Friend of the Departed

by Frank Zafiro

  But this one was still charged.

  Why?

  The police and prosecutor must be holding back facts that would be presented at trial. They gave up enough information to clinch a charge, nothing more.

  Again, why?

  I wondered if there was something scandalous in what they turned up. If so, they’d want to avoid the media storm that would result from releasing that information. Or was this just a reaction to the increased scrutiny all public agencies faced today? Since the case was still active, it wasn’t subject to public disclosure. Only documents filed in court could become public. So was this just a new strategy being employed in all cases? Some kind of cautionary approach, but one they did with every case?

  I’d been out of the game too long to know. In any profession, a lot can change in a decade. In law enforcement, the whole world changed in a decade. Hell, DNA alone had radically changed the game. So had technology. And it was all part of a world that had moved on without me.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. Then I flipped to the front of the affidavit to see who the lead detective was on the Brassart investigation. That’s when I got my third surprise. My fingers shook a little bit, but the bold, typed letters screamed up at me, clear and harsh.

  Detective Kathleen M. MacLeod.

  Katie.

  Oh, hell.

  14

  The name on the paper was all I looked at for a long time. I expected a chaotic outburst of emotions but as I sat staring, I was surprised to feel nothing. No tangle of love, remorse, or anger. It was as if I couldn’t decide how to feel, so all my emotions remained on hold.

  That was probably a good thing.

  Not that it mattered, anyway. Anything good between Katie and me was long past. Everything that had occurred in recent years had a bitter taste to it. She may have cared for me once, maybe even loved me, but at this point in our lives, I’m sure she considered me lower than snake shit.

  I swallowed and ran my hand through my hair. Then I was standing and halfway to the fridge before I even realized I was moving. The image of those bottles of Kokanee in the fridge blared inside my head.

  I stopped, and returned to the table. With an effort, I sat back down.

  I am not an alcoholic, I told myself. And I just proved it.

  My mind needed to be busy, so I spent some time reading the rest of the news stories I’d printed off at the library. It took me the better part of an hour, but in the end, I learned nothing new. The newspaper seemed to be fond of turning up one new fact, something as innocuous as a hearing date being set, and then doing a cut-and-paste job from previous coverage to fill out the rest of the story. Not exactly the height of journalism. I got the sense that everyone was spoiling for a major scandal or controversy but there just wasn’t enough detail to accomplish that. A wealthy woman running over her husband is a great start, but the real dirt for the masses was in the why of the situation. Why’d she do it?

  That wasn’t my question, though. Or rather, it wasn’t Harrity’s question.

  Did she do it?

  I took a deep breath and let it out. How the hell was I supposed to know?

  Standing up, I bypassed the fridge and headed to the bedroom, where I hoped a dreamless sleep awaited me.

  Sunday morning, I met Adam for coffee and chess at the Rocket Bakery. It was a ritual we’d had for years now, with periodic breaks. We used to meet during the week before he headed into work, but he suggested Sundays a while back, and since I wasn’t working a nine-to-five job, I saw no reason not to agree.

  “The usual?” he asked. “It’s my turn to buy.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  Adam was the only friend I still had from my old life as a cop. He’d been an officer, too, coming on about a year after I did. We’d had a casual friendship back then, even after he turned in his badge and took on a civilian technician position within the department. He took care of all of the surveillance equipment, put up cameras on drug houses, as well as more mundane tasks such as copying video from security cameras, or breaking into password protected computers and other electronic devices.

  Surprisingly, he’d stayed friends with me after I left the job, in spite of everything. Maybe it was easier for him because he wasn’t a commissioned officer any more, but I don’t think so. I knew he mostly kept our association to himself, but he didn’t necessarily go out of his way to hide it, either.

  There’d been a couple of times I’d put a strain on our friendship by asking for a favor. He’d helped me out, and taken risks to do so. I think we both realized that if we were going to stay friends, I couldn’t continue to ask him to do that. I did, anyway, and so I stopped, and we had developed a sort of unspoken understanding. I vowed to myself that I would never ask him for a work-related favor again, and so far, I’d kept that promise.

  Adam plunked my Americano down in front of me and slid into the chair across from me. “I bought, so that makes you black.”

  “Why’s it always gotta be a black thing with you?” I joked.

  “You’re a laugh riot.” He pulled the chess board between us, putting the white pieces on his side. Then he marched out one of his pawns. He sipped his fancy coffee and shot me a curious glance, and motioned toward my face. “So you took up boxing, or what?”

  I frowned, which hurt a little. “Bad anniversary.”

  “Bad anniversary…?” He trailed off, not understanding right away.

  I moved my pawn out to match his, not answering.

  “Oh,” Adam said, getting it. He reached for another pawn. “I forgot.”

  “Yeah, well, I was trying to.”

  Adam slid his pawn forward two spaces. “Some things you never forget.”

  I didn’t reply. Instead, I walked my knight out onto the field.

  Adam raised his eyebrow. “Feeling aggressive this fine Sunday?”

