Byron's Lane (17 page)

“We Americans don’t realize that planning ahead and making choices has never been a regular part of most people’s day,” he continued. “Most of our politicians don’t have a clue that the rest of the world is wired to think differently than us.”

I looked at Adams, his eyes intently focused on the opinions section of the newspaper. He picked it up off the counter, bringing it closer to his face.

I tried to temper his remarks and provide some perspective. “Maybe it is better said that we Americans are programmed differently than the rest of the world.”

I made my comment in a purposely off-handed way, making the point that his words betrayed traces of arrogance lingering in his American soul, too.

“There are almost twenty-five of those differently wired people for every one of us,” I reminded him.

Adams pulled his face up from the newspaper and smiled at me. Then he buried his head in the newspaper again.

“Choices.” He said the word in a hard way, and paused for a second. “God, we’ve always had more than enough choices, haven’t we? I hate having to make them. They make me too deliberate. I need to project energy.”

“I beg to differ,” I replied. “It’s an honest matter of opinion about which does more damage to the human spirit—a lack of vitamins, or the complete surrender of choice.”

Adams laid the newspaper down on the kitchen counter and stared at me. “Is that an original thought?” he asked.

“What do you think? Is it black-book worthy?”

“It certainly is,” he said.

“Then I had better footnote it. I read it in a manuscript I edited last month. The book’s about Harry Hopkins, the New Dealer who ran welfare programs for Roosevelt during the Depression and was his confidante during World War Two. Hopkins said it, but I’ve often thought it.”

Adams laughed as he opened a drawer beneath the countertop and pulled out a pen. He wrote my quote on a paper napkin.

Two hours later, Adams drove me to the airport. When we passed Christina’s driveway, Hunter was at the end of it, collecting her newspaper from a green tube next to her mailbox. He waved. We courteously smiled back at him. The likelihood that within the next five minutes Christina would be lounging on her sofa, her feet in his lap, sharing the Sunday
Star Tribune
while sipping coffee he had made for them, destroyed any prospect of Adams’s involvement in a meaningful conversation for the next half hour. I spent the entire trip to the airport filibustering.

“Figure out if you’re in love with Christina. If you are, or if you’re trending that way, make a point to get together with her soon and tell her.”

I managed to phrase my message three different ways before we reached the airport.

I didn’t think it was my place to share details of the conversation I had had with Christina the night before. If she wanted Adams to hear what she’d said to me, her thoughts were best expressed by her, directly to him. All

I said to Adams was: “I think her door is still open a crack. You need to get your foot in—quickly, before it’s closed.”

Adams offered no response.

“I wrote down a couple of phone numbers on the back of one of my business cards where you can reach me in California this week if you need some bucking up. I left the card on your kitchen counter. You really ought to have a heart-to-heart with Christina sometime this week.”

The trip to the airport was the first time Adams had driven me anywhere while not exceeding the speed limit. When he dropped me curbside, in front of the door that opened to my airline’s ticket counter, he finally spoke.

“What you said has some merit. Maybe it’s time for me to learn how to do things a different way. I’ve got to shake this Iraq thing and get focused on something again.”

The possibility of his careful consideration of my argument, given his dismissal of it just days before, gave me reason to hope that he was about to make a serious attempt to deal with his corrosive, debilitating fear of rejection.

“It looks like I’ll have no plans for Thanksgiving this year. Let’s get together in New York,” Adams said as I pulled my bag from the backseat of his car. I told him that that sounded like a fine idea. But I wished hard for a call from Adams in mid-November asking to be excused from the commitment because he had made other plans—with Christina.

“I’ll let you know if Breech calls about that Florida golf vacation,” he added.

We shook hands in his front seat and said good-bye.

As I stepped to the curb and looked behind me, I noticed that Adams had left his car. When he got to where I was standing, he put his arms around me in a splendidly awkward and meaningful way. No words were spoken. He turned and walked back to his car.

As I took my first steps toward the ticket counters, Adams rolled down his passenger-side window and called my name. I turned around. He was stretched out over the Porsche’s front seat, his head almost outside the window.

