The Question of the Felonious Friend (7 page)

“Of course not,” I said. “But I am dubious as to your chances of finding anything helpful to Tyler's circumstance.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

It took me a moment to comprehend. “I am not casting aspersions on your skills,” I told Ms. Washburn. “I believe there is not very much to be found.”

She did not turn her head because she was driving, which I appreciated. But I did see her mouth tighten and there was some movement around her eyes. “You're giving up awfully fast, Samuel,” Ms. Washburn said.

“I am not giving up because I never began.”

The drive to the Questions Answered office took eleven minutes to complete. Ms. Washburn and I did not discuss Tyler Clayton's question or the murder of Richard Handy any further in that time.

When we arrived at the office, however, we found a large man standing outside the locked door. We approached the entrance and he turned toward us.

“Are you the guy who runs this place?” he asked. He had a gruff voice and his face appeared to express something just short of anger.

“I am. Allow me to introduce myself. I am—”

The man reached over and aimed a punch at my face.

Luckily, I am trained as a second-level black belt in tae kwon do, something Mother insisted on when I was in my teens. She thought it would help me develop a sense of discipline and she says now it was meant to introduce me to people my age with “similar interests” who might become friends. That did not happen, but I did acquire some self-defense skills.

I ducked. The man, already starting to breathe heavily, turned to throw another punch even as Ms. Washburn shouted, “Hey!” He did not turn toward her but remained fixed on me as his target, which I preferred. I would not like to see Ms. Washburn hurt in any way.

As he lunged, I put up my hands in a defensive pose but the man's training was poor and his emotion, whatever it might be, was not allowing him to think through an effective strategy. He came at me leaning forward quite pronouncedly so I leaned back as I swept his legs with my left foot. He fell heavily to the pavement.

“What is
wrong
with you?” Ms. Washburn demanded. I did not understand the question, even though it was not aimed at me. Did Ms. Washburn expect the man would lay out a litany of his psychological or emotional troubles simply because she had requested some information? Was it not possible that the man could have made a basic error in judgment or mistaken me for someone else? It was not a given that he had some flaw or medical condition that had precipitated his attack.

Taking another approach, I stood over the man, who was on his back looking up at me, the rage in his face now replaced by what appeared to be exhaustion. For someone who apparently believed he could successfully overcome me physically, he was not in very good condition.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” I said. “I am Samuel Hoenig. Who are you?”

He was still breathing rather heavily and sweat had dampened his shirt collar and was rather badly permeating his hairline. It took him six seconds to gather his breath before he spoke.

“I'm Mason Clayton,” he said. “What did you do to my brother?”

Eight

Mason Clayton had asked
me a question, but it was not one I found interesting enough to consider answering it professionally. Still, Ms. Washburn suggested it would be best not to have what she called “a scene” outside our offices, so I helped Mason to his feet and persuaded him to come inside to discuss his rather extravagant intrusion at the entrance to Questions Answered.

He seemed subdued somehow, certainly less explosively angry than when he had initially confronted me. He slumped in the client chair after I advised him that Mother's recliner was not available. He continued to keep his gaze fixed on me and paid Ms. Washburn very little attention except when she spoke. Even then he glanced at her only fleetingly.

“I have done nothing at all to your brother Tyler,” I informed him after he repeated his melodramatic question. “He asked me a question and I answered it for him. How he chose to act after receiving that information is not my responsibility. The answer I gave him was the most accurate we could provide. Richard Handy was certainly not truly Tyler's friend.”

Mason shook his head as if to clear it. “That's what he asked you? If this guy who's dead was his friend?”

“He was not dead when the question was asked or answered, but yes. Tyler asked if Richard was indeed a friend as Tyler had believed he was. Our research indicated that was not the case, and when I informed Tyler of that fact, he told me I was mistaken, became very upset, and left this office. We knew nothing of his whereabouts or any further developments until Detective Hessler of the Somerset Police called to tell us Richard Handy had been shot and your brother was in custody.”

Mason's mouth opened and closed. Then he managed, “You think he shot this guy because he found out they weren't friends?” Again he shook his head. “That can't be right. Tyler's a little off, but he's not that far gone.”

“We don't think he shot Richard at all,” Ms. Washburn interjected. I looked at her, surprised at the claim she'd made. I had no opinion on Tyler's guilt or innocence, but to say that both Ms. Washburn and I had decided he did not kill Richard Handy was at best inaccurate. “We don't believe Tyler is capable of violence like that.”

Mason's left eye widened a bit as he considered that. “He can be violent; I've seen it. But I never thought he'd do something like this.”

Instead of informing Mason of my true thoughts, which included the possibility that Tyler had indeed shot Richard Handy in a rage, I decided to eliminate any impossibilities in order to narrow the theories. If I could convince Ms. Washburn that Tyler might indeed have done what the police believed he had, perhaps I could convince her to discontinue any investigation she might be considering.

