“Yeah. Isn’t that part of your deal?”
“I haven’t been doing this research on my computer.”
The waitress brought our ribs, and Rick put away all the paperwork. When she’d left, he said, “Do you want to go back to prison, Steve?”
“No.”
“Then stop doing stupid shit.” He picked up a rib and waved it at me. “You’re a smart guy. I’ve known that since chemistry class.” I’d hung out in that class with Rick and a girl from Lake Shores, and though I’m no science geek I had carried both of them along with me. “But it’s like you don’t think the rules apply to you. They do. And the sooner you realize that, the better.”
He chomped down on the rib, still staring me down. I blinked first.
“When I was in prison, I tried so hard to believe that it wasn’t happening to me. That I wasn’t the kind of guy who ends up in a place like that. And I was determined that it wasn’t going to change who I was.” I sighed. “I have to face the fact that it did change things. That I’m not—you know—entitled any more.”
“We were lucky, growing up here,” Rick said. “Stable family lives, two-parent households, good schools. It’s not until you get out into the world that you realize how rare that stuff is these days.”
“Look at Caroline Kelly and her friends,” I said. “They had to move around every couple of years. Chris McCutcheon said it affected the way that they related to other people.”
Some of the tension in my shoulders eased, as Rick and I went on to talk about other stuff—Gail and The Chocolate Ear, Rochester’s behavior, a girl Rick had met the week before and was going out with again on Saturday night. I guess we were both trying to pretend we were just a pair of friends out for dinner, not a cop and an ex-felon who just couldn’t seem to stop getting into trouble.
The next morning I read part of the paper at breakfast and left the rest on the kitchen table to look at over lunch. I had spent so much time helping Edith with her paperwork, and Rick with his internet research, that I’d been neglecting work that made me money. I had to spend some serious time on the risk manager’s work, even though it was Saturday. If I wasn’t going to have teaching income during the summer, and perhaps not ever again, I had to make sure I kept this guy as a client.
I spent the morning reading, editing, and reorganizing. I was just getting ready to take a break when I heard Rochester making a ruckus downstairs. He wasn’t barking, but he was making a lot of noise, what sounded like digging. When I came down the stairs, I saw him on the kitchen tile with a piece of newspaper under his paws. He was scratching at it with his claws, trying to rip the paper apart.
“Hey, stop that!” I said. I hurried down the stairs and grabbed the paper away from him. The page was crumpled and there was a big tear in the center. “Bad dog! We don’t tear up the newspaper.”
I looked at him. “What’s the matter? Didn’t like something you read?” As I was putting the paper back together I noticed an article about the traffic accident Rick had investigated the day before, right where Rochester had been scratching.
“A motorcycle crash yesterday on River Road in Stewart’s Crossing claimed the life of Arsene Philippe, a 19-year-old Trenton resident who lost control of his Kawasaki on a section of the road that has seen numerous accidents. Crossing mayor Neil Down called upon the state to consider widening the road and expanding the shoulders, though environmental activists have long opposed such a move.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Save the birds, kill the people.” I wondered if it was the same section of River Road where I’d been hit.
The article continued, “Philippe emigrated to the United States from Haiti as a child and attended Trenton public schools. He had recently been released from the federal correctional facility in Fairton, NJ, where he served eighteen months on federal weapons charges. When asked if Philippe’s criminal record might be connected to the fatal accident, Stewart’s Crossing police detective Richard Stemper declined to comment.”
Something in that article rang a bell. “Did you want me to read that, Rochester?” I asked.
In answer, he lowered his head to the floor and arched his back in a long stretch. “I guess you want to go out, don’t you?”
He started jumping up and down when I pulled his leash off the counter, and we went out for a quick walk. When I got back, I fixed myself lunch and finished reading the paper.
It wasn’t until I’d climbed the stairs to the office again and gone back to the risk manager’s manual that it hit me. “Fairton,” I said out loud.
