None So Deadly

by David A. Poulsen

  “Right,” I said. “I’m leaving now. I’ll see you shortly.”

  They call it the campus because of its size — two enormous buildings in northeast Calgary surrounded by fast-food outlets, mini-malls, and middle-class residential neighbourhoods. Homicide is located in the smaller of the two — the Investigative Services Building. A detective met me at the front door and was polite, even friendly.

  “Are you Cullen?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Rivers,” he said as we shook hands. “You and your partner are kind of a big deal.”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “We’ve been lucky a time or two.” That seemed to be the right answer, as Rivers smiled and squired me through security and to the elevator.

  As the door of the elevator closed he shook his head. “We hate these.”

  “What?”

  “Arresting kids. Our worst nightmare. So many more regulations and protocols with young offenders.”

  “So, you haven’t talked to Danny yet?”

  He shrugged. “We can’t … not without either a parent or a lawyer or both being in the room with him.”

  “Right,” I said as the elevator door slid open. We stepped out and turned left down a hall and into a room that housed the holding and interview rooms. It was a busy night, with several witnesses and suspects standing around, some in handcuffs, waiting their turn. Rivers guided me through the crowd to one of the holding rooms.

  “He’s in there. You can have a few minutes with him. We’ve heard from the lawyer. He’s on his way.”

  I thanked Rivers and stepped into the holding room. Rivers stayed at the door, I guessed to see the reaction from Danny and confirm that I was legitimate. Danny was slumped in a chair, his head down. He looked up and managed a half-smile when he saw me.

  “A uniformed officer will be right outside the door if you …” Rivers looked at Danny. “If either of you need him.” He stepped out and closed the door quietly behind him.

  The room was small — one table, two chairs, nothing on the walls. I moved to the chair opposite Danny and sat. I could see he’d been crying but he sat up a little straighter and tried to look, if not brave, at least resolute.

  “You okay, Danny?”

  “Yeah.” He gave a small shrug. “I guess so.”

  “You want anything, water or something?”

  He shook his head.

  “Since I spoke with you on the phone, have you talked any more to the police?”

  A few seconds passed before he lifted his head and looked at me for the first time. “No,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I guess I’m sort of screwed, huh?” He tried for a smile. Failed.

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” I said, trying to sound confident and reassuring. “Your parents and a lawyer are on their way.”

  His eyes opened wide at that and he sat up straight, then leaned on the table. “Yeah, I guess that had to happen.”

  “Pretty much. When they get here, you’re going to have to go through all of it again.”

  “All of it?”

  “All of it.”

  “The weed?”

  He was still thinking that was the biggest problem he had. After talking to his old man, I wasn’t sure the kid was wrong.

  “All of it,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “First of all, Danny, your dad knows about the weed. And second —”

  “You told him?”

  “Yes, I told him. This isn’t about smoking some dope. Your dad understands that and you need to, as well. You haven’t been charged yet, but there’s a chance that you will be charged with murder. We need to be ready when that happens. So, when your parents and the lawyer get here, you’ll be questioned by the police. The lawyer will tell you if he doesn’t want you to answer a question, but when you do answer questions, you need to be totally truthful. You can’t tell people what you think they want to hear. There’s no time for that, you understand that, right?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, but I wasn’t sure he got it.

  There was a rap at the door. A bulky uniformed cop opened it and poked his head in. “There’s a lawyer out here. Says he’s been asked by the family’s attorney to come down and talk to the kid.”

  “Sure,” I said, “send him in, if that’s okay. His parents should be here pretty soon, too.” The cop nodded and let the door swing open a little more. He stepped back and a tall, thin, slightly greying man in a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit walked in.

  I have a natural aversion to lawyers, but forced myself not to pass judgment — an admitted flaw of mine — until I heard what the man was all about. He stretched out a hand. “Brandon Kemper.”

  “Adam Cullen.” We shook, then he reached across the table and shook Danny’s hand. I stood up and offered the chair to the lawyer.

  He nodded a thank you, pulled out a tape recorder and set it on the table. He got right to it. “Here’s the thing, Danny, we don’t have a lot of time. I’ve spoken to your parents. They will be here shortly and I’d like to hear as much of this as I can before they get here. Your dad is quite distraught and it might be a while before he’s … helpful.”

  “Okay,” Danny said in a small voice; he leaned forward.

  Kemper looked at me. “I imagine you’ve heard all this before, but I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t interrupt or add anything until Danny is finished.”

  I nodded. I was quickly impressed with the guy, especially his being able to accurately assess Danny’s dad without having met the man.

  Danny told his story again, and I didn’t detect any deviations from what he’d told me. I was relieved about that. But my mood was about to change.

  “Okay, Danny,” Kemper said. “That’s good. I appreciate all that you’ve told me. But there’s one thing you didn’t mention that I think is quite important. The police have indicated that your fingerprints are on the gun that killed Mr. Claiborne. We need to talk about that.”

  I was hoping Kemper wasn’t looking at me, because if my face reflected what was going on inside my head, it wouldn’t have been pretty. I looked across the table at Danny, determined not to allow my voice to scream the words that were crashing around in my brain.

