by Mark Cohen
It was a surprisingly pleasant little city. About thirty thousand inhabitants according to the sign. Five hours southeast of Seattle and three hours south of Spokane, it sits at the foot of the Blue Mountains. It’s wheat country, and the dust from the fields gave the late-afternoon sun a pastel orange glow.
I entered town on what must have been the newer part of Main Street. Every fast-food chain known to man had staked a claim. I continued on through, past the college, and soon found myself downtown, a few square blocks of banks, insurance agencies, Realtors, and mom-and-pop businesses. I located the police station so I’d know where to meet Gilbert in the morning.
Main Street ended abruptly, and I was forced to choose between turning right (three miles to the state pen) or left (seven miles to Oregon). I took the third option, made a U-turn and headed back to fast-food alley. Found a motel offering cable TV and a free continental breakfast, paid cash, registered as J. P. Sartre just for the hell of it, and called my brother to check on my boys. He assured me they were fine, so I walked across the street to a pizza place where a dozen college kids were celebrating the approaching end of the school year. I ordered a small pie with garlic and mushrooms, a dinner salad, and a large diet Coke.
“Is Pepsi okay?” the girl asked.
Not wanting to be a troublemaker, I said, “Pepsi’s fine.” She handed me a tall glass and told me to help myself. I put some crushed ice in it, filled it with pop, and found a table by the window.
The sun hadn’t quite set when I finished my meal, so I took a walk. The lilacs were in bloom and smelled heavenly. The residential areas were beautiful; most of the homes were older and many boasted bountiful gardens. Children played and neighbors chatted. Residents nodded or said hello as I passed. I was in a Norman Rockwell painting.
I found my way to the Whitman campus. Ivy covered most of the buildings and a small creek traversed the grounds. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn I was at one of those liberal-arts colleges in New England. Proving once again what happens when you assume something, I had assumed the college was named for Walt Whitman, but a bronze plaque at the base of a statue informed me it had been named for Marcus Whitman, a missionary killed by the Cayuse in 1847 for what they saw as his role in a fatal measles epidemic. Despite my Unitarian tendencies, I didn’t know much about Walt, and I’d never heard of Marcus. As Whitmans go, my favorite has always been Slim.
From the campus I continued downtown. It was as dead as a jackrabbit on I-80 on a cold winter night, but I found a tavern I couldn’t resist. The decor in McDuffie’s was vintage 1945. The newest thing in the place was a faded portrait of John Kennedy in a two-dollar frame above the entrance. I guessed McDuffie was Catholic. A few old-timers sat at the bar. It was a dive, but it had a three-Hank jukebox. I sipped tonic water, ate free popcorn, and spent the evening listening to Hank Williams, Hank Thompson, and Hank Snow.
I bid McDuffie farewell at eleven and began walking back on a street parallel to Main Street, but one block over. I heard mariachi music coming from one of the taverns I passed and saw a few unshaven migrant workers milling around outside the entrance. I took my hands out of my pockets—just in case they harbored any thoughts of mugging the gringo—but they ignored me and I felt guilty for thinking they might try it.
Did some channel surfing at the motel, then climbed into my dog-less bed and picked up Being and Time. Having started the damned book, I was determined to finish it.
As I’ve said, Heidegger felt the mystery of life was that something, rather than nothing, exists. He called this basic condition of existence Being and called everything else beings. He argued traditional philosophy had erred by focusing on the individual. Rather than recognizing our place within the world—our status as one being among all other beings—Heidegger believed our man-centered philosophy caused us to view the world as something that exists for and because of us.
If Donald Underwood had been a poor writer, Martin Heidegger had been a terrible one. Maybe the book had been easier to comprehend in the author’s native tongue, but I didn’t speak German and five pages was my limit. I caught myself nodding off, put the book down on the bedside table, and turned off the reading lamp.
