Deception

by Randy Alcorn

  Come to think of it, I don’t know how Sharon ended up with me. When Tommi drew Cimmatoni’s name, he set his jaw and said, “I’m not answering.”

  “Why not?” Sarge asked.

  “I have my reasons.”

  “If you have an answer that clears you,” I asked, “how will it be helped by aging?”

  “I need to think about it.”

  “When people need to think about it, it’s to get their lies straight.”

  Cimmatoni might not have killed Palatine, but if looks could kill, I’d have keeled over on the spot.

  “He doesn’t look happy,” Ray said, which was like saying water looks wet. “He never answered?”

  “Nope. If he has an alibi, he’s not talking.”

  “What do you think?” Ray asked. “Could Cimmatoni kill Palatine? And Frederick? And the academic dean?”

  “He could kill a man in a heartbeat,” I said, “if he thought he had good reason to and could get away with it. He worked vice and sex crimes for years. Transferred to homicide four years ago.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Because he likes to see dead people?”

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Clarence asked.

  “It’s like studying game film,” I said. “There’s a lot to see. Isolate it. What do you notice about their sitting positions and eye contact and body language? A murderer’s always interested in discussions of a murder, just like a home run hitter’s interested in discussions of his home run. Even more, since his life could be on the line.”

  Ray pointed at the screen. “Tommi and Noel look casual. Jack and Cimmatoni interested. But I’d say there’s extreme interest by Kim Suda, Chris Doyle, and Brandon Phillips. Look where Phillips is seated. Freeze that frame.”

  “He’s on the front of his chair,” I said. “The front eight inches. Why? Nervousness, uncertainty, fear? He’s extremely absorbed.”

  We did this for two hours, starting and stopping, rewinding and commenting, each of us, especially Clarence, jotting down notes. We were only halfway through and it was three o’clock.

  “Snack break,” Ray said, reading my mind. He threw stuff in the oven while Clarence and I made phone calls. Minutes later we were at Ray’s kitchen table, eating Hot Pockets sausage and pepperoni pizza snacks.

  “We’ve got a ways to go,” I said. “Let’s watch while we eat.”

  Thirty seconds later I pushed pause again.

  “You can enlarge this?” I asked Ray.

  “Who you interested in?”

  “Noel. He keeps looking down. Why?”

  Ray fast-forwarded until Cimmatoni got up for a drink. Suddenly there was a clear view of Noel. Ray zoomed in.

  “He’s reading something. A magazine I think,” Clarence said.

  Ray enlarged it as far as he could. “The picture has lots of green and blue above it. Something yellow there and a little white object and a—”

  “It’s a golf green,” I said. “He’s reading a golf magazine. Figures. In Noel’s mind, work’s for people who don’t know how to golf.”

  “What about that guy?” Clarence asked, grabbing the remote and freezing the frame on one man.

  “Brilliant, athletic, witty, uncommonly handsome,” I said. “Oliver Justice Chandler. Look at that kisser. What does it say?”

  “That you need more sleep,” Clarence said.

  “Question,” Ray said. “Has Tommi ever had a romantic relationship with any of these guys?”

  “Ten years ago she had something with Phillips,” I said. “He’s on his second marriage since then. Anyway, Tommi’s no whiner, but she got hurt. Felt like Phillips used her, I think.”

  “She reliable?”

  “Tommi? Cal Ripken reliable.”

  “Married?”

  “Yeah. Her husband Peter’s a veterinarian.”

  Tommi offered her alibi in the video. “Peter and I were home alone. Went to bed probably by 10:30. We talked and read.”

  “Talked and read?” Cimmatoni grunted.

  “We love to talk—we’re soul mates.”

  She took ribbing for this.

  “Well, we are,” she said. “On our five-year anniversary, I put on my wedding dress and Peter rented a tux, and we stood in the same spot we were married.”

  In the secretarial pool they would have said, “How sweet.” Homicide is not the secretarial pool.

