Tales of River City

by Frank Zafiro

  “Not knowing might have been better for him,” I said.

  “Because he killed himself?” Fred asked. “I thought so, too. Most people did. But then after the funeral, it all came out.”

  “What came out?”

  “His financial troubles. He had lost everything and his company was on the verge of bankruptcy.”

  “It folded?”

  “I’m sure it will,” Fred said, “given enough time. Mr. Stoll only passed a month ago.”

  “A month?”

  He nodded. “Yes. And the biggest question everyone had was whether he killed himself over his wife’s affair or over his financial troubles. Or was it a combination of both?”

  That wasn’t the biggest question I had.

  Fred didn’t have any more worthwhile information, except for the name of the local constable that had investigated the case. He promised to call ahead for me. Before I left, he let me look at the archived stories on the Stoll suicide. The only thing of note was the name of Stoll’s personal attorney, Brian Carter. I looked him up in the phone book and on the way to the police station, I stopped at his office.

  Brian Carter had a florid face, pitted with acne scars. He wore a fashionable suit, but it wasn’t flashy. He would have been at home in any business meeting.

  His secretary was out to lunch, too, and I wondered if, in a town so small, she was out with the secretary from the newspaper.

  Carter’s handshake was firm but not crushing. He offered me coffee and a seat in a comfortable, high-backed chair. His friendliness faded a bit when I told him why I was there.

  “I don’t think there’s anything I can tell you that wouldn’t violate attorney-client privilege,” he said.

  “I’m not asking for that,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure things out here.”

  “Who is your client again?”

  I paused. “I guess I don’t really have one.” I told him about being hired by Richard. His lips pressed together in distaste at the hockey player’s name.

  “I don’t know anything about that man’s situation with Mrs. Stoll,” Carter said. “Frankly, I’m glad to see both of them have left town.”

  “Why?”

  “He was arrogant and a francophone, for starters. And she…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  “She was what?”

  He met my eyes. “She was my client’s wife.”

  “But you didn’t like her.”

  “That is irrelevant,” he said.

  I shrugged. “At one time, it probably was. But now that he’s gone, I think you can safely say how you felt.”

  He didn’t answer right away. Finally, he said, “Death does not sever an attorney’s obligation to his client.”

  “I’m just asking if you liked her, Mr. Carter.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was my considered opinion that she was marrying him for money.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Did she sign a pre-nuptial agreement?”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “It’s a matter of public record, isn’t it?”

  “No, Mr. Kopriva, it is not. If it were to exist, it would be a private contract between my client and Mrs. Stoll.”

  I frowned. “Isn’t Mrs. Stoll your client now?”

  “No. I worked directly for Mr. Stoll.”

  “She didn’t hire you after his death?”

  “I don’t know that I’d have taken her on if she had,” Carter said. “But in any event, she had her own attorney.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Someone from Quebec, I believe.”

  “Patrick Bourdon?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s it.”

  I found Lynn Petruk at the small police station downtown. She, too, was alone in the building. Once I told her that Fred had sent me, her severe features lightened a bit, though with her broad forehead and full mouth, she’d never be beautiful.

  “He called ahead,” she said, and offered me a chair in her office.

  “How many police officers do you have in Trail?” I asked her.

  “Four,” she said. “We work twelve-hour shifts. The Provincial Police back us up when we need it.”

  “Is that what happened at Mr. Stoll’s suicide scene?”

  She nodded. “Anything that serious, they take right over.”

  “Sounds like the FBI.”

  “I’m sure they’d get along.”

  “Still,” I said, “a local cop was probably the first on scene, right?”

  “Perry Winfield was, yeah. All he really did was secure the scene and make a phone call, though.”

  “Could I talk to him?”

  Lynn checked her watch. “He’s probably deep in REM sleep right about now.”

  I shrugged. “I was just curious if he saw anything strange at the scene, is all.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked at me, an odd expression on her face. “What exactly are you looking for, Mr. Kopriva?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know that, either.”

  I told her everything, from Richard hiring me to Bourdon paying me. She listened carefully and didn’t interrupt. When I’d finished, I spread my hands. “What do you think?”

  Lynn pursed her lips. I could tell she was measuring her words. “I think that I’d be suspicious, too. But most people would take the money and be done with it.”

  “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve got the time to look into things, I guess. And more than that, I don’t like the idea of being used.”

  She watched me for a moment, then said, “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  I leaned forward. “I want your cop sense of this thing. Did Mr. Stoll kill himself? If he did, why? If he didn’t, who murdered him and why?”

  Lynn shook her head. “I can’t help you with that, Mr. Kopriva, other than to say the official ruling by the Provincial Police was suicide.”

  “Was there a note?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Did he say why he did in his note?”

  “Yes. Now—”

  “What was his reason?”

  Lynn sighed in exasperation. “You told Fred you used to be a cop, right?”

  “No,” I answered, and I hadn’t.

  She cocked her head at me. “Really? He must have researched that as well.”

