Deception

by Randy Alcorn

  While Clarence watched from twenty feet away, Ray ran the TD-53 over our booth. It activated. I turned on my miniflashlight, opened my pocketknife, and pointed with the blade at a bug, skillfully planted in the woodwork. I went to the other side, guided by his detector, and pointed to a matching bug. They were barely noticeable even under the light.

  Ray went to our new booth and ran the sweeper. Nothing. He walked around to all the other booths. Nothing. Only one booth made the TD-53 excited—the one I’d been spending three hours a week in, discussing a murder case.

  “Killing people’s bad,” I said, as my fingers became fists. “Shooting at me’s irritating. Hanging in my garage? Unpleasant. Placing a bug in my house? Annoying. Drugging my dog? Let’s not even go there. But now … planting bugs in our booth at Lou’s Diner? This time they’ve gone too far.”

  44

  “You must play your cards as best you can when such a stake is on the table.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, “THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON”

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 3:00 P.M.

  THE GRAVESIDE SERVICE for Carly Woods, for family and close friends only, was excruciating. People cried, laughed, and sang. I didn’t sing and I didn’t laugh.

  After we drove to the church for her memorial service, I looked at the people sitting around me. I picked out likely wife beaters, child molesters, drug users, a woman who’d poisoned her first husband, and a teenager who would eventually kill a classmate.

  The decent ones seemed gullible, unaware that sitting in a church service doesn’t make someone a saint. Their minds are at ease, right up to the moment the smiling usher pulls a knife and shoves it through their heart.

  Cynical? I suspect people who refuse to cooperate. I suspect people too eager to cooperate. I suspect people who aren’t friendly and people who are. When our new neighbor moved in and he was friendly, I ran a criminal background check on him. I just like to keep my head out of the sand. It’s a good way to stay alive. I mean, only if that’s important to you.

  There’s something ironic about a skeptic sitting in church. It’s like a vegetarian at a steak house. The people around you have tastes that you just don’t have … and frankly don’t want.

  It’s especially ironic to be pondering this as you sit in the front row, guest of the bereaved family … a church family. Don’t get me wrong. I was honored. But boy, was I a fish out of water.

  The one consolation was Kendra coming with me. She’d met Carly and liked her, but they weren’t close. She knew it meant a lot to me, so she came.

  As music played and somebody sang about “The Far Country,” a slide show of Carly’s life played on the big screen. The little girl pictures were adorable, the troubled adolescence evident, but in the last number of years Carly’s face was different. A grown woman whose face had reverted to childhood. She’d become innocent again. I remembered how she called me “Uncle Ollie.” I knew she loved me. I loved her too but wasn’t good at showing it. Story of my life.

  Soon my face was hot and wet. I wondered why they didn’t open a window or something. I felt Kendra’s hand on my arm, but I couldn’t look at her.

  Jake stood. I’ve heard him preach a few dozen sermons at me, but I wasn’t prepared for this. He tried to speak three times. The words started but stopped. He grabbed the sides of the podium and tried again.

  “I’m not a preacher. I’m just … a father.” I felt it in my throat. “And the only reason I’m up here is that I was asked to do this by someone I couldn’t say no to. Carly. I told her I’d probably break down. She said, ‘If you do, it’s okay. They’ll understand, Daddy.’ ”

  “I said—” Jake’s voice broke. “Well, I’ll leave that between us. The last few months, the last years, Carly and Janet and I have found encouragement in God’s Word. I want to read from 2 Timothy 4:6–8. Paul says, ‘The time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day.’

  “Paul calls his death a departure. A relocation. It’s not ceasing to exist; it’s just moving from one place to another. Paul knew that the moment he died he’d be with Jesus. He wrote, ‘To depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.’ ”

  Jake gripped the podium, knuckles white.

  “It’s hard on us, but Carly’s more alive and happier this moment than she’s ever been. Death isn’t a hole; it’s a doorway. It’s not the end of life; it’s a transition to new life. The best isn’t behind us if we know Jesus. The best is still ahead.”

  How can you say that, Jake? How can you know?

  Jake glanced at his notes, then looked up. “One day Carly said to me, ‘We’re homesick for Eden, aren’t we, Daddy?’ I liked that—homesick for Eden, for its beauties and pleasures and health and relationships. The Bible says heaven’s our home. It’s paradoxical, isn’t it? Our home’s a place we’ve never been. We’re not at home in this world because we were made for a better world. The Bible calls it the new earth.”

  Jake looked at people all over the congregation, then at his family members sitting next to me in the front row. But he wasn’t looking at me. He didn’t want me to think he was talking to me. Naturally, he was.

  “God wants us to have joy … yet we end up searching for joy in all the wrong places, and instead we find addictions and hollowness and misery.”

  Yep.

  “Janet and I and Carly have clung to God’s promises in Revelation 21 and 22: ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.… I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.… And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” ’ It says, ‘[God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ And then in the next chapter it says, ‘No longer will there be any curse.’

