“This is bogus,” said Nelson Sanders. “They get one piece of physical evidence that’s been sitting around for five years, and they think they can make a case with that? Something else is going on, and it’s not pretty.”
I could agree that what was happening here was not an attractive thing to see. Duffy had been handcuffed and placed in the back of a police cruiser, while a uniformed officer named Crawford (according to his nameplate) recited his Miranda rights. (Just as an aside: As a writer, I find the Miranda rights much less wordy and difficult to understand than any other legal document I can recall. It’s not great, catchy writing, but the key is be easily comprehended, and the words accomplish that. End of rant.)
“I don’t get it,” Ben said. “They told you they have the murder weapon, that it’s that gun they dug out of Damien Mosley’s ceiling, and that ties Michelle’s shooting to Duffy? How does that work?”
Duffy, off being further “processed” like a slice of Kraft American cheese, was nowhere to be seen. We were standing in a waiting area in the police station outside the bullpen, and our conversation was being conducted at a low volume. Because maybe someone would hear us and . . . I’m not actually sure why we were being so quiet.
“They say the gun has Duffy’s fingerprints on it,” Sanders added. “Which makes pretty much no sense at all. Nobody on this planet can put him in Dutchess County on the night Michelle died. We’re not even sure if the two of them ever met. The idea that this weapon has been sitting around for more than a whole presidential term and they find his prints on there, clear enough to be positively identified after all that time, is pretty suspicious.”
And that was just the beginning. “What happens now?” I asked.
“Now we wait for him to be arraigned, which should happen today because it’s early enough,” Sanders told us. “The judge will set bail, and we’ll have to see how high that’s going to be. If Duffy can pay it, there won’t be a problem. Do you know anything about his finances?”
Ben and I glanced at each other. “Not really,” Ben said.
“I’ll talk to Duffy about it when we get to court,” Sanders said. “I can’t imagine they’ll see him as a flight risk, but you never know in cases when the defendant is from out of state. Look, there’s nothing you two can do here until the arraignment. I’ll call you as soon as I know when that’s going to be.” He nodded at us and headed back toward the desk to pester the sergeant some more. The man was worth every penny Duffy was paying him. However he was doing that.
“What do you think?” Ben said after Sanders left.
“I think my stomach is tied up in knots, and I feel utterly powerless. How about you?”
“I want to go talk to Louise Refsnyder,” he exhaled.
I figured the day couldn’t go a whole lot worse, so I agreed, although the idea that “worse” might actually be a possibility was a sobering thought. I called Paula through my Prius c’s Bluetooth while I was driving to Louise’s place, which I actually could find without GPS now.
After getting her up to speed on the events of the day, which began with seeing Duffy out of jail and led to seeing Duffy back in jail, Paula filled me in on what she’d been able to find out from Adamstown, a place for which I was becoming ever more nostalgic by the minute.
“I still don’t know if there was a Duffy Madison at Poughkeepsie High School during the years we need,” she reported. “There’s a space for him in the yearbook, but school records don’t show him as registered. Now there are some areas I can’t look because I’m not in the system, so it’s possible he was homeschooled and registered in the high school for clerical reasons. It’s possible he had some kind of disability and couldn’t attend. It’s also possible there is no such person as Duffy Madison, and the two of us are being played for fools.” This was the most hysterical I’d ever heard Paula sound, which corresponded neatly to my most calm and rational moment.
“What about other Madisons?” I asked. “Siblings? Cousins? Dolleys?”
“That’s interesting,” Paula answered, ignoring my feeble first lady/ice cream maker joke. “There was a Susannah Madison two years before Duffy’s supposed graduation date. She is currently living in Lake Tahoe under the married name Susannah Hong. I’ve left a message but haven’t heard back yet.”
Ben looked at me somewhat askance. He still wasn’t used to the idea of digging into Duffy’s past to discover whether he was real. To Ben, Duffy was still that guy he’d been working with.
“That’s good,” I told Paula. “Keep on that as it comes, but for the moment, our priority is finding a way to get Duffy out of jail. Have you come up with anything new on Louise or the others we’ve met up here?”
“I looked into that Walt Kendig you were telling me about,” Paula answered. “His story is not exactly thrill-packed. He’s never been out of Poughkeepsie for more than a week at a time, unmarried, no children. Works as a CPA for a firm that prepares taxes for locals and some walk-ins. Bought himself a condo, an apartment in a converted school building, and pays his mortgage on time. Spends most of his money on books and birding as far as I can tell.”
At least he didn’t have any incredibly expensive high-tech surveillance equipment, I thought. “What about Louise and Rob?” I asked.
