by Noel Hynd
“Yeah, well try this: See the rumor was that Gary had done some of the seducing. He'd helped kill the girl. But it was his buddy who was the chopper and hacker.”
“What buddy?” O'Hara asked.
“A man named Sandor Clay. Or that's the name he went by. Looked a lot like Gary Ledbetter. A pretty boy, too. But his thing was just killing people. Did it for sport at first. Then started doing it for money.”
Slowly coming out of a surge of excitement, O'Hara asked, “How can I believe any of that?”
“Don't it fit what you already know?” Mikalski asked.
O'Hara answered guardedly. “Maybe.”
“The state pigs ran down to a doughnut shop down near the Mass border. Big shot plainclothes guys. Heavy hitters from Concord. Street talk was that they had something to do with the governor's office. Found Karen Stoner's friends. Showed pictures of Gary to all the local skirts. Told them that Gary must have been the guy who skewered the Stoner girl. Then they said they'd send another team of state cops to ask the official questions. They were to identify the right picture if they knew what was good for them. Close up all the angles, make things official. Shit, the girls just thought they was doing the right thing, putting away a bad-ass. I'd of done the same, myself.”
And O'Hara remembered very well how quickly the girls had identified his mug shots of Gary. He had waltzed through an elaborate charade arranged by the state government and, guided through it by his partner, had never picked up on the sham of it.
“So who was this Sandor Clay?” O'Hara asked. “Gary's buddy? Gary's lover? Gary's partner in crime?”
“All of those,” said Mikalski. “All of those and a little more. See, Sandor had done some dirty work for the political people in Concord. Strongarm stuff. Intimidation. People were scared of him. I'd even heard that he'd done some snuff jobs around the Northeast and down South. If he got busted, then he'd sing to the newspapers. So the people who run this state saw to it that he never got busted. See? What he'd done was his life insurance policy.”
“And Gary was unaware?” O'Hara asked.
“That's what I been told. Hell, Gary was a queer and got off on a handsome butch act like Sandor Clay. Loved the guy real bad. Hell, he fried for him.”
“Though Gary couldn't confess to anything,” O'Hara said, filling in the blanks, “without implicating himself.”
“So he would have fried, anyway,” Lavalliere said.
And Gary must have known that his friend had some connections in the state, O'Hara thought to himself. He must have been waiting to get sprung, almost up to the last minute. But the call never came, the deal was never made. And Gary had probably never loved anyone like he loved Clay. So he was ready to take the fall for this guy. To O'Hara it began to fit neatly and grossly into position.
Lavalliere's fascist pal expressed the same thought differently.
“How's that for ultimate, macho, butch, fag love?” Mikalski asked. “Gary Ledbetter sat in Old Sparky in Florida on behalf of two guys. And he never gave his buddy away.”
The monstrosity of all of this, settling in upon him in a smoky pool hall in a dirtball town, reached O'Hara through a thickening wall of spiritual exhaustion. It left him almost speechless. He was aware, in fact, that he had fallen very quiet.
“Gary got the hot seat and Sandor Clay is out hacking away,” Lavalliere said with amusement. “I bet Gary's spinning in his grave right now.”
“Want to know something, guys? He's doing even more than that. “
Five dim-witted eyes focused on O'Hara, seeking an explanation where one eluded them. O'Hara ducked giving out any answers, though. He told them they had a deal, details to be arranged later. Then he set out across the icy roads for confirmation of what he had heard.
*
It was the afternoon of the same day when O'Hara arrived at the hospital in Nashua.
Captain Mallinson was in a private room on a long green corridor. When O'Hara arrived, the captain was seated in a low chair. He wore a newly purchased maroon robe, just perfect for hospital use. The fingerprints of a caring wife were upon the garment. In the room, the television was on. But O'Hara could tell that the tube was only providing background companionship. The captain wasn't watching. O'Hara knew Mallinson had shot a television set once, but he had never known the captain to watch one unless he thought he was going to be on the news.
“Hello, Frank,” the captain said as O'Hara knocked gently on the door frame that led to the room. “Come in. Talk to me. More than ever, talk to me. Everybody else on this frigging floor is senile. Probably I am, too, but I'm too far-gone to realize it yet.”
O'Hara came into the room. He sat on the edge of the captain's bed.
“How are things going?” O'Hara asked. “You're sitting up. You're talking. You sound pissed off. That's good. You look like you might even be your old nasty self.”
“If you're all unlucky I'll be back at work within a week,” Mallinson growled. “I talked to the docs. I got conjuctive corallery something.”
“Congestive coronary failure,” O'Hara said.
“That's it. They tell you?”
“Your wife did. And so did the nurse at the main desk.”
“Yeah. Bless her. Well, it's supposedly not as bad as it sounds,” he said. “Blood's not pumping right through the old ticker. Anyway, they don't have to cut me open yet. I have to take some medicines that do something to my blood.”
