Dead Center ac-5

by David Rosenfelt

  Almost since the day I arrived here, things have happened that seem to defy logic. As is my style, I have been trying to make logical sense out of them, to figure out the “why” behind the actions of these people. I’m being overly kind to myself to say that I’ve had very little success.

  But if the wheel is behind everything, then there’s no way I can succeed. If actions are taken because the wheel dictates them, then the “why” questions are meaningless, and logic has no place.

  I don’t like to hang out in places without logic.

  So I’ve got to get out of here.

  It’s time, actually way past time. I want to get back to my home and my office and my job. I want to get back to a New Jersey courtroom, where I can deal with normal thieves and murderers. I want to be with people who aren’t so friendly; I can hang out with Pete and Vince for twelve years, and neither of them will tell me they hope I have a good day. It’s not that they don’t want me to have a good day; it’s that they don’t care either way.

  I’ve packed my stuff and loaded it in the car, and I call Laurie to tell her that it’s time. She comes over so we can say our good-byes, a conversation I dread with every fiber of my being. If I had twice as many “being fibers” as I actually have, I would dread it with them as well.

  I don’t really know how this good-bye scene will play out; I certainly misjudged the “hello” scene in my hotel room when we had sex. One thing I do know: We’re not going to have sex now. Not unless she wants to.

  She doesn’t. From the moment she walks in, all she wants to do is hug, then sob a little, then hug some more. Hugging is not a specialty of mine, and I’m a completely mediocre sobber, so I pretty much let her take the lead.

  Finally, she pulls away and says, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out better for you, Andy.”

  “We got to spend some time together,” I say.

  “That was wonderful, but I’m talking about the case. I know how much you hate loose ends.”

  I nod. “This one is a little looser than most.”

  “You’ve got to let it go.”

  “That’s what I’m going to be doing in a few minutes. But it will continue to bug me. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had a case of any kind that didn’t end with me knowing who the bad guy was. I’m not saying the jury always had it right, but in my heart I knew what the truth was. Until now.”

  “We’ve been after Alan Drummond all this time, Andy. Just because he died, it doesn’t make him innocent.”

  “Of course, I know that. Alan Drummond was certainly not innocent. But there is no way he was in it alone. Not even close.”

  She nods, knowing that I’m right but not wanting to say so, since she knows how aggravating I find the whole situation. She finally concedes, “There were the two guys that kidnapped Madeline…”

  “They were just soldiers,” I say. “And so was Alan Drummond. They didn’t have the smarts or experience to tap Madeline Barlow’s phone, or watch Larson, or anticipate our every move. That came from someone above them, with more resources and more experience. I’m betting it was Wallace, but it’s just a guess.”

  “I’ll keep working the case, Andy.”

  I nod. “I know.” Then, “Laurie, it’s time for me to go.”

  “Yes,” she says. “You’ll drive carefully?”

  “I’ll drive carefully.”

  “This is awful,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  She gives Tara a huge hug, and Tara’s tail is down, a sure sign that she knows what’s happening. She was a witness to the previous final good-bye between Laurie and me, and I think she might hate them almost as much as me.

  “Good-bye, Andy. I love you,” Laurie says, giving me a final hug. I don’t answer her, because I seem to have grown a watermelon in my throat, and she turns and leaves.

  I watch through the window as she drives off, then I take a moment to give Tara a hug of my own. “It always comes down to you and me, kid,” I say, and then we head for the car and civilization.

  Unfortunately, between Findlay and civilization lies Center City, and after I’m ten minutes into my drive, the sign tells me that the exit for it is coming up in five miles. My mind, possibly seizing on any opportunity not to think about Laurie, takes me on a little trip down Center City memory lane, and my various contacts with the town pass before me, starting with my first visit during the town meeting.

  I think about Madeline Barlow and what she has been through. And then I think about Stephen Drummond, our first meeting, our clash in court, and his outraged phone call over what he saw as the abduction of Madeline. He vowed in our first meeting to defend the privacy of Center City citizens at every possible opportunity, and he certainly did that.

  No, he didn’t.

  The one time he didn’t rush to the defense of the town’s precious privacy is when we stopped the dairy truck his son was driving, and handcuffed him while we searched it. Yet it was the one time he would have absolutely been in the right to complain, and could have profited from it. Laurie’s bosses would likely have felt obligated to tell her to back off from the “harassment,” and it would have significantly hampered our ability to investigate what Alan Drummond was doing.

  Yet his father never said a word. Not one. I can only think of one possible explanation for that.

  He didn’t know it happened. His son never told him, and I can only think of one possible explanation for that.

  Stephen Drummond did not know what Alan Drummond was doing. If the son was involved in a criminal conspiracy, his father was not a part of it.

  As I consider all of this, I realize to my surprise that I’m not driving anymore. I’m sitting on the shoulder of the road, near the exit sign for Center City.

  I no longer harbor any illusions that I’m going to make people pay for their crimes. That boat has sailed. But I would sure as hell like to learn as much as I can about what happened, and another conversation or two just might help in that regard. So I put the car in drive, get off at the exit, and head for Center City to talk to Stephen Drummond.

