Deception Read online

  “Will he accept Your offer? You know the answer.”

  “Yes, I know. But I wouldn’t impose upon you such weighty knowledge. You’re too small for it, little one.” He put His arm around her. “He calls you Saint Sharon.”

  She smiled. “I wasn’t as great as he remembers me.”

  “No. But much that he remembers is truer than he realizes. You did become a saint there. You had moments, even days, of greatness, especially as you lay in that bed, walking with Me when you could no longer walk on your legs.”

  “You were so faithful to me, Lord. Every day. Sometimes I doubted it. Now that I’m here with You, I wonder why I doubted.”

  “It’s not an easy world to live in. I lived there too, you know. It’s not the Eden I made, nor is it the new earth I will make. It’s the in-between world, the isthmus between heaven and hell.”

  “For most of my life, I never saw that.”

  “But you came to see it. And now you see it much more. Ollie’s right. You are Saint Sharon. And one day you will be Queen Sharon. You shall rule a city.”

  “I can hardly believe that.”

  “If you, being here and looking into My eyes, can hardly believe what I tell you, then is it surprising that Ollie, being there and without Me, finds it impossible to believe?”

  “It is impossible to believe without You, isn’t it?”

  “That doesn’t mean exactly what you think it means. But the words are true enough.”

  “Please draw him to Yourself, would You, Lord?”

  “I will do what I will do. But it may prove more difficult than you imagine.”

  “Nothing’s too hard for You.”

  “I mean that it will be hard for him. But some things were hard for Me too.”

  Sharon saw the terrible scars on His hands. She bowed her head and whispered, “Thank You.”

  I woke at 6:00 a.m., realizing I still hadn’t listened to that 911. I went to my home computer to access precinct e-mail.

  The e-mail accompanying the recording, from dispatch, said, “Unusually short call. From cell phone, no GPS. Somebody was driving. You can hear traffic.”

  I opened the audio file and watched the colorful sound wave depictions on my screen. The voice sounded muffled, like someone had wrapped a washcloth around the phone.

  “You better send somebody to the professor’s house at 2230 Southeast Oak Street. Something fishy’s going on.”

  I played it three times.

  Something fishy?

  8

  “Each fact is suggestive in itself. Together they have a cumulative force.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE ADVENTURE OF THE BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23

  I STOPPED AT LOU’S for breakfast and my fourth and fifth cups of coffee. I did something I never do—I actually bought a Tribune, which killed me, but it was too early to get somebody’s castoff. Knowing this was the day, I eagerly searched for Clarence’s article. Found it on B1 just as Bill Haley and the Comets promised they’d rock around the clock till broad daylight.

  After some opening remarks about the nature of his investigative articles and the ground rules, he wrote this:

  Detective Ollie Chandler is a brilliant and quick-witted homicide detective with exceptional deductive skills and street smarts. He’s a police department legend for his offbeat methods that solve crimes and coax confessions.

  But, sources tell me, Chandler’s a risk taker and rule bender who drives his procedure-conscious superiors crazy. If not for his success rate, he’d have been squeezed out of the department years ago, wisecracking his way as a security guard at Clackamas Town Center, raiding cheese and sausage samples at Hickory Farms.

  Ollie Chandler is unorthodox and pit-bull determined. He’s also cynical, like most homicide detectives, and at times can be hard-boiled. He hates the Tribune and says he doesn’t read it, but why do I believe he’s going to be reading this column?

  I put the paper down and looked around Lou’s to see if anybody was watching. The coast was clear. I started reading again.

  My assignment is to tell it like it is. This won’t be a PR job for the Portland Police, but it won’t be an attack piece either. Truth is, Chandler and I got off to a rocky start when he failed to honor our agreement to call me the moment he was assigned to a murder. I told him he reinforced the image of cops who don’t keep their commitments. People like me have as hard a time trusting cops as he has trusting journalists.

  Chandler appears to be a competent and thorough investigator, once you put on your wise-guy filter to get past his mask—I think it’s a mask—of Columbo-type incompetence. He lacks the skills to remotely retrieve a message from his own answering machine, and I can only deduce that his VCR is flashing 12:00 as I write. But he isn’t paid to be high-tech.

  Time will tell whether he’s on the right track to solving this murder. Detective Chandler assures me he’ll live up to his reputation for brilliance. If I don’t see it myself, I’m sure he’ll point it out to me so I can inform my readers … you folks with poor enough taste to read the Oregon Tribune.

  I parked my car on Jackson Street in North Portland, where Clarence lives in his sister’s old house. I knocked on the front door. When he answered, I held up the newspaper.

  “This was out of bounds.”

  “The part about you being competent and thorough?”

  “The answering machine part. And the VCR. And me not keeping a commitment. Cheap shots.”

  Clarence stepped out on the front porch, a place that held bad memories for us both. I could still see the placement of the shells from the automatic weapon that had killed his sister ten feet from where we stood.

  “The cheap shot,” Clarence said, “was you not following through on a commitment, not my pointing out that you didn’t. I’m going to tell the truth. You do good, you’ll look good. Act like a jerk, you’ll look like a jerk in print. It’s up to you. I’m not going to coddle you.”

