Suburban Dicks

by Fabian Nicieza

  That’s when the tape ended. “We have pictures of all of them,” said Andrea. “Clear shots of their cars and license plates, too.”

  “Andie, you have them,” Sathwika said.

  “If we get Jennifer Guilfoyle to talk today, we have them.”

  They rode in silence until they reached the thruway.

  Andrea finally broke the silence. “I’ve had to pee for the last twenty minutes.”

  “Thirty for me. Pull over into the next rest area,” Sathwika said.

  After exit 15A, they pulled into the Sloatsburg service area. Sathwika thanked the gods there was a Dunkin’. Sathwika emerged from the bathroom first and got in line. By the time Andrea had returned, Sathwika was holding two large macchiatos and a box filled with doughnuts.

  “Marry me,” said Andrea.

  “I don’t think my husband would mind so long as he got to watch,” said Sathwika.

  Andrea laughed. “Two pregnant women going at it, that has to already be a subgroup on Reddit.”

  They took big bites of their doughnuts and went back to the car.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  THEY REACHED SHELBURNE, Vermont, by one thirty. Andrea followed the nav system and made a right off Route 7 onto Allen Road. They drove a few more miles east past nice middle-class homes, a pleasant change from the predominantly dilapidated farms they’d seen on the drive up. Neither had ever been to Vermont and both were taken aback by the incongruity of its beauty and decrepitude.

  As they wound through North Jefferson Road, the neighborhood grew spongier, a term Andrea had coined when she was younger for areas that had absorbed as much shit as they possibly could. The houses grew smaller, some little more than shacks. Many were overrun with mold, had roof shingles missing, or sat at the ends of chewed-up driveways.

  “The judging looks from having grown up in McMansions,” Sathwika muttered.

  “One day, I’ll take you to my old neighborhood in Queens,” said Andrea.

  “I thought you left there when you were little.”

  Andrea said, “But it never left me.”

  The nav system chimed. “In half a mile, you will have arrived at your destination.”

  They saw Guilfoyle’s house. It was a small red ranch cottage, no more than 750 square feet. Clothes hung on a line alongside the house with one pole so severely tilted that the clothes almost touched the ground. The driveway was mostly gravel—not because it was a gravel driveway, but because the blacktop had endured decades of Vermont winters with no repairs. One window was missing its shutters. The landscaping hadn’t been tended to in years. The screen door was missing its screen and the front door was badly in need of a paint job.

  After they knocked, Jennifer Guilfoyle came to the front door. She was in her late sixties, but looked ten years older. She was thin, her hair long and unkempt, her skin ruddy.

  She looked at the odd pairing of pregnant women and said, “If you’re selling, I ain’t buying. If your car broke down, you can use the phone, but that’s it.”

  “We tried to call before we came, Mrs. Guilfoyle, but . . . um . . . your phone didn’t work,” said Andrea.

  She mused on that for a moment. “Then I guess if your car is broken down, you can’t use it.”

  “We have something rather important we’d like to discuss with you, Mrs. Guilfoyle,” Andrea continued. “My name is Andrea Stern and I’m working as a consultant to the FBI. This is Sathwika Duvvuri. She is a crisis manager associated with West Windsor Township administration.”

  Jennifer hesitated. “West Windsor . . . ?”

  Andrea could see it right away: she knew.

  “We’re here about something that happened a long time ago,” Andrea said softly. “I hate to impose on you or bring up painful memories, but there are families, loved ones, who deserve to know the truth.”

  Jennifer contracted like a balloon sucked empty. She opened the door all the way and waved them inside. The house was disheveled, but not to an uncomfortable degree. Several cats scampered away, while two brave ones came to inspect the new arrivals.

  The woman removed some blankets from a ratty couch and shooed a cat off the cushions before gesturing for them to sit down. She took a seat in a small sofa chair with a worn cover and one of its arms slightly detached. Jennifer composed herself, straightening her hair.