“Hey, Tom—I’m awfully glad you came. ”

We had just finished a Thursday morning meeting at Disney when one of the office assistants tapped me on the shoulder and told me I had a telephone call from Minnesota. I looked at my watch; it was one-thirty there. As I walked toward the nearest conference room with a telephone, I was grinning. Two people who passed me in the hallway returned my smile. Adams caused it, not them. But I was happy they misinterpreted it. I wanted to keep its source all for myself.

I was impressed that my friend had pursued my suggestion so soon after I had made it. I was happy things went well; I was sure they had. What I had advised Adams to do smashed against more than forty years of carefully honed tendencies. But what Christina had told me on Saturday night persuaded me that there would be hope in Adams’s voice that Thursday. I made a mental note to ask Adams about his Monday meeting with the FBI and the state police. I’d been tied up in non-stop negotiations about the publishing house’s sale since Monday morning. I intended to call Adams as soon as they were finished, if he hadn’t called me first.

I should have been surprised that he didn’t call me on my cell phone or at the hotel. But I gave it no thought as I picked up the telephone receiver.

I pressed the red blinking hold light and started the conversation: “Afternoon, Adams. What’s up?” But the voice on the other end wasn’t him. As I listened to the person who had called, my left hand holding the receiver began to shake. It shook so much that I felt it bouncing against my ear. My mouth went dry. The muscles in my face collapsed.

Jonathan Adams was dead.

A man who said his name was Sheriff John Michaels asked if it was possible for me to return to Minneapolis within the next day or two. He said he was in the beginning stages of a murder investigation. Because I had been with Adams much of the time between the Monday night shooting and his murder ten days later, he thought I might be able to help them determine what happened and identify suspects and a motive for the killing.

His voice was cold and dispassionate; it offered no sensitivity or compassion. I instantly disliked Sheriff Michaels.

“Murder investigation?” I asked. Emotion had drained from me, flushed out by shock. The strength in my legs deserted me. I fell into a chair next to the desk on which the telephone sat.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Walker. I’ve gotten ahead of myself. As you can probably understand, it’s a little hectic here today. The FBI is all over the place and I’m trying to clear up all the confusion they’re causing.”

There was a twinge of excitement in the way he talked. My dislike of Sheriff Michaels grew.

He explained that early that morning, the woman who came to Adams’s house every other Thursday to clean it had found his front door slightly opened. She thought it odd. When she pushed the door open further, it bumped against his body lying face up in the hallway. Michaels said that Adams’s next-door neighbor, Christina Peterson, to whose house the cleaning lady had run for help, had told him that I should be the first to know about what had happened. My business card with my California phone numbers written on the back of it was found on the kitchen countertop by one of Michaels’s deputies.

“I’ll be on the next plane,” I told him without hesitation. “I’ll try to be at your office early this evening.”

I got Christina’s telephone number from directory assistance. I called her, and the phone rang for a long time. No one picked up and her answering machine didn’t engage.

I stumbled back to the meeting and reported the news I had just received; I would have to postpone the rest of our negotiations that week. I had to return to Minneapolis as soon as possible.

I accepted a generous offer from Disney to fly me back on one of their corporate jets.

Disney’s plane returned me to Minnesota in the same amount of time as the drive from Pine Lake Lodge to Adams’s house five days before. I used part of my time in flight to make a list of what had to be done when someone dies unexpectedly: call Adams’s sisters, find his will, secure his house and his personal things. I numbly fell back on what I had learned when Maggie had her accident. I called the sheriff’s department from a phone on the plane and made arrangements with the sheriff to be picked up at the airport by a uniformed officer. I spent the rest of the flight thinking about Maggie and Adams and Christina Peterson. I watched barren Nevada and Utah, the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, and the browning Great Plains disappear beneath the sloped wings of my jet. I thought about the violent ends that had come to everyone who had ever lived on Adams’s property. I cursed his house.

I was slipping from rationality into a dark, churning whirlpool of senselessness. There was nothing around me that I could grab onto to stop my slide. I worried about how Christina was handling the news. I wished I hadn’t told the sheriff that I would head directly to his office when I landed in Minneapolis. I needed to grieve. I knew I could only do that effectively in Christina’s company.

