The Highly Effective Detective

by Richard Yancey

  “We got him,” I said.

  “We got him,” he replied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  GARY PAUL OFFERED TO GO WITH ME TO CONFRONT OUR suspect.

  “Right now?” I asked.

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” I said. “It’s a question of thoroughness. I haven’t been too thorough in my thinking up to this point—I mean in my life, not just with this case—and I don’t want to go off half-cocked without a firm POA.”

  “POA?”

  “Plan of attack.”

  “Detective lingo?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I just made it up.”

  “I thought we’d just drive over there and ask him,” he said.

  “That was my first instinct. It’s direct and exploits the element of surprise, but that assumes this is unconnected to the murder of Lydia Marks.”

  He slowly shook his head. “I’m not following you, Ted. That’s not unusual, but I’m thinking this is one of those times when I really should.”

  “If this guy’s our goose killer, he might also be her killer, and I don’t want to be mucking that up. I don’t want to blow it for the task force. What if this guy takes off or destroys key evidence on the basis of our visit?”

  “I don’t think you go anywhere near that. Like I said, there may be no connection at all, but on the off chance there is, you don’t bring it up. You stay on-message with the geese.”

  “Still, it might spook him.”

  “So it spooks him. I don’t see how you can avoid it, if you want to solve this case. Besides, I’ll be there.”

  In the end, that settled it for me. How badly could I screw up with a member of law enforcement at my elbow? Plus, in the back of my mind, I really did want to kill both birds with one stone. All right, all right, you got me, Ruzak! I did them both, the goslings and the Irish dame! Take me away!

  The address was on the northwestern edge of the county, north of Farragut and just south of Oak Ridge, where they work on nuclear bombs or the technology for nuclear bombs—I was never quite sure which and didn’t really want to be. Oak Ridge was sometimes called “the Secret City” because during World War II nobody knew about it, or if they did, they didn’t know what they were doing up in those hills outside Knoxville. Gary offered to drive, but I told him it was my party, so he rode shotgun in my Sentra. Our perp, if he was our perp, lived in a newer subdivision, in one of those stucco two-story cookie cutter–type houses on a postage stamp–size lot with saplings still staked to the ground and straw still visible on the freshly seeded lawn. The house had a two-car garage, but the Ford SUV was parked in the driveway, and I saw the tag as we pulled in. At the sight of that tag, my heart rate picked up.

  “Look familiar?” Gary asked.

  “That’s it,” I said. “That’s the car that tailed me.”

  I parked behind the SUV, blocking any possibility of a getaway, and Gary stopped me as I started up the walk to the front door.

  “Hang on a sec,” he said. I followed him to the front of the Ford. He squatted down and ran his hand under the front bumper, frowned, then lay flat on his back and reached underneath again, feeling along the edge of the front license plate holder. He pulled something free and held it up: a goose feather—or rather, a downy minifeather, a baby’s feather.

  “Bingo,” he said.

  He handed me the evidence and I slipped it into the money compartment of my wallet, between a five-dollar bill and an old gas receipt, which I was saving for tax purposes. On our way to the door, he said, “Maybe you should let me take the lead here, Teddy. The Marks thing does complicate matters, and I’ve got experience with dealing with these lowlifes.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s terrific. I really appreciate it, Gary.”

  He answered the bell right away, which made me wonder if he’d been standing on the other side of the door waiting for us. He was younger than I expected, maybe in his mid-twenties, and better-looking, though I really didn’t know why I expected someone in his mid-forties, balding, and with a middle-age paunch. I guess my expectation was based on my assumption that whoever smashed those goslings was either a shallow housewife bent on getting to the mall before it opened or a midlevel executive late for his flight to New York to close that big deal. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and a Ron Jon Surf Shop T-shirt. His hair was wet, like he’d just stepped out of the shower.

  “How ya doin’?” Gary said. “My name’s Gary Paul and I’m with the Knox County sheriff’s office. This is Teddy Ruzak. He’s a private investigator.”

