The Verdict on Each Man Dead

by David Whellams

  “That’s my place, end of the row. The patches in between me and the Pasterns have been in legal limbo since the recession.”

  “In distress?”

  “I’ll say. Figured I should make the effort to finish mine. There’s always hope that the development will be fleshed out.”

  “You’re doing the work yourself?”

  “Sometimes Henry helps with heavy lifting.”

  The Pastern estate was a sprawling, horizontal ranch model, plenty of glass and oversize rooms. Peter’s first reaction was that the house was far too big for a widower. Peter and Tynan entered the vestibule; Peter noted that the front door was unlocked — whether out of hospitality or slackness, Peter wasn’t sure. But Henry did not appear, and Peter started to fear that there was something seriously amiss with his young friend.

  Tynan, irresolute, hung back by the rim of the broad, open main room, allowing Peter to absorb the panorama out the back windows. It would be easy to get lost out there, was Peter’s lambent thought.

  “Do you find him roaming in the desert?” Peter speculated.

  Tynan seemed to find this a perceptive comment. He half smiled. “Sometimes. I keep my eyes open for him.”

  Yes, thought Peter, you are monitoring Henry. Why? Just how much of a missionary is this Mormon elder?

  Peter noticed with some amazement the green bottle sitting on the granite bar. It prismed the sun, projecting an emerald beam across the big room. He recognized the unique green of absinthe. Peter had a lit degree from Oxford and knew that Henry had studied fine arts and literature at Brigham Young. No one reads English without a flirtation with Baudelaire, Dowson, and Verlaine, who were perhaps the most famous of the absinthe-drinking poets. The Green Fairy. The Wormwood Frog. The Goddess. Absinthe had ruined many an artist. It lured the morbid, the poetic, and the self-destructive. If Henry Pastern wanted to give offence to his abstemious religion, he could not have chosen a more alien contaminant.

  The paraphernalia of the absinthe ritual were laid out along the bar. A polished salver held a set of Pontarliers, the sundae-shaped glasses used by devotees. A pair of flattened, slotted spoons lay nearby, with a bowl of sugar cubes. An ice bucket completed the gear, the ice melted but the sweat on the outside testifying to recent use. Absinthe turns mystically cloudy when ice water is added, and the effect on the drinker is a fog induced by alchemical interactions. It is the perfect destructive potion for a man in hopeless mourning.

  “The tray was a wedding gift.”

  Peter turned to be greeted by a gaunt beanpole of a man, hollow-eyed and struggling to stand at his full height. Henry was hungover, though near the sober end of a drinking cycle, Peter concluded. His usually shaved skull was stubbly, and he scratched at a scab.

  They embraced. Henry managed a generous smile.

  “Want a drink of this, Peter?”

  “No, you know I prefer beer.”

  “But absinthe is the preferred libation of the greats. Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe. You know your writers, Peter.”

  “So do you. Brigham Young University, I recall?”

  Henry flopped onto a set of cushions. “I really could use a drink. Oh, hi, T.”

  Tynan stepped in from the vestibule. He was no longer smiling. “I’d better go work on some Sheetrock,” he said, and left by the patio doors without looking at Peter.

  Peter sized up Henry’s state. He was in worse shape than expected and required a full-time nurse, or at least a minder. Peter had no intention of taking on the job. On the flight, he had resolved to make a quick start on his re-investigation of Ronald Devereau. This search, wherever it led him across the West, might take a month but shouldn’t be allowed to stretch into two. The quotidian challenge of squatting in this remote house and catering to his friend ran up against his intended method — namely, rambling wherever the clues led him, with or without Henry in the passenger seat. He considered asking Tynan to drive him to a hotel.

  Peter hauled his Gladstone into the big room and extracted a sheaf of notes. He wasn’t interested in the absinthe ceremony. Henry started to drift off, and Peter raised his voice. “You want to get started? Let’s sit at the table.”

