Deception

by Randy Alcorn

  “Okay, that confirms your theory,” Ray said. “But how does it help us find which of a gazillion Donalds assumed the identity of Noel Barrows?”

  “That’s where it gets good. Check this out.” I pointed to the red dots on the map. “Many Southerners, like Clarence when he was in Mississippi, call any soft drink a Coke. Now look at this—the map shows places where there’s an even split between those who call it soda and those who call it Coke.” I clicked to another page. “In Florida, 45 percent say soda, 46 percent say Coke, and less than 4 percent say pop. You’ve got a population that’s split dead-even between soda and Coke.”

  “So what?” Ray asked.

  “So yesterday I think back to Noel telling me how excited he was about the Miami Hurricanes playing the Florida Gators. Who gets excited about Oregon playing Oregon State? Not people in Florida, right? So I started wondering about a Northwest guy having such a passionate interest in two Florida teams. Yesterday morning, guided by this Internet map, I called a half dozen Florida police stations in areas where it’s an even split between soda and Coke.”

  “I’m impressed with your research,” Ray said.

  “That’s high praise coming from you. Anyway, I’m talking to Detective Gary Hunt, formerly of Tampa, now Miami-Dade County, which includes Miami and surrounding areas. Gary says he grew up calling it soda, but half the people there call every pop a Coke. Once in a while it gets confusing. If he’s at the fridge and somebody requests a Coke, sometimes he clarifies by asking “Coca-cola?”

  “Like Noel did,” Clarence said.

  “I figured maybe it wasn’t a needle in a haystack now, but a needle in a bale of hay. I asked him if he knew of any cases involving a young man named Donald who may have disappeared ten years ago. I said he might have been in trouble, from a rough home, and his girlfriend died in an accident. He said it didn’t ring a bell, but he’d ask around and check the records. Figured I’d never hear back from him. But last night after I came home from Linda Glissan’s, as Mulch and I were eating Polish sausages and sauerkraut, guess who calls.”

  “Detective Hunt,” Clarence said.

  “Turns out there was a young man named Donald Meyer. Twelve years ago he’d been a suspect in the murder of his girlfriend. He’d been cleared, but some thought he was guilty. One day he disappears. Even his own mother claimed she didn’t know where he’d gone. Since he was twenty-one and no longer a suspect, nobody searched for him.”

  “So you think Donald Meyer became Noel Barrows,” Ray said. “But Noel doesn’t have a Florida accent, does he?”

  “Accents can be unlearned,” I said. “Radio people and actors do it all the time. If you assume the identity of a Northwesterner, you retrain your voice.”

  “But if Noel changed his name, Jack must have known.”

  “He did. But he trusted Noel enough not to check him out. Or maybe he checked, but there was no arrest, no charge, no record. Just an investigation. He was cleared.”

  “Why would Jack agree to this identity change?”

  “Wanted to get him into the police academy, save him the hassle of the question marks from Florida. He believed his tale of abuse.”

  “Was Noel’s family abusive?” Clarence asked.

  “I’ll let you know. I fly this afternoon to Miami, to call on Donald Meyer’s mother.”

  59

  “I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children. This child’s disposition is abnormally cruel, merely for cruelty’s sake, and whether he derives this from his smiling father, as I should suspect, or from his mother, it bodes evil of the poor girl who is in their power.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES

  THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 10:30 A.M.

  MIAMI WAS WARM and humid even in January. Gary Hunt had picked me up at the airport Wednesday night and actually had me spend the night at his house, in a room with his two mastiffs, who together outweigh even me and who when we wrestled proved to be a formidable tag team. Gary’s bubbly wife, who made me muffins and a killer breakfast, was very nice, but the dogs were a blast.

  Considering Detective Hunt has plenty of crime of his own to deal with, I was blown away by this degree of cop cooperation, which included hospitality. I scanned their bookshelves, and wouldn’t you know it, there were several Bibles and a bunch of books by C. S. Lewis. And nothing by Bertrand Russell.

