Friend of the Departed

by Frank Zafiro

  This isn’t a date. It’s coffee.

  —in my life. Even so, I felt strangely comfortable with her. Maybe it was because she seemed so honest. Maybe it was because she didn’t judge me. Hell, if I was being honest, too, then maybe it was because she was pretty, and I hadn’t shared a lot of female company recently.

  Either way, I was looking forward to seeing her again.

  My mind drifted to Marie Brassart and the silver Mercedes that pulled into her garage. There weren’t a lot of different ways to interpret that, especially when you coupled it with the lights going out ten minutes later.

  If the neighbor and Marie were having an affair, that was certainly a motive for murder. Get rid of the husband so they can be together, that sort of thing. It was an old story, though I never understood it entirely. Was divorce such a terrible option? Maybe you’d lose money and possessions, but you’d avoid having to kill someone, along with the risk of prison or the needle. Not to mention that person would still be alive.

  But love is powerful drug. And I didn’t know their situation, so anything I came up with at this point was all guess work. Even so, I realized that things seemed pretty clear at this point, and I needed to go see Harrity in the morning.

  Then I thought of Anna’s quixotic smile, and that’s the last image I remembered before sleep took me.

  30

  I ate a couple pieces of toast with my coffee before I set out in the morning. The weather had been uncommonly warm for late March, which was usually more winter than spring. I might have felt fine in a long-sleeved shirt, but I could almost hear my grandmother telling me to wear a coat anyway. I grabbed my leather jacket and slipped it on. She may have been gone for almost eighteen years, but she still won all of our arguments.

  The Browne’s Addition neighborhood was full of activity. People were headed to work, and kids walking to school. I drove slowly out of the residential area and onto the Maple Street Bridge, headed toward the library.

  Traffic was thick that time of the morning in what accounted for River City’s rush hour. It thinned out after I got across the bridge, where two lanes turn into three. As I shifted into the middle lane to avoid getting behind a bus, I glanced up in my rear view mirror.

  I saw the blue Taurus, and looked away. Then I did a double take. The car was in the far right lane, and that gave me a perfect view of the driver’s side. The long white scrape on the driver’s side blared in the sunlight.

  Shit.

  I thought about punching it to see what happened, but the traffic was still too thick to safely do so. Besides, I had a pretty good idea who it was, or at least, who he was with. If I let on that I knew he was tailing me, all he had to do was get on the radio and tell Cole or Dan-o and some other cover unit, and they’d swoop in from wherever they were paralleling and stop me.

  So instead, I played it cool. I drove with the flow of traffic, and kept an eye on the car in my rear view mirror. He wasn’t great at tailing, but he wasn’t horrible, either. He waited until another car got behind me before slipping over into the center lane. When I moved into the left lane, he waited again, and only shifted lanes when there was a car between us.

  When had I seen the car first? I thought back. It had been at the bottom of King Pigeon Lane after I saw the neighbor visit Marie Brassart’s house. But that wasn’t the first time. The first time was when he almost rear-ended me outside The Steer Inn. And that had been after Cole picked me up and Matsuda interviewed me.

  The car was a beater, so it was probably one the department had seized in a dope case. That meant Matsuda was using the Narcotics unit on this detail. Those detectives did surveillance and tailing all the time. Loaning them out to Homicide made sense.

  I made no effort to lose him. I drove straight to the library, parked and went inside with my pen and notepad. The Narco cop didn’t follow me inside, as best I could tell.

  I logged into the free computer, and called up a map program. It took me about five minutes to find Brassart’s house. When I zoomed out and shifted west, there was only one possibility for the neighbor’s house. I jotted down the address on some scrap paper, then I went to the county assessor’s website. After I punched in the address, a warning came up advising me that the information I was about to view was not to be used for commercial purposes. I hit Agree with no compunction.

  A moment later, a picture of the neighbor’s home came up. I scrolled down the page to the owner/taxpayer name, and read:

  Garrison, Walter and Jeni.

  So, now the mysterious neighbor in the silver Mercedes had a name. Walter Garrison. I wondered how his wife Jeni would feel if she knew he was driving over to the Brassart residence to console the widow.

  I spent another hour mining the Internet for information on Walter Garrison, making a few notes. When I’d finished, I went into the history file for the browser and deleted my trail.

  The scarred Taurus wasn’t anywhere in sight when I walked into the library parking lot, but I spotted it in the lot across the street as I was pulling back onto the arterial. He waited until a few cars passed before pulling in behind me and resuming his follow. I kept an eye on the Taurus the rest of the way to Harrity’s office. He couldn’t be the only car tailing me, but he was the only one I could spot.

  I made a point to park a block away and walk in the opposite direction of Harrity’s office. Then I cut through an alley and a parking lot before approaching the front door of his office. If they were good, they’d still be on me, but I felt like I had to at least try.

  Harrity had a client, so I had to wait for about twenty minutes. I looked out the second story window down to the street, but didn’t see the Taurus. No obvious cops, either, but spotting an undercover Narco isn’t always easy, especially if he’s any good.

