Presumption of Guilt

by Archer Mayor

  They waited until he’d faded into the night before Willy said to Dan, “I guess this is good-bye.”

  Sally watched her father as he pondered a response. For herself, Gunther’s words and what had led to them marked a watershed, along with a confirmation that a future involving college and a life apart from her attractive but obviously troubled father was the only one viable.

  He had been her foundation from infancy—thoughtful, loving, supportive, and generous. Now her own maturity allowed her to see the perils he’d be facing in her absence. In that funny way, their roles had flipped with what had befallen them recently—Dan was now at an impasse, while she was facing a distinctly well-marked road ahead.

  She was concerned about his odds, especially with what Joe Gunther had just said. Sally knew her father was an addict, as driven in his lifestyle as any drinker by his craving. Coming to a crossroads as he had at the hands of Willy Kunkle and Johnny Lucas might have struck Sally as an obvious sign, but she was unsure of its impact on Dan. For that matter, she was all but convinced that, especially after her departure, he’d rationalize what had happened, and try to resume where he’d left off.

  That realization made her sad and a little lonely.

  She barely heard him as he said to Willy, “I guess so. Try not to take too many chances, Mr. Kunkle,” and shook his hand.

  * * *

  The following morning, Joe made no mention of his meeting with Willy and the Kravitzes as he stood before his desk and addressed the squad.

  “Yesterday afternoon,” he said instead, “I contacted the U.S. Marshals and informed them of the death of Johnny Lucas, asking if the name rang any bells. They are feds, of course, so the fact that one of their own witnesses is dead may not stop them from not answering, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask. So far, I haven’t heard back.”

  “Will they at least tell you if he wasn’t one of theirs?” Sam asked.

  “I put my request in exactly those terms, but—like I said—we’ll have to see,” Joe answered her. “In the meantime, we’ve also circulated his fingerprints, hoping that something in his past—which I expect was full of law enforcement involvements—will come drifting up to give us a hand.”

  He looked at Lester. “Any luck on the Elliot Street canvass for around the time Lucas was killed?”

  In response, Spinney turned his laptop around to face most of the small room. “Not with the canvass. I’m coordinating that with the PD, so something may still pop up. But in the meantime, I went after every camera I could find on that block, which turns out to be quite a few.”

  “Look at how many times they’ve come up in this case already,” Sam commented.

  “The interesting thing,” Lester went on, “is that my best footage came from the PD itself. A few years ago, they hung a couple of high-end cameras downtown, including one on Elliot. They’ve had maintenance problems with ’em, off and on.” He manipulated the computer to bring up what looked like a static street view, familiar to them all. “But, as you can see, everything was working fine when Lucas met his end.”

  He pointed at the image with a pencil. “Here’s Lucas, pulling up before the Kravitzes appear. He gets out, locks his door, and heads for Kelly Doane’s. But check this out,” he added, clearly pleased. “A second car, registration in clear view, with one man at the wheel. He parks and waits. Keep an eye on him and the time stamp. Here come the Kravitzes, first daughter, then dad, a few minutes apart. But our second driver stays put. Then, who leaves Kelly Doane’s building, moving fast and looking a little freaked?”

  “Presto,” Willy grunted.

  “Kravitz, father and daughter, half carrying Kelly between them,” Joe said.

  “Implying that Lucas’s killer was tailing him, and maybe had no clue about either the Kravitzes or Kelly.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Joe said. “But it does make it look like Lucas and his killer knew each other.”

  “Last but not least.” Lester tapped the screen. “So far, you haven’t been able to make out the guy in the car. But here, right after those three take off down the street, he gets out, feeds the meter, like a good citizen, and walks up the sidewalk, where—” He paused to make the image a little larger. “—he enters Kelly’s building.”

  “Hold it,” Willy suddenly ordered. “Freeze it there. Look. Just before he goes inside. He’s signaling somebody.”

  “You sure?” Lester asked, embarrassed at having missed it. “Looks like he’s tossing something into the gutter.”

