by Mark Zubro
“Why?”
“We didn’t know what you’d find. We knew the Grums were going to pin the murder on your sister. We feared that would propel you to further action. We wanted to stop you from investigating.”
“Why not just tell the Grums to stop the police from arresting my sister?”
“We are powerful. We are not all-powerful, much as I’d like to be. The Grums are out of control, and they do have a great deal to say about what happens in Harrison County.”
“How’d you know we were at the warehouse?”
“You were using your GPS to find where you were. We were using it to track you.”
“You can do that?”
“Of course. You’ve seen it done by police organizations in movies. It’s not that expensive to replicate that kind of technology. Well, actually it can be purchased for relatively little. Comparatively. We find it handy to keep track of people we need to keep track of. We wanted you frightened. We didn’t quite expect you to avail yourself of your own legal army.”
“Did you send the cops Friday night?”
“I believe that was the Grums.”
“Why was Frank Smith’s house broken into?”
“I have no idea who that is.”
“The guy who gave a lot of money to your opposition. He won the lottery.”
“Oh, him. He wasn’t important enough for us to notice.”
“Did you use the tracking on Edgar Grum?”
“He was never someone important enough for us to track. I realize he was your brother-in-law, but I didn’t care about him when he was alive. I certainly don’t care about him now.”
I turned my back on him again.
After a minute or so the silence was broken by Ducharmé, who said, “Please come back and sit down.”
I swallowed my anger and sat. He refilled his drink and resumed, “No, my dear Mr. Mason. The key is, we didn’t kill anyone. Isn’t that the heart of your concern?”
“I think the election and the two murders are connected.”
“Two?”
I explained about Zachary Ross.
He said, “I have no idea who that is either. Harrison County is where the vote changed. Who is in charge of Harrison County? This isn’t rocket science, Mr. Mason. Look there for your killer.”
“But if Edgar Grum or Zachary Ross died in part because of your schemes, you are in some way culpable.”
“Morally perhaps you are right, but in the eyes of the law? That’s a much more difficult proposition.”
“And I’m just supposed to take your word for what you’ve told me?”
“You can do as you wish. You will bring no harm to me or my companies. You might even cost me a few million in legal fees. And what of those you know and love? You know the power of lies.”
“And you’re willing to tell such lies?”
“Manufacture them, use them. Look at the Republicans I use. They built their entire edifice on lies. The silly people serve me and mine nicely. They’ve learned to twist and squirm and turn and pivot as I wish. They so desperately want to be part of the one percent, they are quite willing to sell out the 99%. I don’t pretend to understand it. I don’t care if I ever understand it. I just want them to keep doing it.”
He took another sip of his drink.
I wondered if the Grums knew with what scorn he regarded them. At least according to the man sitting in front of me, whatever the Grums felt made no difference to his existence.
And in some ways that was sad and in some ways that made me furious. All the Grums’ mad rushing about to please this man was for what? Themselves? Certainly, he didn’t care.
“You’d rather you and your partner and your lives go down in glorious flames in the hopes, the chance, that I might be harmed? Trust me, I will be on a private jet and gone in just a few hours.”
“You must be very frightened of what we might find.”
Even if all the condescending smiles of the Republicans fighting for the 2012 nomination were combined, they could not have matched the one he now gave me for sneering superiority. He topped off the smile with a chuckle and said, “Not really.”
“Then why tell me this at all?”
“Because I truly want this to go away. I did not kill anyone nor did I order anyone killed. If underlings of mine went to excess, then I’d be quite happy to have them punished. We are not responsible for this. We are not responsible for anyone getting murdered.”
“You’re responsible for screwing a whole lot of things up. You may not have pulled any actual triggers on any actual guns, but your actions set in motion the events that led to this.”
Ducharmé said, “Good luck with finding a prosecutor in this jurisdiction who will take legal action.”
I said, “You must have violated any number of laws. You might not get some local politician in your pay to prosecute, but the federal authorities will go after you.”
“You don’t think I have influence there as well? You are naïve.”
“You’re so sure none of this will reflect on you?”
“Oh, my yes. I’ve got more lawyers on retainers than more than half the countries on the planet have in total.”
“I’d prefer proof.”
“You said you had the documentation from Edgar Grum’s home.”
“I’d feel better if you showed me how it worked.”
He frowned at me for a moment, downed the last of his drink, and said, “Okay.”
He pressed a button on what looked like a remote control on steroids that sat on the coffee table next to him. A flat screen television to my left, his right, came to life. Using the same remote, he began to manipulate the icons on the screen. A program that looked like the one we found on Edgar’s computer came up. He hunched forward on the couch and said, “This represents every Firbutton 20 voting machine in the state. Here are the vote totals. By manipulating the following formulas,” he scrolled down and clicked, “the results should have changed in each machine in each precinct. They didn’t. The command was sent. It never arrived. There should have been no need for Mrs. Grum’s obvious mathematical chicanery.” He took out his cell phone and manipulated the buttons on the front. The numbers on the screen didn’t change. He said, “Go to the machines if you wish, or you can get a court order to do so. Take apart all that techno crap inside them. The program didn’t work to change the votes, but it did work to erase itself. The self-destruct mechanism was set on a timer on all of the machines for forty-eight hours after the election. No paper trail. No electronic trail. None of the Grums were supposed to know about this. More people are going to be fired. I like firing people.”
