Powers of Arrest

by Jon Talton

  Cincinnati and Covington detectives went through the laborious task of sifting through Kristen’s cop life. Her record was better than clean, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t made enemies. Five years before, she had been the first officer on the scene in Sayler Park, where a couple was arrested for starving their baby daughter to death. The crime had shocked the city. Although the ten-week-old was barely alive when officers arrived, it weighed half what a normal infant its age should. At his sentencing, the father, a young white-trash hood, had threatened to rape and kill Kristen when he got out of prison. Such threats weren’t uncommon, but this one, so specific, would have to be checked out. At the same time, they were going through her emails for threats: so far, nothing was panning out.

  The false-confession nuts were unchained by the crime. Most were well known to the police and regularly owned up to crimes they didn’t commit. That this was the murder of an attractive woman seen on national television only ramped up the lunatics. Their stories could be easily shot down by the information they couldn’t provide. But it all required detective time, and Will knew his colleagues resented it.

  Kristen. She had lovers, many acquaintances, but no close friends, no real boyfriend, as far as he could tell. Work was her life, with sex and her boat to relieve the tension.

  Kristen’s timeline also had unfortunate gaps. She had withdrawn a hundred dollars from an ATM downtown on Saturday. She made no calls that day. No one saw her leave the marina. So far, no one had seen her on the river that day or night.

  Now he drove Cheryl Beth back home and they fell into silence. But it was a comfortable one. At the little house in Clifton, he pulled into the driveway, opened her car door, and walked her to the porch.

  “Thank you for a nice evening.” He held out his hand.

  “Oh, Will, come here.” She raised her head and they kissed. It lasted longer than five seconds and less than five minutes, then he held her close to him with one arm as he balanced on his cane, feeling every part of her against him.

  He felt normal.

  “May I see you again?”

  “I’m counting on it,” she said. “Good night.”

  Back in the car, he turned on his cell. One message: he listened to his ex-wife. He was way past her, but hearing Cindy’s voice, and the intonations and emotions behind the words he knew so well, battered his tranquility. Why would she be calling? He thought about ignoring it. Then the phone rang.

  “Hello, Cindy.”

  “Will, I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to talk. It’s about our son.”

  Our son. As their marriage had fallen apart, piece by piece like a cursed dwelling, she would refer to John as her son. Tonight it was our son.

  He sighed. “Give me the new address.” He wrote it down and backed out of Cheryl Beth’s driveway.

  ***

  Cindy was now Cynthia Morrison, or Mrs. J. Bradford Morrison. She had remarried quickly and moved to her new husband’s house in Hyde Park. This somewhat surprised Will. Cindy disliked the city. Her insistence several years ago that they move to a new house out in Deerfield Township, such a long commute up I-71, was one more crack in their marriage. But, then, he couldn’t give her a home in the city’s most exclusive, leafiest, old-money neighborhood. Still, on the drive over he was smiling from his time with Cheryl Beth. He was past being hurt by Cindy. It was merely interesting now.

  The address went with a massive Tudor behind a sweeping, immaculate lawn, and basking in ornamental lighting. An alarm company sign was prominently stuck into the grass. This was what J. Bradford Morrison had been able to buy as a stockbroker. He and Cindy at least had something in common to talk about: money.

  Three steps up. No railing, of course. Will pulled down his lats, and carefully mounted each step, then up the walk to the wide front door.

  “Thank you for coming.” She was already waiting. “Brad is out of town.”

  Cindy had gone blond, an expensive color job and cut parted on one side and swept over her head. She was about as far as she could get from the twenty-year-old brunette bank teller he had met as a young patrolman. There had been a bank robbery. He impulsively asked her out. She had a baby son, had been abandoned by his father. Will and Cindy married too young. They weren’t the people they would become, and they became those people largely apart. He helped her finish her B.A., then later an M.B.A., as she rose in the bank. Sometimes she slept with her bosses. But she didn’t have to. She was smart as hell.

  She led him past the expansive entry hall with its dark, hardwood floor, and into a living room that appeared as if no ordinary humans had ever been inside it, only interior designers. It was flawless. It was larger than his entire townhouse.

  He sat in a broad cushioned chair, keeping his Lazarus tasselled loafers off the vast Persian rug, and she settled across from him on a cream-colored sofa, draping one aerobicized leg over the other. She had become a stick person with breasts.

  “About our son,” Will prompted, moving quickly past the uncomfortable small talk.

  “Something’s wrong with him,” she said, sitting upright with her hands carefully folded in her lap, as if she were talking to a client.

  “He’s a young man,” Will said. “I’ve always thought you should lock up the young men until they were thirty. The young women you can let out at twenty.”

  Not even a smile.

  “He’s so aimless,” she went on. “He wanted to go to Portland State, for god’s sake. So, okay. He ended up dropping almost every class so he wouldn’t get a failing grade.”

  Will was tempted to say something about Cindy continuing to give him money, letting him live at home. He held the head of his cane tighter.

  “He was out all Saturday night,” she went on. “Dragged himself in at eight the next morning. Thought I wouldn’t even notice! Wouldn’t say where he was. But I knew. I got a call around midnight from Heather Bridges’ mother. She had a date with him. We talked later, on Sunday, after Heather came home. Her mother said they were out on the river all night with some other kids from Summit.”

