by Lee Goodman
“You okay, Nick?” Tina asks.
We’re five months into an investigation of the murder of two federal witnesses, and our whole case has just crumbled, leaving us without a single lead. Except we do have a lead: We have Scud, who genuinely seems to know something that he wants to tell us.
“Find Scud,” I say to Dorsey. “Find Scud and find Chip. We’ll immunize Scud on the felon-in-possession violation. He knows something, Dorsey. I’m sure of it. He’ll talk. He’s aching to talk. Forget about the threats to me. Scud is our new best friend. Go get him.”
I end the call and try Chip again. No answer. I try Upton. No answer.
“What is it?” Tina says.
I forgot about her. She’s there across the table, and as luck would have it, she’s about the only person in the world I can explain all of this to. So I do. And she listens. I get into details I don’t intend to, like my feelings about Zander—how he was just a terrified kid; how I’ve strangely superimposed on him the grown-up persona of my departed son, Toby. I tell Tina about the chemistry with Cassandra, and Lizzy’s feelings for Cassandra, and how much I’d love for Lizzy to have a stable mother figure (“Let’s say role model,” I correct myself, embarrassed). I confess to Tina about having gotten too close to the case and maybe not exercising the best judgment. We sit talking for over an hour, until the lunch crowd disappears and we have the place to ourselves. I finish the tale with the part about Scud calling me and begging for help. “I asked who he worked for,” I tell Tina, “and all he’d say was ‘mercy.’ ”
“You sure it was ‘mercy’?”
“I think so, why?”
“Maybe he said Percy. Percy Mashburn. He seems to be the new meth king. He’s who Tamika Curtis was working for.”
“You think Mashburn could be running Scud?”
“Might bear looking into.”
“Maybe so.” I look out at the river. Things have gotten too complicated. I’m having trouble keeping it all clear in my head.
“That’s a lot on your plate,” Tina says, reaching across the table to pat my hand, and I wonder if she might rest her hand on top of mine, and I wonder if I might turn my hand over and take hold of hers. But we don’t, and then the moment is lost, and I am tingly with the almost-ness of it. It’s better this way, though. We’re colleagues at lunch: supervisor and subordinate. I should ask her to dinner. Dinner is outside of work. Lunch isn’t.
We order more clams. My fingers get pruny from all the peeling and dunking, and I worry that she might see the wrinkles and mistake it for age. I’ve got twelve years on her.
“I’ve always liked this place,” she says.
I could invite her to Flora’s with me tonight. It’s probably odd, taking someone to dinner at the ex’s for a first date, but they’ve already met, and Tina wouldn’t mind. She likes Lizzy. She liked Flora. She liked Bill-the-Dog.
Maybe I will. Her hair really isn’t all that bad.
“Something’s going on,” Tina says.
More police have arrived across the river. I see the coroner’s van. They’ve strung yellow tape along the shore.
The feminine hand that was resting on the table, the hand whose comfort and warmth pulled at me with throat-tightening gravity, now goes into Tina’s coat pocket and emerges with glasses. She puts them on, and the hand returns to the table.
Trooper cars have arrived at the scene. We’re close enough to make out forms and actions but too far to see faces.
“Drowning, I guess,” Tina says.
“Something sad,” I say.
Across the room, the vets sit at their table drinking coffee in solemn unity. I see Steve wheeling across the room to join them; Tina and I are at the table where Lizzy and Kendall and Kaylee and I had lunch, and I remember how casually, how nonsignificantly, Lizzy put her arm across Kaylee’s shoulders. And just like that, I’m holding Tina’s hand across the tabletop.
Four cops are lifting a body up the bank, and gawkers watch from behind the tape. Between police and rescue, there are half a dozen vehicles. It’s a light show.
A tall, slender figure separates from the crowd of officers. A man in a suit, not a uniform. He has his back to the river, and I see him lift his hand to his ear. He paces. Then he turns to face us, and I can see that his mouth looks all black. The bear rug: Dorsey’s silly mustache, and I’m reaching for my phone before it rings. And of course it does ring.
