The Verdict on Each Man Dead

by David Whellams

  Henry took his leave and returned to the street. The heat refused to relent. He could have begun working on Mohlman’s list — Henry felt he was collecting Monopoly deeds — but instead he strolled towards the pinyon tree that Nurse Anderssen had mentioned. It stood out in the open space between Jerry Proffet’s house and the place next door (labelled “Henneker” on Proffet’s chart). Proffet had planted it on the municipal right-of-way to mask the electrical relay box that served the street.

  Henry glanced west and noted that most of the police vehicles were still parked in front of the grow house. He saw Officer Jackson coming down the sidewalk and met him halfway.

  “They anywhere close to finishing?” Henry asked. Jackson looked exhausted.

  “They are, for the day. I pulled another shift, till midnight.”

  “Anything I should know?”

  They began walking together back towards the pinyon tree.

  “No breakthroughs,” Jackson said. “They’re rushing the analysis, but that’s gotta be Mrs. Watson’s blood in the residence. She was stabbed there, then carried to the grow house, where the killer cut off her head.”

  “Obviously the husband hasn’t showed up,” Henry stated.

  “He’s either dead himself or took the warning and hightailed it.”

  They paused at the tree. Henry was surprised to see that the mulched ground around it was wet. Jerry Proffet had found time for his pet tree even in the presence of murder.

  “You don’t think the husband did it, sir?” Officer Jackson continued.

  “I doubt it,” Henry said. “I’m getting the picture from the neighbours of an affectionate, if dull, couple. Husband and wife had an arrangement, it appears to me. She got a stable life in a respectable neighbourhood, walked her dog. She could be sociable with the neighbours. He promised to keep the marijuana operation low-key and quiet. I can’t see him executing his spouse like that. Would he chop off her head under any circumstances?”

  Jackson, who smelled of marijuana, completed the morbid logic. “And if he did it, would he have dragged her body all the way next door, severed her head, and posed her on the table?”

  “Too grisly,” Henry agreed.

  He looked at the tree, sad and defiant like a Hollis Street resident. Tom Watson didn’t kill his wife. It was all too crazy, and there was something … perverse about putting the head in the garbage.

  After a pause, Officer Jackson said, “Detective Mohlman says Tom Watson didn’t show up for work today. If he comes back home tonight, I’ll be waiting.”

  Henry looked at the young patrolman. He was starting to like him. Yet he didn’t confide in Jackson that he was on his way to do battle with Boog DeKlerk.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Black Rose Restaurant was the former Rocco’s Bar. The name change had become necessary two years before, as the owners struggled to adapt to the liberalization of Utah’s byzantine liquor rules. They called the Rose a “restaurant” so that they could legally serve a full range of alcoholic drinks, including “heavy” beer — brew containing more than 3.2 percent alcohol by volume. This was important to Boog DeKlerk, who favoured Guinness, which even in its American version contained over four percent. Henry, who didn’t drink, found it all too confusing and kept quiet, but this didn’t stop DeKlerk from holding forth on “Mormon bluestocking laws” whenever he encountered Henry.

  Henry arrived at the Rose to find Phil already in the regular booth with DeKlerk. They were on their second round. An untouched plate of deep-fried zucchini and garlic sauce sat at the edge of the table. The big man looked up from his Guinness. “You’re late.”

  Mohlman said, “He’s not bloody late.”

  “Yeah, you’re late, preppy. We settled everything.”

  “Nothing’s settled,” Phil said.

  Henry sat beside his partner. The waitress came over and asked if the food was okay. That was another complication. Utah liquor rules for this kind of establishment required the patron to order food with his drink. No one knew why the law was this way. Sometimes you just can’t win with the Mormon thing, Henry thought. The regulations compelled DeKlerk to choose something from the menu even when he wasn’t hungry. He had put on weight, for which, absurdly, he blamed Henry. Henry ordered a tall Coke and DeKlerk glared at him.

  “No eats, Pastern? Going home for a leisurely dinner with the wife in your desert spa?”

