Gnosis (21 page)

Dantzler turned off the tape recorder, went to the door, and opened it. After waiting until Charlie was out of the room, Dantzler turned back toward Eli, who now appeared to be smaller and older than he did only moments earlier. He started to tell the old man goodbye, but didn’t. Instead, he just looked at Eli for several silent seconds.

Dantzler turned to leave, and was almost out the door when he heard Eli’s frail voice.

“Think of Jesus’s empty tomb.”

Dantzler wasn’t sure who Eli was speaking to.

*****

For the first hour on the ride back to Lexington, neither Dantzler nor Charlie spoke. Both men stared straight forward, lost in thought, reflecting on what the Reverend had told them and what he hadn’t told them. Each man also wondered what the other was thinking.

After a while Charlie closed his eyes and pretended to be sleeping. Dantzler wasn’t fooled; he was familiar with this ruse. Charlie was using sleep as a pretense, a reason for not engaging in conversation. He simply did not want to talk.

But it was Charlie who, a few minutes later, opened his eyes and broke the silence.

“I’m telling you, Jack, the man is a seer,” Charlie said. “He has special powers, exactly like those ancient prophets. Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel—he sees just like they did. How did he know the gun and safe question was the one that has been troubling me all these years? How could he have possibly known that?”

“It’s what he knows that he’s not telling that troubles me.”

“I knew back in ’eighty-two that he wasn’t being truthful about the gun being in the safe,” Charlie continued, now awake and fully alert. “But I never once challenged him on it, never brought it up. He knew before he opened the safe that the gun wasn’t in there. I should have pressed him harder, but I didn’t. That will always haunt me. It was not good detective work.”

“Don’t beat yourself up on that issue, Charlie. Questioning him about the gun wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Like you said, his fingerprints on the gun were powerfully persuasive evidence. Given those circumstances, I might not have asked the question, either.”

“Then
you
wouldn’t have been doing good detective work. I was suspicious, I should have asked. Simple as that.”

“You have to drop it, Charlie. What’s done is done. You can’t change the past.”

“Oh, really? Seems to me that’s precisely what you’re trying to do.”

Dantzler was happy to see the lights of Lexington on the horizon. Although he loved Charlie like a father, he was growing weary of hearing him whine about what he should or should not have done. It wasn’t constructive or enlightening. Whining didn’t help move an investigation forward.

It would be much different if Dan Matthews was in the car. Dantzler smiled at the thought. If Dan was sitting beside him, they wouldn’t dwell on past mistakes. There would certainly be no whining; Dan would slap a whiner. Instead, they would be tossing ideas and scenarios and possibilities back and forth like a tennis ball. They would challenge each other to come up with better ideas. They would be digging and digging until they reached the bottom of the case, where the answers are found.

“Are you doing any consoling tonight?” Dantzler asked, changing the subject.

“It’s too late for that. Besides, I’m in no mood to console anyone. I’m gonna have a couple of drinks, then I’m hitting the sack.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Dantzler said, adding, “although I’m sure Emily Danforth will be disappointed.”

“Yeah, well, she’ll get over it,” Charlie grumbled.

Devon Fraley didn’t find out about Colt Rogers’s murder until early Sunday afternoon, the only day in the week she bought a newspaper. She made the purchase not for the news or entertainment, but to check the Lotto numbers. She spent five dollars every Saturday, always on Powerball, “the big one” as she liked to call it, hoping like millions of other dreamers to hit the once-in-a-lifetime jackpot. If she could only match those six numbers she wouldn’t have to scrounge around looking for full-time employment. She and her son, Mark, would be set for life.

She spent all day Saturday accompanying Mark’s fourth-grade class to Kings Island, an amusement park north of Cincinnati. It was the end-of-the-year school trip for all three fourth-grade classes, and it had been predictably chaotic. Keeping nearly one hundred wild and energetic kids in check at that place was no easy task. It took a battalion of eagle-eyed adults to manage it. No Child Left Behind took on real meaning in a situation like that. Blessedly, no child was left behind, lost, or injured. It had been a terrific day for everyone. She and Mark didn’t get back to Lexington until almost nine p.m. Both were so tired they immediately went to bed.

On Sunday morning, she asked Mark what he wanted for breakfast even though she knew what his answer would be—McDonald’s, of course. She would have a coronary if he chose some place other than Mickey D’s. She didn’t understand the fascination with the place—she rated the food only so-so—but try telling that to kids. To them it was a five-star restaurant.

After they finished eating, Mark asked if he could spend the afternoon with his cousin, Jordan, whose mother, Terri, was Devon’s older sister. Although Mark was almost two years younger than Jordan, the two boys had always been close. Mark was also extremely fond of Terri and her husband, Kevin, so much so in fact that Devon couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps her son saw in Terri’s stable family environment the very thing he sorely missed in his own home.

Mark had never known his father. Devon had only dated the man four or five times when she found out she was pregnant. It was on the night she broke the news to him that he informed her he was married, that he and his wife were separated but had now “worked things out” and were getting back together. Devon was devastated, but she held herself together, swore she wouldn’t ask the bastard for one red cent, and promised to raise her child by herself, regardless of how difficult the circumstances might be. And she had done exactly that, providing a loving home and a safe environment for Mark. It hadn’t been easy. There were many days when she wondered how she would make it financially, and an equal number of nights when she cried herself to sleep. Once or twice she had to borrow a few dollars from Terri, but for the most part she got by.

