The Truth Can Get You Killed Read online

  Turner said, “Your mother and sister never mentioned anything about any fights between you and your dad.”

  “Why would they? They know I wouldn’t kill my dad, but mentioning the fights would have made me a suspect.”

  “They lied to the police,” Fenwick said.

  “Well, golly, I’ll bet they’re the first ones that ever fibbed to you.”

  Fenwick said, “You’ve got a smart mouth for somebody who just ran from the police investigating a murder.”

  “Sorry, I’ll go back to being passive and intimidated just to make you happy.”

  Fenwick said, “As long as you keep talking, I’m happy.”

  Turner said, “No one where your father worked or any of his friends said anything about fights between the two of you.”

  Mike Meade continued. “We might be arguing like mad before a guest came to the house, but once somebody else walked in, you’d have thought we were Ozzie and Harriet mixed with the Brady Bunch. You really think it’s that odd that a family keeps its business to itself?”

  “Who was the friend you were with in St. Louis?” Fenwick asked.

  “Who I was with has nothing to do with the investigation.”

  “Not answering makes you look bad,” Fenwick said.

  “I don’t have to tell you.”

  Turner asked, “At the bar that night, did you hear the announcement Billy Geary made about your dad being in the bar?”

  “No. Billy made an announcement?”

  “You know who he is?”

  “Yeah. He’s not a close friend, but I know who he is.”

  “Does he know who you are?”

  “No. None of them did. Only one of them even knew where I lived. That was one guy I brought back here. He must have told you about this place. My moment of lust was a mistake.”

  “What happened between you and your dad at Au Naturel?”

  “At the bar I changed and made it just in time for my first set.”

  “What time was this?”

  “A little after ten.”

  “How long did you dance?”

  “About fifteen minutes.”

  “Was it worth it?” Fenwick asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How much money did you make?”

  “In fifteen minutes I had over one hundred dollars and two offers of a great deal more.”

  Turner looked at him. Young, blond, a few boyish freckles, broad shoulders, a narrow waist. Men would pay a great deal for what Mike Meade had.

  “What happened with your dad?”

  “After my fourth set, sometime after one, I saw him while I was dancing. At first I couldn’t believe it. The crowd had started to thin out a little by then. He just sat in the darkest corner—the one on the other side of the pinball machines. The wildest things went through my mind. What was he doing there? Was my dad gay and this was his way of coming out to me? He’d made all those horrible rulings, and he was a closet case? I was ashamed of him more than I’d ever been. It was supremely weird being in a sexual situation with your dad sitting there. I was also curious. Maybe a little scared.”

  “Why?”

  “He has a temper.”

  “Nobody we’ve talked to said that.”

  “At work he was this right-wing saint. To me, he was a terror.”

  “How did he treat your mother and sister?”

  “He was good to them. But I was the son. I had to be the best. That night, I didn’t know what to do. I was barely able to finish that set. He knew I saw him, and I couldn’t stop looking at him. After I was done, I went back to the dressing room and put on my clothes and went back out front. It’s up to us if we want to go out and work the crowd.”

  “Work the crowd?” Fenwick asked.

  “When we’re not dancing some of the guys go out and nuzzle up to men who gave them money, especially those who paid more than a buck or two. It wasn’t really necessary that night. With all that booze and wild partying, the guys were paying well.”

  “You confronted your dad?”

  “He was still sitting where I had seen him. I walked up to him. I’ll never forget it.”

  He paused, wandered around the room, stared out the window, and finally sat back down on the couch. He stared down at the maroon, rose-patterned carpet. “He wouldn’t look at me. The first thing he said was, ‘How could you be so stupid?’

  “I said, ‘Dad, I’m gay.’

  “He said, ‘I’m not as stupid as you.’

  “Partly I was kind of embarrassed, I mean your dad seeing you mostly naked being pawed by a bunch of strangers? It’s like thinking about your parents having sex. I’m sure parents don’t fantasize about their kids having sex. I was also pissed off. He still hadn’t looked at me. Calling me stupid had been one of his manipulations when I was a kid. When I was little, he’d say, ‘Do you want to be stupid all your life?’ I came to hate it. When it was certain that I’d won a full academic scholarship to college, he and I had a huge fight the next time he called me stupid. I was determined that the next time he said it, I’d let him have it.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was the night of the senior prom. He’d been leering and talking all night about the prom being a rite of teenage passage. I told him it was just a dance. He told me not to be stupid. We had a shouting match that lasted half an hour. My mother and sister had to get between us or we’d probably have hit each other.”

  “Does your mother or your sister know you’re gay?” Turner asked.

  “My sister does, Mom doesn’t, although she might have guessed.”

  “You went to the prom?” Fenwick asked.

  “You can read a few headlines about kids taking same-sex dates to the prom. It doesn’t happen. Not in the real world, at least, not in my real world.” He looked at the two cops. “I tried to have sex with the girl I was with. Nothing happened. I couldn’t get it up. Does that shock you?”

  The detectives remained silent.

