A Vicious Balance: A Mystery Thriller

by Jolyon Hallows

  The school administration and the police liaison pleaded for the victim to come forward and talk. The police would protect her identity, but they had to know who she was. Two days later, Connie, Ellen Samson, and three other girls met with the lead investigator and filed charges of rape. Travathan suspected Samson may have told Connie who had taken the pictures—his sister had become tender toward him—but nobody else ever found out.

  His outrage had led him to track Bobby Charlton and take the photos, but he realized he had enjoyed it. He got pleasure out of the process of investigating and surveillance, a sense of achievement from his rescue of Samson, and most of all, gratification from the conviction of the four men. That experience led Gord Travathan to police work.

  But that had been years ago. Now, in the darkness of his apartment, the satisfaction he’d expected from his career was slipping away. He and his partner, Rob Regarno, had been investigating a series of assaults that had led them to a drug dealer and pimp known as Smiley. When Smiley started to run, Travathan tackled him before he reached the end of the alley. As the man lay twisting on the ground, Regarno bashed him on the side of the head with a baton, knocking him unconscious.

  “What did you do that for? I had him,” Travathan protested.

  “The easier to get another piece of scum off the street.” Regarno pulled out a couple of credit cards and a driver’s license, sliding them into Smiley’s pocket. “These are from the last victim. Looks like our investigation just struck gold.”

  “Hold on. We can’t plant evidence on the guy.”

  “Why not? You got something against cleaning up the city?”

  “But he didn’t steal those cards.”

  “So what? He’s sure as hell stolen others from victims he mugged where he wasn’t caught. This is just settling up the score. Whatever he goes down for, he’s off the streets.”

  Travathan swallowed. Regarno had seniority. He could make life tough for a detective who challenged him, especially a rookie. But this was wrong.

  “Sorry, Rob. I won’t go along with this.” He took a deep breath. “That’s not me.”

  Regarno sneered at him. “Let me guess. You’re one of those bleeding hearts who believes it’s better for ten guilty scumbags to go free than for one poor innocent soul, who’s up to his neck in drugs and extortion, to be punished for the one crime he happened not to have committed. Am I right?”

  “Yes, you are. I didn’t join the force to frame people, no matter how repulsive they are.” He pulled out the cards and handed them back to Regarno. “These belong in the evidence locker.”

  And now, in the dark, he wondered if he had just come face to face with a reality of police work he could never accept. He couldn’t shake the notion that Regarno’s attitude had some merit. He would shed no tears for Smiley. But he also knew that safeguards existed for a reason and that one day, Regarno’s approach, which he was sure was repeated throughout the department, would backfire. Travathan feared that if he compromised on this case, he would one day become Regarno, planting or manipulating evidence that would lead to the conviction of an innocent man. He fingered his badge. On that day, he could no longer wear this with pride. He sat up and stretched. He had prevented a wrong today. He would continue as a police officer until the time his conscience no longer allowed it.

  5

  Gord Travathan sat in the coffee shop, his mind racing over something Doris MacIlhenny said. There was more to this case than just another homicide, another horny housewife who jumped into bed with any man who was convenient. A gut feeling infected him with frustration. And it awakened him with possibility.

  He struggled with himself. Getting pulled into another case with Max wasn’t something he had planned. It wasn’t even something he wanted. The only case they had worked on together hadn’t ended well for him. He had spent the years since rebuilding the career it had destroyed. But Max was his friend. Max had asked for his help. That was the only reason he volunteered to meet MacIlhenny. As far as he was concerned, once that was done, he would tell Max what he’d found out and go back to spying for his client.

  But what the detective had said blasted his intention just to do a favor for a friend. If he kept silent and walked away now, not only would he be turning his back on Max, he would be spurning this kid who just might have been railroaded. Didn’t he have a responsibility to him?

