Suburban Dicks

by Fabian Nicieza

  “Wait, wait, we were just going to talk,” said a flustered Wisnick.

  Ramon looked him square in the eye.

  Hillary Eversham proceeded to talk for nearly fifty minutes straight.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  OUTSIDE IN THE parking lot, Ramon said to Rossi, “Detective, I’d like you to join us when we arrest Bennett Dobeck. I know that might not be comfortable for you, but the Windrows arrests will be in Plainsboro and Chief Ambrose will be joining us there.”

  Rossi sucked some air between his teeth, thinking it through. “Does he know you’re coming to pick him up?”

  “We requested he be at his home this afternoon in case we needed to see him,” said Ramon.

  Ramon turned to Andrea. “You want to come with us to Windrows or go with them to Dobeck’s place? Or neither, if you prefer. I wouldn’t mind your eyes looking into theirs, but it’s not required.”

  She looked at her phone to check the time. “I have to make some calls,” she said. “I’ll meet you at Windrows at one thirty.”

  They separated. Andrea leaned against her car door, exhausted. She called Sathwika to see if Sadie could stay at her house until three instead of one. She called Brianne to see if she could get Sarah from Eliza Bushmiller’s house and bring her over to Melissa Henderson’s house. She called Naomi to see if she could hang on to Eli after swimming practice. She called Ruth directly on her cell phone to see if she wanted to join her for lunch. A fifth grader with a cell phone that was actually a gift from her parents instead of something she had to steal on her own: What kind of monster were she and Jeff making?

  They went to Panera Bread in Plainsboro, since it was only a few minutes away from Windrows. Ruth wasn’t talkative until Andrea apologized for the summer she’d had. She knew that with the baby coming, the next few months would only get more hectic for all of them. It would get especially worse for Ruth, who would have to bear a burden of increased responsibility for her younger siblings.

  “Are you arresting people yet?” Ruth asked.

  “I’m not arresting anyone, honey,” said Andrea. “But yes, people are being arrested. Actually, if you want to join me, we’ll be arresting some more after lunch.”

  “Hnn,” Ruth grunted, pretending to be indifferent, but Andrea could tell she was intrigued.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  THEY ARRIVED AT Windrows at one thirty.

  Kenny and the TV crew from that morning were already there. Kenny walked up to Ramon. “I just talked to Laura Privan. She’s the director of the facility. I told her what’s going on so she could clear the lobby.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Ramon.

  “Everyone mills around after lunch,” Kenny said. “It’ll get annoying for you if too many people are in your way. Plus, my mom lives here. I don’t want her seeing this.”

  “Really? You’re protecting your mother?” Andrea asked.

  “No, I’m protecting all of you from my mother,” he said.

  The sliding doors opened and the group entered the lobby. Laura and her staff were asking people if they could clear the room. As people passed by them, Kenny nudged Andrea. He pointed out Dobeck, Halloway, and Appelhans, who were exiting the small dining room.

  “There,” said Andrea to Ramon. He motioned for Nakala Rogers to approach from the right. He went up the middle.

  The hint of recognition first came to Dobeck’s eyes. Halloway was next to realize what was happening and hoarsely whispered, “Bradley . . . ?”

  Appelhans remained clueless until Ramon pounced on them.

  “Bradley Dobeck, Karl Halloway, and Steven Appelhans, you are all under arrest on suspicion of criminal conspiracy for the concealment of the murder of Cleon Singleton. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  Nakala cuffed Appelhans and Halloway as Ramon took Dobeck. As the group was hustled through the crowd of residents, Kenny raised his camera and said, “Mr. Dobeck, are you guilty of the charges against you?”

  “Fuck you,” said Dobeck.

  “Mr. Halloway?” Kenny persisted.

  No response from Halloway.

  “Mr. Appelhans, how do you think your children will react to this?” continued Kenny, knowing the former farmer had been estranged from his children for years.

  “I don’t know,” he said in that way confused seniors had that made them look like elementary school students who didn’t know the answer to a question. “I’m sorry,” he continued. “I did it to protect them.”

