(2012) Cross-Border Murder (25 page)

“Why?” Mary asked from the back seat.

“To see if I can get him to slip-up, reveal something that will give us a lead to more evidence. Unless we get something like that I’m afraid he’ll end up slipping through the cracks in our justice system. Once he gets himself a smart lawyer and clams up, who knows?”

“But with the rifle barrel,” I said, “surely the police can at least arrest him for the motel shooting?”

With a sigh of frustration, he left my question dangling in the air before replying. “I’m not,” he said finally with a grimness which surprised me, “as confident of that as I was yesterday.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“He’s smarter than I thought. I mean, I forgot he was an engineer and not some nutty academic with his head in the clouds. I got a chance to take a look at the barrel when I dropped it off at the station. My first reaction was the same as the detective in charge of the case. It looks like Hendricks treated the inside of the barrel with acid the night before he buried it,” he muttered in a low growl as if he was chastising himself, “if that’s the case a positive identification may be difficult.”

“But you still have the pictures of him burying it.” I said.

“So we end up with a nutty professor who likes to bury his old rifle barrels in his back yard. He could claim that he shot a squirrel there, felt bad about it, and buried the barrel there as a form of apology! Unless we have scientific proof that it’s the same barrel that fired the shot outside the motel, a jury will have to make a circumstantial leap of faith. Juries, as we all know now don’t like doing that these days!”

A glum silence descended on the car as it dawned on us that some of our leverage was lost. My mind was still not in gear. Finally when I spoke, some of my words sounded strange to me. I knew I was trying to elaborate a strategy very different from the one that Phil had proposed. I tried to explain about my last encounter with Hendricks. I wanted now, for some reason I found hard to put into words, to persuade him to give me the name of the person he had hinted might be a more valid suspect than himself. It was not only the name I wanted to hear, but the reasons he might proffer in support of his contention. Gina agreed with me. She expressed a curiosity about what Hendricks might have to say.

We lapsed again into a long silence. Phil sighed, “okay you guys, we’ll play it your way. Your needs come first. But if Tom doesn’t get what he wants from Hendricks, and I don’t believe he will, then I would like to be able to hammer away at him.”

For a moment Gina brightened the mood in the van. Her voice had a pleasant lilt to it. “Actually, I’m rather looking forward to seeing you in action, Phil.”

“Ah, bless you child for your kind words!” He grinned.

We rode along in silence for about another mile.

“Oh, and Tom,” Phil said as if he had just remembered something, “I’d like you to play the soft cop to my tough cop approach.”

“And just how do I do that?” I murmured without showing the slightest sign of real interest.

“Well, my tone throughout will indicate that I personally think he’s nothing more than a self-centered sociopath. Whenever you feel like it, intervene to suggest that I’m wrong, that whatever he did, he must have had his reasons, that after all, he’s a sensitive, caring teacher, not just a callous killer. Try to intervene on something that you feel he can talk about without too much risk. The purpose is to get a door open to whatever is bottled up inside him. Once he gets going, other stuff will then start to come out as well, stuff that we hope will begin to incriminate him.”

That sort of thing, I thought, might work in a police station. I had a hard time seeing it happening in Hendricks’ own cottage. The late morning sun had gone behind a large cumulus cloud which had a heavy, dark underbelly to it. It muted the light inside the van’s tinted windows. I felt like I had stepped back into some vintage black and white movie about cops and robbers during the late forties. Soft cop, tough cop. I thought of all the police stations there were in North America, and I wondered how many tough grillings of that kind were taking place this morning without our knowledge. It was not a pleasant thought. We’d arrived at the border.

“Where are you heading?” The U.S. customs officer lowered his head to glance inside the van.

“Burlington.” Phil said. “Just for the day. Heading back this evening.

“All Canadian?”

“Tom and I are Canadian.” Phil said.

Mary leaned forward. “My daughter and I are Americans. From Portland.”

“Maine?”

“Yes.”

“Bringing anything back?”

“No. We’ll be returning to Montreal this afternoon for at least another few days.”

The customs officer glanced in again, noted that we had no luggage or parcels, nodded, and then waved us on.

