Текст книги "Dearly Departed"

Автор книги: David Housewright

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

six

I found Raymond Fleck kneeling in the dirt with a knife in his hand. He was trimming a roll of sod and using the strips he cut to fill a hole next to the sidewalk. Laying sod, digging holes, clearing brush piles: grunt work for a landscaper in North Minneapolis. Apparently it was the only employment he could find.

The knife blade reflected the sun as I approached. Despite the knife, Raymond did not look like Mr. Stranger Danger. He looked small and harmless in his dirty T-shirt and jeans, almost childish. And although he worked every day in the sun, his face had a gray tint you don’t see on a well man.

“Raymond Fleck?” I asked.

His whole body sagged at the question. He dropped the knife atop the sod and wiped his hands on his shirt. “It’s never going to end, is it,” he said in a sad voice. It wasn’t a question. It was a declaration. He was a man resigned to his fate, more pitiful than frightening.

Raymond was calm but watchful. His eyes looked around me, never at me, as if he were expecting someone else to come for him. He assumed I was a cop, but I corrected that assumption right away. In Raymond Fleck’s world, the cops were bad guys. I wanted him to believe I was the Lone Ranger riding to his rescue. So after showing him my ID, I told him I was working for a client who was convinced that Stephen Emerton had killed Alison. Fleck’s demeanor brightened considerably. At last, someone who believed.

“Alison hated her husband,” Raymond said. “She wanted a divorce, but she couldn’t get one because she came from a very strict Catholic family.”

“She told you that?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

He shook his head.

“Tell me about your relationship,” I urged.

“We loved each other.”

“Did you?”

“I thought we did.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

“Tell me what happened, Ray.” I gave his shoulder a reassuring pat.

“There weren’t any lightning flashes or fireworks or anything like that,” Raymond confided. “It happened slowly. She would touch my hand or look at me without speaking and then look away. I thought it was just my imagination; she couldn’t possibly be interested in a guy like me. Except she was. She told me so at lunch that first time, the first time we went together. She had invited me to lunch. She said she wanted to talk about—I don’t know—some project, only we didn’t talk about work. We talked about … I guess we talked about us. She told me she was unhappy in her marriage, but she didn’t know what to do about it, and I told her I was seeing Irene Brown, but I didn’t really care about her, and then she smiled and squeezed my hand and said at least we had each other, and we began to see each other on the sly. Mostly lunches. A lot of lunches, okay? Nothing came of it. I mean, they weren’t nooners or nothing. We didn’t make love. But the talking, it was almost better than sex. She was so fantastic. I couldn’t wait to see her, couldn’t wait to hear her voice, and when I did I couldn’t take my eyes off her, couldn’t stop listening.”

“Did Alison know about your prison record?”

Raymond shook his head sadly. “It’s not something you talk about,” he admitted.

“But she found out.”

“Yeah, that night.”

“Tell me about that night,” I prompted.

“She told me to park outside her house, and she would meet me after Stephen went to bed. I told her that was a dangerous idea, but she insisted. She said she had to see me. Had to see me,” he repeated as if he could scarcely believe it even now. “So I parked in front of her house, but Stephen saw me and called the police.”

“Stephen did?” I asked, knowing that Alison had made the call; she said so on the tape, and the police report confirmed it.

“Yes, and when they came—well, Alison had to deny she had invited me; she had to protect her marriage and her reputation; she was Catholic, you see. She told Mr. Selmi what happened for the same reason.”

“What did Selmi tell you?”

“He fired me. Had to, I guess. After what happened before.”

“What happened before?”

“People … people around the office, they suspected that Alison and I were having an affair, you know, and that was hard on her—a woman trying to make it in a man’s world, people talking behind her back, I mean. One day people were talking about it, around the coffee machine, I guess. I don’t know. And old-man Selmi overheard and asked Alison, ‘What’s this?’ What could she say? A good Catholic girl. So she said, you know, that I was harassing her, said it to protect herself. I understood that. Anyway, Old-man Selmi decided to have one of his fireside chats with me.”

“What did he say?”

“Said I shouldn’t dip my quill in the company ink well.”

“There’s leadership for you,” I said sarcastically. Raymond didn’t catch it. “What happened next?”

