River of Secrets

by Roger Johns

  It was standing against the rear wall of the carport. With one hand Wallace raised the lid and shone her flashlight inside. A tied-off trash bag covered the bottom. On top of that lay a wadded-up paper cup. Wallace wondered about the box for the pizza he had had with him yesterday afternoon. It wasn’t here, it wasn’t in the house, and, now that she thought about it, there had been no telltale pizza smell inside Peter’s SUV when she and Melissa had gone through it.

  Maybe it was underneath the trash bag. Wallace threw back the lid and upended the dumpster, spilling its contents into the pool of light on the floor of the carport. No pizza box.

  “You do intend to clean that up, I hope.”

  Wallace stopped momentarily, suppressing an urge to look up and see if MaryBeth was being serious.

  She untied the bag and poked around among the contents. Nothing. Just household trash. She grabbed the cup and tossed it in the bag with everything else. As it left her hand, she heard it rattle. She reached inside the bag and snatched it back out.

  Holding it gingerly by the rim, she carefully pried it open and turned it upside down. Her heart skipped a beat when a small plastic square about a half inch on a side with a red-and-white paper label tumbled out onto her gloved palm. She was no photographer, but she knew a memory card from a digital camera when she saw one.

  * * *

  Wallace couldn’t afford to let anyone in her department examine the memory card until she knew for sure whether there was a leak, so she asked Mason for some under-the-table help. She drove straight from False River to his office. During the drive, the idea that they might be able to mix a little work time and playtime popped into her head. But then she became apprehensive. Once he saw the bruise on her back, he would be angry and hurt that she had waited so long to say anything.

  She walked into his office determined to come clean, but the presence of two of his employees working late gave her second thoughts.

  “Don’t they have homes to go to?” she whispered from the chair across his desk, inclining her head toward the hallway behind her.

  “Yes,” he whispered back, leaning forward. “But they think you’re dangerous, so they probably won’t leave me unguarded as long as you’re here.”

  “Can’t you fire them?” She scrunched her nose and bit down on her lower lip. She leaned in closer.

  “I could, but they’re so good at what they do, I’d just have to hire them back, in the morning.”

  “Perfect. I promise to be gone by then.” She inched closer.

  “Hey, Mason.” The voice came from the doorway behind her.

  Mason bolted upright in his chair and peered over her. Wallace leaned back in her chair and ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip. Mason went pink to his ears.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said, fiddling uselessly with some papers on his desk.

  Wallace heard footsteps retreating along the carpeted hallway behind her. She studied Mason as he maneuvered a set of keys from his pocket.

  “So, we’ll just put this in the drawer, for now.” He dropped the memory card into an envelope and slid it into the desk drawer on his right. He locked the drawer and then rose from his chair, giving Wallace an expectant look. She remained seated, smirking at his discomfort.

  “I think I can have something for you early tomorrow.”

  “But that’s such a long time to wait. Besides, I have to go to work early tomorrow.”

  “They’re right.” He smiled and nodded in the direction of the hallway. “You are dangerous.”

  Wallace dithered over whether to tell him. He obviously had important work waiting for him down the hall, and distracting him by opening such a troubling and personal can of worms might be bad timing. She gave him an uneasy smile and decided to wait.

  EIGHTEEN

  WEDNESDAY: JUNE 6

  Mason’s entire staff was in the office, bright and early, when she arrived to see what they’d found on the memory card.

  “These are just the images the photographer decided to keep,” Mason said, dropping a flash drive into her open palm. They were standing inside his office.

  “Is there a chance of recovering any deleted images?” The drive disappeared into one of her shirt pockets. She knew that whenever a camera recorded an image it assigned an address to it, so the camera would know where to look for it later. She also knew that deleting an image didn’t actually erase it. It just nicked off the address so the camera no longer knew an image was there. Eventually, as new images were recorded, they were laid down on top of the deleted images. Once that happened, the earlier images were gone for good, but until that happened, they were still there.

  “We’re working on that,” he said. “The card was handled quite a bit. Probably moved from one camera to another, so there’s bound to be more than just the stuff we pulled off, so far. We should have something for you tonight. If it’s after eight, I’ll be at home. We can have dinner.”

  On her way from Mason’s office to police headquarters, Melissa Voorhees called. The partial print she lifted from Ecclestone’s vehicle hadn’t matched anything in any of the fingerprint databases, so it didn’t belong to Peter.

  After a few hours at her desk, going through the images on the flash drive, Wallace was barely able to keep her eyes open. There were thousands of pictures and looking through them was tedious. Her eyelids were getting heavy and her concentration kept drifting.

  “How’re you doing, Detective Hartman?”

  The voice startled her. She quickly minimized the pictures on her screen, then pulled her feet off her desk and looked behind her. It was Lanny Berto—a beat cop who, as far as Wallace knew, was trying hard to protect and serve but was in just a bit over his head.

  “You might not want to sneak up on people like that.”

  When Berto smiled and jingled the keys in his pocket, Wallace realized she had actually heard the noise at the edge of her consciousness as he came up the hallway, but her fatigue had kept the sound from registering.

