by David Waters
A young officer led us down a corridor to Sheriff Wayman’s corner office. From the photos on the wall behind his desk, I suspected he had just completed a tour of duty as an officer in the Marine Corps. He rose from his desk to greet us. His eyes showed a particular interest as I introduced Mary. He waved us to two chairs.
He gestured to a tape recorder on the corner of his desk. “Would you mind?” He asked. I glanced at Mary. She seemed prepared to leave the decision to me. “No, I don’t mind.” I said.
He nodded. “It’ll help us with the written statement I will need from both of you later. He settled himself comfortably in his padded leather desk chair and smiled. “First I’d like to hear from you the nature and reason for your visit yesterday to Professor Hendricks.”
How to explain? And even more crucial, how much should I tell him? As a journalist I knew there comes a point when it is a mistake to hold too much back. I decided that if he did not know of it already, he would inevitably be told about the retrieval of the rifle barrel from behind Hendricks’ cottage. The smart course, I decided quickly was to tell him as much as he was willing to hear. “It’s a long story,” I admitted wearily, and watched his reaction for some indication of how much he really wanted. I was hoping he would ask me to keep it short and to the point. But he didn’t. He only nodded.
“I’ve been trained to be a good listener.” He said with a smile.
And he was. I began at the beginning, with my coverage as a reporter of Monaghan’s murder. For close to an hour, I gave him a succinct progress report on our attempts to unravel the confusion surrounding that murder fifteen years ago and more recently of Monaghan’s wife. Occasionally, he arched an eyebrow, but he interrupted me only once and when I least expected it. It was when I mentioned our assumption that Hendricks had once been in love with Monaghan’s wife.
“And not with Mrs. Montini?” He asked, surprised, glancing at Mary.
“Good heavens, no!” Mary said. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“I’ll come to that later,” he said apologetically. He turned his attention back to me, and nodded for me to continue. I picked up where I had left off. He gave no indication of surprise when I explained about hiring the private investigators to watch Hendricks and about their retrieval of the barrel. I assumed he already knew. When I finally finished I asked him how Hendricks had died.
“It was not pretty,” He said simply. He turned off the tape recorder. He glanced at Mary momentarily before continuing. “He appears to have put the shot gun in his mouth and somehow managed to pull both triggers at the same time. Or at least that is what we think he did.” For a moment my mind conjured an image of Hendricks with most of his over-sized head splattered about the room. I struggled to keep my composure.
“But of course a more definite conclusion will have to await the coroner’s decision.” I glanced at Mary. Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap, her knuckles white, her eyes half-closed staring down at the floor. I think she was saying some kind of prayer. I deliberately shifted my attention to the window focusing on the line-up of cars waiting patiently for a traffic light to turn green.
“The fact that you brought Mrs. Montini along with you makes my job easier.” Wayman said. “Saves me the time and energy,” he said glancing at Mary, “of trying to contact you and your daughter.”
Mary looked up, puzzled.
“We found a lengthy note on the table near the body. There was also a sealed envelope with Mr. Webster’s name on it. The address was incomplete. But it had a street name, and Montreal written on it. Enough for me to be able to reach Mr. Webster last night.” He turned to me. “It’s addressed to you as confidential and its sealed. With your permission I would like to examine its contents and hold on to the original, at least until after the coroner’s inquest. But I would give you a copy.” I didn’t object. How could I? I didn’t even know whether I had a right to, although the tone of his request seemed to imply that I might have. He continued, “the other document I mentioned appears to have been a relatively straightforward suicide note, but there was an addendum to it.” He pulled a xeroxed copy towards him. “Hendricks wrote: I now think I understand what Frank must have suffered as an unending suspect and subsequent social pariah. Mary and Gina I’m sorry for the extent to which I may have contributed to your tribulations. I hereby amend my last will and testament, which is on deposit with the Royal Bank at the corners of Cavendish and Sherbrooke, to leave my net worth equally to Mary Montini and her daughter Gina rather than to Winston University. I know that they will use the money wisely. I am, at the moment, sober and of sound mind. Despite my displeasure with the manner in which Thomas Webster has behaved recently, I nonetheless have decided to appoint him as executor of my last will and testament. I hope he will accept the nature of the burden that I wish to impose upon him.”
