‘Because he’s a low-life sack of shit. I’ve spent my whole life putting as much distance between him and me as possible.’
‘I can understand that. I’ve heard some stuff about him. I’d feel the same.’
‘But you’re offended because I didn’t take you into my confidence. Especially now we’re drinking and fishing buddies. Is that it?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t give a shit about that.’
‘What then?’
Evan forced himself to look Faulkner directly in the eye.
‘It makes me wonder what else you’re hiding.’
‘I get it. You think Hendricks abducted Daniel Clayton and I knew about it and covered it up because he’s my wife’s brother. Blood’s thicker than water and all that crap.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘I might if I was the sort of person who was prone to jumping to half-assed conclusions.’
‘You think I’m jumping to conclusions? So give me an explanation I can believe.’
‘I just did. I was the Chief of Police. He’d been thrown out of the army and been in prison. How do you think that was going to affect my career prospects if I went around saying, Hey, have you met my brother-in-law? to all those upstanding local citizens?’
Evan started to say something but Faulkner cut him off.
‘What I want to know is how my concerns for my career and social standing—however selfish you might think they were—somehow translates in your mind into me covering up a major crime. Maybe you can explain that to me.’
‘I didn’t say that, you did.’
‘It’s what you think though.’
‘I don’t want to think it, but there are so many unanswered questions.’
‘Try me.’
‘Why was he thrown out of the army? What did he go to prison for?’
‘None of that’s relevant.’
‘Any reason why I’m supposed to take your word for that? Seeing as the whole reason I’m here is because you already lied to me.’
Faulkner jerked forward almost pulling the drip out of his arm.
‘I never lied to you. I just didn’t volunteer all the information you feel you’re entitled to.’
Evan didn’t believe it for a minute but he let it go for the moment.
‘How did he end up living in the farm?’
‘Guilt. It’s what makes the world go around. His folks thought they’d let him down. They blamed themselves for the piece of shit he turned into. So they gave him the farm and moved away. Felt like they’d evened the score.’ He shook his head. ‘And they say crime doesn’t pay.’
‘Your wife couldn’t have been very happy about that.’
‘She didn’t care about the farm. She missed having her folks around of course.’
‘What did she think about her brother?’
Faulkner didn’t answer immediately. Was he concocting a carefully crafted reply, or had it given him genuine pause for thought?
‘It was her one blind spot. She couldn’t see him for what he was. She saw him as a victim just like her folks did.’
‘I bet that caused a few arguments between you.’
‘That’s none of your damn business,’ Faulkner snapped.
He was right.
‘Why did he change his name?’
Faulkner looked at him like he must be the one who just got hit on the head.
‘What sort of a stupid question is that? Why do you think? So that he could start out as a brand-new scumbag, why else?’
Evan managed not to laugh. He liked Faulkner’s attitude.
‘I can see you’re an advocate of rehabilitation.’
‘Rehabilitation my ass. You couldn’t rehabilitate him any more than you could rehabilitate a cockroach.’
Evan thought of the horrible crunch when he’d squashed the roach in the bathroom, and the disgusting mess on the floor afterwards. He’d read that they used elephants to squash the heads of convicted criminals in India. He pulled his mind back on track.
‘How did he get that job? Surely changing your name doesn’t just wipe the slate clean. How did he provide references and that sort of thing?’
Faulkner looked away but not before Evan had seen something in his eyes. Suddenly it clicked.
‘Don’t tell me you got him the job.’
Faulkner didn’t say anything which was admission enough.
‘For Christ’s sake, Faulkner. He’s a convicted criminal and you got him the job as a school bus driver.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘You’ve just spent the last ten minutes running him down and telling me he was beyond rehabilitation. Then I find out you went and got him that job. I just can’t believe it.’
He ran his hand through his hair and held it back, enjoying the pull on his scalp, then released it again.
‘You don’t understand,’ Faulkner said again.
‘Then enlighten me.’
All the fight had suddenly gone out of Faulkner. He looked like nothing more than an old man sitting in a hospital bed. Evan couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for him.
‘I did it because my wife asked me to. She thought he deserved a break.’
‘A break?’ It came out as a squeak. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘He’d just been given a property worth I don’t know how much. How much of a break did he need?’
‘She thought getting him a worthwhile job would help. Stop him from sitting around the house drinking and calling up all his old lowlife buddies. She was worried he’d get led astray and end up back in prison.’
Evan started to say that from the sound of it Hendricks would be the one doing the leading, but Faulkner carried on without listening.
‘It’s not as if he came to me and said Hey, I’d really like a job as the school bus driver, because I want the chance to get close to the kids and then I went out and found him one. My wife saw the advertisement in the local paper and suggested it. The idea came from her, not him.’
‘And you thought, anything for an easy life. Keep the wife happy.’
He regretted saying it as soon as it was out, especially as he’d have done pretty much anything for Sarah.
‘No, that wasn’t it at all. This was right around the time Brenda got ill.’
