Cause of Death

13

I’d like to see Deputy Garner or Detective Bragg. Could you tell him Jon Talbot is here?”

“Yessir. Just have a seat.” The uniformed woman in the glass cage makes a call.

I’ve only just sat on the couch in the magazine-free lobby when Bragg appears.

We shake hands and he directs me into the entrails of the Public Safety Office. He wears a gold bracelet, which I hadn’t noticed on his first visit to my house. Odd that a cop wears jewelry, though on reflection, I don’t see why I should feel that way.

His office doesn’t seem much bigger than Terry Garner’s, in the grunt pen, though it does have a view of grass, not asphalt.

I sit across from him in a chair that’s a fraction off comfortable.

“I know who it is. Who killed my wife. I just got this from my sister-in-law.” I hand him a printout of the email Janet sent me after I’d shared with her the photo I’d found.

I say, “He was at the funeral. And he’s been following me. Here’s his picture.”

Bragg glances at it. The big detective’s black hair is thick as vinyl.

“She lied to me about the road rage. She wanted me to be on the lookout for somebody around the house, to be cautious. But it was to protect me from him, not some wacko driver.”

“Why don’t you back up, Professor? I’m not exactly following.”

“They reconnected somehow. About a month ago, I think. When Patience started spending some nights away from home.”

“They were having an affair?”

“That’s right.”

“When did you learn about it?” Bragg asks. “The affair?”

I pause. “Yesterday.”

The detective eases back and his chair creaks. I don’t think I’ve ever before seen anyone who is nearly all muscle. “And your theory is he killed her because he wanted her to leave you and she said no.”

“Maybe. That’s likely. He’s obviously got problems. Anger, abusive. A sadist, Janet said.” A nod at the email.

“And he’s following you why?”

“Because he knows, or thinks, I suspect him of the murder.”

Bragg pulls a file toward him, opens it. Inside is a notepad, a yellow one, containing much writing. I see photocopies or printouts too.

“Like to ask you a couple of questions, Professor Talbot. You okay with that?”

“Sure. Of course. But wouldn’t it make sense to at least find out where this Wexler is at the moment? I saw him yesterday in Greenville Station.”

“Just a few questions. Fact is, Professor, from the night of the accident I suspected there was some foul play. One skid mark? A notch in the road that looked like it’d been made by a bullet? Then there was that spare tire on your wife’s Nissan.”

He knew this? And didn’t say anything to me? Or to Terry? Maybe he’s the one that Kitten the Chihuahua had alerted Evan to at the scrapyard.

“I know you suspected it too. Deputy Garner and I had a conversation.” He browses through the file folder’s contents. “Now, Professor, our procedure is, when there’s a fatality, an inventory of the vehicle’s done — to see if there’s drugs or liquor, weapons.”

“All right.”

“I talked to the officer in charge of that job the night of the accident. I asked him if there was anything out of the ordinary. He said there was one thing. A Post-it note in her purse.” Bragg flipped a page. “It said, ‘Meet you at the inn at 8. I’ll bring wine.’ The officer saw ‘wine’ and thought of a possible DUI component. But your wife tested negative. Did you write that note?”

“No.”

He regards me closely with dark, gyroscopically steady eyes. “Did you happen to go through your wife’s purse anytime in the past month and see it? The Post-it?”

“No. First I heard of it. Just now.”

“I see.” He doesn’t bother to review the yellow pad. “I looked into your wife’s job at Heart-in-Hand.”

“You did?”

“That’s right. Do you know what they do there?”

“Companions for the disabled, the elderly.”

“That’s one thing. But that’s not what your wife did. All she did was deliver lunch to a dozen people. Just dropped a bagged meal off on their doorsteps. It took her an hour a day, tops. You didn’t know that?”

“No.”

“Which left her basically two full days a week on her own — to see this Wexler maybe.”

“What are you saying, Detective?”

The big man doesn’t answer. “Since this is now an active homicide investigation, I was able to get some warrants. And I saw that two weeks ago you gassed up at the BP in Cooper.”

“You got a warrant for my credit cards?”

“That’s correct. You gassed up a quarter mile from Heart-in-Hand. And it was on the day and around the time your wife would have been there.”

