The Verdict on Each Man Dead

by David Whellams

  They chatted about the case, about Alma and the similarities between the faces in the sketches, and frequently got up to re-examine one or another portrait taped to the chairs. They agreed that the next day they would report their findings to Chief Grady at West Valley police headquarters.

  While Henry cleaned up, Peter sent an email to Joan. On impulse, he sent an affectionate note to his daughter, Sarah. He thought she was on assignment somewhere along the coast of Scotland. Sarah was the true wanderer among the Cammons, her job as a marine biologist constantly taking her to the edges of Britain and Europe. They kept in contact mostly by emails and text messages. It amused him that both Sarah and Maddy were addicted to their smart phones and rarely let five minutes go by before responding to his missives. But tonight Peter was so exhausted that he immediately turned off his mobile and went to bed before Henry.

  The next morning, Peter was brushing his teeth when Henry came in, the telephone extended.

  “Phil Mohlman,” he whispered.

  Peter took the phone.

  “Cammon, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Mark Riotte’s dead.”

  “When and where?”

  “Night before last, and I think you can figure out where. Stabbed through the heart. His place was torched. And guess what? A witness fingered a truck, an F-150 that showed up two days ago at the trailer court. She noted down the tags. The truck is leased to you, Inspector.”

  Peter experienced an odd thought: could the medical examiner determine the exact hour of death? He had called Riotte from the Paradise Motel at 2:30 a.m.

  “Yes, that’s right. What do we know at this point?”

  “Here’s what we know, asshole. You and Henry need to get down here this morning. A meeting is scheduled for ten o’clock. Me, DeKlerk, and Chief Grady.”

  “Why are you so angry? You think I killed Riotte?”

  “No.”

  And then Peter understood. Blood and ashes. Knife and fire. Here was Devereau’s Hollis Street signature. This gruesome thought slightly cheered Peter; this was a link to Casper Shaw. But why was DeKlerk inserting himself? “Did Riotte’s death involve narcotics?” he asked Mohlman.

  “Don’t you get it? I got Riotte’s address from DeKlerk. He did me a favour, and he took a big chance by not clearing it with Grady or Rogers at the DEA. Now that Riotte has turned up dead, they’re giving Boog flak, asking what you were doing in Kansas, and why, once again, Boog handed off the case to West Valley Homicide. You have to explain to Boog and the Kansas police. I’m not carrying that weight.”

  Peter wanted to suggest that DeKlerk should be chastised for not warning him and Mohlman that Marcel Riotte was a dealer, thereby endangering Peter.

  DeKlerk had once again manipulated West Valley Homicide to make them look foolish. Peter simply said, “Henry and I will be there at ten.”

  Phil became calmer. “Can Henry deal with the pressure?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, I’ll cut you some slack on Boog DeKlerk, but he’s gunning for you. To him, you’re an illegal alien. You’ve opened a big can of worms. As soon as you go begging to the ATF, DEA, Utah State Police, or the Bureau for cooperation, which I know you’re considering, you got a problem with DeKlerk. The only thing Boog hates more than you taking over a drug case is you letting the feds take over.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  Peter briefed Henry on the drive into West Valley. Henry, sober and energized from a night’s sleep, wanted to talk “strategy.”

  “Henry, since I’m the one who went to Crispin Breach without notifying anybody and pushed the Drug Squad’s buttons, I’ll take the heat on this.”

  The younger man smiled at him from the passenger seat. “You always knew we’d have to involve the rest of the police world sooner or later.”

  Peter smiled back. “This isn’t exactly how I thought collegiality would kick in.”

  When they entered the conference room at the West Valley station, Phil Mohlman was sitting at the big table with Boog DeKlerk, but Chief Grady was absent. From their grim faces, Peter knew he was in deep trouble, and he moved to get out ahead of it.

  To DeKlerk he said politely, “Peter Cammon.”

  The big man reluctantly gave in to English manners and shook hands.

  But that was his only concession.

