by West, CJ
Oliver heard tires skid to a stop in the shells. Feet scurried in through the door. He couldn’t turn his head far enough to see the officers rush into the foyer and spread out, but he could hear them moving in the living room, the dining room, and the hall. Elizabeth rejoiced at the sight of the police downstairs.
“Thank God! Up here!” she yelled.
Two officers raced upstairs until they saw the women were standing guard. The man down in the foyer radioed for the coroner and a homicide investigator.
Oliver screamed through the tape, “Charlie Marston’s insane. He killed his father and stabbed me,” but all that escaped was a series of excited humming sounds, unintelligible even to him. He pleaded for help with his eyes, tilting his head back and forth the few inches he could move, but the officers stayed back, unsure about the scene they’d rushed into.
Murders in Westport were rare. Oliver guessed that neither young officer had been to a murder scene before. They’d been trained in crime scene procedures once or twice and they’d probably responded to fatal car wrecks, but they’d never come face to face with a killer. Their inexperience was his only hope.
Outside, the fire engines encircled the barn. The men yelled to each other as they rolled out hoses and prepared to deliver thousands of gallons of water onto the raging fire. It didn’t matter what they did now. Thanks to Charlie’s sawdust technique the barn was completely destroyed, putting the fire out now only meant more work for the demolition crew.
The nearest officer, a thick man, short by police standards, squatted and looked at Oliver’s bound hands. He nodded approvingly and looked Oliver over as if he were a trophy animal bagged on safari. The dark skin and short stature suggested the officer was Portuguese. “Is this Charlie Marston?”
Elizabeth was stunned. “Of course not!”
They still had no idea what he had done. The officer’s question was rhetorical, but Elizabeth’s response had him stepping back and eyeing Oliver warily. Time was running out.
“Why would you be looking for Charlie?” Deirdre asked, her puzzled look too convincing to be a fraud.
Desperate, Oliver erupted beneath the tape, hoping the timing of his outburst would move the officer to peel back the tape and let him state his case. The officer leaned forward to do just that, but Elizabeth stepped in, waving the blunt end of the bat at her captive. Charlie had prepared her well.
“The man you’re looking for is right here,” she said.
The officer straightened up. “Who is he?”
“Oliver Joyet.”
The officer recognized the name. There was still hope.
Oliver screamed again and stomped his bound feet.
…
Officer Pinto stood between the two frightened women and the man duct-taped to the railing, trying to reconcile the original call with what he’d found at the scene. Dispatch confirmed the mobile caller as Oliver Joyet and the perpetrator as Charlie Marston. Pinto had found a smashed cellular phone near the top step, most likely Oliver’s, broken in the struggle. Back at headquarters they replayed the tape and confirmed the sound of a running car and a fire in the background.
Oliver’s original story jived with the facts. He saw the fire, called, then rushed inside in time to see Charlie Marston hang his father. So why were the ladies so ferociously defending the man Pinto had come to arrest? And why had Marston disappeared if he was innocent? Harried, unsure what to do next, Pinto wondered if this was typical for a grieving wife and mother. Would she defend the son who killed her husband? Was she afraid of him even though he wasn’t here?
Pinto needed to hear both sides of the story. He put a hand on Oliver’s forehead, pinning it to the post then yanked the tape from his mouth with a jerk.
“God that hurt,” Oliver said, licking a bloody, sticky lip, “but thanks.”
“It’s the only way.”
The mother couldn’t tolerate the friendly banter. “Don’t listen to him. He tried to kill us. He’s had us trapped here for two days.”
“Mrs. Marston, would it really take me two days to kill you?”
Both women turned to Pinto and erupted at once.
“He killed my husband! Look what that savage did to him.”
“He filled the house with snakes,” the second woman said.
The scenario was one of the strangest Pinto had ever heard and he couldn’t quite hold back a snicker.
