Beyond the Truth

by Bruce Robert Coffin

  “Each of these bullets was fired at an upward angle, which matches what you told me about Plummer standing on top of a car. And they were all traveling front to back. There is no question that he was facing the officer at the time he was shot.”

  “So, the only thing missing is evidence that Plummer possessed and fired a gun,” Byron said, thinking out loud.

  Ellis carefully peeled off his gloves and turned to face Byron. “My boy, as we both know, the trace evidence left behind on a person’s hand after they’ve fired a gun is extremely transient. Given the conditions you were working in, and the fact that if Plummer had a gun he may have only fired one round, it’s not surprising we can’t confirm anything by paraffin testing. At best this test is inconclusive.”

  Byron knew what the media, and by extension the public, would do with the word inconclusive. It’s the term police use when they haven’t the first clue about what happened, he thought. In a word, Haggerty was still fucked.

  Diane sat in Rumsfeld’s office, occupying the same chair she had for most of the day, listening as the acting chief consulted with every single member of his command staff about the best way to move forward publicly.

  Jesus, make a decision already, she thought.

  Her cell vibrated inside the pocket of her suit coat. She removed it to find a single line of text from Davis Billingslea. Still looking 4 quote re missing gun.

  Waiting until Rumsfeld was fully engrossed in sharing yet another angle with Commander Jennings, she responded, NO COMMENT!!!

  Thirty seconds passed before Billingslea sent his response. Source says Plummer unarmed. Can we meet?

  She was preparing to shut him down with something snarky when Rumsfeld surprised her by addressing her directly.

  “Diane? What do you think of that idea?”

  Sean Haggerty left the law offices of LeClair and Pomeroy exhausted. An empty shell, he was completely drained of every emotion. He wondered if it was possible for a person to use up all their allotted give-a-shit and in so doing be unable to replenish it. Would he just stumble through life not caring about anything or anyone ever again?

  Investigator Phillips had hammered him on the missing gun. “How do you know the subjects you were chasing were actually the robbers? If they were the robbery suspects, how can you be sure they didn’t toss the gun while you were chasing them?” Again and again she had forced him to recount the events that led up to the shooting. “Was there any other course of action open to you other than discharging your firearm, Officer? Tell me again about the flash of light you saw. You never heard a shot though, correct? Can you describe the weapon Thomas Plummer pointed at you?”

  Haggerty didn’t know exactly what he had expected the interview to be like, but he now wished he had listened to Byron and waited. He had told himself that getting out in front of this, giving the interview to the attorney general’s investigator, would be a good thing, removing a great weight from his shoulders. After all, he had nothing to hide. But it hadn’t been a good thing. And he didn’t feel better. He actually felt worse but didn’t know why. He had gone into the interview nervous but confident in his actions. Now everything was blurry and confusing. Phillips’s last question rattled him to the core. “If you had it to do over again, would you have done anything differently?” How was he supposed to answer that?

  Listening to the news reports had been another mistake. Many people were already second-guessing him, tagging him an overzealous cop, calling for his resignation and for charges to be filed against him. How had he become the bad guy? he wondered. All he had done was his job, chasing down two robbers from the scene of a crime, one of them armed. And he had killed the armed one, in self-defense, exactly as he’d been trained. It should have been the end of story. Except it wasn’t the end and he knew it. He had killed a teenager and regardless of the circumstances, or the outcome, he wasn’t sure how to live with that. This felt like the beginning of a long real-life nightmare. A nightmare from which he might never awaken.

  It was nearly five o’clock when Byron began the hour-long drive back toward Portland. Daylight had long since departed, its passing hastened by the blackened clouds of the advancing storm front. He was in the process of merging onto the southbound lanes of I-95 when his cell rang. It was Diane.

  “Didn’t know if you’d still be at the post or not,” Diane said.

  “Headed back now,” he said.

  “You sound tired.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “How did the autopsy go?” she asked. “Any surprises?”

