Patrick Kanouse's Blog

Thank you

Start with Chapter 1Thank YouI just wanted to take the time to say thank you for reading The Clearing. I hope you enjoyed it. If you're interested in more works by me, you can read the Drexel Pierce series, the first title, The Shattered Bull, is available for $.99 on Amazon.

Again, thank you!

P.S. At the time of this writing, I am expecting to follow up on Dean Wallace and Zion in a future book.

The Clearing - Chapter 42

Start with Chapter 1CHAPTER 42May 31-July 31, 1979The Chief avoided Dean for the next several days, even when his son arrived at their house on Friday evening to pick up Jenny. His mom appeared briefly on the porch and nudged Jenny out, giving her a kiss on the forehead before turning and closing the door behind her. Dean walked up to the porch, grabbed his daughter’s hand and led her to his car. Whether Jessica shunned her son at her husband’s request or of her own volition, Dean did not know, though he chose to believe the former.He drove Jenny down to the city on Saturday, dropping her off at Cindy’s Manhattan townhouse. As he drove away, he could not help wondering if these moments he had had with his daughter in 1979 would be the last of their kind. He knew, of course, that he could never have the same experiences, but his daughter was getting older, had city friends, and he, her dad, was far away in a small town near Canada. How could that compete with New York City? How could he compete against a townhouse in Manhattan and friends?Unable to leave so quickly, he drove by his old precinct and stopped by the cops’ bar just down the street. A string of unknown faces were interrupted by familiar ones. Lance O’Shea, Nathan Deroni, Mike Bullard, all fellow detectives. All had forgiven him long ago for his failures and mistakes. They knew enough of his story—of the many stories like his—to know Dean had been and probably was a man in pain, so they did not talk about the past. They talked as if no time had passed. In some sense, none had. People were still killing people, and they still sought the perps.They had heard about Tony’s arrest. Mike had heard it from a fellow Albany detective, who had a friend in the Bureau, who had mentioned the nabbing of an FBI lawyer who confronted an American-born Soviet spy in the woods. The chase when Billy ran. A chase Billy would have won had he not stepped into a hole or tripped and twisted his knee.The story, of course, had gathered color along the way, but its essentials were the same, and Dean did not bother to correct. He preferred this alternate version of his brother than the one he knew. Lost in the story was the plight of a forgotten son seeking recognition and the twisted depths he would go.Why Tony had pulled the trigger instead of taking Billy in was left to speculation. Dean thought he had done it when Tony realized that instead of helping an investigation along, he may have hampered it, may have undercut it mortally. Dean did not particularly like that theory, but he preferred it over satisfying some familial bloodlust, to make them all killers in war.Too drunk to drive home, he spent the night on Lance’s couch, departing the next morning. On Monday, he returned to work, to pick up the next case. His dad had shown up as well but stayed behind the closed door of his office. Neither Dean nor Tony had stated that the Chief had been an accessory after the fact. That would remain undocumented. Unreported.At noon, Dean’s phone rang. “Hello?”“Detective Wallace?”“Yes.”“This is Special Agent Pryce. We have what we need to arrest Guthrie. Do you want to do it? I’ll even let you in on the interrogation, which we can do there.”“Hell yeah.”An hour and fifteen minutes later, Pryce walked into the Zion police station. He looked at Guthrie, who sat at his desk holding a half-finished pastrami sandwich, and the detective knew the gig was up, even though he knew he would play it out to the bitter end.Pryce and Dean sat across from Guthrie in the interview room. The FBI agent clicked the record button on a cassette recorder. “Detective Jeremy Guthrie, I am going to record this interview. Okay?”Guthrie nodded.“I need you to reply in the affirmative or negative.”“Yes. Yes, that’s okay.”“Good.” Pryce then exposed the trap he had sprung with the assistance of Dean. When Guthrie learned the weapons were being sent to ballistics, he panicked that he had forgotten to remove the M16 from the items handed over to the FBI. The M16 that tied Sam Darwish to Zorn and to the ambush at the meth lab. The FBI had set up hidden microphones in the Grim Devils clubhouse. He played the crackling tape for Guthrie.“Yeah, what’s up?” said a voice that sounded like Zorn.“I just heard that all of Sam’s weapons are being tested now by the FBI,” said the second voice. One that Dean recognized as Guthrie’s.“So. I’ve got the M16. You got that out. That’s the only thing they had on Sam.”“You have it. Shit. I thought I hadn’t got it in time.”“You were pretty tanked when you gave it to me. Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much.”Pryce clicked the stop button on the surveillance. “So we’ve got you talking to Zorn about missing evidence. The M16.”“You can’t tell that’s me.”Pryce pulled out a set of four photos and a journal with a time log. He pushed them toward Guthrie. “Here, we’ve got Paul Zorn going into the clubhouse. Here’s the one of you going in. Here’s you coming out. Here’s Zorn leaving. Each is tied to a time, which we’ve listed here. Which, in case you don’t get the drift, is timed to the recording. And we’ve got excellent chain of custody on all this. You’re done, Guthrie. We’ve got you.”What had been beads of sweat along Guthrie’s forehead turned to rivers. “Look. I don’t think—”Pryce tapped the photos of Guthrie. “We’ve got you. All you can do now is help yourself.”Guthrie fell apart faster than most suspects he interviewed. He had been helping Zorn for years. For cash, Guthrie tipped him off on impending raids, helped disappear evidence, and arrested rivals. He was so far in the hole with the Grim Devils, he had no way to claw his way back out. When Zorn learned of Sam’s arrest, he had told Guthrie to grab the M16. It was too valuable to just toss, so the disgraced detective gave it to the club president. But first, distraught and guilty over Reggie’s death, Guthrie had drunk himself into a stupor, forgetting—at least clearly enough—that he had swiped the M16.“What about Reggie?” asked Dean, who leaned over the table.Guthrie shook his head. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. I didn’t. I thought they’d clear out before we even got there. I was as surprised as you when the buses were still there untorched. I just warned them and thought they’d clear out, but I found out Zorn didn’t like your meddling. He was hoping to take you out. But I swear I didn’t know about that until after.”Pryce, with other FBI and DEA agents, arrested a number of the Grim Devils later that day, taking them all and Guthrie down to Plattsburgh. Dean never saw Guthrie again, something he was not too upset about.The chief seemed unfazed by the arrests and made no mention of them to Dean. He tried to speak to his father, but Laura shook her head. He could see the sadness, the pity in her eyes as she did so.Dean felt sadness too and then anger. He knew he had done the right thing. He knew it.* * *Later that summer, Dean borrowed a tent and backpack from Zach and entered the woods beyond the Pratt farm, walking a series of trails that led through a state and federal forest. He camped by streams, washing his face in the cool, shallow waters. He heated civilian versions of MCI rations. They tasted just as horrible as he remembered, the nastiness cut only by the liberal usage of Tabasco.At night, he contemplated the sky and listened to the forests. After four nights, he was ready for why he had hiked out away from humanity. In a clearing near a stream at sunset, a fire was burning, the blue-speckled enamel coffee cup of whiskey sat by him. He pulled from his pack the journal he had kept in Vietnam. A small overstuffed thing with torn pages, different inks and pencils, drawings, random sayings, and photos. A journal beat up around the edges and the paper often stiff and fragile from the wet, the dampness that seemed to be the single constant of the bush.He pulled out photos. And he tossed them into the fire. Slowly, and then more quickly. And then he ripped out pages and held them as the flames licked the corner and grew. He dropped them into the fire.He said to no one or thing, “I know this. We all die. And it is always too soon. I wish you could have had the lives everyone intended for you. As for me. As for me, I will live on. I will try to live the life intended for me, as screwed up as that is.”He tossed the journal onto the fire. And he said their names. “Lee. Rider. Paxton. Stitch. The NVA kid just outside the bunker. Nolan Wallace. Dean Wallace.” He stared at the journal as it burned. “Hell. Even Tony.”The journal burned bright, crisping to a fine ash that a gentle wind crumpled into the heart of the blaze, and it captured some ash and lifted it into the air, where it hung before it floated away.
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The Clearing - Chapter 41

