Beyond the Truth

by Bruce Robert Coffin

  Vanos glanced over at the guards, but neither were looking in their direction. He turned his attention back to Cavallaro. “Why the cop?”

  “They think he was involved.”

  “Do you?”

  Cavallaro shrugged. “I don’t know. It is a hell of a coincidence.”

  “When do they want it done?”

  “As soon as possible. How much is this gonna cost me, Derrick?”

  Vanos’s lips twisted into a cruel grin. “Let’s call this one a gift.”

  Chapter 8

  Monday, 11:30 a.m.,

  January 16, 2017

  Byron, Luke Gardiner, and Scott Henderson were all seated in the guidance counselor’s office.

  Henderson was tall for his age. Six feet and sinewy with a face covered in freckles, he reminded Byron of Patrick Renna, who played the catcher in The Sandlot.

  Prior to conducting the interviews, Byron had instructed Gardiner to surreptitiously photograph each of the students’ shoes using his cellphone camera. Gardiner would pretend to check his phone as he took the photos. Seizing the shoes or asking to look at them would only serve to tip off the students if they were still in possession of the pair worn during the robbery.

  “I’m assuming you know why we’re here, Scott,” Byron said. “You have heard about what happened to Thomas Plummer last night, correct?”

  “Of course I have. Everyone’s heard about it,” Henderson said. “Can’t believe you guys killed Tommy.”

  “He was fleeing the scene of an armed robbery, Scott,” Byron said, incredulous at the teenager’s comment. “Any idea who he might have been with?”

  “Nope. All I can tell you is it wasn’t me. I was home all night. You can check with my mom, if you don’t believe me.”

  “Now why wouldn’t we believe you, Scott?” Gardiner asked.

  Henderson scoffed at the question.

  Byron slid a blank piece of paper and pen toward Henderson. “Write down her phone number and we’ll call her.”

  “What? Right now? She’s at work. She’ll be pissed if you call her now.”

  “It’s your call, Scott,” Gardiner said. “We either call her to confirm your whereabouts last night, or we can show up at her workplace and ask her. What do you think, Sarge?”

  “I bet her employer will be delighted that we stopped by,” Byron said, playing along.

  Henderson sighed. “All right.” He scribbled a number onto the paper and shoved it back toward Byron. “Here. But she’s gonna be mad as hell.”

  “We’ll chance it,” Byron said as he handed the sheet of paper to Gardiner. “I’ll hang here with Mr. Henderson while you check. We’ve still got a few things to talk over. Don’t we, Scott?”

  Byron spent the next ten minutes grilling Henderson on anything he might know about other robberies that Plummer may have done, or where Tommy might have come by a handgun. The delinquent teen either didn’t know or was already proficient at lying. Byron even checked Henderson’s phone but all the information had been wiped clean, call history, text messages, everything. Byron came away with nothing but attitude. And Henderson’s mother had backed up his alibi. According to her, Scott had been home all day Sunday, throughout Sunday night. Scott had failed to mention that he had been grounded the previous week. As he watched Henderson walk out of the office, Byron couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before the smug teenager would find himself acquainted with the adult version of the criminal justice system.

  Following Henderson’s return to class, Rogers personally escorted Abdirahman Ali to the detectives.

  “Have a seat, Abdirahman,” Byron said, gesturing across the table. Rogers had been right about Ali. He was tall but thin.

  Gardiner stood leaning casually with one shoulder against the wall and his arms folded. “Hey, Abdi,” he said. “Remember me?”

  “Yes. Officer Luke. How are you?”

  Ali was stoic but polite, and didn’t appear the least bit nervous.

  “Do you know why we’re here, Abdi?” Gardiner continued.

  Ali nodded. “Is it about Tommy? They made a morning announcement saying that he died last night.”

  “Yes,” Byron said. “He was shot and killed fleeing the scene of an armed robbery.”

  Ali said nothing.

