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Friday, January 3rd
Charlotte was sitting up in the hospital bed, dressed in street clothes, waiting for the doctor’s release. Her head still hurt. She sighed. The doctor was running late, and she was seriously considering leaving anyway, when there was a knock on the door, and Dorene Sawyer came in.
“Oh!” said Charlotte. “Dorene!”
“I hope you don’t mind my stopping by to say hello.” Dorene came up to the bed and touched Charlotte’s hand. “That Detective Barnes said you were here. Nice man.”
“Yes, he is, a very nice man. He’s been a pleasure to work with. How are you?”
“Oh,” she sighed. “I’m fine. I’m always fine. A strange day, though, visiting both my children. Hewey will be fine, but Janice—not so much, I’m thinking.”
“That’s what Barnes seems to think, too. I’m just glad that Hewey is likely to escape prosecution.”
“He’s a good boy, and he’s probably a good match for a kidney for Alexa. But I don’t know about that girl—she’s got some deep problems, I think.”
There was a lull in the conversation. Charlotte tried to recall what it was she wanted to ask Dorene, but it eluded her.
“I’ve got a concussion, and sometimes I lose a thought. I know there is something I wanted to ask you—“ her eye caught sight of the blue print fabric of Dorene’s tote bag, and her memory kicked in. The dashiki fabric. Stu James.
“Now I remember.” She described what she saw in the tunnel, and what she knew about Janice, Stu James, tunnels, and 1968. “Something happened that terrified Janice. Do you know what it was?”
Dorene nodded. “Janice was a wild one. That Joan wouldn’t raise her right, and Eddie couldn’t ever say no to her. All that hippie stuff was like custom-made for her, the clothes, the free love, the drugs, all of it. Eddie must have told her about the tunnel. He didn’t live at the farm at the time, you know, had his big house up by the campus, but somehow she found the tunnel and she and Stu would go there for whatever it was they got into. But one day she didn’t come back home, and Eddie got worried that she’d run off with Stu, but she’d left her purse and everything else behind. He got hold of my dad, who got hold of me in case it was delicate, and we went looking for her, trying not to draw attention. It was my dad who said it would be worth looking in the tunnels. And that’s where we found them.
“Stu was dead, of an overdose. Janice was alive, but in shock, because it was pitch black in there and she was disoriented. They used candles, not flashlights, and she couldn’t find matches. They’d gotten high and fell asleep and didn’t keep the candles lit. She kept screaming when she saw our flashlights, and kept holding on to Stu’s body, kept saying how cold he was, over and over again.
“It was Eddie’s property, a tunnel that the town had wanted shut down, but he didn’t because it was used in the Underground Railroad and he wanted it kept intact. But now there was a dead boy and a nearly insane girl in it. Dad said he could bury the guy and collapse the tunnel at the same time, and Eddie said okay. But I think Janice heard them, she went crazier than ever, and my dad—I think it took everything he had to do it—he knocked her out with a punch. I had to get back home, because Burdock, my husband, didn’t know about Janice, and I didn’t want him to know, just told him that my Dad needed some help with something, ‘cause it was around ten o’clock at night. Eddie and my dad took care of everything. He never spoke of it again, my dad. I only ran into Eddie once after that. Never got up close to Janice again until today.”
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“HEWEY SAWYER HAS DENIED killing Dr. Garibaldi,” said Barnes, who had come in to take Charlotte’s statement.
“Not surprised. I really do think it is unlikely Hewey has ever killed anything, let alone another person. A gun for him is something to scare off people and predators.”
“There’s not enough evidence to prove he’s lying. Furthermore, Janice Garibaldi has confessed. She shot her husband, but it will probably be ruled accidental.”
Charlotte and Donovan looked at one another, with satisfaction, and Barnes filled in the details.
There was enough similarity between Alexa’s and Gani’s account of the late morning argument between Janice and Alonzo to give a sense of what led to the things that Hewey witnessed. Hewey had, indeed, been looking in the woods for a stray dog he wanted to rescue, but by the time he found it, it was too late. The dog was very old and ill. Hewey made his way back to the outbuilding, intending to get a shovel and go back out and bury it, when he noticed Alexa leaving the lab. He knew she was coming for a visit, the first time in a few years, and that Janice was very nervous about it—but that was all he knew.
