The Question of the Felonious Friend

by E. J. Copperman

  Sure enough, four seconds after the image appeared, a figure approximately Tyler Clayton’s height and build, wearing the same loose, dark, hooded sweatshirt he usually sported, along with a Chicago Cubs baseball cap and a pair of dark sunglasses, walked into the store, seemingly studying the floor. It was difficult to see any facial feature.

  The figure walked out of frame in the direction of the camera and immediately after a hand was seen in very large close-up on the screen, followed by something difficult to focus on. “That’s the nozzle of the spray can,” Hessler said. And his claim was borne out a second later when the screen suddenly went black.

  Because neither of the other cameras was trained in the direction of the one near the entrance, the vandal was not visible immediately. Clearly the high angle from the counter camera meant it was mounted near the ceiling from somewhere across the store. I remembered from our visits to the Quik N EZ that it was on the facing wall of the dairy counter, behind a display of magazines.

  “He must have snuck under another camera here,” Hessler said. There was no footage on that camera that showed anything but Richard Handy and Billy Martinez at the counter. But from somewhere off-screen a voice shouted, “Richard!” and he looked up in the direction of the dairy display.

  “That sounds like Clayton’s voice,” Hessler said. Indeed, it might very well have been Tyler Clayton calling to the assistant manager. I refocused on the screen, thinking about that.

  Without a word, Richard looked at Billy, who nodded and took over the cash register on which Richard was working. Richard, in what would be his last mistake, walked away from the counter toward the dairy display. Then the camera facing the cashiers went black too.

  “He went for the third camera last,” Hessler pointed out. I came close to saying how obvious that statement was, but Ms. Washburn shook her head slightly. That indicated the statement would not be well received. I watched the last monitor.

  There, as a voice I did not recognize called out, “Hey!”, probably spotting the vandal spraying the last camera (the monitor went black after a huge close-up of a hand), Richard Handy’s voice—which I recognized—could be heard saying, “Dude! What?”

  And then there were four shots, and screaming began.

  “It goes on like that for a while,” Hessler said.

  I held up a hand to quiet him, and he stopped talking. I was listening very carefully and closed my eyes to better concentrate on the sound. After a few seconds I opened my eyes and said, “There! Did you hear it?”

  Hessler and Ms. Washburn looked at me. “Hear what?” Hessler said.

  “All I heard was a sort of jumble of screaming and general confusion,” Ms. Washburn told me. Her description was more useful than Hessler’s question.

  “Yes. How would you describe the general confusion?” I asked her.

  I knew Ms. Washburn well enough to anticipate her answer would be to narrow her eyes and say, “General.” But she did not do that. Instead she pursed her lips, trying to come up with the most accurate answer to my question.

  “A few moans, possibly Richard in pain,” she said. She closed her eyes to better recall the sound. “Someone shouted out to call the police. But under that was a just sort of hum of either activity or speech. I couldn’t tell. Does it matter?” Ms. Washburn opened her eyes and looked at me.

  I turned toward Hessler. “May we run the last minute or so again?”

  He appeared puzzled but picked up the phone on the desk and pushed a button. “Can you replay the last minute?” He replaced the receiver and the three of us, perhaps reflexively, turned our attention to a screen we knew would be completely black.

  Through the obvious coat of paint on the lenses came the sounds we had heard before. Ms. Washburn was correct: Richard’s groans were audible, certainly, but after six seconds they ceased as he undoubtedly died quickly. There was the sound of woman shouting to call 911 and some general shouting. Someone shouted, “He’s got a gun!”, which seemed superfluous.

  But underneath the identifiable sounds was something considerably lower. Not close enough to any of the three cameras and their directional microphones to be higher in the sound mix was an unmistakably familiar noise.

  Tyler Clayton was saying, “Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn … ”

  Nineteen

  “It was the volume of the sound that was important, not the content,” I said.

  We were back in Ms. Washburn’s Kia driving to Billy Martinez’s home in Franklin Township. Billy knew we were on our way to talk to him on his day off but Ms. Washburn had said he sounded irritable, perhaps nervous meeting us away from the store.

  The drive from where we were now would take nine minutes unless an unforeseen amount of traffic were to appear. I have come to trust Ms. Washburn’s driving almost as much as Mike the taxicab driver’s, so we are able to have a conversation while the car is in motion, assuming no extraordinary maneuvers, like a left turn, were in progress.

  “Why was the volume important?” Ms. Washburn asked. “Even when you were explaining it to Detective Hessler I wasn’t clear on that. We heard Tyler making that sound he makes when he’s upset. Of course he’d be upset if he had just shot Richard or if he’d seen Richard get shot. So his making that sound doesn’t really seem all that amazing. Except that it confirms that Tyler was there, so he must have been the person in the dark hoodie.”

  Despite my knowing Ms. Washburn would not turn her eyes toward me, I held up my index finger to make a point; it’s a reflex that doesn’t always take context into account. “Volume is important because the microphones on the security cameras are directional. You know what that means.”

