A Dead Issue

by John Evans

  He reached into his sport coat as if he was reaching for a gun and pulled out an envelope. Thick fingers worked their way under the flap and withdrew a document.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said holding it out to me.

  I read it over briefly, assuring myself that I wasn’t signing a confession, and looked around for a pen. Devereaux produced one from his pocket.

  Handing him the signed document, I said, “Jonah was going to pay us with some of that money.”

  “I know. What you want to do is file a claim against his estate—you and Dusty. Make sure you get what’s yours.” He waved the envelope once in thanks and tucked it back in his pocket. “There’s a granddaughter they’ve contacted. She’s going to handle the details.”

  Jonah had mentioned his wife and daughter several times—nothing specific. I gathered that his wife had died, and I knew he had a granddaughter, but these people where missing from his life, dead or disinterested, leaving Jonah alone in the world where his passing away was marked only by a small obituary in the Fannett Dispatch. But now a girl was coming into town to bury her grandfather. A wave of sadness pass over me.

  Devereaux watched me for some time, arms hanging down from a body bent forward by its weight. His eyes shifted one more time around the room. “You doing anything important?”

  “If you think cleaning out a refrigerator is important,” I answered.

  “Look,” he said in a tone that sounded as if he were trying to be reasonable, “You may be some time without your wallet. Let’s do each other a favor.” He paused for me to respond. When I didn’t, he continued. “Let me take you down to the licensing center in town. I’ll get you through fast. Then, with the couple of hours I’ve saved out of your life, you can come with me to Jonah’s. Take a quick walk-through with me to see if anything is missing.”

  "Sounds good,” I said and tied up the garbage bag with a twist.

  Devereaux was as good as his word. With a flash of his badge and a few confidential whispers to the guy in charge, we were in and out of there in fifteen minutes. The fact that Devereaux was all prepared with some paperwork that greased the way confirmed my suspicions that he wanted me at the scene of the crime.

  On the way to Jonah’s, Devereaux subtly shifted from small talk to what I recognized as casual interrogation.

  “What kind of guy is your pal Dusty? Strikes me as something of a character.”

  “Remember the story about the ants and the grasshopper who played his fiddle while all the ants saved for the winter?”

  “One of my favorites.”

  “They should have named the grasshopper Dusty.”

  Devereaux actually smiled, and in the short time I had known Devereaux, I realized that a smile was something his face wasn’t used to. “And you’re one of the ants I suppose.”

  “Nope. Just another fuckin’ grasshopper.”

  His whole body lurched with a grunt, and then the smile faded from his face.

  “You grasshoppers hang out together?”

  “We’re brothers,” I said and explained the family dynamics involved while Devereaux studied me. Something told me he already knew the facts and was gauging my accuracy—or honesty. “Sometimes we ride together, have a beer after work. We’re getting to know each other.”

  “That’s nice,” he said almost to himself.

  We were passing the Cameron campus and we both looked at the gate as it slid by.

  “Looks like business is good,” Devereaux commented.

  “Must be,” I answered. “My father’s flying off to Chicago to work out a multi-million dollar deal with Caterpillar.”

  A mile of scenery slid by before Devereaux spoke.

  “He ever do drugs?” Devereaux asked quite casually.

  “You mean Dusty or my father?”

  Devereaux tilted his massive head in my direction and gave me a deadpan stare.

  “I never saw him use drugs,” I said truthfully, “but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Again there was a lull in the conversation, and I decided to fill it. “Why do you ask?”

  His eyes shifted toward me and then focused on the road ahead. “Just curious.”

  He drove without speaking for a while, “What’s he driving these days?”

  “A rusted out Chevy.” I answered. “It should have antique plates—needs body work.”

  Again we rode in silence. I knew where this was going.

