Quick Pivot

by Brenda Buchanan

  “You know. When his bosses found out he was dating you and pulled him off the story.”

  Joan looked like she’d been slapped. “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you remember when he stopped covering the Desmond story and moved over to the education beat?”

  “I was aware that a few weeks in, he stopped writing about George’s disappearance. But that didn’t have anything to do with me.” Her voice tight, she tapped her cigarette against the ashtray with a shaking hand.

  MacMahon rolled his chair close to where Joan was seated. He raised a big hand, its palm facing me, his eyes signaling a wish to speak. Still spitting my foot out of my mouth, I feared MacMahon was about to make it worse, but couldn’t think of a way to stop him.

  “Ma’am, I first want to say how sorry I am that we’re here. You knew Mr. Desmond personally, and as his closest coworker, I’m sure his disappearance was a shocking and sad event in your life. The news that his remains have been found must have been deeply distressing for you.”

  Joan’s eyes were locked on MacMahon’s. Her chin began to quiver, but she kept her composure. Keeping his tone mild, he continued.

  “I was directly involved in the investigation in 1968. I also worked closely with Paul Finnegan. In fact, I was one of his prime sources. At the time, I was aware of your love affair with him. I had dinner with Paulie the evening he broke it off with you.”

  Wariness washed over Joan’s face like a cloud crossing the sun. MacMahon reached over and put his hand on her arm.

  “Paulie was devastated.” His voice was more that of a priest than a cop. “He didn’t want to end it, his bosses at the paper made him do it. It was you or his job. That night, he was full of anger at them and sorrow for the heartache he’d caused you.”

  Joan’s face was crumpling by then, but the big cop kept talking.

  “From your reaction, I can see you didn’t know all of this. I’m sorry to have to give you this very personal information in front of other people and at such an emotional time. Joe is right when he said Paulie was taken off the crime beat the day before he broke up with you. They let him keep his job, but pulled him off the Desmond story. If you look back at the newspaper clippings, you’ll see he never wrote another story about the case after the first of June. But behind his editors’ backs he kept on gathering information about it, and Joe has the notes he made from that period.”

  Joan swung her head in my direction, her eyes leaking tears.

  “Did you know all this when you were here on Sunday?”

  “I didn’t know anything about you and Paulie until you told me. I didn’t meet Detective MacMahon until Tuesday. When I mentioned your name, he remembered you, told me the brass at the Chronicle came down hard on Paulie when they found out he was dating you. That was the first I knew of it.” I paused. “Detective MacMahon believes the FBI guy—Wellington—is the one who informed Paulie’s boss about your relationship.”

  Joan closed her eyes, as if that would stop the tears. When it didn’t, she gave up, leaning forward at her waist and putting her face in her hands. After a long minute she sat up straight, pulled a tissue from the pocket of her slacks and blew her nose. She took two deep breaths.

  “This information brings up old feelings about Paulie, but it doesn’t change the task at hand.” Her voice was hoarse. “We all have information about George Desmond, a damn good man who we now know was murdered.”

  She pulled a fresh cigarette from the blue leather case. “Let’s get down to business.”

  MacMahon kicked off the discussion, outlining his theory about Coatesworth’s involvement. He’d brought a box of fully indexed file folders from which he extracted key documents for our review.

  “Here are the transcripts of my interviews with Kenny boy,” he said. “Any cop with more than a month’s experience can tell he was lying through his teeth.”

  I read aloud Coatesworth’s claim he’d been holed up in his office the weekend George Desmond disappeared, working on a proposal about marketing specialty textiles in Canada.

  “He never denied being at the mill that Saturday,” MacMahon said. “He must have crossed paths with somebody, a janitor maybe, because he knew he couldn’t get away with saying he’d been elsewhere. Had a story right on the tip of his tongue, and stuck with it.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t true?” Chief Wyatt asked.

  “No one else in the mill knew about any Canadian proposal. Not Coatesworth’s boss, not his secretary, nobody.”

  “I assume you asked him for some sort of verification.”

