Oregon Hill

by Howard Owen

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t guilty. I said . . .”

  “I know what you said.” Shiflett leans forward, and he’s definitely giving me the stare now, and he looks like he wants to leap over that tiny desk. “I read the fuckin’ thing, Willie. What the fuck? Where do you get this shit?”

  I tell him I can’t tell him where I got it.

  “So you can just write stuff, and not even have to tell who told you? That’s just gossip.”

  I think about telling him that it was just a blog, not like it was in the newspaper, but I self-edit, realizing how lame it sounds.

  “Who is she?”

  I know what he means, and I tell him I can’t say.

  “You know,” he goes on, settling back a little in his chair, “cops do stop sometimes when they see something unusual. They might even give some drunk-ass student a ride back to campus. I’ve done it myself. Everybody has.”

  “My source says this girl looked a lot like Isabel Ducharme.”

  “My ass. Half the girls on campus look like her, on a dark street at night. Was she sure it was the same night, even? It’s been almost two weeks.”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Pretty sure? Listen, man, we’ve got this fucker nailed.” Shiflett starts ticking off the reasons on his beefy fingers, slamming them down on his desk one at a time. “He assaulted a woman before. He was banging the Ducharme girl. He had an argument with her. He has a history of lurking around, picking up young girls. And he confessed to me. I don’t give a fuck if it isn’t on tape. He did it.”

  With that last, he slams his whole fist on the desk. I’m wondering if it isn’t time to mosey on out.

  “I’m just trying to make sure.”

  “Don’t worry about making sure, Willie. We get paid to make sure.”

  He gets a grip and lowers the volume.

  “Listen, I’ve done a dozen cases like this over the years. I know he did it, and I know he said he did it. Don’t screw this up. It ain’t that complicated.”

  I mention Mrs. Fell, and how her story and her son’s jibed.

  “Good God,” he says, “of course she’s going to try to save his ass. You think they didn’t get together and cook that story up?”

  He leans forward again.

  “How would you like it,” he asks, “if it was your daughter? She’s a student there too, right? Don’t you want to see justice done?”

  I ask him about the rumors that there’s no visible evidence in the car.

  “That’s still being investigated,” he says. “We’re satisfied with what we have so far.”

  Then, Shiflett asks me something I’d been expecting.

  “Did she . . . was your so-called witness able to identify the cop she thought she saw?”

  He’s trying to sound casual, kind of tidying up his desk while he asks it.

  I tell him that she couldn’t, just knew it was a cop.

  He nods.

  “Well, like I said, it could have been anybody. It probably wasn’t even the right night.”

  He asks me if we’re going to continue to write “that crap.” I tell him we’re going to write something.

  “Well,” he says, standing, “you’d better be sure about what you write. You make me look like shit, arresting the wrong guy and all, you’d better have your ducks in a row. There could be consequences.”

  I’m forty-nine years old, and David Shiflett, when he puts his big right paw on my shoulder, still makes my sphincter clench.

  “You know what I mean?”

  I start to move away, have my hand on the door, but he puts his hand against it to keep it closed.

  “Thing is,” he says, standing far too close for comfort, “I can’t even be sure it was a ‘she.’ Could have been a ‘he.’ Could be some bullshit of yours.”

  I can see that, like me, he knows more than he’s letting on.

  Shiflett takes his hand off the door, and I turn the knob.

  “You know,” he says, his mouth smiling and everything else ready to rip my lungs out, “you were a pretty good football player. Not a bad running back. I still remember the John Marshall game your senior year.”

  I start to thank him, but he goes on.

  “You know what they said about you, about how good you were?”

  I shake my head.

  He almost whispers, so no one else can hear.

  “They said it must have been that nigger blood in you.”

  He pushes me out the door. Just before it slams, I look back at him and tell him, “Have a good day, Bear.”

  I fight the self-destructive urge to kick that door open again and start something, or try to finish it.

  Despite the chill, I’m sweating a little when I get outside. I’ve been in probably a couple of dozen serious fistfights in my life, although none in the last fifteen years or so. You didn’t back down. Even Peggy knew that. If I came home with a busted lip, she didn’t lecture me about fighting, just told me to be careful. She even let me take boxing lessons once, not that the Marquis of Queensberry held much sway on the Hill. More like Marquis de Sade.

  Even so, tough guy that I once thought I was, David Shiflett still scares the crap out of me.

  I rethink what I’m about to do—actually put down what I’ve written in the newspaper, where we’ve been taught that only facts go.

  Why would a guy like Shiflett, a lieutenant with a great pension coming, go so far out on a limb? Maybe it’s just pride. It is his case, after all.

  How can I take the word of the addled Awesome Dude that he saw a girl get into a police car from across a dark street? That the girl was Isabel Ducharme? That the cop he saw was “Bear”? That he even had the night right?

  How is it possible, in a sane and logical world, that the man who opened his door that night was David Junior Shiflett?

  I stop by the Prestwould long enough to make myself lunch. Some of my neighbors are giving me the fish-eye these days. There have been no more thefts, but even Clara Westbrook, whom I run into in the lobby, seems a little nervous, like she’d rather be somewhere else than talking to me.

