Suffering Fools

by Ed Gaffney

  Vera tried to call the parole officer, but he wasn’t in, so she left a message. Then she copied down Zwaggert’s employment information onto the notepad she carried with her, shrugged on her jacket, and headed for the door.

  Maybe if she could make some headway in this case, people around here would finally start treating her like a real cop.

  April 23, 2004

  ATTORNEY ZACK WILSON LED HIS PARTNER, Terry Tallach, into the living room, where they planned to view the videotape that Katerina Gardiner swore would prove her son was innocent.

  “I’m really looking forward to seeing this,” Terry told Zack as he sat on the couch. “Because as everyone knows, grand juries indict people all the time for armed robbery when the police have videotapes that show they are innocent.”

  Terry’s attitude wasn’t exactly a surprise. Ever since they’d met, back in high school, the question for Terry wasn’t whether the glass was half empty. It was whether what was inside the glass would kill him or just make him sick.

  Now, twenty years later, they were successful law partners, and Terry still looked at the world through doom-colored glasses.

  Zack inserted the tape into the VCR.

  “In fact, if that thing does what Mrs. Gardiner says it does,” Terry said, “I will place it between two pieces of rye bread with lettuce and mustard, and I will eat it for lunch.”

  “Just make a copy before you do,” Zack said, picking up the remote control and pressing the play button. “Here we go.”

  The television screen flashed once or twice, and then a remarkably grainy image of the inside of a convenience store appeared. The picture was about as bad as if it were being transmitted live from the surface of the moon. There was a time code running in the upper left corner of the recording. It read 11:44 P.M.

  A few shelves of goods ran from the bottom of the picture to the top. The clerk’s counter, on which sat the usual stuff, including a cash register and a lottery machine, was on the right side of the screen. Farther up the right side of the screen there was an open door, which looked like it might have led to a storage room of some kind. There were some freezer cases running across the top of the screen, although that, like just about everything else appearing on the low-tech video, was kind of hard to make out.

  No one was in sight. It was as if the store was completely abandoned. And then a figure appeared at the bottom right of the picture. He was holding a newspaper. As he walked on the checkerboard-patterned tile floor toward the counter, he was looking to his right, so his back was to the camera. It looked like he was dressed all in black. Why in the world would a business use a surveillance system so bad you couldn’t even tell what kind of clothes the bad guy was wearing?

  “Is that a ski hat?”

  “Yes,” Terry replied. “Or he has hair.”

  The clerk came out from the storage room to handle the customer. Although he was facing the camera as he approached the register, his features were virtually indistinguishable. He was probably white. Beyond that, it was anybody’s guess what he looked like.

  The customer put the newspaper on the counter and, a second later, handed some money to the clerk. The pair seemed to engage in some discussion.

  Then, all of a sudden, the guy ran around behind the counter, grabbed the clerk, and pushed him into the back room. The struggle took only a second, and a candy display case blocked the camera’s view of the bad guy’s face.

  “When he comes out of the room, we’ll get a nice, snowy, unfocused, useless look at him,” Terry said. But when the robber emerged from the room a few seconds later carrying a bag, it wasn’t even that good. He wasn’t wearing a ski hat—he was wearing a ski mask. He was completely unrecognizable. Ski Mask went behind the counter, opened the register and grabbed the cash from the drawer, took some lottery tickets, stuffed it all in the bag, and then bolted out of the store. The time stamp read 11:47 P.M. And then the screen went blank.

  Zack clicked off the television and sat back with a sigh. Terry looked over at him and said without the slightest emotion, “I would just like to say I am shocked and disappointed to learn that the videotape that was supposed to prove that our client was innocent is in fact totally useless to us.”

  Terry kept talking, but Zack’s attention had been pulled away from his partner by a piece of paper on the coffee table by their feet. It was a drawing of two triangles and a circle that Justin had made the other day. Something about those triangles looked familiar.

