The Redemption Man

by James Carver

  Stein rang off and Lazard stood still for a moment, very still, cradling his cell phone. Then he spat out two words in a thick Bosnian accent, “Stein! Jebi se!”

  37

  “Walker and Miller.” The two names rolled around in Stevens’s head continually.

  Stevens’s eyes stung, and his body ached with fatigue. Extreme exhaustion was fueling paranoia, allowing Stevens to entertain theories that a more rested and settled state of mind would have been equipped to discount.

  He should have been at home getting some sleep. He shouldn’t have come straight from Long Pine to the police station. He should have been doing anything other than sitting in his office obsessively running through the events of the night before. He had started checking through police reports. He just had to know what Walker and Miller were doing up to the point of Earl’s death. He was consumed with finding some detail that would unlock a conspiracy between the two. So he’d started by going back over their movements for that day.

  Stevens sat at his PC scrolling through the H: drive, the shared drive which held all the departmental records. He checked back through Miller’s daily activity log for Wednesday’s day shift. The log stated that Miller had initially been on the road check with Officer Lincoln. Then it had him checked in with Chief Walker at Long Pine in Walker’s cruiser. So Walker must have personally pulled him off the road check, and that was unusual. The chief going all the way out to the road check to pick up a patrolman was pretty irregular, maybe even a sign of the conspiratorial behavior he was so desperate to find. Stevens’s mind began to race. His heart quickened as he allowed himself to entertain the possibility that he had found something significant. Something that could nail those two bastards. But even in his ragged and sleep-deprived state, he knew it wasn’t nearly enough.

  Stevens wanted to cross-check the daily activity log, so he went back to the squad car check sheet to confirm it. But as he flicked through documents in the folder for May, he noticed quite by chance that one log sheet wasn’t there. It was the shift log for the previous Friday night into Saturday morning, the 20:00 - 04:00 shift. That was strange. He looked through the previous couple of months, and all the other logs were present and correct. It was just that one shift. Maybe it was a mistake. Someone had deleted it by accident. So he decided to look through the other reports for that Friday-night shift. But as he scrolled through the H: drive clicking on the various different folders and subfolders, he realized that all the logs and reports for that shift had been deleted. That couldn’t be an accident. They had to have been deleted deliberately. Now Stevens had entirely forgotten about Miller and Walker. He had become hooked on a new mystery. He was on a completely different track.

  And then it hit him. A strike of lightning out of the blue that really shook him up. The missing logs were from last Friday’s night shift. The shift that coincided with the time of death of the Long Pine victim. His heart thumped hard now, and his tired eyes suddenly burned with urgency. Who was on shift that night? He opened the folder with the lineup reports. The lineup report had to be there. They were filed and saved thirty minutes before the start of each shift. Even if it had been deleted, a copy would have been sent to the emergency communications center. But the report was there, and there were four names: Miller, Gray, Lincoln, and Taylor.

  How could Stevens find out what these officers were doing on that night? As all the paperwork had been deleted, he decided the only way was to ask them. He sent separate emails to each of the four officers. The subject field read “Missing records for night shift. Friday 4th May.” He explained that the records hadn’t been saved on the drive and asked each of them to resubmit records for their daily activity and their cruisers on that shift. He could picture their reaction when they opened the email. Well, screw them. He’d haul each of them in individually if he had to.

  His discovery prompted the obvious question: Why would someone delete those particular files—the files of the night of the Long Pine murder? The answer to that question filled him with doubt. For seconds that seemed like minutes, Stevens entertained the appalling thought that Earl Logan might not be the tidy solution to the havoc that had been visited upon Halton Springs this past week. It was too terrible to contemplate, so he forced it to the back of his mind, out of his conscious thoughts to a place where it could only fester.

  There was a knock at the door. He looked up to see a thin woman in a checkered suit dress and round glasses standing in the doorway.

  “Deputy Stevens?”

  “Hi.”

  “I’m Catherine Goretzki, the information officer. We should really go through things for this afternoon’s press conference.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  She looked him over with a critical eye and asked, “Have you slept at all, Deputy?”

  “No. No, I haven’t. But I guess it’s too late now?”

  “Ah, yeah. I’m afraid It is. We have rather a lot to do. But this should be a breeze, Deputy. After all, you found and tracked down the man who brutally killed two people. Get through the press conference and people may be calling you a hero.”

  38

  Devlin had felt terrible when he’d woken up. He’d had an hour’s shut-eye at most and had a cricked neck and an aching head. Now, he was hungry as hell, and he must have smelled pretty bad too.

  So he lit up a cigar. Well, that was a kind of breakfast. The dry leaf crackled, and a ball of smoke fled into his lungs, sweeter than air.

  The Gypsy camp had slowly stirred into life. At first, one by one, a few individuals had emerged into the early-morning sun, and then, a little later, the greater part of the community had risen and started to go about their day. Young men and women were heading into town to work or look for work, and kids and toddlers were running around the trailers making their own fun. The people leaving the camp walked along the riverbank to steps that led up to the bridge and into town, so Devlin got a good chance to check out whoever left the site.

