Divisible man the third.., p.22
DIVISIBLE MAN--THE THIRD LIE, page 22
“Do you agree?” Sandy asked Andy.
“Let me call Janos’s deputy at the station and run it past her.” Andy pulled out her phone. She turned to me on her way to the privacy of the great room. “And then you and I have to go. I want to look at something.”
She hurried away, working her phone.
I turned to Arun, who had brightened at the possibility of preventing the destruction of the Education Foundation fund.
“Arun, a question.”
“Yes!” he chirped. He wore his excitement like a fresh shower.
“Was that sliced ham I saw in the fridge?”
40
Andy ate the sandwich I threw together. I finished mine too quickly and wished I’d made another. She ate and talked as she drove.
“When Lyle first started solo patrols, he did a couple shifts with almost nothing in his notebook and next to nothing entered in the shift logs. Tom reamed him out about it, and ever since the guy practically writes a novel every time he goes out. He goes too far. He’ll make a call or a stop, and then spend twenty minutes by the side of the road writing it up. It’s one of the issues Tom holds against him.”
“That he’s too thorough?”
“No. That he doesn’t process his learning and adapt. He goes all or nothing on things. He’s not making judgments and adapting input to advance himself.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen it in student pilots. Tell ‘em they’re not using enough rudder and they’re suddenly Fred Astaire on the pedals.”
Andy steered the car with her left hand and worked her sandwich with her right.
“Do you think there’s something in his notes that points to what happened to him?”
I waited for her to finish chewing.
“We all thought that. We’ve been over his entries a dozen times, starting with the night we arrested Johns. If there’s something there, we’re not seeing it. Or he made pocket notes but never had a chance to transcribe them.” She finished off the sandwich and followed it with water from a bottle she keeps in her car.
“Then what are we looking at?”
“His notes again. But I want to look at them in the environment. His last assigned duty was to re-canvass and list the names of Johns’ neighbors who were present that night. He entered all the names before he disappeared. I’ve already called most of them. My phone interviews didn’t add anything to what we already know. Almost all of them heard the music. Most of them closed their windows and went to bed. The immediate neighbor was out of town. Now I’m starting to rethink my approach.”
“How so?”
“I spoke to each of them in the context of the Johns case, not in the context of a missing officer.”
“You think someone Lyle talked to knows something or saw something?”
She wouldn’t say, saved by her phone, which signaled an incoming text. She found the device in her bag and lifted it, gave it a glance, then returned it.
“It’s done. Larmond made the first transfer. Just one.”
“Do you really think this is a good idea?”
Andy shook her head. “There are no good ideas in this.”
We spent the next two hours retracing Patrol Officer Lyle Traeger’s steps. Andy worked from the volume of notes Lyle entered in the CPU mounted against his unit’s dashboard before he disappeared.
Andy connected to the Essex PD system via tablet. I looked at the screen with her.
I pointed. “He’s got notes that one residence had garden gnomes.”
“That’s actually helpful. Some of those gnomes come with cameras.”
“An entry that says, ‘Four bicycles.’ What’s that about?”
“If I ask how many people live at that residence, and it’s just a married couple, it means someone was with them the night of the incident. See what I mean? The guy is nothing if not thorough.”
He may have been thorough, but the door-to-door visits provided Andy with no hint of what had happened to her fellow officer.
We left the home belonging to Clayton Johns’ immediate neighbor for last. Andy expected no one to be home.
“He races cars,” she said after we parked in front of the seven-car garage. “He wasn’t home that night.”
“Then why are we stopping here?”
“He might have come home. That’s why I left it for last.”
She started up the sidewalk, but I caught her arm above the elbow and stopped her. I pulled her around to face me and pulled her against my body.
“Are we about done here?” I hoped something tactile might inspire her to say that, Yes, we are about done here, and I want you to take me home.
I moved against her, trying to emphasize the point.
“Honey,” she warned me, “I’m on duty.” Yet she did not pull away. We stood in shadow on the sidewalk leading to the front door of the wildly oversized lake cottage.
“It has been a dismal week for us. I’m having PTSD flashbacks of my bachelor days.”
She hummed. “Most guys long for those days.”
“Long periods of celibacy are overrated. And by long periods, I’m talking hours. Days, even. God forbid, as much as a week.”
She made a move against me that only added to my argument.
“Hold that thought.”
And she was gone. Or at least no longer in my arms. It took me a moment to catch up to her.
She pressed the doorbell.
“Who’s this supposed to be? Stockbroker? Hedge fund manager?”
Andy checked the tablet.
“Lyle has the owner down under the name Santi. Derek and his wife Ariel.” She glanced at me in the light of the motion-sensing carriage lamp beside the front door. “What?”
“I know that guy.”
She tried to look inside, but prismed glass on either side of the door protected the interior.
“As in?”
“I told you about him. The guy. The drunk guy. Muscle-bound asshole? Remember?”
She tried the doorbell again. “Should I?”
“Yes! I told you all about him.” This proved it. She had slept through the whole story. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter. Looks like no one is home.”