  “Investigative consultant,” I said.

  “We’re looking for Michael Carroll,” Gary said.

  “I’m Mike Carroll,” the guy said.

  “You got a second, Mike?”

  “Am I in some kind of trouble?”

  “Well,” Gary said, “let’s just say we’re not here to solicit donations for the Benevolence Fund.”

  “Ah, jeez. Okay. I’m kinda running late for something, but come on in.” He asked us to slip off our shoes by the door because the hardwood was brand-new and cost sixty-five dollars a square foot installed, and we followed him into the living room. The house was sparsely furnished and had a Rooms-to-Go feel. There were some built-in bookcases against one wall with no books in them and a glass-topped coffee table with a lava lamp set in the middle, maybe as a conversation piece.

  “Nice lamp,” I told Mike Carroll as we sat down, in case it was. Gary and I took the sofa and Mike sat on a rocking chair without any padding on the rails, which made me wonder how much he really cared about the hardwood.

  “Isn’t it cool? Those got hip again a couple years back, but now they’re waning again. I can’t help it, though, I just love ‘em.”

  “You probably have some memory attached to it,” I said. “That’s what usually happens.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing attached to it at all.” He looked at Gary and wet his lips. He had the classical features of a Greek statue and very blue eyes. If his hair had been lighter, it might have been possible to mistake him for Brad Pitt or an Aryan god, like Thor, only I wasn’t sure Thor was Aryan, being a Norse god. Weren’t the Norsemen from Norway? And I was pretty sure Brad Pitt had brown eyes, and your classic Aryans were blond, all of which would mean Mike Carroll did not resemble Brad Pitt, or an Aryan, or a Norse god.

  “Hey, Mike,” Gary said. “We’re gonna cut right to the chase here. For a couple weeks now, Teddy and I have been trying to hunt down the owner of that Ford in your driveway.”

  “Well,” Mike Carroll answered. “I guess your hunt is over. That’s my Expedition.”

  “Mike, we have reason to believe that vehicle was used in the commission of a crime.” Then Gary added quickly, “Not a very serious crime as far as the statutes go, but in terms of human decency.”

  Mike slowly shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Gary.”

  Gary looked at me and nodded. I pulled out my wallet and drew out the gosling feather. Mike barely glanced at it.

  “It’s a feather,” he said.

  “We found it stuck under your front bumper, Mike.”

  “My client saw a black Ford SUV with your plates hit a gaggle of baby geese by Anchor Park in Farragut a couple months back,” I said. “There was a big write-up in the paper about it. Maybe you saw it.”

  “Look,” Gary said after the silence dragged out and no confession was forthcoming. “I’m gonna be straight with you, Mike. Nobody’s here to arrest you or slap a fine on you and nobody will in the future, but we would like you to fess up so Teddy’s client can have some peace of mind. He’s kind of an old liberal tree-hugger type and he’s been giving Ted here fits about this hit-and-run. All we want is some honesty and a willingness to stand up like a man and admit you made a mistake. We know you didn’t intentionally kill those babies. It was an accident, right? You were in a hurry, didn’t see them until it was too late, and who really gives a shit about six little baby gees
e?”

  Mike nodded. He wet his lips again and ran his fingers through his damp hair, and in that moment I hated Michael Carroll like I’d never hated another being in my entire life. I wanted to grab that lava lamp and smack him over the head with it. He didn’t have to open his mouth for me to know he was our perp. Gary had it nailed: Mike probably hadn’t meant to hit the geese, but he didn’t care that he had. And here it was midmorning and he had only now taken his shower, and he was dressed casually, so I guessed he didn’t even have a job and lived off the largesse of his parents or maybe a girlfriend (he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring). He drove a nice car and lived in a brand-new house, and this is what tore me up, the callousness born of privilege, like the rules didn’t apply to him. And I knew, too, even without any proof, that he wasn’t alone in that SUV that morning; that Lydia Marks was with him, maybe struggling, maybe not. Maybe I was sitting across from her boyfriend, who got mad when she wouldn’t dump her sugar daddy for him, so he took a hammer to her head high on a ridge in the Smoky Mountains.

