Deception (18 page)

“You … haven’t said anything to Abernathy, have you?” Lennox asked, his face drained of blood.

I thought of how I’d unveiled my suspicions to Abernathy, shocking him with the prospect that a detective could be the murderer. I hoped no one noticed my slight hesitation.

“Like I’d drop so much as a
hint
to a
Tribune
reporter that I suspected a cop? What kind of a dimwit do you think I am?”

I was holding a hand of nothing, seven high. Folding wasn’t an option. Bluffing was my only chance.

“You’re an idiot,” Lennox said. “But I’ll grant you, nobody’s
that
big an idiot.”

Apparently he’d forgotten I was King of the Idiots.

“Sergeant,” Lennox said, “you haven’t said anything to talk sense into this man.”

Seymour looked at the chief, captain, and lieutenant, in that order. He’d been a cop most of his life.

“If he’s making a rush to judgment, I’d try to talk him out of it,” Sarge said. “Chandler cuts corners, and I’ve had to pick up the pieces. Still, he’s one of the best detectives I’ve ever seen.”

The sweet talk made me blush and grin.

“But I wouldn’t underestimate how big a dimwit he could be. He may just be warming up.”

I stopped grinning.

“Still,” Sarge said, “the evidence suggests we may have an internal problem. I don’t see how we can overlook it. Our job is to follow the evidence and solve the crime. How it makes us look doesn’t matter.”

“You’ve been a police officer how long, Sergeant?” Lennox asked.

“Thirty-five years, sir.”

“And you were last promoted when?”

“Fifteen years ago. I like my job. It’s what I—”

“Yes. No doubt. But perhaps you aren’t qualified to assess how important our public image is. We work for the people. They pay our salary. What they think of us
does
matter.”

“But it’s secondary, not primary. And I believe they’ll think more highly of us when we catch killers—whoever they are.”

I could have kissed Sergeant Seymour. And if you saw his mug, you’d understand what that means.

“No one’s saying to look the other way,” Swiridoff said. “We’re just saying, use discretion.”

“It’s essential that Abernathy doesn’t catch wind of this possibility,” Lennox said. “I’m going to tell Raylon Berkley the deal’s off. I don’t want Abernathy on this case.”

“Won’t that look suspicious?” Nicks asked.

“I’ll give him a good reason and offer alternatives. Meanwhile, I’m counting on you three men to make sure Detective Chandler stays within his limits and does
not
damage our image. When it comes to your future in this department—all of you—there are other fish in the sea. Am I clear on that point?”

The captain and lieutenant nodded. Sarge’s neck went rigid.

“Am I clear on that, Sergeant?”

“Very clear.”

“As for you, Chandler, if you mishandle this case, it’ll be your last. These men are my witnesses. If your career goes down in flames, you won’t be alone. I’ll hold any or all of your superiors accountable. Do you hear what I’m saying? All of you?”

Everybody nodded. Even me.

I drove home in the darkness. I didn’t turn on the radio, or Michael Pritchard reading Nero Wolfe. I even turned off my cell phone. My body was behind the wheel, but my mind was elsewhere. My meeting with the brass was bugging me; so were nagging thoughts about the gum wrapper and rope. My mind landed on the discussions with Jake and Clarence. They’d raised again the two events I can never escape … Sharon’s death being one of them.

Maybe it was the looming shadow of Thanksgiving. Holidays can do that to you when you have great memories of a past but no hope for a future. Maybe it’s the holiday’s name. You know you’re far better off than most people who’ve ever lived, but you’re still not happy. And part of you refuses to give thanks because you’ve lost so much and you feel like you deserve better than what you’ve gotten.

Then I felt guilty, because I hate entitlement, whining, and ingratitude—three things ruining our country. Yet when I look inside myself, I see the things I hate. Sometimes I think maybe what’s wrong with this world is that it’s made up of people like me.

During my first years as a detective, I never discussed my work with Sharon. I figured it would depress her. What depressed her was that I shut her out. I kept it inside, but it ate at me.

“Let me in,” she’d say.

“You don’t want in,” I’d say.

“Some wives can live with their husband’s silence. I can’t. If you don’t trust me enough to let me in, it’s going to destroy our marriage.”

I started doing what my superiors wouldn’t approve. I’d fill her in on a case. It made me feel better. We could talk about it for hours. When I said, “You’ve got to be sick of this,” she’d say, “I’d rather have us talk about a murder case than talk about nothing.” Then magically, once we talked it out, we could move on to other things. And I was no longer shutting her out.

Sharon was my closest friend and I was hers. Until her last days, that is, when she spent more and more time with Janet Woods, Geneva Abernathy, and Sue Keels. “I love those ladies,” she said. “That Geneva—her smile seems lit from the inside, like a big candle flame coming through a carved pumpkin.”