Mary and I shared a stunned silence. Wayman watched our reactions. Finally he said, “well, there you have it. Since the addendum changing his will was not witnessed there may well be legal complications, but unless something turns up to dispute all of this, I will be notifying the bank and forwarding the necessary documents after the inquest. Do you know whether Professor Hendricks had any immediate relatives who should be notified?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. The university might.”
He nodded. “Someone will eventually have to claim the body.”
Again I nodded. Finally I said, feeling foolish as I did so, “if there was any doubt about the manner of his death, that last paragraph would surely make us prime suspects.”
He smiled. “That did occur to me,” he said, leaving the sentence dangling momentarily in the air between us, “but only for a brief moment. As we know, there were four of you who paid him that last visit. A conspiracy of four? Very unlikely. Besides, you were all seen leaving his cottage long before his neighbor heard the blast of the shotgun.”
He consulted a pad on his desk. I had not noticed him making any notes. But then he may have made them before our arrival. He mentioned that the retrieval of the gun barrel on Hendricks’ property might, under different circumstances, have warranted a charge of illegal trespassing and petty theft. He glanced up at me. I gave him an awkward smile. He added, “And I would like all of you to know that I don’t appreciate private detectives skulking around this County without my knowledge or permission. You might convey that to your friend, the ex-cop.” He sighed. He did not seem particularly happy about ignoring such matters, but then I suspect he was a practical man. Making a fuss involving Canadians was not in his interest at the moment. He glanced at his notes again. “Just a few more things,” he said.
He asked me how to reach both Lieutenant Ricci and Captain Leclair. I gave him their numbers. I also volunteered the number of Joe Gibbs at the university. And I gave him Joe’s home phone number as well.
“Did he admit to any guilt in the suicide note?” I asked finally.
Wayman shook his head. “Only the part about the apology to Mrs. Montini and her daughter.” Meanwhile,” he added, reaching into a drawer, and handing me a manila envelope, “if you will open this, I’ll then make xerox copies of it and his will which you can take with you.” I found myself doing what he asked, although I had some misgivings. I prayed that there was nothing in the document that could pose a problem to me: other, perhaps, than to take my pride down a notch or two. He left the office and returned a few minutes later and handed me a large envelope. It had the logo of the Essex County’s sheriff’s department emblazoned on it.
“I presume I can count on both of you to make yourselves available for the inquest?” We both nodded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
On the way back to Montreal, the envelope which I had folded remained in my breast pocket like a piece of petulance close to my heart. We crossed the border as if nothing had happened.
“What,” I asked, once we were under way again, “are we going to do about his last will and testament?”
“I g
uess we will have to consult a lawyer. I’m sure Winston University will consult theirs.”
“He must have had some relatives,” I observed.
“Funny but he never spoke about relatives in the years I knew him at Winston. No, I’m afraid you’re the one with the real problem now.”
“In what way?”
“Well, unless someone else steps forward to contest the document he left behind you’re stuck as his executor. And you know what that means. Someone will have to claim his body and make the necessary funeral arrangements. And someone will have to go through his house and cottage soon, if only to clean out the fridges and pantries and lock the places up until decisions are made.”