“The longest undefended border in the world!” Phil muttered proudly, “and probably the easiest to cross!”

We turned onto the highway which led into Essex Junction. I tried to think of the questions I would ask Hendricks and of how I might best play the role that Phil Ryan had designated for me. But my mind refused to function. The more I tried to concentrate, the worse it got. Like a writer’s block.

As a journalist I was familiar with that phenomenon. Sufficiently so, to understand its possible significance. That worried me now. A writer’s block, more often than not, is due to the fact that the approach one has taken to a story is fundamentally wrong. No matter how hard one tries, the mind rebels. And it trips the circuits of the brain paralyzing the thought processes. Usually the only solution is to scrap the approach, refocus and start over. Was I wrong about the approach I was planning to take in the questioning of Hendricks? Was that what my mind was trying to tell me? I hoped not.

CHAPTER TWENTY
 

We parked on the gravel driveway. As we emerged from the van, and started slowly up the pathway, Hendricks appeared in his doorway. “What are you all here for?” He shouted although we were by then less than ten feet away.

“We want to talk to you,” I said.

He gave Mary a wary, but friendly nod, and turned his attention back to me.

“Who’s he?” He asked, motioning at Ryan.

“Phil Ryan,” I said, “he was the detective in charge of the investigation into Monaghan’s murder.”

“I thought so. So what’s he doing here?”

“He’s been helping me with my inquiries.” I added. “He’s retired. May we come in?”

He hesitated. I thought for a moment he was going to say no. But he stepped aside, and we entered single file through his door and into his living room. Once we were inside, he picked up a shotgun that he had placed near the door.

The four of us froze.

“I mean you no harm,” he said, “but I have my reasons for not trusting your presence here.” None of us said anything. “I want the two men to sit on the couch. Gina you can sit with them. Mary, you take the chair next to the couch.” He waited until we were seated, then with one hand he carefully pulled his own comfortable reading chair into a position ten feet away. He lowered himself slowly but cautiously into the chair.

“There’s no reason for the shotgun,” Ryan said in a quiet, authoritative voice.

Hendricks simply ignored him. From his vantage point he was able to keep us all in his line of vision, but the center of his focus shifted to me. “Why are you trying to pin the murder of Naomi on me?”

“That’s not what I’ve been trying to do.”

“I have a neighbor who’s a customs officer. We’ve known each other a long time. Your friend fits the description of someone who has been trying to establish that I crossed the border early on the morning that Naomi was killed.”

I did not deny it. I spoke cautiously, “at the time we were busy checking the movements of a number of people. Our purpose, then, was to eliminate suspects, not pin the murder on you or anyone in particular.”

A brief smile flitted across his face. “You disappoint me, Webster. Logic is apparently not your strong suit.” I gave him a puzzled look. “You can’t prove a negative.” He said harshly. “As an educated man, you should know that. No matter how many customs officers said they had no memory of my crossing the border, it would not prove that I didn’t. If you had wanted to eliminate me as a suspect, the logical step would have been to check at the mall where I told you I went shopping. But you didn’t do that, did you? Your friend questioned custom officers because you wanted to continue to believe that I had lied to you even if all the queries at the border proved negative.”

I could not argue with his logic.

“I was the one who questioned the border guards,” Ryan said, “I’m the one who knows you’re guilty. Tom is still more interested in eliminating you as a suspect.”

“Oh, I know what you think.” He gave Ryan a withering look. “I could see it in your eyes from the moment you approached this house.”

Ryan just gave him a hard stare.

“But then your credibility is suspect, isn’t it? After all, you’re the guy who was convinced that Frank Montini was guilty. Or am I wrong?”

Ryan said nothing. He just continued to stare.

“Harold,” Mary said in a voice which under the circumstances had a surprising softness to it. “We only came here to talk to you.” She stared at the shotgun.

Hendricks looked at her. “No, Mary,” he spoke gently to her, “I’m not planning to use this. Not unless I have to. You’re all free to leave any time you want. All you have to do is get up and walk out that door.”

