The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (5 page)

“That’s good news,” I conceded. “How is it relevant?”

“Mark Champlin is heavily involved in those negotiations. A scandal at this time could derail the process, perhaps permanently.”

“The snow angel isn’t a scandal,” I said. “She’s a homicide victim.”

“Snow angel?” Bemis echoed, frowning.

“Julie Novak,” I said. “When we found her in the snow, that’s how she appeared.”

“By whatever name, her death was inadvertent,” Avery said. “A regrettable accident.”

“Or negligent homicide,” Bemis countered. “A mentally challenged kid made an awful mistake. Fine. He can plead to it, the judge will place him in a state institution for evaluation—”

“And any hope for his future will disappear,” Avery shot back.

“Joey Champlin’s record will clear at twenty-one,” I pointed out. “Julie Novak isn’t going to
see
twenty-one.”

“The point is moot,” Avery said. “The Champlins are unwilling to ruin the boy’s life for what was, in every sense, a juvenile mistake.”

“We
might
be open to a compromise,” Bemis said, glancing at Todd. “If one of the parents pleads to negligence—”

“To be held up to public ridicule and shame?” Avery asked.

“
Somebody
damn well should be ashamed!” I snapped.

“Dylan’s right, counselor,” Todd said. “My office can’t just write this off. Especially since Mark and I are friends. You have to give me something, Jason.”

“I’ve been authorized to offer a hundred thousand dollars,” Avery said.

No one spoke for a moment.

“A hundred for what?” I asked.

“Joey’s a mentally challenged minor, with emotional problems,” Avery said quickly. “No good purpose will be served by trying him. The Champlins offer fair compensation instead. Joey will be placed in a secure facility, for appropriate treatment. The Champlins will issue a public statement of regret for the incident and,
privately
, will proffer a financial settlement to the girl’s family. One hundred thousand.”

Bemis glanced nervously at Todd. The prosecutor’s face showed nothing.

“If, on the other hand, formal charges are brought,” Avery continued, “my admission of Joey’s involvement and the offer of compensation will vanish. The Champlins will resist any attempt to incarcerate the boy, and they have formidable resources. We’re dealing with a tragedy, not a crime.”

“That’s for the courts to decide,” I said.

“You can pursue legal action, of course,” Avery nodded. “But what can you win? Joey will most likely be remanded to counseling and the Novak family will get nothing. Are you willing to risk that, Todd?”

“As a friend of the family, I can’t be a party to this,” Todd said. “It’s your call, Harvey.”

“I . . . sympathize with the Novak family, of course,” Bemis said, reading Todd’s eyes as he spoke. “But there’s not much point in convicting a mentally handicapped minor of a charge he’ll barely comprehend. And a court fight could be disastrous for the college.”

Bemis paused, waiting for his boss to comment. Todd didn’t.

“Let’s make it two hundred thousand,” Avery said. “That’s my final offer and it expires in sixty seconds.”

Bemis glanced at Todd, who gave a barely perceptible nod.

“All right,” Bemis nodded. “We can live with that.”

I wasn’t sure who “we” were, but he didn’t speak for me.

“Slow down,” I said. “Before we agree to a settlement, shouldn’t we consult the Novak family?”

“Sorry, but that’s out. They can’t know about Joey,” Avery said. “And an offer of compensation could be interpreted as an admission of guilt. Any approach must be made unofficially, without revealing any part of this discussion. Mr. Novak works as a logger. He might be more receptive if the offer came from one of his own.” He glanced pointedly at me.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “You want me to sell this to Novak? Without telling him anything?”

“He’s free to decline, of course,” Avery said. Taking a checkbook out of his vest pocket, he jotted in a few figures, then slid the check to me.

“This is drawn on my personal account, detective. Two hundred thousand dollars. When Mr. Novak cashes it, he’ll be given a release to sign, acknowledging it as a final settlement.”

“This is a mistake,” I said. “At least let me tell Novak the truth about what happened.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not an option,” Avery said. “It would violate privilege and open the Champlin family to litigation. I can’t allow it.”

