An Unsettled Grave

by Bernard Schaffer

  Next was a yellow piece of legal paper covered in handwritten notes. This is Jacob’s handwriting, she realized, reading the page more carefully.

  At the top of the page was the name Hope Pugh, with her date of birth and Social Security number written beside it.

  On the left side of the page was a series of boxes, written as questions, and on the right were the answers, and they all said the same thing.

  Driver’s License Photo ? No record found.

  Credit History? No record found

  Voter Registration? No record found.

  Arrest Record? No record found.

  Passport History? No passport issued.

  Next to every remaining category on the list was a blank response. There had been no name changes. No activity on her Social Security number. No bank accounts had ever been opened by her. If Hope Pugh had survived into adulthood, there would be some record of her, somewhere.

  Jacob Rein was looking for her, all those years later, still clinging to the idea that Hope might still be out there.

  She wasn’t.

  Carrie could see Rein’s handwriting weaken as the list went on, as if the strength to answer his own questions were being wrung out of him with each hard truth.

  She pictured him sitting at his desk all those years ago, alone, searching for a person who could not be found. As alone as she felt in that moment, sitting on the dirty floor in the records room, and no closer to the truth.

  * * *

  Carrie turned down the corridor and headed toward the crowd of attorneys. They’d surrounded the interrogation room. Some had backed away from what they saw through the one-way glass, their faces pale and stiff. The ones who stayed looked on hungrily.

  The wall shook with a loud crash, and the hulking form of Harv Bender pressed against the window, his forearm wedged under another man’s chin and chest. Harv was close enough to him to fling spit at the other’s man’s face when he said, “You like to rape defenseless women? Yeah, scumbag? You like to dress up like a cop? Since you like rape so much, tell you what. I’m going to put you in a place where rape happens all the time. I don’t think you’ll like the way they do it, though. A nice little white boy like you. You’re gonna be real, real popular in there.”

  Blood trickled down the suspect’s nose, leaking onto Bender’s white dress shirt, but he didn’t mind. He was winding it up for his audience. Shouting loud enough to make sure everyone heard. Slamming the suspect into the wall must have gotten a big reaction for him to do it so soon again. The guy was a foot shorter than Bender, and gagging on the forearm wedged under his throat, squirming to get enough room to breathe. “I didn’t rape anybody!” he gasped. “I told you, I was just trying to go around that lady because she was driving too slow.”

  Bender tossed him aside, scowling in disgust. He lifted his beefy arms to inspect them, seeing the bloodstains there, turning them to make sure everyone standing behind the window could see, too. “I’m going to give you time to think things over. When I come back, it’s either going to get a lot better for you, or a lot worse. Worse than anything you can imagine. I’ve got guys with toilet plungers standing outside, and they are dying to come in here. You better tell me something I want to hear when I get back, or else.”

  Carrie watched the man rub his throat and sit on the floor, lowering his head into his hands. Bender came through the door, beaming at the crowd gathered there who’d been watching him perform. He held his finger to his lips, telling everyone to keep quiet as he pulled the door shut behind him with a soft click. “These walls are thin,” he whispered. He pointed through the window. “See how he’s sitting there with his head down? That’s a classic give-up pose. He knows he’s beat, so he’s conserving his energy. When I go back in there, he’ll crack like an egg.”

  Carrie could see the man’s shoulders and back twitching as he sobbed into his arms. She’d heard of suspects laying their heads on the interrogation table as a sign of them giving up, but never tucking themselves into a ball in the corner of the room and crying like a baby. Give-up signs and the like were all part of the body language bullshit shysters got paid teaching seminars to gullible people like Harv Bender. That was one of the first things she’d learned from Jacob Rein.

  Bender saw her staring through the window and tapped her arm, smiling wide. “See that? The old dog still has some tricks up his sleeve after all. How long did it take me to solve your fake-cop rapist case? A few days?”

  “Yeah, nice job,” Carrie said. “How’d you get him?”