“Then why the gun, Harold?”

“I don’t trust this ex-cop. I think he would like to spirit me back across the border. I’m sure that he’s aware of some of the isolated border crossings that are unmanned and only patrolled periodically. It would not be that difficult to do. And I couldn’t help noticing that he had a bulge underneath his jacket when he strutted up to the house. This,” he motioned to the shotgun which he now held cradled on his knees, “stays here until he’s back in his van.” As he spoke I had begun to wonder how much he had drunk already. His face was flushed and there was a bottle and a half-empty glass above the fireplace. Ryan did not deny that he had a revolver on him. He just sat there with his hands placed well forward on his thighs.

“Mary’s right,” I said quietly, “we only came to talk.”

Hendricks’ glance shifted briefly from Mary to me, but he decided to ignore me.

“So what did you want to talk about?” He asked her. “What was so important to you that it warranted the four of you coming down here?”

I had to admire the calmness in Mary’s voice when she spoke. “On Thursday you hinted to Thomas that you might know who murdered Michael Monaghan and possibly Naomi as well.” He shrugged. She went on, “we were hoping to persuade you to tell us who it is you suspect and why.”

Hendricks frowned. His hand stroked the twin barreled shot gun. I tried not to move a muscle. Mary pressed on, “my daughter and I have a need to know, Harold.”

He glanced at Gina. She nodded. His stare encompassed all of us. A sad, defeated look had crept into his eyes. “I have no proof, Mary. Only a series of unusual circumstances and something approaching a theory.”

“That may still help us. I would really like to hear it.”

He pondered that for a moment. Then he slumped slightly in his chair as if he had finally made up his mind about something.

“It’s all fairly complicated.” He motioned to Ryan. “I’ve never had much confidence in the law. Or justice for that matter.”

I was glad to see that Phil held himself in check. It could not have been easy.

“I’ve had my reasons,” Hendricks continued in a tone that still reflected that sense of personal self-defeat, “for suspecting that Peter Gooden murdered Michael.” His eyes strayed to the back of his large hands. None of us spoke or moved. “Back then,” Hendricks continued, “I had the office next to Michael’s. Just before lunch on the day that Michael was murdered, the two of them quarreled in Michael’s office. Not loud enough for me to follow it, but loud enough for me to realize that they were both very angry. When Frank was arrested, I put the quarrel out of my mind. But it kept coming back to haunt me in a number of small ways. Even though I initially helped supervise Gooden’s doctoral thesis, he was still in many ways one of Monaghan’s acolytes. The way he subsequently minimized his work and relationship with Monaghan struck me as oddly duplicitous. Then around the time he went to the Department of National Defense, he published an article that had touches of Monaghan’s style and flair to it. I suspect if Monaghan had been alive, he could have gone after Gooden for plagiarism.” Gina sat frozen beside me. “Gooden, you see,” Hendricks muttered, “was bright and he was certainly ambitious, but he had none of Monaghan’s temperament or brilliance, certainly not in Monaghan’s field of specialization. Then I began to wonder about Gooden’s appointment to the Department of National Defense. The job was not really in his primary field. More in Monaghan’s orbit. I’m sure you’re not aware of this,” he said, “but around that time, I came across evidence that the RCMP were trying to infiltrate the campus. Shortly after Gooden left for Ottawa, a plainclothes member of the RCMP approached one of our brighter graduate students.”

The RCMP, I thought? What did they have to do with any of this? I had known all along that the RCMP had paid informers on some Quebec campuses, but I had not considered Winston University important enough to warrant their attention. Like many Canadian journalists I had associated the RCMP’s interest in Quebec universities with the growing movement for Quebec’s political separation. The number of professors or students of that kind at Winston could be counted using my fingers.

“What was significant about that student,” Hendricks continued, “was that he was planning to spend his summer working at Gerald Bull’s range at Highwater.”

I thought, of course, why not? If the CIA were interested in the Monaghan-Bull connection, why not the RCMP? At the time, international espionage was still an RCMP responsibility. It was only a few years later that the role was taken away from them and given to a new secret agency with the acronym CSIS.