Black Diamond Fall

by Joseph Olshan

  Tapping into an instinct deeper than thought, he bends down and lifts her up as all the living do with their dead. Her body is remarkably heavy and slack as it settles into his arms. He knows he probably won’t be able to carry her all the way back to the house, and yet he begins his own little cortege. He just wants her inside, where it’s warm. Her limp body somehow becomes the weight of her life. And before his complete and utter abandonment to grief, he comes to understand why there are death marches and why mourning is very much part of surviving.

  February 24; Carleton, Vermont; 19 degrees, overcast

  At 3 a.m. Charlie Taft is sitting opposite Kennedy and Jenkins at Carleton police headquarters. Taft grabs the paper cup of coffee brought to him and, drinking it like water, clears his throat. Kennedy says, “So you can’t pinpoint exactly when Elizabeth got to the pond herself but you say you arrived pretty much the same time.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your purpose in going back to the pond?” Jenkins asks.

  “I was going to”—Taft swallows—“talk to Luc. But then I saw him—Sam—walking away from the pond.”

  The statement would contradict Heather Finlayson’s assurance that she spoke to Sam Solomon at his house at 6:28 p.m. on the night of February eleventh. However, upon their return to the police station, Jenkins and Kennedy were given a report from Fairpoint Communications, the local telephone company, that Sam Solomon in fact, received a single call from Heather Finlayson’s landline number at 5:15 p.m. on the night of February eleventh. Jenkins and Kennedy have decided, for the moment, not to go back to Heather Finlayson and ask her to amend her testimony, the lie she may have told to protect her friend. They certainly cannot accuse Sam of lying since the phone record matches his original statement. Now, of course, the time frame does make it possible for him to have driven up to Carleton before heading to Logan Airport.

  “How clearly could you have seen Sam if it was so dark?” Jenkins says.

  “He had a flashlight. But the moon was out.” Taft looks up at the ceiling, squinting at it as though gauging something in the light fixture not quite identifiable to the other two.

  “Moon or not, you’d still have to be pretty close to him,” Kennedy points out.

  Now Taft stares at them. “At first I thought I was seeing Luc. Then when I got closer—”

  “How much closer?” Jenkins asks.

  “I don’t know, twenty-five yards away. But then I realized the person was shorter. And that it wasn’t Luc.”

  Jenkins is thinking to himself, We will have to examine a pair of Taft’s shoes. “What size shoe do you wear?” he asks.

  Pushing back in his chair, which scrapes loudly against the floor, Taft shows them the underside of one of his feet and says, “Ten and a half.”

  “You know,” Kennedy says, “there’s a whole wide world of men shorter and stockier than Luc Flanders. There is something called Craigslist, where shorter and stockier men put up ads.”

  The arrow hits its desired mark. Taft’s face flushes and he suddenly rants, “I know that happens on Craigslist. That’s how they met!”

  Kennedy replies, “And my point is he could have been meeting somebody else at the pond that night. And maybe it just didn’t work out. Or maybe that unknown person ended up having an altercation with him.”

  Taft almost says something but then clamps down.

  Jenkins nods to Kennedy, who says, “Our forensic computer guy just told us that there is a folder on your computer called ‘Luc.’ And in the folder are two passwords—which correspond to both of his email accounts.”

  Taft nods his head. “Yeah.”

  “You also hacked into Sam’s account. You read Luc’s emails to him and then deleted them after you read them.”

  Taft looks at them blankly.

  “Did you tamper with those emails?” Kennedy says.

  “Okay, yeah, I did.”

  “Why?” Kennedy asks.

  “Because it was gross.”

  “What was gross?”

  “I mean, come on, the guy was way old. Almost thirty years older.”

  “And it made you upset enough to commit computer fraud?”

  “Well, they broke it off so obviously they didn’t care that much. It made Luc miserable.”

  Jenkins and Kennedy look at one another.

  “When did you start hacking into their computers?” Kennedy persists.

  Taft runs his fingers through his hair and then rubs his scalp. “Around November.”

  “And after it ended between them in December, you made sure Sam Solomon never got Luc Flanders’s messages,” Kennedy says.

  Taft nods his head but doesn’t answer.

  “So why exactly did you go back to the pond?” Jenkins says. “On the night of February eleventh.”

  “Because I wanted to talk to Luc.”

  “About?”

  “To tell him that I deleted the emails.”

  Jenkins’ cellphone rings, and he digs into his pocket and harshly silences it.

  Kennedy continues, “So why didn’t you say what you had to say after the pickup hockey game?”

  “Because she showed up. At the time I took that as a . . . I don’t know, a sign.”

  “A sign?” Kennedy sounds dubious. “I have trouble believing that there was to be a sudden confession after months of snooping. Why that night in particular?”

  “Why not?” Taft says, surprising both Jenkins and Kennedy with what seems to be a momentary gush of sincerity.

  Jenkins picks up. “Okay, so you say you saw Sam Solomon walking away from the pond. Do you have any idea of what time that was?”

  “Like I said before, somewhere around six thirty.”

  “And what did you tell Elizabeth?”

  “Nothing then. Later on, after Luc disappeared, I told her I thought I saw Sam.”

