Lillian stood, dumbfounded, watching him go. For the first time in memory, she didn’t know what to say or do. Rod never cursed, and he had never treated her rudely. She swallowed hard, determined not to cry. She then headed out the breezeway door to the backyard to return to the garden. This, of course, was why she had a garden in the first place and why she worked it herself. If she was going to cry, she would do it here, alone. Her azaleas and day lilies would be the only ones to witness her anguish over a fuming husband and his failing political career.
***
Late that evening, Tony and Ben were back in the bar, debriefing about the case. Tony pointed out that Rich Davis, Sheriff Mackey, and a whole lot of other people were undoubtedly angry at the governor’s pardon. They certainly were smart enough to understand the governor had moved quickly in order to take full advantage of the situation through the final weeks of campaigning. Tony also knew that now, no matter what the investigators found, this case was over.
“Yeah, so what?” Ben said, playing the curmudgeon role of the stereotypical editor. “They’ll get over it. Politically motivated or not, the governor did the right thing to get that kid out of prison as fast as possible.”
Tony couldn’t argue with that, so he took another sip of diet cola and popped a fried mushroom in his mouth.
Ben preferred the onion rings on the platter they had ordered. After chewing through a few, he looked up and said, “Tony, let me ask you something.”
“Sure, Chief, anything.”
“You were right all along about the evidence, correct?”
“Well yes, I guess so.”
“And now you’ve been proven right about the whole case, correct?”
“Yes-s-s-s.”
“And the man you agonized over is free from his unjust sentence, correct?”
“Yes…what’s this…”
“Hang on. So in a nutshell, this is the fairytale scenario, in which everybody lives happily ever after, that you only dared to dream about.”
Tony held his tongue and nodded.
“So what the hell is still eating you?”
Tony could have argued he was fine, but knew he couldn’t sell it. It took him a long beat to assemble a response. Ben grabbed a nacho off of the plate between them, but didn’t take his eyes from Tony. Finally he said, “Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s just Lisa. After all, not everybody lived happily ever after.”
“Well, of course that’s true, and I apologize that I didn’t choose my words more carefully. I’m sure it’s on your mind every minute. But that’s not what has you so distracted. You know it and I know it,” Ben said, leaning forward. “There’s something else about the Ennis-Wells-Peters case…jeez, we’re going to have to find a better name for this thing. There’s something about it still buzzing around in your head. I can see it in your face.”
Tony didn’t respond right away, debating. “C’mon, you know me. I get these feelings and I obsess about them. I don’t want to bother you with my nonsense every time I think I’m smarter than the people who do this stuff professionally.”
“By ‘this stuff’ I presume you mean investigating,” Ben said. “Tony, let me be honest. You have great instincts. Maybe the best I’ve ever seen next to my own. You should never hesitate to tell me when something doesn’t feel right to you. Besides, I have to admit that it bugs me a little that this got all tied up in a neat little package so easily. But I figure sometimes life works out. Not often, but when it does you should only look that gift horse in the mouth once or twice. If everything looks good, move on.” He paused. “Good God, did I really say that? Anyway, I can tell you’re bothered by something more than what I just said, and I want you to be honest with me.”
“Okay, okay,” Tony said, holding up his hands in surrender. Then, trying to add a note of sarcasm, “Here are the two great insights I bring to the latest developments in the case. Sadly, the first is based on my prejudices about people. Lisa always said I was too quick to judge someone.”
“Well, she was right, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”
“So, here’s the deal. I met Denny Peters and he was an ass. I find it hard to believe he was overwhelmed with remorse and stooped to apologize to a lowly soul like Ralph Wells.”
“Hmm, you’re right. I mean you’re right that you’ve made a big leap based on the fact you met Denny Peters a couple of times. Hard to say what a man thinks or feels in that situation.”
“I know, I know. But it just feels so wrong. The second thing is a little more problematic.” He paused, debating if he really wanted to go down this path. “You see, I noticed something at Peters’ house.”
