Deception (2 page)

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

My heartfelt thanks to Doreen Button, who looked over the manuscript in detail and made suggestions at critical points, all the way through proofreading.

Thanks to my friend and skilled editor Rod Morris for our partnership on yet another project. Thanks also to Julee Schwarzburg for her graciousness, attention to detail, and editorial input, as well as to Jennifer Barrow, for her outstanding copyediting. And to Rebekah Nafziger and Adrienne Spain for proofreading, and Pamela McGrew for typesetting.

Thanks to Kevin Marks and Doug Gabbert, for your encouragement and patience with this project. And to Sharon Znachko, for all your work and your kind words … thanks, sis.

I’m grateful to all those who have been part of the Multnomah family—including my friend Jay Echternach—and to my dedicated partners at WaterBrook who will help get this book into people’s hands. And to the booksellers, without whom it wouldn’t matter that I write books.

Thanks to the DesignWorks Group and especially to Tim Green for his great work on the
Deception
cover, as well as the new covers for
Deadline
and
Dominion
. (And thanks to Lawrence and Robin Green, who get some credit for Tim.)

Thanks to the staff of Eternal Perspective Ministries, who do so much for me and who put up with a lot while I was buried in this project. Specifically, thanks to my assistants, Kathy Norquist and Linda Jeffries; my secretary, Bonnie Hiestand; and our bookkeeper and diligent proofreader, Janet Albers. Bonnie in particular spent many hours deciphering my handwritten changes when I was reading the book aloud.

Thanks to Diane Meyer for her interest in a spin-off book from
Deadline
and
Dominion
and her encouragement after reading an early draft. Also for her great job on the study questions. And to all the readers who’ve written me about those books, published in 1994 and 1996, who asked me to write another, not expecting to wait this long.

Thanks to our dear friend Sue Keels, for coming up with the title
Deception
while we were brainstorming during a glorious vacation. Thanks also to my buddy Steve Keels, Sue’s husband, who regularly made helpful comments, such as “Aren’t you done with that book yet?”

Special thanks to Detective Sergeant Tom Nelson, who helped me years ago with
Deadline
and
Dominion
and who cheerfully answered many questions over many months concerning
Deception
. Thanks also to my friends Jim Seymour, police officer, and Darrell MacKay, arson investigator, for your helpful insights.

Thanks to Sarah Ballenger for her research on various questions. And to Amy Campbell for entering my manuscript changes on short notice, while trying not to let it spoil the book for her.

Thanks to Tony and Martha Cimmarrusti, Carlos and Gena Norris, Stu Weber, Carol Hardin, Ken and Joni Tada, Sarah Thebarge, and our Sunday night football group, for comments they made that contributed to this book though they didn’t know it. Thanks to Dave Stout for introducing me years ago to one of Ollie’s mottoes.

Thank you, Frank and Myrna Eisenzimmer and Randy and Sue Monnes, for offering me places to write that proved to be great sanctuaries. And to our EPM Prayer Partners, whose prayers as I wrote this book may prove to be the single greatest human contribution to it.

Heartfelt thanks to my wife and best friend, Nanci, whose encouraging comments on the manuscript kept me going in rough times and who thoughtfully gave me permission to go back to work many times when neither of us wanted me to.

Thanks to my precious daughters, Karina and Angela, who made valuable comments on the prologue, and to my wonderful sons, Dan Franklin and Dan Stump, whose lives and interactions contributed to portions of the book. Thanks to Angie also for the medical insights. Thanks to our grandsons, Jake, Ty, and Matt, endless sources of delight when I came in from my office needing a joy transfusion.

I also want to acknowledge Rex Stout, creator of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, written in the 1930s to 1960s. Ollie, my viewpoint character, admires Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Now and then I’ve put into Ollie’s mouth some of Stout’s expressions, a tribute to him. I couldn’t give Stout credit each time, nor can I remember all I’ve absorbed from many pleasant hours reading his books. So I credit him here for what are probably several dozen of his phrases or ideas scattered throughout this book.

Finally and most importantly, thank You, my Lord Jesus, for sustaining me through this project, which was delayed by innumerable unanticipated events in order to conform to Your perfect timing. I pray above all that You are pleased by it and will use it as You see fit.

“Those who seek my life set their traps, those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they plot deception.”

P
SALM
38:12

“Messin’ with me’s like wearin’ cheese underwear down rat alley.”

O
LLIE
C
HANDLER

Prologue

“I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity it is certainly beyond me.”

