Presumption of Guilt

by Archer Mayor

  “I’ll try,” Joe said. “But I already know the answer. They’re rigid about that. Always have been. And it’s not like we have a smoking gun.”

  He looked at his other two squad members. “No suggestions?”

  “Not for that,” Willy said vaguely.

  Joe studied him a moment, wondering where Willy’s mind had wandered—and what therefore lay in store.

  He turned his attention to Les and Sammie. “Well, I do. I think it’s time we buddy up with New Hampshire law enforcement and stop being so polite about meeting Johnny Lucas. We need to put an interview into him, sooner the better. That’ll also tell us if he’s in witness protection, and fast, too, if I know the marshals. By the way, with what Willy has just given us, are any of you still thinking the Hank and BB murders are unrelated?”

  No one answered.

  “It’s not like they both don’t need solving. That being said, I think we should really focus on that connection as our primary working theory, especially given some of the other oddball angles that’re cropping up.”

  “Like my son?” Lester proposed.

  “For example,” Joe agreed. “Any developments there?”

  “Not really,” Lester told them. “Dave’s back on the job. The press seems to have swallowed the sheriff’s cover story, and the real scoop hasn’t leaked so far. Meanwhile, the cops chasing it down can’t find much to chew on, so I don’t know if it’ll be hitting the fan or not.”

  “Well, keep in touch with them—with an eye to what we’re working on.”

  “What the hell are we working on, exactly?” Willy challenged, back from his reverie. “Is it really an avalanche, starting with Hank being dug up? If it is, it’s not moving much. We have no leads on his case, no leads on who shot Barrett, no clue if Dave’s adventure is related or not, and now we maybe got some wild card involving Johnny Lucas—whose name may not be Johnny Lucas.”

  Joe was nodding as Willy finished. “I couldn’t agree more. But the avalanche image may be to our advantage. We just need to figure out which part to kick loose to discover how everything is interconnected.”

  “If it is,” Lester said.

  “Right,” Joe continued. “Right now, the Barrett case is on the hot plate. For sanity’s sake, we better assume that whoever shot him is still alive and well, and still in the neighborhood. Also, if we think that BB was killed because of Hank resurfacing as a homicide, then maybe that tells us the triggerman was also around forty years ago.”

  “Triggerman or -woman,” Willy pointed out.

  “You mean Sharon?” Joe asked.

  “Or Lacey Stringer,” Sam threw in, adding, “And don’t leave out Bonnie Barrett, the grieving rich widow, in case we’re wrong about the two murders being linked.”

  “All right,” Joe picked up. “Start with Sharon. Loved Hank, but tossed him out because of another woman—according to her. She’s then wooed by BB, but rejects him with no hard feelings. Everything ends happily ever after, unless she killed Hank because of his philandering. Question is: How and with whom? She couldn’t’ve pulled it off alone. And even if she had help, what happened to him—or her—and why did she now kill BB?”

  No one answered, knowing his question to be rhetorical.

  “Lacey,” he continued. “She loved Hank, too, which as Willy pointed out last time, is one of the four Ls. Following that logic, did she kill him? Same questions as for Sharon, if so. Why? Who with, et cetera?”

  He took them in with a glance, waiting for objections or suggestions. Again, there was silence.

  “Last but not least, Bonnie. It’s true that there are no indications she goes back to the Hank era, but as Sam said, she’s sitting pretty now. Did she make that happen?”

  “She has an alibi,” Lester said. “Complete with witnesses.”

  “Moving on to the men,” Joe spoke without pause, although nodding once in Lester’s direction as acknowledgment. “Fuentes, Stringer, Neathawk, Greg Mitchell, and Lucas are the ones we know about. Tom Capsen died.”

  “Neathawk’s dead, too,” Lester announced. “I meant to tell you. Just got confirmation. Car crash out west, twenty years ago.”

  “Fuentes also has an alibi for the BB shooting,” Sammie said.

  “Why not list Lucas first?” Willy asked. “He’s the elephant in the room.”

