Powers of Arrest

by Jon Talton

  He showed his badge and was greeted by a wren of a dark-haired woman from the marketing department, looking fine in a navy blue suit with a skirt slightly above the knees. She led him back to the president’s office.

  “Forgive me if this is too personal,” she said. “But I hope you’re not in pain.”

  The damned cane again.

  “Not much,” Will said.

  “My husband had an accident on his motorcycle,” she said. “Since then, he’s been in terrible pain, and nobody can really help him. He’s afraid of getting addicted to Oxycontin or something like that. But…”

  “If you like, I know someone who might be able to give you a referral. My friend, Cheryl Beth Wilson…”

  They were almost there when a tall man threw open the door and nearly slammed it. Will was paying more attention to the wren and the daydream of Cheryl Beth, but the movement ahead caught his attention. The man bent over, tied a shoe, and then fiddled with the back pocket of his baggy jeans, producing a ball cap, which he slapped on. Then he stalked toward them, looking down, and shaking his head. His long-legged stride covered the ten feet that separated them in seconds. Will stopped walking and stood.

  “Excuse us,” the wren said.

  The man looked up and halted abruptly. He had a face young but rutted with creases, and set off with a wide mouth, and strong jaw. At the moment, it held an indignant expression. He stared Will in the eye. Will was past dancing with anyone who was in his path. He couldn’t move that fast any longer, so he continued to stand there. The man glared harder, then sidestepped, and brusquely walked on. Under his breath: “Get the fuck out of the way.”

  Will thought about making something of it, but stopped himself. He wondered if his stepson would act any better in the circumstances. Hell, he remembered his old, impatient self when facing someone with a disability. He wouldn’t have cursed, but he might well have wondered why this person was in his way. He was no better than anybody. In any event, he was on a peace mission from the chief.

  “Sorry,” the wren said. “That’s the president’s son. He can be a bit abrupt.”

  “Those aren’t the words I’d use.”

  She smiled uncomfortably and led him into more spacious digs.

  In two more minutes he was sitting in a deep comfortable chair facing the desk of Kathryn S. Buchanan, president of the CSO. He hoped he could get back out of that chair without too much trouble. His legs had awoken him after an hour’s sleep and he was still sitting on the balcony. He had gotten, maybe, four hours of sleep last night, his new normal.

  Buchanan was somewhere north of fifty but looked at least ten years younger, with features as delicate and poised as her son’s were large and emphatic. Will guessed her suit and shoes cost as much as a month of his salary. Cindy dressed that way now. He pushed his ex-wife away and tried to sit at attention, properly representing the department. After his back could take it no longer, he sank back into the cushions, and admired the large portraits of famous CSO conductors on her wall: Leopold Stokowski, Thomas Schippers, and Paavo Jervi.

  “Your chief tells me you have season tickets to the symphony,” she was saying. “That’s highly unusual for a police officer, if you’ll forgive me seeming to stereotype. But, hey, I’m extremely grateful. And you enjoy the symphony apparently, not only the Pops.”

  “You can thank my mother. She started bringing me as a kid. She thought I was a piano prodigy. I wasn’t, and my dad was having none of that anyway. He was a cop and I was no prodigy. But I came away with a love of classical…”

  “Men are a difficult demographic, even ones without a blue-collar background, no offense,” she interrupted, already unimpressed with him. “Their wives drag them along.” She had been here only two years, having come from Atlanta. He wasn’t sure she fully understood what classical music meant to Cincinnati, but she had absorbed the subtle Indian Hill snobbishness well. He had no doubt that she had also learned the aggressive defensiveness of all who loved the symphony.