  Tommi’s alibi was simple, straightforward, and the next worst alibi to “I was home alone.” It meant that only one other person needed to lie besides her. And that person happened to be her soul mate.

  When I asked his alibi, Karl Baylor said, “Tiffany and I were on a marriage retreat. At the Gresham Holiday Inn.”

  “Just that night?”

  “Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Wednesday we visited friends from church, in their room.”

  “Write down their names, would you?” I felt the ice, not as much from Karl as from Tommi.

  “What time did you go back to your room?”

  “10:30? 10:45?”

  “And you just … went to bed?”

  “Lights out at eleven or so, I guess.”

  “That was it?”

  “One final session after breakfast the next morning. I didn’t see the paper. When we were driving home Thursday, we heard about the moider on the radio.”

  Tommi drew Jack Glissan’s name.

  “Jack’s like the coach every guy loves, the one who brings out the best in them. Mind like a steel trap. Last month he took me out to dinner for the twentieth anniversary of the first day we worked together as partners. Not perfect, but I’d trust my life to him. I have. Heck, we were in a bowling league together.”

  “That settles it,” Clarence said. “Killers don’t bowl.”

  “Could Jack be a killer?” I asked. “Anybody could be. Ray could be the killer. His phone number was in the professor’s desk. I could be the killer.”

  “Could you?” Clarence said.

  “I don’t mean in this case.” I hoped my face didn’t look like my gut felt. “But with a strong motive, like if somebody pilfered my Fritos …” I eyed my plate, then Ray.

  “I only took two.”

  “It starts with two, then it’s a bag, then it’s my car, and next my retirement funds.”

  “I bought that bag of Fritos,” Ray said.

  “Once they landed on my plate they became mine. That’s the law.”

  “Can we get back to Jack Glissan?” Clarence asked.

  “Jack’s retiring in the next year or two. Loves to golf, travel with Linda. I don’t think he’d do that to her—run the risk of leaving her alone if he was caught.”

  On the video, Jack told the same story Phillips had, sitting in his living room and Linda coming downstairs and seeing them after eleven.

  All in all, some detectives had convincing alibis and some weak ones. But what alibi can you expect for ten thirty until midnight? Playing poker with a half dozen federal judges?

  Sitting on Ray’s couch I was lost in this thought, then realized one last question remained on the video. I groped for the remote, which had slipped behind a cushion.

  “What’s your alibi, Chandler?” Doyle spouted off.

  I almost pressed fast-forward but knew how it would look.

  “At Rosie O’Grady’s pub.”

  “Figures,” Cimmatoni said. “How late?”

  “Got there at nine, then drove straight home.” As I said it, Wally’s Donuts, one of them in particular, filled my brain. For all I knew, I’d been abducted by aliens. The hours were missing.

  “Then what?”

  “Went to bed, slept until I got the call about the moider.” I eyed Baylor and pulled a chuckle from Jack.

  “So you don’t have an alibi?”

  “Just my dog, Mulch.”

  “I called you from Jack’s just after eleven,” Phillips said. “You didn’t answer your cell or your home phone. I’d seen you leaving Rosie’s before I went to Jack’s, and yo
u didn’t look—”

  “I didn’t feel like answering,” I said. Never mind that I didn’t remember the phone ringing … or being home to hear it ring.

  Clarence and Ray both looked at me silently. The tape finished five minutes later. I turned it off when Sarge dismissed the group. Ray restarted it to watch people’s reactions after the meeting. I could feel the same chill in the air as I had that morning. Not one person talked to me—except Tommi, who doesn’t count since she would tell Charles Manson to have a nice day.

  “Wish we had tapes of their private conversations afterward,” Ray said.

  “This hasn’t made you popular,” Clarence said.

  I shook my head. “Law enforcement’s most sacred credo, on a par with don’t shoot innocent bystanders, is don’t tell on another cop. Nobody seems willing to take care of cops. People take cheap shots at us. The Tribune comes to mind. So, as they say, ‘we take care of our own.’ You’re not supposed to violate that. I’ve crossed the line. And there’s no going back.”