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  We traded moves along with a few easy barbs and drank our coffee. By the time I reached the bottom of my cup, Adam had boxed me into a corner of the board. Without either knight and with only one bishop, it didn’t take long before he made me choose between my queen and my king. Of course, in chess, that’s a forced choice.

  “Barbarian,” I muttered when he bumped my queen from the board.

  He made short work of me after that, though I managed to knock off the son-of-a-bitch knight that took out my queen before he finished me off.

  “Another?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No, you’re too dialed in today. You’d just smoke me a second time.”

  Adam smiled, happy to have won. He may not have been the archetypical cop when he came on the job, but he still had a lot of the competitive drive most cops had.

  “Hey, let me ask you something,” I said.

  “No.”

  I hesitated. “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”

  “Yeah, I do. You’re going to ask me for chess lessons.”

  I chuckled. “I think that’s what you already gave me today. No, I was going to ask you about a cop I met.”

  “Yeah, who?”

  “Her name is Lee. Last name, not first.”

  “Her? Then you must mean Anna Lee.”

  “That’s her.”

  “How’d you meet her?”

  I pointed to my face. “Public shaming. They called the cops.”

  His eyes narrowed in concern. “Did you get cited?”

  “No. She was actually pretty cool about it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Adam shrugged. “She’s just kind of an odd one, that’s all.”

  “Odd how?”

  “I can’t quite pin it down. She’s sort of a cold fish, for starters.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t like you.”

  “Could be. But I’m not the only one who thinks that. Plenty of people do.” He sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “Besides, it’s more than that. She has an odd affect t
o her. It’s like…I don’t know. A distance, maybe.”

  “A distance?”

  “That’s the best I can do. Why do you ask?”

  “I was just curious. I’d never met her before. She seemed different.”

  “You got that right.”

  I didn’t answer, and Adam changed the subject, so we talked about other things.

  After meeting with Adam, I decided to take a scouting trip. I needed to get the lay of the land, and figure out my next move. Hell, my first move.

  Namaste Estates was only about twenty minutes from where I lived, but in reality, it was a world away. I drove past the old school wealth of River City’s South Hill and into the upper middle class residential section. After a little while, lots became bigger and houses fewer, and then I was on what you could almost call a country road. I was surprised to see white city street signs at the occasional intersection instead of the green ones used by the county. River City had been aggressively annexing for the last five or six years, but it seemed a little excessive to bring city services out to a region that was somewhere between the suburbs and the country.

  Nonetheless, the street signs remained white all the way to the entrance to Namaste Estates. Two large stone markers proudly bore the name of the development. I turned onto Mountain Street and drove slowly down the well-maintained road. The lots looked to be at least seven or eight acres, perhaps larger. One house stood near the road, but most of those I passed sat back at the end of driveways at least a hundred yards long. Some were partially obscured by trees and foliage. An unseen dog barked at me as I drove by one.

  I found King Pigeon Lane after about five minutes. It was an offshoot from Mountain Street, which had turned out to be long and meandering but the main thoroughfare of the neighborhood. In contrast, King Pigeon Lane looked to be a straight shot up a slow slope. Dense pine trees and leafy bushes stood like sentries along the road.

  After I turned, I slowed the car even more, downshifting into first gear. I let the engine pull the little Celica forward with just a slight touch on the gas. I didn’t know how long of a road King Pigeon Lane was, which was something I wish I’d researched at the library. So now I was stuck searching the entirety of it.

  I didn’t know for sure what I was looking for. The crime scene, I guess. For whatever good that would do me. The crime scene was over four months old. It wasn’t like I was going to discover some crucial evidence that the police had overlooked. For one thing, they were professional investigators with all the tools of their trade at their disposal. Secondly, without being familiar with the details of the case, I wouldn’t know what was crucial and what wasn’t.

  But somehow it was still important to me. Just to get some kind of a feel for the case, if nothing else.

  I rolled along the smooth road, imagining Henry Brassart jogging alongside it. The newspaper had used the same picture of him in all of the stories, one of him in a business suit. I suspected it was taken by his investment firm for the official website. In the photograph, Brassart bore a confident expression. He looked like he’d been athletic at one time but was carrying a few extra pounds now. His smile was professional enough, but there was something slightly more genuine to it, too. It gave me the impression of a man who was entirely comfortable with the surface layer of being a professional, but was more than willing to cast that aside and enjoy a few beers.

  Or hell, it could have simply been that he had a bit of used car salesman in him. What can you really tell from a photo?

  I liked him a little from that photo, though. Maybe some of that was an extension of Harrity’s friendship with him, but that had been the sense I got from the picture. Brassart looked like the kind of guy you’d want to spend time with. He looked like he’d be fun. Maybe not the kind of guy who would listen to your problems. No, he’d probably be the kind of guy who’d help you forget them.

  Everybody could use a friend like that.

  Something yellow and out of place flashed in the sun and was gone. I barely caught it out of the corner of my eye. I stopped suddenly and put the car in reverse, backing up until it came into view again. Through the foliage along the roadside, I could see a piece of dingy yellow plastic dangling from a broken limb, fluttering limply in the light breeze. I knew what it was as soon as I saw it.