Minneapolis was still an hour away. I was having a very hard time comprehending that my best friend, Jonathan Adams, was dead. I struggled mightily, trying to figure out what had happened. My grief turned to anger. I directed all of it on Islam, Muslim fundamentalists, and Iraq. Surely if Adams had never gone to Iraq he wouldn’t have been killed.

It was late afternoon when the small jet began its descent in an executive airport in one of Minneapolis’s southern suburbs. The red taillights of cars clogging the highways below us indicated the beginning of rush hour. The plane landed smoothly. The pilot quickly steered it next to a row of hangars. I wrote out Christina’s telephone number on my list as we pulled to a stop. The co-pilot emerged from the cockpit and opened the jet’s door. I gathered my things. I tried to pull myself together. I tucked my list into my suit-coat pocket, grabbed my carry-on bag, and descended the six steps on the plane’s stairway to the tarmac.

The deputy waiting for me at the airport appeared to be in his late twenties, early thirties. He was a bit heavier than police officers ought to be. He was Hollywood’s notion of what sheriff department deputies look like if they work in rural counties, like the place where Adams lived. The officer had driven his police car onto the tarmac and had parked it close to where the plane had stopped. He was half-leaning against his car when I approached him, startling him in spite of my having been in his line of sight for ten yards. The deputy clumsily moved a Styrofoam coffee cup from his right hand to his left and shook my hand.

He introduced himself as Todd Walker. He pointed to a black plastic nameplate above the breast pocket on his uniform that confirmed what he said. He told me that he’d been on the force for two years. To his disappointment, by the time I was seated next to him in his police car, we had already determined that we shared no relatives, in spite of our same last name. Then, breathlessly, he started to tell me that Jonathan Adams was his first murder case.

As quickly as he spoke, he stopped and caught himself. Sensing that I didn’t share his professional enthusiasm, the deputy profusely apologized to me and offered his condolences. I accepted his apology and took an instant liking to him. Unlike his boss, the sheriff, there was sincerity and empathy in his voice, backed by a look on his face that matched what he said.

I used my cell phone to call Christina’s house. There was still no answer.

It was obvious that Deputy Walker wanted to atone for his insensitivity. He did so during our drive to the sheriff’s office, by telling me more than he should have about the murder investigation. I desperately needed to know everything I could about what had happened to Adams. Whatever I could find out about his killer and the motive would provide me that smallest measure of understanding I had to have to help break my emotional free fall. I encouraged the deputy to talk.

A woman—not a man—had been picked up two miles west of Adams’s house early that afternoon. When police discovered her, she was seated against a tree on a riverbank, listening to Fleetwood Mac’s
Rumors
album on an iPhone. They found her by following a trail she had made through the long prairie grass behind Adams’s house. A police dog helped, tracking her path through the woods at the end of the field. Deputy Walker said that the woman offered no resistance when they took her into custody.

Fingerprints on a handgun found in the shrubbery next to Adams’s front door matched the woman’s fingerprints. As far as Deputy Walker knew, she had not yet confessed to committing the crime. The sheriff was sure she hadn’t acted alone. She was from out of town. Since last Monday afternoon, she had been staying at the Budget Inn Motel. I kept what I knew to myself.

My friend’s alleged killer was registered as Mary Rose Fillmore. She had no criminal record. She drove a late-model Honda Civic with Indiana license plates.

The FBI was convinced that she was a minor player in a terrorist cell. They figured she was set up to take the fall for the terrorists who had planned the murder. The FBI was in the process of rounding up a dozen suspects in the region who were on their terrorist watch list. They called in for questioning all the leaders of the Somali community.

We traveled onto and quickly off an interstate highway that bounded the south side of metropolitan Minneapolis-Saint Paul. The road narrowed to two lanes. Mailboxes along it guarded long driveways that disappeared into seas of trees. Most of the cars we passed had headlights on—dusk was upon us and night was fast approaching. We entered Brookfield on its main street, Sibley Avenue, exactly opposite the direction into town that Adams and I took when we went looking for Linda McArthur the previous Saturday afternoon.