  “Okay,” he said softly. Then he laughed. “Okay, I guess I’m busted. Yeah, I saw the article,” he said to me. “And I guess you know I went downtown that day looking for you. I’m not sure why I did that. I was kind of pissed, to tell you the truth. Like, Who does this fat ass think he is? Like, What’s the big friggin’ deal?” He spread his hands wide, then slapped his palms on his shorts and rubbed his thighs vigorously, like he had a circulation problem.

  “You hit the geese,” Gary said.

  “Yeah, didn’t I just say that?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Well, what the hell do you want? A written confession? You said you weren’t here to arrest me or ticket me. What the hell are you here for, then?”

  “A check,” I said.

  “A…a what?”

  “Made out to the World Wildlife Fund. I’m thinking maybe three hundred bucks.”

  “Three hundred bucks!”

  “That’s fifty per gosling.”

  Gary smiled. “Seems fair.”

  “You’re kidding, right? Jesus, man, it was just a bunch of friggin’ geese!”

  “Gaggle,” I said. “And tell that to the parents of those friggin’ geese.”

  “No, why don’t you tell them, Ruzak? You’re out of your damned mind if you think—”

  “Hey, Mike,” Gary said. “Mike, Mike. There’s no need to get all excited about it. I think Teddy’s suggestion is terrific. Three hundred bucks isn’t going to bring those geese back, but it tips the scales in the right direction.”

  “I don’t give a crap about any scales,” Mike said. “What the hell are you talking about with these scales? Look, I’m sorry I hit them, okay? And yeah, I should have stopped I guess and I definitely should have come forward when that story hit the papers, but it’s not like it was a group of schoolkids crossing the road.”

  “You know, Mike,” Gary said. “You say you’re sorry, but your whole attitude lacks any kind of remorse whatsoever. It’s troubling to me and I’m sure it’s troubling to Teddy here and I have no doubt Parker would find it even more deeply troubling. So troubling he might decide to press charges against you.”

  “Charges? Like what charges? This is bullshit, man. Okay, okay, what do you want me to do? I sure as hell don’t want to trouble anybody.”

  “Teddy’s already told you. A three-hundred-dollar donation to the World Wildlife Fund.”

  “Tax-deductible donation,” I added.

  “You bet,” Gary said. He was smiling broadly now at Mike, who was smiling back with perfectly even, perfectly white teeth, which were made even more perfect by the juxtaposition to Gary’s.

  “And an apology to my client,” I said.

  “Apology for what?”

  “For hitting the geese.”

  “But that was an accident.”

  “I think he could have lived with that,” I said. “Anybody can have an accident. It was the driving away part that got to him.”

  “I was in hurry. Didn’t I say that? Jeez, am I the only one who sees the ridiculousness of this?”

  “The only one in this room,” Gary said.

  “What if I don’t have three hundred bucks to give to the World Wildlife Fund?”

  Nobody said anything. Nobody needed to. Everything about Gary Paul’s aura said, I don’t give a flying flip about your excuses, pal.

  Mike sighed, his smile faded, and he stood up. “Okay, I’ll get my checkbook. It just blows my mind when I pick up the paper and see all the shit happening in this town and here’s a guy who cares more about geese —I mean, these are fucking geese we’re talking about, and here you two are banging on my door, kind of strong-arming me because I made a mistake. Why should I have to pay up if it was an accident?”

  “Everything has a price, Mike,” Gary said softly. “Even accidents. Especially accidents.”

  I had an idea as he started out of the room.

  “You don’t need to get your checkbook right now,” I said. They both looked at me, a little surprised. “I’m sure my client would prefer the check and the apology straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  He gave a little frustrated roll of his shoulders, as if the situation was slipping outside all bounds of normalcy. He looked at Gary as if to say, Save me from this freak.

