The Verdict on Each Man Dead

by David Whellams

  “Tell me who he is,” Peter said.

  The other man grinned, his eyes crazed. “Will you kill him?”

  Peter let one of his final two allotted minutes go by. He leaned in and touched one orange sleeve, a clear violation of the rules.

  “Yes.”

  “His name is Kelso Vyne.”

  PART 3

  VYNE

  Every choice is a loss. The past is not where you left it.

  Ruth Padel, “The Cello.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Joan was so eager to land, to spurn synthetic oxygen after fifteen hours of flight and ultimately engage the desert air, that she forgot to look out the window for the Great Salt Lake. All the way she had waited for the mysterious lake to appear. Her miscue dovetailed with a feeling that had nagged her the whole trip from Heathrow: that plans with Peter were already out of whack. The Unabomber meeting had been moved up two weeks to today, and she had no idea how the encounter would affect Peter’s mood. Would it be a momentous breakthrough or an anticlimax? Either way, Joan saw trouble ahead, for her husband was never fun to be around when he was closing in on a target. He had pledged to back off once he had the killer’s name, to let the new team make the arrest. So why had she left a daughter-in-law back home, hovering over her laptop keyboard like Glenn Gould, waiting for that name to appear on her monitor?

  Joan was pretty sure that she would recognize Elder Tynan, but the arrivals area, while it contained many blokes in white shirts and black pants (these were all Mormons?), didn’t include him. As her eyes jumped across the crowd, she caught a lanky figure staring at her, a white sling supporting his left arm. She did a double take: this was Henry himself, thinner than ever but smiling genuinely. Detective Mohlman stood at his side. Henry beckoned to her with his good arm and moved forward to meet her.

  “I’d hug you, but it’s too painful,” Henry said. “You remember Phil, my partner.”

  “You’re always driving me places,” she joshed.

  But then Phil saw the alarm in Joan’s eyes. “No, your husband’s fine. We’re the welcoming committee, substituting for the substitute.”

  “Mr. Tynan sends his regrets,” Henry added. “He had an urgent meeting and asked me to pick you up. But with my arm and all, I needed Phil to drive …”

  “Ignore him, Mrs. Cammon. We’re just outside.”

  On this genial basis, they collected Joan’s luggage and walked to Phil Mohlman’s dusty police sedan. She noticed that Phil still limped in some pain. Henry insisted that she sit in the front of the car so that she could view the desert better, but Joan understood that they didn’t want her feel like an arrestee in the back.

  The first feature that struck her wasn’t the desert but the snow-topped mountains that sheltered the city on the eastern side. Then Phil made a turn that put the mountains at their backs, and soon they were rushing west into what seemed a hazy infinity. She had to ask, “Where is the Great Salt Lake?”

  “Off to our right, not very far at all,” Henry said.

  “You know, I’ve never been on the lake,” Phil said.

  “Maybe because it doesn’t resemble anything in Boston,” Henry kibitzed from the rear seat.

  They chatted amiably about civilian topics — the weather in England, and Phil Mohlman’s continuing sense of being an outsider in Utah. Their jocularity faded the moment they turned onto Coppermount and Henry saw the Escalade in his driveway. Joan felt a rising chill. Henry turned to Phil. “Did you know about this?”

  “I’m a co-conspirator,” Phil declared, drily and without concession.

  Henry stormed out of the back of the sedan. He had the grace to open Joan’s door for her but then he rushed to the house. Joan took her time there in the driveway; she had travelled for a full day to experience the sun, and she revelled in it.

  Inside, she hardly had time to check out the panoramic view from the patio windows before two men on the sofa turned and jumped to their feet. One, she marked, was the peculiar Elder Tynan, but the other was one of the biggest men she had ever met. At first she thought wrestler, and then imagined that Peter had arranged a bodyguard for her, pending some assault from the newly monikered Hollis Street beheader.

  “What the hell did you do?” Henry said to Tynan.