“Then Alison invited me over to her place; told me she wanted to explain why she said what she did. But Stephen called the cops. See, when the cops came that night, they checked my record, and Alison found out about—Anyway, that’s why she turned on me. God, how long am I going to have to pay for that? One mistake, one lousy mistake …”

Raymond began to sob at the injustice of it all. I was grateful for the chance to step away, to pretend to give him some privacy. How long would he have to pay for raping a woman? At least as long as she did, I hoped. I’d read the report; I knew what he had done to her. How he rang her doorbell, and when she answered, he punched her in the face with the barrel of a gun and knocked her down and tied a gag over her mouth and raped her for five long hours, removing the gag only when he wanted her to wet his dick. Raymond had been arrested soon afterward, and when it became clear that the victim would testify, he pleaded down to second-degree criminal sexual conduct. He was sentenced to twenty-one months and served fourteen—it was his first conviction. And while in prison Raymond finished his education; several job interviews were waiting when he got out. He was fine. The woman still hasn’t recovered.

During the first few years after the attack, she was paralyzed with fear, actually carrying two knives with her when she moved through her apartment. She sold her home; she couldn’t live there anymore. Her TV was never off because she didn’t want anyone to know if she was awake or asleep. Her lights were never off, either. She slept with them on—not just one or two, but all of them—averaging about three to four hours’ sleep a night. She would get anxiety attacks driving home from work, panicking at every stoplight, desperate to reach her apartment before sundown. She never went out after dark. Never. Instead, she had holed up in her apartment with its reinforced doors and half-dozen locks and furniture arranged so that it was impossible to walk in a straight line, furniture with bells attached that rang when you bumped into it.

She found support from a small group of women who had also been raped. That had helped. And eventually time worked its magic, and she began to heal; she started to put that terrible day behind her. She started to go out. She started socializing again, although she still viewed each man she met as a potential threat. Then Alison disappeared, and Raymond Fleck’s photograph became a regular feature on TV and in the newspapers, and she was right back where she started.

And Raymond? Raymond got treatment. Raymond learned how to control his anger. In an effort to deflect accusations that he had killed Alison, he agreed to a newspaper interview. In the interview he talked about the therapy he underwent, the Transitional Sex Offender Program, and how it had made a new man of him. The reporter was very sympathetic and pointed out that the average rapist is charged with three or more sex crimes. But not Raymond. Raymond was cured. The system had worked. Praise the Lord.

Raymond was still weeping when I went back to him and put my hand on his shoulder. I was unmoved by his tears. I know a guy, whenever his contact lenses become dry, he forces himself to cry to rewet them; that’s how much I believe in tears.

“It’s okay, Ray, it’s all right,” I told him. What was it the political adviser said? “Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Raymond rested his hand on mine for a moment and then brushed away his tears.

“What happened between you and Alison after you were fired?” I asked him.

“Nothing.”

“You didn’t tell Alison you were going to get her?”

“No, of course not.”

“She received harassing phone calls.”

“Not from me,” Raymond insisted.

“The police pulled your telephone records. You called her several times at her home, at her office.”

“I called her only a couple times. I had to—you know—talk to her, but she always hung up.”

“You called her twenty-two times,” I reminded him.

“No, I didn’t,” he insisted. “I only called her a couple times. Three times, four times.”

“The records say twenty-two.”

“The records are wrong.”

“Could anyone else have called her from your phone?”

“No.”

“Irene Brown?”

“Why would she call?”

“I don’t know, why would she?”

Raymond didn’t answer.

“You were seeing her when Alison came along,” I told him.

“Yeah,” Raymond confirmed.

“And you started seeing each other again after Alison had you fired.”

“Irene was very kind to me; I didn’t know how good I had it.”

“Irene hated Alison,” I told him.

“No, she didn’t.”

“That’s what she said.”

“You spoke to her?”

“I have a question for you, Ray. When Irene volunteered to provide you with an alibi for the time that Alison disappeared, when she said she was going to protect you from the police, did it ever occur to you that she was actually providing an alibi for herself, that she was protecting herself?”

“What is this? You said Emerton did it. Why are you accusing Irene?”

“I didn’t say Irene—”

“You’re accusing Irene! You’re trying to get me to rat out Irene!”

“You have to consider—”

“Get away from me! I don’t have to talk to you, you’re not a cop. You just get away from me. Go on!”

Raymond scooped up the sod knife and threatened me with it. Oh, I was tempted, God knows. But I liked how this investigation was turning out, and I didn’t want to endanger it by breaking every bone in Raymond Fleck’s face.

“Some other time, Ray,” I told him as I walked away.

seven

“Only in Minnesota.”

I shook my head and stood dumbfounded outside the large and handsome split-level office building before me, home of the Metropolitan Mosquito Control District.

“Only in Minnesota,” I repeated.

