Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  Jonathan Ahern pressed his thumb and index finger up against his red-rimmed eyes. It looked like he’d been up the whole night. He hadn’t shaved; the stubble, more grey than brown, added ten years.

  “So how did you link up with the Hagertys?”

  “By chance. I had written some campaign literature for Johnny about stem cells, so I knew the basic arguments on both sides. I was at one of Arlen’s gigs near where I lived, just outside Atlanta. I asked some questions. Margaret came up to me, started talking. We just took it from there. I had formed Research Horizons, as an interest group. I wanted to honor Johnny and Rebecca, and I hoped to bring in contributions. It’s never taken off, though.”

  Ryan said, “What did you do before you got involved with the state senator?”

  “I was an accountant.”

  “Was it hard to give that up?” I said.

  “Not really. I’d always loved politics, and I was just drawn to Johnny. And the way he threw himself into the stem-cell debate … This probably sounds a little corny, but I found it inspiring. Besides,” Ahern said with a sad smile, “Western civilization will survive without one more CPA.”

  “You know, my partner and I were kind of surprised last night when we saw how well you and Arlen Hagerty got along. I mean, with you two being on different sides of the issue.”

  “Yeah, we got that a lot. But it’s really no mystery. Both Arlen and I have been around the block. We know how these things work. You make your case, you try to get to the appropriate public officials, you raise money, you talk to ten people in a living room. You work the system, try to change minds, one at a time.

  “We both understood this is an issue that’s going to play out in the legislatures and in the courts. It’s going to be with us for the rest of our lives, back and forth, just like abortion. Besides,” Ahern said, “Arlen treated me with respect. And, to be honest with you, taking me on the road with him means … meant that I don’t have to do people’s taxes anymore.”

  “What are you going to do for a living now?”

  “Haven’t had a chance to think about it yet.” He shook his head. “It’s Margaret’s call.”

  “You think she might be able to find a place for you?”

  “She might decide to take over in the debates. If so, I might still have a job. I haven’t talked with her except to tell her how sorry I am.”

  “I see. You think she might want to do the debating herself?”

  “She’s a great talker. She doesn’t have the fire that Arlen had, but the sentences come out smooth. She’d do fine.”

  I said, “I take it her position is the same as Arlen’s was?”

  “You know,” Jonathan Ahern said, “in all my years with them, I never spoke with her about the issue. I remember once—it was a few years ago, I don’t remember where—I asked her about stem cells, and she said she leaves all that kind of thing to Arlen. I don’t know whether she meant the debating or the issue itself.”

  “But you think if she figured she could make a go of the debates, she’d do them with you?”

  “Yes, I do. I hope so. It’s important to me that I get e-mails from college kids telling me they really learned something. Sometimes I hear from them after a parent gets Parkinson’s or has a spinal-cord injury, and that breaks my heart, but I think we did some real good with the debates. I hope we can keep doing them. It’s up to Margaret.”

  The shade had crept up my legs, and I was starting to get cold. “What can you tell us about Connie de Marco?”

  His eyes brightened. “Connie is really something.”

  “How so?”

  “I assume you heard her story. Lots of problems. She was homeless, using drugs, when she showed up at Arlen’s door. What I love about her is that there isn’t an ounce of artifice about her. She is exactly what she seems to be: a beautiful soul who’s been knocked around a lot, but she holds her head high, does her job.”

  “Seems like you talk with her a lot?”

  “Oh, yeah, we spend a lot of time just talking on the road. Her outlook is terrific. She doesn’t have any education—you know that—but she’s one of the wisest people I’ve ever met. Everything that’s happened to her, she’s learned from it. She’s not bitter or cynical. She knows there’s bad out there but there’s good out there, too. And she’s determined to experience that goodness without looking back.”

  “She sounds pretty special.”

  “As special as they come,” he said, nodding. His gaze drifted off over the driving range, where the winds were whipping the three flags. Dead leaves scratched across the patio.

  “Can you help us out with anyone who would want to kill Arlen Hagerty?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sure there’re some people out there. We get hate mail all the time, both of us. I guess you’re running down that angle.” His brow was furrowed. “But Margaret? Connie? I just don’t see it,” he said. “Sorry.”

  I nodded to Ryan. He said, “Well, thanks very much, Mr. Ahern, for talking with us. We’ll get in touch if we need to talk more. And we’re going to try to wrap up our investigation as soon as possible so you can get back to your life.”

  “Good luck,” Ahern said. “Get whoever did this to Arlen, will you?”

  “Count on it,” I said, as Ryan and I stood and walked back toward the parking lot. I was shivering when we got inside the big Ford. We watched Jonathan Ahern walk over to the driving range and pull a club from his bag.

  * * *

  “Well, this is starting to get kind of interesting,” Ryan said, blowing on his hands.

  “It always does,” I said, shaking out my fingers to get some blood in them. “Assuming the killer was someone who knew the vic.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I mean, if the room-service guy cracked him on the skull and grabbed the cash from his wallet, that’s not very interesting. But if one of his own people killed him, that’s juicy.”

