Beyond the Truth

by Bruce Robert Coffin

  Tears stung Byron’s eyes as he knocked back the whiskey in one throat-searing gulp. The alcohol stung his busted lip, courtesy of Kenny Crosby’s cheap shot. He reached for the bottle and poured another. What had once been an album filled with joyous moments and people who had both touched and defined his life was now nothing more than a painful reminder of all the things he had lost. His father, Reece. His mother, Molly, twice. A twenty-year marriage to Kay. Ray Humphrey. And now Sean Haggerty. It was too much to bear.

  Beyond his personal losses, Byron had seen more death than he cared to remember. And it stayed with him, always. Every case, every scene, every life snuffed out. Every veteran cop knows the feeling. The growing numbness, the sense of isolation. And the high cost associated with both.

  He held the photograph of Sean Haggerty in his hand. Haggerty, who had been consumed by self-doubt and guilt the night Byron had intervened. He had talked his friend down from the edge, possibly saving Hags from taking his own life. And now he was gone anyway. Gunned down by a sick and twisted excuse for a human being outside of a grocery store. Byron couldn’t help questioning the sanity of a God who would allow those two conflicting events to occur in a span of hours. And to what end? What purpose did any of it serve?

  Carefully, he laid the Emerald Society photo on the sofa cushion adjacent to his own, while absently letting the album slide from his lap onto the floor.

  “Here’s to you, Hags,” he said, lifting his glass to an empty room. “Sláinte.”

  Chapter 27

  Friday, 8:35 a.m.,

  January 27, 2017

  Inbound traffic was at a standstill on Brighton Avenue. Diane inched her unmarked along as fast as the morning rush would allow. She dialed John’s cell, again, and again got only his voicemail. He hadn’t had the courtesy to return even one of her calls. She was oscillating between anger and worry. It was time to pay him a visit.

  Fifteen minutes later she turned onto the road that led to John’s condo. His car was nowhere to be found. She parked her unmarked in the vacant drive and headed inside for a closer look.

  She called out his name, but the condo was empty. A quick search through each room yielded the truth. John had fallen hard from the sobriety wagon. And his unhealthy trip down memory lane did nothing to alleviate her fears about his state of mind.

  In the bedroom she saw signs that he had hastily packed for a trip. His overnight bag was missing along with his toothbrush and razor. Where would he go in such a hurry? John was in a bad place and she knew it. The one thing she didn’t know was how to reach him.

  She returned to the living room, trying to decide her next move. She stooped to retrieve one of the open photo albums. Her hand moved over an old wedding photo on the right-hand page. There was one person who might know how to reach John. The same person who’d stood beside him for almost twenty years. Kay Byron.

  It was nearing half past ten in the morning when Byron slid unseen into a pew at the back of the cathedral. He was late. Molly Donnelly’s service was already under way. Most of the attendees were seated toward the front of the church. He’d spent twenty minutes parked down the street, oscillating between attending the service and driving away. The alcohol still flowing through his veins provided him with just enough courage to enter the church.

  Booming bass notes from the pipe organ reverberated through the vast ornate space. The air was filled with the same mystical scents of rose and frankincense that Byron remembered from his childhood when attending services at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland. He and his friends had been convinced that the aroma was what God’s cigarettes smelled like. Holy smokes, they had called it.

  Already feeling like an interloper, Byron caught the eye of the officiating priest as the robed man rose to speak. In that passing glance it felt as if the man knew of Byron’s guilt, of his shame. The priest’s voice flowed melodic and soothing throughout the church’s many alcoves, but the words gradually faded as Byron drifted off into his own past.

  The boyhood memories came in a flood, mixed up in much the same way his photo albums had been. Warm summer days spent with his Munjoy Hill schoolmates at St. Peter’s Church Bazaar, eating cannoli. Sneaking out of the house early on Saturday mornings and bicycling to the East End Beach. Buying Italian sandwiches from DiPietro’s store on Cumberland Avenue. Stopping by the police station to visit Reece. Fishing off the docks on Commercial Street. The images came and went like a kaleidoscope. But then they took a darker turn. Finding his father dead at the dining room table in his shabby one-bedroom apartment, the gun on the floor. The seemingly endless arguments with his mother. Hateful words that could never be unsaid.

  Ripped from his brief nostalgic escape, Byron was startled by a light touch on his shoulder. He turned to see a short balding man with a neatly trimmed white mustache. Colin Donnelly.

  Donnelly was dressed in a dark suit, starched white shirt, and maroon tie. Worry lines cut deep across his forehead. The man had aged a great deal since Byron had last seen him.

  “I didn’t know if you’d come,” Donnelly said.

  “That makes two of us,” Byron replied as he stood. He was a full head taller than Donnelly.

  “Why don’t you join the rest of the family, down in front?” Donnelly offered.

  “I’m fine right here,” Byron said.

  Donnelly stood there, searching for the words. “Regardless of what you may think of me, John, I did love your mother.”

  Byron’s jaw flexed but he said nothing.

  “I had hoped that we might put all of this behind us now,” Donnelly said, extending a hand toward Byron.