  “The holes were all in the right places and in the right direction. Still can’t put a gun in Plummer’s hand at the time of the shooting though.”

  “His hands didn’t test positive?” Diane asked.

  He sighed. “Is it ever that easy?”

  “Murphy’s law,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, Murphy’s alive and well. Anything new down there?”

  “That’s why I’m calling,” she said. “The protests have begun.”

  It was half past six by the time Byron made the turn off Franklin Arterial onto Middle Street. A light snow had begun to fall. The sidewalk directly in front of police headquarters was jammed with several dozen protestors. He lowered the front passenger window and drove slowly past the front of 109. Some in the group were carrying homemade signs while others shouted at passing cars, including Byron’s. The common themes seemed to be not above the law and legalized murder.

  Byron held no ill will toward the protestors, at least not the ones who were concerned that the police might have overstepped their authority. Hell, he’d spent a career questioning his so-called superiors. No, his issue was with the vultures who showed up to every protest rally as if it were a party. Troublemakers looking to start shit regardless of the cause. People who made his job infinitely more difficult. He continued around the block, then entered the PD’s rear parking garage from Newbury Street. Not wanting to take part in a confrontation, he quickly crossed the plaza and entered 109 through the rear door.

  He trudged up the four flights of stairs toward his office, intentionally bypassing CID’s main lobby where he knew Shirley, who had previously agreed to work late, might still be lying in wait to remind him about the scores of people looking for him. Byron wasn’t in the mood to listen to bullshit from anyone.

  He tossed his coat and gloves into one of the visitor’s chairs in his office, then plopped down in his own chair behind the desk. A stack of pink message slips stood sentry before him. The voicemail indicator on his office phone was illuminated. He closed his eyes and rubbed them with his fingertips. Fatigue was finally setting in. Byron hadn’t realized how tired he was until this very moment. He had already managed half a week’s workload and it was only Monday.

  “Hey, Sarge,” Melissa Stevens said from the doorway. “Didn’t know you were back.”

  “Just arrived,” Byron said as he opened his eyes. “How did it go at the school?”

  Stevens entered the office and sat down across from him. “Well, Gardiner and I just spent the last two hours interviewing every sweaty teenager on the Portland High School boys’ basketball team. Jesus, teenagers stink. Remind me never to have any. Go Bulldogs.”

  Byron grinned. “And?”

  “Aside from Coach Miller, who by the way is a first class asshole, most of the players didn’t care too much for Tommy. Sounds like Tommy thought he was a one-man show. ‘Ball hog,’ one kid called him. It also sounds like it was pretty common knowledge that Tommy Plummer was the go-to if you wanted to score some drugs.”

  “How the hell could he get away with that? Wouldn’t the teachers or coaches have put a stop to it?”

  “Doesn’t sound like anyone was looking too closely?” Stevens flipped open her notebook. “One kid we talked to, a Patrick Mingus, said Tommy’s parents spent a lot of time running interference for him. They knew some of what Tommy was into but helped cover it up so it wouldn’t screw up his chances to get into a big-n
ame college. Apparently the scouts had been swarming the place and there were already offers on the table. Mingus also thought Tommy had a guardian angel at the school.”

  “I’m not following. Someone that kept him out of trouble?”

  “That. But Mingus said it felt like someone inside the school was supplying the drugs to Tommy.”

  “How does Mingus know that?”

  “He wouldn’t say, but I think he was trying not to implicate himself in any drug use.”

  Byron nodded as he jotted Mingus’s name into his own notebook. “Did all of the players talk with you?”

  “Yup. Not one holdout.”

  “Any of them with Plummer on Sunday night?”

  “No one would admit it.”

  “Alibis?”

  “Gardiner and I will tackle those tomorrow. We’ve got contact info for all the parents.”

  After Stevens departed the office, Byron made a halfhearted attempt to read some of the message slips. Halfway through the second one he stopped and tossed them back on the desk.

