by Dave Balcom
“Are you Ben’s boy?” I asked as I jumped out of my chair and extended my hand. He switched his brief case to his other hand and shook mine.
“That I am. I’ve been with Patterson and Douglas for about six years now.” He turned to Jordan, “Rick and I were in law school together at Michigan – he went to public service; I went for family.”
There came another knock at the door, and the sergeant pushed a third chair into the room. “Thanks, Sarge,” Jordan said politely.
“So,” Adam took over. “I’ve been briefed by Rick and my dad. Now, can you tell me your version for a tape recorder?” He placed the little cassette recorder on the table between us.
I gave the tape machine a look, and then looked at Rick. “Shouldn’t we talk about how this is going to work if you’re both involved?”
“We can,” Rick said, “but that’s really not germane to getting you home to supper with your family, is it?”
“Is that a possibility?”
Adam jumped in, “You never know how a place is going to react when lawyers like Patterson and Douglas start screaming about false arrest suits, criminal conspiracy, unlawful detainment, assault with intent… and that screaming is going on right now with the chief, the DA and the mayor. I need to get this tape in my custody before I throw an unlimited gag order on you to not discuss these events even with your wife or your priest. So, please start talking.”
“But the blood test?”
“Negative. No alcohol, no drugs, no VD, nothing. You’re sober and boring. Now talk.”
And talk I did; carefully reviewing the story from the day at the Inland convention until I had met Rick that afternoon.
As he punched off the recorder, Adam smiled, “And we have something like thirty seconds left on a two-hour tape. Good job!”
Rick was looking at his watch. “We’ve gotta hustle.” He looked at me and that evil glint was in his eye again. “See you in a bit.”
Together they marched out and the door closed gently behind them. Then there was a light knock and it opened again. The sergeant put a bottle of water and a glass of ice on the table, said nothing, and walked out.
I yelled, “Thank you!” to the closed door and tested the seal on the water bottle, it hadn’t been opened. I looked at the ice, decided against it, and opened the water. I had quite a thirst and it was empty when I put it down.
I considered my situation and felt a sense of loss. Here I was, in limbo, really. I checked my center and thought about my training. I was tired, and decided to catch a nap rather than sit here and stew about things I couldn’t control.
My nap was interrupted by the sound of the door opening, and Adam walked in with Rick peering over his shoulder from outside the room. “You were sleeping?” Jordan asked in wonder. “We’re all excited to spring you out of this hell hole, and we find you sleeping?”
I shook myself and sat up in the chair, feeling my back creak. My neck felt sore and stiff from the angle it had been for …. “How long were you gone?”
“It’s just past seven,” Adam said with a big smile. “I called your house, and Sandy said dinner was still waiting. You ready to go?”
I stood up and stretched again, and then said quietly, “Get me outta here, please.”
54
The pair of lawyers gave me a ride home, and tried to avoid coming inside, but I insisted, and Sandy met us at the door with a big hug for me and smiles for them.
“Can you feed all of us?” I asked.
“No problem if you guys can wait while I add to the salad. We have chicken holding, it’s still pretty good, and I haven’t cooked peas yet, but they’re coming. If that would please you, please come on.”
The two bachelors didn’t hesitate and shed their coats en route to the kitchen.
I went to the fridge, and found that there were a couple of bottles of beer there, and I asked if they’d care for one, and both agreed. “Glasses?”
“Not ever, for me,” Adam responded. Jordan just smiled that “are you kidding?” smile.
I handed them their beers, and excused myself to go upstairs and check in on Sara and Jeremy. When I came back down showered and dressed in jeans and a tee, they had both removed their ties and were sitting at the table as Sandy put food before them.
We chatted over the meal, and then the guys seemed to be in a hurry to leave, but Sandy wasn’t having any of it.
“What’s the word here, fellas?” She asked the two attorneys. “What’s going to happen now?”
Jordan looked at Patterson, and Adam took the lead. “We’ve filed motions to dismiss all charges. We’ve got a meeting tomorrow with the District Attorney and the Chief of Police, and the FBI. Agent Reynolds called us and suggested she might take part in that meeting…” he looked right at me… “She said she thought she could shed some light on the ‘evidence’ supposedly found in Jim’s car. So we invited her, too.”
Looking at me, she asked with a little arch in her voice, “What could Agent Reynolds know about what Jim had in his vehicle?”
“We haven’t debriefed her, Mrs. Stanton. But it seemed prudent that we should welcome anyone from law enforcement who wanted to intercede on Jim’s behalf.”
She nodded absently, and I could see her wheels turning. “What about his attack on the two jailers?”
Adam spoke up, “Mrs. Stanton, I don’t think I’d advise labeling Jim’s defense of his civil rights as an attack.”
She smiled, and then chuckled, “I heard it called an attack, I don’t know any details. My husband, as usual, left his own actions out of his report so far.”
After the lawyers departed, I turned to the clean-up detail while she went upstairs to check on the kids. She hadn’t come back when I had the kitchen neatened and the dishwasher humming, so I let Hans out for his nightly rounds and busied myself making sure the ground floor was secure.