  “Now?” Byron said with a raised voice. “Now that my mother has passed, you mean?”

  “Yes. Now that Molly has gone to be with God.”

  “That’s what hope will do for you,” Byron scoffed as he brushed past Donnelly and walked from the church.

  It was nearly noontime as Diane stepped out of the elevator and walked toward the front lobby of 109. As she passed by the information desk she saw the familiar face of Khalid Muhammad, Byron’s neighbor. Muhammad was speaking with the desk officer through the bulletproof glass partition.

  “Khalid,” Diane said as she propped open the lobby door and stuck her head out. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sergeant Joyner,” Muhammad said as he turned, his excitement at seeing her obvious. “I have come here to see you.”

  “Me?” she asked. “Why do you need to see me?”

  He approached her. “Could we please talk with some privacy?”

  Finding the first-floor interview room vacant, Diane led him inside and closed the door. After they were seated, she repeated her question. “So why were you looking for me, Khalid?”

  “I heard about Sergeant Byron’s troubles. I’m worried for him.”

  Me too, she thought. “I’m sure he would appreciate your concern, Khalid. But these things have a way of working themselves out.” But she wondered even as she said the words if she really believed them. “Is that why you’ve come to see me, because of John?”

  Muhammad shook his head and reached into his coat pocket. “No. I came to give you something.” He handed her a plastic Ziploc that, at first glance, appeared empty.

  “What is this?” she asked, holding the baggie up and examining it until she saw the hairs.

  “I took those from Ahmed Ali’s son, Abdi.”

  “You pulled them out of his head?” Diane asked, sincerely hoping he hadn’t.

  Muhammad smiled and shook his head again. “No, no, not from his head. During my visit to the Ali home last night I pulled these from the Abdi’s hairbrush in his bedroom.”

  “Why?”

  “I watch CSI. The investigators are always taking hairs to identify people on those shows. I wore latex gloves too,” he said proudly.

  “But why did you think we might need them?” she asked.

  “Detective Sergeant Byron seems to think that Abdi might know somethin
g about the robbery of the laundromat. I know the Alis say he does not, but I thought this might help you to know for sure.”

  Diane didn’t know if they had any DNA samples to compare but she planned to check with Gabe Pelligrosso as soon as she was finished with Muhammad. She assisted Muhammad in writing a statement about what he had done, and couldn’t help but be touched by the risks this man had taken to try to help them.

  Muhammad signed his statement, then handed it to her.

  “Why did you do this, Khalid?” she asked. “Certainly, you must know that your friends will be upset with you if this comes out.”

  Muhammad hung his head. “Some of them will be. I know you are right. But I am hopeful that this will prove Abdi’s innocence.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  Muhammad smiled weakly. “Then we will have the truth.” He paused a moment before he spoke again. “Sergeant Byron is a good man, isn’t he?”

  “I believe he is.”

  Muhammad stood up from the table. “Please tell Sergeant Byron I am very sorry.” He pointed to the baggie. “I hope this helps you.”

  After escorting Muhammad out of the building, Diane headed directly for the third floor. She found Pelligrosso in the lab conversing with Evidence Technician Junkins.

  “Hey, Sarge,” Junkins said.

  No matter how often she’d heard the greeting it never rang quite true. She wasn’t sure if it was because her unseen chevrons were still so new or if it was because as the department’s PR sergeant, who oversaw no one, she did not feel the least bit like a supervisor.

  She held up the bag. “I just had some evidence handed to me. Not sure if it will be of any help to you or not.”

  “What is it?” Pelligrosso asked.

  Diane handed him the bag along with a completed evidence sheet, maintaining the chain of custody. “These are hairs from Abdirahman Ali.”

  Both evidence technicians’ eyes widened.

  “You’re kidding,” Pelligrosso said as he took both items from her.

  “Nope. Sergeant Byron’s neighbor, Khalid Muhammad, a friend of the Alis, pulled them from Abdi’s hairbrush.”

  Pelligrosso held the Ziploc up close to his face, looking at the hairs contained therein. “I recovered a single hair from a torn piece of fabric stuck to a fence in Kennedy Park. Haggerty said that one of the robbery suspects got caught on the fence when he was chasing them. We think the fabric could be from the suspect who got away.”

  Junkins looked puzzled. “How can we use that if it was seized illegally? Won’t those hairs be considered fruit of the poisonous tree?”

  Diane spoke up. “They would if we’d seized them without consent or a warrant. But not if Khalid took them and provided them to us. He was acting on his own, not at our behest.”

  Pelligrosso jumped in. “Sarge is dead-on, junior. These hairs are as good as if we’d had a warrant.” He shifted his gaze back to Diane. “Now, we just need to find out if they match.”

  “How long?” she asked.

  Pelligrosso shrugged. “I’ll do my best to light a fire under the guys at the state lab. I’ll let you know.”

  “Even if you get a match, I’m afraid the DNA by itself won’t be enough,” Assistant Attorney General Ferguson said. “A judge will want more before signing off on a search warrant.”