She checked her tablet again.
“What else does the Shakespeare of police reporting say?”
“There’s a third name. Roger Duwyllen. And a note that says, ‘Fins Wet.’ I have no idea what that means, but if he got names, someone must have been here when he did his canvass. Funny, though…all the other entries run on like prose that needs a good editor. This is just the three names and that note.”
“They must have been here when he visited. How else would he have gotten the names? I’m going to look in the garage.”
“Will! No, you can’t!” She chased me down the sidewalk to the garage.
“I’m not going in!” I told her, pulling out my phone. I switched on the flashlight app. “I just want to take a look.” I folded the phone in my hands. I checked for cameras and line-of-sight to the windows.
Fwooomp!
I vanished and tapped my feet on the pavement. I rose under the garage roof overhang until my face reached a series of small windows high in the garage door. I held up my phone. The light probed the garage.
“Empty,” I said.
“I told you. They’re out of town.”
“Well, if they’re out of town at a race, they forgot to take their race car with them.” I swept the light over a low, tarp-covered vehicle in the only occupied bay of the garage. Beneath the hanging tarp I made out bright red body panels and racing tires. The body suggested Corvette.
“Probably the spare. Rich people have a spare everything. Let’s go.” My exploring made Andy nervous.
“Damn. I wish my garage was this neat. You could do surgery in here. It’s empty.”
“Will!”
I pushed against the overhang and drifted back down until my shoes touched the asphalt.
Fwooomp! I flicked into view. I touched my phone screen and killed the flashlight app.
“Let’s go,” Andy suggested.
“This guy was a client in Lyle’s other job.”
“We’re already on that. Jeff got a complete list of clients Lyle has driven. In case there was a complaint or if there was an altercation.”
“And?”
“And nothing. His clients loved him. I don’t remember this name on the list, but I can check it.”
I climbed in the car beside her. “Actually, I don’t think Lyle ever actually drove this guy. The customer was a no-show that night.”
“Makes him that much less important. Hang on,” Andy said, pulling out her phone, which growled on vibrate. She checked the screen, then touched to accept the call.
“Rosemary?”
“Andrea, thank God! Is Will with you? You need to come to the airport!”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“It’s Earl. He’s going to commit murder.”
41
Leander Lake is forty minutes of pleasant country driving from downtown Essex; thirty minutes from the airport which is located east of town. Andy covered the distance in twenty-two. We arrived three minutes after nine-thirty. She parked in the Essex County Air Service lot. We spotted several people near the airport tug, which remained chained to the Challenger. A second visiting jet, a Citation, sat near the gas pumps. A dark-haired woman paced back and forth near the nose of the jet, watching the confrontation from a distance. Her fashion statement screamed Spandex. Silhouetted against the hangar building lights, she might have been wearing a superhero costume—except for the high heels.
Andy cut across the lawn directly for the tug. I spotted Earl Jackson and looked for bodies on the ground.
As we approached, Rosemary II detached herself from the cluster around the tug and pointed at the badge on Andy’s belt.
“As I promised, here are the police,” she said loudly.
A man in a dark suit turned his attention to Andy. Roughly my height, he had a small, pursed mouth, fleshy jowls and a belly that tried to hide his belt. I made his age to be in the late sixties or early seventies, despite dark dyed hair arranged in a comb-over. His suit, probably expensive, looked loose and lumpy, unable to overcome the body beneath it.
“Officer arrest this man,” he ordered Andy. His mistake. Compounding the error of issuing a command to my wife, he folded his arms across his chest, planted his feet and lifted his chin. The pose said Il Duce and bought no favor with Detective Andrea Stewart.
Earl sat on the tug seat with one foot propped up on the headlight bar. His affect gave me a chill. There was no mistaking his intent.
“And you would be?”
“I’m the owner of this airplane, which that man is unlawfully detaining.”
“Why don’t you give me a chance to decide what’s lawful and not lawful here, sir?”
“Why don’t you do your duty,” the man snapped back. “If you won’t, I can easily reach out to a very good friend of mine, a close friend and a very high-ranking official with Homeland Security. A top man with authority over aviation matters.”
Second mistake.
“You’ve now told me what you are. I asked who you are.” Andy stepped unusually close to the man. He had to depress his upraised chin to look at her. “May I see some identification?”
“I’m Emilio DeSantorini,” he announced, but he made no move to produce ID.
“Maybe you are. I still need to see that identification.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Everyone knows me. That’s my airplane. That man is clearly detaining it. You should be dealing with him!”
Earl said nothing from his perch.
“That gentleman,” Andy said calmly, “I know. You, I do not. Now either you produce the identification I asked for or we can discuss all this at my station house.”
Two men behind DeSantorini—pilots by the look of their matching white shirts, black ties and light jackets—exchanged glances with a third. I pegged the third as The Assistant.
“I can help with that!” The Assistant chimed in. “If you’ll just wait a moment, officer—”
“Detective Stewart.”
