Dead Center ac-5

by David Rosenfelt

  There is a pause of maybe fifteen seconds. If you don’t think that’s a long time, look at your watch and hold your breath. “Oh,” she finally says, a comment not necessarily worth waiting for.

  “Would that be all right?” I ask.

  Another pause, just as long. In the background I can hear the teenager urging, “Talk to him, Mom.” But when Jane finally speaks to me, she says, “I don’t think so.”

  “I won’t take much of your time, and it might help us find out who killed Elizabeth and Sheryl Hendricks. I think that is something everyone wants.”

  Another lengthy pause; if I were charging by the hour, Richard Davidson would be getting a mortgage right now. “I’m sorry, I have nothing to say to you, Mr. Carpenter.”

  Click.

  This isn’t going as well as I had hoped.

  My next call is to the First Centurion Church, and the receptionist answers and wishes me a “fine and healthful day.” I ask for Keeper Clayton Wallace and tell her “Andy Carpenter” when she asks who is calling.

  Within moments a man’s voice comes on the line. “Stephen Drummond.”

  “I’d like to speak to Clayton Wallace, please.”

  “I’m sure you would, Mr. Carpenter, but that’s not likely any time soon. So how can I help you?”

  “That depends on who you are,” I say.

  “I’m a resident of Center City, as well as legal counsel and vice president of the First Centurion Church. So, again, how can I help you?”

  “Well, I’m representing Jeremy-”

  He interrupts. “I’m aware of that.”

  “Then I’m sure you’re also aware that I’m attempting to learn everything I can about the victims, including information about the town they lived in and the religion that was apparently so important to them.”

  “Fair enough. I’m your guy.”

  I’m pleasantly surprised by this open invitation, and we make arrangements to meet tomorrow in his office. Right now I feel like I should be doing something, but there’s nothing else I can think of to do, so I take Tara for a walk.

  I’m starting to like these walks; I may even be starting to like Findlay. The air is crisp, fresh… for some reason every time I go outside I feel like tailgating and throwing a football around. I’d better be careful, or in a few weeks I’ll be wearing a plastic piece of cheese on my head and rooting for Brett Favre.

  There seems to be more of a spring in Tara’s step as well. She’s been showing some signs of age, although that is not terribly significant, since Tara will live forever. But she seems more cheerful since she’s been here; it’s possible she might be a small-town dog at heart.

  When we get back to the house, I am pleasantly surprised to find Laurie waiting for us in the living room. “You left the door open,” she says. “I figured you wouldn’t mind if I waited inside.”

  “Make my home your home,” I say.

  She looks at the pictures on the walls of various people doing various things, like having picnics, going to amusement parks, and mugging for the camera. “Who are these people?” she asks.

  “I would guess they’re friends and relatives of the dead woman who used to live here,” I say.

  She smiles. “I love how you’ve given the place your personal touch.”

  “I even watered one of the plants the other day.”

  “You missing home?” she asks.

  I think about that for a moment and am surprised by what I come up with. “No… not really. Not yet. I’m becoming very involved with the case, so I haven’t had much time.”

  “Everybody’s talking about how you beat up on Lester in court today.”

  I shrug. “No big deal… I had the facts on my side. When I don’t, he’ll beat up on me.”

  She shakes her head and smiles. “I’ve seen you in action, so I know better.”

  I’m not real big on compliments; they’re the one thing that can effectively shut me up. So I don’t respond.

  “You made Parsons look pretty bad up there,” she says. She can’t be happy about this; he works for her, and his performance reflects negatively on her department.

  I nod. “He deserved it. He should have gotten a search warrant; he knew there was no reason to rush into that house.”

  She doesn’t agree. “There were two dead young women at that house, Andy. They could have still been alive, and that would have been plenty reason to rush.”

  I’m not about to back down on this one. “He did what he did, and then he made up reasons for doing it after the fact. That’s called lying, and he did it under oath. That’s called perjury. So I’m not going to feel bad that I embarrassed him.”

