Monument Road

by Michael Wiley

  ‘What else?’

  I said, ‘Mercury.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The blood expert said the Bronson brothers had elevated levels of mercury. The report on Jeremy Ballat, the runaway, said he did too.’

  ‘Weird,’ she said. ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘Probably nothing. All kinds of things can cause it. I haven’t checked the Mexican boy.’

  ‘I’ll look into it,’ she said. ‘What else?’

  I’d seen nothing that directly connected the four boys. But I thought again of the upriver town of Bostwick that Jeremy Ballat seemed to have passed on his way to being dumped in Etoniah Creek State Forest and near where Higby retrieved Josh Skooner when Josh ran away from home. Since Higby charged me with killing Steven and Duane Bronson, Bostwick also made him a kind of connection. I said, ‘You say Higby’s a good investigator.’

  ‘One of the best.’

  ‘Well, you figured out the connection between the Bronson brothers, the runaway, and the Mexican kid. And I figured it out. Why didn’t he?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m wondering is all,’ I said. ‘Does he still think I killed the Bronsons?’

  ‘He has a hard time admitting he’s wrong.’

  ‘Seems like a pretty bad investigator to me, then.’

  ‘He’s complicated,’ she said.

  I got up to leave again. ‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘The lobby camera at the Sun Reach Apartments caught me coming and going. Who else did it catch?’

  ‘That’s the thing. No one of interest. There’s a service entrance and an elevator at the back of the building. We think the killer must have gone up that way.’

  ‘Which means he knew about the lobby camera.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  ‘And that would mean he’d gone to Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit’s apartment before.’

  ‘Maybe. Only maybe.’

  ‘So the killer knew them.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  In the afternoon, I went to Dr Patel’s office. When the receptionist sent me in, Dr Patel was sitting behind his desk, paging through a book.

  I sat on his couch, and after a minute he put the book down, came over, and sat in a chair facing me. ‘I’ve been reading,’ he said.

  ‘I see that.’

  ‘About the bewilderment of the self,’ he said. ‘And the making and remaking of traumatized minds. Sometimes, it seems, even with radical therapies—’ He stopped himself and focused on me. ‘Are you all right? You look exhausted.’

  ‘A long night.’

  He suppressed a smile. ‘With Cynthia?’

  ‘I wish,’ I said.

  ‘Trouble sleeping? I can prescribe—’

  ‘I kidnapped a man I thought was responsible for a murder. A few murders, really.’

  His smile fell.

  ‘I picked him up in Atlanta and took him back to Jane and Hank at the JNI. They made me let him go.’

  He paled.

  ‘I tell you this for a couple of reasons,’ I said. ‘One, he might call the cops on me. He’s guilty and scared, so I don’t think he’ll call them, but if he does, I’ll miss tomorrow’s appointment. And two, he threatened to kill me.’

  ‘Oh, Franky,’ he said, ‘you crashed two weeks ago – you came within an inch of killing yourself – and the moment you get out of the hospital you shove the gas to the floor. I can’t help you if you’re unwilling to help yourself.’

  So, following doctor’s orders, I took the evening off. I left the pistol deep under the front seat of my car where I could get to it if I needed it, but it would stay out of reach – mine or anyone else’s – if I didn’t. Then, at seven thirty, I picked up Cynthia at the Cineplex, and we went out for pizza. Afterward, we drove to the beach and sat on the sand and talked as waves ripped and rushed and then pulled back with a hushing. The sun set, and the moon – huge and yellow – rose over the ocean. Cynthia and I sat and watched, touching hands because we needed nothing more from each other when a moon that huge and yellow was rising.

  The next morning, after sleeping on the carpet, I woke early. I turned on the TV as I did my pushups. The news led with a story about an overnight fire that burned most of a condominium complex on the Westside, and followed with a feel-good story about how kids were spending the last month of their summer vacation. During the commercial, I flipped on to my back and started my sit-ups.