  “Under what authority did you drive across the Kansas border to formally confront a suspect in an active investigation? Have you immigrated, Inspector?” DeKlerk said.

  Peter had kept the Hollis Street carnage bottled up inside him for a long time. He decided to push back. “I was there to see Marcel Riotte. And isn’t the Devereau investigation wrapped up?”

  “Marcel?” DeKlerk spat. “The police hereabouts know him as Mark. He has a criminal record. And why didn’t you inform the Hollis Street investigators of your visit? My Homicide colleague Detective Mohlman, for example?”

  Henry tilted forward. “Peter informed me,” Henry said.

  “You’re not on the investigation anymore,” DeKlerk snapped.

  “There is no investigation,” Henry said. “Every police force in sight has suspended it or ignored it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Peter watched the sparring, startled by the intensity of the South African’s hostility. DeKlerk was ready to roll right over Henry Pastern, and Peter, too. He was overdoing it. He had dodged the Watson file, but did he want back in? Peter resolved to endure the big man’s hypocrisy while he figured out these questions.

  Phil Mohlman lost his temper. “I didn’t know Cammon was planning the trip, but when you provided Riotte’s coordinates, you might have mentioned he was a narcotics dealer.”

  It was a standoff for a moment, and then everyone regrouped.

  “I’ll tell you everything I did,” Peter said reasonably, “but fill us in on Riotte’s death.”

  DeKlerk quoted the report from the Kansas police. “‘Residents of the Friendly Trailer Park were awakened by a fire in one of the units in the early morning, roused by the smell of burning cannabis.’ Lots of it.”

  Peter tilted forward, trying not to sound combative. “I was in Riotte’s trailer. There weren’t substantial quantities of drugs inside that I saw — and no smell of weed.”

  Mohlman said, “Riotte owned a second trailer down the end of the row. Everyone knew he used it for illicit business.”

  Everyone but me, you mean.

  “And no one cared if it was drug business,” DeKlerk added. “Places like that are drug villages.”

  “Just marijuana?” Peter said.

  “A local resident said Riotte dealt cocaine and heroin, too.”

  Mohlman added, “Kansas Homicide told me the attackers heisted narcotics from the second trailer.”

  Henry said, “How do they know for sure?”

  DeKlerk shot him a look of contempt. “Because they got the drug squad out lickety-split to take a gander. In Kansas, Homicide cooperates with Narcotics.”

  Mohlman attempted to calm things by redirecting the conversation. “Cammon, why did you go to Kansas in the first place?”

  “Devereau is a ghost. Nobody’s owned up to knowing him. I figured if anyone met him from two decades ago, it might be Riotte’s younger brother. I also hoped there had been fraternal contact more recently.”

  It sounded weak, and it was. “You were grasping at straws,” DeKlerk fired.

  Henry was in a mood to take on the Drug Unit chief. “Cammon is here because I asked him to come. You and the entire force have closed the file on Devereau. What do you care if someone delves into a dead investigation?”

  Mohlman jumped in before DeKlerk could throw a punch. “Mark Riotte was thirty-five when he died. That puts him at eighteen the last time he might have met Devereau’s ‘
ghost.’ You can’t work both ends of this, Cammon. You’re trying to track down this nasty bastard by yourself, without drawing in the authorities. I know, you’re going to argue that the authorities don’t believe there is a killer out there, and don’t care. Trouble is, you can’t go any further without stepping on someone’s official toes. Kansas Highway Patrol are pissed off.”

  DeKlerk said, “Come clean, Inspector, what did Riotte tell you in Kansas?”

  “I went there for one reason, to see if he ever met someone like Devereau. I showed him the police sketch West Valley prepared. He said he had encountered a man like that. Called himself Casper Shaw.”

  “What else? Address?”

  “No address. Marcel never saw where he lived. But there was one thing. Shaw hated drugs.”

  “What else did Mark Riotte tell you?”

  “He said he would kill Devereau if he ever saw him again.”