  The adrenaline flow that began with the previous night’s call from Dispatch, and had carried him through the last twenty hours, was tapped out. He knew the fog beginning to envelope his brain was a sure path to making mistakes on the case, and if he was feeling it, then so were the others. There were still several administrative tasks needing his attention, but he knew which one of those was most important. He picked up the handset on his desk phone and punched in a number. It was time to send his people home.

  It was nearly ten by the time Byron departed 109. He drove past the vacant sidewalk in front of the station. The protesters had also called it a night. The roads were already coated with several inches of the white stuff as he navigated through the snowy darkness and blinking traffic signals toward his North Deering condo. Snowflakes raced past the beam of his headlights, making him feel like a space traveler. Aside from the plow drivers, and Byron himself, traffic was sparse.

  The storm couldn’t have come at a worse time, he thought, worried that they may have overlooked something. Some vital piece of evidence that would be buried under more than a foot of snow by morning. Evidence that might have cleared Haggerty of any wrongdoing would be lost forever.

  Byron couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that he was heading in the wrong direction, as if driving away from 109 at this point in the investigation was a mistake. One that couldn’t be undone. But there was simply nothing else he could do. The storm was calling all the shots now. He would just have to hunker down and ride it out like everyone else. They all needed a good night’s sleep, himself included. He had to have each detective at the top of their game in the days to come.

  As he slowed to make the turn into his driveway he noticed the familiar shape of a vehicle half-hidden beneath a thin blanket of snow. It was Diane’s unmarked.

  Before accepting the promotion to sergeant, Diane had been Byron’s partner on every homicide case. Her experience investigating murders in the Big Apple made her a valuable asset. At first their relationship had remained purely professional, in spite of the obvious mutual attraction. It wasn’t until after Byron and Kay, his ex-wife, made their year-long separation permanent that Byron and Diane acted on their feelings for each other.

  But it had been nearly a month since he and Diane Joyner had spent any meaningful time together outside of work, let alone an actual night. Her abrupt departure from CID had dramatically altered the dynamics of their relationship. They were now free from the restraints that had existed while working together within the same unit, requiring them to keep secret their personal relationship, but the once symbiotic nature of their formerly shared professional lives was gone. Byron’s days were still occupied by the complexities of homicide investigation, while Diane’s were now spent writing press releases, holding press conferences, and working to maintain the department’s professional image in the news and on social media feeds. As far as Byron was concerned, her considerable investigative talent was being wasted on PR.

  Diane was waiting for him in the living room as he entered the condo. She had made herself comfortable on the sofa, enjoying the warmth of the gas fireplace, a glass of wine, and his latest Krueger mystery novel. Dressed in one of his white button-down shirts, and not much else, she had his full attention.

  “Hey,” he said as he pulled off his wet boots and removed his overcoat, hanging it on the rack in the entryway.

  “Hey, yourself,” she said, taking a sip from her glass. “Thought you might want some help shoveling out in the morning. And perhaps a bit of company tonight.”

  Normally it would have been the last thing he would have wanted at this point in an investigation. Once his brain was dialed into working a case everything else became a burden. But there was nothing he could do about the weather, and if he was being honest with himself, he had missed being with Diane more than he cared to admit. He couldn’t conceive of a more welcome distraction.

  “Unless you’d rather I go,” she said when he didn’t respond right away.

  “Not on your life,” he said, approaching the couch in his stocking feet. “Is that what you envisioned wearing while helping me shovel?”

  “Think it’s too much?” she asked.

  “I think it’s perfect,” he said before bending over her and delivering a lingering openmouthed kiss. He tasted the sweetness of the wine on her tongue. She slid a warm hand around to the back of his neck and pulled him closer.

  Byron remained in that awkward position until his lower back began to protest. He broke away from her embrace and stood upright, catching his breath. “I should probably slip into something more comfortable,” he said.