  Zack’s son was closing in on the end of the kindergarten year, and so far, the little boy seemed to have three undeniable strengths: making friends, drawing geometric figures, and getting bloody noses. The first time Zack had gotten called by the school nurse, his heart started racing so fast he thought he might be the one headed for the emergency room.

  After the second incident, they took a trip to the doctor, where they learned that the problem was nothing more than dry sinuses. It was on the way back from that doctor’s visit that Zack realized Justin was going to be fine—it was he who was going to struggle to make it through elementary school.

  Suddenly, Zack remembered why the triangles on Justin’s drawing had gotten his attention. He stood up, turned the television on again, and then said to Terry, “So how much trigonometry do you remember?”

  THREE

  ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY LOVELL: When was the last time you saw the victim?

  DETECTIVE JOHN MORRISON: The night of the robbery.

  Q: You mean you didn’t do a follow-up interview after that night?

  A: That’s correct.

  Q: Why not?

  A: Because I never saw him again.

  Q: Well, do you recall the last conversation you had with him?

  A: The only conversation I had with him.

  Q: Yes.

  A: Sure. I had already ascertained that he had suffered no physical injuries. I asked if he needed transportation anywhere, and he said that he had his car and that he was going to close the store and go home.

  Q: So what did you do then?

  A: I drove to Babe Gardiner’s house to arrest him.

  Q: You knew where he lived?

  A: Yes. We live in the same town. I pass his home on a regular basis.

  Q: When you drove to Babe Gardiner’s home, what happened?

  A: He wasn’t there. His car wasn’t there, and no one answered the doorbell. I was very concerned, and I immediately drove to the station house and put out an APB for the defendant.

  Q: Why were you very concerned?

  A: Because the clerk told me that after Babe pushed him into the back room, Babe told him that if he squealed on him, he would kill him.

  (Commonwealth v. Gardiner, Trial Volume IV, Pages 82–84)

  Hostage

  HER EAR WAS THROBBING. NO, THE WHOLE SIDE of her head was throbbing. Her shoulders ached. Her throat was raw. Her lips were burning. And something was on her mouth.

  Where was she? Wow. What a headache. She opened her eyes, and all she saw was an unfamiliar floor. She was sitting in some chair, but she had no idea where.

  Then the memory of a man’s voice came into her head. Well, happy freakin’ birthday to you. She couldn’t remember who had said that. Or why.

  She decided to pull off whatever was stuck on her mouth, but she couldn’t move her hands. They were tied together, behind her, to the back of the chair. Her legs were tied, too, to the legs of the chair.

  Fear gripped her. What had happened? Where was she? She tried to call out, but she was gagged. What was on her mouth? Some kind of tape? That’s probably what her hands and feet were tied with. That’s why her lips burned. The adhesive of the tape. Oh my God.

  Her right temple was pounding. Panic flooded her. She looked from side to side. She could see no one else. How long had she been here? Where was she?

  She fought the panic. Panic only digs the hole deeper. Someone had told her that once. She couldn’t remember who. Her head hurt so bad she wondered if she was going
to throw up. But her mouth was taped shut. Please don’t let me throw up. She’d choke to death on her own vomit. Oh my God.

  No panic. No panic. Calm down. Get organized. Get a plan. Figure out what she knew and what she didn’t know, and make a plan.

  Okay. Calm down. Breathe. What did she know?

  She was bound and gagged in a room she didn’t recognize. Her headache was severe, and the throbbing on the side of her head and face was probably from some kind of injury. And since she was bound and gagged, she must have been attacked. She didn’t remember, though. She couldn’t remember being hit in the head.

  What else did she know? She was alive, she was alone, and she was scared. And what a headache. Forget the headache. Focus on something else. Okay—she was seriously thirsty. And she had to go to the bathroom.

  She pulled again against whatever was tying her hands to the back of the chair. Her shoulders were sore, but that was because her arms were stretched back in an uncomfortable position. They were okay. Her hands felt cold—probably lack of circulation—but they weren’t damaged. She could move her fingers. The tape, or rope, or whatever it was—was tightly wrapped around her wrists.

