Nantucket Sawbuck (21 page)

Bob Haffner:

Hey, I was totally out of it that night. I went to the benefit, but I had dinner at the strip first and I was sick as a dog. That's all I was thinking about, OK? Bad clams. I actually got to the benefit though. They gave me something to make me puke at the emergency room and everything was cool. I'm like a dog, man. I barf and I'm fine. Hey, at least I don't try to eat it, like my dog does. So anyway, I got to the party late, someone was watching Leno's monologue in the back room, but the place was still jumping, so that was cool. You should check out the guest list, man. Everybody was there.

Mike Henderson:

Listen, the guy owed me money. I could see threatening him. But I've never understood killing people over stuff like that. Or even hurting someone. Like the mafia. Some longshoreman owes them money, so they break his legs. How is he supposed to earn the money to pay them at that point? It's crazy. I did spread the news about Lomax skipping out. I overheard him, and I just thought…People should know this. It occurred to me that someone might try to do something to the guy. Sure, I admit it. And I guess they did. But it's nothing he didn't deserve, believe me. Lomax was a bad guy. You got in his way, you were roadkill. He wouldn't step on the brakes. He'd step on the gas. That's how I see it.

Cindy Henderson :

Of course Mike hated Lomax. Everyone did. But he would never have done anything violent. Mike's not that way. He breaks up fights, he doesn't start them. He was off-island the night Lomax died. He came to meet me in New York. It had nothing to do with the murder. It's private. We had private business there. I really don't think it's relevant.

Pat Folger: 

Sure, I was in his face at the party. People like Lomax make you want to get out of this business, I swear to God. They make it a goddamn misery. Ten years later, a pipe bursts and they'll sue you into the poor house. Meanwhile they change their minds every ten minutes, and you have to videotape them asking for the extras if you ever want to get paid. And the checks bounce, or they left their goddamn checkbook in New York. Who travels without a checkbook? But if I killed every one of these people who deserved it, I'd be more famous than Son of Sam, all right? And just for the record—whoever got in there, they didn't use my key. I keep those suckers locked up tight. I'm old school, sonny. I take my responsibilities seriously.

Jesse Coleman:

Yeah, I know Ed Delavane. I spend time at his house. But I don't sell drugs and neither does he. If he did, I'd bust him. This whole line of questions pisses me off, if you want to know the truth, Lonnie. I'm a cop. I have ambitions. Busting that turd would make my career. From summer special to detective in two years, man. I could write my own ticket after that. No, I'm not scared of him. He can try all the karate tricks he wants. I'm licensed to carry a firearm in this state and all that ninja stuff don't mean shit unless you're bulletproof.

Rick Folger:

I just worked for my dad. I was at the bottom of the food chain, man. I didn't know any of the customers. He would have killed me if I even said hello to them. The rule was, whatever they asked, I had to say, “You'll have to talk to my dad.” I mean—anything. “How's the weather? What
about them Sox last night?” You'll have to talk to my dad. “You and that girlfriend of yours still together?” You'll have to talk to my dad. He loved that one. That was his idea of a joke. Anyway, the point is, I never met Lomax or his family. I couldn't pick them out of a lineup. By the time they had their big party I had quit. So there was zero socializing, I hate those parties anyway—you know, put out some food for the morlocks. Give 'em a drink and pretend they're human for the night. Fuck that. I was long gone, anyway, like I said. I even got rid of my tools. I don't own a hammer anymore. Can you believe that? And it feels great. I'm never going to bang a nail again. My dad always said I hammered ‘like a cobbler.' Anyway. The one time I took a good swing, I smashed my thumb. The nail was black for a year. Ask him about it. He loves to tell that story. Hey, I know he's an asshole, but he'd never kill anyone. Let's get that straight. He doesn't even hunt anymore.

When I set the last page aside, I finished my coffee. It was cold, but I liked cold coffee. My notes reminded me of the “Voices of Nantucket” column in the
Inky Mirror
, man-on-the-street sound bites about the issues of the day. “How do you feel about the Lomax murder?”

