by Paul Bishop
“We are truth finders,” Pagan said, purposely softening and redirecting the harsh word, police. “We know the truth comes in many different shades. If we can understand the truth then we can help others to understand. Things happen for a reason. I know you have always helped Benny. I know you want to help him now.”
“He was so damaged…” Abi said, tears flowing slowly down her cheeks.
“He came here to hide ten years ago, isn’t that right?” Pagan said.
Abi and Isaac stared at him silently.
“Please. It’s not like you were helping a criminal,” Pagan said, “You were just protecting a child.”
He’d fashioned his phrase as a negative/alternative question. The design of the question was to give a suspect the choice of the lesser of two wrongs: It’s not like you did it for this bad reason, it’s like you did it for this less bad reason. So you would us a phrase such as, It’s not like you stole the money to buy drugs and alcohol, you just took the money because you had to feed your family, isn’t that right? It was a way of providing a socially acceptable explanation for their criminal actions.
“That’s right, isn’t it?” Pagan persisted, his voice soft and low.
Abi nodded her head.
It was an admission. A start.
“Abi,” Isaac said softly.
She took her hand out of his and patted his leg. “It’s alright,” she said. “There is nothing else we can do. I trust him.”
Isaac Kruger looked like a man who checked his spare change every time he went to the store, but he, too, nodded his head. The tension in his shoulders visibly relaxed.
Trust. How could Pagan achieve trust in such a short span of time? He must emit some kind of trust pheromone.
Isaac took the reins. “I spotted him going into one of the oldest family crypts at the back of the cemetery.”
“When was this?” Pagan asked.
“A few weeks after Jack Martin was rundown. We had lived here since it was opened as caretakers. Raised Myron here. We were negotiating to buy the business. We were very lucky. Unlike so many others from the old country, we had hidden money away and it was never found. It was enough to give us a start in America.” Isaac gave what amounted to a bobble of his head paired with a one shouldered shrug and a twist of his lips. “We also had friends who were willing to help.”
“We knew Benny as Conner then,” Abi said. “He was slight for ten, but willful, almost wild, and it was clear Jack Martin begrudged him.”
“We saw him hit the boy on more than one occasion,” Isaac said.
“He didn’t just hit him,” Abi said, her voice full of scorn. “He thrashed him. It was because he was blacker than he was white. We know what it is like to be targets. All Jews know.”
“Did Sophie and Chad see the beatings?” Pagan asked.
“Yes. Jack Martin would threaten to do the same to them, but he never did. Just Conner.”
Myron suddenly chimed in. “I was away at university and then law school. They were lonely.” He said it in defense of his parents, but with no censure.
Isaac gave a shrug and Abi gave several little nods.
“Had Conner been sleeping in the crypt?” I asked.
Isaac nodded. “He had become almost feral, scavenging for food, becoming lost in his mind.”
“We waited until Isaac saw him go into the crypt again,” Abi said.
“Nobody has visited it in years. The family who owned it were either all dead or had moved away. It had settled badly into the ground causing a small gap in the locked doors. He’d only made it a little bigger. Because he was so small, he could wriggle in.”
“We went down there together,” Abi picked up the thread. “We called to him and coaxed him out. We promised to take care of him, not to turn him over to children’s services.”
Isaac took his wife’s hand gently again. “I knew she’d already made up her mind. She wanted so much to help him when Jack Martin mistreated him.”
“He was just a lost little boy,” Abi said. “A broken child. I couldn’t not take him in.”
“Did he tell you anything about the hit and run of Jack Martin?”
There was a pause, then Abi said a simple, “No.”
“We didn’t ask either,” Isaac said with some salt in his tone. “There are some things best left alone.”
Before working with Pagan, I would have been suspicious of their motives. They had been in the process of buying Jack Martin’s mortuary business. They wouldn’t want anything to disturb the process. However, now I was watching the colors of their words closely. I was also concentrating on their tone and intonation. I couldn’t hear or see deception in anything they said.
I looked at Myron Kruger. There were tears of affection in his eyes.
“How did you feel about all this?” I asked him, using the same coaxing tone of voice as Pagan. It was unusual to interview three witnesses together, but the family dynamics were working in our favor.
“It was what they needed to do.”
“Were you resentful?”
Contempt for the question washed over Myron’s features. “Not at all. My parents loved me. They loved Benny. There is never not enough love. My parents would never turn away someone in need.”
That was quite a testament. I probed further. “How did you come to call him Benny?”
“It was the first thing he told my parents.”
I switched my attention back to Isaac and Abi.
Abi had taken her hand back from Pagan and now had them clasped in her lap. “I think it was the reason he came out of the crypt. He couldn’t stand being called Connor. He kept telling us Conner was dead. Told us his real name was Benny White. He wouldn’t calm down until we agreed.”
“You home schooled him?” Pagan asked, bringing us back on track.
“There really wasn’t any other way,” Abi said. “He was too damaged. He wasn’t the best learner, but we got him through the basics.”
“And nobody asked you who he was or where he came from?”
