Deception

by Randy Alcorn

  Turns out the witnesses were the real killers. We’d never have known if the one dying hadn’t confessed and offered proof … three years after an innocent man was put to death.

  Maybe there is something as bad as murder and getting away with it—being murdered for a murder you didn’t commit. Since I put him away, that makes me an accessory to murder.

  Bradford Downs’s face wouldn’t be my first choice to fill the back of my eyelids when the lights go out, but some nights there he is.

  So why am I telling you this? Because I didn’t realize that morning at Jimmy Ross’s apartment that nothing was as it appeared. That case was open and shut all right … open and shut on a dead-wrong conclusion. And I fell for the setup. That makes me mad. It makes me even madder that it was only fate or circumstances or luck or providence—whichever you believe in doesn’t matter to me—that made me realize it.

  Portland homicide has five teams, so Manny and I get every fifth murder. It was our next murder, the one fourteen days later, that pulled the rug out from under me. Eventually it woke me to a shocking truth that forever revised the story of Jimmy Ross and Lincoln Caldwell.

  That second murder turned me, my job, and my friendships upside down. It shook all the change out of my pockets. It threatened to bring down a police department, end my career, and place me inside a white chalk outline, with some other homicide detective trying to figure out who murdered me.

  Not one of those 204 cases prepared me for that next murder, where sinister eyes, hidden in the shadows of a violated house, gazed out at me through a broken window. It was the most unconventional and baffling case I’ve ever worked.

  If that’s not enough, my investigation threatened to end the lives of people I cared about.

  And, ultimately, that’s exactly what it did.

  2

  “Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE NAVAL TREATY

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18

  IN THE MORNINGS I go fishing.

  By the side of my bed.

  For clean clothes.

  I seldom catch much.

  This morning, though, I made a great find. Buried under Tuesday’s blue shirt was my favorite flannel, also blue. It was a good omen.

  On mornings when I don’t have to rush, I flip on the coffee, grab two oat-nut English muffins, and follow Mulch onto the back porch, where my toaster is. I toast those suckers until they’re carbon-based life forms. Then I smother them with butter and a thin slice of Limburger cheese. Years ago Sharon banned the toaster to the back porch, far from smoke detectors.

  My next ritual, on lazy mornings, is to quick-fry a couple of eggs and three bacons for Mulch. If I don’t have time to stop at Lou’s Diner, I join Mulch with three eggs and four bacons of my own, splitting the fourth with him. The highlight for Mulch and me is when we get a double yolk.

  I stabbed an egg covered with Tabasco sauce. If there’s a God, thinking up food was one of His best moves. So were dogs. Some of the best friends I’ve ever had were dogs. If I manage not to die soon, I may be good for a couple more. I’m considering Nero, for Nero Wolfe, my favorite detective. Or Archie, for Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s legman.

  The more people I’ve met, the more I’ve come to appreciate my dog. After Sharon died, Mulch was developing male pattern baldness. I was afraid he’d contracted some fatal dog disease, so I stopped giving him beer and bacon for a couple of weeks. That just made him grouchy. Then one day, running my hand over his head, I noticed a wad of fur between my fingers. I realized I’d been petting him within an inch of his life.

  And you know what? He would gladly have become a bald bullie for me. That’s more love than I’ve known from anybody. Beside Jake Woods, my best human friend. And Sharon, of course. Without Sharon I don’t hang out or play cards or see movies with couples anymore. When I’m with them, I can’t stop thinking about her. It’s like the hole your tongue keeps going to when you’ve lost a tooth.

  One fall day four years ago I was walking Mulch at Laurelhurst Park, where you can let your dog off-leash in a designated area. I unhooked him early. He went after a squirrel. I chased him. Rounding a big fir, I saw Mulch, who’d forgotten the squirrel, beeline to a park bench. He trotted right up to a guy in a business suit, whose back was to me, and hiked his leg on him. For a moment the guy didn’t notice, then he looked down and swore at my dog, kicking his rear.

