Lies Still Told, page 4
The visit had gone well enough, likely due to Tess’s friendly nature and his desire to be a better person when she was around. Afterward, Tess had lain in his bed. “You all have the same noses,” she’d said.
“It’s a challenge to share,” he’d joked.
She’d punched him in the stomach. “It’s kind of sad that your uncle never had any kids and never remarried. He’s been alone a long time.”
A.L thought about that now as he sat in his uncle’s small house. “How are things?” he asked.
“Better before I heard about Platt.”
“I’m sorry, I know he was your friend,” A.L. said.
“He was a damned idiot to get shot in his own house. What the hell was he thinking?”
“I don’t know. I’ve spoken to Veronica and Hank. And Virginia.”
“I haven’t seen the kids for a long time.”
“They aren’t kids any longer,” A.L. said.
Uncle Joe smiled. “You’re all still thirteen in my head. That’s what happens when you get old.”
“You’re not that old,” A.L. said. “How about Virginia? Have you seen her lately?”
“Nope. Not exactly looking for her.”
“Right. Tell me about Platt’s other friends.”
Uncle Joe shrugged. “I didn’t know them that well.”
Baywood had fifty thousand residents. Not everybody knew everybody, but he was pretty sure Uncle Joe and Platt had friends in common. “Names are enough.”
Uncle Joe stared at him. “You should follow your dad’s advice,” he said finally. “Let it go.”
“Why?”
“Because when you stir up a hornet’s nest with a stick, you’re likely to get stung.”
A.L. set his half-drunk beer on the table. “I’m a cop. A man has been killed. It’s my job to figure out why and who did it.”
“Murders go unsolved all the time.”
“Really?” Now A.L. was irritated. “You have firsthand knowledge of that?”
Uncle Joe tipped back his beer, finished the can. “Platt likely did.”
The words settled, and A.L. had a feeling his uncle wasn’t just spouting off. “Are you telling me that Platt was a bad guy?”
“He’s a dead man who was my friend. I’m not saying anything.”
“Don’t you think he’d want his killer found, brought to justice?”
“Justice can get delivered in a number of ways.”
A.L. let that rumble around in his head. “Are you telling me that Platt’s murder is going to be avenged in some way?” Were they going to have a second dead body?
“I’ve got to run to the grocery store,” his uncle said, abruptly changing topics. He stood up and picked his keys off the hook on the wall.
A.L. couldn’t recall a time in his entire life when his uncle had gone to the store at nine at night—or brushed him off. “Tell me about Rocky Patou.”
“What about him?”
“Virginia said she thought Platt was afraid of Rocky. You and my dad were friends with Rocky. About fifteen years ago, Rocky was charged with assaulting Platt Waymann.”
Uncle Joe gave a dismissive shrug. “That was a long time ago.”
“When’s the last time you interacted with Rocky?”
“Christ, I don’t know. Listen, I have to go.”
A.L. pulled out his phone and showed his uncle the photo of the newspaper clipping. “Congratulations on your bowling success. Who are those two other men?”
“Bernie and Wade.”
“Bernie and Wade have last names?”
“I imagine they do, but I don’t know them. They were friends of Platt’s. I only ever saw them when we bowled. About all I can tell you is that when it was their turn to buy a round, they did. That was good enough for me.”
A.L. put his phone back in his pocket. “I’m going to figure this out. With your help or without it.” He had the front door open before his uncle responded.
“Be careful, A.L. Watch your back.”
Twelve hours later, after the body of thirty-four-year-old Colby Kane had washed up in the cold waters of the Baywood lake, A.L. stood on the shoreline next to Rena and reflected on the entire conversation with his uncle and the one line that had reverberated in his head for most of the night. Justice can get delivered in a number of ways.
He wouldn’t have been all that surprised to have gotten up this morning and seen it scrawled in red paint on his bathroom mirror. Or maybe on the lighted highway sign that he’d seen as he and Rena had sped here after getting the call. Buckle up and remember, justice can get delivered in a number of ways.
Colby Kane was known to the Baywood Police Department. What that meant was he had a record of arrests and convictions dating back to age sixteen that earned him consideration anytime something bad happened in Baywood. But for the last three years, he’d managed to keep his nose clean and hang onto a job at the local garbage collection company. When A.L. had first come back to Baywood after years of working in Madison, it hadn’t taken him long to learn that Colby was a punk, for lack of a better word.
In the beginning, before A.L.’s time, Colby had been involved in the usual troublemaker stuff. Home burglary. Retail theft. Simple assault and battery. But every once in a while, he’d kicked it up. Aggravated assault with a weapon. Arson.
A conviction for conspiracy to commit murder had him do some serious time in the joint. A.L. had worked the case early on after he’d started at the Baywood Police Department more than ten years ago. Colby Kane had taken five thousand dollars from a woman intent upon immediate access to her husband’s 401(k). Said husband hadn’t been a complete putz and had put police on notice that his wife was up to something. There’d been a paper trail as long as A.L.’s arm. Dollars withdrawn from her savings account. Same amount deposited into Colby’s checking account.
Nobody ever said Colby was the brightest bulb.