  Henry stared at the bundle. After a stunned minute, he took an exaggerated breath, clapped his hands, and kipped up onto two feet. His smile this time was bright and open. “Right! We’re in business. Do you want to change out of that black suit? You and Tynan are like the Smith Brothers cough drop twins, without the beards.”

  The relief Peter felt was only that of the sober man hoping the drunk will snap out of his addiction, but he grabbed onto it. He was willing to posit that constant motion — no lingering in this haunted house — could be Henry’s deliverance, even if Henry didn’t know yet that the heavy work would start with a visit to Hollis Street.

  Peter opened his bag wide and dug for the red-and-lemon-yellow Hawaiian silk shirt that Joan had packed. It was the shirt he had planned not to wear. He changed right there in the living room.

  Henry grinned. “I can see you drinking beer on the back patio.”

  I see a man on the verge of pouring his next dose, Peter thought. “No thanks.” He went over to the bar and tucked the bottle of absinthe out of sight. “Let’s work at the table,” he repeated.

  And so the cop in the jogging shorts and BYU T-shirt and the one in the improbable floral Hawaiian shirt took seats at the dining room table. Peter decided to start with fundamentals. “Where are you on the hunt for Devereau?”

  Henry shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “Phil Mohlman and I have both sworn affidavits that James Riotte and Ronald Devereau are not the same person. I sent them to you.”

  “I wondered about that. Shouldn’t it be easy to verify? He must have left a paper trail after living ten or more years on the same street.”

  “It’s amazing. He covered his tracks. Oh, there’s the arrest photo of Riotte from twenty years back. I sent that to you, too, but Devereau’s a self-styled ghost. A grainy driver’s licence and one candid photo from a street party five years ago. He remains a cipher.”

  “He bought a house. Doesn’t the real estate agent or his banker remember him?”

  “Real estate guy died. Mortgage banker has only a vague recollection. Devereau made all his payments online.”

  “Facebook page? Internet habits?”

  “Facebook? You kidding? Nope. His service provider resisted our requests for his Google search log. Fought it in court, can you believe. Judge said case was closed, what did we need the records for?”

  “Eyewitness statements? You have some, you said.”

  “The residents of Hollis Street remain tight-lipped. A couple — I can provide names — looked at the Riotte photographs and agreed it wasn’t the same man but refused to swear to it. I tell you, Peter, our saying about the residents is: nobody on Hollis ever knows anything.”

  “What about the Bureau?” Peter knew that Henry had approached his former colleagues in Washington.

  “They blitzed their databases as a favour to me. Looked through all their terrorist lists, also serial killers, highway killers, left-wing and right-wing groups, militias, and drug gangs. But without fingerprints for Devereau and with Riotte’s fingerprints there already in the files, there was never an incentive to look very far. The ATF and DEA made a token effort.”

  “In other words, they didn’t believe you and Mohlman.”

  Henry shot a longing glance at the bar. “Remember, Phil’s only recently gone back full-time. I’m on admin leave. We aren’t at the precinct every day to push this.”

  Peter understood that no one at Henry’s workplace would tolerate his obsession for long. And why should they? He wondered if Detective Mohlman had given up.

  Bitterness deepened Henry’s voice. “West Valley and the Utah Bureau of Investigation consider the Watson murders solved. That means th
e case file is just about sealed.”

  “There’s no doubt in your mind that Devereau killed both Watsons?”

  “No doubt.”

  “He acted alone?”

  “The actual killings, yeah. But we never figured out how he got back home after ditching Tom Watson’s truck in the Wasatch.”

  Henry’s report was entwined with these forlorn questions, but Peter didn’t expect easy answers. The breakthrough would be achieved through ponderous analysis and re-interviews. Still, he appraised the list of questions he himself had made on the plane. How did the killer hide so effectively? How could he be that lucky? Why were there no photos of his face? He was on the street executive, even served as president, and attended the annual barbecue, but no one had really befriended him. Grocery store checkout clerks didn’t recall him, and he did all his car repairs on his own. No prints were found in the ruins at 13 Hollis.

