Harmless (9 page)
God, this sounds like
such mumbling nonsense. I can’t even think of what kind of help I’d actually
ask for. What could YOU do for me? I think if you’d been just a little
less…eager…it would’ve been nice to have a shoulder to cry on. Somebody that
might keep an eye out for strange cars or notice anything out of the ordinary
going on outside my house. Somebody other than that crow across the street.
That Epstein lady. What a wench, huh?
I knew it! See?
Everyone hates her.
I’ve been kinda paranoid
lately. What I mean by that is, some weird things have been happening. Hang
ups on my home phone, like somebody’s checking to see if I’m here. I’ve
noticed a black sedan following me lately and I think (I’m really stressing the
word “think”) that it might be a cop. I went running last week, over by the
park, and the same car was parked outside of a house along with two normal cop
cars. I mean, like, patrol cars. Could be my imagination, but it’s almost too
coincidental to ignore.
The thing is, I wouldn’t
put it past Harry DeShazo to show up here and kill me himself. He’s ruthless.
But he’s also smarter than that. He has money. Lots of it, so more than
likely, he’s paid someone to find me. What better way than a dirty cop, huh?
I guess my point is
this…if I’m dead, and you found this in time, you can make up for being so
weird by figuring out who did it, whether it was DeShazo himself or someone he
hired. Get him behind bars! He’s dangerous, and not just for killing me, if
that’s what happened.
And let me ask you one
last favor. Please go check on my dad and make sure he’s okay. He knows who
you are, and he wanted me to tell you thanks for recommending the goat cheese.
He’s so sweet. He does this thing every year on their anniversary where he
serves dinner like she’s actually there with him. Breaks my heart.
If you’re reading this,
Step-Hen, thank you. Do what you can, but only if you want to.
If it’s anyone else
reading this, I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore since I’m dead.
Jan (Kerry)
I took a deep breath
and threw the diary across my bedroom.
Truthfully, I don’t
know why. It just felt like the appropriate response, and then I immediately
regretted it. I shouldn’t have been flinging around my last, final connection
to the woman who had trusted me with such heart-punching information. And what’s
worse, I had confirmation of our souls connecting, but evidently, I had come on
too strong and blown it.
This isn’t a new
revelation. I’ve heard it before—and disagree—but I had to give credence to
her feelings. Love is compromise.
Still, to this day, it
feels so…I don’t know, square-peg-round-hole to call her Jan, so I’ll just
continue referring to her as Kerry. You’ll know who I’m talking about,
regardless.
The She of All Things.
She’s Kerry to me, and
always will be.
***
Here are three
important facts I learned by reading her diary:
1) Harry DeShazo
deserved a fate much worse than time behind bars. Death wouldn’t have been
enough.
I’m
a wretch? Look in the mirror, Harry.
2) My arch-nemesis,
the bane of my existence, the Hatfield to my McCoy, Clarence, was her father.
You probably saw that coming before I did. My judgment was clouded. Grant me
that, at least. And I felt guilty for my animosity toward him. Poor guy.
(Strange to think that after so many months of disgust.) His wife had died of
cancer and his daughter had been murdered. My new mission, completely
contradictory to the one where I wanted to shove him into a burlap potato sack
and hurl him into the sun, would be to do whatever I could to make things right
for the man. Hard to believe? People can change their minds. That’s the
beauty of free will.
3) If Kerry had been
telling the truth, two million dollars sat buried underneath the rows of
tomatoes and green beans she’d recently planted. Two million dollars that had
been the cause of her hasty exit.
***
It may seem like that
last one shouldn’t matter.
Money
shouldn’t matter, not when someone so
close to you has met such an unjust end. But it did, and not in the way you
might think.
I wanted to set it on
fire.
I wanted to pile it up
in a tidy, perfunctory pyramid and douse it with lighter fluid.
I wanted to watch it
burn.
But I didn’t. A more
suitable scenario would’ve been to take every last bill, no matter the
denomination—George Washington preferred, due to the bulk—and shove it down
Harry DeShazo’s throat, making him swallow my pain so I wouldn’t have to.
