New Blood

  I nodded, and he continued.

  “But I would ask you to be a little more — discreet.”

  I looked at him, waiting for him to elaborate, but then the court reporter came in, her equipment in hand, and sat down at the end of the table.

  “Well,” Holzel said, “We have a few minutes. We might as well prepare.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Tasha Roe and her attorney, a second year associate out of Mort Repo’s office in Peoria, arrived at nine o’clock on the dot. This had given us only five minutes or so of prep time, during which Graciano, not Holzel, explained to me basically what I already knew: don’t offer information, answer questions with a yes or no whenever possible, don’t get flustered.

  “I’m aware of the level of your stress tolerance,” Holzel cut in at some point, his demeanor gone from benevolent to businesslike.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you’re better off not answering when something offends you,” Holzel said. “And believe me, they aim to offend.”

  Graciano had just given me a sympathetic smile when the door burst open and Tasha Roe entered, followed by her attorney.

  Like Graciano, Roe was wearing a navy blazer, a white blouse and a business skirt, quite a change from the sweat pants she’d been wearing when I’d knocked on her door two days before.

  She was short and petite, around twenty-five, with her hair cropped very close, and quite attractive, but when her face screwed up into a scowl, as it had been since she entered the room, all of the symmetry of it went out of kilter and off to one side of her face, making her look like a stroke victim.

  She sat down and looked directly at me.

  “Is he going to lie like his girlfriend?” she said.

  I wasn’t aware anyone knew about the connection between me and Kelly, but then I realized that Tad’s had been a high profile case, which made his daughter and his daughter’s guardians high profile people.

  “Tasha,” her attorney said. “Please. Blake Hamm,” he said and shook my hand before moving on to the other two lawyers. When he was finished, he took his place on the other side of the table next to Roe, who was already seated.

  “Coffee?” Holzel said, gesturing toward the thermos on the table. Hamm thanked him and poured a cup, black, and then handed Roe a bottle of ice tea, which she opened with a loud pop and then sipped, quickly and deliberately.

  “I’m ready,” the court reporter at the end of the table said.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Pople,” Holzel said. He turned to Hamm. “If you agree, I would say that you can begin today, Mr. Hamm.”

  Hamm thanked him and began with the preliminaries: name, date of birth, address (I gave Tad’s), profession, and marital status.

  Almost as soon as he began speaking, Tasha Roe fixed me with an unwavering stare that would continue for the better part of an hour. I noticed that her eyes were brown flecked with gold, and thought again about what she would have looked like if she might venture a smile.

  Then I reminded myself that she was a grieving widow, raising a child by herself, something I wasn’t able to do, and I broke her stare and looked up at the wall, ashamed.

  I also reminded myself that she wasn’t in it for the justice. She was in it for the money.

  Hamm’s initial line of questioning centered on Rassi. When did Rassi begin suppressing evidence in the Roe case? I didn’t know. Was there anything else that he’d neglected to put in the file? I didn’t know. Did he destroy any evidence? I didn’t know.

  “He sure doesn’t know much,” Roe interjected.

  Holzel began to speak, but Hamm held up a hand.

  “Tasha, this is my job,” Hamm said. “Let me do it. You know what we talked about.”

  “I agree with that,” Holzel said. Roe shot him a dirty look, as did Hamm, but she kept quiet.

  There was more about Rassi: his drinking habits, his experience as a deputy, his sexual preferences.

  I wanted to ask Hamm what that had to do with it, but then I remembered the deposition I’d given for the assault case, where I’d been asked if my wife and I had been engaged in intercourse when Jake fell from the bed.

  Hamm moved over to Kelly, asking virtually the same questions he’d asked about Rassi. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.

  “Are you currently sleeping with Ms. Davos?” Hamm asked.

  I looked over at Holzel, who spoke up.

  “Is this really necessary, Mr. Hamm? I really don’t see the relevance, other than to badger Mr. Hartman.”

  Hamm ignored him, continued looking at me, and repeated his question.

  “We have not engaged in any kind of sexual intercourse,” I said. “Next question.”

  “You don’t get to say that,” Hamm said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I just figured you would have another question, maybe about what kinds of positions we were not having sexual intercourse in.”

  “Holzel,” Hamm said, but Holzel just spread his hands wide in an I-told-you-so gesture. I saw that Tina Graciano was grinning. “I want that stricken.”

  “It’s a deposition, Mr. Hamm,” Graciano spoke for the first time. “Nothing gets stricken. You know that.”

  Tasha Roe snorted, and for a moment I thought I saw the beginnings of a grin at the corner of her tormented face, but when Hamm asked the next question, she was all back to business.

  “For the record, Mr. Hartman, was your brother the former Sheriff Tad Ely?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “Please explain your relationship to him.”

  “He was my brother.”

  “Was he adopted?” Hamm said. “Why is it that you have two different last names?”

  “He was my half-brother,” I said.

  “Your father’s son or your mother’s son?”

  “My mother’s son,” I said.

  “And at what point did your half-brother become involved in helping David Rassi to suppress evidence?” he asked.

  “I’m not aware that this was the case.”

  “Well, I’m making you aware.”