  Nearly half an hour passed during which Devlin scoped out the camp from his car. He figured he could pretty much see all of it from where he was parked. There were in the region of thirty trailers. Most were parked in two rows side on to Devlin on opposite sides of a strip of land, but a few at the top and bottom of the camp were parked end on to where he was sitting. There were cars and panel vans dotted around too. Devlin reckoned he had seen around fifty different individuals. So if every trailer housed on average three people, and this was clearly a guess, there should be, even by this conservative estimate, at least forty more people he hadn’t seen.

  Devlin smoked some more as he watched the camp. There wasn’t a lot going on. The morning spike in activity had died, and the camp had settled down. So he picked up and reread through the patient notes he’d found at Lazard’s.

  He got to the last two pages and noticed that there were two sets of identical tests that had been performed but with slightly different results. Devlin held the two pages up side by side and compared them carefully. Why would there be two sets of nearly identical results? What medical value would there be in that? Just based on Lazard’s reaction when Devlin had seen the folder, he felt sure that the notes must hold some special importance. But so far, Devlin couldn’t see what it was. He placed the notes back in the folder, dropped them back on the car seat, and resumed his surveillance.

  About an hour and a half and two more cigars had passed by the time Devlin became curious about one particular trailer. It was now eleven, he’d been parked in his car for four and a half hours, and he’d seen people come and go out of every trailer—every trailer but one. This trailer was smaller and older than the others and out on the edge of the camp. It had the name “Wilderness” stenciled on it and faded light brown stripes around the middle. He had seen signs of movement, drapes twitching and a window opening, so someone was definitely in there.

  Devlin got out of his car and walked toward the line of trees that divided him from the land the camp was on. He followed the trees
away from the river and turned into the field adjacent to the camp and separated by a wire fence. He walked the perimeter of the fence up to the corner where the Wilderness trailer was positioned. He took a look around and then scaled the fence as quickly and as efficiently as his tired body allowed. He hit the ground on the other side harder than he would have liked, but it was grass, so not too loud. Then he moved up to the side of the trailer facing away from the camp and edged closer to an open window. He could have just knocked on the door, but he felt sure he was dealing with a nervous animal that could get easily spooked. He put his hand through the open window, pulled back the curtain, and peered in but could only make out a TV on a kitchen worktop playing Dr. Phil. A figure entered the kitchen humming and still in his robe, but Devlin couldn’t risk a good look to make him out clearly. The guy in the dressing gown settled in a chair with his back to Devlin and started watching the TV.

  Devlin felt confident enough now to crane around the edge of the window and take a closer look. In the dark of the trailer, he could see past the back of the guy’s head and make out the TV screen. Dr. Phil was laying into some old guy about letting his thirteen-year-old daughter go off with a cult leader. In amongst the flailing arms and indignant posturing on the TV screen, Devlin could just about make out the reflected face of the occupier of the trailer. He strained farther in as the screen went to black for a commercial break, and Devlin finally saw the reflected features clearly enough to blurt out, “Ed?”

  The guy in the chair whipped around and saw Devlin, just as Devlin felt a sickening thud on the back of his head that rang through his body like a bell and put his lights well and truly out.

  When Devlin came to, he was slumped in the dinette area of the trailer and could dimly sense other figures standing around him. He immediately grabbed the back of his head where strokes of debilitating pain were emanating from. Then he heard a deep, reassuring voice say, “Here, take these,” and a pack of Tylenol Extra Strength was slid across the table toward him. Someone placed a glass of water in front of him, and Devlin fumbled open two pills from the pack and downed them in one. They could have been arsenic, but with the pounding head he had, it would only have been an improvement.

  “You’re out of practice, Gabe,” the voice said, and Devlin realized it was familiar. He rubbed his eyes and looked over at the person sitting on the opposite side of the dinette. The hair was grayer and the face heavier, but he recognized it, and it took a couple of seconds for Devlin to say the name.

  “George? George Brennan?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What in the name of God…?” Then Devlin looked to his right and saw a guy in a suit, a Fed maybe, standing by the door, most likely the one who had snuck up behind him and given him the mother of all headaches. And past George at the other end of the trailer stood a forlorn figure, stooped and defeated. It was Ed.

  “Hi, Gabe,” he said, looking a little ashamed.

  “Ed… Finally,” exclaimed Devlin. “Now will someone tell me just what the hell is going on?”

  39

  At fourteen hundred hours promptly, Stevens entered one of the meeting rooms at the Clifton Graham Center. He was accompanied by Chief Walker, the Greene County and Shelby sheriffs, and the town information officer. He stood behind a microphone and a wooden lectern perched on a desktop and waited a moment for the scraping chairs and the voices of the audience to die.

  Stevens started to speak. He began with the police identifying Earl as a person of interest and whom they wished to interview about both Halton Springs homicides. He described what they thought they knew of Earl’s relationship with Brendan McKenzie, his subsequent disappearance, and Congressman Logan’s assistance in tracking Earl down to Long Pine. Then, in some detail that had been painstakingly rehearsed that morning, Stevens described the hunt. He described the heat pattern that had alerted the police to Earl’s presence and the scene that greeted officers when they finally tracked Earl down.