“Nick Davis here,” I say in as level a voice as I can.
“Nick, it’s Dorsey.”
“Hi, Dorsey.”
“Listen, I’m down by the river across from the Rokeby Mills building, and I—”
“Yeah, I see you, Dorsey, I’m at the Rain Tree.”
He pauses and waves vaguely in our direction.
“Yeah, hi,” I say. “So I assume there’s a reason you’re calling me?”
“Well, it seems we got a floater here.”
“So I see.”
“And um . . .” He pauses, and I watch as his black raincoat works its way into the mass of rescue workers and police around the gurney. “Well, Nick, we can call off the search for Scud Illman, because I just found him.”
CHAPTER 27
There’s nothing at all connecting Scud Illman to Zander Phippin and Cassandra Randall anymore. The deer poaching explains away the last of it. The Bureau and the state police recognize this. Scud’s only remaining interest to Dorsey and Chip is as the fourth murder victim.
But in my mind, he’s so intertwined with Zander and Cassandra that I need to take pains to separate him. All the loathing I’ve felt has no object; it is a flopping fish tossed onto the sand. Its context has abandoned it. So I’ve decided to prove for myself whether it is possible that Seth and Scud could have poached a deer on one side of the reservoir on the same night they buried Zander Phippin on the other.
It is late at night. I buy coffee at the 7-Eleven across from Seymour Apartments. The register receipt reads 11:47 P.M.
The roads are empty. I drive west, skirting the reservoir to the south, then I leave the highway and turn onto County Road D, paralleling the west shore. I see deer; white tails appear like ghosts before dissolving into the black curtain of woods. But one doe freezes, proverbial deer in the headlights, her eyes burning green. It would be easy to step from the car and shoot, but I drive past, and as the headlights move off her, I see the flash of her tail.
Following my map, I arrive at the dirt road leading toward a cul-de-sac where, last June 3, a game warden found gut piles from two midnight deer poachings. I follow a gravel drive for several hundred yards until my lights shine on a picnic table and a campfire grate and a small pay box where boaters are supposed to leave a five-dollar fee for using the boat ramp. Now it is 1:43 A.M.—an hour and fifty-six minutes since I bought coffee across from Seth’s apartment. The moon sparkles on the surface of the reservoir, and I can make out the opposite shore barely a half mile away.
I return to the hardtop and follow county roads around the reservoir toward the opposite shore. As I get into the unmarked roads of the more forested eastern shore, I’m tempted to call this off and turn back toward the highway. I’m nearing the spot where someone dumped poor Zander Phippin; the woods are getting thicker with ghosts. I wish I’d brought somebody with me as company, but whom—?
Cassandra—I picture us walking in the woods that day last June, but I change it: There is no corpse to dig up. Just the two of us, her cargo pants swishing, her hand clutching mine. But Cassandra is dead.
Toby—mid-twenties now. Lanky like his mom, messy hair, physically fit, a girlfriend at home, but he’s happy to drive around in the woods with his dad, talking about who knows what; maybe grad school, or politics, or girls. Whatever: It’s the company that matters. But Toby is dead.
Or Flora, the old Flora; witty, sharp, intellectual. She’s gone, too.
More literally, I thought of asking Kenny, but he’s not the kind to bask in the quiet pleasantness of familiar company and the woods
at night. He has decided to buy a Jet Ski, and it’s all he talks about now.
I also thought of Tina or Chip or Upton, but my mission—measuring time and distance where time and distance are already known—is so illogical, I don’t want to involve my sober-minded associates. I thought of Lizzy, too. She would be perfect, but keeping her up on a school night to spare myself the hectoring of all my ghosts wouldn’t be good parenting.
I am alone but for these ghosts, so I ask them the obvious question: Who wanted Scud dead? The obvious answer is that whoever killed Zander and Cassandra wanted Scud dead, because he was probably about to rat them out. Though it might be true, it’s an unsatisfying answer. A dead end.
