Lambert felt reassurance as she looked in Channing’s eyes and said, “Deal.”
Channing started to remove his hand from her arm, patted her like a protective older brother, and said, “I’m going to go talk to him real quick, would you mind grabbing that photo of Clifton from your notebook so we can show it to Backhoe?”
“Sure,” Lambert said with a gentle smile.
Channing got out of the car and started walking toward the driver’s side of the SUV. Lambert reached behind her into the backseat, found her notebook, and looked down thumbing through the pages until she found the photo she had pulled from PennDOT. She heard voices and looked up to see Channing walk over to the SUV and a man emerge from the driver’s seat. The man had a gun on his right hip and badge on his left. But those were not the first things Lambert noticed about him. No. The man’s most notable features were that he was the size of an NFL defensive lineman and towered over her partner, and he was most certainly black.
If I get the sense that he’s treating you any different because you are black, I’ll pick his ass up and throw him out into the road, Channing had said. She sat with her mouth open and turned her eyes away from Backhoe to catch Channing looking at her. He gave her a half smile and a wink.
“Bastard,” was the only word she could mutter between gritted teeth before getting out of the car.
– – –
Danny Berres’s hand felt tiny in that of his visitor’s. The warm handshake and affable greeting temporarily allowed Berres to forget his nausea. He took the food from Mayton and invited the man into his home.
As the two situated themselves into tattered chairs around a coffee table, Berres moved some magazines on the table, placed the box of food in front of him, and said, “I’m sorry the place is a mess. I don’t have too much energy for cleaning these days.”
Mayton dismissed the apology with a wave of the hand. “Jimmy told me things have gotten really rough lately. I’m sorry I haven’t been around more.”
Now it was Berres’s turn to wave a boney hand of dismissal. “You’ve had your own problems. We all miss Cindy. But she’s with God now. I hope I’ll be joining her soon.”
Not likely, you abomination, thought Mayton. How dare this man who chose to lie down with other men—. No, Mayton told himself. Fight it back. Stick to your purpose.
“I hope so, too, my friend,” said Mayton.
“Have you been coming down to the center again? If you’ve been down there, I must have missed you.”
Mayton shook his head. “No. I’ve been doing some soul searching of my own. I’ve been speaking with God and trying to discover what direction He wants me to go.”
Mayton stood and walked around the room. The air smelled of illness. It smelled of death.
“Have you figured it out?” asked Berres. “Do you know what God wants you to do?”
Mayton continued his walk and looped behind Berres, who suddenly felt uncomfortable having someone standing behind him. He tried to crane his neck, but his visitor was nearly out of sight.
“I think so,” said Mayton. “I think I’ve found my calling and it may be a bit of a surprise to you.”
Berres sensed movement behind him and heard the rustling of Mayton’s coat. Nervously, Berres asked, “And what is your calling, Lester?”
From behind, Mayton suddenly placed one hand on the sick man’s shoulder and said, “I’m going to help put an end to your troubles.”
– – –
“Bryan Clifton?” asked Channing.
“That’s me. Who are you?” said the man whose face matched the photograph in Lambert’s hand.
“I’m Detective Channing and this is Detective Lambert. We’re with the Pittsburgh Police Department. This is Detective Hopkins, with Butler PD. We’d like to have a word with you.”
Clifton carefully laid down a bundle of steel rods he was carrying across the building. All around him, men were hammering, sawing, welding, wiring, and reading building plans. Channing noticed that Clifton was by far the oldest man doing manual labor.
“What’s this about?”
Hopkins spoke up and suggested, “Maybe we can head down to the station and talk where it’s quieter?”
Clifton shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere. What’s this about? Is Loretta okay?”
“She’s fine, Mr. Clifton,” said Lambert. “In fact, we just saw her at your trailer. She told us where to find you.”
Clifton seemed to chew on that for a moment. He figured if his girlfriend had told the cops where to find him, whatever it was could not be too bad.
“Let’s go outside where I can hear better.”
The four walked out to a patch of dying grass next to a set of unused sawhorses.
Clifton shivered in the cold and used a hand to block the wind while struggling to light a cigarette. Through the other half of his mouth he said, “I didn’t kill that asshole Culligan, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Channing bunched his coat around his chest. He quickly sized up the man in front of him and sensed that he had a certain level of intelligence about him. He decided to be direct and said, “We read the articles in the papers. If what you said was true and Culligan and Harper construction were in bed together and you got fired because of what you knew, that’s a strong motive.”
“I forgot, what night did the prick kick it?” asked Clifton while blowing out a stream of smoke.
Channing told him the date and time.
“I was at a meeting. Give me your card and I’ll call you with some names of people who can verify that.”
Lambert stepped closer and said, “Mr. Clifton, it doesn’t work that way. If you’re just going to make some calls and get some of your friends together to establish and alibi, that’s not going to help you. If it’s a lie, we’ll break the alibi.”
