The Question of the Felonious Friend

by E. J. Copperman

  Sandy sat down on a loveseat near where she had been standing. In fact, she seemed to collapse without thinking of her position and simply landed on the loveseat. She did not cry. She did not even breathe heavily. But she slumped in the cushions and seemed to be very tired very suddenly. The back of her left hand went to her eyes.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she repeated.

  Ms. Washburn, to my surprise, sat down next to Sandy on the loveseat and lowered her tone to a sympathetic level. “Look, I understand how difficult it can be to get divorced. You were secure and now you’re scared and you feel like everything is coming down on your head. You’re all by yourself and you have kids to raise. That’s overwhelming. So when you hear there’s a possibility to make some very attractive money helping to sell things that would have been sold anyway, you would have to think about it, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The voice was barely audible.

  “Sure you do.” Ms. Washburn was almost crooning; she sounded like Mother did when I was a boy and needed encouragement to explain my sudden bursts of anger or sadness. “You’re embarrassed and scared because of what you did, but you can make it a little better by telling us how it happened. You’ll feel better.” Yes, that was the tone.

  Now Sandy could not really speak. She did not vocalize like her brother Tyler, but she shook her head and choked back tears. Her left hand went up as if she were a crossing guard telling an oncoming car to stop and let children cross the street. Her message was very clear and her head was down, staring at her lap.

  Ms. Washburn took the opportunity to put her arm around Sandy in what I have seen in motion pictures and television programs as a gesture of support. But she looked at me as she made the move and her facial expression seemed to contain a question, although I could not determine what it might be. I did not respond because I could not answer a question I did not recognize.

  She turned back and said softly to Sandy, “You shot Richard Handy, didn’t you?”

  “No, she didn’t,” I said as Sandy looked up with a horrified expression. “Sandy was not present when Richard was shot.”

  Sandy pointed at me and nodded, non-verbally confirming my statement.

  “But she was involved in the black market running out of the Quik N EZ,” Ms. Washburn argued. “Clearly she introduced Tyler to Richard Handy by starting his habit of going to the convenience store every day. She was behind that from the beginning. And we know Tyler didn’t shoot Richard, so Sandy didn’t simply put him up to it. Billy Martinez was too far away to do it. So Sandy must have been the one who killed Richard.” She looked at Sandy and tried to modulate her voice to a soothing level again. “Was it because Richard was going to go to the police about the guns and the cigarettes?”

  “No,” I said again. “Sandy was not in the store when Richard was shot. It’s clear on the audio track that Tyler did not speak in the moments before the shooting, or anytime after he entered the store, even when Molly was obscuring the view of the cameras. And Richard’s greeting to whoever was near enough to shoot him was ‘dude.’ He would not have said that to Sandy because she is a woman.”

  “People that age call everybody ‘dude,’ Samuel,” Ms. Washburn explained. “It was not a reference to the shooter’s gender identity.”

  Sandy, interested but not participating in the conversation, watched Ms. Washburn and me in turn as we spoke, as if she were an attendee at a very well played tennis match.

  “Still, I doubt Richard knew Sandy well enough to speak to her in such familiar terms,” I countered.

  Ms. Washburn, who is not at all beyond challenging me when she believes me to be incorrect or (in her view) stubborn, considered that and nodded her consent. “So who shot Richard?” she asked. “If it wasn’t Sandy, it wasn’t Tyler and it wasn’t Billy Martinez, who could have done it? I doubt Molly pulled the trigger. She didn’t even seem to know Richard had been shot.”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. Then I made a point of establishing eye contact with Sandy. “Do you?”

  Her eyes showed nothing but fear now and she shook her head. “I wasn’t there. You said I wasn’t there, right?”

  Ms. Washburn, facing me and out of Sandy’s view, flattened out her lips and cocked an eyebrow. I took that to mean she did not believe Sandy’s statement, which was wise on her part.

  “Well then,” I said. “I suppose the best thing to do would be to go back to the Quik N EZ and put the question directly to Billy Martinez. And I think your presence in the store will go a long way toward getting the truth from him, Sandy. Would you come with us, please?”

  Sandy looked like she would rather do almost anything else. “My children,” she said. “I can’t leave now.”

  “Surely you have some contingency in place for such a situation,” I suggested. “What if you had a job interview at this time? Who would you call in that case?”

  Sandy stared at me for a moment but must have seen that I was not to be dissuaded. “Probably Mason, or Cindy next door,” she said. “But—”

  “This might keep your brother Tyler out of jail,” Ms. Washburn said. “Maybe you’d better call your neighbor and ask about her taking the kids for an hour or so.”

  Before our eyes, Sandy Clayton Webb gathered herself into the businesswoman she must have been and the executive she hoped to be. She stood up and straightened her clothes. “There’s no need,” she said. “The kids are in the afterschool program and won’t be ready to get picked up until five.”

  “You said they were coming on the bus,” Ms. Washburn reminded her.

  “I lied.”

  Ms. Washburn’s look as we followed Sandy out of the house was one I would never be able to understand.

