Volume 1 of 2, p.10
He Was Deceived, page 10
part #1 of Zachary Goldman Mysteries Series
“Does that mean we can’t talk about work?” Kenzie asked.
“Of course not. I love hearing all the gory details of your work.”
Kenzie chuckled. There weren’t a lot of jobs that did actually involve gory details, but hers was one of them. “Well, I didn’t have anything too exciting today. But you have been out all day, you must have learned a lot.”
“Not as much as I would have liked,” Zachary admitted. “But… it is a ten-year-old case. Any details I can dig up count as progress.”
“You’ve been all over Vermont.”
“Well, only northern Vermont, really. But I did put on a good number of miles.” Zachary patted the dashboard of his car affectionately. It was a real workhorse. Put in a lot of hours without causing him any trouble.
“So, who did you talk to?”
Zachary started outlining his interviews for the day, working his way backward through the day, starting with the most recent interview and working his way back to talking to the retired sheriff, Taylor.
“He sounds like a nice guy,” Kenzie commented, as the conversation continued in the kitchen as they worked together on supper. “Not your typical crusty old soldier who doesn’t want anything to do with a PI.”
“Well, I didn’t introduce myself as a private investigator but, yes, he was quite happy to help a civilian. Went out to the shed to dig out his old notebooks to refresh his memory on all the details of the case. But he’s pretty determined that it was an accident and could not have been anything else.”
“Maybe it was.”
“Maybe,” Zachary admitted. “I don’t have anything yet that points me toward it being murder. Other than the calls she was getting before she died. I haven’t talked to all the kids yet, but the older two do remember there being phone calls, and the daughter got an earful when she answered the phone one day. Some pretty nasty threats.”
“So the mother was getting threats.”
“Yes. She definitely was.”
“What did the ex-sheriff have to say about that?”
“I didn’t push it hard. I’m more interested in getting anything he might have than in pushing my own agenda. If I insist it was murder, he’ll just resist and I won’t get anything.”
“Sounds like the approach has worked so far.”
“Yeah.” Zachary laid plates on the table. “I do have some concerns, though.”
“Of what? A cover-up?”
“Not a cover-up, exactly, But maybe it wasn’t investigated quite as thoroughly as it could have been.”
“All police investigations have to take costs into account, weighing them against the likely benefit. You only screen for a few drugs, for example, based on the symptoms and observations of witnesses. You don’t screen for everything on the planet. And if someone dies under a doctor’s care, and they believe they know the cause of death, there is no need for the medical examiner’s office to get involved and no need for an autopsy. Unless the doctor thinks there is a reason.”
Zachary considered Sheriff Taylor’s investigation against this cost-benefit analysis. He believed that it was an accident. He’d seen kids doing target practice in the area. The victim was not someone who was likely to be the victim of a targeted attack. There were no witnesses, no evidence that pointed to murder. So why would he put a lot of time into conducting interviews with everyone who knew Edie Dwayne or getting experts in to analyze the bullet, its trajectory, and anything else they might have questions about?
“That all makes sense,” he agreed. “But I’m worried about whether he was the best judge of whether it was an accident and if they needed to conduct a more thorough investigation.”
“It sounds like he was pretty experienced. Why wouldn’t he be a good judge?”
Zachary sighed. He thought about what he could or should say. Kenzie glanced back at him, but didn’t push it, letting him think about it some more.
When they sat down to eat, Zachary outlined the portion of his investigation he had skipped over until then.
“When I was in his RV and he was outside looking for the notebooks, I couldn’t help but look around a bit…”
“Get a little bit of snooping in,” Kenzie said disapprovingly. “He didn’t exactly give you permission to invade his privacy.”
“And I didn’t,” Zachary protested. “I stayed in the living room and kitchen area. I didn’t go through any drawers or cupboards. I only looked at what was in plain sight. Just like a cop.”
“Plain sight?”
“Really,” he assured her. “I didn’t do so much as take a book down from a shelf.”
“Okay. And what was it about this little look around that concerned you?”
“He had his calendar on the wall.”
“Uh-huh…?”
“With all of his appointments on it.”
“And you read through his private schedule.”
“It wasn’t private, it was posted on the wall for anyone to see.”
“I don’t know… if you’re doing things like getting his doctor’s name or details about private health matters…”
“No. No special medical tests. No names of therapists or medical professionals.”
“But there was something.”
Zachary ate a few bites of the salad, giving it his full attention as if he were greatly enjoying it, which, of course, he was not. He was never going to be a salad person.
“He had a meeting at the local church a couple of times a week.”
Kenzie raised her brows. “Meetings at the church. Okay. Doesn’t sound like anything concerning to me. What kind of meetings?”
“It didn’t say on the calendar. So, I stopped at the church before I left town. Looked at the bulletin board and talked to a caretaker who was there. The priest wasn’t around. I don’t think they actually live at the church like they do on TV.”
“Not always,” Kenzie agreed, with what Zachary thought was a suppressed laugh. “And what did you find out? Is he doing youth outreach or something dreadful like that?”
“No. AA.”