  He slammed his fist on the table. Responsibility! To hell with it. His only duty was to him and the life he’d managed to create after his last encounter with Max had ruined the one he’d had. But there was something else playing out in his mind. An awakening of enthusiasm. A surge of hope—absent for too many years—was stirring in his soul. The life he’d managed to create? It was empty. Sure, cheating spouses paid the rent, but why not let them cheat? They were having more fun than he was. Yet this case . . . There was something going on here that enticed him, that offered some allure. With a sigh of inevitability, he pulled out his cell phone and made two calls, one to the hotel to extend his stay, the other to Max Kagan.

  “Max, have you met with your volunteers yet on the Galina case?”

  “We’re meeting tonight. Why?”

  “I have a hunch that something else might be going on. Look, I’d like to dig around a bit.”

  “Gord Travathan has a hunch? Intuition? Are you crossing over to the dark side?”

  “Don’t hold your breath. Look, were you going to have one of your volunteers interview Jake Handley?”

  “Of course. Why? Do you want the job?”

  “I do. There’s something I need to find out that he might know. Can you set up an interview?”

  “Sure. I’ll call you later today with the time. But what do you need to find out?”

  “Maybe nothing. I’ll tell you after I talk to him.”

  “Okay. How about our meeting tonight? Can you make it?”

  “Sorry. Infidelities call. But I’ll check back with you tomorrow.”

  A prison guard ushered Travathan to an interview room where he paced, unable to sit, his thoughts clashing. He hated being anywhere near the prison, partly because he’d put some of the inmates here and they wouldn’t be friendly, partly because some piece of his humanity rebelled at the idea these institutions were necessary. He’d been a cop long enough to understand there were predators out there, and he’d consoled enough victims to know this was the best place to put them. He’d just never been able to figure them out. He took a deep breath and sat down at the table when a guard came in, escorting a man in shackles. The guard undid the locks around the man’s wrists, and moved, weapon at the ready, to a corner of the room.

  Jake Handley stood across the table and glared at Travathan. He looked older than his eighteen years. His time in prison had layered cynicism and suspicion onto a face whose adolescence should have projected trust and eagerness. His stance was that of a boxer circling his opponent, wary and explosive. His prison shirt stretched tight over his chest, the muscles of his arms swelling under the sleeves.

  When Handley had been convicted, the court sentenced him to spend the first three years of his prison term in juvenile detention, transferring to maximum security on his eighteenth birthday. He had heard the stories of young men thrown into that violence. Of the rapes, of the savagery inflicted on any target who dared resist the gang that claimed him as theirs. And he knew of the disdain of the guards, of their indifference to prisoners butchering one another. Determined not to become one of the victims, he spent those three years in juvenile making himself untouchable. When he wasn’t confined to his room, he haunted the gym. He lifted weights until his muscles screamed for relief, then he lifted more. He ran on the treadmill until he was up to a marathon a day. He pounded the speed bag until the tapes on his hands tore away from the hammering.

  But that was just the physical preparation. He also had to transform his attitude. Violence hadn’t been a part of his life, but it was about to. So when the gym was closed, he immersed himself in books, stor
ies of revenge, of justice denied, of retribution. He absorbed anything he could find that would sharpen his outrage, that would imprint on his brain that violence was honorable. A response to a wrong. On the day he turned eighteen, he had evolved from innocence to menace, from caution to rage, from trust to someone whose only reaction to a threat was to attack.

  On his first day in maximum security, he was in the shower when four men approached him. He made no attempt to cover himself. He continued with his shower as if he were alone, ignoring them and their descriptions of what they were about to do to him. He paid no mind when one of the men, the leader of the group, undressed and walked into the shower, sneering that Handley could cooperate or resist, but either way, he belonged to the gang and they would have him, one by one. Handley steeled himself. He had prepared for this day, but facing it demanded focus, the rejection of his fears.