I glanced at the clock: almost twelve. I should have left five minutes ago. I was going to be late picking up Fiona for lunch. I started to rise, changed my mind, and pulled the chair up to my desk. There was something in those transcripts, some organizing detail that would resolve all these random voices into a coherent story. I didn't have it, and it was giving me a headache.

Chapter Twenty-six

Dirty Laundry

I set the files aside. I had more immediate problems, and the first one was David Trezize, sitting in a holding cell downstairs. It wasn't just that he was innocent, which I firmly believed. Cobbling together circumstantial evidence against him was wasting valuable time. Plus the process had to be annoying David, and one thing I learned in Los Angeles was—don't gratuitously annoy journalists if you can avoid it. They write their stories anyway, and people read those stories, and the words shape people's perceptions and negative perceptions can make the day-to-day business police work, on the ground, talking to witnesses, panning the swift stream of a neighborhood gossip for a nugget of useful information, almost impossible. Conversations that start “Fuck are you doing here, pig?” rarely turn out well.

The Shoals
was a small paper, but its circulation was growing and in any case every big newspaper in the country had sent reporters to the island, and David was the obvious local contact for them. He'd be telling a story, and I didn't want that story to be one of arrogance, harassment, and incompetence.

Besides, I liked the guy. I admit it.

“So what were your footprints doing in the mud?” I asked him. He looked more rumpled and miserable than usual, sitting on the edge of the concrete slab. He needed a shower and a shave.

He looked up. “Funny, no one bothered to ask me that, Chief. I guess they figure it's obvious. I mean, I threatened the guy in front of all those witnesses. Including you.”

“No offense, David, but weak people make threats. Killers just get the job done. And they don't advertise it beforehand.”

He managed a smile. “Thanks. I guess.”

“Still. You came to the house. I'm betting it was the earlier in the day.”

He nodded. “I was returning Kathy's inhaler. She has asthma and she wears glasses and she takes the antidepressant and she's always losing her inhaler and leaving her glasses and forgetting to fill her prescription. Personally I think it's because she'd like to be a happy person with strong lungs and 20-20 vision and some part of her just rebels.”

I sat down next to David on the slab. “So she's in denial.”

“That's what we were fighting about. She was at my apartment and I was trying to explain…well, it's private.”

“Not during a murder investigation. Nothing's private during a murder investigation.”

A lot of people were going to find that out in the next few days.

He sighed. “All right. It had to do with her boyfriend. This painter kid, Kevin Sloane.”

“He was having an affair with her mother.” David looked up, startled. “Diana Lomax was driving the car that night. Remember? You picked up the traffic stop on your scanner. Kevin Sloane was with her.”

“Makes sense. Wish I'd known that. Anyway, she didn't want to hear it and she took off. I found the inhaler the next morning—after the big party. She threw herself at me when I brought it back, sobbing and sniffling and apologizing and calling herself an idiot.”

“She found out the truth?”

“She caught them in bed together.”

“Jesus.”

David bit his lip, shaking his head. “Terrific little present for the Advent calendar, huh? Must make you all giddy about what you're getting the next day.”

I stood. “But we know what she got the next day.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry about this David. I'll expedite the paperwork, get you out of here. If you remember anything else that might be useful, call me.” I dug out my card—the one with my private cell number, the old number with the 323 area code.

He took it. “I will.”

I dismissed Kevin as a suspect—he was a pilot fish, not a shark, and three other people's depositions placed him at the benefit party until dawn, long outstaying his welcome, still drinking Bud Light and chowing down on whatever food was left, but not helping to clean up, or even bus dishes back to the kitchen. Kevin had a clear idea who the party was going to benefit and it wasn't some stranger with multiple sclerosis. It was Kevin Sloane. That was his MO, but that didn't make him a murderer, especially when it came to the powerful husband of one of his many disposable girlfriends. Kevin was the type to cut and run, not make some romantic last stand with a fistful of cash and a bloody screwdriver.