I dialed Rick’s cell phone and as soon as he answered I repeated myself. “Fairton. Your victim yesterday was incarcerated there.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Steve. Somebody else was in Fairton, too.”
“Lots of people,” he said. “It’s a pretty big facility.”
“Yeah, but one in particular. Cyrus Devere.”
“Why is that name familiar?”
“Because he’s Jackie Devere’s brother,” I said. “Jackie, my colleague at Eastern. Jackie, who knew Menno Zook.” My mind was racing ahead. “Arsene Philippe was in on weapons charges, right?”
“Yup.”
“So if Jackie needed a gun and she asked her brother Cyrus for help, he could have referred her to Arsene Philippe.”
“Assuming he knew Arsene Philippe.”
“There is no such thing as coincidence,” I said. “You have some way to figure out if Cyrus and Arsene knew each other?”
“You know it’s Saturday, right? Some people have the day off on Saturday.”
I felt bad for about half a second. “You’re not some people. You’re a dedicated investigator. I’ll bet you’re at the station now, aren’t you?” In the background I heard some kind of intercom going, doors opening and closing.
“Hey, who’s the detective here? I’ll check to see if there’s a connection between these two. I’ll talk to you later.”
He hung up, and I went back to work. Around five, Rochester came after me, wanting to play, and I stood up and stretched. My ribs still ached a little from the accident, but I was a lot luckier than Arsene Philippe.
As Rochester and I were walking back, the lyrics to a Cat Stevens song began drifting through my brain. “Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody,” I sang. Rochester looked up at me, as if to remind me that he wasn’t just chopped liver.
“No offense, boy, but you’re just a dog,” I said, reaching down to pet his head. “And a boy dog, to boot.”
Letting us into the house, I wondered if there was a woman out there who would consider taking me on. I wasn’t bad-looking, I was smart and I could be charming. I was also an ex-felon on parole, though, with a diminishing bank balance and shaky future prospects.
I’d met a few single women since my return to Stewart’s Crossing. Caroline Kelly, Gail Dukowski, Jackie Devere, and Dee Gamay, among them. It wasn’t the availability of women, though, that was the problem. It was me.
Mary had me served with divorce papers while I was in prison, a month after my dad died, and I refused to think about how my life was falling apart while I was locked up. I signed the papers, corresponded with the attorney handling my dad’s estate, but I never let the idea sink in until I was ready to be released and I realized I had nowhere to go but Stewart’s Crossing.
I’d shut down, and forced myself to focus on simple things, like getting a job, making meals, keeping up the house. That was why I hadn’t dealt with my father’s gun—I knew I wasn’t supposed to have it, but it was easier to ignore the issue than figure out what to do.
Caroline’s death, and Rochester’s adoption, had shaken things up. I knew I had to make some changes. I was hoping that once I had put the investigation behind me, I’d be able to continue to move forward. And maybe one of these days there would be a woman to share those Saturday nights with me and my dog.
36 - Occam’s Razor
I didn’t leave the house on Sunday e
xcept to walk the dog. The more I worked on the risk manager’s manual, the more I found I had to do. I didn’t even have time to slip out to The Chocolate Ear. Gail would probably forget who I was by the time I made it back there, given how much I had to do. And that it made it even less likely that she’d agree to go out on a date with me.
Rick didn’t call back until Monday morning, when I was trying to figure out how to make a consent form for the use of gadolinium read like something other than medical jargon. “I got the info on Arsene Philippe. I’m heading up to Leighville to go over the information with Tony. Can you come along? I want you to tell him how you figured out the connection.”
I’d have agreed to walk there on my hands rather than work on that consent form, so I said yes, and Rick picked me up a few minutes later.
“Tony knows about your record,” Rick said, as he turned from Ferry Street onto the River Road to head up to Leighville. “But he doesn’t know about your run-in with Santos, or the papers I burned at The Drunken Hessian on Friday.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s not about you,” he said. “I want this case solved, and your problems are just a distraction. I want to keep Tony focused.”
“Gee, I wish I could consider my problems just a distraction.”
