Deception (40 page)

“I informed Berkley that if Lennox pulled you from the case I’d tell the public why.”

“He try to talk you out of it?”

“He told me he wouldn’t let the
Trib
print those kinds of accusations against Lennox. I said I thought the
Trib
was committed to print the truth.”

“What planet you been living on?”

“That’s the smart-mouthed part of you I mentioned. Anyway, we went toe-to-toe. I told him if the
Trib
wouldn’t let me write the truth, there’s an alternative paper that would. An alternative paper that’s already offered me a job twice. I told him my first article for my new employer would be about the chief’s sabotage of the Palatine investigation and Berkley and the
Trib’s
complicity in it.”

“You really said that?”

“I told him I wondered what that would do for the spiraling sales of the Trib.” Clarence looked me straight in the eyes. “You’re not the only one who cares about justice.”

“Them boys is gettin’ themselves in trouble, ain’t they?” Obadiah said. “But I has to say, I’m proud of ’em for it.”

“So am I.” He nodded thoughtfully. “So am I.”

Lack of sleep and frustration at not having my hands around the killer’s throat were bringing me to a boil. What began as a discussion among friends had degenerated into something else. Still sitting in our nook at Powell’s, I raised my hands, knocking three paperbacks out of alignment. “You want me to just blindly believe without asking questions?”

“No,” Jake said. “Ask your questions. I just think you need to listen to God’s answers. He’s in charge of the universe. His fingerprints are on everything.”

“That’s a bad analogy to use with a homicide detective, bucko. If God’s fingerprints are on everything, doesn’t that mean they’re on every weapon used to kill the innocent? Is He behind my daughter’s disappearance too? If good people aren’t rewarded and bad people aren’t punished, the universe isn’t fair. Injustice drives me nuts. If I could take it all away, I would. If He can, why doesn’t He?”

“What makes you think He doesn’t … or won’t?” Jake said. “Is justice ever done in this life? Sometimes. But those times it’s not done here and now, it will be done on the other side of death.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because God promises it in the Bible.” Clarence pointed to a long line of them forty feet away. “It says, ‘Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.’ ”

“I get tired of you quoting these verses when the fact remains that people who don’t deserve to die do. All the time. Every day. And where’s God when they die?”

“He’s right there offering love and forgiveness,” Jake said.

“Stop kidding yourself. God doesn’t give a rip.”

“You’re drawing conclusions about God without knowing Him,” Jake said.

“I know He killed my wife!” I’d raised my voice. “And that isn’t all He did.”

“What else?” Jake asked.

“None of your business.”

“You need to give God a chance.”

“Why give him a chance? He killed Sharon.” I shouted it, jumping to my feet. “And He killed our son!”

38

“It is quite a three-pipe problem.”

S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
,
T
HE
R
ED
-H
EADED
L
EAGUE

I’D
YELLED
“He killed our son” before I knew what I was saying. Dozens of people at Powell’s turned like I’d dumped kerosene on the New Age section and torched it. The place fell stony silent.

“Your
son
?” Clarence whispered, standing next to me. “But … you don’t have a son.”

“Not since your God killed him.”

Jake said, “Ollie, I’m so sorry about Chad.”

“You know about Chad?”

“Sharon told Janet.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Sharon said you didn’t want us to know. I was hoping eventually you’d bring him up.”

“You had a son?” Clarence asked.

I blew out air and sat down, trying to ignore the stares.

“Chad was born three years after Kendra. When he was two years old, some bozo rear-ended us. Chad was strapped in, but it jarred him. Apparently he had some … condition. I’ve forgotten the name. They say if it wouldn’t have been the car, it would have been something else.”

Clarence’s eyes watered.

“I don’t want your pity,” I said. “But I’m never going to forgive God for taking away my son. What does He know about how we suffer? I wouldn’t take wives from their husbands and sons from their fathers. I’ll never see my son again. Trust a God who looked the other way? No, I won’t do it.”

I was down the stairs and headed to the garage before either of them could answer. I didn’t want to hear answers when there were none. In the face of what happened to Chad and Sharon, words were an insult.

I drove west on Burnside, not knowing where I was going, under the gloom of dark clouds that buried the sun. Appropriate, because when Chad died, thick clouds surrounded me, and I couldn’t see or hear or breathe. I didn’t console myself with Sharon; I consoled myself with booze. Like someone said at an AAA meeting, first I took a drink, then the drink took a drink, then the drink took me. It was ten years before I sobered up and saw the sun again. Then, when Sharon died, the stars dropped out of the sky. Since then I haven’t found much reason to stay sober.

