Dominion

  “Detective. Homicide detective.”

  “What can I do for you, detective?”

  Ollie listened carefully for any cracks in the voice. So far, none.

  “We’re checking out some phone calls and faxes made between your office and Reggie Norcoast’s office in August and early September.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, we’ve got our reasons. What were these phone calls about?”

  Harper hesitated. “I do political consulting for Mr. Norcoast and a half-dozen other politicians. We often talk campaign strategy. I used to work for him in Portland.”

  “How many hours did you put in for Norcoast this summer?”

  “I don’t know, off hand. How is this relevant to your investigation?”

  “I suppose it must have been a lot of hours for you to be paid thirty-five thousand in one shot. And such a nice even number too. Let me ask you, Mr. Harper, did you have any visitors the day of September 2?”

  “How should I know? You want me to check my Day-Timer? Okay, fine. Here it is. Looks like I was in the office all morning. A few appointments, phone calls, it’s all here. In the afternoon I had lunch, worked out at the health club, came back to the office for a few more appointments and a staff meeting. Satisfied?”

  “Do you happen to remember how much money you were carrying that day?”

  Long pause. “Who knows? What’s that got to do with anything? I usually carry maybe a hundred dollars in my wallet. I don’t know. I don’t have to answer any more of your questions. If you want to speak further, you can call my attorney. This conversation is over. Good-bye.”

  Ollie put down the phone, then rubbed his hands together like a master chef mixing his ingredients. “Okay,” he said to Clarence. “It’s hit the fan now. I sent the message we’re onto him. If he’s smart, he knows I’m still fishing, that we don’t have enough to nail him. It’s risky, because he may try to cover his tail. On the other hand, often that’s what gives people away. Telling me I’d have to talk to his attorney was a dumb move.”

  “Why?”

  “Too defensive. At first, he was trying to sound casual, like a guy who had nothing to hide. But the more I showed him our hand, the more afraid of self-incrimination he got. Why should he care if I ask him about legit political consulting and a thirty-five-thousand-dollar fee? When I asked him what he was doing September 2, so what? Unless September 2 means something to him. I ask him how much money he was carrying, and if it’s the usual hundred bucks, it’s just an irrelevant question. If it’s thirty to thirty-five thousand, he has reason to get edgy. He sounded edgy. I didn’t accuse him of anything. I’m a detective—most the people I talk to aren’t suspects, they’re innocent people who may have info pertaining to the case. But he assumed I was accusing him. People assume that for a reason. Often because they’re guilty.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything about the fax?” Clarence asked.

  “That’s still my ace in the hole. I’m waiting to play it.”

  “What next?”

  “I don’t know,” Ollie said, grinning, rubbing his hands together again. “But whatever it is, it’s gonna be fun.”

  At his Tuesday afternoon arraignment, Clarence sat in a courtroom full of the accused. Most of them, he assumed, were guilty, which reminded him that everybody else must assume he was guilty. What made him think he was the only innocent person here?

  Clarence was formally charged, and a court date was set for February. That meant it would hang over his head another two and a half months while the DA’s office prepared their case against him. Meanwhile, everyone would have it permanently cemented in their minds that he was guilty.

  The Willamette Post printed a feature subjecting Clarence to ridicule as another one of those conservative family values hypocrites. He’d often taken on the liberal weekly and mercilessly lampooned its terminal political correctness. This was their perfect opportunity for revenge. They made the most of it, printing a terrible, hard-edged picture of him. He wasn’t even sure where they’d gotten it. He looked so enraged in the photo it made him wince. Then there was a demure picture of Gracie, looking the young innocent Anglo exploited by the big bad black man. Under normal circumstances the Willamette Post would never portray a black man like this. But Clarence was an outspoken conservative. The most brutal treatment is reserved for traitors.

  Ollie sent three more faxes a minute apart, just as he had the day before. He waited a few minutes, then called Matthew Harper’s private line.

  “Mr. Harper, this is Detective Ollie Chandler. I talked with you yesterday, remember?”