  Twenty-Eight

  “When you make the next left, you’ll see the store on your right,” Sandy Clayton Webb told Ms. Washburn despite the obvious presence of a Global Positioning Satellite device in the car and the fact that Ms. Washburn had driven to the Quik N EZ more than once before.

  It had been my condition that Sandy accompany us in Ms. Washburn’s Kia Spectra; she had suggested using her own vehicle “in case it gets close to when I have to pick up the kids.” Given her recent record of falsehood concerning her children and my need to be sure she did not alert someone at the convenience store in advance, I had insisted.

  Ms. Washburn made the turn without comment. As we approached the store, Sandy appeared to be getting nervous. It was difficult for me to see clearly because I would not turn around in the car and she was sitting in the rear seat on the passenger side, an arrangement Sandy had argued against. But I could feel the vibration from her leg, which was tapping on the floor in front of her, and noticed through the edge of my peripheral vision (I have never understood the “corner of my eye” axiom) her hand going to her head, presumably to adjust her hair in some way, which seemed odd.

  “Is something worrying you, Sandy?” I asked. “Someone we should be careful about encountering once we get to the store?”

  “No,” she insisted. “I don’t know anything about this. I don’t understand why I had to come.” She had made similar statements periodically throughout the ride, although the drive took less than two minutes.

  “Yes, you do,” Ms. Washburn said as she parked the car directly in front of the Quik N EZ, which seemed to be experiencing a relative lull in business. “You knew it when we talked back at your house and you stood up to come here and face Billy Martinez.”

  Sandy actually laughed. “Billy Martinez,” she said.

  “What does that mean?” Ms. Washburn turned off the car’s engine and removed her safety harness. “Should we be worried about someone else in there? Here’s your chance to warn us, Sandy.”

  “I don’t have anything to say,” she said, but it wasn’t until both Ms. Washburn and I had exited the car that Sand
y unbuckled her harness and opened the door in the rear. She stepped out slowly, eyes on the Quik N EZ. I am not able to say she looked terrified but there was definitely an edge to her manner that did not inspire a relaxed attitude.

  Ms. Washburn stopped me out of Sandy’s earshot. “How do we want to handle this?” she asked. “We don’t really know what we’re looking for or who we’re going to find in there.”

  “We know Billy Martinez will be there,” I said. “What we are looking for is Sandy’s reaction.”

  “Shouldn’t we have thought about defense or something? Maybe I should apply for a gun license.” She lowered her voice as Sandy approached.

  “Ms. Washburn,” I said, reaching for the door handle, “it’s a convenience store.”

  I held the door open for the two women, which is something I have been told is polite. In this case it seemed a bit odd, but I did want to make sure Sandy didn’t decide to walk away. She did not seem to consider such a move and entered the Quik N EZ with her head held high.

  Inside, the store was indeed not very busy at all. There was one customer, a woman in her late sixties by my estimate, frowning in concentration as she perused the aisle devoted to household items. I did not get close enough to determine which type of product was causing her so much consternation.

  My attention was focused on the counter, where Billy Martinez was indeed manning the cash register, and was alone. Clearly management was aware this would not be an especially stressful time of day for the staff; Billy appeared to be the only employee in the store. He looked up from a comic book as we approached and first looked slightly irritated. But then he saw Sandy and his expression become one of alarm.

  “What’s going on?” Billy’s voice was slightly hoarse, as if his throat had gone suddenly dry.

  “We are here to find out more about the shooting,” I said. “And we brought Sandy with us because we believe the incident was somehow connected to the black market operation you were helping to run from this store.”

  I did not look at Sandy, but I could see that Ms. Washburn was being very careful about watching her face. She mirrored what Sandy must have been doing, and shook her head negatively in a very small gesture, as if wanting not to be noticed by anyone but the person she was signaling. That was interesting, but not unexpected.

  “Sandy?” Billy attempted. “Who’s Sandy?” But he was staring directly at her.

  “I have been diagnosed with a form of high-functioning autism,” I told him. “That is not a form of stupidity.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Ms. Washburn answered before I could. “It means you’re insulting our intelligence. You were selling cigarettes and handguns, among other things, off the books through this store and Sandy was somehow involved. You recognized her when we came in and you’re staring at her now because she just tried to tell you not to admit to anything. But once we call Detective Hessler and invite him here to question you, it’s going to be a different story. So why don’t you talk now, Billy, and maybe you can keep yourself from a long jail term.”

  Billy had winced at a few of the words Ms. Washburn had used—black market, handguns, and jail, for example—and had glanced more than once at the woman in the household items aisle. For the minimum wage he was no doubt being paid, Billy was actually trying very hard to maintain the reputation of the business for which he worked.

  He looked Ms. Washburn directly in the eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t see any proof. So go ahead and bring the cops here. Because I don’t think you have anything to tell them.”

  “We know you did not fire the gun at Richard Handy,” I told Billy. “That’s the question we are actually attempting to answer. So if you can tell us who really did kill Richard, we will withdraw. It is the job of the police to investigate the related matters.”

  “I didn’t kill Richard,” Billy said.

  “I know. I just said that. Who did?”