“Who else wanted Scud dead?” I ask my passengers.
“Doc Wallis,” Toby yells. I ignore him, because Dr. Wallis has been dead almost as long as Toby.
“You wanted him dead,” the youthful Flora says to me in the voice I remember from eons ago—insightful and ironic and teasing all at once. I ignore her, too.
“Everyone wanted him dead,” Cassandra says.
“Can you be more specific?”
“Of course not,” she answers. “I don’t even know who killed me.”
They’re no help, these uninvited passengers. I silence them, but they’re restive, and after a few uneasy miles, Zander blurts, “My father wanted him dead.”
“Yes, but . . .” I answer, and that’s all I can think of. But what? But nothing. Hollis Phippin, successful, intelligent, well spoken, a man of action. He did want Scud dead. He told me so. Crap.
At 3:09 I arrive near where I parked the day we found Zander. I turn around and drive back toward the highway.
Three hours and twenty-two minutes since I bought coffee. Last June 3, Scud bought cigarettes at 2:02 A.M. Adding their travel time, the earliest Scud and Seth could have arrived near Zander’s grave is 5:24 A.M., and that’s if they never stopped. So if Cassandra Randall first heard them in the woods at about 6:15, which is what she told us, it means they had about fifty-one minutes to shoot two deer, gut them, and toss them in the car at the picnic area over on the west side, then on the east side to carry or drag the body into the woods, to dig the hole for Zander, pitch him in, and start filling the hole up before Cassandra came along and heard them. Impossible.
Or maybe not. What if they hadn’t planned to shoot any deer? No skulking in the woods or staking out a game trail, no quartering, even: They see two deer in the headlights, jump out, shoot. Seth was a hunter. He could have gutted them in minutes. Let’s say the whole process takes fifteen minutes. That leaves only thirty-eight minutes to dig Zander’s grave. Impossible.
Or maybe not. What if it was already dug?
Possible. Now there are two problems: First, if they already had a grave dug for Zander on the east shore, what were they doing on the west shore?
Second problem: All the evidence we had linking Scud and Seth to Zander’s burial—the tollbooth record, the blood, the tire print, the cigarette purchase, the phone note in Seth’s apartment—is perfectly explained by the deer poaching. There are no loose ends. Attributing the evidence to the established fact of two felons out poaching a couple of deer, there’s nothing left. Scud becomes no more a suspect than anybody else who was out and about that night in June. Less, actually.
Bottom line: Scud and Seth could have poached a deer and buried Zander Phippin all in the same night. But they didn’t. The contortions of logic and logistics overwhelm the sliver of feasibility. It’s back to square one.
I drive to the highway. Darkness is peaceful now. My dead and departed passengers stayed behind at the reservoir. I wanted it to be Scud, but I’m glad it wasn’t. The deer hunting changed my thinking. Not that I’m in favor of poaching (I’m not even a hunter). No, it’s the pathetic and redeeming humanness of their mission. Two guys, rejects and lowlifes, team up for an illegal and unsportsmanlike venture away from the neon glow, into the startling blackness of woods. Hoods, criminals, city rats, drawn to the tepid wilderness of the reservoir district. I know the feeling, that urge to fan the primeval spark, nurturing the forgotten connection to the earth: man’s longing for self-sufficiency.
We’re all the same.
CHAPTER 28
The music is zippy; Scud hoists himself up on some flotsam in the rain-swollen river and hops to the shore.
“Who killed you?” I ask.
He grins his squinty grin, and he is just about to tell me . . .
“Nick,” Tina asks, “are you okay?”
My office. Tina is in the doorway.
“Are you on the phone?” she asks.
Apparently, I am on the phone, my head pillowed against the receiver, my elbow propped on the desk, and the on-hold music in my ear.
“I’ll come back later,” Tina says.
I hang up. “No. Stay.”
“Are you okay?”
“I fell asleep.”
“On the phone?”
“I was up all night.”
“Have you had coffee yet?”
“I don’t think so.”