I woke up around four-thirty. Another dream about Joy. A strange dream. I was plummeting to earth and Joy was soaring like an eagle, carrying a CARE package, and shouting, “Dozen, dozen.” Joy and I had lived together for two years while we attended law school. She’d been dead more than twenty years, but still visited me regularly in my dreams.
Unable to get back to sleep, I went for a predawn run and soon found myself on a country road. I reviewed the dream in my mind as I ran. Falling to earth could symbolize how I’d felt since Joy’s death, but I couldn’t make any sense of the rest of it. A dozen what? After a while I let it go. I could’ve run forever in the cool morning air—especially at that altitude—but a large and spirited farm dog appeared at the three-mile point and suggested I turn back. I took the hint and reversed course. Shaved, showered, and took advantage of the free breakfast.
The police station, a monument to cream-colored brick, had probably been constructed at about the same time McDuffie had last redecorated. I arrived at nine sharp. Gilbert was a tall man, six-two. Maybe two hundred pounds. I liked him the moment I saw him. His left forearm bore a globe-and-anchor tattoo. He had a full head of hair, but spent a disproportionate amount of his salary on Grecian Formula. He wore navy blue polyester pants, a light blue shirt, and a maroon tie that had seen better days. A black nylon holster kept his nine-millimeter pistol snug against his hip. I guessed he was in his late forties. From the way he was smoking, I didn’t think it likely he would make it to his late fifties.
“Call me Dick,” he said as he greeted me. I commented on his tattoo and told him I’d been a marine JAG. “Well,” he said in a raspy voice, “you get points for bein’ a jarhead, but you lose points for bein’ an officer.” I laughed. He led me back to his office, a nondescript room decorated in early cop. Stacks of papers scattered about. Bowling trophies graced the tops of his old metal filing cabinets. The obligatory picture of the wife and kids sat on a shelf behind his desk.
We exchanged small talk for a few minutes, but the phone rang and he took it. “Shit,” he told the caller, “it’s gonna be another fine day.” When he finished, he put down the receiver and handed me an accordion file. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got some things to do. Here’s my entire file. We don’t have room for you here, so take it someplace and come back in a few hours. We’ll talk over lunch.”
I walked two blocks, to the courthouse, found that there was a small law library on the first floor, and further found that it was unoccupied. I parked myself at a sturdy oak table and began to read.
Paul Fontaine had lived on Boyer Street. When he failed to show for classes on the first Monday of the school year last September, one of his colleagues, Professor Max LeBlanc, made repeated calls to his home. When he didn’t appear on Tuesday, LeBlanc tried his parents’ farm, then walked the few blocks from the campus to Fontaine’s home. Climbed the steps to the porch, peered between the curtains into the living room, puked his guts out, then notified Walla Walla’s finest.
The pathologist’s report indicated Fontaine had been shot once in the back of the head at point-blank range. The angle of entry, blood-spatter patterns, and position of the body all suggested he’d been made to kneel down. Executed in his own living room. Her best guess was that it had taken place late Sunday evening. He’d been dead at least thirty-six hours when the authorities entered his home.
They had found a slug embedded in the floor near Fontaine’s head. It had entered his skull at a downward angle and exited in the vicinity of his mouth. It had been fired from a .38-caliber pistol, but that wasn’t much help. You can purchase a .38 at any pawnshop in America for less than a hundred bucks. Gilbert had checked on recent sales around the state, but that had produced no viable suspects.
There was no sign of forced entry and n
one of the neighbors had heard anything. No appliances had been stolen and not much was missing. Fontaine had favored wearing an expensive watch, and a gold ring evidencing his membership in a mathematical society. Those were gone, as was any cash he’d had in his wallet.
The evidence suggested he’d been composing a letter to his oldest sister on the evening of his murder. The computer in his upstairs study was still on when the police arrived. A police technician had examined it, as well as the computer in Fontaine’s office, but found nothing remarkable. Those efforts became significant when the feds entered the case because they had yielded no evidence of any correspondence with Carolyn Chang or Donald Underwood.
