Friend of the Departed

by Frank Zafiro

  “Thanks for the education,” I snapped, and turned to walk away.

  “Happy to be of service,” he said to my back.

  Once I was back in my car, I sat and thought. Why bail out? And why now? If she had the money, why wait all these months? And if she didn’t, where did she get the money? Or did someone else put it up?

  Sitting in my car, I wasn’t going to come up with any answers. But I knew where I might.

  I dropped the car into gear and headed for the Namaste Estates.

  20

  I parked down the road a ways from the Brassart home, near a small square patch of manicured grass with a pair of benches in the middle. Namaste Estates idea of a mini-park, I supposed. From there, it was an easy walk to King Pigeon Lane. Or would have been, if my knee wasn’t screaming at me the whole way.

  To avoid limping, I slowed my pace to a lazy stroll. I passed several houses, both set back from the road and well fenced, before I reached King Pigeon Lane. I guessed each lot had to be somewhere between seven and eight acres. By city standards, that was huge.

  The unmistakable drone of a car engine approached me from behind. I turned to see a grey Mercedes slow and turn onto King Pigeon Lane. Out of die-hard habit, I glanced down at the license plate. The personalized plate read GETSUM2. When I looked at the driver as the car passed, I wasn’t surprised to see a middle aged man with slightly graying hair behind the wheel. The message on the license plate could mean a lot of different things, but somehow I was pretty sure what he was going for was getting rich.

  Given the insignia on the hood of his car, it looked like that was working out for him.

  The car continued straight on, and for a moment, I thought he might turn into the Brassart driveway. Instead, he veered left when he reached the cul-de-sac, and headed down that driveway.

  “Hello, neighbor,” I muttered, and continued strolling.

  My initial thought had been to walk right up and knock on the door and talk to Marie Brassart. But by the time I got near enough to see their driveway in the distance, a new plan began to take shape. I decided that I should at least scout out the lay of the land before going with the direct approach. I wasn’t sure what it might yield, but I figured it was worth a try.

  I slowed down when I neared where I believed Henry Brassart had died, but didn’t see any purpose in revisiting that spot. So I continued past, and passed two more driveways before I knew I was nearing the Brassart home. The cul-de-sac was visible from a long ways off, and King Pigeon Lane was a straight road, so the distance was a little deceiving. But I knew I was close enough to go off-road, and probably only be trespassing on Brassart property.

  The thick bushes tugged at my clothing as I tried to play at being Daniel Boone. Being a city boy was a definite disadvantage in situations like this. I felt pretty confident in my urban talents, but trying to stay quiet in the woods was like trying to breathe water.

  Still, if Marie Brassart was inside her house, she wasn’t likely to hear me. And as long as she didn’t have a dog—

  That stopped me. Any dog living out here in the quasi-country was going to be pretty territorial. And even if it was a Pomeranian or some other yapper, it’d be far more likely to spot me, and to ghost my position.

  I listened for barking but heard none. Eventually, I decided to press forward, keeping an ear out for thundering paws, barking, and snarling.

  Finally, I reached a location close enough to get a decent view of the house while still remaining hidden in the foliage. I crouched down and took in the scene. The Brassart home had a lot of windows. A big bay window extended out from what looked like the kitchen, and the living room windows were tall and wide. None of the shades were drawn, but I guess that made sense. Living out here, why would you need to? It’s not like people were going to hide in the woods and peer inside your home, right?

  In that moment, I felt more than a little grimy.

  I also felt foolish. I had a small pair of field glasses in my apartment. They would have come in handy here. Instead, I had to keep watch with the naked eye.

  A couple of times over the next half hour, I saw a figure walk through the living room to the kitchen and back again. From that distance, it was impossible to tell but the body shape was right for Marie.

  After about forty-five minutes, I started to wonder what I expected to accomplish. Watching from the woods wasn’t going to answer the questions I had about the corporate insurance, or how she’d bailed out. Unless she was going to confess to the murder using signal flags, all I was accomplishing was feeling like a peeping Tom.