  “Careful, pardner,” Phil warned from behind Henry. “Remember, Mormons don’t swear.”

  It was the wrong thing to say to an outraged man, Joan thought, but Phil showed no concern. This was a tough copper, she recorded.

  Tynan spoke for the first time. “Henry, have a seat. I invited José over.”

  “I won’t allow this in my own house!” Henry unwisely flung up both arms in anger and grimaced in pain. He stomped across the vestibule and disappeared to his bedroom.

  Joan had already perceived that Henry’s eruption flowed from a deep loneliness as much as from anything Tynan had done. The house felt hollow despite the stunning view from the back windows; Henry was alienated from his own home. In temperament, Joan was eternally polite with people and she understood that they should stay put and wait him out.

  Everyone had noticed the blood oozing through Henry’s shoulder bandage. Tynan, though he hadn’t said hello yet, gave Joan an intimate glance, the look of one nurse to another.

  “I’ll be back,” Tynan said.

  Joan stepped forward. “No, let me do it. Where are his supplies?”

  She faced the chagrined looks of the three men. The big bloke had yet to speak. Did he hope she hadn’t figured out that he was a drug dealer? All of them were awkward in her presence. She decided to cut through the tension by showing them she was Peter Cammon’s wife.

  “Supplies? Bandages? Did you think I meant that silver box of cocaine sitting on the bar?”

  José, ruddy from a life of exposure to the desert, turned even redder and got up from the sofa. Phil Mohlman beamed. José massively loomed over Joan but he shook her hand in a chivalrous way. “I am José Mariana. That will be gone when you return. It is a pleasure to meet the wife of Señor Cammon.”

  Joan discovered the bandages and disinfectant in an unsanitary mountain in the main bathroom. She carried the stack into Henry’s bedroom, where he was struggling out of his blood-ruined shirt. Joan stripped it off, exposing a wide square of gauze on his left shoulder. She removed the compress and observed that though the shoulder scar was clean, the resurgent bleeding had to be dealt with before infection set in. Henry looked embarrassed.

  She swabbed the wound. “Was there any tendon damage?”

  “Luckily, no. The muscle injury will heal, they tell me.”

  “If you stop stretching that shoulder. What painkillers have you been taking?”

  It was Henry’s turn to look shamefaced. “You saw the drugs?”

  “I’m pretty sure the silver box will be gone when you go back out there.”

  “I was hoping to give you a proper welcome. That didn’t include the Mexican.”

  “Scary fellow.”

  “Sorry.”

  Joan was not only scrupulously polite with strangers, she knew how to forge intimacy. “Listen, Henry. Peter and I have been married forty-six years. He tries to shield me from the worst of his mayhem, but I’ve learned to handle the bizarre bits … which always seem to come up.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry. Let me tell you something. This is a typical Peter Cammon case. Peter becomes relentless when he gets close to solving a crime, and as a consequence things can get weird. To his credit — I think — he ignores the small stuff that could distract him from the big picture. I’m guessing that he’ll see José and his white powder as a minor distraction.”

  It was a sign of how much she missed Peter that she rambled on about him. I may be light-headed from the flight and the sun, but now I understand why I’m here. Peter’s welcoming me into a strange wor
ld, where he may be its strangest inhabitant. That’s his idea of a compliment. His assertion that he was flying to America to deal with an evil man had niggled at her from the moment he said it. When he invited her over, she reasoned that he wanted comfort and, possibly, her insight. Now she began to think the reverse: My bigger job will be to constantly explain my quirky husband to these people.

  “So you’ve figured out what’s going on here?” Henry asked.

  “Let’s see. The Mexican — Peter told me about him — came to see you after the Denver incident. He was grateful to you. You saved his life.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Peter did. Señor Mariana thought it would be a nice gesture to supply you with some cocaine for your aches and pains. Mr. Tynan wanted to cut off that supply chain, so he asked you to pick me up at the airport while he met with the Mexican gentleman. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. Unfortunately, he was still here when we arrived. That wasn’t in the plan.”