Start with Chapter 1CHAPTER 41Dean drove in shock. He kept spinning and tossing and tumbling the possible scenarios for Tony having the gun that killed Billy Nimitz. Did someone buy it using his name? Did Tony buy it and sell it to someone? He had not had a picture in his wallet to show the Kowlowskis. He felt like a bad brother about that and forgot it as his mind raced along with his speed east on Route 11.Without any transition, Dean wondered why would Tony kill Billy? He was shocked at his ability to leap to that conclusion, to even contemplate his brother was a killer. He shook his head to force the thoughts away, but he could not. He accepted that Tony had bought the pistol that was used to kill Billy Nimitz. And Tony must have pulled the trigger. He did not understand why though? It did not answer for all the cash or The Communist Manifesto. But Dean felt the same way about this answer as he did when he was talking to Sam Darwish or Alex Smith. He knew his brother was a criminal. Knew it in his bones. He pulled over and vomited alongside the road. The sun dipping below the horizon. He rinsed his mouth with Wild Turkey before racing again along Route 11.Now Dean had to understand why. Tony and Billy did not know each other. No connection between them had popped up during the investigation. As Dean pulled into his parents’ driveway and parked next to his father’s car, his right palm throbbed from having struck the steering wheel repeatedly since Monrovia.He took a drink of Wild Turkey and lit a cigarette before getting out and walking up to the door. Even there, he hesitated but went in. Jenny ran up to him and hugged him. He told her they would be going soon but he needed to talk to Grandpa first. She made some comment about helping Grandma cook and ran off. Then the smell of onions and green peppers. His stomach quivered.His dad sat in his recliner tapping down the tobacco in his pipe. “Hey there. Your mom’s making chop suey.” He looked up and paused when he saw Dean’s drawn face. “What’s wrong?”Dean told his dad about tracing the Kowlowski gun back to Tony, including trying to piece together the connection between the gun, his brother, and the victim. The chief leaned back in his chair, struck a match, and lit his pipe, puffing hard to get it to stay lit. “What’re you going to do?”“What do you mean?” Dean flopped down onto the sofa. The TV was mute, but Walter Cronkite was on screen. A banner with SALT II with an image of the Soviet and American flags side-by-side.“Not sure how to be any clearer. What are you going to do with this information?”“I need to talk to him. Find out what happened to the gun after he bought it.” That was the only explanation he could come up with that cleared his brother. Tony had bought it and then sold it or discarded it. He would take “lost it” as an answer. Dean knew he did not believe it though.“You mean, like was it stolen or something?”“Yeah. Something. I mean—” Dean looked over at his father, who struck another match and thrust the flame into the pipe. “You knew, didn’t you?”“Huh?” Eric looked at him out of the corner of his eye.“You knew Tony bought the gun already. You knew—.” But Dean could not yet bring himself to those final, fateful words.Eric scratched his eyebrow. “So what if I did?”Why would the Chief keep that information to himself except to protect Tony. And his brother would only need protecting if—. “And you’ve kept it to yourself? Tony killed a man, and that’s okay.”His father leaned back against his chair, the wood frame creaking. He dropped his head and looked at Dean. “You and I have killed, son.”“That was war.”“And this isn’t?” The Chief gestured to the TV. The map of Iran was replaced by the flag of the Soviet Union. “You don’t call this a war? Them or us? Our way of life is at stake.”The Communist Manifesto. The passports in Canada. Billy Nimitz was a spy. Or involved with spies somehow. Dean still could not wrap his mind around the idea a spy would be a young kid in nowhere New York.Dean shook his head. “Was this approved by the FBI?” He said the words, but he knew the answer already.Eric stood up. “I’m going to wash up. I think dinner’s close to being ready.” He walked out of the room.Dean sat there, staring at the TV but not seeing it. Jenny walked in and tugged his arm. “Daddy.”“Yes?”“What’s wrong?”He looked over at his daughter. He shook his head. “Things a young girl like you don’t have to worry about.”“About what? And dinner’s ready.”He smiled at his daughter, who was growing up so fast but yet seemed so young and innocent still in spite of how much he had screwed up. “I can’t tell you. But I’m not sure what the right thing to do is.”“But you do. You always say, ‘You know what the right thing to do is.’”He grabbed her and hugged her. He and Cindy had always said that. Whenever she had gotten into trouble at school, they had queried her about why she had punched the boy who took her Oreos or had pushed her way onto an occupied swing set. Jenny knew that she had done wrong, and so her parents had encouraged her to listen to that message in her head. Here she was telling him, and it immediately clarified what he needed to do to. He was a policeman, and Billy Nimitz had been murdered. Dean only knew of one right thing to do, even if it was painful.* * *An hour later, Dean sat in his car across the street from Tony’s two-story brick and wood siding house halfway between Zion and Plattsburgh. The house was in a small housing addition surrounded by farms. He pulled out his last cigarette and lit it before crushing the packet.A large bay window in the family room let light from the TV pour out. Dean took a drink and shoved the flask into his coat pocket. He smoked the cigarette down to the filter, got out of the car, flicked the cigarette to the road, and walked up Tony’s driveway.When he reached the porch, Dean noticed the front door was open. “Tony?” he said in a volume close to shouting. He opened the screen door and knocked on the door jamb. Waited. He peered into the entryway, which led straight into the family room and back to the kitchen and a hallway. A lamp was on next to the tan, leather sofa. The TV, which faced the sofa and backed up against the front window, was tuned to ABC and an Eight Is Enough rerun. On the coffee table, a plate with a half-eaten sandwich and potato chips. “Tony?” Dean took a few steps into the family room, attempting to look down the hallway that began where the family room ended and the kitchen began.“Hello. Dad called.” Tony’s voice came from the shadows of the kitchen. “And I saw you out there in your car.”“Yeah? So you know why I’m here.”“You want to arrest me.”“Come out from there.” Dean leaned right to see if he could see Tony in the kitchen, but he could not. “Let’s have a drink, a talk.”Tony stepped into the doorway of the kitchen. “What’s there to talk about?”“Billy was a spy, wasn’t he?” He paused to let his brother respond, but when he did not, he continued. “I’m not sure what he was spying on. Nothing much up here, but then I’m not much of an expert in that area. But the FBI and the Mounties seem interested in some fake passports of a guy in Montreal who was a communist. Some of the passports had Billy’s name on them. You know this, of course. Knew it before I even told you weeks ago.” He watched his brother’s face. No change. He continued, “Billy was going to flee, take secrets that he had been given. I’m guessing here. You found out. You aren’t a field agent in the FBI, but I know you want to be. Perhaps taking him out—no, bringing him in—would get you that role. Something went wrong. It’s easier if something went wrong”Tony stood just inside the kitchen, his hands in his pockets.Dean clenched his jaw. The anger rose up, and he shouted, “Say something.”His brother shook his head. “What do you want me to say? You want me to confirm or deny your story? Is that going to change what you do to me?”“Tell me. Give me a reason to do something different.”“Like Dad?”“No. I can’t overlook it. But I can except something that is less than murder.” Dean waited for reaction on his brother’s face, but it was blank. He shouted again, “I don’t understand why a gun you bought last year was used to kill a kid a few years out of high school who worked in a car-repair shop. Maybe I could live with that, with not knowing, if the killer wasn’t my brother. But since I found out about the gun, I’ve been trying to understand, trying to figure it out. There’s a reason, right? You sold the gun to someone? Lost it? Dropped the thing and it went off. Something other than you stood there and pulled the goddamn trigger.”“You’ll never get it. If you get the facts, if you get what happened that night, you won’t really understand. You never will.”Dean stepped forward.“That’s close enough.” Tony’s hand dropped to his back.“You going to shoot me?” Dean raised his hands in front of his body. “Like you shot Billy?”Tony took a deep breath. “Do you know what it’s like being the brother who didn’t serve his country? Who found a way to avoid going to war?”“Lot’s of people did that. It was a war to stay out of.”“Hmph.” Tony shook his head and sighed. “Jesus, you really think that. The moment Nolan died, I was a pariah to Dad. He hated me for not going. He said I was a coward. But not now. No. Not now. I killed Billy because he was funneling Soviet agents into the country. He was in the woods that night to meet one of them crossing over from Canada. He’d give them money and a drive to Plattsburgh, where they’d take a train with the tickets he gave them to New York City. Poof, they’d disappear into the country. Show up in DC or military bases and take pictures, recruit, infiltrate. This has been going on for years. He’d help them out, too. Pick them up, bring them up here, and ensure they had a safe passage back to Canada, rich with intelligence.“Middle of last year, they caught one of these agents heading back into Canada, laden with photos of our submarine base in Norfolk. That’s when we had to figure out who was doing it. Billy wasn’t smart. So we found him. The FBI wanted to keep watching him, use him perhaps.”“But you didn’t?”“No. I don’t know. I don’t know what got into me. I wanted to move up in the FBI. I wanted redemption in Dad’s eyes. I knew from surveillance reports Billy would be meeting someone crossing the border and where he did it. So I went out day after day, waiting for him to show up. I knew where the FBI surveillance was set up. Knew that they watched Billy go in and wait for him to come out. What they wanted was to catch his contact. I knew if I went out there, I could catch them both. They weren’t going to get them just by sitting in their cars.“Billy, finally, showed up one night. I met him out there. I mean, I followed and watched him first. I was going to take photos of him meeting the agent coming into our country. Then something made a noise. I don’t know what, but Billy ran. I chased him and confronted him. I announced myself as FBI. I said I was going to arrest him and take him in.”As Tony paused, Dean had the keen sense of the space between them becoming a heavy weight, a barrier and tension that isolated his brother. “What happened next?”“Don’t answer that.”Dean whipped around to find his dad standing in the entryway, his service revolver out and pointing at the floor. Dean turned and stepped back toward the doorway to the garage behind the sofa. He was able to see both his father and brother. “Dad, let me handle this.”“I’m not letting you take him in. He did this country a service. The FBI would’ve just given him back to the Russkies. Let him live in his communist paradise. He’s better off dead. This country is better off with him dead. Tony’s a patriot.”Dean looked at Tony. “Is that what you believe? Do you think you did the right thing? I’ve killed before. In war. And I’m still not sure it was the right thing, and it haunts me. This will haunt you. You know he didn’t need to die. You could’ve—”“Shut up.” Tony pulled a silver automatic revolver from behind him and pointed it at Dean. “Shut up.”Dean raised his hands.“Son, easy there.” Eric took a step forward. “That’s your brother.”“I know, the hero. The vet. The one who followed in your footsteps.”Dean shook his head, but he did not say anything.“Look at me,” said Eric. “Look at me, son.”Tony turned his head but kept the gun pointed at Dean.“You think I was angry at you. Well, you’re right. I was. I didn’t understand at the time. I just knew your country needed you but, but you didn’t need this country. And when Nolan was killed, I was just so angry. I was angry he died there in a war that we weren’t going to win. Angry that I was mad at you. I couldn’t face it. So I took it out on you. But you didn’t deserve it.”“But you welcomed me back after I killed Billy.”Their dad shook his head. “Shit, son, I was just happy to see you after so much time. It didn’t matter what you did.”Tony let his arm that held the gun drop, but Dean remained where he was. Eric looked back at Dean. “He doesn’t say another word without a lawyer.”Dean’s brother dropped to his knees, letting the gun flop to the floor, and began weeping. Dean quietly removed himself from the house, returning to his car, where he leaned against the hood and opened his flask. He patted his coat for cigarettes and sighed when he remembered he had smoked the last one.Thirty minutes later, the Chief walked his son out of the house and into his car and drove off toward Zion.
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Featured Author Interview