  When the news came back on, a serious-faced Asian reporter stood in front of the county courthouse and said a controversy was brewing over the execution of a local man convicted of double homicide twenty-five years ago. I stopped exercising and watched. With forty-eight hours remaining before the scheduled execution, the man’s lawyer was calling for a delay after discovering new evidence. The camera cut to an interview the reporter had taped with Jane yesterday afternoon. Jane said that a man had emerged who had knowledge of the events of twenty-five years ago and possibly an active role in them. This man’s knowledge might exonerate Thomas LaFlora. The reporter asked why Jane was introducing this man only now. The urgency of the moment had made wheels turn that were stuck for more than two decades, Jane said. Then she named Randall Haussen.

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Good for you.’

  When I called the JNI office at nine, though, Thelma said Jane wouldn’t talk to me.

  ‘How about Hank?’ I said.

  ‘Uh-uh,’ she said.

  ‘Tell them Haussen will run now that they’ve named him. He did it before and no one even suspected him.’

  ‘They know that,’ she said.

  ‘Then why did Jane go public with his name?’

  ‘LaFlora has two days. Unless something happens now, nothing happens.’

  ‘Ask if I can help,’ I said.

  ‘You already know their answer,’ she said. ‘Straighten your own mess. Until you get yourself together, they can’t depend on you.’

  ‘What if I never get myself together?’ I said.

  ‘Then it’s been good knowing you.’

  Last time I’d tried to get myself together – to resolve the circumstances that had torn me apart – I’d gone to the Sun Reach Apartments and found Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit dead. And then I’d slashed myself with a box cutter.

  But the dead men must have known more about the circumstances that led to the Bronson brothers’ deaths than they told me – maybe even more than they realized they knew. Why else would the killer visit them in their apartment, exposing himself to attention that had mostly disappeared with my arrest eight years ago? Maybe I’d gone to bed with the box cutter just when I was finding my way back to myself, or at least to what happened to me and the Bronson brothers.

  Who else would know the same things Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit knew? Rick’s sister Lynn. But she was still hiding. Darrell Nesbit’s two friends who kicked down my motel room door with him might also know. So might the Bronson boys’ mother.

  I decided to try the mother again. I would ask if her boys ever went to Bostwick. I would ask about the man who threatened them. I would ask for Lynn Melsyn’s address.

  But as I left my room, Deborah Holt’s black Grand Marquis pulled on to the parking lot and stopped behind my car. The detective got out, holding a black vinyl portfolio. She said, ‘Good news. Or interesting, at least.’

  We went back into my room. ‘I drove down to Putnam County yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘They still have records for the Mexican boy.’ She unclipped the portfolio and pulled out a file. ‘He also had high mercury. Way high. Like if he was a thermometer he would have geysered.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘My reaction exactly. But get this.’ She leafed through the pages. ‘The kid had a seven-year-old sister, right? After he died, the sister told their mom and dad about the man who came to their campsite. The lead investigator sat the girl down with a sketch artist.’ Holt handed me a photocopy. ‘This is what they came up with.’

  The sketch showed a squar
e-faced white man. Handsome and serious. Familiar too. If you averaged the features of Judge Skooner and his son Andrew, the face would look a little like the one in the sketch. ‘That’s screwed-up,’ I said. ‘Who do you think?’

  She shook her head. ‘You say it.’

  ‘Eric Skooner sixteen years ago?’ I said.

  ‘Looks like him. But I expect it looks like hundreds of other men around here. Maybe thousands.’

  The resemblance was strong, and the judge and his family were always brushing against trouble even as he collected awards for his toughness as a prosecutor and rigor on the bench, but the idea that he could have anything to do with the death of even one child, much less four boys – and with the killings of Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit too – was outrageous. But I said, ‘His family owns property across the river from where the Mexican kid’s family was camping.’

  She nodded. ‘Tomhanson Mill.’

  ‘That’s where the runaway kid – Jeremy Ballat – swam to shore from the barge.’

