“Hallie will back you up on this story of yours? C.J., too?”
“Sure.”
“Call them.”
He did, and they did.
I didn’t like it. The stories sounded pat and rehearsed. They fit together like neatly machined puzzle pieces. Who was holding the jigsaw? That was my question. All my cop instincts told me Chris and his cohorts were lying, but they had told me Hollister was a killer, also. My instincts were unreliable these days, and I liked that least of all.
There was nothing to do but press on. My next target was Toby Vollans, the WAVE bus driver who had claimed no recollection of Hollister among his passengers on the afternoon of the murder.
I found him having an early beer at the Chicken Box, and got a small concession.
“Look, maybe he was on the bus and maybe not. Maybe it was that day and maybe it was a different day. I don’t pay that much attention, okay? I just want to drive out my shift and get home.” I looked around the seedy bar, from the pool tables to the bandstand, lifted an inquiring eyebrow. “Yeah, okay, I stop off here first. Here or the Muse. Like nine-tenths of everybody else who works for a living around here. So what?”
“Chris Felleman told me Hollister promised him a part in a play if he’d lie about that day. It wasn’t Hollister, but someone made that promise—to both of you. A production of True West. At the time it seemed like a great deal, but now you’re both accessories to murder and you’re thinking your best bet is to stonewall the cops.”
“Nobody promised me anything. Besides, if the Lab did True West, they’d bring in a couple of Equity actors from New York, anyway. That’s what they do now. Fucking ‘community theater.’ What a joke.”
“But you believed it. And now you’re trapped.”
“One more word and I’m calling a lawyer.”
I stood up. “That’s a good idea, Toby. Have your parents hire a criminal attorney out of Boston or New York. There’s no one around here smart enough to get you out of this one.”
If the plan was in fact to stonewall me, Toby had done a good job. Something smelled bad, but as anyone who’s had a mouse die in their house can tell you, it’s often hard to locate the source of the smell. Billy Delavane had wound up taking a sawzall to his living room wall a couple of years ago, and I was prepared to take my entire house apart one room at a time if I had to, until there was nothing left but rubble.
One room at a time.
My next target was Carmen Delgado, Judith Barsch’s maid. Perhaps some pressure would change her story. She could have any number of reasons for lying, including her own guilt. She was friends with Sebastian Cruz, her paperwork was flimsy, Refn could have threatened to turn her into Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He could have taken advantage of her in other ways. It wasn’t tough to conjure reasons why anyone would have wanted to kill Refn. I couldn’t see her colluding with Toby Vollans and Chris Felleman, but that was just one more reminder of how little I knew about my adopted island, and its complex tangle of social networks. Anything was possible, and after close to a decade on Nantucket, surprise was practically dereliction of duty.
The driveway was empty and the door was open when I arrived, with carpets and runners draped over Finnish beating racks outside, while Carmen mopped the floors. The polished ash wood front hall was still drying.
I stuck my head inside. “Hello? Hello?”
Carmen called from upstairs. “Missus not home!”
“I want to talk to you! Carmen? It’s Chief Kennis!”
A moment of silence, then, “Come on up.”
I found Carmen in the master bath, scrubbing the claw-foot tub with a scouring powder called Barkeeper’s Friend. I made a note of it—rich people found all the best products. I looked around. Something was wrong.
“Chief Kennis?”
“Shhhhh.”
What was it? I knew it was something I’d seen in Hamburger’s video, and failed to register, just as Hector’s Israeli Coke can had failed to register when I studied the photographs I’d taken of his room. I scanned the closets, cabinets, counters, sink and bath, mirrored doors, racks of shoes and glasses. It didn’t help, looking could only take me so far.
Then I hung my head and stared down at the floor—white hexagons, beige grout. I sensed Carmen rising to her feet, but I ignored her. I let my mind disengage, studying the ceramic tiles. If you imagined a “Y,” with lines drawn from the bottom legs of the top triangle and a vertical stroke down to the apex of the bottom triangle, the hexagons turned into cubes, stacks of cubes. I released the tension of focus and they turned back into hexagons again. Squint, push—cubes; relax, hexagons. From two dimensions to three, popped and flattened, reversed, made opposite, restored—because of nothing more than a tiny wrench of perception.
Just like this case.
When I looked up, I knew exactly what I was looking for and exactly where to find it.
I grabbed what I needed from the counter and, in a linked moment of inspiration, from the cabinet above the sink. Carmen was saying something to me. I barely heard her and didn’t answer. I left her standing there. I didn’t need to talk to her anymore.
Time was running out and I had work to do.
Chapter Nineteen
Malice and Forethought
I drove back to the station too fast, running stop signs with my flashers on, pushing cars and SUVs and painters’ vans, tour buses, taxis and gardeners’ trucks with their trailers of clanking lawnmowers to the side of the road like a blast wave, moving like a bullet through soft tissue.
I pulled into my space behind the station and was upstairs in my office with the door shut three minutes later. I spoke to no one and no one dared speak to me.
I grabbed my chair, rolled it up the desk, and booted the computer. The full set of scanned files Karen Gifford had compiled for me popped up—court records, transcripts, depositions tied to a time line of Refn/Pomeroy’s movements east across the country over the previous decade.
