The Pain Scale

by Tyler Dilts

  “It’s okay. I understand. I lost my wife violently a few years ago.”

  I think that was the first time he really looked at me. “Yeah,” he said.

  We sat there for a minute or two in our grief. I waited for him to talk.

  “I thought...I thought if I got out for just a little while...that maybe I...”

  “I know,” I said. “I know. It’s going to take a long time.”

  He nodded at me, and the pain in his eyes was so palpable and despairing that it was hard to believe he was a rapist.

  When I called the Deering factory, which turned out to be located just outside San Diego, I talked to a guy named Barry, whose name I recognized from the company’s website. It had identified him as their worldwide sales manager. I told him about the situation, and he asked me a few questions about the banjo. When I described the part with the metal that seemed discolored, he stopped me with an excited “Oh!”

  “Oh?” I said.

  “You’ve got a Saratoga Star with Jens Kruger tone ring.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes.” He told me a detailed story about a bell foundry in Switzerland and how they made a special part for that particular banjo. There was a keen enthusiasm in his voice that actually got me a little bit excited, even though I had trouble following much of what he was saying. Barry seemed to have a surprisingly thorough knowledge of metallurgy. He finished with, “It’s a very subjective thing, but I think that model of banjo has a better tone than just about anything else out there.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. Tony Trischka and Bela Fleck have both played them.”

  I’d actually heard of Bela Fleck, so I didn’t feel quite as lost as I had through most of our conversation. “It must be very valuable, then,” I said.

  “Well, depending on its age and whether or not there were any custom features added, it’s probably worth somewhere between seven and eight thousand dollars.”

  I was silent long enough for him to think we’d lost the connection. “Hello?” he said.

  “Wow, that’s a lot more than I expected.”

  “It is an excellent banjo.”

  “Thank you, Barry. I really appreciate the help.”

  “Happy to. Do me a favor, would you?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Let me know what you decide to do with it.”

  “I will.”

  And I really will, I thought, if I can ever figure it out.

  We assumed Turchenko had heard the news about Shevchuk, but we wanted to see if we might be able to leverage some kind of information out of him. Bob Kincaid, the DDA handling the case, had an unusual idea. Because the Ukrainian had invoked his right to legal representation, we weren’t allowed to question him without his attorney present. We could, however, make a death notification.

  The interview room in the administrative segregation unit of the county jail was even smaller than the one we used back at the station. Looked about eight by eight or so. Jen sat at the table, and I stood just behind and to her left.

  One of the two deputies who had led Turchenko down the hall waited outside, and the other prodded him into the chair across the table from Jen. He wore the ubiquitous orange jumpsuit and had his hands cuffed to a leather belt around his waist.

  “Hello, Mr. Turchenko,” she said. “Do you remember me? I’m Detective Tanaka.”

  “Without lawyer,” he grumbled, “I am not supposed to talk.”

  “That’s okay, Mr. Turchenko,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything. We won’t be questioning you.”

  “Then what?” There was a dull groan in his voice, and I remembered the first time I had seen him, with milk running down his chin but thinking about going for his gun. The danger seemed suppressed. But not the oafishness.

  “I’m afraid we have some bad news,” Jen said. “Your friend, Taras Shevchuk, has been killed.”

  He already knew; that much was clear from his expression. But he was clearly confused. I figured he was struggling with what to make of the fact that we were bothering to tell him anything at all.

  “I know,” he said.

  “Your friend was murdered,” I said with as much sympathy as I could fake.

  “Don’t worry, though,” Jen said. “We have it on good authority that you’ll be able to stay here in ad-seg. Whoever killed your friend probably won’t be able to get to you.”

  He raised his head and lost a bit of the slump in his shoulders. “Probably?”

  “You shouldn’t worry, Mr. Turchenko,” Jen said, leaning forward. “I’m sure you’re very safe here.”

  It actually was unlikely that anyone would be able to get to him where he was. But we were betting on the fact that he wouldn’t believe it.

  “Is there anyone else you’d like to tell us about, Mr. Shevchuk?” Jen asked.

  “Anton Tropov?” I asked, as if the idea had just occurred to me. Turchenko’s eyes widened at the name, and he lost even more of the slouch.

  “You might want to talk to your lawyer about him, Mr. Turchenko,” Jen said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “you should. Unless, of course, he’s Tropov’s lawyer, too.”

  He looked confused.

  I gave him the best fake look of surprise I could muster. “He’s not, is he? Your lawyer doesn’t represent Anton, too, does he?”

  We watched him for a few moments, and we could almost hear the screws turning inside his skull, and then the realization that we were reading his behavior dawned on him and his shoulders re-hunched and his eyes returned to the slits they had been when he came in.

  “No,” he said. “No one else to tell about. Can I go now?”

  “Of course,” Jen said. “Good luck.”

  He glanced back at her once and then trudged back the way he had come with the two deputies at his heels.

  “How do you think that went?” I asked.