When Hans and I went up the stairs, I saw that all was dark. I peeked into the kids’ rooms, listened to their sleep sounds and watched as Hans took his normal position at the foot of Sara’s bed.
I silently closed the door and entered our room. The only light was the glow from the bedside radio indicating that the alarm was set. I didn’t turn on a light, just started undressing. I was groping around my closet looking for the pajamas that should have been hanging there when Sandy whispered from the bed, “Don’t bother, just come here.”
I slipped into the bed and found her waiting with open arms. I settled inside them, and ran my hand down from her shoulder to her hip, marveling as I always did at the satiny smooth feel of her hide.
“Honey,” I started, but she interrupted, “Shhhh. We can talk in the morning, just know that I’m thrilled to have you here with me, but not all that pleased that you’re not telling me everything...”
I started to pull away from her to protest, but she tightened her grip on my neck and pulled me back into her warmth. “Later,” she said. “In the morning,” she said. And then she didn’t say anything.
“I love you,” I said later, listening to her breathing change.
She made a snuffing sound I’d heard before as she fell asleep, and that was good enough for me...
55
The meeting with the DA and the Police Chief was set for nine and I was at the paper at six. Randy greeted me with some sour inmate joke, but Cindy Shaul was at her desk already, and that gave me pause.
“What’s up, Cindy?”
She looked up from her screen with a wide grin, “Just law and order, Jim, just law and order.”
I looked a question at Randy, and he shook his head. I dragged a neighboring chair up to Cindy’s desk. “You’re pretty early this morning.”
She gave me the grin again, “Some things can’t wait.”
“What things?”
“Like Deke Hardy.”
My head did an involuntary snap at the mention of the name. “Hardy?” I asked.
“As in Derek Hardy, son of Jake; seven-year veteran of the L
ake City Police Department who has never risen past the rank of Patrolman Three.”
I couldn’t help but stand up. She stopped typing and hit the “print” command. “My notes are coming out now. He’s the guy who stopped you; I have his arrest report here.”
“How did you get that?”
“I have sources, Mr. Stanton. You know how that works, don’t you?”
I gave her a smile with a nod. “As simple as that?”
“Not really. Appears the arrest report had been filed, and then it was mysteriously missing off the sergeant’s desk about dinner time last night. Then it magically reappeared there this morning as I was sharing a cup of coffee with Murph.”
“Magic?”
“It’s like sources, you know?”
“This arrest report, it’s signed and everything?”
She pulled a plastic file protector out from under the calendar on her desk, and handed it to me. “Seems the officer was real proud of it before quitting time, but something maybe didn’t sit well at dinner.”
I looked at the two-sided report. “Did it come to you in the protector?”
She nodded.
“Did your source hand it to you, or did it just magically appear in your notebook and you didn’t notice it until you got back here?”
“Does it matter?”
“Depends on the quality of the fingerprints on the plastic, I guess,” I said in an off-handed tone.
“Fingerprints?”
“Very useful crime fighting tool, that technology; it also comes in handy for bureaucrats looking for leaks in their organization.”
She paled for a second, and then reached out to take back the file. “I need the restroom,” she muttered, and got up and hurried away.
I moved over to Randy’s desk. “You know all the players, Randy...”
“Deke was a year or two behind me in high school. Big stud athlete, not too big on brains. Had some kind of falling out with his old man over college, and went off to the Army for two years.
“When he came back, he landed a job with the cops, and has been there ever since. I haven’t seen him in quite some time, but then I don’t spend a lot of time on law enforcement.”
Cindy came back from the bathroom, and was carrying the file protector by two corners between both of her hands.
“Everything come out all right?” Randy asked innocently.
She hit him a glancing blow with her best smile, and handed the report to me. “I don’t think our fingerprints are very important, do you?”
“I’m sure that’s all there are on the outside...”
“On the inside, too, is my guess,” she said over her shoulder as she walked back to her desk. “Don’t forget my notes in the printer.”
I read her notes thoroughly and appreciated the fact that nothing in the notes indicated a plot, named a suspect or in any other manner could be used as the basis of a defamation lawsuit.
I left for City Hall just before nine, and arrived just as my two lawyers were walking up the stone steps to the front door. I caught them and suggested we dally for a second outside.
“What’s up?” Adam asked.
I handed Adam the arrest report from Cindy as I told them how she’d obtained it.
“Can we use this?” Jordan asked. “Is it stolen?”
I hadn’t considered that, but I shrugged it off. “I think it must be a copy, but I don’t know that for sure.”
Adam, who was turning it over and thinking about pulling it out of the protector nodded, “It’s all in black; it could be a copy. Why would this guy set you up for a frame?” Adam asked, looking at me.
“I can only guess. I met his dad once. He’s a bigwig here ’bouts; runs the family’s steel mill. He was a guest of the publisher when we were printing a special section on the first anniversary of Suzanne’s disappearance back in August.
“He and his wife made it pretty clear they weren’t fans of mine. They think the newspaper’s role with news like that is to be seen and not read, I think.”