My wife said things like that.

“When I’m with them, I feel encouraged,” she said. “I feel hope.”

“And when you’re with me?”

“I feel your love. It seems like the love was late in coming. But now that it’s here, I’m so grateful. But …”

“But?”

“But when I’m with you, I don’t feel much hope. Long-term hope, I mean. You’re always trying to give me hope that I’m going to beat this cancer. But I don’t know if I
can
beat it.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You mean well, Ollie. You’ve become my cheerleader, and I love you for it. But I
am
going to die.”

“Stop it!” Hot blood flooded my brain.

“Okay, let’s say I
do
beat this cancer. Then what? Does that mean I won’t die? Of course not. I’ll die at a different time, maybe in a different way. You’ll die too. I just want to be ready. Geneva and Janet and Sue are helping me get ready.”

“They’re helping you give up, that’s what they’re doing! They’re throwing dirt on your grave!”

“No, they’re not. They’re showing me God loves me and—”

“God loves you? Then why’s He doing this to you?”

“I don’t know, Ollie. There’s a lot I don’t know. But I want to spend the time I have left—whether it’s weeks or years—learning more about Him.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

“Following Jesus is like a fresh start. I feel like I’ve been wasting my life.”

“On me? And Kendra and Andrea? We’re a waste?”

“What a terrible thing to say. You know I don’t think that.”

Her tears started flowing, and my stupid heart broke.

“Sorry.”

“Even my death is about you, isn’t it, Ollie?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re the detective. Why don’t you figure it out?”

My job is figuring out why people died. But I’ll never figure out why Sharon died.

When she was near the end, Jake said to me, “God loves you and Sharon.”

If God loved us, why didn’t He help us? Why isn’t Sharon still alive? If He’s in control of everything … then He’s the one who killed Sharon. So why would I trust my wife’s killer?

Thanksgiving? For what?

14

“They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. It’s a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.”

S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
,
A S
TUDY IN
S
CARLET

T
HURSDAY
, N
OVEMBER
28

THANKSGIVING DAY
.

My daughter Kendra hadn’t returned my call—she usually doesn’t—so I drove toward Jake’s house to join his family and the family of Finney Keels, Jake’s old buddy who died years ago.

I pulled up across the street from Jake’s and tried to find motivation to get out of the car and face another holiday with a group that didn’t include Sharon. After ten minutes, I walked to the front door.

The first person to greet me was Little Finn, Finney Keels’s Down syndrome boy. He wasn’t so little anymore, but his face was still that of a child.

“Hi dere, Unca Ollie!” He put his arms around me.

“Still working at the health club, Finn?”

“Yeah, Mr. Eisenzimmer says I’m his best ’ployee!”

“I’ll bet you’re one fine ’ployee.”

“No, it’s ’ployee,” he said.

I nodded and smiled.

“Uncle Ollie!”

I turned and looked at the familiar smile of the young woman in the wheelchair. I came close to her, bending down. Carly Woods, brown-haired with a hint of red, reached out and hugged me. She was so thin now it was like being hugged by dried-up branches. She felt brittle, and I was afraid to squeeze lest she crack.

Carly seems to like me. I’m grateful for her naïveté, but I can’t stand what she’s going through. It isn’t right. Her son Finney, named after Little Finn’s dad, Finney Keels, shook my hand politely and firmly. I liked that. He looks like his grandfather Jake.

Jake gave me his muscular Vietnam vet handshake. Janet fawned over me, taking my coat and offering me malted milk balls, which she knows I love. When you come to gatherings alone, it helps to have something to do with your hands … and your mouth.

“Ollie!” Sue Keels, still blond and petite, threw her arms around me. “I’ve really missed you.”

Funny how you know when people mean what they say.

I see Sue only a couple of times a year when I pick up Little Finn and take him to a ball game or a movie, usually with Jake. I got to know her while investigating her husband’s murder. She’s dated a few guys since then, one or two I’ve met at our Thanksgiving gatherings, but she’s never remarried. She’s a sweetheart, and she’d be a great catch for any guy with a high tolerance for talk about Jesus. But with her it’s more than talk. She gives me hope that her beliefs aren’t empty, and that, in the end, maybe Sharon’s weren’t either.

Sue’s daughter Angela and granddaughter Karina were there, with Sue’s grandsons Ty, Matthew, and Jake. (People get named after each other in these families). The three boys are an entertaining little trio—binky-sucker, stair-climber, and fridge-raider.

It wasn’t long before we’d grabbed hands, Carly on one side and Little Finn on the other. I knew what was coming. Different people pray before meals, but usually Little Finn steals the show.