I wanted to share a link to Manybooks.net, where I'm today's (20 June 2017) featured author: Interview.

The Clearing - Chapter 40

Start with Chapter 1CHAPTER 40May 30, 1979Acouple of days later, with Jenny staying at her grandma’s, Dean was in the station, the Billy Nimitz file on his desk. The hospital search had turned up nothing, which meant Billy had not stopped for treatment after being beaten by factory workers or the hospital people had not recognized the photo. Either resulted in a dead end.With the Grim Devils untouchable until the FBI and DEA gave Zion PD the all-clear, which might be months at best, that path of investigation was limited. And so with all the dead ends facing him, Dean flipped open the file and started looking. He pulled out the photos. The gruesome ones and the ones provided by Billy’s parents. He reviewed the coroner’s report and the crime-scene report. Everything he knew about the death of Billy Nimitz summarized and ordered on sheets of paper and tucked into a folder. He pulled up the report on the gun. The Remington M1911A1 found at the scene, buried under some snow.Purchased by Dennis Kowlowski in 1952. He died the same day JFK was shot in Dallas. And the trail stops. Dean looked at the report. Guthrie had signed his name at the bottom. Dean was already convinced his fellow detective was corrupt, handing information over to the Grim Devils, derailing investigations where he could, even helping in an ambush of police. And now, knowing that, Dean doubted every bit of Guthrie’s part of the investigation. Had Guthrie done the necessary work on confirming the history of the gun?Dean walked to the Carnegie Zion Library, a two-story brick building, five blocks from the station. Lisa Munadi smiled at him as he walked through the double-glass door entrance. She had graduated two years before Dean and washed out of SUNY-Buffalo while he was heading to Vietnam. During school, she had acted as if she were better than everyone else except for the jocks she threw herself after. Now she worked as a librarian in the town she had said she was going to abandon. Wasn’t that the American reality?“Hey Dean,” she said. “What can we do for you?”He smiled at her. “You keep archives of the paper, right?”“Yeah. We keep it on microfilm.”“I need to see the Zion Beacon for 1963. November 22nd, 23rd, and 24th. Start with those.”“Doing research on Kennedy?” She walked from behind the counter toward the stairs leading upward.“No. But a fellow in a nearby town died the same day. I want to see his obituary.”“Sure. Sure.” She led him up the stairs to the single microfilm machine, patted him on the shoulder, and said she would return a few minutes later. She did with two square boxes. She turned on the machine and pulled out the tray, lifting the glass covering. She inserted the reel of film on the spindle, unspooled a bit of the film, and slipped it beneath the roller and into the uptake reel, which she rolled a few times. She set the glass down and pushed the tray in, revealing the Zion Beacon’s front page of the November 22, 1963. She adjusted the rotation knob to flip the image upright. “There you go.”He heard her footsteps fade away and looked at the screen. The headline for that day was, “Kennedy Shot. Johnson Sworn In.” A photo of the dead president and new president alongside the article. Dean fast forwarded to the obituary section. He did not find one for Dennis, so he moved on to November 23rd. More JFK assassination coverage, including a prominent “Marxist Accused of Murder” headline.On the bottom half of the page, a photo of Zion’s mayor and Eric Wallace. Dean paused and lingered over the image. Despite his dad wearing the dress campaign hat, Dean could see that his father had grayed significantly since then. He had also gained some weight around the middle, but the image reminded him of how vigorous his dad had been. And then he thought how active and strong his dad was yet and hoped that he remained so in his later years.He moved on to the obituaries and found one for Dennis that day. From there, Dean learned Dennis was survived by a brother and a son: Jacob and Curtis. Dean rewound the microfilm. Handed the boxes back to Lisa and walked back to the station. He had Laura call into the state dispatcher to pull the license information for both Jacob and Curtis Kowlowski.While she did that, Dean smoked a cigarette and pulled up the day’s memo on any changes to the laws and guidelines. He stuffed them into a manila folder and shoved that into a desk drawer. He walked back over to Laura, who put her hand over the mouthpiece. “I don’t have the information yet.”He nodded. “My question was, ‘Where’s Guthrie?’”She shrugged so he walked outside, smoked another cigarette, and walked back in. She gave him a slip of note paper. Jacob did not have a license on file. The last one issued was in 1968. Curtis’s address was in Monrovia, a smaller town than Zion and to the west on Route 11 toward Chateaugay. He looked at his watch. Too early to go. Curtis was probably at work already, and Dean did not want to waste the day in Monrovia. He looked back at the reports awaiting his attention and knew he would not be able to focus on them. His mind was too hungry for an answer. So he told Laura he would be back later and drove to his mom’s house and absconded with Jenny. He drove her to Montreal, where they bought tickets for the Expos-Phillies game. While downing a hot dog bathed in mustard, they watched Gary Carter hit a two-run homer in the second from their left field seats. Dean bought Jenny a hat and mitt. Carter’s home run was the only score of the game. After watching the Expos, Dean thought they, perhaps, had a winning team that season. He dropped his daughter off with his mom before heading over to Monrovia. The day Jenny’s dad played hooky from work and took her to a baseball game—to a foreign country even—would long remain precious and special to her.The short drive to Monrovia along a tree-lined and farm field highway passed by with few other cars. He pulled to a stop on the street outside the home listed as Curtis’s address, a split-level minimal Tudor cottage style house with olive wood siding and black shutters in need of painting. Dean walked up the driveway and the sidewalk, which was framed in a flower bed of begonias and marigolds. Standing beneath the small covered porch, he rang the bell. He started to ring again, when he noticed movement behind the lace curtain covering the front door’s window.A finger moved the lace curtain, exposing a bald head. The finger disappeared and the curtain fell back in place. A dead bolt clicked and the door swung open.A thin, frail man stood at the entrance. An oxygen tube hung from his nostrils to a small silver tank with a red valve he had on wheels behind him. Even though he was a couple of inches shorter than Dean, the man’s frailness made him seem much smaller, diminutive. Silver stubble dusted his face and he had no eyebrows above his blue-green eyes. “Hello?” he asked.Dean flipped open his badge. “Detective Dean Wallace from Zion PD. I’m looking for Curtis Kowlowski.”“Well, you found him.” He turned and slowly walked down the hallway. “Close the door behind you, please.”Dean stepped into the house and closed the door. He caught up with Curtis as he was turning into a dining room with a dark, brilliant table surrounded by six chairs. An ivory, lace table runner a foot wide cut across the length of the table, and two crystal candle holders with virgin white candles sat in the center. He started to pull out one of the end chairs with armrests and a floral cushion pattern. Dean grabbed the chair and pulled it out. Curtis sat down and breathed deeply. “Thank you.”Dean pulled out a chair next to him and sat down. Across from him stood a large china cabinet in a darker wood but also much older than the table. However, the cabinet seemed to hold only a few mugs and not much else.“I’d get you something,” said Curtis, “but….” He gestured to the tank and held up the tube.“That’s okay. I don’t think it’ll take much time.”“Mm. Francis, my wife, should be back soon.”“Sure.”“She’s been good to me since. Well—”“Can I get you something?”“No.” Curtis shook his head. “So how can I help?”“I’m here about a gun your father purchased. It was used in a homicide in Zion. The records indicate he bought it, but nothing after that.”“My dad had several. Which gun?”“It was a pistol. A Remington M1911A1.”A car pulled into the driveway.“Dad had a number of rifles, but he had only one pistol. I don’t like guns. Ah.” The garage door was opened. “Francis is home now.”They waited in silence as the car was pulled in, the garage door closed, and the door to the house from the garage was opened. “Curt, I’m home.” Keys landing on a counter.“In here, Francis. We’ve a visitor.”“I wondered about the car in the driveway.” She walked into the kitchen, the sounds of her shoes hitting the floor changing as she walked from carpet to linoleum. “Hello,” she said when she saw Dean.Dean stood up. “Hello ma’am. Sorry to disturb you. I’m Detective Dean Wallace with the Zion police.”Her smile faded. She wore a brown business suit with a large, silk tan scarf. Gold hoop earrings dangled along her neck. “I’ll make some coffee.”“That’s not necessary,” said Dean.“Maybe not for you, but after the day I’ve had, I need it.” She pulled open a cabinet.“Do you remember Dad’s guns?” asked Curtis.“Oh yes. I hated those.”“Me too. This detective’s here about the pistol. What we’d do with that?”As she measured Folger’s into a paper filter, she tapped her right foot. “Let’s see. We sold a couple of the rifles to Stephen—Stephen what’s his name—Mc or something.”“McHugh. Stephen McHugh. Has the kid, Joey, who’s a heck of a winger. Used to be at least, years ago.”“Right. Yep, that’s him.” She filled the carafe and started pouring it into the coffee maker.“The pistol. Oh that’s right. We sold it to that fella from the FBI. Remember?”“FBI?” Dean could not hide the perplexity from his question.“Yes, that’s right.”“When was this?” asked Dean.“So Dad died in sixty-three.” Curtis looked at Dean. “Same day as Kennedy. And we took all of it. Except the guns and a few things, which my uncle took. He used them on his farm and he went turkey hunting every fall. And then he passed. Oh, last year some time. Lived to be ninety-two. Imagine that. I won’t get there.”“Don’t think that way,” said Francis, out of Dean’s sight now but in the kitchen.Curtis mouthed “cancer” to Dean. “Yeah, yeah. Anyways, we got the stuff and we knew some people that still farm around here and asked if they wanted the guns. A few did and took them. But I knew a young man, worked down at the Webster’s restaurant downtown. Good fried chicken if you’re interested. He said—Taylor Parker is his name—he knew someone who was interested in the pistol. I said, ‘Have him give me a call.’ A couple of days later, he did. He drove out here. He’s not from Monrovia. From out in your parts or more east, I think. He bought it. Gave us a hundred cash. I have no idea if it was worth that or not, but I got more out of the cash than I would’ve out of the gun.”The coffee maker started to drip. “That’s right,” said Francis, who appeared in the dining room and took a seat across from Dean. She patted Curtis’s hand and smiled at him.“Do you know his name? The one who bought the pistol,” asked Dean.Francis wagged her finger. “You know what? Since I didn’t know him, I wrote his name down.” She stood up and walked to the cabinet behind Dean. She pulled open a drawer, from which she pulled out a small box, the kind of which his mother stored recipes on index cards. Francis said she forgot her glasses, disappeared, and returned a few minutes later with them sitting low on her nose. She asked if he wanted sugar or cream, and he said no. He was anxious to find out who this FBI agent was that had purchased the gun, but he could not bring himself to be rude to Curtis and Francis. She pulled some mugs down.Curtis leaned over. “She loves to have any company. So she’s excited to be able to serve coffee,” he whispered.A few minutes later, each had a coffee adjusted to their liking. Francis, who splashed a bit of cream into hers, opened the box on the table and started flipping through pieces of paper.Curtis started into a lengthy foray into his chemotherapy treatments for lung cancer. The prognosis did not look good, but Francis told him to be positive, that that was as important as the chemo. They responded to each other’s cues, which Dean could not see but knew were there nonetheless. His parents had them. He and Cindy had had them.“Ah, here it is.” She pulled out a piece of paper. “That’s right. He was a handsome fellow.”“Hey, now,” said Curtis.“You’ve nothing to be jealous of.” She smiled at Curtis. To Dean, she said, “His name was Anthony Wallace.”“Is that any relation?” asked Curtis.
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The Clearing - Chapter 39