  Standing next to Kenny, Andrea elbowed him in the rib cage and whispered, “Ask Halloway what he meant when he said, ‘If you don’t talk, their truth is a lie.’”

  Kenny barked the question out to Halloway.

  Halloway stopped, forcing Nakala to abruptly lose her balance. He turned to Kenny with even more righteous fury than Dobeck had displayed.

  “I told Bradley not to kill that Indian kid,” Halloway blurted. The bombshell stole all the oxygen in the room. Everyone who heard it was stunned by the revelation. “I told him not to do it, but he’s a stubborn son of a bitch!”

  “You’re a fucking liar!” shouted Dobeck, straining to attack his old friend, but flailing while held firmly by Ramon.

  “Move them out of here,” said a flustered Ramon.

  Kenny bumped into several Windrows residents while trying to keep up with the FBI entourage. Then, suddenly, he was face-to-face with his mother.

  “Kenneth!” she bellowed. “What is going on here?”

  “Not now, Mom,” he muttered as he tried to move around her. Ramon and the group had slipped through the sliding front doors. Andrea lagged a few steps behind them, holding Ruth by the hand. Huiquing wouldn’t let her son pass.

  “Tell me now,” she said.

  “I’m trying to do my job!” he exclaimed, his voice cracking in an unfortunately timed imitation of Peter Brady.

  By the time he got outside, the FBI agents had already finished loading their prisoners into two cars. Andrea walked to her Odyssey with Ruth.

  “Andie,” Kenny called out. “Did they say anything else?”

  The wind whipped her thick curly hair all over her face. She pushed it aside and replied, “They said ‘fuck you’ a lot.”

  “To who?”

  “Each other,” she said. “And then all three of them said it to you.”

  “And you’re okay with your daughter hearing that kind of language?” he asked.

  “Fuck, yeah,” she replied with a smile as Ruth laughed.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  AS ANDREA DROVE Ruth to her friend’s house, her daughter protested every second of the way. She had been thrilled watching the arrests and wanted to see more. Andrea was pleased about Ruth’s interest, but she couldn’t have her at the intake. She dropped the mopey girl off, but told her she’d tell her everything that happened later.

  Andrea pulled into the Plainsboro Police Department parking lot and realized she would likely miss Jeff’s arrival at the train station. She’d deal with that bullshit on a need-to-deal-with-that-bullshit basis.

  Ramon met her. “Bennett Dobeck is in a WWPD holding cell. He refused to talk until his lawyer arrived,” he said.

  “And our three?” she asked.

  “Halloway and Dobeck Sr. both asked for lawyers,” said Nakala. “Appelhans hasn’t. Chief Ambrose is buttering him up now. Her family and his go back. She’s laying down the ‘for the good of your children’ track. We roll in with the evidence.”

  “Appelhans was terrified at Windrows. You didn’t need to play the emotion card; you needed to hit him as hard and as quickly as you could,” Andrea said.

  “We d
idn’t want him to lawyer up,” said Nakala. “Textbook says if there is someone in the interrogating party that has familiarity with a suspect, develop a soft rapport before revealing the evidence you have on them.”

  “I never got to the books,” said Andrea with hardly a trace of bitterness. “I just know getting Appelhans to cave quickly gives us much better ammunition against Dobeck and Halloway when their lawyers arrive in about fifteen minutes.”

  Ramon said, “Pull Ambrose out.”

  They went at Appelhans hard. They piled the evidence on a table in front of him, even though half the folders had blank paper in them. They ran through the statements from Eversham, Mueller, and Thomas Robertson, who had admitted to threatening the Sasmals, but had only meant in terms of generating bureaucratic nightmares for them.

  “What do you want out of me?” asked Appelhans. “We did it, okay? We did it.”

  He exhaled five decades of guilt in one breath. His body seemed to lose a thousand pounds.

  “We did it,” he said again, so softly that Andrea almost missed it. “We buried him all over town. Then, twenty years later, when developers started building everywhere—fucking absolutely everywhere—we had to find a way to keep the past buried.”

