“We try to be discreet where this kind of thing’s concerned,” Karl said. “Something as tragic as suicide –”
Cunningham cut him off.
“There may be more to it than that, Karl, we just don’t know yet. I’m sure that you’ll hear some rumors about this soon, but there’s a remote possibility of foul play.”
“Really?” Karl tried and failed to keep the excitement out of his voice.
“Yes, really,” Cunningham snapped. “I have to stress it’s unlikely, but with someone like Chief Harrison … I can’t tell you what to write, Karl,” The hell you can’t, Karl thought, you’ve been doing it for years, “but if you hear anything like that I have to ask you to keep it to yourself, at least for now. Dave Harrison was an important man in this town and he did a lot of good for a lot of people and he deserves better. Gossip won’t do anybody any good.”
Karl didn’t say anything for a few moments, pretended to think it over. There was an opportunity for some leverage here, something for a rainy day.
“I can certainly understand that, Mayor,” he said after a thoughtful pause, “especially if you think it’s the right thing to do.”
“I do, Karl.” Cunningham said, “out of respect.”
“You have to understand that in this day and age things like this will get out anyway.” It was a tacit admission that by the time the ‘news’ appeared in the Ledger it was already history everywhere else, but Karl had to cover himself. “As far as the Ledger is concerned it will stay off the record.”
“Thank you, Karl. I appreciate it.”
Karl would have liked to get more than that, a heartfelt expression of gratitude, something, but he knew better. Cunningham was too canny an operator to be effusive about it, and both of them knew that he could wipe out around forty percent of Karl’s advertising revenue with an inter-office memo.
Still, Karl had made a concession and Cunningham of all people knew how things worked. Karl now had a chit that he could cash in somewhere down the line and it had cost him nothing. The rumor mill had probably kicked in already.
It didn’t change the fact that he could still get a story out of it, something that wouldn’t offend anybody and remind Cunningham that he’d given him what he wanted. Harrison’s death meant that Strothwood had lost two of its most distinguished citizens within a comparatively short time. That did represent the end of an era, even though it hadn’t been much of an era at all, and more importantly it gave Karl an opportunity to actually write something worthwhile, a retrospective and tribute rolled into one. Better yet, he could interview some other distinguished citizens—people like Cunningham—who’d welcome their implicit inclusion in the pantheon of local movers and shakers.
The stuff Karl did for the Strothwood Ledger rarely allowed him to write much of anything beyond an endless procession of service club functions, bake sales, sports events and puffy human interest stories. The routine was virtually automatic, and he often thought that at some point he should just recycle all of last year’s papers into this year’s and just change the dates. He could take last January’s ‘Gee how cold it is.’ stories, kids playing in snow and people shoveling snow off their driveways, and extrapolate everything month by month through ‘Gee how hot it is.’ stories about farmers’ problems with drought and/or rain and somewhere in there a shot of a nice-looking girl in a swimsuit—nothing too racy, mind you, no thongs, he’d made that mistake once—through the back to school/end of summer shit, into the fall and then finally into the Christmas rush and how expensive it was and how much pressure it was on everybody but it is a magical time of year…. basically, he thought morosely, that’s what I’ve been doing anyway. For the most part ethnic diversity and political correctness hadn’t really penetrated Strothwood and at least he could still put ‘Merry Christmas’ on the front page without getting pilloried for it.
The exceptions to all of that that had been the violence and scandal that had swirled around Frank Stallings, Adrienne Simmonds and Kenny Langdon. For a brief, shining moment Karl had thought of that as his ticket out, a chance to be a real journalist, maybe even get a book out of it. Nobody in Strothwood actually read books, but people in the outside world did. His hopeful little project slowly evaporated when he was met with almost complete silence by just about everybody concerned. Nobody was talking. Langdon was dead, Stallings didn’t like Karl at the best of times, Dr. Jeff Wagner thought he was a fool, Adrienne Simmonds and her daughter looked at him like he was some repulsive form of pond life, and Ed Cunningham and Brent Williams just wanted the whole thing to go away.
In the end Karl had covered the incidents in the only way he could – a perfunctory just the facts ma’am scorecard of the carnage that only touched the surface of what had really happened. He wanted to dig deeper but he just didn’t know how, and it didn’t matter anyway. The Ledger’s publishers let him know that they had no interest in anything that might get people upset and cut into the ad revenue that kept the paper viable. They wouldn’t sell any more papers because of it. Anybody in Strothwood who was ever going to subscribe to or buy The Ledger already had, and the readership was going in the same direction as Strothwood’s population – down.
Nobody could possibly object, though, to an homage to two of Strothwood’s most distinguished citizens. If nothing else it would give Karl a respectable addition to his painfully thin portfolio, something he could present to potential employers. There wasn’t anything wrong with enlightened self –interest, especially if eventually it led to a job somewhere in The World, which was located pretty much anywhere beyond a fifty mile range of Strothwood.
For a few moments he’d allowed himself to be buoyed by an unaccustomed bubble of optimism, the pathetically encouraging thought that somehow an article about two leading citizens from a place no one had ever heard of could be something on which to base a career move. Reality returned just as quickly as it had fled.
