The Hanging Tree

twenty-three

We had waited for almost an hour in the shift room at the Pine County Sheriff’s Department when Dingus swept in followed by Darlene, D’Alessio, and Skip Catledge. The deputies lined up in front of pop and candy vending machines on the back wall, their hands folded behind their backs. Dingus stepped to a lectern set up between two long white folding tables. A TV camera light shined on his face.

“We are on the record,” he said. “But, Ms. Reese?” He motioned to Tawny Jane, who stood with her cameraman behind the two rows of folding chairs where the rest of us sat. “No cameras, please.”

“But Sheriff, we need some live-”

“I’m sure you have plenty of pictures from your little episode on the street this afternoon. Be thankful we didn’t give you a ticket.”

The Channel Eight van had blocked in the illegally parked Suburban. License plates were checked. The briefcase was whisked away. Now Crater Face waited in a cell somewhere in the building where we sat.

The camera light went dark.

“Thank you,” Dingus said. He faced eight reporters, including Philo, Tawny Jane, me, the Associated Press guy from Grand Rapids, and others from as far away as Petoskey. Reporters from the Detroit papers were probably on their way. Maybe even Michele Higgins.

I sat at one end of the back row of chairs. In one jacket pocket I carried the Build it and they will die note; in another was Gracie’s blackmail note to “L.”

“First,” Dingus said, “a little housekeeping. We will try to be as helpful as we can with information about the pending case. But we will not try this case in the media. We understand that you all have your jobs to do. We hope you’ll understand that we have our jobs to do.”

“Sheriff Aho?”

It was Jim Kerasopoulos, sitting ten chairs away from me in the back row, near Tawny Jane. I’d ignored the dirty look he had given me when I came in with a notebook in hand.

“Sir, I will take questions when I’ve-”

“I apologize, Sheriff.” Kerasopoulos stood. “But there’s something you probably should know before you continue. One of the journalists here-I believe you know him, Mr. Carpenter-has been suspended by our publication, the Pine County Pilot. I don’t believe he legitimately belongs.”

The deputies and all the reporters turned their heads toward me, except Darlene, who stared straight ahead, and Dingus, who said to Kerasopoulos, “Excuse me, sir, but who are you?”

Kerasopoulos looked surprised. He cleared his throat. “Forgive me. I am James Kerasopoulos, president and chief executive officer of Media North Corporation, parent company of the Pilot.”

“What exactly is your interest in this matter?”

Keraspoulos clapped an earnest hand to his chest.“I believe we share an interest, Sheriff, in making sure we make a clear and factual record of what you’re doing while not in any way hindering you in your endeavors.”

“And what does Mr. Carpenter have to do with that?”

“Quite frankly, Sheriff, I think he should be removed.”

Everyone looked at me again. I shrugged. I was a lot more useful to the sheriff than fat ass. Dingus turned to Kerasopoulos. “I’ll take that under advisement,” he said. “Meanwhile, do you have anything identifying you as a journalist?”

“Identification? My driver’s-”

“A press pass perhaps?”

“No, sir, I do not have a press pass.”

Kerasopoulos was growing annoyed. I was enjoying it.

“Then I’ll have to ask you to leave, sir.”

“I beg your pardon? Sheriff, please. This is really not-”

“This briefing is for journalists, sir, not the general public. I believe your paper is adequately represented. Deputy?”

Darlene ushered Kerasopoulos out. Again I hoped she’d look my way. She did not.

“Let’s proceed then,” Dingus said. He put his right hand on the butt of his holstered gun, the other at the top of the lectern. “As some of you may know by now, we arrested Laird Kenneth Haskell and charged him with murder in the first degree related to the Monday, February eighth death of Grace Maureen McBride.”

Haskell was being held in the Pine County Jail. He would be arraigned the next morning in front of Judge Horace Gallagher.

Other “persons of interest,” Dingus said, were being held for questioning: Jason Thomas Esper, of Starvation Lake, and Kazmierz Lubomir Geremek of River Rouge. Police also were seeking for questioning a man identified as Jarogniew “Jarek” Vend, of Windsor, Ontario.

“That’s all I have for now,” Dingus said. “I will take a question or two.”

A few hands went up. Not mine. I figured Dingus would talk to me afterward.

“Yes?” Dingus pointed at Philo.

