by Shane Lusher
A conundrum. He’d won the Tazewell County Spelling Bee the first time on that one, age eight. Conundrum. Use it in a sentence. Can I have the definition please?
Conundrum. C-O-N-U-N-D-R-U-M. Conundrum.
A conundrum wasn’t this ozone feeling of guilt he got on the back of his tongue every time he did it. It wasn’t what made him pop Valium like Tic-Tacs in order to chill out for the next three days.
What it was, was betrayal, betrayal to Father Marin, and most of all, himself, whom Father had taught to trust and to keep safe and to nurture most of all. Father had never spoken about sinning, and guilt, and rarely of the soul. The self is what guides you, he’d always said to Tuan, before Tuan had even been old enough to understand. You have to have the self before you can have God. Without the self, God is meaningless.
And that was how Tuan felt now: meaningless. The way he’d often felt after Father had died and left him as a ward of the state at the age of twelve. A lack of meaning, which was different from a lack of hope. If you felt hopeless, at least you were starting from somewhere.
When you had no meaning, you didn’t really exist.
It was also complicity. Rank and rotten, Tuan’s self was a part of what they had wanted him to become. He’d done it of his own free will.
He took another pill and stared at the screen for a moment.
Then he highlighted all the remaining files and dragged them into a new window. The processor on Ely’s desktop was horrifically slow, but locked down here in the basement, it would do its job.
On a whim, he clicked on the Excel file, which stood at the top of the Erin folder, and discovered that it didn’t ask for a password.
Dates. Dates stretching all the way back to nineteen-ninety-two, every other Saturday of each month, some of them highlighted in yellow.
Tuan looked at the row of files sitting in the password cracker. How had he missed it?
He laughed. Forty-two years old and still as dumb as Jared Scally, sitting alone in the office like it was his first day.
Ely had gotten much further than he had thought.
It was time to talk to Madeleine.
Thirty-One
I got out of the courthouse before eleven, and headed over to the sheriff’s office. Hamm had seemed stumped by my last comment, and had finished with his portion of the deposition.
Holzel, who had full rights to a cross examination, waived that right, although it was Graciano who’d actually done it.
“We have no questions at this time,” she’d said, and Hamm hadn’t looked surprised. The whole event had been as expected: convoluted, and with little for me to offer.
I was informed that both sides might be in contact with me, that I would be sent a copy of the deposition, as a matter of courtesy, and should I decide to amend or modify my testimony, I was to contact the court reporter prior to such-and-such a date.
When I passed the Pekin Observer, I glanced into the front window and saw the two interns from the day before busy at their monitors on the oversized table. The blinds in the windowpane in Nguyen’s office were closed.
I thought about stopping by, but considering our last meeting had ended on a less than cordial note, I walked on past and continued on to Capitol Street.
I’d gotten my cell phone turned on and unlocked by then. It beeped immediately: one call, from a number I recognized. Checking the list from my pocket, I saw that it was Darcy Stamm.
I hit redial, and stood listening to the phone ring as I looked over at the vacant gravel lot across the street. Somewhere a few blocks behind me the Illinois River carried its muddy water down toward the Mississippi.
I was about to hit ‘end’ on my phone, figuring that it was about to go to voice mail, when she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Darcy? This is Dana Hartman. I’m returning your call.”
“Hi, Dana,” she said. “Actually, you called me.”
“Yes, I did,” I said. “Thanks for getting back to me. I wanted to talk to you about-”
“About my mom?” she asked. “I know all about it.”
“You do.”
“My Dad told me. He says you believe her.”
“I think I might,” I said.
“Well, that would make you the only one,” she said. “Except for me.”
“You don’t think she did it?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t. But I don’t want to talk about this on the phone, you know, with the NSA and all.”
“Okay,” I said. “Fine by me. Can you meet me some time today?”
“Wait a second,” she said in a slurry of feedback. “This phone.”
There was a beep, and then a recorded message from the provider telling me that I’d been put on hold, and then she came back.
“Can you meet right away? Noon?”
“Sure,” I said. “Where?”
“You know the Lebanese restaurant on Main in Peoria? The one with the big chicken in the window?”
I didn’t, but given that there had to be a maximum of one Lebanese restaurant in Peoria, I said, “Yes. I’ll be right there.”
“Wait,” she said. “How will I recognize you?”
“I’ll be the uncomfortable thirty-something in a sweaty suit,” I said.
She laughed at that, and hung up.
Outside the sheriff’s office I paused for a moment and then dialed Kelly.
“Hey,” she said. “How’d it go?”
“As good as it could, I guess,” I said. “I didn’t tell them anything.”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to do,” she said.
“Okay, so I told them everything. I just don’t know anything. Hey, are you sleeping with Dave Rassi?”
“What?” she said. “Jesus, did that guy Hamm ask you that, too? What a shithead. Straight out of law school-”
“It doesn’t take them long to learn, does it?” I said. “And?”
