by Nina Post
Paul Harmon lived in a modest downtown apartment overlooking an alley. Shawn was incredulous that every one of his old friends was in Erie.
They wound up the stairs to the fifth floor -- Shawn wanted the exercise and didn't trust the elevator at all. It probably hadn't been serviced beyond its installation, which must have been when LBJ was president. "Did you know that Paul Harmon ran for mayor?" Sarah said.
"No, but I'm starting to feel like an outsider for not going into politics. And I'm starting to think that you should start doing the background checks."
"Harmon ran in the mayoral race for Coudersport -- " Sarah started.
Shawn snorted.
"What?"
"My dad's family is from Coudersport. Please, go on."
"Paul pulled out of the race following a sex scandal and returned to Erie. My guess? He's regrouping and slunk back here to strategize his comeback."
"Comeback for what?"
"Who knows. Maybe he wants to run for Darcy's seat."
"How is that a comeback?" Sarah took that as the rhetorical question it as Shawn knocked on Paul's door. Across the hall, a woman in her twenties opened the door, sending a whiff of marijuana smoke drifting out past her languorous pose. Shawn suddenly felt like Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye.
"Dude's not home." The neighbor noticed Sarah and smiled, lifting her chin. "Hey. You're cute."
"Thanks." Sarah flashed a smile. Shawn assumed everyone thought she was cute, because how could you not?
"I'm looking for Paul Harmon," Shawn said. "Do you know where he is?"
The woman in the doorway laughed. She was slim, shoeless, and her Ali McGraw hair was loose around her shoulders. Shawn's sister Melly didn't look that different years ago, and he had a memory of her giving him his first album, Synchronicity, in one of her nicer moments. One of maybe three such moments.
"I don't have a microchip on the guy," the woman said in her lazy voice.
"You've met him?" Sarah asked.
"Yeah. He's pretty squirrelly, and way too full of himself. Like, 'When I'm governor, you can say you knew me when,'" she imitated, then laughed. "What a bag. He's always trying to get some, as if. What's he done? Nothing would surprise me."
Shawn shrugged. "I'm just looking for him. If you see him, give me a call." The neighbor took the card.
"And you can give me a call." She directed this at Sarah, just before she closed her door.
"We'll try his office next," Shawn said. "I've got an address." He stopped halfway down the stairwell to read a text, hoping it was lab results, a wit from the canvass, a hit on Brower -- but no. It was his sister.
DAD NEEDS MED TESTS U NEED TO TAKE HIM
"Oh, for the love of -- " He deleted it. "Why are they texting so much?"
"Haven't they texted you before?" Sarah asked.
"Yes, but my mind blocks a lot of things to protect itself."
They continued down the stairs. "What do they want?" Sarah asked.
"They want me to take my father in to get some medical tests done, and as always, my job means nothing to them." He imitated his mother: "Who cares, they're already dead!"
***
Sunday night
Shawn found Paul Harmon working from a card table in an overly heated room that smelled like old Chinese food.
"Paul Harmon?" Shawn asked.
Sarah's camera peeked around his right side, then she winged out to the side like they were a very small phalanx.
Paul looked up and squinted. "Who are you?" His curly hair looked like he got a scalp massage from a river otter and his pants were almost hanging off him.
"Shawn Danger, Erie PD."
Paul started to stand, pulled out his rickety wooden chair, then straightened the rest of the way. "Shawn Danger?" Shawn leaned back an inch or two, reticent. He didn't want to get into it. Anything from his past made him uneasy, and it was weird to see Paul after all this time.
"Wow! Shawn Danger! Ha!" Paul clapped his hands together, came around the table, then stumbled and caught himself. He moved the table, then hugged Shawn with a clap on the back -- awkwardly, considering Shawn was several inches taller. Paul retreated a few steps and crossed his arms, breaking into a big grin.
"This is Sarah. She's filming a documentary. If you don't want to be a part of it, just let her know."
Paul's eyes widened a little too feverishly, and Shawn wondered if Paul was on something. But he'd always been like that, except his sense of hopefulness had been replaced with a sense of fevered desperation. "No, no! I think it's terrific! Maybe when you get done, you can do one about me!"