  “I almost feel bad taking advantage of someone that dim.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” she said, “not really.”

  It was a bit after seven when I stepped up onto Harlan’s front porch. He saw me through the front window and motioned for me to come in. Before the screen door even closed behind me, I said, in what was probably the loudest voice he had ever heard me use, “Why the fuck did you give me an eight-thousand-dollar banjo?”

  When I saw the expression on his face, I regretted my tone. When I saw the woman who came into the living room from the kitchen, I regretted it even more.

  “Danny,” Harlan said, “I’d like you to meet my daughter, Cynthia.” The alarm I’d seen in his face had given way to a bemused smirk as he saw me squirm, trying to cover my embarrassment.

  “Hello, I...uh...” I realized I’d misspoken, but she spoke before I could correct my mistake.

  “Hi,” she said. “Dad’s told me a lot about you.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Me too.” “He’s right,” Harlan said. “I tell Danny a lot about himself. He just never listens.”

  They both thought that was very funny. She was tall, like Harlan, with broad shoulders and hips, and a smile that seemed comfortable on her face.

  “We just finished eating,” she said. “Can I get you a plate?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine. Thank you.” I wasn’t sure why I said that. I hadn’t eaten, and my stomach had been growling in the car on the way there.

  The three of us chatted a bit about things that didn’t really matter, and when we reached a natural lull in the conversation, Cynthia said, “Why don’t I go clean up the kitchen and give you guys a chance to talk?”

  “Thanks,” Harlan said.

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “Why did you give me the banjo?”

  “I told you why. For your physical therapy.”

  When I tried to stare him down, he said, “It’ll be even better than a guitar. For your left hand. You have to do more hammer-ons and pull-offs and such.”

  “I thi
nk you’re full of shit.”

  “You know what I did to the last man who said that to me?”

  “I don’t know. Dragged him through the town square behind your horse?”

  He didn’t quite laugh at that, but I could see that he came close.

  “In all seriousness, Danny, I gave it to you because I thought it would do you some good. It’s different having a really good musical instrument like that Deering. You can’t just blow it off like you would some crappy hundred-and-twenty-dollar guitar. It’s serious having something that valuable, and you have to take it seriously. I want your hand to get better. I thought it would help. Besides, I have two more even better than that one.”

  “Even better than the Jens Kruger tone ring?”

  He did laugh a bit then. “Spent some time on Google, did you?”

  “Even talked to a guy at the factory.”

  “Wow.”

  We were quiet for a few moments, and then I came right out and asked him the question that had been on my mind since I’d first seen the Deering.

  “What if I don’t want to play the banjo?”

  “What if I don’t want stomach cancer?”

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to reply to that because Cynthia came back into the living room with a plate in each hand and said, “Who wants pie?”

  An hour and a half later, I had just left and was putting the key in the lock on my Camry’s door when I heard Harlan’s screen door close and turned to see Cynthia walking toward me with an aluminum foil–covered plate.

  “Hey,” she said. “I brought you a piece of pie.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I don’t think my dad believes that I just came out here to give you dessert.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. I came to ask you about the banjo. Which one did he give you?”

  “It’s a Deering Saratoga Star.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Why? He said he had two others that are even better.”

  “He has others that are more valuable, but that one’s his favorite,” she said. “He always said it had the best sound of any banjo he’d ever played.”

  Nine

  I DON’T KNOW what was worse that night—the worry or the pain. I’d trimmed an hour off the prescribed interval between Vicodin doses, and at two thirty in the morning, I was sitting in the living room watching Shake ’Em Down for the sixth or seventh time. Too bad the movie’s star, Jack Palms, turned out to be a junkie asshole wife beater. He might have filled that big gap between Bruce Willis and Jason Statham with a few more decent action flicks if he hadn’t had to go to prison. I’d seen the movie too many times for it to distract me, though, and I couldn’t stop my attention from ping-ponging back and forth between Harlan and the Benton victims. And the viciously constricting tension in my neck and shoulder was constant.

  In the bathroom, I turned the shower on to hot and let the water blast me lobster red. When the water heater exhausted its supply, I toweled off and reluctantly put myself to bed, my skin numb and stinging from the heat just enough to pull my focus away from the pain and allow me to settle into a shallow and fitful sleep.

  The next morning, Marty came in a few minutes after Jen and me with a big pink box, and I found the only cruller in the batch.

  “Good news,” he said.

  “Yeah?” I replied, my mouth full of coffee and cruller.

  “Driver had two cell phones,” Marty said. “A prepaid throwaway and an iPhone.”

  “Get an ID?” Jen asked.

  “Not unless he’s a fifty-two-year-old woman from Simi Valley. But there’s an assload of data there. The techs are downloading everything and running it through that new Lantern software to see how far back we can trace the locations.”

  “Maybe we’ll catch a break,” I said.

  Jen peeled the foil top off a Yoplait and asked, “Any other smartphones we can cross-reference?”

