Dooley Takes the Fall

by Norah McClintock

  “Okay,” Dooley said.

  Dooley went straight home after school so that he could go with his uncle to meet the lawyer his uncle had hired. It turned out the lawyer, a woman in her forties wearing a sharp-looking suit, had come to the house. It turned out she was there because Dooley’s uncle had called her as soon as he opened the door to the police, who had a warrant to search the house—again. By the time Dooley got there, they had torn apart Dooley’s bedroom, his uncle’s bedroom, both bathrooms, the living room, the dining room, Dooley’s uncle’s home office, and the laundry room and storage area in the basement, and were working on the kitchen. But as far as Dooley could see, they had found all they were going to find and that amounted to exactly one item, which Dooley saw sitting on the coffee table the minute he walked into the house. Dooley’s uncle was sitting on the couch, staring at it. The lawyer in her sharp-looking suit was standing on one side of the table talking to Detective Graff. All three of them turned their heads when Dooley entered the room. Dooley noticed right away that his uncle looked completely different from any other time Dooley could remember. Sometimes Dooley’s uncle looked annoyed. Sometimes he looked downright pissed-off. Occasionally he looked amused. But right now? Right now he looked mostly tired and when he turned his head to Dooley, Dooley was surprised to see a dull flatness in his eyes, like he didn’t care about anything any more.

  “Ryan,” Detective Graff said, his voice nice and loud and, Dooley noticed, very upbeat. “Look what we found.” He nodded at the backpack that was sitting on the coffee table. It was red with black trim and net pockets.

  The lawyer was all of a sudden telling Dooley what Dooley already knew—that he didn’t have to say anything, he didn’t have to answer any questions, that he had a right to talk to his lawyer in private. Dooley glanced at his uncle, who didn’t even look up at Dooley now. Nor did he go with Dooley and his lawyer, whose name was Annette Girondin, when they went with Graff so that Graff could ask Dooley some questions, which made Dooley think he was more or less fucked this time.

  Annette Girondin and Detective Graff argued about the backpack. Apparently the search warrant was related to Edward Gillette and was focused on either the murder weapon or on clothes that Dooley had been wearing that might have blood on them that could tie him to Gillette’s death or any other biological evidence like, say, soil or anything else from the park where Gillette’s body had been found. But now Graff was saying that he had some questions about the death of Mark Everley in addition to questions about the death of Edward Gillette. When Annette Girondin said that she thought that death had been accidental—which Dooley believed his uncle must have told her—Graff said at the very least Dooley had to account for how he came to be in possession of a deceased person’s personal property, which property the decedent’s family had claimed the decedent had had with him at the time of his death. He turned to Dooley for an answer to this question.

  “You don’t have to answer,” Annette Girondin told Dooley.

  “His sister told me it was missing,” Dooley said to Graff. “She was really upset about that. She wanted it back. So I put out some feelers, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know,” Graff said. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “He went off the bridge down there in the ravine,” Dooley said. He was pretty sure he wasn’t imagining Graff’s reaction to how he put it—went off the bridge. “There are lots of people down there. Homeless people. So I asked around. I said if anyone found it, there’d be a reward. Some homeless guy turned up at my workplace and gave it to me.”

  “At your workplace,” Graff said. “You mean the video store?”

  “Yes,” Dooley said.

  “This homeless guy, does he have a name?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Dooley said. “But I can describe him.” As he told Graff everything he could remember, he realized that he could have been describing any one of dozens, maybe hundreds, of down-and-outers in the city. He wished he’d paid closer attention to the guy.

  “And you gave this person a reward,” Graff said.

  “Yes.” Dooley could tell Graff didn’t believe him.

  “How much?”

  “Everything I had on me—fifteen dollars.” He thought about telling Graff that he’d offered to take the man to the bank machine to get him more money, but decided that would make it worse. First, he’d have to say that the homeless guy had disappeared before he got his break and could take him to the bank machine. Then he’d have to look at the expression on Graff’s face while Graff wondered what kind of homeless person would turn down an offer of more money, except maybe one that was a figment of Dooley’s imagination.