“Sheriff, can you give us an idea what evidence you have against Mr. Haskell?”

Dingus smoothed his mustache over with a hand. “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t normally discuss evidence until we’re in court.”

“But Sheriff,” Philo said, “Mr. Haskell, as you know, is a very well respected man in these parts and known well beyond Michigan, let alone Starvation Lake. His case is likely to get an enormous amount of attention.”

Nice, Philo, I thought. I watched him squint skeptically at Dingus through his horn-rims, tried to imagine him at a White House press conference. Not quite there, I thought.

“Agreed,” Dingus said. “What’s your point?”

“Well, it seems like all you have is a body that was hanging in a tree. Is that it? I mean, when you arrested him, Mr. Haskell seemed to think it was about his problems with the IRS, not with some obscure killing up here.”

Normally Dingus would have repeated what he’d said about trying the case in the media. But Philo’s question, more of a well-aimed poke than a question, apparently got to him. He turned to Catledge and whispered something. Catledge left the room. Dingus held up a finger. “One moment.”

It was Dingus’s moment. He had spent the last three days working his way around town councilmen and county commissioners and a coroner who had tried to discourage him from chasing the truth. Now he would show them all.

Catledge returned holding two clear plastic bags that he handed to Dingus. Dingus held them behind the lectern so we couldn’t see them just yet.

“During a routine response call to a chimney fire shortly before midnight last night, the Pine County Fire Department discovered evidence that appeared to be pertinent to an ongoing crime investigation.

“Pursuant to that, the Pine County Sheriff’s Department secured a warrant which was executed on the premises at 72215 North Shore Road, a home belonging to the suspect, Mr. Haskell. We removed a number of items from the premises and have marked them as evidence.”

No wonder Felicia hadn’t gotten much sleep.

Dingus held one bag up in front of him. A white tag on one corner of the bag was marked “2.” Inside we could clearly see a work boot, right footed, ankle high, brown, with a hard black sole. “This is the boot that the decedent, Ms. McBride, was wearing on the night of her death. When she was found, she was not wearing anything on her left foot.”

He moved the bag back and forth and turned it around so everyone could see. He set it down on the table to his left, then lifted the other bag up. The white tag on this one was marked “3.” It, too, contained a shoe. The shoe looked similar, but the surface visible to us was blackened, as if it had been in a fire.

“We believe this shoe belonged to Ms. McBride as well,” Dingus said. He laid the bag on the lectern. “During our legal search of the Haskell residence last night, we found it lodged in a fireplace.” He looked at Philo. “That’s all I can share for now, son, but I hope that answers your question.”

Philo didn’t say anything. Dingus looked around the room, ignored the other outstretched hands. “Or anyone else’s question, for that matter. That’s all I’ll be saying for now.”

“Were there witnesses?” the AP reporter asked.

“No comment. That’s all for now.”

“Sheriff, could you just tell us-”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Reese, we’ve got to get back to work, thank you for coming, I’m sure we’ll be talking again soon. Good afternoon, everyone.” Dingus turned and addressed me: “Stay right where you are.”

I stayed put. Philo stopped on his way out. He kept his voice down. “Meet me at my place after you get out of here.”

“Why?”

He winked. “We have a deadline to meet.”

“So,” Dingus said, “I cannot wait to hear how you ticked off your boss.”

The room was empty, the fluorescent lights humming. Dingus sat facing me on one of the tables.

“Same way you tick off yours, Dingus.”

“Yes, indeed. It’s Starvation Lake, eh? Everybody’s talking, and everybody’s holding out on you.”

“Something like that.”

“So what are you holding out on me?”

“Nothing you don’t already know,” I said. “You’re going after Vend, so Deputy Esper obviously talked to you.”

“You may reach your own conclusions.”

“Got anything else besides the shoe? A witness? A helper? I mean, how the hell did Gracie hang herself in a snowstorm without a ladder or a-”

Dingus held up a hand to stop me. “Off the record?”

“Ha. You heard the guy. I don’t have a paper anyway. Sure, off the record.”

“Got a ladder.”

“From Haskell’s house?”

“Could be.”

“You got lucky with that chimney fire.”

“True,” he said. “And it really wasn’t much of a fire.”

“You got forensics backing any of this up?”

“We will. Takes time. This is a small town.”