  She tried to move her legs, and although they were tied to the legs of the chair, they didn’t feel injured. She tipped her face forward and looked down—God, her head was killing her—she still had her clothes on. She probably hadn’t been raped.

  No harm in you looking for the good news, as long as the bad news was looking for you.

  Who used to tell her that?

  Happy freakin’ birthday. And who had said that? Why was she remembering that?

  She tipped her head back slowly and looked up. The low ceiling was made from acoustical tile. It was old—the once-white tiles were yellowing. There was a simple frosted-glass fixture attached to the middle of the ceiling, through which a single low-wattage bulb shone, casting the entire room in a dim gray light.

  The walls in the room—the one to the left side of the chair, the one across the room to her right, which had some kind of old paneling on it, and the one directly in front of her with the cheap-looking glass sconce and a door that led to what might be a little bathroom—didn’t look like anything special. They didn’t have any windows. With the exception of the paneling, they were painted off-white.

  There was an old couch with torn and stained upholstery against the wall. A tall, thin, ugly metal floor lamp stood beside it. Between her and the wall in front of her, a rickety-looking folding chair was pulled up under a fake wood card table, where somebody had left the remains of their lunch.

  The room smelled musty. No. Make that nasty. Moldy, with some stale cigarette smoke and old beer thrown in. And some body odor. Frat house minus. Probably the basement of some home.

  She looked past her right leg at the floor. Some kind of gross green-and-gray vinyl tile, with lots of litter. Cigarette butts, a brown-and-blue paper coffee cup that had been used as an ashtray, a beer can, three beer bottles, an old newspaper, a bag from a sandwich place.

  Okay. So that’s what she knew. Now, what didn’t she know?

  She had no idea where she was. She didn’t know how she got here, but it sure looked like somebody hit her and brought her here, unconscious, and tied her to the chair. But she had no idea who would want to kidnap her.

  And then a slow, unpleasant realization began to force its way slowly into her throbbing brain. What else didn’t she know?

  Everything.

  Another wave of nausea passed through her, and again she fought the urge to throw up. There was something wrong with her mind. Something was blocking her memory. It was like a wall or a curtain was denying her access to the simplest things. Parts of her memory that she needed. She was really scared.

  Because she couldn’t remember anything. The day of the week. Where she lived. What she did for a living. Who her parents were. Whether she was married. Whether she had kids.

  Oh my God.

  Her name.

  May 14, 2004

  Approximately four months before the Babe Gardiner trial

  THE BLOND LAWYER, ZACK, WAS DOING MOST OF the talking, which was good. Because the big one, Terry, looked like he got up on the wrong side of his cave, and was much more interested in his coffee than in this meeting. And Mrs. Gardiner, well, she just looked so—tired.

  Maria Gallegos began to take notes on one of the purple legal pads that her boss, Anthony LoPresti, insisted on buying for the office. Maria looked up at him for a second. Like always, he was overdressed—a dark blue pin-striped suit, a white shirt, and a red silk tie, along with his gold watch, cuff links, and a pinky ring. He kept what little hair he had on his head cut very short, like his closely trimmed goatee and moustache. Anthony had to be the weirdest private investigator in the world. He looked more like an in-shape forty-year-old manager of some fancy restaurant.

  “Terry and I met with Babe the other day,” Zack said, “and it turns out that he doesn’t remember too many of the specific details of his activities on the night of the robbery.”

  Terry blew out a quick, humorless laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Not too many.”

  “Anyway,” Zack continued with a quick glance at his partner, “as far as we were able to piece together, at around five o’clock that night, Babe left Ibis Industries in Laurelton, where he works as a janitor. He drove from there to a restaurant called The Burger Barn, up past Norton, and arrived a little before six. He had dinner there, alone, and then things get a little fuzzy.”