“God in heaven,” Finn said, much louder than necessary, “tank You dat You are dere and here and everywhere else, even under da bed and in da closet and on da roof, and in dat scary corner in da garage by da paint cans. Tank You for takin’ care of me and my mom and sister and niece and nephews, and everybody else’s nieces and nephews and cousins and children and parents and grandmothers and grandfathers and great-grandmothers, and da people they don’t know very well too.”

There were amens and nods and smiles. I know because I was looking around the table, not being much of a prayer guy. One time I closed my eyes in a group setting and opened them to see a gun pointed at a hostage. Since then I’ve made it a habit not to close my eyes in public.

Little Finn was going right on, as if he were talking to a real person.

“Tank You, Jesus, dat my dad’s dere with You and he’s lookin’ forward to seein’ me again just like I want to see him. Please make dat happen soon, Lord. Say hi to him for me, and hi to Unca Clarence’s daddy, Mr. Abernathy, and his sister and niece and say hi to Unca Ollie’s wife, Sharon, who also died. And Carly is going to be joining them soon too, so please tell everybody she’s coming, okay?”

I looked at Jake and Janet and saw tears come to their eyes, and when I looked at Carly, right beside me, I saw a huge smile on her face. She nodded and said a soft “Yes, Lord.”

“And Jesus,” Finn wasn’t done, “tank You for this Thanksgiving dinner and for Aunt Janet and my mom, Mrs. Susan Keels, and for everybody who came with food, including da pie somebody bought at Safeway. And God, we also pray for Unca Ollie dat he repent and come to Jesus and admit that he’s a big sinner.”

Little Finn squeezed my left hand and Carly squeezed my right, and she looked up at me and laughed hysterically. It was contagious, and others started laughing. I laughed too.

Little Finn went right on, “And God please forgive everybody for laughin’ in da midda of my prayer, but we do wanna laugh tonight, just not during da prayer, so help me to finish this prayer so it will be ’kay to laugh. In Jesus’ name …”

“Amen!” Five people said at once, and Little Finn was done. Now he was laughing too.

I looked at him and marveled that he could be in his twenties now and still a child. He reminded me of Obadiah Abernathy, a man I’d known in his eighties, who even then was childlike. It made me long for the childhood I’d left behind too soon. One that my father or Nam or job or the realities of life and death had taken from me.

The meal was wonderful—turkey and dressing and gravy and corn and the most wonderful biscuits drenched in butter and strawberry jam. I had three tall glasses of milk, plus sparkling cider that Finn told me I just had to drink.

Afterward we sat around the living room telling stories. Jake and I talked about our tours in Vietnam. They asked me to tell them detective stories. I obliged, and they seemed interested. The children made everybody laugh, and Champ, Jake’s old springer spaniel, sat at my side, where I scratched him nonstop. Mulch would demand an explanation.

Dogs know the people who love them, and they know enough not to walk away from a good thing. If only we were that smart.

As it got dark, I looked around for Carly but couldn’t find her. The conversation had broken into groups of threes and fours, and I stood and stretched and inched my way toward the hall closet and my trench coat. Jake caught me.

“Carly wants you to say good-bye before you leave. She’s in her room.”

I knocked on the partly open door.

“Come in.”

Carly was lying in her bed, all tucked in, with her right arm outside the covers. Her son Finney’s head was on a pillow next to her. Her smile lit up the room. I know that’s a cliché worthy of the chief, but I don’t care. It did.

“Uncle Ollie, I’m so glad you came.”

“Wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye,” I said.

She whispered to Finney. He jumped off the bed and walked out of the room telling me, “I’m going to have blackberry pie.” I smiled my approval.

“How you feeling?” I asked Carly.

“Not great. I get so tired. But I’m grateful. It could be a lot worse.”

I stood there and stared, like an idiot.

“It may not be much longer,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe you missed that part of Little Finn’s prayer,” she said, grinning. “In case you haven’t heard, I’m supposed to die pretty soon.”

“No, you’re not.” I knew it was stupid the moment I said it. Sometimes I need a filter between my brain and my tongue.

“Sounds like you’ve got inside information. Maybe you could fill me in. And the doctors, too!” She laughed.

How could she laugh?

“Don’t feel bad for me. I know where I’m going.”

“Good,” I said, which seemed better than saying, “How could you
possibly
know that?”

“Jesus promised He was preparing a place for His followers so we could live with Him forever.” Her voice was light and airy.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Sometimes I want to.”

“And sometimes you don’t?”

I nodded.

“Aunt Sharon believed in Jesus.”

“Yeah. She changed her thinking a lot before …” I trailed off.

