Deception (48 page)

“I never heard your answer to something you asked me earlier,” Clarence said, sinking into Ray’s couch. “If you were a homicide detective and were going to kill somebody, how would you make sure you’d get away with it?”

“You answer first,” I said to Ray.

“I’d take into account every procedure followed by the other detectives and myself and make sure I didn’t do a single thing to give myself away. Obviously, I’d wear gloves and cover my face. I’d have a backup plan in which I could justify my presence even if found at the scene.”

“Good answer,” I said. “But I’ve got an even better one. It hit me the other day. If I were going to kill someone in Portland, I’d just wait until my partner and I were the up team. Then I’d commit the murder.”

“So you’d be called to the scene,” Ray said. “To investigate the same murder you just committed?”

“Right. So now, even if I left a strand of hair or a fingerprint at the murder scene, it’s okay, because everybody knows I was there—legitimately. I could even confiscate evidence.”

“Like you confiscated the Black Jack wrapper,” Clarence said.

“Right. Except I didn’t leave that, because I didn’t kill the guy. It was planted.”

“But if your theory’s correct,” Clarence said, “doesn’t that mean that either you or Manny are the murderers? You were the up team.”

“We were on call when the professor was found. But murders aren’t investigated in the order they’re committed.”

“They’re not?”

“They’re investigated in the order they’re discovered. By a fluke, another murder was discovered just before the professor’s, the one near Lloyd Center, where the guy shot his wife’s boyfriend. The up team got called to that murder instead.”

“Jack and Noel,” Clarence said. He clenched both my shoulders in his big mitts. “You’re saying Jack or Noel killed the professor?”

51

“There is a master hand here. It is no case of sawed-off shotguns and clumsy six-shooters. You can tell an old master by the sweep of his brush. I can tell a Moriarty when I see one. This crime is from London, not from America.”

S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
,
T
HE
V
ALLEY OF
F
EAR

F
RIDAY
, J
ANUARY
10, 11:30
A.M
.

AS
I
STOOD
JAWING
with a Fourth Street vendor who cooks the best hot dogs in Portland, Ray Eagle called.

“You know that seventh phone number I told you was a convenience store?”

“The one in the back of the Bertrand Russell book?” I said. “What about it?”

“Turns out that number’s been the store’s for nine years. Before that it was out of commission for a year. But for a fifteen-year period ending ten years ago, guess whose home number it was.”

“Too tired to guess.”

“Jack and Linda Glissan’s.”

No wonder that number rang a bell. Working on the assumption that the professor didn’t consider Jack a great dating prospect, that narrowed the field to his wife, Linda, and his daughter, Melissa, who’d been alive when the Glissans still had that number.

I hoofed it back to the precinct and entered Sergeant Seymour’s office, closing the door. I told him about the phone number in the professor’s book.

“We need to take a closer look at Jack,” I said.

He nodded reluctantly.

“He’s my friend,” I said. “But I have to check him out.”

Two hours later I was summoned to Chief Lennox’s office.

I hadn’t seen the chief since he’d set up the sting that took down those two notorious felons, Raylon Berkley and Mayor Branch. He’d probably avoided me so I wouldn’t be able to gloat. I had, however, done a great deal of private gloating.

The chief couldn’t accuse me of anything without revealing that he’d ordered illegal bugs in a public establishment. I’d removed them the day after the sting. Till then, who knows how many private conversations had been recorded at Lou’s. He couldn’t expose me without incriminating himself. So he found something else to jump on me about.

“I’m told you’re going after Jack Glissan now.”

Two hours and word had already reached him? Sheesh.

“First, Glissan’s innocent,” he said. “Second, if we had concerns about him, we could retire him early. Or if absolutely necessary, demote him. Put him back on the street.”

“Yeah, that would encourage the community,” I said. “Assign killers to drive our streets and protect our people.”

“We wouldn’t tell them. Jack would volunteer. But he’s not guilty. Remember innocent until proven guilty? Doesn’t that include cops? Jack is supposed to be your friend. If you had evidence, it’d be different.”

“There’s evidence. I’m continuing to gather it.”

“Captain Swiridoff tells me you suspect Palatine was involved with Jack’s daughter.”

“Possibly. Plus there’s the—”

“How could that account for a murder ten years later?”

“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

“That’s a cliché,” the chief said.

“Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

“That’s a cliché too. You’re embarrassing yourself. All you’re doing in this investigation is making the department look bad.”

“All I’m doing is trying to keep the department from
being
bad. How it looks isn’t my concern.”

“You admit it!”

Like I’d confessed a murder.

