False Cast: a small town murder mystery (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Series Book 5)

by S. W. Hubbard

  Meyerson smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “For God’s sake, the man fired at law enforcement officers, fired at his wife, held seven people hostage at gunpoint. Does he honestly think we’re going to let him order a pizza and go to bed?”

  “I can’t live in jail. I can’t be inside all day. I’ll die.”

  “Ronnie, you need help. That’s what we’re going to get for you.”

  “Whattaya mean, help? I ain’t going to the nut house.”

  “Look, Ronnie. I’ve done all I can for you,” Earl said. “If you don’t come out in the next ten minutes, the state police are going to shoot a tear gas canister into the house. Then they’re coming in after you. If that happens, I can’t protect you.

  “I haven’t lied to you ever. Not once through this whole day. So I’m telling you now just what’s going to happen. If you ever want to see your son again, you’d better walk outta that house like a man.”

  Silence stretched on. Every passing second made it seem more likely they would hear one last gunshot, the sound of Ronnie ending his life.

  Meyerson shifted his weight like a racehorse at the starting gate.

  The front door opened.

  The state police raised their weapons in unison.

  Ronnie stepped out on the porch. He looked at the guns aimed at him and his weapon clattered to the ground.

  He raised his hands.

  It was over.

  When Earl emerged from his pickup truck he was met with a chorus of cheers. The crowd engulfed him, patting his back, hugging him, slapping him high fives. His mother threw her arms around his neck.

  Frank stood back. He thought Earl looked like a guy he’d once seen who’d been plucked from rough surf by lifeguards at the Jersey Shore: stunned to have come so close to death and survived.

  When the crowd thinned, Frank walked up to Earl. Earl smiled weakly and extended his right hand.

  Frank ignored the offer to shake. He pulled Earl into a tight embrace. He didn’t care who saw or what they might think.

  Earl’s shoulders trembled.

  “You’re coming home with me,” Frank said. “You need to decompress.”

  Chapter 8

  Earl didn’t say a word on the ride home.

  Penny rushed out to the front walk to greet them when she heard the car pull in. Frank hugged her briefly. “We’re all fine. No one hurt at all. Earl did a fantastic job, but he needs to unwind. Give us a little time alone, okay?”

  She looked miffed for a moment, but she must’ve sensed how much Earl needed the space. She watched them go into the living room, while she retreated to the kitchen.

  Earl sat on the sofa and stared into space. “When it was happening, I felt like I knew what I was doing. Now I can’t stop thinking of all the things that could’ve gone wrong. What if Henry had had a seizure? What if little Teddy had started screaming when he saw the gun? What if Ronnie had killed Pam in front of all those kids?” Earl shuddered. “I could have screwed it up. I could have screwed it up bad.”

  “But you didn’t. Your training kicked in. You did what you had to do.”

  Earl put his head in his hands. “Thinking about it makes me feel like I wanna puke. One of the troopers told me I oughta apply for the hostage negotiation team. Are you kidding me? I don’t ever want to do this again in my whole life.”

  Frank sat down next to Earl and handed him a glass half full of Irish whiskey. He’d never known Earl to drink more than a couple of beers, but the occasion called for the calming effects of something stronger.

  Earl swallowed a mouthful and made a face. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a cop. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’m not tough enough for this job.”

  “You know what makes you a good cop, Earl? The fact that you’re having these doubts. The fact that you’re not drinking at the Mountainside right now bragging about how you captured Ronnie Gatrell single-handedly.”

  Earl looked up at him. “You’ve had doubts? I mean, I remember how upset you were after you had to shoot Oliver. That’s understandable. But, did you ever think you couldn’t do the job because, you know, the responsibility was too much?”

  “Do you know why I left Kansas City, Earl?”

  “You wanted to be closer to your daughter,” Earl said.

  “That was part of it. The part I told you. I never wanted to tell you the whole story.”

  “Story? What story?”

