The Betrayers (16 page)

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Authors: James Patrick Hunt

BOOK: The Betrayers
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Senior probation and parole officer Brahma Jones asked if he was going to read her the Garrity warning.
Hastings said, “Garrity? This isn't a disciplinary investigation.”
Brahma Jones said, “It's not, huh?”
And Hastings saw it coming.
“No,” he said, “it's not.”
Brahma Jones said, “Then I ain't got a fucking thing to say to you.”
She was a short, heavy woman, a roll of tummy hanging over her belt. Chris Hummel had been skinny. Hastings looked at her and an unpleasant image of the two of them formed in his mind, and he quickly escorted it to the door.
They were in the break room of the local probationary office, Hastings sitting at a table with this woman who was getting tough with him for some reason.
Hastings said, “What are you concerned about?”
The woman said, “First of all, I'm married.”
Hastings shrugged. “Hummel was married too.”
“You're missing the point,” she said. “I don't fool around.”
“Officer,” Hastings said, “this is a criminal investigation. You are not the target of this investigation. You want to plead the fifth even though you're only a witness, I can't stop you. But if you do that, I'll go straight to your supervisor and tell him you refused to cooperate with me on a murder investigation of a brother officer. And I'll back it up with a letter that I will insist be placed in your personnel file. Now if you tell me that nothing was going on and it's true, then we're done and you have my apologies. But if you lie to me, even once, I will hammer you.”
The woman stared at him, not having the strength to show anger.
“It's not your business,” she said.
“If it relates to his murder, it's very much my business.”
“It doesn't relate to it. Not one bit.”
“I'll make that determination, officer. Are we clear?”
“I—”
“Are we clear?”
“Yes.
Lieutenant.
” She stated his rank like it was something you step on.
Hastings said, “Let me say for the record, I don't give a shit if you slept with him in his mother's bed. I'm not here to judge you. And this is not an internal affairs investigation. But—people saw you together. And they formed impressions about it.” He said, “Were those impressions wrong?”
“I'm married,” she said.
“Were those impressions wrong?”
The woman looked away from him. “No,” she said, “they're not wrong.”
Hastings eased back, a little. He said, “Did your husband know?”
“No.”
“Are you absolutely sure of that?”
“Yes. I'm absolutely sure of that.”
“I understand your husband works for St. Charles PD. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where he was the night of the murders?”
“He was on duty. In St. Charles. It's miles away.”
“Okay,” Hastings said. “And you?”
“I was doing home visits to offenders. It's in my logs. You want to question the people I visited, go ahead.”
“Okay.”
After a moment, Brahma Jones said, “You don't actually think I killed him, do you?”
“No. I just need to check things off.”
The woman said, “Man, you are reaching.”
She was trying to get something back now because he had threatened her. Hastings ignored it. He said, “What did you think of Chris?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, was he nice, was he cruel? Did he ever scare you or hurt you?”
“He was fun is what he was.” She said, “No. He never hurt me or scared me. That's not the kind of man he was. He was actually very nice.” The woman was looking at him. “Whose side are you on?”
“His.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, “he was a good officer. And he was not the sort to rough women up. I promise you that.” Her voice broke toward the end.
Shit, Hastings thought. He felt ashamed. He put that aside too and said, “How did it end with you two?”
“It just fizzled out. I know Chris. I was well aware that I wasn't the first and I wouldn't be the last.”
“So he moved on.”
“Yes,” she said. “To some other lonely, fat girl. But I'm not sorry for what we did. You can write that down if you want.”
“That's all right,” Hastings said. “You say he moved on; you mean to another woman or back to his wife?”
“Probably another woman.”
“Okay. How did you feel when you found out he had been killed?”
“What do you think?”
Hastings remembered sitting at a trial and watching a shrewd defense lawyer cross-examining a sad old lady in a quiet, patient tone, asking the woman if she took medication for mental illness and she answered that yes, she did and the lawyer took his sweet time and made her list every sort of pill she had ingested. After each one, the lawyer would say, “And what else?” until tears started rolling down the old
lady's face. The prosecutor objected to the cruel line of questioning, and the defense lawyer told the judge he was by no means enjoying this, but that it was necessary on the issue of credibility. The lawyer was slick enough that Hastings almost believed it. In any event, the man had to do his job.
Hastings said, “Do you want to answer my question?”
“I felt like shit.” Brahma Jones said, “Happy now?”
“No,” Hastings said. “One more thing. Was he clean?”
Brahma Jones strengthened her lower chin. She said, “He was the cleanest cop I've ever met.” And everything about her expression at that moment said,
Cleaner and better and nicer than you, Detective. A better man than you.
Later, she walked out of the break room. Murph, who had been waiting in the hall on Hastings's instructions, stepped back against a vending machine, gave a mock leer to her hind end after she walked past him. It made Hastings feel worse.
Hastings walked up next to Murph.
Murph said, “Well?”
“She's okay,” Hastings said.
“So you're eliminating her as a suspect?”
“Probably.”
Murph said, “Did they—?”
“Yeah. She was in love with him.”
“Hmmm,” Murph said. “Ready for the next one?”
“Can't wait,” Hastings said.
 