“That’s it? You haven’t done anything to offend him personally?”
“Not that I know of. Doug said he always thought Jake and he should have been close because they both shared the responsibility of taking over their fathers’ companies and breathing new life into them, but that never happened. He said he didn’t think Jake appreciated the newspaper business.”
“That’s fascinating,” Adam said with a shake of his head. “Well, let’s go meet the prosecutor and the mayor, and find out if we need this...”
When we got to the DA’s office, FBI Agent Marcia Reynolds was waiting for us. Adam greeted her with a familiarity that surprised me. It was Jordan’s first meeting with her. She gave me a brief smile and a nod. “I don’t think this is going to last long,” she said in a subdued voice.
“What gives?” Adam asked.
“I think they’re on the phone right now with the SAC in Buffalo, and he’s pretty pissed.”
“Why?” I asked. “I’m the guy who is being framed.”
She gave me a sympathy smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “Because it was our gun and our drugs that he tried to frame you with.”
“I have to sit down,” I said in a whisper as I slumped into a chair. “Really?”
“It was in our car when we came down to meet with the locals about your story. We parked it right out there,” she said pointing at a window overlooking the police security lot. “Segura didn’t think to lock the vehicle; it was in a locked lot, you know? In a police station for Christ’s sake.
“So, when we get back to the office, Segura finds the weapon and cocaine missing. We aren’t sure, but we notify the police here as well as in Rochester and Batavia where we had also stopped on our way home...”
“So how did you make the connection?” Jordan asked.
“We got a call about five yesterday from someone identifying himself as a desk sergeant here, telling us that our missing weapon and drugs had just been turned in as evidence.”
I spoke up, “A Sergeant Murphy?”
“That’s what the caller said, but I met Murphy this morning, and he denies ever making the call or any knowledge of the call. He admitted he’d seen our BOLO notice identifying the weapon and the drugs this morning, but he said all this happened before he reported to work last night.”
I nodded. “I think Sarge is a good guy, but I know this all happened before he was on duty. He’s the overnight guy.”
Adam had a thought. “Jim, I think you might want to take a seat out here and let us meet with the guys inside first, if you don’t mind. It may speed things up a bit, but if we need you, we’ll call you. Is that okay?”
At that moment the secretary answered her phone and announced that our meeting was ready. Adam pointed at a visitor chair, and I sat down.
They had been gone for about fifteen minutes when the door to the conference room opened and Adam beckoned me with a smile on his face.
His smile turned off as he escorted me into the room.
The mayor, D. Dalton Henry, was standing at the head of the conference table as I walked in. To his right was District Attorney Anthony Fusco. I knew both of them by sight, but had never had a sit down chat with either.
“Mr. Stanton,” Henry opened, “It is with a great deal of sadness that I have to apologize to you, your newspaper and the entire community for the way you were treated yesterday. I can only hope and pray that you and the community can forgive and move on.”
There was an extended silence. I didn’t know what to say, and finally looked at Adam for guidance. “District Attorney Fusco is dropping all charges, Jim.”
“That’s great, of course, but can anyone tell me what this all means?”
Fusco took over. “It has become obvious that you were targeted by one of our own officers, using evidence illegally obtained from the FBI, in an effort to discredit you. We believe this effort was conceived and carried out by an individual officer of the Lake City PD. That
officer is now on suspension, awaiting a public service commission ruling on his future employability as per the conditions of the collective bargaining agreement between the city and the police officers’ union.”
I saw a convenient open chair on my side of the table, and I took it. “Mr. Fusco, I might challenge the idea that Officer Hardy was acting alone when he attempted to frame me.”
He looked up sharply from his notes. “Why is that?”
I explained my encounter with the black car on my walk home, and I related my daughter’s observation that I was under surveillance by a man in a “black car” outside my office.
Jordan spoke up, “Gentlemen, what Jim’s saying right now is consistent with the first account he gave to me of this situation. I have that on tape if you’d care to hear it.”
The mayor took over. “What you’re insinuating is preposterous, young man. You want us to believe that other members of our police department were involved in a plot to discredit you personally and professionally? Why would they do that?”
“That’s a great question, Mr. Mayor,” I said. “I don’t know the ‘why’ of it, or even the whole ‘who’ of it, but I do know in my heart that Deke Hardy isn’t the ‘all’ of it. And before I’m going to find it in my heart or head to forgive and forget, I’m going to have to know the answers to those questions and how they play in the real issue here – who killed Suzanne Czarnopias?”
Adam stood up. “I believe you gentlemen have a press conference to schedule, and an investigation to conduct. Jim has had an interesting week and needs to recover, and we lawyers have other clients to serve, so we’ll just get out of your way...”
“Hold on,” Fusco said. “Ms. Reynolds, would it be out of the question to think the FBI might be able to help us with our investigation?”
“I’m sure we’re interested, Mr. Fusco, but that kind of call is above my pay grade. I also think there is a State Police department for just that kind of inquiry and they may have a more practical jurisdiction. We are, after all, one of the victims in all this – we have a bunch of tainted evidence to deal with.”