Indefensible (7 page)

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The lake surface is pounded into droplets by the blades. Saplings on the shore try to uproot and run. But through the dragonfly eye of the 407, I see no sign of human life around either Flora's cabin or mine. We ascend again, and as we pivot, I catch sight of someone watching from Sammel's dock, far down the shoreline.

We dart over the road. “There's local, just arriving,” the pilot says, and we settle down on a Christmas-tree field as two cruisers pull up. One's a trooper, and the other is a local cop. I get in the front seat of the trooper car. “I've been briefed by Captain Dorsey,” the driver says, and he sprays gravel pulling back onto the main road, but then turns slowly into my driveway and creeps down the long gravel path. The trooper from the helicopter is in the backseat, and Tina seems to have disappeared.

We stop. “Wait here,” the driver tells me as the other trooper walks around the corner of the cabin to the door. The driver and I lean against the car, which idles in the sun. There's no wind, and the black flies find us and add their electric drone to the crackling of the police radio. Everything looks disturbed; leaves and pine needles are stuck to the cabin window, and there's trash in the bushes and against the cabin, and I count three T-shirts, two of Lizzy's and one I don't recognize, thrown into the trees.

“Something's happened,” I say.

The trooper I'm standing with answers vaguely: “I'm sure it'll all check out.” He wears a brass name tag: J. Voight.

I start for the cabin. Voight catches up and grabs my arm. “Best to wait with me, Mr. Davis.”

I twist my arm loose, but I don't make for the cabin.

“Rotor wash,” Voight says, waving his hand at the woods and cabin. “The chopper blew things around a bit, that's all it is.”

I follow him back to the cruiser. We just stand, waiting, and finally, the other trooper comes out of the cabin and waves me over. “No one's home,” he says.

The local cop drives up and parks beside the trooper car. Tina is with him.

“That other cabin?” Voight asks, pointing.

“My ex-wife's.”

“Let's take a look.”

The two troopers walk over, and I tag along. At the door, one of them stands halfheartedly to one side and knocks. “State police. Anybody home?”

Nothing.

He looks at me questioningly, so before they can object, I open the door and go in.

It's a nice place, with more sunlight than mine. Flora likes pretty curtains and tablecloths, and the woodwork is finished out with gingerbread scrollwork. It smells of incense: typical Flora.

“Everything in order?”

“Well, I—”

There is a rustling. The mound of quilts on the bed heaves, and Flora's friend Lloyd emerges. “Caught me napping,” he says, blinking at the two service revolvers leveled at him in the no-nonsense, double-handed grips of my escorts.

“Get your hands out,” one of the troopers shouts, which is overly dramatic, since it's hard to imagine anyone less threatening than this pasty-faced guy who keeps blinking even after the shock and bleariness should have passed. He is wearing a white shirt buttoned right up to the neck, and when his hands emerge from the quilts, I'm not surprised to see sleeves buttoned at the cuffs.

“Oh my heavens, don't shoot me!” he says.

“Do you know this individual?” one of the troopers asks.

“Lloyd, where is Lizzy?” I ask.

“I don't . . . ummm, I've been asleep. Isn't she . . . I'd ask Flora.”

“Where's Flora?”

“Ummm. Isn't she . . .”

I glance around the room. There are pill vials on the table, and I pick one up. Haldol, which explains the midday nap. I nod at the troopers, and they lower their guns.

“What's going on?” Lloyd asks.

“Probably nothing. We just need to ascertain Lizzy's and Flora's safety.”

“Flora did say something about going for groceries.”

We escort Lloyd outside, and the troopers confer with the local cop, who is a stubble-headed young man. He goes to his police radio and transmits the details of Flora's car. Then we stand around waiting for the police in town to find Flora at the grocery store. There are six of us: Tina, Lloyd, the two troopers, the stubble-headed local cop, and me.

“How you doing?” Tina asks me.

“Could I wait in the car?” Lloyd climbs into the open trooper cruiser without waiting for an answer. “How do you stand the bugs?” he says, and closes the door.

After about ten minutes, the local police call back on the radio to tell us they've located Flora at Rick's grocery, and Flora says Lizzy is out for a run. The stubble-headed local gets in his car and leaves to circle the lake.