“It’s over, Elizabeth. I’m sure your hot-shot lawyer will get Charlie off, but don’t involve me in your family dirt.” Oliver’s voice rang of senatorial distinction.
“Don’t listen to him, he’s insane!” Elizabeth shouted, poking him with the bat.
In spite of his detractors, Oliver appeared the most rational of the three.
The other woman closed in, forcing Pinto to stand directly over Oliver’s legs to keep them separated. He was glad when Frenet joined him and helped usher the women over against the wall. Pinto motioned to his partner. “Why don’t you take the ladies into the next room while I get Mr. Joyet’s version of events?”
“I’m not going back in there!” the older woman yelled.
Panic whitened their faces. Their fear was real, but was it Marston or Joyet that scared them? They had tape residue on their wrists and faces similar to the tape that held Joyet to the post. Joyet couldn’t have set them free in his condition, and the women couldn’t have bound him up if he had. Only Marston could have bound Oliver to the post. But why didn’t he re-bind the women if he was guilty? And why didn’t he stick around if he was innocent?
Frenet spoke for the first time. “Would you ladies feel safer downstairs? Or outside in a cruiser?” The older woman stepped forward, clearly relieved.
Pinto was always amazed at the way women responded to Frenet’s six-five frame and deep soothing voice. His easy demeanor emanated protective power. Before the women were halfway down the stairs, Frenet had the bat.
Pinto adopted a stern expression and turned to Joyet. “Ok, you called us here then walked in. What happened?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“And?”
“Charlie Marston was my client.”
“And you ratted on him? That can’t be good for business.”
“I had no choice. I thought he could handle what I needed to tell him, but it set him off.” Oliver cast his eyes toward Charles hanging behind him.
“What did you tell him?”
“For starters, his father built a fortune by bankrupting wineries then buying them. That was my first report six weeks ago.”
This was no motive. The kid cooled off for six weeks, then offed his father? Pinto shook his head. “Why now? Why’d he wait six weeks?”
“He didn’t. He asked me to keep digging. I gave him my last report last night.”
Pinto was skeptical. “What did you tell him this time?”
“His father paid to have his knee broken.”
“What?”
“Charlie was going to be drafted high by the Steelers three years ago. You can check it with Ohio State and the Steelers’ scouting organization. His father was a total prick. He needed him in the family business and the only way to ensure that was to end his football career, so he did.”
“No father would do that.”
“Imagine how pissed you’d be if you knew yours did?”
Pinto couldn’t believe a father could cripple his own son, but he couldn’t help glancing in disgust at the man hanging by the rope.
“I have proof.”
Pinto’s heart pounded with rage just hearing the story. He imagined how Charlie Marston had reacted and thought maybe he deserved to go free.
“Listen, he knows I have the evidence that will put him away. That’s why he trussed me up and ran. You’ve got to help me. The proof is all there in my office, but he’s going back to cover himself. I know he is. You’ve got to stop him. If you let him destroy the pictures, he’ll try to hang this on me.”
Pinto looked at the
dried blood on Oliver’s forearm and the rusty-looking smears on his shirt and pants. The old lady didn’t slice him. Oliver was stabbed in a struggle with Marston. It certainly looked like Marston bound him up and rushed out to destroy the evidence and Pinto wasn’t going to let that happen on his watch.
He radioed a car to the address Oliver gave him.
Chapter Fifty-six
The pictures brought a twinge to Charlie’s knee, a feeling he usually ignored, but knowing his injury was intentional multiplied his pain. He spent years pushing himself in the weight room and on the track, years catching passes and taking hits, all to get him to that day standing in the sun with Julie. One moment, an early-round draft selection was within reach and the next, his dream was obliterated, ripped out of place like the tendons and cartilage in his knee. He’d never know if he would have risen to stardom or struggled as a second stringer. A decade-old vendetta had stolen that chance from him. At that moment, he didn’t know who to hate more: Oliver for shattering his knee or his father for setting the catastrophe in motion.
