At the Scene of the Crime (8 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“If Triplett comes back, you don’t hesitate, you don’t warn him, you just spray the hell out of him and call 911. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” the guard said.

Hawkins half expected the guy to salute and snap his heels, but, thankfully, the doors whispered shut and the elevator started its descent. Hawkins had pressed the button for the parking garage, figuring that was where Triplett was headed. As he rode, Hawkins withdrew his nine mil and clicked off the safety. Triplett had left Hoff’s gun at the crime scene, but that didn’t mean Triplett didn’t have one of his own.

As the elevator eased to a stop, Hawkins dropped into a shooter’s stance. He knew he was ahead of Raines and the detectives, but he probably wasn’t ahead of Triplett—

The doors silently slid open and Hawkins arced the gun across the opening.

He saw nothing in the darkness. He stepped out and waited a few seconds as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the garage. He listened carefully in the silence for a sound, any sound, the scraping of a shoe on concrete, the click of the safety of a gun, the clunk of a car door, anything that would tell him where Triplett was.

Creeping forward, pistol at the ready, Hawkins strained to see into the cars on either side of him as he moved down the middle of the aisle. He wished he had thought to ask Mrs. Triplett where their parking place was. This was slow going, one car at a time, first on the left, then on the right, then back on the left . . .

Sweat ran down Hawkins’s back; his hair matted to his forehead as he inched forward. The garage was cooler than outside but only a little and the heat pressed in on Hawkins as he searched the Lexus, then the BMW, then the Jaguar.

Still no sign of Triplett.

To his left and behind him, Hawkins heard the scraping of a door and it occurred to him that maybe he had beaten Triplett to the garage and the killer was now behind him. Hawkins spun and trained his pistol on the doorway and saw a nine millimeter Glock coming through the door first. He increased the pressure on the trigger. Just as he was about to squeeze off a round, Hawkins saw the burly frame of Yackowski follow his pistol into the garage.

Then a car roared to life and Hawkins whirled as a gray Lexus lunged out of a parking place, tires squealing as it charged toward him.

Steadying himself, even as he heard Raines shout behind him, Hawkins took aim and squeezed the trigger, once, twice, three times. The car continued toward him even as the first shot punched through the windshield. The other two bullets followed the leader through the spiderwebbing glass as Hawkins dove for cover between two cars.

The Lexus heeled to the left, scraping against a concrete pillar, sparks flying as the car smashed into a parked Cadillac. Even before the sound of the crash had fully died away, Hawkins was on his feet, running toward the smashed Lexus, his gun poised to shoot. The air bag had deployed and Triplett was trying to get out from under it as Hawkins aimed his pistol through the shattered passenger-side window.

Triplett saw Hawkins and the weapon and stopped battling the bag and raised his hands. Yackowski, Stark, and Raines came running up.

The detectives yanked the suspect out of the car and cuffed him. Raines reached a latex-gloved hand through the window, picked up a white garbage bag, and carefully shook the broken glass off it. She set the bag on the concrete floor. Inside were two lavender bath towels that Hawkins recognized as a match to the ones in the Hoff apartment.

Two shell casings fell out of the towels.

Stark read Triplett his rights, but the suspect shouted over them: “Carl shot Caroline! I was just defending myself.”

Hawkins pointed to the garbage bag. “And this?”

“I panicked. I didn’t think anybody would believe me.”

“You’re a smart man,” Yackowski said. “’Cause we don’t.”

Triplett’s eyes widened.

“He was running away from you,” Yackowski said. “You didn’t have to shoot him. You had the gun. Why didn’t you just call 911 and bust his ass?”

Triplett’s gaze fell and he said nothing.

Hawkins stepped forward. “Because Hoff knew. That’s it, isn’t it, Roger?”

Triplett kept his eyes on the cement.

Yackowski asked, “Knew what?”

Hawkins’s eyes bored into Triplett until the suspect finally met his eyes.

His voice barely above a whisper, Triplett said, “He knew about Caroline and me.”

Yackowski, incredulous, said, “You witnessed a man kill your lover, his ex-wife . . . and then you shot him because he found out about your affair?”

