Beyond the Truth

by Bruce Robert Coffin

  For the next several minutes neither man said anything. It was Byron who broke the awkward silence. “It just seems like such a waste.”

  “What does?” Ferguson asked.

  “A great cop’s career derailed by a single moment. Hell, his entire reputation.”

  “Are we still talking about Sean Haggerty?”

  “It isn’t fair,” Byron said.

  “Life isn’t fair, my friend.”

  “Who says I have a problem anyway?” Byron said, hating the implication in his own slurred words.

  Ferguson said nothing, as if the question had been rhetorical.

  “How do you know I can’t stop anytime I want to?” Byron said. “I have before, you know.”

  Ferguson took a sip of his soda, then placed the glass back on the bar. “Mind if I tell you my story, John?”

  Byron shrugged. “Have at it.”

  “I began drinking in college, like most people, I guess. Weekends. Mostly beer. A lot of keg parties. It didn’t really get bad until I started law school. By then I’d switched to hard stuff: vodka, gin, whiskey, the usual suspects. Just a couple every night to take the edge off. Friday and Saturday nights were for partying. I usually spent Sunday hungover, throwing up, and trying to study. I passed the bar and took a job in the Kennebec County District Attorney’s Office. That’s where I met Betty. A year later we were married, and I toned it down for a while. At least around her.”

  Byron stared at his whiskey glass as he listened.

  Ferguson continued. “I’m not sure when the wheels first began to come off, but I remember having a couple of high-profile trials. Trials I didn’t want to lose. Spent many late nights prepping, and drinking. Started keeping a bottle in my desk at work. Next it was a small flask of vodka in my suit coat, just to give me an edge. I even had a tiny funnel for transferring the booze into the flask. The vodka was great. No odor. I won both trials and kept right on drinking. I guess I thought the alcohol was like a talisman. I’d replenish my stock on the way home from work, never buying from the same store two days in a row. I’d toss the empty bottles in the trash at the gas station and keep a fresh one under the driver’s seat in my car.”

  Byron sat in silence, stunned by the similarity to his own history.

  Ferguson continued. “I’d wake up every morning and take a few hits from the bottle I’d hidden in the bathroom cabinet or in the pocket of one of the suit coats in my closet. I’d start the day telling myself I wouldn’t drink at work, but as the day wore on and I started to feel sick, like I was coming down with something. I knew of only one thing that would make me better. I told myself a lot of things back in those days. Lied to a lot of people I cared about. Including me.”

  “What made you finally give it up?” Byron asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

  Ferguson turned to look directly at him. “Betty. She sat me down one day and said she’d had enough. Told me she loved me too much to watch me kill myself.”

  Byron remained silent. But his thoughts were clearer than they should have been given the whiskey. He looked back at the glass, regarding the vessel’s contents with a strange combination of longing and revulsion. The cost of his habit had already become incredibly expensive. He’d lost his wife to it. His career was hanging by a thread. And then there was Diane.

  “So, you quit?” Byron asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Just like that?”

  Ferguson chuckled. “Hardly. I fell on my face a few times. But I finally admitted to myself that I couldn’t do it alone. That was the first big step, admitting that I needed help.” He paused to take another sip of the soda water. “After that I only had to do one more thing.”

  “What was that?”

  “Ask for it.”

  Chapter 30

  Monday, 6:50 a.m.,

  January 30, 2017

  The empty paper tray light was flashing red on the printer as Diane unlocked the door and turned on the lights in the CID lobby. If the report pile was any indication, the patrol units had been out straight all weekend. She replaced the paper in both trays, then grabbed the stack that had already been printed. She headed toward her office, listening to the whir of the printer as it continued to spit out reports, wondering if there was enough toner in the building to finish the task. It took her the better part of two hours to go through all of the cases, and assign them. The additional stack deposited on her desk by Sergeant Peterson at eight o’clock didn’t help. Nugent volunteered to handle the in-custody felonies, each of which required affidavits and a signed complaint from the District Attorney’s Office, otherwise the prisoners might be released. Diane assigned a Saturday pharmacy robbery to Stevens, then met briefly with LeRoyer at eight-thirty, giving him a thumbnail of the weekend’s criminal activity. The lieutenant had asked about progress on the Plummer case, but seemed disinterested as she explained the Gomez interview. She couldn’t help feeling that John had been right all along. The command staff had moved on.

