by Mark Zubro
Scott was a good man, and I loved him, but neither he nor I would be up for sainthood any time soon.
Labrinski rushed on, “Don’t get me wrong, I loved him. He was kind and considerate and thoughtful. He went out of his way for me. And I was into some of his causes. The gay rights ones anyway.”
Scott asked, “How long had you been together?”
“Six years. We fell in love senior year of high school. We went to college here, me at Marquette, him at UW Milwaukee. We had an apartment together. I was a musician. He was a waiter at a bunch of different places.” He waxed nostalgic for several minutes. The memories brought smiles to his lips and more tears to his eyes. He finished, “We graduated. He wanted to make a difference in the world, not get a job in some Silicon Valley cubicle. He got a job as a stringer for the paper out in Harrison County. And then he got involved in that damn campaign. I was all for it at first. I wanted to be part of bringing those goddamn homophobic pricks to their knees.” He shook his head.
I asked, “What happened?”
“Over time Zachary got more and more tense. I’d never seen him like that. His hands shook. He was paranoid, thought someone was following him.”
“Did he tell you what was wrong?”
“I asked him about it. I think he was frightened. Turns out he was right. He should have been.” Tears began to flow. “The police claimed it was an accident! An accident! You don’t fall from a bridge and it be an accident. You either jump or you get pushed, and Zachary was not suicidal. He never said the word suicide in all the years we were together. We never discussed it. If he thought about it, he never brought it up, never, not once.” More tears.
I got another supply of napkins from the dispenser. He blew his nose, got himself under control. I said, “We can stop if you want.”
“No,” he said. He was fierce and angry. “I want to know who did this. I want to find out what the hell’s was going on. Someone killed him.” He took great gasping breaths. Scott eased closer to him and put his hand on his arm.
“Are you sure this is okay?” Scott asked.
Jordan nodded but his tears still fell. The people in the Starbucks were beginning to notice. One of the baristas came over and asked if he could help. Jordan shook his head no. He said, “These guys are friends. I’ll be all right.”
It took a few minutes but Jordan pulled himself together. “Thank you,” he whispered to Scott.
I stood up. “We should go.”
“No, please, stay. I needed to do that. Thank you.” He patted Scott’s arm. “I want to try and get through this. I want to help.”
I looked at Scott. He nodded. I sat back down.
Jordan blew his nose several times and tossed the used tissues in a small trash can next to the chair. He pulled in several deep breaths. He leaned against Scott as he spoke to me. “I have no proof that someone killed him. How is anyone going to get that kind of proof against the Ducharmés? Not against that kind of money. You can buy a lot of silence and a lot of death with that kind of cash.”
I said, “Maybe if we start more simply.”
Jordan looked at me.
“Did Zachary leave any clue about what he did every day in the recall campaign?”
“He was the assistant to Edgar Grum. He worked directly for him.”
“Did he say what his job required?”
“He said he was kind of a babysitter. Edgar Grum was the idiot relative in that group, at least that’s how Zachary described him.”
“What idiot things did Edgar do?”
He gave us a convoluted list of Edgar bragging and being chastised by his mother, father, and oldest brother and other higher up campaign functionaries. “He would rail against them and threaten to get even with them. Right to their face, but as far as I know, he never did anything like that. At least Zachary never said so. He also was convinced that something really crooked was going on in the campaign. He never said what.”
“No hint?” Scott asked. “Criminal mishandling of campaign contributions? Electronic computer stuff?”
“He just said he was suspicious about all of them, but he needed to get proof, but he must not have found it, or if he did he never said. He was suspicious of all of them, especially the Ducharmés. He said that kind of money was totally corrupting.”
“Is there any way to know what he was doing that last night, why he was on that bridge?”
“He always kept a record. He always took notes. The answer might be in them.”
“Can we see them?”
“I can’t find them.”
“Pardon?”
“He was very organized. Every day after work he’d go to a coffee shop a few blocks from the office and go over his notes, make additions and corrections. When he got home, he’d transcribe them first thing to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He kept them on his iPad. I can’t find it.”
“Why was he so meticulous?” Scott asked.
“He said a good reporter always checked his notes after every interview, after every event. It was good discipline.”
“Maybe the killer stole the device or threw it off the bridge with him?”
Jordan sniffed and wiped at his eyes with a tissue. “He also e-mailed the notes to himself frequently while he was writing.”
I knew writers who saved materials to their computers, to back up drives, made hard copies of it, and sent it to themselves as e-mails - at least four systems of backups, paranoid maybe, but you were unlikely to ever lose anything.
I said, “If he e-mailed it to himself, maybe we can retrieve that. Can you get into his e-mail account?”
“I don’t know his password.”
“Maybe we can try, or we can find a computer expert to give it a shot.”
His place was two blocks away so we walked over.
At the first corner, Scott looked back over his right shoulder and stared.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head. A chill wind had sprung up and the temperature had dropped. Jordan’s apartment was half of the upstairs of an old home. At the door I saw that the wood around the doorknob had recently been replaced. I pointed to it, “You had a problem lately?”