  Chief Grady entered the boardroom in a rush. He was in his late fifties, skinny rather than lean, with the typical cares of a chief of police weighing on him.

  “You’re Chief Inspector Cammon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cammon, I may have to send you Topeka.”

  The four detectives in the room all understood that Grady’s worries reverberated beyond the sordid killing of Mark Riotte in lonely Crispin Breach. The bigger police agencies were now irreversibly involved in the Hollis Street case and the manhunt for Ronald Devereau.

  There was more.

  “There was a major raid on a drug operation in Wichita last night. No one killed but four shot and the place burned out. Captain Brockhurst of the Kansas Highway Patrol demands to know if the attack is connected to Riotte.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Peter and Henry returned to the house, neither man particularly chastened by Chief Grady’s anger. Henry chattered about their defiance of Boog DeKlerk’s effort to intimidate them, but then he announced that he needed a nap, and retreated to his bedroom.

  Coppermount felt isolated. The urge for movement swept over Peter and he secretly — he wouldn’t confide this to Henry — was pleased at the prospect of taking to the interstates again, no matter what grief this Captain Brockhurst gave him. He searched out Topeka on his bedroom wall map and found that it lay at the far eastern edge of Kansas.

  He considered Henry’s state of mind again. He allowed him his deep grief, but his uneven conduct — why suddenly depart for a late-morning nap after a solid night’s sleep? — made him think that Henry might be about to go back on the booze. Joan, an emergency room nurse who had seen her share of addicts, believed in the “addictive personality,” and Peter wondered if Henry’s drinking went beyond normal grief. Peter had stated, perhaps rashly, that he was travelling to America to kill a dangerous man. It would help to have a reliable partner at his side when the time arrived. But for now he decided to make the trip to Kansas alone.

  Presumably Devereau/Shaw had attacked the Friendly Trailer Park one night and a significant drug operation the next, both in one state. Why was he moving so fast? He was ripping off drug dealers and selling off the product to finance … what? Peter worried that he was racing towards some kind of terrorist assault, returning to his old ways. He had long wondered how they would trap Devereau, and now he perceived a weakness in the killer/terrorist’s pattern. Times had changed in the West and across the country since 9/11. Drug dealers, perhaps including the Mexican Henry had encountered, had come to understand that they could no longer launch drug wars in the West with impunity. Homeland Security had effectively obliterated the distinctions among drug marketing, organized crime, and terrorist actions and were targeting every kind of criminal organization. Spreading carnage across the Kansas drug world two nights running reflected old, lawless frontier thinking. It would bring Devereau coordinated attention he didn’t want.

  You’re out there, Devereau. Not far. But you’re running fast now, aren’t you?

  Peter had Captain Brockhurst’s number, and before dialing he pondered what to say. He supposed he would have to disclose his full theory of Devereau’s links to the Unabomber in order to satisfy the Kansan. There was no other way to explain away his visit to the trailer park.

  As he was about to ring up Brockhurst on Henry’s landline, Maddy reached him on his mobile.

  “Dad, can you go online? I’ve only a minute. Joe’s on my lap.”

  Peter could hear his grandson babbling in the background. He went to Henry’s computer to access his email. Six massive files from his daughter-in-law sat in his inbox. The volume didn’t bother him, since she included an explanatory summary with each data set.

  “Dad, are you there?”

  “Six files. Next?”

  “Open the one called ‘Picture/95/15/04.’ Call me when you can.”

  “Bye, Grandpa,” Joe said.

  Peter clicked the label, and the police artist’s black-and-white sketch of Ronald Devereau from Junction City, Kansas, stared him in the face. No, it was different. Here was a refined version of the sketch generated by the bloke who had knocked on Tim McVeigh’s motel room door. Peter sat back in surprise. This was new.

  He read Maddy’s caption.