  Then I saw the man’s face. It was Edward Lennox, the brand new chief of police, talking with Portland’s mayor, the distinguished Garrison Branch. I stayed behind the tree and whistled. Mulch ran around it, passing me. I chased him through some rhodies, and we both slipped down into a thick grassy area piled with old leaves, where he licked my face mercilessly. That’s when I nicknamed him Mulch.

  We walked back to our car the long way. I took Mulch to Burgerville and bought him a Tillamook cheeseburger. Got one for myself to keep him company and gave him the last gulp of my blackberry shake.

  In the years since, as Chief Lennox has led our police force, I’ve come to realize that Mulch, from the beginning, was an extraordinary judge of character. Lennox has been chief of police five years. In dog years, that’s thirty-five, but it feels like more. For most Portland cops, his reign has been a long, cold winter.

  By the time I read the paper and took Mulch for a walk and changed the oil in my Taurus, it was lunchtime. Mulch’s stomach growled. I checked the cupboard. Hiding behind the Ovaltine were the cans of Dinty Moore beef stew and SpaghettiOs. Sharon was wine, shrimp salad, Perrier, and asparagus. I’m beer, pizza, cream soda, and SpaghettiOs.

  Not a day goes by when I don’t wish she were here to give me a hard time about SpaghettiOs.

  An hour later I crossed the Hawthorne Bridge, turned left on First, and pulled into the parking garage on my right, opening the gate with my precinct key card. I parked, then walked to the northwest corner, crossed Madison to the north, then Second Street to the west and entered the Justice Center, home of the Portland Police Bureau. I veered to the elevators. The uniformed officer nodded. Since most of this building is a jail, with a 676-inmate capacity, his job’s more important than it appears.

  The elevator gives only five options for the sixteen floors. Floors 2 and 3 are courtrooms, 4 to 11 jail floors, accessible only by authorized personnel.

  Twelfth floor’s intelligence, identification, juvenile, and narcotics. Thirteenth floor’s the DA’s office and Internal Affairs, where for six months I spent more time than I care to remember. They’d gotten bad information from the Tribune and went after my scalp.

  I pushed fourteen for detective division. It has only one place the general public can go—the reception desk, with a thick bulletproof window and no door that opens from the outside. All the detectives hang their hats here, everyone from robbery and pawnshop details to homicide.

  I hadn’t even made it through security before Mitzie called, “Chief needs to see you.”

  “Let me get settled first.”

  “His assistant said it’s urgent.”

  “Does that mean I’ll have to wait one hour instead of two?”

  I went to my workstation and looked out the huge windows, soaking in the panoramic view of Portland. It all seemed so tranquil from up there. So ordered and peaceful. Years ago it was just a bunch of buildings to me. Now it’s more than that. Feels like nothing should escape your sight up here. Ironic that such a grand view is from homicide. My job takes me lower to the ground, where things aren’t so lofty and inspiring.

  I retraced my steps to the elevator and pushed floor 15, home of the chief of police’s office and the media room. If any chief ever wanted to be near media, it was Lennox.

  After passing through security, I was escorted into the waiting area outside the chief’s office. It brought back memories of when a cop could walk right through the chief’s open door. Now who’d want to?

  I saw on the walls three paintings, two of which wer
e classical, with people centuries old wearing funny hats and looking serene. The other was vague and surreal, the type I saw in a gallery that Sharon made me go to in retaliation for pretending I had the flu so I could watch a play-off game and miss her family gathering. They were paintings you had to develop a taste for. I was still at the gag reflex stage.

  The chief’s assistant, Mona, fifty-five trying to look thirty-five, marched toward me. Her perfume arrived three seconds before she did. Her aide, twenty-five trying to look thirty-five, walked eighteen inches behind her, leaning forward to hear every word.

  “Sit,” Mona said. “Chief Lennox will be with you soon. He’s on an important phone call.”

  I started to sit in a chair facing away from the chief’s office.