After dropping Mark off at Jordan’s, Devon drove to a convenient store and bought a paper. When she got back in the car, she immediately went to the page listing the Lotto results for Saturday’s drawing. Taking out her ticket, she began comparing numbers, her forefinger moving slowly across all five lines. One number in two different rows and that was it. Damn, she mumbled under her breath, what a bummer. Wadding the losing ticket up and tossing it into the empty seat next to her, she resigned herself to yet another week of accepting whatever crummy jobs the Pro-Temp Agency sent her way. It was better than nothing, she had to admit, but she simply had to find permanent employment.

Almost two hours later, while scanning the paper, she saw the article about Colt Rogers. She was stunned, couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Colt Rogers, dead? How could it be? What could possibly have happened?

The article was brief, six paragraphs wrapped around a mug shot of Rogers, and it didn’t offer much in the way of details. Devon read it three times, finally zeroing in on a quote from Captain Richard Bird.

We estimate that Mr. Rogers was killed sometime between 4:45 p.m. and 5:45 p.m.

Devon put together a timeline for Friday afternoon. Mr. Rogers gave her permission to leave at four-thirty, saying he was letting her go a half-hour early because she had done outstanding work. He did ask if she could swing by the Post Office and drop off the day’s mail. She had gathered up the stack of mail from the outgoing tray, thanked Mr. Rogers for the opportunity, adding that she would love to work for him in the future if at all possible, and walked out of the office at precisely four-thirty.

Between 4:45 p.m. and . . .

A wave of fear swept through Devon when she realized she had possibly missed the killer by a mere fifteen minutes. Had she stayed on the job until her actual quitting time—five p.m.—her name might have ended up in the newspaper article. There would have been two murder victims and she would have been one of them. The thought terrified her.

She phoned Terri and told her about Rogers’s death. She asked Terri if she should call the police and talk to them about it. Terri recommended holding off on that, arguing it wasn’t a good idea for Devon to get involved, especially since she really didn’t have any important information to offer. Besides, Terri said, if the police feel the need to speak with you, they’ll be in touch.

Devon really didn’t know anything worth telling. That had been her one and only time working for Mr. Rogers, and he had been out of the office for much of the day. The paralegal, a woman named Cheryl Likens, had been off all day as well. Devon spent most of the day alone in the office. She recalled that three of Mr. Rogers’s clients came by to pick up documents he had filled out. Two others came in asking to set up appointments with him, which Devon did. And there had been maybe a dozen phone calls, some from clients, still others wishing to speak with Mr. Rogers about him possibly representing them on certain legal matters. She had logged every caller’s name and message, and promised to give them to Mr. Rogers when he returned.

One of the last calls she took on Friday afternoon was from a Detective Dantzler, who asked if he could meet Mr. Rogers later in the evening. She remembered telling the detective she would schedule him for six p.m., give the message to Mr. Rogers, then have him get back in touch if there was a conflict and the meeting couldn’t take place. When she relayed Detective Dantzler’s request to Mr. Rogers, he said it wouldn’t be a problem, he would arrange his schedule so the meeting could take place.

Between 4:45 p.m. and 5:45 p.m.

Detective Dantzler was to meet with Mr. Rogers at six. Could he be the killer? Devon wondered. No, no, no, that’s a preposterous notion, she said to herself. A police detective wouldn’t kill Mr. Rogers. Clear that thought out of your head, girl, this instant.

Then Devon remembered something else—the man who came into the office while she was speaking with Detective Dantzler, the one who stayed a few minutes and then mysteriously disappeared. Could he have been the killer? Or was he one of Mr. Rogers’s clients, perhaps one who was in such a hurry he didn’t have time to stick around until she got off the phone? The man didn’t give his name, and she had not mentioned him to Mr. Rogers when he returned later in the afternoon. Thinking about it now, she wondered if she should have.

Devon spent the rest of the day trying her best to block out thoughts of what happened to Mr. Rogers, or how close she may have come to being murdered. It was frightening and unsettling to realize the difference between life and death for her boiled down to a mere fifteen minutes. If she hadn’t been given permission to leave early, she would be dead.

The realization brought tears to her eyes.

It was almost dark when Terri brought Mark home. Seeing Terri’s car pull into the driveway, Devon went outside and spent fifteen minutes talking with her sister about the Rogers murder. She told her about the phone call from Detective Dantzler, and about the man who mysteriously vanished. Then she asked Terri again whether or not she should contact the police. Terri suggested that if the police had not contacted Devon by noon tomorrow, she should call Detective Dantzler and speak with him about it. Devon agreed to do that.

By eight-thirty, Mark was sound asleep, a rare occurrence for him. Under normal conditions, Devon had to fight to get him in bed by nine or nine-thirty. It was a nightly battle getting the child to give it up. But not tonight. The all-day Kings Island excursion on Saturday, and a Sunday afternoon spent romping around with Jordan were more than enough to wear him down. He was yawning at seven, droopy-eyed at eight and completely out of it thirty minutes later.

Devon undressed, put on her pajamas, poured a glass of ginger ale, and stretched out on the sofa, eagerly awaiting the start of her favorite Sunday night TV show,
CSI:Miami
. When it went off at eleven, she would have to hit the sack. She was scheduled to be at work tomorrow morning at eight. A local dentist’s office needed a receptionist, and Susan Lloyd, owner of the Pro-Temp Agency, had called to see if Devon was interested. Initially, Devon was reluctant to accept the offer, but when Susan told her the job was guaranteed for a week, Devon couldn’t say no. A week-long gig—that was like permanent employment. It also meant a decent paycheck.