Beyond the Truth

by Bruce Robert Coffin

  “Um, note to you, the robbers fled on foot,” Nugent said. “We just went from deflecting to regressing in a span of seconds. So much for progress.”

  Byron waited until nine o’clock before heading back to Portland High School. He wanted to make sure that Abdi Ali was in school and not under the protective veil of his father. He had barely gotten through the administrative office doors when he was confronted by the school principal.

  “Dana Larrabee,” the principal said, extending her hand. “And you must be the detective who disrupted my school earlier this week.”

  Byron quickly realized that things had changed, and not for the better. The warm welcome afforded by Assistant Principal Paul Rogers had evidentially been revoked. There was nothing warm about the smile painted on Larrabee’s face. This woman was all business. Not wanting to escalate the tension, Byron shook the hand that was offered, doing his best to remain cordial.

  “Detective Sergeant John Byron,” he said.

  “Well, Detective Sergeant, I understand that you spoke to a number of my students the other day. Pulled them out of their classes, in fact.”

  “I’m investigating the police shooting that took place Sunday night.”

  “Is that the shooting in which one of your officers shot an unarmed teenager?”

  Byron could feel his patience slipping. “There were two people running from the police, Ms. Larrabee. One of them attended this school. I am trying to locate the second suspect.”

  “Suspect? These are students, Detective Byron. Do you have some type of warrant for one of my students?”

  “No. I just need to speak with one of them.”

  Larrabee proceeded into a long soliloquy, quoting chapter and verse about the rights of students and about the dangers of Portland becoming a police state. Byron wondered how differently the self-righteous administrator might feel about the situation if Haggerty or even the laundromat owner had been friends or relatives of hers. Wisely, he kept those thoughts to himself.

  He noticed that Larrabee made no attempt to move their conversation to a more private location, like her office, though it was clear from the posture and cocked heads of both office assistants seated nearby that they were monitoring every word. Reflecting on it further, Byron realized that it was probably Larrabee’s intention to be overheard. The opportunity to showcase her authority to her subordinates was too good to pass up.

  As Larrabee droned on, Byron couldn’t help but be reminded of Albert Stansfield. Stansfield, one of Byron’s professors at Saint Joseph’s College back in the late ’80s, had lectured in the same irritating, monotonous way. Saint Joe’s had some truly great professors. Stansfield had not been one of them.

  “Are you listening to me, Sergeant?” Larrabee asked, as if she were dressing down one of her students.

  “Yeah,” Byron said, wondering if all teachers eventually lost the ability to communicate with adults as if they were adults. “You’re saying you’d rather I didn’t bother your students during the day.”

  “It’s not just that. I must guard against you trampling their rights, Sergeant. While they are here, they are my responsibility. And I wouldn’t want the parents complaining.”

  “Heavens, no. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  Larrabee’s mouth hung open in disbelief.

  Byron, realizing his sarcasm had caught her off guard, forged ahead. “Is it specifically Scott Henderson, Abdirahman Ali, Nate Freeman, and Mohammed Sayed that you don’t want me talking to? Or are there other students that you’re protecting?” Byron asked, intentionally trying to provoke a reaction from her.

  Larrabee’s expression hardened as she worked to control her anger with him.

  “I’m afraid I don’t respond well to sarcasm,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” Byron said. “I don’t respond well to people obstructing my investigations.”

  “You know, Sergeant, I’m not sure I even want you in my school. It’s clear that you’re intent on being disruptive.”

  Byron wondered how disruptive she’d found the influx of illegal drugs into the school to be. He reached inside his suit coat and removed a single business card, then slid a pen out of the same pocket and began to write something on the back of the card. When he had finished, Byron handed the card to her.

  “What is this?” Larrabee asked.

  “It’s the name and telephone number of my lieutenant. I figure you’ll want to call and complain about me.”

  “Thank you,” Larrabee said with as much inflection as she was apparently capable of. “I will.”