  “Watson didn’t make Sherlock Holmes look bad.”

  “He showed he was a drug addict, for crying out loud!” Clarence raised his left arm, and his oven-mitt hand nearly hit the porch ceiling. “You need thicker skin.”

  “The part about the answering machine could compromise my investigation.”

  “No one knows what I’m talking about. No one’s asked. If they do, I’ll just say I left you a message, which I did. And you didn’t know how to retrieve it, which you didn’t.”

  “The murderer will know.”

  “So? You trying to impress him?”

  “You compromise this investigation, we’re tearing up that e-mail attachment. I’ll resign before I let the Tribune help a killer slip away.”

  “If a killer slips away, it won’t be because of me. You’re capable of bungling your own case.”

  We traded stares. I exchanged hellos with Geneva. Clarence and I didn’t exchange good-byes.

  Three hours later, Manny and I stood again in the professor’s living room. Unfortunately, Clarence felt like he had to be there too.

  “Can you absolutely eliminate suicide?” Clarence asked.

  “Yeah,” Manny said. “You can put a noose around your neck, inject yourself with poison, and even shoot yourself in the chest. But only once. The second shot’s tough. But he was nearly dead before the shots anyway. Which makes both shots a problem.”

  “So he could have injected himself before someone else shot him,” Clarence said. “If he were going to kill himself, did he maybe want to suffer?”

  “Penance?” I asked. “Doesn’t fit Palatine’s profile. Neither does suicide.” I waved my hand at all the pictures. “He was too infatuated with himself.”

  “He’d been grading papers,” Manny said. “Who grades papers as his final act on earth?”

  “I’ve seen lots of suicides,” I said. “This is murder. We have to assume that everything means something. So why the noose? Why bother with suggestions of suicide when it’s so obvious it wasn
’t? Either our perp’s an idiot or he thinks I’m an idiot.”

  “Could be both,” Manny said. “And could be right in both cases. He’s playin’ with us.”

  “Or trying to send a message.”

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1:00 P.M.

  The greasy, unshaven man peeked out his door, past the chain, at Clarence and me.

  “Paul Frederick?” I showed him my badge. He studied it, moving his reading glasses up and down.

  “I’m with homicide. My partner’s Manny Domast. Stopped by earlier. Asked me to follow up.”

  Frederick unlatched the chain and put a butcher knife on the kitchen counter. Clarence ogled it.

  Midfifties, Frederick had a crossword puzzle smile like a hockey player who couldn’t afford dental work. His eyes were droopy, disinterested. His hair went everywhere—Einstein with a perm in a wind tunnel. This was where the similarity to Einstein ended. He wore what may have been pajamas and looked like he’d been dragged through a hedge by a mule team.

  “He’s a jerk.”

  “Who?”

  “Your partner.”

  “Yes. However, being a jerk is not a prosecutable crime.” I walked to the window and pointed down to the professor’s house. “Good view. What’d you see and hear? If you answer, I won’t send my partner back to ask you.”

  “You wouldn’t … would you?”

  “Answer me and maybe I won’t.” Manny makes good cop/bad cop easy.

  Frederick moved to a sagging card table with a cage on it. Inside was a golden teddy bear hamster poised by his wheel, stroking his whiskers and appearing to have an IQ twenty points higher than his caregiver.

  “I’m not answering.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “See my other partner here? I could leave the two of you alone. He’ll eat your hamster like it was a tater tot.”

  Clarence covered his face. I couldn’t look at him.

  Frederick stepped between me and his hamster. Voice squeaking, he asked, “You threatening us?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “You better not hurt Brent,” he said to Clarence.

  “Your hamster’s named Brent?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “If you love Brent, you’ll answer my questions.”

  He looked at me long and hard, then took a comb out of his pocket and ran it over Brent, who squealed with delight. Finally he said, “A guy knocked on the door. I could see the professor inside look through the peephole.”

  “How’d you know he was a professor?”

  “Read the newspaper.”

  I pointed at Palatine’s house. “You saw him through the living room window? Blinds were up?”

  “Down but open. You know, so I could see the professor—there’s a bright light over his computer. I saw the guy on the other side of the door, under the porch light, same time.”

  I walked out onto his paint-peeled deck. He followed me, keeping an eye on Clarence and Brent. “Quite a view.”

  “Professor was sitting by his computer, reading or something.”

  I noticed binoculars hanging from a lawn chair

  “Then what?”

  “The guy at the door gave him something. Then the professor let him in. They stood and talked.”

  “What happened next? Don’t leave out the details.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t have time for this.”

  He walked to the sink and reached underneath. As I pulled my Glock from its shoulder holster, he pulled out a handful of hamster food. Brent had the munchies.

  I pointed at the binoculars. “I see your days are busy. You can take a little time now or a lot later … at the police station … with my partner Manny. We can bring in a subpoena, all kinds of court orders. Clarence can be Brent’s sitter. But he has to be fed every couple hours. Clarence, I mean. Your choice.”