  He waved for her to follow him down the hall toward his office. Along the way, Bender stepped into the kitchenette to scrub his arms in the sink. He rinsed off the soap and checked his arms for blood. “Rod Turley, that’s our guy,” Bender said over his shoulder. “Mr. Turley tried pulling a woman over on a deserted road out past the water treatment plant this morning. Real isolated area. Unfortunately for him, she’d read something in the paper about your case. What’s your victim’s name? Monica Gere?”

  “That’s right,” Carrie said.

  Bender dried off his arms with a handful of paper towels, then tossed them away. “So this chick calls nine-one-one. Turley sees her on the phone and tries taking off, but the locals stopped him. My victim ID’d him at the scene. Now he’s all mine.”

  Carrie followed Bender into his office. “Was he dressed like a cop?”

  Several large paper bags lay open on Bender’s desk. “No. No uniform, no badge. None that we found yet, anyway. No flashlight, either,” Bender said, reaching into the largest bag. “But he did have this.”

  The chief pulled out a rectangular light box with four blue bulbs and a long cord with a cigarette lighter plug-in attachment. Underneath the box was a bracket where it had been mounted on a car’s dashboard, and chunks of the dashboard were still stuck to it from where the cops had ripped it out. Bender held it up triumphantly, displaying his prize.

  “A volunteer firefighter’s blue light?” Carrie said.

  “That’s right,” Bender said. “This is what he stopped my girl with. And we got it before he had time to ditch it. I’ve already got a phone call in to that Monica Gere gal, but from what I heard about her being a psycho, I don’t expect to hear back.”

  “She told me it was definitely blue and red lights that pulled her over,” Carrie said. “Kind of a difference, right?”

  “Happens all the time,” Bender said, dropping the blue light back into the evidence bag. “He probably read that article in the paper and knew it was time to change his MO. You of all people should know these mutts don’t always fit the usual profile.”

  “Right,” Carrie whispered. “Well, nice job, boss,” she added.

  “Now do you see why I was telling you to slow down? You never want to run with your choke out in these kinds of situations.” He tapped his finger against the side of his head. “You always gotta use this, okay?”

  “Okay, Chief,” she said. “I’ll remember that.”

  “Good. So talk to me. How’d it go out in Liston-Patterson?”

  “They found the rest of the body, which is good, I guess,” Carrie said. “But that chief out there, he’s different.”

  “How do you mean?” Bender asked. “You know he called here, checking up on you? I only talked to him for a few minutes. He seemed to feel like you were done with your assistance.”

  “I gotta be honest, I’m glad to be out of there. The guy kept saying shit about us. How we don’t know our asses from holes in the ground. How you are just some political hack who blew enough people to finally get the chief’s job. I had to tell him to shut his damn mouth a few times. I’m telling you, boss, if this guy worked for you, you wouldn’t put him in charge of a school crossing.”

  Bender’s brow twitched as she spoke. Carrie gave it a second, letting it all sink in before she went on. “I’m not surprised he wants the county out of his little kingdom. I don’t think they know what the hell they’re doing. He’s terrified I’m going to see s
omething and come back and report it to you, and you’ll come down on them like holy hellfire.” Carrie leaned against the doorway, staying casual, not looking at Bender’s sweaty, inflamed face. “Anyway, that’s what I think.”

  Bender ran his hand through his hair. “Tell you what. Give it a few more days down there. Lay low, stay quiet. I want you to report back to me on every single thing that little cocksucker does and says. Maybe I’ll go have a little chat with him when this is all wrapped up and explain just who is who in this county.”

  “You sure?” Carrie asked. “I’d rather be up here, helping you with this rapist case.”

  “I’ve got this under control,” Bender said, hiking his pants and belt up over the lower lid of his belly. “You just get back there and make sure those bozos don’t miss anything important.”

  “Understood,” Carrie said.

  “Now excuse me,” Bender said, moving past her to go back down the hall toward the interrogation room. “I have to go have another conversation with my new friend and see if he wants to play nice or receive the worst ass beating of his miserable life.”

