A Dead Issue

by John Evans

  I unfolded my story, telling it exactly as I remembered it. Devereaux threw in a question or two, and I knew that he was silently comparing my version with whatever Billy and Ray had said, and since they had nothing to hide, I knew our stories would be more or less the same told from different perspectives. I made sure I emphasized the fact that we kept tossing back shots. It helped explain why I slept till nearly eleven o’clock and missed the morning paper.

  “You have a problem with alcohol?” he asked.

  I frowned. I guess I overdid it.

  “You had a rough night and I smell it on you today. It’s early afternoon.”

  “Lunch with my father,” I explained. “He offered me a job and I took it. We had a few drinks to celebrate.”

  Devereaux paused. It was as if the mention of my father was an opening and he was deciding which way to play it.

  “You getting along with your old man?” he asked finally. It was no secret that I didn’t want to work for my father.

  “Not really—until today,” I answered truthfully. “My father has to run everything. But I’d like to run my own life.” I grunted—almost a laugh. “How am I doing? Twenty-seven and working McDonald’s. Helping a blind farmer on weekends.”

  We shared a look, and his eyes had a touch of sympathy and understanding in them—the first I noticed since we met.

  “I think I grew up yesterday,” I said.

  “So, you starting out in the mail room?”

  I smiled. “Almost. I’m watching the house while he’s in Chicago hammering out a business deal.”

  “Young lord of the manor,” he said almost to himself. He flipped a page in his tablet and started off in a new direction. “How long you been working for Jonah Heard?”

  “About four weeks or so,” I answered. “He hired us to move stuff around when he had his auction. He stopped farming because of his eyes and was selling off everything he didn’t need. When it was over, he asked Dusty and me to help him on weekends. Then we started putting in a few hours during the week before McDonald’s.”

  Devereaux scribbled in his tablet, talking down at it as he wrote. “I heard he liked the way you work—not afraid to break a sweat.”

  I let the compliment slide by without comment. As he finished his entry, he looked up. “He ever mention any enemies? Pissed off neighbors? People he owed money?”

  “No,” I answered and paused. “Everybody liked Jonah. He was one of those people you take to right away. Nobody ever got pissed at Jonah.”

  “Somebody was pissed yesterday. Shots were fired.”

  “That’s what Billy and Ray said. Bullet holes all over the place.”

  I was hoping Devereaux would give me his take on what had happened at Jonah’s, but this was an interrogation not a conversation.

  “How about valuables?” he looked up from his tablet. “Did he have anything worth stealing?”

  “No,” I said. “He was a farmer—very simple. He owned only what he needed, and he didn’t need much.”

  Devereaux cocked his head like he had a thought, and looked at me. “You carried things around for the auction. What happened to the stuff that didn’t get sold?”

  “We moved it back into the house or barn.”

  “So you touched a lot of stuff?”

  “Everything.”

  “Then I’ll need some elimination prints. You mind?”

  Not waiting for my response, he pushed himself out of his chair as if we were going to have lunch. “We’ll need Dusty’s, too. Figure out which prints don’t belong there.”

  We walked down the hall and turned into a small room. Devereaux got out an inkpad and a fingerprint card that he slipped into a little frame support. As he rolled my fingers in the ink and on the paper, each in turn, he said, “You know, some valuable things don’t look like much at first glance. When you say ‘valuable,’ everyone thinks about diamonds or jewelry. Maybe he held something back from the auction because he didn’t want to part with it—something you thought was worthless.”

  “Like what?” I asked. Devereaux was slipping into a dialogue with me and I wanted to keep it going.

  “I don’t know,” he paused. “Would you recognize a Stradivarius if you saw one?”

  I shook my head.

  “How about an original Michelangelo?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I’m thinking that if Jonah didn’t have any enemies, maybe he had something that somebody wanted.”

  “But if someone stole it, we’ll never know what it was.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Devereaux said. “Maybe when we clear the scene you could give us a hand. Take a walk-through and see if anything is missing. Something that you put away and isn’t there anymore.”