Quiet desperation, he thought.
25
Vince knew he was already in the middle of something that could finish him, put him inside for good. He didn’t want to be inside again, ever, but no matter which side of that edge he came down on he knew that was probably where he was going.
His original plan had been to somehow embed himself in Strothwood, become part of the woodwork, but from what Tommy had told him and from what he could see for himself that process would take more time out of his life than he was willing to give. People here were too suspicious, too insular, and it would take years. After all his time inside he couldn’t handle the thought of blowing even more of his lifespan in a place like this. Even in the short time he’d been here he’d found he couldn’t stand the place or the people in it. Better to come in, do what he had to do, and get out as fast as he could. It would jack up the risk, but there wasn’t a choice.
The first two had been old men. This one was different, although he could hardly be described as big game. From what Vince could see in the picture there wasn’t much to be worried about. He’d been easy to find, too. All the research he’d done before coming to Strothwood had hardly been necessary at all.
Greg McIvor was in real estate and he’d plastered himself all over social media. He advertised in the local newspaper, had his own website, the whole nine yards. The downside was that he was high profile, like the first two, but unlike them he was comparatively young. From the picture on his website he appeared to be in his early thirties.
Looking at his picture it was hard to believe this guy could have beaten out Tommy for anything. McIvor had probably been better looking back then, before age and donuts and whatever else had done their work. He had the requisite salesman’s grin but it was framed by a pudgy face, and what little Vince could see from the head and shoulders shot suggested a flaccid build. There was more than a hint of dissolution in the blue eyes and something in the sardonic cast of the mouth that screamed treachery.
I’m projecting, Vince thought. This was years later, and whatever he was or
wasn’t now didn’t matter. Vince didn’t care. What mattered was what McIvor had done then.
The phone call was the easy part. Vince channeled the smooth persona from his earlier life, the one with all the rough edges beveled away, and told McIvor he was coming in from out of town to look at some of the golf course lots he had listed. The story was that his uncle was nearing retirement and wanted a quiet place for a vacation home, and since his uncle was a busy man he’d been delegated to look around for him. Thin, but it gave Vince an excuse to protect the mythical uncle’s ‘confidentiality’ and hopefully short circuit any credit check or research McIvor might attempt. Greed could usually win out over skepticism, and from the way McIvor sounded on the phone Vince figured it was working again.
The rest was logistics. He wasn’t going to get the kind of car he needed in Strothwood, so the next best venue and the fastest was Buffalo. He knew how to make that happen, and when the time came it would take only a day or two, just long enough to boost a late-model Lexus or Mercedes and switch plates.
He was acutely aware that this would be the first one where he could anticipate physical risk to himself, his miscalculation with Harrison notwithstanding. Actually the risk had been there all along, in a small vial containing more than enough to do what he had to do. One thing his misspent youth had taught him was how to handle drugs, but this was something else entirely, something that he’d had to catch up on when he got out. At first he hadn’t believed the hype, hadn’t believed its lethality, and it took some research on his own to assure himself that the hype was real.
It was.
26
“This stuff is ancient history, Karl,” Louanne Hastings told him.
“I know it’s a lot of trouble, but I think it’s worth it. Besides, it wasn’t that long ago.”
Louanne looked at him dubiously. She wasn’t Karl Jamieson’s biggest fan. She’d started out as a paralegal after graduating from community college, gone to work as a temp for a succession of Strothwood attorneys in private practice. She was bright and hardworking, but given the male-dominated nature of the legal profession in Strothwood her looks had gotten in the way. They were certainly no detriment to getting hired—her first couple of jobs had probably been on that basis alone—but often enough they created complications later on.
It didn’t help that after a few years she’d realized that she knew as much about the law and how to implement it as some of the people she worked for. It wasn’t vanity, but instead the day to day exposure to the realities of a law practice. She was a product of her environment and her upbringing. A law degree in Strothwood conferred a certain status on the person who held it, not quite to the extent of a medical degree but certainly above the rank and file occupations pursued by virtually everyone else. She’d bought into that, and while she didn’t have the financial capability to go to law school herself, becoming a paralegal seemed the next best thing.
As with so many things in life it wasn’t as great a solution as it first appeared. Many of the attorneys in Strothwood liked to convey the impression of maintaining a thriving practice, but in a lot of ways having a law office wasn’t much different than running a mom and pop small business, especially where cash flow was concerned. A lawyer in private practice—even now the law profession in Strothwood was overwhelmingly male—had to go out and kill his own food, and even when he was good at it he still had to manage the money once he had it.
That wasn’t easy. Revenue came in fits and starts, was difficult to forecast with any accuracy, and depended on who walked in the door and when. The trickledown effect was predictable, however. Some years she worked nearly full time, but the off years, the ones where she worked less than thirty weeks, were difficult to deal with and budget for. While the flexibility of her work schedule was appealing, after a few years Luanne had grown tired of the downside.