  “So she’ll corroborate this . . . telling,” Kennedy says.

  “She will,” Taft says.

  Jenkins nods to Kennedy, who now says, “So you’ve driven down to Woodstock a few times?”

  Taft looks at them both questioningly.

  Kennedy says, “On the floorboard of your car, McKinnon found a receipt from the local Sunoco station in Woodstock. Your family lives in Newport, in the Northeast Kingdom. Even a flatlander like myself knows that Woodstock is not exactly on your route home.”

  With a gloomy expression, Taft looks down at the table. “Yeah, I went down there.”

  “To spy on them,” Kennedy says.

  He looks up at her. “I’m not that fucking desperate.”

  “So why then?”

  “I just wanted to see where Luc was going all those weekends and coming back so fucking happy.”

  “I thought you said he was miserable,” says Kennedy.

  “Later he was. In December he was happy.”

  Jenkins asks, “How many times did you drive down to Woodstock?”

  Taft holds up two hooked fingers. “Twice last fall.”

  “And did you drive down there recently?”

  Taft leans forward and shakes his head miserably.

  Kennedy nods to Jenkins, who says, “A woman who works for Sam happened to see your friends, the twins’ Jeep parked down the street from his house.”

  Taft looks up now, first at one detective and then the other.

  Kennedy says, “Do you want to tell us why you drove to Mark and Howard Newcombe’s house and borrowed their Jeep?”

  Taft exhales forcefully. “I didn’t drive to their house to borrow their car. They live a mile from the Route 12 turnoff. My car kept stalling out. On bad gas. I didn’t think I’d make it, so I just stopped at their place and asked to borrow theirs.”

  “Hell bent to get to South Woodstock,” Kennedy intones.

  “Did the Newcomb
e twins know where you were going when you borrowed their car?” Jenkins asks.

  “No.”

  “You didn’t tell them where you were going?” Kennedy asks.

  “No.”

  “So they just let you borrow it?” Jenkins says.

  “They like me. They like hanging with college kids and giving them workout advice.”

  Jenkins says, “So you borrowed the Newcombes’ car. Drove to Sam Solomon’s, stole his car, and then drove to the house of his dog-sitter. And waited. Why?”

  “Because she helped get him off. Because I knew exactly where he was at 6:28 p.m. on February eleventh.”

  “But why did you steal Sam’s car?”

  “Why did you let him off because of what a fucking dog-sitter says?” Taft fumes.

  “You thought that if you ran her off the road with Sam Solomon’s car, she would change her story and take back what she said,” Kennedy says, incredulous.

  “Would have done it with my own car if I’d had it.”

  “Oh, so you didn’t want to bring any heat on your drug dealer friends.”

  “Right.”

  “Their car was still spotted,” Jenkins says.

  “Got to say, your thinking here makes no sense,” Kennedy says.

  Taft shrugs. “It is what it is. I don’t care anymore.”

  “So let’s get back to the Newcombes,” Jenkins says. “They met you in Carleton the night Luc went missing.”

  “Right.”

  “You went to them directly from going back to the pond?” Kennedy says.

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you meet them?”

  “Just a bit south on Route 7.”

  “More specifically?”

  “There’s a pullover spot.”

  “What if we told you that somebody spotted their camo Jeep driving on the road Luc took after he left the pond.”

  Taft goes still and then shakes his head resolutely. “Look, I borrowed their car. I met up with them. But they have no connection to the rest of this.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Kennedy asks.

  “Because I told you that I saw him—Sam—leaving the pond.”

  “But you’re not completely positive you saw him,” Jenkins says.

  “Okay, then I saw somebody who looked just like him.”

  “Then all the more reason to have reported it earlier,” Kennedy says. “The fact that you never told us you went back to the pond undermines your credibility.”

  Taft doesn’t respond. Kennedy nods to Jenkins, who says, “Did you drive down to Sam Solomon’s house last night?”

  Taft hesitates.

  “Did you drive—in your own car—down to Sam Solomon’s house last night?” Kennedy repeats.

  Taft looks at each of them with bewilderment before saying, “Yes.”

  “Did you go inside his house?” Jenkins asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Taft flares up. “To tell him that I was on to him. That I knew he was there. At the pond.”

  “But you didn’t tell him?”

  “I waited two hours for him, and then I just couldn’t stand being there anymore.”

  Jenkins says, “And the gun we found in your car. What were you going to do with that gun?”

  “Because if he killed Luc, maybe he’d try and kill me, too.”

  Both detectives let this statement settle into the charged atmosphere of the room. Then, after several beats of silence, Kennedy says, “Look at me right here.” She points to both of her eyes with her middle and index fingers. “Did you put his dog outside?”

  Taft looks bewildered. “No. Why?”

  “Did you see the dog?” Jenkins asks.

  “Of course I saw the dog.”

  “You’ve seen the dog before,” Kennedy says.

  “Yes.”

  “When you drove up in the Jeep and stole Sam’s car.”

  Taft nods.

  “She didn’t bark at you, then. Why is that?”

  “Because I gave her meat treats.”

  “And yesterday?”