  When the client left, Harrity invited me into his office. He seemed more like his old self again when he sat down.

  “Have you reached a conclusion?” he asked without preamble.

  “I have some thoughts,” I said.

  “And?”

  I shrugged. “It looks like she did it. Or had it done.” I gave him a brief run-down of what I knew.

  His brow furrowed. “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I’m not. But the facts are pretty straightforward. The only thing that threw me was the fact that the cops are watching her. There must be a hole in their case somewhere and they’re hoping she’ll screw up somehow and fill it.”

  “It’s not an uncommon tactic,” Harrity said. “And it’s frequently successful.”

  “People can’t get out of their own way sometimes,” I observed.

  “Precisely.” He leaned forward. “But I’m not interested in what the police think. They indicated that very clearly when they asked the prosecutor to charge the case, which he did. I’m interested in what you think.”

  I sighed. “I just don’t know.”

  “Explain.”

  “I’ll try.” I thought about it, then shrugged. “My brain says she’s guilty, either of doing it or getting the neighbor to do it.”

  “Mr. Garrison?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  I glanced down at my notes. “Looks like he’s into commercial real estate, brokering leases in office space and malls, mostly. He’s been sued a couple of times, though I couldn’t find the outcome of either suit. He’s active in Kiwanis, and plays racquetball.”

  Harrity gave me an odd look. “Racquetball?”

  “He won a league championship a couple of years ago at his gym. They posted it on their website.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  I put my notes down. “On top of all that, he owns a home worth over half a million, and he appears to be sleeping with your prospective client. And that is about all I know about him at this point.”

  “Murder doesn’t exactly seem to be in his repertoire,” Harrity said.

  “Love is a dangerous drug,” I told him. “Besides, I don’t know eno
ugh about him to really say if he’s the kind of guy who could run over a jogging man from behind or not. What I can say is that the affair provides a pretty tried and true motive for either Marie Brassart or Walter Garrison to kill Henry.”

  “Motive does not equate to guilt.”

  “No, it doesn’t. And there’s something else bothering me, too.”

  “What is that?”

  “The cops aren’t just watching Brassart. Now they’re following me.”

  Harrity’s expression grew concerned. “What do you mean?”

  I told him about the blue Taurus and my Narcotics unit theory.

  He listened, nodding along. “That makes some sense,” he said. “But why follow you?”

  “I’m a wild card. They don’t know how I’m connected, so they’re running it down. They need to eliminate me as a suspect, but I’m sure they also want to know what my angle is.”

  “Your angle is no secret,” Harrity said. “If they followed you here, let them come and ask why. I’ll tell them. What you’re doing is perfectly legal.”

  “Well….”

  He gave me another look of concern. “It is, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “Technically, I trespassed on Marie Brassart’s property.”

  Harrity frowned. “On the curtilage, or…?”

  “No. In the woods surrounding her home.”

  “Oh.”

  “Twice,” I added.

  His frown deepened.

  “And,” I finished, “the second time was after the detectives warned me not to interfere with the case. They threatened me with an obstruction charge.”

  Harrity snorted. “A common threat, rarely enforceable. They go to that well far too often.”

  “Small comfort when I’m the one facing the charge.”

  He gave me a long stare. “You seem to have stirred things up a bit.”

  A small worm of irritation wriggled in my chest. “Let’s try to remember why you hired me to handle this, and not some big firm.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged in concession. “Point taken.”

  “Either way, I don’t know if it is a good idea to be sharing anything with them just yet. You’ve got a reputation to consider.”

  “I’m not worried about my reputation,” Harrity said.

  “Well, I’d like to stay out of jail, too.”

  He actually smiled. “For a change?”

  I just stared back at him, surprised. “I didn’t think you had a sense of humor, counselor.”

  The smile went away as quickly as it had appeared. “It’s not my strong suit.” He cleared his throat. “In any event, I think your suggested course of action is the correct one. I’ll hold off on any information sharing with the police.”

  “What about your call on representing Marie Brassart?”

  He smiled again, this time humorlessly. “I’m unable to make that decision. My investigator hasn’t finalized his recommendation yet, has he?”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  31

  I took a different route back to my car, even though it involved walking almost two blocks out of my way. As I walked, I called Adam.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he asked.

  “I need to pick your brain about something. Can I buy you a cup?”

  The moment of silence on the other end of the phone was telling. But then he answered, “Okay, yeah.”

  “See you at the Rocket in an hour?”

  He agreed and we hung up.

  I kept my eyes peeled for the Narco cop in the Taurus, but either I’d lost him, or he’d gotten better at his job, because there was no sign of him. Even so, I drove a long and circuitous route to the Rocket Bakery, doubling back several times to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I couldn’t be certain, but I felt pretty good about the possibility that I was tail free.

  The Rocket Bakery was starting to pick up for lunch traffic by the time I took a corner table in the back. I sipped my Americano and leafed through the River City Herald. The stories all seemed to be the same as the last time I read the thing, but I’m sure that said more about me than the rest of the world.

  Adam arrived about fifteen minutes later.

