“I’d rather not do that now. I’ll give a full and complete account of what I know at the proper time to the proper authorities.”
“Spoken like a true lawyer,” I observed.
“Do you have a problem with that?”
I could almost see bristles growing out of her forehead. Cassandra Ellis clearly wasn’t much for humor at her own expense.
“No problem,” I said. “But we’re not in court here.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said curtly. “Let me show you something.”
She dug into her svelte Italian handbag, and I caught a glimpse of what looked to be the grip of a pistol tucked inside. She left the gun undisturbed and instead produced a manila envelope. It contained a letter, which she placed on the coffee table in front of us.
“I received this two days ago,” she said. “It may be evidence, so you shouldn’t touch it. Go ahead and read it. It will explain why I’m here.”
The letter read as follows:
My Dearest Cassandra,
I have been meaning now for many years to write to you, but something has always held me back. Now that I find myself very near the end of my life, however, it is time to bring this matter to a close, so that I may leave the world with a peaceful heart.
My name, Cassandra, is Peter Swindell, and I am your father. I know you will find this hard to believe, but I assure you, with all my heart, it is true. Your mother, who I knew only briefly but loved very much, gave birth to you on Sept. 30, 1983, in Chicago, and gave you up for adoption soon thereafter. I learned of this only later, and as you may imagine, I was heartbroken. Your mother is gone from this world now, and so I alone am able to tell our story.
Cassandra, I am a white man and your mother was Black. We truly cared for each other but at that time ours was an illicit love, and I could not do the thing then that I should have done, which was to marry your mother and raise you as our daughter. For this, I am truly sorry.
I have searched for you for many years—adoption records, as you must know, are sealed under court order—and it was only recently that I was able to learn at last of your whereabouts. Since then, I have read everything I could find about you in the Chicago newspapers, and I hope you can at least imagine how proud I am of you and how thrilled I am at your success in life. Your adoptive parents, George and Helen, certainly raised you well and I am grateful for that. I only wish I could have found you sooner.
There is much, much more I would like to tell you, but more than anything else I want to see you, to look into your beautiful face and ask for your forgiveness, before I die. I am too ill to travel—the doctors say I have only a matter of weeks—but if you could come here to my home in Pineland, which is just north of the Twin Cities, we could spend my remaining days together.
I know this is a great deal to ask after so long a time. I will understand if you choose not to come. But there is nothing in life I want now except to see you. I have not called you because it would somehow seem wrong to intrude on you in that way. However, please feel free to call me at any time if you wish. I can only conclude by saying it would mean everything to me if you would respond to this letter and agree to come see me here in Pineland. I would savor every moment with you and perhaps, in what little time there is, you might even come to feel something in your heart for me as well.
With all my love,
Peter Swindell
Beneath the signature was a phone number beginning with a 612 area code, which covers the Minneapolis area but not Pineland, as well as what appeared to be the correct address for Peter’s mansion. The signature itself, in blue ink, was written with a shaky hand. I couldn’t recall ever seeing a specimen of Peter’s handwriting, but I would have expected it to be bold and pretentious, just like the man, and not the reedy scrawl I was looking at now.
Nothing about the letter sounded at all like Peter. I doubted heartache and repentance were part of his genetic makeup. His style was never to look back, and I suspected he’d long ago buried his emotions in a deep pit so he could stomp across the world free from the entanglements of the heart. I simply couldn’t imagine him suddenly becoming sentimental about an abandoned child. Nor was he at death’s door as far as anyone knew.
“That’s quite a letter,” I said. “But I have to be honest with you. I don’t think—”
“You don’t think Mr. Swindell wrote this letter, do you? Why is that?”
I explained my reasoning. I also told her about the Serenader and the message he’d left at the courthouse. “You must be ‘the woman.’ And since the Serenader seems to have predicted your arrival, it’s possible he wrote the letter. Or, at the least, he knows who did.”
“So you’re saying I was lured here. I suspected as much.”
“Then why did you come? If this is all bullshit—”
She cut me off. “It may not be entirely bullshit. It’s possible, even likely, Peter Swindell really is my father.”
“Why do think so?”
“Because I called him, whoever he is. It was an interesting conversation.”
8
I wanted to hear what Cassandra and the letter writer had talked about. But I had to temper my curiosity. She clearly possessed significant evidence relating to Peter and possibly his disappearance. It was time for official business, rather than casual conversation.
“We really need a formal interview at this point,” I told her. “I’m sure I could arrange a meeting at the sheriff’s office within the hour. Would you be willing to do that?”
“Yes, that would be fine. As I said, I have no problem providing a statement.”
I called Arne on his cell and explained the situation. He agreed to meet us at his office in forty-five minutes and said he’d notify the two Jasons to see if they were available as well.
“We’re all set,” I told Cassandra. “I can drive you to the sheriff’s office and back if that will work.” She said it would.