  “You have my personal guarantee I’ll do everything in my power to keep him from popping you in the nose,” I said.

  “Oh, sure, that makes me feel a lot better,” he said. “But that’s not going to happen, Ruzak. First you come in here demanding three hundred bucks and now you tack on a personal apology. You guys keep upping the ante. What’s next? Taking out a billboard?”

  “I’m thinking more along the lines of a written apology.” Gary said. “With a copy to the newspaper.”

  “I’m sure he’d prefer it in person,” I insisted. “A letter to the newspaper isn’t bad, either; I’ll run that by him when I set up the meeting.”

  “I’m not meeting with him, Ruzak,” Mike Carroll said, but he was looking at Gary. He had Gary pegged as the rational one, the good cop.

  I said, “Is tomorrow, say four o’clock, good for you?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I’m not meeting with him.”

  “Parker would prefer it.”

  “I don’t give a shit what Parker would prefer. He gets a check and note, ‘Dear Mr. Hudson, I’m sorry about killing those fucking baby geese.’ If that’s not good enough for you, then slap the cuffs on me now. I’m not a bad person; I’m a decent human being. And I really resent the hell out of you two showing up at my door like this, acting like I’m some kind of serial killer or something.”

  “I don’t have my cuffs, Mike,” Gary said. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to go along with this, or I’ll come back with them.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not. You’ll do this, or I promise you I will come back, and when I do, I’ll be wearing my badge, Mike.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  PELLISSIPPI PARKWAY WAS ONLY A MILE OR SO FROM MIKE Carroll’s house, so I swung onto it, heading south toward the interstate.

  “You in a hurry?” Gary asked, and I eased up on the gas, thinking maybe my speeding seven miles over the limit disturbed his cop sense.

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “Let’s have a beer, then.”

  “A beer?”

  “To celebrate.”

  He directed me off the Kingston Pike exit, then west toward Farragut, then into a little strip center anchored by a Harley-Davidson shop called Biker’s Rags. At the corner of the L-shaped center was a sports bar with a big screen on every wall, a pool table, a couple of dartboards, and a tired-looking waitress with dyed-blond hair and a tattoo on her shoulder that said BITCH. Gary ordered a Michelob lite and I had a Budweiser. We shared a bowl of stale pretzels, and the waitress ignored us after she asked if we wa
nted some wings or a slice of pizza and we said no.

  Gary raised his frosty mug and said, “To Teddy Ruzak, ace detective, first case in the can.”

  I clinked mugs with him and said, “Investigative consultant.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “One’s legal and one isn’t.”

  He shook his head. I wasn’t sure what the shake of the head meant, but I didn’t ask. Something was bugging me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I should have been flush with pride, overjoyed at my perfect batting average, relishing my victory, but there was a shadow over me, or it was more like a thorn in my head, pricking my brain.

  He laughed suddenly. “Did you see the look on his face when he realized we knew?”

  “Hand in the cookie jar.”

  “This gives me incredible satisfaction, Ruzak. I just can’t tell you. So many times I’ve sat there in court and watched these jerks walk and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. It’s a pretty frustrating job, being a cop. The pay is shit, the hours are lousy, and, five times out of ten, after all the shit work you get the pleasure of watching the perp walk. It can make you cynical, you know? Pretty down on everything. It’s nice to see something come out the right way once in a while.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You bet. But what’s your gut tell you, Gary? Is he the one?”

  “A black Ford Expedition with the same license plate that both you and Parker saw, a goose feather caught in the undercarriage, and a confession. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s the one.”

  “I don’t mean the geese.”

  “Ruzak, the only thing I know about Mike Carroll is that he’s a very careless driver, a very casual dresser, and a very poor decorator. But you can bet the task force is gonna know his name.”

  “He never said,” I said.

  “He never said what?”

  “Why he was there that morning. Why he was driving so fast. Why he didn’t stop.”

  “Maybe he didn’t because we didn’t ask.”

  “I was nervous,” I admitted. “Thanks for coming along, Gary.”