  Byron turned to go, then stopped, turning to face her again. “Have you ever been to the deli, Miss Larrabee?”

  “What?” she asked, lowering her brows and looking confused.

  “I should warn you, calling Lieutenant LeRoyer to complain about me is like shopping at the deli. You’ll want to take a number.”

  Byron drove away from the school sure of two things. First, LeRoyer would not be pleased that he had goaded Larrabee into complaining about him. And second, he still needed a way to speak with Abdi without his father interfering. Had Principal Larrabee’s only concern been the welfare of her students, or was there something else behind her stonewalling the investigation? The assistant principal had said that Larrabee had been the driving force behind Tommy Plummer’s disappearing drug charges. What if the “inside man” Special Agents Collier and Lessard were looking for was actually a woman?

  He was trying to decide his next move when his cell rang.

  Byron answered it without checking the ID. “Byron.”

  “It’s me,” Diane said. “Can you talk?”

  What now? he wondered. “Yeah. What’s up?”

  “Billingslea just called. Someone sent him a copy of the MedCu statement. He knows about the flashlight.”

  “Shit.”

  Police Dispatcher Justine Jewett had just returned from a bathroom break and side trip to the basement vending machines for a bag of Cheez-Its and a Diet Coke. She’d popped a handful of the salty crackers into her mouth when the computer screen at her station lit up with an incoming emergency call.

  “911, Operator Jewett speaking. What is your emergency?”

  “Officer Haggerty is dead meat,” a male voice said.

  “Excuse me?” Jewett said. “I don’t think I heard you right. Could you repeat that?” Jewett looked at the number displayed on the screen. It was an obvious mobile number.

  “You heard me. Haggerty is dead.”

  And with that the line was disconnected. She attempted to redial, but the phone was no longer in service. Jewett looked at the caller ID map. The signal had originated from Portland’s West End. The caller had been near St. John Street and Congress Street when the call was made. Jewett swiveled in her chair, looking for the dispatch shift supervisor.

  “Hey, Mary,” Jewett said, addressing her boss. “We just got another one.”

  “Dammit, John,” LeRoyer said as he stepped into Byron’s office and slammed the door. “I can’t decide what I’m more pissed about, your behavior with Principal Larrabee or the fact that you withheld such an important detail from me.”

  Byron could have predicted the lieutenant’s response. He had heard it more times than he cared to count. It was nothing more than a dance necessitated by LeRoyer’s position within the department hierarchy. Byron’s job required him to withhold certain case details from his boss while simultaneously punching holes in any investigative barriers until the truth began to leak out. LeRoyer’s job was to try and keep his senior sergeant in check. Byron didn’t envy him.

  “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” LeRoyer asked, the stress showing through on his reddening and tightly pinched face.

  Byron, who had been running quickly through his voicemails and still held the desk phone to his ear, shrugged. “Which thing are you referring to?”

  “Do not fuck with me, John!”

  “Look, Marty, I didn’t sign up for this job to ma
ke friends.” He punched the number six, deleting another message before dropping the receiver back in its cradle. “That self-righteous woman is hiding behind her authority. I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened leading up to Sean’s shooting.”

  “What about this damn MedCu statement?”

  “I’m sure you’ve read it by now.”

  “Yeah, I have. As has Rumsfeld. And I gotta tell ya, it looks like shit. You know what it’s gonna look like printed in the Herald. I can’t believe you kept that from me.”

  “Come off it. You know as well as I that I intentionally don’t tell you everything when I’m working a case. It’s called deniability. And I don’t give a damn about the Herald. We don’t share information on an open investigation with the public. If I’d have told you about the flashlight you would have been obligated to share that with Rumsfeld.”

  “And I would have.”

  “Yeah, and he would have done what all administrators do. He would have circled the goddamned wagons and figured out a way to distance himself from Haggerty. He would have come up with a contingency plan to fuck Sean over.”