  “Yeah, but if it was random, like the room-service guy, that’s interesting, too, in its own way. You trace back how he got to where he was, what decisions he made, the kind of pressures he was living with, and you start to understand what brought him to that decision.”

  “Yeah, if you’re into sociology,” I said. “But if you’re a detective, that kind of investigation usually goes pretty quick. The room-service guy blows off work the next day, you find out where he was born, you alert the cops there, send his picture, and they pick him up when he gets off the Greyhound. Or he’s bunking with his best friend from high school.”

  “That isn’t how Matt Damon would do it if he were the room-service guy.”

  “Yeah, well, Matt Damon’s writers are smarter than the room-service guy.” I was starting to warm up, the sun coming in the windshield. I undid the buttons on my coat and pulled it open to let the sun hit me, then got self-conscious and closed it up again. “Since there’s no evidence there was a room-service guy, let’s assume we’re dealing with a murder among friends.”

  “Good,” Ryan said. “So what does Jon Ahern add to the mix?”

  “You tell me. Did you buy that story about the Johnny Trautman and his wife with MS?”

  “It’s easy enough to check out. I’ll run it down as soon as I can,” Ryan said, taking his notebook out of his pocket and jotting it down. “I got kind of a funny feeling with the way he started crying about the wife.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Trautman and his wife were older, right, around seventy? It just didn’t ring true that Jon was crying about his boss’ wife.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but it looked real enough. You never know. Maybe this woman was a mother figure or something. I can see it. Or maybe Jon lost a parent or someone to a bad disease when he was younger. The emotion can attach itself to a different story. That’s assuming there was a Johnny Trautman and his wife.”

  “That should take ten minutes, tops, to confirm.”

  “All right, let’s talk about motive. He’s opposed to Hag
erty’s side of the debate.”

  “Yeah, but he’s traveling with him.”

  “At the bar, when you guys were talking football, what did you get off of Ahern?”

  “Unless he’s a heck of an actor, he was sincere. I was thinking about their relationship the whole time, trying to read it in their faces, because remember we were both pretty surprised they seemed to be friends. Arlen Hagerty definitely liked Jon Ahern.”

  “How’d you see that?” I said.

  “Not so much what he said. His body language. It seemed that Hagerty was the senior partner, you know what I mean? He didn’t have to suck up to Jon Ahern, so what you saw on Hagerty’s face and the way he moved was the truth.”

  “And the fact Hagerty was nailing someone in his room? That doesn’t change that for you?” I said.

  “Not really. I’m not saying Hagerty was a saint. Maybe Margaret won’t sleep with him. Maybe he was into some kinky stuff with Connie or hookers. But it looked like he really liked hanging with Jon. Like Jon was his son, but with none of the father/son baggage. A guy he could talk football with.”

  “And you think Jon felt the same way toward Hagerty?”

  “It’s hard to say. Knowing what we know now—that someone was going to kill Hagerty in an hour or two—I’m sure I might see something different on Jon’s face. You know, I’d love to crack this case right here, right now, impress the heck out of you. But, tell you the truth, I didn’t see one thing suspicious about Jon last night. He seemed completely comfortable with Hagerty the whole time.”

  “All right,” I said. “One thing for certain, it doesn’t make sense Jon would want to take out Hagerty, who’s paying his salary.”

  “Yeah, unless Jon’s already worked it out with Margaret that she’s going to take over the road show.”

  “You saying she could’ve had Jon take out her husband?”

  “Just that it’s possible,” Ryan said. “That way, she gets the respect she thinks she deserves from Soul Savers, plus a nice promotion. She doesn’t have it in her to kill her husband, but she’s got no good feelings for him. She goes to Jon with a deal: you do it and you get a serious raise. You don’t do it, it happens anyway—and you’re out of a job.”

  “Geez,” I said, smiling. “You’re kinda weird.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “That means a lot, coming from you.”

  “Don’t be a wiseass,” I said, like a big sister.

  “One other thing makes me not like Ahern for the murder. You notice he didn’t try to throw any suspicion on either Margaret or Connie?”

  “Yeah, I caught that,” I said. “But maybe he’s just smooth. You know, he realizes we’re watching him carefully. He figures we’re gonna be looking for anything like that. So he talks up the two women, which makes him look cool.”

  Ryan said, “Okay, but listen to what he said about them. He did say he didn’t think Margaret could have had anything to do with killing her husband, but he didn’t say anything positive about her. He didn’t even say she believes in their stem-cell cause.”

  “Yeah, whereas Connie wears a halo.”

  “I see it more like he admires the heck out of her for what’s she’s put up with. She’s been victimized for years, but she’s got dignity.”

  “Which means what? He’s doing her or not?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ryan said. “He’s old enough to be her father.”

  “Yeah, but you told me Hagerty’s doing her, ninety-five percent, and he’s old enough to be her grandfather.”

  “True, Jon might be a creep, but the way he called her a beautiful soul, I think he sees Connie as a daughter, not a young girl with a hot body.”

  “So, call it.”

  “On the other hand, maybe that stuff about her having a beautiful soul is his way of talking himself into not seeing her as a junkie whore. She’s got a hot body, and the beautiful soul compensates for all the miles on her odometer. So my guess—right now, since you’re making me call it—is that both guys were doing her, and Jon flipped out and killed Hagerty because the old guy just saw her as a reliable hard-on. Is that how you see it?”