“People who come here are too wrapped up in their own grief to ask questions about others.”
“What about your friends?”
Isaac shrugged and did the bobble head, twist of the lips, gesture again. “We are German Jews. Our friends understand secrets and how to keep them.”
“It was music he loved,” Abi said softly. “He learned to play the piano by ear. We bought him a guitar one year and he was playing it within a couple of weeks. He would watch video things on TV and his computer, then play them.”
“What about the equipment he used to make his videos?” Pagan’s voice was soft, nonjudgmental.
“He worked for us,” Isaac answered. “We paid him. I drove him to a music store and he bought the things he needed. I don’t understand it all, but Benny seemed to know all about the things he needed.”
“Did he never want to leave? To get a driver’s license? Hang out with other kids or, eventually, older peers?” I asked.
Isaac and Abi looked at each other as if this was something that had never occurred to them.
“Sometimes, he would go for long walks at night, but he was calm here. He felt he had what he needed,” Abi said.
“Did you know he was checking up on Chad and Sophie Martin – his adopted siblings?” Pagan asked.
Isaac shrugged. Abi looked down at her hands.
Myron came to their rescue. “He was happy here. When I graduated, I came back to help my parents. I do some will and estate planning work for customers, but mostly I helped run the business. Benny was younger than me, but he was my friend – as much as you could be a friend with Benny. He was disconnected, struggled with relationships. He was at peace playing his music and making his videos inside the crypt where he first hid. He said he liked the echo.”
“And then Smack Daddy Davis contacted you,” Pagan said.
“A bloodsucker if ever there was one,” Myron said.
“Were you surprised?”
“What did Smack Daddy promise you?”
“He wanted to sign Changeling to an exclusive deal. I didn’t trust him from the start, so we kept Benny’s real name from him. He had to deal through me only. He promised money. Lots of money.”
“And Benny was interested?”
“It surprised me. He’d never shown interest in money before. I took him to Smack Daddy’s house. Benny kept playing this role of Changeling. It appeared the only way he could interact.”
“And he met Unicorn at Smack Daddy’s house?”
“Yes. I took him back several times. Smack Daddy kept trying to get Benny to make public appearances or go into a real studio to record, but Benny would simply refuse and go to play with Unicorn.”
“You knew Smack Daddy was streaming remixes of the Changeling songs from the videos?”
“I did some research into how streaming worked, how music downloads were paid for. I knew there must be big money coming in, Benny’s Changeling character was continually trending all over the Internet. I could see the number of hits his videos were getting.”
“Did Benny tell you ahead of time what he was planning?”
“No!” Myron was emphatic.
The blue of truth was attached to his words, plus a good, strong, immediate denial is a sign of truthfulness. Somebody who is lying will give a weak denial, sometimes after several beats of silence, and then will get weaker and weaker in their denials. An innocent person’s denials will get stronger and stronger.
Myron continued, “I had no idea what was in his mind. No idea he had been watching what was happening to Gerrard Martin, or was worried about how Unicorn was being treated. No idea, until he turned up here with the children, that he was going to try to stop it…or how.”
It was amazing. In that second, it all became clear to me. Everything Pagan had done since he stepped into the mortuary offices had been tactically staged to get to this point.
His total assumption of the Kruger’s involvement with Benny made them think we knew so much more than we did. He had held them and cried with them, made them trust him, and cracked open their deepest secret, their deepest fears, simply with the power of his presence. The man wasn’t a parlor trick magician, he was a fully-fledged wizard.
“Is Gerrard safe?” Pagan asked, his eyes hypnotically boring in to Myron’s.
“I…I…” Myron stammered. “There is a trust. I wrote it. I filed it with the court. Benny is my client. I can’t talk about the trust or what’s in it.”
“I don’t want to know about the trust,” Pagan said. “I don’t want to know about the money.”
That statement went off like a bomb in the room. Myron had forgotten to mention Benny turning up with the kids and the money.
“It was his money,” Myron said desperately, his tone totally different, his word streamers filled with the color of guilt. “He earned it. He just had to take it because Smack Records would never have paid what they owed him.”
There is always a justification, always an excuse for wrong actions. It doesn’t matter if the justification is valid if the act is still wrong.
Pagan ignored the outburst. “Is Gerrard safe?” he asked again, softly but with a sharp edge to his inflection. The red of his word streamers was so bright it hurt.
Conflicted with emotion, Myron nodded his head once in the affirmative.
“And Unicorn?”
There was a beat, then Abi said, “She is with us. Such a sweet child.”
“Benny brought her to us,” Isaac explained. “Asked us to take care of her like we’d taken care of him.”
“How did he bring her here?” Pagan asked.
There were several beats of silence.
“Please,” Pagan said.
Isaac spoke up. “I taught him how to drive a few years ago.” He tossed his hands around. “He loved going for drives in the car. I thought it would be okay. He often drove an old pickup truck we have for errands and moving equipment. I knew he sometimes took it out at night.”
“You knew and you didn’t stop him?” This came from Abi, who obviously hadn’t known. “What were you thinking?”