  “There was an incident in Easton—a shooting. A low-level drug dealer got popped in his Cadillac convertible. Security camera shows one shooter. He walks up from behind the guy, fires once, and walks away with a bag. ”

  Devereaux stared at me silently for a moment, letting the facts sink in. As they did, waves of cold sweat rippled across my skin. “Seconds later, a dark car—black, possibly blue, parks next to the Caddy. Two guys sit next to a dead body for fifteen minutes before they see it. Then they take off like their asses are on fire.” He glanced at me again and asked, “You guys in Easton Friday night?”

  Well, there it was—out on the table, the wild card. The big question was how it should be played. To lie or not to lie—that was the question. To say ‘yes’ would put us at the scene of another murder. An investigation on two fronts was bound to uncover the truth. I stalled for more time.

  “Are you saying we look like the two guys in the video?”

  “You could be,” he answered without hesitation. “The images aren’t clear. The car was parked way off. What I want to hear is if you think you could be those two guys.”

  What would Dusty do? The answer was simple. He’d lie.

  “We were at Miller’s Friday night—with Billy and Ray.”

  “This would be later,” he said and I couldn’t decide whether he was challenging my statement or giving me an opportunity to tell the truth. Maybe he was doing both.

  “I went home after Miller’s.” I felt him looking at me, but couldn’t make eye contact. I knew that was bad.

  “Dusty dropped you off?”

  “Yes,” and I shot him a quick glance. His eyes were still on me.

  Devereaux pulled into Jonah’s lane and we dropped over the rise and wound our way toward the house. The lane had always been an annoying dirt path I took to work. Now it was an extension of a crime scene. We passed the field where my car was stuck and I stared at it, wondering what evidence I left behind.

  “See something?” he asked casually.

  “Uh, no. I was looking at the piles of brush we made the other day.” I remembered Devereaux checking out the undercarriage of my car as he waited for me to return from lunch with my father. Had he noticed something? Weeds or mud caught up under my car? The field was a perfect place to park while robbing a house.

  He swung his head toward me as he navigated down the lane.

  “Were those your tire tracks in there?”

  The question sent a wave of apprehension through me. Devereaux was thorough. Nothing escaped him, and the realization that he might be playing me like a fiddle was disquieting at the very least.

  “Yeah,” I continued as casually as I could. “I drove in there to take a piss.”

  “I don’t think you mentioned that the other day.”

  “Didn’t think it was important.”

  “Everything’s important.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Devereaux led me to Jonah’s front door—the one Billy kicked in. Yellow police tape stretched from post to post barring access to the little porch with the warning “Police Line Do Not Cross.” Devereaux lifted it with a forearm, stretching it out of shape as he ducked under it. He held it up while I did the same.

  “Don’t worry about touching anything,” he said, poking through a fistful of keys. “We’re all but done here.” He pinched a key between his thick thumb and index finger and worked it into a sturdy padlock on a galvanized hasp that had been newly secured above the splintered wood around the doorknob. “You watch these crime shows, people think we can lift prints o
ff a fart.” The lock fell free and Devereaux pushed the door in. “Fact of the matter is that we’re sometimes lucky to get a clean one off a plate glass window.”

  The detective stepped aside and allowed me to enter first.

  “Get any?” I asked as I slid by him.

  “A couple,” he answered and followed me in.

  Jonah’s parlor was sparsely furnished. It reminded me of my own simple apartment—a few items spread out to break up the empty space. I stood inside the door and surveyed the room. Devereaux watched.

  “If you notice anything’s missing—anything, tell me.”

  I took my time, going over every inch of the room in case Dusty was right and someone else was in the house that night. Everything was as I remembered it. I looked at Devereaux.

  “A chair is missing.” An image of Jonah supporting himself using the ladder back chair as a crutch flashed across my mind.

  Devereaux nodded in approval. With a flick of his head he invited me into Jonah’s den where all hell had broken loose. He led the way this time, stopping so that I had to squeeze around him to view the room.

  My mouth fell open. “Jesus!”

  The wall directly opposite us looked as if it had taken a broadside from a Spanish galleon. Holes the size of bowling balls were punched at random, marking the spots where Jonah’s bullets hit. Down near the floor, other holes looked like entranceways for very large mice. Chunks of plaster and dust littered the floor and mingled with the stuffing blown out of Jonah’s soft chair. The damage looked far worse than I remembered it.

