Flame Out

by M. P. Cooley

  “I don’t feel like waiting, Hale. His sister—”

  “I think in this particular case she’s acting as his lawyer—”

  “Well, whether she’s acting as his sister or his lawyer, Deirdre could block this for weeks if we don’t go tomorrow.”

  Hale shook his head. “We need a second set of eyes, a second set of ears.”

  “Got a handheld recorder? Hopewell Falls doesn’t have money for fancy electronics in their budget.”

  “I do, and I can bring it along when I go with you.”

  “Hale, if you come, we’ll be shut out.”

  I wanted this interview. While I wasn’t sure how wise it was to give Hale six hours to try to talk me into rejoining the FBI, I was willing to make a deal.

  “You can’t come to the interview, but we can drive out together. So you know, it’s a three-hour drive each way—”

  “Deal,” Hale said. “And while you’re visiting Bernie, I’ll drop in unexpectedly on the Syracuse field office. They’ll love that.”

  On the way home, we called Chief Donnelly.

  “I recall Tanya,” he said when I told him about her file. “She’s hard to forget. Firecracker. Ten years old, and she announced she was starting a detective agency. I expected lost dogs or stolen lunch money, but she clued me in to a money-laundering racket run out of a video store.”

  I told Donnelly about the missing women.

  “I know those cases,” Donnelly said, “We re-examine the evidence from time to time, but your dad, he could tell you more.”

  Great. Convincing my dad to stay out of the investigation would be hard if I kept pulling him back in, but the chief was right.

  Hale dropped me off, and I promised to pick him up promptly at 6:30.

  “Can’t we take my car?” he said. “It’s roomier and has a CD player.”

  I was still unhappy that he was going at all. “Bring your cassettes,” I said, and slammed the door.

  It was past Lucy’s bedtime, and I was half wishing it was past Dad’s, too. But the downstairs was lit up, and more ominously, Dave’s car was parked out front.

  Inside, I didn’t bother stopping in the kitchen, but crossed through the living room to the dining room, which had been converted into a sort of incident room. Dave sat on one side of the table, Dad to his right. In front of them files spilled across the table, brown with age and labeled in Dad’s neat script: basement pictures. Witness testimony.

  I grabbed one labeled “Blood spatter.” “Which of you stole these from the station?”

  “Not me,” Dave said.

  “They’re copies,” my father said. “I’ve had them forever. Since the case.”

  Between Tanya and these two, I felt surrounded by vigilantes. I was lucky they didn’t have gun permits. Oh wait! They did!

  “Look, Lyons,” Dave said. “We’re digging through old details, trying to come up with a connection between Vera and Bernie Lawler. If Bernie’s willing to murder his angelic wife Luisa and his son, he wouldn’t blink at killing Mom.”

  I thought of the judge, his earlier comment on how Bernie was raised to control and abuse women. They might have something.

  “So you two promise”—I looked back and forth from my dad to Dave—“not to go out there and get in the way of the investigation.”

  My dad held up his hand in pledge, and Dave followed. They were both good cops. It would be a huge help and might keep them off the street.

  “Here,” I said, holding out the file Tanya had given me. “Add this to your pile.”

  Both men hesitated—I think they thought it was a trick. I put it on the table between them and they pounced.

  “Jeannie Saranov,” Dave said, admiring the blonde. “I had such a big crush on her. Never saw her in the open files.”

  Dad’s voice gentled. “Jeannie was a sad case.”

  “Murdered?” I asked. “The way Tanya describes it, she had the world to live for, and Jeannie’s family hasn’t been in contact.”

  “There’s more to that story,” Dad said. “Jeannie had a nice little life. But she started to hear voices, voices telling her there was evil in the world.”

  “Schizophrenia,” I said.

  “That it was. She did go missing for a while, but we found her nine months later when she got arrested for stabbing another woman, thankfully with a plastic knife, but it was enough to get Jeannie committed.”

  “And she’s still in a facility somewhere?” Dave asked.