Start with Chapter 1CHAPTER 39April 8 - May 28, 1979At ten the next morning, Pryce called into the station. Laura put the phone to her shoulder and shouted, “Special Agent Pryce calling you Dean.”Dean nodded and waved to have her transfer him to the line. They spoke briefly as they had arranged, with Dean saying “Yeah,” “Uh-huh,” and “Thank you.” He hung up the phone and walked to Guthrie’s desk, who looked up from the typewriter, tapped his cigarette in the brown-glass ashtray. “So?”“They’ve got all the evidence processing now. The guns will be the quickest, but even they’ll be a couple of weeks at best. Sam’ll be cooperative, but nothing’s going to happen until all the evidence is sewn up tight. The good news is they’ve arrested him for drug possession and distribution, so he’ll be waiting in jail.”Guthrie grabbed his cigarette and inhaled deeply. Through the smoke coming out of his mouth, he said, “Why not just test the M16 first? That’s the gun.”Ballsy fucker, thought Dean. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Being thorough I guess. Hell, they’re the Feds. They’ve got plenty of money for tests. Maybe they don’t believe me that it was an M16. Or they want to see if they get any hits on the other guns.”“Sure.”“Look, we spent yesterday calling hospitals. Let’s hit a few today and flash Billy’s picture around. See if anyone recognizes him. And did you call George Littlefield?”“I did. He moved to Boston in November. Hasn’t been back since.”“He provide alibis to prove he was in Boston the night Billy walked into those woods?”Guthrie nodded and handed the handwritten list with phone numbers to Dean, who handed them to Zach and asked if he could call the numbers and verify Littlefield’s alibi.Dean—acting his very best as if nothing was different and wishing he had participated in the high school drama club—and Guthrie drove south to Plattsburgh and traced threads of possible return routes to Zion, pausing at the hospitals, and speaking to emergency room staff. They left their cards and photos of Billy with every hospital, asking that if anyone recognized him to call the Zion PD. Then they would see what came about.Over cheeseburgers and fries at a place in West Chazy, Guthrie expounded on his theories of the Nimitz murder. To avoid talking, Dean let him. Guthrie liked the upset girlfriend or jealous Alex line of reasoning. Sarah Esposito was angry that Billy could not buy her everything she wanted—even though she seemed to get everything she wanted. They argued. She shot him.Guthrie’s other theory was that Alex Smith was jealous. All the talk about Alex and Billy having a falling out was true and it was around Sarah. They knew it. Alex and Sarah had slept together. Two boys liked one girl. One boy shot the other.What troubled Dean about those two theories had remained unchanged. The money in the closet. To him, that was the central fact of importance in the case. Unless the theory of the crime could explain that money, the theory had too big of a hole. He could dismiss The Communist Manifesto except for the new information from Billy’s cousin, Tim. Was the murder of Billy politically motivated? But the cash?For the first time, Dean wondered if Billy’s murder would go unsolved. It would not be the first time in his career. Several of his old NYPD homicides were still open. Straight up whodunits with evidence but no person to tie it to. In 1977, his last year working in New York, there had been almost two thousand murders, leaving several hundred open cases. But the idea of having this single homicide remain open was a devastating thought. He could not untangle whether he felt this way because he was less drunk than he had been in New York, because Zion had so few murders compared to the much larger city south of them, or if age and remembering Stitch and the open question of who killed him—knowing that it will never be solved.They paid and continued their path back to Zion, leaving photos and cards and questions behind. Once back in Zion, they waited.* * *The Pratts celebrated every Memorial Day as if it were the biggest holiday of the year. In reality, they believed too much in the sanctity of Christmas and Easter to treat them other than the religious observances they had once started out being. Memorial Day, however, was the start of summer and deserved a grand party of a kick off. This year, Cindy, Jenny, and Spencer drove up to the Pratt farm to spend the weekend, have a cookout, and do some fishing in the stream that ran through their property.Cindy called a week ahead and invited Dean, who was shocked. He knew he would be keeping Jenny for the week, but being invited to the cookout was unexpected. When she recommended he bring his mother and father along, he was flabbergasted. For the entire week, he contemplated if he should expect some major news. Cindy had sounded normal, but it had been years since she had asked him—let alone his parents—to do anything social with her or her family.Eric drove them to the farm in the late afternoon. As the chief was fond of reminding everyone, summer officially would begin a few weeks later in June. As if acceding to his technical demands, the air was pleasant, still spring. But the sky was clear and that soft blue associated with delightful photos featuring the sky. Wayne Pratt had the grill already cranking at the front of the house on the lawn under the big oak tree, whose leaves had yet to reach full maturity for the season.Smoke poured out the grill’s vents. The smell of charcoal and hickory wafting over the yard. Two picnic tables covered with red-and-white checkered tablecloths, one of which was piled with paper plates, utensils, and baskets of breads, fruits, vegetables, bags of potato chips and pretzels, and containers of potato and macaroni salads. A blue ten-gallon cooler sat next to the table, full of ice and soda and beer.As Dean stepped out of the car, Jenny ran up to him, screaming “Daddy,” and they hugged. The jeans that had touched the tops of her ankles in January were now capris. She hugged her grandparents and then grabbed Dean’s hand and dragged him to play a game of yard darts. The badminton net and croquet field were set up for later that day.Spencer and Wayne worked the grill. The former, dressed in dark blue jeans and a long-sleeved yellow button up shirt, leaning in and pointing and nodding to the latter’s queries. Dot hung nearby, panting and looking between the spatula in Wayne’s hand and the grill. The Pratt boys played basketball in the driveway while Cindy, Dean’s parents, and Eileen sat on lawn chairs, each with a can of Budweiser in their hands or on the ground beside them.After three games of yard darts, Jenny ran off to play with the boys, and Dean walked up to the grill. Spencer nodded his hello, and Wayne asked him how he thought the burgers looked. Dean looked down. They looked too crisp for his taste, but he said they looked delicious.Spencer stepped away from the grill when Dean did and walked alongside him toward Dean’s parents and Cindy. Spencer put his hand on Dean’s lower arm and stopped. “She’s really growing up, isn’t she?”Dean looked at his daughter defending Cole, who towered over her. But she had, indeed, grown and was growing up. “She is.”“This is probably the last year she’ll be able to spend weeks with you up here, so far from home.”Dean looked down, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and toed the grass with his shoe. And thus the reason for the invitation, with parents as a stand-by to keep him calm.“Cindy didn’t want to tell you, but with Jenny’s friends and stuff, she’s spending more and more time with them. Next year, she probably won’t want to spend time with any adults.” A thin smile crept across Spencer’s face.Dean nodded slowly. “Maybe. Maybe. Eventually for certain. I figure when Jenny doesn’t want to visit, she’ll let me know.”“Well, she might not. That’s why I’m alerting you.”“I see. Well, thanks for the public service announcement.”Spencer patted Dean’s shoulder. “Ah, don’t take it like that. Just prepping you for the future.”“Sure. Sure.” Desperate to change the subject, Dean said, “So you been up here all weekend?”Spencer started walking toward the cooler. “Not all, no. Came up on Saturday afternoon. We’ll leave tomorrow morning. Took the day off from the office.”After all these years, Dean still could not remember what Spencer did for a living. Something that paid well he knew. He thought about asking, but he did not care enough to ask, so he walked past him, opened the cooler, pulled out two Budweisers, and gave one to Spencer. They both raised the can and saluted it in the air.Dean ate a hot dog and burger, which ended up tasting better than their appearance might have suggested, and a substantial volume of mustard potato salad and carrots. The adults played croquet. Eric mastered the field the quickest and won handily, which true to form he gloated over the other players. Then the kids took on the adults in a badminton tournament. Mike, the middle Pratt boy, won in the end, beating Cindy in a sibling duel.The kids returned to the basketball goal and the adults to their chairs and beer. Somewhere along the way, Wayne had started a fire in the fire pit, which they huddled around. Fireflies blinked away along the edge of the woods. The crackle of wood in the fire, the sound of the basketball hitting the pavement or the goal, and occasional cheers or claps from the kids wafted in and out of the conversation. The evening transitioned to night without any particular notice. During one of Spencer’s trips to the house’s bathroom, Cindy caught Dean’s eye and gestured with a head nod to the darkness and woods away from the house—a gesture Dean understood immediately to be a request for him to walk with her.They strolled in silence across the grassy hill to the edge of the woods. She wore tight blue jeans and a button-up blouse that hugged her figure. He wondered how she had been able to keep so trim while the rest of the world aged around her. She showed her years only at the edges of her eyes. As their vision adjusted to the darkness, the edges of the leaves caught what little moonlight there was. Dean slapped a mosquito biting into the back of his neck, breaking the silence.Cindy slipped her hands into her pockets. “I wanted to talk to you about Jenny.”“I think Spencer already did.”“Oh?”“Yeah, something about her not wanting to be around adults much longer and probably not wanting to visit me so much anymore.”“Yeah, that’s the gist. I just wanted to prepare you. To let you know, it’s not about not wanting to visit you. It’s about wanting to be with her friends.”Dean smiled though Cindy did not see it in the darkness. “I know that. We were kids one time a long time ago.”“Ass.” Cindy laughed. “Not that long ago.”But to Dean it felt like lifetimes. They walked in silence along the very edge of the woods. Cindy reached out her hand and grabbed the leaves.“Look,” said Dean, “I get it with Jenny. But over the past few months, I’ve realized—well—I always realized I think but not like now. So—”“Spit it out,” said Cindy in a kind tone that Dean long ago understood to be her form of encouragement.“Well, I’m sorry about what happened to us. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the life you wanted.”The pause was so long, Dean wondered if she was going to ignore him. She said, “You don’t have to apologize. I don’t know what happened over there—not really. But I do know it changed you. Changed us in ways we can’t and won’t understand. In ways we couldn’t have predicted. How could it not? You needed a better wife.” He was going to interject, but she raised her hand. “Hold on. And I needed a different husband. At that time. We were both so young. We didn’t know what to do. I just wanted a corner of life. I wasn’t ambitious. Just a space, a place to call mine.”Dean hesitated in saying anything, fearing he would cut her off. So he waited and when it was clear she was not going to say anything more, he said, “I’m glad you found that space.”She stopped and looked at him. Fireflies flashed behind her. One landed on her shoulder. “Oh Dean.” She stepped up and embraced him. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you. I’m so sorry.”“Forgive me.”“I forgive us.”He returned her embrace and cried for the first time in a long time.
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The Clearing - Chapter 38