  Atomic particles in Will’s brain wished he didn’t know this information. But hundreds of young people were on the river this time of year.

  He said, “What does he do with his time?”

  “He still reads all the time. He rides his bike.”

  “Does he have a job?”

  She shook her head.

  “I had to work my way through college.”

  “Kids are different now,” Cindy said. “They take longer to grow up. You can read it anywhere. Anyway, he doesn’t need money.”

  “That’s part of the problem.”

  Her voice rose. “You have no right to judge!”

  “Okay.”

  “Will, I’m afraid he’s into drugs again.” She leaned forward. “I want you to talk to him.”

  “He came to see me the other night,” Will said.

  “Did he say anything?”

  Will shook his head. “We only had a beer and watched the city. If he had something to tell me, he kept it to himself.”

  “William!” It was that familiar voice, harsh and frustrated.

  “What do you want me to do, Cindy?” Everything was transactional with her. He felt the old toxic feelings returning. “Why haven’t you talked to him? Have Brad talk to him. What about his real father?”

  She stood. “You are so…so much the same.”

  He stood and left without another word. The walkway was slanted down. He was extra aware of it and wished he hadn’t enjoyed that second beer with Cheryl Beth. Next came the steps. Those would be more dangerous: Not even a shrub to hold onto. He did all the things he had been taught to steady himself and made the first step down.

  Then he was down on the sidewalk, a sudden, scary vertical rollercoaster dip that was over before he even knew what was happening. He reflexively put his hands out and avoided mashing his face in the concrete. His blood was pumping too fast to feel any pain. One second he was upright
, now he was down. For a long time, he took in the quiet of the street and the plain black tires on his car. A small bug walked beneath his gaze. He got to his knees and then the agony seared through him. Somehow the rewiring of his spinal cord made being on his knees especially painful. He couldn’t stand the normal way. He thought about turning around and using the steps to get up. But he was in too much pain, and too angry. He used his strength to crabwalk until his body bent in the middle, and then he could push himself up with his hands until he could use the cane to help lift the rest of the way. It hurt like hell. Then he was upright again. His pant legs looked in good shape. His hands weren’t bleeding. He felt his phone vibrating and let it alone.

  On shaky legs, he walked around to the driver’s side. Looking up, he saw that Cindy had long since closed the door. Maybe if he had gone on to law school, as he had intended, he could have given her this pile of rocks. It never happened. The more he got to know lawyers as a cop, the less he wanted to be one. He could have stomached being a prosecutor, but there was no money in it. Prosecutors didn’t live in Hyde Park. Cindy never understood how he liked being a police officer. Every day, no matter how shitty, you could come home and know you had actually helped someone. On good days, you got the bad guys. That sensibility never left him. He was so much the same.

  He listened to the voice mail: “Will, it’s Diane Henderson, Covington P.D. We matched the shoe print that we found on the boat. It’s a size ten-and-a-half Columbia Sportswear Drainmaker.”

  Thursday

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cheryl Beth visited her daughter early that morning. Eighteen years old now: past childhood that went so fast and nearly an adult. She had Cheryl Beth’s face, hair, and eyes. They were nearly carbon copies. She could do anything she wanted, live adventures her mother had never experienced, give her so much to be proud of. Someday give her grandchildren. Cheryl Beth imagined the years of pink dresses and stuffed animals and squeals of laughter over the most trivial delights. She was not like her mother had been, telling Cheryl Beth all that she could not be, subtly upending her dreams at every corner. At eighteen, her daughter would be confident and kind, full of wit and decency, so intelligent it would continually astonish Cheryl Beth.

  If only she had lived.

  As she had for fifteen years, Cheryl Beth sat on her daughter’s grave, arranged fresh flowers for her birthday, and wept. Time did not heal some things.

  Time did not heal this gaping hole in her heart. It did little better than, very slowly, to dull the pain from losing her father when she was nine, that big, rough-handed, laughing bear of a man she had so loved. She had been a daddy’s girl. He had a good job on the L&N Railroad until the day it killed him. She still heard his voice. She still felt that anguish beyond words. Time didn’t heal.

  The best you could do was try to take one step forward, then follow it with another, and try to go on. For years, this had been a day Cheryl Beth would take off, even calling in sick if necessary. She could now at least function enough to go to the hospital after saying a long prayer for all the lost children, all the lives that were never lived, the eighteenth birthdays that were marked on the dewy grass of graveyards until they could see each other again at God’s table.

  She used her index finger to trace the name on the headstone. The green and gold of the newborn grass mocked her. The trees flaunted their beauty, unconcerned with her cares.

  She had lied to Will last night when he asked if she had children. This honorable man and she had lied, as she always did. No: That was always her response. Ask a little more and she would say, the timing didn’t work out. Damned straight. Fifteen years and she still couldn’t talk about it. The only people who knew were her family, and the family of her ex-husband. Their marriage hadn’t survived the death. Cheryl Beth had barely survived. Oh, so many years she had cried an angry prayer of why didn’t you take me? Even now, she could work in any unit of any hospital but peds.