 
Deputy Connie Birdsong was in full uniform when they interviewed her—tan slacks, dark brown tunic. They sat at a small table in an interview room at the county headquarters. She was a tall woman with broad shoulders and a short, unfashionable haircut, and she sat in her chair the way a man would. They had barely started their questions when she burst into tears.
Hastings wasn't ready for this at all. Murph had his mouth slightly open, mildly shocked. She was an officer in uniform wearing OC spray, ammunition clips, and a fully loaded weapon on her side. But here she was weeping like Tonya Harding over a broken shoestring.
Hastings said, “There's nothing to be upset about.”
She said, “Am I going to lose my job?”
“No, we're just—”
“I can't lose my job—”
“That's not going to—”
“—I didn't do anything—”
“Connie,” Hastings said, “Connie. Will you please calm down?”
Deputy Connie Birdsong drew a few breaths. She steadied herself, bit by bit, resting her hands on her knees.
Hastings said, “Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
Hastings said, “Now, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. But we have information you were having an affair with Chris Hummel. Is that true?”
Connie Birdsong nodded. Her mouth closed, as she struggled to hold back the tears.
Hastings said, “It is true?”
“Yes.”
“When was it?”
“About two years ago.”
“You were married too, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did your husband ever find out?”
“Yes. Yes, sir.”
“How did he find out?”
“I told him.”
Murph said, “You told him?”
“Yes, sir.”
Murph said, “Why?”
“I told my minister. At church. He said that's what I should do.” Deputy Birdsong said, “I told my husband and then I told the congregation at the church. It's what Ben said I should do.”
Hastings said, “I thought your husband's name was Martin?”
“It is,” she said. “Ben is our minister.”
Murph said, “Your minister made you tell everyone at church?”
“Yes, sir.”
Murph said, “What church is this?”
The question seemed to wound the woman. It was her religion they were messing with now.
She said to Murph, “What church do
you
go to?”
“Never mind that,” Hastings said. “About how many people are in this congregation?”
“Around fifty,” she said. “It's a small church.” She added, “But we like it.”
Hastings said, “When did you make this confession?”
“It was about a year and a half ago.”
Hastings looked at Murph and Murph looked back at him. Hastings said, “Did you feel better after you made the confession?”
“Definitely.”
Murph said, “How about your husband? Did he feel better?”
“Yes. We worked through it.”
Hastings said, “Your husband works at Boeing, correct?”
“Yes, sir. He's an aerospace engineer.”
Hastings said, “Where was he the night Chris Hummel was killed?”
Deputy Birdsong counted back the days. She reached it, then said, “He was with me. We were at church, getting ready for a bake sale.”
Murph said, “I believe it.”
Hastings gave him a look and said, “Can you give us names and numbers of people who saw you there?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
The detectives looked at each other again, seeing if the other had something else to say.
Deputy Birdsong said, “I'm not going to lose my job, am I?”
Hastings said, “For what?”
“For—you know.”
Hastings said, “I strongly doubt it.”
And Murph said, “Lady, they start firing police officers for that, they're not going to have the manpower left to patrol Tower Grove Park.”
 
 
Hastings waited for a county patrol car to pull into the parking lot before he drove the Jaguar out into the street.
Murph said, “Are you Catholic?”
“No,” Hastings said. “You?”
“Yeah.” Murph said, “We have confession too. It's not like that, though. It's to a priest. When I was a kid, the priest'd be behind a screen so you couldn't see him. I went last year, before Easter Sunday, though, and then you just sat in front of him in front of the whole church.”
“So now it's like what she did?”
“No. No one hears what you're saying. Except the priest. It's just that people who are waiting in line can see you. The priest, he hears you.” Murph said, “Still, I liked it better the old way.”
“Protestants think that's wrong too, don't they?”
“What, confessing your sins to a priest?”
Hastings was thinking of his father. The man could quote New Testament passages chapter and verse. A Protestant of the John Knox school, Carl Hastings hated Catholics. When Hastings was a teenager, he finally figured out that dad was a man full of resentment and anger and meanness of spirit. A small man who probably despised his son and wife for seeing through him. In one of their last conversations before Hastings had left for St. Louis, he had heard his father say something vicious to his mother, something ugly enough to send her from
the kitchen in tears. Hastings said to the old man, “You're not even interested in religion. You just want to carve people up and claim that it's for the greater glory of God.” He waited for the old man to make his move, so he could have an excuse to belt him. But Carl was a man of violent words, not action, and a coward, so he kept still. In the solitary years that followed, Hastings more or less came to terms with the fact that he had been a miserable creep. He believed that if there was a hell and he went there, he would probably meet up with Carl on a talk show set, with Jerry Springer or some other demon trying to coax a bogus reconciliation between them before the inevitable exchange of swinging chairs.

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