He picked up the photograph of his wife with her folks that Evan had brought from his trailer, but he was looking through it to a time long ago. Evan was ashamed of the fact that he’d brought the photograph along, not to give an old man in his hospital bed some reminder of better times, but to use it as a weapon against him.
‘There was even some suggestion that all this trouble with her brother started it off.’
Evan groaned. Even though Faulkner hadn’t said it in an accusatory way, he felt like a complete shit. Faulkner had risked his own career in an attempt to make his wife’s life a little easier. Now, ten years later with the benefit of hindsight, Evan was giving him a hard time. He swallowed a lump the size of his fist. This wasn’t how he’d pictured it panning out.
‘Her doctors said she shouldn’t get stressed out over anything because it would just make her worse. And she was stressed as hell over her brother.’ He snorted. ‘She even gave herself a hard time because she had a nice life and her brother didn’t. No wonder you never see a hungry psychiatrist.’
‘Why couldn’t she see what he was really like?’
‘Who knows? That’s families for you. Did you ever read the poem This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin? He had a different take on families.’
Evan ignored the question.
‘What did you do?’
‘I told the school I’d run all the background checks for them. Then I told them he’d come out purer than the driven snow. The perfect candidate to drive their kids around.’
‘Did it help your wife get better?’
‘Definitely. For a while. Whereas my stress levels went through the roof. And stayed there.’
‘Did you regret doing it?’
‘What is this, some kind of psychiatric assessment?’
‘Sorry, none of my business.’
‘Don’t worry about it. You know, it’s actually something of a relief to talk about it after all these years.’
Unfortunately, they both knew it wasn’t about to end there, with Evan assuming the role of Father Confessor, absolving Faulkner of his sins. It was about to get a lot worse for Faulkner and he could see it coming.
‘I’ve really dropped myself in it haven’t I? As far as you’re concerned, I’ve now got a compelling motive for protecting Carl Hendricks. If he goes down, I go down.’
They were both quiet as the unavoidable truth of Faulkner’s words sank in. The only sound was a comforting, quiet hum coming from the equipment in the room.
‘That’s only true if Hendricks was guilty,’ Evan said, surprising himself as he came to Faulkner’s defence. ‘Why did he go to prison?’
Faulkner leaned back on the pillows and looked up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Something bad was coming.
‘Unlawful sexual intercourse,’ he said quietly, without opening his eyes.
Evan was beyond reacting. He leaned back and closed his own eyes.
‘Girl or boy?’
‘Fifteen-year-old girl. Fifteen going on twenty-five. Three of them were convicted. Him and a couple of buddies from the army.’
His voice was completely flat and devoid of emotion.
Evan was lost for words. He didn’t know what to say, wished more than anything that he was somewhere else. And he wondered if all this would have come out in a small boat in the middle of a lake, or whether it was just Faulkner’s weakened state.
‘He spent two years in prison,’ Faulkner continued, ‘before the conviction was overturned on appeal.’
Evan sat up and opened his eyes.
‘That’s something, at least. Why was it overturned?’
‘Apparently the original jury was deadlocked so it can’t have been black and white anyway. Then the judge reminded them about the time and expense involved with the trial, and possibly a retrial if they didn’t make up their minds, which he shouldn’t have done.’
‘You mean he basically said Hurry up, I’ve got a dinner date to get to. I suppose it’s just a job to him.’
‘Something like that.’
‘That means Hendricks got off on a technicality.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘What about the other guys?’
‘Them too.’
Evan stood up and paced the small room. Faulkner was still lying back with his eyes closed, probably wishing Hendricks had hit him a bit harder.
‘What did your wife think about all this?’ Evan said.
‘She thought he was set up. That it was all the other guys’ fault. One of them was seriously unstable, that’s for sure. Her brother never actually did anything. He was framed. Everybody had it in for him.’
It had the sound of a well-worn argument. Evan could see that he’d been right about it causing more than a few problems between Faulkner and his wife.
‘Is that possible?’
‘Anything’s possible. If you mean: do the police routinely fit people up for crimes they didn’t commit? No. Do they make mistakes? All the time.’
‘What did you think? Could he have done it?’
‘Of course he could have. For what it’s worth I don’t think he actually did. He might be the lowest form of pond life, but he’s certainly not stupid.’
‘That’s handy for your conscience.’
Faulkner tried to give him a hard stare but looked a bit too comical with his head bandaged to pull it off.
‘Let me ask you something, Mr Holier-than-thou. What would you be prepared to do to bring back your wife?’
‘We’re not talking about me here.’
‘That’s handy for you too.’
He picked up the photograph of his wife again and waved it at Evan.
‘I didn’t want to lose my wife so I went against my better judgement. I did what she asked me to do. I put my career on the line because I didn’t want to make her life more difficult than it already was.’
He dropped the photograph onto the bed again.
‘Something tells me you might bend a few rules to get your own wife back.’
Evan didn’t have an answer for him. Faulkner was right and they both knew it. Faulkner wasn’t going to leave it there either.