  I chose my words carefully. “I’m still not aware,” I said. “I have yet to see any evidence showing that my brother was helping Mr. Rassi in any way outside of official proceedings.”

  Holzel winced a bit, but just barely, and Hamm followed with:

  “You haven’t seen any evidence,” he said. “But you have looked for it.”

  “No, I have not.”

  “Why not?”

  I sighed. “Because I have no reason to suspect that Tad was doing anything other than trying to solve a murder case.”

  “So, it was only Ms. Davos,” Hamm said.

  “What about Ms. Davos?” I asked.

  “Who was helping Mr. Rassi suppress evidence?”

  I looked over at Holzel and Green before answering. “I’m not aware that Ms. Davos was helping Mr. Rassi do anything.”

  “Why did you just look over at the State’s Attorney?” Hamm asked. I saw a brief grin flicker across Roe’s face again.

  “I want it marked for the record that Mr. Hartman looked at Mr. Holzel and Ms. Green prior to answering.”

  “I looked over at them because I find this entire situation tiring,” I said.

  Hamm ignored me. “Are you aware that Darren Roe was adopted?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  “And are you also aware that Justin Sweeney was adopted?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And how did you come by this information?”

  I paused for a moment, considering my options.

  “I think I read about it in the paper,” I said finally.

  “I’d like to remind you that you are under oath here,” Hamm said. “And if you willingly lie during this deposition you are committing perjury, which is a felony. Might I also remind you-”

  “Blake,” Holzel said. “Can we just continue? Mr. Hartman is well aware of the protocol of a deposition.”

/>   Hamm sighed and poured himself another cup of coffee. I did as well.

  I looked at my watch. Nine-thirty.

  “When did you become aware that Ms. Davos and Mr. Rassi were suppressing evidence in the murder investigation pertaining to Darren Roe’s demise?”

  “I’m not aware of anything of the sort.”

  “That’s interesting,” Hamm said. “Because she’s on the record, saying you knew about it.”

  I looked at Hamm. “Enlighten me, Mr. Hamm,” I said. “What is it I know about?”

  Roe smiled at me over the top of her ice tea as she took one of her microscopic sips.

  It was not a friendly smile.

  “You know that Ms. Davos and Mr. Rassi didn’t include the very pertinent information that both Darren Roe and Justin Sweeney were killed by an arrowhead inserted into the back of the skull.”

  At his mention of that, Tasha Roe looked away. I glanced over at Holzel again, who shook his head.

  Hamm smacked the table. “Dammit, Mr. Hartman, the answer is not over there,” he said. “It’s right here with you.”

  “Blake, that’s enough,” Holzel said. “Let’s keep this civilized.”

  “Like this guy does?”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “Dana,” Holzel said. He shook his head again.

  “I know you have a tendency to hit people,” Hamm said. “Your wife killed your son, and then you put your son’s doctor in the hospital.”

  Tina Graciano’s face had gone bright red.

  I took my time answering.

  “You’re not important enough to make me angry,” I said finally.

  “Am I to understand that you don’t consider this case important?”

  “I wasn’t talking about the case,” I said. “I was talking about you.”

  “You can’t just fucking-”

  “Enough!” Holzel said, this time slapping the table himself. He looked quickly from me to Hamm and then back to me again. “If we can’t do this like civilized people then we’re going to have to adjourn.” He swiveled toward Hamm. “And stop badgering him-”

  “Badgering isn’t something you can object to here-”

  “And don’t tell me how to practice law, Mr. Hamm,” Holzel thundered. “I have been doing this longer than you have been alive.”

  “I can file-”

  “File what you want, but we’re going to finish this deposition this morning, and we’re going to finish it in a civilized manner.” He looked from Roe to Hamm. “And we’re not obligated to speak to anyone about an ongoing investigation, except the matter at hand, meaning the—unfortunate—case of Mr. Darren Roe.”

  “We can-” Hamm objected.

  “This is a civil proceeding,” Holzel said. I wasn’t sure exactly what Holzel meant by that—I was wondering what it was that had made him go so strongly to bat on a deposition that involved the brother of a deceased sheriff. As far as I knew, you weren’t supposed to do that, and most likely, there would be hell to pay.

  “Please continue,” he said.

  In spite of the look on his face that said he’d just had the carpet pulled out from under him, Hamm left the Trueblood case alone and hammered on for another forty-five minutes.

  He asked questions on several variations of the Kelly-Rassi conspiracy theory. He wanted to know if I was aware that Kelly and Dave were sleeping together. I was not, but told him that I would get back to him on that one.

  It was ten-thirty before we finally wound up.

  “Last question, Mr. Hartman,” Hamm said. He’d rolled up his sleeves by then, and he had sweat stains creeping out from underneath his armpits. He was also working on his fourth cup of coffee. I could see the muscles of his jaw contracting beneath the skin of his face.

  “What did your brother do with the evidence Mr. Roe presented him with prior to his death?”

  I folded my hands on the table.

  “What evidence are you referring to?”

  “He’s lying,” Tasha Roe said to Hamm.

  “Tasha,” Hamm said, turning to her. “I won’t ask you again. Seriously.”