  “Trust me,” Willy said, smiling confidently. They did, of course. Surveillance was something he knew about.

  This time, he was the one pointing at the screen. “Right here. Watch the little dude. Mr. Hit Man goes inside, and Little Dude chucks his butt into the street and falls in behind the Kravitzes and Doane. Perfect tail setup.”

  “Shit,” Joe said, straightening. “If we’re right, the bastard’s gonna have it both ways. He can focus on taking out Lucas, and with his hired hand on their tail, also chase down Dan and Sally at leisure. Assuming that’s what he’s here to do.”

  “Sure he is,” Willy stressed. “That’s gotta be what’s behind those mystery cameras across from Lucas’s house. Hit Man was keeping an eye on Johnny, saw Kravitz do his thing, and added him to his to-do list.”

  “What thing?” Lester asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Willy told him. “Anyway, it must be tied to the distant past—Hank, Ridgeline Roofing, money laundering, where Lucas came from before all that.”

  “What’s past is prologue,” Joe quoted, almost to himself.

  “Whatever that means,” Willy shot back. “The good news is that I know who’s working for the man with the garrote.”

  “The tail?” Joe asked, pleased but not completely surprised.

  “Darren Leroy,” Willy stated. “And we haven’t chatted in way too long.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  As irony would have it, Darren Leroy and Dan Kravitz shared the same social orbit. But here, as among the rich, the middle class, or any other lumped-together group, their contrasting outlooks put them a universe apart. Where Kravitz was an intellectual loner, whose pathology combined a need to pry with a craving to be invisible, Leroy was a rodent whose aversion to work was offset by an inclination to steal. Both were crooks, legally speaking, but where Dan was unconventional and thus oddly appealing, Darren was predictably mundane.

  When Willy located him, after tracing his whereabouts through a network of like-minded layabouts, Darren was supposedly volunteering at a local senior center, serving up lunch and washing dishes, while actually keeping track of any momentarily abandoned purses or unlocked cars in the parking lot.

  Willy knew his man. Instead of entering the center openly for a straightforward conversation—as logic might have suggested—he borrowed a patrolman from the Brattleboro Police to walk through the front door and make a display of asking for Darren’s whereabouts. The result, as predicted, was that within a minute, Leroy came bursting through the service entrance, only to trip headlong over Willy’s outstretched leg.

  “Got him,” Willy said dourly into his radio to the patrolman, watching Darren trying to gather his wits, spread-eagled on the parking lot. “Thanks for the help.”

  “Ten-Four. Anytime.”

  Willy crouched beside the fallen man, incidentally placing one knee into the small of his back. “Hey, Darren. Long time.”

  Leroy squirmed. “Ow, man. That hurts. Get off me.”

  “Why’d you run?” Willy asked, ignoring him.

  “I forgot I had to be somewhere. I’m late.”

  Kunkle laughed. “It wasn’t that uniformed gorilla at the front door?”

  “No, man. I told you.”

  Willy increased his weight, making Leroy cry out, “I want to change topics, Darren. Tell me how much you got paid to follow those three people on Elliot yesterday.”

  His victim’s momentary stillness gave him away, not to mention his
transparent stall: “What three people?”

  Willy shifted position, seized Leroy’s scrawny shoulder, and flipped him onto his back. He then patted the man down, removed two wallets from his baggy cargo pants pockets, and laid them side by side on Darren’s chest.

  Leroy stared down the length of his body, seemingly transfixed as Willy opened both wallets.

  “You don’t look like Gertrude Williams,” Willy said, reading off the first wallet’s license.

  “I found that on the floor,” Darren said. “I was about to turn it in to Lost and Found when you rousted me.”

  “Thought you were late for an appointment, Darren,” Willy reminded him, sounding bored as he opened the second wallet. “Or should I call you William … how do you pronounce this? Benajic? Benochick?”

  He let the wallet drop, along with the subject matter. Instead, he grabbed Leroy’s T-shirt in one massive fist, pulled him upright, and propped him against the wheel of a nearby truck like a rag doll.