  “Henry, let’s visit Hollis Street.”

  Henry winced, almost tipping back onto the floor. “I haven’t been on Hollis … for a long time.”

  “Just one visit, to help me visualize it.” Peter didn’t specify “it.”

  “No, I couldn’t endure the neighbourhood.”

  “It will perk you up.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What if I told you I have an idea where to look for Devereau?”

  Peter had noticed that Henry’s moods cycled quickly through anger to resignation and back to morbidness. He required a lot of attention. Peter’s cajoling was hit-or-miss.

  “If you tell me the truth about one thing, Peter,” Henry said.

  “I will.”

  “Do you believe the killer is out there? Do you believe me?”

  “I came five thousand miles because I do believe you.”

  Henry nodded, quickly accepting this pledge, although he was lucid enough to sense that Peter might also be in Utah for his own reasons.

  CHAPTER 24

  When Henry insisted that Peter take the wheel of his Subaru, Peter thought it wise to comply, given Henry’s probable blood alcohol level. He drove conservatively, acclimatizing himself to North American traffic rules. Henry slouched in the passenger seat and fell asleep several times, and Peter had to nudge him for directions to Hollis Street.

  Henry came alert the moment Peter slowed through the stone gates. Proximity to death broke through his dreaminess. “This damn street is doomed. It …”

  Peter stopped at the curb, thirty feet inside the gates. He took in the padlocked bungalows at 3, 5, and 8, and the barricaded lot at the far end. “You were going to say, ‘It always was doomed’?”

  “My God, Peter, that’s exactly what I was about to say. I knew you were psychic …”

  Peter drove a little closer to the Devereau site, and that diverted Henry. Peter began a running critique in an even tone, like a medical examiner dictating autopsy impressions. “There are signs of house-pride on the street, but the two murder houses still have police locks and no FOR SALE signs. Number 8 was on the market at the time of the fire, you said, and no one has moved in. You said the residents here keep their mouths shut. Who can blame them for feeling defensive? Not hard to believe they were cursed from the outset on Hollis Street.”

  Peter’s spiel was in part an effort at distraction, but Henry, fidgeting, remained fixed on the Devereau ruin ahead.

  Henry tried to delay the inevitable. “You want to see inside the grow house?”

  “Not necessary. The police reports seem complete.” He edged the Subaru closer to the cul-de-sac.

  “Really? I remember you telling me, Peter, you love nothing better than spending time at crime scenes. ‘Wandering the killing floor,’ you put it.”

  The absinthe had made Henry jumpy, and Peter could do no more than address each of Henry’s thoughts as it popped into his mind, even if he had to dissemble. “I consider this whole sad street the crime scene.”

  “One thing Phil and I wondered, why do you think Devereau opted to leave behind the two bags of weed?”

  “Because he didn’t need the income.”

  “It was premium weed. He could have sold it down the street in a flash.”

  Peter shook his head. “If he wanted money, he could have blackmailed Tom Watson for half of the action. Maybe he did. Marketing that small amount to street operators would make him memorable. Too much risk. Devereau was super-careful.”

  “Super? He was about as subtle as a flash flood.”

  Peter’s long trip and his frustration with Henry made him snappish. “You didn’t collect a single fingerprint from either house. Devereau gutted the Watsons but never stepped in their blood. No photos of him exist. That’s the most fastidious killer I’ve ever heard of.”

  “If he wanted to keep it simple, why not burn down the grow house? He decided to torch his own place.”

  “Before then, he still had hope.”

  “Of what?” Henry persisted.

  Peter was drifting into pontification, and he slowed down. “Of redeeming the street, I guess. The first time, he planned to stay, so he didn’t burn down 3 or 5. He’d been hiding on this street for ten years, and he had grown to like it. He clung to an idealistic greeting-card view of suburban bliss. Label him the Hallmark Psychopath. The second time, when he killed Mr. and Mrs. Proffet, he was trying to get away, and he adopted a scorched earth strategy.”