  “Are you harassing me, detective? If you are, I could take you to court.”

  “Excuse me? This is just the second time I’ve called. How am I harassing you?”

  “Are you the one who keeps sending these…”

  “These what?”

  “Never mind. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, there’s a document that’s come to our attention. It was faxed to you from Councilman Norcoast’s office on August 29.”

  “What document?”

  “It says, ‘Harper: Counting on you to take care of the job. Make it soon.’ Sound familiar? Now, what job would that be talking about?”

  “I don’t know what job. Not sure I ever received a fax like that in the first place. If I did, it was probably about a consulting job. Remember, I told you I do political consulting for the councilman.”

  “Are you saying the councilman sent you that fax?”

  “I didn’t say that. You’re the one that’s been sending me that fax, aren’t you?”

  “Is there something about that fax that bothers you?”

  “No. I’ve just had a half-dozen copies of it sent to me in the last two days. I don’t understand. What’s going on? Where did you get this fax?”

  “Where do you think I got it? From the same person who sent it to you August 29, where else?”

  “No… I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, suppose I told you he says he was referring to something else, but he’s afraid you flipped out on him and you did something he never intended.”

  Harper laughed. “Nice try, detective. What am I supposed to do now, say, ‘Tell him he’s not going to get away with it’?”

  “Get away with what?”

  “Setting me up for the fall.”

  “What fall would you be anticipating?”

  Harper hung up on him.

  “The fish has bit,” Ollie said. “But there’s one thing I don’t get.”

  “What?” Clarence asked.

  “He seemed to know immediately I was bluffing when I told him the guy who sent him the fax claims he meant something else. Obviously I have the fax. Why wouldn’t he believe I’ve confronted Norcoast or Gray with it, and whichever of them sent it denies its real meaning? What tipped him off?”

  Clarence shrugged.

  “If I could inflate this evidence,” Ollie said, “I could argue probable cause to a judge to get my hands on Harper’s phone records. But it just isn’t enough. We know he got that fax at 3:32 P.M. on August 29. What I want to know is, who did he call then?”

  Ollie looked up a number on his Rolodex, then dialed it quickly. “Ray? Ollie Chandler. How’s things in Sacramento? Listen, I’ve got something else I need you to do.”

  “All right, let’s try it again,” Ollie said to Clarence. “Anybody at all who could have planted the heroin in your overcoat?”

  “I’ll tell you once more, Ollie. The coat’s in my closet at home Wednesday night, right? I get up Thursday with my hangover. It’s raining. I wear it to my car, then take it off and lay it over the seat. I don’t put it back on until I park my car. I get in the elevator at the parking garage, go to the ground floor, walk to the Trib, come up the elevator, hang up my overcoat, and go to my desk. It’s that simple. I don’t see how anyone could have planted it until I got to the Trib.”

  “Okay, then someone at the Trib planted it while the co
at was on the rack. Who?”

  “Everybody there has security clearance. These aren’t criminals, these are journalists.” He looked at Ollie. “Don’t say what you’re thinking, okay? Yeah, I guess somebody at the Trib could do something like this, but I really doubt it. My conservatism isn’t popular, but they don’t hate me that much. At least, I don’t think they do.”

  “I’ll have Manny check into vendors, custodians, computer technicians, anybody that had access to the coatrack Thursday morning.”

  “There is someone else who could have planted the powder,” Clarence said.

  “Who?”

  “Rodriguez.”

  “The officer? Come on, Clarence.”

  “We’ve been over this before, Ollie. To you it’s inconceivable a cop would do that. To me it’s a real possibility. He could have easily pulled it out of his pocket and planted it in my coat during his search. Be open-minded.”

  “Okay.” Ollie sighed. “Let’s get back to whatever knocked you out for four hours on that bench. Is there anything else you ate or drank, anything that could have been poisoned?”

  Clarence thought hard. “Yeah. That green powder stuff Geneva mixes in my orange juice.”

  “The health food? Yeah, I hear you. But we can probably rule out Geneva as a suspect.”