  “Exactly right. I expect that José resisted being told what to do, but Tynan’s a very persuasive guy.”

  Joan found a fresh shirt in the closet and helped Henry put it on. “One thing I can’t figure out, Henry, is why Detective Mohlman wasn’t distressed when he encountered Señor Mariana a few minutes ago. But I suppose the Mexican is just another criminal to him.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that. Where do you think Tynan got José’s phone number? Phil’s a good guy, but he keeps some distance from our pursuit of Devereau. He hopes to get back to being a street detective, so he’s careful about our obsession. But you can be sure he’ll do his best to help us. Devereau wounded him, too.”

  Joan faced him. “Henry, the cocaine is gone for good. You and I will make sure it doesn’t get in your way again. Can we agree on that?”

  He murmured, “Yup.”

  Her next words sounded more portentous than she wanted. “Peter’s endgame requires that you be there for him.”

  They returned together to the living area to find that Mohlman and the Mexican had both departed. Although Peter was absent, she was starting to situate him in this extreme world of hunters, hunted, and wounded. She understood that, to varying extents, these men took their cues from Peter; he was their leader. By association, she would take on a role, too. She had meant what she said to Henry: Peter would need him clean and sober — no more white powder or green elixir. She would be his monitor, his scold, and the peculiar Mr. Tynan would back her up. She had landed in a house of damaged men: she had never seen so many scars.

  The afternoon was ebbing and Joan wasn’t up for more long conversations. She unpacked in the room Peter was using and hung her outfits next to the garish Hawaiian shirt she had forced him to bring. It made her smile. She sniffed it: he had worn it at least once. She was eager to greet the John Ford landscapes of the West, though she wondered if any part of the next few weeks would feel anything like a vacation.

  She was considering a call to Leeds when the telephone in the outer room rang. She heard Henry talking, and a minute later he came to fetch her.

  “Hello, dear,” came Peter’s calm voice. “You arrived okay?”

  The rush of her own emotion surprised her. “Are you safe, Peter?”

  “Safe? No place safer than the ADX Florence.”

  “You got the name?” she said.

  “Yes. I gave it to Henry. I’ll tell you everything when I get there, which should be tomorrow afternoon, early after lunch. I have to touch base with the Hollis Street task force and a fellow called Rogers at the Drug Enforcement Administration in Salt Lake.”

  Joan was pleased at his openness and the intimation that he was indeed handing off the search to the authorities.

  “Have you had a chance to see any of the Utah desert, dear?”

  “No, but I’ve met a drug dealer, two injured detectives, and the very odd Elder Tynan.”

  She rang off cheerily. Henry announced that he was off to pick up dinner. He grinned at her for the first time. She pledged to eat whatever he bought and warned him in a motherly tone to drive carefully.

  With the house suddenly quiet, Joan looked around the place, easily identifying the touches that were Theresa’s. Henry hadn’t turned it into a shrine, but on the other hand he had done little to clean up the rooms. It remained a sad house.

  She opened the glass doors and walked out onto the sand. The immense distances at every compass point, so unlike well-groomed England, resounded with both possibility and loneliness. The beauty, especially the light, won her over to America, at least this portion of it. Quicker than most visitors, she grasped the paradox of the West. It was a place that encouraged contemplation, but while you communed with nature you might easily lose yourself in solitude.

  Henry returned with too much Tex-Mex takeout. They sat at the dining room table, and he delighted in identifying the dishes: enchiladas, tacos de lengua, bean dip, albondigas soup, arroz con pollo. He talked openly of Theresa, and Joan was content to listen to his how-we-met stories. Without her prompting, he again swore off cocaine and absinthe. She wanted to believe him, and so she grinned back at him.

  At 8:30, jet-lagged, she went off to sleep in the guest room. She left a note by the front door just in case Peter returned that night, telling him to wake her.