“Novak could be facing felony charges for assaulting the Patel boy,” Harvey Bemis added. “Remind him of that, Dylan. Given a choice between a paycheck and jail time, he’ll do the right thing.”

“Right for who?” I asked. “Novak’s a wood-smoke stud. He’s used to getting up off the deck to come back at you. He won’t take this.”

But I was wrong.

By the time I got back to Hauser Justice Center, Carl Novak had been cooling off in an interview room for over an hour.

Locked up alone in a ten-by-ten concrete box, he had time to absorb the death of his daughter. And to consider a future that could include months, even years, locked in rooms like this one.

He was seated at a small steel table bolted to the floor in the center of the room. I took the chair facing him. It was just us. Off the record. No one observing from the other side of the two-way mirror, no recorders, no video cams.

Novak was dressed for work, in a faded flannel shirt, bib overalls, and cork-soled boots. His shoulder-length shaggy hair was shot with gray, his face seamed and weathered by the wind. His knuckles were oversized, scarred from rough labor.

Red-eyed, coldly furious, he listened with folded arms as I offered my sympathies on the death of his daughter, then outlined Avery’s offer of compensation. His eyes widened at the figure. Cocking his head, he eyed me curiously.

“Two hundred grand?” he echoed. “For real? Jesus. Do you know how many cords I’d have to drop to make that much?”

I nodded. “My dad was a logger.”

“I know. I worked with your old man years ago, on Moose’s crew, cuttin’ pulpwood in the Comstock. He’s dead now, right? Car crash?”

“Killed by a drunk driver,” I said.

“Tough break. Anybody offer you two hundred thousand for him?”

I didn’t answer.

“Nah, of course not,” he said. “I liked Dolph, he was steady, a good worker. But your old man wasn’t worth no two hundred grand, dead or alive. But that’s what them people figure my Julie’s worth, eh?”

“Mr. Novak—”

“Save it, LaCrosse,” he said, waving me off. “This ain’t on you, I know that. And it sure ain’t on Julie. It’s on me, and I ain’t even got enough put aside to bury her decent. Been working two jobs just to keep her in school, and I got three more kids to think of. I—” He looked away, swallowing hard. “I’ll take the money. Got no choice.”

“You realize if you do, it’s over. You can’t sue later.”

“Never figured to. But off the record? Just two wood-smoke boys sittin’ in a room? Who done this, Dylan? Who killed my girl?”

“It’s an open case, Mr. Novak. I truly can’t comment. But I can tell you this much. Nobody meant Julie harm. It was an accident, or close to it. Hard as it might be, it’s best to accept that, and move on.”

“Is that what you’d do?”

“I don’t know what I’d do, Mr. Novak.”

“My Uncle Matt was killed in Vietnam,” he said absently. “My ma’s only brother. Know what his wife got? Ten thousand. And a flag to lay on his coffin. Ten grand for his life. I’m getting a lot more for Julie. Maybe I should be grateful.”

He waited for a comment. I didn’t have one.

“Hell, maybe you’re right,” he sighed. “There’s no help for a thing like this. No way to set it right. Tell your people I’ll take the deal.”

“They aren’t my people,” I said.

He met my eyes dead-on. Cold as the big lakes in January.

“Sure they are,” he said.

I didn’t attend the snow angel’s funeral. I wasn’t sure how the Novaks would react and I didn’t want to intrude.

A week passed, and then another. Christmas was in the air, and as an early present, Vale Junior College won state approval to become a fully accredited, four-year institution.

Good for us.

I began to think Jason Avery had been right. We’d salvaged a positive outcome from a god-awful situation. Won the greatest good for the greatest number.

I thought that right up until the night Derek Patel disappeared.

Ten days after Julie Novak’s funeral, Derek Patel vanished from the campus of Vale Junior College. His folks weren’t overly concerned when he didn’t show for dinner; the boy often stayed after class on lab nights. But when he wasn’t home at ten, his mother called the school.

