Oregon Hill

by Howard Owen

  I have just enough grace not to ask if it’s a female friend.

  “I think we can work it out,” she says in voice that tells me she doesn’t think that at all.

  We’re at her car. She’s fishing for her keys, trying not to cry.

  I lean down so she has to look at me. I feel like I’m talking to a little girl instead of a strong, upwardly mobile lawyer—upwardly mobile, that is, if she doesn’t ruin her career by trusting the likes of me.

  “Look, this is all going to work out. All of it. The whole trouble with us was my fault. Only thing you did wrong was marrying me in the first place. Don’t get into instant replays. Patterns do not have to repeat themselves.”

  She gets into her car and looks up at me.

  “So you say,” is her goodbye line.

  I do a quick drive through the Fan. No sign of Awesome Dude. Nobody at the shelter owns up to having seen him, either. When I call Peggy, same thing. She says she’s worried about him, and I tell her I’m on it.

  “How’s Les doing?”

  I hear her sigh.

  “Oh, he’s fine. He had me tie one of his ankles to the bed last night so he’d have to at least wake up before he started looking for the ladder. Kind of reminded me of Walter.”

  She giggles a little. Peggy has, through much trial and error, found a way to stay just high enough pretty much from just after breakfast until bedtime.

  Walter, whose last name I can’t remember, was briefly married to her. I don’t want to know any more about ropes.

  “But he had to get up and piss, and he almost broke his neck, so we’re back to square zero, ground one, whatever.”

  I tell her I’ll be by later.

  My cell phone rings. It’s Jackson.

  “Craziest thing,” he says. “Wheelie just called me. He said they want to talk about a possible job. Something on the copydesk. I ought to tell him to shove it up his ass.”

  I advise against this. I remind him that Bob Parks, who was a pretty good assistant editor until they laid him off last year, is selling used cars. I don’t have the heart to say what he and I both know: Whatever his new salary, it’ll be the best one he can get for the rest of his working life.

  I’m glad to see that Grubby apparently isn’t going to renege on our deal. Now it’s up to me to make it happen. Otherwise, I’ll be helping Bob Parks pretty soon.

  It’s a quarter past two when I go back to the Fourth Precinct. Shiflett’s door is open, but I knock anyhow.

  “What?” he says, but then he looks up and sees me.

  “Willie,” he says. “I hear you’ve got some information for me.”

  Yeah, I’m thinking. I’ve got enough information to make you wet your pants.

  I shut the door.

  “I’ve been checking around,” I tell him.

  “Snooping around, you mean. That can be hazardous to your health.”

  He looks at my eyes, which are starting to lose some of their Mardi Gras color.

  “I get paid to ‘snoop around.’ I’m a reporter, remember?”

  He reaches into his vertical files and pulls out a sheet of paper.

  “Well, report this,” he says.

  It’s Martin Fell’s original confession. I was afraid Shiflett was going to show me something new.

  “I think it was coerced,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t seem to want to hear this. His face turns red, and I get a brief glimpse of what he must be like in an interrogation room. I’m thinking David Shiflett is always the bad cop.

  “That’s a serious charge. You better have something to back that up.”

  This look of utter contempt comes over him.

  “You newspaper guys, you’re all alligator mouth and hummingbird ass.”

  “You want to know what I’ve got, or are you just going to sit there and try to scare the shit out of me?” Actually, he’s doing a pretty good job of that.

  He leans back and folds his arms, maybe to help him resist the urge to leap across the desk and strangle me.

  I take him through what I’ve got, step by step.

  Somebody beat the crap out of me and made it clear that my blogging about the Fell case was the motive.

  “You made some enemies here,” Shiflett says. “Hell, there’s some civilians out there that probably don’t like it when guys like you try to get murdering perverts sprung.”

  I mention that my daughter thinks she’s being stalked. He says she should file a complaint.

  I turn up the heat a little.

  “I know about Bobby Jenkins.”