  “Okay—enough. You know what I want. You know what I can throw at you for charges. Let’s cut the crap and treat each other like professionals. Give me what you know about the old guy who hired you to tail the threesome.”

  Leroy visibly wrestled with his options—to the point where Willy half expected him to start counting odds on his fingers—when he finally gave up with a sigh, perhaps defeated by the math.

  “I don’t know the guy. Never saw him before.”

  “How’d he know to reach out to you?”

  “He said a mutual friend. Didn’t give me no name.”

  “And you didn’t ask.”

  “He paid me a hundred bucks,” Leroy protested.

  “Okay,” Willy agreed. “Point taken. Was there anything about him you remember—accent, reference to some city or state, maybe another local, like you?”

  Darren shook his head.

  “How ’bout his own name?” Willy continued. “What’d he call himself.”

  “Walter.”

  “Walter Who?” Willy asked, struck by the name actually sounding real, unlike something like Bob or Bill. Had that been carelessness? Or hubris, from a man thinking himself above the need for anonymity?

  “Nuthin’. That was it.”

  “Fair ’nough. Did he describe the people? Give ’em names? What?”

  “No names, and he only told me about the geeky guy in black with glasses, and the good-looking teenage blonde. The skanky girl was just with ’em. Didn’t matter—there weren’t gonna be too many like the two he described coming outta that rathole.”

  “And what was your assignment?”

  “Like you said: Follow ’em. That’s it.”

  “Where’d you meet Walter? Motel room?”

  “Nah. His car. A rental. I could tell from the sticker.”

  “Same one he had parked on the street when he signaled you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You notice anything in the car that told you anything about him?”

  For the first time, Darren looked thoughtful. “Just the opposite. They coulda turned that thing around for a new customer in five minutes. The floor mats weren’t even dirty. There was nuthin’ except the dude himself.”

  “When was this?”

  “Maybe fifteen minutes before the job.”

  Good planner, Willy thought. Walter probably had several contacts like Darren, available for instant service if needed.

  “All right,” he said. “Last question about Walter: He give you any way to reach out to him? Cell number, location, signal, anything?”

  There was—to Willy—the telling hesitation of a fraction of a second before Darren replied, “Nope.”

  Willy smacked him across the temple, hard, and leaned in so their noses were almost touching. “Don’t you even think about fucking me around right now. How the hell was he supposed to find out where you followed them to? You may think I’m an asshole, but don’t you ever treat me like one.” He cuffed him again. “Do you understand?”

  “Ow. Yeah, man. I’m sorry, all right? It’s a habit. I didn’t mean to.”

  “I bet. Answer the question. How were you supposed to tell him where they’d ended up?”

  “He gave me a cell phone with a number already in it.”

  “You still got it?”

  He couldn’t help himself. Darren gave Willy a pitying look, which earned him a third whack.

  “Damn. Cut it out. I gave it back. You’re not supposed to hit me.”

  “You’re not supposed to dick me around,” Willy countered. “What about the three you followed? Where did they go?”

  This time, Leroy’s expression showed pure bafflement. “It didn’t make no sense. First they went to a fancy penthouse downtown—that’s where they ditched the skanky girl. Then, later at night, they hooked up with a couple of guys in the municipal garage. I didn’t get a good look at them. After that came the crazy part: they left the two guys pretty quick and went to that busted-up old falling-down greenhouse at the edge of town, with all the broken windows. I hung around after they got there, but they never came out. That’s what I told Walter when we met. He didn’t seem to care. Paid me my money, took back the phone, and told me he’d already cancelled the number on it—as if I hadn’t guessed—and that was it. We were done.”

  “You talking about Grissom’s Greenhouse?”

  The other man raised his eyebrows. “That’s what I said. The big abandoned one.”

  Willy rose from his crouch, thinking how that made sense.

  Darren stared up at him. “We good? Can I go?”

