A Guilty Mind (18 page)

 

Chapter Thirty-­Six

T
HE TAPE
BOTHERED
him. Cancini had watched it three times, and still there was something about it that seemed staged, unnatural. But the captain was right. Vandenberg did not seem drunk on the tape. He didn't stumble or sway. Instead, he was stiff, head up and back straight, no wasted movements. If the surveillance video was authenticated, it would not look good for Vandenberg. He'd left his club at ten—­alone. A slew of witnesses had corroborated this part of Vandenberg's story. The tape placed him at a convenience mart just before midnight. The question was, where had the man been for nearly two hours? Cancini had no doubt what a prosecutor could do with that time and how it might be spun before a jury. The compounding lies added to the evidence mounting against him. So why did he waive his patient's rights and allow the police to access his sessions with Dr. Michael? Was he that clever or that stupid?

Cancini pounded the desk. He knew what was bothering him. Even with the surveillance video in their possession and the knife missing from Vandenberg's apartment, the detective had questions about the man's guilt. “Damn.” Listening to those crazy tapes was making him soft. He'd actually begun feeling sorry for the guy. The detective could even pinpoint the moment when it had happened and the session that had touched him most.

“Do you still hate your father, George?” Dr. Michael had asked.

“Yes,” Vandenberg cried. A moment later he retracted his answer. “No, I guess not. I don't know what I feel toward him.”

“I see. Well, let's look at why you disliked him in the first place.”

“Not disliked,” the patient said, correcting his therapist. “Hated. I hated him.”

“Okay, hated. But surely you didn't always hate him. It must have started somewhere.”

“Do we have to do this, Doctor?”

“Yes.” The doctor was firm. “I think we do.”

There was nothing for a moment and then, “He didn't know how to leave me alone. He was obsessed with controlling everything I did, where I went to school, the classes I took, what sports I played, who my friends were, even who my girlfriend was. I couldn't do anything on my own.” Vandenberg's voice rose an octave. “He had every detail of my life planned out for so long, I can't remember when I didn't hate him.”

Dr. Michael's tone was noncommittal, but the question was all encompassing. “So, your whole life then? It was always that miserable?” The therapist waited. Listening, Cancini leaned forward, waiting, too.

“No, I guess not. Not always. When I was little, it was different. I remember going to the park with him and growing things in the garden. We had fun then. He would take me to baseball games and out for ice cream and fishing at the river.” Vandenberg's voice grew quieter. “I loved him then. I loved him a lot.”

“When did it change, George?”

Cancini heard a tremor in Vandenberg's voice. “I'm not sure. It did change though. He changed.” There was a long sigh. “Before high school, around then maybe.”

“You were growing up. You were a teenager about to become a man.”

“But that's no excuse. He changed. It was as though nothing I did was good enough anymore unless it was exactly the way he'd ordered me to do it. I mean, he'd always been tough on me, don't get me wrong, but we got along. Then, one day, we didn't.”

“Are you sure it wasn't normal teenage rebellion and your father trying to protect you?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. I might have been a little rebellious, but it wasn't about that. Every night he would drill me with things he wanted me to learn so I could go into the business. He'd describe my life in detail, what kind of wife I needed, where I should live, what clubs I should join. My opinion was irrelevant. In fact, I don't remember him ever asking me what I wanted. I don't think it mattered.”

“What about your mother? What did she think of all this?”

“I don't know. She never said much when he was around. He kind of dominated the house in every way.” He paused, then added, “I'm sure she loved me, but she couldn't do anything.”

“I see.” The therapist cleared his throat. “Then your father was what some ­people might call a control freak?”

Vandenberg snickered. “No, I wouldn't say that. That would be too easy. Besides, he wasn't that way with everything. There were plenty of things he let go, just none that had to do with me. What I would say is that my life became an obsession with him. Whenever I did anything that wasn't in the plan, he went ballistic.”

“Was he ever violent?”