  “Sure did. He apologized that he couldn’t oblige. Said he didn’t keep written records. Claimed after working on the proposal for a full weekend he realized the idea was unworkable, so he tossed everything in the trash. Draft report, notes, the whole shebang.”

  “I talked with Ken’s secretary that next week.” Joan was perched next to the coffee table, a stack of typewritten pages in front of her. “She didn’t realize I was interviewing her, of course. Thought we were just gossiping. According to her, Ken was in the office for a different reason that weekend.” Flipping through her papers, which were sorted into neat categories, Joan extracted the one she was seeking. “She said Mr. Coatesworth had been in his office over the weekend planning a sales pitch to the Department of Defense.”

  “Different stories probably means both were lies.”

  Chief Wyatt turned to MacMahon. “Were you able to nail down who else came and went during the weekend?”

  MacMahon made a sour face.

  “There wasn’t any kind of security protocol back then,” he said. “You didn’t have to sign in, or show identification to get inside the mill buildings. It was 1968, for Chrissakes.”

  “But the mill had a security department, right?”

  MacMahon laughed. “Made up of old guys who couldn’t work the floor anymore, needed a few years to make their pension. They didn’t have any security training. Just strolled around with a big ring of keys on their belts, trying to keep tools and other valuable stuff from disappearing out the back door.”

  “Leo Harding wasn’t old,” I said. “A few months after Desmond’s disappearance, didn’t he become head of security?”

  “Desmond’s disappearance changed everything.” MacMahon wheeled himself over to the dining room table and selected a sandwich from the platter Joan had set out. “The whole mess made everyone jumpy, so they gave all the old farts early retirement and tried to step up the security operation. That big lunk Leo Harding was quick with his fists. He scared the hell out of people so they made him security chief, even though he had no police training whatsoever.”

  “I’ve heard Coatesworth pulled strings to get him the job.” I was careful not to say Earl told me that.

  MacMahon lifted the top slice of bread off the sandwich he’d selected and inspected its contents. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Harding was the perfect man for the job. Followed Kenny around like a puppy. Obeyed without question. Bared his teeth on command.”

  Following MacMahon’s lead, Chief Wyatt edged toward the food.

  “When I interviewed Harding on Tuesday, he was bobbing and weaving like a heavyweight boxer,” she said. “I had a hard time putting a glove on him.”

  I was scribbling notes as fast as I could. “Coatesworth was in the Saccarappa office building on the weekend in question. Let’s assume for the sake of argument he kills Desmond and enlists his big strong buddy Harding to help him get rid of the body. How’d they get it behind a brick wall without anybody noticing? As far as I know, nobody’s even sure exactly when that wall was rebuilt.”

  It turned out, that was the right question to ask.

  “I have a report on that in here somewhere.” MacMahon pulled out a hand-printed index and ran a blunt finger down the page. “Hand me my file
box, will you?”

  He flipped through the beige file folders. “Here we go. Outside contractors paid by the mill in the eight months before and after Desmond’s disappearance.” He peered at us over the top of his glasses. “We were following the money, checking to see if there were dummy accounts.”

  I knelt down next to his wheelchair as he scanned a list of trade creditors beginning in January 1968. My eye found it before MacMahon’s. Invoice number 17. Labor and materials charges from an outfit called Hilltop Masonry.

  MacMahon shuffled papers and found the actual invoice. It was dated May 31, 1968. Repairs to damaged wall in basement, B wing. Labor and materials: $330. Work began May 11. Ended May 12.

  I opened my laptop and called up the Maine secretary of state’s website. Three clicks took me to the corporate database. What I saw rang a faint bell. Two clicks later, I realized why.

  “In 1975 Hilltop Masonry changed its name to Casco Bay Stonework, the company owned by one Michael A. Thibodeau.”

  Bingo.

  * * *

  Two hours later we were building layers of evidence. Details that supported MacMahon’s Coatesworth hypothesis showed up in Joan’s notes. At the far end of the dining room table, Barb Wyatt was charting the facts, using a timeline and a coding system to highlight patterns.