  “You don’t know that,” LeRoyer said.

  “Don’t I?” Byron pointed toward Rumsfeld’s office. “What’s he doing right now?”

  LeRoyer didn’t respond.

  “Tommy Plummer had a gun. Haggerty knows the difference between a flashlight and a muzzle flash. He isn’t some petrified rookie, Marty. Hags is a seasoned veteran. All I’m trying to do is figure out what happened that night. That is still our priority, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is,” the lieutenant said, backing down, but only slightly.

  “You should be far more concerned with the goddamned mole that’s leaking all this shit to the paper.”

  Defeated, LeRoyer let out a long sigh, then plopped down in one of the visitor’s chairs across from Byron. “Tell me where you’re at?”

  “We’re still looking at Plummer’s basketball teammates and the four students whose names we got from Assistant Principal Rogers at Portland High the other day.”

  “You think one of them might be the other robber?” LeRoyer asked, his expression softening.

  “It’s possible. Plummer hung out regularly with all of them. I’ve got Tran working on them now,” Byron said, intentionally holding back the Facebook angle. “If there is a link, beyond the obvious, we’ll find it.”

  “Just do me a favor. Go easy with the feather ruffling, okay?” LeRoyer said.

  “You know me.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Billingslea said from the other end of the phone. “The information is legit.”

  “The big deal?” Diane said, squeezing the telephone tighter in her hand and wishing it was the young reporter’s scrawny neck. “All you did by running that story was pour gasoline on a fire. That’s the big deal. You’re implying that the kid Haggerty shot was only armed with a flashlight. Also, the internal affairs case, which you shouldn’t have had in the first place, was cleared as unsubstantiated. I noticed that doesn’t appear anywhere in your damned story.”

  “Still shows a pattern,” Billingslea countered.

  “Of what?”

  “Excessive force. Overzealousness on Haggerty’s part, and on the part of cops nationwide.”

  “What?” She was so angry that she couldn’t speak for a moment. Her mouth wouldn’t form the words. “Davis, you’re lucky that you’re not standing here in my office or I’d probably clean your fucking clock.”

  “Why are you pissed at me?”

  “Do you have any idea how dumb what you just said is? Do you really think police officers get up every day looking for someone to beat up, or shoot?”

  “Of course you see it differently. You’re one of them.”

  “So, it’s us and them now, is it? Keep this up and I might come over to your office and kick your scrawny ass up and down the newsroom anyway. Then you’d have something real to write about.”

  “No, I just meant—”

  “I know exactly what you meant. You think you have any idea what it’s like to do this job?”

  “Of course not. I don’t know—”

  “That’s right, you don’t know. You don’t have the first clue about what it means to be a cop. This media crap about labeling police officers as trigger-happy thugs is beyond ridiculous.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Shut up and let me finish, Davis. Or I swear to God I will come find you. Sean Haggerty is not only a friend of mine but my brother. A brother cop. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that though. Hags is no more trigger-happy than I am. But you’re all painting him that way. You’re the reason those people are marching outside the station right now, instead of waiting to see what the facts are. Sean is a good cop and he shot a kid, period. Unlike you, we are trying to investigate exactly what did happen. Either Tommy Plummer had a gun and Haggerty shot him in self-defense or Plummer didn’t and it was a bad shoot. That’s enough to deal with without you sensationalizing it. Whether you are aware of it or not, Haggerty is suffering right along with the Plummer family.”

  Davis said nothing.

  “Tell me you don’t honestly believe Sean took any satisfaction in killing that kid,” Diane said.

  “I would hope not.”

  Diane took a deep breath, trying to get a handle on her emotions. “Ever had a gun pointed at you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then consider yourself goddamned lucky. The question you should be asking is why somebody sent that IA report and the MedCu statement to the newspaper. By the way, not that you care, we’re now receiving death threats against Haggerty. And if you print one word of that, you’ll have to deal with me. Got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “Death threats. Is that what you wanted?”