My cell rings. It's Upton. I tell him it looks like everything here is okay, and we'll know for certain in a few minutes.

“That's good,” Upton says. “Chip has appointed a female agent to watch over Lizzy and Flora until this is all resolved. She's driving up now.”

With the phone at my ear, I walk to the edge of the lake and out onto the dock. I push the Adirondack chair around with my foot to face the shore. I can see Lloyd in the cruiser, watching out the backseat window with his face pressed to the glass like a little boy. How typical of Flora to find someone in such need of kindness and care. Beside the cruiser, Tina talks with one of the troopers. She laughs, he
smiles. The rim of his Smokey hat dips as he nods in agreement with whatever Tina is saying. Tina's still in her court clothes and carrying her ever-present shoulder bag.

I can see both cabins from here, Flora's and mine. “I have to tell you this, Upton,” I say. “I'm sure Kenny was the source of the leak. He just doesn't think sometimes.”

“It's not Kenny,” Upton says. “I had thought so, too. That's where we started the questioning, because he was with you at the reservoir that day. But he checks out. Chip and I did some of the questioning, and I talked to the librarian myself. Penny Russet. She was real contrite; says she cajoled him—that was her word, cajoled—for details. All Kenny would tell her was that he visited a crime scene with you. Period.”

Something inside of me gives way, and I slump back into the chair, taking a second to absorb this good news. “Thank God,” I say.

“Yes.”

“But then who?” I wonder aloud. “Maybe it was out of Dorsey's office. Or Chip's.”

“No,” Upton says. “We've identified it. It was from this office.”

I wait.

“Your daughter,” Upton says apologetically.

Of course.

“Apparently, she was traumatized when she got back here Friday afternoon. You were at the reservoir or someplace, and she talked to at least three different people here: Paul Myrtle, Janice Troyer, and Frea Schultz, to be specific. All report her saying, ‘Don't tell my dad I told you, but,' and the three of them have strikingly different impressions of the who-what-and-wheres. Then it all went into the gossip machine and, well, God knows.”

Now I realize for the first time the magnitude of my indiscretion, bringing Lizzy to the reservoir with me. It's one of those things nobody would give a second thought to until it turned out badly; lousy decision-making by me, head of criminal division.

From my chair on the dock, I see Tina at the door of my cabin.
She's wearing the trooper's Smokey hat now. She signals to ask if she can enter. I nod.

“I wonder if I'll have to step down,” I say, thinking aloud, forgetting for a second who is on the phone with me. Upton isn't exactly a therapist or clergyman but, rather, one of my likely successors. And he's ambitious. But his poise is perfect: “Don't be an idiot,” he says.

Tina emerges from the cabin carrying her shoes, and I notice her legs have gone from charcoal to flesh-colored. She's wearing the Smokey hat and carrying her shoulder bag.

“One more thing,” Upton says. “Scud Illman has slipped surveillance.”

“Pardon?”

“Yeah. The agents lost him. We're not sure if he pulled a fast one or if it was a screwup.”

I
stay on the dock in my Adirondack chair until the local cop who left to circle the lake pulls back into the clearing with someone handcuffed in the backseat.

The officer gets out and walks around the cruiser. He has the head-bobbing strut of a man who has accomplished something grand but is pretending it's no big deal. I walk to the car. Inside, wide-eyed and terrified, is the scrawny, drug-wasted Sammel boy from the cabin up the lake.

“Get him out,” I say.

He is pulled from the car and stands in front of me with his hands locked behind his back. From their shadowy sinkholes, his eyes scan the faces in front of him, giving no sign of recognizing me. But there is a barely registerable awakening when he sees Lloyd in the other cruiser, nose against the glass.

“Tell me,” I say to the officer. I take a step backward, concerned that if what I'm about to hear is bad, my hands might happily reach out and pop this kid's fucking head off. I am aware of Tina beside me, the Smokey hat gone. She touches my arm.

“Yes, well, circling the lake,” the local cop says. “I pulled into the first drive up the road, intending to conduct a visual and to inquire about the girl, your daughter, as to whether anybody who might be home had seen her—”

“Get to the point.”