  He lowered his eyes, such as they were, to keep me from looking into his brain, such as it was.

  “What you want to know?”

  “How long between the time this visitor went in and the time he left?”

  “Forty minutes? An hour?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “Forty minutes.”

  “What else did you see?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “There a reason you seem reluctant to offer information?”

  “You accusing me of something?”

  “I don’t know. You guilty of something?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” Suddenly his face softened, and his voice went limp. “You have to believe me.”

  “Actually, I don’t have to believe you. Look, Mr. Frederick, both of us want this to be over. I’m sure Clarence and Brent want it to be over. You have your binoculars. Earlier you said the guy at the door gave him something. What?”

  Frederick stared at us, like we were conspirators. “How should I know what he gave him?”

  “Because you’re the witness. Witnesses witness things. How big was it?”

  “I was clear up here.”

  “The binoculars bring you seven times closer. Just take a guess at the size and shape.”

  “Maybe it was a picture.”

  “A picture?”

  “He unfolded it. Maybe someone lost his dog.”

  “His dog?”

  “Somebody came to my door with a picture of their dog.”

  “That same day?”

  “No. Months ago.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Just a little black dog. A mutt, maybe some terrier in him.”

  “I mean the person holding up the … picture or whatever.”

  “She was maybe forty years old.”

  “The person at the professor’s door?”

  “No. The woman showing me the picture of her dog.”

  “I’m talking about the guy across the street, at the professor’s house, Wednesday night. The one you said was holding something up for the professor. What did he look like? White? Black? Hispanic? Asian?”

  He nodded.

  “Which you nodding at?”

  “White maybe.”

  “Size?”

  “Looked sort of big. Maybe heavy.”

  “Hair color?”

  “Couldn’t see it. Maybe a gray sweatshirt, with the hood up. Or … wearing a stocking cap, I think.”

  “What color was the cap?”

  “Dark blue.”

  Finally two points of agreement. I was tempted to ask if he looked like Abraham Lincoln. I also thought if we have a lineup, it would be great to have a Lincoln look-alike to see the expression on Rebecca “my friends call me Becky” Butler’s face.

  “If we end up with a suspect, we’ll get back to you to identify him.”

  Suddenly his eyes lit up and his shoulders straightened. “One of those police lineups where you pick out the guy?”

  “Would you like that?”

  “Yeah. That’s cool.”

  “We’re all about cool. What happened next, after he gave him the little poster or showed it to him, and he let him in the door?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You must’ve kept watching.”

  “Not when he closed the blinds.”

  “The professor closed the blinds?”

  “The other guy.”

  “Didn’t you get a clear look at him then?”

  “I was watching the professor.”

  “How’d he look?”

  “Surprised. I was looking at his surprised face when he disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Behind the blinds. One second he was there, the next he vanished. Poof.”

  “You call 911?”

  “Why? People shut the blinds so people don’t spy on them. I shut my blinds. You never know, a pervert might be spying on you.”

  “Yeah,” Clarence said.

  “It’s not like I saw a murder or something.”

  “You may not have seen it, but it happ
ened.”

  We went over details, trying to fasten down the times.

  “All right, Mr. Frederick, we’ll be in touch. Think of anything else, here’s my cell number.”

  As we walked to his door, he stood between Brent and Clarence. He pulled out a piece of newspaper lining the bottom of the hamster cage and replaced it with a page from today’s Tribune. I’m not kidding—it was page B-1.

  “Enjoy, Brent,” I said, as we went out the door. “Brent’s about to bury your byline,” I said to Clarence.

  “Don’t use me to threaten people.”

  “I’ll use anything and anybody to get the job done. You don’t like it, shadow the paperboy. You see Brent quiver when he looked at you?”

  “At least you got something from this Frederick character.”

  “He didn’t want to help until we came to the lineup. Suddenly he sees himself on TV. Now he’s civic-minded.” I shook my head. “Whatever it takes.”

  “He acted guilty, didn’t he?”

  “Ask somebody a question and if they’re guilty, they always assume you’re accusing them. Ask a guilty woman, ‘How well did you know Bob Smith?’ and she hears, ‘I know all about your affair with Bob Smith.’ Frederick’s guilty all right. But of what? Voyeurism? Tax evasion? Welfare fraud? Claiming Brent as a dependent? Everybody’s guilty of something. It’s probably not the professor’s murder. But once we feed him some suspect photos, who knows? He might hand us the killer.”

  Clarence and I picked up drinks to go at a Seattle’s Best. I treated myself to the special, a Butterfinger mocha. He had a skinny latte. No wonder he’s such a grouch.

  We were back downtown in homicide detail, at the Justice Center, reports laid out in front of us.

  “Lab confirms bedroom window was broken from the inside,” I said. “Most of the glass was on the outside. But, like I pointed out, some thin shards fell inside. CSI vacuumed the carpet and found more. No blood, skin fragments, or DNA. No fingerprints. But when they tried to put together all the fragments, the ones from the floor and the ones outside, some were missing. That could mean they’re stuck in the bottom of someone’s shoes.”