  “What kind of gun did that?” I asked.

  “Wasn’t a gun. We used a Sawzall.” Devereaux looked at me for a moment before continuing. “This house is plaster over lath—wood strips. We cut out sections to get the bullets. Some fell down between the walls. That’s why those holes are near the floor. One bullet went through to the other room—in this wall, out the other side, through the backside of the kitchen cabinet and bounced off the door hinge. We found it in a teacup. That’s one for the books.”

  I took in more of the room, consciously avoiding the spot where Jonah had been stretched out on the floor. I had expected a chalk outline of his body to mark the spot, but it was not there. Had there been an outline, it would have been natural for me to stare at it. Its absence had created a morbid fascination with that spot and trying not to look at it was like trying to ignore a naked girl sunbathing next to you on the beach. My eyes were drawn to the center of the floor, and I knew in my heart that Devereaux was silently waiting for me to look, confirming his suspicions or perhaps invoking them.

  I solved the problem by staring around the room, surveying the contents and at the same time working my way to the center of the room until I stood where Jonah had died. Then I turned slowly, intending to do a full 360 scan of the room. When I shifted toward Devereaux, I expected him to step aside so I wouldn’t miss anything. Instead, his eyes captured mine and he said, “Yeah, that’s about where Jonah was standing when he fired off those rounds.”

  The tone of the statement jarred me. It was as if he had read my mind and was quietly addressing my thoughts. I looked down at the floor.

  “And that’s about where we found him,” he added.

  I moved away from the spot as if I did not want to tread on sacred ground or desecrate the memory of Jonah Heard. And as unsettling as Devereaux’s comments were, they at least gave me a reason to glance occasionally at the place I last saw Jonah, face down with my wallet sticking out of his pocket.

  “There’s your missing chair,” Devereaux offered after a considerable moment of silence. It lay in the far corner of the room on its side where Jonah had tossed it.

  “Anything missing here?”

  Anything missing? A body, a wallet, huge chunks of plaster and . . . “A painting,” I said. There was a tone of discovery in my voice and a hint of awe. “There was a painting hanging on the wall.” I pointed to the wall blasted by cannonballs. “It was an oil painting of some women in a field.”

  “The Gleaners,” Devereaux commented.

  “That’s the one. Dusty said they were looking for a contact lens.”

  Devereaux grunted. “Jean-Francois Millet. Oil on canvas. 1857. The original is hanging in the Louver. Jonah’s reproduction is worth about seventeen cents and a cup of coffee.”

  “Maybe there was something behind it.”

  “Like the Declaration of Independence?” Devereaux smiled. “No such luck. Jonah’s picture is in the garbage over there.” He pointed to a plastic trashcan that used to be in the kitchen. A corner of a frame stuck out. “It was one of the casualties in the shooting,” Devereaux explained. “We had to take it down to punch a hole in the wall.”

  We both gravitated to the trashcan. Devereaux pinched the frame between his fingers and held it like he had a dead rat by the tail. Triangular shards of glass spilled out of the frame back into the can. He shook a few loose. “Nice shot,” he commented dryly. One of Jonah’s bullets had clipped one of the gleaners in the ass.

  He dropped the frame back into the trashcan. “Millet painted hard-working people, peasants with strong faith. He once said, ‘Every person is on God’s most wanted list.’”

  He looked at me long and hard, waiting for a response as I dug way back into my Sunday school days to find one. “I guess he meant that everyone is important in the eyes of God,” I offered lamely.

  “I think he meant that everyone is a suspect.”

  CHAPTER 23

  “Am I a suspect?” I asked him directly. I stared at him as I waited for an answer.

  “Everyone’s a suspect,” he said. We held eye contact for a moment longer and then he broke with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Hey, what the hell. You could be in the top ten,” he said, his voice casual and non-threatening—almost playful. “You were one of the last to see him alive, he owed you money, you needed money . . .” He rolled his hand in a gesture to indicate that there was a longer list of items to consider. “People have been killed for less.”