  “Well, she swears she’ll never divorce me, but more than once she has threatened to kill me.”

  Ollie looked at his notes. “Breakfast was heated Grape Nuts with a packet of Equal, toast, and coffee. More coffee at the Trib. Sandwich at the deli for lunch. But nobody else at the Trib or the deli passed out later in the day. You sure you didn’t stop for a doughnut?”

  “I’m not a cop, Ollie, I’m a journalist.”

  “You are what you eat, isn’t that what they say? Journalists must eat a lot of bologna. Come on. You’re a big fellow. What else did you eat?”

  “Ollie, that’s it, I’m telling you. Maybe it really was insulin shock. But it’s never come on so suddenly or put me out so long.”

  “If it was insulin shock, it was an incredible stroke of bad luck for you and good luck for Gracie and whoever else wanted to take you out on the abuse charge. I’m not a big believer in luck. They knew you were going to be out of commission on a remote part of a bike trail on a dark rainy day. If they didn’t know, they wouldn’t have had your impostor posing with Gracie.”

  “But I still don’t see how they could have knocked me out like that.”

  “I’ve done my homework.” Ollie flipped his yellow pad furiously, finally landing on a page full of pen scratchings. “Called an anesthesiologist, Dr. Randy Martin. I described what happened. He said if this was a knock-out drug, he’d go with one of three candidates. First, fentynl.” Ollie looked at his notes. “High potency narcotic, puts you to sleep for two hours, maybe more. Used in hospitals for surgery.”

  “Hospitals? You think I was drugged by a doctor?”

  “No. Stuff gets stolen from anesthesiology carts. I’ve got a call in to see if we can find out what’s been stolen lately, in case there’s a connection. Second drug is ketamine. Primary use is anesthesia. Dr. Martin says it induces a zombie-like effect for two or three hours. There’s a teenager lives next door to me. I figure he must be on ketamme.”

  “Zombie? I was out cold.”

  “Third candidate is sufentynl. Most potent narcotic around. He told me about a cousin of this drug called…” Ollie looked down. “Carfentynl. It’s used as a military weapon. Dr. Martin says a Q-Tip of this stuff touched to the nostril of a moose will knock it to the ground, out cold.”

  “Why would anyone want to do that to a moose?”

  “Don’t know,” Ollie said. “Seems like if you got close enough to put a Q-Tip to the moose’s nostril, you’d just shoot the sucker and save yourself some trouble. Anyway, obviously it isn’t the carfentynl you got or you would have been knocked out right when you ingested it. Technically, you may be slightly bigger than a moose, but still. Now with this sufentynl, Dr. Martin said the right dosage could put you out four hours.”

  “You said the tests showed my insulin was clean. But even if something was mixed in my food, wouldn’t I have tasted it?”

  “Depends on what the something was and how strong the food or drink it was mixed in. Dr. Martin said the only other possibility that fits the symptoms is a street drug, an opiate.”

  “Opiate?”

  “Yeah, specifically morphine or heroin. I wish we’d gotten you in for a test earlier so we’d know what was in you, but it seemed like an insulin reaction then. All right, let’s go over it again, from the top. Wednesday. You left the Trib a little after two?”

  “Right. Parked by the bike trail maybe around three. We’ve been over this, Ollie. Too many times.”

  “But we’re still missing something.” Ollie sighed and tossed his notes in his briefcase. “Okay. You up for some male bonding, big guy? I think it’s time you and I went for a bike ride.”

  Clarence sat uncomfortably in his cubicle on Monday, noticing all the stares, including some that weren’t there. Those who didn’t come talk to him he felt certain believed he was guilty. Those who did come to him he assumed were putting on a cloak of civility when inside they despised him for what they thought he was.

  He tried to push these distractions aside and focus on the column he had to deliver to Winston in a little over two hours.

  If the grand imperial wizard of the KKK was determined to destroy black America, he couldn’t have come up with a better plan than the welfare system that offered financial rewards (including housing) for not working and for having children outside of marriage.