“Somebody broke in a few days after Zachary died. They left a mess, but I didn’t find anything missing.”
It had a bathroom, living room/kitchen, and one bedroom. The couch was a garage sale reject. The one easy chair sagged in the middle. There was no television. A few torn rock posters featuring bands I never heard of adorned the walls. No dirty dishes in the sink. Navy blue dish towels hung neatly. The floor was waxed.
A third of the bedroom had a desk with a computer where the three of us gathered. On the floor of the bedroom, I saw dirty socks, discarded underwear, waded up shirts and jeans, and several pairs of shoes. The bed was unmade.
We scrunched around the computer monitor. Jordan clicked over to Zachary’s e-mail provider. The cursor blipped on the password box.
We tried as many variations we could think of: his birthday, 1,2,3,4,5, the most common sequence used as a password, his name backwards and forwards, his middle name both ways, his brothers and sisters names, birth date, Jordan’s name and birth date in numerous combinations. And other statistically probable sequences. Nothing. And that was just to get into the e-mail in case there might have been anything in it.
“You know his dog’s names when he was a kid?” I asked.
“I don’t know if he had a dog.”
“Who he worked with, friends, enemies?”
Jordan sat down on the bed. He looked from one to the other of us. “I don’t have a clue, and this is kind of fruitless. Do you really think they might have killed him? For a campaign? For politics?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
He gave us Zachary Ross’s mother’s address.
As we walked to the car, Scott said, “Another break in. They are certainly looking for something.”
“You looked back at that firs
t corner.”
He shrugged. “For a minute I thought maybe we were being followed. I checked at each corner, but I didn’t see anyone, but then we didn’t walk far.”
I looked out at the cool, cloudy day. “I haven’t noticed anyone.” I was tired so I gave him the keys. He started the car and turned the heater on.
He said, “I was probably wrong. I haven’t seen anyone since that SUV this morning. I don’t want to get as crazy paranoid as the rest of them.”
“And they are crazy paranoid about something which fits the Grum family profile. I’m worried about the Ducharmés. They could afford an army of rotten people and lethal guns.” I tapped the dashboard. “We’ll have to keep more careful watch. We’ve got other questions. Why is Ross’s iPad missing? Is that what people have been looking for? And if whoever ‘they’ is have it, are they now done looking?”
“The Grums have been trying to get into that office and the gun shed, and it’s been over a week since the reporter died.”
I shrugged. “Maybe the two events aren’t connected.”
Scott said, “I’m not so sure about going to see Zachary Ross’s mom.”
“Zachary might have left something there or told her something. Remember, we’re up against the notion that the police and the Grums want to pin Edgar’s murder on Veronica. Maybe they’re just a fake fingerprint or two away from making an accusation.” I found this a chilling and frightening thought. “We can at least ask her. If she wants us to go away, we can leave.”
Scott acquiesced.
I got out my phone and keyed in the address for Zachary Ross’s mom. She lived in a suburb at the south end of Harrison County.
FORTY
Friday 3:41 P.M.
A blond woman in her mid-forties with hair pulled taut back from her face answered the door. Jordan had told us he had a good relationship with Zachary Ross’s mother, and he would call ahead for us. We received a friendly albeit subdued greeting.
We sat in a living room. Two sandy-gold couches faced each other in the middle of a vast space of hardwood floor. The stone fireplace was immense, dead, and ashless. One wall had a painting about 24 by 36 inches. It showcased brushed right angle geometric objects.
She wore faded jeans, a heavy sweatshirt, and running shoes. She sat with her feet primly flat on the floor and her hands tightly clasped in her lap.
She offered coffee. We accepted. She left the room and returned with a tray of cups, served us, and resumed her posture.
I said, “We’re sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. You are kind to stop by. I talk with Jordan almost every day. He made my son so happy. I was hoping some day they’d be able to have a wedding I could go to. Jordan is a good man. He said you were hoping to find out information that might lead to who murdered Zachary.”
“You think it was murder?” I asked.
“Of course. Zachary would never have thrown himself off a bridge.” She gave a brief sniff, dabbed at her eyes.
Scott said, “If this is a bad time, we can come back.”
“No, now is best. The police don’t return my calls. Nothing about this makes sense although I know what happened to him had to do with those evil people connected with that campaign.”
“Which people?” I asked.
“The Grums and the Ducharmés. They are all evil incarnate.”
“Evil?” As neutral a prompt as I could think of.
She said, “My son worked directly for Edgar Grum. If there is a hell, that man is in it. His parents, brothers, and sisters will join him. If hell has a band or an orchestra, that family will be the entire trumpet section, and Edgar Grum would be the conductor. If hell has a cheering section, he will be the head cheerleader. That whole family is evil.”
I said, “I need to be honest. We probably should have said this earlier. We agree with you about Edgar, but he was married to my sister. I don’t care about him, but I care about her.”
“Everybody thinks she’s this poor soul, intimidated by him. Oh really? She must have loved him. She must have found his piggish, obnoxious ways satisfying.”