“She died.”

“Before I lost her.”

“When you know where someone’s gone, you haven’t lost them,” she said, sticking her thin, shivering arm under the covers.

“I’m just not as sure as you are.”

“If you knew Jesus, you’d feel differently.”

“I’m not a religious man, Carly.”

“Neither am I. I mean I’m obviously not a man, but I’m not religious either.”

“You sure sound religious to me.”

“Because I believe Jesus and love Him? That’s not religion. It’s just love and trust. Trust in what I’ve seen.”

“You mean what you
haven’t
seen.”

“No. First, all those years ago I saw what Jesus did to my dad. How He changed him through and through. You’ve known my dad a long time. You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

I nodded.

“Then I saw what He did in my mom’s life. And finally I experienced Him myself. He changed me from the inside out. I believe Him. I believe His promises. I believe in the resurrection and the new earth. I believe that He’s going to take away all the pain and wipe away all the tears. Those are His promises. I’m taking them to the bank.”

“Good for you,” I said. I didn’t hear conviction in my voice. I suspect she didn’t either.

“It’s only good for me if God keeps His promises. But I believe He does.”

She pulled out that arm again and beckoned me to come close. I could hear her breathing now in little puffs.

“Can I pray for you, Uncle Ollie?”

I nodded numbly. I can’t tell you what she said except, like Little Finn, she sounded like she was talking to a real person. I can’t explain it. It was really … well, not religious. She said the names Andrea and Kendra. Not hearing what she said about them, even their names stabbed my heart.

An “Amen” yanked me out of my fog.

“I may not see you again here,” Carly said. “But I hope I’ll see you again there. And if I do, let’s make a date to walk the new earth together, okay? Maybe visit the New Grand Canyon or the New Mount Everest or the New Lake Victoria. Maybe even the New Portland. Without any crime or suffering or death.”

“What would I do for a living?”

She laughed. “You’d be living all right … and you’d find plenty to do. You’d love every minute of it. I know you would.”

I looked at the floor. I couldn’t bear to look at her. She was so much more alive than I was.

She stretched her arms out to me, like an angel but better, and I felt her thin fingers on the back of my neck and something light on my cheek. I heard her say, “I love you.”

I stumbled out of her room and out the front door. Somebody said something to me. I don’t know who or what.

I pushed my way into the cold east wind, weak in my stomach and my legs, feeling something sticking to my face. I barely made it to the car, fumbled with the keys, and dropped them. I swore. I sat in the car a long time before I realized I was shaking. I turned the key and continued to sit. It might have been ten minutes later when I noticed a curtain move and saw Janet looking at me. Afraid Jake would come out, I pulled away.

I went home, thinking of Jake and Janet and Carly and Finney and Sue and Little Finn—and Sharon too. I felt a lingering warmth inside, harpooned by sharp cold.

How could I explain what I’d seen?

How could Carly Woods believe in a God who was letting her just shrivel up and die?

“I’m so happy Carly’s coming soon.”

“So am I.”

“It’s going to be hard on Jake and Janet to lose her.”

“Did you not hear My daughter’s words, Finney?”

“Right. They’re not going to lose her because they’ll know she’s here with You. But they don’t know what it’s like here. I sure didn’t. It’s so much better than I imagined.”

“I’ve told them about this place and much more about the new earth, but somehow they don’t grasp it.”

“Wherever You are, it’s heaven.”

“So it is, Finney. But the best is yet to come. I will relocate all of this, all of us, to a new realm. There you and your people will at last reign over the earth, exercising dominion as I intended from the beginning when I made your planet and the morning stars shouted for joy.”

Finney Keels entered into the Carpenter’s joy, He who was the maker and repairer of people and worlds. Finney felt his companion’s arm rest on his shoulder, an arm that felt extraordinarily light considering it had created the universe.

F
RIDAY
, N
OVEMBER
29, 9:00
A.M
.

“Chandler? Phil Oref, criminalist detail.”

“You finally got that fingerprints report?”

“On the gun in the Dumpster? Not my assignment. I’m calling about your gum wrapper.”

“You can get me results in two days when you’ve already taken a week on the gun?”

“I’ll say it again. I have nothing to do with the gun. We’re understaffed, Detective.”

“What you got on the gum wrapper?”

“One thumbprint, 60 percent of a whole, and a partial finger, both yours.”

“Mine?”

“Yeah. That’s what you were expecting, right?”

“Right. Nothing else though?”

“Just yours. Must have dropped from your pocket. You want me to put this into the evidence room with the rest of the stuff?”

“No,” I said a little too emphatically. “I better get it back. I was a dope to touch it with my glove off.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“At least I didn’t contaminate a blood sample.”