  “Most other patients like her have been mainstreamed, but she’s noncompliant with her meds, so her family pays through the nose to keep her someplace where she’s monitored.” He frowned. “And where she’s away from them. When neighbors and friends ask, the family claims they have no idea where she is. They know. They want to avoid the taint of the illness.”

  I pointed to the redhead. “What about Oksana?”

  “That one’s tougher. Another island girl. Rough family, but Oksana made good, with a job and friends, and a boyfriend, if you want to call him that, in Jake Medved.” He studied her picture. “Disappeared in 1985? Eighty-six? Her family didn’t put in a missing person report, but a friend filed one in 1989. Couple months after that she started sending letters home, so we let it go.” He shrugged. “Provided there’s no fraud, adults are allowed to disappear.”

  Dave pulled the file close. “Her family was kind of a mess. I’m not judging.” He hunched over the pictures. “Mine was, too.”

  I told them about my trip to Auburn the following day.

  Dad sat forward. “You’re seeing Bernie?”

  “And his lawyer,” I said.

  “Deirdre,” Dave said. “I don’t envy you. I went up against her once, and I felt like my head”—he clapped his hands together hard—“was in a vise.”

  “You know she’s Bernie’s sister, right?” Dad said. I didn’t want to mention my talk with Dan, so I just nodded. “She’s a sharp cookie. Did criminal defense work way back when, and teaches over at SUNY. I hope for your sake she’s lost her edge.”

  “She’ll never lose her edge,” Dave said. “She’s all edge.”

  CHAPTER 10

  HALE GAVE A LOW WHISTLE. “DICKENS CALLED. HE WANTS HIS prison back.”

  The gates of Auburn Correctional Facility loomed in front of our car, iron bars towering up twenty feet—old-fashioned but effective.

  “What, no moat?” Hale asked. A guard in front gave us the stink eye as we switched places, with Hale sliding behind the wheel of the Saturn.

  “Two hours. Over there.” I pointed across the street to the prison’s visitor’s center, a low-slung building that, in contrast to the prison, had the architecture of a seventies bus station.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “Several of my biggest fans are in that prison right now.”

  My gun was in a locked chest in the trunk, and I left my phone, keys, and purse in the car—everything except my ID, notebook, pencil, recorder, and five dollars in quarters. I didn’t want to risk getting stopped at the gate.

  I introduced myself to the guard and showed my ID, and the officer radioed for confirmation before unlocking the gate. It swung open electronically—I would have expected the jailer to have a big skeleton key.

  Once through, I was greeted by a second guard, a large man wearing a shirt that cut into his formidable biceps. He couldn’t carry a weapon within prison walls, so his too-tight shirt was a way to signal to the prisoners that he could take them down.

  “The lawyer lady’s here.” His voice was without affect, although his lip quirked at the corner. “Think she wanted to have a few minutes alone with her client, but I didn’t want to give them an unfair advantage. He’s looking good on another murder?”

  “It’s likely,” I said as we entered the waiting area.

  “Likely?” a woman’s voice said from across the room, her voice clear and sharp, bouncing off the linoleum. “If you’ve made up your mind to convict him without conducting an interview, I’m glad I�
��m here.”

  I would have put Deirdre Lawler in her early fifties, but it was hard to tell from her CV. She finished college in the late seventies but didn’t go to law school until much later, graduating in 1988. She had a stellar reputation, both as a defense lawyer and as a professor at SUNY, where she ran their Innocence Clinic, a group of law students representing prisoners who claimed to be wrongly accused. Knowing prisoners, I was amazed they weren’t representing the entire prison system.

  I walked forward and put my hand out. “Ms. Lawler?”

  She didn’t take it.

  The guard wagged a finger. “Now you two get along.”

  “Are you going to tell us how much prettier we are when we smile, too?” Deirdre said.

  “I meant . . .”

  “You wouldn’t have made a comment like that to two men.” She walked toward the door to the holding area. “Shall we get this show on the road?”

  Without another word, the guard walked us down the long hallway, the stone walls painted bluish white and cold when I brushed against them. This prison was the oldest in operation in the country. The walls were thicker, stonework that no one would escape, but it had the same smell as all prisons: industrial cleaners, male sweat, and urine. The smell got stronger and stronger as we walked down the hall. By the time we reached the interview room, I was breathing through my mouth, trying to avoid the worst of it.