  “Hey, boss?” Carrie called out after him. “I forgot to ask, is this guy Turley a volunteer firefighter?”

  “He said he was a few years ago, but I haven’t checked it out yet. Those guys are supposed to hand those blue lights back in once they stop being active members. Him still having it is what we call, in the detective world, Exhibit A.”

  Bender went back through the door, into the interrogation room. The people still gathered around the window pressed forward again. Carrie hurried by, wanting to be as far away as possible from whatever was about to happen inside that room. As she passed, Turley looked up from the table, as if he could see her through the mirror, his wet eyes pleading with her to stay.

  Maybe he was the right guy, Carrie thought. Maybe he really did swap out his entire scheme as a cop, which was completely effective, just to try out something lame and nonsensical instead. A volunteer firefighter with a plug-in blue light. Of course, that wouldn’t work, Carrie thought. The most people did was slow down to let blue-lighters go around them. Nobody ever pulled over and stopped. And if they did, they damn sure didn’t provide their driver’s license information to a volunteer firefighter or comply with their orders. Jesus Christ, they barely complied with cops. Rod Turley would have to be the biggest idiot in history for running that ruse, especially if he’d already found a good one that worked. And if there’s one thing about bad guys that she knew, when they found something that worked, they didn’t abandon it. They improved.

  She looked back at the shriveled man through the window, even as Bender leaned toward him and seethed, “You going to tell me what I want to know or am I going to have to get unpleasant?”

  Maybe Monica Gere was wrong, Carrie thought. Maybe she was lying. Maybe she was trying to make it sound bigger than it actually was, or justify why she hadn’t fought back, or a million other possibilities that could somehow explain how Rod Turley was the right guy for the rape.

  But not likely. The overeagerness to fit a suspect to a crime, instead of letting it evolve organically, is any criminal investigator’s Achilles’ heel. She knew that only amateurs and idiots took any oddly shaped puzzle piece and rammed it into the one opening they most desperately needed to fill. Forcing it to fit didn’t make it true. Even if a jury came back with a guilty verdict, that didn’t make it true, either. When it was true, you could see it. Prove it. Examine it a thousand different ways and it still remained. It never had to be bent. The truth rings clear, like a bell, and even if it’s crazy, it always makes sense.

  Carrie tucked the Oliver Rein case folder tight under her arm, heading for the exit. Inside the interrogation room, Rod Turley was crying out for someone to help him, but Carrie let the door slam closed behind her and kept going.

  CHAPTER 16

  On the morning of his preliminary hearing, Rod Turley shuffled into the district court lobby wearing the same orange jumpsuit he’d worn since being placed in County Prison. He was shackled across his hands and feet, and shuffled past his mother and father, too ashamed to look at them.

  “Come on, this way,” Dave Kenderdine said. He escorted Turley into the courtroom and sat him down at the nearest table next to the public defender. She was an unhappy-looking woman with long black hair and a purple blazer. Turley leaned in to ask her a question, and she told him not to speak.

  Judge Jean Smythe entered the courtroom in a black, flowing robe. Everyone but Turley stood. The judge was in her late sixties but fresh faced and smiling. She looked like someone’s grandmother. She even smiled at him and said good morning. Turley wiggled out of his chair and stood as well, as hard as it was with his limbs chained together.

  “Please, be seated,” Judge Smythe said.

  “Your Honor?” Turley called out.

  “Sit down,” the public defender said, pulling on his arm.

  “Your Honor, I didn’t do anything! I’m innocent!” he said, talking over the sound of the judge slapping her gavel on the bench.

  All the judge’s grandmotherly goodness evaporated as she leveled a crooked finger at the public defender. “Advise your client not to say another word. That’s the first and last warning he gets.” “Keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking,” the public defender said through clenched teeth.