  She shrugged and leaned toward him. “Now, to this tragedy. Jeremy Snowden was one of our rising stars, as you probably know. He was pure Cincinnati. Born here. Studied at CCM with Stephanie Foust…” Will also knew Foust was the principal cellist for the orchestra, even knew she held the Linda and David Goodman Endowed Chair, because he read the programs. “…who studied at Julliard. As for Jeremy, the whole world was before him. I could list the prestigious competitions he had won, the orchestras trying to steal him away…oh!” She shook her head and seemed on the verge of tears before quickly composing herself.

  “I’m counting on you to understand this, Detective Borders. You know the deep history of this orchestra and what it means to the community. The May Festival is coming right up. And these aren’t easy times for even an orchestra of our caliber.” She held her palms up as if everything should be perfectly obvious.

  “How may I help, Ms. Buchanan?”

  “That man Dodds. He’s very unpleasant.”

  “You’re telling me. He was my partner for eight years.”

  Her perfect small mouth didn’t register even a millimeter of amusement. It was as if he had let out a loud, long fart at the Queen City Club.

  “He wants to talk to members of the orchestra,” she said. “That’s unacceptable. These are world-class musicians. Their time is simply beyond price. And we’re a family grieving over this tragedy.”

  “Detective Dodds is the finest homicide investigator in the state, maybe even the nation,” Will said as calmly as he could. “It’s normal to speak with coworkers. We need to know if Mr. Snowden had enemies…”

  “Enemies!” Her calm demeanor vanished and Will saw a bit of that raw anger from her son’s face. “It’s perfectly obvious what this is! Some…some…ghetto youth from the ghetto murdered him. They deal drugs right out in the open, you know, right out in Washington Park. We warn our musicians about this neighborhood. My god, I’m sometimes afraid here in the middle of the day.”

  “We can’t be sure of who did it, I’m sorry to say. He wasn’t robbed. His cello was still in the car. The murderer could be anyone. It could be a crime of passion…”

  “That’s absurd. He had become engaged to be married only a month ago!”

  “It would be the first place I’d look for a suspect. Discreetly, of course.” His brain told him not to say it, but now he was getting pissed. “The cello is a sensuous instrument, played between the legs.” Her eyes shot open and she flushed. Will continued: “It could also be blackmail, or a case of mistaken identity, wrong-place-wrong-time, a kidnapping gone wrong.”

  “This is unbelievable.” She shook her head but not a strand of expensively maintained hair moved.

  “We’ll still have to talk to the musicians, ma’am.” Will used his best respectful-but-firm voice. Inside he was disgusted with the sense of privilege and haughtiness. It’s never about the victim. It’s always about the reputation of their companies and organizations and rich Cincinnati tribes. He could never get used to it.

  “So you’re not going to help.” Her voice was flat and seething.

  “I am, ma’am. And you need to do your part, as well.”

  “I have friends on city council,” she said, her voice no longer heated but now almost languid. “I have friends beyond that. This is not the end of the matter, Mr. Borders. Now, I have an important meeting.”

  He used every trick he had learned in months of physical therapy to stand in one fluid motion. Somehow he did it. “We’ll handle this investigation with tact and confidentiality. But our detectives will talk to your people.”

  For several seconds she stared as if her brain had stopped processing. Then her eyes found him again. “Very well. But I expect you to put a stop to the media’s incessant calling.”

  He laughed. He couldn’t help it. The phone call to the chief about him was coming anyway. “The First Amendment is beyond my control, Ms. Buchanan. Don’t get up. I’ll find my way out.”

  The wren in
the short skirt was gone, so he wandered through the hallways for a moment. He had actually heard Jeremy Snowden play several times with the whole orchestra, once as a soloist on Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 1. Snowden was indeed very gifted and now the gift was dead, murdered. But he, not Kathryn S. Buchanan or the CSO, was the vic.

  A custodian recognized him from the television and offered to give him a tour backstage, even take him into the attics “where the ghosts hang out.” Will regretfully turned him down.

  He was back in the car when his phone rang: Dodds.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at Music Hall trying to do damage control because of your winning personality.”