  “It shocked me and scared me. The week after, the guy I wished I’d had the nerve to take to the prom, turned out to be as interested in me as I was in him. That’s when I admitted to myself I was gay.

  “That shouting match with my dad wasn’t the first, but it was the worst and the last. We avoided each other a lot after that. The summer vacation after high school, I worked as a counselor in Wyoming at a Republican Youth summer camp. Those people are real crazies. Then I went away to school but, when I came home, like for the holidays, everything was really tense. We avoided each other. I’d go out with friends, be anywhere except in his presence.

  “Anyway, being called stupid sets me off, and that night at the bar, I got really angry.”

  “Didn’t people notice your argument?” Fenwick asked.

  “The noise level in the front room of the bar is usually a zillion decibels into the dangerous zone. New Year’s Eve is worse. You have to shout to be heard inches away. They couldn’t hear us. Most everybody looks at the stage or people they know.”

  “What else did you say to each other?”

  “I positioned myself so he was wedged between a bar stool, the wall, and a pinball machine. He’d have to trample over me to get out. He finally glanced in my direction. I said, ‘I’m not ashamed of what I do. I am not stupid. You are. You’re the ignorant bigot in the family. You’re the one who can’t write his own decisions on the court, who has to get other people to write them. You’re the one who hasn’t had the brains.’ He said, ‘I’m not the one stupid enough to be a whore.’ I said, ‘What are you doing here? Do you like what you see?’ For a few seconds I thought he was going to hit me. I probably deserved it. I know I felt like hitting him and he certainly deserved it. Finally, he said, ‘This place disgusts me.’

  “I didn’t say anything for a minute, then I asked him how he knew I was there. That’s when he told me about the airport. I can’t believe it, a few minutes in either direction, and we’d have never seen each other. No snow in St. Loui
s, and he might still be alive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’d have gone on to Montreal. He’d still be alive.”

  “Then what happened at the bar?” Turner asked.

  “He said, ‘If you leave with me now, we’ll save your mother a lot of grief.’

  “I told him that was a crock of shit. I said that he shouldn’t hide behind my mother. Then I said, ‘I’m gay and proud of it.’” He swept his arm around the bar and said, ‘You’re proud of this? That’s pathetic and stupid.’

  “I lost my temper. I told him to fuck off. I told him he was a Neanderthal creep. I told him hateful things that I am never going to be able to take back.”

  Mike leaned forward and stared at the floor. Turner couldn’t see the young man’s face, but he saw tears falling onto the carpet. “As a teenager I hated him so much. The last year or so, I thought I’d come to understand him. I wanted to come out to both my parents. I almost did this Christmas. I wanted to so bad. I discovered I needed their approval more than I thought. I wanted to end the pressure of hiding so much of my life. Living one place with them thinking I was somewhere else. It was awful. I pictured myself sometimes, talking to my dad for hours, convincing him, and he’d realize he’d been wrong about gay people. Now, that will never happen.”

  Mike snuffled the snot in his nose for a moment and then resumed. “I said lots of hateful things that I can’t take back. I didn’t wait for his answer. I just turned around and left him there. I went back to the dressing room. When I came out for my last set, he was gone.”

  Turner unlocked the handcuffs. Mike wiped his face with his hanky. He looked at the two detectives.

  Turner said, “We have a source who says he saw you with your dad at the Kennedy Federal Building.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Turner almost believed him. Here was a gay kid in pain, who’d just had his father murdered, and he wanted to believe the son had nothing to do with it, but his cop instincts told him the kid’s last statement was a lie.

  Fenwick said, “You’ll be in the film from the security camera at the Federal Building.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “You were angry enough to kill your dad,” Fenwick stated.

  “But I didn’t.”

  “What did you do after work that morning?” Turner asked.

  “I came back here. The next day I was in and out. I called my answering machine in Bloomington from here to get my messages. That’s how I knew I was supposed to call my mom.”

  “Dana Sickles said you didn’t have a phone,” Turner said. He glanced around the apartment. “I don’t see one.”

  “I have a cellular phone. I wanted as few people as possible knowing where I was. I didn’t want even an unlisted number here.”

  “Why did your father follow you around town? Why didn’t he simply go back home?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d told him about the bar, and that I was going to work. My father always did what he felt like doing. He was the ruler of the roost. It was a very Republican thing, he was more important than anyone else, so he should always get his way in what was best for him.”

  “We’re going to have to hold you until after we look at the film from the camera at the Federal Building,” Turner said.

  “I wasn’t there.”

  Fenwick asked, “Did you kill your dad?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you run from us earlier?” Turner asked.

  “Maybe I’m not as bright as I think I am.”

  16

  They put him in the backseat of the unmarked car and drove to the rear entrance of Area Ten Headquarters to avoid any reporters out front. They almost got the kid upstairs unnoticed, but a stray reporter standing at the front desk spotted them.

  “Hey!” he yelled. He ran toward them. “Have you arrested Judge Meade’s son? What’s going on?”

  People gaped at them. Turner and Mike Meade continued up the stairs. Fenwick barred the reporter’s progress.

  “Why are you bringing him up the back way?”