Camus, who’d been sprawled on the floor, went over to Cassandra and favored her with one of his patented, soul-searching stares.
She stared back and said, “Your dog seems to find me very interesting. What’s his name?”
I told her, explaining that I’d read a lot of Albert Camus in college. “Then I found myself back in Pineland and it felt kind of absurd, so when this guy arrived at my doorstep one day, I decided to anoint him my Camus in residence.”
“And he provides philosophical advice, is that it?”
“Yes. He also keeps burglars away.”
“Fascinating,” Cassandra said and looked at me as though I just might be crazy.
Before we headed off to Arne’s office, I gave Cassandra a brief sketch of Pineland and Paradise County. I assumed she felt uncomfortable, fearing that racists lurked around every corner. It’s not like that, I told her, but I did caution that Pineland is not a liberal Valhalla where rainbows of happy diversity sparkle in the sky. I suggested she should be straightforward and nonjudgmental with the locals, and most would respond in kind.
“I’ll handle it,” she said.
Out of sheer curiosity, I asked about her education and background. She wasn’t very forthcoming, but I was able to tease out some information. She’d graduated from Northwestern University with a double major in political science and economics and gone on to Harvard Law School on a scholarship. Then she’d clerked for a federal appeals court judge. It was the kind of resume most lawyers would kill for.
My educational background, I told her, wasn’t quite as stellar. I have a bachelor’s degree in history from St. Cloud State University, a school of no particular distinction, followed by an L.L.B. degree from William Mitchell College of Law. I didn’t mention that it required five years of night classes to get my law degree while I worked an array of odd jobs, all accomplished with student loans totaling close to sixty thousand dollars. I’m still paying the
m off.
She wasn’t familiar with William Mitchell and asked where it was.
“It’s an adjunct of Harvard,” I said.
“Really? I never heard of it there.”
“That’s because I’m kidding. It’s actually in St. Paul, but it’s now the Hamline College of Law.”
“Haven’t heard of that, either,” she said without cracking a smile.
I changed the subject and asked how long she’d worked for her firm in Chicago. She said she’d started at Randall, Morton, Muir and Feinstein right out of law school. The firm specialized in personal injury cases and was known for its aggressive, leave-no-bridges-unburned style of litigation. In Chicago legal circles, she said, the joke was that the firm’s initials actually stood for Really Mean Motherfuckers.
“So how do you end up among the sharks?” I asked.
“Simplest reason of all. The firm needed a nice Black face for their affirmative action portfolio, and they dangled plenty of money my way, so I signed on.”
“And from there, I gather, it was onward and upward. Now, you’re already a senior litigator. I can’t tell you how impressed I am.”
“It wasn’t easy,” she said. “I worked really hard. I won some big cases for the firm and when you bring in money you get rewarded. It’s that simple.”
“Any cases I might have heard of?”
“The biggest was Richard Washington vs. Chicago Housing Authority. That was last year. Richard was just fourteen and a shooting left him paralyzed and with a traumatic brain injury. I argued that CHA was negligent in just about every way you can think of, and the jury agreed. He was awarded sixty million, counting punitive damages.”
“And your firm will get forty percent of that?”
“Fifty. And that’s how I became a senior litigator with a corner office. More importantly, Richard will get the care he needs for the rest of his life.”
“You sound like you just might be an idealist underneath all that legal armor we lawyers have to wear.”
She smiled for the first time and said, “Oh, I don’t know if I’d go that far. So, tell me something. Who’s the sheriff I’ll be seeing?”
“His name is Arne Sigurdson.”
“What’s he like?”
“The consensus of one, that being me, regards him as an asshole.”
“Wonderful,” she said. “Assholes are who I deal with every day.”
As we drove to Arne’s office, I decided to take a gamble. I knew Arne and the Jasons wouldn’t want me in on their interview with Cassandra. But I felt I’d established some rapport with her and I remained deeply curious about the phone conversation she’d had with whoever wrote her the letter. So I told her how I’d become a suspect in Peter’s disappearance because of the text message.
“I’m officially considered a suspicious character,” I said.
“Well, that’s good to know, but I have to say you don’t look like a desperado to me.”
“Thank you.”
“Actually, you have a kind face. That’s not true of many lawyers I know.”
“It’s the one defect in my otherwise sterling character,” I said. “Now, if there’s anything you want to mention in passing about that phone conversation yesterday, I’d be happy to hear it, in complete confidence of course.”
She seemed to be loosening up—maybe she’d decided she could trust me—and she said, “I guess I can give you the quick version. I talked with the guy for about twenty minutes. He knew all about me, where I grew up, what my adoptive father did for a living, where I went to school, you name it. He also talked about my birth mother but wouldn’t tell me her name.”
“Did he say why?”
“Not in so many words. But he left the impression she might have been a prostitute. He told me he really did love her but marriage was out of the question. Besides, she had a bad drug problem, or so he said.”
“Is that how she died?”