  “Did you know Tommy very well?” Byron asked.

  Ali nodded again. “We played basketball together.”

  “That’s right,” Byron said. “I understand you’re the only underclassman on the varsity team. Congratulations.”

  Ali’s sullen expression brightened a bit. “Thanks.”

  “Did you only know Tommy from playing basketball or did you hang out with him outside of school too?”

  “Mostly basketball. Tommy was a senior. Seniors don’t hang out with sophomores.”

  Byron smiled for Ali’s benefit. “I guess they don’t.”

  Ali turned his head toward Gardiner. “Is it true that Officer Haggerty was the officer who killed Tommy? That’s what everyone is saying.”

  Byron answered for him. “I’m afraid it is true, Abdi.”

  “Did you ever know Tommy to carry a weapon?” Gardiner asked.

  “No,” Abdi said.

  “You’re sure?” Byron asked.

  “I am sure,” Ali said, although his tone suggested otherwise.

  “Aren’t you at all curious about the kind of weapon?” Gardiner asked.

  Ali looked over at the newly minted detective. “Why would it matter? I never saw him with any weapons.”

  Gardiner grinned at the young man’s attempt at projecting an attitude.

  “Where were you last night?” Byron asked, shifting gears.

  “At home. Studying.”

  “All night?”

  Ali nodded.

  “I didn’t catch that,” Byron said, cupping a hand behind his ear for effect.

  “Yes. I was home all night.”

  “Can anyone verify that?” Byron asked.

  Ali shrugged. “My parents didn’t get home until late.”

  “Then you were home alone?” Gardiner said.

  “Nadi, my younger sister, was home too.”

  “N-a-d-i?” Byron asked, pausing to enter the name in his notepad.

  “It’s short for Nadiifo.”

  “Do you have a cellphone, Abdi?” Byron asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “May we see it?”

  Ali began to reach into his pants pocket, then stopped. “Why do you wanna see my phone?”

  “I’m just a curious guy,” Byron said. “Curious about why you wouldn’t want to show it to me. Is there something on there you don’t want us to see?”

  Ali’s Adam’s apple bounced up and down. “No.”

  “Did you call or text Tommy recently?” Byron asked.

  “No.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about, right?” Gardiner said.

  Ali pulled the cell out of his pocket and, after punching in the key code, handed it to Byron.

  Byron went right to the text history. It was blank. He glanced up at Ali, but said nothing. He punched up the call history and voicemail, and just like Henderson’s phone it had been erased. Byron recorded the cell number into his notebook, then handed it back to Ali.

  “Know what else I’m curious about, Abdi?”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’m curious about why you would erase all the history from your phone.”

  Ali shrugged again. “I do it all the time. Can’t be too careful about your phone falling into the wrong hands.”

  “That you can’t,” Byron said, grinning. “That you can’t.”

  Byron and Gardiner drove away from Portland High School with a list of every student on the varsity boys’ basketball team, two alibis, and the address of the Eastern Halal Market, the business owned by Abdirahman Ali’s parents. Tommy Plummer’s other known associate, Mohammed Sayed, reportedly down with the flu, would have to wait. Byron checked
the time and wondered why he hadn’t heard anything from Diane about Mayor Gilcrest’s press conference.

  “What do you think, Sarge?” Gardiner asked. “Nate looked a little nervous.”

  “Yeah, he did,” Byron said. “Had an answer for everything too.”

  They had interviewed Nate Freeman last. Freeman should have been a senior like Tommy Plummer, but he’d been held back a year due to his grades. Unlike the other two, Freeman didn’t own a cellphone. Like the others, he claimed to have no knowledge of the robbery. Freeman claimed to have been at home all night watching a movie. Said his mom was home too.

  “Starship Troopers,” Gardiner said. “You ever see it?”

  “Missed that one,” Byron said.

  “It’s good. And it’s available on Netflix.”

  “Which means what?” Byron asked.