  “He’s a good cop, Andy.”

  “Look, I’m not saying he wasn’t trying to serve the cause of justice. I’m saying he didn’t follow the rules.”

  This is not the first time that Laurie and I have disagreed in this manner. She is a law enforcement officer, and I’m a defense attorney. Not exactly two peas in a pod. “You want to go out to get a bite to eat?” I ask. It’s my version of being conciliatory.

  “I can make dinner,” she says, a little tentatively.

  Then it hits me. “You let yourself in here because you didn’t want people to see you waiting outside. And that’s why you don’t want to go out to eat. You’re worried about being seen as being on my side, because of our previous relationship.”

  “This is a small town, Andy, and people depend on me… on my doing my job.”

  “Hey, it’s okay, Laurie. You’re in a bad spot.”

  “Worse than you think. Lester has gone to the mayor and told him about our relationship. He doesn’t trust me.”

  “What did the mayor say?” I ask.

  “That Lester should worry about his own job and let me do mine. But that could change, Andy. If I give him half a reason…”

  “Laurie, you called me, I didn’t call you. I’m here because of you.” After I say it, I realize that she could take that last sentence one of two ways: that I’m here because she told me about the case, or that I’m here because I wanted to be near her. I don’t know which is true, so I don’t clarify it.

  “I know,” she says, “and I’m glad you are, really I am. Jeremy will get the best defense possible, and I won’t have to miss you the way I have. I just don’t know how to behave, Andy.”

  “You mean in your job?”

  “In my job, but out of my job as well. If we want to go out to dinner, I don’t want to have to worry about how it will look. I want people to trust me enough to know that I’ll live up to my responsibilities as a police officer, no matter what is going on in my personal life.”

  “Anybody who doesn’t trust you is an idiot.”

  She’s not about to just accept that. “And it’s not just trust, Andy. I want people to respect me. I want my fellow officers to respect me. Some of them got passed over for a promotion because I was brought in. I want them to respect that decision. I need them to.”

  I walk over to her and hug her. Hugging is not an act that comes naturally to me, but this time I do it without even thinking. She looks at me, and for a moment I’m afraid she is going to cry. “I don’t want to screw this up, Andy. Not any of it.”

  I hold her tighter. “When you’re young and so alone as we, and bewildered by the world we see, how can we keep love alive, how can anything survive, what a town without pity can do.”

  She looks at me strangely. “What?”

  As further evidence that I am unable to control my mouth, I’ve just been inappropriately song-talking, a game that my friend Sam Willis and I play back home. The object is to work song lyrics smoothly into a conversation. “That’s ‘Town Without Pity.’ Gene Pitney.”

  “My life is going up in flames, and you’re song-talking?” she asks incredulously.

  I nod. “Not bad, huh?”

  She laughs. “Not bad at all.” Then she kisses me, perhaps unaware that she is providing positive reinforcement to my childish behavio
r.

  “You know, I’ve got an idea,” I say. “We behave professionally out there in the world, but we meet back here maybe ten or twelve times a day to have secret sex.”

  She smiles. “You’re the boss. But you might want to be careful. At the pace you’re suggesting, you wouldn’t last until tomorrow.”

  “We’ll see about that. You want to have a sleepover date tonight?”

  “I think that can be arranged,” she says.

  “Then arrange it,” I say, trying not to drool as I talk. It may not be the smartest thing to do, but the idea of spending the night lying next to Laurie, something I thought I’d never experience again, is just too good to pass up.

  • • • • •

  LAURIE LEANS OVER at five-thirty in the morning. “I have to leave for work,” she says.

  “What are you, a night watchwoman?”

  “No, I like to get in early and make sure organized crime doesn’t take over Findlay.”

  “I was hoping you could stay a little longer,” I say.

  She leans over and kisses me. “Like until when?”

  “Next August.”