  She held the sketch so it caught light from the window and adjusted its angle as if that would change the picture. ‘I’m sure plenty of men in the area look like this,’ she said.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Did you check to see if Tomhanson Mill uses mercury?’

  She nodded grimly. ‘Fourteen years ago and then again three years ago, the Department of Environmental Protection fined them for dumping waste into a creek that empties into the river. In the settlement, Tomhanson admitted to regularly piping out what the DEP called “effluent with chronic toxicity.” The suit never mentioned mercury, but I made some calls. The mill uses it in its machine parts – the gauges and switches. It’s also in the chemical compounds. And it’s in the incinerator ash. So, yeah, there’d be a lot of mercury.’

  ‘Enough to show up in the boys’ blood after they died?’

  ‘Maybe – if the kids had close contact with the waste,’ she said. ‘The lawyers for Tomhanson Mill argued against the DEP, saying that once the waste spread into the river water it would become harmless, but the DEP showed that this kind of waste concentrates in pools.’

  I thought about all she’d told me. ‘One problem,’ I said. ‘Steven and Duane Bronson also had high mercury. Were they ever near the mill? If they weren’t, then the Tomhanson mercury might have nothing to do with any of the deaths. And if that’s true, maybe the sketch isn’t Eric Skooner.’

  ‘Could be,’ she said. But she stared some more at the picture. ‘You know what happens if this is him? Everything collapses. Hundreds of verdicts. All the work that people like me have done to send him the cases. All the trust that people have—’

  ‘Then it can’t be him?’

  ‘If it’s him, if he’s involved in even the slightest way, it all falls down.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  She shrugged. ‘His accusations against Bill Higby would collapse with everything else.’

  I thought about that. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Higby has also spent time at Tomhanson Mill.’

  Now I’d surprised her.

  So I told her about Higby’s commendation for bringing Josh Skooner back to his family when, as an eleven-year-old, he ran away to the mill. ‘He went from rescuing Josh Skooner to shooting him. In between, he arrested me for killing two boys who might have died because of some connection to Eric Skooner. Higby rammed me on to death row even though he had evidence of earlier killings that I couldn’t have committed – killings that happened around mill land owned by the Skooners. His next-door neighbors.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When Holt left, I got in my car and followed her on to Philips Highway. She exited into downtown, and I headed north toward the airport and Felicia Bronson’s house. I parked in the driveway, and as I went up the front path, her dogs barked at me from the windows. The air was still and hot and smelled of swamp water and jet fumes. I knocked, and the dogs went wild.

  Felicia Bronson opened the door, wearing cut-off shorts and an orange T-shirt. Her dogs danced around her, and she held her overexcited terrier by the collar. Her eyes looked flat, but she recognized me and said, ‘I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Ask to talk to Detective Holt,’ I said. ‘She’ll tell you I’m more of a danger to myself than to you.’

  ‘I want you away from my house,’ she said, and she started to close the door.

  But two mutts, one with a diseased left eye, broke free and dodged outside. I caught the one with the bad eye, but the other ran across the yard and into the street. I shoved the first dog back into the house and went after the other.

  It let me get close, then bore down to the ground as if it would attack. I reached for it, and it darted away. We repeated that game three times, moving farther up the block and then back toward the house.

  Then from the front lawn, Felicia Bronson said, ‘You’re an idiot, aren’t you?’

  She stood by the driveway, cradling her terrier in her arms.

  The dog I was chasing bore down again and barked, daring me. I reached, and it darted away.

  ‘You’re letting him call the shots,’ Felicia Bronson said. ‘Walk away. Make him come to you.’ She went to the front porch.

  I looked at the dog. It barked. I followed Felicia Bronson to the house. The dog barked again and fell in behind me.

  Felicia Bronson held the front door open, keeping the other animals back. I stepped inside, and the dog came in after me.

  The house smelled terrible. Garbage lay on the hall floor, and a stain from dried dog urine marked the doorway to the living room. Felicia Bronson closed the door and scolded the dogs.