Only in Minnesota, a state well-known for its ability to marshal together whatever resources were necessary to solve the least of our problems, would the legislature budget over ten million hard-earned tax dollars to kill mosquitoes. I am as opposed to the evil insect as the next fellow. But ten million bucks? Seventy-five full-time employees? A shiny new office building? Cars and trucks and helicopters? Say it ain’t so, Joe. But it is. Some well-meaning quality-of-life researchers discovered that on any given summer evening, the average Minnesotan is assaulted by four to five mosquitoes per five minutes. Upon hearing this news, our normally fractious state politicians rose as one: Forget the economy! Forget the environment! Forget the declining educational system! All work at the state capitol ceased until a bureaucracy was created– the seven-county Metropolitan Mosquito Control District—for the sole purpose of reducing mosquito attacks to only two bites per five minutes. Good Lord, how they must have celebrated that piece of legislation. Then they had the temerity to level the Midway Car Wash on University Avenue in St. Paul (where I worked as a kid) to make room for the damn thing. Is it any wonder that I was one cranky pup by the time a bored receptionist pointed me toward Stephen Emerton’s office?

I stood beside Emerton’s open door for a few moments, playing mental tricks to improve my disposition before I started questioning him. Anger and frustration creates a tense atmosphere, and a witness, sensing those emotions, will tighten up and shut up. It’s a problem I’ve grappled with most of my career. It’s the reason why Anne Scalasi conducted most of our interrogations while I stood in the background, looking surly.

“Mr. Emerton?” I finally asked, rapping softly on the open door and addressing the man inside.

“Aww, man!” he said, tossing a pencil on a map spread out on his desktop. “Not again!”

“Sir?”

“You’re a cop, ain’tcha?”

“Private investigator,” I replied and showed him my photostat.

“You work for that insurance company, don’t you?”

I would have told him no if he had given me the chance, but he didn’t, so I figured what the hell.

“What more do you guys want from me?” he continued.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions concerning your wife’s disappearance.”

“More questions? Christ, that bitch is gonna haunt me forever, isn’t she? Aww, man, I’m tired of it. I’m just so fuckin’ tired of it.”

I tried to mask my disapproval of him, convinced people would not say such stupefying things if they could hear the sound of their own voices.

“We can speak another time,” I suggested, although I made no move to leave.

“No, no,” he answered, waving me toward a chair. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

Stephen Emerton was not the sharpest knife in the drawer by any means. Insulting a murder victim in front of an investigator wasn’t the brightest thing a suspect could do, for example—it tends to arouse suspicion. Still, he was tall and handsome and splendidly tanned; he looked like someone who measured his biceps twice a week. I could see how a lonely young woman might find him attractive. And then there was the paper displayed in frames behind him. Diplomas from the University of Minnesota. BA. MA. And a certificate declaring his membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Only he didn’t speak like a key holder. He spoke like a guy who spent his spare time calling talk radio programs.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Emerton told me. “It’s just that I am sick and tired of answerin’ questions about my wife, okay? I mean, I have problems of my own, okay? I can’t sell my house unless I practically give it away. The insurance company won’t pay off on my claim; one day it’s because without a body I can’t prove Alison is dead and the next it’s because they think I killed her—shit, make up your mind. And my friends, suddenly they’re all too busy to check out a ball game or go out for a beer, and you know why. It’s because of Alison, damn her.”

I felt the anger start in my stomach and work up. I fought to keep it down.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Emerton continued. “I’m sorry she’s dead. But hell’s bells, man, give me a break. People make out like she was Mary Poppins or somethin’. She was cheatin’ on me, you know? Forget that sexual harassment shit. She was sleepin’ with that little jerkoff, and when he started gettin’ serious, she burned him. That’s why he did her, man. Any idiot can see that. It’s not like she didn’t deserve it.”

I envisioned Alison’s photograph, which was sitting on the front seat of my car, and thought about the expression on her face, the look of incredible despair in her eyes. Then I thought about how much fun it would be to pop Stephen Emerton in the mouth. I stood up.

“What? You leavin’? I thought you had questions to ask.”

Self-control. You need self-control in my business. I reminded myself of that as I moved to the large map hanging on the wall, a map of the seven counties that make up the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area. About two dozen pins were stuck in it. Red flags were attached to the pins.

“What do these represent?” I asked.

“Targets of opportunity,” Emerton explained. “Quick lesson: A female mosquito—the female mosquito is the only one that bites, did you know that?—a female mosquito bites you and sucks your blood so it can lay eggs containin’ about three hundred baby mosquitoes. Follow? The eggs then turn into larvae. Now, larvae live in water. A tablespoon at the bottom of a beer can is enough, but the more the better. Are you still with me? Okay, a larva is transformed into what we call a pupa. A pupa is like a cocoon. It’s in a pupa that the mosquito becomes a mosquito. What we do is, we gas the suckers while they’re still in the larval and pupal stages. Those flags, those are low-lyin’ swamp areas where we’re takin’ ’em out.”