“Something to thin the blood,” O'Hara said. “Makes it easier for the heart to operate.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Mallinson, almost sounding mildly heroic. “I just have to take it easy. And I got to stop smoking. If I promise to do that and take my medicine they said they'd let me out of this frigging place. So naturally I promised.”
O'Hara nodded. “Good for you,” he said.
The captain gave a plaintive gesture with his hands. “Two things that I'm going to have a real easy time of doing,” the captain said with an easy sarcasm. “Taking it easy and quitting tobacco. You bet.”
“You owe it to yourself, Cap,” O'Hara said. “You've busted your butt for years on this job. There's no use overdoing it now.”
“Yeah. Right,” Mallinson said, sounding one hundred percent unconvinced. He looked back to his visitor. “You know I've said for years that this job will either kill you or drive you crazy. Looks like with me it'll be the former if I'm not careful. So, frig it, Frank. I'm planning to be careful.”
O'Hara nodded again.
“How are things going? Keeping my chair warm?” Mallinson asked. “Or did you chop it up for firewood?”
“Your chair will be waiting for you next week.”
“That's good news. How's the Negri thing coming along?
Do you know that the asshole, the one who's on the radio, called me to see what he could find out? Spent one minute asking about my health and another ten asking about the investigation.”
“Is he pushing for an arrest?”
“He seemed to be more interested in knowing what was happening in the case more than having it closed. Funny reaction. He kept wanting to know if we had a suspect. Wanted real bad to know. I guess I could have told him to call you.”
“I wouldn't have told him.”
“Why not?”
“No use giving our hand away.” O'Hara sought to make a joke of it. “Negri makes his living by talking,” O'Hara said. “Let him talk about something else.”
“No complaint from me,” the captain said. “But what's going on? You got a break in the case or what?”
“Possible. But I need some background.”
“Yeah? From who?”
“From you.”
“I don't know what I got on Negri.”
“It's Ledbetter I'm asking about.”
“Ah, frig it, Frank! You're not beating that drum again, are you?”
“I still need to know things about the case.”
“You know everything.”
“No, I don'
t.”
“What don't you know?”
“Captain, remember when I signed the succession paper last week? You said I was doing you a big favor. You said you owed me a big one.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So I'm calling in the IOU right now. I want to know about the evidence in the Ledbetter case. Was it clean or not?”
“Someone saying it's not?”
“I got a source that says a heavy fix was in seven years ago.”
“Who's telling you that?”
O'Hara didn't say a word.
Mallinson looked at O'Hara, started to speak, then shook his head as if he just couldn't. He started with the same old protestations.
O'Hara interrupted.
“This is a big-time request, Captain,” O'Hara said. “This is the IOU I want the full answer now.”
Mallinson looked down and found the need for a sip of water. He fiddled with a drinking glass that was half full. Then his eyes locked on the younger man.
“You found Ledbetter, Frank,” the captain said. “You were the one who went out and did the spade work and came up with him as a suspect in January of 1987. The thing is, we had other detectives on it, too. And no one was finding any hard evidence. Yet we knew we had a guilty man.”
“How could you have known that?”
“It came through the state capital, Frank. I don't even know the source of the information any more. I just know that we had it from intelligence in other states: Ledbetter was part of a two man hit team. Killed for thrill, killed for money. A couple of sickos. Arresting the other guy was off-limits. But Gary was a guy we could grab. If we had the evidence. If we had some murder tools with fingerprints. If we had a girlfriend of a victim who would say the right thing. And if we had, say, a store clerk or two who could make an identification.”
“But you didn't have those things.”
“And Carl Reissman knew it. So I put Carl on the spot. I told him, 'This is coming down from on high. So take the gloves off. Build your case against Gary. You'll get help from Concord. Talk to your potential witnesses and we'll cover the inducements. Make sure the witnesses remember.’”
“Feed them information?” O'Hara asked. “Let them know what we wanted to hear?”
Mallinson nodded. “Pretty soon people were standing in line to be witnesses. It's an imperfect world, Frank. You know that. Sometimes you have to construct your own case. Otherwise a killer walks away. We've seen that too many times, haven't we?”
“What about Gary's partner?”
“What about him?”
“A big loose end in the case like that? And we let it hang? Sandor Clay. Who the hell is he?”
Mallinson looked distinctly uneasy with this line of discovery. “Like I said, Frank. We were getting pressure from Concord. Heavy pressure. They wanted a clean wrap in this case. I was under orders to give them one. I was taking orders, not answering questions. Have to do that sometimes to stay in this job.”
“Who the hell was Sandor Clay?”