  Welfare to give temporary aid to get someone back on his feet or help him acquire job skills, that’s reasonable. (But whatever happened to help from family and church and neighbors, instead of government?)

  For thirty years, Uncle Sam has been a surrogate father, and everybody, including real fathers, started asking, ‘Who needs Daddy after all?’ Every day the moral chaos of our culture screams the answer to that question.

  Around two o’clock, he walked out of the Trib to meet Ollie and drive to Gresham to reenact his Wednesday bike ride when his life had come unraveled.

  Clarence parked the Bonneville in his favorite little patch of roadside grass and gravel near the Springwater Corridor bike trail. He took two bikes off the rack, his eighteen-speed Cannondale mountain bike and Ollie’s Sears three-speed beater from the Eisenhower era. Clarence put the rack in the trunk, and he and Ollie mounted their bikes.

  “The things I do to keep this city safe,” Ollie said.

  “Just don’t fall,” Clarence said. “Don’t want you to squash the wildlife.”

  “Very funny. Catch me if you can.” Ollie’s big legs churned, and he took off in a flash of spitting gravel. Clarence stared at Ollie, amazed again at the deceptive strength of this cop who looked like a giant marshmallow in pants but could head butt you into tomorrow.

  Clarence rode up next to Ollie. It seemed strange to have company. He’d gotten used to traveling this path alone. He slowed to a stop after a quarter of a mile and pointed to a bench on the right. “That’s where I conked out.”

  “We’ll check it out on the way back,” Ollie said. “I want to do everything just like you did on Wednesday. Talk to me as we go. Tell me what you saw.”

  They passed by the Rottweiler on the left, who barked like crazy. “See you on the way back, Hugo,” Clarence called. They crossed under Hogan Road, close up against the gently flowing creek. The next few minutes both men admired the sounds and sights and smells. Clarence took strange pride in it, as if it were his turf. It felt like showing off his clubhouse to a friend.

  “Okay. I’m starting to get winded,” Ollie admitted when they got past Main Street Park. They pulled over at the cemetery, its plush green grass and ordered tombstones suggesting death was less senseless and traumatic than it seemed.

  “You didn’t get any Kool-Aid or anything from somebody on the
trail, right?”

  Clarence shook his head.

  “Okay. Let’s go back and look at that bench.”

  When they reappeared twelve minutes later, Hugo did a double take, looking surprised to see Clarence again so soon. When he saw Ollie he started barking. Clarence pulled over and petted him, then removed a milk bone from some foil in his bike bag and gave it to him through the cyclone fence.

  “Did you know dogs are color blind?” Clarence asked. “Maybe you and I don’t look all that different to him.”

  “Two handsome studly men, that’s all he sees?” Ollie said. They rode just a little farther before coming to the bench. “Okay. Show me exactly what you did.”

  “Put my bike over here on this side, just like always.” Clarence pulled over to the right, parking his bike beside the trail.

  “What do you mean, just like always? I thought you stopped because you weren’t feeling well.”

  “I wasn’t feeling well. I could hardly wait to get here. But it’s where I always stop. It’s part of my routine.”

  “You really are predictable, aren’t you?”

  “Sue me,” Clarence said. “I like things to be orderly. I always pull over here to stretch out and rest a few minutes, soak in the smells of the outdoors. Spend a few extra minutes before I head back to the cold cruel world.”

  Ollie leaned down next to the bench. He inspected it closely. He pointed his right index finger down into the gravel and pushed it around. “It was raining Wednesday, right?”

  “Yeah. Rained almost the whole ride. The weather was getting worse all the time, dark gray clouds. Too bad, because as remote as this part of the trail is, even in November you’d still have a dozen people easy come by on a decent afternoon. Somebody would have seen me on the bench.”

  “Maybe somebody did.”

  “I doubt it. It’s a fair-weather trail. When I ride in the rain I rarely see anybody this far out.”

  “I called your doctor about insulin reactions,” Ollie said. “He told me sometimes after hard exercise they can come on pretty fast.”