  As Desmond’s secretary, Joan had had license to talk to pretty much everybody at the mill, and she’d taken advantage of that. She’d focused on the nonexecutives who worked in the office building, the maintenance guys and file clerks who noticed things but went unnoticed themselves. After each conversation, she went back to her desk and jotted notes about what had been said. Then she went home and typed it up.

  “I was a secretary.” She held up shorthand notes in her right hand, double-spaced reports in her left. “It was second nature to keep a written record.”

  A janitor named Frank told her he saw Coatesworth meeting with four or five men about three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, May 11. The only one he could identify by name was “Big Leo, the guy on second shift who runs the football pool.”

  “That’d be Harding,” MacMahon said. “Everyone called him Big Leo back then, meaning muscle big. Before he went to fat, he was one intimidating specimen.”

  “No mention of Thibodeau?”

  Joan shook her head.

  “We know he was the brickman,” MacMahon said. “Maybe Coatesworth ordered Desmond dead, but we need to be careful about assuming that. Thibodeau might have been taking orders from the mob.”

  The next part of Joan’s notes backed up MacMahon’s caution about jumping to conclusions. The janitor told her the other men at the meeting weren’t Saccarappa execs but “guys wearing dark suits and good shoes, maybe bankers.” Joan committed all the details to writing, including that the visitors were driving a brand new Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham with a Massachusetts license plate.

  Chief Wyatt’s instincts told her something was off. “The janitor said the meeting was in Coatesworth’s office?”

  “With the door closed, even though no one else was around. He thought that was odd.”

  “Did Coatesworth have a big office?”

  “Not really. He probably had to bring in extra chairs to seat everybody.”

  “Could have been Boston investors come to talk about an expansion into Canada,” I said.

  MacMahon stretched in his chair. “Even in 1968, moneymen went for fancy German cars, not Caddies.”

  “Harding and Coatesworth are still tight,” I said. “They play golf together at the Mill Stream every day, weather permitting. Jay Preble plays with them too.”

  Joan sat back against the couch, fumbling with her cigarette case.

  “Jay Preble. I’d forgotten about him. Paulie and I went to a party at his family’s island cottage that Memorial Day.” Emotion washed across her face. “Ken Coatesworth was at the party too. And the one they called Big Leo. I remember thinking they were thick as thieves.”

  One of Paulie’s notes jumped off the page and smacked me in the face. How hard have cops leaned on BL?

  BL = Big Leo?

  “Did you interview Leo back in ’68?”

  “I didn’t, but one of my men did.” MacMahon was flipping pages again. “He was just a guy who worked inside the mill at the time, but Paulie Finnegan told me he was buddies with Coatesworth, so he was on my radar.”

  MacMahon found the notes he was seeking and scanned them while we waited. “On June 4, Finnegan told me about an interview he’d just had with a guy named St. Pierre who worked inside the mill.”

  The cover of the notebook I was holding bore the inscription 6/4/68 in Paulie’s distinctive scrawl. I flipped pages, looking for my golf pal’s name. In the margin, I spotted the letters ESP. Until that moment, I’d not guessed that meant Earl St. Pierre. Next to the scribbled initials Paulie had written: Pal of GD. Strt shootr. Will he help xpose BL fibs?

  MacMahon cleared his throat.

  “According to Paulie, Leo Harding went out of his way to tell this St. Pierre fellow that Ken Coatesworth hadn’t seen Desmond for a couple of weeks before he disappeared. St. Pierre thought that was odd. Desmond and Coatesworth worked in the same building. Different departments, but same front door, same parking lot, you know? I was busy dogging Coatesworth, so I sent Artie Boothby, an experienced detective, to talk with Leo. Artie caught him at his home on June the fifth. Here’s the interview summary.

  “‘Subject readily admitted knowing Desmond. Said he couldn’t recall when he last saw him, possibly early May at the Warp. Acknowledged being a friend of Kenneth Coatesworth. Denied having any conversation with Coatesworth about Desmond for past several weeks, quote since the FBI started questioning people, unquote. Strongly denied saying Coatesworth told him anything about when he last saw Desmond. Subject grew agitated at end of interview. Asked who was quote putting words in his mouth unquote. Interview ended with heated denial of knowledge about Desmond’s disappearance and threat to find out who indicated he had such knowledge.’”

