by Lee Goodman
“And?”
“Used mostly for texting. Just a few calls. But always the same number. Only one number.” She sipped her coffee, then put it down and patted her mouth with a napkin. “Lydia Trevor was having an affair.”
“Oh. With whom?” I asked. I was pleased at my nonchalance. Don’t react, just listen.
“We haven’t figured it out yet,” Sabin said. “The other party had a disposal, too. No quick way to identify it.”
“What do you know?”
“He’s married. He was cautious, referring to his wife simply as ‘the W’ in texts. No names. Lydia was more revealing. She texted a lot about Henry and Tina and your family.”
“So this mystery lover: I guess he’s our main suspect now?”
“Not exactly,” Sabin said. She put a sheet on the table. “This is a printout of all the texts. If you read through, it feels like Lydia and this guy had more of a tired old marriage than a passionate fling. Very few sexual references, and the guy sounds genuinely happy for her about getting engaged.”
I flipped through the pages, reading a few strings:
555-1225: Glass of wine tonight?
Lydia: Can’t. Plans with Henry.
555-1225: Lucky guy.
While I was reading, Sabin chuckled. “That number,” she said. “Christmas Day. Twelve-twenty-five. It’s my birthday. Ironic for a Jewish girl.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The phone number: 555-1225. I’m always seeing that string: twelve-twenty-five. December twenty-fifth. I used to use it for passwords and security codes.”
I continued reading.
Lydia: Fun afternoon. Got to pop in my favorite CD!
555-1225: Can’t believe I fell asleep.
Lydia: LOL. Passion gone. So sad.
555-1225: Passion is fine. Youth and stamina gone.
Lydia: LOL.
“You’re sure it’s a man?” I asked.
“Pretty sure,” Sabin said.
“Any clues who it could be?”
“Not yet. We’re working on it. What we’re interested in—”
“What about his wife? She’d have motive.”
“Possible,” Sabin said. “But look at these texts we pulled out.” She handed me another sheet.
Henry would fucking kill me.
Henry went ballistic.
Henry went postal.
If he ever finds out I’ll be dead.
Scares me sometimes.
He’s got demons like a dog’s got fleas.
I handed the sheet back to Sabin. “You’d have to know Lydia,” I said. “She was like that. Everything’s the biggest, the best, the worst. Everything always leads to cataclysm or to paradise. It’s just the way she talked.”
“Yeah, well,” Sabin said. She sipped her coffee. “You see where we’re coming from.”
“You’re thinking Henry’s involvement with that scumbag investigator . . . what’s his name?”
“Pursley.”
“Pursley. Right. You’re thinking Henry had his suspicions, hired Pursley. Pursley did the digging, discovered the affair. Is that right?”
“Ten-four.”
“And it looks bad that Henry was even involved with a guy like Pursley. Too cozy with the criminal element?”
“Well, it doesn’t look good.”
“And I’m sure you’re thinking that when Pursley confirmed what Henry already suspected, Henry went ballistic. Postal. Whatever. So Lydia fled. She tried to call Tina, but in her panic, she got the number wrong.”
“Yes,” Sabin said, “that’s what I’m thinking. Henry went after her in a jealous rage, caught up with her in the park, shot her, did some quick tinkering with the scene to make it look like robbery and attempted rape, then made his way to the amphitheater and sat patiently waiting with everybody else.”
“He’d have to be a pretty cool customer.”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” Sabin said. “His face being the way it is, he’s a hard guy to read. Am I right?”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “Why this sudden sharing of info?”
“Two reasons,” she said. “First is that Captain Dorsey told us to keep you in the loop.”
“And second?”
“Well, this one you’re not going to like so much,” she said, her Brooklyn accent suddenly thicker. “Philbin’s out talking to your wife and daughter again, asking how Henry Tatlock seemed that evening when he showed up at the amphitheater.”
She was right, I didn’t like this. They were really trying to make the case against Henry. From their perspective, it all fit together perfectly.