“It’s not a damn lie,” Clifton shot back. “I just can’t give you their information unless they tell me I can. That’s the way it works. I’m in AA. Have been for two years. I’m sure some of the people there will have no problem talking to you, but I’m not going to give them up until they tell me I can. Hell…one of the members of my group is a cop. Mr. Butler PD here will know her.”
“Fair enough,” said Channing as he handed the man his business card. “If it checks out, it checks out and you don’t have anything to worry about.”
Clifton nodded and tapped some ashes to the ground.
“What happened at Harper?” asked Lambert. “There were a few reports that said you were accusing Harper Construction and Culligan of conspiring together, and then nothing. No follow-up reports. No court actions. No investigations on record.”
Clifton threw his cigarette on the ground, and pulled out a new one and lit it. “No investigation on record. Pfffft. What a shock.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Clifton?” asked Channing. “Are you saying someone did investigate?”
Clifton looked at Channing with eyes that contained a practiced cynicism. “I guess it depends on what you call an investigation. Look, all I know is what I told the reporter. I was in charge of this new project in the city, alright? Then, this one day, I’m over at the main office late one night and I overhear the head of finance for the whole damn company, Chris Menster, talking on the phone. He’s telling someone that the money is on the way and that there was no way he would have entered a bid that low if he hadn’t gotten the info, and all that type of crap. I listened outside the door for just another minute, but from what Menster was saying, it was clear as day that he had gotten inside information on a bid for a project. And right before he hung up he said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Culligan. I’ll be in touch.’”
“And you took this information to your boss?” asked Lambert.
Clifton nodded and took a drag off the cigarette. “Yeah. Real bright, huh? You see, I’ve met the owner of the company, Robert Harper, several times. Seemed like a real stand-up guy. So, I figure if this guy Menster is doing something shady that could get the com
pany in hot water, Harper needs to know about it. So, I tell my boss, who takes it to Harper. The next thing I know, I’m getting a severance check and a strong suggestion to not disclose any proprietary information which includes conversations overheard in the office. Well, I got the message, but I was too pissed-off to keep my mouth shut.”
“So, you went to the press?” asked Channing.
“You’re damn right I did. I called up a reporter for the Post-Gazette and told him the whole story. He said his editor was hesitant to run anything, because they needed some sort of corroboration. I asked him, ‘How are you supposed to corroborate a conversation I overheard unless Menster talks?’ He took a run at Menster, but got nothing. I guess the reporter started looking at bidding histories and saw enough suspicious stuff to run the story. But obviously, that was a waste of time.”
Channing and Lambert waited, knowing the man had more to say.
Clifton looked at a spot on his hand and uttered, “They burned up her trailer.”
“Whose trailer?” asked Channing.
“Loretta’s. They must have figured if they went right after me when those stories started appearing, it would look suspicious. So, they did the next best thing. They torched her trailer.”
Channing looked at Hopkins, who nodded and said, “I remember that.” Then, looking at Clifton, asked, “Loretta Twickle?”
Clifton gave a quick, sad nod.
Hopkins turned to Lambert and Channing and explained, “It was looked at as an arson. She had a trailer a few miles from here. The detectives found traces of an accelerant, nothing rare. She works midnights, so thankfully nobody was home.” Looking back to Clifton, he said, “If I recall, she was asked if she had any idea who would do it, and she wasn’t very cooperative with the detectives.”
Clifton now appeared more sad than angry and said, “Can you blame her? She knew I’d been getting strange phone calls ever since the stories came out. Not to mention, suddenly nobody wanted to hire me. I’d been blackballed all over the area and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out they were behind it all.”
Channing thought for a few seconds and said, “You said there was some kind of investigation into your accusations? We don’t have any record in the department.”
Lowering the last stub of his cigarette, Clifton said, “Oh, of course not. It wasn’t important enough for the real cops to investigate. No, no, no. Instead, the city sends some bureaucrat with a badge up here to talk to me, but the whole time I know it’s a whitewash.”
Lambert asked, “Who was the person who interviewed you.”
Clifton shrugged. “Lady, I have no idea. All I know is it was some joker who said he was doing a municipal investigation for the city, whatever that means. He said he’d write up the report and send it to his boss, who would send it up the chain. I guess the chain must have been attached to Jimmy Hoffa’s leg, because I’ve sure never seen what’s on the end of it.”
– – –
Chad Wayland was sitting in an old recliner, watching reruns on the television. It was a common occurrence for the manager of the city’s Office of Municipal Investigations, or OMI, to spend his evenings like this, watching television in the middle of his living room, comfortably resting in his favorite chair. The life-long bachelor had long ago accepted that he was not a social person and did nothing to become somebody different. He was who he was, and there was no need to put out any effort to change. Always being somewhat of a recluse could have hurt his employment prospects, but fortunately for him, as a youngster, he had entered the bureaucratic labyrinth of a mid-sized city government and quickly came to realize that common courtesy was rarely rewarded and social awkwardness was rarely noticed.
