The Case of the Missing Department Head

by David Staats

  “While you’re doing that, don’t talk to anyone about the case. You just find and identify the witnesses – we’ll get their affidavits. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Houlihan.

  4.

  The next morning, Dure called Kara into his office. “I think we should talk to young Houlihan. The testimonies of Houlihan and his neighbor don’t agree at all points. Maybe the son can throw some light on the discrepancies. Call him and have him come in here, would you?”

  Kara was a perceptive and intelligent woman, and she knew her boss. Adding up his words and his tone of voice and his body language, she knew that what Dure meant was “Get him in here right away.” So that’s what she did. She used her secretary’s magic, in this case, a vague implication that the lawyer needed to see him about something so important that not even she was allowed to know what it was. He said he would come in at 10:30.

  At 10:43 a young man came into the office. It was Liam Houlihan. “Please take a seat, Mr. Houlihan,” said Kara. “I’ll let Mr. Dure know that you’re here.” She took him to be a body builder. His upper body was an agglomeration of enormous slabs of muscle, and veins stood in high relief on his bare arms. His face was florid and acned, and yet, when he flashed one quick smile, it was sweet and innocent.

  He stepped over into the waiting area but did not sit down. While Kara used the phone with Dure, Liam Houlihan stood bouncing on his toes, turning this way and that, and periodically smacking the palm of his left hand with his balled-up right fist.

  Kara led him to Dure's office, then took a seat off to the side.

  Liam Houlihan sat in front of Dure’s desk, pressing his thighs with his straight arms so as to arch his back. Dure, with his head bent forward and his eyes rolled up in their sockets, eyebrows raised, was watching him closely.

  Dure went through the usual amenities, offered his sympathy for the loss, gave Liam a little legal background, which probably went over his head, about Dure’s representation of Liam’s father. Then he began to dig in.

  “I take it you’ve talked to the police, or they’ve talked to you?”

  “Yeah.” Young Houlihan exhaled the word short and sharp.

  “Let’s start there. What did they ask you and what did you say?”

  Liam leaned back in his chair and rotated his head in a circle, then began to speak. “Who’d wanna hurt my mom? What’d I know about it? Where was I? Where was my dad? Who are the neighbors? Stuff.”

  “Tell me what you told the police . . . and, anything you might additionally have remembered since you spoke with the police.”

  “I didn’t know anybody who would want to hurt my mom. I didn’t know anything about what happened. My dad didn’t do it and neither did I. The neighbors are who they are.”

  “This is what you told the police?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In those exact words?”

  The young man snorted.

  “There is no law that says you have to help your father,” said Dure.

  A period of silence ensued as a battle of stares took place. There was no way that a young kid could prevail against the intense stare of Dure's light colored hazel eyes, glowing out of the dark caverns that were his eye sockets. Young Houlihan’s hands were grasping the arm rests of the chair in which he sat; he twisted his grip outwards, as if he were trying to twist off the upholstery. “Okay,” he said.

  Dure nodded, and the young man began to speak.

  “I didn’t have to work Friday – that’s the first day they asked about – so I slept in. I got up around nine. My apartment mate, Matt, was gone already. I ate breakfast, checked my e-mail, surfed the internet. Then I went out driving around, had lunch around 1:30 at Arby’s, and got back around three. It was a recovery day, so I didn’t work out. I did a load of clothes, spent some time on Facebook, checked e-mail again. I made dinner, streamed a movie, checked my e-mail, surfed some more and went to bed.”

  Kara was taking notes on a steno pad.

  “And Saturday?” said Dure.

  The young man gave another similar recitation, including things that he likely would not have included but for the fact that he had been asked for details on a previous occasion. For example, the fact that he hadn’t taken a shower in the morning because he had to be at work early, but had taken a shower after his workout at the gym.

  “Did you happen to visit your parents’ house on either day?” asked Dure.

  “No!” he said, as if daring Dure to make something of it.

  “Is the job at the deli the only job you have?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it’s part-time?”