  “One way or the other,” Ray said, “somebody’s going to make you pay.”

  26

  “It is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12

  WHEN IT COMES TO RELATIONSHIPS, I’m like a battery-operated screwdriver that has to be recharged for twenty-four hours to be useful for ten minutes.

  For twenty years, whole weeks of my family life went by without my family. All things considered, it’s amazing our marriage lasted. Sharon gets the credit. I didn’t deserve my wife. And she didn’t deserve me. She deserved a lot better. I’m ashamed to say I love her more now than I did when she was alive. I’d like to tell her I’m sorry.

  Part of me says there’s no way I’ll ever see my wife again. One, there may be no heaven. Two, if there is a heaven, I won’t be there.

  As for Kendra, there’s a hint of progress. I keep calling her. She doesn’t seem to resent me as much. I’m holding my breath because one wrong move and I may not see her for another two years. I told her again I’d do what I could to help with the baby. Kendra may be there to choose my nursing home. But I wonder how much I’ll see her between now and then.

  We met at the parking garage. Jake would drive us out in the country, past Sandy to Calamity Jane’s, a great burger place. We figured we’d take a break from Lou’s and use the extra drive time to discuss the case.

  Before Jake got us across the Morrison Bridge, I decided to stir things up.

  “Why would anyone want to go to heaven? When my grandmother spoke about heaven, it was the last place I wanted to go. Who wants to be a ghost anyway? My idea of utopia was a place like earth, where you could have fun and ride bikes and play baseball and go deep into the forest and dive into lakes and eat good food.”

  “Sounds to me like the new earth,” Clarence chimed in from the backseat.

  “Exactly,” Jake said. “The Bible says the heaven we’ll live in forever will be a new earth, this same earth without the bad stuff. God doesn’t give up on His original creation. He redeems it. And we’ll have these same bodies made better. The Bible teaches the exact opposite of what you’re saying—we won’t be ghosts. We’ll eat and drink and be active on a redeemed earth.”

  “So you’ll still be Jake Woods?” I asked.

  “Yeah—without the bad parts. We’ll be able to enjoy creation’s beauty and rule the world the way God intended us to. Baseball and riding bikes? Why not?”

  Clarence leaned forward. “The thing you want is exactly what God promises. Earth with all the good and none of the bad. Heaven on earth.”

  “Wish I could believe that.”

  “What’s stopping you?” Jake asked.

  “Same song, different verse. A world of injustice and suffering is part of it. Another part is hypocrite Christians.”

  “Okay,” Jake said, “suppose there is a God and Jesus really died on the cross for people’s sins. Suppose He rose from the grave and offers eternal life to everybody who trusts Him.”

  “That’s a lot to suppose.”

  “And suppose there really is a devil. Now, if you were the devil, what would you do to keep people from believing in Christ?”

  “Never thought about it.”

  “I know what I’d do. I’d get people to claim they’re Christians when they aren’t. I’d get them to do terrible things in Christ’s name. Then I’d try to persuade unbelievers to focus on those terrible things done by so-called Christians, instead of on the wonderful things done by Jesus. Then I’d try to get Christians to be self-righteous hypocrites who don’t care about the needy, but only themselves.”

  “You’re blaming the devil for what Christians do? Like the Crusades?”

  “I’m saying the devil’s behind lots of evil, yeah, but so are people. And I’m saying people can claim to be Christians even though they aren’t. And sure, people can be real Christians and mess up, big time. But true, humble followers of Jesus are everywhere, and if you knew them, Ollie, you’d be drawn to Christ. If not for Clarence’s sister being murdered, you’d never have met Obadiah Abernathy. You wouldn’t have been touched by him because you wouldn’t even know he existed.”

  “He was one of a kind,” I said.

