of the Gorman Transmission Company. They had a manufacturing center just about in Plattsburgh.

Dean held out his hand. “Detective Dean Wallace.”

“Tim Upton.” He took his hand and shook firmly. “That’s my girlfriend Julie.”

“Hi,” she said as she left the room.

Dean nodded. Unmarried but living together. He rubbed his nose. He was certain they were at least the talk of their neighbors.

“Coffee?” asked Tim.

Dean said yes, and Tim poured him a cup. The detective turned down cream and sugar.

“Here about Billy? I heard you at the door.”

“Yeah. I was talking to your uncle yesterday. Sam.”

Tim smiled. “Talking. I get you.”

“Anyway, he said you had spoken to Billy a bit. Claimed you called Billy a communist.”

“I did.” Tim took a drink of his coffee. “He was. He’d show up at the factory. We’re non-union there. So he’d show up and agitate. Tell us we should organize, unionize. Power to the people and that kind of crap. He was a red, pure and simple. Wouldn’t deny it.”

“I know lots of fellas who are pro-union that don’t consider—that I wouldn’t consider—communists.”

“Yep, I know some too. Me. Hell, the factory used to be union. But they shit-canned everyone three years ago and re-opened as a non-union plant. Most of us took the job. They can’t put these transmissions together anymore and be competitive. It was either that or the factory goes some place else. I’ll take the job, thank you very much. But I wish we were still union.”

Dean said, “So what made Billy a communist?”

“Because he said it. And he’d pass out The Communist Manifesto. He didn’t lead with that, but he got there pretty fast. And, boy, would he piss off some of those old-timers when he’d tell them unions were the consequence of communism. They did not like that.”

“How’d others react? You?”

Tim smiled and shook his head. “I told him to leave me alone. I wasn’t interested. I’m a patriot, you know, I believe in America. The communist crap can be flushed down the toilet as far as I’m concerned. I was the nice one, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I just barked. A number of guys bit. Some guys who fought in Korea and Vietnam, they didn’t take so kindly to him. I know a few of them beat him up one night. Told him to not come around anymore.”

“How bad?”

Tim shrugged. “Bad enough to let him know they were serious. They just told me after. Sometime last fall, I think it was.”

Dean took a large drink of coffee.

“And you know,” continued Tim, “that bastard showed up again. Black eye. Bandages. I’ll give him that. He was a tough son of a bitch.”

Until the bullet hit him. Dean nodded. He and Tim finished their coffee. Tim did not know anything else of relevance other than the guy who talked about beating Billy was George Littlefield. Shortly after, he and Julie walked him out, and Dean drove back to the station under a cloudy morning sky. Once there, he had Laura look up any information on George Littlefield she could find. She told him that Special Agent Pryce had called and wanted Dean to call back.

At his desk, Dean called Billy’s parents to ask who the family doctor was and if they recalled any injuries to their son. They said he had had an accident at the shop in October, but he had not seen a doctor. Just to be sure, Dean called the family doctor, who pulled up the files on Billy Nimitz and noted no visits regarding any accidents.

Guthrie walked up to Dean after he hung up. After updating Guthrie on his conversation with Tim, they split up the hospitals from Plattsburgh to Zion and started calling to see if Billy Nimitz sought medical treatment there.

He spent a couple of hours calling the hospitals on his list, most of the time on hold. As he hung up one call, his phone rang. He hoped it was St. Francis Hospital in Plattsburgh, who said someone would call him back, so he answered. “Yep. Detective Wallace here.”

“This is Special Agent Pryce.” When Dean did not respond, Pryce asked, “Detective?”

“Sorry. I was expecting someone else.”

“Yes. Anyways, I left a message for you.”

“Yeah. Haven’t had a chance to call you back.”

“Obviously. Look, we’ve got a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“When we got back to Plattsburgh last night, we were inventorying the evidence you loaded up for us. We noticed a discrepancy.”

“Sure. How can I clear that up for you?”

“It’s a serious one, detective. I’m not sure there is any clearing this up. It might blow our whole case.”

Dean sat up straight in his chair, pulling himself closer to the desk. “Excuse me?”

Pryce covered the phone and coughed. “Excuse me. Sorry about that. Yes. The photos of the weapons seized at Sam Darwish’s home and the weapons we have don’t correspond. Specifically, we’re missing the M16.”

Dean held the phone in his hand, his mind tracing the conversation the day prior with the FBI and DEA. They had not yet sent the M16 downstate for ballistics testing. The rifle should have gone with Pryce and Hayes.

“Detective?”

“Uh, yes? Is it listed in the seizure list?”

Pryce did not pause. “No. I’ve checked a half-dozen times. The paperwork doesn’t mention it. It’s not with the other weapons or any of the other evidence. It’s only in the picture. And you told me an M16 was used in the shooting. So do you have the M16 with an intact chain of evidence trail?”

Dean thought it over. Who had been in charge of gathering the physical evidence? Had he been and forgotten to do what he needed to do? Had the booze screwed him up again?

“Detective, do you have the M16?”

No. Dean was sure it was not him. But if not him…. He looked up and down the station floor. Guthrie was talking on the phone. “I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.” He hung up.

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