  “Yeah.” Liam nodded.

  “Where did this interview take place?”

  “Two men came to my apartment Monday afternoon. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but the one showed me ID.”

  “Do you remember their names?”

  “No.”

  “How had your parents been getting along?”

  “Good, I guess. No problem.”

  “How’d you get the cut on your arm?”

  “My arm?”

  “Yes, your right forearm, right there.”

  “Oh, that. That’s not a cut, that’s just a scratch.”

  “I see. How’d you get it?”

  “How’d I get it?”

  Dure nodded.

  “I, uh, scratched it on a lettuce crate at work. They have these wires holding them together, and one of them scratched me.”

  “Did your parents always get along?”

  Liam let his head sway back and forth briefly. Then he shrugged. “Yeah. Far as I knew.”

  “Did you ever hear – well, let me back up for a minute. How long had your mother been working at her job?”

  “She worked at the library for a long time – long as I can remember. She got promoted to the head of everything about . . . I think six years ago?”

  “Did you ever her her complain about any of her co-workers?”

  The young man smiled for the first time. “She used to complain about some of the patrons. But that was a long time ago when she actually worked in the library.” He was smiling as if he were recalling some fond memory; then became serious again. “But since I went to college? . . . I can’t recall anything . . . oh, . . . yeah.” He laughed again. “I don’t know if you would call it complaining, but she used to talk about this idiot who worked there, Chauncey Blackwell, I remember his name. He was retarded or something, couldn’t talk right.”

  “Did there seem to be any hostility on Mr. Blackwell’s part?”

  “Nah, it was just, like, you know, how stupid can somebody be?”

  Quite suddenly the young man’s eyes filled with water. He blinked vigorously and sniffed and threw his head back as if he were determined not to let any tear trickle down his face. He turned his head to look away from Dure.

  The yellow legal pad in front of Dure had eight short notations of subjects for the questioning of Liam. Dure had made, during this interview, tick marks by four of them. However, instead of continuing on to the remaining four, he suddenly said, “Alright, Liam. Thank you for coming in.” He stood.

  The young man pushed down on the arm rests with his huge arms and his body came up from the chair is if propelled by a giant spring.

  “Oh, one last thing,” said Dure. “Have you ever taken anabolic steroids?”

  Liam had started for the door, but stopped and turned. “Who, me?”

  “Have you?”

  Liam hesitated, his face a picture of perplexity. Suddenly it lit up with a bright smile. “I plead the fifth,” he said. He turned quickly, bounced out the door and was gone.

  Dure rubbed his chin. Kara finished writing, then left also. Dure got up and stepped across the hall into Ralph’s office.

  “Ralph, you’re my one-man mock jury. Here’s what I’ve got.”

  Ralph sat up straight. His large, round eyes were unblinking while he listened.

  “So what do you thi
nk?” said Dure.

  “Her old man did it. The husband.”

  “The apparent lack of motive doesn’t bother you?”

  “Naah, they were married,” said Ralph. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my wife. But some of ‘em . . ..”

  “I’m trying out a line of defense. What would a jury say to this? You know the prosecution has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So, what we have to do is raise a reasonable doubt. If the case gets to court, I might have to suggest to the jury that someone else did the crime.”

  “Right,” said Ralph.

  “Suppose I suggest to the jury that young Houlihan did it, not his father. What would a jury say?”

  “Huh?” The idea was too new to Ralph. He couldn’t grasp it right away.

  “Would a jury find that there was reasonable doubt that the father did it if we suggest that the son might be the one who had done it?”

  “The kid? . . . I don’t know.”

  “Isn’t there such a thing as ‘roid rage,’ you know, aggressive or violent behavior due to taking anabolic steroids?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see the kid? He looks like he might be susceptible to that.”

  “Sceptible?”

  “Like he might get ‘roid rage?”

  “I heard of that. I don’t know.”