  “To avoid any questions from dopes like you,” Fenwick said.

  “Why are you avoiding questions?”

  “Look,” Fenwick said, “he’s helping us with the investigation. We’re taking all the help we can get. What’s wrong with the son helping us?”

  “I think I’ve got a scoop.”

  Acting Commander Molton hurried down the stairs. “Problem here?” he asked.

  “Why have the police arrested Judge Meade’s son?”

  Molton said, “No one has been arrested. No arrest is imminent. We are getting help from as many people as possible.” Molton drew the reporter away from Fenwick, allowing the detective to hustle up the stairs as fast as his bulk would allow. As Fenwick climbed, he heard Molton making soothing noises at the reporter.

  On the third floor Turner was hunting in a storage room for a VCR that worked. He’d already rolled a cart with a television on it next to their desks.

  “Where’s the kid?” Fenwick asked.

  “I arrested him.”

  “Funny.”

  “I proposed marriage, and he said yes.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “He died.”

  Fenwick said, “You’ve got him on the fourth floor in one of the conference rooms.”

  “If you knew that, why did you ask?”

  “Habit? I wanted to exercise my jaw? I want to win the Carruthers-Is-Stupid prize?”

  Turner walked out with a VCR He brought it over to the television and rested the VCR on the shelf below the television on the cart. He plugged the machines in, hooked them up, put in one of the tapes, and pressed play. Turner and Fenwick placed their chairs so they could both watch it at the same time.

  They recognized the empty corridor as that of the Kennedy Federal Building. In the distance they could see cars going by on Dearborn Street. The film had a time display/counter in the lower-right-hand corner.

  Nothing moved in the corridor. “This is boring,” Fenwick said. He picked up the remote control and pressed fast forward. Twice they saw the security man, Leo Kramer, doing a high-speed Charlie Chan imitation. The guard never looked up at the camera, but his general body structure and his little white goatee made it evident that it was he.

  Rodriguez walked up behind Turner and Fenwick. He watched the screen for a few minutes as the film of the empty corridor whizzed by He said, “I’ve seen this before. The bad guys get caught, but before they do, they rescue a baby whale from evil adventurers so, before the hero machine-guns them, he forgives them.”

  “That’s the sequel,” Turner said, “this is the original.”

  Rodriguez stooped closer and peered at the screen. “I think you’re right,” he said. “You guys hear who won the pool?”

  “No,” Fenwick said.

  “It just got announced downstairs. Some uniform on the admitting desk is up five hundred bucks. It was some nerdy blond named O’Leary who’s been out of the academy less than a month. There is no justice.”

  “Life’s like that,” Fenwick said.

  “You’re cute when you’re profound,” Rodriguez said. He pointed at the television set. “Much as I hate to miss any of this, anybody seen what’s-his-name? Molton told me I wasn’t supposed to let him out of my sight.”

  Turner and Fenwick shook their heads. They knew he meant Carruthers. Rodriguez wandered away.

  They watched seven full tapes of nothing flash by. A third of the way into the eighth, a figure hurried out of the building. Turner stopped the tape and ran it backward. He put it on normal speed and let it run. They saw a well-muffled man with his back to the camera. All the film showed was that he came in to the camera’s range and walked out the door.

  Turner pressed freeze frame. “This is who?”

  Fenwick put his face inches from the screen. “Can’t tell really. Sort of has Mike Meade’s build.”

  ‘Time says nine thirty-nine.”

  �
�Kid said his dad followed him to the bar.”

  “No, he said he presumed he followed him. He looked up from his dancing and there he was.”

  “So, dad and son took a side trip to the Federal Building. Why?”

  “Or the kid is lying.”

  “We’ll have to ask him.”

  “I’ve got that list from Janice Caldwell.”

  Turner opened his briefcase, shuffled through several papers, and came out with the list. He glanced down it. “Note here says no one had signed in. She didn’t know who this was.” Turner peered at the screen and checked his notes. “The time’s about right. I don’t see another person. Carl Schurz said he heard voices, plural. I only see one person hurrying out.”

  “Schurz lied or the tapes are totally screwed up.”

  “I’m not going to court with this as identification.”

  “Tell me there isn’t another way in or out.”

  “Caldwell says all the exits and entrances have security cameras, but only one was supposed to be unlocked at that time. We should have everything, but she was double-checking.” Turner reached for the phone and dialed the Kennedy Federal Building. When he got through to Caldwell, he asked about other possible exits.

  “In those tapes you have,” she said, “there’s supposed to be one of a small private elevator the judges can use to go directly to the parking garage. They have a special section reserved for them. They don’t have to check in or out. You have to have a special card to enter or exit. You just insert the card, and the gate goes up and you can enter or leave. You don’t have to pay.”

  “Meade could have gone out that way?”

  “Or in,” Caldwell said. “You could also walk in through the parking garage.”

  “There was more than one entrance unlocked?”

  “I’m sorry, yes. I should have made it clearer sooner. If you aren’t in a car, you don’t need a card to open the gate. It’s a bit of walk, inconvenient, but not difficult.”