  Despite his better instincts, Willy stepped back. “I catch you jaywalking, you’re going to jail. Go away.”

  Leroy needed no more encouragement. He scrambled to his feet and trotted off, leaving the wallets on the ground, where Willy picked them up to be delivered to the center’s management—along with a warning about the quality of their volunteers.

  * * *

  Joe and Lester waited patiently for the clerk at the car rental agency to read the court’s paperwork—word by word—before he looked up at them and blinked.

  “So, you’d like to know who rented this car?”

  Joe considered his choice of responses, tempted to give Kunkle some competition in his absence, before settling on, “That’s the gist of it.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Yes,” Lester answered shortly, less generous of spirit.

  The clerk nodded before turning to his computer, where he engaged in a sequence of eloquent facial expressions, as if responding to an interesting bit of dialogue only he could overhear.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Looks like we have a Charles Kuralt, from Bayonne, New Jersey.”

  Lester laughed quietly as Joe commented, “Clever—using a man with a double life. Our boy has a sense of humor.”

  The clerk again paused wonderingly.

  “Never mind,” Joe soothed him. “Did you take care of Mr. Kuralt?”

  “I did,” he said brightly.

  “Tell me about that.”

  The man stared at him. “He was nice.”

  Both cops waited for more. In vain.

  “Nifty,” Joe finally said. “Good to know. Did he say how long he wanted the car for? Take out insurance? Mention anything about why he was here or where he was from? Look funny? Smell funny? Stand out in any detail?”

  The clerk’s mouth half opened, and Joe knew he’d overstepped again.

  “Smell funny?”

  Lester leaned on the counter, bringing his face close enough to their quarry’s to make the latter step back. “What’s your name?”

  “Dick.”

  “Of course it is. So—Dick—if somebody walked in right after we left and asked you what it was like dealing with us, you might have something to say, no? I was the tall one, he was the older one. He was polite, I got visibly more irritated as the conversation went on. Stuff like that. Get the idea?”

  Dick nodded.

  “That’s wha
t we want concerning Mr. Kuralt. Give us your impressions of the man.”

  Gathering his thoughts, Dick nodded, swallowed, and said, “I get it. Well, he was about average height, pretty skinny but with a gut, and a white comb-over across a mostly bald head. He wore reading glasses when he filled out the form, and they were on a cord around his neck. He had a fancy gold watch and what looked like an organization ring on his left hand. On his right, he had one of those bad-looking blue thumbnails, like when you hit yourself with a hammer, and he had an old scar across his knuckles. He was wearing a white shirt and black tie, partly loosened, and an older dark blue suit that didn’t fit him too well, and could’ve done with a cleaning. He had two pens in the outer handkerchief pocket—cheap clicker models. His shoes were brown and scuffed.”

  Joe and Lester exchanged startled glances.

  Dick took no notice, lost in some mental middle space. “He wasn’t happy or sad,” he continued, “but something in between, like somebody you interrupt when they’re watching TV. He had to think about how to sign his name, ’cause he paused for a second at the bottom of the form, and he was super vague when I asked him why he was in the area.”

  Lester was laughing enough by now that Joe had to ask, “Very nice. Excellent job. These folks required to give you a driver’s license? Which you’re supposed to keep on file?”

  “Yup,” Dick replied. “That’s it.”

  Joe looked at him without comment, hoping the man’s earlier burst of insight would continue. But apparently it had gone missing again, forcing Joe to add, “You think we could see it?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  He moved to a filing cabinet adjacent to the counter and smoothly removed a file from one of the drawers. He flipped it open and handed them a single, full-color, Xerox copy of a New York State license, which showed neither the real Charles Kuralt or the thin-haired man they were after.

  Lester eyed Dick suspiciously and asked, “Did you look at this when you copied it?”

  “Sure.”

  “And you didn’t notice that the address was different than what he wrote on the rental form—New York versus New Jersey?”

  Dick didn’t appear troubled. “Lots of people have that. They moved or something. Doesn’t mean anything.”