“No shit. What about the briefcase? No bomb?”

“No bomb. But some pretty explosive photographs in there, if you know what I mean.”

I knew. “Vend could’ve been involved too, don’t you think?”

“Possible,” Dingus said. “Seems more likely he set Haskell up. If he wanted Gracie dead, looks like he may have sent a boy to do a man’s job.”

“You heard about the woman in Sarnia, right?”

“What woman?”

I had called the Sarnia cop shop on my way to the press conference and the chief still hadn’t returned. But I had assumed that Darlene had told Dingus by now and they were checking it out.

Now I told him.

“Will certainly look into that,” he said.

“So,” I said, “you think you have a motive?”

Dingus shifted on the table, looked away, scratched a forearm. He made a little show of looking at his watch. “She obviously knew some things,” he said. “But that could look a little squishy to some juries. How about you?”

I thought of the burned-up videotapes down in Melvindale.

“Working on it.”

“It’s getting late, Gus. The state police would be glad to give you a ride downstate. The Melvindale police have some questions about a fire.”

I could have handed over Gracie’s blackmail note. But it was the best thing I had that was mine alone. I had no paper, but I hadn’t lost the jealous need to hang on to the scoop.

“What about the Zamboni explosion?” I said. “How’s that fit in?”

“Not sure it does. Maybe a prank, in the end. We don’t have to prove Mr. Haskell had anything to do with it anyway.”

I reached into a pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to Dingus. “This came in the mail the day the bomb went off.”

Dingus looked at it. “‘Build it and they will die,’ ” he read. “Clever. I doubt Mr. Haskell would have sent it.”

“Me, too. But maybe Vend? It came from downstate.”

“That seems a little too obvious.” He smiled and slipped it into a pocket beneath his badge. “I’ll hang on to it.”

“Consider it my get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“For now.”

Philo’s A-frame cottage nestled in a copse of evergreens on the north bank of the Hungry River. I knew the house. In the summer there would be a dock and a pontoon boat and a deck lined with Adirondack chairs painted a green that matched the water. Now everything was draped in white.

“Nice place,” I said.

I was kicking snow off my boots on the throw rug inside his front door. I smelled Windex on the air.

“Yeah,” Philo said. “I rent it from Uncle Jimbo and Aunt Linda. Overpriced, though.”

“Uncle Jimbo?”

“Yeah. I might need another place to stay tomorrow night.”

“What do you mean?”

“This way.”

He led me down a hallway into a small bedroom he had made into an office. Two framed diplomas, one from the University of Pennsylvania, the other from Columbia University, hung over a desk pushed up against a wall. On the desk sat a computer, a stapler, a Scotch tape dispenser, and a Washington Redskins coffee cup holding pens, pencils, and a pair of scissors. A swivel chair sat before the computer, and Philo had brought a straight-backed chair from the kitchen. I watched the photograph on the computer screen change from the Washington Monument to the Capitol dome.

“Take your coat off,” Philo said. “Did you bring your notes?”

I slapped my back pocket. “Yeah. Why?”

“Observe.”

He leaned over and clicked his mouse. The screen went blank. Slowly, the frame of a web page unfolded. Most of it was empty. But the top of the page bore a title resembling a newspaper’s:

NEWS OF THE NORTH

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Jimbo let us-I mean you-have a website?”

“Not exactly.”

I turned and leaned in toward the Penn diploma on the wall.

“Computer science, Philo?”

“I know a little.”

“You built us a website? And it’s not the Pilot? Or Media North?”

“What did I tell you?” he said. “The Internet to the rescue. It’s a little crude, but at least we don’t have to sit on our hands till Saturday. I’m tired of watching that Channel Eight chick get all the stories.”

“Wow. So-what? We just write? And then what?”

He laid out the plan: We’d write a main story that included the particulars of the day-Haskell’s arrest, the arraignment, the arrests of Jason and the others, the town council drama-as well as the exclusive stuff we had from my trip downstate. We’d write a sidebar about Kerasopoulos’s entanglements with Haskell, based on the state documents we had.

Philo would post the stories online the next morning, then send an e-mail announcing the new website to all the people who had signed up for Media North’s Internet service. By nine o’clock, everyone in Pine County would know what we knew.