  Three hours later, in the heaviness of complete darkness, she drifted out of sleep. Her eyes adjusted to the high window, and she was able to grope to the door. She missed Jasper. The glow from the under-counter lights in the kitchen directed her along the hushed corridor. A hundred wild species lurked out there, most of them benign, and she wished her biologist daughter were there to name them. The thought of intrepid Sarah made her bold. She flipped the switch on the patio flood and opened the heavy door, leaving the screen shut while she tested the nighttime desert. Silence reigned. She opened the screen and stepped onto the patio and waited. Red eyes looked back at her from twenty feet or so beyond the rim of the light. Sarah would know who was watching her.

  Joan noticed for the first time how the dryness made the air tolerable, pleasant, but she didn’t dare walk farther out into the unfamiliar badlands. She returned to the kitchen and took a bottle of water from the fridge. Closing the door, she saw the bird standing in the living room. He was over two feet in length, with a long, straight tail. She knew he was a roadrunner. Sarah will be proud of me. She had her mobile and might have snapped a picture and sent it to Joe in England, but she didn’t want to alarm the bird. The roadrunner flapped onto the big table and nibbled at a few dinner crumbs. His brown-and-white speckling provided excellent camouflage, she thought; traces of blue feathering marked his breast and belly. With a coo and a clatter of its long beak, the creature hopped down and raced out the door.

  She was in the mood for omens and signs, even if she had to look them up. A well-thumbed Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America sat on the shelf next to the computer stand. She had been visited by the state bird of New Mexico, she discovered. In Hopi Indian culture, the roadrunner protected the tribe against evil spirits: he was good luck. She turned on Henry’s computer, went right to her email, and relayed this information to Sarah and Maddy in short messages. In a breathtaking two minutes, the insomniacal Maddy fired back: “What are you doing up at this hour?” In six more minutes, Sarah wrote, “Congratulations. You had an encounter with a sacred bird. Geococcyx californianus. Go with it!”

  Joan strolled outside to the far rim of the light pool. Not that she was following the roadrunner, but its spirit drew her to the sand. When Peter had emailed her about arrangements for her journey, he suggested she read The Teachings of Don Juan on the plane. “Carlos Castaneda is an old fraud, but you might enjoy it.” The tome, she knew, was about solitude, contemplation, and self-realization. Did Peter know how much he was like the ancient Don Juan?

  CHAPTER 41

  On the way home fro
m Denver, Peter reported the name Kelso Vyne to Furst and Ordway, who currently operated out of the Utah Bureau of Investigation offices in SLC, and to Rogers at the DEA branch. The dyspeptic drug investigator, though he still resented being snubbed by Avelino González at the bizarre Wendover session, was probably best positioned to monitor narcotics-linked incidents across Western jurisdictions.

  Ordway called the Coppermount house the next morning to report that their suspect was born in Monroe, Kansas. He had no criminal record under Kelso Vyne, but Peter was pleased that the authorities could now focus on one name linked to a birthplace. This somehow crystallized the manhunt for them. Now if only they could obtain a verifiable photo of their ghost.

  On the fifth day after Peter’s return from the Florence Supermax, New Mexico State Police came close to nabbing Vyne in Albuquerque when he and three armed men held up a small-time meth distributor and relieved him of his roll of cash and a stash of meth. The NMSP’s Clandestine Lab Team, working out of Santa Fe, had been watching the dealer in the hope that he would lead them to his factory source, and were infuriated when Vyne spoiled their surveillance. Furst and Ordway drove down and briefed the New Mexicans about Vyne.

  For Joan Cammon, the next fortnight floated past with surprisingly little tension. Each day was full. She and Peter and Henry established a compact under which the men vowed to share everything that had happened in Colorado. In daily sessions at the dining room table, documents spread on chairs and all about the floor, the three of them revisited the facts, theories, and rumours that swirled around Kelso Vyne. They all became experts on the Watson murders. It was the best they could make of the waiting game.