  “Second Peter 3:13 says, ‘In keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.’ Well, that’s what our family’s been looking forward to. We know there’s a reunion ahead. And we know that someday we’re going to walk the new earth together.

  “Maybe you’re thinking this is a memorial service, so I should be talking just about Carly, not about Jesus.”

  You got it, Jake.

  “Well, Jesus was and is the most important person in Carly’s life, and she made me promise I’d tell you about Him. For all I know she may be listening right now. I’m not going to let her down. One day I’ll join her … I’ll see my little girl again.”

  He stopped. The pause was long and gut-wrenching.

  “God is so holy that He can’t allow sin into His presence. Romans 3:23 says, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ Because we’re sinners, we can’t enter heaven as we are. God loves us just the way we are, but He loves us too much to let us stay this way. That’s why Christ came, to change us.

  “So heaven is not our default destination. Unless our sin problem is dealt with, the only place we can go is where God isn’t … and that’s hell. Judging by what’s said at most funerals, you’d think everyone’s going to heaven. But Jesus said otherwise. The Bible says we’re not good enough to go to heaven on our own.”

  I squirmed. Jake had a captive audience, and he knew it. Unless a murder was discovered in the next few minutes, I couldn’t escape.

  “How much does God love us?” Jake asked. “He went to hell for us on the cross so that we wouldn’t have to. God took on our worst suffering so we could go to heaven. What more would you ask God to do than what He’s done for you?

  “Like any gift, forgiveness can be offered, but it isn’t ours until we receive it—and we can only do that through repenting and confessing our sins and saying yes to God’s offer. I
f you haven’t done that, you can do it quietly now.”

  Jake the evangelist. He wasn’t this way when I first met him. He’s a far better man in most ways, but this part irritates me.

  “I began the message by reading from Revelation 21. I’ll finish with reading a few more verses: ‘ “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” ’ ”

  Weird. Right when he said those words I was thinking how thirsty I was.

  Afterward we had a huge dinner at Jake’s church. When I was finishing my second dessert, pecan pie, Jake asked, “How was your dinner?”

  “Well, I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid.”

  He stared blankly.

  “Jim Jones. Guyana. Religious cult. Poisoned Kool-Aid. Get it?”

  “So, what did you think?”

  “The coffee was a little weak. Great pie though.”

  “What did you think of the service?”

  “Didn’t know any of the songs except ‘Amazing Grace.’ You guys don’t sing familiar stuff, do you?”

  “What did you want, the Beach Boys? Anyway, thanks for coming, Ollie.”

  “I … wouldn’t have missed it. I mean … it was Carly.”

  Jake’s face collapsed, and he put his arms around me. I felt him shaking. We hugged a long time, longer than I’ve ever hugged a man, though I don’t keep a book on that sort of thing.

  When we let go, I saw Kendra looking at us. Tears were streaming down her face. I put my arm around my little girl. Now she was hugging me.

  “I’m glad you have each other,” Jake said to us. “Be grateful. Don’t let go of each other, okay? Fathers and daughters shouldn’t have regrets. Carly and I didn’t have any.”

  Janet came up beside Jake. Now they were hugging.

  Kendra and I walked out, my arm around her shoulder.

  I wasn’t sure how a man could feel so incredibly empty and full at the same time.

  45

  “Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labor, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE

  MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 9:30 A.M.

  JANUARY 6 WAS MY BIRTHDAY. Like the crabby uncle in the retirement home in that Hallmark commercial, I had no intention of letting others in on it. I always put in a full day’s work on my birthday, proving to myself I’m not a little girl.

  On Mulch’s birthday I drove east on Burnside to buy him a Dea’s longburger, fries, and an orange malt—which usually gives him a brain freeze. If Mulch could drive or handle money, I knew he’d do the same for me.

  Tired of looking over my shoulder at people who might have shot and hung me, I deserted my post in detective division and turned the corner for the elevator. There stood Kim Suda. I joined her for a forty-second wait, in complete silence.

  There are times in detective work when you need to be subtle, and other times you need to be confrontational. But in both cases the goal is the same—to try to catch people off guard and put doubts in their minds, and to read their responses like a polygraph. I’d been subtle with Suda. This seemed like the time to go on offense.

  When we got in the elevator, she pressed the ground floor button before I could.

  “What would you say,” I started, “if I told you that the chief claims you were the one who bugged my house? And that he told me you were covering your tracks by setting me up for Palatine’s murder?”

  “You’re lying,” Suda said.

  “What if he told me you might have planted Noel’s fingerprints on the gun? How easy would it be for you to have Noel’s fingerprints? Your desk is eight feet from his. You could get a Black Jack wrapper out of my trash any day. What if I told you that the chief said, confidentially, you should be at the top of my suspect list?”