“You’d have to know Henry,” I said.
She expected me to continue, to tell her all about him, and I could see her getting ready to silently debunk whatever I said. She’d listen to me, but she’d be thinking I was like the neighbor saying that the killer next door seemed like such a nice man. A quiet man. Henry was a nice man and a quiet man. We were friends, but in a much different way than I was friends with Upton or Chip. With Henry, I felt like the wizened master to his little grasshopper. He had that childish innocence. He was wounded, and whether the psychic wounds came with his burns or arrived separately, I had no idea. I couldn’t tell Sabin this, though. I would say, He has a wound, Sabin. He’s fragile. And she’d start to profile him: Yes, he has a wound, and whenever it hurts, he reacts in mindless fury.
It was better for me to keep my mouth shut. A real investigation would vindicate him, so my strategy should be to make sure they investigated broadly, rather than myopically zeroing in on Henry.
“Sad, though, isn’t it?” Sabin said.
“You’re a master of understatement, Detective.”
“Not the murder. Of course that’s sad. I mean how screwed up it gets. Even if Henry isn’t the perp. You have this couple, giddy in love, but she’s got old business with some married guy.” Sabin thumps the printout of text messages with a knuckle. “You can tell the guy cared for her—the married one, I mean. It reads like he’s an old friend. Maybe they could have been friends, all three of them—all four of them. Henry and her and the other couple. Except for the benefits thing. Sad.”
“Listen to you,” I said. “The yogi detective. Sounds to me like you might have a sad story of your own.”
She shrugged.
“Married?”
“Divorced,” she said.
“Amicable or otherwise?”
“Amicable. That was the problem. Not enough passion.”
“Got kids?”
“High school. Boy and a girl. Just about ready to fly the coop.”
We sipped coffee.
“Henry didn’t do it,” I said.
“Somebody did it,” Sabin said.
CHAPTER 15
Evening: I cleaned up after dinner and went upstairs to work in the office. Tina put Barn to bed and must have fallen asleep reading to him, because she was gone a long time. She came into the office just as I was starting to fade. There was a lot to talk about. I rallied.
“Did you know Lydia was stepping out?” I asked.
“If I’d known, I’d have told you. And I’d have told the police.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sisterly secrets.”
“But damn her,” Tina said. There was fury in her voice. “It’s so like her. I thought she’d outgrown that bullshit.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
Tina shook her head. “I only met the real boyfriends. I wasn’t privy to all the illicit ones.”
I wanted to wrap Tina in my arms, but she was way too angry for that. I realized something about her relationship with Lydia: Tina was very much the big sister, and she’d spent much of her life watching out for Lydia, who could be irresponsible and immature. So with the death looking more and more like something Lydia had brought about through her own lousy choices, Tina would be left wondering for the rest of her life how she could have steered the rambunctious Lydia in
a safer direction.
“It’s so goddamn typical of her,” Tina said. “Finally getting something good and sabotaging it.”
“I know, babe.”
“Intentionally sabotaging it.” She wiped her eyes. “Fuck it all.”
“How’d it go with Philbin this morning?”
“He just kept asking if Henry seemed strange when he showed up at the concert and if there was anything notable in his appearance or behavior. I kept saying no. Philbin was like some loser representing himself in court, trying to get around a hearsay objection by rearranging the words.”
“I know how this works,” I said. “The detectives have Henry in their sights, and they’re gearing up to prosecute. They get blinders.”
“And they probably won’t follow up on other leads.”
“Conclusion-based investigation.”
“What can we do?” she said.
“Stand by Henry.”
“Of course.”
“And try to come up with another theory,” I said.
“I’ve been trying.”
Silence. I wanted to jump up and do something. Investigate. Figure it out. Charge into the night and come back with the head of whoever had messed with us. I stood up and turned off my desk lamp.
“Don’t go running,” Tina said.
“Don’t?”