While he was in the outbuilding he decided to warm up a little, as it had been snowing heavily. He saw Gani get in his car and leave. After a bit he heard voices coming up from the tunnel access in the closet. So he lifted up the flooring, and heard Alonzo and Janice having a row—it sounded like Alonzo was hurting Janice. He made his way down to the connecting tunnel, opened the door to the main tunnel, and just listened for a minute. Alonzo and Janice were in the tunnel lab, and she didn’t want to be there, was kicking and yelling for him to let her go. Hewey went to get his .22 rifle, then came right back.
Alonzo kept telling Janice that she had to “face it,” to “deal with it.” Hewey went in, then, and saw that Alonzo was standing behind Janice, pinning back her arms to force her to look at something, down where the tunnel was caved in. She started screaming then, in absolute horror, and Hewey yelled for Alonzo to let her go. He didn’t aim the gun at Alonzo, but he held it so he could do so if necessary. Alonzo let Janice go, and she ran to Hewey, in hysterics, falling at his feet, and Hewey helped her up.
Alonzo was in full temper, shouting things at Janice that confused Hewey, something about how the Mahons were always bailing out the Cortons.
And now that Alexa was sick—and this was the first that Hewey learned that Alexa was ill, that that was why she was visiting—Alonzo said they could use the hydroponic lab to grow marijuana, to raise extra money if they needed it. He would do whatever he could to take care of Janice and Alexa, but Janice had to come to grips with their using that tunnel, because there was no other way.
Janice was afraid of doing something illegal in the lab, because she was terrified of what the cops would find if they came and raided it, that everything her grandfather worked for would become tainted. Alonzo just laughed at her, and said that she and himself were little better than whores in the first place, that they had no moral superiority over the average dope dealer. She should just look at it as a business decision. Eddie Corton was a bootlegger, after all, he said—how could growing weed in a hydroponic lab possibly be any worse?
She said something about there being no more money in the trust, and Alonzo told her that Joan made sure of it after Eddie Corton died—had not only disinherited Janice, but disowned her, said Jonathan was her only child.
Then he said something that sent Janice over the edge:
That Gani was the only thing that made his life worth living, and he was making Gani a partner in the business.
This was where Janice’s story began to differ from Hewey’s:
Hewey said that Janice all but collapsed, and he led her out of the tunnel, out of the laboratory, and back to the house. They heard the gun go off about twenty minutes later, and found Alonzo shot, and the rifle on the ground next to him. At first, Janice was hysterical, but within minutes she became angry and said that Alonzo was selfish to kill himself and leave her to deal with life and Alexa’s problems all alone.
Janice, however, claimed that during the argument with Alonzo, she grabbed the gun from Hewey and aimed it at Alonzo, and told him she was going to kill him for wrecking her life. He laughed and walked toward her, grabbing the barrel and pushing it aside with one hand and pointing back to the collapse with the other, and told her that she’d ruined her own life with what was underneath the rubble—and with the silly stuff in her head.
Janice pushed the gun back toward Alonzo; Hewey tried to stop her, but the gun went off, and Alonzo was shot.
Then, once again, their stories agreed.
Janice went weirdly calm after that, and Hewey wasn’t sure at first what to do, because his head was full of all this new information, especially about the part that Janice was his sister, and that part was more important than anything else because it fit with how he felt about her. He wanted to protect his big sister. When she started to formulate a plan to cover up the crime, he did whatever he could to help.
Her main goal was to keep the tunnel hidden. No one must ever know about the tunnel, she said. She wanted to collapse the whole thing, but Hewey said he didn’t know how. So she came up with the idea to make it look like Alonzo was shot in the course of a robbery, and they took his body out of the tunnel and laid it in his office. She then told Hewey to get his truck and make it look like somebody stole all the plants that looked like cannabis from the greenhouse. Janice wasn’t entirely sure that the plants weren’t actually cannabis, but Hewey still thought they were.