“And what?” There was a pause, and then she said in a low tone. “Don’t even go there, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Really.”
“Okay.”
“Do you really need to know the answer to that?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Good, because if I’m screwing Dave Rassi, you can go back to court and get full custody of Erin, because that would be a serious lapse in sound moral judgem-”
“Kelly,” I said.
“What?”
“I was just kidding. Let me know when you know about this weekend.”
“I should hear back by noon,” she said.
Percy’s desk was in the cube in the far back corner, next to Dubois' window, where the curtains were closed. Janine breezed me through this time, barely glancing up as I went by. The metal detector beeped, and she gave me a plastic basket for my keys and my phone, and then I went on through and into the back.
“Hey,” Percy looked up. “Coffee?” His eyes were bloodshot, which was to be expected, considering that the guy had just pulled a double shift. Mine were certainly not much better. “Hey, you look good in tweed,” he said. He gestured toward my suit coat.
I wasn’t sure it was tweed, not really knowing what that was, but I let that slide. “I’m all coffee’d out,” I said.
He gestured for me to sit in the chair in front of his desk, and I hung my coat on the back of it and sat. A withered rubber plant was on the desk in front of me, pushed back against the wall of the cubicle. One leaf poked over the top, held flat to the few rays of sunlight filtering in from a back window, like a lifeline.
I looked around the office. “Where’s the rest of the crew?” I asked.
“Patrol deputies are out on patrol,” he said. “As far as homicide is concerned, I’m it.”
“I thought you said you had three,” I said.
“We had Dubois,” Percy said, and then, speaking in a near-whisper, “And you know where his detective work gets us.”
“Other than that, there’s Rassi,” Pe
rcy shrugged. “We’re always low on personnel.”
“I need to know who called in the report about the break-in,” I said, changing the subject.
“Why do you need to know that?” Percy asked.
I still didn’t know if I could trust him, but I needed him to trust me. The best way to do that, I figured, was to offer information.
“Because obviously somebody wanted what was on the hard drive,” I said. “Rassi told me something about what Tad said right before he died. What he supposedly said. He claims that he was talking to Tad when Stamm pulled the gun on him. He said something like ‘Now they’re going to kill me.’”
He nodded slowly. “And you were thinking about telling me that when?”
“Now,” I said. “I’m telling you now.”
“Why not last night? This morning, I mean,” he said. “Jesus, I don’t even know what fucking day it is anymore.”
I looked at him. “Because I didn’t know if I could trust you then.”
“And you can trust me now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Can I?”
He looked at me for a moment. He took his time answering. “I can see that,” he said. “I know most people think I’m a dickhead.”
I shook my head, but he held up a hand.
“Lots of cops are dickheads. It’s what happens when most of the planet hates your guts. Doesn’t mean you can’t trust us.”
“Thanks for the speech,” I said.
He ignored me. “The caller was anonymous,” he said. “Called from a pay phone.”
“They still have pay phones?”
“Scotty Mart. Call came in at—” He looked over a sheet in front of him. “Nine twenty-four p.m.”
“Great,” I said. “So you get a hold of the security video, and we’ve got our suspect.”
“Suspect in what?” He leaned back in his chair and sipped from a cup of coffee that looked and smelled like roofing material.
“Come on,” I said. “Do I really need to spell this out?”
“Did Rassi really talk to Tad?” he asked.
“Don’t you know that?”
“Exactly. I’m not going to ask you how you know he didn’t. What I am going to do is explain something to you. Police procedure.”
“Can we skip the formalities?” I asked.
“Not if we’re going to work together on this,” he said. He’d leaned his head to the side, watching me. I rolled my hands in front of him in a ‘get on with it’ gesture.
“All right,” he said, leaning the balls of his forearms on the desk. “Here’s the thing: one, we can’t just get video because we think somebody called in a break-in and then somebody stole something at the house. We have to have probable cause. We’d also need a theft report.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Probable cause not being someone witnessing a crime?” I asked.
“Second,” Percy continued. “We’ve got three open murder investigations—”
“Four, if you count Tad.”
“We’ve got three,” Percy said. “And I’m on two of them. You’ve got the other one. We can pull some strings with a judge, but we only have so many strings.” He drained his cup of coffee. “And we only have so much time. I have to go with Roe. Then Sweeney, because there’s an obvious connection there.”
“Is that the order of priority?”
“It is when the wife of one of the deceased is suing the county,” Percy said.
I gave him a skeptical look.
“Hey,” he said. “You want to turn into a dickhead like me? Stick around for a while. You think the people with influence are the ones who get shit done for them? It’s the people who scream the loudest.”
I rolled my eyes at that, but I knew he was right.
“It’s the same everywhere,” I said. “But can’t I just go out there and talk to the manager at the Scotty Mart? See if they might want to offer up something to assist in an investigation? Just the video right at that time might at least give us a guy we can talk to.”