He wore boots the same size as the prints in the snow, and with the same vibram sole. But the prints were too deep for him to have made them. I guessed that the person wearing those shoes had to weigh at least a hundred pounds more than the skinny painter. Hal Loomis, the taciturn SID guy from the state police, reluctantly agreed with me. I think he was surprised that I noticed. Local cops were supposed to be bumpkins. “I guess you picked up a thing or two with the LAPD,” he muttered.

That was as close to a compliment as I was going to get.

For Diana Lomax, innocence wasn't so clear-cut. Despite her apparently solid alibi, her genuine-seeming shock and her plausible suspicion of Tanya Kriel, her genuine upset at the sight of the girl, we weren't quite done with Diana.

There was still some of her privacy left to violate.

“You're not gonna believe this,” Lonnie Fraker said to me as I walked into the station the next morning.

I patted his shoulder. “You're probably right.”

He led me into the conference room, shut the door and took out a small digital recorder. “Listen to this.”

Then the two disembodied voices filled the room. I recognized Diana's raspy contralto immediately. The guy I had never heard before.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Paul.”

“You sound awful. Are you drunk?”

“No, but thanks for the suggestion.”

“What's going on? Did something happen?”

She laughed. “No, don't worry about that, Darling. Nothing ever happens. That could be my whole autobiography. At least I don't need a ghostwriter. I am a ghost. The autobiography of a ghost. Three words. Nothing ever happened.”

“You are drunk.”

“Just high on life. Isn't that what we used to say?”

“Diana, you have to get out of there.”

“Really? And how do you propose I should do that?”

“Go to the airport. Buy a ticket. I'll meet you at LaGuardia.”

“And then what? We live in your tiny apartment on a music teacher's salary? We'd be at each other's throats in a month.”

“Divorce Preston. Than you can live any way you want.”

The room went silent. Fraker held up one finger to say “just wait.” So we waited. I felt a sickly voyeuristic thrill listening to these intimacies, and I began to understand what motivated the spies who operate our surveillance state. The sense of power was overwhelming. We were omniscient at that moment, just like God, listening in on the most private moments of these hapless creatures.

But what petty and mean-spirited little gods we were.

“Diana? Are you there? These fucking dropped calls! Every time you try to—”

“I'm still here.”

“Then talk to me. What's going on?”

“I signed a prenuptial agreement, Paul. I would have thought you'd have figured that out by now. Everyone assumed I was a gold digger. I suppose I was a gold digger. What they don't tell you is, it's much easier to actually
dig gold
out of the ground than to live with Preston Lomax.”

“Diana—”

“If I leave him, I get nothing. Even the gifts he gave me. He makes me sign ‘gift vouchers.' I have to return everything if we break up. Even the clothes I bought. I'd be left with a two shirts and a pair of blue jeans. And my old sneakers.”

“We'd survive.”

“That's an attractive prospect. Survival. Between your ex-wife and my ex-husband, we could barely afford groceries.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I don't know. I don't see the point anymore. This isn't even fun. Sometimes I don't even remember why I loved you, or if I did. It's all just talk. I hate the telephone anyway. It's fake, it turns a whole person into this little quacking in your ear. And my ear gets sore. It's uncomfortable. And it seems…I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about.”

“I want to see you. I'll come there.”

“You can't afford a plane ticket. You can't afford cab fare. You told me yourself.”

“I'll take the bus and walk onto the boat. That's cheap.”

“Paul—”

“Then we could be together and—”

“That's two full days of travel, and all you have is the weekend.”

“I have a sick day coming.”

“Stop. Please just stop talking about this. It's all too shabby and sad.”

Another silence.

Fraker perched over it eagerly, waiting to pounce.

“Listen, Diana—”

“You know what's funny? Preston's left me everything in his will—all the property, all the stocks, all the cars and cash. Nothing to charity, nothing to the kids. Everything goes to me. The problem is he's healthy as a horse. He's going to outlive all of us. Both of his parents are still alive. His Dad is ninety-three—and he drinks! Preston isn't even a teetotaler. He allows himself exactly enough red wine every day to clean the platelets out of his arteries.”