Randomly, now deep on the west side, toward Beaverton, I drove by an abandoned graveyard, where the headstones seemed arbitrarily placed, many of them bleached, crooked, and sinking. Part of me welcomed the day when my name would be on such a stone. Part of me dreaded it, with a fear that tore up my insides so much my hands shook on the steering wheel.

“He doesn’t understand.”

“No.”

“He doesn’t realize that though he’s tortured by his memories of me, my life’s gone right on in a better place. And he doesn’t have a clue that sometimes I’m allowed to see and hear him.”

“They don’t believe the Scriptures,” Sharon said, “that there’s rejoicing here in the presence of the angels over the work God’s doing in their lives on earth. They think of this place as disinterested in what’s happening there. They don’t realize their planet is center stage in His unfolding drama of redemption. They’re on the playing field. Those in the grandstands are watching.”

“Here with my Father, I’ve gotten to know my earthly father too.”

“You know him far better than he ever knew you,” Sharon said.

“Will I be with him again?” Chad asked. “Will Elyon answer that prayer?”

“He says we must wait and see. But we don’t need to wait to know that He’s always good. Your father doesn’t understand Elyon’s purposes. What’s now clear to us makes no sense to him. Yet even we don’t understand it all, do we?”

“His ways are above our ways, and His thoughts above our thoughts,” Chad said smiling. “But to me, that’s beautiful. Whatever we don’t yet grasp leaves us more to learn about Him.”

Chad grasped his mother’s hand. “I hope to walk beside my earthly father again—this time on an earth no longer cursed.”

“His relationships with us, though interrupted, need never end. But he must come to trust the One he blames—and that will not be easy.”

“Let’s pray for him again, Mother.”

Arms around each other, mother and son talked to Elyon about a man driving aimlessly on back roads, a man so far away he had no idea they were there, yet so close they could almost reach out and touch him.

T
HURSDAY
, D
ECEMBER
26, 6:30
P.M
.

A night-after-Christmas party had been scheduled at Chief Lennox’s house. I’d never been in the chief’s house, only by it. Most recently in the middle of the night, when we’d followed him from the 7-Eleven where he met Kim Suda.

This time the gate was open, and an officer was letting people pass because he recognized them or they showed ID. Turned out the mailbox was in a different zip code than the house.

I’d heard a lot about that house. What I’d heard didn’t do it justice.

I’ll probably never marry again, because if I did, my wife would want to buy this house, and if I took my retirement savings and held up a couple of banks, I still wouldn’t be able to afford the down payment, and then she’d dream about it and show me pictures of it, and then she’d cry and I’d feel like a loser for letting her down, and my daughter would end up siding with her, and pretty soon our formerly romantic evenings of blackberry shakes at Burgerville and bowling at Mt. Hood Lanes would have a cloud cast over them. So it’s better all around for me never to marry again.

About forty people showed up, but only three other homicide detectives—Suda, Chris Doyle, and Brandon Phillips, without his wife. There were fancy hors d’oeuvres. I searched for Cheez Whiz and cocktail wienies on a toothpick but finally settled for what was there, though I couldn’t tell what it was. I wrapped up items in a napkin and stuffed them in my trench coat pocket for Mulch. When he smells it on me and I don’t come through with the goods, he sulks.

The chief’s wife was the perfect hostess. Thirty minutes into the party I told her, red-faced, that I was having some … personal problems and I needed to be in the bathroom for a while, but I didn’t want to keep anybody out of the main bathroom.

She looked at me sympathetically. “Go all the way to the end of the hall and turn left. There’s a bathroom on your right just past Ed’s office.”

“I’m embarrassed,” I said.

“Happens to all of us. I won’t say anything.”

I thanked her profusely, then followed her directions. I came to the chief’s office, looked both ways, and disappeared inside.

Twelve minutes later, I reappeared, looking for something to drink to calm my shakes and hoping the wienies and Cheez Whiz appetizers had shown up.

No such luck.

39

“The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish.”

S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
,
T
HE
A
DVENTURE OF THE
C
OPPER
B
EECHES

F
RIDAY
, D
ECEMBER
27, 2:15
P.M
.

“THE
OPEN
HOUSE
was a big hit,” Mona said.

“I expected more men would attend,” Chief Lennox said.

He sounded like he was sulking. I couldn’t see him, since he and his secretary were in his home office and I was in mine, sipping A&W root beer. The remote unit was picking up a clear signal, thanks to Ray’s high-tech booster.

“I was surprised to see Chandler here,” she said.

“Maybe he’s seen the light and realizes he needs to get on my good side.”

I’d just swallowed some root beer, and suddenly it was spurting out my nose.

“Did you hear something?” the chief asked.