“Do you know where Tyler might have obtained a firearm?” I asked Mason.

Mason looked at the floor in front of his chair. “Actually, from what I'm told, the gun was mine,” he said. “I have a license for it and a carry permit. I keep it in my bedroom but I didn't think Tyler knew where it was. He must have gotten it out and loaded it when I was at work.”

“You were power washing someone's house when this happened?” Ms. Washburn said.

Mason's head turned swiftly. “How did you know where I work?” Then he stopped himself and nodded. “Sandy. You've been talking to Sandy along with Tyler, right?”

“We are not at liberty to discuss client information,” I told him. Ms Washburn looked at me with something like amusement in her eyes, no doubt because she had said almost the same thing to Hessler and I had contradicted her.

“You don't have to confirm it,” Mason said. “If you think that what I do is strictly power washing houses, you've been talking to Sandy, all right.”

“Is that not accurate?” I asked. Perhaps all the information Tyler and Mason's sister had given us was suspect.

Mason Clayton's face contracted; he was indicating something, but I could not decipher it. “It's one of the things I do,” he said. “We also clean gutters and leaders, we do some roofing—mostly patches—and we will paint and seal foundations to keep water from seeping into your basement. Almost anything involved in home maintenance, we do.”

Since I did not actually own a house—it is Mother's name on the deed and she is two years away from paying off the mortgage—water in my basement was not an issue. But I believed that Mason was speaking in the second person only to try to personalize the service he was claiming to provide.

“What were you doing when you got the call from the police?” Ms. Washburn asked. She knows how to make a subject feel that the conversation is about him or her and that she cares. It is a talent I would truly care to cultivate, but I think with Ms. Washburn it is genuine. She actually cares about the people who walk into our offices. I consider them the sources of questions that are interesting or are not.

“I have a three-man crew, and we were installing six windows in a house in Metuchen,” Mason said. “When my cell phone rang I almost didn't take the call, but it said it was the police and that made me think of Tyler.”

“Has he run afoul of the authorities before?” I asked. Sandy had not mentioned any previous legal entanglements.

Mason waved a hand. “Oh, no. Tyler's a good kid, basically. He's never been arrested or anything. When I saw the cops were calling, I got worried that he might have gotten hurt or something. He doesn't pay attention even when he's crossing the street, like a six-year-old. He's engrossed in the phone, playing those games of his. So I got worried right away that something was wrong and I figured my next stop was the emergency room. Not the police station.”

“So you went to the police station in Somerset, saw Tyler, and still got here before us?” My mind was racing. “That doesn't seem possible.”

For a moment Mason looked confused. “No. I didn't go to the cops. They told me I couldn't see Tyler for at least a couple of hours. Once I heard about you from Tyler—they let him have a phone call and he called me—I came right here.”

“To attack me,” I said.

Mason's lips straightened out. “It was supposed to go differently,” he said.

“Do you want to ask Samuel a question?” Ms. Washburn said. “Do you want him to find out who killed Richard Handy?”

Mason's facial expression seemed to indicate that he thought Ms. Washburn was delusional. “I don't want anything from either of you,” he said. “You talked my brother into shooting that other kid. You're bad news, lady.”

Ms. Washburn sat down behind her desk, looking stunned. She must have assumed that this ploy to get me involved in the investigation of Richard Handy's death was flawless. But Mason was not cooperating by being the desperate client she had hoped for.

Still, she was not going to give up without a fight. “I told you, we don't believe that Tyler shot Richard Handy,” she said to Mason. “If you think there's a chance he didn't, you should ask the question. Samuel never stops working until a question is answered, and answered correctly.”

I wanted to stop this conversation immediately, seeing nothing but problems coming from any research I might do into Richard Handy's death. Clients do not seem to understand the concept of a correct answer versus the one they want, and this question would surely fall into a very emotional area for Mason. Ms. Washburn herself seemed somehow engaged with Tyler Clayton's difficulties much more than any other question we had answered together, and that was confusing.

Before I could reconcile those thoughts, Mason shook his head. “I'm not paying you people a dime,” he told Ms. Washburn and, I assume, me. “I don't like the way you handled my brother and now I'm going to have to figure out how to pay for a lawyer. You can forget me asking you a question and giving you money to answer it.” He stood up, shaking his head. “I don't know why I came here to begin with.” I considered reminding him that his original mission had been to beat me up but decided that would not improve the situation.

“We'll answer for free,” Ms. Washburn said before Mason could reach the door. “Just ask the question.”

“Ms. Washburn,” I began. I had no intention of answering a question for Mason Clayton, and I certainly wasn't going to do so without being paid my usual fee.