  “But Jonah wasn’t killed,” I objected. Even though I knew the legalities involved, I wanted to hear it from an official source. “You said he had a stroke or a heart attack.”

  “It was a heart attack,” Devereaux interrupted. “Myocardial infarction. That’s what the autopsy says, but it doesn’t say what brought it on. If he died during a felony, it’s murder—plain and simple.”

  Devereaux led me to the stairs that came down behind the wall opposite the fireplace and made a 90-degree turn in a tight spiral of six steps. On the wall, inside the stairway was another cannonball hole. It was Jonah’s opening shot before he came tumbling down the stairs. Devereaux studied it, shook his head, and lumbered up the stairs painfully, his bulk swaying from side to side in the narrow stairwell as he pulled himself up by the handrail. Clearly, he was never going to chase cat burglars across the roofs of Paris.

  Halfway up the stairs, Devereaux stopped and turned toward me, one foot on the next step, both hands on the rail. “He must have fired at someone from the top of the stairs. Then he fell down the steps. Doc Pritchard says he had all the bumps and bruises of a good tumble. Maybe he fired as he tripped,” he added and then returned to his ascent. Devereaux was a size larger than Jonah. They were both big men, and the picture I formed in my head of someone that size bouncing down the stairs was not pretty.

  When Devereaux reached the top of the stairs, he turned and pointed an imaginary gun at me. His index finger moved, and he jerked his arm in a gentle pantomime of a recoil.

  “Hard to believe he could miss anyone on the stairs,” he said almost to himself. “If he did, the bullet must have gone right by their ear.”

  He backed up to allow me to pass, then took Jonah’s position at the top of the stairs again, imaginary gun held in a half-raised position. Then he lurched as if tripping and reached for the handrail with his left hand. The gun came up and he “fired” again as his arm swung out. He gave a dissatisfied shake of hi
s head as he studied the stairwell.

  My imagination followed through where Devereaux’s reenactment stopped. I saw Jonah drop the gun to grab the handrail with both hands. His body swung around and, unable to hold his weight, he fell into a backward summersault down the stairs, coming to a jarring stop when his back slammed against the wall at the bottom. A momentary pause, and Jonah rolled down the spiral of steps spilling into the den with his feet still upon the last three steps. The gun, lost in a tangle of arms and legs, bounced down the stairs with him and landed on the floor near his hand—a hand that I could still picture flexing long after the fall.

  Our inspection tour started with the bathroom at the back end of the hallway and worked its way back to the stairwell and beyond to Jonah’s bedroom. Nothing was missing or out of place. I was thorough in my inventory of each room even though I strongly suspected that nothing would be missing. And all during the walk-through, I thought about Jonah’s gun and who could have taken it. Dusty, of course, was still my first choice, but he had made a convincing argument establishing his innocence. When we got to Jonah’s bedroom, I went right to his dresser and reached for the top drawer.

  “You checked in here?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he answered.

  I opened the drawer anyway and peered inside where I had placed the gun a few weeks before. I pushed around among the socks and underwear. No gun.

  “All of the slugs we recovered were forty-fives,” Devereaux said, confirming his earlier guess. “Probably from Jonah’s gun.”

  Devereaux led the way back to the stairs talking all the while. I got the feeling that he was rehashing theories, getting things straight in his mind. I remained silent. I didn’t want to remind him that he might be divulging information to a suspect. Later it occurred to me that he deliberately told me what he wanted me to know, sowing seeds that could flower later in his investigation.

  “This whole business would be so simple if it weren’t for a couple of things. You’d think it would be easy to piece this all together.” He shook his head and lumbered down stairs, leaning heavily on the rail. “Jonah hears something that makes him get a gun out of his sock drawer and carry it to the top of the stairs. He fires a round down the stairway—maybe as he’s falling down the steps, breaking his glasses. At the bottom of the stairs, he gets up and moves to the middle of the room and starts blazing away at things he can’t see because his glasses are in pieces on the steps.”