  “If it comes to that, I am prepared to suggest it. But I can’t suggest he might be the one if I know for sure that he did not do it. On the other hand, if I knew that he did it, putting suspicion on him could get him prosecuted. And, I would be ill-serving Mr. Houlihan to send his son to the electric chair. So I do not want to know either that he did it, nor that he did not do it. So I cut my questioning short. It is the government’s business to find out the guilty party, not ours.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Friday, Ralph was working on another case, entering medical damages into a spreadsheet. His thick, clumsy fingers first typed in a short text, using the “hunt and bash” method. Swiveling his head to the right, he looked at the paper he was working from, looked down at the 10-key numeric pad and bashed in a few digits. Then he looked up and strained forward to read the computer screen. He took a short, dull pencil from behind his right ear and made a check mark on the paper, pausing to get a good look at the next item he was to enter. He replaced the pencil behind his ear and prepared to bash in another entry.

  A light tapping noise was on the door to his office. Dure was standing in the doorway. “Ralph, let’s get out of the office,” he said.

  Without a word, Ralph simultaneously stood and closed up his work as if Dure had told him the building was on fire. When they were outside on the sidewalk, Dure said, “We’re going to go to the Houlihans’ house.” Ralph nodded.

  In the car a conversation of sorts took place. “It’s exactly a week ago that the murder took place,” said Dure, “according to the medical examiners. Either today, Friday, or tomorrow. My hunch is it happened on the Friday, so let’s just go and observe the locus in quo . . . at the same time of the week.”

  Ralph responded with an inarticulate grunt.

  They drove to Sunderly Chase and backed into the Houlihans’ driveway. Their windows were rolled down on this warm June morning. The roar of lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and weed whackers resounded throughout the neighborhood. The roar reached them even from the next street, a quarter of a mile away. Through an open vista through the trees, one could see a mower going back and forth, the operator standing up on a platform on the back of the mower.

  “Make a note,” said Dure “to find out when Mr. Houlihan and these neighbors have their lawns cut, and who the mowers are.”

  To their right was the house of the Vanderlogens; to their left, Mr. Loveless. Across the street were the Sweets. Other than the distant lawn crews, no human being was to be seen. Of course, given the curvature of the street and the size of the lots, people could have been out in their back yards, and the occupants of Dure’s car would have been unable to see them.

  “You think one of the lawn crews did it?” said Ralph.

  “One of the lawn crews?” said Dure. “Could be.”

  “Lotta Mexicans,” said Ralph.

  “That appears to be the case,” said Dure. “What do you think the motive would have been?”

  “Money,” said Ralph, as if it had been a stupid question.

  “The dead woman’s purse was found in the house. Her billfold was in it. As far as anyone has been able to tell, nothing was missing from either the purse or the billfold. The police found a cell phone and a ring of keys on the body,” said Dure.

  Ralph thought this over for a moment. “That fits with what I said before . . . the husband did it.”

  The two men sat for a while without talking. Ralph became fidgety, as if he were a seven-year-old boy forced to sit still in class. Dure, however, quietly observed the surroundings with intent concentration. After a time, Dure said, “I believe I saw movement through the picture window in the house across the street. Let’s go see if we can talk with . . . the Sweets, I think live there.” The two men got out of the car and walked down and across the street to the driveway of the Sweets’s house. Going to the door, Dure pressed the doorbell button.

  The door swung open. “Yes?” said Mrs. Sweet. She supported herself with one arm against the door jamb while with the other held the storm door open a few inches. She acted as if she did not recognize them, although they had spoken briefly to her before, when she had told them to come back when her husband was home.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” said Dure “We don’t want to come in, but we would like to speak briefly with you about the happenings, the unfortunate happening, at the Houlihans.”

  The crack in the door began to close.

  Dure let it close all the way. With the large pane of glass between him and Mrs. Sweet, he said, loudly, “She was no friend of yours I take it?”

  The door opened a crack. “No. She wasn’t.” And the door shut again.

  “Do you dislike Mr. Houlihan, too?” yelled Dure.

  Open. “No.” Close.

  “Well, he needs help.”