  “Actually,” Clarence said, “there are plenty of good-hearted, humble, and lovable Christians like my daddy. All the attention falls on false Christians or loudmouths or hypocrites. But the gospel’s about Jesus.”

  “The fact remains: Some Christians are mean and hateful. I’ve met them.”

  “So have I,” Clarence said. “Read some of those Christian blogs, and look at how they love to gang up on people, kicking them with their words when half the time they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “Christians can be jerks,” Jake said. “We’re unanimous on that one. Sometimes they’re just nominal Christians. Other times they may be real Christians full of flaws. I have plenty myself.”

  “At least you admit it,” I said.

  “But it makes no sense,” Jake said, “to reject Jesus because some of His followers are hypocrites. The Bible never says that to be saved you have to believe in Christians. It says you have to believe in Jesus.”

  “I still don’t want to be associated with judgmental hypocrites.”

  “It’s pretty judgmental to call all of us Christians hypocrites, isn’t it?” Clarence asked. “Speaking of which, if you discovered other detectives were withholding evidence because they thought it had been planted against them, wouldn’t you say they were wrong for covering it up?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “By your own standards you—Oliver Justice Chandler—have been unjust. That’s hypocrisy, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I don’t claim to be godly.”

  “You claim to love justice, don’t you? Yet you violate standards of justice. Lots of people, including you, don’t live consistently with what they profess to believe. Christians don’t have a monopoly on hypocrisy. The justice you believe in is good, even when you violate it, right? Well, the Jesus that Christians believe in is good, even when we violate His teachings. Even when we’re hypocrites.”

  It’s scary when Jake and Clarence make sense.

  “Mind if I change the subject?” I said. “I’ve been thinking about our murderer. This guy doesn’t kill as a last resort. It’s become a habit.”

  “Which puts you in danger,” Clarence said. “You could have been killed.”

  I shrugged it off. “I’m still kicking, aren’t I?” We pulled into the Calamity Jane’s parking lot. I could taste the County Fair Burger, smothered in grilled onions. I jumped out of the car, eager to get moving.
As we walked to Jane’s door, I said, “To catch a killer, you have to think like a killer. If the killer’s a bricklayer, you have to think like a bricklayer, know how he’d kill someone. In this case, you have to think like a homicide detective. The bad news is, any homicide detective is going to be tough to catch because he knows the ropes. The good news is, I’m a homicide detective, so I know how they think. But we’ve had three deaths and a shotgun blast through my window. I’ve got to do something to get ahead of this guy.”

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 6:00 P.M.

  Clad in an extra-large A&E Nero Wolfe T-shirt and my blue plaid boxers, I sprawled back on my faded brown recliner. With a plate of Ritz crackers on my lap, a jar of Skippy peanut butter between my saggy white knees, and a tall glass of milk in my right hand, I was unlikely to make the cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly.

  I plunged into my Wolfe book, Over My Dead Body, enjoying the artistry of Rex Stout, who as far as I’m concerned is twice the writer Faulkner ever was (not that I’ve ever read Faulkner).

  After finishing a chapter, I rewarded myself by spreading Skippy on Ritz. I wasn’t sure there was a heaven, or the heaven on earth Jake and Clarence said was coming, but this might be a foretaste.

  Mulch was working peanut butter off the roof of his mouth. Suddenly he froze, his tail rigid. He stared out the dining room window looking out on my backyard. I heard a slight growl, then the first of dozens of loud barks. He ran to the back door and scratched. I looked outside the window. Nothing.

  Mulch has conned me into checking the backyard for intruders countless times, and I wasn’t about to fall for it again. I finally managed to calm him down.

  Sitting back in my recliner, I thought I heard a creak on the back porch, the sort of creak that bothers women, like Sharon, who thought that every noise required an explanation. Being a man, I ignored it.

  I leaned the Nero Wolfe book against my chest, dabbed my knife into the peanut butter, lifted the cracker to my lips, then bit slowly. Oh, yeah.