The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (46 page)

“You sure it was Tom?”

“I was drinking,” Scott said. “I wasn't drunk. Besides, he sent me cash money to apologize for being a jerk and asked me not to tell Ma. Told Dad, though. Big mistake. He tried to find Tom, and when he couldn't, he spent near a year in Tups, hoping he'd come back. He never did. Then Tom flew 'em all out on one of them Utah ski trips, and when Dad come home, he didn't want to talk about it anymore.”

“You know what Tom was doing here?”

“Nope, and I'm sure Dad don't, either. Like I said, Tom was good at making you think one thing when he was doing another.”

Webb knew that. He knew that very well. “So what do you think happened to Tom?”

“I think somebody finally got tired of all the lies and used a bullet to shut him up.”

“Any idea who that somebody was?”

“Nope.” Scott stopped tapping the remote and pushed a button. The TV flicked on, so loud that Webb jumped. “I'm sure you're not hurting for suspects, though.”

 

The winter darkness that Webb hated had settled in by the time he left. The sky was black—no stars, only clouds—and the streetlights made the snow seem white. Black and white with no gray. Not even the world had room for nuance anymore.

John Johanssen lived out near Jenna Hastings Johanssen Conner. John's house was a 3500-square-foot mock Tudor. It stood on a hill with a view of the river valley, the rolling land, the copper water tracing its way through taconite country. John owned fifteen acres here, and half the town besides. His rents were sky-high and his reputation nasty. But his buildings were never empty, and if Tom hadn't become such a legend, John would have gotten credit for being the rich Johanssen brother.

John's wide, winding driveway had a square snow-blower-built wall on each side. The snow was still picture-perfect, icy pure and fresh-fallen white. The garage door was down. Webb parked on the far side, careful to leave room for a second car to park beside him. He got out, slammed his car door, and the sound echoed in the winter air. He followed the snow-blown trail to the immaculately shoveled front porch.

He grabbed the carved brass knocker with his bare right hand. The shock of cold ran through his skin and up his arm. He banged once, then waited, scouting for a doorbell.

He didn't need it. John's wife, Evvie, pulled the door open and braced the frame with her right hand. She was too-rich thin and wore fresh makeup despite the late hour. “He's not here, Webster,” she said.

“I wanted to talk to both of you,” Webb said.

Her smile was tired. “You know I can't do that without John.”

John had never liked it, not from the day they got married. Any independence Evvie showed somehow reflected on him. Evvie couldn't talk to another man alone. Webb had been on some of the calls as a beat patrolman. John never hit his wife, but the yelling had terrified the neighbors more than once. Webb suspected that was one of the reasons the couple had moved so far out in the country.

Webb didn't argue. He could talk to them together if he needed to. “Where is he?”

“Funeral home. Someone has to make the arrangements.” She brushed a strand of unnaturally dark hair from her face. “I've been trying to call the folks in Utah. The numbers don't work, except the home number, and Cindy won't pick up.”

“Someone at the station probably notified her.”

“Hope so. We shouldn't have to take care of him. He never did his part for this family.” Then she shrugged. “Shouldn't have said that, should I? Speaking unkindly of the dead.”

“It's not a sin,” Webb said.

“At least, not in the world of Tom Johanssen.” She sighed. “I'll have John call. I know he wants to talk. This has him shook.”

“And you?”

“I'm surprised it didn't happen years ago.” She took her hand off the doorframe. “Thanks for understanding, Webb.”

“Always have,” he said.

She nodded and eased the door closed. It snicked shut, and he stood for a moment, his hand still aching with cold. He'd always liked Evvie. She and John were high school sweethearts, and seemed to have an understanding. But Webb thought John had never treated her well enough, despite the house, despite the trips, despite the money. She had no life away from him, and she should have.

At least Webb thought so. But he wasn't sure if that thought came from his own desire to see Evvie alone and have a real conversation, just once, without the guilt.

He sighed, walked off the steps and back to his car. When he got inside, the porch light switched off.