“I went up to the park in Kennesaw Mountain to bike.”

“By yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go into Heart-in-Hand, say hi to Patience? Would’ve made sense if you had, husband dropping in to see his wife.”

“No.”

“I know you didn’t. I asked.”

“Hold on a minute here,” I say firmly.

“Did you follow her from Heart-in-Hand and spot them in a hotel?”

“No.”

Another page gets turned. “You told Deputy Garner that you didn’t know she had a second phone, the one he found at the crime scene. He gave it to you. Where is that phone now?”

“It was password protected and I tried it a few times and it locked me out.”

“I see. You know it’s virtually impossible to break into a locked phone.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“Were you concerned about what we might find on the phone? Texts?”

“Are you serious about this?”

My words are water on a swan’s feathers.

“The day you and Deputy Garner were at the scene he started to walk over part of the ground and you told him to stop, warned him about a bog. How’d you know about that? You told the deputy you hadn’t been there before.”

“It looked boggy.” I suppose I sound exasperated. I can’t help it.

Poor Terry Garner would have been interrogated as fiercely by Bragg as I’m being right now.

“Now, the flowers. That bouquet that wasn’t by the roadside but down near the car?”

“I remember.”

“We talked to all the florists in the county. None of them stocked that kind of flower. But one clerk recognized it. Birdsfoot trefoil. She said” — he reads — “it’s a form of lotus. In some folk cultures, it’s called a revenge flower.”

“Look—” I don’t get very far.

“I checked your Facebook page, Twitter, Professor Talbot. You’ve been seen in the company of Brooke Hartford.”

“In the company of? We work together.”

“I mean socially.”

“Lunches, out for drinks with colleagues. My wife was with us sometimes. She’s married. I know her husband.”

“Yes.” Water, feathers. “Now you also told Deputy Garner that you didn’t have a gun.”

“I... He asked if I was carrying, when we were going to Todd Stoltz’s place. I meant I didn’t have a handgun.”

“But you have a rifle, don’t you, Professor? I saw it above your mantel.”

“That? My father’s old hunting rifle. It’s a decoration.”

“You ever fired it?”

“Years ago.”

“Do you own ammunition for it?”

“No.”

Bragg displays his phone. “When I went to see you the other day? I noticed this in your garage.”

“You weren’t there to do a police report.”

“No, sir. I wasn’t.”

I look at the image. It’s of my workbench.

“I don’t—”

He zooms in and I’m looking at a plastic freezer bag of cartridges, half-hidden under the bench.

“I... Somebody put those there.”

“They’re .30–06. Like your father’s gun.”

“How do you know that, Detective?”

“A couple years ago you bought some ammunition. It was .30–06.”

Credit cards.

“I fired it a few times and threw the bullets out.” My voice is taut as I say, “I didn’t give you permission to look inside the garage.” Law is one of the engines of history and I happen to find the discipline particularly interesting. The Fourth Amendment protects us from unlawful search and seizure in homes and structures within the curtilage — the surrounding property.

“The garage door was wide open, Professor. Falls under the plain-view rule.”

I don’t remember opening it.

Bragg continues in his steadfast voice. “Had you ever been to Todd Stoltz’s place before you and Deputy Garner were there?”

“No.”

“You’re sure about that?”

My sigh and the compressing of my lips are the answer.

“We’ve determined that Todd Stoltz was murdered. Hit behind the head with a pipe, stripped and dumped in his tub to drown. Crime scene found the pipe we believe is the murder weapon about forty feet into a field from his back door. His blood and hairs are on it.”

“Fingerprints?” I ask.

His only response: “Where were you when he died?”

“I don’t know when he died.”

“As near as we can tell, it was about one to four hours after your wife.”

“Then I was home. And I was home when Patience died too. Detective, what you’re forgetting, or missing, is that I’m the one who brought this whole thing up. Your office said ‘accident.’ I said ‘murder.’”

“Which is just what a guilty party would do, don’t you think? You’re a smart man, Professor. And I’ve looked through some of your articles. Battleground tactics, feints, flanking movements.” He shrugged. “One theory might be you murdered your wife and Mr. Stoltz then set up her lover to make it seem like he did it.”