Sarah smiled politely at Paul and gave an encouraging but noncommittal nod, then disappeared behind the camera again. "I'd like to ask you a few questions," Shawn said.
"Sure, sure." Paul went behind his small wooden card table and sat in his small wooden chair as though positioning himself behind a massive teak desk. Sarah made a small noise, like a muffled snort, and Shawn tapped her hip with his hand.
"Have you been in touch with Jasper Stowe recently?"
"Jasper?" Incredulous. "No. Uh-uh."
"What about John Brower? Have you talked to him?" Shawn fixed his eyes on Paul's, though his former friend's focus kept shifting around the room.
"John?" Paul blinked, grimaced as though remembering something, then shook his head. "No. Why? Have you seen them?"
"What about Darcy?"
"I, uh…" Paul sucked in a breath. "Darcy. I found out she was in local politics and went to see her." He raised his hands off the table then let them fall back. "I thought…" He closed his eyes and shook his head. "I thought she could hook me up with something."
"A job?"
"Mm, yeah. Yeah. A job. Maybe she knew someone. But she said she couldn't help me." He chuckled softly. "That's okay. I found this, right? I found this job. It's not great, mostly filing, but it's a start. After what happened, I moved back here to regroup and strategize my next move."
Shawn glanced at Sarah, who gave him a look that said Told ya.
"Oh?" Shawn said.
"Yep. I'm going to be governor of Pennsylvania one day."
Shawn let a moment pass. It was more likely that Comet would be governor of Pennsylvania. Shawn hoped his cat wouldn't forget him once he got into a position of power like that.
"Good for you, Paul. So, when did you speak to Darcy?"
Paul put his hands over his face and took a hitching breath. A sob escaped from behind Paul's fingers and Sarah looked at Shawn with astonishment. Shawn imagined the actual governor being like Paul and marveled at the handlers he'd have to have around him.
Shawn took a step toward Paul then hesitated. Paul rubbed the corners of his eyes with the heels of his hands and blinked. "I'm sorry. It's an emotional time for me. It wasn't easy to ask. Dumb male pride thing, right?" Paul laughed, but another tear escaped down his cheek. He swiped it away as though already moving past the whole thing, then leaned forward. "Let me actually answer your question. This was a week and two days ago that I spoke to Darcy. She was very cordial, very professional. I don't hold it against her for not wanting to give a position to someone involved in a scandal. I said, give me anything. Scut work. Copies, coffee, calls, office supplies. I just want to be in it, you know?" He clenched his gesturing hands into fists. "Involved."
"There might not have been anything available," Shawn offered.
"That's kind of you to say, Shawn." Paul smiled. "But I know how it works. It's okay. I'm going to pull myself up, rung by rung, until I get even further than I was before. Honestly, I'd be happy with a mayorship."
Shawn approximated a smile. Paul would never be content, especially when he kept sabotaging himself. He wanted things, but never honed in on what or why, and probably didn't believe he deserved them.
"If Darcy or John contacts you, call me immediately, any time, day or night." Shawn gave Paul his card. "Good to see you, Paul." He left with Sarah, eager to get out of the office and back outside.
"Wow," Sarah said. "He is a mess."
They got back in his Acura. Shawn rested his head against the seat then turned to talk to Sarah. "It's your birthday tomorrow."
"Ruby Tuesday's thought it was three months ago."
"Ruby Tuesday's has a touch of dementia."
"No, I always give them the wrong date," she said. "A free sundae can go a surprisingly long way. It's the little things. Worried that your work won't go anywhere? Hey, look, a free ice cream sundae!"
"Are you worried your work won't lead to anything?"
"Yes," she said. "Aren't you?"
"What, me worry?"
"Okay, Alfred E. Neuman. But aren't you worried now?"
"A little. New situation, new people," Shawn said. "I figure there's always something to worry about, so you can either worry 24-7 or you can let it go. But yeah, I am worried about Darcy. And Paul." He paused, looked at her. "By the way. You like Comet, right?"
She quirked a brow. "Comet's great. Why?"