  Custalow is in the apartment. He’s making a couple of sandwiches and doesn’t look up when I come in.

  Out of nowhere, he says, “You don’t think I did it, do you?”

  I ask him “Did what?” with both of us knowing damn well what.

  “I never stole nothing in my whole life.”

  He isn’t looking at me, instead staring out the window at the unit across the courtyard from ours. But I can see his face in the reflection. He looks tired.

  I put my hand on his shoulder, which is so massive and firm that it feels more like a hunk of beef than human flesh.

  “No, man. I know you didn’t do it. Just bad timing that’s all, you being here and all. But we’ve got workers, delivery people, nurses here all the time. It was bound to be one of them.”

  “Maybe.”

  He looks at my reflection in the window and, I hope, sees trust and belief.

  I write the story I’ve already scooped myself with in my blog. It has to be dumbed down a little. Get rid of the innuendo and bullshit, just write what the lawyers will allow.

  Still, it isn’t bad. Mrs. Fell has moved from Kate’s, not wanting to be a bother, and has a room at the Quality Inn. I’m able to get her on the phone and go back over her story. I get up with McGonnigal’s friend, who verifies the story he told me earlier about Fell and the chickens. I mention the unnamed source that says no hard evidence of foul play has been found in the car, and that there’s no tape of Fell’s confession. I only mention that “a possible witness” saw a girl of Isabel Ducharme’s description get in the car that night. Detail-wise, it’s more petite than heavyweight, but it’s still the right thing to write, right now.

  I put in a call to the Ducharmes up in Massachusetts. Nobody’s heard a word from them about any of this. They ceased to be people to us as soon as Martin Fell was arraigned.

  The phone rings five times
before the answering machine picks up and I hear what I presume is the recorded voice of Philippe Ducharme, sounding vaguely French with something else I can’t pin down. I leave a message about writing a story casting doubt on the police department’s belief that Martin Fell killed their daughter.

  Not five minutes later, my phone rings.

  “You son of a bitch,” Marie Ducharme says by way of greeting when I identify myself. With her accent, much more French than her husband’s, “bitch” sounds like “beach.” “You want to free that animal.”

  I try to point out that I’m becoming convinced that the cops have the wrong animal, but she cuts me off.

  “You just want the big story, the, ah, scoop,” she says. “You want to be a big shot. They got the man. Leave us alone.”

  I never am able to get in a full sentence before Marie Ducharme hangs up.

  The story will note that the Ducharmes believe the true killer has been caught and do not wish to pursue the case further.

  I call Kate, who says Martin Fell is mad at me for standing him up, but now that she’s given him a printout of the blog, he’d be willing to talk again.

  The next possible time seems to be Saturday, day after tomorrow.

  She asks me, “Did you get in trouble for writing all that?”

  I tell her no more than usual.

  “Well, thanks,” she says. “Thank you. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “We’re working together better now than we did when we were married.”

  “Maybe I’m easier to appreciate from a distance.”

  I want her to contradict me. She doesn’t.

  It’s a quiet night. I write my piece and listen to Ray Long tell me the same story he’s told me five times already, about the time he stumbled on one of our dignified state legislators having sex with a male page in the men’s bathroom at the Jefferson. I’m getting ready to slip away a few minutes early, willing myself to turn toward the Prestwould, away from Penny Lane.

  I can occasionally fool myself, promising the thirst that it can be quenched once we get home. Then, once we get there, I go straight to the bedroom, hoping sleep will come and the thirst won’t walk me back to the liquor cabinet or the fridge.

  I walk through the back doors to the smoking area. One for the road. On the way, I walk past Features, and there’s a copy of Sunday’s paper. On the front, there’s a photo, only two columns wide, of some old broads at a charity soiree. Something about the picture snags me as I walk by, and while I’m having what I’ve promised myself is my last smoke of the evening, it nags at me like a rock in my shoe.

  I stop at the same desk on the way back and pick up the section. I sit down and read the cutline. I go back to my desk, click on to our electronic archives and type in the name. She hasn’t made the news much lately, and when she did, it was mostly for fund-raisers or in connection with her husband.

  Twelve hits down the page, I find what I’m looking for, in her husband’s obit. I don’t make the connection at first, but all of a sudden I get it, or at least think I do. It hits me so hard that I must have let out an involuntary grunt, because Ray Long asks me what’s the matter.

  Nothing, I tell him. Heartburn.

  It’s too late to call anyone tonight. Come tomorrow, though, Clara Westbrook has got some ’splainin’ to do.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Friday

  It’s raining, and I’m having a hard time keeping the smoke from staying inside as I lean forward and try to blow it out the half-open window in the den.

  Custalow is only working a half-day today. Marcia told him they didn’t need him until after noon. He’s already worked probably fifty hours this week. The damn boiler, which is about twenty years past its logical expiration date, is acting up the way it always does when we get our first cold snap. It’s like an old ballplayer who has to warm up a little, do some stretching, get the kinks out. And Custalow is pretty good with boilers, so he’s been busy.

  The meeting that will settle his hash is on Monday. While nothing else has been stolen, nothing’s been solved, either, and Abe Custalow—as he and I and everyone in the building are aware—is the prime and only suspect.