I hadn’t thought of any of that. I was beginning to get a taste of what I thought of as Hendricks’ revenge. That evening, I opened the envelope, put aside for the moment the document addressed to me and examined the suicide note. Apart from the testamentary part at the end, it said nothing that I did not expect. He spoke of the inevitable humiliation he would be facing, of his innocence and ineffectualness, of the pointlessness of dragging himself through a prolonged process which he knew he had no desire to endure. Everything was couched in general terms, no specific reference to recent events or to the renewed investigation Gina and I had launched. Even his apology to those who would have to clean up the mess of his suicide seemed almost formal. But then, I reminded myself, this note was intended for public consumption, and the public was not Hendricks’ natural audience. With some trepidation I turned to the document he had addressed specifically to me. I could tell immediately that most if not all of it had been written before we arrived on the scene. As I feared, it was highly personal and intimate. Most of it was an apologia for what he considered his pitiful existence. I decided I would give it a careful reading later, but for now I only skimmed through it looking for anything that might be pertinent to the investigation we were conducting. At one point I came across the section in which he admitted that he had fired the shot at the motel. “But I meant to injure no one,” he wrote, “and I repeat that I had absolutely nothing to do with either Michael’s or Naomi’s murders. I fired the warning shot because I hoped to halt what I felt was your pointless and potentially dangerous probing. I could see no good coming from any of it. Of course, at the time I did not know that Naomi had been murdered earlier that day.” And that was all that directly related to matters that were still, for me, of primary concern. A more careful reading of the document could wait until later.
I turned back to the suicide note with its alteration of his last will and testament and was about to phone a lawyer I knew when Ryan called. I gave him a synopsis of the meeting with Sheriff Wayman.
“Jesus!” He said, “in all my years as a cop, I don’t think I’ve ever run into anything quite like this. By the way I reached Leclair. And he would like to see us tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, preferably around seven. At the office he’s using here in Montreal.”
“Why? Did he say?”
“He came across something in Naomi’s safety deposit box. He wants to talk to us about it. How are Gina and Mary surviving all of this?”
I gave that a moment’s thought. “Okay.” I replied. “They’ve gone for a walk in the park. I think they wanted to talk things over together.” I was sure they were undergoing some form of trauma. I knew I was. But for the moment at least, we all seemed to be handling it fairly well.
“Shall I pick you up at around six-thirty?” Ryan asked. I wanted to avoid another group discussion at this stage, even if it was a brief one. “Why don’t I pick you up instead?” I suggested.
“Sure. Okay.”
When Gina and Mary returned I told them about Leclair’s request. They seemed content to be by themselves for part of the evening. I left, picked up Ryan and we reached Leclair’s office with time to spare. Captain Leclair nodded and gave me a cautious smile. He spoke in French.
“Got a fax about an hour ago,” he said, “from a Sheriff in Vermont. Had to have someone translate parts of it for me. Very interesting. He mentioned that you might have some additional information of importance to my investigations.”
“Not really,” I said. I told him that Hendricks had acknowledged responsibility for the shot fired at the motel, but had insisted he knew nothing about Naomi’s murder.
Ryan softly interjected a note of caution. “One shouldn’t take even a suicide’s confession as necessarily valid.”
“And do you?” Leclair asked, studying me carefully.
I held his gaze and nodded. It was not a firm nod. But there was nothing hesitant about it either.
He sighed. “Then Ricci can probably close his case, but I still have one that has yet to be solved. I’m having someone translate the documents in Ms. Bronson’s deposit box because they’re highly technical and my English is not quite good enough,” he said. We spoke in French. He opened a large envelope and handed us a couple of large glossy photos and two articles: one was a publication attributed to Gooden, the other a copy of an original English version of a planned article of about a dozen pages. The latter document was typewritten with numerous emendations made in red ink. The photos, I assumed, had probably been taken with a telephoto lens from Naomi’s cottage. One showed three men in conversation: her husband, Gooden and someone I did not at first recognize. The second photo showed Gooden and the third man from the first photo standing near an artillery gun. On the back was a date which indicated that the photo had been taken about three months after her husband had been murdered. I identified Gooden and Monaghan for Leclair.
“And the third man?”
I could only guess. “I think that it’s probably Dr. Gerald Bull. It looks like him.”