S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
,
T
HE ADVENTURES OF THE DEVIL’S FOOT

IN A DARK ROOM
punctured by a bare hundred-watt bulb, two newspaper clippings on the card table appeared whitish gray, four others dim and yellow. Agile fingers arranged them chronologically so the handiwork could be better displayed.

Should they be placed in a scrapbook? What if they were found? Of all places, surely no one would try to break into this one. The world’s full of stupid people, but not that stupid.

Most of the people in the clippings had been stupid. But over the years, one by one, they’d been abruptly liberated of their stupidity. And the world had been liberated of them.

A penciled list of names dropped to the table, by the playing cards, next to the clippings.

It was time for another stupid person to go away.

But which one?

The liberator brooded thirty minutes, forearm bulging, squeezing hard a small object.

Finally, one name rose to the top.

The mastermind wrote the name down, then covered it with the ace of spades.

1

“My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.”

S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
,
T
HE
H
OUND OF THE
B
ASKERVILLES

W
EDNESDAY
, N
OVEMBER
6

MY CHEST POUNDING
like a dryer load of army boots, I knocked the noisemaker off its cradle, then groped for it in the darkness. Three enormous red digits—2:59—assaulted my eyes.

“Hello?” The voice on the phone was deep and croaky. “Detective Ollie Chandler?”

I nodded my head, admitting it.

“Chandler?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t answer your cell.” His voice was a hacksaw cutting a rain gutter. “You awake?”

“No. But … you may as well finish the job.”

“In bed?”

“Mowin’ the lawn. Who died?”

I’ve been waiting all my life for good news from a 3:00 a.m. phone call. It’s been a wait of Chicago Cubs proportions.

Many imagine that middle-of-the-night phone calls mean someone’s been killed. I don’t imagine it. It’s true.

Jake Woods tells me there’s a God in charge of the universe. I’m not convinced. But if there is, I’d appreciate it if He’d schedule murders during day shift.

“Victim’s Jimmy Ross,” Sergeant Jim Seymour said. I pictured him sitting home in his underwear. Not a pretty picture.

“Drug dealer.”

I didn’t shed a tear. They say cops are cynical. To me drug dealers are a waste of protoplasm. They should be shot, injected, then put on the electric chair at a low setting.

“Officer Sayson’s the patrol,” Sergeant Seymour said. “1760 Southeast Clinton, apartment 34.” I scratched it down in the dark, postponing those first daggers of light.

As I hung up, I sensed a presence in the dark room and reached toward the nightstand for my Smith and Wesson 340 revolver. I saw the whites of two eyes three feet away. My hand clenched the revolver. Suddenly I recognized the sympathetic eyes of Mike Hammer, my bullmastiff, who spends his nights getting in and out of my bed, licking my toes to reassure me he’s back.

Slowly I withdrew my hand from the gun, not wanting to send the wrong message to my bullie.

What was wrong with me? How could I forget Mike Hammer, my roommate and best friend? I shuddered, remembering five years ago, when I drew the gun on Sharon when she came back to bed after taking Advil.

The problem with morning is that it comes before my first cup of coffee. I stumbled toward the kitchen, fingertips on the hallway wall, stubbing my toe on the exercise bike Sharon bought me. I’ve used it twice in four years. I keep it around to maintain the illusion that it’s making me healthy. Since this helps me justify the next cheeseburger, it’s worth every penny she paid.

I keep water in my top-of-the-line Mr. Coffee, poured to the ten-cup mark, with Starbucks French roast always waiting. In my quest for maximum darkness, I load the filter to the top. Whether it’s 7:00 a.m. or 3:00 a.m., I can throw the switch and, even though the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, coffee’s brewing … so there’s hope.

I leaned against the fridge and pulled the pot off the burner every few ounces to get what was there. I’d mainline it if I could. Sharon told me maybe I should drink less coffee now that Juan Valdez named his donkey after me.

Trying to remember whether I’d had three hours of sleep or two, I put Mike Hammer—I call him Mulch for short—out the back door to do his business. Every morning he acts like it’s his first time, a privilege he’s been waiting for all his life. After two minutes outside for him and six more ounces of coffee for me, Mulch blew open the door to get his biscuit.

I abandoned Mr. Coffee and headed for the bathroom. I put my face two inches from the showerhead and let the water pummel me.