"Would you be willing to take care of him if anything happened to me? I'd rather not say I have a dangerous job -- "
"You just did."
" -- but I just want to make sure he'd have a good home. Just in case."
"Something I should know about with this investigation?"
"Nothing in particular. Say yes. Unless you don't think you can." He hated the thought, but what if they broke up? Maybe she'd get tired of dealing with his job. That was common enough in his line of work.
"Yes, I promise to take care of Comet."
He felt so much lighter. That was a heavier weight than he thought. "Thank you. That's a relief. But I'll have a backup and alternate, in case you change your mind."
"A backup or alternate girlfriend?" she asked, with an amused twitch.
"Hardly." He started the engine and drove out of the parking lot. "Are you busy tomorrow? I need to stop by the office, then I'm going to pay a visit to the Downs."
"Me too, then."
He drove her to her father's house. She went there for dinner and a movie every Sunday night. Shawn had joined them for a few dinners, but couldn't make it every week. In his mind, he pictured her father though the front bay window, reading in his armchair under a soft yellow light, a small glass of Scotch and a few more books -- law, or eighteenth-century classics -- on the table next to him, bird-and-flower pattern wallpaper in the background.
"I wish I could stay," Shawn said. He did. He wanted to come into the warmth of their house, take the glass of Scotch her father would offer, have dinner with them, and stay to watch something with Spencer Tracy in it.
When he got home, Comet ran out of the kitchen and snaked around his ankles then pranced back over to the kitchen. His tension dissipated. "It's been a day, buddy." Shawn spent a couple minutes with Comet, just running his hand from Comet's nose to his tail, then got up and put his suit jacket in the front closet. He refreshed Comet's bowls then made a ham and cheese sandwich for himself, which he attacked like a feral animal.
"You think Brower turns into a cat when he's not killing someone?"
Comet craned his head around and meowed without making a noise.
"Because that would explain a lot."
After he finished the sandwich and washed the plate, he took off his shoes, then headed upstairs and into the bedroom, where he hung up his suit jacket. He stood by the bureau and put his main service weapon, a .45 Glock, and then his backup, his utilitarian Kahr PM9 with the brushed stainless sides, on the top near his wallet and keys. He took off his holsters but didn't change yet. He went back downstairs then got up on the trampoline. He needed that interstitial mental time to sort through what he knew, to review every detail since Sunday morning, walk through it again step by step, and then clear his mind and not think about anything in particular.
Comet jumped up onto the top of the big chair by the sofa and watched him with alert eyes and posture before settling into a relaxed, tail-swishing pose.
***
Monday morning
Shawn had slept just over three hours and was at the station before dawn. He made a fresh pot of coffee in the break room and took his full mug to his office. There was a lot to do, but first he read over Jasper's financials. His former friend had been living off astoundingly large royalty checks in the Hollywood Hills for the last eleven years before moving back to Erie two months ago. Shawn was still baffled why Jasper had moved back, after making the effort to go to L.A.
Jasper had paid for his house in Erie with $500,000 in cash, no mortgage, and then spent a good chunk of money decorating the place. He leased a Prius, transferred his insurance, and got a new driver's license, all listed under a different Erie street address. He continued his subscriptions to American Heritage magazine and a t-shirt of the month club. And in the past two months, Jasper had donated generously to, of all things, Battles Museums of Rural Life.
"The hell?" Shawn muttered. Jasper just wanted to live in a city. He wasn't one to fetishize the agrarian life.
At a clattering noise, Shawn looked up and saw that his captain was roaming and had backed up against a trash bin. Ashburn was easy to spot, with his shock of wavy gray hair and frequent careless flailing. His assistant, a silent and harried woman, scurried after him. She kept her hands out, ready for her boss's next inevitable disaster.
"Captain," Shawn called out. Ashburn whirled and knocked a large framed photo off an unoccupied desk without noticing. The assistant reached out and caught it before it reached the floor. A solid left fielder.
"May I talk to you for a minute?" Shawn asked.
Ashburn frowned, his almost-pudgy cheeks dimpling, glanced at his watch, then turned to the assistant and asked, "Do you have any more of those special jelly bean jars from the office supply people? I'm down to the very bottom of my last one."