  “I can do that,” I said.

  There was a place on the bottom of the card for “flat” prints. I pressed down with four fingers and capped it off with a thumbprint and then repeated the process for my other hand.

  “Done,” Devereaux proclaimed and handed me a towlette.

  He waited patiently while I wiped away the ink then led me back to the interrogation room. The detective lowered himself into his chair with a groan like he had a twinge of pain and took out his notes again.

  “We’re checking his bank account to see what he did with his money. If somebody knew he kept a lot of cash—” Devereaux stopped and looked at me expectantly.

  “Jonah didn’t have a lot of money,” I started to say, “but . . .” I hesitated, knowing I was about to step into the briar patch.

  “But what?” he prompted.

  “He was carrying around a thousand dollars last week or so.” I looked at Devereaux. He sat waiting. “He lost his wallet last week with ten hundred-dollar dollar bills in it. It’s all he talked about. How he wished he could get his stuff back—a picture of his wife and daughter.”

  Devereaux sat there, studying me, making me feel uncomfortable in the silence and letting me fill the void with rambling information. “He told everyone he knew,” I concluded.

  “That’s a nice round figure to have—ten hundred-dollar bills. It’s the kind of money you’d find on a drug dealer.”

  My mind replaced ‘drug dealer’ with ‘Stemcell’ and I broke into a sweat.

  “Maybe he was making a payment—mortgage or something,” I offered and Devereaux looked up at me with his close-set eyes.

  He grunted an agreement. His whole body lurched with the effort and he made another note. Then he checked his watch and looked at the door as if he was expecting company. “Let’s talk about the last time you saw Jonah. What time was that?”

  I tried hard not to squirm but shifted around in my chair just the same. I could feel my pulse surge and a prickly feeling worked its way around my scalp, and I now fully understood how a lie detector works. This was my first lie, and my body was anticipating it and reacting to the uncomfortable consequences of telling it.

  “It must have been around five o’clock,” I answered. “We called it quits and Jonah took us in for a cold drink, and to tell us that he wasn’t going to be able to pay us.” I paused and then explained. “Part of that thousand dollars was our wages.”

  “How did you react to that?” Devereaux probed as if he expected me to say we got pissed and started shooting at him.

  “I needed the money,” I said slipping back on the honesty track, “but Jonah said he’d pay us after his appointment. He didn’t give any details, but it sounded like he expected to have some money afterwards. We knew he’d be good for it,” I said and then stopped. “Of course, we never thought he was going to die.” My voice tapered off and I felt tears welling up.

  “So you were counting on the money?” Devereaux pressed on, seemingly unaware of my inner turmoil.

  “The weekend was coming, my car needs work, and I’m almost broke.”

  “Ever ask your old man for money? You know—just to get you over the hump?”

  I shook my head firmly.

  “OK
, so you left without any money,” Devereaux continued. “Beside Dusty, did you see anyone else? Maybe a car parked along the road, some guy walking down the road? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  A vision popped into my head with a jolt of adrenaline—Morgan’s Fuel truck lumbering over the last rise of Jonah’s lane, Dusty waiting for him to pull onto the highway, exchanging a wave and a thank you. When Frank Devereaux got around to talking to the driver, he’d remember us waiting to go down to Jonah’s around six o’clock. Caught in my first lie.

  “Not then,” I answered, “but later on. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I just remembered. Morgan’s Fuel truck was coming out of Jonah’s lane.”

  “When was that?” Devereaux asked, and I could tell that he had a renewed interest in our little talk.

  “Around six, I think.”

  “And the truck was coming out of Jonah’s lane. So you went back, or what?”

  “Yes,” I said, “For my wallet.” I wanted to slow this down and give my head a chance to sort things out so I’d make sense. “When I was getting ready for work at McDonald’s, I remembered I left it at Jonah’s. I had just enough time to go back and get it.”

  Devereaux scribbled in his notebook as I talked.