  Bernie Lawler—shaved head bowed, eyes closed—sat at a metal table, which had all four of its legs bolted to the ground. His hands weren’t cuffed, but he held them clasped in front of him as if they were. It wasn’t a large room, but the ceilings were high, and the room dwarfed the lone man sitting at a single table.

  He opened his eyes as we walked in, and surprisingly, smiled, crow’s-feet creasing the corners of his eyes. For the first few years, prisoners were a ball of fury, ready to smash it up at “hello.” Those in for a long stretch looked beaten down. Bernie looked peaceful.

  “Bernie,” Deirdre Lawler said. She sat next to him, and he leaned close, obeying the rules forbidding touching, but barely. He was shorter than his half-brothers, and his denim shirt had been neatly pressed.

  Deirdre Lawler was explaining the parameters of the interview, when I pulled out the recorder.

  “No recordings,” she said, pushing it back at me.

  Cameras tracked our every move from every angle, and she knew it. She was trying to score an early win. “This little machine isn’t going to make any difference.”

  “Let her keep the recorder, Dee,” Bernie said. “This lady’s right.” He smiled, encouraging. “Sure you got enough tape?”

  “Digital,” I said.

  He laughed at himself. “Not up on the latest technology in here.”

  I went to hit record, but he stopped me.

  “Hold up. You related to Gordon Lyons?”

  There went cooperation. “Yes. He’s my father.”

  “Your dad put me away here. Didja know that?” I nodded, waiting for the speech. Prisoners had a lot of time to think, and in interviewing them, I found they often had the responses prepared in advance, having spent a lot of time thinking of everything a police officer might ask and how they might answer. Those folks in for long stretches were also big letter writers, penning thoughtful replies with better spelling than I had.

  “For the first several years in here, I hated your dad’s guts. Cursed his name every night, and wished pain and suffering on him and those he loved. It was wrong.” He clasped his hands together tightly. “Your dad probably doesn’t care about my good opinion, but if it’s appropriate, tell him I appreciate what a fair guy he was. After time spent with the rest of the law enforcement profession”—he glanced up at the cameras—“I have come to appreciate him.” He half reached across the table and pulled back. “And you turned out OK, so my curses weren’t good for much.”

  The eye roll Deirdre gave was more sisterly than lawyerly. “My client, the Zen master. Still have your sensei?”

  “It’s a spiritual teacher, not a sensei. And yes. In here, acceptance keeps you alive. You fight it, you end up hurting yourself.”

  “Yes, yes. That’s why you have me to fight for you.” Deirdre tapped the table, and for a moment I thought of Jake Medved. Looking at Deirdre and Bernie and comparing them to Jake and Maxim, it was hard to see much physical resemblance between the siblings apart from their pale blue eyes, but Deirdre shared Jake’s need to make his point physically, and I wondered if she, like her brother, wouldn’t mind breaking a few skulls with a pipe. If so, I was probably at the top of her list right now.

  “Shall we?” Deirdre asked.

  I hit record. A soft low whir sounded, so much less jarring than the crackle of tape. I gave everyone’s names, including Bernie’s. He shifted in his seat as I recited his prisoner number.

  “Tell me about your relationship with Vera Batko,” I said.

  “Sure.” He paused. “That’s terrible, what happened to her.”

  “How’d you know her?”

  “We grew up together, and later, I gave her a job. I always tried to hire from the neighborhood as much as possible, give people a leg up. Vera worked for me for about a year—I want to say in seventy-eight or seventy-nine?—and then took off, and then came back and worked for me again for about six months in eighty-three. Up ’til she died.” He paused. “The business closed, and the old employment records . . . maybe Elda might know where they are. Although”—he smiled—“she probably burned them. Maybe the whole factory. Did you check her alibi?”

  “Let’s stick to the topic of Vera Batko, shall we?” Deirdre said.

  A look of hatred passed over the face of the guard working the far door. Seeing him, I worked harder to keep my expression impassive. “Did you date?”