  When I reach the center of town, I see a display near the town hall with flowers and letters posted on a bulletin board. I am struck by the irony that the first time I was here, a similar display was there for Liz Barlow and Sheryl Hendricks, and now the tribute is to Alan Drummond, who died two days ago. Again the tributes are arranged as spokes on a wheel, but this time I understand the significance of that design, whereas last time I did not.

  There’s a strong possibility that Stephen Drummond, in mourning for his son, will not be working today. Nevertheless, I park the car, take Tara out, and we head for his office, in the building next to the town hall.

  As we approach, two uniformed servants of the Keeper come out to meet us. “Can we help you, sir?”

  “I’d like to speak to Stephen Drummond,” I say.

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “Tell him Andy Carpenter has information about his son.”

  One of them goes into the building to do just that, which leads me to believe that Drummond is, in fact, working today. So far, so good. Now, if he’ll just see me…

  The servant comes back out, and much to my surprise, Stephen Drummond is with him. He looks about thirty years older than the last time I saw him.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I say.

  “Thank you. You had something to tell me about Alan?”

  “Yes.” I look at the two servants. “In private.”

  He nods and points across the street. “Is that your car?”

  I confirm that it is, and he tells me to get in the car and follow him. He gets in his own car, and we drive four blocks, to one of the houses on the edge of town.

  We get out and walk toward the house. As we near the door, Drummond realizes that Tara is with me. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a dog in our house,” he says.

  “Then we can talk on the porch,” I say.

  He thinks about this for a moment.
“No, I want you to come in.”

  We enter the house, and I am struck by how similar it is to the Barlows’. Simple, inexpensive furniture, only family photos on the walls. If Stephen Drummond was making big money in a criminal enterprise, he wasn’t using it to pay his decorator.

  He sits on a chair in the den, and I sit on the small sofa across from it, with Tara at my side. He neither offers us anything nor engages in small talk. “What did you want to say about Alan?”

  “I don’t believe his death was accidental. I believe he was either murdered or committed suicide, and though you don’t know it, you can probably tell me which.”

  His face is impassive, betraying neither surprise nor anger at what I am saying about his son. “And how can I do that?”

  “Is it possible that the wheel, through Keeper Wallace, instructed him to bring the plane down?”

  “Not only is it impossible, it is also absurd and insulting. I neither know nor care what you think of our religion, but your lack of understanding of its values is complete. It is peaceful and beautiful, and violence of any kind has no place. What you are accusing the Keeper of is ludicrous.”

  I nod. “I accept that. But then it means your son was murdered.”

  “Explain yourself,” he says. It’s a two-word sentence that my keen ear notices does not contain words like “impossible,” “absurd,” or “ludicrous.”

  So I proceed to explain myself. I probably talk for about twenty-five minutes, detailing everything I know about the murders, the airport, the criminal conspiracy… everything.

  He doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t say a word, and the only time he changes expression at all is when I tell him that I was there the day that Madeline Barlow was abducted and that two of the Keeper’s servants were the perpetrators. I think that the expression I detect in his face at that moment is surprise; could he not know what really happened?

  I conclude my soliloquy with a description of the search of Alan’s dairy truck, my witnessing of the plane crash, and my belief that its illicit cargo was thrown down to the ground minutes before. When I finish, he continues to sit there, almost expressionless, for a few moments. Then he stands up and leaves the room.

  I have no idea what to make of this, and Tara seems as confused as I am. It’s possible he’s not coming back and that Tara and I should just be on our way. I figure I’ll give him five minutes and then call out to him.

  At about the three-minute mark he comes back into the room, carrying a small carton, maybe a foot and a half square. He brings it over to the table next to me and sets it down. The carton has been previously opened, and he just pulls open the flaps.

  He takes out a smaller box that was contained within, and has also been opened, and hands it to me. “Do you know what this is?” he asks.

  I look inside the box and take out a small bottle of pills. The legend on the label identifies the contents as OxyContin, which I know to be a painkiller that doubles as a popular recreational drug in the United States. I also see that the box has a notation that the materials were packaged in Alberta, Canada.

  I explain what it is, and Drummond says, “There were three boxes just like that in Alan’s room.”

  “They must have been smuggling them across the border from Canada. They are a fraction of the price there compared to the United States, so they can be resold here at huge profits and still be less than the legal marketplace.”

  He nods. “That was my fear.”

  “And my guess is, they weren’t bringing in just the kind of drugs that can be abused. The market would be almost as good for all kinds of prescription drugs; the sale of it has even become a huge industry on the Internet.”

  “Perhaps he kept these aside for his own use,” he says, something I was thinking but saw no need to voice.

  “Alan wasn’t the leader of this operation,” I say. “Until today I thought that you probably were.”

  “And now?”

  “Now my best guess would be Wallace, but it’s only a guess.”

  “It’s an incorrect one. I would vouch for the Keeper with my life.”

  Unfortunately, he’s not able to come up with any idea who might have been directing the conspiracy, but promises to give it intense thought and effort. “I just hope I’m not too late,” he says.

