I pulled out, but was blocked by a student in a car much fancier than mine, who was blasting rap music and talking on his cell phone. His bumper sticker read, “Mean People Suck.”
Unable to go forward, I tried to back up, but had parked in too tight a space to make it feasible. Meanwhile, just as Mahoney had feared, the Mole got him to cross the street onto Somerset, committing Mahoney to that direction, and then doubled back on foot toward the rental car he had driven here.
I pulled back into my space while the traffic jam, apparently caused by Mean People Man making a left turn off Easton behind the rental, made it impossible for me to go forward in the car. I leapt out of the car and headed on foot toward Mr. Sweets.
Too late. The Mole had already made it to his rental car and driven down Easton toward St. Peter’s Hospital. Mahoney couldn’t back up and I couldn’t go forward. We had been outpaced.
I stood in the street for a while, watching, until Mahoney managed to complete a trip around the block and pull up in the van. He lowered the driver’s side window and looked at me.
“I don’t really think this plan is going to be all that famous,” he said.
“Don’t be so sure,” I told him. “They’re still studying Napoleon at Waterloo.”
Chapter Eleven
A Star-Ledger assignment had come in on Friday, so I made a couple of phone calls after getting back from the Great Mole Chase Monday morning. Abby was at her office three days before Christmas, since there was no reason for us to care about the holiday. Everyone else was in the house with me, a perfect environment in which to make business phone calls.
After I had made the Star-Ledger calls (nobody’s ever there the first time you call them), I decided to look into a couple of things regarding the Justin Fowler story because freelancers are always on the lookout for ways to prolong the agony.
First, I called Justin’s lawyer, who worked for the public defender in Middlesex County, and had a caseload approximating the number of bricks in the Empire State Building. J. Bernard Tyson, who was covering up a first name somehow worse than “Bernard,” was, counter to stereotype, not fresh out of law school and idealistic. In fact, he was in his early fifties, and seemed to have eaten a breakfast consisting of sour grapes, rotten eggs, and crow.
“The kid’s crazy, and he should plead crazy,” he said as soon as he dug Justin’s folder out of his files and reminded himself who Justin Fowler was to begin with. “I could knock him down to a charge where he wouldn’t even realize he’d done jail time. Kid with a disease like that, the prosecutor doesn’t want to put him in front of a jury.”
“But what if Justin didn’t do it?” I asked after downing a mouthful of Maalox.
A pause. “What do you mean, he didn’t do it?” Tyson said. “The kid said he did it. He confessed, for criminy’s sake. Of course he did it.”
I watched as Ethan and Dylan, sitting side-by-side on the sofa, fought over the remote control to the television. Howard, seated not five feet away in the armchair, read the New Yorker, and seemed not to notice. “Where’d he get the gun?” I asked. “There’s no record of him buying and registering a gun, and a weapon like that you don’t just pick up at a Wal-Mart.”
“There’s gun shows all over the place,” Tyson said. “The kid is obsessed with guns. He could go to a gun show.”
“There are no gun shows in New Jersey—they’re illegal,” I countered. “Justin doesn’t even have a driver’s license. How’d he get to a gun show in another state?”
“You never heard of the bus?”
This was New Jersey, and I knew people who didn’t go to the bathroom unless they could drive there. But I let that comment go. I hit the “mute” button on the phone, yelled, “PUT DOWN THE REMOTE!” and hit the “mute” button again. “Why’d he do it?” I asked Tyson. “Why did Justin kill Michael Huston, a man he’d never met before in his life, and had no argument with?”
“I just told you, the kid’s crazy,” he droned. “Had a new gun, and needed to test it out.”
“But you know how serious Justin is about guns,” I said. “He’d know what kind of damage he could do, and he’d also have a method of testing out the gun without firing it at a living human being. Why not fire it at a firing range? Shoot into a barrel filled with Styrofoam? If he’s going to shoot something, why not a squirrel or a rat? Why kill Michael Huston?”