"No, sir," the assistant answered. "You have the last jar."
Ashburn rolled his eyes then indicated to Shawn to follow. The assistant cast a worried look after them, presumably because her boss, the tornado, was on the move, and she couldn't follow. When Shawn got close, Ashburn spoke to him in a low, conspiratorial tone. "If you buy $100 in office supplies, you get a jar of Jelly Belly."
Shawn dared to ask, "Why don't you just buy a jar of them?"
Ashburn stopped dead.
Great, fired from my new job over a jar of jelly beans.
"Yes, of course that's occurred to me; I'm not an imbecile." Ashburn gestured dramatically. "Look, I can't explain the psychology behind it. All I know is, it's more satisfying to get the jelly beans with an office supply order. They just taste better when they arrive in the same box as four hundred legal pads." Ashburn stepped into his office and dropped into his chair, briefly spinning in a quarter-circle. Shawn flicked his eyes over to a huge whiteboard covered with ominous-looking flowcharts and Ashburn followed his eyes. "Oh, that? A little organizational audit project I'm working on."
"Audit?" Shawn said. A scary word, just behind Soon.
Ashburn's eyes brightened with a mischievous glint. "I haven't yet decided whether I'll focus on one component, or make it more systemic, but that's my timeline right there."
"I see." He didn't.
Shawn dropped his eyes to Ashburn's desk. There were three juggling balls, a photo with a wife and two kids, the latest issue of Police Chief magazine, a bag of potato chips, and a cell phone. "Got something for me on your vic?"
"Not yet," Shawn said. "But Darcy Kehoe hasn't been seen or heard from since early this morning. She has strong ties to the community, a husband, a lot of responsibilities. She's not the type to shirk those."
Ashburn fixed his eyes on Shawn. "Any hits on her plate, credit card, cell phone?"
"Nothing."
Ashburn sighed. "I'll put someone on it."
"And Paul Harmon?"
"You think I'm made of money, Danger?"
Once Shawn had assured Ashburn that he didn't think of him as the EPD's sugar daddy, he went back to his office and receiv
ed a call from the Mercyhurst geologist just as he sat down.
"If you're talking about biologically productive Great Lakes, you're talking about Lake Erie."
"I wasn't talking about either one," Shawn said. "When did this conversation start, exactly?"
"This is Ethan Trainor. Now, by far, the most abundant life form in Lake Erie are microbes, which have very fast growth rates and very short life cycles."
Shawn rubbed the bones at the back of his neck. "Did I accidentally call the Lake Erie Info Line?"
"No, Detective. Just providing a little context."
"Go on. Excited for more."
"These microorganisms are not evenly distributed either temporally or spatially."
"Okay."
"And there are varying abiotic factors such as temperature, pH, light, nutrients, circulation, et cetera. These abiotic factors can change hourly, daily, seasonally, or annually."
Shawn silently groaned, leaned back in the chair, and stared up at the ceiling. Of course they did. Nothing could be simple. He just wanted to identify a particle, but now it was like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
"I checked the phytoplankton distribution pattern, thanks to a spectrofluoro-metric technique that surveyed a lake-wide scale -- "
"Just like I asked."
"-- and, of course, the most recent report from the phytoplankton trawl net."
"Checked that myself. Look forward to it every month."
"In that case, they could identify the genus, and possibly even species of the phytoplankton they picked up."
Shawn had no idea what this meant. "In other words, we've got nothing. Or, you can pin down the microbe to a specific place and time."
"The latter."
Shawn cheered up. He hoped this would lead to finding the exact place on Presque Isle where Jasper was killed, and not to unleashing a deadly, heretofore-undiscovered microbe that would precipitate a global pandemic. Fingers crossed.
"I can almost certainly narrow it down to a specific area around Presque Isle," Trainor said. "The microbe can only be found in a very specific area out of a habitat of sandy beaches, marshes, ponds, grassy areas, scrub, and woods. The woods alone -- "
Why was this man toying with him like this? "How is that specific, if it could be narrowed down to any one of a half-dozen habitats?"