  ‘Should I leave?’ I asked.

  She looked at me with those flat eyes and asked, ‘What do you want?’

  I said, ‘There’s a little town called Bostwick, about fifty miles upriver from here. Were you ever there with your boys?’

  She frowned. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘How about Tomhanson Mill?’ I asked. ‘It’s near Bostwick.’

  She shook her head. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Could Steven and Duane have gone there without you knowing?’

  She said, ‘In the last year before they were killed – after their father left – they snuck out at night. They would take my car and drive. In the final months, it became an every-night thing. They could have gone anywhere between midnight and morning if they had enough gas. But I’ve never heard of these places.’

  ‘You never heard them talk about driving that way? There’s a park there too – Etoniah Creek State Forest.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something,’ she said. ‘I’ve forgotten nothing about Steve and Duane, especially in those last months when they stayed up all night and started acting crazy. I take care of these dogs so I won’t hear their voices in my head or smell their sweet skin in the air. I remember every word they spoke. Every time they laughed. Every time they cried. In the last month before they died, they talked all the time, and I remember it all. I thought it was drugs, but they swore it wasn’t. I remember every promise, every lie. If they went to that town, they never mentioned it in this house.’

  So I tried to place them near the judge on Byron Road. ‘How about Black Creek?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘We all spent time over there. When their dad and I first separated and before he moved to the Southside and then to Miami, he rented a place on Orangewood. Why?’

  ‘I’m trying to put the pieces together,’ I said.

  But she said, ‘The pieces don’t go together. They never did. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying.’

  ‘Did they get caught for any burglaries in the Black Creek area?’

  She shook her head. ‘They mostly broke into big houses out at the Beach. They liked the mansions.’

  ‘Is it possible they also did places by Black Creek?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘They have some big houses there too. Duane and Steve got caught for pawning watches and jewelry from the Beach
, but after they died, I found other things. Bracelets. Coins.’

  ‘I’d like to see anything you still have,’ I said.

  She said, ‘I gave it all to Duane’s girlfriend. That wasn’t the part I wanted to remember.’

  ‘Can I see what’s left?’

  ‘Why?’

  I figured that if Duane or Steven had stolen something that got them killed, it probably was more than a watch or jewelry or coins. Felicia Bronson might not know what she had. ‘I told you,’ I said, ‘I’m trying to put together the pieces.’

  ‘And I told you the pieces don’t go together.’ But she considered me, and I thought I saw life behind the flatness of her eyes. ‘You can’t touch anything,’ she said, and she walked into the hallway.

  Before the kitchen, there was a closed door with a child-safety gate stretched across the frame, probably to keep the dogs out when the door was open. She touched the doorknob as if she feared it was hot – and pushed the door open.

  Although the cops must have searched the house after Steven and Duane died, the room looked as if Felicia Bronson had closed the door when she’d heard about their murders and never gone in again. The covers on the bunk bed were pulled back, the sheet on the top bunk hanging down like a curtain over the bottom bunk. Dirty clothes – T-shirts, a pair of shorts, a pair of jeans, socks turned inside out – lay on the floor. On a table where one or both of the brothers had been taking apart a little television, a set of screwdrivers rested on top of a pile of electronic parts. A pair of pliers lay on the floor. Two school backpacks leaned against the table legs. A closet door was closed. Pen and pencil drawings of fighter jets hung on the walls. A blanket of dust covered everything.

  The backpacks and the closet interested me. I started to step over the gate.

  But Felicia Bronson grabbed my arm. ‘No.’

  I said, ‘I need to see—’

  ‘No,’ she said again.

  ‘Did anyone ever go through their things? Someone must have. The police? Bill Higby?’

  She looked at me, and the life had sucked back out of her eyes. ‘This is mine,’ she said, and she steered me down the hall.

  I could have shoved her aside and gone into the bedroom. I could have poured her dead sons’ backpacks on to the floor and rooted through their closet. But I just said, ‘I need to talk to Duane’s girlfriend.’