  “Yes,” she said, perhaps with an edge of annoyance in her voice, although I could not understand what might have made her feel that way. “I’m a photographer, but I do understand the concept of a directional microphone. It will receive sound only from something in the direction the microphone is pointed. It’s not going to pick up peripheral or ambient noise.”

  “That is exactly correct,” I said after she had successfully turned the Spectra. “A directional microphone is like a person with no peripheral vision—it only records what is in front of it. So with those three microphones all pointed in different directions—one toward the counter, but from a high angle; one at the front door from directly opposite, again bolted to the ceiling; and the last pointed at the area where Richard was shot, mounted on the side wall rather than directly opposite the refrigerated counter—the sound we should have gotten would be from close to those three locations.”

  “So that’s what we got,” Ms. Washburn said. “So what?”

  “I believe you know the significance,” I said. I did not want Ms. Washburn to think I had a low opinion of her intelligence. “You are not considering the sound we heard from Tyler.”

  “It was the ‘nnnnnnn’ sound. We’ve heard it a number of times now.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But assume for a moment that Tyler did shoot Richard Handy in front of the dairy display. That camera is the one mounted most closely to its subject; it is actually less than ten feet from where the shooting took place.”

  Ms. Washburn considered that fact for a moment and then nodded her head enthusiastically, which worried me a bit as she drove. “So Tyler’s voice should have been louder. When we were watching the painted-over security videos, we should have heard Tyler more clearly than anyone else if he really was the shooter.”

  I smiled. “Precisely.”

  “So this proves that Tyler didn’t kill Richard Handy.”

  “You heard Detective Hessler,” I reminded her. “He was not convinced.”

  Ms. Washburn’s mouth curled a bit. “Yeah, he seemed to think that Tyler could have shot Richard, run to some other spot in the store and then started freaking out. He doesn’t really seem to have a firm grasp of what Tyler is up against on a daily basis.”

>   “Most ‘typical’ people do not,” I said. “We need to bring more specific data to the discussion if the detective is going to be moved to look in a direction other than the one he is pursuing now.

  “In addition, Tyler was found standing over the body of Richard Handy, so it is significant that as the recording goes on, the vocalization he is making gets louder. He is being moved into position. The detective was not open to that suggestion immediately.”

  “In other words, he’s taking the easy way out.” Ms. Washburn had navigated us into Franklin Township. Another three minutes and we would be at Billy Martinez’s front door.

  I shook my head, more for my own benefit than hers. “Detective Hessler is not an incompetent police investigator,” I told her. “He is going to investigate all the possibilities, but given the system in which he works, he is not able to go to the county prosecutor and say Tyler’s charges should be dropped based on an incoherent soundtrack to a vandalized security video. What our revelation has accomplished is that the detective will now concentrate on Tyler’s case and the possibility that he is not the person responsible for Richard Handy’s death. But that is not our responsibility; our job is to answer Mason’s question.”

  “He wants to know who killed Richard, and we have pretty convincing proof that it was not Tyler,” Ms. Washburn said. “If we find out that someone else did it and we can prove that, the detective’s job will be done just as we are answering the question.” She pulled the car into a space across from a split-level suburban house with blue vinyl siding and a brick facing on its front stairs.

  “That will be the ancillary effect, yes,” I agreed. We got out of the car and walked to Billy Martinez’s front door.

  Billy, dressed in jeans and a Metallica t-shirt, did not exactly greet us at the door so much as he allowed us to enter. As Ms. Washburn had reported, he did not seem happy to talk to us, and ushered us toward the basement stairs as soon as we were inside.

  “This is where my room is,” he said. “My mom’s upstairs and she doesn’t need to hear more about what went on at the store. She wants me to quit the job as it is.”

  We descended the stairs into the area that was indeed Billy’s room. It was essentially a finished basement with small casement windows on either side wall and fluorescent fixtures installed in a dropped ceiling. There was a rug on the floor that clearly had some water damage and a television on a stand opposite the sofa that no doubt folded out when Billy slept at night.

  “You don’t make that much working in the Quik N EZ,” he added, although we had not commented. “I don’t know where she gets that idea.” He was sweating. It was not exceedingly warm in the room.

  Something about money was making Billy nervous; that was the only reasonable explanation. When trying to answer a question by talking to someone who is not eager to share information, it is sometimes necessary to amplify that person’s weakness. It is not pleasant, but it can be effective.

  “How much do you make at the Quik N EZ?” I asked. Ms. Washburn, perhaps taken slightly by surprise, turned to look at my face.

  “I’m only part-time,” Billy said. “If they don’t give me thirty hours a week, they don’t have to pay benefits or anything, so I’m usually at five hours a day, four days a week or eight hours a day three days a week.”

  “And you earn the state’s minimum wage?” I said, following up. Billy looked slightly pained by the question. I avoided Ms. Washburn’s glance. She is sensitive in such areas and sometimes her negative opinion can cause me to soften my resolve. That is one of the rare areas in which Ms. Washburn is occasionally not helpful.

  Billy nodded. I was aware that at that time the minimum wage in New Jersey was under nine dollars per hour. Even after the maximum number of hours Billy might be assigned, he would earn an annual salary well under the poverty line as defined by the United States government.