  Next morning Gary took me to Miami-Dade County Police Headquarters, gave me keys to the car he’d arranged for me, and handed me a MapQuest printout pointing me to the doorstep of Brenda Meyer, 13.7 miles away.

  The closer I got to the Meyer house, the more my stomach flip-flopped. I finally turned onto the designated street in a run-down neighborhood and drove the exact distance indicated on the map. Seeing no number on a weather-beaten gray house, I parked by the weed-choked yard. A half dozen side boards hung at all angles by single nails. Several were on the ground. The topsy-turvy roof needed redoing years ago.

  No sign there’d been flowers, just dead grass. Front door had been white in a former life, but most of the white had peeled. What remained was a brownish gray. The house was beyond dingy—as if color had chosen to keep its distance.

  The moment Donald Meyer’s mother opened the front door, I smelled the house’s inside. The smell pushed its way out like fresh-baked bread, but it was anything but fresh. Gagged me. I couldn’t identify the smell and didn’t want to.

  The room was somehow misshapen and grotesque. I’m talking about the smell and the room because I don’t want to speak about the woman. But I have to.

  She was all teeth, bones, and gristle. I can’t tell you the color of her eyes, only that they were cold and flinty. I always notice eye color, just as I notice the color of hair roots and whether a man’s sideburns are equal length. But the hardness of her eyes kept their color from registering.

  When she stuck out her hand, it was all rings and knuckles. She was so skeletal she appeared to have died, yet there she was, moving around. It seemed unnatural, indecent. I wanted to leave, to get fresh air. I took care not to turn my back or let down my guard, watching her as she sat on a recliner, stained with who knows what. When she reached for something under a pile of old junk mail, I reached for my Glock. She pulled out a cough drop, used, sticking to newspaper. She put it in her mouth, paper bits and all.

  In the thirty-five years I’ve been a cop, I’ve been deeply afraid maybe just a few dozen times. This was one of them.

  “You came about Donald.”

  Her voice was unnaturally deep, the raspiness suggesting she’d been smoking a few hundred years. I smelled sulfur. No sign of cigarettes or ashtrays. It smelled like garbage had been slow burning for eons.

  “I wondered if he was dead,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Never found the body. Not that they tried.” She didn’t look sad. She didn’t look happy. “What’d you say he calls himself?”

  “Noel.”

  “Last name?”

  “Sorry, I can’t give that now. I promise to tell you later.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t care.”

  Donald’s mother spoke like someone who had to remind herself how to do it, as if she hadn’t talked to a live human being for years. Or hadn’t been a live human being for years.

  As she spoke, I noticed a spider web connecting the left arm of her chair to the seat. A spider in the center was wrapping up an insect. The smell of the room wasn’t cigarette smoke. It was death.

  Speaking of spiders, when she said “they never found the body,” I’d felt those spiders with wet feet again, crawling on the nape of my neck. I had the unnerving feeling that she hadn’t spent much of her existence in one of these tricky little human bodies and had yet to get the hang of it.

  “I was in labor thirty-five hours,” she said. “Donald didn’t want to come out.”

  Looking at her, I couldn’t blame him.

  “He and his brother
were no good. Never should have had them.”

  She said it matter-of-factly.

  “Donald had a brother?”

  “Don’t know where he is either.”

  “Younger or older?”

  She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “Younger.”

  On the walls there were no family pictures, only drab random images, including pictures from magazines that had no place in a home, one with a girl pointing a gun to her head.

  “Donald was never the same after his girlfriend died.”

  “You knew her?”

  “She came over a couple times. That was too many. Never liked her.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Carrie.” She smiled wickedly.

  “He knew her in high school?”

  She nodded.

  “How did she die?”

  “Car accident. Drove herself right off the road, hundred feet down to the rocks.” She grinned. “Stupid girl.”

  “Did you know about a girlfriend Donald had in Oregon?”