“Crazy’s crazy,” Tyson said. “I could have a team of psychiatrists on the stand testify, but it won’t go to trial. The prosecutor doesn’t want to go after a crazy kid.”
“He’s NOT CRAZY!” I screamed into the phone as Howard looked instinctively at Ethan, and Dylan stifled a chuckle. “Justin Fowler has Asperger’s Syndrome—if anything, he’s autistic. It’s not a mental illness, just like what you have isn’t a mental illness!”
“What I have? What do I have?” Tyson asked.
“Stupidity!” I said, hanging up loudly.
Two pairs of eyes were staring at me from the living room. Ethan, of course, hadn’t noticed, and was busy taking the remote control and changing the channel to Dexter’s Laboratory.
I said something on the order of “heh, heh, heh,” and picked up the phone again. The best defense is complete denial that anything happened.
Working on something that had been itching at me for a few days, I checked with James Earl Jones (he supplies the 411 welcome voice for Verizon) and got the number of the administration offices of the University of Indiana. Worming my way through the layers of bureaucracy, I managed to find the Registrar’s office after being kept on hold only twice. After being transferred to my second registrar, I asked about the records of one Kevin Fowler, a junior whose major I did not know. There were the inevitable clicks of a computer keyboard in the background as my current best buddy checked on his computer.
“You’re sure about the spelling?” he asked after a moment.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said, and spelled it again.
“And he’s a junior?”
Seeing as how this was the grand total of my information on the subject, I worried that the next question would make me seem foolish. “Yes,” I answered. “I’m sure he’s a junior.”
There was a long pause this time, and more clacking, then silence. Finally, the registrar du jour returned to the phone.
“There’s no one by that name enrolled here in any class,” he said. “Never has been.”
Chapter Twelve
After checking with Indiana State University, University of Southern Indiana, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (huh?), and Purdue University-Indianapolis, I determined that Kevin Fowler, despite his obvious academic gifts, was not enrolled in a college whose name included the state of Indiana. This was not, I should note, a major shock to me, but it did necessitate some further investigation. I called Rodriguez, but he wasn’t in.
Desperate to get the heck out of my house and distance myself from my houseguests, I walked to Police Headquarters and asked Marsha if Barry Dutton was in. Being chief of police requires one to be in Police Headquarters more often than most citizens, so I found Chief Dutton behind his desk, which I pointed out to him was not as grand as the one behind which Chief Leslie Baker of the North Brunswick Police Department was currently sitting.
“I know,” Barry nodded. “But this is so much more homey.”
“I need some police-type thinking,” I said.
“Any type of thinking will be an improvement.”
“Geez, wake up on the wrong side of the paddywagon this morning, Barry?”
The chief nodded his head slightly and frowned a little. “Westbrook dumped his girlfriend, and he’s making my existence a living hell,” he said.
I sat still, shocked to my tiny core. “Westbrook dumped his girlfriend? You sure you didn’t get that backwards?”
With great glumness, my friend shook his head. “No, he ended the relationship himself. Felt he could do better.”
“Maybe we should chip in and buy the man a
mirror. What brought this on?”
Barry leaned back in his chair and locked his fingers behind his head. “She got a new job.”
“You’re speaking in riddles today, oh Police Oracle.”
“I wish I were. The woman wanted to be a hairdresser, and a job opened up in a salon on Edison Avenue.”
“So?” This was more perplexing than the Huston murder, and had considerably more potential for me to make fun of Westbrook, so I was paying a good deal of attention.
“So, Cyndi wasn’t working at the All-You-Can-Eat anymore, and Westbrook figured he didn’t need a restyling, but he was missing out on the free eats. So he dumped her.” Barry was having trouble hiding the grin now.
“You’re lying to me. Here’s a guy with the personality of gravel and the looks of a Macy’s parade float, and he’s dumping an actual live woman . . . She is alive, right?”
