Chapter Sixteen
The Hilton Garden Inn in Ashland, Ohio, housed a nicer bar than Jonathan had expected. A little brighter than he liked, and a little more plastic, the back wall displayed high-end liquors, and the chairs were reasonably comfortable. He preferred seats with backs like these over the traditional bar stools. Too many years of hard landings and parachute jumps. That shit comes back to haunt you way younger than you think it’s going to.
He’d been here for nearly ten minutes, having been alerted by Boxers that Detective Hastings was on her way back to the hotel. Big Guy displaced too much air to attend the kind of meeting that lay ahead, but he was the perfect choice for keeping eyes on Pam Hastings while she toured the house on Wells Road.
The phone call had been short and sweet even by Boxers’ standards.
“Okay, Boss, she’s on the road to the hotel. She’s kinda hot, but keep it in your pants. Uncle Box does not want to have to pull you out of a jail cell. I’m gonna go and try to get laid. Wish me luck.” He hung up. Jonathan worried about his friend’s proclivities toward one-nighters, but lo these many years had demonstrated that it made no sense to try and talk him out of the things he liked to do.
Jonathan took a position at the angle of the bar where he could nurse his martini while keeping an eye on the propped-open etched glass doors. After a half hour and a bowlful of bar snacks, he began to wonder if Venice’s research might have been wrong. For sure, it was time to order another drink, this time with a tall glass of club soda on the side. He was easily good for three martinis, but not without some sacrifice in agility. He needed to pace himself in case the evening stretched longer than he was expecting.
The second drink touched down on his cardboard coaster at the same moment when Detective Pamela Hastings arrived at the doors. She’d clearly changed clothes—unless LEOs these days wore jeans and T-shirts on duty—and she’d clearly showered—unless it was raining in the elevator. Her hair wasn’t wet, exactly, but another minute or two under the hair dryer would not have been wasted. Back in the day, Jonathan’s now-deceased ex-wife, Ellen, had told him that when women traveling on business visited hotel bars on business travel, they did everything they could to make themselves look unattractive in order to keep horny dudes from hitting on them. Jonathan had countered that dudes on travel could get horny enough that looks no longer mattered.
In Detective Hastings’s case, on this particular night, it seemed clear that she wanted alone time. She chose a seat on the distant corner of the bar, as far away from Jonathan as possible.
He offered up a silent apology to Venice for ever having doubted her. As if to drive the point home, Hastings ordered a Stoli vodka and tonic, exactly as Venice had predicted she would.
Jonathan made eye contact and toasted hello. She returned the gesture with a thin-lipped grimace then made a show of stirring her drink. Jonathan gave her two minutes of peace before making his move.
He slid off of his stool and walked the length of the bar to man the corner perpendicular to Pam’s.
“Oh, please, no,” she said with the concomitant eye roll.
“Excuse me?” Jonathan said. The goal of this meeting was to knock her off balance, so he might as well start now.
Pam hitched her shoulders once, relaxed them, then gave Jonathan a condescending glare that he imagined was well practiced. “Look,” she said. “Yes, you’re a good-looking guy, but nowhere near as good-looking as you think you are. Major brawn is not my type. I don’t care how lonely you are, and there is no part of your body that I wish to see unclothed. I’ve had a very long day, and what I’d like more than anything else is to be left alone.”
Jonathan smiled. It was his charming smile, he’d been told, the one that Venice said made his super-blue eyes look even bluer. And he said nothing.
Silence unnerved most cops when they were not manipulating it. “What.” She uttered the word as a statement of exasperation, not a question.
“I’m just marveling at the eloquence of that speech, Detective Hastings,” Jonathan said, smile still affixed. “Did you rehearse it, or was it spontaneous?”
He’d intended to startle her, and clearly he’d succeeded. “Do we know each other?”
Jonathan pulled on his drink to buy a few more seconds of silence. “I can’t say that we’ve met, but I certainly know a great deal about you.”
