Not even the biblical Isaac held such a harsh opinion of his father Abraham.
Dantzler tried to dismiss Isaac Whitehouse as a suspect in the murder of those two boys in 1982, but he couldn’t. His instincts wouldn’t allow it. Did he see Isaac as the shooter? No. Dantzler quickly ruled out that possibility. But ruling Isaac out as somehow being involved in the crime wasn’t so easy to do. As Dantzler saw it, there were several critical factors preventing a quick dismissal of Isaac as a suspect.
To begin with, Isaac knew the combination to the safe, which gave him access to the.22. He could easily have gotten the gun and given it to the shooter, having made sure Eli’s prints were on it. Given Isaac’s apparent apathy toward his father, such action, although unlikely, was not beyond the realm of possibility.
Also, Isaac was only a couple years younger than the two victims, and although he denied knowing them, it didn’t mean he was telling the truth. They may have been friends, or at the very least, acquaintances. If so, and if a link could be established, it enhanced the likelihood that Isaac was somehow involved. If nothing else, it would prove him to be a liar.
And having been involved in the crime, Isaac could be counted on to remain silent all these years.
But why would Isaac help perpetrate such a crime? Did he really hate Eli enough to watch him sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit? Was Isaac that bitter, that cruel and uncaring? And if Isaac was involved, who was he covering for? Who was he protecting? Who was the shooter?
So many unanswered questions, so many dots yet to be connected.
Dantzler went into the kitchen and made another drink. Sitting at the table, his thoughts kept coming back to the two meetings with Isaac. During those talks, Isaac demonstrated no love for his father, but neither had he displayed any outward or overt signs of hate. Or at least, none Dantzler could detect. More than anything, Isaac seemed indifferent, almost strangely removed from his father’s plight. It was as though he simply didn’t care what happened.
But was Isaac Whitehouse an accessory to a double murder? Was he so hate-filled, so heartless, that he was willing to ruin his own father’s life? Could any son feel so much animosity toward his father?
Dantzler cringed at the thought. Hating a parent was unnatural, and harboring enough hatred to help send a parent to prison was even more unnatural. But… if twenty-five years as a detective had taught him anything, it was this: human behavior is the ultimate mystery.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
At a little past eleven p.m., a second thunderstorm, this one accompanied by heavy winds, drove Dantzler off the deck and into the house. Once inside, he mixed another drink, settled into the recliner in the den, and began surfing the tube for something worthwhile to watch. His first stop was The Charlie Rose Show, the most intelligent and enlightening of the interview programs, and one that rarely failed him. However, that wasn’t the case on this night. Tonight, Charlie was talking to the director and two actors from a new movie based on a graphics novel. Dantzler had no interested in that. Things didn’t improve with a switch to usually reliable CNN, or to any of the other cable networks, where, for the most part, there was a lot of screaming and finger pointing between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.
So much for intellectual and civil debate.
In the end, Turner Classic Movies came to the rescue, as it often did at this late hour. After giving the remote a solid workout, Dantzler landed on White Heat, the classic black and white gangster flick starring the great Jimmy Cagney as Cody Jarrett, the psychopathic criminal with the mother fixation who yells “made it, Ma-top of the world!” just seconds before he’s blown to smithereens in spectacular cinematic fashion. It was one of Dantzler’s all-time favorite movies, and certainly his favorite Cagney performance.
Dantzler was enough of a movie buff to know every serious actor from Brando on down idolized Cagney. The legendary director Stanley Kubrick rated Cagney as one of the five greatest movie actors of all-time, and with good reason. Cagney never let you down. Energy and truth were at the heart of Cagney’s acting. No matter the situation, or how lame the dialogue, he was always believable. For Dantzler, ten minutes of the marvelous Cagney was preferable to the endless, numbing hours of barking, biting, and screaming constantly found on the major cable networks. It wasn’t even a close contest.
After Cagney went up in flames, Dantzler turned off the TV and relocated to the kitchen. For the next half-hour he waded through a stack of unopened and long-neglected mail, separating the important (bills, bank statement) he had to address from the unimportant (credit card offers, various coupons, the Watchtower), which accounted for the ninety-five percent he could deep-six without bothering to open.
With the mail taken care of, Dantzler thought about finding another movie to watch. But the chances of running across a worthy follow-up to Cagney were slim to none. Instead, he decided to take another look at the obituary information Eric had gathered. It was tedious grunt work, and his previous studies had yielded nothing helpful, but he felt compelled to pore over the information one more time. Or ten more times, if necessary. After all, according to Eli, this stack of clippings was where the answer to the mystery could be found.
All Dantzler had to do was find it.
Two hours later, having gone through every obit notice in the three folders, he was still batting a solid zero. There was simply nothing linking anyone mentioned in any of the obits to the Eli Whitehouse case. If, indeed, Eli’s secret was hidden within these pages, it was beyond Dantzler’s grasp.
When Dantzler set the three folders aside, he noticed a fourth folder, one not nearly as thick as the others, lying on the table. At first he was puzzled; the folder seemed to appear almost out of nowhere. Then it dawned on him what he was looking at. The folder with the female obituaries he had asked Eric to check out. Staring at it, he realized he had never studied its contents.
Could it possibly be?
Dantzler opened the folder and took out the stack of newspaper clippings, photographs, and notes Eric had written. Slowly and methodically he began reading the obits, which had been arranged alphabetically by Eric, beginning with Adcock, Shirley.
More than halfway through the stack, having uncovered nothing of interest, Dantzler turned the page and picked up the next obit notice.
And there it was, plain as day, exactly like Eli said.
Holy shit, Dantzler muttered out loud, his heart pounding like a timpani drum. Holy shit, he repeated.
He looked away, then back down at the newspaper clipping, blinking several times to make sure that what he was looking at was no sleep-deprived vision. It wasn’t; this was the real thing. Hands trembling, suddenly wide awake, adrenaline pumping, he picked up the single piece of paper.
And began reading.
RICHARDS
Mary Magdalene Richards, 54, loving wife of Johnny Richards, departed this life on April 7, 2010, after a brief illness. Known to everyone as Maggie, she had a strong devotion to family, a great appreciation of the arts and a love of Nature’s beauty. Maggie was born on June 18, 1955, in New York City, where she met and fell in love with her husband, whom she married in 1976. She worked in the HR Department at the VA Hospital for many years, eventually retiring in 2005. Maggie is survived by her husband; two sisters, Annabella Donetti of New York City and Gabriella Terranova of Atlantic City, N.J.; six nieces and three nephews. Funeral services will be held at Kerr Brothers Funeral Home in Lexington on April 9 beginning at 10 a.m. Burial will be in the Lexington Cemetery. Donations on behalf of Maggie Richards may be made to the Markey Cancer Center.