  Ramon let it hang for a moment, letting Appelhans think they were giving it the proper respect his confession deserved. He let the older man stew in his guilt, his relief, and his shame. Then, coldly, he said, “We don’t need you to tell us what we already know. There are only two things keeping you from dying in prison. Who swung the weapon that killed Cleon Singleton? And who pulled the trigger that killed Satkunananthan Sasmal?”

  Appelhans answered one of the two questions.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  THREE DAYS BEFORE, after returning from Vermont, Andrea had sent Kenny the compressed file containing Jennifer Guilfoyle’s confession. He sat at his kitchen island counter, the last of his bourbon in a glass, his laptop cracked open.

  The video cycled as it loaded. Jennifer Guilfoyle’s weathered face came on-screen. “I loved Cleon,” she said, pausing. After a few seconds, she continued, “I knew I shouldn’t—and he tried so hard to ignore me every time I flirted with him. He was funny.”

  Her eyes looked away, lost in bitter memories.

  “He had such a beautiful smile. I try to remember that smile . . . his laugh . . . I try to remember that and not the farmers . . . my father . . . yelling at him in the barn. All of them yelling at him. They were so angry.”

  Andrea’s voice chimed in from off-camera. “Let’s go back a bit. The night he died, what happened?”

  “My father, he caught us kissing,” she said. “No, he caught me kissing Cleon.” She paused again, gnawing on the words that proved a painful reminder of her responsibility. “Cleon kept saying we shouldn’t. He was too old. That it wasn’t right. But I didn’t care. I loved him . . . but I know I loved the danger more.”

  “And what did your father do?” asked another voice, which Kenny assumed was Andrea’s new friend, Sathwika.

  “He yelled,” she said. “He charged at Cleon. He shoved Cleon away from me. Grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him into the barn. I was shouting that Cleon hadn’t done anything, but my father wouldn’t listen. He didn’t listen. He . . . never listened. He locked Cleon inside the barn.”

  “And that’s when he started calling the other farmers?” asked Andrea.

  “I don’t know . . . yes, I guess,” she replied. “He ordered me to go to my room. It was after eight. The sun was starting to set. My mother and my sister had gone to visit my aunt’s house. I was supposed to go, but I didn’t, because I was hoping to have time alone with Cleon. I heard a car on the gravel driveway. I tried to see it from my window, but I couldn’t. I heard a voice. It was Steve Appelhans. His family farm was the closest to ours. Then I heard more cars. About five more. I tried to identify some of the voices. It was hard because they were arguing. Jon Ferris, Jerry Manning, and Martin Weinlock I recognized. Some others, I didn’t know for sure. But through it all, one voice was the one I heard the loudest. Cleon. Shouting to be let out. Begging them. They cursed at him. They told my father that Cleon should pay for what he did. That’s when I called the police.”

  “You called the police?” asked Andrea.

  Kenny paused the video and sipped his bourbon. He knew where this was going.

  “I heard the barn door open and Cleon shouting to be let go. He must have gotten away; I heard Mr. Appelhans shout, ‘Get him.’ Then more voices through scuffling. Someone shouted, ‘Kill him!’ But they used the N-word. Then more of them were saying it, too.”

  Jennifer Guilfoyle paused. The video kept recording on her silence. She was crying now. Her voice hitched as she continued. “He was begging for them to stop. Begging. They were all saying, ‘Kill him, Frank! He’s trying to fuck your daughter, Frank! His kind can’t control it.’ And through it all, Cleon was denying it, begging to God, begging to them. Then . . . then Cleon made the mistake of saying, ‘She came after me.’ There was more shouting, more scuffling. Someone, I think Mr. Pimlico, said, ‘Just do it, Frank!’ And then I heard a sound . . . it was . . . it was like the sound a hoe makes in the fall when it runs over a pumpkin. There was a loud cheer, and I knew.”

  She paused again.

  “I knew,” she said. “I knew they had killed him. That my father had killed him.”