“We already knew much of Louise’s past,” Paula said. I could hear her flipping through a notebook she keeps on her desk; Paula is skittish about leaving her research strictly on a computer or in the cloud. She lives under the assumption that the whole Internet is constantly on the brink of collapse, and the only reason she cares is that her work would be lost. “Right now she’s working as a supervisor at a FedEx plant from five in the afternoon to one in the morning. You’ve seen her house, so you could tell me more about it than I can tell you.”
“I doubt that,” I said.
I could hear the smile on Paula’s face. “Thank you. But the fact is, since the time of her pregnancy and divorce, Louise has lived a fairly mundane life. She does have a thing for men, though. From what I can tell, she’s had a lot of boyfriends. They don’t seem to last very long, but Facebook and other sources would indicate she stays friendly with a number of them.”
“Any married ones?” Ben asked.
Paula took a moment. I’d told her Ben was in the car with me, but that was the first time he’d spoken since we’d started the call. She recovered quickly. “It’s hard to tell because those would usually not be broadcast all over social media,” she said. “It’s possible, but I don’t know that I can say certainly it’s happened.”
Paula hates it when she doesn’t have a definitive answer.
“That’s fine,” I told her. “We’re going to see Louise right now. What do you think we should ask her?” Paula has great insight in such matters, and I’ll often ask her advice when I’m stuck on a plot point but never a character moment. Those are all mine.
“From what you’ve told me, I’d ask her about the Poughkeepsie Police Department,” she answered. “If there’s a gun with Duffy’s fingerprints on it, somebody planted it there. Who in the department would want to do that, and why? A local like Louise, especially one whose social media shows she has definitely dated a cop or two, might have some idea.”
Ben nodded. I wasn’t looking directly at him because we were pulling up in front of Louise’s house, but I was willing to bet he looked impressed with Paula and sheepish that he hadn’t thought of that himself.
“You’re a gem,” I told Paula.
“Awww . . .”
We disconnected the call just as I was parking three houses down from Louise Refsnyder. Ben and I got out of the car and started back toward Louise’s front door.
“Paula would make a good detective,” Ben said.
“Don’t tell her that. I could never replace her.”
Louise opened the door wearing an impatient expression that changed when she saw Ben standing to my right. The look she gave him paired with the idea that Ben and I might be dating and were at least sharing a hotel room at the moment roused some competitive feelings in me, which I pushed back down where they belonged. This was business.
But Ben was noticing Louise. I’d never been on this kind of visit with him before, so I wondered whether he gave that look to every woman he might want to get information from. Another feeling to ignore for the moment.
“What is it this time?” That was Louise, directed to me. “You want to know about the time I got put in the corner in first grade?”
“I’m here to ask about Michelle Testaverde’s murder,” I said. “I didn’t know if you were aware of that.”
By now I’d learned to watch for the reaction, and Louise presented us with a whopper. Her face paled, and her mouth dropped open; she actually took a step backward that seemed instinctual and not planned. Her hand let go of the doorknob, and she made some noises that weren’t exactly meant to be coherent, in my opinion. It took her a good long moment to compose herself.
“Michelle was murdered?” Louise said. More gargling noises. “When?”
That seemed an odd first question, but what’s the logical one? “About five years ago,” Ben told her. “Right around the time she and Damien Mosley supposedly moved into his apartment in New Jersey.” Then he gestured toward the doorway. “Can we come in?”
I was grateful when Louise nodded and opened the door wider, so I didn’t even mention to Ben that the question should have been, “May we come in?” It seemed a secondary issue at the time.
We sat in her kitchen again, Michelle pouring herself a gin and offering us nothing. I didn’t care, and Ben didn’t say anything about it. “What happened?” Louise finally managed.
Ben told her what we knew, leaving out the part where Duffy was arrested and awaiting arraignment, probably because that might prejudice her take on the subject but also because neither Ben nor I wanted to consider that reality at the moment. When he had finished with his recap, Louise refilled her glass and took a healthy swig.
“Who would have done that?” she rasped.
“That’s kind of what we’re trying to figure out,” I said. “We started off knowing that Damien had vanished from town, and that led us to Michelle, and the next thing we know, Michelle was shot and there’s a good chance Damien was, too, at the bottom of a ridge in a park in New Jersey. It doesn’t seem to make any sense.”
Ben didn’t want to wallow in that idea. He was used to the idea of moving forward on an investigation, and he wasn’t going to stop now. “We’re told that before they both disappeared, Damien sort of proposed to Michelle at the bowling alley during a league match, and she turned him down,” he said. “Were you there?”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and nodded. “Yeah, but they ended up getting married anyway,” she said.
“Were you at the wedding?” I asked.
Louise laughed without any joy. “Me? No. I didn’t get invited.”
Ben’s eyes got more intense. “Do you know anybody who was?” he asked.