Start with Chapter 1CHAPTER 38Tony patted his shoulder. Dean was far down a bottle of Wild Turkey, sitting on the lawn chair on his front porch. Tony’s Oldsmobile popped and clicked as the engine cooled.Tony sat in the chair next to him. The evening had slipped into night. The warmth of the day lingered, but it was fading as rapidly as the visibility of the trees sinking into the dark. Tony pulled the bottle from Dean, took a drink, and handed it back to him. “What’s up?”Dean let the question sit unanswered for a while. Why had he called Tony? Why not go directly to their dad, who would know soon enough? It was not about protecting the chief. He did not need or want that. When Dean started telling Tony about the missing M16 and Zorn’s source of information, the words came out fast and quick, like he were vomiting. His body cleansing himself of disease. All the little things over the months, every word Guthrie had said, every action he had taken loomed ever larger, ever more significant. And he wrestled coming to terms, accepting that Guthrie had led him, Reggie, and Etheridge into a trap. Had walked them in and expected them to not return.Tony took another drink and handed the bottle back to Dean. “That’s messed up. They may lose leverage on Sam. Probably have. Well, they have. It’s just a matter if Sam knows it or not.”“And that protects Zorn.”Tony nodded once. “Yup.”“I should’ve seen it.”“That’s the booze and hindsight talking. Sounds like Guthrie was real careful. It’s not like Dad noticed it either. Zorn’s been slipping through his fingers for years. Some of that had to be Guthrie’s work.”“But we’ve got nothing solid on him. He probably has an explanation for the M16. An explanation for everything.”Tony leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “Thing is, now you know your target. All of that stuff he was doing was in the shadows. Now you’ve got the flashlight.”Dean nodded.Tony looked at his brother and then to the night sky. Only the brightest stars burnt through the haze of street and living room lights. “I know something about redemption. What it means to live with shame and to find a way, to claw your way back to something like respect. You. You are not in need of that. What Guthrie did, you didn’t give him that power to do. So you can’t reclaim it. You can arrest him. You can find justice for what he’s done, for Reggie. But you—you do not need redemption.”Dean let a long silence rest between them. “Do you think Pryce will work with me?”“How so?”“Keep the missing M16 quiet for now. Help me nab Guthrie.”“I’ve worked with him a couple of times. He’s a good agent. He’s pissed as hell, I’m sure. He’ll want justice, so yeah, I think he’d listen to what you have to say.”Dean nodded. “I need to talk to him.”“I’ll call him. I’ll tell him you’ll talk to him tomorrow.” Tony stood up and walked into the house.Dean watched the Straithorn’s Buick LeSabre drive past his house and into their driveway. Their daughter, Lilly, jumped out of the back seat and ran to their front door. Two years older than Jenny, she seemed a lifetime more mature. Boys meant something to her and she meant something to the boys, at least a number of them. High school was sooner rather than later. And Dean saw Jenny so infrequently, that every time he did so very much seemed to have changed. She had grown or altered her hair style or found a new favorite band. It was impossible to keep pace with her. Impossible to understand and accept what he was missing. He swirled the whiskey in the bottle and took a drink.The screen door closed behind Tony as he took back the seat he had abandoned a few minutes before. “Pryce says he’ll keep it quiet. Call him tomorrow with your plan.”“Thanks.”“Sure.”“Did I ever tell you about Stitch?”Tony smiled. “Yes. A couple of months ago. One of your buddies that didn’t make it out of Vietnam.”“Mmmm.” Dean sighed. “Yep. Quang Ho. Hill 425. Lost a lot of good men there.”“Yep. Sounds familiar.”“Did I tell you I killed Stitch, that I’m the reason Stitch left in a body bag?”Tony sat silent in the chair. He had grabbed a Pabst when he was inside.“I take it I didn’t mention that part.”“No. You did not.”“It was when we were fighting bunker to bunker. Fucking NVA knew how to build bunkers. You could drop bombs on them all day and night and those goddamned bunkers would hold together. Unless it was a direct hit, which almost never happened. Anyways, we were crawling our way up this hill. Machine guns sweeping the routes of our advance. Those assholes could set up interlacing fire as well. Don’t ever believe them, when they say the NVA wasn’t a good army. They were well trained. Professional. Deadly.”“I won’t.”“I can’t remember which bunker it was, but it was a few in. We darted from outcropping to outcropping. Wherever we could find cover. But we moved. Had to. You stopped for too long you died. Who wants to die in Vietnam?” Dean took a drink. “Shit. Anyways, it was my turn to flank this bunker and drop some grenades in it while a couple of guys provided the covering fire. I get up there. I pull the pin. I drop the grenade in. And a gook pops up on my right. I don’t think. I spray the guy with my gun. The grenade goes poof. The NVA in front of me falls. He looked surprised.” He rubbed the armrest’s plastic. After a while, he continued. “The battle’s over and we’re trying to find the guys that didn’t make it. I found Stitch. He was downhill from that NVA guy I killed. I shot a bunch of bullets and it killed the enemy. And it may have killed Stitch. I didn’t think too much about it at the time. Just a fleeting thought. The kind like, ‘Did one of my bullets kill Stitch?’ But over time, over time, that begins to weigh. And then you get home. And you can’t tell anyone this. No one understands except other Marines. And you can’t tell them you think you killed one of your own, even if you know you aren’t the first to do so because you’re sitting at home on your ass drinking beer and he’s dead.”They sat there in silence, watching the lights of the nearby houses turning off one by one.“You end up hating yourself. You hate yourself for what you’ve done, and you wonder if there’s a way to claw your way back to humanity, to even liking yourself.”
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The Clearing - Chapter 37