  “I don’t see it at all,” I said. “We don’t have enough facts. Only an inexperienced detective would call it this early.”

  “Thanks for the sucker punch,” Ryan said, laughing.

  “Not a problem,” I said. “Any time.”

  “I’d sure love to figure out who’s sleeping with whom. If we knew that, we’d be in a lot better shape to figure out motive. Got any ideas except for waiting for the DNA?”

  “Well, we could come back a little harder on Margaret Hagerty or Jon Ahern, but they won’t be easy to rattle.”

  “Then there’s Connie.”

  “That’s right,” I said, “and since we’re pretty sure Connie is where we ought to be looking, why don’t we push her a little harder?”

  “She’s the one who’s probably most afraid of cops. She might think she’s the path of least resistance because she already has a record and doesn’t have the resources to fight back like the others do. That makes her more likely to slip up. But what do you want to use to push her? We don’t have any new information, right?”

  “Right,” I said, “but she doesn’t have to know that.”

  “So what do we say we have?”

  “DNA. She’s not gonna know we don’t have it yet.”

  “But if she meets with Hagerty every night, there’s got to be DNA all over his room.”

  “We don’t say it’s all over his room. We say it’s all over his dick.”

  Ryan said, “And if she calls our bluff?”

  “You mean if she wasn’t screwing Hagerty?”

  “Either way: if she was or if she wasn’t.”

  “If she wasn’t screwing him,” I said, “we’ll be able to tell by the way she says it. If she was screwing him, she’ll tell us, and then we’ll be closer to figuring out who wanted to kill Hagerty. Either way, it’ll shake up the three of them, assuming they’re talking with each other.”

  “Is there a down side of bluffing her?”

  “You mean, she could lose some respect for the Rawlings Police Department?”

  “Good point.”

  Chapter 4

  The uniform in the lobby pointed and said, “The pool.” We followed the signs to the outdoor pool, past the empty exercise room and the locker rooms. The chlorine smell, which lingers even through the winter, told me we were almost there.

  The pool and the Jacuzzi were covered for the winter with dark green tarps attached to hardware built into the pebbled cement. In the center of each tarp was a large puddle, filled with dank brown water. The chairs, brown-painted steel with tan plastic straps, were stacked in a corner. The tables and the umbrellas must have been stored somewhere else.

  Connie was sitting with her face to the sun, a pale gauze of smoke obscuring her face. This woman must really be addicted to cigarettes if she’s willing to grab a chair and sit out on the pool deck in November just for a smoke. As she watched us approach, her hand shielded her eyes from the sun.

  “Ms. de Marco, can we talk with you again?” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, no intonation in her voice, no expression on her face. It seemed like she meant exactly what she said: it wouldn’t be particularly good or bad, just okay.

  I glanced around for someplace for me and Ryan to sit, but there were no chairs. Seeing that Connie had just started on that cigarette, I turned up my collar and began to talk. “There’s been some new information from the lab,” I said. Connie didn’t say anything. She just kept looking right at me. “We know you were with Arlen Hagerty last night.”

  Connie took a long pull on her cigarette, then exhaled slowly. “Yes, I told you that earlier. I met with him almost every night.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Ms. de Marco.” I paused. Some people get so uncomfortable with silence they start saying things they hadn’t meant to, but Connie wasn’t one of those people.

>   “What is it that you mean, Detective?”

  I didn’t say anything for a couple of moments. “Why did you lie to us about your relationship with Arlen Hagerty?”

  Connie sighed, looking out over my shoulder at the sky. The sky was a pale blue, a few wispy clouds hurrying across.

  Ryan said, “Ms. de Marco, lying to us is obstruction of justice.” She looked at him for the first time. “That’s a felony.”

  Connie turned her gaze back to me. “Should I get an attorney?”

  “No,” I said. “We’re not interested in pursuing that if you help us with the investigation.” Connie nodded slightly, the first sign she was willing to be more forthcoming. “But we need to understand the relationships among the four of you who traveled with the debates. We want to solve this murder. That’s all we care about.”

  “What do you want to know?” Connie’s voice was level and low. She took her folding ashtray out of her coat pocket and stubbed out her cigarette.

  “Okay, you were in Arlen Hagerty’s room last night.”

  “Yes.”

  “You had sex with him last night.”

  Connie was looking straight ahead, not at me. “Yes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “What happens every night after that.”

  “Which is?”

  “I go back to my room, take a long shower, and go to bed.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About 12:00.”

  “When you left him, Arlen Hagerty was alive.”

  She looked at me, waited a beat. “Yes.”

  “You didn’t kill him.”

  “No, I didn’t kill him.”

  “I could understand if something happened in that room that got to you, made you want to hurt him.”

  “No,” she said, sighing, “there was nothing like that. I didn’t kill him.”

  “Do you have any knowledge of what might have happened to Mr. Hagerty after you left his room?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “And you say you went back to your own room. You didn’t go to anyone else’s room or see anyone else.”

  “That’s right.”