  He doesn’t blink.

  “What do you know about Bobby Jenkins?”

  “Your old pal, class of ’78, he’s the one that put Fell back in the general population.”

  “So what? I barely know Bobby Jenkins anymore. I see him maybe twice a year.”

  “So, he claims he got orders to throw Fell back to the wolves, but he can’t remember who from. And I know you called him just before it happened.”

  I know no such thing, or at least I didn’t until now.

  Shiflett blinks, then shifts a little in his chair.

  “No,” he says. “I didn’t, and if you print something like that I’ll sue your ass for so much money you’ll have to move back in with your dopehead momma.”

  He grins when he says this, showing his teeth, which are big and blocky like the rest of him. He’d like an excuse right now to put the purple and green back in my face. The only thing that keeps him from busting Peggy on possession, I’m sure, is the unwritten law that says Oregon Hill cops don’t foul their own nest. You look out for the neighborhood. Now, though, I’m wondering if he might be thinking about making an exception.

  Still, I press on.

  “There’s more.”

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  I don’t move, and he finally sighs and lets me continue. He’s looking at some spot on the wall behind me.

  “There’s a guy, Awesome Dude,” I start, and I see that I have his attention.

  “He saw something.”

  A short silence.

  “What, exactly, did Awesome Dude see?”

  “He saw a cop car stop and he saw a girl get in. The girl fits Isabel Ducharme’s description. He’s pretty sure it happened the night she disappeared.”

  I have David Junior Shiflett’s attention.

  “He’s pretty sure he can identify the cop.”

  “Then he ought to come in and do so.”

  “I can’t find him,” I admit. “He’s disappeared.”

  Shiflett smiles.

  “Quite the witness,” he says. “I know that bum. He couldn’t identify what he had for breakfast.”

  He’s dying to ask it. I wait.

  “Did he tell you, or anybody, who this so-called cop was?”

  “Yeah.”

  I make him ask me. I’m kind of enjoying this.

  “He said he was the one they call ‘Bear.’ Oh, wait. Isn’t that your nickname?”

  He stands up, and I’m ready to do a quick exit. But he doesn’t come out from behind his desk.

  “None of this amounts to anything,” he says, quietly. Somehow, he’s more scary when he’s quiet than when he’s ranting. “You’ve got a bunch of hearsay, secondhand innuendo and bullshit. If I called Jenkins, and I didn’t, what does that mean? Somebody beat a reporter’s ass. Hell, they ought to give him a medal. Your daughter’s hysterical. Must be genetic. And Awesome Dude. I’d love to see you or your goddamn ex-wife get him on the witness stand. If you can find him.”

  I’m quiet, trying to keep my cool. I can’t resist the urge to do a little Columbo number on him, though. I get up like I’m going to leave.

  “Well,” I say, my hand on the doorknob, “you’re probably right. I’m sorry to waste your time like this. No hard feelings?”

  He doesn’t answer, and I do a three-count before I reach for my shirt pocket.

  “There is one thing, though. I don’t know what made
me do it, but I went to the boat landing out on Route 33—you know, the one that crosses the South Anna? I just couldn’t believe that they never found any evidence of where the Ducharme girl was thrown in the river?”

  He’s sitting again.

  “I walked out through the mud and all, and I saw this thing kind of shining in the weeds. If the sun hadn’t been just right, I wouldn’t have seen it. This is just a copy, of course.”

  I throw the Xerox of the credit card offer down on his desk. He reads his name on it.

  “Must have been inside an envelope,” I tell him, “one of those things Capital One sends me about twice a week. I just throw ’em away, but maybe a pile of mail was on the seat of somebody’s car, and it got knocked off somehow when he opened the door, and it fell out. And it was night and the guy didn’t know he’d lost it.

  “But I can’t understand how this one came to have your name on it. It’s just peculiar.”

  “And you found this at the boat landing on U.S. 33?”

  I nod my head.

  “Anybody with you?”