Gilbert and his colleagues had interviewed dozens of people. I studied the notes of each interview, but nothing jumped out at me. Nobody knew why anyone would want Fontaine dead. He had been a likable man with a good sense of humor. Bottom line, the killer was still out there. I bought ten dollars in dimes from the county treasurer, then photocopied every document in Gilbert’s file.
While at the courthouse, I decided to see if Fontaine’s estate had gone through probate. The probate court was on the second floor, and the clerk of the probate court was a blue-hair named Edna who’d probably been working there thirty years. She was gossiping with a much younger civil servantress when I approached.
“Good morning,” I said. “I’d like to see a probate file on a man named Paul Fontaine. He died last year.”
“Are you an attorney?” she asked. It was a public record and I had a right to see it, but practicing law had taught me that court clerks are among the most powerful people in the world. You piss them off at your peril.
“I hate to admit it,” I said with a smile, “but I am.” I showed her my plastic American Bar Association card—the one with the Hertz #1 Club logo on the back. I positioned my thumb so she couldn’t see my name. The card had expired, but she didn’t notice. Or didn’t care.
“Not from around here,” she remarked.
“Doing some work for an insurance company,” I lied.
“Just a moment.” She disappeared, and I was left to exchange small talk with her protégée, a wholesome cutie excited about her upcoming marriage to a rodeo cowboy. Edna reappeared two minutes later with a thin file in her right hand. Before entrusting it to me, she slid a checkout card across the counter and instructed me to fill it in. I scrawled something illegible and she handed me the file. “File’s due back at four,” she said as she tapped a sign with the eraser on her pencil. Attorneys who didn’t return files on time would lose their checkout privileges.
“I’ll have it back in an hour,” I said. I winked at her, took the stairs back down to the first floor, bought a cold diet Coke from a vending machine, and returned to the library. I had never been fond of probate work, but I knew what to look for.
Fontaine had executed his last will and testament more than ten years prior to his death. A will executed shortly before his death might have indicated that he had anticipated trouble, but a will made more than ten years ago suggested he probably hadn’t had any reason to believe his life was in danger.
His will left everything to his parents, both of whom were still living at the time of his death. The only other document of interest was the inventory of assets. In addition to a home valued at more than $200,000 and his half-million-dollar interest in the wheat operation, Fontaine had owned stock in nineteen corporations. No mutual funds. All told, the value of his estate had exceeded two million dollars. Not bad for a math professor.
I copied the entire file and walked upstairs to return it to Edna. She wasn’t there, but the young girl was. As I handed her the file, a yellow sticky note fell from it. I picked it up to give it to her and noticed a handwritten message:
Fax copies of all documents to
Special Agent Mike Polk
FBI—Denver
(303) 877-8121
“Any idea when that was written?” I asked. She took the note and studied it.
“I remember this,” she said as Edna returned to the room and joined her younger colleague at the counter. “He called Friday and I faxed everything the same day.”
“Are you working on the same case?” Edna asked.
“Same case,” I said, “except the FBI’s done with it and I’m not.” I asked her to photocopy the note for me, then drove to what had been Fontaine’s home as I pondered why Polk would’ve sought copies of the probate documents after the bureau had concluded its investigation. Maybe the local agents had neglected to obtain them and the bureau just wanted to be sure its file was complete. Or maybe the Denver office had managed to lose them and wanted replacement copies.
Fontaine’s residence was an impressive white structure with tall columns. Just three blocks from the college. Probably built in the early part of the century. Similar homes sat on each side of it, but none was separated by more than thirty feet. There was a covered porch complete with porch swing. Roses were in bloom in front of and along both sides of the house. The same home in Boulder would cost half a million dollars.
I walked up the seven wooden steps and peered inside. Toys were scattered about, but nothing in the probate file indicated the home had been sold, so I assumed it had been rented to a family with young children. I rang the bell, received no response, and walked around back. The windows were old and large, but high off the ground. Thorny rosebushes nearly reached the windows. Not an easy way to gain entry.