  I obviously overreached, because she’s out of bed within three minutes. After her shower, while she’s getting dressed, she asks, “So what’s on tap today in the legal world?”

  “Well, I can’t speak for the whole day, but this morning I’m meeting with a guy named Stephen Drummond.”

  She does a mini-double take in surprise. “Really?”

  “Yup. By the way,” I say, “did you talk to Elizabeth Barlow’s ex-boyfriend?”

  She shakes her head. “Jeremy tried to implicate him, without knowing his name. But nobody in that town will even confirm there is such a person.”

  Laurie leaves, and I shower and take Tara for our walk. I’m not big on introspection, and I really need to focus on the case, but I still can’t help thinking about the situation with Laurie. Things are good now, and we still love each other, but this case is going to come to an end. I’m going to go back home, and she’s going to stay here.

  If I were smart, I’d stop seeing her right now and focus only on the case. Maybe that way it would hurt less when we separate again. But I’m not smart, and I can feel myself heading toward the edge of the cliff. Unfortunately, I’ve been over that cliff, so I know what a long drop it is to the bottom.

  When Tara and I get back to the house, Calvin is there waiting for us, an envelope in hand. “I got something for you to read, city boy,” he says, holding up the envelope.

  The pages inside turn out to be copies of the newspaper articles written by a man named Henry Gerard, identified as a former resident of the town of Center City. Mr. Gerard’s job was “servant of the Keeper,” which put him in the employ of the church. Based on the uniform he wears in a picture accompanying one of the articles, the uniformed man who questioned me when I was in Center City was also a servant of the Keeper.

  Gerard became disenchanted with the Centurion religion, for reasons left unexplained by the articles. His writing them seems almost an act of revenge, trying to hurt his former church by exposing its secrets.

  Those secrets, if these articles are to be believed, are bizarre. The Centurions believe that God speaks to them through an enormous wheel housed in the town hall, with symbols on it that the Keeper deciphers and interprets. The wheel is literally spun, once a week, and where it lands determines what the Keeper ultimately says.

  All major decisions in Center City are made through the spinning of this wheel. People’s occupations, their mates, all of their significant life choices, are determined by the Keeper’s interpretations of the wheel. It has been this way for almost a hundred and fifty years, as generation after generation in Center City has willingly made the choice to give up its right to make choices.

  If Liz Barlow had an ex-boyfriend, as Jeremy claims, then he was likely matched up with her by their religion, by the spinning of the wheel. For her to have broken off their relationship and pursued Jeremy instead would have been a blasphemy, according to the world Gerard describes. The pressure to go back to him would have been overwhelming, which no doubt explains Liz’s ultimate rejection of Jeremy.

  I have no time to discuss the implications of the articles with Calvin, since I’m in danger of being late for my meeting with Stephen Drummond. I manage to arrive at his office just at ten o’clock. He is in the two-story building next to the town hall, and I pull into the small parking lot behind the building. Two men, each one at least six two, two hundred and twenty pounds, are standing in front of me by the time I get out of the car. Their uniforms identify them to me as servants of the Keeper. The Keeper must have more servants than Thomas Jefferson.

  “You’re here to see Mr. Drummond,” one of them says.

  “Right.”

  “Follow us, please.”

  They proceed to lead me, in a weird procession, into the building and to the receptionist’s desk. “Thanks,” I say, “I shudder to think what could have happened if I tried to make it here on my own.”

  If there was a joke there, they don’t get it, and they melt away, leaving me with the receptionist. “Mr. Drummond will see you now. Down that hall and to the right.”

  I follow her directions, passing an office that the sign says contains the town clerk, and another woman is at the end of the hall waiting for me. It seems like the entire town has mobilized to get me to this meeting. “Right in here,” she says.

  I enter the office, and a man I presume to be Stephen Drummond rises from his desk to greet me. He is in his early sixties and wears a conservative three-piece suit. Compared to the mode of dress I’ve seen so far in these small towns, he would look less out of place if he were wearing a space suit.