  “If you have the streaming service, you can watch it anytime.”

  “Streaming?”

  “Yeah, it’s like movies on demand. Like they have in hotels. You find the one you want to watch and it just plays.”

  Byron considered it for a moment. “Then we really wouldn’t know for sure if he was watching it Sunday night, right?”

  “I guess. There should be playback history. He’s always been such a quiet and polite kid though. Hard to believe that he would have been involved in something like this.”

  During Byron’s twenty-two years on the job, many people had said the exact same thing about one suspect or another. If there was one thing police work had taught him, it was to never underestimate what people are capable of. He’d met many good people who had done some pretty horrible things. The priests of Byron’s youth had been fond of saying that God forgives us our sins. Byron wondered which of Tommy Plummer’s friends might need absolution.

  “What’s up with the cellphones being erased?” Gardiner asked. “You ever see anything like that?”

  “Not with teenagers,” Byron said. He wondered if they’d have better luck with Plummer’s phone.

  The Eastern Halal Market stood near the top of Munjoy Hill on the north side of Congress Street in the shadow of the Portland Observatory, a seven-story watchtower constructed in 1807 to monitor approaching ships. In Byron’s youth, long before the word halal appeared anywhere in Portland, he and his friends had played inside the observatory until the landmark structure fell prey to post beetles and dry rot and was shuttered. Closed to visitors, the tower became a popular surveillance spot for Maine’s Bureau of Interdiction and Drug Enforcement (BIDE) and later for Maine Drug Enforcement Agency (MDEA) detectives monitoring the East End’s bustling illegal heroin and cocaine trade in the 1980s and ’90s. As Byron pulled into a loading zone just down the street from the market, he wondered if any of Portland’s residents from the 1800s had ever envisioned the city’s future diversity of culture.

  The strong scent of exotic spices enveloped the two detectives as they entered the overly warm market. Several female customers eyed them suspiciously, as did the balding dark-skinned middle-aged male standing behind the register.

  “May I help you?” the man asked as they approached the counter.

  Byron produced his credentials with all the smoothness of a veteran detective, then turned and waited as his temporary partner, who until recently had always worn his badge pinned to his chest, fumbled with a stiff leather ID case.

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Byron, and this is Detective Gardiner. Are you Mr. Ali?”

  “I am Ahmed Ali. What is the problem?”

  “I wonder if we might ask you a few questions about your son, Abdirahman?”

  Ali’s eyes narrowed. “Has something happened to Abdi?”

  “Not at all,” Byron said, returning his ID to his inside coat pocket. “In fact, we just spoke with him at the high school. He’s fine. Did you know a boy by the name of Thomas Plummer?”

  “Tommy, yes. He played basketball with Abdi. I heard he was killed by police.”

  “How well did you know Tommy?” Byron asked.

  Ali turned and hollered something in a foreign dialect toward the back of the store. Ali readdressed Byron. “We should talk in private, Sergeant.”

  A short stout woman wearing a bright tangerine-colored hijab appeared from somewhere in the back, wordlessly swapping places with Ali behind the counter. Byron took her to be Ali’s wife.

  “Come,” Ali said. “We shall speak in my office.”

  As they followed Ali, Byron still felt the eyes of curious customers upon them.

  Cramped and packed floor to ceiling with boxes and paperwork, Ali’s office more closely resembled a walk-in closet than a true workspace. There were only two chairs. Ali offered one of them to Byron, then he cleared off a wooden crate and gestured for Gardiner to sit. Byron, unsure if the chair had been presented to him as a recognition of rank or simply one of age, hid a smile from the young detective.

  Byron sat down and flipped open his notebook. “What can you tell us about Tommy Plummer?”

  “He was trouble. Or as you say, bad news.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I can’t explain it, just a bad feeling.”

  “According to the school, your son was often seen hanging out with Tommy.”