“Something like what?” Ben asked, leaning in even closer.
“I noticed the thumb tacks and photographs were clean.”
Ben looked puzzled but waited for Tony to continue.
“You see, in the room where Peters had his ‘shrine’ to Anne Ennis, there must have been sixty or more of those one hundred photos pinned to the walls. As I was taking pictures of my own and examining the pictures of Anne, I noticed the thumb tacks looked new. They were those wide, flat, shiny kind of chrome or polished steel or something. There were four stuck into each picture. It seemed odd that all of the thumbtacks were identical and gleaming bright. It was a small thing, but it caused me to look more closely. I inspected every single thumb tack and, as far as I could tell, there were no fingerprints on any of the tacks.”
Ben was careful not to comment or react, wanting Tony to finish his thoughts.
“Now obviously, I didn’t have a fingerprint kit. But the crime scene guys had spotlights in the room and I had a zoom lens on the Nikon. I’m telling you, there were maybe 240 bright silver thumb tacks and not one thumb print. Also, it seemed odd to me that all the photos looked new. Not the content, but the prints themselves. No fading, no dust, identical borders and physical appearances. If this was a longstanding obsession, wouldn’t the prints have been hung over a long period of time? Wouldn’t they have had some variation in appearance?”
Tony wanted a reaction but Ben was determined to remain mute, so Tony continued. “So my mind – I warned you about this part – my mind immediately raced down the path of asking, why would a man hanging pictures of the woman he loved in his own home wear gloves or wipe all the thumb tacks clean? Would he take photos over a period of months or years and then wait to print and hang them all at once, apparently within days of his suicide? I say he wouldn’t. So who would? Well, it’s obvious. Okay, it’s obvious to a cynical and perhaps delusional person like me that the person who would do this is a person who wanted it to look like Denny Peters was obsessed with a woman we have no evidence he ever even met. There, now you’ve heard it all.”
They both sat silently for a long time. Ben finally asked, “So have you asked your pals at the DCI about this?”
“No,” Tony admitted. “But think about it. Wells was framed, and the likely perpetrator was on the inside. A member of the Sheriff’s Department. Now here I am I wondering if Peters was framed or… or who knows what, and who’s to say the perpetrator of this isn’t on the inside? I don’t know if I should talk to anybody. I don’t know if I dare to talk to anybody.”
“You know,” Ben said slowly. “When I started this conversation I intended to advise you to be careful; that if you weren’t careful you were going to drive yourself crazy. Now I see the real problem.” Tony raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“Now I know you’re going to drive me crazy.” Ben took the last swallow of his beer and stood up to leave. Looking down at Tony in the booth, he said, “My advice is to tell everyone who will listen exactly what you observed. If you’re the only one who knows it, you’re in a lot more danger than if you’ve shared it with all the agencies involved. And don’t forget, there’s a hell of a news story in this if it turns out you’re right.”
“Uh, thanks, Chief,” Tony said numbly, not thinking about a news story or his boss standing at his elbow. He was
thinking about the “danger” comment. He had been carrying a notion in the back of his mind that he might personally be at risk, but hearing Ben say it out loud brought it to life in an entirely new way. It was like the difference between knowing a bear was sleeping in the cave and hearing it roar as it chased you through the forest. He felt a growing, hollow sensation in his stomach he didn’t like at all.
As Ben zipped up his jacket, he said, “I say again, be careful, Tony.”
Before Ben could turn to go, Tony jumped up and grabbed his boss’ sleeve.
“Sit down, please,” he said.
Ben looked puzzled but eased himself back into the booth and waited patiently.
Tony chose his words carefully. “If I’m in danger, then you could be too. If there really are people out there trying to cover up a murder…no, multiple murders, then they might be worried that I’ve given you information or evidence that could hurt them.”