“Our money’s all Angela’s. If she found out about Caroline and me, she’d have divorced me, whether Caroline was alive or dead.”

Yackowski was shaking his head now. He looked over at his young partner, who shrugged and rolled his eyes.

Hawkins laid a hand on Triplett’s shoulder. “Why pick up the shell casings, and take them with you?”

Triplett didn’t answer.

Hawkins pointed at the burn on the man’s arm. “The ejected shell casing was hot and burned you—you figured we could get DNA from that. You didn’t know which casing burned you, so you took ‘em both, right? To avoid DNA testing?”

Triplett swallowed, then nodded.

“Just so you know? We couldn’t have got a damn thing off those casings.”

At his side, Raines whispered, “He’ll go away forever. All to cover up an
affair with a dead woman.”

“I guess the lowlife just didn’t want to risk it.”

“Risk what?”

“Losing the high life.”

TROOPER ERIN FLANNERY, OUT OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA:
Five-six. One-twelve, brown over brown. Red-brown over brown. Over hazel, make it, a kind of green. At her funeral, speakers said she was a loyal friend, good at her job, full of zip, had a beautiful smile. Everyone loved her, they said.

When she came aboard Troop M, even I thought of asking her out. But dating people from work—no good. The day our Commander, Paul Ooten, told us a female was joining us he warned not to engage in excessive swearing and crude remarks to see how she’d take it or to show she was one of the boys. He’d seen it before, and it was comical and juvenile, and nothing more than bias in the guise of jokes. He reminded us of the word “respect” used in the state police motto, and that our training includes the concept of military courtesy applied to civilians, peers, and superiors, whatever the gender. Unless some miscreant pissed us off while breaking the law, and then you can beat the shit out of him, he said. We laughed. Commander Paul Ooten. A lot like my dad. Upright, ethical, fair. Firm, yet fun when the time called for it. He also reminded me of my dad in the way he talked and in some of his mannerisms, like swiping a knuckle under his nose after he delivered a punch line. My father died when I was twelve. Heart attack in his police cruiser.

Everything changed.

My mother was okay for a while. Then she slowly took to drinking. By the time I was fourteen, she was into it full throttle. She dated, and each time it hardened me more. The idea of her wanting anyone but Dad sickened me.

It wasn’t like she brought guys home, but she might as well have.

As soon as I was out of school and found someone to share rent with, I moved out, enrolled in community college, and later, with my AA degree in hand, applied to the Pennsylvania State Police Academy. What I really wanted was to go to Missoula where my uncle lived, study writing and film, and then wind up in California or New York, doing that scene. But I needed money from a job. I more than satisfied the physical training, aced the written and orals. Bingo, I are a cop.

Within seven years I earned a couple of medals for distinction in service. The last recognition was from the community, the “DUI Top Gun Award” for nailing forty-nine intelligent people who got behind the wheel while drunk.

Once, when I was ten, I alerted some neighbors across the street that their house was on fire. They called me a hero. I wasn’t a hero. I was an ordinary kid who knew enough to realize a ton of smoke was not coming from a leaf pile in the backyard. My dad was the hero. He ran to the house with a ladder to get Mrs. Salvatore from the second floor.

 

I’m twenty-eight today. Today, like when you go to the doctor and the assistants ask and even the doctor asks how old are you today? Uh, yesterday I was twenty-eight, and today I’m twenty-eight also, thank you. And I’m single after a two-year marriage to a girl who couldn’t dig someone who always thought he was right. I tried, really did, to see more gray instead of black and white. The marriage just wasn’t meant to be. She went back to Alabama, teaches elementary school there. I wonder how she’d view me now.

How old are you today? A hundred inside.

 

When Officer Flannery transferred over she was required to put in her time on reception. Nobody likes that duty, but there aren’t enough civilians for
it even though our governor is high on recruiting them. Right away the guys started testing her, seeing how available she might be. Married, unmarried, didn’t matter. It’s a thing guys do. I should say here I never saw our commander flirt or kid in any way that made it seem Erin was anything but another trooper.

 

Commander Paul Ooten’s a real family man. That’s what I heard all the time. I’d seen him with his family at a state patrol picnic once. Pretty wife. Two kids, about eight, ten.