“Your job’s on the line, Chandler. Embarrass Jack, and I’ll make sure you pay for it.”

“You’re still threatening me? Don’t you get it? You laid the trap at the seminary parking lot based on what Ray Eagle and I said in a booth at Lou’s Diner. What other conversations between my buddies and me did you listen in on? And how many other citizens sat in that booth? Can you imagine the scandal? Private citizens illegally recorded at a public establishment. And two of those recorded work for the
Tribune!
I grant you, they were probably evangelizing me—they usually are—but the point is, they’re journalists, first amendment junkies, civil liberties freaks, covered under the Bill of Rights, along with car thieves and hit men. They tell the world that cops were eavesdropping … talk about a PR problem. There’d be a media feeding frenzy. After the lawsuit against this department, Lou’s could be a 10-million-dollar restaurant.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“One of them saw the bugs. He’s eager to know who did it.” It seemed better leverage not to mention that Clarence and Jake already knew. “They’ll fill pages with this story. Can you imagine someone at Police Headquarters doing this? Zero political savvy. He’d be ruined. The man would have to be an idiot. King of the Idiots.”

I went out the door, ticked not just because of his dirty tricks, but because he’d accused me of using clichés.

As I walked out I saw his daughter Jenn’s sullen face in that family photo, and I found myself wishing she was more like her friend Tasha, who kept … all her stupid phone photos.

Why hadn’t I thought of that before?

“Ever find those pictures with the professor?” I asked Jenn Lennox on the phone. “Told you I didn’t keep them.”

“Did you ask your friend Tasha?”

“Why?”

“Because you said Tasha keeps everything. And aren’t you always sending photos to her?”

“Oh.” Long pause. “So if Tasha has it, do I get the Starbucks card or does she?”

“Both of you get one.”

“I’ll call you back.”

Ten minutes later she called. “Tasha has some pictures at Palatine’s. She’ll send them to you, once we get the Starbucks cards. Forty dollars each.”

“We agreed on thirty, just for you.” Finally we settled on twenty-five each. I said, “No cards until I see the pictures.”

“No pictures until I see the cards.”

I swore an oath as a police officer to surrender the Starbucks cards once I got the pictures. Were it possible to strangle someone over phone lines, I’d be on death row.

Ten minutes later my phone buzzed. I went online to access pictures sent to my account. Surprisingly, the images weren’t bad. In two, Palatine’s mantel was visible. I sent them on to Carp. She called me back and said I should pay her a visit at the
Trib
.

I was there in twenty minutes.

“These are low resolution pictures, but the photo you’re interested in is visible. I’ve made as many sharpness and contrast corrections as I could. The lighting’s not bad. The faces aren’t sharp, but not nearly as blurry as they were in those other photos I enlarged.”

I looked at the first picture. It was much better. I had the sense that I recognized one of the faces. Then I looked at the silver chain around her neck … a high school graduation present from her mother.

I looked at the last picture. No doubt now who the girl was.

Kendra Chandler. My daughter.

I drove directly to Kendra’s real estate office, near Parkrose High. She seemed surprised. I’d pulled into the parking lot before, to watch her through the window and make sure she was all right. One day I took out my compressor and put air in one of her tires. But this was the first time I’d shown my face inside.

“Got a few minutes?” I asked.

“I’ve got a break coming. We can sit in the staff room.”

She introduced me, awkwardly, to a few of her coworkers. I took a good look at the three men, comparing their faces to wanted posters. I asked Kendra a few questions about her Christmas with the other family, pretending I wasn’t jealous, then jumped in.

“This picture was on Dr. Palatine’s mantel.” I handed it to her.

“No way,” she said, studying it. “Dad, I’m thirty. This would’ve been, what, ten years ago?”

“I was surprised to see him with you.”

“Well, I happened to be in the picture, but it wasn’t me he was interested in.”

“The other girl?”

“You do know who that is, don’t you?”

“Should I?”

“It’s Melissa. Melissa Glissan. You used to work with her dad, remember?”

“I still work with him. I guess I forgot what Melissa looked like.”

“Well, she’d bleached her hair blond. Maybe that threw you.”

“You didn’t tell me you and Melissa were in the professor’s class together.”

“Why should I? I didn’t even remember until I saw this picture. Brings back memories.”

“So Melissa knew Palatine.”

“She knew him all right.”

“Why’d you say it that way?”

“Well … they were just.” Her face turned red. “You know what I said. He liked the pretty girls.”

I had two main memories of Melissa. One, a sunny day when she was eight years old, laughing hysterically with Kendra on our Slip ’N Slide. Two, the night I got the phone call, around 3:00 a.m. as I recall, that she’d taken her life.