  “What about the pipe bomb?”

  “Was it powerful?”

  “No.”

  Peter grunted. “It wasn’t designed to burn down Number 5 but only to wipe out any evidence. He still had hopes for the street.”

  Cammon parked the Subaru in front of 13 and stared at the detritus.

  “What are you expecting to see, Peter?”

  Resoluteness was the way to keep Henry moving. “I’m expecting to see ashes. I’m hoping to find clues. Let’s do it.”

  The arson squad’s report had highlighted the fierceness of the blaze, which caused the upper floors to buckle and collapse and every flammable object in the basement to implode. Peter smelled damp soot as soon as he exited the Subaru. The police had erected a pressed-board fence around the property, but panels of it were already sagging. If someone didn’t bring in a bulldozer soon, the place risked becoming a permanent eyesore. The Hollis residents had reason to worry about their property values.

  Peter peered around a sheet of plywood into the abyss, where greasy water had collected. Henry forced himself to look.

  “Nothing left bigger than a Buffalo nickel. Except Jim Riotte’s body survived mostly intact,” Henry said.

  “Why do you think that was?”

  “Don’t know. Burned all the skin off his body,” Henry said. “Bastard.”

  Peter was intrigued by the condition of the body, given that everything else in the basement was consumed, but he moved on to examine the last remaining structure.

  The garage endured, scorched on the outside but otherwise intact and currently strapped in police tape like bad gift-wrapping. The makeshift fence hooked up with the back wall of the structure, leaving no entry point. Peter rattled the slide-down garage panel, now sealed by its internal mechanism. He could jimmy it or have Henry call in for the key.

  “Let’s break in, Henry.”

  “You sure, Peter? What’ll we see?” Henry leaned on a corner of the garage. Grief and too many doses of the Green Fairy had undermined his stamina.

  But Peter was in a mood, too. “Henry, you seem to expect me to play Sherlock Holmes every five minutes. Ronald Devereau left no signatures, no testament for posterity, no suicide note, no documents at all. He burned up every shred of his persona. We’ll take it as it comes. If we see anything off centre by a millimetre in this garage, I’ll consider it probative.”

  “How do we get in?” Henry said.

  Peter began to circ
le the double garage. If the door at the front was impenetrable and both sides were solid, then the rear offered the only way. Around the back, the collapse of the breezeway had left a hole, and Peter started to push aside a slab of composite board that the police had clumsily nailed over the opening to the garage. Henry followed; picking up on the chief inspector’s impatience, he aimed a kick at the board and split it in two.

  They entered gingerly. Rectangular windows high on the south wall of the wooden box provided light for their search. There were no cars in the garage, and the vanishing of Devereau’s Buick remained a puzzle. The state police had issued a BOLO alert, but the Utah tags never resurfaced. Along one side of the frame structure, garden tools hung in their proper places, while a red lawnmower, a well-maintained electric model, stood on its outlined spot on the floor. There was no barbecue — thank God, it would have blown out the walls — but everything else bespoke American suburban normal, Peter concluded. A full-size white freezer dominated the non-automobile half of the garage.

  “Should we guess what’s in the Coldspot?” Peter asked. Henry didn’t pick up on the gallows undertone in Peter’s manner. Did he not grasp that Devereau had stored Jim Riotte’s body in the deep freeze, Peter wondered?

  “Empty. It would be standard procedure to clear it out and unplug it,” replied Henry.

  And so it was, except Devereau was the one who had cleaned it out. Peter, pleased that the investigators hadn’t locked the unit, tilted up the lid. The empty whiteness was discouraging; only a blue ice pack and some kind of deodorizer were left inside.

  Henry leaned against the far wall, mildly amused and still unaware of the freezer’s recent use. “Are you about to present me with a Poirot moment, Peter?”