  MacMahon smirked as he read the last part of Artie Boothby’s summary. “‘Strongly recommend two interviewers on follow-up. Need to tag team a subject this volatile.’” He winked at Wyatt. “Good thing he’ll be surrounded by cops this time. Big Leo may still have it in him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Thursday, July 17, 2014

  Durham, New Hampshire

  While MacMahon was reading old interview notes, I was sitting at the dining room table, Paulie’s three notebooks spread before me. The good news was that he always dated his notes. The bad news was that they were far from coherent. Paulie scribbled single words and the occasional phrase in big letters, did some underlining and circling. But no narrative, no summaries of interviews, not even clarity about who was giving him information.

  Willing myself to slow down and go page by page, I sifted through the narrow notebooks. Meanwhile, Wyatt and MacMahon were knitting the pile of information into a theory.

  “Coatesworth was the inside man, helping his mob pals engineer the money scam at the mill,” MacMahon said. “Desmond picked up on the irregularities and started asking questions. When that got back to Coatesworth, he told his buddies and a hit was arranged. Coatesworth manufactured a reason for Desmond to come in that weekend so he could knock him off.”

  “You really believe Ken Coatesworth killed George?” Joan crushed out yet another cigarette.

  “Not personally,” MacMahon said. “If it was Ken who arranged the hit, I’m sure he had someone else do it, probably Big Leo. If the mob was running the show, more likely they sent a pro. Could have been Thibodeau, but maybe all he did was build the tomb.”

  “Thibodeau’s involvement would mean at least two co-conspirators,” I said.

  MacMahon brushed his hands together as though he was cleansing
them of soil. “Sounds that way. I’m sure Kenny wouldn’t be a dirty-work kind of guy in any event.”

  Barb Wyatt looked up from her notes. “You really have it in for Coatesworth, don’t you?”

  MacMahon sat up straighter. “Have it in for him? That sounds like it’s a personal thing, like he pissed me off and I’m trying to get back at him. That’s not it at all. I’ve always known in my gut he was connected with George Desmond’s disappearance. In 1968 he lied to me. Before I could find out why, that asshole Curt Wellington put the kibosh on my investigation. But Wellington’s long gone, and I’m still here.”

  He said all this in a low, steady voice. Joan’s eyes flicked back and forth between the old-time cop and the modern one, waiting for the next volley. Barb Wyatt operated in a world of men with big egos. She’d learned the benefit of the direct approach.

  “Detective, I have a world of respect for you.” Her posture was straight, her voice firm. “You worked your tail off on this case only to get stiffed by a fibbie who seemed to have bigger fish to fry than resolving this case. My statement a moment ago wasn’t intended as an insult. I want to be damned sure we get a clean arrest.”

  MacMahon’s face relaxed, but his body remained tense.

  “We’re teammates, right?” Wyatt put out her hand. MacMahon’s pause was maybe a beat and a half.

  “Yes, Chief,” MacMahon said. “Absolutely.”

  By the time we’d devoured the last of the sandwiches and finished a third pot of coffee, a plan had emerged. Chief Wyatt called Tony Rigoletti to let him know she had several hot targets and requested Coatesworth, Harding and Thibodeau be brought in for questioning. She kept the gloat out of her voice but she was telling, not asking, when they blocked out a plan to interview each of them separately at the Riverside PD as soon as possible. Wyatt mentioned that MacMahon would be sitting behind the interview room’s mirror with his meticulous files, ready to jump on any discrepancy between what Coatesworth and Harding said and their words from forty-six years earlier.

  “Both were full of shit when I questioned them in ’68. It’ll be interesting to hear ’em now.” MacMahon was tapping his big fingers on the wheels of his chair. “Like the nuns taught me when I was a kid—if you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said the first time.”