His slogan under both names could have been “Often Indicted, Never Convicted.” He always managed to skate on some technicality, missing witness, dropped charge, or recanted testimony. Then there were all the cases where he was never even charged, but Karen had found his mark. She followed the trail of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills, paid blackmail, broken marriages, and looted nonprofits. None of it helped me. I was looking for one particular case, one special swindle. I didn’t know what it was, and I wasn’t even sure of the victim’s name. I hoped I’d recognize it when I saw it. I skimmed half a dozen dismissed civil suits, and even more litigations deemed frivolous, findings against the plaintiff, court costs paid by the complainant. All small-time stuff, bricks through a window.
I was looking for the wrecking ball.
It was dark out when I finally found it.
The company was called Beckham Studios, and it billed itself as the first major film production entity to locate in the Midwest. Located in Elk City, Oklahoma, named after the city’s home county of Beckham, the brand new distributor arrived in town with a carpetbag full of tax breaks from the state government and a substantial, but never fully disclosed, initial operating budget. They bought a bankrupt industrial park on the outskirts of the city and launched into a spectacular renovation—repaved parking lot, remodeled offices, and ground cleared for a pair of sound stages. Their motto was “Twenty-first century entertainment—Twentieth Century Entertainments.” They meant it. They had the rights to remake or revamp a slew of old TV shows, from Mr. Ed to The Gale Storm Show, Topper and My Little Margie. They had purchased solid properties that no one else seemed much interested in—Chuck Norris films (they were actively seeking “the new Chuck Norris”), Steven Seagal films, old Western serials like The Lone Ranger and Zorro. “Wholesome old-fashioned stories,” the CEO told a city council meeting as they were breaking ground for the first of the soundstages. “Rous
ers!”
By all accounts he was charismatic, charming, and—most of all—convincing. City managers saw new revenue streams pouring into the city, leading to a new cachet—Elk City would become the Hollywood of the Plains. And there was more—a new string of drive-in movie theaters, upgraded with the latest technology, as well as surf parks tied to their collection of old beach movies, from Gidget to Beach Blanket Bingo.
But they weren’t just blowing into town on a gust of tax incentives, cheap and star-struck local politicians. It was a heartland company and wanted heartland men and women involved with the day-to-day running of the business. They wanted to “Put America back into American movies.”
Beckham Studios offered stock options and investment opportunities. Shareholders, if they put enough skin in the game and enough money on the line, would be brought into the highest level of decision-making at the studio. They would be “green lighting” major motion pictures and partnerships with streaming companies like Hulu and Netflix, signing off on financing for giant movie-themed amusement park construction across three states. More importantly, they would be helping to shape national culture as their nation sailed into the new uncharted century.
Heady stuff. It seemed too good to be true.
And of course it was.
The CEO was one Horst Refn.
Karen had scanned news photographs and TV screen grabs. It was Refn, all right. His phony film company practically bankrupted the city and ruined a number of its more prominent citizens. But the biggest investor, who was only allowed to participate after an exhaustive “due diligence” that included ten years of tax audits and a month-by-month review of his company’s ledgers as well as his own credit history, family holdings, and capital acquisitions, was one Gregory Fillion of Fillion Oil. That was his grandfather’s name for the company, outdated now since their primary business had become extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracturing.
Fillion was so busy proving himself to Refn that it never occurred to him make Refn prove himself to his investors. It would only have been needlessly discouraging—“looking a gift horse in the mouth” and this glamorous stallion had a fine set of choppers. Fillion was sure of it. He said so in his deposition.
It made sense at the time. Beckham Studios was demonstrating strength and solvency every day, pumping much needed money into the city, changing the landscape emotionally as well as physically. Elk City was turning into a boomtown and the giddy imminence of impending wealth lent a party atmosphere to the early spring days as winter faded and the last patches of dirty snow started to melt on the newly patched sidewalks.
Fillion was given an office suite and a seat on the board of directors. All he had to do in return was wire what turned out to be his life savings, along with his liquidated stock holdings and the family funds held in trust (he was the designated beneficiary) into a numbered account in the Cayman Islands.
His wife begged him not to do it—as wives often do.
He ignored her, as husbands often do.
A week later the construction had stopped, the half-renovated offices were empty and Beckham Studios had ceased to exist, the loans they had taken out to start construction defaulted, the ownership of their intellectual properties proved fraudulent, the operating officers vanished. Everything turned out to be a lie, even the supposed tax breaks from the state government. It was a teetering construction of outrageous fabrications and it couldn’t have lasted long, but it didn’t need to.
It struck me that Beckham Studios resembled one of those L.A. bank robberies where the thieves were in and out in under two minutes, just ahead of an LAPD three-minute response time. Speed was everything—speed and a posture of absolute confidence. The robbers achieved it with masks and automatic weapons.
All Refn needed was a good story and a smile.
The city recovered, but Gregory Fillion committed suicide.
In the State Attorney General’s investigation, Fillion’s widow described confronting Refn and demanding their money back. He gave her cash.
In the transcript the Deputy AG asks,
“Cash? Didn’t that make you suspicious?”