Hewey walked home to get his truck, and backed it up to the laboratory delivery doors. He and Janice worked like demons loading up the plants. He then took the truck up to his youngest stepbrother’s house, and the stepbrother gave him a ride back to the lab. He and Janice were in the lab when Alexa came back with Charlotte. Hewey got Janice into the outbuilding, closing up the entrance to the tunnel behind him. He told her about the dog in the woods, and Janice said they should both walk out there, make the tracks in the snow look like they’d both been out there for a while. They went over their story again and again until Hewey convinced himself that was how things really happened. Then things went pretty much as Charlotte saw them the rest of that evening.
“But what about the cross-burning? The pictures on the hate blog? The brake lines?” asked Donovan. “Kidnapping Lola? Attempting to murder my—” he gestured toward Charlotte, “—my lady here?”
Barnes nodded. “That’s where Dorene Sawyer helped to fill in some of the gaps. Evidently it didn’t take long for the Sawyer brothers to figure out that the plants weren’t cannabis, and at first they were angry at Hewey for being so stupid. Hewey tried to explain that there really was marijuana in the lab, he’d heard Alonzo and Gani talking about it—and even saw them sharing a joint on occasion. He thought the plants were a new kind of marijuana that Alonzo was developing for medical research—which is kind of plausible given his limited understanding of what they actually did in that lab and the nature of the hybridization project.”
Barnes went on to explain that the Sawyer brothers were then angry at Alonzo and Gani for misleading their hapless brother. Alonzo was dead, so Gani became the focus. A couple of the more wayward younger Sawyers got wind of what was going on, and decided to make Gani feel threatened by burning a cross in front of the lab and taking pictures to post on a hate blog. The cross turned out to be one that was in Dorene’s barn—it belonged to her stepsons back when they had a biker gang called the White Ghost Riders. The metal ring that was originally on it had been removed at some point, but the cousins didn’t worry about it. They did this without Hewey’s knowledge, but Hewey thought the cross looked familiar. He asked his stepbrothers about it, and they told him to keep his mouth shut, as they didn’t want their grandsons going to jail.
“So it wasn’t even a serious threat, then?” asked Charlotte.
“Not so much, no,” said Barnes. “The kids just wanted to get back at Gani for what they thought was playing Hewey for a fool; it was okay if they played Hewey, but not if anybody outside the family did it. As stuff like that goes, it’s pretty mild. I’ve seen people’s cars set on fire for less.”
“But the brake line stuff,” said Donovan. “Not so mild.”
“No it’s not,” agreed Barnes. “But it turns out the Sawyers weren’t solely responsible. Hewey said Janice wanted him to keep an eye on Gani, to make sure he stayed quiet about the tunnel until the cops cleared out. And she wanted him to find out how to make the tunnel collapse. Said it was done years ago, and she wanted it blocked off for good. Now Hewey knew that both his grandfathers had been miners who came to Elm Grove to build tunnels, and that many had been caved in to close them off. He asked his stepbrothers questions about how they were closed off, and once again gave himself away to his shrewder family. That’s how they gradually figured out there was a tunnel at the Garibaldi farm.
“Hewey said he was all set to make some exploding targets—ones that were a little more sensitive than the commercial ones—enough to pack into the ceiling and sides of the main tunnel, when Janice decided she didn’t want to do that anymore, but to grow marijuana. They needed the money, she said, for Alexa. But they needed somebody to sell it to. Hewey said he knew who to talk to, and of course he went right to his brothers about it. I guess a couple of them went to see for themselves and got a little threatening with Gani.”
Here Charlotte started feeling nervous. Was Gani going to be jammed up by the cannabis, either the few plants he really did have or the intent to grow it for sale under pressure from Janice and the Sawyers? She willed herself to remain calm.
“Then Janice changed her mind again, fearing that if the Sawyer brothers got their hooks into the tunnel, there was an even greater chance of discovering the body of her old boyfriend under the rubble of the cave-in.