  “I don’t suppose anyone else saw you with this homeless person?” Graff said.

  “Kevin,” Dooley said. “My shift manager. He can tell you call about it.” Well, he could tell Graff that a homeless guy who fit Dooley’s description had turned up at the store and that Dooley had gone out and talked to him. But had Kevin seen the guy give Dooley the backpack? Dooley wasn’t sure. Kevin was a nosy guy. Maybe he’d watched it out the window. “Yeah,” he said to Graff, “talk to Kevin. See if he remembers anything.”

  Graff said that he would do that. Then he said, “Tell me again about the night that Mark Everley died.”

  “You said you wanted to talk to him about the murder of Edward Gillette,” Annette Girondin said.

  “You were the one who found Mark Everley, that’s what you told me that night, correct?” Graff said.

  Dooley said, “Yes.”

  “At the time, you told me that you thought Mark Everley went to your school, but you weren’t sure. You remember that, Ryan?”

  Dooley said, “Yes” again, knowing where Graff was going this time.

  “You didn’t tell me that you had been in a street fight with Mark Everley two months ago, Ryan—a street fight that Edward Gillette witnessed.”

  Who had told Graff that? Dooley bet anything it was Beth.

  “It wasn’t a street fight,” Dooley said. Jesus, trust a cop to put that kind of spin on it.

  “But it was a fight.”

  “He was hassling a girl. I told him to back off. That’s all.”

  “You made that point with your fists, isn’t that right, Ryan?”

  “I told him to leave the girl alone. He came at me. All I did was defend myself.”

  “Like you defended yourself against that woman, right, Ryan? You’ve got a real temper, don’t you? Is that what happened that night in the ravine, Ryan?” Dooley hated the way Graff kept saying his name. He sounded like a salesman. “Did Mark Everley give you a hard time? Did he come at you again? Did you have to defend yourself, Ryan? Because if that’s what happened, you should say so. Self-defence, you know, it happens, right?”

  “Don’t answer that, Ryan,” Annette Girondin said.

  “Come on, Ryan. We know you knew Mark Everley. We know you had at least one fight with him. Maybe there were more. Were there, Ryan?”

  “No.”

  “We know that Edward Gillette was a witness to that fight. What happened, Ryan? Was Edward in the ravine that night, too? Did he see something? Was he holding it over you? Is that what the fight was about at Winston Rhodes’s party? Did Edward Gillette threaten you? Did he say he was going to the police? Is that why you killed him?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Dooley said.

  “Oh,” Graff said, sounding surprised now. “You’re sure about that? Because the last time we talked, you weren’t sure about anything. You said you didn’t remember what happened that night. But now you’re sure you didn’t kill Edward Gillette. Is that what you’re telling me, Ryan?”

  Dooley just looked at him. He didn’t need Annette Girondin to tell him that he didn’t have to answer.

  Detective Graff stared at him for a few moments. Then he smiled, like, hey, he’d only been kidding, and said, “What were you looking for in the ravine the day after Mark Everley died?”

  “What?”

/>   “The day after Mark Everley died,” Graff said, his voice friendly now, like a guy reminding his buddy of some pleasant event they’d shared and he now wanted to reminisce about. “I saw you down in the ravine, remember? It looked to me like you were looking for something. What was it? Did you leave something or maybe drop something at the scene?”

  “I was just taking a run.”

  “Why did you get your uncle to ask around and see if the police had any idea where Mark Everley was before he died?” Boom, boom, boom. The guy was like a one-man assault squad the way he kept lobbing questions at Dooley from different directions. “Were you afraid someone saw you with Everley that night, Ryan? Were you checking to see if you were in the clear?”

  Dooley didn’t answer. What was the point? Graff would never believe him.

  “The night Mark Everley died, you told me you left the video store at nine o’clock, correct?”

  Dooley nodded.

  “Tell me again exactly what you were doing between the time you left the video store and the time that kid on the bike came by and saw you standing over Mark Everley’s dead body.”