  Diane had wanted to run her case by Ferguson before approaching the District Attorney’s Office.

  “Because?” she asked.

  Ferguson settled back in his chair. “Because all this evidence would show is that Abdi Ali climbed over the fence in question recently. The boy frequents Kennedy Park because he lives nearby and because he attends a nearby high school and has friends in the area. Kids probably cut through the park all the time.”

  “But Hags said that he was chasing the suspects from the robbery over that fence and thought one of them might have torn his sweatshirt in the process.”

  Ferguson removed his reading glasses and set them on the table in front of him. “Diane, I’m not looking to undermine what you’re trying to accomplish here. Trust me, I want to clear Haggerty’s name as much as you do. But you’re ignoring some key holes in the evidentiary chain. Haggerty didn’t seize the material immediately after the shooting, so you would have a time gap to contend with. How long between the chase and when the hair was recovered?”

  “Close to twelve hours, I’d guess.”

  “Any defense attorney worth his or her salt would get that evidence thrown out along with anything else you might recover as a result of the bad warrant. I’d hate to chance it and have you lose something even more important, like the gun.”

  Diane said nothing.

  “Did Haggerty actually point the fabric out?” Ferguson asked hopefully.

  “No,” Diane said. “He told us where it happened and Gabe Pelligrosso found it the next morning.”

  Neither one of them needed to say it, but they both knew that Sean Haggerty wouldn’t be making their case any stronger now that he was dead.

  Diane felt hopelessness circulate through her like a powerful drug. She wondered if this was how John was feeling. She knew Ferguson was right. The evidence was useless without something further to bolster it in the eyes of the court.

  “What about the sneaker prints?” Ferguson asked. “Did you get anywhere with finding a match?”

  “Gabe identified the sneaker brand and size but not the owner.”

  “I’m sorry, Diane. Keep at it. Bring me something more solid and I’ll help you get your warrant.”

  Diane returned to 109. She couldn’t believe how quickly her stress level had risen. Not that her position as the department’s public relations sergeant wasn’t stressful. Dealing with Rumsfeld on a daily basis was extremely taxing, mostly because he enjoyed listening to himself ramble on about everything. And the idiosyncratic behavior of news media types, like Billingslea, was always a challenge, but the pressure associated with the cases currently under investigation by the detectives now under her charge was ridiculous. What had she been thinking? It had sounded like such an easy transition when LeRoyer suggested it. All she had to do was find the missing robber and gun, clear Haggerty’s name, without pissing anyone else off, calm the city’s unrest, and put a bow on the murder case against Derrick Vanos and Terrence Alfonsi, and find Micky Cavallaro. No big deal. Oh, and if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, see if you can put John back together while you’re at it.

  She glanced at the stack of folders piled atop John’s filing cabinet, reports from the Plummer shooting that had been removed from the CID conference room after the administration had deemed the case closed. The conference room had to be cleaned out to prep for the next major case. What a bunch of bullshit, she thought. The city would probably settle out of court, paying off the Plummers and their attorney on a wrongful death suit.

  She knew they were still missing something. They had to be. Something that was obscured by the more obvious parts of the case. But what? Did the incident go down as Hags had described? John certainly believed so, or at least he had believed it enough to get himself suspended. The bullet Pelligrosso had found tended to support Hags’s version too.

  Diane placed her elbows on top of the desk, closed her eyes, and rested her head in her palms. She wondered if it was possible to want a case to break so badly that it just happened.

  Please God, give me a sign, something to point me in the right direction.

  She waited. Nothing. No file folder containing the answer floated magically onto the desk, or fell from the stack and landed on the floor. She massaged her temples with her fingers. “Dammit,” she said.

  The desk phone rang, startling her. It was Dustin Tran.

  “Sorry to bother you, Sarge,” Tran said.

  “You’re not bothering me,” Diane said. “What is it?”

  “I think I may have something.”

  Diane had caught the breathless excitement in Tran’s voice when he telephoned. Now that she was standing in
his office face-to-face with the computer crimes detective, she could see that none of his excitement had waned.

  “You said you might have something for me,” Diane said.

  “I think I just might,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, you know that I maintain phony Facebook profiles, right?”

  She did know. It was one of the many tools law enforcement agencies availed themselves of in order to catch online sexual predators. “And?”

  “And I took the liberty of friending the students that Sergeant Byron was looking at as possible accomplices of Tommy Plummer.”

  “And they accepted?”

  “Of course they did. Most of these kids will accept a friend request from anyone who has a good-looking profile picture.”

  “Anyway,” Diane said, anxious for him to get to the point.

  “Right. So, after they accepted my request I began following their friends and figured out which ones went to Portland High and which ones they had the most interaction with. Like possible girlfriends or besties. Check out this profile.”

  Tran pulled up the page of an attractive auburn-haired girl named Bethany Simpson. The profile photograph captured her in mid-jump wearing a blue-and-white Portland Bulldogs cheerleading outfit.

  “This girl is a junior at Portland and among her 637 friends are Ali, Plummer, Freeman, and Henderson.”