  “I don’t want to ignore the others in his favor,” Joe explained. “But what about Lucas, Willy? You have anything on him we don’t?”

  Joe saw Sam cut Willy a look, but the latter merely shook his head. “Only what I told you. He is the one with the other L in the game, though: loot. He worked under Hank and became BB’s number two man after Hank left the picture. Which means this could be a lot easier than we’re making it. After Hank was established as a murder victim instead of a disappearing act, it may have thrown BB and Lucas into conflict somehow.”

  “Winner take all?” Lester said.

  “More like loser take his story to the grave,” Willy suggested. “It still doesn’t explain who’s got Lucas under surveillance—unless BB rigged those cameras before he was croaked.”

  There was a telling pause in the room, prompting Joe to say, his frustration clear, “I’ll reach out to New Hampshire—see about getting Lucas out from behind his front door. Somebody’s got to know something, for Chrissake. What about the other two on our list—Greg Mitchell and Stringer?”

  “I went by the cabins to see Mitchell again,” Willy said. “No luck this time, but I’ll go back. I got a feeling when we talked first that he was holding back. I’ll find him.”

  “Stringer was mine,” Sam reported. “I found him as usual in Carlo’s bar, his home away from home, but he told me to drop dead. Wouldn’t give me squat about his whereabouts when BB was killed.”

  “That can be changed,” Willy said menacingly.

  Sam took it in stride. “No need. He was showing off ’cause he knew he was safe. I rounded up Carlo and Lacey later—individually—and they both accounted for him being at home or at the bar during our time slot. Lacey even said she wished she couldn’t cover his ass—her words—but there it was.”

  Joe looked disappointed. “Okay. Thanks. Let’s keep digging, then. But please”—here he looked pointedly at Willy and Sam—“no more dancing around the letter of the law. This is tough enough without opening up another can of worms.”

  “Yes, boss,” Sam said.

  Willy, as befit his style, stayed silent.

  * * *

  “God, I felt uncomfortable at that squad meeting,” Sammie said later, placing a bag of groceries onto the kitchen counter, next to the fridge. “It was like lying to Joe’s face.”

  “Oh, please,” Willy protested. “And that was worse than getting fired? What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I told him about the cameras.”

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, Emma in her portable playpen nearby, contentedly whacking at a plastic keyboard with a wooden spoon. Outside the window, a neighbor was mowing his lawn, taking advantage of the day’s extended light. Sammie had just walked in, having stopped by the store on the way home. Willy had been there several hours already, with proof of his labors scattered across the tabletop.

  Sammie cast it a glance. “I take it that’s from Dan Kravitz’s midnight outing?”

  Willy laughed, making Emma look up and smile. “I like that. Right—the inner life of Johnny Lucas.”

  Sam crossed to the pen and scooped her daughter up into her arms, making the child chortle happily. She buried her face in Emma’s neck, blew a raspberry, and twirled her around the room.

  “Find anything interesting?” Sam asked, still dancing.

  “Yeah. I don’t know if he’s in witness protection—it’s not like they give those guys a special ball cap or anything—but I’ll guarantee he wasn’t born Johnny Lucas. For one thing, can you lay your hands on your social security card? Right now?”

  Sam stopped to stare at him. “I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t seen it in year
s.”

  “Right,” Willy said, holding up a copy of one. “And if you could, it wouldn’t look like this—pristine as the day it was printed, which sure wasn’t in the 1940s. Just like exhibit number two.” He held up another document. “His birth certificate—also fresh off the press, by the looks of it.”

  Sammie kissed Emma and returned her to the playpen, where she began foraging through her plush animals. Sam pulled a chair alongside Willy’s. “Cool. What else?”

  “Usual stuff—insurance records, tax receipts, utility bills, bank statements. It’s what’s missing that’s interesting—no photo albums, no old letters, no framed pictures pre-dating the early 1970s. He married Linda Lucas—making her sound like a sitcom character to me—but that was seventeen years ago, after he made most of his dough. So, there’s junk in this pile relating to them, but nothing like most people have—keepsakes, pictures of parents, grandparents, shit like that. My gut tells me that if someone went wandering around some small-town cemetery somewhere, they’d eventually find a headstone for a John Lucas who died at the age of three months, or something. That’s how people used to steal identities back then—ask the local town clerk for a reissued birth certificate—” Here he held up Lucas’s version. “—and then start building from there—social security, eventually a passport. After you finally got something with a photo on it, you were off to the races. The resurrection of Johnny Lucas.”