“Stay here with me. Please.”
I sat back down and turned on my lamp again. I really wanted to go out.
“Do you think it’s possible?” she asked.
“Think what’s possible?”
“About Henry.” She swiveled around to look at me.
Was it possible? I’d been wondering, too. It wasn’t possible for the man I thought of as Henry to kill his fiancée. But what if he had me fooled; what if he had all of us fooled? I liked how Henry was quiet and reserved and thoughtful. It was such a great counterbalance to Lydia’s impulsiveness. But had I misread him? I’d assumed his placid surface concealed a philosophical core—still waters run deep, and all that. I assumed his physical scars and the events that had caused them had resulted in a heightened capacity for introspection and compassion.
Could I have been wrong? Could the placid exterior conceal bitterness? Rage? Psychosis? Did he have demons like a dog has fleas? Would the neighbors someday say he seemed like such a normal and pleasant man?
I hated to admit it, but Detective Sabin had planted some doubt.
Now, months later, I sit in my cabin up north, writing this sorry record of events. With the omniscience of hindsight, I’m amazed at how resistant I was to the idea of Henry’s guilt. But back then, as revelations accumulated, I was the legendary frog in a pot. The fire had been lit, and the water would boil, but it would happen slowly enough that I wouldn’t think to jump.
“Henry guilty?” I said to Tina. “Of course not. Henry is just Henry.”
Morning. At work, I jogged up a flight of stairs to Pleasant Holly’s office. Pleasant had been appointed U.S. attorney about three years previously, after Harold Schnair, my friend and mentor, retired. Pleasant’s background is in civil law, which makes me especially valuable to her, advising her along her journey through the criminal system. We were meeting to talk about Henry’s situation—his entanglement with Pursley. I doubted Pleasant even knew about the mystery cell phone and the “enraged lover” theory, so I knew I could talk her back from doing anything impetuous, like placing Henry on administrative leave. I would remind her that we have a right of free association in this country. Presumed innocence. Henry was doing fine at his job, I’d tell her. We could stick with the status quo while quietly collecting facts.
“Nick, c’mon in,” Pleasant said. She motioned me to sit, but before my ass even found the seat cushion, she said, “I’m putting Henry Tatlock on administrative leave.”
As a trial lawyer, I should have immediately voiced my objection and launched into argument. But I was too surprised. I gaped.
“Have to,” she said. “We must avoid not only impropriety but the appearance of impropriety.”
I blurted a quick version of my prepared spiel: presumption of innocence, benefit of the doubt, loyalty to colleagues. It came out garbled, and I could see she wasn’t listening. “It’s done, Nick,” she said. “Let it go.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said. I glared at her. She was surprised by the hostility in my voice. I was surprised by it, too. I’m usually tactful; I usually conceal annoyance behind excess cordiality. But this was too much. Poor Henry, who just lost his fiancée, who had no family of his own, whose effort to keep coming in to the office and producing work during these traumatic months was both inspirational and pathetic. It was pathetic because I knew he had no place else to be and nothing else to do. It infuriated me that Pleasant would so callously send him packing.
Harold Schnair had let me run the criminal division as I saw fit. But Pleasant liked to stick her nose in everyplace, despite knowing a fraction of what Harold did about prosecuting.
I had liked Pleasant a lot when we were equals. But after she ascended to the role of the U.S. attorney, I became less of a fan. Harold Schnair had ruled the office by gut and creativity; Pleasant ruled by the book. No creativity.
I should have had her job. Everybody assumed I’d be Harold Schnair’s successor, but Harold retired while my ill-fated nomination to the U.S. Circuit Court was pending, so Pleasant Holly, who had been head of civil division for only a few months, got tapped for U.S. Attorney. Now, despite my twenty-plus years as head of the criminal division, I’m her subordinate, and there’s not a thing I can do about it.
From Pleasant’s office, I went down to the small conference room. Chip and Upton were already there. Calvin Dunbar arrived with his attorney.