  She gave him a weak smile. “What can I do for you, Officer Berto?”

  “Not a thing. Just passing along information.”

  “I’m listening. Is this about one of my cases?”

  “In a roundabout way.”

  “Okay.” Wallace gave him a palms-up shrug.

  “There’s more than a few around here that feel like you’re putting friendship ahead of doing the right thing. That maybe Mr. Pitkin needs to be wrapped up with a nice big rope and handed over to the DA so she can get down to business.”

  “And what, exactly, is the right thing, in the estimation of these unnamed others for whom you speak?”

  “I don’t speak for them. I’m just passing on the scuttlebutt, trying to do you a favor. Me, personally, it’s no skin off my nose one way or the other. Just thought you’d want to know.”

  “What I’d like to know is who these dissatisfied folks are that you’re talking about.”

  Berto scowled and backed up a step. Wallace regretted the words the moment they came out of her mouth. She sounded petty.

  “Well, see, I didn’t come here to get myself in trouble. I was just trying to help you out.”

  Wallace held up her hands in surrender. “And you did exactly the right thing. So, do you think this is just grumbling, or does it sound more like people with a plan of action?”

  “No way for me to know. Just don’t let your guard down.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll keep my eyes and ears wide open.”

  “You take care now.” He turned and disappeared into the warren of cubicles and tables that spread across the room.

  Wallace listened as the jingle of his keys kept time with the sound of his footsteps moving down the hallway. She wondered whether her visitor in the nighttime who had left his calling card above her right kidney was one of those dissatisfied colleagues and if maybe Berto was trying to make sure she had gotten the message or to warn her that another visit might be in the works.


  “What was that all about?”

  Wallace flinched—startled for the second time in two minutes. “Hey, LeAnne.”

  “A little jumpy today, are we?”

  “Officer Berto stopped by to let me know that there are some among us who feel we’re making a nuisance of ourselves by continuing this investigation.”

  “Did that little gargoyle just threaten you?” LeAnne pointed in the direction Berto had taken. “If he did, file a grievance against him. If people make trouble for you, you have to make trouble back.”

  “I don’t think he intended it as a threat.”

  LeAnne shrugged and dumped her shoulder bag onto the seat of her chair.

  “What have you found on Tonya Lennar?”

  “She cleans houses, she goes to the grocery store, she goes home, she goes to sleep. If there’s anything sinister there, it’s very well hidden.”

  “What about any connection between Glenn Marioneaux and Eddie Pitkin?”

  “Still digging. But so far, nothing.”

  “Did Burley give you the phone records on the Marioneauxs?”

  “That’s probably why he was looking for me. I’ll go track him down. Unless you want to do that and I can take over your vacation-photo scrapbooking operation.” LeAnne smiled and nodded at the pictures Wallace had just clicked open on her monitor.

  “Thanks, but I’ll manage.”

  After LeAnne took off, Wallace returned her attention to the images from Peter Ecclestone’s memory card. He had taken lots of close-ups of insects and individual flower blossoms and one of a long-legged white bird wading through a marshy area. Peter was actually a good photographer, and Wallace kept finding herself engrossed in the quality of the composition and how beautifully some subjects were lit. But eventually the surge of energy that came from her encounter with Berto faded. She gulped down the remainder of her coffee and refocused.

  She kept hoping she would find a shot of Eddie Pitkin on the dock behind Craig’s lake house. There was a shot of the house at twilight, but there were no faces in the shot—just the house with clouds behind it. The milky glow from a waning gibbous moon shone through a thin spot in the clouds, and once again Wallace found her mind wandering. A few more screenfuls, then she would have to get up and move around to keep from falling asleep.

  She scrolled down, bringing up a new batch of images. One by one, she ran her eyes across the pictures. Near the bottom of the screen she saw a series of daylight shots of the lake. It looked as if they had been taken from the back of the lake house where Peter had been staying. She remembered that the dock behind the house had been replanked. In the image on her screen, fresh tan boards were visible, mixed in with the weathered gray of the older planking.

  Some of the images seemed to have no obvious subject. She spread the images and let her eyes roam over the elements in the pictures. Houses on the opposite bank, a speedboat pulling a pair of skiers exiting frame left, somebody wiping out on a boogie board. She dragged the images across the screen, chunk by chunk, looking at everything. Near the right edge of one picture she spotted a bass boat, with a lone occupant. It looked about a hundred yards offshore.

  Wallace enlarged the shot further, marveling at the image resolution. The occupant was seated in the rear of the boat, right hand on the steering wheel, left hand holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

  It had been a windy day and the choppiness of the water tilted the boat, so she couldn’t be absolutely sure what the binoculars were aimed at, but it looked as if they were pointed toward the shore, a bit south of where Peter took the shot from. The occupant could have been looking back toward Craig’s lake house. A registration number was visible on the hull, just below the forward gunwale.

  * * *

  Northlake Cemetery was old and no longer accepting new tenants, but it was still well kept. It had assumed an almost park-like status in Baton Rouge and, for the last half century, had been maintained by the city.