  “No,” Mona said, waving her hand, propelling the perfume toward me like nerve gas. “There, on the couch. Chief Lennox prefers people to sit on the couch. But you must take off that raincoat.”

  “It’s a trench coat. Columbo wore a raincoat. Sam Spade wore a trench coat … and a fedora.” I waved my hat at her.

  Her assistant looked curious, but Mona Estée Lauder, lip curled, looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon? Raincoats are to trench coats what a minivan is to a sports car.” I posed dramatically, like a fashion model on the runway. “Notice the ten buttons, epaulets, shoulder straps, and D rings. In the inside pocket we have—”

  “It’s wet and it stinks. Keep it off the couch.” Mona marched off, her assistant smiling back at me. The younger woman was too new to realize she didn’t need to be cordial with working stiffs who put away bad guys. She could save her smiles for journalists and the public.

  I sat down, still wearing the coat. I gazed across the corridor into the inner sanctum—throne room of the King of Police.

  A long man with a big jaw threw his voice at the speaker phone on his desk, leaning toward it, bawling it out. He was gangly and mechanical. Yet his voice was smooth and commanding, a radio voice, the kind that comes in handy for banana republic dictators and Eastern European tyrants.

  “That’s not going to cut it,” Lennox said. “Those dogs won’t bark.” A few minutes later I heard, “He’s dumb as a post.”

  The chief’s king of clichés. What next, I wondered? Soft as a baby’s bottom?

  His office, I knew from prior visits, was the size of a tennis court, his private bathroom big enough for Ping-Pong.

  On the coffee table in front of me were a number of magazines, including the New Yorker, with its stupid highbrow comics, and Architectural Digest. No cop, gun, or sports magazines. Four news and two home decor periodicals.

  Next to me was a lamp stand with an eight-by-ten photo of the chief, his wife, and presumably his teenage daughter. What it was doing out here I didn’t know, but maybe it was a statement: “All this is my turf.”

  I studied the photo of the Lennox family. The chief looked noble, refined, confident—right down to the perfect triangle of the handkerchief folded in his suit coat pocket. He looked far better in the picture than in real life. Maybe somebody had altered his face in Photoshop. Or maybe it was his makeup.

  His wife, prim as her husband, had the smile of a woman who’s looked at more cameras than books. The teenager had too many rings in her face. Beneath the hardware she was pretty but looked miserable. Her face screamed, “Let me out of this picture!” If I had that much metal in my skin, I’d feel lousy too.

  If this is the picture they chose, I’d hate to see the rejects.

  It made me think of Kendra, my younger daughter. When she was a little girl, she couldn’t get enough of me. That all stopped as a teenager. She’s thirty now and lives in Beaverton, on Portland’s west side. Fourteen miles away. Might as well be Neptune, which as far as I know is still a planet.

  When she turned fourteen, Kendra became an explosive compound of hormones and acne, replete with habitual eye-rolling and a terminal case of protruding lip. At fifteen, she was a walking melodrama. She lived in two modes: despondency and rampage. Whichever she was currently in, I always longed for the other. I lost her at sixteen. I was told it was just a phase, that she’d come back. She never did.

  This couch had known a thousand posteriors, and so far it had spent forty minutes getting to know mine. This was Lennox World, and I was but a bit player in it. He strutted around his office, in front of the framed awards, trophies, and VIP photographs visible from the hall. One with Clinton, one with Bush. He had his bases covered.

  Why the open door? He had to have an audience. People kept passing by, glancing into the inner sanctum. They could remark at the dinner table, “I saw the chief of police today. He smiled at me.”

  I crossed and uncrossed my legs, trying to invent a new way of doing it. Why was I here? Students get called to the principal for two reasons. One I’ve seen in a Hallmark commercial but never experienced: The boss wants to congratulate you. The second reason: You’re in trouble. That one I know. I felt like a fly called to meet with the spider.

  Ten feet away, Lennox’s voice rose, dripping with disdain. Apparently some minion was daring to question him. “There’s no way that’s going to happen. Learn to live with it. No pain, no gain. Am I clear on that point?”

