“When I came back from the hills this morning, I sat down and made up a list of all the things that bother me. My psychiatrist told me to do that. It’s better than scream therapy, Neal, but you know what? I couldn’t find Cameron’s name anywhere on it.”
“God damn it, he’d better be on it.”
“Are you gonna eat that pickle?”
“Sure I am. Listen, do you want to talk to me or not?”
“I might, if you’ll pull the cork out of your ass and stop being a cop for thirty seconds.”
He took a long breath and held it. As he let it out, he said, “I’d just hate to see you take a fall.”
I gave a little shrug. “Are we all finished with the dance now? If we are, I’ll tell you something: the real truth, forty-carat, government-inspected stuff. You can take it to the bank, Neal. You ready? Here it is. This boy is dead meat. I don’t know who he is or where he’s hiding, but his ass is mine. He can’t go far enough and he can’t dig himself a deep enough hole. That’s on the record, and frankly I don’t give a fuck what Lester thinks.”
I picked up his pickle and bit the end off. “Does that answer your question?”
“Yeah,” he said grimly. “It’s also what I was afraid of.”
He ate the rest of the pickle fast.
“This is now my full-time job,” I said. “You want to talk turkey, fine. How much time do you have in a day? Did you guys ever get through checking out that U-Haul lead? Well I did, because I’ve got nothing else going with my time. My business is closed for the duration and I’m on this guy full-time. I can’t wait for you guys, Neal, because you’ve probably got ten other cases on your desk right this minute. Hey, I know how it goes. I also know you’ve got to get on something like this right now, because evidence tends to dry up. I’ve already found something that would be ashes now if I’d waited for you. No offense.”
“What evidence? What the hell’ve you found?”
“Only something that puts a whole new slant on things. Don’t ask for specifics if you’re not willing to punt the football. It’s a two-way street. That’s simple manners, and I know Mrs. Hennessey didn’t raise anything but polite little walruses.”
“You’re out of your mind. Cameron’d have a hematoma of the left nut if he thought I was sharing information with you.”
“It’ll give him something to play with. Look, I’ve got to go, I can’t sit here and bullshit all day. You’ve gotta make up your mind.”
He sat perfectly still, struggling with the forces of good and evil.
“Don’t hurry on my account,” I said. I looked at my watch. “I’m due at an appointment, where I’m getting my ass sued off, in thirty minutes.”
“One time and one time only,” Hennessey said. “What do you want to know?”
“All the good poop. What happened at McKinley’s. You can put in a lot of color. Tell me if her cheeks were rosy or pale when Lester broke her door open and wrestled her down just as she was about to throw the tape into the fire.”
“You should do stand-up comedy.” He fished in his pocket for a small notebook and leafed through the pages. “At eleven forty-eight yesterday morning, your police department, accompanied by officers from Jefferson County and acting on a warrant signed by District Court Judge Harlan Blakeley, scaled the fence at the mountaintop residence at the end of Road twelve, otherwise known as Crestview Street…”
“I think I’ve seen this one. In a minute it snows and turns into Bambi. I really don’t have time for this much color.”
He put his notebook away and looked at me long and hard. He was a cop who went by the book, and it broke his heart when he had to go the other way.
“She gave us the tape.”
“No kidding. Was it all there?”
“Seemed to be.”
“How about the part I erased?”
“Entirely different tape. You remember she had taken the tape out so she could play it for you when you arrived. She had already put another one in the recorder. The tape we wanted was still in the player when we got there.”
“Did you listen to it? Stupid question. What was on it?”
“Same thing you heard.”
“What’d you make of it?”
“We think it was the killer who came in at the end. Almost had to be, the way it goes. The time’s about perfect, and the guy—Peter, right?—seems to fall apart right at that moment.”
“Could you make anything out of the section where they’re talking together?”
“It was pretty much of a mess. I’ve listened to one of the copies maybe two dozen times and I can’t get it. The lab boys have the original; maybe they’ll do some good with it. They’ve got the equipment: they can do some amazing stuff, separating voices. They might have something for me later today.”
“Would it be too much to ask… you know, for old time’s sake… could you tell me what they say?”
“I’m already a dead man. What’s one more shot in the head?”
“What was McKinley like while all this was going on?”
“Couldn’t‘ve been more cooperative. Went right to the tape player and handed over the tape and we were out of there in ten minutes. Even Lester liked her.”
I sat quietly, lost in thought.
“Your turn,” Hennessey said.
I started with the U-Haul rentaclass="underline" told him how Peter had rented the truck and gave him the gas station’s address. I told him about Portland, and the lovely Mumsy Bonnema. I told him about Peter’s books: where I had found them, what I thought they were worth, where I had put them. He kept his eyes closed, a suffering man, all the time I was telling it. At the end, he said, “I don’t wanna know how you found out all this, do I?”
“Probably not.”
“So what the hell d’you expect me to do with it?”
“I’ll try to find a way to get it to you. For now, let’s say there’s a gray point of law involved.”
“Let’s say your ass is gray. Come on, Cliff, what am I supposed to do? Just how the hell am I supposed to have gotten those books from Oregon to Denver, let alone found out where they were in the first place?”
“I guess you’ll have to follow the evidence, like a good cop always does.”
“Right through you. I’ll send you postcards in Canon City.”
“Yeah, 1 thought of that. Maybe I will have to do some jail time before it’s over. I just know I couldn’t leave those books in Portland. By now they’d be ashes in Mumsy’s back yard.”
“You wouldn’t be so particular if the evidence was pornography or dope.”
“You may be right.”
“You know I’m right.” He finished off his beer. “You’re crazy, Cliff, you really are.” He got up and put on his coat. “You’re crazy,” he said again. “God dang, you were a good cop, though. You sure were a good cop.”
37
“This is getting us nowhere,” Levin said. “You admit you hated Mr. Newton. You admit you harassed and persecuted him for more than two years prior to the incident in question. You admit you kidnapped—threatened and beat and illegally handcuffed and detained—Mr. Newton, not in the legal performance of your duty as a Denver police officer, but out of sheer malicious hatred. Then you took Mr. Newton, against his will, for a little ride. Sounds like something out of The Untouchables, Mr. Janeway, but this is what, by your own admission, seems to have happened that night. All these things you have admitted for the record, and now, when we come to that little clearing by the river, you would expect us to believe that you removed the handcuffs from Mr. Newton’s wrists and not only allowed him an even break but actually let him strike the first blow?”
Mose leaned across the table and in a very weary voice said, “Counselor, if you keep asking questions like that, we’ll all be old men before this thing ends. The golden age of oratory is over.”