“Detective, you actually think I killed her?”

“I’m examining facts and the theories they lead to. Spousal homicides make up a big percentage of murders. And one of the main reasons that happens is because the victim has been cheating.”

I tap the email hard. “Marcus Wexler hired Todd to shoot a deer and take it to Palmer Mountain, then he killed my wife and Todd. Now he’s following me. He knows I’m a threat to him.”

Bragg lifts his hands and says in a reasonable voice, “Or, it’s the other way around. He believes you, the jealous husband, killed her and’s looking for evidence to prove it.”

After a moment he says, “Professor Talbot, I’ve spoken to several of your colleagues at the university, some of your students. They told me that you’ve exhibited a certain... detachment.”

“What does that mean?”

“You don’t seem particularly upset by your wife’s death. A ‘numbness,’ one of them said.”

Ah, that...

It takes me back to what I’d been recalling earlier: my uncle, who so resembled my father, sitting beside me.

The hospital room was bright, too bright. My eyes stung. My uncle inhaled deeply. I smelled cigarette smoke on his brown plaid sport coat. He whispered, “Jonny, something I have to tell you. It’s not easy. But I have to.”

“Okay. Go ahead.” The walls were the color of putty, the color of dried bone.

“I’m so sorry. Your mother and father... They’re gone. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” I felt no reaction.

He blinked, expecting more — I now suppose. Hysteria maybe. A scream. Tears.

The doctor walked into the room, and my uncle rose from my hospital bed where he’d been perched. The two men nodded.

The kindly physician said, “The nurse told me you woke up. How’re you feeling?”

“All right.”

My uncle whispered, “I told him.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, son.” The doctor shone a little flashlight into my eyes. He seemed pleased with the results. “Do you remember anything about the crash, Jonny?”

Every goddamn second of it, loud and twisting and bloody. I frowned and in an even voice, I told him, “No, sir.”

He nodded and his expression seemed to say: That’s good. It’s for the best.

Now, sitting across from Detective Bragg, I ask him who among my students and colleagues said I was, in effect, heartless regarding my wife’s death.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

He sits back. His chair complains yet again. “You went to Greenville Station and spoke to the clerk at the Main Street Inn.”

So maybe it was Bragg following me and not Wexler.

“You asked him a lot of questions about who your wife was in the company of.”

I sigh. “And you’re going to suggest doing that was all planned out ahead of time. To make me look innocent. I scripted it?”

His expression was an incarnation of the phrase: if the shoe fits...

I dig into my pocket and hand him the note on the hotel letterhead, the two twenties still attached.

He snaps on too-small blue latex gloves before opening and reading it.

One of you two must’ve dropped them...

“I wrote that and sent it to myself?”

“Block printing is almost impossible to match.”

Now, I sit back. My chair is silent but remains hard on the back and butt.

“Professor.” Bragg sounds burdened, almost pained. “You have to admit it’s odd. You make all these deductions: from the tire skid mark to the junkyard, the convenience store, Todd Stoltz. Just like Sherlock Holmes.”

“I’m being framed by Marcus Wexler. Check those bullets for fingerprints.”

“We intend to.”

Sitting heavy between us is the supposition that there’ll be none.

My phone hums with a text. I glance down. It’s from Mr. Ebbetts, my neighbor.

I’m thinking back to one of Bragg’s earlier comments.

Crime scene found the pipe we believe is the murder weapon...

I put my phone away and look over at Bragg. “I’ve seen enough TV to know that it’s either time to arrest me or let me go.”

Bragg’s lips tighten. He had hoped to keep me here long enough for crime scene to determine that my father’s gun was the one used to shoot out Pax’s tire and the pipe that knocked out Stoltz could be traced to my backyard.

“You can go, Professor Talbot. I would advise you not to leave the county.”

I walk out of the office and five minutes later, having navigated through the labyrinth of the PSO, I’m in my car pulling onto the street.

I accelerate quickly. I need to put some distance between myself and the law. Even if I’m not yet under arrest for Pax’s murder, I soon will be for something else.