“Far as I know. I don’t think they’re hiring dead haircutters on Edison Avenue.”
“He’s dumping an actual live woman because he no longer saves $7.95 when he goes to the Trough-eteria. Am I getting this right?”
“You’re a born detective, Aaron Tucker,” said Barry. “You’ve analyzed the situation flawlessly.”
I sat for a few moments and shook my head, staring at the diploma over Barry’s head. I never knew he went to Stanford. Oh yeah, colleges.
“Speaking of being a detective,” I began.
“Don’t let what I said go to your head,” Dutton interrupted. “I was being arch.”
“You could be an arch, if you could touch your fingers to the ground while you stood up. Nonetheless, I have a police question for you.”
“If I can’t answer, should I call a cop, or just make something up.”
“Make something up. There’s never a cop around when you need one.”
He grumbled a little, which would unnerve most mortals, but had no effect on me. If Barry ever hurt me, his wife, I’m pretty sure, would yell at him, and he hates that. And my wife wouldn’t be too thrilled, either.
“What exactly do you need to know, Citizen Tucker?”
“A guy says he’s a student at the University of Indiana. Phone records show he called his mother, who lives in North Brunswick, twice from Indiana the week Michael Huston was shot. But there’s one little thing—the University of Indiana has never heard of the guy. And I think he was in the area of New Jersey that week. Now, how is that possible?”
Barry, now the professional, sat back and thought. “He have a cell phone?”
“Yes, but it’s based here in Jersey. No record of a cell phone in Indiana.”
“An address in Indiana?”
“I haven’t been able to find one, but admittedly, I haven’t had time to look very hard.”
Barry sat up. “Ah-hah!” he said. “I have it.”
I cut him off. “He has a phone number set up in Indiana, possibly based in a friend’s house or a local business,” I said. “It doesn’t exist physically, but it bounces whatever calls he gets there to his number here in Jersey. He can also bounce his outgoing calls through that number to make it look like he’s calling from Indiana.”
Barry, looking deflated, stared at me. “How did you guess all that?” he asked.
“I tried doing it myself for a couple of years,” I told him. “Make it look like I was in the L.A. area in case producers wanted to meet. They don’t like to do business with people outside the Hollywood area.”
“Did it help?”
“Am I a successful screenwriter today?”
He stared at a spot above my head, clearly thinking about the murder case again. “Somebody’s going to an awful lot of trouble to make it look like he’s in Indiana,” Barry said. “Why would he do something like that?”
“I’m just guessing,” I said, “but I think it’s because he’s been here the whole time.”
“Who is this guy?” Barry asked.
“Kevin Fowler, the younger brother of the guy they’ve charged with the crime. I met him once, and got a bad vibe.”
“You’re basing this on a bad vibe?” Barry tried not to guffaw. If you’ve never seen a very large African-American man struggle not to guffaw, don’t feel deprived—it really doesn’t live up to the hype.
“No, I’m basing it on my understanding of Asperger’s Syndrome. Justin Fowler says he found the gun—after the murder—in a hiding place he and his brother used when they were kids. He’s lying about a few things, not the least of which is his confession that he killed Michael Huston. And the only person besides his mother for whom Justin would lie about these things has to be his brother, Kevin. It fits.”
Barry frowned. “Let me play devil’s advocate. Justin really did kill Huston, confessed to it, then got scared of spending the rest of his life in jail. So he started lying to protect his ass, and in the process, implicated his brother. It fits that way, too.”
“Explain the fake University of Indiana registration and the phone that rings through from Muncie.”
He pursed his lips, about to reply, then thought better. “Okay, I can’t,” he said. “But you don’t have enough yet. Why would Kevin Fowler want to kill Michael Huston?”
I probably pursed my lips, too. It was a lip-pursing contest, and I knew not how to judge it. “I have no idea,” I admitted. “But I can find out.”