  “Custalow.”

  He gives a tight little smile.

  “Custalow. Well, you’ve got quite a rogue’s gallery of witnesses here. Wasn’t he involved in some kind of burglary thing where you live this week?”

  “If by ‘involved’ you mean he caught the thief, yeah.”

  I can see that Shiflett’s a little shaken. He knows there are two people who will swear they found evidence upriver of the body indicating that he was there. Along with everything else, he knows it could be enough.

  Still, though, there’s nothing that absolutely nails him.

  “You think I’m somehow involved in this?” he asks me.

  “I wouldn’t begin to assume something like that,” I lie. “I’m just going by the facts.”

  “Some facts.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right. But I have to tell you. Kate is kind of a bulldog. She won’t let go of this until she’s sure her client’s gotten a fair shake.”

  “A fair shake. That little cocksucker doesn’t deserve a fair shake.” Shiflett stops, as if he’s afraid he’s said too much.

  I turn again to the door.

  “Well, thank you again for your time.”

  “I better not see this crap in the paper or your damn blog,” he says. “If you make me look like I’m involved in this, if you drag my name through the mud . . .”

  I open the door a couple of feet, then stop again. WWCD. What would Columbo do?

  “Oh. I almost forgot. You know, when I was trying to figure all this out, somehow I started thinking about your dad.”

  Shiflett’s face is approximately the color of purple my eye was two days after the beating. He says nothing, though.

  “I did some digging, and I took a road trip. And you know what? I know you’re not going to believe this, but I think that guy, that Valentine Chadwick the fourth, I think he’s still alive. I have reason to believe that he never drowned. As a matter of fact, I’m planning to pay him a little visit in a couple of days. I’ll let you know what I find out.

  “It’d be a real pisser, wouldn’t it, if he’d been alive all this time, laughing his ass off about killing your father?”

  Shiflett is quiet for half a minute, although it seems like half an hour. But I wait.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I’m not at liberty to reveal my sources,” I tell him. “Let’s just say a little bird and leave it at that.”

  Shiflett’s jaw muscles are twitching. I can almost smell something burning.

  “You were right about one thing,” he says. “We do need to talk. But it can’t be here.”

  I tell him I’m amenable to a neutral site.

  “No,” he says. “It’s got to be at my place. Tonight. I get off at ten. Be there by ten thirty.”

  “That doesn’t sound like such a good idea.”

  He’s quiet for a few seconds.

  “OK. How about this? Meet me at O’Toole’s? Over on the South Side? That neutral enough for your candy ass?”

  I tell him that’ll be fine. I’ve drunk enough beers at O’Toole’s that I might actually have home-court advantage there.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Do you even know how to shoot that thing?”

  Custalow is watching me put the .22 in the inside pocket of my jacket.

  I’ve explained already that Shiflett has made it very damn clear that this has to be a one-on-one.

  “He knows better than to do something stupid,” I told Abe. “He knows at least a couple of people besides me know about this—you and Kate. I think he either wants to tell me how and why he didn’t do it, or how and why he did.”

  I have the tape recorder in the other pocket. When Abe wishes me luck on the way out, it sounds like more than idle chatter.

  Truth be known, I’ve been more comfortable.

  David Shiflett isn’t stupid enough to kill me right there in O’Toole’s, which is bound to have one or two people present who are sober enough to be witnesses at ten thirty on a Tuesday night. He’d have to be out of his mind to do something there other than try to scare the crap out of me.

  It’s the “out of his mind” part that gives me pause. But surely a Richmond police lieutenant couldn’t be completely insane without somebody noticing it. The way cops act sometimes, though, it might take a lot of crazy to really stand out.

  Mainly, I want the damn story, and I want it all.

  It isn’t just because it might save my sorry-ass job until the next time they start looking for human sacrifices to appease our corporate gods.