  “I screwed up an investigation, Earl. I screwed up so bad that a guilty man walked free because we couldn’t get the evidence to charge him. I was so certain I knew who was guilty and who was innocent. But I had the whole case wrong. They encouraged me to take my pension. I planned to come here and just sit on my ass till I died.”

  Earl smiled. “You’re not very good at ass-sitting, Frank.”

  “I know. Edwin knew too. He encouraged me to apply for the Chief’s job here. I figured I couldn’t screw up directing after-school traffic. And then we got hit with the Janelle Harvey disappearance. I was spooked. I’d lost my confidence. I didn’t trust myself.” Frank stood and put his hands in his pockets. He crossed the room and looked out the window into the black night.

  “Really? You didn’t seem that way to me. You always seem like you know just what to do. How did you get your confidence back?”

  Frank turned to face Earl. “I guess you could say I learned how to doubt constructively. Never to take anything at face value. Never to believe that there are people who can commit crimes and people who can’t commit crimes.”

  He came back to the chair where Earl sat. “You have to walk a fine line between trusting your own judgment but never thinking you know it all. I think you did that very well today.” He put his hand on Earl’s back. “Very well.”

  Earl stared into his glass for a while. “If I drink all this whiskey, you’ll have to drive me home.”

  Frank clinked his glass against Earl’s. “We’re both going to drink all this whiskey. And Penny can do the driving.”

  Chapter 9

  When Frank entered the town office after finishing the morning patrol on Wednesday, the first thing he saw was Doris’s “Out to Lunch” sign propped up on her desk. Immediately, he felt a flash of irritation. He’d told Earl to take the day off after yesterday’s ordeal. Would it kill Doris to delay her lunch for ten minutes so the office wasn’t unmanned? His irritation increased when he saw a woman sitting on the hard bench in the waiting area. He could hardly stride past her without offering assistance, even if she needed a building permit or some other thing he was entirely unqualified to help with.

  Frank paused in front of the woman. She was in her mid-thirties, with a tired face and a shapeless figure. “Doris is out to lunch,” he said unnecessarily. “I’m the police chief. Not sure I can be of any help, but I’ll try.”

  She rose, gazing at him with unblinking steadiness. “It’s you I came to see, Chief Bennett. Don’t you recognize me?”

  There was something familiar about her hoarse voice, but he couldn’t place the face. She had an odd smile with very white teeth that seemed too big for her mouth. Probably some mother whose teenaged son he’d arrested for drinking in the park or smoking weed under the covered bridge come to plead with him to drop the charges. Could he be expected to remember them all?

  He shook his head with a smile. “Sorry, you’ll have to refresh my memory.”

  “Anita Veech.”

  She watched him, grinning when his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

  “Yeah, I’ve changed, right? Lost 250 pounds on that prison food. Didn’t have anybody to put money in my account, so no snacks from the commissary for me. Ha! Let the student dentists practice on my teeth. Gave me implants.” She bared her teeth in a mirthless grin. “Come back to my hometown and nobody recognizes me.”

  Frank continued to stare, trying to find in the nondescript person before him the shadow of the grotesque woman he had arrested five years ago. That Anita had weighed over four
hundred pounds. Her features had been so sunken in fat that he honestly couldn’t have described the shape of her nose or the turn of her lips or the color of her eyes. She’d had several missing and blackened teeth and straggly, colorless hair. He knew that she was in her early thirties when she was sentenced, but she had appeared neither young nor old, just an unfortunate example of the effects of bad nutrition and limited education.

  The woman before him was far from beautiful, but she had achieved ordinariness. She could walk down the street without people turning to stare and shake their heads. Quite an accomplishment.

  Frank had never known anyone to be so improved by a stint in prison. He didn’t know what to say. Somehow “Congratulations, you look great,” didn’t seem appropriate. “I heard you’d been released early,” he finally stammered.

  “Yeah, I’m a nonviolent drug offender. Not dangerous, right?” She gave him that unpleasant smile again. Frank had his doubts about the free prison dentistry.