Start with Chapter 1CHAPTER 37April 7, 1979Dean drove to the station the next morning and had Laura look up both Julie Darwish and Tim Upton. He had slept poorly and had not bothered to shave after he woke up. As he waited for the information about the niece or her boyfriend, he sat at his desk, shuffled the piled reports and memos, but barely registered their titles or purpose. Etheridge walked in after a while and sat down at his desk, tendering a wave as a hello. Dean nodded his hello.Laura walked up to the desk and handed him a piece of notepad paper with addresses and phone numbers. “That’s what we can get on those two. No arrests. Upton has a couple of speeding tickets is all.”“Thanks.” Tim’s address was on the south side of town, amongst the largely residential section that had built up after World War II around the now defunct piping factory. As he walked out of the station to his car, he passed Guthrie without saying a word.The house at the address was a ranch, all brick house with white molding around the windows and a black-gray roof. The white wooden garage door needed a coat of paint.He pulled the car to a stop in the driveway, half of which consisted of a white gravel and the other cement. He stepped out and walked up the gravel with the grass rising up in spots. When he got to the sidewalk bordered by evergreen shrubs, the front door opened. Through the screen door, Dean could make out a woman dressed in blue jeans and a Coca-Cola t-shirt. “Hello?” she asked.“Hello.” Dean stopped. “I’m Detective Dean Wallace. Is Tim Upton home?”“He’s getting ready for work. What’s this about?”“Billy Nimitz.”“Ah, I was wondering if you’d ever show up.” She pushed open the screen door as her invitation to step in.Dean walked into the entry way, where a set of light jackets hung from the wall directly across from the door. An off-white wallpaper with brown stripes and small flowers covered the walls.She pointed to the right. “He’s in the kitchen getting breakfast.”Dean walked down the hallway. It opened to a family room with the same wallpaper, a sofa, lounge chair, coffee table covered with magazines, a TV, and a basket of more magazines. To the back of the family room, the kitchen sat with a built-in table, counters, appliances, and a pantry. The small window looked out onto the driveway.“You’re looking at it like Julie does,” said the man with blond hair with a part on the far left and combed over with a looping bang hanging down. He had the rudiments of a mustache. He was dressed in the blue and white uniform of the Gorman Transmission Company. They had a manufacturing center just about in Plattsburgh.Dean held out his hand. “Detective Dean Wallace.”“Tim Upton.” He took his hand and shook firmly. “That’s my girlfriend Julie.”“Hi,” she said as she left the room.Dean nodded. Unmarried but living together. He rubbed his nose. He was certain they were at least the talk of their neighbors.“Coffee?” asked Tim.Dean said yes, and Tim poured him a cup. The detective turned down cream and sugar.“Here about Billy? I heard you at the door.”“Yeah. I was talking to your uncle yesterday. Sam.”Tim smiled. “Talking. I get you.”“Anyway, he said you had spoken to Billy a bit. Claimed you called Billy a communist.”“I did.” Tim took a drink of his coffee. “He was. He’d show up at the factory. We’re non-union there. So he’d show up and agitate. Tell us we should organize, unionize. Power to the people and that kind of crap. He was a red, pure and simple. Wouldn’t deny it.”“I know lots of fellas who are pro-union that don’t consider—that I wouldn’t consider—communists.”“Yep, I know some too. Me. Hell, the factory used to be union. But they shit-canned everyone three years ago and re-opened as a non-union plant. Most of us took the job. They can’t put these transmissions together anymore and be competitive. It was either that or the factory goes some place else. I’ll take the job, thank you very much. But I wish we were still union.”Dean said, “So what made Billy a communist?”“Because he said it. And he’d pass out The Communist Manifesto. He didn’t lead with that, but he got there pretty fast. And, boy, would he piss off some of those old-timers when he’d tell them unions were the consequence of communism. They did not like that.”“How’d others react? You?”Tim smiled and shook his head. “I told him to leave me alone. I wasn’t interested. I’m a patriot, you know, I believe in America. The communist crap can be flushed down the toilet as far as I’m concerned. I was the nice one, though.”“Oh?”“Yeah. I just barked. A number of guys bit. Some guys who fought in Korea and Vietnam, they didn’t take so kindly to him. I know a few of them beat him up one night. Told him to not come around anymore.”“How bad?”Tim shrugged. “Bad enough to let him know they were serious. They just told me after. Sometime last fall, I think it was.”Dean took a large drink of coffee.“And you know,” continued Tim, “that bastard showed up again. Black eye. Bandages. I’ll give him that. He was a tough son of a bitch.”Until the bullet hit him. Dean nodded. He and Tim finished their coffee. Tim did not know anything else of relevance other than the guy who talked about beating Billy was George Littlefield. Shortly after, he and Julie walked him out, and Dean drove back to the station under a cloudy morning sky. Once there, he had Laura look up any information on George Littlefield she could find. She told him that Special Agent Pryce had called and wanted Dean to call back.At his desk, Dean called Billy’s parents to ask who the family doctor was and if they recalled any injuries to their son. They said he had had an accident at the shop in October, but he had not seen a doctor. Just to be sure, Dean called the family doctor, who pulled up the files on Billy Nimitz and noted no visits regarding any accidents.Guthrie walked up to Dean after he hung up. After updating Guthrie on his conversation with Tim, they split up the hospitals from Plattsburgh to Zion and started calling to see if Billy Nimitz sought medical treatment there.He spent a couple of hours calling the hospitals on his list, most of the time on hold. As he hung up one call, his phone rang. He hoped it was St. Francis Hospital in Plattsburgh, who said someone would call him back, so he answered. “Yep. Detective Wallace here.”“This is Special Agent Pryce.” When Dean did not respond, Pryce asked, “Detective?”“Sorry. I was expecting someone else.”“Yes. Anyways, I left a message for you.”“Yeah. Haven’t had a chance to call you back.”“Obviously. Look, we’ve got a problem.”“What’s that?”“When we got back to Plattsburgh last night, we were inventorying the evidence you loaded up for us. We noticed a discrepancy.”“Sure. How can I clear that up for you?”“It’s a serious one, detective. I’m not sure there is any clearing this up. It might blow our whole case.”Dean sat up straight in his chair, pulling himself closer to the desk. “Excuse me?”Pryce covered the phone and coughed. “Excuse me. Sorry about that. Yes. The photos of the weapons seized at Sam Darwish’s home and the weapons we have don’t correspond. Specifically, we’re missing the M16.”Dean held the phone in his hand, his mind tracing the conversation the day prior with the FBI and DEA. They had not yet sent the M16 downstate for ballistics testing. The rifle should have gone with Pryce and Hayes.“Detective?”“Uh, yes? Is it listed in the seizure list?”Pryce did not pause. “No. I’ve checked a half-dozen times. The paperwork doesn’t mention it. It’s not with the other weapons or any of the other evidence. It’s only in the picture. And you told me an M16 was used in the shooting. So do you have the M16 with an intact chain of evidence trail?”Dean thought it over. Who had been in charge of gathering the physical evidence? Had he been and forgotten to do what he needed to do? Had the booze screwed him up again?“Detective, do you have the M16?”No. Dean was sure it was not him. But if not him…. He looked up and down the station floor. Guthrie was talking on the phone. “I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.” He hung up.
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The Clearing - Chapter 36