“Indeed, it did. But he had a good explanation.”
“Will you share it with us?”
“Very well. He told me, and I later verified this, that New Mexico and Colorado to the west, and Missouri and Arkansas to the east, all had much more lenient policies concerning marijuana. New Mexico and Missouri had decriminalized the drug, it was okayed for medical use in Arkansas, and Colorado, of course, had legalized it. But the states were at odds with the federal government and banks were reluctant to take deposits from these people. Consequently, they had a great deal of cash on hand and they were actively looking to invest it.”
“Or launder it.”
“Yes, I was sure that some of this activity was indeed illegal. But I confess I was happy to take the money.”
“Which turned out to be counterfeit. Mrs. Fillion? I need a verbal response.”
“Yes. Yes, the money was counterfeit. One more lie. And there was nothing anyone could do about it. Refn vanished into thin air. And left us with nothing.”
I pushed back my chair and stood.
It all fit, even the initials: Judith Lane Fillion.
On a stationery monogram that would read: JFL.
A quick search gave me the rest of it. Barsch was Judith Lane Fillion’s maiden name. She had never stopped hunting for Refn and she had finally managed to find him. She could have tracked him by his MO, which was always the same, or by a trail of news photographs, since Refn wasn’t shy and liked seeing his picture in the papers. It couldn’t have been cheap, but Barsch had family money. Determining how much of it was left, how much of it her husband had put into Beckham Studios would be a job for a team of FBI forensic accountants, somewhere down the line.
Right now I had more urgent problems. Hollister’s glasses, hiding in plain sight on Hamburger’s video, pale-red plastic frames stuck among the pink ones in Barsch’s bathroom, most likely by Carmen tidying up after Hollister’s visit on the day of the murder and mistaking them for one of Barsch’s many pairs, proved he had been at the house. Which meant Felleman and Vollans were lying. Now I know who had offered them roles in the Sam Shepherd play. She saw through them with icy contempt and used them with pragmatic indifference. By the time their white lies turned black it was too late to recant. They were already part of a murder conspiracy and their only hope was that no one would figure it out.
I picked up the bottle of Elizabeth Arden Mariah Carey Eau de Parfum, thinking all the Oklahoma oil money in the world doesn’t give you good taste. Hollister had been right about that. I pulled the crystal stopper. But I already knew what it would smell like.
Marshmallows.
That was the perfume Kelly Ramos had smelled on the day when Barsch planted the keyboard cleaner in Hollister’s office at the theater. Her hand was everywhere. She had taken Joe Little’s phone that day at Ventuno, and had her favorite cab driver return it. I’d be fascinated to find out how she pulled that one off.
But first things first. I had to get Hollister out of my jail and offer my most heartfelt apologies, and hope or, better yet, pray, that he would chose not to sue the town for harassment and false arrest.
Oh, and I could also return his glasses.
But when I got to the holding cells, Hollister was gone. Thick-necked, potato-faced, crew-cutted Quentin Swan was manning the booking desk, absorbed with his iPhone in the big empty room. He always had the look of a State Police storm trooper; maybe he was studying for the exam online. The room was silent except for the faint rasp of the air conditioning and the rhythmic tapping of his heel against the linoleum—restless leg syndrome. The mass of him visible above the desk seemed alarmingly still, a pour of fresh cement staring to cure in a footing. Soon to be a fully weight-bearing slab!
“Swan,” I said. He looked up from his phone, eyes only, head motionless. “Where’s Hollister?”
“They bailed him out.”
“They? Who? When did this happen?”
“Couple hours ago. Just before my shift. Didn’t you get the text? Johnson said he texted you.”
“I had my phone turned off. Let me see the paperwork.”
He set his cell down and pulled a file folder out of a drawer. Call me a dinosaur, but I liked keeping hard copies of all arraignments, bench warrants, and pre-trial release outcomes. We’ve had some spectacular computer crashes, some of them suspicious in origin. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure our records had been tampered with, but paper was backup and insurance.
I crossed the room and picked up the file, feeling a queasy tremor of premonition. I flipped to the last page looking for the co-signer and surety. The Nantucket Theater Lab, third-party custody assigned to NTL Board President J. Barsch.
I dropped the file on the desk, my head pinwheeling like a car on black ice. Stay on the road, steer with the skid, foot off the brakes, round and round, scanning for oncoming headlights. Why would she do this? What could possibly be the point? It wasn’t forgiveness, I was sure of that.
Swan must have caught my stunned expression. “Johnson said they wanted him at the theater. I guess his play opens tonight? He’s like the guest of honor. So it looks bad if he’s in jail, supposedly. Anyway, that’s what Johnson told me.”
“Right. Of course. The play.”
“Chief?”
“Thanks, Quentin.”
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. Keep your eyes open and have a good shift.”
This new piece of information completed the picture. It reminded me of the night I figured out Joe Arbogast was sleeping with my ex-wife.
I wanted to sell my ring back to Rebecca Harper’s jewelry store where I’d bought it in the first place. Getting rid of the thing felt like an essential act. I needed to purge the totems of my marriage.
Nantucket Counterfeit Page 24