  DeKlerk wasn’t married, and Henry had once suggested to Phil that Boog was married to the night shift. “Not true, Henry. Boog is married to his pension plan. He hopes to retire to a place in the desert in the next year, and that’s why he envies you your new house. He also suffers from the delusion that the Utah desert is the South African veld. Jesus wept. Some people just can’t bury their childhood.”

  Phil now turned to Henry amiably. “Discover any stone killers hiding on Hollis Street, Henry?”

  “Not among the even numbers,” Henry replied.

  “I didn’t get far with the odd addresses,” Mohlman said. “What’s Jackson doing now?”

  “Stuck in the Second House, best I can tell. I like him. He’s conscientious —”

  Boog DeKlerk hated being left out. “I don’t figure the husband for it, but he’s the key to getting the killers.”

  Phil continued with Henry. “I did run into Ronald Devereau at Number 13, next to Jerry Proffet, one of the two-storeys. Used to be vice-president of the street group for a brief time. I got no further. But Boog has a point. Finding Tom Watson tops our priorities.”

  DeKlerk chewed on a zucchini stick while he waited for a chance to pontificate.

  “Any sign of him?” Henry asked.

  “Nope. Didn’t show up for work. We issued a BOLO on the truck. Nothing. Chief Grady’s office took care of getting the warrant out on Watson. Suspicion of homicide.”

  Boog grunted. “Should be for trafficking, that’s the better rap. We know he pushes drugs. This is pre-eminently a drug case, a gang making a point.”

  “A moot point if Watson is dead,” Henry said.

  “I’ll buy that, preppy,” Boog said. “Watson is in a dumpster somewhere in the Valley. His head may be in a different dumpster.”

  Phil, tiring of Boog’s combativeness, waved him off. Henry noted that his partner often turned morose in the Black Rose. The restaurant had no connection to the famous Black Rose Irish pub down by Faneuil Hall, but Phil grew nostalgic for Boston whenever he drank here.

  Henry reflected on the mentality of the three of them. The South African. The boy from Charlestown. The lapsed Mormon. They all lived in Utah and they weren’t going anyplace, but still they positioned themselves as outsiders. It was an immature attitude, he recognized.

  Henry was exhausted and wanted to get home to Theresa. His attention wandered. With its black lacquered bar backed by a big mirror, pinpoint red lights limning the mirror and baseboards around the room, the place resembled a Chinese restaurant more than an Irish pub. Due to another arcane state rule, there were no bottles of booze behind the bar. Larry the bartender was fed up with explaining that he wasn’t Rocco, there never had been a Rocco, and no, he wasn’t Irish. The bar/restaurant had trouble fixing on an identity — just like the community along Hollis Street, Henry mused. Maybe like himself, Phil, and Boog, too.

  DeKlerk hammered on the drug argument. “I can get FLIR warrants on the units at Numbers 6 and 8.”

  Phil and Henry remained skeptical. Forward Looking Infrared spectrum analysis was a police tool derived from military technology. It registered the heat signature from a building, in this context the juice used by grow lights in a marijuana operation. Because of its lack of subtlety — planes flying low overhead — and the emerging controversy over drone surveillance, the courts were becoming restrictive in the warrants they granted. But police forces loved the technology.

  “On two separate, unrelated houses?”
Phil said. “Not enough grounds for a flyover. Any evidence risks being thrown out as unreasonable.”

  “Un-this, un-that. Hell, Phil, we’ll have the judge onside. Blood’s still wet.”

  Henry held his opinion back, but he was with the Drug Squad chief on the issue of authorization: in the aftermath of the discovery of a beheaded female victim, the court would be sympathetic to a FLIR scan warrant. He was more concerned about a breach of privacy allegation from an individual resident causing all of them to clam up. FLIR scans would increase the circus atmosphere on Hollis Street, when what was needed was calm, door-to-door police work.

  Phil remained antagonistic. “The locals we’ve met so far tend to be snoops, old ladies and their equivalents, living their lives at the front curtain. I don’t know, there’s something about the residents on this street. You do a flyover — what, three or four passes? — someone is bound to call in a complaint —”

  DeKlerk burst in. “I don’t want my men knocking politely on the front door and trying the lock. Booby traps are a real danger.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Henry said, taking the unlikely role of mediator between the senior detectives. “You have car-top scanner units, don’t you?”