  Danny was looking down again, his eyes not meeting mine or Kemper’s.

  “Would you say the police are right in making that statement, Danny?” Kemper asked.

  “Uh, yeah … I guess they are.”

  “Well, we need to talk about that.”

  We damn sure do.

  But we didn’t. As Danny looked up, glancing quickly at me before turning his gaze to Kemper, there was another knock at the door.

  Burly-Cop opened the door wide this time and stepped into the room. “Mr. and Mrs. Luft are here.”

  THREE

  Cobb was sitting across from me, sipping a Scotch while I nursed a rye and Diet Coke without enthusiasm. I’d related, twice, everything about the Danny Luft case.

  We were in the lounge of the Earl’s on 4th Street Southwest. Cobb, sharing my frustration, shook his head again when I got to the part about the kid’s fingerprints on the murder weapon.

  “Any chance there’s some mistake?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Fingerprint evidence is not infallible. There have been mistakes over the years. But they’re rare. And you said he didn’t deny it or even register surprise when the lawyer brought it up. My guess is the cops got it right.”

  “Which means the kid’s in trouble.”

  “Well, it’s not good news, that’s for sure. But it’s not a slam dunk either. Fingerprints on a gun don’t mean that that person necessarily pulled the trigger.”

  “So, what’s our next move?”

  “Well, first of all, we don’t really have a client here.” Cobb shrugged. “And from what you’ve said, it doesn’t seem likely the kid’s dad is about to hire us. Tell me that part one more time.”

  “I wasn’t there that long,” I recounted. “He wasn’t i
n the holding room for much longer than a minute or two before he told the lawyer that he wanted, and I’m quoting here, my ‘sorry ass out of here and right fucking now.’”

  Cobb sipped his Scotch and it was a while before he answered. “See, that seems like overkill to me,” he said. “All you did was try to help his son — at the kid’s request. So, why the animosity?”

  “Don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe he’s from the school of all media are bad guys — there’s a fair amount of that going around the last couple of years.”

  Cobb smiled. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Or maybe he didn’t like the fact that Danny had confided in me and along the way revealed a few family secrets.”

  “And he’d know that how?”

  “Well, when I told him to cool his jets and think about his kid as more than an object needing discipline, maybe he put two and two together.”

  “That’s possible.” Cobb nodded. “Anyway, that doesn’t alter the fact that we don’t have a client.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, technically the kid sort of hired us to help him deal with Claiborne’s proposition that he kill his wife.”

  “Proposition,” Cobb repeated.

  “Maybe not the right word. Doesn’t matter. Danny did come to the office and wanted to hire you. In your absence I advised him. Not sure if that constitutes being a client or not.”

  Cobb sat back and looked at the ceiling. “If we do have a client or a case to work on, it’s likely to be pro bono. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for being a good Samaritan, but I’m also not averse to being paid.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’m not sure. Let’s think about this. Here’s this teenage kid who has a story about his girlfriend’s dad, one of the city’s leading citizens, wanting the kid to off his wife. The cops hear a story like that and they’re likely to say, ‘How dumb do you think we are?’ Then Mr. C ends up being shot with what was very likely the same gun the kid alleges he was being set up to use on Mrs. C. And think about this — if the police do actually give Danny’s story any credence at all, then what we have is motive. Because now the scenario becomes this: Danny pops Claiborne to make sure he doesn’t rat the kid out on the drug thing to his old man or to keep from having to shoot Mrs. Claiborne. Or both. And just to put the bow on the wrapping paper, there’s the murder weapon with the kid’s fingerprints conveniently in place. I don’t like his chances.”

  I nodded. “I get that it sounds bad.”

  “And yet you, someone whose judgment I trust, feel that Danny was telling the truth when he came to you at my office.”

  I nodded again. “I would have bet the ranch that there wasn’t a trace of larceny in that kid, at least not that I saw.”

  “But he didn’t tell you he’d handled the gun?”

  “No, but that might have happened after we talked.”

  Cobb regarded me thoughtfully. “Okay, you’re a writer, how about you give me a storyline that explains some of the things we’re dealing with here.”

  It was my turn to think. “Okay … I don’t know, but maybe Claiborne had the gun with him when he saw Danny at the park and Danny was reluctant to admit he handled it.”

  “Which isn’t the way the kid related it to you.”

  “No,” I conceded, “it’s not. But maybe he was embarrassed that he was dumb enough to actually handle the gun and didn’t want to tell me that part.”

  “Okay, that’s one possibility. I don’t like it as credible, but it’s a possibility. Got anything else?”

  “Or when Claiborne was out of the house, Danny and Glenna snuck up to his bedroom and checked out the gun. Kids do some dumb shit.”

  Cobb let out a loud hmmf, and since I didn’t know what that meant, I didn’t answer. He went on. “Or how about Danny snuck out of his house the night of the murder and actually met with Claiborne even though you’d urged him not to. He handled the gun, and later that night somebody — Danny or someone else — got hold of the gun and popped Mr. C. The cops will like that one because they could argue that Claiborne gave Danny the gun, ostensibly to kill Mrs. Claiborne, and Danny decided to shoot Mr. C instead.”