Start with Chapter 1CHAPTER 36Guthrie walked into the hallway outside the interview room, followed by Dean, who closed the door behind him. At the end of the hallway, just outside the chief’s door, his father stood, pounding his fist against the door jamb. Before him stood two men. One was dressed in a black suit with a black tie and holding gold aviators in his hand as he rubbed his thick mustache with his index finger and thumb. The other wore a windbreaker and a baseball cap on his bald head that bore the logo of the DEA.“You can’t do this.” said Eric. “This is our case. Our man got killed.”The man in the suit—whom Dean presumed was FBI—said, “Sir, I understand your attachment to this case, but the jurisdiction is ours.”Guthrie brushed past the two, and Dean stopped beside his dad. “What’s your jurisdiction?”The DEA man looked at Dean. “Special Agent Tony Hayes.” He extended his hand.Dean shook it. “Detective Dean Wallace.”The FBI man said, “Special Agent David Pryce.” He tapped the edge of his cap.Dean nodded.Hayes said, “Multiple, actually. The DEA’s interested because those drugs are crossing state and international lines. The FBI’s interested because there’s reason to believe the Grim Devils have perpetrated crimes in Canada. The Mounties called us up. Said they found some evidence in a murder outside Montreal. I understand you’ve seen some of that evidence.”“We talking about the case where a guy was found murdered in his home and a bunch of fake passports and cash were found?”“Yes. Marcel Lorrain was the victim.”“And it’s connected with the Grim Devils?”Hayes shrugged.Eric turned to Dean. “They want to take Sam into their custody. Get copies of all our evidence on the ambush, the lab, everything. They want goddamn everything.” He raised his hands in exasperation.“But we can keep it and prosecute, right?” asked Dean.“Maybe. But you’ll have to wait. We may need that leverage to get some of them to talk, to cooperate,” said Pryce.Dean put his hands to his waist. “Shit, fellas, we want these guys for killing one of our own. Reggie Hargrove.”Hayes nodded. “We know. And we’re sorry, and we don’t intend to let them off for that. But there are—frankly—other priorities.”“Assholes.” Eric stepped forward.Hayes raised a finger. “You know what I meant. We’re talking about bringing down the entire gang in this area. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, all right? Just give us the evidence and reports you’ve got.”“And Sam?” asked Dean.“Yes. We’ll take him down to Plattsburgh. You’ve got enough evidence to hold him?”Dean nodded. “Yeah. We’ve got enough.”Pryce said, “Great. Then let’s get the stuff.”Eric shook his head, waved his hand in the air in disgust, and walked into his office, slamming the door behind him.Dean said, “Okay. I’ll have Guthrie gather the physical evidence. We haven’t had a chance to get the guns tested that we found in Sam’s house, just so you know. I’ll grab the reports. I need to type up this interview, and we’ll put it in boxes for you.”Pryce placed his hand on Dean’s shoulder and squeezed. “Thank you.”Ninety minutes later, Guthrie placed the last box of evidence in the trunk of the agent’s car. Pryce and Hayes signed the paperwork indicating they had taken over the evidence: A box with a short stack of reports he and Guthrie had typed up, the surveillance logs, and photographs. Another box of the meth, marijuana, and heroin seized at Sam’s house plus two bags with his cache of weapons.Dean stood outside the driver’s side window, looking down and in. “You know,” he said to Pryce, “the Alex kid we arrested and ran that lab is the son of the county DA.”Pryce smiled. “Yeah, we know. Lucky for him, his son is small fry. And the Justice prosecutor is an asshole, so some county DA’s not going to frighten him.”“All right. Please keep us informed if you can. At least about the Reggie aspect.”Hayes tapped the dash. “Let’s go.”Dean only then realized the day had turned to evening. He looked at his watch: a quarter after seven. The western sky was a luminous orange and red and pink swaths of clouds a quarter of the way up the horizon. He rubbed his chin and then pulled out a cigarette and lit it.When Cindy and he had been married, they had made a thing of watching the sunset together, except for winter. From their apartment in New York, it was not always a great view, but nonetheless, they would sit on the small balcony in cheap lawn chairs and watch the sunset wash over the sliver of sky and buildings. He smiled at the memory. Only in hindsight after the divorce did he realize the first sign of trouble in the marriage was when they stopped sitting and watching the sunset. He took a drink from his flask and watched.A few minutes later, he went to check on his dad and Guthrie, but both had left.His phone rang, so he walked to his desk and answered it. “Hello? Detective Wallace here.”“This is Paige McFadden.”“Good evening.”“Yeah. So want to tell me what’s up? I saw a couple of FBI guys show up at the station. Well, they were at the Shambles first stuffing their face.”“One of them is DEA.”“DEA?”“Yep.”“Gotcha. So tell me.”Dean told her. He gave her the rest of the information he felt comfortable giving. He attributed the lab to intelligence they had received to cooperating witnesses. He skimmed over the ambush and then gave her the high-level view of the evidence leading them to Alex and then to Sam. And now the DEA and FBI were interested. She thanked him and hung up.He pulled on his coat and went to his car, leaving James and Stanley at the station for the night shift. He started the engine and sat there, rehashing the day in his mind and settling on a single thought: Sadie. He debated what he should do but realized he already knew. He hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Fuck it.”Minutes later, he was pounding on the front door of her two-story house. She whipped open the door. “What the hell Dean? You drunk?”He thrust the door open, which thudded against the back wall, denting the red and light yellow striped wallpaper and drywall behind it in the shape of the lockset.“Hey,” she said. “What’s the meaning of this? I’ve got someone coming over. I don’t have time.”“I’m not here for the normal.”She saw the look in his eyes. Something beyond determination, beyond anger. She knew then to be frightened. “What’s going on?” She put her hands to his chest.He grabbed her wrists and twisted them away. “How long have you been informing on me?”She held up her hands.“How long have you been telling Paul Zorn everything I tell you?”She knew that look in his eyes was betrayal. “Now look here.” She raised up a finger and held it in the air, pointed at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You get a grip and get the hell out.”He stepped toward her, recognizing that she had gone from light-hearted, to terrified, to strong in a few quick beats.“I mean it. You stop right there. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t tell Zorn anything. Or any of his lackeys.”“I trusted you. I said things, and they shouldn’t have gone anywhere.”“They didn’t. You paid me and what happened in this house, anything you said, anything we did, no one knows but you and me.” She dropped her hand. “No one.”He stood before her, in her living room, a room he never bothered to notice. She stood, dressed in black lace negligée and a light pink robe with white lace edging, next to a brown leather couch on a large, square beige rug. Matching dark wood end tables at either end of the couch with brass lamps and off-white lamp shades from which plastic diamonds hung. A television to the right of the couch, next to the fireplace with its mantle. Framed photos of Sadie and her family and friends. A greeting card. At this distance, Dean thought it was a birthday card.He looked back at her. And he knew he was wrong. She had not betrayed him.“Get out.” She had moved to the front door, still wide open. “Now.” She gestured for him to leave.He nodded once and grimaced.As he walked past her and onto the porch, she said, “Fuck you, Dean. I never want to see you again.”She slammed the door behind him.
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The Clearing - Chapter 35