Large parts of the countryside were being swallowed by Minneapolis’s sprawling growth, but Brookfield had managed to retain the distinctive characteristics of Norman Rockwell’s notion of what small-town America should look like: a vital downtown built around a town square full of stately oak trees; a large gray sandstone courthouse dominating the square; cars parked in neat angled rows on both sides of the streets; people in business and casual dress standing around and sitting on benches, chatting in the park that filled the square; storefronts and small offices with names stenciled on their windows and doors; folks walking on the sidewalk, crossing the street, going busily about their business before everything would close for the day. They all stopped what they were doing and stared at the police car when we made our fast, noisy entrance into the central business district. The only things out of place in this snapshot of Americana were the four television vans taking up all the parking spaces in front of the courthouse, satellite dishes on each of them pointed toward heaven.

Sheriff Michaels had just finished a press briefing. He was in full uniform, reporting the event to a woman dressed smartly in a dark-gray pinstriped business suit, well-fitted and nicely worn over a white silk blouse. He was describing the press conference to her play by play, as if it had been a football game. His excited voice indicated that he was pleasantly surprised at his performance. His demeanor reinforced my negative opinion. I didn’t like the man. He was fast becoming a target at which I could misdirect my anger and frustration about what had happened to my friend.

I had been standing in the room for almost a minute before Michaels noticed that Deputy Walker and I were there.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Walker. Please come in. Thanks for picking Mr. Walker up at the airport, Todd. That’s all now. You can stand down.”

I nodded a thank-you to the deputy before I turned in the sheriff’s direction.

“Mr. Walker, this is our district attorney, Marcie Saunders.” I shook hands with the sheriff and the woman in the silk blouse. Saunders excused herself. As she left, she reminded Michaels to stop by her office upstairs before he went home.

“Thanks for coming back to Minnesota on such short notice, Mr. Walker. I’m really sorry about your friend. Jonathan Adams was an important, respected, and well-liked person in this state. He’ll be missed.”

That’s everything Adams ever wanted to be, I thought—well-liked, appreciated, and missed. From Adams’s point of view, those words would have made a fine epitaph. But they were too personal to be offered by a man who hardly knew him. I questioned their sincerity, although Adams never would have. He would have taken the comment at its face value and quietly reveled in it.

“Mr. Walker, let me bring you up-to-date about what happened and where we are now in the investigation. Because it’s an open investigation, I can’t tell you everything, of course. But I’ll tell you as much as I can. The FBI is getting increasingly involved in this. You’ll have to find out from them what they know.”

I stopped Michaels short. “Thanks, Sheriff. But Deputy Walker briefed me on the way in. May I see the suspect—this Mary Rose Fillmore?”

The scathing look the sheriff shot in the deputy’s direction transformed Todd Walker’s friendly face into an expression of extreme apprehension. Then the sheriff turned toward me. In the process, he changed his scowl into a politician’s smile.

“A civilian interviewing the prime suspect in a murder case is something we don’t allow in a criminal investigation, Mr. Walker. I don’t—”

I interrupted him again. “I think I know who she is.”

At first the sheriff looked startled. But, as I hoped would happen, he quickly saw an opportunity to move his investigation in front of the FBI’s. His female suspect had refused to talk to his detectives and the FBI agents who had tried to interrogate her. She might talk to someone she knew. He could be miles ahead of the FBI by the time they arrived at his office in the morning.

A few minutes later, another one of Michaels’s deputies ushered me to a room off a hall that connected the jail with the sheriff’s office. Having seen dozens of movies set in police stations, I expected the place to be windowless and sparsely furnished with a metal table, two or three straight-backed chairs, a two-way mirror filling one of its walls. But the room looked more like the sheriff department’s break room. It was brightly lit and sterile-looking, with a coffee maker and a microwave on a counter built against one of its walls. A water cooler and two vending machines occupied space on either side of the counter. In front of the room, nearest the door, were a sturdy-looking conference table and two squat oak bookcases filled with law enforcement manuals. A sloppy circle of brown folding chairs were scattered about, and the scuffed gray tile floor made the whole place seem perpetually cold.