I was back at the station by eleven, but Gilbert wasn’t, so I took a chair and read USA Today. Two scruffy teens occupied the bench next to me, their heads down, waiting quietly for their parents. “Is that the Group W bench?” I asked the desk sergeant.
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I said. Evidently too young to remember “Alice’s Restaurant.”
Gilbert walked in at eleven-fifteen, flicked his cigarette butt into an ash can, and said, “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”
“No problem,” I said as I folded the paper. He walked to the counter and retrieved his messages.
“Daughter’s eight months’ pregnant and she’s having some problems, so the doc put her in the hospital. Wants her to stay there till she pops the kid. Seems like I spend half my time over there.” He placed the pink message slips in his pocket and said, “Let’s get some lunch.” I followed him out and donned my aviator’s sunglasses. With my haircut, they make me look like a Secret Service agent on steroids, but I can’t stand bright sun in my eyes.
“How many kids do you have?” I asked.
“Three. Oldest boy’s an architect in Seattle.” He paused to light another cigarette. “Daughter’s twenty-two. This is her second child; she had a rough time with the first. My other boy’s a student at the college here; costs an arm and a leg, let me tell you.”
We ate at a surprisingly good deli. Sat outside and watched the cars and people on Main Street. Everyone knew Gilbert. Some from Rotary, others from church or the Little League team he coached. He ordered a ham and cheese; I opted for turkey and Swiss. A spinning electrical sign on top of the tallest building gave the time as 11:34 and the temperature as 77.
He took a deep drag on his cigarette and said, “You’re a man with a past.”
“I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t checked me out.”
“I got the police reports from Denver,” he said. “I can’t understand why they charged you in the first place.”
“I was a pretty well-known criminal-defense lawyer,” I said. “I’d been a vocal critic of the DA, and it finally caught up with me.”
“Fucker comes at me with a knife and I ain’t got a weapon, one of us is goin’ home dead.”
“Water under the bridge,” I said. A college girl in jeans arrived with our drinks and sandwiches, and Gilbert switched topics.
“So what do you think about this thing?” he asked.
“No forced entry,” I said. “I’d guess Fontaine knew the killer. Or felt no reason to fear him.”
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br /> “Maybe,” he said. “Around here nobody locks their doors, so it’s hard to say.”
“Pretty pathetic robbery,” I said.
“Christ, the guy’s credit cards are still in his wallet. Silver candlesticks on the dining-room table.”
“Don’t forget the nineteenth-century coins on display in the study. It looks like the killer never went upstairs.”
“If he did, it was before he pulled the trigger. There wasn’t a speck of blood up there.”
“If we exclude the possibility of a psycho, somebody wanted him dead.”
“Guy had no enemies,” he said.
“Girlfriends?”
“Not really. He had a thing with one of his students year before last, but she’d already graduated when he took the bullet. She’s teaching high school math in Portland. I talked to her, but she didn’t have much to say. He was a sweet man, it was a real tragedy, and all that.”
“I didn’t see any of that in the file.”
“The notes are in my office. He’d slept with some others over the years, but the college doesn’t need that kind of publicity. I’ll give you copies before you leave.”
“I looked at his probate file,” I said. “He didn’t appear to have had any financial problems.”
“No, he’d done pretty well in the stock market. And his family owns the biggest wheat farm in the county. That’s big business up here, let me tell you; ain’t none of them farmers hurting.” The waitress refilled our drinks, and Gilbert extinguished his cancer stick. “People don’t know it, but this is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation.”
“Why fake a robbery,” I said, “unless you’re trying to disguise your motive or lead us down a false trail? And if you’re going to fake a robbery, why not take those coins?”
“The more he takes, the more he has to carry.”
“The more he takes, the greater his ties to Fontaine. If somebody finds those coins in his possession, he’s got some ’splainin’ to do.”
“You do a mean Ricky Ricardo.”