It made me wonder about my Andrea, and whether she was still alive. It’s hard when a man to feels powerless to take care of those he loves.

I asked myself … Who
would remove a photograph of Palatine, Kendra, and Melissa?

I went back to the precinct and reopened Melissa Glissan’s case file. I zeroed in on her roommate at Linfield College, Cherianne Takalo. I put Ray on it, and thirty minutes later he’d traced her down under her married name, in Grosse Point, Michigan. He had her home phone, work, and cell numbers.

“Ray, you scare me,” I said.

I put Manny on some background research on Melissa. Anything that might be relevant. He said I was wasting his time. I told him he was paid to waste his time.

I called Cherianne. She hadn’t heard the professor was dead.

“Just that name, Dr. Palatine, brings back memories,” she said.

“Good ones?”

“No.”

“Did you know Melissa was involved with him?”

“She talked about him all the time. He complimented her writing. She really fell for him.”

“A crush?”

“She loved him. She’d read his little love notes and his sappy poetry. She showed me some. He never signed them. I wondered if he was covering his tracks so he could deny he sent them. I never met the guy, but I thought it was a big mistake getting involved with a professor.”

“You knew about the drugs?”

“She only had two classes at PSU, the rest were at Linfield. She was back in our room every night. She was devastated when the professor told her not to call him anymore. She started smoking pot. I asked her not to do it in our room. I warned her it was messing her up. But that didn’t help her, so she started snorting coke. She got more depressed and was sleeping more and more. Stopped doing her homework. Stopped caring.”

“This was all a backlash to the professor rejecting her?”

“Melissa thought he was going to marry her. He turned out to be a jerk. I told her to just walk away. I mean, she had a decent boyfriend her own age.”

“Melissa had a boyfriend?”

“She broke up with him for the professor. But he still loved her.”

“What was his name?”

“It’s been a long time. Ten years. Um … David? No, wait. Donald. I don’t remember his last name. I only saw him twice. I think he stayed at her parents’ house when he was in town.”

“In town? Where did he live?”

“In the South, maybe? I remember he’d had a long flight. Wait … I remember now. It was weird. He wouldn’t say where he was from. And when I asked Melissa, she wouldn’t tell me. Said something about him having family problems and maybe he was going to make a break from them and start a new life.”

“What was he like?”

“Nice. Maybe insecure.”

“You said you saw him twice. When was the second time?”

“A few days before Melissa died.”

“He was in Portland?”

“Yeah. Melissa had broken it off with him over the phone, I think. He flew in to talk her out of it. He didn’t want to lose her.”

“He knew there was another guy?”

“She tried not to tell him. I’m afraid I was the one who let it out.”

“He knew it was the professor?”

“Melissa had told him. I felt terrible.”

“How long were Donald and Melissa together?”

“They were on and off a couple of years. They got serious the summer before our junior year. When we came back to the dorm in September, she talked a lot about him. He came for a few weeks that summer and stayed at Melissa’s parents’ house.”

“What’s Donald doing now?”

“No clue. I knew Melissa’s parents, and I really liked them. We kept in touch the first year after Melissa died, but I transferred to Michigan State. Just couldn’t come back after my roommate died, you know? Could you do me a favor, Mr. Chandler? Do you have a photo of Melissa’s parents?”

“Probably.”

“Would you mind sending me one? I do scrapbooks, and I’ve got pictures of Melissa. But I’d like a picture of her parents. They were always nice to me.”

“I could probably find something.”

Cherianne gave me her address. I gave her my number. If Sharon were around, she’d know right where to look in our albums for a photo of Jack and Linda. I’d probably send her a copy of the detectives and spouses group photo, but at least she’d have Melissa’s parents. Not to mention the best photo of Sharon and me. Carp would make me a copy.

Meanwhile, I shifted gears to Donald.

Where was he? And why hadn’t the police reports or anyone else—especially Jack and Linda—mentioned him?

Manny chose that moment to call. “Doing the background check you wanted on Melissa Glissan.”

“You got something?”

“Most of it’s irrelevant, like I told you it’d be.”

“But you got something, didn’t you, or you wouldn’t have called.”

“Turns out she was an insulin-dependent diabetic.”

I looked over Melissa’s death report again. Toxicology reported drug use—methamphetamine and some indications she’d also snorted coke. The hanging had been the cause of death. But without the drugs would she have hung herself? Naturally her parents didn’t think so. They’d said she’d never been on drugs until she’d recently become depressed.