19
Kenzie sat back in her seat. “Oh.”
Zachary nodded and continued to eat, working his way through the unpalatable salad and giving her a chance to think about that.
“Did you talk to him about it?” Kenzie asked eventually.
“No, I haven’t talked to him since I went to the church.”
“And I don’t suppose the janitor or anyone else there knew or would tell you his history. Whether he was sober ten years ago.”
“I didn’t ask. But the possibility has to be taken into consideration. There was no wife in the family pictures. Not for a long time. Pictures of him with his kids and grandkids. No pictures of his wife. She is in some of the early pictures when the kids were younger, but nothing in, say, the last ten years.”
“Did she die or is he divorced?”
“I assume that if she had died ten years ago when Edie Dwayne did, he would have made a connection while we were talking. ‘It was that same year that my wife died,’ or ‘I knew exactly how he felt,’ or something like that. If she’s died, he would have been very empathetic toward Oliver and his family.”
“Wasn’t he?”
“He was sympathetic,” Zachary told her. “He felt sorry for him and the kids. He gave him space and didn’t ask him a lot of questions. But he wasn’t empathetic. He didn’t know how Oliver was feeling. Didn’t agonize over the children’s loss. Nothing about taking him food or flowers or talking about how the community would take care of him.” Zachary cut a piece of chicken. “I could be wrong. People don’t always behave the way you would expect them to. Maybe if his wife had just died, that was all the more reason to withdraw from the Dwayne family emotionally, to tell them it was an accident, and not to investigate it thoroughly.”
“The drinking is worrisome,” Kenzie admitted. “It doesn’t mean that he was negligent in the investigation, but it opens up the possibility.”
Zachary nodded his agreement. Up until then, he hadn’t been too worried. Taylor seemed like a competent cop. He remembered the investigation and details about it. It seemed like he knew what he was talking about. He resisted any suggestion that it had not been an accidental shooting, but what law enforcement officer would not stand up for his own theory of the crime? He had a gut feeling about it. He had experience. He trusted his feelings. If he had waffled about it, let Zachary push him around, and changed his opinion about what had happened, Zachary would have been much more worried.
“Do you have copies of his notes?” Kenzie asked. She didn’t sound too hopeful about it.
“No. I did take pictures of two of his crime scene sketches, and he drew a larger scene view for me.” Zachary brought them up on his phone and passed it across the table to Kenzie.
She hesitated for a moment, then picked up the phone and looked at the diagram. Zachary watched her pinch and zoom and manipulate the photo. He didn’t know what she was looking for, but was patient and worked his way through the chicken and salad while she looked at them.
“You could have a graphologist look at the diagrams,” Kenzie said, “But I don’t see anything in his lines that indicates he was impaired when he drew them. His lines are confident, not shaky. Everything is oriented to the square, not splayed out every direction. Comparing what he drew then to what he drew today, there is not much variation in the lines or the content.”
Zachary let out his breath. Kenzie passed his phone back to him. Zachary did as she had, zooming in on the lines and looking for shakiness or sloppiness. But she was right. His lines didn’t wander or shake, and the diagrams all hung together well.
“It’s always possible that he drew the pictures later, when he was sober, and that he was drunk when he arrived at the scene. But just taking this at face value, it looks good. It’s very professional. I’ve seen a lot of scene-of-crime sketches, and this contains everything that a medical examiner or court would want to see. All the pertinent information is clearly laid out. I don’t suppose you have any crime scene photos.”
“No, not yet. I will request them under a Public Records request, but I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be able to get anything. Or whether I’ll get it in a timely manner or without everything being redacted.”
“You should be able to. It is a closed case. If the police thought that it was an accidental shooting, then there is no danger to the public. There may be some stuff that they redacted because of privacy concerns for the individuals who were questioned. But other than that… I can’t see how a request for an accident investigation file could be denied.”
Zachary nodded. He had dealt with a number of requests under the Public Records Act before. Sometimes it was remarkably easy and he got exactly what he needed in a timely manner. Other times, it was like pulling teeth and going back and forth with the agency involved would take months, even years, to get what he wanted. And then it might be so heavily redacted that he couldn’t get the details he was looking for. Maybe he would have Heather put together the request. She was better with wording administrative stuff than he was, and he thought agencies like the police department were more likely to provide a woman with the information she requested than a man, especially a PI. Even if they were required to do so by law, it would always be more difficult than it should be.
“You took some pictures?” Kenzie asked.
Zachary nodded. He retrieved his camera from his pocket and turned it on. He rewound to pictures he had taken in the woods. And of the road when he had returned to his car.
“Keep in mind that it happened in the summer and, of course, it is winter now, so everything is covered with snow and the trees are bare. They would block more of the view if they were out in leaf.”
Kenzie nodded her agreement. He probably didn’t need to tell her that. She had eyes and she was bright. She’d looked at a lot of crime scenes. She was used to this kind of analysis.
“Those woods are pretty thick,” Kenzie observed, paging through the pictures. “I wasn’t expecting them to be so dense.”