  “No, of course it isn’t.”

  “Take a good long look in the mirror, Davis. Because you helped to create this shit storm.”

  She slammed the handset down, ending the call. “Fuck.” Her hands were shaking. She didn’t know what she was most pissed about, losing her temper with Billingslea or his infuriating stereotyping of everything. Movement in the hallway caught her attention. She looked up and saw Melissa Stevens standing wide-eyed in the doorway. “How long have you been standing there?” Diane asked.

  “Long enough to hear how friggin’ awesome you are,” Stevens said.

  “Wasn’t trying to be awesome, Mel. I didn’t know I had an audience.”

  “I could kiss you right now.”

  Diane felt her rage beginning to dissipate. “While I appreciate the gesture, Detective, I’m not sure how appropriate that would be.”

  Stevens grinned. “And when have you ever known me to be appropriate, Sarge?”

  Byron was still fuming about the leaks when he received a call from Nugent telling him about the calls to Dispatch threatening the life of Sean Haggerty.

  “How many calls?” Byron asked, thinking it was probably only one or two looneys.

  “Close to a dozen.”

  “Dispatch should be able to track those down easy enough,” Byron said, knowing that the numbers for all incoming 911 calls were captured.

  “That’s the problem, boss. Some of these assholes are calling in on Dispatch’s nonemergency lines, the others are using burners,” Nugent said. “The state police in Gray are getting the same type of calls.”

  Shit, Byron thought. “Okay, let’s get someone to sit on Haggerty’s house.”

  “The shift commander already assigned someone out there ’cause the media was showing up.”

  “Yeah. I heard. How the hell did they get his home address?”

  “Who knows. Somebody here at 109 with a grudge, maybe? Assholes wear badges too, Sarge.”

  After ending the call with Nugent, Byron dialed Haggerty’s cell. An automated message stated that the voice mailbox was full. He hung up, making a mental note to stop by and pay a visit to Haggerty later in the evening.

&n
bsp; Byron couldn’t believe how quickly the hatred had spread. Born from rumor and innuendo, the facts of what had happened that night in Kennedy Park had quickly been replaced by speculation and outright lies. Even the media had done their part to spread disinformation, airing erroneous accounts from supposed witnesses. Witnesses who refused to be interviewed by the police. And the protests had made a tense situation infinitely worse, adding to the stress within the police department. It was as if the City of Portland had lost its collective mind. A rift had formed between residents. People took either the propolice or the antipolice side of the issue, causing them to act like rabid fans of rival sports teams, reminding Byron of the Red Sox and Yankees of old, before A-Rod and Varitek, back when it was Munson and Fisk. But regardless of the way in which the community was acting, Byron knew that the detectives had to stay on point. Had to stay focused. They couldn’t allow themselves to be dragged down into the melee. One-dimensional thinking had never held a place in successful investigations and Byron was trying hard to keep an open mind about what had happened. He wanted Haggerty to be cleared of any wrongdoing, of course, but he wasn’t about to cut corners to get at the truth. The FBI had kicked around the possibility that Haggerty could be facilitating the influx of drugs to the school, and although Byron didn’t believe it, he hadn’t found anything to rule Haggerty out either. Byron had allowed a friendship to cloud his judgment once before and it had nearly cost him his life. He couldn’t let it happen again.

  Chapter 17

  Thursday, 8:05 p.m.,

  January 19, 2017

  Byron pulled into the plowed dooryard of Haggerty’s brown shingled cape on Olde Birch Lane. He exited the car, exchanging nods with the detail officer seated behind the wheel of the idling black-and-white parked directly across the street. Byron walked up the paved drive past Haggerty’s pickup to the side door where an outside light was illuminated. He ascended the crumbling brick steps and observed Haggerty seated alone at the kitchen table. Haggerty saw him too, and waved Byron inside.