  But I stayed for a little while longer while I tried to decide how to approach her once I was at the front door. Would a direct approach work? It hadn’t been too successful at the jail. But that was a different setting. Maybe at her home, free of incarceration, she’d be more amenable.

  Or she could be more confident in telling me to stick it.

  One thing was sure. I wasn’t going to get an answer crouching in the woods outside her house.

  I was about to stand up to walk back to the road when I heard a stick snap, and the rustle of bushes. Images of a rabid dog went through my head, and I stared intently toward the sound. Nothing but silence followed.

  I glanced up at the trees. Some were pines. Maybe it had been a falling cone.

  Somehow I didn’t think so. I was no woodsman, but the sound had the feel of movement to it. And now that I was paying attention, I sensed a presence. Something was there.

  I decided I didn’t need to know what. I rose slightly into a hunched standing position, and started backing through the foliage. I kept my eyes locked on where the sound had come from, except for quick backward glances to make sure I wasn’t going to back into a tree. The result was a less than stealthy retreat on my part, but at this point, I was more concerned with being ready for whatever came through the woods for me than being quiet.

  Forget the field glasses, I thought. I wish I had my gun.

  I thought I heard another rustle of movement, but couldn’t be sure. My own noise-making parade made it difficult to hear. Every few feet, I stopped and listened.

  There! Another twig snapped, this time off to my right.

  I turned in that direction and tried to see through the mess of trees and bushes, but saw nothing. No dog, no grizzly bear, nothing.

  So I kept backing up toward the road.

  I hadn’t gone another fifteen feet when a cold voice stopped me.

  “Right there, motherfucker,” came a low, deadly tone. “Keep your hands where I can see them, or I will make today your last day on this beautiful planet.”

  I froze.

  “Over here!” He said, raising his voice slightly.

  The noise of movement was all around me now, no pretense of stealth. Two men and a woman appeared out of the woods, all wearing forest camouflage, and trudged toward me.

  “Who the hell is this?” one of the men asked.

  “No idea,” the man behind me replied.

  The trio all regarded me curiously. I stared back, taking in their expressions and demeanor. A realization hit me.

  These were cops.

  “You live around here?” the first one asked me. He wore a Fu Manchu mustache, along with a couple days’ worth of stubble on his face.

  “No,” I said.

  He gave me a suspicious look. “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” I asked back.

  He smiled contemptuously, then looked over my shoulder at the man who’d captured me. “Cuff him, Dan-o.”

  “For the fiftieth time, it’s Daniel,” the voice behind me muttered.

  “Just cuff him,” Fu Manchu said.

  Dan-o instructed me to put my hands behind my head, then expertly cuffed one wrist, and brought it down to the small of my back. “Give me the other hand,” he said. When I did, he cuffed that one as well. He performed a thorough, meticulous search, which turned up my wallet and my car keys.

  I waited while he went t
hrough my wallet.

  “Says here he is Steven, no, Stefan…” he hesitated, then guessed, “Cop-riv-uh?”

  “Wait, what?” Fu Manchu stepped behind me. “Let me see that.”

  I took a deep breath and waited some more. Dan-o didn’t know who I was, but I was pretty sure Fu Manchu did. As we stood there, I caught a whiff of cologne. I wasn’t familiar with the scent, but the boldness of it told me who it probably belonged to.

  “Son of a bitch,” Fu Manchu whispered. Then, “Take him back to the barn. We’ll interview him there.”

  “Interview him?” Dan-o asked. “About what?”

  “What the hell he’s doing here,” Fu Manchu snapped. “Just do what I said.”

  Dan-o didn’t argue further. He took me by the elbow with one hand and grasped my ring and small fingers with the other. “This way,” Dan-o instructed.

  “Am I under arrest?” I asked.

  “You’re being detained,” Fu Manchu answered gruffly.