And I saw him one night, behind a motel near Tannersville, coming down the stairs from the second floor, Trooper Flannery in front of him.

I had just gotten in my car after coming out of a restaurant. Parked perpendicular to the restaurant, nose in to the motel, I went to wipe moisture off the side mirror and then looked up. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. The light over the staircase and landing was fuzzy from moist air. The couple had long coats on. I watched them walk over patchy snow to her car. She got in, and a different light, coming from the motel sign near the street, hit her face, brighter, paler. Paul shut her door. She rolled down the window, and he leaned over and kissed her, then stood watching as she pulled away.

The next day I had a hard time looking at him.

 

A couple of weeks later, I was at my desk on a weekend. I had off, but my review was coming up and I had to get some overdue paperwork in. Ooten’s door was open. Half of him was visible through the doorway, cut vertically, or I’d see him when he’d get up to go to his file cabinet.

Bill Buttons was in too. He’s a kiss-up. Buttons thinks he’s Bruce Willis. Shaves his head, swaggers around, crinks his mouth to smile. Sometimes when Ooten is around, Buttons makes like Bruce Willis making like John Wayne, saying, Wal, pardner, let’s get ’er done. The effect: ridiculous.

That day, Paul Ooten came out of his office a couple of times, said something to Buttons, something to me. I tried forcing my feelings, tried to look
at him the way I did before the night outside the motel with Erin. But I kept picturing him on her, her doing stuff to him.

When Buttons left for lunch, Paul—it’s hard to call him Commander Ooten anymore—came into Room 5 where there are mail slots against the wall, a supply cabinet, a small refrigerator, the coffee machine. I was pouring coffee for myself. Ooten put a memo in a slot and then took some time to mention the weather, the Eagles game, and how he’d been thinking of taking a course in Excel. I couldn’t hide my lack of interest, but I guess because I had recently lost my mother to cancer, he said, “If you need to talk about it, Justin, my door’s always open.”

I said something like Thanks, I’m fine. His manner, the kindness behind it, touched me. And I resolved to put what I saw at the motel out of my mind.

 

What’s bitter is that Erin Flannery didn’t die from a car accident or a long-hidden disease. She died from brain trauma in her own home.

Detectives interviewed the civilians in her life: family, friends, neighbors. They interviewed us at Troop M too, in due time. I wondered what Paul Ooten had told them. I wondered if the strained expression I saw each day was worry about his secret being outed, or if the tightness in his face was the shame he knew he brought to the badge. I’ll say this: for some guys, if they learned the commander was boning Erin he’d only be more of a hero in their eyes.

No boyfriend turned up in the investigation. Bill Buttons said that’s sure hard to believe, a piece like that.

A crime of opportunity, we concluded. It happens. Even to cops.

Kleinsfeldt said he overheard there was something odd about the evidence in her case, he didn’t know what. We asked who he heard it from. He wouldn’t say.

I reminded the guys that Flannery had been an LEO, a Liquor Enforcement Officer up in Harrisburg. It sounds like soft duty, but not necessarily. You go undercover to nab idiots who sell to minors. You look for cheats who avoid taxes by importing liquor from other states. You bust
speakeasies. Yes, they still call them that, those enterprises too un-enterprising to get a liquor license. The Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement also goes after illegal video gambling machines, looking for operations suspected as hooked to corrupt organizations. Maybe she found one and was afraid she’d get cashed out because of it. Patrol sees our fair share of action, I don’t mean we don’t. It’s more than spotting violations of the vehicle code. When your number’s up you can get killed responding to a disturbance call as well as by some desperate speakeasy owner.

One time Erin found a note on the seat of her desk chair. It said he wished he were her seat cushion. She told me about it only because I was walking through the lobby and saw the look of disgust on her face as she studied the paper still in her hands. “Some jerk,” she said. Said it quietly, almost with sadness. I don’t know why that particular note would bother someone so much, but then I’ve never been a woman. I told her maybe it could be the computer guy, Steve Gress. He was in every week, supposedly upgrading our systems, which only created more problems. I’d noticed the way he looked at her.