‘The only thing that differentiates us,’ he continued, ‘is that I already had to find out if I had the balls to do it. You, I’m not so sure.’
Evan wasn’t sure how he’d allowed Faulkner to get him on the back foot. On the subject of Sarah too. It was time he turned the tables again.
‘Okay, okay, you did what you had to do. Your wife’s getting better, you’re learning to live with it, Hendricks is keeping his nose clean . . . and then Daniel Clayton happens. That can’t have been a good day.’
Faulkner snorted.
‘Not for anyone, it wasn’t.’
‘I don’t suppose you want to share your initial thoughts when you took that call?’
‘Sure I do.’ He smiled. ‘Probably something along the lines of I better not do a Buckley here.’
Evan’s bewilderment amused Faulkner. He smiled again, although it didn’t get up anywhere near his eyes.
‘It means I better not go off half-cocked, jumping at the first half-assed conclusion that enters my preconceived mind.’
Evan felt his cheeks burning.
‘You expect me to believe it never crossed your mind it could have been Hendricks—and you’d given him the perfect opportunity? You must have been scared shitless the chickens had finally come home to roost.’
Faulkner shook his head emphatically and grimaced.
‘No. For one, it was a young boy who went missing. That’s very different to Hendricks and his piece of jailbait. A man who goes after a girl because she looks twenty-five isn’t interested in prepubescent schoolboys.’
It sounded to Evan like the kind of homegrown psychology that Ray Clements had complained about. He was surprised at Faulkner, who must have come across plenty of degenerates who crossed the lines during his time on the force.
‘Okay, let me put it a different way—’
‘You can put it where the sun don’t shine for all I care.’
‘Just hear me out. Let’s say you were looking into all the other potential suspects and one of them just happened to have a criminal conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse. Would that have flagged him up, made you treat him any different to the others? Maybe concentrate your efforts on him.’
‘I didn’t need to concentrate on Hendricks any harder. I already knew everything about him.’
‘And chose to ignore what you knew.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Buckley, you’re impossible. I didn’t ignore what I knew. I made a judgement call on the basis of that information. ‘
‘And that was it?’
‘No, of course that wasn’t it. We interviewed him along with everyone else. But, like I told you before, he had a perfect alibi. When the boy disappeared, he was driving a bus full of fifty screaming kids. Then he went to a strip club. To look at women’s tits, not little boys’ wieners.’
Evan had to admit he had a point. Everything he knew about Hendricks suggested he was a low-life pussy hound. Perhaps he was jumping to conclusions.
‘What did your wife think when it happened?’
‘She thought it was going to go badly for him. She was scared his past would get dug up and then everyone would jump to conclusions, just like you.’ He jabbed his finger in Evan’s direction. ‘Not to mention the effect it would have on my career and our lives.’
‘But still no doubts about her darling brother? It must have seemed like one thing after another and it’s never his fault. She didn’t see any kind of a pattern there?’
‘No. Nor did she see things that weren’t there in the first plac
e.’
Evan was well aware that the comment was directed against him.
‘Better than deliberately not looking at things that are staring you in the face.’
Faulkner would have thrown something at him then if he’d had anything to throw apart from the cheap plastic TV remote. Instead, he lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes again. His face relaxed.
‘I really don’t think we’re getting anywhere here. I’d like to get some sleep now.’
Evan agreed. Whatever Faulkner really thought and felt, he wasn’t about to share it with him. He started for the door and then stopped.
‘One more thing.’
Faulkner groaned.
‘Why did Hendricks attack you?’
‘I have no idea. You’ll have to ask him.’
‘What was the argument about?’
‘Nothing that would make him want to try to kill me.’
‘I suppose I just have to take your word on that as well?’
‘How about I just make something up? Will that make you go away?’
Evan wasn’t going to get anything else out of Faulkner. He headed for the door again.
‘What are you going to do? I hope you’re not going to go over all this again with Hendricks,’ Faulkner said.
Evan stopped and turned around.
‘What do you care?’
‘I don’t want to be the cause of any more trouble as a result of what I’ve told you.’
Evan was instantly alert.
‘What do you mean any more trouble?’
‘Okay, that’s it. We’re finished here. Send in the nurse on your way out, will you. For some reason my head hurts twice as bad as when you arrived. Forget I said we were quits.’
Evan took the hint and left. Damn, he thought as he walked down the corridor, I forgot to ask if it was okay to borrow his gun.
Chapter 35
EVAN HAD NO IDEA what to make of Faulkner’s comment about causing more trouble. He couldn’t decide if it had been an innocent slip of the tongue or if Faulkner secretly believed Hendricks was guilty and felt responsible for everything that had happened.
He certainly had enough to lose. Back when it happened, with thirty years on the job, he’d already made it to the top. That was a lot to throw away. He just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would let a serious crime go unpunished to save his own skin.
The Evan Buckley Thrillers: Books 1 - 4 (Evan Buckley Thrillers Boxsets) Page 18