  “For what?”

  “How about trespassing?” He snapped. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  Sometimes that’s the best thing to do, and this seemed like one of those times.

  21

  Dan-o took it slow through the wooded area. Once we were back on the roadway, he called for a vehicle, which only took about a minute to arrive. They must have one of the neighbors cooperating, I decided.

  The ride to the station went fast. We remained silent the entire trip, though the patrol officer driving the car kept giving me the mean mug. As we neared the station, he diverted from the route I’d expected. I had a small moment of fear then. I knew most of the stories about cops doing bad things to people were untrue or exaggerated, at least in my time on the job. But I was a long time removed from those days, and maybe things had changed. The newspaper sure seemed to think so, and some of the stories I’d read seemed awfully hard to refute. And now we didn’t seem to be going to the police station any more.

  The rest of the trip lasted about three blocks. We stopped outside a non-descript single-story office building. Dan-o exited the car, popped open the door for me, and helped me get out of the back seat. He thanked the patrol officer, then steered me toward the building. On the side of the building, I read River City Police – Investigative Division.

  Believe it or not, I felt a little bit of relief. Whatever happened next, at least it was going to be above board.

  Once inside, Dan-o guided me to an interview room, where he offered me a seat. I turned and offered my cuffs toward him. He hesitated, but took them off. Then he stood outside the door and waited.

  I sat down and waited, too.

  It was almost an hour later when the door opened and Fu Manchu strode in. With him was a face I recognized immediately but it took a few moments for me to place. Fu Manchu cut my effort short.

  “I’m Detective Cole,” he brayed at me, holding up the badge that hung from his muscular neck on a thick chain lanyard. His voice was brash and testosterone fueled. I didn’t know him from my time as a River City cop, though he looked like he was old enough to have been on the job then.

  “Good for you,” I said icily.

  He snorted and shook his head. “Nice attitude.”

  “What do you expect? You’ve got me here for no reason.”

  “No reason?” Cole arched his eyebrows in surprise. He reached for the chair opposite me, turned it around and straddled the seat. With practiced casualness, he draped his arms over the chair back and leaned forward. I caught another whiff of the same bold cologne I’d smelled in the woods. “We got all kinds of reasons.”

  “Name them.”

  “Trespassing. Obstructing an official investigation.” He shrugged. “Hell, maybe you’re an accessory to murder.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t even know about this murder until recently.”

  He grinned malevolently. “Accessory to murder…after the fact.”

  I glanced up at the other detective. He had mildly Asian features and was a few years younger than me. His dark black hair was combed forward in the front in a classic Mr. Spock style. Red port wine splotches of birthmark stood out on his cheek, as if they’d been frantically splashed there. He adjusted a pair of thin, square glasses and made no move to sit.

  “Richie,” I said, speaking the name as I remembered. “Richie Matsuda.”

  He nodded slightly, but corrected me. “Detective Matsuda to you.”

  My eyes dropped down to the gold shield clipped to his belt. I spotted the thin silver lines around the word ‘detective.’ “And you made first grade, too. Congratulations.”

  Matsuda didn’t answer. Instead, he took the chair kitty corner from mine, almost as if he were setting himself up as an arbiter between Cole and me.

  “You know this donkey?” Cole asked him.

  Matsuda gave a curt nod. “Jack Stone and I interviewed him a couple of years ago on a child porn case.”

  Cole’s eyes bugged out and he gave me a disgusted look. He managed to carry it off pretty well, but I could tell it was an act. He and Matsuda had written this script before they ever came into the room.

  “You’re shitting me,” Cole said.

  “True story,” Matsuda answered.

  “It’s a bullshit story,” I countered. “And you know it. You know how all that turned out, Richie. You know Stone was wrong, you were wrong, and I had nothing to do with that.”

  Matsuda shrugged. “I know you pled guilty.”

  “Not to that.”

  “And you did time.”