  Open. “What can I do?” It was not an offer of help, but an expression of inability. Close.

  Ralph rubbed the short hair on the top of his head with his palm and looked away from the door. He sighed.

  Dure yelled, “You can help me find out what happened and I’m going to go hoarse in a minute.”

  The door opened again, wider than before. “I told the police everything I know. That’s all I can do, right?” The door stayed part way open.

  “Not at all,” said Dure. He spoke rapidly. “You might have remembered something since. The police might have missed something. I may know something that the police don’t that would match up with something you observed.” He paused. “Please, okay?” he said.

  “Alright,” she said. “What?”

  “Thank you,” said Dure. And they began to talk.

  In response to the question whether she knew of anyone who might have any animosity against Mrs. Houlihan, she could think of no one; but when Dure asked her what Mrs. Houlihan was like, Mrs. Sweet said she was a terror. Because Mrs. Houlihan worked for the county, she knew just which person to call to bring down the county on anybody who violated any county ordinance, such as letting the lawn grass get too high, or open burning out of season. And she did the same thing with the development’s homeowners’ association. If anybody put a sign in their yard, or left their garbage canisters too long at the curb, Tiffany was on the phone to the head of the homeowners’ association. And maybe on account of Tiffany’s relentless calling down authority on others, their own property had to be faultless, to the point where her poor husband Howard had to hire a lawn maintenance company to keep his wife off his back, even though he didn’t work a regular job and probably could have done the yard work himself.

  On whom, in particular, had Mrs. Houlihan “called down authority”? Just about everybody in the n
eighborhood at one time or another. She had even made a complaint about the Sweets’ putting a political sign in their yard one year. That’s how they found out that the rules of the homeowners’ association forbade it.

  Mrs. Sweet came out of the house and stood on the porch with them. Had she seen anything unusual that Friday or Saturday? Of course she did not stand around at the picture window and watch the neighbors all the time, and she couldn’t say she had paid any attention to the Houlihan’s house those days more than any others. But she had seen, around lunchtime on Friday – she had told the police this – she was going out to check the mail and had seen a small red sports car backing out of the Houlihans’ driveway and zooming away. She pointed to the place. She couldn’t say the make or model, she wasn’t a car expert. She hadn’t paid attention to the driver, it was a man she thought.

  Dure asked: “What can you tell us about the neighbors on the other side of the Houlihans? The Vanderlogens, is it?”

  “Yes. Right. They’re, um . . . they’re okay. I don’t know too much about them. Mr. Vanderlogen is like, really tall, like professional basketball player tall. But you know, husband, wife, two kids. Just normal.”

  A pick-up truck towing a trailer full of lawn maintenance equipment came down the street and stopped in front of the Sweets’s house. Men got out and unhooked the gate at the back of the trailer that also served as a loading ramp. An enormous roar began, and a huge mower slowly rolled down the ramp. Mrs. Sweet seemed anxious to get back into her house.

  Yelling thanks to her over the noise and giving her a wave, Dure turned to go. He checked his phone. To Ralph he said, “It’s 12:35. Let’s go have lunch.”

  * * *

  There no longer seemed to be urgency about the Houlihan case. Mr. Houlihan himself was off chasing the promoter of the gun show for a list of food vendors, trying to locate the ones he had bought food from, and presumably finding the persons with whom he dealt who could testify as to his whereabouts at the time of the murder of his wife.

  A week passed. Then came a piece of startling news that unsettled the case.

  The Essex County Courthouse in downtown Canterbury had been until 2007 a small, handsome Greek Revival building with four large marble columns in its front. Now it is an enormous, brick and glass building taking up half a block and called the Justice Complex of Essex County. It is indistinguishable from any commercial office building except that the facade of the old courthouse has been retained and makes up a small part of the front of the new building. The marble columns, however, instead of their former imposing appearance, now appear insignificant in the overwhelming height and width of the new building. The incongruity of the small Greek Revival facade embedded in the predominating modernist front gives the building the appearance of an architectural joke.