Presumably I dressed, poured the last of the coffee into my thirty-ounce mug, and said good-bye to two of my favorite people—Mulch and Mr. Coffee. Mulch licked my face. I wiped off Mulch-slobber and tossed the paper towel at the sink, coming up short. I slowly shut the front door, watching Mulch shred the paper towel—his reward whenever I miss.

“You’re in charge while I’m gone.”

Mulch loves it when I say that.

It was early November but felt like late December. Like a polar bear on ice, I negotiated the slick walk to my white Ford Taurus. I dropped into the driver’s seat and kicked aside a Big Gulp cup and a Burger King bag, which expelled the scent of French fries like a perfume spray bottle. I must have been on a stakeout the night before. Maybe two nights before. Eventually I’d remember.

You shouldn’t assume I was conscious during all this. A detective establishes his routine so he can do it in his sleep. You wake up on the way, more at each stoplight. By the time you really need consciousness, it’s usually there. You just hope it doesn’t arrive at the scene after you do.

It was dripping cold. I drew the window half down to double-team with the coffee. Every few blocks I stuck my face out—I learned this from Mulch—and gulped a quick fix of wet oxygen. Then I pulled in my frozen face and warmed it with the coffee. It’s a ritual, like those Scandahoovean men who go back and forth from ice baths to saunas.

The Portland night, nearly uninhabited, smelled of frosty rain on asphalt. It reminded me of working the beat, night shift. One year I saw no daylight between November and February. From what I heard, I didn’t miss much.

When you’re on the “up team”—on call for the next murder—getting yanked from the netherworld in the middle of the night comes with the territory. It’s the only thing easier now since Sharon died: I don’t have to worry about her worrying about me.

I turned onto Burnside, next to Max, the light-rail tracks, where there’s only one lane. Occasionally people don’t understand that what I’m doing is more important than what they’re doing. The moron in front of me—only the fourth car I’d seen—just sat there in his lowrider Acura Integra, figuring that since it’s 3:23 a.m., he can chat with someone on the curb, even after the light’s turned green.

My Taurus is a slicktop—unmarked. Cop on the inside, civilian on the outside. Usually that’s handy. Not this time. I honked. Nothing.

I honked again. Then I reached to my right and typed in the license number on my mobile data computer. I honked a third time.

The bozo charged out of his car, yelling and swearing. When he was two feet from my window, I pulled my Glock 19 and pointed it at his face.

“Get out of my way.
Now.”

He froze, with the fixated expression of a man wetting his pants. He scuttled back to his car sideways, like a crab, and hopped in, banging his head on the door frame. He turned his key with a garbage-disposal grind, forgetting he’d left the car running. He screeched through the now-red light.

I flipped on my flashing red and blue grill-mounted strobes. He edged to the right, and I passed with an inch clearance. My computer screen flashed. I lowered my passenger window and shouted, “Have a nice day, Nathan Roberts!”

Okay, maybe when he approached my car I should have identified myself as a cop. But many people assume that if you’re a cop you won’t shoot them. I didn’t want Nathan to labor under this assumption.

Having been a cop for thirty years, I find that you can get most of what you want with a kind word. But sometimes, as Al Capone put it, you can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun.

“Sayson?” I spoke into the car phone. “Chandler. Homicide. On my way. 1760 Southeast Clinton? Apartments?”

“Greenbridge Arms. Third floor, four doors left off the elevator. Apartment 34’s sealed. My partner’s checking on neighbors. Dozen people heard the shots. One possible witness.”

“Be there in five.”

When I’m on the up team, anybody who kills somebody does it on my watch. That means they’re messin’ with me. And messin’ with me’s like wearin’ cheese underwear down rat alley.

I pulled up to the Greenbridge Arms, studying the four-story brick building. I settled next to one of three patrol cars in a no parking zone, beside a van labeled KAGN.

Four criminals rushed me, armed with notepads, pens, electronic gadgets, and cameras. Crips and Bloods have a name. So do these—journalists.

“What can you tell us, Detective Chandler?” The
Oregon Tribune
reporter brandished her notepad, poison pen ready to scribble.

“Nothing. If you check your notes, you’ll see I just arrived.”

“They’re denying us entrance to the apartments.”

“Good for them.” This was standard procedure, but reporters—thinking they’re royalty—are outraged when they aren’t allowed to trample a crime scene.

“Victim’s name’s Jimmy Ross, apartment 34. Right?”

Apparently someone on police radio had slipped up and said the victim’s name. “There’s a victim?”

“We called neighbors, and they confirmed it was Jimmy Ross. True?”