When his composure returned, he looked back at the corkboard. The evidence mounted in the succeeding photos just as it had for Bill Caulfield. The first was Charlie standing in the Caulfield’s kitchen with an array of tools at his feet. He stared at the picture, stunned that Oliver took it without arousing his suspicion. The camera must have been tiny. The next three photos showed Charlie carrying the bag of corn, then his lower body in a tight shot of the mice scattering in the basement, and finally him holding the drill up in the attic. The holes Oliver had drilled were clearly visible behind him. Charlie was horrified and impressed at the same time.
All of a sudden, Oliver’s collection of Bill Caulfield pictures made sense. Oliver hadn’t accidentally exposed his own motivations for sabotage. He had framed Charlie and created a no-lose scenario for himself. Bill had already lost his wife, his job, and his house. The only way for him to avoid jail was to convince the jury someone had done this to him. That someone was Charlie. The legal battle would be long and nasty. No matter who won, the battle would take its toll.
Another series of pictures began with the farmhouse in daylight. The next showed the rental car parked beside Henri Deudon’s, the photo Laroche had been e-mailed. The next was Deirdre naked and strapped to the bed. Underneath, was a photo he hadn’t seen: Henri Deudon with his neck oddly twisted among stacks of hundred-dollar bills. The implication of the photos was clear: Charlie killed him for the money. Worse, the money was gone and Charlie was sleeping with his widow.
Charlie gasped at the next photo even as the footsteps came closer down the hall. The pattern on the couch cushions was unmistakable. They had been pulled aside to show the money neatly stacked in boxes underneath. He gasped. The money was in his house and there was no way he could get to it without alerting the police and firemen swarming around the barn. Oliver had used the snakes to keep him out while he moved the money in. By now, Oliver had cleaned the house and removed the snakes. Charlie’s version of the story would sound like insanity. The body upstairs, the money in the couch, and the widow in his bed were damning evidence. Bill Caulfield might be the least of Charlie’s legal troubles.
Oliver would show the police to the money then send them here.
The door swung open, but Charlie was transfixed on the next photo. TJ Lynch lay with a bullet hole in his forehead. The dead man in his house was no surprise, and the image was much less horrific than suddenly encountering the body in the dark. A figure took two steps into the room and Charlie felt the weight of the revolver in his hands. Astounded by a final gruesome epiphany, Charlie popped open the cylinder and pressed the ejector. Five live bullets dropped on the floor along with two spent casings. This was the gun that killed TJ Lynch. The other bullet was meant for Oliver. The bullet he fired through the window linked him to TJ’s killing with prints and powder on his hands.
Oliver couldn’t have scripted the timing more perfectly. No sooner had the depths of his plan gripped Charlie than his captor appeared inside the door. The pictures had engrossed him when he should have been shredding them one after the other. The gun had done its job, too. He knew he should have shunned it from the beginning. Why had he picked it up? Why had he fired it? Perhaps Oliver had always expected to survive; expected Charlie to take the high road and rush here to clear his name. Oliver had gathered an insurmountable pile of evidence and drawn Charlie to it.
More footsteps.
The truth was going to be hard to argue. He was sure Oliver had linked him to his father’s death somehow. The murder in Piolenc would be hard to dispute with the stolen money hidden in his couch and the widow living with him. The case for the detective’s murder was practically ironclad, the gun still in his hands, the spent casings at his feet. Charlie collapsed in the chair and faced the man before him. The gun had sealed his fate as surely as if he’d shot Oliver Joyet twenty minutes earlier. Now empty, it could only drag him down.
Oliver had won.
Beaten, Charlie drooped forward and stared down at the two empty shell casings. The footsteps stopped three feet behind him.
“I guess you’re not going to shoot me then?” a familiar voice asked.
Charlie wheeled around with the gun still in his lap, the cylinder open. The man with the long, mustached face smiled down at him. He’d traded his uniform for jeans, a white oxford, and a blue windbreaker. His hands were empty, but Charlie wished he hadn’t ejected the shells. He also wished he’d made the calls to Piolenc as promised.