“Oh, man,” I said. I was getting excited. I was a reporter again. I pulled out the blackmail note and gave it to Philo. “Look at this shit.”

He scanned it quickly. “Awesome.”

“Yeah. Yeah, man. We’re going to stick this right up Tawny Jane’s sweet ass.” At that moment, I almost high-fived Philo Beech. Instead I said, “Hey. Are you sure you want to nail your uncle, Philo? We don’t have to.”

“Don’t you think he deserves to be nailed?”

“That’s a complicated question for me. But for you, well… there might not be a lot more budget meetings in your future.”

Philo considered this for only a second. “I actually do have a trust fund,” he said. Of course he did. He turned the swivel chair toward me. “You drive.”

After the stories were written, Philo left the room and came back with two bottles of Amstel Light and a bag of Better Made potato chips.

“Amstel?” I said. “You’re going to have to change your brand if you want to work for a real newspaper.”

“If you say so.” He sat in the straight-backed chair next to me. “I’ve never done a real story before. This is a real story.”

“Yeah, man. Good work.”

We clinked bottles. We leaned back and drank. I couldn’t help but think of my best nights at the Times, when I had a great story all wrapped up and headed to the printing plant, a story that was going to cause all kinds of headaches the next morning for the Free Press reporter who had missed it. That first beer never tasted so good. Even an Amstel.

Philo said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Did you ever ride on one of those Zambonis?”

“Nope. The guy who drove the Zam most of my years here wouldn’t let us near it. Or her. He called it Ethel.”

“My father took me to a Baltimore Skipjacks game when I was little. I won some contest and got to ride on the Zamboni between periods.”

“Did you like it?”

“At first, sure, it was cool. It’s really a totally different perspective from down on the ice, seeing all those people in the seats. The lights are really bright down there too, and you can see how the ice isn’t nearly as smooth as it looks from the stands.”

“Things never are what they seem, are they?”

“Well, no, and especially so in this case.” Philo took a sip of his beer. “We were making our last little trip around the rink and I was looking up in the seats, waving to my father. We were supposed to turn but the Zamboni just kept going straight for the, what do you call them?”

“The boards?”

“The boards. I looked at the driver and he was slumped over, unconscious. I started screaming and yelling and all these men ran out on the ice but they were too late. We just slammed right through the boards and into the bleachers.”

“Were you OK? What happened to the driver?”

“It turned out he’d had a stroke. I had a couple of bumps and bruises, but mostly I was scared. I haven’t been to a hockey game since.”

I shook my head. “Crazy. I guess Zam driving is a young man’s game.”

“Yeah.” He set his bottle on the desk. “Talk about crazy. How about that Haskell woman? Did you see her outside?”

“Nah. I was dealing with Dingus and that briefcase.”

“She was hysterical. She kept trying to get in the police car with her husband. It took two cops to restrain her. Her poor son just stood there like he was in shock.”

“He probably was.”

“Which reminds me,” Philo said. “Was she the woman that fat guy at the pizzeria pointed out in the paper?”

“Supposedly.”

“What was that about?”

“Supposedly she was in the place with Gracie last week. I don’t know. Belly’s full of shit half the time.” I stood up, finished my beer, set the bottle down on Philo’s desk. What Belly had said didn’t make sense, at least not within the story line Philo and I had decided upon. I didn’t want to think about it. “We’ll have plenty more to write tomorrow. Maybe the cops will have grabbed Vend by then.”

“You think maybe Dingus really does have the wrong guy?”

“I don’t know.” I pulled on my coat. “There was a city editor at my old paper who liked to say, ‘They wouldn’t have arrested him if he wasn’t guilty.’ ”

Philo had a good laugh at that.

Starvation Lake was quiet as I drove to Mom’s, almost as if nothing of note had happened that day, as if no one had been arrested and accused of murder. I planned to go home and make myself a big fat fried bologna sandwich with lots of ketchup and onions, drink a Blue Ribbon or two, and get a good night’s sleep, get ready for my Internet debut.

I had to stop at the red light at the Estelle Street Bridge. I peered up the hill to the pizzeria. As usual, the place looked empty. I saw Belly’s head, wearing a white paper hat, moving around beyond the lighted windows. The stoplight turned green, but I sat there a bit longer, staring.

Belly had to be yanking my chain, I told myself. Or he was just plain mistaken. I hit the gas.