“He had big-time friends in this state, Frank,” Mallinson said softly. “The whole government mafia. I'll even take it one step further. I wouldn't be surprised if Negri hired him to have his ex-wife hit before she cleaned him out. That whole connection fits. But I'll tell you this: That case is never going to fly. The whole state government is Negri-friendly. No prosecutor is going to try it, and no judge is going to listen to it. You're after Sandor Clay, Frank? If you are, it's frontier-style justice or it's no justice at all.”
“Are you telling me that's what happened? That Negri hired this guy to kill Abigail? And that's why he's back in the state? And that Stacey Dissette was just collateral damage? A little sport on the side, the way some men go deer hunting?”
“I always thought you were too bright to be a cop, Frank. And you just proved it. Frig it, Frank. Do what you want. I'll support you if I live long enough.”
O'Hara's eyes found the floor. He leaned back. “I can see why poor old Carl finally drilled a bullet into his head. A career as a good cop going into the trash barrel. Fucking with evidence. Watching homicidal maniacs walk while they fix the case on an accomplice.”
Mallinson shrugged.
“Why didn't I know about any of this at the time?” O'Hara asked.
“Carl Reissman was afraid of you,” Mallinson said.
“What?”
“Afraid of your sense of ethics,” Mallinson said. “He figured that you were in your twenties and wouldn't quite see things his way. Wouldn't quite want to shortcut the system like that.”
O'Hara thought about it.
“He was right,” O'Hara said. “I would have screamed.”
Mallinson nodded. “We all knew that.”
“And Carl might have been alive today.”
Mallinson gave O'Hara a grieved expression. “In Carl's case, this whole thing was particularly sad. He was no virgin on this. I'd say Carl had been to the trash barrel several dozen times. I guess it weighed heavier on him than anyone knew.” Mallinson shook his head. “Poor, poor bastard. I liked him. And he should have known a long time ago that this was how the backwoods homicide business is conducted.”
“So all of this,” O'Hara asked, hearkening back to the case at hand, “was at Gary's expense?”
“You could draw that conclusion.”
“And that's also why the file was robbed at Central Records?”
“Could be. I don't know.” Some primal sense of indignation sparked inside of Mallinson and he angered. “Look. Ledbetter was no good!” he snapped. “No question that he killed. The only question was how many. He took a fall, maybe even for something that he didn't completely do, but something which he had plenty to do with. Did we stack a case on him? Yes. But we got him. And he was guilty.”
“That's not what he says,” O'Hara said, slipping.
“What?” scoffed the captain. “You been in touch recently?”
“That's what Gary used to say, is what I mean,” O'Hara said, recovering. “‘Not guilty, man.' And he wasn't, in the way he was being accused.”
“I hasten to remind you, Frank,” Mallinson continued, “that as far as we're concerned, it's all a bullshit point, anyway. We never had to use what we had assembled. Florida took him off our hands. “
Mallinson interrupted his own lesson in frontier criminology with a long cancerous cough, one that went on for several seconds. O'Hara was on the verge of calling a nurse when the hacking ceased.
“That leads me to the end of what I wanted to know, Captain,” O'Hara said. “You pawned him off on Florida. Did they have a solid case? Or were they cleaning out their desks same as we were?”
“Frank, look at the larger picture,” Mallinson said. “Gary was involved. Up and down the east coast. Five women. How many more where the bodies were never found? How many men? How many for money? The fact is, we got him. New Hampshire helped get him. Otherwise he'd still be out there.”
“Maybe he still is. “
“Don't talk nonsense, Frank. There's a psychiatric wing to this hospital, too.”
“You ducked my big question.”
“Which one was that?”
“Did Florida have a case?”
Mallinson leaned back in his chair. He fidgeted with the sash of his robe, then tightened it.
“Florida looked at us,” Mallinson said, “and thought we were doing one fine job of clearing a major case. They admired us. What's the old saying. 'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery'? They imitated.”
O'Hara blew out a long breath. Finally, he stood. He shook hands with his commander.
“See you next week,” O'Hara said. “I'll let you know what happens.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
O’Hara parked in the lot closest to the tarmac at the heliport in Concord. It was another frigid day, December 13, twelve days before Christmas. O’Hara still wasn't able to think about gift shopping. His mind was still locked on homicide. And on this day, he was taking to the air.
Fortunately, flying the chopper required two hands, so the alcohol intake was minimal.
They took off at ten A.M., and were over the Monadnock region within a few minutes. Hamburger deftly ducked the treacherous air currents which shot between the mountains and above the forests. Flying a chopper in frozen weather was a rough assignment. But in the Monadnock location, glacial winds tended to drop sharply down the sides of mountains, constantly threatening to pull helicopters into a wind shear and drive them down into trees.
Nonetheless, Hamburger guided his aircraft with a talent that bordered on genius.
O'Hara asked the pilot to take him as low over Devil's Glen as the air currents would allow. Hamburger took his craft to three hundred feet above the trees. He hovered there and did an aerial version of a crawl.