Calvin’s lawyer and Upton went over the particulars of our agreement with him: Calvin was pleading guilty to three federal counts of bribery and would accept a suspended sentence of four years’ prison time and restitution of fifteen thousand dollars. In exchange, he would cooperate fully with our investigation and would be immunized for any crimes incidental to the ones he was confessing to. If he perjured himself during the investigation, though, all deals were off.
The tale he told went something like this: The state legislature was reworking the tax structure for natural gas extraction. The industry argued that any additional taxes would smother production. Every fraction of a percentage point in the tax rate was worth tens of millions in tax revenue. And for every year the legislature failed to enact the legislation, the industry saved hundreds of millions. Everyone knew some bill would pass eventually—the only questions were when and at what rate.
As he described the industry and the politics of the issue, Calvin Dunbar was animated, even enthused. I could see how he’d been a good politician. He was knowledgeable and had a knack for making the complex understandable. The guy was likable. He had a boyish look; he was eager to please. There seemed always to be a smile waiting just behind whatever expression he wore. He had blond hair that was mussy, and he had shown up that day in jeans. I knew his remorse was sincere, and I admired him for coming forward. I always gave the perp’s remorse and sincerity a lot of weight whenever I argued sentencing in court.
Calvin noticed me watching him. He looked down, embarrassed. He assumed I was repulsed by him. I wished he’d look up again so I could give an encouraging smile.
“Okay, we’ve got it,” Upton said when Calvin finished with the background info. “Let’s talk about your involvement.”
Calvin Dunbar told us how he didn’t have direct involvement in these matters. As chair of the appropriations committee, he hadn’t ever seen the final bill until it hit the floor of the full house.
“Appropriations,” Chip said, “which one is that?”
“We give out money for particular projects,” Calvin said. “It’s the opposite side of the coin from Revenue, which is where the gas tax bill was being worked up. So the only impact I had was my vote on the floor.” He cleared his throat.
Paused and then cleared it again. His confident manner was faltering. We were getting closer to his actual crimes.
“I was a centrist,” he said. “I hadn’t voiced my position on the gas tax. So you see . . .” He choked up for a moment. “You see, my vote was pivotal. They wanted to make sure I was . . .” He stopped. His eyes filled, and he shook his head. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he whispered.
This all made sense. Subsurface was just tossing a few thousand dollars to a few state reps who hadn’t declared their position. They were paying for some insurance.
“Who else got payoffs?” Upton asked.
Calvin listed half a dozen other legislators.
“How was it arranged?” Chip said.
“Subtly,” Calvin said. “Maybe an envelope accidentally dropped on the floor, wink wink, during a private meeting in the legislator’s office. And sometimes not even money. Sometimes they’d send a Subsurface work crew over to build you that new deck on the back of your house, or they’d install that new kitchen, and then they’d kind of forget to bill you.”
“Specifics,” Upton said. “Did Billman himself do any of these payoffs?”
“Sometimes,” Calvin said, “but other guys, too.”
“Names?”
“Jimmy Mailing, for one. He was the main fixer.”
Mailing. Of course. That was the guy who got caught burglarizing the EPA office, trying to get proprietary information on the productivity of various gas wells. I made eye contact with Chip. We could subpoena Mailing, maybe get a second crack at him.
The questioning went on and on. Upton had prepared well. And just as Calvin Dunbar had promised, he had plenty of names to name and facts to recount.
When we were done for the afternoon and everyone stood to leave, I shook Calvin Dunbar’s hand. He seemed surprised and grateful for this.
CHAPTER 16
It was late September. Things were settling down. Not that anything had been resolved, but the relentless series of events seemed to have ended. First there had been the murder, then the discovery of Henry’s involvement with Pursley, then Lydia’s panicky phone message. Then Lydia’s affair. It all told a story, but Sabin and Philbin read the story one way, while Tina and I read it another.