I thought for a minute. “We’re not going to find proof.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“So Mallon or the Grums stole the election?”
“The governor? You’ve met her. As I said, the woman doesn’t have the brains that this table has. She has neither charm nor good looks. She happened to be in the right place at the right time for our purposes. No one thought she’d win the governorship in the first place. She did, and we were glad. She is certainly expendable.”
“And the Grums?”
“Are also expendable. Whatever happened with the election, happened locally. For the cheating and the killing, look to them. Call off your people or have them search forever. You will get nothing on us.”
“And if we get things on the people who worked for you?”
“As I said, nothing will redound to us.”
I stood up. “I’ll have to think about what I intend to do.”
He rose as well. “Do that.”
The man who accompanied me up did so as well on the reverse journey.
FIFTY-FOUR
Sunday 11:23 A.M.
When I got into the car, I asked Scott to drive along the lake. We got to the Wind Point Lighthouse in Racine and pulled into the deserted parking lot. All the good Christians were in church so we had the place to ourselves.
I’d
told him the whole story as we drove. Now we walked along the lake. The sky had turned gray, the low clouds rushing in from the northeast, the wind off the lake snapping our clothes.
Scott asked, “Do we believe him?”
I said, “I don’t, but I’m not sure what we believe makes much difference. It certainly doesn’t to Ducharmé, but he certainly wants off the hook for the murders.”
“He’s afraid of something, or he wouldn’t have met with you.”
I agreed. Neither of us was sure precisely what he was afraid of, nor if we could ever find proof that would convict him in a courtroom of whatever crimes he may have committed.
I called Todd Bristol and filled him in. He promised to call Achtenberg and let her know the latest. I told him I wanted to confront the Grums immediately and to call the police to have them arrested.
He suggested we wait until after he had more time to confer with police and legal officials not connected with Harrison County.
Frustrated, I said, “They killed their own kid.”
Todd was very patient. “Are you saying you know who pulled the trigger?”
“One of them did.”
“You know we need evidence. You’ve got proof of internal family hell. You don’t have a smoking gun.”
I knew he was right. I agreed to give him a chance to meet with legal people, possibly not easy on an Easter Sunday.
We picked up some pecan Kringle, a Seven Sisters, and coffee and drove back to Veronica’s. Kringle is great, but if you’ve ever had a custard filled Seven Sisters from Racine, you’d know what true bliss is. Maybe I could drown my sorrow in the glorious confections we purchased.
After we were admitted to the subdivision without incident, we detoured and drove to the Grums’. I’d passed it on my morning runs. There were no cars parked outside their palatial mansion. Like good Christians they were in church where they belonged.
We drove to Veronica’s and ate in the kitchen then headed back to the dead animal den, and got back to work on the mess in the closet.
Around one I found a box with disturbing news about Edgar’s financial information. He’d had money coming in all right, but there were enormous investments over the years in schemes and deals and dreams, none of which worked out. I organized them by year and company. Often the paperwork included copies of legal briefs of people suing to get their money back. I found copies of court proceedings from some of them. The ones I found showed that the cases had been lost by Edgar. The bills I found for these legal issues were immense. Edgar’s overseas money had rushed in each year and flooded out. Presumably if Veronica now stopped the idiot investment schemes, the family might be well off, unless Edgar’s legal troubles came back to haunt them. Veronica would have to turn all this over to lawyers, more expense and frustration.
After I was done sorting the box of investment catastrophes and legal chaos, I went over the papers with Scott. As far as I could tell, there were at least three on-going legal cases and more than five that had already been settled. We set up separate files for each one, with court materials by date, letters from angry investors in a separate section, notes from Edgar’s legal team. Half an hour into this, Scott said, “His brother Dewey is mentioned in a lot of these.”
I looked where he pointed. “Dewey was involved in a lot of his money-losing schemes?”
“Seems so. The two of them were in these up to their eyeballs.”
I said, “Why couldn’t the killer be an angry investor?”
“I’m not sure that’s a strong motive. I mean, so what if you kill Edgar? How does that get you your money back?”
The next box had even more court cases. We examined, separated, filed, read.
Scott held out another set of documents to me. He said, “Dewey lost a lot of cash on some of these,” Scott said. “More than Edgar sometimes.”
I examined the papers. “The two were losing money together?”
“The family that goes broke together sues each other together?”
When we were done with that box, Scott said, “This is so sad.”
I held up a sheaf of legal papers from just one case. “His desperation for success, respect, and making it on his own combined with his lack of insight might yet bankrupt Veronica.”
“And maybe his blindness got him killed.”
We had maybe a quarter of the boxes yet to go. The very next one was another investment-legal nightmare. I started sorting.