  He looked past Sandy toward the spot where the shooting had occurred. “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking that way.”

  “Oh, come on.” Ms. Washburn shook her head in disbelief. “You’re standing at the counter. You have a clear view of the dairy case from where you are. Even if you weren’t looking in that direction before, you were going to look up when you heard shots. So who did you see holding the gun?”

  “The kid they arrested.” Billy had been given his story. Even if it did not fit the facts or make any sense at all, he was going to repeat it ad infinitum. “The one who kept coming in to see Richard. The retard.”

  Sandy’s face flinched at the last word. “Don’t ever say that,” she said quietly.

  Billy appeared not to have heard her. “He was standing there, holding the gun over Richard’s body. Just making that noise he makes, like, ‘nnnnnnn,’ over and over. Something wrong with him.”

  Sandy gave him a vicious look that needed no interpretation. “I said not to say things like that!” she hissed.

  The moment was interrupted when the woman from the household products aisle walked to the counter and stood behind Sandy. She did not move.

  We all stayed motionless and silent for eleven seconds until Ms. Washburn addressed the customer. “We’re not in line,” she said. “You go ahead.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely,” Ms. Washburn told her. “Please.” She gestured toward the counter, and the woman walked to Billy and placed a small bottle of glass cleaner on the counter.

  No one said a word as Billy scanned the UPC code on the item, bagged it, took the woman’s five-dollar bill and gave her the necessary change. The woman thanked him, gave the rest of us a curious look, and left the convenience store. There were no other customers present.

  “That’s it,” Billy said once the door had closed behind her. “I’m not talking to you anymore. Why don’t you just go home?”

  “You’re not telling us the truth, Billy,” Ms. Washburn said. “We’re going to have to call the police and let them know about the black market ring you had here, and you’re going to go to jail. Is that what you want?”

  Billy appeared confused by our refusal to leave the store when he had told us to do so. “Just go,” he reiterated. He looked past my head and his mouth twitched a bit. I did not look behind me, but saw Sandy also glance in that direction.

  “The contraband merchandise and the shooting of Richard Handy are connected,” I said. “If we let the police know about your involvement in selling illegal goods, they will undoubtedly assume you are implicated in the murder.”

  Billy, his eyes still looking at a point behind my right ear, gave a tiny nod. Clearly he had heard the truth in what I had told him and was making the decision to answer our questions. He walked out from behind the counter.

  Then he went to the entrance to the convenience store and turned the dead bolt in the door. Having locked it, he turned the sign now reading CLOSED from our perspective inside the building to its opposite position, meaning the CLOSED sign now faced outside. And he lowered a venetian blind on the door to shut out any light—or visibility—in either direction.

  “Billy,” Sandy said. Her voice was shaky.

  “It’s not up to me, Ms. Webb,” came the reply. Billy walked back toward us but did not resume his position behind the counter. Instead, he went back to the dairy display where Richard Handy had died.

  Next to the display, facing toward the counter, was a narrow door bearing a sign that read Employees Only. It opened and Raymond Robinson walked through it toward us.

  He was carrying a shotgun.

  “It’s so unfortunate,” he said. “You could have just accepted the story you were given. The young man with the disability was upset because he felt betrayed by someone he thought was his friend, and he snapped. He borrowed his brother’s gun and came here to take his revenge. Why was that so impossi
ble to believe?”

  I took a step toward him and Mr. Robinson leveled the shotgun at my chest. “Don’t do that,” he said.

  I felt my head start to shake. I’m sure it was at most a slight movement from the perspective of the others (except perhaps Ms. Washburn, who knew me well) but from my viewpoint the frustration and anger at myself was palpable and made the reaction feel much more noticeable than it was. That led to feelings of embarrassment, which added to the frustration. This was not a helpful tactic but I was having difficulty controlling it.

  “You shot Richard?” Ms. Washburn sounded both surprised and disappointed. “With all that money and all those businesses, you had to kill a kid because you needed to protect your little black market side deal?”

  “It was the guns,” Mr. Robinson said. “Those made it a federal crime and that made it more dangerous. When Richard threatened to expose the operation, he became dangerous. He never really understood. And your brother … ” He smiled a smile without any amusement or warmth at Sandy. “Well, he presented the perfect opportunity, didn’t he?”

  “You cold bastard,” Ms. Washburn said. Her voice was angrier than I’d ever heard it, which only made me think of how she would sound if she knew about her husband’s affair. That did not seem a productive thought at the moment. “Why did you even get involved in that sleazy business to begin with?”

  But Mr. Robinson pointed the shotgun directly at her chest. “I’m not a Bond villain,” he said. “I have no intention of explaining my evil plan to you for so long that you can figure out a way to escape. There is no way to escape.”

  Then he looked at Billy Martinez and gestured with the barrel of the shotgun. Billy, taking the instruction, said, “Move over here,” and pointed toward the dairy section. It was easy to see the advantage of leading us into that area—it was away from any windows. The security cameras appeared to have been removed, probably in anticipation of replacement that had not yet happened.

  It was the perfect place to shoot people and not be seen.