  He’s watching an old movie and only criticizes my bad habits—smoking and fouling my former wife’s living room— with his eyes.

  “What?” I ask him as I carefully stub out the cigarette prior to carrying the ashtray over to the sink, wetting the stub down, then putting it in the plastic Ziploc bag I keep next to the trash can, into which I will empty the bag so that not even my trash can smells of smoke. Or at least, not much.

  “Nothing,” he says, with just the hint of a smile. “I was just thinking about how hard you have to work, just to smoke. Maybe you ought to switch to weed. Peggy seems a lot happier than you do.”

  He’s got a point, but more than the usual bugaboos are after me today. I feel like I’ve earned a cigarette or two.

  I tell Custalow to mind his own business, then feel guilty for that. For one thing, he does mind his own business. I’ve never seen anyone mind his own business better than Abe. When he minds your business, it might be time to pay attention.

  After I left Jeanette, a lot of my friends, real and so-called, didn’t come around much. Abe came around more. There are good-times friends, always there to share your triumphs and have a few laughs. And there are bad-times friends, who know when you really need one.

  On top of that, Abe’s got bigger problems than mine right now. He needs this job he’s about to lose.

  I put the ashes into the plastic bag and zip it back up. I haven’t emptied it into the trash for a couple of days, and there’s a depressing amount of ash in there.

  The story made A1, albeit beneath the fold. The headline: Did cops get right killer? Jesus. Does that mean Martin Fell is the wrong killer? I scan it quickly to make sure no more violence than usual has been done to my story. I usually don’t bother anymore. I’m already on Lisinopril. But this one is important, and I’m relieved that the copydesk has been kind, headline notwithstanding.

  I toast a bagel and gulp some orange juice, then make the call.

  Clara Westbrook answers on the fourth ring.

  When I ask her if I can come up, that I need to ask her about something, she asks me what in particular. When I tell her, there’s a pause.

  “All right. But can you wait awhile? I’ve got to get decent.”

  I know for a fact that Clara is almost always dressed to the nines by eight. I ask her if it’d be OK if I came by around one. She says it is, but I have the feeling that it really isn’t.

  Clara Westbrook is our social director and guiding spirit. She is always ready for a party, and her door is always open. Except for now.

  I have time to kill, so I decide to go over to Peggy’s. It feels more like winter than fall today, but I’d like a good head-clearing walk. Fighting the wind, I cut through the park, take Laurel across the Downtown Expressway and I’m at Peggy’s in less than fifteen minutes.

  When she answers the door, she looks a little more disheveled than usual. I don’t detect the sweet scent of cannabis, so it isn’t that.

  The problem is Les. She caught him in the middle of the night, sometime after two A.M., in the front yard with the ladder. She was able finally to persuade him to come back inside, and then neither of them could sleep.

  He’s resting now, and Peggy looks like she could use some more sleep herself. When I find out she hasn’t eaten breakfast yet, I send her into the living room to doze off or watch television, and I fry some bacon and scramble a few eggs, put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster. I’m a little hungry myself and add a couple of strips and two eggs.

  “Just like old times,” I hear her say from the next room.

  By the time I was twelve, it was my job to fix us breakfast every morning. My repertoire was limited—sometimes we’d have sausage instead of bacon—but Peggy didn’t mind. She always seemed to have the kind of job where y
ou had to be there at seven or seven thirty, and she’d always give me a little peck on the way out as I got ready for school. I’d wipe the inevitable egg off her mouth and she’d wonder out loud what she’d do without me. I think she has the same toaster and the same skillet she had in 1972.

  As we eat, she catches me up on the latest. My old friends drop by to visit her more often than they see me. I think they enjoyed coming here when we were kids. Peggy was not, to put it mildly, like other moms.

  She says Andy Peroni’s worried about the hardware store. The new Lowe’s is really putting a hurt on him. It’s half a mile away, and despite the fact that everybody says they’re four-square behind the good old local merchant and clerks that may actually have used tools at some point in their lives, his sales keep falling. People don’t want to live in a Norman Rockwell painting. People want cheap shit.

  There was a fire over on Pine, two blocks down, not serious enough to make the paper—student renters drinking and smoking and not using ashtrays and passing out.

  “And I’m worried about Awesome.”

  I ask her why, and she explains that he always comes by on Thursdays. She lets him take the glass bottles from her recycling to add to what he gets from other kind souls. He can probably buy a couple of bottles of cheap wine just from what he gets here. Peggy has a fondness for Rolling Rock, and there’s usually a small mountain of those green bottles out back by the time Awesome Dude comes to retrieve them.

  “But he didn’t come by yesterday, and he hasn’t been today.”

  I remark that I didn’t know Mr. Dude was so dependable that his absence was cause for concern.

  “He’s been by here every Thursday for three years. I told you that.”

  Considering Awesome’s state of mind when last I saw him in the rearview mirror on Wednesday, and considering everything else, I do pay more attention than usual.

  I tell her I think he’s staying over on Maplewood.

  Peggy sips her coffee and says, “Yeah. Phil Patterson, he said. Runs some kind of construction company.”