  She was put together again by the time she arrived at the hospital and the intensity of the morning shift let her put that one foot forward once again.

  At lunch, she had to get out. So she walked up and down the broad lawn that ran from the main entrance to Auburn Avenue. The groundskeepers probably wouldn’t like it, but the spring sunshine and the shade of the trees was healing, these and her fast stride back and forth. Across the street, the occasional car would pull into the William Howard Taft National Historical Site, honoring the only president from Cincinnati. She wasn’t hungry.

  On her third circuit, she noticed Allison Schultz watching her.

  ***

  The funeral for Cincinnati Police Officer Kristen Gruber was held at ten a.m. at St. Peter in Chains Cathedral. It was a grand, Greek revival building with a tall, slender steeple at Eighth and Plum downtown. It sat across the street from the brick Victorian mass of City Hall and the delicately Moorish-Gothic Isaac M. Wise Temple, home of Reform Judaism. Church and state in the Queen City. Inside the cathedral was a magnificent pipe organ. Cops from three states came, all in their finest dress uniforms. Will would later learn that 1,200 mourners filled the church. He wasn’t among them. Instead, he sat in his car and watched the crowd. Another detective was concealed among the television crews, filming the people as they walked up the steps. The process would be repeated when Kristen’s coffin, an American flag tight across the top, was carried back out, a police bagpiper in front, on its journey out to St. Mary Cemetery.

  Will despised the sound of bagpipes. He had barely slept the night before. It was even worse than usual. He sat in the chair at the foot of the bed, shaking his tense right leg until what he called “shift change” caused his left leg to start its own little hell. Then he would have to walk on it. His back hurt from the fall in front of Cindy’s house. His hands were raw. He didn’t want to know about Drainmaker shoes. Tens of thousands must have been sold. But then there was that knife in John’s pocket, that damned knife. And his odd visit to Will’s townhouse. His instincts told him something was wrong.

  Calling Cheryl Beth to thank her for a nice evening—that was the good thing on his mind. But he might seem to be coming on too strong. In any event, he had to watch carefully. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but this was S.O.P. It didn’t surprise him that Kenneth Buchanan wasn’t there. Her lover the sergeant walked by in dress uniform. From another direction, several minutes later, the diving instructor mounted the steps and disappeared inside.

  “You’re mighty inconspicuous.”

  Dodds climbed in and sat, momentarily tilting the car. He slid Will’s cane out of the passenger seat.

  Will said, “And now I’ve got a fat black man in his band uniform to complete the picture.”

  “Anything happening?”

  Will shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, partner. I tried to fight for you.”

  Will’s stomach turned sour. “What?”

  “They didn’t tell you? Fuckers. Fassbinder’s made me the lead on Gruber. You know how he can get. You never feel the knife until it’s in your back.”

  “The chief put me on this case.”

  “I know. But it’s a done deal. The case is moving too slowly for command. They want somebody in custody. Hell, Kristen’s face is on the cover of People magazine, all over the blogs, and the Cincinnati Police can’t solve the murder.” He sighed. “I was able to keep you as the liaison detective with Covington.”

  Will fought to control his emotions, without much success. “It’s not one of her boyfriends, unless it’s the lawyer, Buchanan. And he’ll sue us if we push too hard. You know how these things go.”

  “That’s why I fought for you,” Dodds said. “I told them you were the best homicide investigator in the department…”

  “But all they see is this goddamned cane.”

  Dodds was silent as Will thought about his father’s full-dress funeral. That day it had rained.

  His call sign came over the radio.

  “Meet t
he officers, Spring Grove Cemetery.”

  He told the dispatcher he was on special assignment. To Dodds, “Is this some PIO shit work for me?”

  Dodds shrugged.

  “Break away from that,” the female voice came back immediately. “Respond code three.”

  “You coming?”

  “Why not?” Dodds said. “Hey, isn’t that your boy?”

  Sure enough, John was walking up Plum Street, wearing a dark suit. He didn’t see Will and walked quickly up the steps into the cathedral.

  “It is.” Will was thankful that Dodds didn’t ask more. He started the car, made a U-turn, and rolled away from the curb, only hitting the siren when he was a block away.

  ***

  Allison Schultz was the student Cheryl Beth worried about. Her bookwork was perfect and she was competent clinically. But she was so shy, so unsure of herself. It meant she had a difficult time communicating with patients. She wouldn’t have the confidence to push back on a doctor, question a dosage, or find a mistake. Now she was slowly walking toward Cheryl Beth.

  “Do you mind if I talk to you?”

  “Walk with me,” Cheryl Beth said, and they started out toward the street.

  “Are you all right?” Allison asked.

  “I’m tired.”

  “They think Noah killed Lauren and Holly.”

  “That’s right.”

  “They’re not going to let him come back, are they?”

  “I think it’s unlikely, Allison. I really can’t discuss this with you.”

  “He’s got his whole life aimed at becoming an R.N.” She mustered more assertiveness than Cheryl Beth had ever seen her show. She started to say that class and his career were the least of his troubles, that Hank Brooks wanted him on death row. But she walked on.