Dead Center ac-5 Read online

  “And they practically invented beer up there,” Pete says. “You can drink a different beer every day for the rest of your life, and not try them all.”

  Again Vince couldn’t agree more. “People got beer trees growing in their front yards.”

  “Listen, morons,” I say, “I wasn’t drafted. I’m going up there because I want to. It’s an important case… a kid’s life is on the line.”

  “Right,” Pete says.

  “Sure,” Vince agrees.

  They think I’m going up there to win Laurie back, and the case is my excuse.

  They’re wrong.

  Probably.

  • • • • •

  I USE THE RETURN flight to read the report Kevin has prepared. He went online to learn whatever is available about the Centurion religion and the town of Center City. He could not find the five-year-old articles to which Laurie referred, but he found references to them.

  Kevin learned some striking things about the religion. Apparently, they don’t just believe that they are on a blessed piece of land. They also believe that God speaks to them, through their leader, and thus directs their lives. The device through which God communicates is some kind of wheel, which sits in the town hall. That town hall is in the center of the town, which in their mind makes it the absolute center of the spiritual universe.

  The Centurion version of a priest or rabbi, the leader of the flock, is called the Keeper, short for “Keeper of the wheel.” The current Keeper is Clayton Wallace, who has held the title for almost four years, since the death of the previous Keeper. Keepers are apparently elected by the other leaders of the church, like popes.

  Very surprising, to both Kevin and me, is the total lack of effort the Centurions make to recruit outsiders. They have no desire to convert, or even interact with, the outside world. The town and the people in it are subject to the laws of the state and the country, and they offer no resistance to those laws, but they very strictly maintain as much separation as possible.

  Kevin relates the Centurions’ belief that the land they occupy will be the only land left intact when Armageddon comes. The extent of my knowledge of Armageddon is that Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis were in it, so I’m not all that interested.

  I land at the airport and go straight to my rented house, having called Laurie and told her of my impending arrival. She is there waiting for me with Tara.

  I invite her in, and she seems to hesitate and look around for a moment before accepting. “Something wrong?” I ask.

  “No… it’s just that we’re on opposite sides of this, Andy, at least in terms of our jobs.”

  I nod my understanding. “I won’t ask you to compromise that, and I won’t intentionally put you in an uncomfortable position.”

  “I know that,” she says, and comes inside the house.

  We enter the kitchen, which represents the first time I’ve been in it; I had previously neglected to check the house further once I discovered the cable TV. “I’m sorry I have nothing to offer you,” I say as I open a cabinet, “but I haven’t had time to…”

  I stop talking because I see that the cabinets are filled with groceries of all kinds. I look at Laurie, who smiles. “It’s my ‘welcome to Findlay’ present,” she says.

  “I thought you gave me that the other night.”

  She shakes her head. “That was my present to myself.”

  “You were amazing,” I say. “Almost like you’ve been practicing.”

  “Andy…” is how she admonishes me for prying. Then, “I’ve been doing some thinking. I’m the one who left… and now you’re here to do me a favor. I’ve got to be careful not to take advantage of the situation.”

  “So… ,” I prompt.

  “So I want you to take the lead, okay? You decide where this goes and how long it goes there.”

  I understand what she’s saying, but taking the lead in a romantic relationship runs counter to my normal style. “That’s fair, but I don’t know yet which way I want it to go,” I say in a rare burst of honesty. “I’m not going to be here forever, and I found out that I wasn’t crazy about being dumped.”

  She nods her understanding. “I know that. I wasn’t wild about doing it. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

  I notice something in the cabinet. “Pistachio nuts. You got me pistachio nuts.” Pistachios are among my favorite things in life, and if there were a professional pistachio speed-eating league, I’d be an even richer man today.

  She smiles. “And tangerines. And cut-up honeydew melon. And potato chips. And”-she does a little drumroll on the table with her hands-“Raisinets.”

  We kiss again, more romantically this time, but it doesn’t lead to sex. I guess since I’ve just been appointed the leader, it’s my fault that it doesn’t. That’s something I’ll have to get used to.

  Instead we talk about the case, and I ask her if she has any recommendations for private investigators I can call on. She says that this area is not exactly a hotbed of investigative talent but that she’ll come up with some names.

  “By the way,” I ask, “do you think the Davidson farm is worth a quarter of a million dollars?”

  She laughs. “Only if they found oil on it.”

  This confirms my worst financial fears. Richard Davidson barely has enough money to hire a public defender, but he was not about to let that stand in the way of doing the best he can for his son. He probably decided he’d just have to figure it out as he goes along.

  “Anything new in the investigation?” I ask. “You find out who firebombed my client’s house?”

  She hesitates. “That’s really something I can’t share with you. You need to go through channels.”

  I understand what she’s saying and regret forcing her to say it. I’m going to be seeking a great deal of information in the normal course of pretrial discovery, and I will have to get it from the prosecution, not the police.

  “Sorry. I guess I’ll just have to start torturing Lester Chapman.”

  She smiles. “I’m sure he’s expecting nothing less. By the way, Andy, don’t underestimate him. He’s actually very good.”