  “When we got to his lane, we had to wait for the truck to pull out.”

  “We? You and Dusty?”

  I nodded. “Dusty drove because I didn’t have my wallet. This was the time to mention my close encounter with Officer DiNuccio, but I said nothing, wondering if it would come back to bite me in the ass.

  “Then what?”

  “Then we drove down Jonah’s lane, but his truck was gone so we swung around and came back to Fannett Meadow.”

  “So maybe you weren’t the last one to see Jonah alive.”

  “Maybe.”

  Detective Devereaux wrote some more in his book. No longer scribbling to catch up, his fingers worked the pencil with slow, heavy strokes. Then he placed a period deliberately at the end and looked at me with his intense little eyes.

  “So you left your wallet there?” he said like he was establishing it firmly as the basis for something.

  “Yes. I put it on the kitchen counter at lunch.”

  “Any idea how much money was in there?”

  “I know exactly how much was in there,” I paused. “Thirty-three dollars—a twenty, a ten, and three singles.”

  “You sound pretty sure.”

  “I counted it earlier in the day.”

  Devereaux stared off into the corner of the room for a moment. “Don’t go anywhere.” He left the room for a minute and came back, flipping a plastic bag onto the table in front of me. “Look familiar?”

  “That’s my wallet!” I exclaimed and reached for it.

  Devereaux’s large hand came down nearly covering it. “Actually,” he said, “it’s evidence.”

  CHAPTER 18

  I sat there staring at my wallet with Devereaux’s hand cupped over it. Sweat beaded at my hairline. The word ‘evidence’ hung in the air like a specter and I looked up to find Devereaux searching my face for a reaction, which was basically stunned silence.

  “We found it in Jonah’s back pocket,” he explained, “and you can have it back after we’ve cleared a few things up.”

  I had another vision: Jonah lying face down on the floor, Dusty’s hand reaching out toward the bulge in the rear pocket to retrieve the wallet—my wallet! It was my freakin’ wallet, and I stopped Dusty from getting it. It was right there. Jonah must have found my wallet and slipped it into his pocket thinking maybe it was his.

  “One of the things we have to clear up is the eleven hundred-dollar bills,” he continued.

  “The eleven hundred-dollar bills?” I echoed.

  “The eleven hundred-dollar bills that was found in your wallet besides the thirty-three.”

  This didn’t make any sense.

  “Got any idea how they got there?”

  I shook my head. “All I know is that those hundreds weren’t in there in the morning. Jonah must have put them in there himself.”

  “That’s one possibility,” Devereaux conceded, but his tone indicated that he had another theory. “Let’s see. He finds your wallet with thirty-three dollars in it. He thinks it’s his and sticks eleven hundred-dollar bills in with it.” Devereaux let me think about that for a moment and then continued. “Where did the money come from? If he had eleven hundred dollars laying around, sounds like he was holding back on you.”

  Again, I had to shake my head.

  “Let’s try this one,” Devereaux began, shifting in his chair as if to get down to business. “You go to work for Jonah. While you’re doing yard work or whatever, you find his wallet. You take out the hundred-dollar bills and tuck them into your own wallet. Then you toss his wallet into the woods or stick it in a hole in the stone row. Later on, he finds your wallet in his kitchen—your wallet with all that money in it. He’s suspicious. Then you see a wallet sticking out his back pocket, and you know it’s yours because Jonah’s wallet is in the stone row. At the end of the day, he doesn’t pay because he’s not sure whose money it is—uses his lost wallet as an excuse. He wants to wait. Now you’re pissed because you know he has all that money plus yours and you won’t have any money for the weekend. After work, you go home and get a gun and come back to get your wallet. Then something happens. Jonah gets hold of your gun in a struggle. He tries to shoot you. Throws bullets all over the place, but he can’t hit anything. He has a heart attack or a stroke or something, and you pick up your gun and run home.”

  “Without my money?”

  “You panic. It happens all the time.”

  “And when you asked me how much money I have in my wallet, I’m too stupid to say, ‘My life savings’ or ‘I don’t know.’”