  Sammie was looking intrigued but skeptical. “How many of those old documents do any of us have? If you didn’t like where you came from, or maybe grew up in an orphanage, you wouldn’t have any mementos, either.”

  Unusually for him, Willy didn’t argue. “Maybe. Linda has items going back to her childhood, but there’s nothing for him—no high school yearbook, no old favorite toy or baseball or hat, no beaten-up books or knickknacks with a sentimental value. You and I have some of that. Both of us do.”

  Now it was her turn. “You’re right.” She reached out and pushed some of the papers around haphazardly. “So what do we do?”

  “Well, the boss is right about squeezing Johnny. That’s an obvious first step. But if I’m right that there’s something wrong about him, he’s gonna clam up.”

  Willy leaned back, staring thoughtfully at Dan Kravitz’s stolen treasure trove. “I’d be more inclined to go after the lovely Mrs. Lucas—see what pillow talk she and the hubby might’ve shared.” He let out a sigh and checked his watch. “But that’s the boss’s turf now. Me, I’m gonna see if ol’ Greg’s decided to come home.”

  * * *

  Tony Tribuno had been Chesterfield’s police chief for more years than even he could remember. A mostly picturesque rural patch of New Hampshire, located between the Connecticut River and Keene, and bisected by the heavily traveled Route 9, Chesterfield was also host to a couple of large parks and a popular boating, fishing, and swimming magnet named Spofford Lake. As a result, Tribuno and his officers routinely had their hands full with rowdy tourists, reckless drivers, and a steady diet of thieves and burglars who used Route 9 as a quick getaway after filling their trunks from the seasonal homes dotting the map.

  It wasn’t New York City, but nor was it some modern version of Mayberry, North Carolina. And Tony Tribuno—an old friend of Joe’s—was no rube.

  They agreed to meet at one of the gas stations on Route 9, overlooking the twin bridges spanning the river, connecting West Chesterfield to Brattleboro. The two parallel, metal arch bridges—one rusted, closed off, and dating back to the Depression; the other a wider copy, but not fifteen years old—represented the almost farcical end result of years of political wrangling.

  Instead of simply tearing the old one down and replacing it with its safer but equally attractive replacement, the powers that be decided to keep the old-timer as a pedestrian span, but not to maintain it. They gave it a new name, dubbed it a historical artifact, and watched benignly while some locals struggled to transform it into a “bridge of flowers.” To Joe, the fact remained that a structure once deemed too dangerous to travel had been sanctified in order not to pay for its dismantling. Now, glowing like a postcard in the setting sun, the end result was a bizarre double image, one half of which looked ready to fall into the water.

  Joe was reflecting on all this when Tony pulled up in his threatening black Dodge Charger police car, his open and pleasant face at odds with the vehicle’s hormonal growl.

  “You liking how it feels to be in a non-Socialist state?” Tony asked, rolling down his window.

  Joe shook hands. “I’m a happy Vermonter, Tony. Give me taxes and tree huggers over a state motto that reads, ‘Live, Freeze, and Die’ any day.”

  Tribuno laughed and waited for a convoy of loud motorcycles to roar past, headed east. “Right. Meantime, all your countrymen come blasting over here, where they can eat cheap, avoid taxes, and not wear helmets.”

  “Cruel, Tony. Cruel.”

  Tribuno wrapped it up, the subject as threadbare as the jokes. “But not that off base. So, you want to roust one of our fine citizens without a warrant?”

  “You hear about our Concrete Man?” Joe asked him.

  “Who hasn’t? That’s what you get for living in that slum.”

  “Well, West Chesterfield resident Johnny—or more properly, John—Lucas used to work with the guy in the old days, before everybody thought he’d headed for California to enjoy the fun and sun.”