Starting as an entry-level records clerk with the city’s Pension Office, Wayland had been passed around from one post to the next, never excelling in any particular area. Wayland, however, did have certain traits that made him a desirable employee in select city offices. The thin, unpretentious-looking man had been born with a complete lack of passion. At no point during his twenty-year career in the government had he done anything other than compile data and report facts in a passable manner. He had no ambitions, no strong opinions, and cared little for the end result of his work. In sum, he was an ambivalent paper-pusher who nobody found threatening.
Wayland was the perfect candidate to manage OMI, due to his reputation as a dispassionate collector of facts who could be influenced by stronger personalities. OMI’s responsibilities included investigating accusations of misconduct against employees of the city, and assembling detailed, unbiased reports. However, the power of the OMI stopped there. Once an investigation concluded, the OMI simply turned the report over to the director of whatever agency had been involved in the alleged misconduct, and the director would determine if any further action was warranted. At least, that was the process on paper.
Once Wayland assumed control of OMI, the heads of the various city offices made it clear to him that it was a much more efficient process if those expected to manage an office were to have some idea what the official report might indicate. Of course, they would not hesitate to assist Wayland in clarifying some information by putting it into the proper context. Doing things that way was better for everyone involved. The managers could handle things in-house, the city could avoid bad publicity, and OMI would not be flooded with agency reports refuting the office’s findings. It was a win-win for everyone involved and created a lot less hassle. Of course, Wayland immediately saw the logic in this way of thinking and agreed to unofficially allow the high-level city managers to influence OMI reports.
Wayland picked the remote control up off the arm of the recliner and mindlessly flipped through the channels. In the darkened room, the flickering light from the screen bounced off the walls. He paused when he happened upon a game show, but became frustrated when the contestants answered the questions faster than he could read them. He continued changing the channels until he hit the end of the options and reached a blank screen with blue text at the top reading, Channel Not Purchased, Call Customer Service to Add. Below the text, he could see his own blurry reflection. He started to press a button to bring up the channel guide when he thought he saw something move in the reflection of the screen. Instinctively, he sat up straight and peered over the back of the chair. Nothing was there. The entrance to the kitchen was dark, his front door remained closed and the few items on the narrow table beside the door were undisturbed.
What time is it? he thought while relaxing back into the chair. Glancing at the clock beside the television, he saw it had gotten very late. His eyes were tired and, if he did not get some sleep, he was going to give himself a migraine. He started to get up, but stopped. Sure it was late, but he had nowhere to be in the morning. Aw, live a little, Chad. Another thirty minutes won’t kill you.
He settled into the plush chair again, leaned back, looked to the ceiling, and stretched his arms out to his sides. With the television silent, he thought he might fall asleep right there in the chair.
A booming voice erupted from the man looking down at him from behind the chair.
“I have the keys of Death and Hades!”
In an instant, the intruder’s arms slammed something solid down on to Wayland’s chest. The pain was excruciating. The oxygen fled his lungs and he hopelessly grabbed the devices that had pierced his chest. Then, even while viewing the man’s upper body upside down, Wayland could see the intruder held a knife. Wayland tried to dislodge one of the objects from his chest, but could not. The man lowered the knife in front of Wayland’s face and turned it back and forth. He put the blade against the terrified city official’s neck, but harmlessly withdrew the knife.
The intruder leaned down and whispered the name of a location into Wayland’s ear. Unbeknownst to Waylon, they were the same two words the man had said to the others. Wayland could still feel the man’s warm breath on his skin as he realized the significance of those two words. When the intruder was satisfied that Wayland
understood, he pressed the knife against the man’s scalp and pulled back hard. Mayton shocked himself by letting loose a guttural scream he did not know he was capable of producing. The intruder repeated the act four more times and Wayland convulsed with each new wave of pain that slammed into him. Then, the intruder placed the blood-covered blade horizontally beneath Wayland’s chin and slit his throat with one smooth stroke.
Step 9
We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
“T
he lab work and final forensics analysis finally came back on Culligan.” Lambert appeared next to Channing’s desk. She was thumbing through a set of stapled papers, squinting at the lines of text. It was six o’clock in the morning and her eyes were revolting against her. The two detectives had returned from interviewing Clifton the evening before and agreed to meet early in the morning to figure out how far down the Harper Construction path to go. Lambert glanced from the papers to rest her eyes and looked out a window to see the sun starting to come up.
“It took long enough. It’s only a murder investigation,” Channing grumbled and examined the photos on his desk. Spread out across the top of the desk calendar, which was still showing the wrong month, were photos of the Culligan and Abdella crime scenes. He had arranged the sets of pictures in two neat rows—both nearly panoramic views of each crime scene. He studied the positioning of the bodies, the landscape, the method of the kill.
“The time of death still looks to be consistent with Culligan being killed in the parking garage. No surprise there,” Lambert said without looking up. “The two holes in his chest were definitely puncture wounds, made with something round and pointed, but not too sharp.”
Measure Twice Page 13