  “How long have you lived in Vermont, Mrs. Guilfoyle?” Andrea asked.

  “Oh, it feels like forever,” she said. “Since sixty-nine? No, late sixty-eight.”

  “You married young, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A lot of us did back then. Usually we were stupid in love or we wanted to get away from something worse.”

  “Which were you?”

  “Paul was funny. Kind. But scared of life. Scared of the war. He got out of the draft because of his asthma, but then he looked at a life working in his father’s hardware store in Hamilton.”

  “I might have chosen Vietnam,” Sathwika said.

  Guilfoyle nodded. “Paul made the same joke back then, but it wasn’t funny, really. Too many kids we knew had gone already and not come back. We came north in his car with three suitcases.”

  “Your sister ended up in Massachusetts, right?”

  Guilfoyle said, “She didn’t need to run as far as I did, I guess. Just far enough.”

  That was the cue Andrea had been waiting for. “What happened, Mrs. Guilfoyle?”

  “Depends on who you ask, I guess,” she said. “Isn’t that always the way?”

  “Well, I’m asking you, ma’am,” said Andrea firmly.

  After several quiet seconds, Guilfoyle finally said, “You found him, didn’t you?”

  “We did,” said Andrea. “He had a name, Mrs. Guilfoyle. We found that, too.”

  “Cleon,” she said softly, possibly for the first time in fifty years.

  In releasing the name from her lips, a half century of self-loathing had been uncorked. She burst out crying, her body racked by heavy gasps for air.

  Sathwika moved for a second to console her, but Andrea held her back. The woman needed her release, but she didn’t need sympathy. She hadn’t earned it, at least not until they had heard the truth.

  After several minutes, Guilfoyle finally regained some measure of composure. She wiped her eyes and the snot from her nose with her sleeve. She fussed with her hair in a useless attempt to regain some dignity.

  “Cleon Singleton,” she said. “The most beautiful boy I ever knew.”

  “You fell in love with him?” Andrea asked.

  “I did.”

  “And your father found out?”

  “He did.”

  “Can you tell us, please?” Andrea asked, now placing her hand over Jennifer’s in a gesture of warmth. “Everything.”

  Andrea looked to Sathwika. She nodded and gave a thumbs-up. Her phone had already been in video mode.

  “We need to record it, Mrs. Guilfoyle,” Andrea added. “Because the people responsible for Cleon Singleton’s death are also responsible for the death of a young gas station attendant a few weeks ago and only the truth will coerce them into a confession.”

  The older woman hesitated, afraid of her sins being concretized in such an inescapable manner. With growing resolve and an almost perceptible stiffening of her back and shoulders, she said, “I understand.”

  And Jennifer Guilfoyle started to talk about the murder of Cleon Singleton.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  THEY RODE IN silence for over an hour. Sathwika had taken the wheel to give Andrea a break. The quiet gave them time to process what they had heard. The suddenness, the sadness, the inevitability, of what had happened to Cleon Singleton was a heavy weight to bear.

  They stopped at the outlets near Lake George, New York, and got coffee an
d two more doughnuts, which was enough to break them out of their reverie. As they walked back to the car, Sathwika absently said, “It doesn’t matter, I don’t think.”

  “What?”

  “The reason why,” Sathwika said. “One of the first things I learned in crisis management—among a long list of things I hated having learned—the reason why doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is controlling the narrative.”

  “So, silence is a form of control,” said Andrea.

  “Absolutely,” she replied. “Not the best, I don’t think, but certainly a valid approach.”

  “Even if it’s meant to cover up a murder?”

  “Hey, I never said I liked my job, only that I was good at it,” she laughed. “Hindu killed Sikhs and Muslims. Muslims and Hindu killed Sikhs. Muslims and Sikhs killed Hindu. Brits killed Indians, Indians killed Brits. Africans were sold into slavery, and whites fought against whites because of it. The reasons don’t matter. It’s just us being who we are.”