  I snorted, doing my best Cole imitation in the process. “You make it sound like I went to Walla Walla. I did fifteen days in county, for a misdemeanor.”

  Matsuda’s flat stare was impenetrable. “What people plead to and what people actually did are very frequently two different things. It happens that way all the time. Or weren’t you a cop long enough to figure that out?”

  “You know what?” I said. “Fuck you.”

  I stood to leave.

  Matsuda remained seated but Cole hopped up and held his hands out in front of him. “Ho, there, pal. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “So sit down.”

  “Don’t play me,” I said. “Either arrest me or let me go.”

  “I don’t want to have to arrest you,” Matsuda said. “Not if we can talk and work things out.”

  My immediate thought was to ask for my lawyer. But that was Harrity, and this time, he wasn’t my lawyer but my client. Calling him now would get me out of this jam, but I didn’t want to do it. It seemed like failing somehow. That left asking for a public defender or playing lawyer bingo with the Yellow Pages, neither of which held much appeal.

  Matsuda took my hesitation as if he were getting through to me. “That’s it,” he continued, talking to me like I was a spooked horse. “Just sit back down, and let’s talk things through. No lawyers, and hopefully no jail.”

  I didn’t want to sit down, but I didn’t see a better choice.

  “Ask your questions,” I snapped as I took my seat.

  Matsuda glanced at Cole, who nodded appreciatively, probably congratulating his partner on his communication skills. “Was that true?”

  “Was what true?” Cole asked. “That you were a cop?”

  I shrugged. “Like you didn’t recognize my name, back there in the woods.”

  Cole kept looking at me, as if he expected me to explain further. I didn’t. Either he knew the whole story already, in which case he’d made up his mind about me. Or he didn’t, in which case he could ask around and get it. Hell, maybe Detective Jack Stone could fill him in. He always seemed to be such an expert on how badly I fucked up.

  When I didn’t answer, Cole turned his mouth down in a facial shrug and glanced over at Matsuda. “Your ball, Mats.”

  Matsuda remained silent for a few moments, his expression rigid. Silence can be a useful tool in an interrogator’s tool belt, bu
t often a hard one for some cops to master. Too much ego makes it hard to shut up. But Matsuda seemed to understand the power of silence, and he held this one for almost thirty seconds before speaking in a low voice.

  “Stef,” he began.

  “That’s Mr. Kopriva to you,” I said. Then I added, “Richie.”

  I wasn’t trying to be a jerk, at least not completely. Mostly, I wanted to throw off his rhythm. If I was going to stay and talk to these two clowns, I wanted to get as much out of them as they got out of me, or more.

  Matsuda didn’t break stride. “What were you doing when Cole’s team contacted you?”

  “Bird watching.”

  “Without binoculars?”

  “I’m into naked-eye bird watching. It’s the newest thing.”

  “Do you know whose property that you were on?”

  “Do you?”

  Matsuda paused, then took off his glasses and made a show of cleaning them. “We can sit here and trade lame jousts, Stef. Or we can have a real conversation.” He replaced his glasses. “Your choice.”

  I spread my hands. “Why don’t you start so I can see what a real conversation is supposed to look like?”

  Matsuda eyed me for a few seconds. Then he said, “All right. Here’s where things are. The property you were on belongs to Henry and Marie Brassart. Only now, that property and the house on it belong solely to Marie Brassart. That’s because Henry Brassart was murdered earlier this year. Marie Brassart is the prime suspect in that murder, and she was arrested and charged for it. Her case has yet to go to trial.”

  “All of that is very interesting,” I said, “but so what?”

  “I don’t believe any of it was interesting to you,” Matsuda replied. “I believe you already knew all of it. In fact, I’m almost certain of it.”

  “Your detective skills include mind reading?”

  He shook his head. “I am merely looking at the facts. After Cole’s team picked you up, I did a little checking. You visited Marie Brassart at jail recently.” He looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t reply. After a few moments, he went on. “And then we catch you skulking around her property—”