“No!” George cried. “No way. But he would threaten to take everything away, and I knew he would do it, too.”

The doctor said nothing for a few minutes, allowing his patient some time to calm down. When he spoke again, he focused on more recent years. “So how were things after you were grown and married?”

The answer was grudging, “Better, I guess. Okay. I had the right wife and a good job.”

“Was he still so obsessive?”

“For a long time he was. I was following the plan by then, but he kept after me anyway. I had as little to do with him as I could.” Vandenberg's breathing sounded ragged on the tape. “Mom died and then he seemed older. He stopped badgering me. It was like he gave up. I could tell I was still a disappointment, but at least he didn't harp on it anymore.”

Stopping the tape for a minute, Cancini swallowed hard. He knew a little about what Vandenberg had felt with his father. His dad, too, had wanted more from his son. But it wasn't always that way. Unlike George, he knew exactly when his relationship with his father had changed, Sunday, August 14, the day he lost his mother. Cancini was twelve years old. She'd been an innocent bystander, a customer who walked in the door on the wrong day at the wrong time. None of that changed the fact that she was gone. Together, he and his dad had gone to the morgue, both their lives irrevocably changed by events neither could understand. Sadness replaced joy. Duty replaced play and spontaneity. At home, laughter became a sound from the past. As a boy, Cancini tried to fill the void, tried to live up to his father's expectations, but as the years passed, he knew nothing he did would ever be enough. Graduation brought new misery to the small family when he'd applied to the police academy, squashing his father's dreams of a career in medicine or law. Even then, the young man had seen things in black and white, eager to right the wrongs in the world. When he'd made detective, his father had said, “It's something, I guess.” While the elder Cancini never came out and said so, his son knew, could see it in the old man's eyes. He was a disappointment. Divorced. No children. He didn't know Vandenberg, but he understood the man's problems with his father. He pushed play again.

“And the last year, when he had cancer? How was your relationship then?”

For a long moment, there was dead air.

“George?”

“I don't know what to say.”

The doctor used his most reasonable voice. “Tell me what you felt during that year.”

“I felt the same thing I always felt. My father was an asshole.” Cancini flinched at the words. Even to him, the attitude seemed harsh, unnecessary.

“Did he do something different than before?”

“Yeah.” George could not hide his bitterness. “He goes from being obsessed with me, then not giving a shit, to then, when he's sick, saying I'm not allowed to see him. My wife could visit. My children could visit. Hell, my friends could visit. But I was barred from the house I grew up in.”

“Oh.” Dr. Michael seemed stunned, unprepared for this turn of events. Cancini could understand his surprise.

“Yeah. You know when I was allowed to see him again?” George paused for only a half second, answering the question himself. “Never.”

“I see,” the therapist said.

“No, you don't!” There was sound of a book or magazine falling to the floor. “I wasn't allowed to see my father the whole last year of his life, the whole time he was dying. He refused to see me! Do you have any idea how that feels? Do you know what it's like to know you were such a colossal disappointment your own father doesn't want to see you even when he's on his deathbed? Do you?” Cancini held his breath, waiting. When Vandenberg spoke again, he was quieter, anger spent. “He didn't want to see me.”

“I'm sorry, George.”

Vandenberg's voice caught. “Do you know how much I hated him for that?”

Cancini sat at Dr. Michael's desk, body leaning toward the cassette player. His bony hands gripped the arms of the chair, his fingers leaving deep impressions in the leather. Engrossed in George's paternal struggle, he forgot the late hour and even that the man on the tape was a suspect in a murder investigation. Fathers and sons. Sons and fathers. The relationship could be the most formative of a young man's life or the most destructive.

“George, would you like to take a break?”