  “So why, then, did you always let Richard Handy take the hundred-­dollar tips Tyler Clayton would leave for him every day?” From my right I heard Ms. Washburn let out her breath; perhaps now she understood what this tactic had been designed to accomplish.

  I found that somehow reassuring. I prefer Ms. Washburn not to think of me negatively.

  “I told you before, that was Richard’s business,” Billy said, but he did not establish eye contact when he said it. “The weird kid had a thing for him or something, and he gave Rich money to like him, I guess. Rich pretended to be the kid’s friend and he got those big tips every day.”

  “Every day?” Ms. Washburn asked. It was time to establish that fact definitively. I appreciated her help.

  “Every day Rich and I were working there,” Billy said. “I can’t say anything about the days I wasn’t there, but if Rich was working, the kid was there and so was the Benjamin.” He was referring to the image of Benjamin Franklin printed on the one-hundred-dollar bill.

  “Were you never tempted to take one?” I asked.

  Billy shrugged. “The first few times Rich grabbed it out of the jar so fast I didn’t even see how big the bill was. You know, the action in that place gets pretty serious that time of day, so I’m usually concentrating on what I’m doing. I don’t have time to look at what the other guy is up to.”

  I nodded. I was attempting to act the role of the interrogator who understands the witness’s dilemma, the one commonly referred to as the “good cop.” In this scenario there was no “bad cop,” as Ms. Washburn would not be attempting to threaten or intimidate Billy into giving us stronger answers or a confession to any crime.

  “Of course,” I said. “Your work would require you to pay close attention to the customer in front of you and the cash register you were operating. Richard would be seen more through peripheral vision than directly observed.”

  Billy, looking confused, simply looked at me.

  But his eyes frequently darted toward a door to his right, carved into a false wall built for storage or simply to make the room seem more like living space. It was possible the home’s heating system was housed behind that door. Billy, though, was looking at it nervously, as if something dangerous might pop out and eat him if he were not careful. I had that fear as a young child, but I did some research on the structure of my bedroom closet and concluded that no evil creature could possibly gain access without Mother’s knowledge or permission.

  In this case, I wondered whether there was someone behind the door whom Billy did not want Ms. Washburn and me to see.

  The glances were telling in more ways than one—closer examination of the knob on the door in question indicated that it had no lock. That clarified Billy’s anxiety; there was no way to keep us away from whatever secret lay behind the door except through distraction, and they way he looked at the door was not helping his cause.

  The best thing was to keep him talking and not let on I’d determined there was a reason to investigate behind the door in question. “So if the oversized tips Tyler gave Richard were in the jar to your left and you were simply serving the customers in front of you, there was no reason you would be looking in that direction?” That was not so much a question as a recap, but it did engender a response.

  “That’s right,” Billy exhaled.

  “But you said that was just when the big tips began,” Ms. Washburn reminded him. Her statement made Billy’s head swivel toward her quickly and his expression of relief was overcome with a replacement that was closer to panic. “What about later? When did you first see that it was a hundred-dollar bill every day?”

  “I dunno.” Billy shrugged. “It went on for a long time, so I guess I took a better look one day. Maybe I didn’t have a customer at that moment or something.”

  “Didn’t it strike you as odd?” Perhaps Ms. Washburn was playing the “bad cop” after all.

  “Sure, but everything about that kid was odd.” His quick glances at the door to my immediate left were not decreasin
g; if anything he was looking at it more often and more urgently.

  There was no point in prolonging the moment. “I’m sorry,” I said, walking toward the door. “But I must ask if I may use your restroom.”

  Ms. Washburn, fully aware that I would never barge into a strange restroom unless I had no possible alternative, covered her mouth. Billy raised his hand, almost pointing at the door as if to protest, but I gave him no time to speak. I grasped the knob on the door and turned it.

  The door swung open and I looked inside very carefully, but not slowly. “Oh, my mistake,” I said.

  “Bathroom’s upstairs,” Billy managed. He pointed up to the ceiling in the event that I could not discern where “upstairs” might be.

  “It’s not necessary,” I said. “I just needed to wash my hands.”

  “Wash your—”

  “Come along, Ms. Washburn,” I said. “I believe we have occupied enough of Billy’s time today.”

  Ms. Washburn’s face registered some surprise but not enough for Billy to notice. He actually looked relieved, no doubt glad to have these two prying people out of his house as quickly as possible. He saw us upstairs, reminded us to be quiet once on the ground floor, then ushered us to the front door and did everything but slam it behind us with glee.

  We were not even in the car before Ms. Washburn asked, “What was in the other room?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Ms. Washburn settled into the driver’s seat looking disappointed. “That’s too bad.”

  I sat down on the passenger’s side and closed the door, checking to make sure it had definitely engaged the latch. “Not really,” I said. “It was the way there was nothing that makes it significant.”

  Ms. Washburn rotated the key and engaged the ignition but turned to me before activating the transmission. “Significant? You think the nothing was important?”

  “It might very well be crucial to our answering this question. But I will have to do some additional research before I can be certain, so please do not ask until I can confirm my suspicions.”