Again Oliver’s orchestration of events was impeccable. Laroche materialized a moment before Charlie began destroying the pictures. Soon the Westport police would arrive and the two jurisdictions would clash over his punishment like packs of hungry dogs fighting over a fresh kill.
“How’d you find me?”
“I would have been here sooner, but that car of yours is awfully fast. I lost you a few miles back.” Laroche stepped closer and eyed the photographs.
“You followed me?”
Laroche leaned over the desk and inspected the pictures. “I tried.”
“From the winery?” Charlie stared at him too wary to hope.
“Yes. The man with you, was that Randy?”
“He looks a lot different doesn’t he?”
“I saw what he was doing.” Laroche gestured in frustration where his sidearm would normally be, an apology of sorts that he hadn’t been able to help. He then traced his finger down the column, stopping on the photograph of the dead man and the money. He pulled the tack and set the picture on the desk in front of Charlie. “You two seemed like chums? Why would he do this to you?”
“He hated my father.”
Laroche sighed sympathetically then pointed to the photo of the money in Charlie’s couch. “The money from Piolenc?”
Charlie nodded.
“Where is this?”
“My house,” Charlie said, expecting Laroche to produce a pair of handcuffs at any moment.
Instead, Laroche took the picture down and laid it on top of the last one.
Charlie straightened in his chair with a rush of hope. His eyes asked what he couldn’t force his lips to.
“I believe you, Mr. Marston. I know who killed Henri, but I can’t prove it.” Laroche began indiscriminately removing pictures from the board and piling them on the desk as he talked. “He killed your father, I’m sure of that. He’ll get what he deserves.”
“You’re going to help me?”
Laroche shrugged at the pile of pictures as if to say, “aren’t I already?”
Charlie rushed over to another board and skimmed over the pictures and clippings as he pulled them down. The first column showed photos of Roger Joyet and Charles Marston shaking hands. An index card was tacked underneath with the handwritten caption, “A partnership with Marston leads to downfall.” Underneath, five newspaper articles detailed the downfall of the Joyets from wealthy winery owners to the discovery of propylene glycol, their suspicious death
s, and ultimately the sale of the winery. One headline reported their car accident as a suicide. The police report underneath told a very different story. Oliver Joyet reported seeing Charles Marston tampering with the wine. He was just thirteen then and no one believed the distraught boy who’d just lost his parents. His statements never made it into the newspapers. Charlie realized that Oliver had been working to impose a death sentence ever since.
The next five columns were hauntingly similar. Each started with a partnership between Charles Marston and a small winery owner and each column ended with a mishap. Every winery suffered a decline in business, some reported in the papers, some not. They all resulted in a sale to the Marston family. As time went on, there were fewer news clippings, a sign that Charles was mastering his craft.
Charlie couldn’t imagine how Oliver collected the information for the final column without wiretaps and a first-class investigative team, but judging by his surveillance of the winery and the Caulfield home that is what he had become.
The pictures showed Charles handing a briefcase to two men. The caption beneath was labeled “Charles Marston pays National Institute for Appellations Committee to fail Chateau Piolenc.” Bank statements tacked below showed one hundred fifty thousand dollars withdrawn by Charles and then deposited in equal shares by two other men. The timeframe for the transactions was thirteen days. The typewritten narrative below explained how the owners couldn’t sell the wine without approval of the panel. Oliver’s case would have been convincing even without the evidence of the five previous frauds.
Charlie moved away in disgust and stood at a table full of neatly arranged paperwork. There were six columns arranged on the table, each with an envelope addressed to a Charles Marston victim, a stack of papers detailing the entire fraud, and an envelope full of photographs similar to those arranged on the corkboards. Behind each column was a FedEx box, prepaid and waiting for someone to stuff the contents inside.