She talked over my admonishment. “We can help Tyler's lawyer prove he didn't kill Richard Handy. And you don't have to pay us because Tyler already contracted with us to answer a question. What do you say?”

Ms. Washburn was acting irrationally and that confused me to the point of inactivity. She knew I had no interest in answering a question about Richard's murder. She knew I would not work pro bono for a man who had tried to hit me in the face. And yet she was doing her best to convince Mason Clayton to ask me about the incident in which it was quite likely his brother had killed another man. Besides, Tyler had not given us any money for his question, so we owed him nothing even under Ms. Washburn's logic.

“What's your angle?” Mason asked Ms. Washburn. “Why do you want this so bad?”

“We didn't help Tyler the first time,” Ms. Washburn answered. “We answered his question but it made his situation worse. We would like the chance to make it up to him.”

I was torn. Since I had met Ms. Washburn I had appreciated her thoughtful support and had attempted to reciprocate by trusting her judgment. She had never actually attempted to make a unilateral decision for Questions Answered before, and had often pointed out that I am the owner of the business and therefore “the one who makes all the decisions,” adding, “I'm the employee.”

But now she was offering our services—for no payment—when I had clearly stated my opposition to taking on the question even if we were to earn our usual fee. I wanted to tell Mason Clayton that we were not available for the service, that I was not interested in answering the question about Richard Handy's murder, and that, in fact, I expected his brother had probably committed the crime, so the answer would not be the one he was hoping to receive.

Instead, to avoid exhibiting a conflict between the two members of the Questions Answered staff, I remained silent, hoping that Mason would have the good sense to turn down the offer as he had indicated he would. It was difficult for me to know whether my resistance was based on my distaste for the question or whether I simply did not want to prolong any disagreement with Ms. Washburn.

“The cops are investigating,” Mason pointed out.

Ms. Washburn nodded. “And they have already arrested your brother. How hard do you think they'll want to search for another killer when they have one in handcuffs who can't even verbally defend himself?”

“Ms. Washburn—” I managed.

“Why would you do better?” Mason was ignoring me entirely and directing his question toward Ms. Washburn.

“Samuel can think like Tyler,” she answered. “He too has an autism spectrum disorder, and he uses it to his advantage.”

That was, as Mother would say, crossing a line. I do not always inform strangers of my “disorder,” and Ms. Washburn had always left that choice to my personal preference until now. I'd never required she ask permission to do so, but she knew how I feel about it.

“Mr. Clayton,” I said when my voice had recovered from the stunning pronouncement Ms. Washburn had made. “I do not believe my Asperger's Syndrome is a particular asset in answering this question, and I think the police are best suited to this kind of investigation.”

“You're the guy who put Tyler over the edge,” he answered, still aiming his gaze at Ms. Washburn. “Don't you feel some responsibility for what happened?”

Before my associate could say we did, I answered, “I do not. Tyler asked a question and I gave him the best answer I could. The fact that it did not please him is not my fault. The truth is not something you can alter to your taste.”

Mason nodded toward Ms. Washburn to indicate he was speaking to her now. “Do you think there's a chance Tyler didn't shoot that guy in the convenience store?” He held up a hand in my direction. “I'm asking the lady,” he said. I had understood that point and was not going to interrupt. I would express my opinion after Ms. Washburn responded.

“I think there's a good chance, based on what I know about Tyler, that at least he didn't kill Richard with any premeditation. I think either he didn't shoot Richard at all, or he did it on an angry impulse. Either way, considering his developmental disability, the charge against him would be lessened and maybe dropped.”

Now Mason turned to face me. “And what about you?”

It was difficult then to know what his question meant. “What about me?” I echoed back at him.

“Yeah. Do you think it's possible Tyler didn't shoot that guy?”

The office telephone rang. I was going to ignore the ringing and let the voice mail function, something I rarely use, receive any message the caller might want to leave. But Ms. Washburn immediately picked up the receiver and said, “Questions Answered. How may we help you?”

She listened for nine seconds, then extended the receiver toward me. “It's Detective Hessler,” she said.

“Does he want to speak to Mr. Clayton?” I asked, although the idea that the detective would have looked for Mason at Questions Answered would be an unlikely coincidence.

“No. He wants to talk to you.”

I took the telephone receiver from her hand and said into it, “This is Samuel Hoenig.”

“Mr. Hoenig, it's Detective Hessler.” Surely he should have realized I knew that already. “I have a question for you. How smart is Tyler Clayton?”

I looked over at Mason and placed my hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. “Has Tyler's IQ ever been measured?” I asked. There is a general belief that people with autism spectrum behaviors have generally higher IQs than the rest of the public; that is not true. It is also not true that we have lower IQs. Individuals respond according to their abilities.