I sat there for a
while, on my bed, legs crossed, daydreaming about finding him, tying him to a
chair, and then prying his mouth open with a crowbar. Then, I’d coat each
individual dollar with fiery hot sauce and force it down his horrible gullet so
that it would sear his insides, all the way down.
I checked my watch. It
was a little after three in the morning.
Knowing that sleep
wouldn’t come anytime soon, I went out to my tool shed and grabbed a shovel.
And for the first time
in a long time, I didn’t think about how Shayna would react.
Officer Planck
“I’ll ask again,
Officer Planck, what did you find?”
“Can I get some water?
And maybe turn those lights down a little. My head is killing me.”
“Lights and water for
Officer Planck, please.”
“Thanks. That helps.”
“What did you find?”
“Let me give you a
little background first. I mean, you probably want to know
why
I
decided to help him, right?”
“That’s a question that
has come up, yes.”
“On the night of Miss
Oliver’s death, Steve…uh,
Mr. Pendragon
called me for assistance—”
“And why did he do
that, Officer Planck? Why call
you
first?”
“I told you already,
the guy was obsessed with me and he wanted my help because he was afraid, and
rightly so, that Schott and Berger—or whoever got assigned to the case—he was
afraid they would screw it up. I don’t think he
knew
, per se, but it
turned out to be a fairly accurate assumption.”
“Continue, but I ask
that you refrain from any more accusations regarding the department’s
effectiveness, no matter what eventually transpired.”
“Or what?”
“Just a gentle
warning. You were saying?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll keep
it short—he brought up this…this thing from my past. I screwed up big time
about four years ago. I’m not gonna go into detail—you can look it up if you
want. Basically, he made me feel guilty. Right place, right time. Right
button to push. I don’t know how long he’d known about it, but he had that ace
up his sleeve, just waiting to use it. So anyway, that started it—”
“Started what?”
“Me caving in, I
guess. But then, he said that he’d leave me alone if I helped him out, and you
gotta understand, I was
so
ready to be done with him.”
“And you agreed.”
“Hell yeah, I agreed.
Who wouldn’t? If you knew the guy…”
“We’ve had a number of
discussions with him and haven’t necessarily come to that same assessment yet.”
“Give it time.”
“Let’s stay on track.
You agreed to help. Go from there.”
“Yeah. Off the record,
under the table, whatever you want to call it.”
“Without informing the
lead detectives.”
“Yes. That’s about the
size of it.”
“Did you feel, at any
point that this was the wrong course of action?”
“I did, but it was
worth the result. Getting him away from me was the only goal, at least until I
realized that if you know how to read him, he’s not half bad.”
“But you just said you
were ready to be done with him. Which is it, Officer Planck? You wanted him
gone or you’re having him over for dinner?”
“Man, come on, what do
you want from me? The thing is—look, you see—actually liking the guy—it’s like
a dude watching
The Bachelor
. It’s acceptable until somebody catches
you doing it.”
“Again, let’s stay
focused here.”
“What? You started
it.”
“What happened after you
agreed to help?”
“He called me the next
day. Said he’d been up almost all night. He said he’d found something but
didn’t want to tell me what.”
“Something from Miss
Oliver’s diary?”
“Exactly. Which I knew
nothing about, at the time. I’d like to make that extremely clear. I had no
prior knowledge of the diary—
the evidence
—that he removed from her
home.”
“And what had he
found?”
“It’s there in the
report.”
“On the record,
please.”
“That he had a good
idea of who killed her.”
“And whom did he think
it was?”
“Harry DeShazo. A
retired broker from Goldman Sachs.”
“Why did he think it
was Mr. DeShazo?”
“This is ridiculous. I
don’t see why I have to keep repeating everything you already know. There are
pages and pages right there in front of you. See how thick that folder is?
Why don’t you just read it out loud and save me the trouble?”
“You know how this
works, Officer Planck. In the event of a trial—”
“I have to go to
trial
?”
“Not necessarily.
Precautions.”
“Precautions? Against
what?”
“We take these things
very seriously. Just answer the questions truthfully, and you’ll be fine.”
“I’m not sure I believe
you.”
“You’ll just have to
trust us.”
“That’ll be the day.”
“Answer the question,
please. Why did he think it was Mr. DeShazo?”
