“Carly,” he whispered.
I shook my head, but that wasn’t what I was feeling, and Tommy knew it because he took my hand and gently pulled me toward his car. I looked over at Jenny, who was waiting with her car running. I smiled at her, shrugged my shoulders and walked with Tommy to his car.
Detective Parachuk
Three days after Truman’s death
Mayor John Riddle didn’t look up as I entered his spacious office. He was looking down at a newspaper. Like most of what John does—Little John to his friends and enemies—reading the paper and not acknowledging my entrance was deliberate. I chose one of the two seats that faced his desk and sat. The New Jersey and United States flags flanked John on either side, and on the wall in between them was a bookshelf filled with volumes. To my right, even from a sitting position, I could see the Catatunk Stream, and beyond that the main road leading out of the town of Persia. John finally looked up from his paper and nodded to me. I nodded back.
I grew up in Persia and went to school with Mayor Riddle, so his growling doesn’t bother me much. I was better in school and on the playing field, and had it not been for a certain girl I couldn’t quite get out of my mind when I was at State College playing second base and going to classes free, I probably would’ve been sitting on the other side of that chestnut desk. I came home my sophomore year to marry her. I’m still lucky, though. I married that girl, now Wendy Parachuk, and haven’t regretted a single moment of the time I’ve spent with her since kindergarten. Not many can say that.
It was Wednesday morning three days after the murder. He and I had both been contacted not only by the local paper, but also the
Star Ledger
, the
New York Times
,
The Washington Post
and even the
Boston Globe
. This murder had national prominence, and when the mayor had called me late the night before I knew I was in for some cajoling, a habit old John had learned as a lawyer and as a boy spoiled by extravagance.
He was dressed in a suit and tie. The weather was cold for the last day in March, windy as it often is in that month. The pasty fat that had stayed with him since he was a kid rolled over his buttoned collar. His cheeks were ruddy from his nightly whiskeys; his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, I imagined; and his chubby hands, ringed on both pinkies and on his wedding finger, trembled as he held today’s
New York Times
up so I could see the article about the murder of a seventeen-year-old boy from Persia, New Jersey.
Possible Hate Crime Shakes New York Suburb
“I’ve seen it,” I said. “Read the article this morning.”
“Got a phone call from this reporter an hour before I called you last night.” He pointed to the byline. “‘No comment’ is what I told her.”
“I read that part, too.”
He dropped the paper on his desk and looked at me for any signs of sarcasm. This particular time there wasn’t any. I didn’t blame him for not saying anything. At this point, nobody had a clue why the Engroff boy was killed.
“Where are we on this?”
“He more than likely died from blunt-force trauma—which was determined by pre-mortem, peri-mortem and post-mortem bruising to the legs, the stomach, the back and the head. The blows to the head are the ones that killed him and, although the weapon to this point hasn’t been found, the coroner is fairly certain it was a baseball bat. The nature of the contusions, lacerations and fractures all indicate something smaller than a paddle oar, for example, and bigger than a lead pipe.”
I had memorized parts of the results from the coroner the night before so I could recite them.
When I was finished, Mayor Riddle looked at me as if I had two heads.
“I don’t give a goddamn about all this bull, Nelson. I wanna know if this was a hate crime.”
He slammed his hand down on the paper as if that would blot out the controversy. The article must’ve spoiled his daily breakfast of two eggs (over easy), toast (white), four slices of bacon and a pot of coffee at George’s Restaurant on the town square. I knew he didn’t want to hear any of the autopsy babble. I gave it to him to put him at a slight disadvantage.
“It seems like most of the kids we’ve talked to at school to this point knew he was gay, teachers as well,” I said. “It also seems they didn’t care. The consensus, John, is that he was widely viewed as a strange kid. People liked him, generally, because he was different without…being offensive to them. He was his own person. I thought we’d go in there and get a sense of some dislike toward him—that there would be this…I don’t know.”
I stopped, because I wasn’t sure what we’d expected. His Facebook profile was not typical of a kid of that age. He was funny and irreverent, but not just towards authority, which was usually the case with kids, teenagers—including my twin boys Justin and Alex when they were still in high school—but also toward cliques: jocks, nerds, motor heads, hippies, born-again Christians, wastes, druggies and anyone else who had more than one friend who was of the same persuasion. But from what we could tell, the majority of kids respected him and were very shaken by his death. Some wanted to see a counselor or psychologist. Some of them shook their heads in wonder and grief.
“Well, Nelson, was the kid gay or wasn’t he?” The one vein on his forehead was starting to pop out.
“According to his parents, he was.”
“Well, I know Ethan and Amy and they’re first-rate folks.”
When John called people “first-rate” it meant they possessed some form of power he respected and wanted. I understood why he would call the Engroffs first-rate. My slight exposure to them had unsettled me. Interviewing them was like talking to people from some other planet, both because of their enormous wealth and their terrible grief. I had never seen grief on that level before, even though Mr. Engroff’s was not as easily detectable. I don’t think either of them could’ve recounted a single word they’d said to me. But they were rich and John knew it. Old-money rich.
“We haven’t interviewed the kid we most need to speak to, John.”
He’d been deep in thought, probably about the various “first-rate” people he knew, but his head jerked up at my words.
“What the fuck do you mean you haven’t interviewed the kid you need to speak to the most?”
“Carly Rodenbaugh,” I said.
“Oh,” he said.
“Frank said we can talk to her tomorrow, maybe.”
Frank Rodenbaugh was a prominent lawyer in Manhattan, and he had incredible political connections in New Jersey. His father had been a state legislator and he was best friends with John Corzine.
“Why ‘maybe?’” Mayor Riddle said meekly.