  “Don’t work as well. And with this heat, the contrast …”

  “But well enough, I understand,” Henry said.

  Henry got the other look from Phil and Boog, not the Mormon Look, but the one that said, “You learn that crap in the FBI in Washington?”

  Phil thumped the table and said, “Done! They’ll blend in with the rest of the bullshit going down.”

  DeKlerk was satisfied. The drive-by unit looked odd perched on the roof of a vehicle, but a couple of passes up and down Hollis would be quick and minimally intrusive.

  It was Phil who wouldn’t let it go. “That’s all we do on that front. Leadership stays with Homicide.”

  DeKlerk smirked. “Make it a drug case, Phil, and we easily explain the decapitation and the pipe bomb. I’ll tell Grady the cartel moved a little farther north than usual.”

  “I don’t plan to explain anything away,” Phil lashed out. “I plan to solve it.”

  The Drug Squad chief sat back in the banquette. “Whatever. Grady wants us to wrap it up fast.”

  Henry had heard the refrain many times. “We have to wrap it up.” It was a reference to West Valley’s most notorious case. The tragedy of Susan Powell haunted every cop in West Valley, even those who had joined the force later. Susan Powell was a model wife, the mother of two boys, lovable and loved, who vanished from the Valley on a December day in 2009 and was never found. The case gripped the city for months. Half the citizenry had the husband for it, but as many wanted something else to be true, an abduction by an outsider, for example. West Valley, already in the shadow of Salt Lake, didn’t need a reputation as an unsafe place for women, and the pressure to solve the kidnapping rose daily. The police force believed that her abductor had drowned her, but Henry had doubts, since it was almost impossible to sink a body in the Great Salt Lake, and the rivers up in the Wasatch Range are fast-flowing and unlikely to conceal a corpse for long. The killer had dumped her in the woods up near Park City, he believed. West Valley had its share of violent crime, but this one resonated, and as the case dragged on, the public started to suspect incompetence within the police department. In 2012, Susan’s husband, who had relocated to Washington State, killed his two sons and then himself. The case was fresh in everyone’s memory. Many a West Valley officer had been heard to say with gallows humour that it would have been helpful if he had left coordinates for finding Susan’s body before he offed himself. The local chief, Grady, pledged to keep the case open. As if he had the choice. No one wanted a second Susan Powell.

  “We got a profile of the husband?” DeKlerk asked.

  “Watson. Age forty-two, no criminal record, two non-criminal citations way back for drinking in a public place,” Mohlman stated. “Employed as a journeyman electrician at Salaberry Electric in Salt Lake. Office says he didn’t show up today, and his usual partner reports no contact since the day before, when he acted, quote, ‘like all was normal.’ No one so far on Hollis reports seeing him leave for work.”

  “No one saw anything,” DeKlerk said. “Ya know, after a while, the cannabis starts to ooze out of a home factory like that. Somebody shoulda noticed.”

  “Like they’re olfactorily deaf and blind,” Phil added.

  They were venting; they couldn’t help themselves. Henry chimed in: “I agree. I’ve met less than half of them, but they all talk about ‘standards’ and ‘neighbourliness.’ Yet a grow house? Nobody paying attention when every house can see — smell — every other house, and you have to drive past the murder site to exit the street?”

  “What’s your point?” Boog DeKlerk said.

  “We find it strange that nobody saw anything. What if the opposite was true? All the residents actually knew about the grow operation.”

  “And tipped off the Mob,” DeKlerk tossed in.

  Phil was unpersuaded. “Nice to see you two bonding, but one way or another, Tom Watson fled the scene and remains our top candidate.”

  The Guinness now tipped DeKlerk over into belligerence. It was no longer a matter of who had jurisdiction here — DeKlerk knew that he was far better plugged in to the convoluted drug trade than Homicide, and he only need bide his time. “So why can’t you Eastern pantywaists find one bloodstained electrician in a van in a state of only 444,000 people?”