  As busy as she was, there was one thing occupying her thoughts all morning—the call she’d missed from John the previous night. He’d left her a voicemail, and quite possibly a new lead, something she intentionally withheld from LeRoyer. But lead or no lead, she wasn’t happy with John. She realized that the conversation she’d had with him on Saturday morning hadn’t changed a thing. Had she really believed that it would? He was clearly drunk on the voicemail. She thought about calling him back, but to what end? Based solely on the background noise, he’d made the call from a bar, most likely the Black Gull. She imagined that some habits died harder than others.

  The one upside was that he was still thinking about the case. Still trying to set things right. Regardless of how damaged he was, John was still John. He still possessed that never quit attitude. It was one of many things she loved about him. She only hoped that when he was ready he’d be able to draw on that stubbornness to help himself stay sober. For good.

  It was after nine by the time Diane had finished her Monday morning duties, duties that should have been John’s. She dropped a stack of statements off with Shirley Grant for typing, then headed for the computer lab.

  “Hey, Sarge,” Tran greeted as she entered his computerized abode. “What’s up?”

  “I need you to access an incident report from the mobile database,” Diane said.

  “From this past weekend?” he asked.

  “No. From the night Tommy Plummer was shot.”

  Tran slumped back in his chair and looked at her. “Anything from that night would already be free of the system. The reports would’ve automatically printed after the supervisor signed off.”

  “But not if the report was never completed, right?”

  She waited while Tran processed what she was saying.

  “No. You’re right. Only finished reports submitted to a supervisor for approval would get through the system. If it never got that far it would still be locked in the system. Whose report are you looking for?”

  “Haggerty’s.”

  Diane noticed a video running on one of the three computer monitors atop Tran’s workstation. “Is that the video from Haggerty’s cruiser?”

  “Yeah. I’m reviewing everything, hoping we’ve overlooked something. Can’t hurt, right?”

  “Right. So, you’ll check for that report?”

  “I’m on it.”

  Diane left Tran to his own devices in search of the unfinished shoplifting report, assuming that Haggerty had ever been able to even start it, while she headed to the basement of 109.

  “Anyone home?” Diane called through the caged upper half of the security door to the property office.

  A gruff masculine voice called from somewhere out back. “Who’s askin’?”

  “It’s Diane Joyner, Cowboy.”

  James “Cowboy” Rollins had been the PPD range officer long before Diane had come to Maine. If the stories about him were true, he’d been a cop in Portland for nearly two d
ecades before she’d even begun her basic police training at the old Gramercy Park academy in New York City.

  The handsome white-haired man came into view, dodging boxes and brushing the dust off his hands as he headed toward her. “Hey, Sarge,” Rollins said, barely hiding his smile under his signature fireman’s mustache. “What brings you down to these parts?”

  “Can’t a girl just stop by to see her favorite old-time cop?”

  He flipped the dead bolt on the cage and swung open the Dutch door to the basement hallway. “Flattery will get you everywhere with me, pretty lady. What can I do you for?”

  “I need to get into a locker.”

  “Lose your key?”

  “Sean Haggerty’s locker.”

  It took Diane all of thirty seconds to locate what she was after. Haggerty’s notebook had been shoved haphazardly, clearly by someone other than Haggerty, into the lower shelf, along with everything else that had been removed from his cruiser following the Kennedy Park shooting. She thanked Cowboy for his help before returning to her office and closing the door.