  Diane slid off the couch and pressed herself against him. “Or, if you’re looking to get more comfortable, I could help you slip out of these.” She maintained eye contact as she slid her hand up his chest and began to loosen his tie.

  “Good to have options,” he said.

  Starting at the top, with agonizing slowness, she unbuttoned his dress shirt, then untucked it from his trousers. When she had finished with his shirt, she began to unfasten the buttons on the one she was wearing, revealing the dark unblemished skin of her breasts. Repositioning both of them, she pushed Byron backward onto the sofa, then climbed over him, straddling his thighs. “Comfortable?” she asked.

  “Getting there,” Byron said as he felt his desire stirring.

  She reached down and unfastened his belt and trousers. “Well, let’s see just how comfortable I can make you.” Diane leaned forward and delivered another long kiss while her skilled hands went to work on him.

  Sean Haggerty awoke with a start. His heart was racing, pulse pounding in his temples, and his entire body was soaked in perspiration, as were the bedsheets. Threads of sleep still clung to his consciousness and it took him a moment to realize where he was. He sat up in the darkened room and looked at his alarm clock. The red LED glowed 3:15. It was only a dream.

  He had been chasing two hooded figures through an unfamiliar darkened alley during a snowstorm. This alley didn’t look anything like Kennedy Park; he wasn’t even sure it was Portland. The buildings weren’t row houses but high-rises with blackened windows that loomed ominously like abstract art forms. The figures rounded the corner of a building, disappearing from his sight. In the dream, Haggerty followed them through the swirling snow. As he neared the corner he tripped over something and went sprawling, losing his grip on his gun. Exposed and unarmed he searched frantically but the pistol was gone. The hooded figures, no longer fleeing, were now slowly approaching him. He tried to get to his feet to take cover, but his hands and knees were frozen to the ground, rendering him completely helpless. Haggerty looked back at the hooded figures. The luminescence of the snow-covered ground provided enough light for him to recognize the pale chiseled features of skulls. In each of their hands they carried freakishly huge chrome revolvers, the barrels of which would have looked more at home on shotguns. His struggles to free himself fro
m the ground were useless. He looked up at the figures, wordlessly pleading with them. The skeletal faces were grinning. The dream demons raised their arms, pointing the enormous guns directly at Haggerty’s head. He screamed as they opened fire.

  With the screams still echoing in his head, Haggerty jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. He dropped to his knees in front of the toilet and vomited.

  Chapter 10

  Tuesday, 6:00 a.m.,

  January 17, 2017

  Overnight the snow fell with such intensity that Portland’s Department of Public Works hadn’t been able to keep up. According to the local news, a total of fourteen inches blanketed the Greater Portland area. The accompanying northeasterly winds had created drifts as high as four feet. It would be well after noontime before many of the city’s secondary roads were passable. As with any winter storm, parking on the in-town peninsula was a nightmare, the snowbanks rendering parking spaces on many streets unusable.

  Byron was up and out of the house by 6:15. He’d cleared off both his car and Diane’s before shoveling out some of the pile left by the plow at the end of his short driveway. He grabbed a quick shower, dressed, and was headed for the door when Diane greeted him with a travel mug of coffee and a morning-after kiss. She was wearing his button-down shirt from the night before.

  “Here, you’ll need this,” she said.

  “Which?” he asked, giving her a smirk.

  “Both. Although I suspect the memory of this will outlast the coffee.” She rose up on the balls of her bare feet and kissed him again. “Be careful, John,” she said, her expression turning to one of concern. “Things are likely to get crazier.”

  Byron’s morning commute normally took ten or fifteen minutes. Today it took forty-five. When he reached 109, he found that nearly a dozen of the protesters from the previous night had already reassembled. The gathering was still low-key and clustered together, many of them holding a Styrofoam cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in one hand and a homemade sign in the other. Every protest begins with Dunkin’, he thought as he drove past the group and headed to 109’s rear parking garage.