“Because her diary said
it might be him. Miss Oliver had stolen two million dollars from him back in
New York and she’d moved out here to hide. Changed her identity to Kerry
Parker and had been living a normal life. Well, as close as you can get to
that when you’re on the run. She’d legally changed her name, got a part-time
job at an elementary school. Had dinner dates with her dad every Thursday.
Usual life stuff. Only problem was, she had two million bucks in duffle bags
that belonged to a humongous asshole.”
“Strike the expletive
from the record. Let’s keep it clean, Office Planck. Next question: what
exactly had you learned about Harry DeShazo?”
“Like I said, he was a
retired broker from Goldman Sachs. Probably worth close to two hundred million
dollars. Had a house down in the Virgin Islands, one in Key West, and one up
in Bend, Oregon. You’d think with that kind of money, a measly two million
would be like emptying your pockets into the change jar at a gas station. But
no, it was a matter of principle. She’d stolen from him and he wanted to teach
her a lesson.”
“And how had he planned
to do that?”
“How do you think? By
killing her.”
“Using what method?”
“You know what
method—never mind. He hired somebody, this private detective named Edward
Strout.”
“And what information
do you have about him? Or
did
you have, I should say.”
“Just his name. I did
the research later, myself. Shady guy, had a real reputation for being willing
to do just about anything for the right price. He’s good, too. Not a blemish
on his record. Not even a parking ticket. So whatever the guy does, whatever
he gets away with, it’s professional. Clean.”
“It almost sounds like
you admire him.”
“It almost sounds like
you’re railroading me.”
“Disregard, please.
What happened with Mr. Strout?”
“Change of heart.”
“Change of heart?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Elaborate.”
“Christ, like I have
any clue what he was thinking? He did
part
of his job, I guess. He
found Miss Oliver and then chickened out. Or maybe he found Jesus. How should
I know?”
“How did he find her
all the way out here? All the way from New York?”
“He wouldn’t be a very
good P.I. if he couldn’t find her. The kicker of it all—it was her dad who
accidentally gave her away.”
“How?”
“After his wife died of
cancer, Miss Oliver moved him out here to be closer to her so she could keep an
eye on him. I guess the poor bastard didn’t understand how serious her
situation was—no, wait, I forgot her dad said that he didn’t know. She hadn’t
told him. Huge screwup on her part, because he didn’t hide his tracks as well
as she had. Strout would’ve found her eventually, I’m sure that was
inevitable, but if she’d only told her dad the truth upfront, it might’ve
bought her more time. You know, more time to get help or get gone.”
“Why do you think that
is?”
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t she tell
him? If she was smart enough to hide, it stands to reason she would’ve been
smart enough to make him stay under the radar.”
“You got a ring on your
finger. How long you been married?”
“I’ll ask the questions,
Officer Planck.”
“And you’ll answer
mine. How long?”
“Eighteen years.”
“You got kids?”
“A daughter.”
“Say your wife died of
cancer. You’re an emotional goddamn basket case that doesn’t know which way is
up. Your daughter, if she had anything resembling a heart, would think twice
about piling any more on by telling you she’d stolen two million dollars,
wouldn’t she?”
“My daughter wouldn’t
resort to theft.”
“That’s not the point
and you know it.”
“What
is
the
point, Planck?”
“If pride goes before
the fall, then emotion does, too. Compassion got Miss Oliver killed, not
negligence.”
“That will be for the
remainder of the investigation to decide. There’s something else we need to
cover. If it’s your opinion that Edward Strout didn’t kill Miss Oliver, then
who did?”
“We were about ninety
percent certain that Harry DeShazo did it himself.”
“And then the thing
with DeShazo proved otherwise.”
“Yes, the thing with
DeShazo proved otherwise.”
“I’m sure you’re aware
that all police-involved shootings are treated as a homicide until an
investigation is included.”
“I’m aware, damn it.”
“For the record, what
happened with Harry DeShazo?”
“You know what.”
“I do, and you need to
say it.”
“On the night of July
thirty-first, I removed my firearm from its holster and shot him twice in the
chest, as a matter of self-defense.”
“He didn’t survive.”
“He did not.”