  She sat down at her desk and flipped through Haggerty’s duty notebook until she came to the point where the notes ended, and the blank pages began. She turned back a page and read what he had written. Shoplift. 27 Wash. Ave. Twelve-pack of Bud. S. W, M, husky, young, teens? Freckles, black SS, and black watch cap. Fled E on foot.

  Diane’s hopefulness quickly evaporated. John hadn’t said what he was looking for specifically, but since both suspects in the Bubble Up robbery had been wearing masks and the missing one was dressed in a red sweatshirt, she didn’t think the notes from Hags’s unfinished shoplifting report would be of much help after all. She closed the notebook and placed it inside the top drawer of her desk. She called Tran.

  “Hey, Sarge,” Tran said. “I was just about to call you. There’s nothing trapped in the computer from Haggerty.”

  “Thanks for checking,” she said.

  She hung up the phone and grabbed her gun and coat. There was still one more thing she could check.

  As she walked through CID, headed for the elevators, she caught the eye of Detective Luke Gardiner. She knew that Gardiner had assisted Byron with some of the interviews. Diane veered over toward his desk.

  “Morning, Sarge,” Gardiner said as she approached.

  “Luke. I understand that you and Sergeant Byron worked some of the Portland High interviews together.”

  “We did. Talked to a few of the students I knew who hung out with Tommy Plummer.”

  “Wanna take a ride?” she asked.

  His eyes lit up at the prospect of getting involved in the case again. “Sure.”

  Thirty minutes later Diane and Gardiner were standing in the computer lab hunched over Tran’s shoulders as they stared at the 7-Eleven surveillance video from the night that Plummer was shot.

  “What exactly am I looking for?” Tran asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Diane said. “I know from Haggerty’s notes that the shoplifter wasn’t the missing robber Haggerty was chasing because he was dressed in a black hoodie not a red one. Guess I’m hoping that they might have cased the 7-Eleven before they hit the laundromat.”

  “Well, let’s see,” Tran said. “The time is probably off on this thing. But we should be getting close to when the shoplifting occurred.”

  The three of them studied the video closely, waiting for something to happen. Several minutes into the tape, a single person entered the store just as the clerk stepped into the back room. The customer’s head was down and his hood was up, preventing identification, but his size and clothing generally matched the entry Diane had located in Haggerty’s notebook.

  She shifted her focus to the upper right-hand part of the screen where the four-camera multiplexer had captured the activity near the beer coolers. The male in the video turned from the coolers, providing the detectives with their first good look at him. He matched the suspect described in Haggerty’s notes to a T. Right down to his freckle-covered face.

  “I know him,” Gardiner said, making no attempt to hide his excitement. “That’s Scott Henderson. He’s one of the kids who regularly hung out with Tommy. He told us that he was home all night. And his mother gave him an alibi.”

  Diane turned to Tran. “Print me a still of that ugly, lying mug.”

  Scott Henderson’s mom stood frozen in the doorway to her boss’s office. She had one foot in the office and one still in the hallway. Her recognition of Diane and Gardiner as police detectives was obvious. Henderson’s eyes shifted from Gardiner to Diane.

  “Mrs. Henderson,” Diane said as she removed her badge case from her pocket. “I’m Sergeant Joyner and I believe you’ve already spoken with Detective Gardiner.”

  Gardiner acknowledged her with a nod.

  Henderson’s hesitation continued.

  Diane gave a predatory smile as she gestured toward the chairs. “Come right in, won’t you? Have a seat.”

  Cautiously, Henderson entered the office and sat down, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. Both detectives pulled chairs up close and sat down facing the woman.

  “I imagine you must have some idea why we’re here,” Diane said.

  “It’s about Scott, isn’t it?” Henderson said, her voice barely a whisper.

  “When you previously spoke to Detective Gardiner you told him Scott had been home with you the Sunday night that Tommy Plummer was shot,” Diane said.