  “Researched?”

  “Fred did more than just call ahead, Mr. Kopriva. He did some background on you. He told me about your famous shootout when you were a police officer.”

  I didn’t respond, though I could feel the tension in my jaw. I knew what was coming next.

  “He told about the little girl you let die.”

  “That was a long time ago,” I whispered.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know you. All I know is that I don’t want you being some kind of a cowboy in my jurisdiction, or screwing things up.”

  “That was a long time ago,” I repeated, a little louder this time.

  “It’s all I know,” she said, just as loud. “Now, do you need directions out of town?”

  I was two hours away and a little more than half way to River City before the burn from that conversation faded enough to think. I stopped for gas in Colville and bought some convenience store coffee, mixing in a little cocoa to temper the bitterness. Poor man’s mocha, we used to call it when I was a cop.

  A picture was beginning to form in my mind. There were a lot of soft spots and more than a few what ifs, but it fit what I knew. Anne Marie and Richard were having an affair. Both of them admitted it. Most of the town knew it. If Anne Marie was unaware of her husband’s financial troubles and still thought he was loaded, there was a motive there for her to kill him and make it look like a suicide. It wouldn’t be the first time someone was killed for their money. Then she could run off with Richard.

  I set my Styrofoam cup on the h
ood of my car and rubbed my palms together. It made sense, but at the same time, it didn’t. She already had the money and Richard. What would she gain by killing her husband? Was he tight-fisted with money by nature? Or had his financial troubles forced him to become that way?

  Maybe he found out about her affair and planned to divorce her. But in that case, wouldn’t she get half of his assets? She would, unless she signed a pre-nuptial agreement of some kind. And Carter wouldn’t let on either way about whether one existed or not.

  Drugging Stoll would be easy enough, I figured, but there was the suicide note to fake, too. Then again, how close would they look at a situation where it came out that the dead guy’s business had failed and his wife was having an affair? Would they even do a handwriting analysis?

  The gas nozzle clicked off and I replaced it on the pump and put the gas cap back on my car. Then I grabbed my to-go cup and got back on the road. It was another sixty miles to River City.

  As I drove, I wondered where Richard came in. If she murdered Stoll, did Richard know she killed him? Did he help her cover it up? Do it for her? Or was he involved at all?

  It seemed that I had more questions coming home than I did leaving.

  Clell sipped his Maxwell House and shook his head. “It’s an awful lot of guesswork,” he said.

  “Sure it is. But what if it is true?”

  “If it is true, then that woman killed her husband for money.”

  “Of which there was none.”

  “That would be the irony,” he said, sipping again. “Seems a terrible shame when someone dies, but all the more so when he dies for nothing.”

  “I’m guessing pretty close to nothing is what Anne Marie is getting, whether she killed him or not.”

  “So she’s blackmailing the hockey player?” Clell asked, his voice doubtful. “Why would she do that? Why not just wait and go through the courts? A public figure like him wouldn’t be able to avoid paying child support of some kind.”

  “Unless the baby isn’t his and she knows it,” I said.

  “That’s as much a long shot as her killing the husband for his money, you ask me.”

  “Something’s not right,” I insisted. “Why did they pay me four hundred dollars for nothing?”

  We sat in silence, drinking coffee and listening to the light hum of the building’s heating system.

  “I saw something on TV once,” Clell said.

  “TV?” My voice was doubtful.

  “Uh-huh. It doesn’t fit exactly, but it seems there was a guy on a show that needed a witness, so he hired one.”

  “Hired a witness?”

  “Yup.”

  I thought about that. The longer I thought about it, the less stupid it seemed. “You might have something. After all, who would make a better witness than an ex-cop? But a witness to what?”

  Clell shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. You’re not the witness. Your friend is.”

  “Matt?”

  Clell nodded. “I think so. I don’t think the hockey player or his lawyer planned on you getting involved. But once your friend insisted that you could help, they had to go along with things to avoid suspicion.”

  I considered his words. They were sound.

  “They gave me some make-work and paid me off,” I said, shaking my head.

  Clell nodded. “It would seem so.”

  “That still leaves the question, what did they want a witness to? To the woman blackmailing him?”

  “That,” Clell said, “and maybe to her being obsessed or unbalanced.”

  “Unbalanced?”

  Clell nodded. “Yeah. In case she killed herself.”

  My stomach sank. “Oh, Christ.”

  Several marked and unmarked police units were parked at the Celtic Spirit motel. The area was roped off with yellow crime scene tape, but I slipped under the outer perimeter simply by walking with purpose. When I approached cabin twelve, a muscular, young black officer stood in my way.

  “Who are you?”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, ignoring his question.

  “A crime scene,” he said. “How’d you get past the outer perimeter tape?”

  “Is she dead?”

  “Are you family?”

  That answered the question. I sagged and shook my head.

  “Then who are you?”

  “He’s Stefan Kopriva,” a voice came from behind him.