When the job as court clerk came up she decided to go for it. In the long run it would pay more, especially factoring in benefits that were unheard of in any Strothwood private practice. She knew Karl Jamieson and she didn’t like him. She thought he was pretentious and had an inflated idea of his own importance. They were of the same generation, with a history—well, a history as far as Karl was concerned—going all the way back to high school. He seemed to think that gave them some kind of connection, although they’d only rarely crossed paths even then. For one thing, she’d been popular with her peers. Virtually everybody had given Karl a wide berth.
In nearly twenty years little had changed. The difference was that because of her position Louanne had to talk to this guy, even be helpful to him. She was a public servant, an officer of the court, and that meant she sometimes had to deal with undesirables. She smiled to herself and assumed an expression of interested cooperation.
“It’s the end of an era,” Karl said.
That’s original, Louanne thought, but she just nodded. When he’d first called she thought it was yet another clumsily disguised attempt to get closer to her, but she’d given him the benefit of the doubt. On the face of it a tribute to Landers and Harrison wasn’t a bad idea, even if it meant putting up with Karl Jamieson for a few minutes.
“I understand that, and I think it’s nice that you want to write something about these people,” she chose not to say that it might have been more to the point while they were still alive, “but most of what you need should be in the library – or your own back issues, for that matter.”
Karl looked offended.
“I know that, Louanne, but I want to go deeper. I mean, just about everything in this town revolved around them for a long time. Over the years they would have been involved in some interesting cases. I thought getting some trial transcripts would be a good start.”
Louanne just stared at him for a moment.
“Karl, you said it yourself. The two of them were involved with a lot of stuff over a very long period of time. You’re talking thousands of pages here.”
“It’s okay – I narrowed it down.”
He reached into the vest pocket of his sport jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper, handed it across her desk. Louanne looked down at the typewritten list, then back at Karl.
“Are you sure you need all this?” she asked. “There’s a charge for this stuff, you know.”
“You could help me fine-tune it a bit,” he said.
Forget it, she thought. She’d been out of his league when they were in high school and she was out of his league now. She wasn’t going to spend any more time with this guy than she absolutely had to.
27
The trial transcripts were heavy going, even though Karl had tried to focus on cases over the years that had warranted the most coverage in the Ledger. It didn’t help that most of Landers’ and Harrison’s careers predated both Karl’s arrival at the newspaper and the advent of decent computer records. That left microfiche at the two libraries in town – the public library only a few blocks from Karl’s tiny bungalow and the one at the local college.
Karl had an aversion to the public library – he’d spent too much time there as a kid and he didn’t like to be reminded of it. The college library was familiar ground to him as well, but it didn’t generate much nostalgia either. He hadn’t been any more popular in college than he had been in high school. It was quiet this time of year, only a few summer school students in evidence, but even squirreled away in the stacks he felt self-conscious and old.
He ended up doing what Louanne had suggested in the first place, doing most of the research in the Ledger offices. He’d decided to do that after hours – even running a newspaper as small as the Ledger demanded the kind of attention that didn’t allow much time during the day for either research or writing the kind of piece he wanted to do about Landers and Harrison.
Louanne had talked him into drastically reducing his wish list of transcripts, but there was still a lot of material. Landers had been on the bench for something like thirty-five years, and Harrison had been chief of police for nearly as
long. Landers figured heavily in the transcripts while Harrison’s name came up only sporadically. There wouldn’t have been too many times when Harrison’s presence in court would have been required once he’d become chief.
In itself that wasn’t a huge problem. In his position Harrison would still have gotten a lot of coverage in the Ledger, and that would correct the imbalance in a hurry. Karl had covered both men for a few years until their respective retirements, but he couldn’t legitimately claim to know either of them well. Both were decidedly old-school, neither of them regarding journalism as fit work for a grown man. Landers had been decidedly apolitical and he’d never had any interest in getting his name in the paper, although inevitably it had appeared there anyway. Harrison had been at the other end of the spectrum, had gone into the Strothwood P.D. pretty much straight out of high school. He’d worked his way up through the ranks from there. The two men couldn’t have been more unlike, but somehow—this was more surprising in Landers’ case than in Harrison’s—both were hardliners when it came to the justice system. That was hardly an unpopular stance, then or now, in a place like Strothwood.
Maybe that was made Karl think of it. Karl’s early years at the Ledger had overlapped the latter stages of both Harrison’s and Landers’ careers. When Karl had started out he’d inherited a lot of the crap duties on the Ledger that nobody else wanted, and one of them was a column grandly entitled In the Courts, a mind-numbingly banal recitation of the various ways Strothwood residents had run afoul of the law that week. The offences were mostly confined to shoplifting, DUIs, petty fraud, and Saturday night punch-outs, but paradoxically the column was one of the Ledger’s most popular features, the equivalent of placing miscreants in public stocks so Strothwood’s law-abiding and smug citizens could throw rotten vegetables at them. Karl remembered how his initial rookie excitement at getting the column had swiftly eroded into disappointment. Nevertheless he’d been stuck with the column for three or four years and had spent more stultifying hours than he could count sitting in the courtroom wondering how Judge Landers had managed to endure it so long without blowing his brains out.
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