  “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout Oregon.”

  I waited, finding it hard to talk. Finally she spoke again.

  “Wasn’t good with girls. Couldn’t keep ’em in line. Couldn’t do much of anything except that stupid golf. Won a few tournaments. I never saw any money. He may as well be dead. What does it matter to me?”

  “He became a cop.”

  “Donald?” She shook her head, in wonder or disgust. For her, the two seemed interchangeable.

  “What was Carrie’s last name?”

  The corners of her mouth lifted slightly. “Graves.”

  “You said Donald had a brother. Never heard him mention a brother.”

  “Bet he never mentioned me neither.”

  He’d mentioned she was dead. Sitting there, I wasn’t sure he’d lied.

  “Did he mention his girlfriends?” She spit the word girl.

  I shook my head.

  “Always had bad luck with girls. Tramps.”

  “Did he have many girlfriends?”

  “Not enough for him. Too many for me.”

  “You said Donald’s brother was younger. How much younger?”

  “Seventeen months.”

  “That’s close.”

  “Too close. Shouldn’t have let them be born. They was always partners in crime.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When they was little, it was harmless. Rodney would distract a store owner while Donald filled his pockets with candy or a radio or something. No big deal.”

  “Sure, no big deal,” I said. Unless you’re the store owner.

  “Later they was always breakin’ in to places. Stole a couple of cars together. Two peas in a pod.” She glanced at a far wall, too dark to see.

  I stood, walked to the wall, and found a small picture. I blew dust off it, took it to a window, and held it to the light. Two teenage boys. Both of them looked like Noel might have fifteen years ago.

  “They could be twins.”

  “People couldn’t tell ’em apart. Sometimes they even tricked me. Thought it was funny fooling their mother. Ungrateful punks. Their daddy beat ’em hard. Shoulda beat ’em harder. Maybe it woulda worked.” She laughed.

  “Mind if I borrow this picture to make a copy?”

  “Keep it.”

  “I’ll send it back. I just want—”

  “Take it. Never want to see ’em again.”

  They peered at the tortured planet through the portal. “There’s so much evil there,” the young man said. “When they sense a supernatural evil, you’d think they’d turn to a supernatural good. My father is burdened not only by injustice but by malevolence. And the disappointment of his unfulfilled dreams.”

  The young man’s mother nodded. “I wish I could have helped your father grasp the truth that one day the wicked will be judged. And one day the paralyzed will know the joy of running in a meadow and the pleasure of swimming. And many of those murdered will stand tall, never knowing dread or suffering again. And His children who seemed robbed of a childhood will know the wonders of eternal adventures on a new earth.”

  “My father longs for exactly what our Father promises. But above all, he longs for Elyon Himself.”

  “We won’t give up on him, will we?” Sharon Chandler asked, putting her arm around him and pulling him to herself.

  “No, Mother,” Chad said, smiling. “We won’t.”

  In the Miami airport that night, I thought I was calling Clarence, but Kendra answered the phone. I’d pressed the wrong button. “Hey,” I said. “I’m in Miami.”

  “Miami? What’re you doing there?”

  “This is crazy for me to ask, and I’m sure it won’t work but … I’m flying back to Portland. I’ll be in at eight o’clock tonight. Any chance you could pick me up at the airport?”

  “Yeah. I could do that.”

  “Outside Delta’s baggage claim?”

  “Sure.”

  After contemplating Donald’s family during a long plane ride, when I got into Kendra’s car, I told her how good it was to see her. And how grateful I was for her and her mother and her sister, wherever she is … and her little brother.

  When I mentioned her mom and Andrea and Chad, Kendra cried. So did I.

  It was a wet ride home.

  THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 9:45 P.M.

  “You know your open-door policy?” I asked Captain Swiridoff, as I stood on his front porch.

  “That’s in my office. This is my house.” He looked at me as if I were homeless and holding a sign: Will solve murders for food.

  “I guess I should invite you in. What’s going on, Detective?”