  “That’s incredibly bleak for a suburban mom,” muttered Andrea with a smile.

  “You disagree?”

  Andrea laughed. “If we weren’t who we are, I would be out of work.”

  “Oh, we’re being paid for this now?” Sathwika said, smiling.

  “Earning karma,” Andrea replied. “But we don’t always get what we deserve. Just ask Cleon and Satku.”

  40

  BY eight the next morning, Kenny sat in the West Windsor Township administrative complex parking lot. The swelling had gone down enough that he could talk without sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher. After Andrea sent him the video of Jennifer Guilfoyle’s confession the previous night, he became more determined than ever to nail these people to the wall. He spied Hillary Eversham pulling into the lot. He grabbed his phone off the front seat and opened the audio recording app.

  “Hillary Eversham? Kenneth Lee, Princeton Post,” he said, surprising her. “I’m hoping to ask you a few questions.”

  “You really should go through the township clerk’s office to schedule something, Mr. Lee,” she said.

  “I have evidence you are part of a criminal conspiracy to conceal a murder that occurred in West Windsor in nineteen sixty-five.”

  She hesitated, clearly shaken, then recovered and said, “Mr. Lee, I was born in nineteen sixty-six.”

  “I never accused you of the murder, ma’am, just the part where you’ve helped to cover it up,” he said. “Those pesky pool permits.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about. Have a good day, Mr. Lee.”

  She began to mount the steps when Kenny said, “I know the pressure you’ve been under, Mrs. Eversham, but you—and everyone else who has been involved in the conspiracy, from Bill Mueller to Thomas Robertson to Bennett Dobeck—all of you are covering up for people who don’t deserve your support.”

  That froze her in her tracks. She stopped and turned to look over her broad shoulder at him. “I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said.

  “Sticking to the party line, Mrs. Eversham?” he said. “I just want you to think about a very real truth regarding criminal conspiracies: the first person who comes clean usually spares themselves and their family a tremendous amount of pain. Your son and daughter, your husband—Bob, isn’t it?—yeah, they’d probably appreciate it if you decided to cut a deal.”

  Kenny didn’t wait for her response.

  He drove well above the speed limit toward the Plainsboro administrative complex, hoping to ambush Bill Mueller as well, but was disappointed to see Mueller’s car already parked in the lot. He could go into the township offices and make another scene, but he knew that would be counterproductive at this point.

  He got out of his car and entered the offices anyway.

  Rosemary Gavin stood behind the counter at the entrance to the municipal clerk’s offices. She eyed him with distrust instead of her usual friendly smile. “Kenny, what the hell happened to your face, boy?” she asked.

  “Tsetse fever,” he said. “Believe it or not, it looked worse yesterday.”

  “You here to make trouble?”

  He put his hands up. “No trouble. Okay, I take that back. Some trouble, but really it depends on what Bill Mueller does next.”

  “About what?” she asked.

  “About you telling him that if he doesn’t talk to me now, within the week he’ll be charged with criminal conspiracy to conceal a murder, tampering with public records, and fraud.”

  Rosemary looked at him, eyes wide, shocked. “Bill?”

  “Bill.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, walking to Mueller’s corner office.

  She returned a minute later, her face full of concern.

  “He said he has nothing to say to you, Kenny,” she reported. “I asked him if any of this is true, but he just said he wouldn’t talk to you.”

  “His mistake,” Kenny said. “Thank you, Rosemary.”

  Before he left, she said, “Ken, I’ve worked with him for almost twenty years. He’s not a bad man. A good family.”

  “That’s why I gave him this chance,” Kenny replied. “He didn’t commit the original crime, but he’s covered it up. A lot of people have. And it led directly to the Sasmal murder at the Valero.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” she asked.

  “Because people here don’t like me, but they do like you,” he said. “I want you to know the truth because everyone else is going to say I’m lying. But I’m not, and you know I’m not.”

  Kenny left.