  I’d been through the files enough times to know the answer without looking. “Only Sara Benton’s,” I said. “But let’s check the call logs against everything else we have to see what might connect. And let’s check with Patrick, too. See if he’s got anything he picked out of the data.”

  An hour later, Marty came back from tech services with what looked like a ream of paper in his hands.

  “They printed it all out. Two and half months’ worth of location data.” He dropped the pile on his desk with a thud and fished around in his shirt pocket. “I had to ask them for this.” He held up a black plastic thumb drive.

  “You know how the techs are,” Jen said. “They think everybody over forty is still living in the dark ages.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s cute when you type with two fingers.”

  Marty seemed satisfied with that. “Want copies?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why don’t we all start working on it?”

  We agreed and divided the spreadsheets by date, with a section each for Dave and Patrick as well.

  Smartphones record their locations by triangulating with cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots and occasionally pinging off satellites, all in the form of latitude and longitude coordinates. The techs were able to download this data from the SUV driver’s iPhone and translate it into a series of street addresses laid out in spreadsheet form that we could check against all the addresses we had that were related with the case. If we came up dry in that regard and couldn’t make any connections, we’d start Googling the addresses one by one and hope we found a needle in the haystack.

  “I’ll cross-reference all the addresses we have in the murder book,” I said. “Let’s see if we get lucky with anything before we start checking the locations one by one.”

  Marty and Jen both seemed relieved that I’d volunteered for what amounted to the glorified data-entry task. The truth was, even though I didn’t relish the idea of spending the morning in front of a spreadsheet, the new information kindled the excitement and the connection I felt to the case. As long I believed there might really be a needle in that haystack, I didn’t mind going through it straw by straw.

  I ate lunch at my desk and was just finishing up a Modica’s meatball sandwich when Jen came back into the squad.

  “Just got off the phone with Kincaid,” she said.

  “What’s up?”

  “Turchenko wants a meet.”

  “Think he’ll roll on Tropov?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “Did he get a new lawyer?”

  “I forgot to ask,” Jen said.

  “If Shevchuk was killed to keep him from talking and they were both working for Anton Tropov, how do you figure he’ll play it if he gets word that Turchenko is going to roll?”

  “That’s why Ruiz got him transferred to ad-seg. Tough to hit him there.”

  “So we’re figuring Tropov’s either got to shut him up or skip.”

  “Yeah.” She looked at me and saw the idea take root. “What are you thinking?”

  “Why would Tropov want Sara Benton killed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if he’s not the shot caller?”

  “A contractor?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What if?”

  “Then he could be the next target.”

  Whenever Bob Kincaid and Jen are in the same room, I always feel like a supporting player. The three of us were in an interview room waiting for the guards to escort Turchenko in for his visit. We had already filled him in on everything we needed to, so they chatted.

  “Any leads on houses?” he asked.

  “Saw a nice Craftsman last weekend in Belmont Heights.”

  She didn’t mention that I’d found it and pointed it out to her.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Is it the one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then it’s not. You’ll know when it is.”

  “How?”

  “Trust me,” he said, �
��you’ll just know.”

  “I’m not sure I have your confidence.”

  “Don’t settle. It’s a buyer’s market.”

  She was about to say something else when the door opened and Turchenko was led in and told to sit by a single hulking guard. Usually there are two escorts. Maybe this one was big enough to be counted twice.

  The guard looked at Jen, then at Turchenko’s handcuffs. She nodded, and he removed them. The bracelets dangled from the strap around Turchenko’s waist.

  After Turchenko was seated, the guard leaned out the door toward the public waiting room and motioned to someone outside. A man we hadn’t seen before entered. The new guy wore a nicer suit than I did and had a shiny gold watch on his wrist that would have looked too big even on the guard.

  “You wanted to see us?” Kincaid said to the Ukrainian.

  The new suit talked before Turchenko had a chance to reply.

  “Hello. You must be DDA Kincaid and Detectives”—he opened a leather portfolio and pretended to check his notes—“Tanaka and Beckett.”

  We nodded.

  “I’m Robert Pfister. Mr. Turchenko’s new counsel. He’s agreed to meet with you on my advice.”

  “How do you spell that?” I asked, holding up my pen and notebook as if I were about to write it down. “F? P-h?”

  “P-f-i-s-t-e-r.”

  He hid his irritation well, but it was there. I pretended to write it in my notebook and didn’t press him any further.

  “What did you want to talk about?” Kincaid said, directing the question at Turchenko.

  He might have been dim, but he knew enough to let his lawyer speak for him.

  “There’s a possibility my client may have some information that could be of use to you.”

  Six

  “I NEVER WANT this,” Turchenko began. “Taras, too. This is not why we came to America. Not to kill children.”

  They both had criminal records that had followed them from the Ukraine. But there was so much going on politically and societally in the late nineties that we had to wonder how much they got away with that nobody ever noticed. Still, judging from everything we were able to dig up, they were petty criminals who upped their game to the big leagues when they immigrated to the States.