  Kenny needed another sip. He actually felt himself fighting back tears.

  “Then another car pulled into the drive,” she continued. “I heard Sheriff Dobeck and his son shouting at everyone. The two of them sounded like cement mixers trying to out-churn each other. They were both terrifying. They said they had to bury the body or they’d all get in trouble. It was Bradley Dobeck who said they should . . . they should dismember Cleon’s body. ‘Spread it around,’ he said. ‘Bury it where it won’t be found.’”

  “You still couldn’t see anything from your bedroom, but you could hear all of it?” asked Andrea. “What did you hear next?”

  “They . . . they were arguing about how to do it, to use a saw or an ax,” she said. “I heard Bertram Dobeck get angry. He said, ‘Get out of the way, Frank. Give me the ax. Shit, you’re all such a bunch of pussies,’ he said. I remember that . . . ‘you’re all a bunch of pussies.’ I remember how . . . how disgusted he was . . . not by what he was about to do, but that these people—his people, I guess—didn’t have the . . . the courage . . . to cut a body apart? He didn’t care that Cleon had been killed. He was the sheriff and he didn’t care. It was horrible.”

  Kenny waited as she composed herself. Then she continued, “I heard the ax come down, that sound like when you’re cutting ribs? You get used to the sound of animals getting cut apart when you live on a farm, but this . . . this was different. This was Cleon. And . . . I don’t think it was that easy, because . . . they kept arguing. . . . ‘Grab his arm and pull,’ I heard. ‘It won’t come off,’ someone else said. The sounds. The sounds were . . . they were twisting and wrenching poor Cleon’s body to pieces.”

  Kenny finished his bourbon. Though he’d watched the tape several times already, he was taken aback by how angry he felt, but more, how scared. It could have been him. They would have killed the gook for flirting with one of their daughters. Because he was Asian/African American/Hispanic/Plaid. It didn’t matter what he was, he just wasn’t one of them, and that meant he wasn’t worthy of their children. And for that, they would have hit him from behind and torn his body apart like they were fighting over a rotisserie chicken.

  Franklin Wright killed Cleon Singleton, but every single person there that night was guilty. And every single one of them who was still alive was going to pay.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  AFTER WRANGLING WITH the men who had lawyered up, Andrea and the FBI agents convened in Chief Ambrose’s office. Rossi was on speak
erphone describing their interrogation of Bennett Dobeck. The disgraced police chief had politely declined to answer a single question.

  Nakala was confused. “Father and son are clamming up, but neither of them killed Cleon Singleton.”

  “Bennett’s not going to talk,” said Rossi through the speaker. “He’d rather take his chances in court.”

  “And he likely knows we can’t leverage Singleton’s murder to get him to flip on the Sasmal killing,” said Ramon.

  “We got corroboration on Singleton, though?” asked Rossi.

  “Appelhans provided eyewitness confirmation of Jennifer Guilfoyle’s videotaped hearsay admissions,” said Ramon. “Franklin Wright swung the weapon that killed Cleon Singleton. And Franklin Wright died in nineteen eighty-seven.”

  “Recommended charges?” asked Nakala.

  “Conspiracy, accessories to murder,” said Ramon. “Eversham, Robertson, and Mueller will get two years max. Unless we can pin something else on him, Bennett Dobeck will get five. For Bradley Dobeck, Halloway, and Appelhans, we’ll include desecration and ask for ten to fifteen years.”

  After a several-second pause, Andrea decided to ask the obvious question, knowing the obvious answer. “What about Satkunananthan Sasmal?”

  “It’s on me,” said Rossi through the speakerphone. “It’s always been on me. If it was either one of the two Dobecks, we’ll find out.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  SEVEN WEEKS LATER, they still hadn’t found out.

  48

  EVERY morning since the conspirators were arrested in August, Andrea looked at the calendar to punish herself thinking about the number of days that had passed since she’d let the Dobecks slip through her fingers. This absurdly still-humid October morning of Monday the twelfth marked forty-six days.