“Well, at least you're taken care of, that's something.”

“Oh, yeah. I'm taken care of all right. When I've served my life sentence I can wear mink in the retirement home. It'll be the snazziest retirement home money can buy, but I‘ll be too senile to notice.”

“Come on. That's just—”

“You know what I need? I need someone to kill him for me. Can you do that, Paul? Can you kill him for me? Or will I have to do it myself? Because that's the obvious solution.”

“Diana! Cut it out. This is a cell phone, for God's sake! It's illegal to even talk about this stuff, don't you know that? It's called conspiracy.”

“So you don't want to talk about it.”

“Goddamn right I don't! I'm hanging up right now!”

The recorder went silent.

Fraker stared at me, grinning. “This Paul knows what he's talking about when it comes to conspiracy, Chief. Looks like we just found ourselves a killer.”

“What about David Trezize? You found him yesterday.”

“I didn't have this recording yesterday.”

I started pacing the big room. My queasiness was firming up somehow, coalescing into simple indigestion, the heartburn of uncomplicated rage. I stopped walking and drilled Fraker with an unblinking stare. “How did you get it?”

“Excuse me?”

“The recording. That's a private cell phone transmission from one American citizen to another, within our borders, with no discussion of a terrorist act.”

“No, just murder.”

“But you couldn't know that until you heard the tape. Diana Lomax was no more under suspicion than anyone else. Do you have recordings of everyone involved with the case? Because that's a lot of talk and ninety-nine-point-nine percent of it is none of your goddamn business.”

“It's the point-one percent we care about, Chief. And we always look at the wife first—even she knows that. She said so herself.”

“Then why would she incriminate herself on the telephone?”

He shrugged. “I've never understood women. Ask my ex-wife.”

We had veered off the subject. “The state police don't have the authority for this. How did you get the recording?”

“Well, I'll tell you, Chief. I went to an old friend of yours from your West Coast days.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jack Tornovitch. You remember good old Jack Tornovitch, don't you? He ran the FBI investigation that saved your ass and solved one of your cases for you. Just before you got fired. That's how the newspapers painted it. I Googled you—and him. It's all online for anyone to see.”

“This is unbelievable.”

Jack Tornovitch. Three thousand miles and five years later, I thought I was finally done with Jack Tornovitch. But maybe we're never really done with anyone in our lives. They linger. They may be dormant, like the shingles virus after a bout of chicken pox. But they can flare up anytime.

Fraker was still talking. “Hey, you're not the only detective around here, Chief. Tornovitch moved up. He's a big wheel at Homeland Security now. So I called him and used your name and explained the situation. I told him some push with the FISA court could help the state police solve this thing while you were stumbling around trying to get DNA reports on old cigarette butts. He liked that idea. In fact I think he liked the idea of making you look bad more than he liked the idea of solving the case. You've got a way with people, Kennis. Too bad it's not a good way. Tornovitch may hold a grudge, but I don't. I'll let you stand on stage with me when I announce the arrest.”

Well, there was no arrest. He brought Diana Lomax in, and he made her cry, but she was in the city with the boyfriend Paul on the night of the murder, with lots of witnesses and an impressive paper trail of credit card receipts and ATM withdrawals to prove it. Her phone log showed no contact with contract killers or anyone else even remotely sinister.

In the end she was just one more unhappy cheating wife who had contemplated killing her husband. If we made that illegal we'd have to arrest half the married women in America, and clear out the prisons to make room for them. It would be a good excuse for legalizing marijuana, but none of it was ever going to happen. It might comfort Diana Lomax to know she wasn't the only one to have her dirty little secrets flushed out by the investigation. There were plenty more to come. But Lonnie Fraker chose to lay low for a while after his pair of overreaching blunders.

That left the next round of embarrassing revelations to me.

Reading through the interview transcripts I marked down every person of interest with a weak or nonexistent alibi. That gave me a short list of suspects, and I didn't need to violate anyone's civil rights in the process.