“It was at this point that Dorene Sawyer was useful—she has told us the story of what happened to Stu and Janice in 1968. The fabric scrap you found helps to confirm it. It doesn’t have any direct bearing on Alonzo Garibaldi’s murder, except in contributing to Janice’s phobia about the tunnel, the emotional instability that led to shooting Alonzo. For Dorene it is important to save Hewey from going to prison for something he didn’t do—he wouldn’t be able to handle it, or even survive. Saving Hewey is also paramount because he is a likely donor for Alexa. They already know he’s the same blood type, and passes a few other criteria. He’s healthy as a horse, never drank or smoked or anything.”
Charlotte let out a gasp of relief. Donovan leaned over and put an arm around her. “So Janice has confessed?” he asked.
“Yes, basically. She’s the one who cut Gani’s brake lines. She wanted him out of the way so that she would once again become the sole owner of the lab, and then she would make a deal with the Sawyer brothers for the equipment, after which she would have Hewey collapse the tunnel.”
Charlotte was confused. “How was she going to earn money with the lab without a scientist?”
Barnes shrugged. “Her answer was that she would simply find another scientist. Or turn it into a potpourri factory or an art gallery. Or sell the place. She didn’t have any really clear ideas.”
“I suppose that fits in with why Eddie Corton thought she needed looking after.”
“But what I wanna know,” said Donovan, “was why she thought it was necessary to go after Charlotte?”
“Charlotte had been looking into things and snooping around from the get-go. Janice suspected that Gani had told Charlotte more than he should have. And if Gani had to go, Charlotte had to go. Janice told Hewey to have the same boys who burned the cross cut Charlotte’s brake line, and when that didn’t work to grab her and lock her up in the tunnel. When she saw that they grabbed Lola instead of Charlotte, she couldn’t believe it. On top of it, Alexa was now hospitalized. Then you managed to walk right into a trap they hadn’t even made, but she was determined that you wouldn’t be able to thwart her plans, even if her plans didn’t make that much sense.”
“What will happen now?”
“Janice is facing a variety of charges, from accidental death to intention to inflict grievous harm, to attempted murder. I have a feeling that her lawyer will go with an insanity defense. Hewey might have to attend some counseling or education classes, but unless some hard-line prosecutor decides to make an example of him, I think he’ll escape charges, especially in light of the fact that he has never planned or intended to harm anyone, has never threatened anyone, and wants nothing more than to be able to donate a kidney to his newfound niece. Gani might be facing obstruction of an investigation, but a good defense attorney should be able to demonstrate coercion and fear of bodily harm, especially since that harm actually materialized. Some of the Sawyer family are in a bit of hot water, too. Alexa, as well, may be facing obstruction of an investigation, for lying about where she really was the day her father was killed and not sharing what she knew. There again, her illness may be seen as a mitigating factor.”
“I’m so relieved,” said Charlotte.
Barnes, however, sighed and looked out the window for a minute, lost in thought. “The thing is,” he turned to look at Charlotte, “Hewey has resumed his claim that Alexa shot her father. He insists that he and Janice Garibaldi heard a gunshot and found Dr. Garibaldi on the floor of the tunnel, the one with the hydroponic lab. He said that Janice thought her husband had killed himself. But forensics has shown it was impossible.”
“Another problem I have with the whole thing,” said Barnes, “is the hydroponic lab itself. It’s the perfect setup for a cannabis-growing operation.”
Charlotte took this one by the horns, having anticipated it all along. “Yes it is, and I think that was actually the inspiration—the buckeyes look so much like cannabis, that it wasn’t much of a leap to go from joking about growing weed in the tunnel to actually growing buckeyes there. Alonzo and Gani needed to be able to prove it worked before refitting the greenhouse as a hydroponic operation. It made both scientific and business sense to do it that way.”
Barnes just looked at her for a moment, and she looked him right in the eye, letting him make of it what he would. It was the truth, after all, the original intent of the hydroponic lab. Everything that came later was not Gani’s fault—nor Alexa’s.
He gradually nodded as he thought it through. “I think I can work with that.” He looked straight at her.
He knew.
But, to her relief, he trusted her judgment.