 

The home Jenna Hastings made with her second husband, Steve Conner, was one mile and an entire income district away from John Johanssen's. Jenna lived in a small three-bedroom ranch at the base of one of the rolling hills. Her nearest neighbor on the left had a front yard littered with dead appliances and car parts. Her nearest neighbor on the right had lost his home in a winter fire fifteen years ago and replaced it with an Airstream because he hadn't been insured. Jenna had tried to make hers nice, with flower boxes outside the window and a fresh coat of paint every few years. But the little house still looked like what it was—a starter home for a family that had never moved on.

Webb used to drive out to Jenna's a lot when Steve was still on the force. They'd have barbecues and parties for the department, and Webb'd watch her four Johanssen boys take care of her two Conner girls. Handsome children all, with the same restless intelligence he'd once seen in Jenna's eyes.

He turned onto the highway leading to the Conner place and was startled to see the road filled with cars. Black-and-whites parked haphazardly, their blue and red lights bright splashes against the snow. His mouth was dry, his stomach suddenly queasy. He had purposely had his scanner off, and now he flicked it on, the buzz and crackle of voices uncomfortably loud.

Steve Conner was standing under the outdoor light, coatless, arms wrapped around his torso. He was yelling at one of the patrolmen who stood, head bowed, blocking Steve from the house. Other officers were walking in and out of the open front door. Even from this distance, Webb could see the damp footprints on Jenna's red-and-black rug.

He got out of his car slowly, like a man in a nightmare. The air, frosty cold, didn't touch him. His feet squeaked on the snow, and some of it fell over the edge of his shoe and instantly melted on top of his sock. He scanned each squad until he saw what he was looking for, Jenna's too-white face pressed against the rolled-up window, watching as her husband continued to argue with the officer in charge.

All beat officers, no detectives. That made him shaky. He grabbed one of the patrolmen—a woman, actually, Kelly Endicott, who had gone to school with one of Jenna's kids.

“Who ordered this?” he said.

“Headquarters.” She shook his arm off.

“Who?”

She shrugged. “No one wanted a name attached.”

“What's the charge?” he asked, hoping that he'd stumbled on something else, that this was a mistake that had gotten out of hand.

“Murder, Webb.” Endicott's voice was soft. “They found the gun.”

He put a hand to his head. It didn't make sense. They had to do firing tests and match-ups and hours of lab work, and even then they couldn't be certain that the gun they had was the one used in the murder. The idea of ballistics as used on TV detective shows was as much a fiction as the locked-room mystery.

“What'd they find?” he asked.

“Conner's old service revolver, under one of the cars at Tups. It'd been fired. Conner says the gun was stolen one night when he was at Tups.”

Webb nodded. “He reported it years ago.”

Conner, a gun nut, had made a special petition to keep his weapons. Webb had kidded Conner about losing his revolver.
Hated the force so much you've gone and lost the one thing to remind you of it.

Webb rubbed his hand over his face. His skin was getting chapped from all the exposure to the frosty air. “How come Jenna and not him?”

“No motive,” Endicott said. “He'd never met Johanssen. She had cause, so they say.”

“She's had cause for thirty-three years,” Webb said. “Doesn't mean she'd do it now.”

“I don't like it any more than you do, Webb. Seems to me someone just decided how this would fall, and didn't do the backup work.” She tugged on her cap. “But what do I know? I'm still considered a rookie.”

She walked away from him, back to Conner and the officer he was yelling at. Webb glanced at Jenna. She had gained weight since high school. She had a matronly fullness, the kind of motherly warmth once drawn in ads for Campbell's chicken noodle soup. When she saw Webb, she shook her head, and held up her hand as if he shouldn't come near. He shrugged, and she shrugged in return. Then he retraced his steps to the car, got in, and went back to the station to see who had caused this travesty.

 

During the winter, after five, the station had a different feel, a dark, gloomy feel, as if no hope could return to the world. Most of the desks were empty, but cops milled around, finishing business, leaning on counters, talking on the phone. Webb hated night activity. In this town, night activity was always sad activity: drug arrests, drinking violations, domestic violence disputes. Later, after midnight, the bar fights and the knifings would happen, but now the station's business was usually about kids in trouble with nowhere to turn.