  He pulled into the gravel lot of the Patriots Rifle Range. Only Appelhans’s car was there. The place had its regulars and the regulars had their schedules. Andrea had mentioned you could set your clock by when people would be shooting outside, and Kenny had learned from his mother that Appelhans shot target practice every Friday afternoon.

  Kenny got out of his car to the steady crack of a single pistol methodically firing off in five-second intervals. He approached the outdoor pistol range and as he rounded a row of trees, he saw the back of Steve Appelhans, shoulders squared as he fired his gun at the target berm thirty yards away. He wore noise-canceling earmuffs, and Kenny decided tapping him on the back and surprising him while he shot would be unwise. Then, for the first time, he wondered if it had been a wise choice to be there at all. He shuffled some dirt with his toe as he stood behind Appelhans and waited. After six more shots, the old man stopped. Removing his earmuffs as he turned, he was surprised to see Kenny.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he exclaimed, awkwardly raising his pistol and waving it at Kenny.

  “You know me, sir,” Kenny said. “Ken Lee. I’m Huiquing’s son.”

  “Who?” he asked, confused.

  “Huiquing Lee. Shit—you know her as Blaire. We met at Windrows?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, lowering his gun. “What the fuck’re you doing here?”

  Kenny gauged the man’s disposition. He was confused, which wasn’t unexpected considering the way Kenny had ambushed him.

  “I came here to see how you were, sir,” he said carefully. “To talk to you away from Bradley Dobeck, or Karl Halloway, or any of the other friends you’ve known who don’t have your best interests at heart.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Appelhans, we know,” Kenny said. “We know about Cleon Singleton and what happened the night he died. We know the names of nearly everyone who was there that night. We know—”

  And that’s when Kenny was interrupted by the barrel of a pistol pushed into the middle of his forehead.

  “You know so fucking much, then you know I’m up to my neck in it,” Appelhans seethed. “Why wouldn’t it be in my best interests to blow your brains out and bury you in one of those berms?”

  Kenny remained calm, surprising himself. Possibly because he kn
ew the truth was on his side, but more likely because he suspected Appelhans was out of bullets.

  “Two other people know I’m here,” he said. “I don’t think it would take Angela Lansbury an hour to solve this case, do you?”

  “I didn’t kill that nig—” He stopped himself. “I mean, Negro. It’s wrong to call them that, I know.”

  “I’m sure Cleon appreciates that, sir,” Kenny said, regretting his sarcasm the second it escaped his lips. He wished sometimes—not often, but sometimes—that being an ass didn’t come so effortlessly to him. “I’m sorry, sir, I know this is all difficult for you.”

  “It’s been a long time,” said Appelhans. He took an awkward step back. He lowered the gun. “Whatever you think you got, you got nothing if we don’t talk.”

  “Mr. Appelhans, I am being honest with you. You’re going down,” said Kenny. “All of you. There is no way out of this. Put yourself in front of it. Go on the record and I think you can help yourself and minimize your sentence.”

  The gun went up again, angrier this time. “You fucking idiot, my sentence is that I’m seventy-six fucking years old!”

  “Your family name, the respect you had in this town, it’ll all be gone,” said Kenny.

  “Not if you’re gone first.”

  After a few seconds, Kenny said, “You’re out of bullets.”

  Flummoxed, Appelhans looked at his gun, then ejected the cartridge to see if it was spent. Kenny took that opportunity to turn tail and run like a bandit.

  He reached his car and started it. The Prius spat dirt as he snapped it into a K-turn and made a fast getaway. Well, fast by Prius standards. In his rearview mirror, Kenny saw Appelhans emerge from the path, frantically waving the gun. But Kenny and the Prius were off, headed down Route 571.

  Kenny parked near the Princeton Post office and walked southeast on Witherspoon Street toward the university. He needed to clear his mind. The realization that he wasn’t at all certain Appelhans had run out of bullets coursed through his mind. His arrogance was the enemy of his common sense. What kind of a time was that to bluff?