  I looked up to see Officer Rick Hunter approaching. I glanced down at his sleeve and saw sergeant’s stripes. That didn’t surprise me.

  “You’ve never heard of Kopriva?” Hunter asked the officer, who shook his head no.

  I gave Hunter a neutral nod, hoping to cut him off. He ignored me.

  “Kopriva was a folk hero for a little while, back in the early nineties. Had a little shootout with a robber. Oh, and he let a cop and a little girl die.”

  “Rick—”

  “My name’s Sergeant Hunter,” he said coldly. “And you are about to be under arrest for violating a crime scene.”

  “I just want to know—”

  “McClaren,” Hunter said. “Get him out of here.”

  The black officer grabbed my right arm at the wrist and the elbow. He had a grip as strong as Richard’s.

  “—if she’s dead,” I finished.

  “Hold it,” Hunter ordered.

  McClaren stopped.

  “You know something about this situation, Kopriva?” Hunter asked me.

  I almost laughed at his choice of words. “Pound sand, Sergeant.”

  Hunter scowled. “Get him out of here.”

  McClaren walked me to the edge of the perimeter and released me. “If you come back inside, I’ll have to arrest you for obstructing an investigation, sir.”

  “I won’t. Tell me something, though.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Just tell me how she was killed. That’s all.”

  McClaren stared at me, then said, “It was suicide. She took some pills.”

  I sat in the darkness of my apartment, staring up at the ceiling. A ray of light from the streetlight outside cut a large swath through the center of the room, and I stared at the yellowish tint and ran things back and forth through my head. I asked the hows and the whys and in the end, I decided I was trying too hard to make the thing too complicated. It was never anything more than it seemed to be just below the surface. All you had to do was follow the money.

  Of course, I didn’t have any proof.

  And then I knew what I had to do.

  Phillipe Richard came out of the dressing room and into the hallway. Sweat matted his hair and rolled down the sides of his face. It was in between periods of the Flyers game versus Nelson. Richard had a goal and fight in the first period.

  “I will get some fine for this,” he told me, wiping his sleeve across his forehead. “Coming out of the locker room.”

  “You should get prison,” I told him.

  “For what?” His expression was one of surprise, but irritation rimmed his eyes.

  “You killed Aaron Stoll,” I said. “You poisoned him for his wife. Or the money, I don’t know which.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “It’s true. We both know it. And when it turned out that he didn’t have any money left, things got rough between the two of you. That’s why you broke up.”

  “I broke it off with her because I was traded here,” he insisted.

  “And then she followed you here.”

  “Yes, and blackmailed me.”

  “Over the pregnancy?”

  “Yes, of course. What else?”

  “I think she blackmailed you over your part in killing her husband,” I told him. “I think she held onto some evidence and rather than pay her off, you made it look like she—”

  He lashed out then, his huge fist catching me on the chin. I flew back into the wall and crumpled to the floor.

  “You’re some kind of smart guy, huh?”

  I
shook my head to clear it. Warm blood flowed over my lip and down my chin.

  “Well, let me tell you something, smart guy. You better shut up and stay away from me or I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  “Will you do it with sleeping pills, Phillipe?” I asked.

  He snatched me up with his left hand and punched me again with his right. The world tilted on its axis and there was a shuddering, strobing of light.

  “Shut up!” he said.

  “You killed her,” I said wetly. “You killed them both.”

  He brought his face close to mine. “Yes,” he hissed softly, “but so what? You can’t prove anything. And if you get in my way, I will kill you, too.”

  I gave a sputtering laugh, sending a light spray of blood into his face. He recoiled and shoved me backward into the wall.

  “Disgusting slime,” he said, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  “Tell me one more thing,” I said.

  “Shut up.”

  “Whose baby was it? Was it his or was it yours?”

  There was no reaction in his eyes. “Who cares?” he said.

  At that point, an assistant coach stepped out of the locker room. He saw me against the wall and gave Richard a quizzical look. Richard shook his head and the coach shrugged.

  “Time to go,” he told Richard.

  The players filed out of the locker room. Some were too focused to notice my presence. Others glanced at me curiously. I met and held those glances, hoping they remembered my face. Richard tapped gloves with each player as they filed past, studiously ignoring me. When the last player walked by, Richard fell in behind them, never giving me a backward glance.

  The crowd cheered as the hometown boys took the ice. When Richard strode out of the tunnel, the cheers doubled.

  The crowd loved him.

  “You’re no Lancelot,” I wheezed and spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground.

  With a slow effort, I rose, my body aching. I wiped the blood off my chin and reached into my jacket pocket. The small mini-recorder was still running. I stopped it, rewound it and listened. Richard’s hissing, deadly voice made me shudder. Then it made me smile.

  Limping, I made my way out of the arena.

  Beaten By Anger

  In the darkness of his cell, Phillipe Richard crouched on his haunches and put his back against the wall. The block guard called lights out an hour ago, but Richard couldn’t sleep. He hardly ever could.