I grabbed a paper towel to clean up. Though I was in the far corner of my office, I’d been heard. I’d turned my monitor low so their voices wouldn’t be picked up by their own bug. But I’d assumed my office audio was being recorded and monitored at the precinct, not in the chief’s home office. With bugs going both directions, I’d need to be careful.

Great thing about that bug on the chief’s phone, one of the two spares Suda planted at my house, was that it not only picked up calls but also any voice within five feet.

“Chandler’s at home today?”

“Our friend in detective detail says he’s working at home today. I’ve heard him off and on,” Mona said. “It’s all recorded, but most of it’s wasted. Thirty minutes ago I checked, and he was singing to his dog. Something about bacon and eggs and cats.”

“Pathetic,” the chief said.

“You’d think we’d hear something interesting. Occasionally he’s on the phone, but he never says anything significant. He calls out on his cell phone from another room, for better reception I think, but then I can’t hear him. We’ve had a week of voice-activated recording, but it hasn’t amounted to much. And the bugs in the other parts of the house still aren’t working.”

“Maybe I should send Suda back. If he’d just talk with Abernathy or that PI in his office, we’d know what’s going on. And maybe be able to head him off.”

“You could get in trouble for this, Ed.” I heard Mona’s voice tremble. “Is it worth it?”

“If we’re caught, I’ll say it’s because I had substantial reason to suspect him of murder. Including that gum wrapper he stole from the scene.”

How’d he know about that?

“We need to find out what he’s up to. Maybe we should bug that Ray Eagle character too.”

“Could you justify that?”

“You know how I feel about this, Mona. That’s one reason we need to have these conversations away from the precinct. As chief I have to make difficult judgment calls. I feel more freedom here in my home office.”

“Has that
Tribune
reporter come through?”

“Button promised me he’d deliver Abernathy’s notes on the investigation, but nothing so far. I told him no more leads if he doesn’t.”

I double-checked my recording device. Lights on.

Mona said, “The last inside tip the public got related to the vagrant.”

“Right. Let’s get the names of all the bums in that area then run background checks. Find the toughest record. We can provide some evidence, get a positive ID, and at least bring him in as a suspect.”

“But …”

“What?”

“If he’s innocent …”

“You aren’t listening. I don’t want you to find someone innocent, I want you to find someone guilty. That’s the point of the background check.”

A cynical laugh came out of my mouth. Covered it too late. “What was that?” Lennox asked.

“Sounds like Chandler laughed. Wonder what he’s laughing at?”

“He doesn’t need a reason. The man’s a clown. An idiot.”

King of the Idiots. But Lennox was in danger of dethroning me.

Obadiah Abernathy. Why do I keep thinking about that old man? Was it because I wished I’d had a real father? Mr. Abernathy’s gone. I attended his funeral. And yet … his faith was so real, his life so … right. I just can’t believe it ended when he died.

Clarence told me what his daddy said on his deathbed, about the people he was supposedly greeting in heaven. Was he delusional? Or was he seeing things I’ll never see?

That old man haunts me, comforts me, gives me hope. But he also unnerves me. Because if he was right about heaven, maybe he was right about hell. And that scares the bejeebers out of me.

Especially when I think about him asking me if I have my ticket because the train’s about to leave.

“Lord, put Yo’ gracious hand on Mr. Chandler.” Obadiah’s eyes shone bright.

The great guardians standing around the small but powerful man bowed their heads in respect for the One he addressed.

“Do what it takes to make him not so full of himself. Show him who he really is. And who You really are. Would You do that? For me? And for him? And for Your glory? Would You do that, my sweet Jesus?”

I sat at my detective division workstation making phone calls, looking around and turning my head, my voice low. I alerted Clarence to keep his notes under lock and key because the chief wanted them. And to keep his eyes on Mike Button. I warned Ray to look out for somebody bugging him, even though it was hard to believe the chief would go that far. Ray told me the number Jake found in the back of the professor’s
Why I Am Not a Christian
was a convenience store’s. Dead end.

I sat down, trying to clear my mind, attempting again to think like the killer. It isn’t easy for me to think like a drug dealer, a lawyer, a con artist, or a Pistons fan. But thinking like a homicide detective? That should come naturally. What would I do if I were … what I am?

Frame somebody for my murder? Only if they were guilty of a crime just as bad or worse. I hated to admit it, but I understood the chief’s logic about framing someone if I knew that person was guilty of something else.

Would I leave conflicting evidence to confuse investigators and delay resolution with rabbit trails? This could force the detectives to move on to the next case, making it likely they’d never solve this one.

Like the first glimpse of sunrise, another possibility hit me. If I were a Portland homicide detective planning a murder and wanted to be sure I wouldn’t be found out, what would I do?

Of course. There it was. So simple. So obvious.

Why hadn’t I thought of it before?