  Phil never apologized for his Boston roots, especially not in the Black Rose, and especially not to the South African. “Get out of our way and we’ll solve this.”

  “Why haven’t you arrested anyone, Pastern?”

  Phil won Henry’s everlasting loyalty by bristling back. “My partner’s the one who thought to look next door for the grow operation. Otherwise, you’d still be walking around Number 3 Hollis with Al Pacino’s dick in your hand.”

  Even Boog DeKlerk had to laugh.

  The two senior detectives ordered another round. The zucchini had turned flaccid and the garlic sauce had coagulated. Henry excused himself and drove home to have dinner with Theresa.

  CHAPTER 7

  On most days, Henry made it home by dinnertime, although he often returned to work for a modified swing shift. Management expected extra effort from junior detectives. Sometimes Henry worked an all-night stint and arrived back on Coppermount Drive at dawn. The Utah desert was at its most beautiful when the first glimmer of morning crept in, and he loved pulling into the driveway in the quiet neighbourhood and going round back of the house to watch the sunrise. Often he would find Theresa dozing on the couch with the patio doors open a few inches.

  Today, the Black Rose far down the highway behind him, Henry stopped in the driveway and felt oddly queasy. The feeling, he realized, had everything to do with the stark differences in neighbourhoods. Hollis Street presented a lurid contrast to Coppermount. It wasn’t that the cul-de-sac was so bad, but for all the owners’ efforts to keep up standards and sustain a cohesive community, the whole row had declined. Their paranoia, born of a desire to keep their little world static, had turned in on them. By contrast, Henry’s street was brand new. It wasn’t finished to the end of the block, although the last lots were marked and the piping and gas lines had only recently been installed, but once complete, Coppermount Drive would be more fashionable than the West Valley enclave could ever hope to be.

  He locked the Subaru and walked around to the rear of the sprawling ranch house, intent on admiring the view. He liked to monitor the changes in light. By now, the desert plateau had darkened into ochre and rich browns, and the distant hills were purpling in the declining sun. Two firm truths struck him: the vista was perfect, and they had likely bought too much house. Oh, well, it was their sanctuary. Theresa wasn’t healthy, but they had worked hard to turn this place into their dream home on
the rim of the great desert.

  He saw that the back doors were open. Theresa often turned the air conditioning off in late afternoon, even though the system filtered out the dust and sand that aggravated her throat. Henry entered the immense living room. He heard Theresa rattling dishes in the kitchen; the house was so large that she hadn’t heard the family car pull up. At least she wasn’t coughing. That was encouraging.

  She came out of the kitchen and smiled at him. She wore a puffy oven mitt on her right hand. There was no doubt of her radiance and if her breathing problem had imposed a consumptive pallidness on her beauty, she still glowed and triumphed in the evening light. Theresa stood three inches under Henry’s height, thin now but still almost statuesque; a mica-like fleck in her left eye often caught the light and gave her a mischievous look. As often happened lately, the first glimpse of her instantly called back to him, in abbreviated form, the story of how they’d met, even if these days the saga of their meeting — both of them native Utahans who’d had to move to Alexandria, Virginia, to find each other — seemed a cruelly short story, truncated by fate. Was he in fact fashioning a time capsule of anecdotes for a time when she wouldn’t be here?

  The FBI had historically liked Mormons, and all Utahans knew it. Even so, Henry was surprised when they accepted him straight out of university. He may have been the only applicant ever with a fine arts major and a criminology minor. By his third undergraduate year at Brigham Young, he had convinced himself that he wanted a lifetime career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Like much else in his youth, this was a murky choice that lured him because it bridged the straightlaced certainties of a Mormon upbringing and the uncertain rebellion represented by a career beyond the State of Deseret. “Perhaps over-enthused,” one member of the recruiting panel wrote in his interview file. Henry got in, but his lack of focus bore consequences: when he started at the academy, he made the rookie mistake of saying that he would take “any assignment” in his novitiate years, and so, with Bureau logic, they sent him to Art Crime.