  Anita continued talking. “Can we go in your office? What I got to say, I don’t want the whole town to hear.”

  Frank opened the door and ushered her in. He felt like he was wearing a blindfold and couldn’t imagine what he would see when it was torn off. Not for the first time, he marveled that Anita Veech had given birth to Olivia. Charming, funny, smart, pretty Olivia.

  Anita sat in the chair across from Frank’s desk and looked around. “Place hasn’t changed one bit. Even that half-dead plant’s the same.”

  Frank glanced at the yellowing philodendron. It really was time to put the thing out of its misery. His gaze shifted to Anita and he waited. She had requested the meeting. Let her talk.

  Anita took a breath. “First off, I gotta thank you for a few things.”

  “Thank me?”

  “I’m thirty-six years old and I’m finally free of my wacko family. I don’t look like a freak anymore.”

  “You’re saying you’re glad I arrested you?”

  “I’m glad you arrested all of us. Pap died his first month in jail.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  Anita held her hand up. “He’s burnin’ in hell, which is the only place built to hold him. And my brother ain’t never gettin’ outta Attica, not the way he keeps makin’ trouble in there. So like I said, I’m finally free of those two. They made my life a living horror movie. I got to Albion, I slept through the night for the first time since my mother died when I was six.”

  Frank took a breath as if to speak, but what could he say? What was the proper response when someone told you her family life was so terrible that prison was a welcome relief?

  Anita didn’t mind his silence. “And, I got some job skills that don’t involve pushing a broom. I got you to thank for that, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “I took a computer class in prison just to pass the time. Learned to code. Turns out, I’m good at it. Now I got a job with Gage Shelby. You know him?”

  “I know Leon Shelby, the real estate broker.”

  “That’s his dad. Gage has his own software company. He runs it out of his house, over near the covered bridge.”

  “That’s great, Anita. Finding a job can be hard when you have a felony conviction. I’m glad it hasn’t held you back.” The words sprang from his lips spontaneously. Every cop had to be glad when an ex-con got a job. Employment kept that person from cycling back through the criminal justice system. But then he remembered this was Olivia’s mother. A job would improve Anita’s chances of getting her daughter back.

  They sat in silence for a moment. Where was Anita going with all this? Surely, she didn’t consider him a long-lost friend she was eager to update.

  Finally, she resumed speaking. “So all-in-all, I gotta thank you for what you did. Turned my life around. Except for one thing. You gave my girl to those people, those fancy friends of yours.”

  “The Essex County Department of Child Protective Services placed Olivia with Edwin and Lucy Bates. They’ve been excellent foster parents to her.”

  “Yeah? Well maybe they were nice to her, maybe they weren’t. I’ll find out soon enough. All I’m sayin’ is that woman isn’t Olivia’s real mother. I am. And I aim to get her back. I served my time. I finally got free of the crazy family that abused me and Olivia. I got a good job. Now I plan to raise my girl.”

  Anita stood up. “And you’re not going to stop me. So don’t even try."

  Chapter 10

  Anita Veech’s visit left Frank feeling morose, and with Earl at home, he had no one to cheer him up. He glanced at the time on his phone: Penny would be in the middle of her morning book club. Then his finger hesitated over the Contacts icon. He scrolled to his daughter’s number and pressed call.

  The phone rang and rang. He cut off the call without leaving a message; he knew she never listened to her voicemail. A few minutes later, a text message appeared on his screen: Hectic day. No time to talk. Will call tomorrow.

  Would she? He hadn’t had a full conversation with Caroline in weeks. She was always just about to get in the car, or dealing with some catastrophe, or having a bad day. Sometimes she handed the phone over to his grandsons, but she never seemed to call him back. He’d asked once if something was wrong and she’d snapped “of course, not.” He was afraid to ask again.

  Now he was doubly despondent. Surely there was something he could do to set his world back on track. He toyed with the idea that had come to him in the middle of last night.

  Why delay?