  He turned, ignoring the pounding of his heart, the shaking of his hands. He smiled at the gang leader and knelt. The man, his erection growing at this gesture of submission, moved forward. Handley lunged, grabbed the man in the crotch, and pushed. The man toppled forward. Handley seized him by the neck, hoisting him up to chest level, and in a weightlifter’s jerk motion, he dropped his legs and thrust his arms upward, raising the man’s body into the air, high above his head. He turned to face the man’s comrades, then slammed him down across the ridge of the shower floor. The crack of his snapping spine echoed off the tiles. Handley reared toward the other men, but they had fled. A wave of nausea hit him, forcing him to double over. From the hallway, he heard guards running toward the shower. By the time they’d arrived, he had flushed the vomit down the drain, he had turned off the water, and the rapid movement of his arms toweling himself dry hid the shaking in his hands. Nobody ever bothered him again.

  Travathan had been warned that Handley didn’t talk any more than necessary, and even when he did, his words were more snarled than spoken. Another effect of being locked up, especially if you’re not guilty. “Have a seat.” Travathan sat and gestured to the opposite chair.

  Handley stood long enough to let Travathan know he would sit or stand by his own choice before he pulled out the chair and slouched. His eyes never left Travathan, and he hadn’t spoken.

  “Hello, Jake. Can I call you Jake?” There was no reply. “As they may have told you, I’m Gord Travathan. I’m a private investigator. I represent the Brouer Foundation. We help people who’ve been wrongly convicted of a serious crime, and we try to get their trial reviewed and, we hope, to get them released.”

  Handley’s face tightened. His lips compressed. His voice a snarl. “Then why the hell are you here. I did it. Wrongly convicted? Go screw yourself.”

  Travathan said, “Well, Jake, that’s not what your aunt, Maureen Sanderson, thinks. She gave us a lot of information about your case, enough to convince us you may not belong here. I’ve come to—”

  “Screw Maureen. And screw you.” The words were spat out.

  “Jake, your aunt is trying to help. If you—”

  “Take your help and shove it up your ass.”

  Travathan gave a mental shrug. Creating rapport wasn’t working. Time to change gears. “Why did you kill Sherry Galina?”

  A look of something crossed Handley’s face. Was it fear? Whatever it was, Travathan had, for an instant, pried below his shell.

  The shell clamped back shut. With a sneer, Handley said, “You told me I was wrongly convicted. Now you say I did it. Make up your damn mind.”

  “Hey, you said you killed her, and I’d like to know why.”

  “Why I killed her or why I said I did?”

  Handley was also shifting gears. There was intelligence behind that insolence. He’d decided on word games. It was a positive step, but a poor strategy. Words were among Gord Travathan’s tools.

  “Let’s start with why you did it.”

  “I already told the cops that.”

  “So you did. You said you flipped out after she refused to stop molesting you. You said you didn’t know what you were doing. I believe those were your exact words.”

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “Of course I have a problem. You’d been screwing her for about a month. You went there every day. And you were hot for her. You weren’t the victim of harassment by some pedophile. You were ready and willing. Now,” Travathan leaned back, “if you’d been playing some kind of sex game that went too far, that could explain it. Or if you told me she was tired of you and wasn’t going to see you anymore, I guess that might be a motive. But don’t give me that flipped out nonsense. Tell me why you killed her.”

  Handley clapped his hands together in a mocking rhythm. “You figured it out. Yeah. She told me I was just a kid, and she needed a man. She told me when I grew up, got some balls and some guts, maybe she’d see me again. She laughed at me. So I got pissed and I killed her. Happy now?”

  Travathan smiled and said, “Well, Jake, I’m glad you told me that because it confirms my opinion you had nothing to do with her death.” He watched Handley’s face slide from contempt to confusion to something approaching panic.

  “See, I’ve been dumped a few times myself, and you know something? Sometimes the I can’t see you anymore speech came over the phone, once in a restaurant, but never after sex. It just doesn’t happen. So I don’t buy it. If Sherry Galina wanted to dump you, she’d have stopped you at the door, or changed her locks, or been out when you called, or had another man in with her. No way would she romp with you and then tell you she was done. So, Jake, if you didn’t do it, why did you say you did?”