“I knocked at the door of the structure, and I heard a commotion from the rear. I walked around the cabin, and the suspect emerged from an outhouselike structure, very suspicious-looking. I approached the suspect and he was very nervous. I had reasonable suspicion. I asked if he knew Lizzy Davis, and he said yes, and I—”

“Stop,” I yell, “just tell me where Lizzy is.”

“I don't know, but what I—”

“Where is she?” I say to the kid, taking a step toward him, and Tina immediately has my arm locked in hers and is tugging me backward. The kid in handcuffs blinks at me, bewildered.

“I found this,” the stubble-headed cop says, and he holds up a plastic bag, inside of which is a bag of pot with a long string tied to it.

“Where?”

“In the outhouse.”

“What the fuck were you doing in the outhouse?”

“Searching.”

“For what?”

“As I said, he seemed reasonably suspicious. And I correctly believed—”

“And this has nothing to do with Lizzy?”

“Well, she's why I was—”

“So, the hell with Lizzy and just go dig in this kid's shit pile instead?”

Tina tries to pull me backward. “Let it go, Nick.”

Stubby runs fingers through his nonexistent hair.

“Unbelievable,” I say to the cop. “You suspend a federal investigation to bust this schmuck for a bag of pot. And with no fucking warrant, no permission to search—”

“Actually, sir, he gave me permission—”

“Bullshit,” I scream. “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

“Because I thought—”

“Dereliction of duty,” I yell, and before Tina or the troopers can stop me, I snatch the so-called evidence from his hand and toss it to the kid in handcuffs. Of course it hits his chest and lands at his feet. Nobody picks it up. “Uncuff him,” I say.

This makes everyone uncomfortable. I have no authority over local or state police. They have a suspect caught in a crime, and while the search was no doubt illegal and any prudent DA would decline to prosecute, that's not a decision for any of us to make.

“I can't do that, sir,” Stubby says.

I take a big breath to bellow back into the face of this Johnny Law, but Tina steps between us, her back to me, and she speaks quietly to Stubby's face. “Not a good test case,” she says.

“Excuse me, ma'am?”

“Look at him,” she says, flicking her head at the handcuffed ne'er-do-well. “You might as well gift-wrap him and send him to the ACLU.”

“Ma'am?”

She turns to the kid in handcuffs. “HIV?”

“Leukemia.”

“How you doing?”

He shrugs.

I'm stunned. How did I miss it? I gawk at the kid, speechless.

Tina looks at Stubby, then at the two troopers. “Medical use. You hear what I'm saying? And that's without even mentioning the search-and-seizure can of worms.”

Stubby looks unsure. He and the troopers go into a huddle, and while we stand waiting to see what will happen next, the rumbling of tires on gravel bursts into the clearing. Flora parks behind the cruisers, and there, beside her on the front seat, fit as a fiddle, sits Lizzy.

“Hi, Daddy,” she says, her braces owning the smile like bullfrogs own a pond. In thinking about her the past few hours—my Lizzy, who, for all I knew, had already been whacked by whoever did Zander Phippin—I'd forgotten the braces. The oversight feels tragic. I turn away from her to get everything straightened out in my head.

“What's the matter, Daddy?”

“Nothing,” I answer, my voice sounding like it comes through a cylinder. My cell phone is ringing, but I ignore it.

“Oh God,” Flora shrieks. She has spotted Lloyd peering out the back window of the state cruiser like a common criminal. He's urgently trying to get out, but the door doesn't open from the inside. Flora runs and opens it for him, then spins and catches me in a look of unmitigated contempt. “What did you do?” she hisses.

I start a babbling explanation, but I'm immediately drowned out by Lizzy, who shrieks, too, but hers is just a wordless scream, as she
runs to the kid in handcuffs and attaches herself to one of his arms and cups his cheek in her palm.

“Seamus, oh my God!” Lizzy spins and looks like her mom, giving me the same betrayed expression. “Daddy, what have you
done
?”

“Not me,” I protest.

Flora helps Lloyd out of the police car.

Lizzy lays her head on the Sammel kid's shoulder. Stubby snaps into action: “Stay away from the suspect,” he says, grabbing Lizzy by the arm and tugging. Lizzy responds by holding tighter to the boy, managing to get her arms around him and locking her grip. Stubby tries to peel her off. “Away from the suspect,” he repeats.