Now, after several hours in the water and a bullet to the middle of his forehead, he looked downright dim. As did the faces of most of the cops at the scene. Colby’s body had been found almost exactly twenty-four hours after Platt Waymann’s. He wasn’t badly decomposed, but his body was starting to blow up with unreleased gas.
“I thought he finally had his shit together,” Rena said, watching the body get loaded up for a trip to the morgue.
Before A.L. could answer, Chief Faster approached. The chief rarely visited an actual crime scene. That, in itself, spoke to the gravity of the concern.
“My office. Eleven o’clock,” he said.
Both A.L. and Rena nodded. Faster walked away, and Rena looked at her watch. “We’ve got an hour to kill. Uh…bad choice of words. Let’s get coffee. I’ve been thinking about your conversation with your uncle Joe.”
Last night, after leaving his uncle’s house, he’d called Rena and given her a quick rundown. “We need to talk to Rocky,” she had murmured.
“Yeah,” he’d agreed. “He lives about forty minutes out of town. We’ll go tomorrow. My uncle didn’t seem to think the two men had anything to do with one another for years. But still.”
This morning, they’d been fifteen minutes away from Rocky’s house when the call had come in for them to return to Baywood posthaste. A woman walking her dog had stumbled upon Colby Kane, and a shitstorm was brewing.
Now, as A.L. drove to the Love Cup, one of Rena’s favorite coffee shops, he caught sight of a sign in the secondhand furniture store that said, “Christmas equals Peace equals Love.” Tell that to Platt Waymann and Colby Kane, he thought.
Ten minutes later, he and Rena sat at a table. Both had coffee. Rena had an almond croissant, too.
“This is a bad week in Baywood,” she said.
A.L. said nothing.
“Bullet hole in his forehead was small caliber. As was the bullet through Platt’s back,” she said.
He’d shared with Rena that Carrie Stack had left a message on his voice mail just that morning telling him that Platt had been killed by a .38. Not his own; the gun found in the bedroom drawer had not been fired. “You think the two crimes are related?”
She shrugged. “Platt hang out with Colby Kane?”
“Not that I know of. Colby is closer to our ages.”
“I’m much younger than you,” she said immediately.
“As I recall, next birthday you’ll be in your forties. I’m in my forties. Point made.”
She smiled and ate her croissant. “You think any more about the mayor’s charity ball? Did you tell Tess about it?”
“No and no. I didn’t even see Tess last night.” He held up his hand. “And before you ask, no, there’s nothing wrong. She had the title company holiday party last night.”
“And she didn’t invite you?”
“She took her other boyfriend.”
“She has another boyfriend?”
He pushed back his chair. “No. And you’re too gullible to be a cop. No spouses or significant others invited. Only employees.”
“That’s no fun,” said Rena.
“I did not have to spend the evening with Clark Hampton,” A.L. said. Rena and he had both interacted with Clark, the owner of Hampton’s Title, when they were investigating a serial killer who had picked Tess as his next victim. Tess thought he was a good boss, and that was all that mattered, but truly, the man was not a ball of fire.
“Yeah, he is a bit of a downer,” Rena conceded. “But the charity ball will definitely be fun. I want you and Tess to come.”
“We’ll see.”
Rena smiled, likely happy that he hadn’t said no. She’d done her job, planted the seed of doubt in his mind that Tess might want to go. He had no idea if that was true. This was the first invitation of its kind since they’d started dating last spring. And, he supposed, if it would make her happy, he’d strap on a tux for a couple hours.
There was no doubt that Chief Faster and his wife would be in attendance. Also no doubt that A.L. was not going to waste any time chatting with them.
“It’s time to go,” A.L. said. “We don’t want to be late.”
It ended up that Faster was late. To his own meeting. All six of the detectives had their butts in their chairs on time.
No one was surprised. Took the delay in stride. But oddly enough, nobody was very chatty. Proof that two murders in two days was sitting heavy on everybody’s chest. Rena tapped her foot, her only show of impatience.
The door opened, and Chief Faster came in. He did not apologize for being late. “This is not good,” he said.
No one said anything.
“We found Colby Kane’s vehicle. The 2009 Dodge Charger was in a parking lot near the bridge. An officer searching the vehicle found an address written on a square white napkin between the passenger seat and the middle console. 4040 Elm Street. That is Platt Waymann’s address.”
A.L. sat up in his chair. At the coffee shop, when Rena had asked A.L. whether Colby and Platt had been friends, he hadn’t really considered it a serious question. Yeah, there was a similarity in bullet holes, but nothing else to suggest that the two crimes were related.
Until now. And it was something pretty substantial.
“Carrie Stack dropped everything and did a quick look at the body. Colby Kane was shot by a .38, as was Platt Waymann. No way to know for sure whether it was the same gun since we have not recovered a weapon. She also said that based on the condition of Colby’s body, he was likely killed around the same time as Platt Waymann.”
No one said anything. It was a lot to take in. Same caliber bullet, same timeframe, and Platt’s address found in Colby’s car.
“I don’t want the press to get wind of the fact that the two cases are related,” Chief Faster said.
“Why not?” Rena questioned. “It might ease people’s minds to know that there weren’t two random killings within twenty-four hours.”