  Maria looked down at the picture of Babe Gardiner that his mother had given to Anthony. Maria and her friends had a code regarding men. They described them in terms of food. A man with real husband potential would be a nice big chicken dinner. A player with a sharp ride who might be fun for a little while would be an ice cream sundae. And if he was really good-looking, he’d have sprinkles on top.

  Babe looked more like last week’s taco.

  “Was he drinking?” Anthony asked.

  “The safe money is riding on ‘yes,’” Terry replied, clicking his pen repeatedly. “But ‘oh yes’ is also an excellent possibility.” Now the big lawyer looked like a bear whose caffeine had just kicked in.

  “I think it’s fair to say that Babe had a little trouble being, uh, forthcoming about what he did or didn’t do from that point forward,” Zack said. “But The Burger Barn does serve alcohol, Babe did have the following day off, and the arresting officer said he smelled alcohol on Babe’s breath.”

  “And after we asked him about fifteen times, he told us that he might have had a small beer with dinner and that he might have gone to a bar after dinner.” Terry clicked his pen a few more times. “But, of course, he didn’t exactly remember the details. Except the one about the beer being a small one. After we talked for a while, he got pretty confident of that.”

  As Terry spoke, Mrs. Gardiner nodded but stayed silent. She did not look happy. If there was ever a woman who needed some good news, she was the one.

  Anthony saw it too. “This case shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” he said. “We’ll go up there, ask around. I’m sure somebody will remember seeing him.”

  Then Maria asked, “Mrs. Gardiner, you don’t happen to know if Babe uses a credit card?”

  Mrs. Gardiner looked over at her and then back to Anthony. “I, um…”

  “Maria handles most of our administrative work, but she also supports me in field investigations from time to time,” Anthony said. “She has my complete trust. Please feel free to share with her anything you would share with me.”

  Anthony may have been weird, but Maria loved it when he said that to new clients.

  Mrs. Gardiner nodded and spoke directly to Maria. “I’m sorry—I know this is public information, but I still tend to be a little overprotective of Rufus. He’s made some bad decisions, but his heart is almost always in the right place. I’ve had some medical problems, and he’s always…” She took a shaky breath and let it out. “I’m sorry. This is just�
�hard.”

  “I understand,” Anthony said.

  Mrs. Gardiner took another breath and began again. “After he pleaded guilty the last time, Rufus had some problems with credit card companies and ended up filing for bankruptcy. He doesn’t use credit cards anymore, at least to my knowledge.”

  “Babe was in jail?”

  “No, he got a suspended sentence and a three-year term of probation.”

  “And when was this?” Anthony asked.

  “About four or five years ago,” Mrs. Gardiner replied. “And the bankruptcy was about a few months after that. Around Christmas.”

  “I see,” Anthony said. “Is there anything else we should know?”

  Zack looked down at some notes. “Just one more thing…”

  AS DETECTIVE VERA DEMOPOLOUS STARTED TO take on more cases, her search for fugitive parole violator David Zwaggert slowed down considerably.

  Her visit to Zwaggert’s employer had generated only a weak lead—apparently Zwaggert had talked to one of his coworkers about spending a lot of time in the past at a bar named Froggy’s. And as Vera had expected, David Zwaggert’s name and picture had not generated a great deal of enthusiastic recognition among the people who were hanging out in Froggy’s when she had arrived. So she took the name and number of the owner of the place, gave her card to the only waitress on duty, and sat down to eat.

  The good news was that Froggy’s had a dinner menu. The bad news was that the only two things on the menu that weren’t fried were beer and ketchup.

  If she hadn’t been so hungry, she would have waited to get a bite to eat on the return trip, but there wasn’t anywhere to stop on the way home for thirty miles, so she decided to roll the dice and try a burger and a Diet Coke.

  And when the waitress brought Vera’s meal to the table, it didn’t look as bad as it could have. The pickle was a little small, but hey. Maybe she’d get lucky with the rest of her dinner. She took a bite of the burger.

  Maybe not. But food was food. As Vera washed the questionable mouthful down with some soda, the waitress came back over. “When did you say that guy might have been in here?”