  Bernie looked at his sister, who shook her head no. He answered anyway. “She dropped out of school pretty early. Had a son.”

  “No, I meant did you date in the early eighties, right before she died?”

  “We—”

  “Caution,” Deirdre said.

  “Yeah, yeah. It all came out in the trial, anyway. I cheated on my wife, my Luisa. But I didn’t cheat on her with Vera. Vera was fast, even for me, and I couldn’t keep up with the way she partied.”

  “And how was that?”

  “She went to my brother’s bar all the time. You hang out at Jake’s, you start to notice who’s going to the bathroom, coming back a little hyped up, maybe a dusting of powder on the nose. Plus, toward the end there, she went pro.”

  “Pro?” I asked.

  “Yeah, pro. Professional.” He lowered his voice. “Prostitute. She wasn’t out there walking the streets, but she was willing to give a guy a blowie on his break in the back of his car.”

  “Bernie . . .” Deirdre said.

  “Did you ever pay her for sex?” I asked.

  “Don’t answer, Bernie.” Deirdre stared at me. “That question is off limits.”

  Bernie talked over his sister. “I’m not implicating myself if I say no, I didn’t pay her for sex, right, Deirdre?” She quieted, and he patted her hand.

  “No touching,” the guard said.

  Bernie quickly pulled his hand away. “How Vera lived? No way was I risking picking up a disease. That was pre-AIDS, but God, if I’d brought something home to my wife? I couldn’t have lived with myself.”

  “Luisa didn’t approve of your . . .” I tried to think of a polite way of saying “affairs,” “ . . . outside relationships. That must have caused friction in the marriage.”

  “Don’t answer, Bernie,” Deirdre said.

  “Deirdre,” Bernie said, “I know you’re doing everything to clear me, but they’ve convicted me of Luisa and Teddy’s murders and can’t do it again. Double jeopardy, right, Officer Lyons?”

  “That’s true.”

  “And the fact that I was a terrible husband all came out at the trial. So yes, Luisa didn’t approve of my affairs, but when she disappeared . . . when she
died, I’d been on the straight and narrow. I hadn’t fooled around with anyone since Teddy was born because my boy-o . . .” He closed his eyes tightly and took a few quick breaths. His breathing slowed, and he opened his eyes. “I wanted to make sure he had the best life. And I loved Luisa. The day I first saw her, I was willing to do anything to get her . . .”

  “Bernie, there’s no time for dredging up memories of Luisa. Later,” Deirdre said, not unkindly, “when it comes out you were innocent and this woman’s father wasted years focusing on the wrong suspect”—she pointed at me, and I wanted to grab her finger and break it for implying my father was a bad cop—“that will be the time to share with people like Officer Lyons how much you’ve lost.”

  The air in the closed space was stifling. The vents in these places usually sounded like aircraft taking off, but they were kept off when an interview was taking place. The heat made me crankier than Deirdre.

  “Bernie, tell me more about Luisa.”

  Deirdre swung her arm protectively in front of Bernie, as if it could keep away my questions. “No! We’re done with that discussion.”

  “It would be nice to talk about her,” Bernie said. “And maybe if Officer Lyons understood how much I loved her . . . I would never kill my sweet Lou, she would . . .”

  “No,” Deirdre said. “Bernie, we agreed you would always take my advice when I was acting as your legal counsel, and in this situation, I’m telling you we’re not talking about Luisa anymore.” She slid her arm in front of her brother. “Officer Lyons, stick to Vera, her character and behavior, or this conversation ends now.”

  She was right. I had no reason to talk about Luisa. Bernie’s crime and punishment were never going to change, no matter how many DNA tests of the basement or the blood in the trunk she ordered.

  Direct questions weren’t getting me anywhere. I decided to see if he would lie. “Bernie, were you there the last night Vera worked?”

  “I—”

  “Don’t answer,” Deirdre Lawler said.

  I shut my notebook and threw down my pencil. “Ms. Lawler, why did you agree to this interview if you were going to block every single question? Let me do my job, or I promise you, we will block that DNA test.”