  “I’m on a short timetable,” he said as he sat down. “They’ve got me redacting some footage for media release.”

  “What footage?”

  “Some stupid clip we shot during the animal rights protest last month. Remember Mira Tanis, the actress?”

  “No.”

  “She did those comedies with the guy from that TV show? The one about the guy that had the pet penguin in his apartment?”

  I stared at him. “In a million years, I wouldn’t watch a show about a guy with a pet penguin.”

  “It was actually pretty funny. Anyway, he made a movie, and she was in it.”

  “The penguin?”

  “No, the actress. Mira Tanis.”

  “You’ve totally lost me.”

  The waitress arrived and Adam ordered his usual. Then he turned back to me. “It’s simple. Mira Tanis was at the animal protest. She was part of the whole passive resistance bit they pulled. Some other protestor decided to go from passive to active. He was probably trying to impress her, or something. Anyway, there was a fight, he got Tasered, and now it’s a big deal. You really haven’t heard about this?”

  “I don’t watch Entertainment Tonight, I guess.”

  He pointed to the paper. “I know the Herald covered it.”

  “Not today.”

  “Well, anyway, we filmed the whole thing, and now it’s a lot of work. I’ve got to blur out faces and bleep out personal information. It’s a slow process, and not much fun.”

  I leaned forward. “Listen, if you’re pressed for time, let me get straight to the point.”

  He seemed to shuffle nervously in his seat. I hadn’t asked him for anything in a long time, and that had become the accepted norm in our relationship. I could tell he was wondering if I was about to violate that.

  “Relax,” I said. “I don’t want anything illegal…or even a little bit funny.”

  That made him smile. “Nothing illegal, just a little bit funny,” he half-sang, and nodded appreciatively. “Nice. A Bruce call back. I thought you’d forgotten that CD I made you.”

  The truth was, the CD he was talking about didn’t get much play. Courtesy of superfan Adam, the handwritten title (“An Introduction to Bruce Springsteen”) was supposed to convert me. It hadn’t, though one song did resonate. “The Big Muddy” seemed to possess a kind of simple wisdom that I kept coming back to.

  “What’s your question?” Adam asked.

  “It’s pretty straightforward. What do you know about collisions?”

  His face pinched in confusion. “I don’t follow. That’s a pretty wide topic.”

  “I mean, the math of it. I worked my share when I was on the job, and I’m sure you did, too. But that was at a basic level, right? Who should I talk to about the more advanced stuff?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  I explained the scenario of Henry Brassart’s death to him. At first he listened with an expression of academic interest. After a minute or two, realization flooded his features, and he leaned away.

  “You’re talking about the Marie Brassart case, aren’t you?”

  I stopped. “Why do you say that?”

  He tapped the newspaper. “I read this. And I pay attention to everything that happens inside the department. There are a lot of resources being poured into that case. People talk.”

  I wondered for a second if he’d heard about Cole hauling me in to talk to Matsuda. “What do they say?”

  He shrugged. “I probably shouldn’t talk about it.” He eyed me more closely. “How are you involved?”

  “I probably shouldn’t talk about it,” I said, smiling slightly.

  Adam’s coffee arrived. He made a show of stirring it, and taking a sip. Then he said in a stiff tone, “I can’t help you with anything t
hat has to do with a formal investigation.”

  “I know.”

  “We tried that before, and it nearly cost me my job.”

  “I know.”

  “And our friendship.”

  “Believe me, I know.”

  “Then why are you asking me this?” His voice sounded sad and angry at the same time.

  I held up my hands in a peace gesture. “Whoa. Look, let’s just talk theoretically here. I want to understand the mechanics of an auto-pedestrian collision. No specifics about any case. Just math.”

  He didn’t look at me for a long while. Then he sighed. “Only math?”

  “That’s right.”

  Another sigh. “Okay. If it’s just math.”

  “Good. So who’s the best collision investigator?”

  “Corporal Hallock,” he answered immediately.

  “Think he’ll talk to me?”

  He shook his head. “I doubt it. You’re not exactly on the Christmas newsletter list down there, Stef.”

  “That’s no lie.”

  “Besides…” Adam trailed off.

  “What?”

  “He…he probably worked on…uh, a case similar to your hypothetical.”

  I stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “Very similar,” Adam added meaningfully.

  “Oh.” I thought about it for a moment, then asked, “Is there someone else that maybe you could talk to?”

  He shook his head again. “No need. About a year ago, he asked me to design a spreadsheet program to work out the different equations.”

  “Don’t they have software for that?”

  “Sure. But that costs money, and we’re in a budget crunch.”

  I held back a snort. The police department was in a perpetual state of self-proclaimed budget crunch. When it goes on that long, there’s another word for it. Cheap.

  “Besides,” Adam said, “they spent all of their software budget on some 3D rendering program. New, cutting edge stuff. You punch the data into it and it draws out the roadway, the cars, everything. Then it animates the collision.”

  “Crash cartoons,” I mused.

  Adam shrugged. “Juries like visual evidence. Anyway, we had to run several test cases through to validate the program for court testimony. It was a pretty big project.”