“A couple of years from now, this will all be a distant memory,” Rick said. “When you look back you’ll be surprised you ever stressed about it.”
“That’s assuming that I’m not back in prison by then,” I said.
Rick gave me a sharp glance. “You’re not doing anything else you shouldn’t be, are you?”
“No, Dad.” I turned to look out the window.
We were both quiet for a while, as the spring landscape unfolded around us. Blue jays swooped in the pine trees by the roadside, and tiny daisies were popping up in the grassy verge. “I have a buddy in AA,” Rick said, when we’d crossed through New Hope, the Delaware swirling beside us in fast eddies. “He has a sponsor he calls whenever he feels like he’s in trouble.”
I looked over at him. “I’m not an alcoholic,” I said.
“But I know you must get tempted,” he said. “I want you to know you can call me, like my buddy calls his sponsor. I’m no computer geek, but I know what it’s like to want to do something you shouldn’t.”
“You? Mister straight arrow?”
“Just because I’m a cop doesn’t mean I’m not human. I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. The point is, I know what temptation’s like. You ever feel like you’re going down the wrong path, I want you to call me. I promise I won’t judge you or anything.”
I remembered Rick setting the printout from Strings Livorno’s bank account on fire at The Drunken Hessian, and I felt sort of warm and fuzzy inside. “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
He pulled into the parking lot behind the Leighville police station a few minutes later, and we met Tony in an interview room. “You have another lead?” he asked Rick.
Rick nodded. “It started with Steve.” To me, he said, “ You want to tell Tony what you found?”
“It was really Rochester,” I said.
“The dog?” Tony asked.
“Just tell him, Steve. Leave the dog out of it.”
I frowned at him. “There was an article in the paper on Saturday about the victim in a motorcycle accident Friday on River Road. The article mentioned that the guy had been in a federal correctional facility in Fairton, New Jersey.”
“And?” Tony asked.
Rick jumped in. “I got confirmation this morning from Fairton that my victim, Arsene Philippe, was on the same cell block with a guy named Cyrus Devere. Cyrus is the brother of Jackie Devere.”
“Jackie is a professor in the English department at Eastern,” I added. “Menno Zook took a developmental writing class with her in the fall, and I know he kept in touch with her.”
Tony Rinaldi finished his cappuccino and I could see the wheels whirring around in his head. “You think this MVA is related to our crimes?”
“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” I said.
“Yeah, there is,” Rick said. “But sometimes you just have to look at what’s in front of you.”
“Occam’s Razor,” I said.
Tony looked at me, and Rick sighed. “Remember, the guy’s a professor.”
“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,” I said. “Occam’s Razor in a nutshell.”
He nodded. “The Name of the Rose.”
This time Rick looked baffled. “It was a book,” I said. “A medieval murder mystery. The hero solved the case by applying Occam’s Razor to his deductions.”
“Also a movie,” Tony said. “I’m a Sean Connery buff. Have everything available on DVD.”
“OK, enough diversion,” Rick said. “Back to the problem at hand. It’s possible that Jackie Devere either met Arsene Philippe when she visited Cyrus at Fairton, or that she asked Cyrus for a gun and he pointed her toward Arsene.”
“All conjecture,” Rick said. “But IF she got the gun from Philippe, and then she wanted to cover her tracks, she could have run him off the road.”
Tony opened up a note pad and wrote some things down, asking for dates, the spelling of names, and so on. Probably to prove he was just as good a detective, Rick took some notes himself. While they challenged each other on whose note pad was bigger, I got a hollow feeling in my stomach. “So it’s likely that the accident that killed him was related to everything else.”
“And it’s likely that your pal Jackie is at the center of it all,” Rick said. “What do you say, Tony? I think we should both head up to Eastern to look for her.”
“The school’s on break this week,” I said. “Spring term finished on Friday, and summer term doesn’t start til next Monday.”