  Stevens believed he had done a good and thorough job and couldn’t see how he’d let anything slip between the cracks. The media had been only too ready to buy the simple theory that Earl had committed both murders and, once surrounded and cut off, taken his own life.

  Even so, as he stood at the head of the room facing the legions of reporters that had crowded in, he felt a little nervy. He casually wiped a couple of beads of sweat away from his temples and turned around to see Catherine Goretzki looking calmly back at him. Beside her was Walker, who avoided any eye contact. Stevens also noticed that Officer Gray had crept in while he was speaking and was standing alongside Walker, which struck him as odd. Gray had been out all night on the manhunt, and despite the fact she must have been dead on her feet from lack of sleep had still come to the press conference. Maybe, reasoned Stevens, she really wanted to show her support, even though it wasn’t entirely in Gray’s character to be outwardly supportive to anyone. Then he began to wonder if she had got his email about the missing shift report, but his thoughts were cut short by Goretzki’s voice asking for questions. In response, hands shot up across the crowded room.

  The first question was tricky. A lady from WDTN wanted to know if the police were convinced Earl had worked alone. Stevens leaned into the microphone.

  “We have no evidence that would link any other parties to the two homicides. All the evidence we have gathered points solely to Earl’s involvement.”

  Another journalist raised his hand, and Catherine pointed to him and nodded.

  “Has Clay Logan given any comment on his brother’s involvement?”

  Catherine whispered into Stevens’s ear, and he listened attentively and then replied, “I believe Mr. Logan will be making his own statement later this afternoon about last night’s events.”

  “Is there any information on who the Long Pine victim was?” shouted a voice from the back row.

  “No. At this moment I’m afraid that is something we haven’t been able to confirm. A check of the national database has not yielded a match. However, the Bureau of Criminal Investigations is contacting international law enforcement agencies to cross-check their databases.”

  The room had fallen quiet, and Stevens felt calm for the first time. Maybe this was going to be a comfortable home run.

  Then a voice, high and harsh and from the back of the room, came sailing over the heads of her colleagues.

  “Deputy Stevens, what can you tell us about ‘God’s Detective’?”

  Stevens was taken completely by surprise by the sudden change in tack. “I’m sorry? I don’t understand the question, Miss…?”

  Stevens sensed movement behind him, a sudden restlessness and unease amongst his colleagues. The journalist spoke again, abruptly, impatiently, as if Stevens were an idiot.

  “Linda Chambers, editor-in-chief of the Dayton Sun. Did you use the services of a Father Devlin on this case, known to your colleagues as ‘God’s Detective’?”

  Catherine Goretzki stepped forward and spoke into the microphone. “I’m not sure this is really what we’re here to answer questions about.”

  Two arms shot up amongst the sea of reporters holding a newspaper aloft which carried the headline, “Halton PD Hire ‘God’s Detective’ with Troubled Past.” Linda Chambers, who was holding the newspaper, now bellowed back, “This is today’s Dayton Sun headline, Deputy. My paper asks some concerning questions about your judgment, and the people of Halton Springs deserve answers. Did Father Devlin assist you with this investigation?”

  Stevens heard Walker behind him cough and mutter, “I could have told you so.”

  Goretzki looked at Stevens with a puzzled expression. He whispered to her, “It’s okay. Let me answer.” Then he addressed the crowd.

  “Father Devlin assisted me in the ruling out of the initial line of inquiry due to his familiarity with—”

  But Stevens didn’t get a chance to finish. Chambers burst in on Stevens’s reply. “Did you know he had a history of alcoholism, Deputy?”

 
Stevens should have carried on answering Chambers’s first question, but he was flustered and reacted to her new line of attack. “I knew he had a history, but it was a history—”

  Again, before he’d fully explained, Chambers came back with another challenge. “A history? Didn’t you know he spent a night in a Boston PD drunk tank last week?”

  “No…no I did not.”

  “Were you aware he told his congregation that he didn’t believe in God?”

  “I…I really couldn’t speak to that.”

  “Is it true that Father Devlin had a vicious fight in the street with Earl Logan the night before he took his own life?”

  “I… It’s possible. Yes, I believe that he was attacked—”

  Again Chambers didn’t wait for a full answer and came back at him. “Were you aware that Father Devlin had a violent past?”

  “No, I was not. I mean, I don’t think he has—”

  “You don’t ‘think’?” Chambers had now adopted a tone that combined indignation with exasperation. “So you are not aware that Father Devlin has a conviction for violent assault?”

  “I…I wasn’t aware, no…”

  Chambers was now full of righteous indignation as she went for the final blow. “Deputy Stevens, did you vet Father Devlin before he was brought on board the investigation into the Long Pine murders?”

  “I…er…”

  “Yes or no, Deputy Stevens?”

  “No…not formally. I interviewed him myself and was satisfied he would be an asset to the investigation.”

  “Did you do a background check?”

  “No. No, I did not.”

  “Would you say that your failure to make such a check—I believe I’m correct in saying a mandatory check—in the most important and tragic case in Halton Springs’ history is a matter for resignation?”