She leaves. Then she’s back with two cups of coffee. “How you doing, boss?”
“This’ll help.” I sip the coffee and say, “Mmm,” just to say anything, because she has settled down across from me.
“Up all night doing what?”
I tell her about driving to the reservoir.
Janice buzzes. “Agent d’Villafranca for you, Nick.”
I put him on speaker. “Hi, Chip.”
“Nick, did you just call me?”
“It’s possible.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I have Tina with me here.”
“Hi, Tina.”
“Hi, Chip.”
I say, “I think it’s safe to assume that Scud killed Seth Coen to keep him quiet. They were out poaching deer. Scud was a two-time loser; Seth wasn’t. When the shit hit the fan, Seth probably wanted to cop to the felon-in-possession charge to remove suspicion on the murder charge. Scud couldn’t allow that because he’d be in on three strikes.”
“Nice theory.”
“Do you have any evidence from Scud’s body?”
“Dorsey’s department,” Chip says. “The state has the body. They worked the scene.”
“I have a name to suggest,” I say. “Hollis Phippin has motive, and he’s capable.”
Tina’s eyes widen in surprise, then she nods in agreement.
“Talk to Dorsey,” Chip says.
So I do. I hang up with Chip and dial Dorsey’s office.
“Dorsey,” Dorsey says.
“Nick here. I have a theory on who killed Scud. I’m thinking you might want to interview Hollis Phippin. He’s smart, he’s a doer, he has motive. He even said something to me about killing Scud himself if he had to . . .”
“Nick—”
“I mean, I’d hate like hell to see him go down. You’ve got to admire it, really. But that’s why we have laws, am I right? I feel responsible. It was me who—”
“Nick—”
“—lost objectivity.”
“Nick,” Dorsey says, “I’ve got the ballistics report here. Listen to me. Seth Coen and Scud Illman were killed with the same gun.”
Tina and I look across the desk at each other as implications stream from this tidbit of data. “Self-inflicted?” she whispers. This makes sense, considering the state Scud was in when he called me on Kendall’s phone. He’d gotten himself in too deep, the pressure was too much: sayonara. But in this case, it’s impossible: Not too many guys off themselves with an executionlike hole in the back of the head and then tumble into the river.
“It doesn’t rule Hollis out altogether,” Dorsey says. “Like maybe he confronted Scud, got the gun away from him. We’ll talk to him.”
“Sure,” I say, “but keep me out of it. Have you found anything at the scene?”
“No, so far we don’t even know where he was killed. I’ve got investigators searching the picnic areas and waysides
for anything interesting.”
“Well, keep me informed.” I end the call because something just occurred to me. “Tina, go brief Upton,” I say to get rid of her.
When she’s gone, I call Kendall Vance’s office and leave a message saying I need to speak with him immediately and away from the office.
Janice buzzes while I’m waiting for Kendall to call back. “Nick, I have the file you wanted.”
“What file?”
“It was several weeks ago. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through. Because it had been archived, but then they’d pulled it for digitizing, but they hadn’t digitized it yet, so it was in this never-never status where nobody could find it, and finally, I went over there to look for it myself, but they wouldn’t let me take it until they actually did get it digitized, so now I’ve got it.”
“What file?”
“Burton.”
“I don’t remember Burton.”
“Well, you asked,” she says.
I go out and take it from her. Leroy Burton. It’s a case that was closed almost thirty years ago. Fuseli! The tattoo guy. I’d forgotten.
• • •
I silence my cell phone so it won’t ring while I’m with Kendall. We meet at the Sahara Café, a tiny falafel joint in the old town.
“I don’t have much time,” Kendall says, “but you sounded desperate.”
“I just thought we should talk,” I say. “You lost a client. What must that be like?”
He shrugs.
“So I guess he was innocent,” I say. “Of the murder, anyway.”
“Innocent or not,” Kendall says, “I figured he was going in for life, but your case kept unraveling, and it started looking like I could get the son of a bitch acquitted. I never expected that.”