  Turley looked around the courtroom. His mother and father were seated behind him. His father’s arm was clenched tight around his mother, and she was weeping. Only a swinging wooden gate separated where they sat from where he was, but it seemed a thousand miles away. At the table to his left was the prosecution side.

  The assistant district attorney looked like he wasn’t old enough to shave. He wore thin, stylish glasses and his hair was slicked back with so much product it reflected the lights from the ceiling above. Seated next to him was the fat cop who’d beaten Turley up and thrown him in prison. Harv Bender, chief of county detectives, Turley had heard him say, over and over. Bender had called him a rapist and a scumbag. On the way to the jail, when they were alone, Bender had said he’d see to it that the guards beat Turley on a daily basis.

  Now, Bender looked sweaty and agitated. Both his legs were bouncing up and down in his seat like he was running as fast as he could but not going anywhere.

  “Your Honor,” the assistant district attorney said, raising his hand to silence Bender, “before we begin, the commonwealth would like to request a continuance.”

  “On what grounds?” Judge Smythe said.

  “Our victim could not be here today,” the ADA replied.

  The public defender shot to her feet. “Objection, Your Honor. Nothing in the paperwork indicates there has even been a positive ID on my client. I’d respectfully like to know if the victim is even cooperating at this point?”

  “We’re not prosecuting the case right now. You’ll see our evidence when we are ready to proceed,” the ADA said.

  “Your Honor, I move for immediate dismissal,” the public defender said. “My client has been held in prison for days based on nothing but Chief Bender’s criminal complaint, which, with all due respect, is nearly incoherent.”

  Judge Smythe looked at the ADA, who looked about to protest, but had nothing to offer. Behind him, Harv Bender made a small choking sound.

  The judge slid the criminal complaint across her desk and read through all of Turley’s information and the list of charges. She licked her thumb and turned the page to the affidavit of probable cause, a long narrative that detailed all of the events in the case, written and signed by Bender. Judge Smythe’s eyes narrowed before she finished the first paragraph.

  She looked up from her desk. “Did the DA’s office review this before it was filed?”

  “No, Your Honor,” the ADA said, moving slightly away from where Harv Bender sat.

  “I can’t accept this,” the judge said. She smacked her gavel and said, “Dismissed. If and when the Commonwealth is ready to proceed, this court i
s ready to hear their case.” She snapped her fingers and said, “Sergeant Kenderdine, release this man from custody, immediately.”

  Turley was too confused to realize what was happening when the sergeant took him by the arms and raised him out of the seat. “Just hold steady,” Kenderdine said. “Raise your hands so I can get the key in.”

  “Yes, sir,” Turley said, too numb to move. “What just happened?” He felt his mother and father come up behind him. His mother wrapped her arms around his back, embracing him.

  Kenderdine unlocked the cuffs. He saw Harv Bender rise up from his chair, face purple with rage, and patted Turley on the shoulder. “You can go now. There was a problem with the paperwork. Listen, stay out of trouble and lay low for a while, all right?”

  “It wasn’t me. I told them that from the beginning. I hope you get whoever it is, I really do,” Turley said.

  “I’m sure we will,” Kenderdine said, watching Bender slam the swinging gate open to pass through it. The man’s hands were curled into tight fists.

  * * *

  Harv Bender shoved the courthouse door open so hard it smacked the wall behind the entryway. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted. He bent forward and pounded his fists against his thighs. “Son of a freaking bitch!”

  “Bad day at the office, Harv?” a voice called out to him.

  A shabbily dressed man sat on a park bench nearby. His thick beard and threadbare clothing made him look like a homeless person killing time. No, not a homeless person, Bender realized. Something much worse.

  “What are you doing here?” Bender said. He stood up and straightened his tie. “Get arrested again?”

  “No, not lately,” Jacob Rein said. “I came to talk to you about your case.”

  “My case?” Bender snorted. “Why would I possibly want to talk to you about my case?”

  “Because you arrested the wrong man. I knew that before I came here, and now everyone in that courtroom knows it too. That word’s going to spread, Harv.”