FIFTY-FIVE
Sunday 3:00 P.M.
Veronica, the three kids, and my mom and dad didn’t get back until nearly three.
Scott and I, Veronica and my mom and dad and my brother Darryl sat in her living room. Lionel was with the kids.
I told all of them everything. I had my laptop set up so I could simultaneously display the program on its monitor and on the large screen television. I showed them Edgar’s and Ross’s notes.
Veronica sat between mom and dad on the couch. Mostly she looked frozen and numb.
When Scott and I were done talking, her eyes scanned all the rest of us. We’d only summarized everything. If she wanted to, it would take her quite a while to finish reading all the details of what Edgar wrote.
Veronica said, “I’m not sure what to do.”
I said, “You don’t have to do anything.”
Veronica said, “I’m too emotional to talk to the Grums. I don’t want anything to do with them. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the funeral tomorrow and the reception afterward.”
Mom held her hand, “We’ll be there with you, right next to you. Don’t you worry about that.”
I said, “We’re waiting for Todd Bristol and probably Enid Achtenberg to come by. We can discuss what’s to be done about the Grums with them.”
“Am I going to be arrested?” Veronica asked.
My dad said, “We’re not going to let that happen.”
Veronica said, “I just want to get through tomorrow, then I want whoever killed Edgar to suffer. And if that poor reporter died because of it, I want them to spend the rest of their lives in prison for that too.”
At 7:00 the lawyers appeared. We talked over everything. At 10:00 they left. We were to trust them, and they’d take care of everything.
Later in our bedroom I said, “I’m going to confront the Grums after the funeral. Those shits have got to pay.”
“We’ve got a portrait of an idiot as a modern Republican.”
“I thought you were the one who felt sorry for him.”
“I do. That doesn’t change the fact that he was one of the great assholes and morons in history.”
FIFTY-SIX
Monday 10:00 A.M.
The early morning was subdued. Mom was in the kitchen. The coffee was prepared. Scott and I made toast, got cereal and juice ready.
Veronica and Patricia came downstairs together. Veronica hugged my mom.
David appeared in a good suit. He held a tie in his hand. He went up to Scott and asked him to tie it for him. After Scott gave him a two-minute lesson, David smiled at himself in a mirror in the bathroom off the kitchen and said, “Thanks, Uncle Scott.”
We drove to the funeral home. We left Darryl in charge of the caterers preparing for the after-funeral reception.
In the front parlor the great trollish Buddha that was Mrs. Grum sat by herself glaring straight ahead in silence, as disapproving as at the wedding. She wore a black velvet dress, draped in a black knock-off pashmina shawl, and a pill-box black hat with tiny feathers on one side. The hat had a veil attached. It was thrown back over her head. When she stood, she pulled the veil forward. It hung in front to the top of her breasts and in the back, halfway to her butt. As she walked out, I noted that the dress had a foot-long train. The dog was nowhere in evidence.
Dewey Grum took pictures of the casket leaving the funeral home, being moved into the hearse, of the people as they milled about. My family ignored him. At one point Patricia broke away and went over and tugged on his suit coat a
nd asked, “Why are you taking dead pictures?” This did not stop Dewey, who marched quickly away from his niece.
We processed in our vehicles to the church.
Minutes later, the sound of Mrs. Grum’s sobbing filled the sanctuary. She’d begun as her son’s casket appeared at the far end of the center aisle of the Cathedral of Saints Majestic Church. Mr. Grum held her hand. A mother was weeping for her son. I felt rotten for all the bad things I’d thought about mother and son.
A misty rain fell throughout the entire ritual at the cemetery. This wasn’t a problem, as an enormous tent had been erected around the gravesite. I was given to understand that it was a family plot.
I hoped maybe the rain would ruin Dewey’s camera as he continued to record everything. I thought his behavior was vile, but I didn’t have to live with him. Then again, maybe having pictures of this ceremony would give him or his family solace in such a difficult time. I couldn’t see how, but I wasn’t going to have to look at them.
At her son’s graveside, Mrs. Grum wept, great sobbing gusts. And I felt sorry for her again. Perhaps she was seeing her child as a baby when she rocked him to sleep. I thought of Watson’s comment in the Hound of the Baskervilles when the evil criminal Seldon has died and his sister weeps for him. Watson says, “Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.”
And Edgar had more than one. I shoved the thought that this was better than he deserved deep into my subconscious.
Veronica had wept. His kids at various times showed their distress. I was being too harsh and too judgmental. Maybe this whole Republicans-are-totally-evil shtick was a little harsh. Or maybe I was just feeling guilt for recognizing my honest feelings about the asshole.
Around two back at the house in the living room, Scott and I took some bottled water and stood in a corner out of the way. People and caterers crowded the house. The dark suits were perfectly normal. The somber looks standard. Even wolfing down food seemed pretty usual. The liquor flowed. But a catered funeral? With waiters carrying canapés and drinks? Maybe I don’t get to enough funerals.