  “I’ve seen dumber. Bank robber writes a stick-up note on his own deposit slip.”

  Devereaux was way off base. My nerves had settled down, calmed by a growing anger and indignation. I took a deep breath. “Look. In the first place, if I found Jonah’s wallet, I’d return it to him. In the second place, I don’t have a gun. In the third place, I’m only interested in getting my driver’s license and thirty-three dollars back—I don’t want Jonah’s money. It’s not mine, and I have no idea how it got in my wallet.”

  “Anything else?” he prompted, evidently happy to let me talk.

  “Yes, there’s an extra hundred dollars in the wallet. Where’d that come from?”

  Devereaux hunched his shoulders.

  “And even if I did see my wallet in his back pocket, I wouldn’t go get a gun. I’d call you. ‘Hey, Detective, Jonah Heard has my wallet with my life savings in it.’”

  Devereaux shrugged but made no indication that I was to stop. So I didn’t.

  “You want a theory? Try this. Maybe some guy was there to steal something valuable like you said and he tries to shoot Jonah when he’s discovered. Then, when Jonah dies, he takes the Stradivarius, the Michelangelo, and his gun and goes home.”

  “A guy with a gun can’t hit Jonah in a room not much bigger than this?”

  “Maybe this other guy is half blind, too. Maybe that’s why he didn’t see my wallet in his back pocket.”

  The detective shifted in his chair, and I caught the tiniest hint of a smile on his lips and maybe a twinkle in his eye. He was having fun with me and was trying hard not to show it.

  “That’s pretty good,” he admitted, and I did see a smile for an instant. “Except that Jonah was the shooter. We know that. Residue all over him. There were no guns in the house. That’s strange for a farmer—you’d think he’d have a few.”

  “Did you check his sock drawer?”

  Devereaux deadpanned me for a moment. “He had a gun?”

  “Just one. Jonah sold most of them. Gave a few away, but he had second thoughts about his pistol. He said he might need it for protection. He told me to put it back in his sock drawer.”

  “Protection?” Devereaux asked. “Y
ou mean like he was threatened?”

  “No, Jonah said it with a smile—like he knew he’d never be able to hit anything. It was a gun he used in the war. A souvenir.”

  “You know what kind?”

  “No, just a big black thing—some kind of automatic. You could stick your pinky in the barrel.”

  “A 1911 Colt,” Devereaux said almost to himself. “That fits—we found steel casings from WW II. So the gun was Jonah’s.”

  He flipped his notebook shut. “We still have to clear up where that money came from.” Then he gave me a smile that said we’re done here and asked, “Ready to go?”

  Yes, I was.

  Detective Devereaux dropped me off at my apartment. All the way over to Fifth Street I replayed the interrogation. He asked a few questions, I told the truth—mostlyand we shared some ideas. Except for the extra money in my wallet, I felt good.

  CHAPTER 19

  Once home, I cracked open a beer, feeling sleepy and relaxed, thinking a nice nap would do me good before going in to work. I was still congratulating myself on my performance during the interrogation and it struck me that I wasn’t really performing. Except for that one lie where I told Devereaux that the last time I saw Jonah was around five o’clock, I had told the truth. The lie about what time we showed up at work was still to come.

  I was at the refrigerator again, looking for something to eat, when I saw Dusty coming up the steps to my apartment. Although I had enough of him I knew that he was here on a mission. He had either already been interrogated by Devereaux or was going to be. In either case, it was time we talked.

  When I answered the door, I tossed him an unopened beer and got another one for myself. Dusty cracked his open and followed me into my living room.

  “They talk to you?” he asked.

  “Just before you got here.”

  Dusty sat back and melted into the cushions of my sofa. “Who’d you talk to—Devereaux?”

  “Yeah, and guess what,” I paused to allow Dusty to prepare. “He found my wallet.”

  His brow scrunched up. “Your wallet? Where?”

  “In Jonah’s back pocket, that’s where.”