On the way out of the building, I passed by Westbrook, who was back in his double-knit checkerboard suit, making him look like he was about to squirt water out of his carnation or put on big, floppy red shoes and climb out of a small car with thirty or forty of his closest friends. He grimaced at me as I went by, and I couldn’t resist.
“Hey, Gerry,” I said as I passed. “You’re looking a little shaggy. Think you could get yourself a free makeover anywhere in town?”
Luckily, Westbrook can’t run.
Chapter Thirteen
Dinner that night was the usual cornucopia of hilarity, with Howard and Andrea glaring openly at me, Dylan questioning everything Ethan did or said, Leah finally giving up and acting sullen like everyone else, Abby cooking until the last possible second and seemingly never sitting down, and Ethan . . . well, Ethan didn’t much notice, as soon as pasta was placed in front of him.
In a day and a half, I assured myself, the house would belong to its usual occupants. Even Warren seemed a little relieved. He occasionally picked his head up off the floor and looked at us, particularly while meat was being served to anyone anywhere near the table.
I was determined to see the better side of Abby’s family, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that without climbing under the table. Howard would clearly have been happier if his younger sister had married someone more like him, and Andrea didn’t actually exist on Planet Earth. She was in a place where talking about something and doing it were roughly the same thing, as if you could get pregnant by saying “let’s go to bed.” Which, come to think of it, might have been how she got pregnant to begin with.
Dylan, I had decided, was treated as a prince, but actually was the spawn of Satan, so calling him “Prince of Darkness” wasn’t necessarily that great a stretch. I realize it’s not nice to brand a 15-year-old boy, but then, as Shakespeare once noted, some people are just pains in the ass.
At the moment, he was trying to attack Ethan’s eating habits again. This is a particularly sore spot for Ethan, who knows his AS makes him “pickier” than most kids, but for whom venturing outside his accepted range of foods is a downright terrifying idea. He wants to be more like other people, but not if it entails actually changing the way he is. It’s a difficult concept, and not made any better by teasing.
“How come you’re eating spaghetti when the rest of us are having turkey?” Dylan did his best not to sneer, but failed. “Are you allergic or something?”
“No,” Ethan answered, his face reddening a bit.
“Well, then why?”
“It’s okay for Ethan to eat what he wants to eat, honey,” Andrea cooed to her son. “You
eat what the adults have.”
“I’m having turkey, too,” Leah noted, “and I’m not a grownup.”
Before any more scintillating banter, I decided to jump in and emphasize one of Ethan’s strengths. “So Ethan,” I said, “I found out about Kevin Fowler’s phone calls from Indiana.” I told him that Rodriguez had confirmed, through phone records, Kevin’s sham phone number in Muncie that rang through to his cell phone.
“So that means he didn’t have to be in Indiana when he called, but he could be anywhere, since his cell phone goes wherever he goes,” Ethan said.
“Very good,” I said. “That’s exactly what it means.”
“Big deal,” said Dylan. “I could have figured that out.”
I couldn’t help it. “Maybe you could have,” I said quietly. “But Ethan did.” Leah, of all people, snickered at that.
Andrea gave me a sharp look, as if to say that I shouldn’t trample on her precious child’s self-esteem, but somebody had to, since the kid had about seven pounds more self-esteem than he actually merited. I did not continue the line of conversation, however.
Ethan did. “Do you think Kevin killed Michael Huston?” he asked, with his mother’s cut-to-the-chase directness.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But I really don’t think Justin did, no matter what he says.”
Leah chirped up at exactly the right time. “Was there any blood on Justin’s clothes?” she asked. “If the guy who shot him was using that old gun you were talking about, he’d have to stand pretty close, right? So there’d be blood on his clothes, right?”
“Oh, really!” said Howard. “Is this the kind of conversation we want to have with our children at dinner?” Personally, I didn’t see why not, especially since I hadn’t considered Leah’s question before. But I didn’t say anything.
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