“He claimed he didn’t know for sure but it might have been a heroin overdose. He told me he’d lost track of her after I was born. Then he moved to the Chicago suburbs and married a woman there. She’s dead, too, he said. Cancer.”
“How did the guy sound?” I asked, thinking of Peter, who spoke in a silky baritone and always talked very fast.
“He sounded like an old, sick man. His voice was almost a whisper, and he seemed to be struggling to get the words out.”
“What time did you call him?”
“About four o’clock yesterday.”
Peter had vanished early Saturday morning, well before Cassandra made her call. But if he were still alive, his disappearance a ruse, why would he have gone to the trouble of disguising his voice? And if he was in hiding, why had he urged Cassandra to visit him in Pineland? It didn’t make sense.
I shared these thoughts with Cassandra. She said, “That’s interesting. Let’s assume then that I didn’t talk to Peter Swindell yesterday. But whoever it was, he was very convincing. That’s why I hopped on a flight this morning.”
“I would have stayed in Chicago,” I said. “Why risk coming here when you knew you could be walking into a trap of some kind?”
“There are things I need to find out, and I’m willing to take the risk. Besides, I don’t scare easily.”
“So what exactly are you hoping to find out? That Peter really is your father?”
“Yes, that’s the first big thing. The man I talked to on the phone knew way too much to be a simple scammer. He knew the date and location of my birth in Chicago. He also offered up details about the woman he claimed was my birth mother. A lot of what he said was new to me. You have to understand, I was only a few weeks old when I was adopted by a white couple, George and Helen Ellis, from Wheaton, Illinois. They’re the only parents I’ve ever known.”
“Did you ever try to track down your biological parents?”
“No. My attitude for a long time was that I really didn’t want to know. But I could never quite make the curiosity go away. Last year, I took one of those DNA tests that traces your ancestry. If the test was accurate, I’m half Scottish and Irish.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, Peter is of Scotch-Irish ancestry. We have an annual parade up here and Peter liked to march in it playing bagpipes and wearing a kilt. I can’t say his appearance was fetching.”
Cassandra Ellis, on the other hand, was very fetching, and I studied her face closely as we continued to talk. One feature, her eyebrows, stood out. They were long and slightly arched in the usual manner but took a short, steep dive as they neared her nose. It was a striking detail, one I’d also noticed on Peter’s face. A genetic marker of sorts or just a coincidence? I didn’t know.
As we approached the sheriff’s office, which is near the courthouse, Cassandra said, “The only way to tell for sure if Mr. Swindell really is my father would be a DNA paternity test. But now that he’s gone missing, that might be a problem.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “You probably don’t know it, but Peter has a son here in town named Dewey. His DNA, if he’d be willing to provide it, would do as well as Peter’s for purposes of comparison.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure things out.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, here’s the way I see it. Whoever sent you the letter and talked to you on the phone is likely the same person who snapped that photo in Chicago. And now that he’s got you here, who knows what his intentions are? You could be in real danger. My lawyerly advice would be for you to leave here as soon as you can until we have a better sense of what’s going on.”
“I appreciate what you’re saying, but what if Peter Swindell really is my father? I need to know what happened to him. Is he dead or alive? Who spirited him away and why? But more than anything else I need to know who I am because I’ve never been able to answer that question. My ad
optive parents are wonderful people but they’re not blood, and blood is the one true thing we get when we come into the world. It took me a long time to realize that, but now I do.”
I thought of my own tangled bloodlines, a saga of Germans and Irish and Native Americans and God knows who else, and I understood her point. I also saw that there was in her a deep fierceness—how could she, as a prized litigator, not have that quality?—and that she wouldn’t back away from danger in pursuit of a worthy goal.
“So I gather you’ll be staying here for a while.”
“Yes, until I know what I need to know. I’ll be at the big resort hotel outside of town.”
“Okay. I assume you know who owns the place?”
“I don’t.”
“Peter Swindell.”
“Imagine that,” she said. “Small world up here, isn’t it?”
Arne and Jason Braddock were waiting for us at the sheriff’s department. After introductions were made, I mentioned that Cassandra’s car was parked at my house and she’d need a ride back. Jason immediately volunteered.
“You won’t have to talk to Mr. Zweifel again,” he added. “We’ll take everything from here.”
Maybe Jason believed that, but I intended to see Cassandra again, and soon.
9
I went home and screwed around with some legal work to pass the time, but I couldn’t get Cassandra out of my mind. Her story, especially the part about the letter from her supposed father, had resonated with me. With its plea for reconciliation, the letter was exactly the kind my own father should have written but never did, and I still can’t get over it.
My father, the Honorable Phillip Howard Zweifel, was an excellent lawyer, known for his cutting cross-examinations and charming way with a jury. He was also, for ten years in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Paradise County Attorney. It was a part-time job then, more political than anything else, and my father was by all accounts very adept at it.
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