“And the articles?” Leclair asked. I gave them another brief examination. At first glance the unpublished document appeared to be a copy of an early draft of a highly technical paper on some aspect of ballistics. I skimmed it quickly and then put it aside.
I thought first of Gina’s skill in spotting the anomalies in Gooden’s curriculum vitae: and then, of course, of what Hendricks’ had told us about Gooden’s possible plagiarism of something Monaghan had authored. I explained about Gina’s discoveries and about what Hendricks had told us. But I suspected he already knew that from Ryan. “Here’s what I think. Even though at this stage I’m probably putting two and two together and coming up with six. I think the first photo was probably taken by Naomi at her husband’s request, maybe for his own egotistical records, or because he wanted visual proof of his presence at Bull’s artillery range. Then her husband is murdered and she, for some reason, comes to suspect Gooden. Maybe she subsequently realized that the original of her husband’s article was missing from his office when the files were finally turned over to her. But she had this copy of it at home. Maybe her husband had told her about the argument he had had with Gooden on the day he was murdered. At any rate, for whatever reason, she keeps an eye on Bull’s gunnery range at Highwater, and captures Gooden there on film months after her husband’s murder. Then he publishes his article and she collates all this as evidence and stores it away in a safe place.”
Leclair hunched his shoulders. “Possibly, but why would she sit on this information for all these years?”
I had already formed an answer. “What else could she do with it? It was not the kind of evidence that would have re-opened an investigation into her husband’s murder.”
But the answer bothered Leclair. “She had no way of being sure of that,” he said, “so why didn’t she try? She could, of course, have wanted to use the information to blackmail Gooden.” Leclair offered.
I doubted it. “She was independently wealthy,” I said, “and I don’t think Gooden would have had the kind of money to make it worthwhile. And so she probably just sat on the information in case some day she might have a reason to use it.” But then I added, “I think she was prepared to tell Gina what she knew.”
Leclair nodded. I won
dered whether he knew more than he had revealed to us. Had Naomi’s friend told him something?
“Which raises another question,” Ryan said, “when and how did Gooden find any of this out, if he ever did?”
A slight smile played at the corner of Leclair’s mouth. “As part of our routine investigation,” he said finally, “I had Ms. Bronson’s telephone calls checked. She made a long-distance call to Gooden’s number at the University when she arrived at the cottage on Friday. We checked it out as a matter of routine. Because it was late on Friday, we believe she only managed to reach his answering machine. She may or may not have left a message for him. His secretary says there were no messages on the machine when she came in on Monday morning. But then he could have checked his messages from either his home or his cottage and subsequently erased the message.”
For a few moments the three of us sat there pondering all of this. Finally Leclair shook his head sadly. “So all we have is some interesting speculation and a possible suspect. But nothing more.”
“Well, at least we now have a possible motive. I wonder if he returned Naomi’s call while she was still at the cottage? Is there any way to check that out?”
Leclair shrugged. “I would have to get a warrant to check any long distance calls he may have made from his home. Besides, if he suspected anything, he probably would have been smart enough to use a phone booth to call to her. One that could not be traced to him. What bothers me,” Leclair added, “is the problem of motive. What we know is pretty weak stuff.” He glanced at Ryan. “Nothing here that would have warranted re-opening the Monaghan file, is there?”
“No. It would have taken something more substantial than that. You’re right there.”
“So why take the risk of killing Ms. Bronson?” Leclair asked, frowning. “Unless of course she knew more than what she decided to store away in a safety deposit box.”
In a way we had come to a dead end. There were a number of things nagging at the back of my mind. One of them had to do with Hendricks’ claim that Gooden might have been an RCMP agent. But I saw no point in raising the issue with Leclair at this particular moment. I asked for a copy of the documents and the pictures. He nodded. I had the feeling that Leclair’s thoughts had also moved onto some other aspect of the case, something he had no inclination to discuss with us at this stage.