I avoided the attack on my sister, oblique as it might have been. I wanted information. “What was it he did that was piggish or obnoxious?”
“That family rules this county, and probably owns half the state. If you don’t kowtow to them, you get frozen out. They have these barbecues every summer, July 4th weekend, and if you want to be in the elite in this county, you better damn well be there. Ha! The elite barn people! My husband and I went for the first few years. He worked for them, and we had to go. Then I put my foot down. My husband was a good man. He quit and found another job. He died of cancer five years ago.”
“We’re sorry,” Scott said.
She gave us a thin lipped smile. “My husband had huge life insurance policies. I was lucky. With even more luck I’ll be able to tell you something that brings those idiots down.”
I asked, “What can you tell us that would bring them down?”
“One of the oddest things was that just before the people started eating at the barbeque, they’d gather everyone into a huge prayer circle. Imagine everyone out on the lawn on a hot, sweaty, Fourth of July bowing their heads in prayer before eating baked beans and hot dogs.”
I kind of figured if people wanted to pray their hearts out night and day, that was their business. It was the Grum’s home. Despite the societal pressure, the guests didn’t really have to be there.
She shook her head. “That was slightly weird, but it’s what they talked about constantly that was offensive.”
“Oh?”
“Everything was a political discussion. You mention the heat, it was the Democrats who had the wrong policy on climate change. No matter how innocuous the subject, they had something bigoted and racist and irrational to say. That birther bull shit? They put money behind people to write things about it and to keep it going.”
“That all sounds kind of rude for a party.”
“Rude and stupid didn’t bother those people. They have convoluted stupidity far beyond a dangerous, brainless idiocy.” She sighed.
I gave her a sympathetic nod.
“I’m a Democrat. One of the few Democrats in Harrison County.”
I took a guess. “You were working in the recall campaign?”
“Of course. Over the years I’ve worked, and I’ve marched, and I’ve protested, and now I’ve lost my son. They can all go to hell. All of them. I didn’t use to hate politics, but I do now. I hate the Grums. I hate the Ducharmés. I hate them all.”
Like Beulah Grum, she’d lost her son.
“Did you know what Zachary was doing at the campaign?”
“He told me he was investigating. I was afraid to ask him too much. I told him it was dangerous.”
“You think they killed him.”
“The Grums are capable of anything.”
“But he didn’t say anything specific?”
“No.”
Scott asked, “Would Zachary have left notes or computer information here?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Who else knew he was a spy?”
“His editor, a good man, but a frightened man. He’s got kids and a mortgage and a job. He called me and came to the wake and the funeral. I feel sorry for him.”
“You think he’ll talk to us?”
“You can try. I can give him a call.”
She showed us Zachary’s old room, but from the level of dust it was obvious nothing had been disturbed in a long time. There was a shelf with what looked like high school textbooks. A twin bed against one wall had a row of stuffed toy elephants lined up along the wall. Several more larger stuffed elephants sat in front of the dresser. One even sat on the desk chair.
Scott said, “He must have loved elephants.”
“When they are little, some kids get into dinosaurs, but for some reason Zachary got into elephants. He wanted to go on a safari in the worst way. It was one of those �
�bucket list” things that now he’ll never get to do.”
She wiped at her eyes.
Scott said, “We’re so sorry.”
In the car I said, “Elephants.”
“What elephants?” he asked.
“We didn’t try it as a password.”
He looked at me. “You think?”
“Can’t hurt to try.” Labrinski had shown us Zachary’s e-mail provider and the e-mail address he used. We could try it when we got home.
FORTY-ONE
Friday 4:48 P.M.
The wind was up. The afternoon had turned totally gray and misty. We’d followed up on Mrs. Ross’s call to Zachary’s editor, Jeremiah Gottlieb. Frank Smith, the aged gay millionaire, had done as we asked and called him as well. We met at another Starbucks. Thankfully there’s always a Starbucks. The editor was in his fifties. Short and stout with a white beard, he had all the accoutrements of a Santa impersonator, including the rosy cheeks. He wasn’t smiling, and after his first few words I knew he wasn’t planning for any ho, ho, ho in his near future.
We huddled in a corner. Gottlieb stared out the window, glanced carefully at the other patrons, then leaned over his cup of coffee. His voice was low and quavery. “I caused that young man to die. It is my fault. I should have known better. I thought I was a good person. I thought I was a good editor. I was too smart for my own good.”
I spoke just enough to be heard over the piped-in-music. “You must have been close to Zachary. We’re sorry for your loss.”
“I will never forgive myself. Never. No election is worth this. It just isn’t. If anything I tell you can lead to finding out who murdered him, I’m glad, but it can’t come back on me. It just can’t.” He mopped at his face with his hanky. “This is all so awful.” He blew his nose, put the hanky away. “I’m not stupid. As soon as the campaign started, I worked with Frank Smith, and we set up a spy program on the campaign. I knew it would be too obvious late in the campaign. I sent that kid in. It got him killed. I’ve been in this business for years. I’ve seen some odd shit, some crazy shit, but I’ve never seen murder. Never been a part of it. And I’m scared.”
