Pierce and I stepped to the edge of the porch and stood there side by side, hands on the railing, looking out at the coach house, not at each other. I asked, “Now what?”
He thought, but not very long, before answering, “Now that I’ve been so clearly implicated, I’ll have to remove myself from this case. The irony is, you know who will now be driving the investigation.”
I supplied the implied name: “Deputy Dan.”
“He’ll have a field day with this. It fits his agenda perfectly, and it may very well cinch his election.” After a moment’s pause, Pierce added, “Unless…”
I swung my head to face him. “Unless what?”
He faced me. “Unless we undertake our own investigation. Behind the scenes.” He arched a brow.
I smiled. “How can I help?”
L
UCILLE HARING SAID, “LET
me get this straight, Sheriff. You had sex with the victim on the morning he was killed. Your name popped up on a computer file in which the victim demanded hush money from you, threatening a preelection scandal. Now you’ve withdrawn yourself from the investigation, handing it over to your political opponent.” She looked up from her notes. “Did I miss anything?”
“That about sums it up,” Pierce told my managing editor.
We were huddled around the table in my outer office at the
Register
on the morning after Pierce had recruited my help. Glee Savage was also present, eager to test her skills on some hard news—our local murder story, now spiced by blackmail and the whiff of political intrigue, was a far cry from the usual social reporting and personality features that occupied most of her time.
Lucy rose from the table and paced across the room in thought. Her steps had a deliberate, marchlike quality—an impression made all the more vivid by the military styling of the suits she frequently wore. She turned to tell all of us, but particularly me, “I’m just not sure what role the
Register
should play in all this. A police investigation is already under way.”
I understood her concern, and indeed, I shared it. Our journalistic integrity was at stake, an issue I had tussled with overnight. Ultimately, though, I’d slept well, having concluded that the paper’s involvement in this mess was justified.
I explained to Lucy, “There’s more to this story now than the murder of Carrol Cantrell. If this were simply a matter of Lieutenant Kerr taking over the investigation from Sheriff Pierce, I’d agree—that’s police business, and we shouldn’t get involved. Consider, though, the intriguing circumstances that have prompted Doug to step into the background.
“First, he’s been implicated in the murder itself, on the basis of an extortion note drafted on the victim’s computer. The wording of the note, which you’ve all seen, is peculiar enough to suggest that it’s bogus, leading us to conclude that it was written and planted by someone other than Cantrell, most likely the killer himself. That’s more than just a new wrinkle in the investigation. That’s
news.
“Second—and this is what kept me awake last night, at least till I sorted it out—second is the question of what motivated the bogus note. The obvious reason for implicating Pierce is to cast suspicion away from the real killer. But there’s another possibility, one that we’ve overlooked.” I paused, letting them mull this.
Pierce, Lucy, and Glee glanced at each other, puzzled. Then Glee suddenly sat up rigid and alert, enlightened. She slipped her reading glasses off her nose, letting them drop to her chest on their gold chain. She told the others, “Election shenanigans!”
“Of course,” I said. The others nodded, now seeing this secondary motive as clearly as Glee had. “Whoever framed Doug was not only trying to pin the crime on the wrong man; he was also well aware that he was jeopardizing Doug’s chances for reelection. The note’s reference to Doug and Carrol’s sexual ‘dalliance’ has the smell of a classic smear campaign. Ironically, the writer may have had no direct knowledge of their fling.”
“A lucky stab,” Lucy commented, sitting with us again at the table.
“That depends on your perspective,” Pierce dryly reminded her.
“In any event,” I told everyone, “if election shenanigans have in any way tainted the murder investigation, it falls to the press—it falls to
us
—to expose them. That’s why I feel the
Register
is more than justified in pursuing this.” I paused, then added for Pierce’s benefit, “I also feel obligated to help a friend to clear his good name.” I didn’t need to mention that I’d already endorsed that friend for reelection, so in a sense, my own reputation was at stake as well.
Glee drove our discussion forward (I was pleasantly surprised by her analytical approach to our discussion—had she been wasting her time in features all these years?), suggesting, “If the motive for framing Doug was election shenanigans, we need to ask ourselves, ‘Who would have the most to gain by hurting Doug’s chances?’ Obviously, the opponent, Deputy Dan Kerr.”