  “Ah, fuck ‘em. I got an arrest.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Black male, twenty-five, tried to rob a motorist with a knife this morning two blocks from where the cello player was killed. Motorist maces him and drives away, dragging the suspect two blocks until he falls off, thanks to the intervention of a mail box.” Dodds was laughing the entire time. “So he’s in custody. And the sweetest little thing of all? We’ve got his fingerprint on the door of the cello player’s Lexus. Case clearance, my brother. So you, PIO, need to put out the news.”

  “You get to do that, Dodds. The chief has given me leave while I work Gruber.”

  “So I heard.” His voice changed. “I hate talking to the media.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  “I can do it, though. Give a handsome African-American face to the department.”

  “I’ll tweet it,” Will volunteered.

  “Fuck you. Let me give you some friendly intel, partner. Not all the brass was happy when the chief let you come back, and they’re sure as hell not happy now that you’re the lead on Gruber. They don’t know why you didn’t take disability and go away.”

  Will had suspected as much, but his stomach churned anyway.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “And if I were you, I’d show around some photos of that expensive letter opener. In case your suspect isn’t really a…ghetto youth.”

  Dodds was cursing him when the connection ended.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The setting sun painted the clouds pink as Will sat in the parking lot of the Montgomery Boathouse. It wasn’t a real boathouse but a popular restaurant selling ribs and overlooking the Ohio River. Will had been to a dozen police retirement parties here over the years. Now, he was waiting for someone. A someone who had instructed him to sit in a parking spot as far as possible from the front entrance. Will only accepted this instruction because this someone was a partner in one of the city’s most powerful law firms. His cell number had shown up on Kristen Gruber’s recent calls in the hours before she was killed.

  It had been another long day, and while Will waited, he stood, sandwiching himself between the car and car door. His legs were not cooperating with this long day of too much sitting interspersed with too much walking. He needed the relief of simply standing for a few moments, stopping the thumping in his left leg and easing the mammoth tightness of his right quads. He said out loud: “Ahhh.” But he was so tired that he couldn’t stand for long. He was tellingly leaning on the car roof and door.

  He had spent the day with the Covington police. Although Kristen’s cell phone was still missing, techs had found her cellular phone bill on her computer, and the phone company had provided records. The detectives ran through phone numbers. Much of it was dull and tedious: calls to the dry cleaner, the producer of LadyCops: Cincinnati, her parents in Myrtle Beach, and her sister in Phoenix. Finally, Will called the number that led him to this meeting.

  A hand tapped brusquely on the passenger window. The door opened and a man got in. He was wearing a navy pinstripe suit far more expensive than anything in Will’s closet and he folded long legs into the well of the car and closed the door. With his executive build and tan, he looked pretty much as Will had expected for a senior partner at Briscoe, Hayne, and Douglas. Along with Baker Hostetler, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, and Keating, Muething, and Klekamp, it was one of the city’s most prestigious law firms.

  What stood out most was his fine head, with a fringe of close-cropped iron-gray hair and creeping forehead, with two dramatic slashes of eyebrows amid uniformly strong features. He had barely a wrinkle even though he seemed at least Will’s age or older. In fact, he looked younger than the son who had nearly run down Will at Music Hall that morning.

  The patrician head swiveled around, looking to see that no one was watching them. He didn’t offer his hand and neither did Will.

  “I’ll see your identification, please.”

  Will handed over his badge case.

  “I called your chief.” He closely examined Will’s identification. “And I assume he called you.”

  “He did.”

  “How does that make you feel, Detective Border?”

  “It’s Borders, and I don’t follow you.”

  “How does it make you feel? Does it make you feel small? It should. I’ve only been in this city a short time. I didn’t go to Moeller or Elder or any of that provincial crap I hear all the time. Who gives a shit where you people went to high school? If I hadn’t had to move here with my wife, I wouldn’t even have flown through your airport. I don’t care about Cincinnati. I don’t speak Cincinnati. So don’t expect me to be impressed by you or your badge.”