  Ali frowned. “Yes. It is true. I did my best to stop him, but Abdi is very much like his mother, stubborn. Abdi continued to see Tommy outside of school even after I told him not to.”

  “Was Abdi out with Tommy last night, Mr. Ali?” Byron asked.

  “No. He was upstairs studying for school.”

  “Are you sure he was here all night?”

  “Yes. I am sure.”

  “Were you here all night, Mr. Ali?”

  “No. I was attending a meeting at the East End Community Center.”

  “And your wife, was she here?”

  “She was with me.”

  “So, there is a chance Abdi could have snuck out without your knowledge, right?” Byron asked.

  “No,” Ali said. “I would know. Besides, he was babysitting our daughter, Nadi.”

  “Nadiifo,” Byron said.

  “Yes,” Ali said with obvious surprise. “Abdi was watching her. He would not have left her alone.”

  Byron didn’t possess the same level of confidence as Abdi’s father. “Is Abdi a good student?”

  “Yes. He gets high grades in school.”

  “Has he ever gotten into trouble at school or elsewhere?” Byron asked.

  “No. And I do not want him to.”

  “Has he ever used illegal drugs?”

  “Of course not. Why would you ask that?”

  “Just trying to be thorough. Do you know the names of any of the other kids that Abdi hangs around with?”

  “He has many friends.”

  “Anyone in particular that he spends time with? Someone he is close with?”

  “There are many. I do not know all of their names.”

  “How did you know Tommy Plummer?”

  “Because he was popular in the school. Abdi talks about him all the time.”

  “Does anyone in your family have access to a gun, Mr. Ali?”

  “No. No one.”

  “And you’re positive Abdirahman was home all night?” Byron asked again.

  “I already told you. Yes.”

  Byron maintained eye contact with the store owner, then nodded his understanding. Realizing that they would get nothing further from Ahmed Ali during this first visit, Byron stood up and closed his notebook. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Ali.”

  It was fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of Acting Chief Rumsfeld’s press conference when Sergeant Diane Joyner learned of the amount of damage Mayor Gilcrest had done. Diane successfully managed to avoid the three different reporters who had attempted to corner her as she walked through 109’s hallways, but not before getting a taste of the direction the questioning was likely to go. Rumsfeld, who had been in a closed-door with the police attorney during Gilcrest’s press conference, h
ad given orders not to be disturbed. Diane could only hope that he knew about Gilcrest.

  Diane stood just outside the double doors to the auditorium, waiting as Rumsfeld approached from the elevators. The chief appeared to have aged ten years in the hour that had passed since she’d last spoken with him.

  “You heard about the mayor’s grandstanding?” Diane asked.

  “Yes,” Rumsfeld growled. “Not every detail, but I know she skewered us.”

  “You ready for this?” Diane asked as she pulled opened one of the auditorium doors.

  “Do I have a choice?” he said.

  All eyes turned to watch as the two of them entered the packed room.

  Diane followed Rumsfeld up to the front of the auditorium where a tangled bank of microphones and wires had been arranged directly in front of the PD’s glossy wood podium. Displayed upon the front of the podium were the city seal and motto, Resurgam: I shall rise again. Diane wondered if perhaps, given the nature of the press conference, there should have been a question mark following the Latin word.

  Rumsfeld removed the prepared notes from his suit jacket and set them atop the podium. Several of the cameramen activated their lights, literally bathing the acting chief in the spotlight. Relegated to second banana on this briefing, Diane gladly stood off to one side.

  “Thank you all for coming today,” Rumsfeld began. “As you all know by now, last night one of our uniformed patrol officers shot and killed a local teenager. The officer was pursuing two suspects believed to have committed an armed robbery moments before at the Bubble Up Laundromat on Washington Avenue. As a matter of routine, the officer has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation into this shooting by the state Attorney General’s Office and of this department. I will attempt to answer a few questions, but please keep in mind that this is an ongoing investigation, and as such I am not at liberty to discuss certain details.”