  “Ouch,” Tony said sympathetically. “So much for Plan A. And you think Lucas had something to do with his becoming part of a building slab?”

  “For starters. Lucas used to work for the guy who got shot a few days ago.”

  “No kidding? Clearly not a guy to stand next to in a storm.”

  “Nope. Which is why we wouldn’t mind having a chat with him,” Joe confirmed. “So far, though, all we’ve talked to is a speaker by the front door, telling us to disappear. I thought having you and the Batmobile along might make a better impression than my out-of-state badge.”

  Tony nodded. “Glad I wore a uniform today. Let’s go be intimidating.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, the two cops pulled up alongside the Lucas house in separate vehicles, Joe not willing to leave his back at the gas station. The stark, sharp-edged building remained as silent and still as an abandoned bunker. As Joe got out of his car, he studied the trees across the road—having earlier asked Willy precisely where the mystery cameras were located.

  “What’re you looking at?” Tony asked him, walking up.

  “Nothing,” Joe answered. “I’m supposed to be seeing some discreetly placed surveillance cameras. Up there.” He pointed.

  Tony followed his gaze. “‘Discreetly’ must be the operative word. I don’t see anything.”

  “They’re gone,” Joe said.

  Tribuno let that sink in. “Huh. Weird. Were they trained on people like us, or your shy pal inside?”

  Joe gave him a look. “That’s one of our growing list of problems—we think they were there to watch him.”

  “And now they’ve disappeared.”

  “Apparently.”

  Tribuno pondered that before asking, “What the hell have you dumped on us, Gunther? Being your next-door neighbor used to be a lot more fun.”

  Joe wasn’t so sure that was true. Back when Hank Mitchell was entombed, Brattleboro had been like a western bar town, straight out of the movies.

  He turned and indicated the forbidding house. “Shall we?”

  “Absolutely.” Tony Tribuno shifted his gun belt slightly and marched toward the front door.

  “Yes?” a female voice asked over the speaker, moments after he’d pressed the bell. “May I help you?”

  Tony’s voice was suddenly lower and more authoritative. “This is the Chesterfield Police, ma’am. We’d like to have a word.”

  “What about?”

  “Please open the door, ma’am.”

  There was a moment when Joe thought they’d hear only a variation of the familiar theme,
when the voice responded, “Yes. Okay. I’ll be right there.”

  “Miracles’ll never cease,” Joe said in an undertone.

  Tony smiled and rocked slightly on his heels. “It’s the uniform, man.”

  “Of course it is.” On a more serious level, however, Joe did wonder about the change.

  The door swung back to reveal a worried-looking woman, her hair tousled and her eyes wide. “Oh, my God. Did you find him? Is he okay?”

  Both men hesitated before Joe asked, “Is Johnny missing?”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again, and then asked in turn, “You didn’t find him?”

  “We didn’t know he was lost,” Tony explained. “Did you call the police?”

  She stared at the ground, touching her temple with her fingertips. She shook her head. “He wouldn’t like that.”

  “When did you last see him?” Joe asked.

  “When we went to bed. He must’ve left in the middle of the night.” She slumped against the doorframe and began crying. “What’s going on?”

  Tony looked at Joe, who shrugged and answered, “Fair question.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Have a seat, Mrs. Lucas.”

  Joe had found an office down the hall from the VBI, on the Municipal Building’s second floor, whose occupant he knew to be out of town for the week.

  “Could I get you a cup of coffee or a soda?”

  The still distraught Linda Lucas settled nervously onto a padded metal chair and shook her head. “No. I’m fine. Thank you.”

  Joe sat across from her and laid a small recorder on the table nearby. “With your permission, I’d like to record this, so there are no misunderstandings later on. That okay?”

  She barely glanced at it and nodded. “Like I care.”

  In that context, Joe recited his and her names out loud, along with the day’s date, before asking her, “How long have you known Johnny Lucas, Linda?”

  “We’ve been married seventeen years.”

  “Any kids?”

  “No. Johnny didn’t want them.”