“Perhaps,” Ben began, “but…”
“No, listen,” Tony interrupted forcefully. “I’ve already lost the woman I love. If something happened to you or anyone else because of me, I couldn’t bear it. I think we should talk about whether I really do walk away from this completely. Use the ‘tidy package’ as an excuse to let it go, and make sure everyone knows that’s what I’m doing.”
“Tony, if you want to walk away, that’s your call. You know me well enough to know I would never force you to pursue something dangerous. But do not do it for me or for anyone else at the paper. In fact, if you walk away, I probably will take it up myself.”
Tony looked up in surprise.
“Don’t be shocked,” Ben said. “As I said, if you’re right this will be a huge story. This is the kind of stuff we live for in newspaper work.”
Tony began to protest but Ben cut him off.
“Perhaps,” he said, “it’s time to explain to you why I left the East Coast.”
***
After waving at the bartender for another round of drinks and snacks, Ben recounted for Tony in great detail what had happened to him in Baltimore. In a nutshell, Ben had been pursuing an article about an embezzlement at a local car dealership. What appeared at first to be a simple case of a bookkeeper taking advantage of his boss turned out to be something more. Being the thorough professional he was, Ben had dug into the thief’s background and had quickly realized he wasn’t working alone. Two other names in other dealerships were shared with him by an anonymous source.
After months of digging, Ben had assembled an astonishing story involving organized crime and money laundering. It was a complex scheme and Tony didn’t understand it all, but the crux of it was the mob was using the car dealerships to turn illegal profits from drugs and prostitution into funds that could be accounted for and used. As Tony understood it, the car dealers would sell a car legitimately to a customer at a typical discount. On a new car purchase, customers always negotiated a price less than the sticker price. If the customer’s discount was $4,000, for example, the bookkeeper would record a discount of $2,000. The balance would be “paid” by bringing in cash that needed to be laundered. The excess funds went straight to the dealerships’ net profits. These profits then were paid back to the silent partners in the businesses or as bonuses to people listed on the dealerships’ payrolls.
By the time he had finished, Ben had hard evidence of involvement in the scheme by people in seventeen dealerships scattered across four eastern states. Millions of dollars had passed through their books and back into the mob’s pockets in this way. He had been very excited the day he brought his investigative work to the editorial conference at the paper and presented the facts to his bosses. The editors were pleased and excited, but they said that because it named names and accused people of mob connections, the publisher and the attorneys would have to get involved.
“To make a long story short,” Ben said, staring down at his bottle of Sam Adams, “they killed my article.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, they said all the things a reporter fears. They were worried about the risks of taking on organized crime. They were worried about the liability of naming people who were working for the mob. They thought the risks were too great for a story that didn’t really hurt the people buying cars or the ‘average person.’ Blah, blah, blah.”
Tony was contemplating how to respond when Ben continued.
“Understand, that wasn’t the worst of it.” Tony raised his brow and Ben continued, “The worst part was that everything they told me was total B.S. What they really feared was losing advertising revenue. You see, the car dealers were the single biggest advertising segment the paper had. They were unwilling to piss them off. That’s when I decided I needed to be my own boss. I walked out that night and never went back.”
“I’m sorry,” was all Tony could think to say.
Ben looked at him sharply. “Don’t be sorry, Tony. I love what I’m doing now. I wouldn’t trade my life today for any other journalism job in the world. But understand the impact the experience had on me. I have vowed that fear, and I mean fear of any kind, is not going to drive my decisions at the Crier. I’ll take afraid and free over safe and hog-tied every time.”
He chugged the last of the beer and stood up once more. “So, to hell with whoever or whatever is behind all of this. I say we move forward, and if it turns out you’re right, we put these bastards behind bars where they belong.”
Ben turned and was gone before Tony could formulate a response.
He sat alone in the booth for a long time thinking about everything he had heard and everything he had said. Ben’s story had only made Tony admire him more, if that was possible. While taking on the mob took a level of courage Tony couldn’t imagine, he also knew that walking away from a successful career; from everything you knew, took another kind of courage. Ben had demonstrated both.
