“Is it individual or is it institutional?” Kenny asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It always has been and always will be. It is the job of people like you—on a case-by-case basis—to determine which one it is.”
“Okay, let me try it from a different angle: Does the institution lead the individuals to act in a certain way, or do the consistent actions of many individuals create institutionalized, systemic racism?”
“I think it started as individuals, decades ago,” she replied without any bitterness or rancor. “The entire area north of Trenton and south of New Brunswick was predominantly farm country, which meant mostly Caucasian immigrants from Great Britain and Germany who came here as far back as the sixteen hundreds. Then, Italians, who came to Trenton at the turn of the nineteenth century and were the first to creep north and start buying farmland to turn into housing after World War Two.”
“And it was all white,” Kenny added. “Government, business development, residential development, everything.”
“During picking season, some of the farmers would bring in day help from New Brunswick.”
“Not Trenton?”
“Trenton makes, the world takes,” she said with a smile. “Industry was strong through the sixties, so African Americans had factory work.”
“How do you know all this?”
“A good politician learns everything they can about their enemies,” she replied.
“Are white people your enemy?”
She laughed. “There’s your headline quote. No, they’re not, but some individuals are. So are some in the Indian community, the Pakistani community, the Korean community . . . and here’s a shock, even the Chinese community.”
“Way to kill my headline,” he said.
“It’s no secret the members in good standing at the Patriots Rifle Range weren’t happy when I was elected,” she said. “They were even less happy when I was reelected. But now, as I serve my sixth term, well, let’s just say the ones who haven’t died off or moved away have accepted the reality they live in.”
“And that reality is?”
“They don’t own this town anymore,” she said.
They reached the Harrison Street crosswalk. She hit the button for the pedestrian flashers and without missing a step walked right across the street, daring cars to run through the crosswalk and kill them both.
“I’m going to die of dehydration,” he said.
“We all die from something.”
“Such as a bullet,” he said, thankful she’d handed him his way back to the main topic. Kenny wiped sweat off his brow with his forearm. “Satkunananthan Sasmal died of a single shot to the head at point-blank range.”
“And?” she asked.
“And my source feels that’s an unusual bit of shooting. The police are ignoring that. Do you protect your daughter, or do you let Dobeck drag her down with him?”
“I’ll talk to Michelle,” the mayor said.
“I can keep her name out of the paper,” he said. “For now. Eventually, she’ll probably have to go public, but maybe not if other people roll on Dobeck.”
After a minute of walking in silence, she said, “I have to be honest, I’m more than a little concerned that you are creating an elaborate fiction for the sake of reclaiming your reputation.”
They were approaching Alexander Road and the end of their conversation. He needed Michelle on the record. He needed the mayor scared and angry. He had to gauge how far to go in order to get both.
“If it were only me coming up with all of this, I’d say you’d be totally right to be concerned, Madame Mayor, but it’s not,” he said. “The eyewitness I have is ridiculously credible. I can’t tell you their name, but they have informed my approach to the story.”
“Why can’t you tell me their name?”
“Because they would prefer not to be publicly involved,” he said. “And based on this person’s history, it would probably complicate things with the police.”
“Now you have my curiosity piqued,” she said as they reached the gravel lot where their cars were parked. Jiaying Wu stopped at her car. “I need a name.”
He’d expected that, but it still worried him. He said, “Her name is Andrea Stern. But that’s her married name. Before moving back here after college, her maiden name was Abelman.”
“Why does that name sound so familiar?” the mayor asked.
“After you look it up, you’ll agree to work with me,” Kenny said.
20
KENNY Lee stared at the rug in Andrea’s basement with the map of West Windsor taped to it. He wondered if that was how the FBI did it, too. His delusional expectations that she’d have a state-of-the-art holographic, touch-sensitive, voice-activated whiteboard were dashed. When he had asked her to finally come clean on what she suspected, he hadn’t expected this.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
“The red circles mark homes that were denied a pool permit because the township claimed there was groundwater on the property,” she replied. Pointing to the rug, she continued, “The Sasmals’ house is this one. The blue sticky indicates the field where a bone was found by the family that lived there at that time.”
“A bone?” asked Kenny. “Like, a bone bone?”
Andrea showed him the printout of the newspaper article and photo.
“Farmer found it tilling a new field in nineteen seventy-two. The police at the time said it was an animal bone,” she said. “It was a human femur.”
“Okay, so . . . there are bodies buried all over the town?”
“No. One body, dismembered,” she replied.
“So, a killer dismembers a body and then buries it in backyards all over town?” Kenny asked. “That sounds stupid.”
“They weren’t backyards then,” she said. “A body was disposed of decades ago and people in town—the police force and the administrative offices—have been covering up for those responsible ever since.”
“You’re serious?”
“The houses that have been denied pool permits are all close to water. Back then, that was all overgrown by brush and it was all farmland.”