“Do you know what hurt the most?” Vandenberg ignored the question. “After he was gone, after he died, the lawyers told me he'd left everything to me. I got the house, his share of the company, the place at the river. And he left me a journal, his journal. The damn thing was filled with stories about me, all good stuff. There was a letter stuck in the back. It was to me, written right before he died. In it, he told me he loved me and he didn't deserve me.” Vandenberg sniffled. “Can you believe it? Almost my whole life he makes me feel unworthy and then he leaves me a letter like that.” Cancini blinked, eyes misty. “You want to know how I really feel about my father? I have no idea.” Vandenberg broke down sobbing.

The detective had heard enough, the family dynamics striking a little too close to home. He'd turned off the tape and placed it in the box. He'd left the office, tired of complex ­people and complex suspects. But the complications would not go away. Between Vandenberg, his wife, and the Michael widow, Cancini felt surrounded by secrets. None of that was supposed to matter. He had a dead man and a case to solve. That was his priority. He needed to keep his own feelings out of it. It was evidence that counted. Black and white.

“That convenience store manager and the clerk on the tape are here,” Smitty said, breaking into his thoughts. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, you take the lead. Anything from the lab guys?” The two men strode side by side to the interview room.

“Not yet.”

Cancini recognized the clerk from the tape, an elderly man with a shock of white hair. A second man, big-­boned with a large paunch around his middle, wore a sweat-­stained sport shirt and sweatpants. Perspiration dotted his forehead and upper lip. He mopped his face with a hand towel.

“Thank you for coming in.” Smitty made introductions and recapped what they'd seen on the video. The clerk sat wide-­eyed, but his manager appeared bored, tapping his fat fingers against his thighs. “Is there anything either of you can add?”

“No,” the burly man said, “an' I don't know why we're here. Far as I can tell, there ain't been no crime committed. So what if a guy came in and bought cigarettes? Who gives a crap?”

“I give a crap, Mr. Turner. Mr. Vandenberg could be instrumental in a case we're working on. We're trying to verify the sequence of events that night. Of course, if you're uncomfortable cooperating with the police . . .” He left the thought unfinished. The clerk shrank farther down in his chair, eyes downcast.

“I ain't sayin' we won't cooperate with the cops, but I got a business to run, you know. We ain't done nothin' wrong. I don't need any trouble.”

“That's fine.” Smitty turned toward the clerk. “Sir, I was wondering if you could tell me how Mr. Vandenberg seemed that night. Did you notice anything unusual?”

“Like what?” the manager interrupted. Cancini shot him a look. The manager folded his arms across his chest but closed his mouth.

“Anything at all?” Smitty repeated.

“I . . . I don't think so. He was kinda quiet.” The clerk picked at his fingernails and swung his leg back and forth. “He smelled like he'd been drinking but other than that, he seemed okay.”

“Mr. Vandenberg comes in regularly?”

“Once or twice a week, I guess.”

“And nothing was different Thursday night?”

He screwed up his small face, hands clenched. “It's hard to remember, but I don't think so. Except he did look like he might have fallen or something. There was something on his shirt. I asked him if he was okay but he didn't answer. I remember now because usually he's real friendly.”

“Are we done?” the manager said, standing. “I think we've talked plenty enough.”

Cancini stood, too. “Actually, I have a question for you, Mr. Turner.”

“Why?” the man asked. “I wasn't workin' that night.”

“It's about the tape and how it came to be in our possession.” Cancini caught the flicker in the other man's eyes.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Did you send the tape to Captain Martin, Mr. Turner?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, and puffed out his chest. “Can I go now?”

“No.” Cancini took a step closer to the big man.

The manager's face flushed. “You can't keep us here.”

“True. But unless you can enlighten me, I'm going to assume you did send the tape, and if you did, I'm going to start wondering why. Maybe I need to subpoena all of your surveillance tapes so I can take a look for myself what kind of business is going on over there.” Mr. Turner's face went white. “Unless you happen to know how I got that tape.”

The fat man glanced at the floor and out the door, then shrugged. “I sold it,” he said. The clerk gawked, openmouthed. “I looked at it first and I dint see nothin' on it. How was I s'posed to know it was important?”