  Reid Burlingame’s law office had a separate entrance on the first floor of his rambling old red brick house with forest green shutters. Frank walked in to an unattended waiting room and tapped lightly on the door to Reid’s inner sanctum.

  “What are you knocking for, Marie?” a cranky voice answered from within.

  Frank opened the door a crack. “It’s not Marie, Reid. It’s Frank Bennett. Am I bothering you?”

  The head of the Town Council sighed. “If Marie isn’t back yet, you’re not. Once she brings me the papers from Leon Shelby, I’ve gotta get cracking on a real estate closing. What’s on your mind?”

  Frank supposed he should have called for an appointment so he wouldn’t be rushed, but the idea bubbled up in him and demanded immediate action. “I have something important I need to talk to you about.”

  Reid made a sweeping gesture of welcome.

  “I suppose you’ve heard about how Earl saved those kids at the Happy Camper Day Care Center,” Frank began.

  “I heard that you and Earl spent hours of your time—time paid for by the tax dollars of the citizens of Trout Run—taking care of a problem that should’ve been handled by the state police.” Reid tapped a pencil on his desk. “But Earl certainly did admirable work.”

  Normally, Frank would be irritated by Reid’s penny-pinching ways, but this was just the direction he wanted the conversation to take. “Yeah, you know that’s not the first time we’ve been called upon to help out in Verona.”

  Reid’s brow furrowed. “You need to keep a tight rein on those activities. Just say no.”

  “The last time it happened, Father Tim from St. Margaret’s called me directly because there was a vagrant sleeping in the back pew of the church and he and the Altar Society ladies were afraid to go in and prepare for Ash Wednesday mass.” Frank knew Reid’s wife was a devout Catholic and a member of the Altar Society at St. Margaret’s, the nearest Catholic church. “I would’ve felt terrible saying no.”

  Reid coughed. “Yes, of course, some discretion is required.”

  “And then there was the time I chased a speeder from Trout Run clear to Verona and it turned out it was the guy who’d been dealing pills right there in the Stewart’s parking lot behind the Dumpster. The manager of Stewart’s had called the state police four or five times over the past few months, and they never got there in time to catch him.”

  Reid’s eye’s narrowed. “What are you getting at, Frank?”

  “Last week’s incident with Ronnie Gatrel
l proved once and for all how totally inadequate the state police coverage is for Verona’s needs. You should talk to the mayor of Verona—”

  “I will. I’ll tell him he’d better be prepared to pay your and Earl’s overtime on this latest intervention.”

  “That’s all well and good, but the bottom line is, a community has to pay for its law enforcement. While Earl and I were over there tending to Verona, anything could have happened here in Trout Run.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “My point is, Verona needs to step up to the plate. They’re always ballyhooing their low taxes. Well, anyplace can have low taxes by skimping on essential services and then relying on the good nature of other towns when an emergency arises.”

  Reid frowned. “True.”

  Frank leaned across Reid’s desk. “I have a proposal to make. Why not hire Earl as a full-time deputy and have the two of us take over the law enforcement needs of both municipalities: Trout Run and Verona.”

  “Preposterous!” Reid tossed his pen across the desk. “Where’s the benefit to Trout Run?”

  “Let Verona pay Earl’s salary increase. We get an experienced, well-trained officer instead of losing him to another town and replacing him with green teenager with no skills that I’d have to train.”

  “But you and Earl would be patrolling twice as much territory with no additional manpower.”

  “Ah, but Verona has a fantastic administrative assistant. She could do a lot of the paperwork Earl does now, and that would free Earl up to do real policing, not just traffic enforcement.”

  Reid cocked his head. “Hmm. We’d have to work out an appropriate division of expenses. It would take a while.”

  “I’m sure Earl would wait if he knew the promotion was coming.”

  Reid narrowed his eyes. “Did Earl and his father put you up to this?”

  “No, no. The idea just came to me yesterday. I haven’t even mentioned it to Earl. I wanted to run it by you first.”