“They purposefully buried the body parts in areas they thought would remain untouched?”
“But they never could have comprehended how the town would change.”
Kenny looked at the marked houses on the map more carefully. “If we dig up each of these backyards, we’ll find a piece of a body?”
“Not all of them,” she said. “It depends on how many pieces were dismembered.”
“Okay, but here’s what I don’t get,” he said. “Why kill Satkunananthan? The Sasmals’ permit application had been denied already. That means their property wasn’t going to be dug up. What does killing the kid get anyone?”
“They were fighting the township’s decision and weren’t backing down.”
“So, someone killed the nephew to get the family to stop asking if they can dig a pool?” asked Kenny. “That sounds more than a little ridiculous when you say it out loud.”
Andrea thought of Morana, covered in blood, the scalpel in her hand as she laughed at the college girl asking her why she had committed so many murders.
Because if you’re not willing to respect the life you’ve been given, you don’t deserve that life, she had said.
“As motives go, I’ve started with less,” Andrea replied.
“Okay, so let’s say I buy into this—which, for the record, I don’t,” he said. “That still doesn’t give us a suspect.”
“For the Sasmal shooting? No,” she admitted. “For the cover-up?”
“Start with the top,” Kenny continued. “Police Chief Bennett Dobeck. I don’t know. I can see him fudging a report, but being complicit in murder?”
“I never said he was complicit in murder, I said he is comp
licit in the cover-up of a murder,” she replied. “Whoever killed Satku did it to conceal a very old sin.”
“We’re looking at fifty years?” Kenny whistled. “That makes it really hard.” He thought for a minute. “You started with public records, right? Pool permit denials? But you could only go back so far with that.”
“To go further requires filing a public record access request,” she replied.
“And that sends a red flag and they know we’re looking,” he said.
“We stay on the police for now,” she replied. “We need access to the evidence archives or records. Did they really test that bone like the newspaper article said? What were the results? Where is the bone?”
“Okay,” said Kenny. “I’m meeting with Officer Wu tomorrow morning. Her mother set it up. I’ll use her to get to the evidence locker and archives.”
“And we need to take another run at the Sasmals,” she said. “Both to get more details about their interactions with the township and to gain access to their property.”
“You plan on digging holes until you find an old body part?” he asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m forty-seven months pregnant,” she said. “I plan on watching you dig holes until we find an old body part. Unless you have access to a helicopter and can afford a lidar, I don’t see as how we have much choice.”
“What’s a lidar?”
“Surveying method using lasers,” she said. “Light Imaging, Detection, And Ranging. It’s used in archaeological digs, along with lots of other applications.”
“Well, I left my lidar in my other pair of pants,” he said.
“Then shovels it is.” She shrugged. “Unless you know someone who runs lines and knows how to use a cable locator. And also happens to have a cable locator.”
Kenny smiled.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“You know a guy?”
“I know a guy,” he replied.
He took out his phone and slid his thumb over the keypad. He put it to his ear. “Jimmy? It’s Kenny Lee. Beer. Yeah, I know. Been better, been worse. Beer. Yeah, how’ve you been? Good. You still work for Verizon? Good. Beer. Listen, I need a favor and in exchange I will buy you as much beer as you feel like drinking tonight.”
Kenny hung up.
“I bet you had him at beer,” said Andrea.
21
THE cell alarm rang at six fifteen in the morning. Kenny missed his phone three times before knocking it off his night table. He rolled out of bed, groggy. He put on a white Dri-Fit shirt and the same pair of gym shorts he had worn yesterday. They were about ten years old. He grabbed a water bottle and his car keys. He couldn’t believe that Michelle Wu woke up as early as her mother did every day to exercise. Tiger mom mania passed down through the generations.
Kenny drove to West Windsor Community Park, a half mile away from the site of Satkunananthan’s murder. He parked by the community pool. Michelle was in front of the dog park, stretching on a walking/running path that wound its way through the park. It was hotter and more humid than yesterday. Two days in a row of this insanity had Kenny questioning his need for redemption.
“Hey, Michelle,” he said. “Thanks for meeting me.”
Without stopping her routine, Michelle said, “Those shorts been sitting in the bottom of a drawer for ten years?”
“The last four,” said Kenny. “They spent the previous six just lying on the floor.”
She almost smiled. She was pretty, but there was a kind of distance to her look. Large brown eyes that you hoped would invite you in, but they never did. The lack of trust in people, Kenny assumed, she had gotten from her mom.
“Are you going to be able to keep up with me?”
“Absolutely not,” he replied. “I figure I’ll ask you a question, then when you lap me, you give me an answer . . . and so on.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said. She started running.
Kenny started jogging to catch up with her. Not even twenty yards down the path he felt a stitch in his side.
“The mayor said I had to talk to you, but she refused to tell me why or about what,” Michelle said.
“She’s covering herself,” Kenny said.
“Of course she is.”