The cops couldn't help them, either. The best the kids could hope for was to return to the parents who had neglected them in the first place. The worst was juvie, the petty-criminal training ground.

Webb slipped inside. The station smelled of chalk dust and old coffee grounds. The concrete walls muted voices, made them sound as distant as and less important than the voices on the police scanner.

Darcy sat behind her desk, hands in her short cropped hair, a cigarette burning to ashes in a tray below the bright glare of the desk lamp. She was staring at the notes in her phone log, cheeks red with a stain Webb had learned to identify as anger.

“What's the idea not showing up at your own collar?” he asked.

She didn't look up. “Wasn't mine. It was Bernard's.”

“The gun's not going to hold up.”

“You're telling me.” She kicked her chair back. Her eyes were full of red. “Serial numbers were scratched off years ago. Bernard claims the notches in the handle make it Steve's. His brother confirms it. But the gun's wiped clean, no prints, and only one shot fired. Johanssen was killed point-blank, so the killer has to have powder burns. I'll betcha Jenna Conner doesn't.”

“Why her? Why not Steve?”

“Former cop with a brother still on the force?” Darcy snorted. “You tell me, smart-ass.”

“Shouldn't have arrested her at all, then.”

“No, they shouldn't have, but they want it wrapped.” She pulled a file from beneath her log. “Makes this all worthless.”

Webb pulled up a chair. “What is it?”

“Johanssen's arrest record. Longer than my arm, some drug­related, all smuggling. No convictions, not even any overnight stays in jail. Big lawyers, big money.”

“And you think they bought someone here?”

She shook her head. “I think this town's too wrapped up in its past to know what's going on in its present.”

Webb nodded. The analysis made sense. Tom Johanssen betrayed his wife, so she murdered him, first chance she got. What did it matter that she had to wait thirty-three years to do so?

The problem was, the same logic applied to Flo.

He swallowed, not liking the options. “You know about the trips, then.”

“Every three years like clockwork,” she said. “Supervising international barges with some ‘special' loads. A real hands-on kinda guy.”

“Drugs?”

She shook her head. “At first, I think. Then contraband. Going in and out. The Utah company was a front for chip smuggling. Disbanded last year just before the feds caught up to it.”

“So you think this was a related hit?”

“I'm sure of it,” she said. “He screwed up, let some investigator get too close. That's why the Utah office closed. His friends didn't like it, and they killed him.”

“That's not evidence, Darce.”

“Evidence.” She waved a hand. “Look at the evidence. The hit's professional. There're no prints, no witnesses, no gun ID, and a weapon left at the scene. Someone wanted him, and they knew if they got him here there'd be plenty of other suspects.”

“And a police department unused to these kind of cases.”

Her smile was tired. She picked up the cigarette, flicked the long trail of ash into the tray, and took a drag. “I didn't say that.”

He smiled back. “But you could have.”

“I could have.”

He sat down in the metal chair beside her desk. The green upholstery had a rip in it that whistled under his weight. “Let me see the file.”

She tossed it at him. “This bothers you?”

“The whole thing bothers me. Tom was a bright guy. Why come here to meet a shipment if he knew his people blamed him for the raid last year?”

“Money?”

Webb frowned, remembering Flo's face on the last beautiful day of her life. “He had other ways of getting that.”

He opened the file. Many of the sheets inside were old. Arrest records originally done on typewriters and recopied so many times that the dirt dots outnumbered the keystrokes. As usual on the old ones, the photos were missing, removed to put in a mug book or on another, more successful arrest sheet. The fingerprints were dark whorls of unreadable lines.

He flipped. The later arrest records were on a computer printout. Information, but no original arrest sheets. There was reference to an FBI file, and notes from Darcy's conversation with the head of the FBI's case. A reference sheet in the very back also had a DEA file number.