  Annette Girondin shook her head impatiently. “Don’t answer that, Ryan.” She looked at Graff. “Ryan has explained how he got the backpack. Why don’t you check out what he told you? And since Mark Everley’s death was accidental, I suggest you move on. If you have any more questions about Edward Gillette, ask them. Otherwise…”

  “Where were you the night Mark Everley died, Ryan? Were you two drinking together?”

  “Don’t answer that. Ryan.”

  “I don’t drink,” Dooley said.

  “I bet you don’t do drugs, either,” Graff said.

  Dooley looked right into the detective’s eyes. The man was aching to nail him.

  “I didn’t kill Gillette,” he said. “And I had nothing to do with whatever happened to Everley.”

  “Don’t say another word, Ryan,” Annette Girondin said. “In fact, unless Detective Graff is charging you—”

  “I didn’t see Mark Everley that night until he took a header off that bridge,” Dooley said.

  “You just stole his backpack off him after he landed, is that it?” Detective Graff said. “What did you do with his camera? Did you sell it? Oh, no, that’s right, you said some homeless guy had the backpack.”

  “Check with my manager,” Dooley said. “Check with Kevin. He’ll remember the homeless guy.”

  `“Come on, Ryan,” Annette Girondin said, standing up. “We’re leaving.”

  “Where were you between the time you left the video store and the time Mark Everley went off that bridge?”

  Detective Graff said.

  Dooley said nothing.

  “Why did you kill Edward Gillette?” Graff said.

  Jesus.

  Twenty-Two

  You okay?” Dooley’s uncle said after Annette Girondin left the house.

  “Other than I have a homicide cop accusing me of killing two guys, I’m fine,” Dooley said.

  His uncle shook his head. “You should take up running, maybe martial arts, boxing, something. You’re wrapped too tight, Ryan. You work at keeping it in, but if you don’t find an outlet, one of these days you’re going to explode.”

  “Graff thinks I already did. Twice.”

  “Well, that’s your past catching up with you—at the ripe old age of seventeen.” He’d been standing in the front hall, watching for him, Dooley realized, when Dooley and Annette returned to the house. He had tidied the place up—well, the first floor at least—and now that Annette was gone, he was sitting on the couch working on a bottle of beer. He’d offered one to Annette Girondin, but she had declined. He hadn’t offered one to Dooley. He took a long swallow of it now and looked at Dooley. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  “Besides I didn’t do it?” Dooley said.

  His uncle took another swig of beer. “Yeah,” he said. “Way too tight.”

  “You used to be a cop,” Dooley said. “What do you think are the chances Graff can nail me for something I didn’t do?”

  His uncle’s expression soured. “You mean, do I think the prisons are full of innocent people?”

  “David Milgaard,” Dooley said. “Donald Marshall, Rubin Carter, Clayton Johnson, Thomas Sophonow, Steven Truscott, Robert Baltovich—”

  His uncle waved a hand to silence him.

  “You know,” he said, “this wouldn’t even be an issue if you had come straight home from work the night that kid went off the bridge—like you were supposed to—and if you had gone to work the night that other fellow disappeared—like you were supposed to.” He set down the beer bottle. “You’ve been straight with me, right, Ryan?”

  “Yeah,” Dooley said. He looked at his uncle, who wasn’t a big guy, but who you could tell was tough, you could tell he’d never back down and he didn’t scare easy, but who looked worried now. “I screwed up a couple of times, I admit it. But I never killed anyone.”

  “Annette’s good,” his uncle said.

  Which, Dooley knew, meant that she was expensive.

  “I have some money saved,” Dooley said. “You know, from work.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s see where this goes,” his uncle said. He got up off the couch. “I’m going to start supper. Jeannie’s coming over. Go clean up your room. They really did a number on it.”

  His uncle wasn’t kidding. The cops had tossed his bed. They’d pulled everything out of his closet. They’d emptied his drawers. They’d even gone through the small collection of books on the shelf above his bed. It wasn’t until nearly two hours later that everything was finally off the floor and he was up-righting his wastepaper basket, which, thank God, contained nothing but paper, including the business card he had found in Everley’s backpack.