“No,” the chief said. “Not yet. We can’t link them with a hundred percent confidence.”
Maybe not, but it was damning evidence. But, in general, A.L. didn’t believe in giving the press too much, too early. There was a time and a place for transparency. “Is there any other information on Colby Kane?” he asked.
“Only that the address on his driver’s license didn’t pan out. He hasn’t lived there for more than two months. No forwarding address with the post office, and when we checked with his employer, they had the same address on file.”
So Colby had been in the wind. Or maybe shacking up with a girlfriend somewhere. The possibilities were endless. But that wasn’t necessarily bad. All it took was one good lead sometimes.
Faster looked around the table. “McKittridge and Morgan already have the Platt Waymann investigation, and given the connection, they’ll take lead on Colby Kane as well, with Ferguson and Blithe as backup.” He looked at the remaining two staff. “You two take everything else. And for God’s sake, let’s get this off our plates. I don’t want to be thinking about this when my kids are opening Christmas presents.”
Chapter Four
“Wait here,” A.L. said to Rena. They’d left the conference room along with everybody else, but now he needed to talk to Faster. He knocked on the man’s open office door. “A minute?” he asked.
Faster nodded. A.L. entered, but he didn’t sit. “I need you to know something. Platt Waymann was a longtime friend of my father and uncle. My father is going to come up in the phone records.” He detested telling Faster anything about his personal life, but he also wasn’t going to let this information surface later and adversely affect the investigation. In a town the size of Baywood, with only six detectives working cases, it was almost a foregone conclusion that one of them might know a victim or a perp. It shouldn’t, and generally didn’t, pull a detective from a case, but the right thing to do was to get it on the table now.
Faster said nothing. Finally, he rubbed a hand across his chin. “Do you have any concerns about keeping personal relationships out of the investigation?”
It was the right response, but still, it pissed A.L. off. Faster lived for personal relationships and whatever benefit they might bestow upon him. “No.”
“Okay. Then I don’t think it’s an issue. As long as your father or your uncle didn’t pull the trigger,” Faster added with a smirk.
“Thank you for your time,” A.L. said and got the hell out of there. Faster was an idiot who had somehow convinced the mayor, who was pretty decent, that he was ready for the top job. He generally left A.L. and Rena alone, which made the situation tolerable.
“Everything okay?” Rena asked when he got back to his desk.
“Yeah.”
“You want to head over to Rocky’s again. Maybe we’ll make it all the way there this time.”
“I think we better.”
“I’ll get us some coffee for the ride,” Rena said.
Rocky Patou lived in an old farmhouse on an acre of land. There were two horses in the fenced-in pasture to the north of the house and some chickens running loose in the front yard. “Doesn’t look too sinister,” Rena said.
“I think you’ll change your mind if he meets us at the door with a rifle,” A.L. said. This was rural Wisconsin. Anything was possible.
A.L. opened his door, and around the corner of the house bounded a German shepherd. Barking. He quickly debated getting back in the car but saw a man come around the corner.
“Max,” the man’s voice thundered across the yard. “Stay back.”
The dog, resembling a cartoon character, almost skidded to a stop. Criminal or not, if this was Rocky Patou, he had a way with dogs.
“Mr. Patou?” A.L. called out.
“That’s right.” The man patted his leg, and Max sidled up to him. The dog did not take his eyes off of A.L., however, and A.L. sensed that if this didn’t go well, he might be lunch. He heard Rena’s door open, and she finally got out of the car.
“Detectives McKittridge and Morgan from the Baywood Police Department,” A.L. said. He pulled out his badge and saw Rena doing the same thing. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Rocky Patou approached, dog at his side. “You’re a long way from home,” he said.
“We are, sir,” A.L. said. “We’re investigating the death of Platt Waymann.”
The man made a noise. Hard to decipher what it meant. “So he’s dead?”
“Yes,” A.L. said.
“You’re Francis’s boy, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“Your old man could be a son of a bitch.”
Hard to argue with that.
“But I liked him. And your uncle Joe, too.”
“But not Platt Waymann.”
Rocky shook his head. “He’s a—or I guess the appropriate word now is was—a snake. The world has not lost a bright penny. Maybe tarnished tin.”
“You did twelve days in county lockup about fifteen years ago for assault.”
Rocky scratched his head. “I’ve always wondered how much time I’d have gotten if I’d killed him. But since the police are investigating his death, that makes me think that somebody finally got the job done.”
“They did,” Rena said. “Mr. Patou, where were you the night before last?”
For the first time, Rocky hesitated. “I went to the hardware store.”
“Where?”
“In Baywood.”
“There aren’t closer hardware stores?”
“I like Second Street Hardware. They always have what I want.”
Second Street Hardware was an institution in Baywood. The owners had recently celebrated seventy-five years in business, and A.L. was pretty sure some of the original employees were still waiting on customers. His dad wouldn’t go anywhere else. Had Rocky hesitated because he couldn’t remember what he was doing on Wednesday night or because he didn’t want to say he’d been at the hardware store. “Did you go anywhere else in Baywood?”
“No,” Rocky said.