  “What evidence are you referring to?” I asked him again.

  He looked up at me, and back down at his notes.

  “Darren Roe provided your half-brother, Sheriff Tad Ely, with material evidence one day prior to his murder,” Hamm said. “I would like you to tell me what happened to it.”

  I thought about the stolen computer and my search for ammunition the previous evening. Tad had kept a tidy house, and if I hadn’t come across any kind of evidence in the process, I was sure it wasn’t there. I was also familiar with all of Tad’s personal documents, because I was the executor of his will.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  Hamm gritted his teeth and referred to his notes one last time.

  “Well, then,” he said. “Why, in your opinion, was your brother not able to solve Mr. Roe’s case?”

  This time I didn’t bother looking at Glenn Holzel. “My opinion isn’t a statement of fact,” I said. “Isn’t that hearsay?”

  “Just please answer the question, Mr. Hartman,” Hamm said wearily.

  I looked over at Roe, who was as dapper and put-together as she had been an hour and a half earlier. When I answered, I addressed myself to her personally, and not to Hamm.

  “Because somebody killed him before he could,” I said. “If he’d lived, he would have found out who did it.”

  Thirty

  He’d called in sick for the first time in ten years. Kara was way the hell out in Brimfield, gathering information for a special interest piece on damage from the tornado that had gone through in April, specifically on the federal government’s unwillingness to pay, in spite of the disaster area rating the President had so generously declared back in May.

  Jared had been surprised when he’d called, and in spite of his good grooming and his white-bread upbringing, he’d been at a loss as to what he was supposed to do.

  “Check the roster,” Tuan had said, trying not to be impatient. “Same as yesterday, and the day before.” And the two months you’ve been sitting at that monitor.

  “Well, when will you be in?” Jared had said, after a pause, his voice rising a few octaves.

  “After lunch,” Tuan said, stifling the urge to berate him for being a complete ninny. “No worries, man. We’ll get the paper out on time.”

  Now he was sitting in his safe room in the basement, an eight-by eight chamber with a fold-down cot, a desk, internet access, and the kind of lock you couldn’t penetrate with anything less than a good wad of C-4.

  The door was locked, the sun lamp turned on. The computer was on a table in front of him, hooked into a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse. Tuan pointed and clicked, pointed and clicked, and after a full forty-five minutes of searching, he finally found something.

  He hadn’t expected to find much, and so he was surprised when he discovered that Tad Ely had kept so many case files from the sheriff’s department on his personal computer. The problem had been finding them. Ely hadn’t had any kind of recognizable organization, and when, in frustration, Tuan opened the folder marked “Erin,” he could have kicked himself.

  The mother lode. Hidden right there in the open, where nobody would look.

  He wasn’t all that surprised to see that none of them were encrypted. In spite of all the talk of security of the past decade, most people didn’t bother. And when they did, they usually did it only with a password a third-grader could figure out. Still, cops were a paranoid group of people, and even if Ely had been one of the more likable ones, he had been a cop through and through.

  There were plenty of images, a few documents, even an Excel sheet, and each and every one he’d opened until then was password protected, nestled in folders with names: Roe, Sweeney, Quiverfull, Dubois, Trueblood, Anderson, Madeleine.

  Madeleine. He didn’t think she had been on Ely’s radar. More importantly, i
t appeared from the outside that he himself had not been. There was no folder labeled “Nguyen.”

  He looked at the monitor on the wall. The camera out in front of the house showed only his car, and the ones in the front room, the kitchen, and his bedroom were devoid of life. Outside in the basement, the light was off. He hadn’t thought that anyone coming down would try to do it in the dark, and though it raised his fringe sense of danger a bit just then, he shrugged it off. Anybody coming down those stairs would show up on the cameras up above, and once they were outside his door, he would hear them.

  He sighed, opened an image, and typed a few passwords. Nothing fit. You could crack passwords, but it took time. And a little help.

  He downloaded a freeware program and got it busy working at one of the image files. There were certain folders he could sort out: he already knew why Roe and Sweeney had gone down, and there wasn’t much about the Quiverfull he wasn’t already aware of.

  He looked at the monitors again. He still hadn’t made it to the bank, and that always made him nervous. The things he had in his possession were more dangerous than anything else he could think of. But possession of a dead cop’s personal computer was also one of them, and so he would give the freeware an hour to crack the passwords before he took off.

  The safe deposit box in the bank had led him to think of its contents: the photos he kept there, along with his citizenship papers and the crucifix Father Marin had given him.

  Father. That had been a real man. He’d taken care of Tuan, made him feel at home. Tuan rubbed his wrists, which were still raw from the ligatures Kara had used on him two days before.

  He often thought of Father when he and Kara had finished one of their sessions. Kara was into it because she was young and any kind of sex turned her on, but soon enough she would figure out what Tuan was. He would get old, and she would move on.

  It had been that way with all of the women he had ever tried to form a relationship with in his adult life. He’d grown used to it.

  What he hadn’t grown used to was the guilt. The fact that he enjoyed doing it the way he did after all these years, in spite of his initial repugnance of the thing when he’d first been introduced to it, was something of a conundrum to him.