Lucy tapped her notes with her pencil. “And Deputy Dan is now in charge of the investigation—an investigation that has implicated Doug on the basis of a computer file found by none other than Deputy Dan himself. Pretty slick.”
“Hold on,” said Doug, leaning toward the rest of us, tightening our circle. “Dan Kerr may be my political opponent, but he’s also a good detective and an honorable cop—I trained him myself. If you’re suggesting that Kerr is behind all this, forget it.”
Pointedly, Lucy asked him, “The laptop computer containing the extortion note—was it fingerprinted to determine if anyone had used it other than Cantrell?”
Pierce squirmed, settling back in his chair, admitting, “No. Kerr had no idea—”
“
Claimed
to have no idea,” Lucy interjected.
Pierce rephrased, “Kerr claimed to have no idea that the computer might contain material not authored by Carrol, and in fact, the official stand of the investigation is that Carrol himself wrote the note. Anyway, Kerr didn’t bother to dust the laptop before going to work on it. At this point, I’m sure the only prints we’d find all over it are his own.”
Glee perched her glasses on her nose again and added a note to her pad, musing, “A handy oversight on the lieutenant’s part.”
“Here’s a thought,” said Lucy, running a hand through her mannish crop of red hair. “We’ve been assuming that whoever wrote the note is Cantrell’s killer. But let’s consider Kerr. Presumably, he had no motive whatever to want Cantrell dead. On the other hand, he has a strong motive to want the murder pinned on Doug. Maybe he was cunning enough to recognize a golden opportunity when he got hold of the laptop. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that he suddenly had the means to divert the murder investigation and secure his own election.”
Pierce seemed stunned by this observation, not only by Lucy’s solid reasoning, but by the feasibility of foul play from his opponent, who happened to be his protégé. Pierce had already made it clear that he believed Kerr incapable of murder. Was he now willing to believe that Kerr was capable of this lesser crime? Lucy had raised an intriguing and compelling possibility.
“Uh, Doug?” There’d been something on my mind that needed to be dealt with, and now was as good a time as any. Everyone at the table could tell from my reticent tone that I was broaching something awkward.
Pierce cracked a smile, unable to fathom where I was headed. “Yes, Mark?”
“I believe you—we all believe you. There’s no one in this room who thinks that you murdered Carrol Cantrell. We know, however, upon your own admission, that you did have sex with him, which is disturbingly consistent with the tenor of the blackmail note. What’s more, Grace Lord has come forth as an eyewitness to your overnight visits with Carrol. My point is that you’re now in a weak position to make a public denial of your relationship with Carrol, even if your sense of ethics would allow that. If you did make such a denial, and it were proven that you lied, you’d arouse serious suspicions that you just may be the murderer.”
I paused a moment, making sure everyone had followed this logic. Perhaps the deeper-seated reason for my pause was that I had reached the stickiest aspect of what I had to say. So I rose, pacing a few steps from the table, not looking at Pierce as I asked him, “Will the autopsy reveal the presence of semen, other than his own, in Carrol’s body?”
“No,” said Pierce, surprisingly calm and objective. As I turned to listen, he explained, “We ‘played safe.’ Still, I’m well aware that if I deny our relationship, it’ll trigger a scrupulous search for any physical evidence linking me to Carrol—a stray hair, a loose button, anything. It would be easy to prove I’d been in that bed. So there’s no point in denying it. My best hope is to be forthright. Before this is all over, my private life will be very much a matter of public record.”
We were all silent. I knew how painful this was for Pierce. Though I’d thought all along that he’d be better off “out,” he didn’t deserve the ignominy of being outed, especially under circumstances that accused him of murder.
Glee spoke first, and as she attempted to comfort him, I realized an embarrassing irony—she was the only straight person in the room. “Listen, Doug”—she leaned to tell him—“this town is full of your friends. You’ve never done anything to betray your office, and you’ve never given anyone cause to distrust you. When a man in his midforties is still a bachelor, assumptions are made about him. This news will barely raise an eyebrow, in spite of the headlines.”