Louise sat forward looking annoyed, like her word was being challenged. “Sure!” Her eyes went up and to the right—her left—indicating she was trying to remember something. “Um . . .” She didn’t add to that.
“What’s wrong?” Ben asked. It was his good-cop voice, oozing kindness and understanding. Now I knew he was just playing it up to get Louise to talk.
Louise looked at him as if surprised he’d spoken. “Fact is, I can’t remember anybody telling me they went to the wedding,” she said. “I just heard they were married, from Walt, maybe. But it never came up. I didn’t expect to get invited to their wedding; I mean, we weren’t tight friends or anything, so when they got married and I didn’t go, that didn’t seem strange at all. But now that you ask, I don’t know anybody who went to that wedding.”
I tried to duplicate Ben’s tone, but it was difficult for me because I’d decided I didn’t like Louise, and covering up my feelings is not a strong suit. Assume the effort was there. “The last time I was here, you said you and Damien had been having . . . a relationship before he disappeared. And there was some talk that Michelle was cheating, too. Do you know how they reacted to that? Did either of them find out about the other?”
Louise looked away, and I knew what that meant. “Yeah, see, here’s the thing about that,” she said. “I was lying.”
“About which part?” The fake kindness was probably out of my voice.
“About me and Damien. I didn’t like the way you were looking at me, and I figured maybe you were an old friend or a girlfriend of his or something, so I made up that story about me and him. That never actually happened.”
I opened my mouth, but Ben wisely beat me to the punch. “You never slept with Damien Mosley,” he said calmly.
“No. As far as I know, Damien was with Michelle and only Michelle.”
“What about the other part, where Michelle was supposedly having at least one affair behind Damien’s back?” Ben asked.
Louise resumed eye contact. With Ben. “As far as I know, that part is true.”
“Who was she cheating with?” I asked. It probably should have been, “With whom was she cheating?” but who says that, really?
“I don’t know,” Louise said. “There was talk at the time, but I wasn’t really seeing them. Damien was still working at the club once in a while, but he never complained about Michelle. I don’t know if he heard anything about what she was doing.”
Every time we learned something new, it made the whole situation more confusing.
I remembered what Paula had said and decided there was no reason not to go all in with Louise. “Do you know anybody in the police department?” I asked her.
Immediately, her expression showed suspicion. “Why?”
“There’s some evidence in the case of Michelle’s murder that is questionable,” Ben said, moving Louise’s focus away from me, which was probably wise. “One of the things we’re trying to determine is how it might have gotten into the evidence room if it wasn’t real.”
“So you figure that hey, Louise gets around, she must have been with somebody in the department?” She wasn’t even cutting Ben any slack now. “You figure I just have a thing with every guy in town?”
To be fair, that was kind of what I had been thinking, but Ben had been involved in these things before and knew how to handle them. It would be very instructive for a future Duffy book.
“That’s not what we’re saying,” he said soothingly. “We figure you know this town a lot better than either of us, and you might have some insight into the police department. You might have heard things about cops who might not be completely perfect on the job. You know, like a guy who used to give a nice-looking girl a break on a speeding ticket and now maybe is a detective or has access to high-profile cases. Something like that. We were just relying on your knowledge because we don’t have the insight we need here.”
It was so convincing, I made a mental note never to believe anything Ben said to me again. But it did seem to work on Louise, who tilted her head to one side as she was listening and nodded a little.
“I actually did date a cop for a little while about a year ago,” she said. “I’m not giving you his name because maybe he’ll call me again sometime, but he did talk about some of the other guys in the department, the ones who were standing in his way of being promoted, you know? And it’s possible there is someone there who cuts the occasional corner. I don’t know anything about evidence or anything, but I know he said not to let this guy decide you were a problem because he’d find a way to get rid of you. Legal, you know? Or at least it would look legal. And he wouldn’t shoot you or anything—there was no violence I knew about. Just a little rule-bending.”
“Thank you,” Ben said. “That’s very helpful.” It was? “What was his name?”
Louise blinked. “I told you I wasn’t going to say his name. I might want to see him again, and I can’t be seen as a snitch.”
“The crooked cop,” I jumped in. “Not the one you were dating.”
“Oh!” Louise waved a hand. “Sorry. All I remember is that my cop, the one I was seeing, told me to watch out for the sergeant they called Phil.”
It took a moment. My brain sifted through its invisible Rolodex, and then my head must have snapped straight up. I stared a little.
“What?” Ben asked.
“Dougherty. Sgt. Phillip Dougherty.” Duffy and I had met him at our first stop in Poughkeepsie. He had met us and found Duffy annoying. Would that be enough to have him falsify evidence against Duffy in Michelle’s murder?
“Yeah, that’s it,” Louise said. “Phil Dougherty. That’s the guy.”