  The last year, covering one mundane yet heartbreaking killing after another, I’d become more or less numb. Come to work. Listen to the police radio. Take a smoke break every fortyfive minutes. Be sober enough to get the names right when the mayhem descends. Write the story. Drink. Go home. Wake up. Repeat as necessary.

  But this is more. I hate to admit it, but, against all my reporter’s instincts, I really care. I can’t get the innocent, headless body of Isabel Ducharme out of my mind, and, OK, I do think about Leonard Pikarski once in a while.

  And, fuck it, it is a good story. The juices are flowing. I don’t even want a drink right now.

  I head south on Belvidere and cross the James into Dog-town. I steal a glance to the left. All the lights from the buildings on the hill downtown make Richmond look like a real city. I turn on the tape recorder so I won’t forget to later.

  I exit onto Riverside Drive, headed east. A few seconds later, the blue light and the short burst of a siren make me jump. Out of instinct, I look for a place to pull over. There’s an entrance to James River Park at 22nd Street. The park’s closed, but there’s enough pavement between the chain and the road for me and the cop car behind me. I do a quick search of the memory bank and realize I miraculously haven’t had a drink in the recent past.

  I’m blinded by the light as the officer approaches me, and I don’t realize my mistake until a hand grabs my head and pulls it out the window. He clocks me pretty good with the flashlight, and then something is being pressed over my mouth and nose. I see his face before the lights go out.

  I come to in a room that smells of mildew and bachelor funk. There’s one light bulb overhead, illuminating a small area surrounded by darkness. I feel like I’m onstage.

  What a dumbass. I never saw it coming.

  I’d probably be screaming like a little girl right now if I wasn’t gagged and tied rather securely to what appears to be a heavy metal chair in what appears to be someone’s basement. For some reason, the chair is covered with plastic.

  “Well,” I hear Shiflett say, from somewhere behind me, “Sleeping Beauty is awake.”

  He walks around into my view. The light is behind him so that I only see his silhouette. Then he pulls up another chair, close to mine, and I can see his face. He looks as if he’s at peace.

  “You’ve been wanting this,” he says, almost in a whisper
. “You’ve been begging for this. And now you’re going to get it. You’re going to get the best story you ever heard, ever will hear.”

  He smiles, or at least shows his teeth.

  “The pisser is, you’ll never get to write it.”

  He reaches over and picks up the .22, which is lying on the table beside him.

  “Protection,” he says, the way he might have said “child molester.” “You fuckin’ civilians. You get one of these things and then you don’t know how to use it. Here let me show you.”

  He takes the little pistol in his right hand. He holds it up for a couple of seconds, examining it. Then, he slowly lowers it to my head, my chest, my balls, my legs. He stops at my left foot. And he fires.

  It’s surprisingly loud for something so small, a thought that hits me a millisecond before all my senses are overtaken by blind, searing pain. I almost swallow the gag, and I realize that I have lost control of my bladder. It hardly matters to me. The only thing that matters is my left foot.

  “Man,” Shiflett says, “I’m glad I put some plastic down. You’re not scared, are you, Willie? I probably shouldn’t have done that, because I want all your concentration. But sometimes you just can’t help yourself.”

  He puts the .22 back down. I feel my shoe filling up with blood. I’d like some Tylenol. Or to pass out again.

  “I guess you think I’m crazy, huh?” Shiflett says.

  I decline to either nod or shake my head.

  “Well, I’m not crazy, or at least not Ted Bundy crazy. What I am, Willie, is persistent. Do you remember my father?”

  The pain has become manageable enough that I can concentrate on something else. I nod.

  Shiflett is standing now, pacing a little. It occurs to me that despite being in the spotlight, I’m not the performer here.

  “He was a good man. He didn’t take any shit, but he was fair and decent and honest. He was about the only person I’ve ever really respected. My mom, she was shaky even before it happened, and after that, she just fell apart. My dad was the glue.”

  He sighs, looking me in the eye. He turns toward the .22, and my sphincter clinches. But he looks back toward me and continues.