Her mind spun behind her eyes, but she continued to show a good poker face. “And who are you?”
“Call me Smith,” Jonathan said. “Or Jones, if you’d prefer.”
Pam blanched, but just a little—barely enough to demonstrate that Jonathan had scored a point. “If you’re from some law enforcement agency, let me see some ID.”
Jonathan changed his smile to something ugly—at once condescending and smug. Pam needed to accept that he was in charge. The flow of information would be entirely one-way.
“I don’t have time for this,” Pam said, and she pushed away from the bar.
“You went to King’s Park Elementary School,” Jonathan said. “And then on to Lake Braddock Secondary School for grades seven through twelve. Your father had a debilitating stroke when you were seventeen, so you had to abandon your plans to study English literature at NC State and you settled instead for Northern Virginia Community College. That’s where you were bitten by the bug for criminal justice. Shall I go on?”
His recitation of Venice’s research seemed to stun the detective, paralyze her. The poker face had morphed into a gaping stare.
“We really do need to talk,” Jonathan said. “There will be no flashing of credentials because my identity is irrelevant. That’s why Smith or Jones will work equally well. I assure you, however, that I am a good guy, not bad guy, and I have no intention of showing you any unclothed body parts.”
Pam blushed through obvious confusion. “Who are the bad guys?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Jonathan replied. He was in large measure playing a bluff here. He needed to know what she knew, and this seemed like the shortest pathway to the goal. “I need to know what you know about the killings on Wells Road.”
“Why don’t you ask the Ashland Police Department?”
Jonathan needed to play this part carefully. It was the major hole in his bluff. “Because I’m speaking with you,” he said.
“Why me instead of the original investigators?”
“Because the Ashland case is only a small part of what I’m interested in.”
Pam’s gaze bored into him. “What’s the other part?”
“I think you know,” Jonathan said. “It’s about a fellow you know as John Doe. And a young man you know as Ethan Falk.” He forced a chuckle as a response to what he saw in her face. “If I knew everything about your past, why on earth would you think I wouldn’t know about Ethan?”
“What is your involvement in any of this?” Pam asked.
Jonathan took another sip of martini. He let the question hang for dramatic effect, and then he leaned in closer. “My involvement is inconsequential,” he said. “But the facts of the two cases you’re looking at are of huge consequence. I come here tonight to make you a deal.”
Pam made a quick waving motion. “Oh, no. I don’t have any authority to make deals with unnamed government agencies. And not knowing if you are even telling the truth, I’m not inclined to continue this conversation.” She gathered her things and started for the door again.
“Act in haste,” Jonathan said, “and repent in leisure.” He said it loudly enough to be heard, but he didn’t look at her as he said it. The charade was all about him having something that Pam needed. To pull it off, he couldn’t look anxious. In the polished brass of the beer tap, he saw a contorted image of the detective paused in the doorway. She stayed there long enough to make Jonathan wonder if he’d misplayed his hand.
Then the image moved, and a shadow arrived at his shoulder. “What deal?” she asked.
Jonathan spun away from her on his stool, and pointed to an uno
ccupied booth in the far corner of the bar. “Let’s talk over there,” he said. “It’s a little more private.” He grabbed his drink and led the way, not bothering to look back. When he arrived at the table and turned, there she was. He slid into one of the under-padded bench seats and indicated that she should take the other. “Want another drink?” he asked.
Pam still had not committed to sitting down. “What deal?” she said again.
“We’ll talk when you’re seated,” Jonathan said. “Really, there’s no need to be concerned about me. Besides, you’re a cop, and that means you’re armed. If I get out of line, you can always shoot me.” He fired off his charming smile again.
Pam looked over her shoulder and appeared to scan the bar. For what, Jonathan wasn’t sure, but he appreciated her situational awareness. Finally, she sat on the bench opposite him. She didn’t commit to it, though, staying on the very end on the bench, her right arm still in the aisle. Jonathan interpreted the posture as a way to guarantee free access to her firearm. “No more games,” she said.