“Why would I tell you?”

“What’s the harm? We heard it on the radio. We just want you to confirm it.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“We’re just doing our job.”

“You’re getting in the way of me doing
my
job. Monitor your own calls.”

“Cops don’t own the airwaves. The public deserves to know what’s going on.”

I turned away as her photographer took a photo. He grabbed the sleeve of my trench coat. I yanked it back. I turned toward him. His camera flash did that dagger thing in my eyes.

“Out of my face!”

I saw the red light of a television news camera right behind him. Images of my anger management class assaulted me. I’d sworn I’d never subject myself to that again.

I smiled and waved to the camera. “Just kidding! Actually, I want to thank you folks for coming. I wish I had time for tea and crumpets, but we have a crime to solve and people’s lives to protect, so if it doesn’t inconvenience you, I’ll be going up to the crime scene now. Enjoy.”

The
Tribune
and TV reporters and their cameramen followed me to the front door of the apartments, where Officer Brandon Gentry opened the door for me. He and I nodded at each other, two professionals trying to beat off the vultures. I wondered if he was an anger management alumnus. They should give us a secret hand signal. I signed his log sheet and wrote down the time: 3:39 a.m.

The TV cameraman pushed open the front door and did a quick sweep with his video. As I stepped in the elevator, I said, “Officer Gentry, there’s a van illegally parked. I think it has the letters KAGN on it. Would you please write a parking citation?”

The door closed and I tried not to ponder how the media, especially the
Tribune
, had been my judge, jury, and nearly my executioner fifteen years before. I needed to switch gears to the job at hand. At least I was awake.

The elevator was old, with a bad case of asthma. As I got out on the third floor, I popped in a stick of Black Jack gum—my crime scene entrance ritual.

I headed up the hall to the left and saw a cop, midtwenties, poised like a jackal guarding pharaoh’s tomb.

“Sayson?”

He nodded, too eagerly. Academy written all over him, Officer Sayson exuded a Secret Service alertness. If he lives long enough, eventually it’ll give way to the fear of dying on duty and leaving behind kids and the wife he’s promised not to forsake. Eagerness to jump into the middle of a dangerous situation is inversely proportionate to age. Twenty years ago I was chasing armed fugitives down back alleys, by myself. Now my first thought is to call for SWAT teams, armored cars, helicopters, guided missiles, or stealth bombers—whatever’s available.

I’m a Vietnam vet. Someone watching my back means everything. Officer Sayson was protecting my crime scene; he was my new best friend.

Entering apartment 34, I stepped from hallway to crime scene. There, sprawled in a death pose, was Jimmy Ross, two shots to the head. Physical evidence all over the place, with a bonus: a sealed Ziploc bag of Ecstasy and a half-spilled sack of meth. No need for a lab report to tell me what was what.

Sayson introduced me to the apartment manager, who assured me Ross lived alone. No wife, live-in girlfriend, brother, cousin, friend, or roommate. Sayson consulted two neighbors who’d noticed lots of coming and going. The manager appeared shocked, as if he’d never suspected one of his renters was a drug dealer. Go figure.

Since most murders are done by family members, that’s where you look first. Domestic arguments normally begin in the living room, where weapons are limited. They migrate to the kitchen, where weapons abound, or the bedroom, where there’s a gun, which has a way of ending fights. This argument had stayed in the living room. No sign the killer had been anywhere else—only between the door and body. Didn’t fit the domestic murder profile.

Sayson told me the paramedic who’d come twenty minutes ago had pronounced Jimmy Ross dead. I looked at what used to be the man. He was dead all right.

The medical examiner, Carlton Hatch—I’d seen him at a dozen other homicides—showed up ten minutes after I did. Most MEs ask you to call them when you want the body removed, after the crime scene’s clean and detailed. Unless time of death is unknown, the ME may not arrive until three or four hours later. Not Hatch. Every time I’ve worked with him, he’s come immediately, like an autograph hound to an NFL team hotel.

Hatch is a number two pencil, head pink and bald like an eraser. He carries a man-purse and wears a nicely fitted suit beneath a poorly fitted face. His pointy chin isn’t a good match for his pale, bloated cheeks. Too much chlorine in his gene pool.

I gazed down at my Wal-Mart jacket over my flannel shirt spotted with yesterday’s bacon and cheese omelet. I considered my rumpled slacks, pockets holding Tuesday’s Taco Bell receipt and a packet of hot sauce. Then I looked again at the ME’s tailored suit.