  I return the smile. “So am I, babe. So am I.”

  • • • • •

  CALVIN WANTS TO use my house as our base of operations. It’s fine with me, since this way I’ll spend more time with Tara, but I had just assumed we’d use his office. “Why?” I ask him.

  “Because you’ve got a refrigerator, and I’ll shame you into keeping it stocked with beer.”

  “What kind do you like?”

  “The kind that says ‘beer’ on the label.”

  I go out to fulfill Calvin’s request, a rather easy task in this area. In addition to the national beers, there is an entire wall of beers I’ve never heard of, which are brewed locally. I let the clerk advise me on three of the best, and I buy enough to stock the entire upper shelf of the refrigerator.

  A few minutes after I get home, Calvin arrives. He opens the refrigerator and nods approvingly at my efforts. He takes a beer out, opens it, and then finds a comfortable spot on the couch in the den on which to enjoy it. “Okay, let’s talk about our case,” he says.

  “First we need to talk about your fee,” I say.

  He holds up the bottle. “I’m drinking it.”

  “Richard Davidson wants to mortgage his farm,” I say.

  He laughs. “Yeah, right.” Then, “I thought you were already rich.”

  “I am.”

  He smiles and holds up the bottle again, showing it to me. “Me too. So let’s talk about the case.”

  Since we’re only starting to receive discovery material, we don’t have many facts to go on, yet some potential investigative tracks are quite clear. First of all, we need to look into the lives of the victims, Elizabeth Barlow and Sheryl Hendricks. They were murdered by someone, that much we know, and we have to operate on the assumption that the killer is not our client. Therefore, by knowing who these young women were,
and who they knew, we could hit upon the real killer. Or at least some potential killers that we can point to.

  At this point we can’t even be sure that Elizabeth, Jeremy’s girlfriend, was the primary, intended victim. The prevailing view is that she was, and that Sheryl was an unfortunate bystander, caught in the carnage. That view is held because Jeremy is the presumed killer, but if he is not, then it could be that Elizabeth was the person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Working against this hypothesis, but not destroying it, is that the bodies turned up on the Davidson property.

  We also need to learn much more about the Centurion religion and its possible role in this case. These people appear to be at the very least zealous, and possibly fanatical, in their beliefs. Such strongly held passions can often fit neatly into murder cases, and we must find out if they do in this case as well. Unfortunately, the very eccentricities that have sealed them in their own world will make penetrating that world very, very difficult.

  The two most logical places to start are the university that Jeremy and the victims attended, and their hometown, Center City. Calvin volunteers to check out the school, leaving me with Center City. Of the two, it would have been my second choice, but I don’t argue the point.

  I tell Calvin that I’m annoyed with the lack of speed at which the prosecutor is providing us discovery material.

  “I told you,” he says, “Lester is an asshole.”

  We talk for a while longer, mostly to divvy up the assignments so we don’t duplicate each other’s work. We have little manpower and less time, so it’s important we operate efficiently.

  Once we convince ourselves we have our act together, Calvin suggests we go over to the diner to get something to eat. Just before we leave, we get a phone call from the court clerk, informing us that Judge Morrison has scheduled a nine o’clock hearing tomorrow to discuss pretrial matters. It will be conducted informally, in his chambers.

  On the way to the diner Calvin says, “Since we’re buddies now, you want to tell me how Laurie fits into all this?”

  I nod. “Back in New Jersey we were a couple. We talked about getting married, but then she moved back here.”

  “And now?”

  “And now I don’t have the slightest idea where it’s going.”

  “You can do a hell of a lot worse,” he says. “Hell, I’ve spent my whole life doing a hell of a lot worse.”

  “You ever been married?” I ask.

  He nods. “Three times. Each one a bigger disaster than the one before it.” Then, “How do you want to handle things with Laurie when it comes to the case?”

  I shrug. “She’s a cop. She’s the investigating officer… the arresting officer. That’s how she deals with us; that’s how we deal with her.”

  “That’ll work for you?” he asks, his skepticism evident.

  I nod. “So far, so good.”

  As we walk, I keep having to force myself to slow down. Missing a leg, Calvin can’t walk as fast as I can, and I apologize for my pace.

  “You need to get the small-town shuffle down,” he says. “You walk like a big-city guy.”

  “How do big-city guys walk?”

  “Fast and stupid. Like they’re in this big hurry to get somewhere, but when they get there, they’ll just stand around with their thumb up their ass, wondering what to do next.”

  “So big-city people are stupid?” I ask.

  “No, they just look stupid to small-town people. And you don’t want to look stupid to these particular small-town people, because they’re going to be on the jury.”

  Once we’re seated in a booth at the diner, the waitress comes over with two menus. I wave the menus off. “That’s okay,” I say. “We’ll have two specials and two soda pops.”

  She nods and leaves, and I say to Calvin, “See? I’ve even got the lingo down. I used to watch The Andy Griffith Show, so I know more about places like this than you think.”

  He nods. “Let me ask you this. Do you want us to starve?”

  The waitress brings the sodas, and Calvin asks her, “Donna, tell Gomer Pyle here what the special is today.”