  He had little hair but plenty of jaw, which is more important in police work. I’m talking Jay Leno jaw. And teeth that had more man-hours invested in them than the Hoover Dam. Why not? Teeth are a politician’s greatest asset, and the chief was a PR man. He’d grinned his way to the top.

  Our police department doesn’t exist merely as an arm of law and justice. We exist to further the chief’s reputation, make him look good, and allow Portland to be a stepping-stone toward his lifelong dream of being Chicago chief of police.

  At that moment, two cameramen and a television reporter walked by. They slowed outside the chief’s office. He smiled broadly and waved to them. One of the cameramen gave him an “okay if I shoot?” look. The chief nodded and smiled warmly, oblivious to the poor sap on the other end of the phone.

  “He’s really a fun guy,” the reporter said.

  There isn’t a cop I know who’d call him a fun guy.

  While peering in at Lennox, I caught sight of his full-length mirror. A cop with a full-length mirror? I wondered how many hours he’d watched himself, practicing looking natural.

  I saw my face in the lower corner of the mirror. I stuck out my tongue. Then I held up my hand, moving thumb and fingers together in a yakety-yak. The chief turned and looked at me. I went seamlessly into a wave, smiling at him.

  Anyway I hoped it was seamless.

  The chief emphatically hung up and walked toward his door.

  I looked at my watch. I’d been sitting fifty-three minutes.

  “Sorry for the wait,” he said, not sounding sorry. “It was important.”

  “So I was told.”

  He didn’t offer his hand, which was fine with me since shaking it would have required touching him.

  “Time gets away from you in a job like this.”

  “No problem. I’m just working a murder investigation. No need to hurry on my account.”

  The chief looked me over like you do a bad piece of fruit. “I’m the chief of police. I have many important responsibilities.”

  We stared at each other to see who would blink. I stared at his mostly bald head. Despite his Mexico vacations and tanning booth visits, it had a gray pall. The slight sheen reminded me of a steelhead fresh out of the river. I saw slight streaks of makeup, a big joke among the cops. The chief lived for his photo ops.

  I looked at his eyes, the color of last week’s barbecue coals. Like a propane stove, they could be turned off and on. Right now they were off. “You’re still wearing that raincoat.”

  “Trench coat.”

  “You wear it to defy me, don’t you?”

  “I wear it because the classic detectives wore it. It helps create the mood, the mindset.”

  “You look like an oddba
ll.”

  “Maybe Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe looked like oddballs, but they did their job. I do mine.”

  “This isn’t a novel. This is the real world.”

  “We’re all inspired by different things.” I gestured at his artwork, none of which inspired me.

  “All right, Chandler … I know we have some history. We need to get on the same team, lock arms.” He invited me into his office with a sweeping gesture, like I was entering the home of the pope, Vince Lombardi, or Chuck Norris.

  “Sit down,” he said, shutting the door. “I’m going to tell you the unvarnished truth. These are challenging times. We need to set aside our differences for the greater good.”

  I knew whose greater good he meant. Still, I sensed a conciliatory tone. What’s up with that?

  “I have an idea I want to bounce off you.”

  Lennox didn’t bounce ideas off you; he dumped them on you. Something was up.

  “I told you to sit down,” he said.

  “I’ve got a back spasm. Been sitting too long.”

  “Sit down.”

  I’m three inches taller than the chief, and he doesn’t like looking up at me. I stretched myself on tiptoes for about five seconds, then sat.

  “What’s that smell?” He leaned down, two feet from my face.

  I ran through the options: coffee, beer, smoke from Rosie O’Grady’s pub, Limburger cheese on my morning muffin, Jade East, English Leather Lime. Since I hadn’t worn the last two since I was a junior higher, I finally said, “My gum? Black Jack?”

  “It smells terrible. And it leaves a black film on your teeth.”

  “That’s licorice.”

  “I’ve been looking through your file,” he said. “Before I took over, you were cited for ‘inappropriate levity.’ Do you recall why?”