  Wallace walked toward the sound of a mower in the distance. A sluggish breeze carried the heavy fragrance of freshly mown grass through the boneyard. It was a cloudless day, so she moved from one patch of shade to another, doing her best to stay out of the baking sun.

  As the noise of the mower grew louder Wallace slowed. She wanted to approach the man with caution, but she didn’t want him to know she was being cautious.

  He had his back to her as he pushed his mower between two rows of headstones. She could see a thick black pouch-style wallet in the back pocket of his jeans. The steel chain fastening it to a belt loop glinted in the sunlight. He had draped a shop rag over his head and pulled a ball cap down on top of it, so the cloth shielded the back of his neck from the sun. He was a wiry man about her height, with thick, gristly forearms. The edge of a blurry tattoo on his right shoulder blade peeked out of the armhole of his sleeveless gray T-shirt. A Buck knife was strapped to his left thigh.

  His head was down and he appeared to be focused on the ground right in front of his mower as he jockeyed it forward and backward, angling it this way and that as he mowed between and around the stones. He was very precise and extremely thorough. The cemetery was so large and the man cut with such deliberation, Wallace guessed that by the time he finished, it would be time to start again.

  On his present trajectory, he would soon reach the high brick fence that ran along the perimeter. At that point, he would have to turn back in her direction.

  She quickened her pace so she could meet him as he made the turn. The roar of the mower covered the sound of her arrival. With his head still down, the man mowed past the end of the row, then pulled back, making a three-point turn to head back in the direction he had come from.

  As he began pushing up the row in earnest, Wallace’s boot came to rest on the engine housing of the mower, bringing it and the man behind it to a sudden stop. For a full three seconds, nothing happened.

  Wallace could practically hear him thinking. He would decide if he recognized the boot invading his field of vision and whether it was friend or foe. Then he would calculate whether, with both hands still gripping the mower handle, he could get to his knife in a useful amount of time. He elected to look before he leapt.

  His head inched up. His brow furrowed and his gaze slowed as it moved past her hips and her gun and then stopped entirely, several inches above her belt line, once he became certain the boot belonged to a woman. Wallace’s badge placard dangled from a lanyard around her neck. She flipped it around so he could see her ID on the other side.

  With excruciating care, the man reached for a lever on the mower handle and turned the machine off. His big hands and his ropy, oversized forearms were covered with a fine haze of grass and leaf trimmings.

  “How are you, today, Mr. Harpin?” She spoke quietly, but, in the sudden silence, her voice seemed loud.

  “Officer.” He nodded, avoiding direct eye contact and declining to initiate further conversation.

  “This feels like a good time to stand in the shade and take a break, wouldn’t you say?”

  He remained silent, apparently understanding her question was not really a question and not something to which an answer would be welcome. His gaze went over her shoulder, into the distance. Wallace studied him, fairly certain he was engaged in some internal debate over how he should proceed while he figured out what was coming down.

  “I brought you a present.” She smiled casually and offered him one of the bottles of water she carried with her, holding it by the cap.

  “No, thank you.”

  She continued to hold the bottle in his direction. “You can pay me back out of what’s in the cooler you’ve got in your pickup. Besides, how much cooperation will a bottle of water obligate you for, anyway?” She brought the bottle close to her face and studied the label. “Although it says here that this came all the way from some glacier in South America. Pretty special stuff.” She held the bottle back in his direction. The smile was gone from her face.

  Mechanically, Harpin�
��s hand came up and he took the bottle, but he didn’t open it. Wallace nodded in the direction of a huge oak and Harpin trudged ahead of her.

  In the deep shade beneath the canopy of branches, Wallace leaned against the trunk, keeping Harpin backlit, between her and the sunshine.

  “Am I in some kinda custody?” His gaze meandered across the loose branches and squirrel-gnawed acorns scattered among the tree roots.

  “Would you like to be?”

  Harpin looked at the bottle of water in his hand, then back over his shoulder at his silent mower. He pushed his lower lip out and rocked back on his heels.

  Wallace pulled out her phone, tapping and swiping her way to the image of the man in the boat on False River. She spread the image until the boat and its occupant covered the screen.

  “Is this you?” She held the phone up next to her face, forcing him to come in close for a look, so she could watch his expression as he examined the image on the screen.

  She could tell that he was uneasy as his eyes toggled back and forth between her and the phone, eventually coming to rest on the picture.

  “Can’t really tell. He’s wearing a cap and them binoculars he’s looking through are covering some of his face.”

  “Look again. See that registration number on the bow. From that I found the owner—a gentleman by the name of Leslie Hatfield. He runs a boat rental concession on False River.”

  Harpin scuffed the toe of his stained work shoe against the ground.

  “He says that this past Friday he rented that boat to a man who showed him a Louisiana driver’s license in the name of Oliver Dale Harpin. As luck would have it, the State of Louisiana has issued only one driver’s license to an Oliver Dale Harpin. I looked at the license photo. It looks a lot like you.”

  Harpin pursed his lips and nodded. They made solid eye contact for the first time.