  Dooley’s uncle was at the kitchen table when Dooley got up the next morning. He had a mug of coffee in front of him, which was normal. He didn’t have the newspaper open in front of him, which was not normal. When he turned to look at Dooley, Dooley got a sick feeling.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “I called this guy I know,” his uncle said.

  Dooley glanced at the clock on the stove. It was eight o’clock in the morning.

  “Joe DeLucci,” his uncle said.

  Dooley recognized the name. He was the cop his uncle had asked whether anyone knew where Mark Everley was the night he went off the bridge.

  “Sit down, Ryan,” his uncle said.

  Dooley sat and looked across the table at his uncle with his gray-and-black spiky hair, his barrel chest, his piercing eyes, and, more prominent today, the worry lines over the bridge of his nose.

  “They’re saying now it could be that Mark Everley was pushed off that bridge.”

  “What?”

  “Scuff marks, marks on his clothes, the way he fell, all that kind of stuff.”

  “You said they thought it was an accident.”

  “Yeah, well, now they’re not so sure. Or maybe Graff is just being pig-headed.” His uncle had his hands wrapped around his coffee cup, but so far as Dooley could tell he hadn’t yet taken a sip. Dooley couldn’t even tell whether the coffee in the cup was still hot. “You had nothing to do with that, right, Ryan?”

  “What? No!”

  “You just happened to see him go over. It’s a coincidence you were in the ravine at the time, that’s what you’re saying?”

  “You think I kill people?” Jesus.

  His uncle stared at Dooley for far too long before he finally shook his head. He looked more defeated than convinced.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Dooley said. “If I was going to kill someone, it would be over something important. It sure wouldn’t be over some asshole like Mark Everley making some girl cry.”

  “Tell me why I’m not taking comfort in that,” Dooley’s uncle said.

  “I didn’t kill Eddy Gillette. And I didn’t kill Mark Everley. I don’t kill people.” Jesus, like he had to say tha
t.

  “Tell me again exactly what you were doing that night.”

  Dooley hesitated. Big mistake.

  His uncle’s fist came down like a sledgehammer on the table, making it and Dooley jump and the coffee in his mug slop over onto the tablecloth.

  So Dooley told him.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” his uncle said when he had finished. “Why do you want to go and upset those people?”

  “I just wanted to take a look,” Dooley said. “You know, see if I could see how she was?”

  “Didn’t I tell you to leave it alone?” his uncle said. “I bet you were one of those kids, Lorraine would tell you not to do something and you’d be right there doing it and probably thumbing your nose at her at the same time, right?”

  Boy, he was mad. Dooley waited to see what he would say next, which turned out to be something practical:

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “Are you kidding?” Dooley said. The sharp look his uncle gave him made him regret his words. “I was afraid if the husband saw me, he’d call the cops and accuse me of something just to get me busted.”

  “That didn’t tell you something?” his uncle said, still angry.

  “Yeah, well, maybe it was dumb—”

  “Maybe?”

  “—but you know what? If that dog hadn’t come at me, I wouldn’t have been anywhere near Mark Everley when he died. I would have been fifteen, maybe twenty minutes away. I wouldn’t even have seen him go off that bridge. That kid on the bike would have found him, not me.”

  “Dog?” his uncle said, perking up. “What dog?”

  “Just some dog,” Dooley said. “It came out of nowhere.” It had scared the shit out of him. “When that dog came at me, I hopped a fence into the next yard and got out of there—fast.”

  “Describe it,” his uncle said.

  “I didn’t get that good a look at it. It was dark, and it was a dark-colored dog. All I saw were teeth.” He remembered thinking that those teeth looked sharp.

  “Was it a big dog? Small dog?”

  “Medium-sized, I guess,” Dooley said. “It came at me fast. Some of those medium-sized dogs can be scary.” For example, pit bulls were medium-sized dogs.