  Found this artist’s sketch in Oklahoma City records (okay, in Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms historical file system — semi-secure file system — hope you aren’t sharing my hacking!). It is supposed to be Timothy McVeigh!!! On April 15, 1995, about four days before the Murrah Building explosion, McVeigh stayed at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas. He ordered takeaway Chinese food, and the lad from the restaurant delivered it to his door, Room 25. This is a picture of the character who answered. Does it look like McVeigh to you? Here’s the thing, Dad: later, the delivery boy swears it wasn’t McVeigh who paid for the food. He stuck to his story. Does the chap in the picture look like someone we know?

  Peter knew most of this already, but what the FBI had never told him was that they had re-interviewed the delivery boy and come up with an amended portrait — now staring him in the face — that looked even more like Ronald Devereau. Peter printed out the sketch. He now had five portraits of Ronald Devereau. He was running out of dining room chairs.

  Keeping the picture file open, he rang up Captain Brockhurst in Topeka.

  “Chief Inspector Peter Cammon, I’m presuming.” Brockhurst’s drawl was low and thick but, to Peter’s limited ear, sounded like a Texas accent.

  “I am retired, Captain. Private citizen.”

  “Not of this state. What the hell were you doing in my backyard two nights back?”

  “Tracking a killer.”

  “Who’s the victim, other than Marcel Riotte?”

  “The wife of Henry Pastern, a West Valley detective. Plus a couple named Watson. Another couple named Proffet.”

  “Listen, Mr. Cammon, when Chief Grady told me who you were, I checked you out. You were here during the Unabomber mess.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Ever make it to Kansas back then?”

  “No. I almost came to your state in 1995. There was talk of a possible connection between Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh, but I never made the trip.”

  Brockhurst grunted. “I was also involved in the Murrah blitz in ’95, but I guess we didn’t meet.”

  “No,” Peter said neutrally.

  “Any links between this week’s drug raid and domestic terrorism or militia groups?”

  It was Peter’s turn to pause. “I confess, Captain, I think there is. Can you give me your email? I want to send you something.”

  It took only a minute to forward the fresh sketch of the stranger in Timothy McVeigh’s motel room.

  “Who is this?” Brockhurst said.

  “Probably Ronald Devereau, also known as Casper Shaw, and likely the killer of Marcel Riotte.” Peter explained the delivery man’s testimony.

  “Inspe
ctor, you’ve become suddenly interesting to me. I’m expecting you in Topeka. There are daily flights from Salt Lake.”

  “I’d prefer to drive. See the country,” Peter said.

  “It’ll take you two days, but I suppose you could do it in one fifteen-hour stretch.”

  “I’ll do it overnight. Oh, am I a suspect in the trailer park case?”

  “Everyone’s a suspect. This is America.”

  Peter left for Kansas within the hour, without Henry. He sensed that he might have an ally in Brockhurst, a cop willing to work with him. Of course, maybe this optimism merely reflected his longing for a partner of his own generation.

  He crossed the Colorado border on the relentless I-70 and stopped for the night at the El Palomino Motel in Grand Junction (he liked the leaping horse on the sign out front). He could just as well have left Utah in the morning, but he was consumed by the need to press on, and driving always did the trick. After a restless sleep, he was on the highway at sunrise. The I-70 ran all the way to Topeka.

  About 150 miles out of the Kansas state capital, a road sign startled him: “Fort Riley Military Reservation.” Timothy McVeigh had been assigned here for a short spell. A second interstate marker promised “Junction City: 2 Miles” — the town where McVeigh had stayed at the Dreamland Motel.

  But a gas station attendant in Junction City informed Peter that the Dreamland Motel had gone out of business. McVeigh had left no martyr’s shrine.

  Brockhurst had asked Peter to come by police headquarters as soon as he reached Topeka, “as long as the sun is up.” The captain was in the office when Peter arrived. Peter instantly took to him. He carried the aura of a wily small-town sheriff, jowly, ruddy-cheeked, and dramatic in his every movement; his hair, barely thinning as he reached sixty, swooped past his temples to form a pompadour.