“Life and death is never a game,” Jonathan said. “The deal is this: I answer a question for you, and you answer a question for me. We’ll go back and forth until one of us refuses to answer. The only topic off the table is anything having to do with who I am or where I work. Are you in?”
Pam took her time. “How will I know if you’re telling the truth?”
Jonathan shrugged. “I could ask the same of you. There are no guarantees, but at least it’s a place to start.”
Pam’s glare intensified as she read his face. Jonathan knew she would get nothing. He’d practiced the nothing look for many years. “Okay,” she said, “I’ve got a question for you.”
Jonathan held up his hand. “I go first,” he said. “And you have my word that I will answer your first question, so long as it is within the parameters I laid out.”
She clearly didn’t like it.
“My deal, my rules,” Jonathan said. “Or we can pretend that we never met.”
A sigh. “Okay, go.”
“Ethan Falk has told quite a story. You followed the elements of that story all the way to Ashland, Ohio. Does that mean that you believe him?”
“Should I?”
“A question is not an answer,” Jonathan said. “And I wouldn’t waste your first question on one like that. Do you believe Ethan Falk’s story?”
Again, Pam took her time answering. “There are elements that ring true, and there are elements that strain credulity.”
Jonathan waited for more.
“On balance, I believe him more than I don’t. But events that happened over a decade ago do not justify murdering a man in cold blood.”
“Under the circumstances, how cold could that blood really be?” Jonathan asked.
“That’s a second question,” Pam said. “It’s my turn. Do you know the true identity of our John Doe?”
Jonathan started to answer, but she held up her hand, as if to stop traffic at an intersection.
“No, let me ask it differently,” she said. “What is the true identity of our John Doe?”
Jonathan smiled. To ask a yes or no question is to invite a single syllable answer. “Nice catch,” he said. “His real name is James Stepahin, and he was everything that Ethan Falk purports him to be. What have you been able to find out about him so far? That’s my next question.”
“Absolutely nothing,” Pam said. “How do you know his real identity?”
Jonathan patted the table lightly with both hands. “And there you have it,” he said. “The end of the game. That’s the question I won’t answer.” He stood without offering his hand. “Good night, Detective Hastings,” he said.
Chapter Seventeen
Braddock County Police Chief Warren Michaels looked up as Lieutenant Jed Hackner approached his door and knocked.
“Excuse me, Chief,” Hackner said. “Have you got a minute?”
From the way Jed asked the question, Warren was inclined to say no. First of all, he and Jed had known each other since they were kids, and the only time he used the honorific instead of his first name was when the officialness of the official business was grim. Second, Warren could see past Jed’s shoulder, where German Culligan and Wendy Adams both looked pretty spun up.
“Am I in trouble?” Warren asked.
“It’s about the Falk kid,” Jed said. “They want to do something that only you can approve.”
“Am I going to want to approve it?”
“I think you should hear what they have to say.”
“Do they know that I’m busy and cranky?”
“It’s a day with a y in it, isn’t it?”
“And they’ve already spoken with you?”
“At length.”
“And what do you want to do with whatever they’re asking?”
“I want to send them to you so you can make the decision.”
Warren’s expression triggered a smile from his old friend. “Send them in.”
Over the course of his nearly thirty-year career with the Braddock County Police Department, Warren had worked hard to build cordial relationships between the many players in the judicial process. Unlike far too many of his counterparts in other cities and counties, he did not see defense attorneys as the enemy, but rather as the necessary counterbalance that forced his police officers to do their job to the best of their ability. Guilt or innocence notwithstanding, if his troops screwed up an investigation, the accused went free. And that sense of fairness was a counterbalance to the political ambitions of the Commonwealth’s attorney, J. Daniel Petrelli, a fifth-degree asshole by any measure of the word.