Start with Chapter 1CHAPTER 35Sam sat in the interview chair with a strip of tissue wadded and stuffed up his nose. Pieces of grass stuck to his beard. He was still cuffed. “Police brutality. You had no reason—”“You ran.”“I thought you were after me.”“We were.” Dean locked his fingers together.“You know what I mean.”“I don’t. Help me out. A police car shows up and you run. And I’ve seen what’s inside your house.” Dean, Zach, and Etheridge had waited on the warrant before entering to find a cache of weapons: pistols, rifles, shotguns, submachine guns. Plus several pounds of meth wrapped in plastic. Dean placed photos in front of Sam. “So you usually want to shoot any officer that comes along or were you eager to sell some of your crank?”Sam was sweating profusely from his forehead and he kept swallowing and licking his lips. “I don’t know what that stuff is. You planted it. And I’ve got people after me. I thought it was them.”“Ah, I see. So why are people after you? Who?”“Just people. And I thought you were them.”“Did you tell the police earlier that you were being targeted?”Sam laughed. “What? Hell no. Why would I do that?”“It’s what most people do when they’re being targeted.” Dean added air quotes to the last word. “Look, it’s simple. We’ve got you on weapons and drug possession charges. You’re looking at a good number of years. Not county jail. State prison. Worse.” He pointed at Sam. “For you, it’s worse. We’ve got a witness who says you set up the ambush that killed an officer two days ago in the woods out west of town.”“I don’t know nothing about that.”“Of course not. Thing is, I don’t care. We’re taking those guns and checking them. I’m particularly interested in this one.” Dean pointed to the M16 in the photo. “See, I know what one of those sounds like. I heard one as my fellow officer was shot dead. I’m betting this here M16 is going to match some ballistics we found out there in the woods.”Sam bit his lip.“Yeah. And it seems like you set someone up for making crank. Encouraged him. Got him a loan. Even trained him. Do you offer health insurance too? What’s the vacation policy?”Sam rubbed his mouth. “That shithead.”“Oh, do you know something?”Just as quickly as it disappeared, the fear, the concern came back. “You talking about Alex?” Sam squinted at Dean. “Yeah, I bet you are. Whatever he says, you can’t believe a word out of his mouth. He lies just like his old man.”“Right now, all I care about is making sure you end up in prison for a long time. Weapons possession. Drug possession. Distribution. Murder. Whatever I can send you to lock up for.”Sam looked at Dean and then back down. “I didn’t murder anyone. No. Not that.”“Not sure it makes much difference if you were there and shooting at us. Attempted murder? Does that sound any better? Accessory to murder? The point is, you’re going away. Sit on that.” Dean grabbed the photos and walked out of the interview room.Eric was standing in the hall. “How’d it go?”Dean gave him a thumbs up. “About ready to break.” He walked to his desk, slid open the drawer with the bottle of Wild Turkey, refreshed his flask, and took a drink.Guthrie walked up, hiking his pants when he stopped before Dean’s desk. “Alex is booked and in jail. He’ll have a few hours at least before his pops bails him out.” He thumbed back toward the interview room. “How’s Sammy boy? Heard Zach put the baton to work.”“Yep, whacked him back along the legs, sent the man down quick.”Guthrie nodded. “He about ready to spill the beans?”Dean nodded and took another drink. “He’s on the hot seat now for murder. At least he thinks he is. Based on his reaction, I think the M16 we found in his house was at the lab site.”“That’s with the state now?”“Not yet. We’ll get that over probably tomorrow. Maybe this afternoon.”“Can I watch him squirm when you go back in?”Handing Guthrie the flask, Dean said, “Hell yes you can.”They waited another hour. Dean took in a small styrofoam cup of water and set it in front of Sam, who looked up at both of the detectives. “What the hell you doing out there?”Dean sat down and crossed his arms. “Had a good think, did you?”Sam took the cup and downed the water in one gulp. “I was thirsty. Thanks.” He tapped the cup over so that it slid across the table. “Yeah. I thought about it. I told him it was a bad idea.”“Told who?”Sam looked at Guthrie and then at Dean. “Zorn. He set up the ambush. Knew you guys were sniffing around. He didn’t mean to get anyone killed. Just scare the hell out of you. Make you think it was well defended. Keep you away.”Dean leaned back. “That’s bullshit. You don’t bring an M16 and, I’m guessing, a rifle with a scope, start shooting, and not expect to hit somebody. And that’s not going to scare anyone off. We would’ve just gone back with more. More cops with more guns. Zorn’s not stupid.”Sam shrugged. “What can I say? I only know what he tells me.”Dean put his elbows on the table. “I know you. You’re not stupid either. This may not be the future you thought of when you were running track, but this is where you are and you’re not stupid.”Sweat appeared again on Sam’s forehead.Dean stretched his arms out wide. “Fine. So Zorn says let’s go into the woods and wait for the cops to show up? That about sum it up?”Sam nodded.“Who was with him? You?”“No. No. I just knew it was going down. It was Zorn, Paddy, and Jimmy.”Dean recognized the names. Paddy was the Sergeant-at-Arms. Jimmy was a new member. “Was Jimmy looking for his skull patch?”“Yeah. He was.”“When was this planned?”“This is Friday. So it was planned on Wednesday.”“The fourth?”“Yeah.” Sam wiped the sweat from his brow. “Yeah. Wednesday night. It was discussed after the meeting. Zorn said it had to be done the next day and they needed to leave early.”“Just like that?” Dean snapped his fingers.Guthrie, who had drifted into his familiar corner, stepped forward. “And how come the M16 used to kill a cop winds up at your house?”“Look, now that, that—. That is not my gun. Zorn or Paddy must have left it there for me. I was not in the woods. I was at home asleep man. I knew it was going down, but I can’t shoot. And like you said, I thought it wasn’t very smart.”Zorn had put Sam up as the patsy. Dean knew that was why he was talking.Guthrie said, “You know how often we get ‘home asleep’? It’s not an alibi. And what do you mean by ‘left it there for you’?” Like a gift?”“I don’t know. Shit.” Sam dropped his head. “Shit.”Dean raised his hand to stop Guthrie from continuing. “I’m just not buying this Sam. But if this is the story you’re sticking to, you can be just as stupid as Paul. Answer me this.”Sam looked up at him.“How’d Paul know about us cops showing up out there?”A smile flickered across Sam’s face. Pride coming back in full splendor, even if briefly. He had knowledge Dean did not. Sam said, “He says he has a bitch who tells him everything. Connected direct into the police.”Dean leaned back. Alex telling them this was the case was one thing. Sam was different somehow because he was a Grim Devil. “Who?”Sam shook his head and shrugged. “Hell if I know. He kept that to himself. Always said he had himself a bitch to tell him everything.”Dean breathed in deep. Sadie. It had to be Sadie. He knew he told her things he should not, as if she were his wife. She was nice to him because he paid her. He was not under any illusions about that, but he never expected she would be pumping him for information and passing it to Zorn. He would have to deal with that later. “Fine. You don’t know shit. But what do you know about William Nimitz?”“Huh? What? He didn’t have anything to do with talking to the police.”Guthrie pulled out the second chair across from Sam and sat down heavily. “No, you moron. We know that. But Billy was found in the woods, a bullet in his head, and a wad of cash in his closet. Was he working for Zorn like Alex?”“That commie piece of shit. Hell no. He wasn’t cooking. If he had showed up at the clubhouse, we’d have beat the red right out of him.”That word again, said with flagrant disgust. Dean asked, “He was a communist?”“Yeah, man.”“How do you know this?”“My niece’s boyfriend’s about the same age as Billy. Says Billy was spouting off communist crap all the time. Wanted to save people from whatever.”“Who’s the niece?”“Why do I need to tell you that?”“The spirit of cooperation.”Sam twisted his mouth, sighed, and looked at the wall. Then he looked back at Sam. “Julie. Julie Darwish. Her boyfriend is Tim Upton.”“And where was Billy spouting this commie stuff off at?” asked Guthrie.“I don’t know. Ask one of them.”
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