  He extends his hand, and I shake it. “Mr. Carpenter, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is mine,” I say, charming as always. The line between me and Cary Grant gets thinner every day.

  “Please sit down. Would you like some coffee?”

  “No thank you,” I say, but I sit in the offered chair. On his desk is a family photo of him, a woman I assume to be his wife, and a man in his early twenties. The young man is dressed in the garb of a servant of the Keeper, and since the resemblance is apparent, I assume he is Drummond’s son. They are all standing in front of a small airplane, the kind with propellers. The kind you couldn’t get me to fly in at gunpoint.

  “You fly?” I ask.

  He smiles. “As a passenger only. My son is the pilot in the family. There is a small airfield just outside of town.”

  I nod, having seen the airport on my drive to Findlay. “I’ve often thought about taking flying lessons,” I say truthfully. “The only problem is that I’m afraid of heights, machines, high speeds, parachutes, and dying.”

  “Then you’re probably not a great candidate for it,” he says.

  I nod but don’t say anything. It’s his turn to make small talk, and he obliges. “You’re far from home,” he observes.

  “I am,” I say. “But I take it you’re not?”

  “You take it correctly. I’ve lived here in Center City all my life. Except for the four years I spent at Dartmouth and the three at Harvard Law.”

  It took him only seven sentences to get in the fact that he went to Harvard Law. That’s pretty quick. I decide it wouldn’t be productive to ask him if the spinning wheel made him pick Harvard over Yale. But what the hell is a Harvard Law grad doing here? “What is a Harvard Law grad doing here?” I ask, leaving out the “hell” in deference to his religion.

  “Mr. Carpenter, my belief is that we are sitting on the most blessed ground on our planet. Why would I rather be somewhere else?” He says this in a tone so smug it’s as if he expects me to say, “Yes, Your Eminence.”

  “Is there anyone in this town who is not a member of the Centurion religion?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Would anyone else be welcome?”

  “No, they would not. Mr. Carpent
er, are you writing a dissertation on my religion, or are you here to promote the interests of your client?”

  “Sorry, I’m just a curious guy. Did you know the victims?”

  He smiles. “Certainly. I know everyone in this town. This is a very friendly community.”

  “With no crime,” I point out.

  “Virtually none.”

  “How would you suggest I get all these friendly people in this friendly community to talk to me?”

  “I would doubt that they would want to,” he says. “Everyone loved Elizabeth and Sheryl very much.”

  “Many of them talked to the police,” I point out.

  He nods. “I’m sure it was with some reluctance. We like to keep to ourselves, but we recognize our obligations to follow the laws of the imperfect nation that contains us.”

  “But if you suggested that they talk to me… in the pursuit of justice for the victims…”

  “I’ll inform the families of your interest. That’s all.”

  This guy is bugging me, and not because he is evasive and uncooperative. It’s because he seems to consider me of no consequence. This is particularly annoying, since when I die, I want my headstone to read, “Here lies Andy Carpenter. He was of considerable consequence.”

  “Look, I have no interest in causing problems for you or your community,” I say, “but as I’m sure they mentioned at Harvard, I must vigorously defend my client by all legal means available to me.”

  He barely deigns to shrug, so I continue. “And within this town there is information about the victims that is relevant, one way or the other, to this case. I can’t just say, ‘Well, these are religious people, so I’ll leave them alone.’ ”

  “You are getting to a point?” he asks.

  “Yes. There is substantial national interest in this case. The media will descend on Findlay for this trial. If I tell them that the real truth is buried here, in Center City, your parishioners will spend all their time dodging TV cameras. There will be so many people here you’ll have casinos springing up.”

  “Mr. Carpenter, our people have been here for one hundred seventy-one years. Our society has remained pure and untouched, despite the efforts of many outsiders to pollute it. We are capable of handling threats far greater than yours, I assure you.”