I jumped into the conversation, assuring him, “And there won’t
be
any headlines. As the story breaks, of course we’ll report it—we have to—but it won’t be sensationalized, at least not in the
Register
.”
He sighed. “I appreciate that—
believe
me.”
I sat again, joining the others around the low table. “Okay, then. We’ve all got our work cut out for us. We’ve got news to report, but at the same time, we’re investigating a murder and the possibility of election antics. Let’s concentrate on the murder and assume, for now, that the bogus extortion note is the work of the killer. Let’s review the possible suspects.”
“There still aren’t many,” said Pierce with a toss of his hands. “By my count, we’ve got three: Bruno Hérisson, Deputy Dan Kerr, and…me.”
“Now, Doug—”
“Stay objective,” he reminded me. “I’ve been implicated. And you’ll note that none of these three suspects are puny. Any one of us would have had sufficient physical stature to subdue and strangle Carrol.”
“Fine,” I said, adding Pierce’s name to the lineup on my pad, “the sheriff himself has joined the ranks of the suspicious, but he’s at the bottom of
my
list, so let’s start at the top. Where are we with Bruno?”
Pierce told us, “His alibi checks out, as far as it goes. The Pfister confirmed that Bruno arrived late Saturday morning before his room was ready, then checked in after lunch. The computer log verifies this, and the desk clerk remembers him vividly. As for his departure on Sunday, the facts are consistent with Bruno’s claim that he simply left before noon; housekeeping had his room turned by one o’clock. The sticking point, of course, is that there’s no way to pinpoint how long before noon he left—was it mere minutes, as he claims, or possibly six hours? He still can’t seem to establish proof of his whereabouts at the exact time of the murder; a simple parking stub would do the trick. Clearly, Bruno had the most obvious motive to want Carrol dead, so he’s still first on my list.”
I reminded him, “There’s also the matter of
dalliance.
”
Glee and Lucy exchanged a puzzled look.
I explained, “The extortion note uses the word
dalliance
to refer to Doug’s fling with Carrol. Both Doug and I found the word not only vague, but downright peculiar—who would talk like that? Is the word perhaps French?”
Glee and Lucy both nodded that they now understood the implication, but then Glee shook her head uncertainly. “
Dalliance
may have the
look
of other French words, but I have a hunch it derives differently.” She rose, asking me, “Okay if I check the unabridged in your office?”
“Please do.” I chided myself for not having already done it.
She stepped from the conference room to my inner office, where
Webster’s Third
lay open like a Bible on a stand behind my desk. With one hand, she riffled to the d’s; with the other, she adjusted her glasses. Leaning over the book, she read, telling us, “No. It derives from
dally,
which in turn comes from Middle English. It was Anglo-French five hundred years ago, but that’s not exactly
au courant.
” She laughed at her clever understatement.
Lucy called to her, “Check with the morgue. They have French dictionaries.”
We waited while Glee used the phone on my desk to call the paper’s reference room. After a short conversation, she joined us again at the table, reporting, “There’s no
dalliance
in common usage in modern French.”
Lucy said to me, “Nice try—it sounded promising. It would have been tidy if the extortion note had pointed directly to Bruno.”
I scribbled over
dalliance
on my pad. “Okay,” I conceded, “the note doesn’t point to Bruno, but it doesn’t exonerate him either. His English is fluent, if stilted—he may very well know the word.”
Glee, thinking, tapped her pencil on her pad. “It
is
an odd word choice. Who’d say
dalliance?
It’s so…affected.”
Pierce reminded us wryly, “Carrol Cantrell was highly affected. Maybe he
did
write the note—and someone killed him before he had a chance to deliver it.”
Lucy eyed him askance. With a tinge of sarcasm, she asked, “And just what is it, Douglas, that Carrol Cantrell might hope to wring out of you? He seemed like a big-bucks kind of guy, while you…well, your salary’s a matter of public record. Not that you’re ‘hurting,’ but—”
Pierce laughed, interrupting her, then finished her sentence. “But people in my line of work aren’t in it for the money. I’m an unlikely target for extortion.”
“Unless,” Glee interjected, “Carrol was desperate. Maybe he was having financial difficulties. We still don’t know much about his background.”