  “Fair enough,” Will said. “But I warn you, people move to Cincinnati and dislike it, but after two years you couldn’t pry them out. They fall in love with the city.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. What did your chief tell you, Borders?”

  “He said to do what I felt needed to be done, counselor. So let’s cut the bullshit. I have a murdered police officer. I suspect they take that seriously even where you come from. It so happens that your cell phone called Kristen Gruber at 2:21 p.m. Saturday, a few hours before she was killed. Those are the facts, unless you want to tell me your phone wasn’t under your control during that time, and then we can have a different conversation.”

  He handed back the badge case and sat in silence for a good five minutes. Will was happy to let him stew.

  “I called Ms. Gruber,” he said. “She berths her boat next to mine. I wanted to ask her a question about the marina management. They can get pretty sloppy.”

  Will watched him lie smoothly, not even a blink to his eyes. He said nothing, letting the silence do its work.

  He finally couldn’t stand it. “Are we done, Detective?”

  “No, we’re not done. We have records of you calling Kristen Gruber more than a hundred times in the past three months. You must really have issues with the marina management.”

  He sighed. “Off the record?”

  “For now.”

  “Look. Do you have any idea who my wife is?”

  “Actually, I do. I was talking with her this morning, Mr. Buchanan.”

  He sat up straight and stared ahead at the trees and, beyond them, Riverside Drive.

  “It was about another matter,” Will said.

  “And you say these phone records showed a call from me Saturday?”

  “That’s right. Did you make it?”

  Kenneth Buchanan hesitated, ran a hand with long fingers across his face, and pinched the bridge of his nose. The dark eyebrows inched together.

  “I had an affair with Kristen,” he said. “It started about a year ago. I’m willing to cooperate with the police, off the record, but my wife can’t know about this. I want your guarantee.”

  Will looked at the man. He might have been old enough to be Kristen’s father, but he supposed that was one of the perks that came with money and power.

  “I can’t make that guarantee, sir. All I can say is that I’ll do my best.”

  “Well, I was golfing with friends on Saturday, then I went home, where my wife and I had a quiet dinner and spent the evening and night together. So this should cover the entire period you’re talking about, if what I read in the newspape
rs is true.”

  Will watched for tells that he was lying, saw none.

  “So why did you call Officer Gruber? What did you talk about?”

  “I got her voice mail. That’s it.”

  “It was a six-minute conversation. Want to try again, counselor?”

  He made fists out of his hands and put them in his lap.

  “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even see her, haven’t seen her for a month. We broke things off.”

  “Because you were afraid of being found out?”

  He rearranged himself to face Will, leaning against the door, and trying to stretch out.

  “Let’s say I was tired of competing with other men, all right? Kristen was not…faithful.”

  “As a mistress.”

  His mouth crooked down. “You’re in no position to judge me, and I can walk away.”

  “But you won’t,” Will said. “I got enough sense of your wife to know you really want her kept out of this.”

  “And you’re an asshole.”

  “So I’ve been told.” Will smiled without humor. “How did you meet Officer Gruber?”

  “She moored her boat next to ours, like I told you. My wife doesn’t really care for the water, so usually I was there alone. She flirted. A man can tell. At least, I can tell. Things went from there.”

  “Tell me about things.”

  “Things? I don’t get you.”

  “Did you have sex at her place?”

  He angrily pursed his lips and nodded. “Sure.”

  “Five times? Twenty times?”

  Kenneth Buchanan laughed. “Obviously you didn’t know Kristen. A hundred would probably be more like it.” His eyes glowed with the memory.

  Will used the ensuing quiet to study the man. Was a murderer sitting next to him? He looked physically powerful enough to have inflicted the brutal knife strokes that tore apart Kristen’s vagina. His hands were large, their backs showing engorged veins. But not one knife knick was showing on a knuckle or finger.