“Yes, of course, Detective. If you’ll just wait a moment…” he backed away. “It’s in the other airplane. I’ll just be a moment!” He broke into a trot across the ramp, chased by his own long shadow. His boss did not acknowledge him or turn to watch him.
One of the pilots held a bolt cutter half hidden behind one leg.
“Sir, I need you to put that down,” Andy told him. He didn’t question. He dropped the tool to the asphalt; it still bore the price tag.
Andy turned back to DeSantorini.
“While your friend is fetching your wallet, maybe you can tell me what this is about,” Andy said.
“Are you blind?” Third mistake. DeSantorini took an abrupt step back, exactly as Andy had intended. He pointed at Earl. “He’s blocking my aircraft. He has it chained to that tractor, which is causing damage to a very expensive nose wheel!”
Andy turned her head and examined the heavy chain running from the rear hitch to the nose gear strut.
“I don’t see any damage, sir.”
“I don’t see how you could. You’re not qualified to make that judgment.” At that point I stopped counting mistakes.
“What’s your business here, Mr. DeSantorini?” She closed proximity to him again. It gave me a nervous twinge, the same as I might have felt if she stepped to the edge of a cliff. Once again, DeSantorini took a step back.
“Not that it’s any of your concern, young lady—”
“Detective.”
“My business here is not your concern. I want that chain removed, this tractor gone, and that man arrested. If you can’t resolve this, I’ll call your boss.”
I looked at Earl, then at Rosemary II, whose worried expression mirrored mine. We held our breath, anticipating calamity.
Andy glanced at her watch. “I think you will not like the result if you drag my boss out here in the middle of a Packer pre-season game.” Andy turned to Rosemary II. “Is there a reason the aircraft is being detained?”
“The gentleman has not paid a seventy-five-hundred-dollar fuel bill,” she said. “He also has an open invoice for repair to a nosewheel tire for two thousand, four hundred and eighty-three dollars.”
“You’ve been given all of the appropriate billing information,” DeSantorini said.
“Sir, that’s not how this works,” Rosemary II replied. “I will not send an invoice to a P.O. box in New Jersey for a ten-thousand-dollar bill.”
“You’ll get your money.”
“Liar.” Earl said it so softly he might have been speaking only to himself.
“What did you say? Did you just call me a liar?”
“Mr. DeSantorini,” Andy said, “do you have a credit card you can use to settle the bill?”
“This is insane. Do you know who I am?”
“That’s the problem,” Rosemary II said, gaining confidence. “We do. We spoke to your FBO at Teterboro. You have a history of not paying your bills, and those that you do, you take a very long time.”
“You’ll get your money, but I will be deducting for damage done to my nose wheel.”
“As I see it, Mr. DeSantorini, that chain isn’t touching the nose wheel. Nor has it damaged the oleo strut, the camber counterweight or the retract braces.”
DeSantorini blinked at Andy. “What do you know about it?”
More than you, I thought, although I had no idea where she came up with camber counterweight.
“Do you plan to fly out on this jet?” Andy asked. She pointed. “Or on that jet?”
“What business is that of yours?”
Andy shrugged. “It’s a simple question, but if it’s that difficult to answer, then let’s go to my office where we can have a comfortable chat over a cup of coffee.”
DeSantorini stared. He lowered his chin and shook his head. “Detective, you will regret your treatment of me. I plan to press charges against the woman who attacked my employee. I can easily add you to the list.”
“If you’re referring to the young woman who was sexually assaulted by your employee—”
“She committed assault and battery.”
“Liar. That’s twice.”
Everyone looked up at Earl. His posture remained unchanged. I wondered if I could stop him, or at least slow him down. Either way, it would hurt. I didn’t think Earl, in his present state, would hesitate to go through me to get to DeSantorini.
“Ridiculous. She attacked my employee and put him in the hospital.”
Andy said, “The district attorney is reviewing the matter. Last I heard, he’s considering charges against your employee.”
I had no idea that Andy was aware of the incident with Pidge—or that it had escalated to criminal charges.
DeSantorini scoffed. “Why am I not surprised. If you people choose to shield a criminal, then I will bury that woman in lawsuits.”
“Anyone with a checkbook can file a lawsuit. However, the recording that the young woman made on her cell phone, which begins at the point where your employee lures her onto the aircraft under false pretenses and ends at the point where she calls 9-1-1 on behalf of your employee, suggests you would be better served spending your money paying your vendors.”
As if on cue, The Assistant arrived out of breath. He held up a black wallet. Andy asked him to produce a credit card. He looked for release to do so from his boss, then scrambled to pull out an American Express card. Rosemary II dove into her purse for her cell phone. She attached a small cube to the side of the device and held out her hand for the card. The Assistant looked at DeSantorini for permission.
Rosemary II didn’t wait. She snatched the card from The Assistant’s hand, tapped her phone screen, swiped the card through the cube on her phone, and waited. We all waited.
After a moment, satisfied by the result, she handed the card back.
DeSantorini curled his lip. “Detective, you have no idea the shit you’ve stepped in here.”
He turned to his trio of associates.
“I want that fucking chain removed!”