  “She barked at me, she was playful and then she ran away in the house. I didn’t see her after that.”

  Jenkins says quietly, “Sam Solomon came home and found her dead.”

  Both are watching Taft. “What do you mean?” he says, looking appalled.

  Kennedy says, “He found his dog outside. Dead.”

  “Somebody killed her?”

  “We think you killed her,” Kennedy says.

  “You think I shot her?”

  “No, we think you left her outside, where she froze to death,” Jenkins says.

  Taft is distraught. “Look, I did stuff, okay? I creeped into Luc’s computer. I went into his boyfriend’s house. I looked for shit. ’Cause I fucking hate that guy. But I didn’t do anything to his dog. I swear to God!” he screams. Tears are flooding Taft’s eyes. “I would never do something like that. I love animals. I grew up with dogs like her. I love mutts.” He breaks down completely and they allow him a minute to collect himself.

  “You think maybe you didn’t close the door properly?” Kennedy says with a bit more sympathy.

  Taft covers his eyes with his hands. “I closed it,” he agonizes. “But I don’t know for sure.”

  They watch Taft carefully, and his reaction, his claim of innocence regarding Sam’s dog, strikes Jenkins as credible. “The wind,” Kennedy says at last. “I suppose the wind could have opened it.”

  They wait until Taft has somewhat recovered from the news of Sam’s dog. Then Jenkins resumes, “If Sam had come home, what exactly did you plan on saying to him?”

  There is no trace of anger left on Taft’s face, just misery and hopelessness. He’s barely able to articulate, “To tell him I know he did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Murdered Luc.”

  Both detectives stare at Taft and say no more.

  “I don’t understand why you’re just letting him off!” Taft cries out at last. “I don’t understand, why you aren’t questioning him again?”

  “Well,” Jenkins says. “If what you say is true, we will be questioning him again.”

  February 24; Route 89 South from Carleton to Woodstock, Vermont; 21 degrees

  “We’d like to come and see you,” Jenkins tells Sam. “Detective Kennedy and I. Can you make yourself available?” There is a dire yet flat tone to Jenkins’s voice, and Sam, in the midst of studying the depths and dimensions of a sunroom in a set of mechanical drawings of a house he is redesigning, watches the indigo lines of his carefully written specifications blur before his eyes. He manages to ask when and Jenkins says, “We’re ready to drive down there right now if that can work for you.”

  There is a stunned pause. “Did you find Luc?”

  “We have not found him.”

  “Then can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “We’ll be there soon, in an hour or so.”

  “Can’t this be done now, on the phone?”

  There is a strange lull before Jenkins replies, “I’d rather meet face-to-face.”

  “Okay,” Sam says reluctantly. “I’m here.”

  Looking ahead of them on Route 89 through the sheets of freezing rain that strike the windshield with a hollow popping sound, Jenkins says, “It’s well below freezing. I don’t understand, why aren’t we getting snow?”

  “Inversion layer,” Kennedy remarks. “Happens more often now because of global warming. The guy who plows my driveway said fifteen years ago, they sanded driveways maybe once or twice a winter for ice. Now they’re up to seven or eight times.”

  “And yet we still get plenty of below zero weather?”

  “I think the flip side of global warming is polar vor
tex,” Kennedy says.

  Jenkins snorts.

  A small green Mazda Miata convertible that passes their unmarked car on the left momentarily diverts their attention. The top is down and they can clearly see the driver is a youngish guy, probably in his twenties. His longish hair is flapping in the freezing wind. He seems impervious to the weather.

  “What the hell,” Kennedy says. “It’s twenty-one degrees. Why is he driving with the top down? Did he just get out of the mental ward?”

  Jenkins says, “Maybe he’s an athlete training for some cold weather event.”

  Kennedy says, “I think it’s reckless. I think that kind of thing should be illegal.”

  Jenkins says, “We’ve got enough going on.”

  Kennedy flips her hand in a dismissive gesture.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever told you this. But the more time I spend in the state of Vermont, the more it reminds me of when I lived in California,” Jenkins says.

  “How so?”

  “Higher volume of wingnuts in Vermont than I ever thought.”

  A few moments elapse and then Kennedy says, “Yeah, wingnuts.” Jenkins can feel her eyes carefully surveying him. “So where are you now, Nick?”

  “Where am I now? Sam never got those emails is where I am right now.”

  February 24; South Woodstock, Carleton, Vermont; sun and clouds, unseasonably warm, 43 degrees

  “You can’t accuse me of lying to you,” Sam says quietly to Jenkins. “I told you when you first questioned me that Heather called me around five fifteen. I never tried to make it seem that I couldn’t get up to Carleton.” Panda’s strange, inexplicable death is weighing heavily on him, and he’s just plain weary of worrying. For the moment he feels curiously detached from it all.

  “But why did she lie on your behalf?” Kennedy says.

  “Why? I think she really believes she called me right before the evening news.”

  Kennedy says, “Have you known her to have . . . cognitive problems remembering?”

  “Not at all. She always seems to be pretty on top of everything. I mean, just the fact that she thought to call me because she was afraid I hadn’t brought enough food for . . . my dog,” he says, struck by a pang of desolation.