“What is this blue flag?” I asked, pointing to a pin surrounded by red.

“Oh, that’s what this guy works for … Where does that jerkoff work?” he asked himself, searching his desktop, finding a business card. “The Mosquito and Fly Research Unit at the Medical and Veterinary Entomology Research Laboratory of the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He’s a wimp. He thinks he can get rid of mosquitoes with genetic engineerin’. Good luck. Man, there are one hundred trillion of the little buggers out there. I say gas ’em all.”

“Gas them all?” I repeated. “One hundred trillion?”

“Hell, yeah. Why not? That’s what insecticide means, okay? Kill insects.”

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” I told him, and he laughed.

“That’s funny,” he said. “I gotta remember that, that’s funny. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do….”

“Sidesplitting,” I agreed.

I went back to the chair. Emerton sat on the corner of his desk.

“Why are you convinced Alison was sleeping with Raymond Fleck?” I asked.

“A guy knows these things, okay? You can tell. Besides, it’s not like it was the first time.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Hell, no. She was screwin’ some guy at the health place, some doctor I think.”

“Huh?” My internal computer sifted through Anne Scalasi’s entire file in about two seconds flat, and all I could come up with was, “Huh?”

“Not long after we were married, neither.”

“Are you—?”

“Sure? You were goin’ to ask me if I’m sure? I told you, a guy knows these things. They say the husband’s the last to know. Forget that. The husband is the first unless he’s a dumb shit. Anyway, she didn’t deny it, okay? I told her I knew she was whorin’ around, and I was going to divorce her pronto. That was like the magic word with Alison: divorce. Her family, man, divorce was like worse than death. They’d rather you died than get a divorce, okay? So, she starts wailin’ and pleadin’ with me, sayin’ she was sorry, and the next thing she ups and quits the health place and gets a job at the dog place.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police this?” I asked him.

“What for? Man, they already thought I did her, okay? I’m gonna be the jealous husband? I’m gonna give ’em a motive?”

“Why are you telling me?”

“You’re not from the cops. You’re from the insurance … Shit!” Emerton jumped off his desk, walked around it, and fell into his chair like he had been pushed there. He covered his face with his hands. “I’m never going to see my money now, am I? God, I can’t believe I said that.”

I believed it. I’ve seen stupid before. Especially in killers. It’s like the act of murder freezes their brain cells. The mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, who once was a Pinkerton, called it “blood simple.” On the other hand, despite the degrees hanging on his walls, maybe Emerton was just plain simple.

“Who do you suspect?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“The doctor Alison was …” I couldn’t get the word out.

“Fuckin’?” Emerton finished.

“Involved with,” I substituted.

“I don’t know. I’m just guessin’ it was some doctor. Coulda been a janitor for all I know. Hell’s bells, man, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was with him right now on some beach in Bermuda, laughin’ her ass off at how badly she fucked up my life.”

“Wait a minute. First you say she’s dead. Now you say she’s alive.”

Emerton stared at me for a good ten seconds, his jaw muscles working but nothing coming out of his mouth. Then, “She’s dead, man. Don’t go sayin’ she ain’t. You ain’t usin’ that to deny my claim. She’s dead.”

“If you think she’s alive …”

“I didn’t say I think … I didn’t say … What I’m sayin’ is, wherever she is—in hell, man; she’s probably in hell—I’m sayin’ she’s laughing at the joke she played on me.”

“The joke she played on you?”

I wondered if it was too late for the Phi Betas to take their key back.

Stephen Emerton annoyed me. He annoyed me even before I met him. And I sure didn’t like the way he spoke about his wife, discussing her like she was a major appliance that had broken down a week or so after the warranty expired. Except I wanted his story—I wanted it complete and unabridged—so I tried to ignore the blood pounding in my head and listened, encouraging him when he became bored with the topic. I pumped Emerton for more information about the doctor—if it was a doctor—he claimed was “getting into Alison’s pants,” but he turned into a dry well. I gave it up after about an hour and made my way back through the now deserted offices to the front door.

I reached my car and removed Alison’s photo from the envelope. Her eyes spoke to me as they always had. Now, though, along with the despair there was something else, something I hadn’t seen before. It was like her eyes were pleading with me. But for what? Justice? Revenge? Or maybe it was just the gathering twilight that was casting soft shadows across the glossy surface. I returned the photograph to the envelope and started my car.

Emerton’s revelation that he suspected Alison was cheating on him with the phantom doctor and later with Raymond made him an even more likely suspect than before; Teeters would put him through the grinder again and so would the insurance company—and so would the media once they all heard. I looked forward to telling them. Only I didn’t want to annoy the sheriff with yet another phone call. It could wait until the morning.