  “I need a search warrant.”

  He frowned. “Can you be more specific?”

  “I want to go into the home of one of our detectives and examine his shoe.”

  “Which one?”

  “The right shoe. Maybe the left one too.”

  “No, I mean which detective?”

  “Noel Barrows.”

  “I’m listening.”

  After telling him about the photo ID by Melissa’s roommate, Cherianne, and my research into pop, soda, and Coke, he said, “I thought Barrows had a solid alibi for the professor’s murder.”

  “He does. Better than solid.”

  “He couldn’t have been there, right? Jack killed the professor. By himself. Jack admitted it. Jack’s wife vouches for it. Jack killed himself over it. I don’t see what you’re going for.”

  I tried to explain how Jack and Noel, two grown men, sat in that love seat, how I thought they’d scripted it for Linda and Jack was protecting Noel. The captain’s hand wasn’t reaching toward the phone to call a judge for a search warrant.

  I went back to my pop and soda angle, told him about Gary Hunt in Dade County and Noel’s mother, and how Donald aka Noel had been a suspect in the murder of his girlfriend and that he was in Portland when his next girlfriend, Jack’s daughter, died.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Positive.” I told him about Cherianne Takalo.

  He’d been taking notes and flipped back and forth, left hand on his chin. Finally he said, “I’ll get the list of judges.”

  The captain returned with a file and read off several names. We both kept shaking our heads until he got to Ann Sugrue.

  “She’s our woman,” I said.

  Judge Sugrue had granted search warrants when threads of evidence raised significant questions. She didn’t require proof as a condition for attempting to find proof.

  The captain called her. Sugrue told him she’d be in bed at eleven and wouldn’t answer the door after that and said something about her Dobermans and that her husband had been a military sniper. Forty minutes later, at 10:50, we presented the judge with the search warrant draft in which we specified Noel’s shoes and possible glass shards. Because I was also fishing—a term you never use with a judge—we included lots of generalities, including carpet fibers from the crime scene a
nd “documents or photographs demonstrating the suspect’s possible involvement in the murder of William Palatine.” This could include notes, phone numbers, journals, handwritten letters, word processing files, e-mails, and the ever-popular e-mail attachment.

  I wasn’t sure Judge Sugrue would approve it, but her husband and Dobermans and she’d had a long day, so she signed quickly, which is what we look for in a judge unless it’s our personal liberties at stake. I didn’t agonize over this, since the Bill of Rights wasn’t written to ensure murderers’ access to more victims.

  At 11:20, Manny and I and Dan Ekstrom, a uniformed officer, showed up at Noel’s apartment. I couldn’t bring Clarence, in case Noel went ballistic.

  Noel wasn’t home. The apartment manager, upon examining our IDs and getting his reading glasses to go over the warrant, finally unlocked the apartment door and asked us to lock up because he had Sleepless in Seattle on pause and his wife would be getting ticked.

  We entered Noel’s apartment and saw a card table in the middle of the living room, with playing cards faceup in multiple stacks. A completed game of solitaire. The ace of spades sat by itself, in the center.

  Sitting on the table was a black plastic tray with pens, paper clips, a small notepad, and a golf ball. This was directly under a desk lamp with no shade, just a bare hundred-watt light bulb. I turned on the lamp. The light was blinding.

  After wondering about the function of the golf ball, I went into the bedroom for Noel’s shoes. He had eight pairs on his rack. We bagged seven, leaving his slippers and flip-flops.

  Against the far wall of the bedroom was a small desk. In one of the drawers I found a love letter, undated and faded. It contained poetry about misty eyes and yellow hair and tender shoulders. I read it to Manny, which made him uncomfortable. The letter was written in a distinctive blue ink, from a fountain pen. I didn’t need Rupert the Penmeister to tell me that.

  “Color’s royal blue,” I said. “Just like what was injected into the professor. And Palatine wrote this love letter.”

  “The professor was in love with Noel?”