  Crime scene tape.

  I pulled the car to the side of the road and got out. When the engine died, I was struck by the immense silence that remained. Living in the city, it was always loud. You get used to it. I didn’t realize how loud it must be until confronted with this silence.

  Only it wasn’t silent. Not really. The sounds were just different. Even though the wind was barely blowing, I could hear it streaming through the trees. The branches and leaves rustled, sounding like flowing water. Birds chirped and called. Crickets seemed to answer. In its own way, this street was just as busy with activity as an arterial in River City.

  I kept my eye on the flapping yellow piece of plastic as I wound my way through the thick brush, and around trees. The vegetation caught at my jeans and boots as I pressed through.

  When I reached my destination about fifty feet off the roadway, I found exactly what I expected. A piece of crime scene tape was wound around a small branch and tied in a simple knot. Below the knot, the thin plastic was stretched out and it ended in a ragged tear. I’d been at enough crime scenes in my day to know what had happened. When the crime scene was finished, some junior detective, patrol officer, or crime scene tech had been tasked with taking down the tape. On an outdoor scene, even the inner perimeter was likely to have been pretty large. While gathering up the tape, he’d given it a good tug and it tore below the knot. Maybe he didn’t see the small piece that remained hanging from the branch, or maybe he was just too lazy to walk over and tear it down, too. Either way, now I knew the general location of the crime scene.

  I walked around the wooded area, moving slowly and letting my eyes take in the scene. The air was thicker here than on the roadway, and cooler. The sun cut through the foliage here and there in bright slashes but mostly I walked and searched in shade. Even so, sweat popped up on my brow, and a stream of it trickled down my back. Time crept by and all I could see were bushes and trees. The forest floor was covered in pine needles and old, dead twigs. Nothing to give me any hint of where Brassart’s body had come to rest, and where the police had investigated his death. In four months without interference, nature had reclaimed whatever they’d done.

  Or I simply wasn’t finding it.

  After the better part of a half hour, I gave up. I wandered back to the tree where the remnant of crime scene tape flapped in the wind. I stood beside it and looked around the area again. Was this tape cordoning off the inner perimeter, or just the outer? How close was I to where the body lay? I tried to imagine the situation. Brassart is struck and thrown off the road and into the brush. Where did he land? How far off the road?

  Far enough that no one found him for almost a day. That much I knew. But when did they start looking? And how much traffic came down King Pigeon Lane on a normal day?

  I thought about it some more, staring absently at the leaves of the bushes and the thick bark of the trees. Then another thought occurred to me. How fast was the car going that hit him? To throw a grown man fifty-plus feet off the road, I figured it had to be going pretty fast. But was I right? I didn’t get into traffic collision investigation much beyond basic crashes that I ran into on patrol. As a result, any estimate I’d make right now would be no better than a wild guess. I’d have to do some research to figure that out. Right now, I didn’t have the slightest idea.

  Of course, all of that was in the police report. And if Harrity took the case, he’d get all of that information in the discovery process.

  A lot of good that did me now.

  I let out a deep sigh and let go of that thought. Instead, I imagined Brassart’s situation from his perspective. I tried to envision him trudging along, trying to shed those few extra pounds. Was he wea
ring headphones and listening to music? Did he hear the car approach, or sense it? My gut told me no. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have tried to get out of the way?

  Maybe. Or maybe cars passed him all the time, and he didn’t sense the danger of this one.

  Had he survived the initial impact? Or did that first crushing blow cause him to black out? If it did, he would have been spared the secondary impact with one of the trees. But what if he was still conscious after both? Could he have lain on the cool ground, his body crushed and broken, his mind jarred and confused but aware?

  I wondered how long it would take someone to die like that. A collision that was forceful enough to throw him off the road and into the wooded area had to be something that would crush bones and lacerate internal organs. Same with the impact with the tree. Maybe he bled to death in a matter of minutes.

  I hoped so, for mercy’s sake.

  But somehow I didn’t think so. I imagined Brassart lying on the ground amidst the smell of earth and blood and his own shit. The pain may have been immense, or maybe it was so great that his broken body just blocked it out. Did he struggle for air? To move? Did he try to drag himself to the road where he had some hope of being found, only to give up when nothing worked the way it used to? Or did he just lay there, his breath gurgling in his chest, as his life seeped out of him?

  I saw it one way. Then the other.

  In the end, did he long for the mercy of death? Did he wish someone could have put him out of his misery, just like an animal injured beyond hope?

  I imagined the hours passing painfully. What did he see? What sounds did he hear? Did cars pass by on the road, so close and yet so interminably far away? Did hope soar every time one approached, then sink when it continued on past him?

  And I imagined him eventually surrendering to whatever mysteries lay beyond this life. It must have been a relief at that point. Something he probably welcomed, even if he’d fought for life up until then. Sometimes things just hurt too much to want to go on.