  “Too late for what? With all the attention that the crash brought to this area and that airfield, that operation has to shut down.”

  “You think it’s over?” he asks, clearly doubting that it is.

  “I do, only because I don’t see how it can continue.”

  “Then you’re not thinking clearly,” he says. I wait for him to continue, and he does. “You believe that the crash was intentional, yet you also believe the crash ruined their chances for continuing their operation. These are smart people; why would they intentionally stop themselves?”

  What he is saying is so obviously true that I’m embarrassed it eluded me. “Unless they’re moving on to something else and were ready for this to end,” I say.

  He nods. “Exactly.”

  • • • • •

  I’M ABOUT FIFTEEN minutes out of Center City, and I can’t get the conversation with Drummond out of my mind. Since I arrived in Findlay, I’ve always been a couple of steps behind the people I’m chasing. If anything, that gulf is widening now.

  My goal has been to figure out who they are and to stop what they’re doing. I haven’t given the slightest bit of thought to what they’re going to do next, but Drummond is absolutely right. There is no reason to think they would have done anything to stop themselves, yet it seemed as if the plane crash did just that.

  I turn toward the passenger seat to make sure that Tara is all right, something I do every few minutes. It causes me to glance at my cell phone in its case, and I see that I’ve received a phone call and have a voice mail message. I didn’t take the phone in with me when I went into Drummond’s house, so the call must have come in then.

  I check caller ID and see that the call came from Laurie. I’ve been so focused on Drummond and Center City that I haven’t thought about her at all.

  I play back the message, and within moments I hear her voice, which sounds excited. “Andy, I think we got a break. It looks like Wallace has been behind the whole thing. Cliff Parsons has gotten one of Wallace’s servants to turn on him… Cliff says the guy is rock-solid and will testify in court. We’re going to get Wallace in a few minutes and bring him in for questioning. I’ll keep you posted.”

  I hear what she’s saying, but a cold chill runs down my spine as I hear even more clearly what she isn’t saying… something she doesn’t know, but I suddenly know down to my very core.

  Wallace is not the leader of any criminal conspiracy: he’s had nothing to do with the murders, and Cliff Parsons has not gotten one of his servants to turn on him.

  Because Cliff Parsons has been behind it all.

  I pull the car to a screeching halt and execute as fast a U-turn as I can. At the same time, I dial Laurie’s number at the station. No one answers her phone, and the call gets kicked automatically to the sergeant at the front desk.

  He says that Laurie is out, so I ask to speak to Parsons, though there is little chance that he is there. When the sergeant says he’s also out, I tell him that he needs to reach Laurie and have her call me. I tell him that it’s again a life-and-death situation, but I don’t tell him that the life on the line is hers.

  I call Drummond, only to find that he has not returned to his office. No matter how much I beg, they won’t give me his home number. I plead with them to reach him and have him call me, and though they say they will, I have no confidence in it. They’re not accustomed to doing favors for strangers that involve any kind of invasion of privacy. Especially when the person whose privacy they’d be invading is Stephen Drummond.

  The feeling of panic and dread that I have as I speed back toward Center City is overwhelming. The signs that Parsons was behind it were right there in front of me, but
I never saw them. Now they are hitting me in waves.

  Parsons was kept informed of our stakeouts of the airport, which explains why we were never able to catch them with anything other than a truckload of cheese. The only time he thought the airport was unwatched was when I went out there on an impulse on Christmas Day, and that is why a plane came in that day.

  I never knew how the two servants who kidnapped Madeline found out she had spoken to us, but Parsons certainly knew, and directed them to do what they did. He’d been assigned to Center City for a few years and must have found a few of the servants, Alan Drummond included, that he could recruit for his scheme.

  I keep turning to stare at the cell phone, as if that might get it to ring, but it refuses, leaving me alone with my thoughts and my fears.

  I’d bet my life that it wasn’t cargo that the postman saw fall through the clouds from the plane that day, and it wasn’t a piece of the plane. It was Cliff Parsons, a former Army Airborne Ranger, who parachuted out of the plane after he killed Alan Drummond. He must have been afraid that Drummond was so scared he would talk to us, or perhaps it was time to end the scheme, and he didn’t want Drummond around as a possible future witness.

  The next step is all too obvious. Cliff Parsons is going to kill Laurie and make it look as though Wallace did it. Then he’s going to take Laurie’s job, a job he thinks he should have gotten in the first place. He must have all the money he needs; now he will get the position and respect he thinks he deserves.

  He’s a piece of shit, and if he does anything to Laurie, I will hunt him down until the day I die.

  I make it back to Center City in less than half the time it took me to leave, and I pull the car to a screeching halt right in front of the town hall. There are a number of people in the street, going about their business, and I’m sure they must be staring at me. For the first time, I don’t see any servants in front of the place, providing security.

  I leave Tara in the car, but as I run toward the building, I flick the button on my key ring, locking her in. I see a Findlay squad car parked along the side of the building, which increases an anxiety that is already threatening to explode my head.