Isaac gave another what can you do gesture with his hands. “Who thinks about these things? He’d go. He’d come back. I didn’t tell him I knew. He had so little joy in his life. What’s a little driving?”
It explained how Benny got to Smack Daddy’s house to bug it and to steal the money. He would have also needed it to transport Unicorn and Gerrard.
Pagan finally asked the big question. “Where is Benny?”
The Krugers all shared a look. Pagan was patient, letting the moment stretch. I felt my own anxiety making my heart pound.
Abi sighed, tears returning to her eyes yet again. “He is in the back courtyard playing with Unicorn.”
Chapter 31
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
And there she was…
I let out a deep breath I hadn’t known I was holding. Relief at finding a kidnapped child apparently unharmed washed over me.
And then I realized…
There she was…
Happily playing with some anonymous toys on a patch of grass near a tinkling fountain…
Alone…
I quickly scanned the courtyard, knowing Pagan was doing the same.
“Call it in,” he said. “Get back-up rolling.”
I didn’t argue, dialing my phone while Pagan checked anywhere in the courtyard where Benny might be concealed.
He knew where to hide where nobody would find him.
He’d had years to make a series of secret bolt holes. He could be anywhere in the cemetery.
I disconnected my call to communications asking for uniformed units to respond to our location Code 2.
Pagan had gone back inside the mortuary offices. He came out with Abi Kruger, who gathered Unicorn into her arms. As she did so, I had the uncharitable thought that Unicorn was indeed not a pretty child. I was disgusted with myself for the knee-jerk reaction. She laughed as Abi tickled her, and the noise was magical. No child deserved to be judged by an adult’s standards of beauty.
“Randall?” Pagan said. He was practically vibrating.
I knew waiting for back-up wasn’t going to happen.
“I’m with you, partner,” I said. And I was. I was tapped in to Pagan. I believed I knew what he was feeling. Changeling was a protector first before all other things. Somehow, he managed to take advantage of an opportunity – a boatload of cash and a family lawyer – to protect somebody he had been wanting to protect for years, but couldn’t.
Now he perceived Gerrard was safe, protected by some sort of trust created by Myron, and he wouldn’t want anyone to be able to get the information from him.
I felt, and I knew Pagan absolutely felt, Changeling was done being a danger to others and was now a danger to himself.
Waiting for backup was not an option.
“The Escalade,” Pagan said.
I didn’t argue, just turned and followed him. Moving as fast as I could, my cane was more of a hindrance than a help. I grabbed it in the middle and ran as best as I could on my bad leg.
“Northwest corner,” Pagan said, as we scrambled into the Escalade. “The crypt where he first hid.”
He spun the wheel and reversed out of the parking spot, then hit the gas and we sped forward.
Twice we made wrong turns on the streets meandering through the cemetery. Pagan pounded his hand on the wheel in frustration. We could see the area where the crypts were, but were having trouble getting there.
“Calm down,” I said to Pagan, just as he turned the Escalade and went over a curb onto the grass. He cut a swath directly to the area where the crypts were
gathered like a murder of gothic crows. I didn’t want to think about what we had driven across.
We bailed out of the car, guns in hand. I’d brought my cane with me out of habit, still holding it in the middle as I jogged after Pagan with my uneven gait. I’d been free from pain since Tanaka had apparently popped everything into place, but I was beginning to feel fatigue in the leg itself.
Pagan pointed toward a black marble monstrosity rising like something out of a Frankenstein movie. It was surrounded by other above ground monuments with crypts beneath them, like a condo complex for the dead.
We spread out as we approached, but still weren’t prepared for a huge bang and a black smoke-spewing fireball of red streaking toward us. We didn’t have time to move as the flaming projectile hit the ground in front of us, bounced up, spun in the air hit the ground again and streaked between us.
“What the hell?” Pagan yelled, spiked adrenaline making his voice quiver.
“Flare,” I said. I’d once had a Coast Guard boyfriend who had fired one off in frustration when I’d caught him in a lie. Some relationships are more volatile than others.
“Where did he get a flare gun?”
I took the question as rhetorical. “He missed us on purpose.”
“He didn’t miss by much.” Our voices were unnaturally loud.
“He’s trying for suicide-by-cop,” I said.
“He might just get his wish,” Pagan said harshly, displaying yet another side of his personality. There was indeed the blue steel of a hardcore cop under all his emotional, empathetic guise.
Smoke drifted away showing a scorched strip of grass torn up by the flare as it had rocketed past. The smoke was heavier by the crypt and a small body seemed to float out of it toward us.
“Gun!” I yelled.
The warning was unnecessary as the flare gun Benny was pointing at us looked like a cannon. Benny said nothing as he came to a stop. He had the gun in both hands pointing it at us, but even through the smoke it was easy to see he had no idea of a shooter’s stance. The gun wavered as if it was too heavy for him to hold.
Pagan had his gun up in a two-handed grip, his body turned sideways in a Weaver stance, his weight slightly forward. “Put it down, Benny,” he ordered, command presence coming off of him in waves.