  She stared at me, trying to keep a poker face. It wasn’t working. I saw doubt in her eyes. I’d tipped her off when I’d called her a dog drugger. But now it didn’t sound like a guess. Suddenly her face hardened.

  “You don’t scare me, Chandler. I didn’t break into your house. You don’t have proof, or you’d be showing your cards. You’re bluffing.”

  “You wore your gloves, but there’s something that proves you were at my house,” I said. “It’s going to come back to haunt you.”

  “Dream on,” she said.

  “You always have your camera with you, don’t you? You think I don’t know you took a picture of the professor after he was murdered? And got it to Mike Button at the Trib?”

  “You’re so lame,” Suda said.

  “If I’m lying, how did I know it was you? If the chief didn’t tell me, who else could have?”

  Right on cue, the elevator opened, and ten seconds later Kim Suda was outside the Justice Center, walking rapidly, as if she were escaping.

  After a brisk two-block walk to Waterfront Park, I returned to bad news: I’d been ordered again to Shelob’s Lair, the chief’s office. This was my fifth summons in nine weeks. I went to the bathroom with a bag, took off my shirt, and got myself ready, just in case our conversation proved interesting.

  As usual, I sat and waited. This time I brought two ESPN magazines. I read one and hid the other under a couch cushion for my next visit.

  Lennox was born seventy years too late and in the wrong country. He was doing his best to compensate for having missed his chance to be commandant of a slave labor camp.

  Finally he stepped out and said to Mona, “Any calls?”

  “Yeah,” I said under my breath. “Your proctologist called. They found your head in your—”

  “Chandler!” Though he couldn’t have heard me, he beckoned, and before I was through the door he asked, “Situation changed with the professor?”

  “No. He’s still dead.”

  “They did a routine security sweep of my home office this morning. Guess what they found.”

  “Jimmy Hoffa? D. B. Cooper? Elvis?”

  “They found a bug.”

  “A cockroach? I know an exterminator named Jim Bob—”

  “An electronic bug.”

  “No kidding. Did you run a check to see whose it was?”

  He squeezed the shiny fountain pen in his hand. “It was issued by this department.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Chandler. I know what you did.”

  “Are you suggesting I planted a bug in your house?”

  “Yes! My wife said she sent you to the bathroom by my office. You had opportunity.”

  “But you said it was issued by this department, right? If I’d requisitioned it, there’d be paperwork. They would’ve entered the serial number in records. They could tell you exactly who checked it out. In fact, why don’t I call them right now and ask.”

  I reached toward the phone on his desk. The chief let loose with a string of words rivaling Nixon’s Watergate tapes.

  “I have good news,” I said. “That bugging device didn’t cost the department anything. I found it right in my living room. Somebody here at Police Headquarters tried to bug me. Can you imagine?”

  “You think you know who it was?” Lennox asked, pretending ice water ran through his veins while sweat was dripping down his forehead, smearing his makeup.

  “Oh yeah. We both know.”

  “You can’t prove anything.”

  “Even if the detective who planted it confessed?”

  “Detective?”

  “What if I told you she admitted the whole thing?”

  When I said “she,” his face froze.

  “Suppose we’ve got her on tape, including her middle-of-the-night meeting with you at a 7-Eleven?”

  He sucked a breath and coughed.

  “What would you say if I told you she left a partial print on one of the bugs? And there’s a
match? What would Kim Suda do?”

  He sat back in his chair, considering his hand. “It looks like we have each other here, Detective.”

  “Actually, I have more of you than you have of me.”

  “I had legitimate grounds for placing a bug. You didn’t.”

  “There’s a legal process for placing a bug, cop or not. All I did was find department equipment someone placed at my house. Then I returned it to the home office of the chief of police, the one who checked it out in the first place. Okay, maybe I forgot to mention I’d returned it. And maybe I forgot to turn it off.”

  “You won’t get away with this.”

  “And you won’t get away with setting up some vagrant as the murderer. Tell Mona to back off on that. It’s recorded. Speaking of which, if I wake up dead, Clarence and Jake and two others get a copy of the recording and documentation. I’ve got backups and copies. You better hope I don’t die even of natural causes, because if I do, you’re toast.”

  “You mean, you think the chief of police would harm you?”

  “You’ve already broken the law. For all I know you killed the professor. I narrowed it down to the detectives—but couldn’t the chief of police get his hands on everything a detective could … and more?”

  I pulled from my pocket the picture of his daughter and the professor.

  He snatched it.

  “Got more,” I said.

  He stared at the picture as I stood and walked out.

  I took the elevator, hoping I’d set him and Suda at odds with each other. If one didn’t trust the other, somebody might sell out. Though he’d be frustrated about what I had on him, he had every reason to believe I had no knowledge of the other bugging devices in my home office or at our booth at Lou’s.

  Once I got in my car, I unbuttoned my shirt and checked the mini-digital recorder with the cord that ran up to my tie. I played it back.