  “Scrapple potpie.”

  “On second thought,” I say, “we’ll look at the menus.”

  She nods and goes to get them, winking at Calvin as she does.

  Calvin’s point about my not knowing the local ways and customs, while humorous in nature, is actually an important one. I am out of my element here, yet these are the people that I am going to have to convince that Jeremy is innocent.

  I let Calvin order for me; I can’t hear what he says, but I know he orders two of them, so I assume we’re having the same thing.

  Once the waitress has taken the order, I ask, “What do you think about a change of venue?”

  When a murder like this takes place in a small town, there is a strong possibility that the people in that town will be very aware of the case and very predisposed against the accused. The firebombing makes my concern about this even more acute. We need to determine whether it is possible for Jeremy to get a fair trial in Findlay, and if not, we’ve got to move to have the trial somewhere else. It’s one of the first decisions we have to make.

  Calvin nods. “Been thinkin’ about that; I think we should try the sucker right here.”

  “You think the locals are on Jeremy’s side?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe half and half. But all we need is one.”

  He is advancing a theory that most defense attorneys agree with: A hung jury is good for the defense, and it only takes one vote for acquittal to hang a jury. It’s not a theory I subscribe to; I prefer to go after outright victories.

  “I prefer twelve,” I say.

  “And I preferred Raquel Welch, but I married Celia Bagwell.”

  Our food arrives; it looks like it’s some kind of sausage. Back home I would order tinted broken glass before I would order sausage, but I figure, when in Findlay, do as the Findlayans do. So I take a bite, albeit with my eyes closed, and it tastes okay. Maybe a little better than okay.

  “Andy, I heard you were in town.” The voice comes from the back of the room, and it causes me to open my eyes. When I do, I see Sandy Walsh, a prominent local businessman who I met last year when I was in Findlay. He is a really terrific guy who made the suggestion to Laurie that she move back here, so I would like to rip his eyes out of their sockets and put them in the scrapple potpie.

  “Sandy, how are you?” I say, shaking his offered hand. He says hello to Calvin as well; they obviously know each other.

  I invite Sandy to sit down, and unfortunately, he does, launching into a few minutes of how much the town loves having Laurie back. I’m about to commence strangling him when he switches and refers to the Davidson case. “So you guys are representing him together, huh?” he asks.

  “We are,” I confirm. “Let me ask you a question. If we polled the people in this room about whether or not they believe he’s guilty, what do you think they would say?”

  “Tough question,” he says, and then thinks for about thirty seconds, confirming what a tough question it is. “There’s a lot of angry people, more than I would have thought. Everybody’s always liked Jeremy and his family, but most people think if somebody’s arrested, he’s probably guilty. And with all the evidence they supposedly have…”

  I attempt to make eye contact with Calvin, but I’ve never been that good an eye-contacter, and no connection is made.

  Sandy continues: “But on the other hand, I think most people would want to believe he’s innocent.”

  “Why do you say that?” I ask.

  Sandy thinks for a few more moments and then says, “Because these murders… things like that don’t happen around here. And now that it has… well… people would want to deny it, blame it on the outside world. But if the killer was from our town and just a boy… well, then somehow we’re all to blame. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but I think that’s how a lot of people will feel. On some level I think it’s how I feel.”


  It’s a thoughtful point of view, and helpful because I hadn’t expected it. Obviously, Calvin finds it moving, because he gets up to go to the bathroom. Since Sandy’s on a roll, I decide to try him on something else. “We’re going to want to talk to the families of the victims and some other people in Center City. Any suggestions how we go about that?”

  “Boy, that’s a tough one,” he says. “Those people really keep to themselves and talk to outsiders as little as possible.”

  “What about if we go through Clayton Wallace?” I ask.

  “He’s the Keeper, right? That’s what they call their leader.”

  I nod. “So I’m told.”

  “Yeah, I guess you should go through him. But you’ll probably wind up with Stephen Drummond.”

  “Who’s he?” I ask.

  “Sort of like the town’s general counsel. Handles all their legal affairs, which basically means doing whatever he can to keep the outside world outside.”

  I thank him, and after offering to help in whatever way he can, he goes back to join his friends for dinner. Calvin comes back a few moments later.

  “Where’s your friend?” asks Calvin in a tone that indicates he’s not a big fan of Sandy.

  “You don’t like him?” I ask.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s part of a group, mostly guys, who sort of make the decisions for the town. Kind of like influential citizens that the mayor basically listens to because he wants to stay the mayor.”

  I nod my understanding. “He’s the guy who got Laurie the job back here.”

  “My point exactly. He butts in where he shouldn’t, and because of him you’re not in a fancy New York restaurant eating pheasant and pâté and caviar and shit. Instead you’re sitting here sucking up a face full of sausage.”

  We finish our meal, and I pay the check, eight dollars and ninety-five cents. At this rate the twenty-five-hundred-dollar retainer will go a lot further than I thought.

  On the way to the door I see Laurie at a table at the other end of the diner. She is with three women, all maybe ten or fifteen years her senior, and they are roaring with laughter.