  “But you said the cops wouldn’t believe the hired assassin part of the story.”

  “They would in that scenario.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Bottom line,” Cobb said, “is the kid is definitely the underdog in this thing, even with a good lawyer.”

  “And I still say he’s … sort of your client.”

  Cobb took a sip of his drink, then stared at his glass for a long time. Finally, he said, “Okay, let’s give this thing a try. I want you to dig deeper on Claiborne — get everything you can. Mrs. Claiborne, too. I’ll see what I can learn from a few of my police friends. I’ll try to find out where this thing’s at from their perspective. We need to move fast if we’re going to do any good at all. How’s your time?”

  “I’ll make time.”

  “Okay, let’s roll.” He stood up, tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table, and shook my hand, as he often did when we were about to embark on an investigative mission. “I’ll call you tomorrow and we can exchange findings.”

  I dug deeper. That night after a dinner that featured a couple of dishes Jill had mastered in her gourmet cooking class — one a spectacular fish creation, the other a risotto-like compilation of rice and vegetables that was a definite ten out of ten — I hit the computer, this time at Jill’s house.

  During dinner we had talked about Danny Luft and the trouble he was in. I’d learned a long time ago that Jill and occasionally Kyla could offer useful suggestions about cases Mike and I were working.

  Both of them were convinced that Mrs. Claiborne had shot her husband having found out about his plot to have her murdered. A pre-emptive strike. It made at least some sense and I tucked that potential solution in the back of my mind as I set my laptop up in a small quasi-bedroom Jill and I had rejigged into an office so that I wouldn’t have to go home every time I had work to do. More and more of my writing files and paraphernalia had made their way to the room that Kyla had insisted on repainting a colour that could best be described as autumn off-pink with a hint of oh, I don’t know, let’s call it aged pumpkin.

  She was sure I’d become the male equivalent of J.K. Rowling, working in a room as inspiring as this one. I dialed up some Barenaked Ladies and the Halifax band Hillsburn as a soundtrack and dug in. I had noticed that more and more of my all-Canadian music collection had also found its way into Jill’s house.

  I decided to focus my research on the personal as opposed to the corporate Wendell Claiborne. It didn’t take long to come up with a few interesting bits to ponder, though I wasn’t sure any of them would amount to anything resembling a breakthrough. Mrs. Claiborne was the former Rachel Coverdon; the Coverdons were in retail clothing in London, Ontario, and backed that up with a few multi-family dwellings they owned and rented out for fairly large sums.

  Rachel had a brother, Elwood, who died suddenly at age fourteen (no details in the accounts I found), and another brother, Lance, who’d had some brushes with the law as a teen and young twenty-something. Borrowing cars without the express written consent of the owners seemed to be his crime of choice, but he had apparently righted the ship and was now a pipefitter by day and a successful DJ (“I’ll Make Your Wedding Unforgettable!”) by night. Married, with twin girls, eleven years old. I came across a five-year-old photo of a good-looking character home on Waterloo Street in London.

  On the surface, everything sounded okay, but I made a note to check on the more recent whereabouts of Lance Coverdon.

  Rachel Claiborne had a couple of skeletons of her own tucked away. Turns out the now respectable Mrs. C was once an exotic dancer who may have taken her relationship with certain members of her audience to a somewhat more personal and financially rewarding level. She’d given up her career as an entertainer and moved in with a high school phys. ed teacher several years her junior, whom sh
e later sued for a significant amount of money, alleging that he drove away potential employers for her dancing talents by behaving in a menacing manner when the club owners and managers came around to sign the lovely Rachel to a contract.

  I circled back to Wendell Claiborne and it turned out that Claiborne, not to be outdone, had a younger brother of his own with somewhat nefarious leanings. Wilson Claiborne had run up against the regulatory authorities when he’d operated a limousine service in Edmonton. He finally closed up shop after three colourful years in the business and turned his attention to investment counselling. He had that licence revoked when several clients protested that the junior Claiborne had failed to invest the clients’ money in the various platforms he had indicated he would.

  I sat back and listened to Hillsburn perform “Sun Ought to Shine” while I thought about the Claiborne clan. Often in my work with Cobb, I struggled to find someone who might fit the role of perpetrator of the crime we were investigating. This time around it was damn tough to point to someone who didn’t.

  I wasn’t sure I liked this better.

  I was about to dive back into the morass that was the house of Claiborne when there was a tap at the door. Kyla poked her head in. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said softly.

  I beckoned her in. “You are most definitely not interrupting,” I told her, and pulled a chair from against the wall a little closer for her to sit on. “What’s up?”

  “I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Ask away.”

  She sat, fidgeted for a minute, then folded her hands. Ready. “How soon do you think I should make a decision about what I’m going to be when I grow up?”

  Several responses quickly came to mind, but I could see she was serious and I realized that none of my witticisms were going to be seen as either funny or appropriate.

  “I’m not sure, sweetheart,” I said. “I don’t know that there’s any rush. You have lots of time to consider the possibilities, and if you think there’s something that sounds pretty good right now but you change your mind a time or two as you get older, that’s okay, too.”

  “When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?”