Tony ached to be more like him, but in fact, contemplating Ben’s courage only made Tony feel inadequate. The truth was, Tony was numb with fear. He didn’t want to be the next “suicide” found in his house with who knows what elaborate setup to make him look crazy. The thought gnawed at him. He realized that tonight, and maybe for many nights into the future, returning home late at night to a dark house would be a very stressful experience. He wondered if he could handle it.
Chapter 23
Tony sat in blue jeans and a T-shirt in his favorite leather chair. Wide and soft, and positioned near the front windows of his house, the chair was his favorite reading spot. He wasn’t reading. It was just after 1 a.m. and he couldn’t sleep. He sat in the chair in the dark, staring out the big plate glass window into the moonless night. Joe Cocker’s gravelly voice was singing rhythm and blues out of his computer’s speakers in the other room. He had the volume down low, just something to keep the house from feeling so empty. It occurred to him he needed to buy a piano. It was times like this that knocking out a few tunes would be perfect.
It wasn’t fear keeping him up. At least he didn’t want to think it was. He was awake and his mind was still racing because of an overwhelming sensation that his life had been out of control for the past two years. Ever since the Ennis couple had been found dead and Lisa had entered his life, he had felt like a surfer clinging to his board as a tsunami hurtled him toward the shore.
As he replayed all the events of the past two years, he just couldn’t make sense of it all. That nagging sixth sense told him that somehow it all tied together, but how…or why? He thought about Lisa’s advice, given so off-handedly. Figure out who benefits.
“Sure, honey, easy to say, hard to do,” Tony said aloud to the empty room. The irony in all this was that the man who was clearly going to benefit the most was Governor Roskins. Today’s events would put Nelson’s campaign in the dumpster and Roskins was headed for another four years in office.
Speaking out loud once again Tony said, “See, honey, it’s simple. The governor did it.”
Wait…See, honey, it’s simple. The governor…
<
br /> Suddenly Tony couldn’t breathe. The thought stopped him cold. He could feel goose bumps on his arms and the clammy sensation of blood draining from his upper body.
“The governor did it,” he repeated aloud. It was as if speaking the unspeakable had ripped a giant hole in the curtain of confusion.
Was it possible Roskins was somehow involved in all this? Tony thought back to the beginning. If the governor had known Nelson was going to run against him, could he have arranged to have the Ennises killed? Could he have made sure the evidence looked convincing; could he have positioned the case to be irresistible to a prosecutor wanting a big win before the race? He would have had to arrange for Francie Wells’ testimony. Holy sh… did that explain her windfall of cash and the relationship with Peters? Peters. Good God. Could he then…?
No, no, no. This was insanity. Over the course of two years, there were hundreds of things that could go wrong with a plot as involved as Tony was now imagining. Roskins would have to be a cold-blooded SOB to kill an innocent young couple on the chance this crazy idea might work. So was the governor a cold-blooded SOB? Tony had no idea, but had to admit he wouldn’t put it past him.
His thoughts were interrupted as a car’s headlights flicked against the glass of the window. Tony wouldn’t have noticed a car going by, but it was late, and so it was one of the few interruptions to his solitude. Then, more curiously, a car didn’t go by. Tony was sure he had seen the reflection. So why had no car passed by on the street?
Tony pushed his bare feet into his jogging shoes by the front door and stepped out into the darkness on the front porch. The street was quiet. Tony busied himself bringing a few things into the house from the porch to give the appearance of having business there while he glanced quickly down the street in both directions. There, to his left, past two of his neighbor’s homes, he could see a large sedan parked on the street. The streetlight further down the street shone partly through the car’s windows and displayed a silhouette in the front seat. From this distance in the dark, Tony couldn’t tell if it was a person or a headrest. But now he was just paranoid enough to want to know for certain.
Burying the Lede Page 21