“I guess she’s pretty devastated by the death of the kid. I think she’s being treated by a doctor who’s trying to get her feet back on the ground.”
“How do you feel about that, Nelson?”
I knew what he meant. He wondered if her reaction to the kid’s death might be deeper than just grief. I didn’t know. The thought had crossed my mind also. But I did know the reputation of Frank Rodenbaugh and it could be that he was just protecting his kid. He had the power to do that, at least for a while.
“I know she and Truman were close. Both his parents mentioned her pretty early on in the interview I had with them. I don’t know the girl, but she could be really suffering from this, so it’s prudent to use kid gloves. Kids are susceptible to self-destructive tendencies in a situation like this.”
“Jesus Christ almighty,” Mayor Riddle said. He put both his hands in the air in surrender and leaned back in his swivel chair, exposing a gut that surprised even me. “That cannot fucking happen in this case.”
He meant, of course, that Carly Rodenbaugh, Frank Rodenbaugh’s daughter, could not be allowed to hurt herself. In Mayor John Riddle’s eyes that would be tantamount to political suicide. Especially if the tragic result was caused by his chief of police.
“I doubt seriously if it will, but I’m guessing her father is not taking any chances. Or else…”
“Or else what?”
“There’s always the possibility she’s somehow involved and her father knows that.”
“Jesus Christ almighty,” the mayor said again. “Don’t even go there, Nelson. I know the family in some ways and there is no way that girl would be involved in this…this disaster.”
I knew he meant disaster to him, not to the Engroffs or to the other people who most certainly loved the Engroff boy. I’ve always had a hard time figuring out what motivates people as egocentric as John. For me they don’t seem to have any moral core, and I wonder how far they stray from the personality of a sociopath.
“So let’s get back to the gay issue. What was the word from kids in school?”
“Once again, John, most knew it, but I had to be careful about how I broached that topic. There’s the issue of privacy, regardless of the fact that Truman said he was interested in men on his Facebook profile. He was seventeen, after all. Who knows what they are, at seventeen? Plus, his parents have not talked to the press, so I don’t know where they’re getting their information.”
“Talk to the reporter…what’s his name.” Mayor Riddle picked up the paper and looked at the article. “
Her
name, actually. Heather Trent.”
“She may or may not be willing to divulge that information.”
“Fuck! Why wouldn’t she? It’s not like this has anything to do with privacy, for shit’s sake. We just need to know if they have a source we can use.”
I had to smile and hoped he didn’t see it. “They might not see it that way, John. They guard their sources pretty strictly.”
“You need to find out, Nelson. I’ll talk to our lawyers at the same time to see how they view it.”
This was the mayor’s favorite part of his power, I always thought: the town’s lawyers. He leveraged them when he needed to appear threatening and he knew his own title wasn’t commanding enough. The law was the law. I think he thought all lawyers were like him and, consequently, worked the law in their favor even if it wasn’t exactly legal.
“Well, Detective Parachuk, maybe we can go at this from a different side.” His arms came back to his desk like an oversized goose making a bad landing. “Now that you’ve had access to his Facebook page—and perhaps other personal sites—is there any indication he had a boyfriend?”
“He was pretty close to Logan Marsh, a kid who graduated last year and is now attending Columbia. He’s the son of Sam and Becca Marsh.” I knew the mayor knew them. They, too, were
first-rate
citizens. I wanted to smile again, because I knew everywhere we turned in this case, John Riddle would be up against people he perceived as influential.
“Were this Marsh kid and the Engroff kid familiar with one another?”
“Yes, that’s why we’ve found him to be a person of interest. Truman’s mother and father mentioned they were good friends, although Mr. Engroff couldn’t remember Logan’s name.”
“You know what I fucking meant, Nelson! Don’t be obtuse with me.” He gave me a menacing stare.
“Did you mean were they lovers?” I liked saying the word “lovers” out loud. I knew he wanted to avoid the idea of homosexuality. Mayor Riddle wanted all of this to go away or, if that didn’t happen, he wanted the crime to be solved so the spotlight would no longer rest on the people allegedly responsible for law and order. The burden was on me, of course, but it also rested rather heavily on the broad shoulders of the mayor, and he knew that. He did what I expected him to do. He winced at the question.
“Yes, that’s what I meant. You know goddamn well that’s what I meant.”
“I don’t think they were, John. I think they were just good friends. But I can’t say for sure. They could’ve been. Truman went into the city quite frequently. Logan will be one of the people we’ll interview very soon. On the other hand, I don’t know if Truman actually had an active sex life. We haven’t had anyone volunteer that kind of information, which normally happens in a case of this nature. If he had a lover, that person, unless they were involved in the murder, would more than likely come forward. They would want to help find who was responsible. Of course, if that person hadn’t come out, then that would change it, too. There are problems with this case because the kid was so private. Even his parents stressed that part.”
The mayor looked down at the paper and then up at me.
“What you need to do now is interview that Rodenbaugh girl. It sounds as if she’s gonna be a big help in this case. She’s the one person that might give you some answers.”
“I intend to do just that, John. If her father stalls tomorrow, I’m going to take her into custody for questioning. I don’t think he’ll like that.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Nelson, don’t resort to that! If he still stalls tomorrow, then I’ll get some people I know to call him and tell him it’s in the best interest of the child. But for Christ’s sake don’t piss him off. I can’t afford to have a guy like that taking aim at me. I’ve been thinking about a run at the state legislature next term and I don’t want…I need people like him on my side.”
“I have the law to uphold, too, John. I’m trying to take it easy with the girl. I know she’s probably genuinely upset about this whole thing, but I bet she can help us. We need to be able to talk to her.”