  Gardiner joined in. “You told me that he was home because he’d been grounded, remember?”

  “That is what you said, isn’t it?” Diane asked.

  Henderson nodded. She cast her eyes to the floor, ashamed.

  “Why did you lie, Mrs. Henderson?” Diane asked.

  “I was afraid of what Scott might have been doing that night. I knew he was out with Tommy. But I swear I didn’t know what they were up to.”

  Neither detective said a word as they waited to see where she would take them.

  Henderson uncrossed her arms and began wringing her hands in her lap. She continued. “Scott really was grounded, but I can’t control him anymore. It’s so hard to work full-time and raise a teenager by myself.”

  “Were you at home when he returned that night?” Diane asked, trying to get her back on topic.

  “Yes. I got home from work about twenty minutes before he showed up.”

  “Do you remember what time that was?” Diane asked.

  “I’m not sure. I guess it must have been around nine.”

  “Did Scott say anything?” Gardiner asked.

  “No. Not really. I asked him where he’d been. He said, ‘Out.’ Then he went upstairs to his room and slammed the door.” Henderson looked up from the floor with tears in her eyes. “Do you really think Scott was involved in the robbery?”

  “Do you?” Diane asked.

  “I don’t know.” Henderson put her hands to her face and began to sob. “I’m afraid he might have been.”

  Diane opened the door and marched directly into Principal Larrabee’s office. Gardiner was right on her heels.

  “Excuse me,” Larrabee said. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you can’t just barge in here.”

  “Oh, I am sorry,” Diane said. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Detective Sergeant Diane Joyner and I think you already know Detective Gardiner.”

  “Thank you for introducing yourself, Detective Sergeant,” Larrabee said, her tone dripping with condescension. “Now I know who to complain about.”

  “Complain away,” Diane said. “But first I need to know which classroom Scott Henderson is currently in.”

  Diane stood her ground as Larrabee wasted the next five minutes whining, cajoling, and threatening. Finally realizing that the detectives would not be dissuaded, she spit out the room number. Henderson was promptly arrested and transported to 109.

  Diane went through the formality of reading Henderson his Miranda rights before tossing the still photo from the 7-Eleven security
video onto the interview room table in front of him. He looked down and in the span of five seconds all the color drained from his young freckled face.

  “You said you were home the night Tommy was killed,” Diane said. “Check the time and date stamp, sport. Tough to be home when you’re out stealing beer from the local convenience store.”

  Henderson looked back at the detectives, the arrogance returning to his face. “Don’t you need to have my mother here if you want to question me?”

  Gardiner produced a sheet of paper from the folder he was holding. “She already gave us signed consent.”

  “So, Scott, you want to tell us what really happened that night?” Diane asked.

  Henderson glanced over at Gardiner, then back to Diane. “I have no idea.”

  “This picture says otherwise,” Diane said.

  He pushed the photograph away. “This picture says I snatched some beer. Nothing to do with Tommy.”

  Diane scoffed. “You’re telling us that you just happened to sneak out of the house so you could steal some beer, and the timing of your moronic impulse just happened to coincide with the armed robbery your buddies were about to pull less than a half mile up the street?”

  Henderson shrugged.

  “You don’t really think we’re dumb enough to believe that, do you?” Gardiner asked.

  Henderson scoffed. “I don’t know what you’re dumb enough to believe. But I don’t know anything about a robbery. I was by myself when I stole the beer. Shoplifting’s only a misdemeanor. If you’re gonna charge me, then go ahead.”

  Diane could feel her anger rising to the surface. This little shit knew how to push her buttons. She turned and opened the door to the interview room.

  “Where are you going?” Henderson asked. “Am I free to leave?”

  Before Diane could respond, Gardiner answered for her. “You’re the guy with all the answers, Scott. What do you think?”

  The detectives exited the room and closed the door.

  “How long can we hold him?” Gardiner asked after they were out of earshot.