  Handley’s voice rose an octave. He half stood up from the chair. “I told you, I killed her. She laughed at me, and I killed the bitch.” He dropped back down in his chair, an angry glare on his face.

  Travathan waved back the guard who had started across the room at Handley’s outburst. “Jake, do you know the Roseway Circle Shopping Center?”

  Handley looked puzzled at the change of direction. “What?”

  “The Roseway Circle Shopping Center. Do you know of it?”

  “What the hell do you think? I was only there every day.”

  “You used to hang out there?”

  “I did my goddamn homework in the library.”

  “Do you know if Sherry Galina shopped there?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Well, Jake, I’m just trying to take care of some loose ends. Did she shop there? Did you ever see any plastic bags from the supermarket in her house?”

  Handley’s face slid from antagonism to suspicion. “Yeah, I saw some bags from there. So what?”

  “Jake,” Travathan’s voice was sharp. “How long had you been having sex with her?”

  Handley frowned, his eyes narrowed. “You already know that. What the hell is it to you?”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “None of your goddamn business.”

  “Well, Jake, I could use some tips. How do you meet a woman like that?”

  Handley sneered. “Just gotta know when to stop stalking.”

  “Stalking? You’d been watching her?”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Was she hot?”

  “You saw her picture.”

  “Yeah, but was she hot in bed?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, did she have some, you know, great moves? How many times a day did you two do it? Did she go down on you? Did you go back door? Threesomes? Household pets?”

  Handley’s face was reddening, his eyes becoming slits, his nostrils flaring. “Screw you. She was a lady. She was good to me. She cared about me.”

  “Come on, Jake. ‘She cared about me.’ Get real. You were just a carrier of a penis. All she cared about was getting laid. She didn’t choose you because she loved you, she chose you because you were convenient.” He shrugged. “Or maybe she got her jollies banging kids.”

  Now Handley was out of the chair, screaming
, “You don’t know a goddamn thing about her. She wasn’t some slut, she was a great woman.”

  The guard said, “That’s it,” reattached the shackles, and marched Handley toward the door, but not before Travathan said, “That’s a passionate defense of a woman who rejected you so badly you killed her. I’ll be back later and we can talk some more.”

  Travathan sat back in the empty interrogation room, his second question answered. Jake Handley hadn’t killed Sherry Galina. And his initial suspicion had been strengthened. There was more to this case than it seemed.

  6

  “Looks like a winner, Max.”

  Adam Archer, a journalist who was the most experienced of Kagan’s investigators, sat next to Colin Grogan, an accountant, and Ruth Janner, a secretary in a law office and occasional participant in the activities of the Brouer Foundation.

  Kagan nodded. Of course it’s a winner, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. He asked, “Has everyone reviewed the file?” His question was as irrelevant as Archer’s comment. Anyone who said no would be invited to leave and would no longer be part of the Foundation’s team of investigators.

  Nobody said anything.

  “Comments? Adam. Let’s start with you.”

  Archer straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat as if he were about to deliver a report on the six o’clock news. “I think that despite the confession, the kid got railroaded. And twice. Let me summarize the prosecution’s case. First,” Archer ticked off points on his fingers, “the kid was having an affair with the victim.” He nudged Grogan. “I looked at the picture of her we ran with the story. I should be so lucky. We know of the affair because the kid confessed to it and because the DNA they took from the victim matched his.”

  Grogan said, “We know this. What’s your point?”

  “Bear with me. The kid was seen coming from the Galina house at about the time of the murder. He seemed to be in a hurry, pedaling his bike really hard. There was no sign of forced entry, which means whoever did this had access to the house. And her husband, always a promising suspect, had an alibi. Put it all together and the cops decided the kid was the only one who had the opportunity.”