Warren had learned the hard way nearly two decades before about the fallibility of incontrovertible evidence when a twelve-year-old boy named Nathan Bailey was without question a murderer. Only by forcing himself to look at the evidence from a different angle did Warren see the error of the obvious, and in the process of doing that, he’d saved the boy’s life. Now that boy was a thirty-year-old patrolman for the BCPD and Warren called him his son.
German P. Culligan, attorney at law, was to Warren’s mind one of the best in the business. He pressed hard, fought harder, and somehow managed to fight fair. Warren knew that German had contacts within the department who leaked him information, but he didn’t care. That was one more way to counteract Petrelli’s exuberance for his job of prosecuting the innocent as well as the guilty.
As for Dr. Wendy Adams, the jury was still out for Warren. He respected the job she had to do, and the zeal with which she did it, but when all was said and done, Warren didn’t have a lot of faith in the art of psychology. There was no way he could think of it as a science. An admitted curmudgeon, Warren had little tolerance for insanity defenses or for so-called hate crimes for that matter. No one murders someone they like, after all, and the fact that the decedent was “hated” or not had no effect on his status as a corpse. As for insanity, he’d noted over the years that that defense was usually trotted out as a last resort, and at that, only for the most heinous crimes.
Culligan crossed the threshold first and Warren stepped out from around his desk to greet him. “Nice to see you, Counselor,” he said as he shook the man’s hand. “And Dr. Adams, to what do I owe the pleasure?” He gestured to the oval conference table near the window. The police department offices today were a hell of a lot more opulent than they were in Warren’s early years.
“Are you aware of what happened to Ethan Falk in jail last night?” Culligan said.
Warren looked to Jed.
“He was beaten pretty badly,” Jed said.
“What does pretty badly mean?” Warren asked.
Wendy said, “It means two broken teeth, an eye swollen shut, and nearly broken ribs.”
“Have you brought it up with the ADC bosses?” Warren asked, referencing the Adult Detention Center.
“They didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” Wendy said.
Culligan added, “We talked
to the lunkhead who runs the place and he washed his hands of it. He said, ‘Well, it is jail,’ and then brushed it off.”
Warren cut his eyes to Jed again. “Doesn’t he have a point? You put violent people together and violence is likely to happen.”
“How could you of all people say that?” Wendy snapped. She appeared totally aghast.
“Excuse me?”
“Your own experience with Nathan Bailey.”
Warren bristled. “That was a juvenile detention center, and he was twelve years old. And, frankly, that’s not a topic I intend to discuss.”
“There are similarities,” Culligan said. “Falk does not have the skills to cope with jail.”
Again to Jed: “Isn’t he charged with murder?”
“Yep.”
“Admitted to it, right?”
Jed nodded. “And we have about twenty witnesses to the event.”
“Well, come on, Counselor,” Warren said. “Actions have consequences, you know? One of the downsides of killing people is that you have to learn to get along with other killers.”
Wendy started to speak, but Warren interrupted.
“Why are you even here? I don’t run the ADC. Go beat up on Sheriff Wallingford.” To Jed: “Why are they even here?”
“We want to move him out of the ADC and into one of your holding cells,” Wendy said.
Never a very patient man, Warren felt himself slipping toward anger. “They call them holding cells for a reason. The people in them are just a-passin’ through. On their way to the Adult Detention Center.”
“This is not without precedent,” Culligan said. “Alejandro Garcia.”
“That’s not a precedent,” Warren said. “He was a protected witness who would have been whacked in thirteen seconds if people knew where he was.”
Wendy started to speak again, and this time it was Culligan who silenced her, with a gentle touch on her arm. He softened his tone. “The precedent lies in the fact of long-term incarceration outside the ADC.”
“It was not long-term,” Warren objected. “What? Maybe three weeks?” When this meeting was over, he intended to have a discussion with Jed. Some decisions were easy. This should have been one of them.
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