“Yeah. You can see why kids target shooting here wouldn’t think there was any danger firing toward the public road. There are so many tree trunks in the way; you wouldn’t think a bullet would be able to make it all the way there unimpeded.”
“You’re right,” Kenzie agreed. “I guess as a rural law enforcement officer, he would have a pretty good idea of what was possible. But I’d be hard-pressed to find a straight line from here to the road.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”
20
Jeff was living closer to Zachary than the other Dwayne children, going to school in Randolph Center. When Zachary called him to discuss the possibility of coming to talk to him, Jeff betrayed no surprise or resistance. He seemed to welcome the chance to meet with Zachary about the accident.
Zachary usually met with clients or witnesses for the first time in public places like restaurants, coffee shops, or their workplace. Jeff, however, invited him to his dorm room, and Zachary accepted. Zachary found his way to the correct building, and Jeff was waiting for him in the lobby and took him up to his room.
It was small, as Zachary had expected. He had never gone to college or lived in a dorm himself. He had taken night classes here and there where he needed to upgrade his skills or learn new investigation techniques, but that was different from being a full-time student.
Zachary could not see much of Oliver in his son’s features. The boy had short, sandy hair and hadn’t yet outgrown gawky adolescence.
There were a couple of beds and several computers, tablets, and speaker systems. One of the beds was neatly made and the other a mess of blankets. Jeff offered Zachary a wobbly chair and sat on the neat bed.
“This is nice,” Zachary commented. “How are you enjoying the program?”
“It’s good. I’m excited about being able to be certified and get a job in veterinary medicine. I’ve always loved animals and wanted to work with them.”
“I hear you had a dog when you were younger.”
“Rosie. She was the best. I really miss her. You know in the Peter Pan movie, how that Nana dog takes care of the kids? That’s kind of how I thought of Rosie. As far as she was concerned, I was one of her pups. She protected me, kept me company, looked after me. I don’t think she could have done anything more for me if she had been a human nanny.”
“That’s cool. You must have been sorry to lose her.”
Jeff’s eyes welled with tears. “I was,” he agreed. “I wish animals could live forever. And people, of course.”
“The world would get overpopulated pretty quickly.”
“I know that. Maybe just the people and animals I love could live forever.” He gave a little smile. “It’s a fantasy. I know there are all kinds of logical problems and consequences involved.”
Zachary nodded. He understood the desire. He had lost his family and mourned them greatly, even though it had not been an ideal family, or even a very functional one. He had been abused and neglected, but he had still wanted to go back home, to go back to the family that he longed for. He had wanted everything to stay the same, to stay with the people he loved. That fantasy had taken years to fade. Maybe it was still there, lodged in a dark corner of his mind.
“Moving on is hard,” he told Jeff.
“Yeah. You’re right about that.”
“So, you know I’m here to talk to you about your mom.”
“Yeah. It’s kind of funny, Dad deciding to look at it now, so many years later. I thought everyone just wanted to put it behind them.” He grimaced. “I thought I was the only one still hanging on to it.”
“Did he tell you why he was looking into it now?”
Jeff cocked his head slightly. “No, he didn’t say… but I guess, now that I’m out of the house, he’s been thinking about it again. All by himself… must have long nights.”
Zachary wondered how much of it was just that. Oliver had a lot of time to think now. He had occupied his life with raising his children without their mother but, now that he was by himself, he must be lonely. And he was still in the house he had bought with his wife. Still in the bed they had shared together. The phone calls might just be a coincidence. Or they could even be a complete fabrication. He might have known about the calls that Edie had been getting before she died and resurrected them for his own purposes. That would account for why he was getting calls now, when surely the killer—if there was one—would not want the case reopened.
Oliver said that the police had not bothered to trace the calls, so there was no proof that the calls even existed. In fact, Zachary had not even talked to the current sheriff to find out whether Oliver had reported the phone calls. He could have just made that up too.
If Oliver wanted to fabricate calls, hoping that the police would reopen the case, that wouldn’t have been hard. He didn’t need long calls. Just evidence that the calls had been made, and that they had been made from somewhere untraceable like a public phone or a burner located several miles from his house. With an answering machine on his home line, it would be easy to call from somewhere else and then offer evidence that the call had connected and had lasted ten to thirty seconds.
Zachary shook off these thoughts. Whether the phone calls were real or not was academic. He was still on the case and looking for any clues that Edie Dwayne’s death had not been accidental.
“There’s more to it than that,” he told Jeff. “Your father said he’s been getting anonymous calls telling him that your mother’s death was not accidental. The police were not interested in looking into it, so he asked me if I would see what I could find.”
“Calls like Mom got?” Jeff asked, eyes widening.
“What do you know about your mom getting calls?”
“Well, she was.” He blinked and looked at Zachary. “Didn’t you know about that?”
“I did. But Terry doesn’t seem to know anything about it, and Marissa couldn’t tell me anything about them, other than that they were upsetting to her.” He didn’t tell Jeff that Marissa had once answered one of the calls. He wanted to know what Jeff knew independently of anyone else. He didn’t want to feed him memories.