“And you, too,” he interjected quickly. “If your mother doesn’t talk to you about it now, then the mayor can protect you later.”
“Protect me from what?” she asked.
Kenny chose to play it straight and hard. “I know you filed an inaccurate report on the Sasmal murder.”
Michelle stopped. She knew she was caught. He admired her quickness when she said, “What did the pregnant woman say?”
“It’s not what she said that matters,” Kenny spat out between gasps. “It’s what you didn’t say that does. And why you didn’t say it.”
She turned away from Kenny, as if looking at him was so distasteful that she had to cleanse herself with blue skies, fresh air, and sunshine. He could practically hear the gears grinding in her brain as she tried to figure her way through the dilemma.
“Who is she?” she asked.
Kenny saw how her play would go. Predictably, she would attack the source as non-credible. Bad choice.
“You don’t have a leg to stand on if you try discrediting her.”
Michelle started to run again. Ken felt his side cramp up again.
“So, what is it you and my mother want from me?”
“I’m sure she would like you to call more often,” he said. “I just want to know if the decision to avoid mentioning my source in your police report was yours or Dobeck’s.”
“Mine,” she said. “I told Niket it didn’t impact anything, because it didn’t, and it only made us look bad—which, by the way, we deserved. It was amateur hour out there.”
“I hadn’t heard,” Kenny muttered.
“That’s what bothered me the most,” said Michelle. “That pregnant troll knew—totally and unequivocally she knew—that we were idiots.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve known her since I was nine and everyone has always felt that way around her,” he said. “Mostly because, to her, we are idiots.”
“I remember her now, from school. The cell phone detective,” she said. “Just my luck. Listen, I know you like to cause trouble even when there isn’t any trouble to be found, but Dobeck didn’t tell me to do anything. I was just covering my own ass.”
Michelle didn’t realize that by admitting to filing a false report, she was actually implicating her boss in a cover-up. Ascribing robbery as a motive in the official report, with no evidence to support it, was something Dobeck had chosen to do.
Now to reel her in.
“I don’t need to include that in any of my coverage.”
“Because you’re going to ask for something else,” she said.
“Yup,” he answered. “But not that big a thing.”
“Then I know it’s going to be a big thing,” she said.
“It’s not a big thing for me,” said Kenny. “I mean, for you, maybe. . . .”
“What do you want?” she sighed.
After telling her, dealing with her outright refusal, coaxing her to an inevitable acceptance, waving her off as she continued her run, and then running into the bushes to vomit, Kenny went home to shower.
He still had to crash an Indian funeral service that morning.
* * *
■ ■ ■
SATKUNANANTHAN’S SERVICE WAS scheduled to start at ten a.m. Kenny pulled the Prius into the parking lot of the funeral home in Hightstown that was respected in the Indian community for performing Hindu ceremonies. Contrary to custom, because of the delay from the autopsy, Satkunananthan hadn’t been cremated yet.
Kenny entered, thankful he’d gone to a few Indian funerals during high s
chool and knew enough not to wear dark clothes or a suit. His white button-down shirt and khaki slacks worked. Nearly all the men and women wore white or light beige clothing. He sat in the back. Satku’s body was in an open casket. A karta, a Hindu priest, was speaking. The usual platitudes were recited.
Tharani Sasmal said a few words, followed by his sons, Sivang and Prisha. The priest read a hymn from the Rigveda about mourning the loss of a child. Not exactly appropriate to Satku, but from all accounts, he was childlike, so maybe it worked.
Kenny stayed in his seat as the mourners paid their respects to Satku. He waited until the venue had emptied out and approached the Sasmal family. “Thank you for coming to pay your respects,” said Sharda. “Have you learned anything new?”
He had the nerve to flash that cocky grin of his, and asked, “What would you say if a friend and I dug a few holes in your backyard this week?”
22
OFFICER Michelle Wu walked through the parking lot behind the West Windsor Police Department to begin her shift, cursing her mother with every step she took. If it weren’t for her, Michelle would never have become a cop. If she hadn’t become a cop, she never would have been placed in this situation. By her mother. Whom she hated.
Their phone call had ended when Michelle had parked her car. Well, technically it had ended when Michelle hung up on the mayor. To Michelle’s recollection, the call had gone something like this:
Mother, why are you encouraging this reporter to blackmail me?
You are such a baby, Michelle; you can’t do anything without my help. If I don’t protect you, your stupidity will destroy my administration and scar my legacy for eternity. If only you had become a mathematical genius or a violin virtuoso the way your father and I politely encouraged you to become, we wouldn’t be in this situation and we would have been so much happier.
She thought about the violin lessons and the damning expectation of perfection that had soured her on the instrument for the rest of her life. She loved the music she could make and missed playing, but she would never tell her mother that. She thought about the tutoring, beyond the Mandarin classes they were all expected to take on Sundays; she thought about the math tutoring on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. From third grade until she finished high school.
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