“You feel up to a drive?” Tony asked Rick. “You go to Fairton, talk to Cyrus, and I’ll look around for Jackie Devere. Leighville’s my turf, after all. I’ll see if it looks like her car was in an accident with a motorcycle last week.”
They agreed to their division of duties, and I Rick dropped me off back at home on his way to Fairton. I left the investigating to the professionals and went back to the gadolinium consent form. I was sick of radiology procedures, privacy policies and health care regulations, but I wanted to be able to put dog food on the table for Rochester, even if all I could afford was to share it with him, so I kept working. I was so busy I didn’t even go out for the mail until I was walking Rochester after dinner.
There was a lumpy package in the box addressed to him. “Hey, boy, you’ve got mail,” I said, imitating the voice from AOL. Back at the house we opened it up.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” the note read. “Hope you like these biscuits.”
“Isn’t that nice,” I said. “Your Aunt Gail sent you some biscuits.” I sniffed them. They didn’t smell like pumpkin. “She must be trying a new recipe.”
I gave him one biscuit and left the rest, in their plastic bag, on the kitchen counter. I went back to the big manual, and I was caught up in work until eleven, when I realized it was late and my back and ribs had started to ache again.
“Rochester,” I called. “Hey, boy, want to go for a walk before bed?”
I found him sprawled out in the middle of the kitchen floor. The empty plastic bad that had contained the biscuits was near his head, and he’d thrown up twice. “You ate all those biscuits!” I said. “Bad dog! No wonder you threw up.”
His body was twitching, and his nose was warm. “Are you OK, boy? Do you need to go to the vet?”
I didn’t know what to do. The only other dog owner I knew well enough to call for advice was Jackie Devere, and I figured she had her own problems, especially if Tony Rinaldi had caught up with her.
I cleaned up the vomit and wiped Rochester’s mouth with a wet towel. Then I started pacing around, talking to myself as I argued the pros and cons of taking him to the vet’s emergency service. Would th
ey think I was stupid and overprotective if he just had an upset stomach? What could they give a dog for overeating, anyway? Some kind of puppy Pepto?
I picked up the plastic bag, which still had one corner of a biscuit left in it, and was about to throw it away when the aroma of chocolate wafted out of it. Chocolate? I didn’t know much about doggie digestion, but I knew they weren’t supposed to eat chocolate. How come I hadn’t noticed that smell before? Didn’t Gail know dogs couldn’t eat chocolate? I thought she knew everything there was to know about the stuff.
Then I caught my breath. What if Gail hadn’t sent the biscuits at all? There was one other person who made biscuits for Rochester—Jackie Devere. I flashed back to the last time I’d seen Jackie, at Eastern, with Rochester. I’d bragged to her about how he’d helped me find clues to Caroline’s murder.
A murder she might have committed, or at least ordered.
It was as if I’d signed the dog’s death warrant.
I searched through the trash for the envelope that had brought Rochester the biscuits. There was no return address on it, and the postmark read “Southeastern Pennsylvania,” which was not helpful. I left it on the counter, and found Rochester’s leash. “Come on, boy, we’re going to the vet,” I said.
He didn’t get up, he just banged his head against the floor a couple of times and wagged his tail.
“Come on, Rochester, get up,” I said, tugging on the leash. But though he tried to get up, he couldn’t move enough. I ran to the front door, opened it, and dashed out to the Beemer. I didn’t have the keys. I ran back inside, found them, then ran back outside. I realized I wasn’t wearing shoes. I ran back inside, and Rochester thumped his head on the floor again and wagged his tail. “All right, boy, I’m going to make you all better, I promise,” I said. The words caught in my throat and I thought I might cry.
Upstairs, I threw on my shoes, grabbed a jacket, and a blanket to put over Rochester. I hurried back downstairs, dropped what I was carrying, and bent over to pick up the dog.
“Oof,” I said. “Dog, you’re going on a diet.” He must have weighed eighty pounds. Bending from the knees, I lifted and stood, then staggered out the front door to the BMW in the driveway. I nearly dropped him twice, but at last I was able to deposit him in the front seat.
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