Percy sighed loudly and walked over to the pot of coffee on the counter. He returned with a full cup.
“No,” Percy said. “They’re not going to do jack, because they’re liable for that themselves. And who said it was a guy?”
“It wasn’t?”
“It was a woman. And the answer is, again, no. You stay away from that. You have to have some story. What exactly would you tell them?”
I really didn’t know. I waited for him to speak.
“Third,” he said. “We have a lead.”
“We do?” I asked.
Percy smirked. “We have police procedure.”
He pulled out another printout and pushed it across the table to me. “We have information pending from the state forensics lab in Morton. Roe’s neck wound was only partial, owing to decomposition. Sweeney’s wound was full, owing to the fact the bastard had the courtesy to fall on it before he got barbecued.
“Forensics has got a ballistics expert down from Chicago who may be able to figure out what kind of arrowhead was used. Once we have that, we can start narrowing down this list.
“Bow hunting,” he said. “Never got into it myself, but they tell me it’s gotten more popular now that the price of ammunition has gone up by 4,000% or so.”
He produced a three-page document. On it were the names and addresses from various sports stores around the tri-county area, detailing arrowhead types, brands, and date of purchase. I skimmed through it, noting that the handful of women’s names had been initially crossed out, and then penciled back in.
“This is the list of names,” he said. He took the printout away and handed me another list. “And these are the five women.”
“You get subpoenas for this?” I gestured at the sheet.
“Strings,” Percy said. “One already used up.”
It felt rather futile, but I’d already made and lost my point. It seemed to me that a face was much more valuable than three hundred or so names, but he’d already cut that list down to five.
“Why do you need forensics?” I asked. “You’ve got five people here.”
Percy waved a hand. “Juries today,” he said. “They want some science to back up what you tell them.”
The point was lost on me — I thought it a waste of time, but I wasn’t the detective, either.
“Saved the best for last,” Percy said. “Dubois wants us to bring in Rassi for questioning.”
“You said Dubois was going to do that anyway,” I said.
He was smiling, but behind the smile there seemed to be something else. Fear, maybe, or at least uncertainty.
“Why don’t you like that idea?” I asked when he didn’t respond.
“Who said I didn’t-”
“He got something on you?”
“Let me make myself clear again,” Percy said. “We either work together on this or we don’t. Rassi doesn’t have anything on me because there is nothing on me. I’m clean. Which is more than I can say for him.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, holding up both hands. “Then why are you worried?”
“Because he’s a cop,” Percy said. “We might hate each other at times, but we’re still cops.”
“I thought they only said stuff like that in the movies,” I said.
“Maybe they only say it in the movies, but it doesn’t mean that’s not how it works.”
Percy filled me in on his plans. He’d already known that Rassi had spent the night in Peoria, but by the time Percy had tracked him down, Rassi had already checked out. The police union had tied his hands so that Percy couldn’t track the cell phone, and he wasn’t picking up when he called.
Dubois had tried as well, to no avail.
“I need you to reach out to him,” Percy said. “Get him to come in.”
“What do I tell him?” I asked. I looked at the clock on my phone. “He’s probably still asleep.”
“Tell him whatever you need to,” he said. “Just get him to come
in.”
“What if he won’t?” I asked.
“You want to find out what the hell really went on with your brother, you find a way. If you can’t, you call me, and I’ll come get him.”
I had my own reasons for talking to Rassi anyway, and that side of my loyalty was rapidly dwindling.
Percy handed me an envelope. “Papers,” he said. “If you run into him, you serve him with these.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
Percy tapped the short list of women’s names.
“Police work,” he said.
When I got back to my car it was only a quarter after eleven, so I got the Trueblood case file out of my trunk and went over to the Java’s for another coffee. I got a cup and went back outside, in spite of my better judgment, to swelter while I went over the case.
I opened up the Trueblood murder book, and then closed it. There’d been no mention of Colby Trueblood in my meeting with Percy, and he hadn’t discussed Roe and Sweeney with me, either, beyond using them as props for his speech about police procedure. My only job was to run down Dave Rassi.
I knew why Dubois wanted him, but what did Percy, who had made it clear he held no particular love for Dubois, need him for?
I pulled out my phone and dialed Rassi.
When it went directly to voice mail, I said:
“Dave. You don’t seem to have a lot of friends around here. Tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’m one of them, either, but I’m the closest you got right now. Call me back.”
I hung up, thought briefly about what Darcy Stamm had said about the NSA, and dialed Hannah Trueblood.
I waited for the call to connect, picturing her in the gossamer blouse she’d been wearing two nights before, with precious little underneath—and why was I thinking about that?—when my second line cut in, informing me that Kelly was trying to call.
Just then, Hannah picked up.
“Hello?” she said. She sounded as if she’d been drinking. Or asleep. Or crying.
“Hannah, this is Dana Hartman,” I said.