A security guard answered. The school was locked down, but Derek’s VW Bug was still parked in the lot. The guard found it unlocked, with the driver’s door slightly ajar. Odd, but not necessarily ominous.

Until he noticed Derek’s keys in the snow beside the car.

And the bloodstains on the headrest.

The crime occurred on school grounds so jurisdiction initially fell to the state police. But when my chief informed their post commander the missing kid was part of an open case, they kicked it to us.

Not that it made any difference.

We had nothing. CODIS, the combined DNA index system run by U.S. and Canadian crime labs, identified the blood spattered in the car as belonging to Derek Patel. Violence had obviously been done, but in the swirling snow and the bustle of the busy parking lot, nobody had noticed anything out of the ordinary.

A few students mentioned a rust-bucket white pickup truck parked near Derek’s V-dub around the time he vanished, but nobody got a good look at the driver, caught a plate, or could even swear to the make of the truck.

Maybe a Ford. Maybe a Chevy. White. Rusted out around the wheel wells. Big guy behind the wheel. A working stiff, not a student.

Why a working stiff?

“You know. Tractor cap, canvas vest, wild hair? A wood-smoke boy. Cedar savage. You know the type.”

I knew. Which narrowed my list of potential suspects down to the sixty thousand blue-collar folks who didn’t live in Sugar Hill or the condos along the lakeshore strip.

Rusty white pickups? That slimmed our suspect list down to a thousand or so. But I didn’t need a thousand names. I already knew the name.

I questioned Carl Novak, of course. Spoke to him on the porch of his double-wide in Poletown, a Slavic enclave in the smokestack shadows of the Deveraux hardboard plant. Novak didn’t invite me to step in out of the weather, a deliberate breach of etiquette in the north.

His alibi was rock solid, though. Novak could account for every minute of the day Derek Patel disappeared. Witnesses could vouch for his whereabouts the entire time.

Which proved beyond a doubt that he was involved. Nobody keeps total track of a day, unless they expect to answer questions about it. Innocents don’t need alibis.

Still, on the face of it, Novak was as pure as the new-fallen snow. Probably felt ten feet tall and bulletproof. He was sure that he’d won, and he wanted me to know it.

And I did. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Dr. Patel and his family were out of their minds with worry. The state police assigned an electronic intercept team to their home to deal with a possible ransom demand.

They tapped their landline home phone and their cells, ready to identify the relay tower as soon as the call came, then triangulate the signal and home in on it.

But there was no call. No ransom demand. No threats.

As the shopping days before Christmas dwindled down to the final few, there was no word at all.

Derek Patel had vanished as though he’d never been.

And when the dreaded phone call finally came, it didn’t ring at the Patels’ home. Or even at my office. It came to Bowie Cadarette, a conservation officer with the DNRE.

A farmer named Pete DeNoux capped a coyote that had been killing piglets. Pete hurried his shot, didn’t nail the rogue cleanly. Gut-shot him, he thought.

That would have been sufficient for some folks. The wound would likely prove fatal. The predator would crawl off into the brush and bleed out. Even if he survived, he’d be minus his taste for bacon.

But DeNoux was a wood-smoke boy, born in the north. Raised on some unwritten rules. If you shoot something, you damn well put it down. You never leave a wounded animal to suffer. Ever. Not even a thieving coyote.

Pete had no trouble following the blood spoor through the snow. Trailed the rogue male back to the farthest corner of his land, near his fence line.

He found what was left of the animal near its den at the base of a toppled pine. The poor bastard had made it home, only to have his own pack turn on him. Maddened by the blood scent, they ripped him to pieces.

The deep-woods wild has countless graces, but mercy isn’t one of them. It’s a human concept, and not all that common with us.

Satisfied, if a bit dismayed, Pete turned to leave, then hesitated. There were a lot of bloody bones around that den. Too many for a rogue coyote. The pack had been working over another carcass. DeNoux took a closer look, expecting to find the remains of his piglets. The bones weren’t from a shoat, though. Nor a deer, nor anything else he recognized.

At first.

Pete was no biologist, but he’d butchered enough game to know the basics of bone structure.

Even so, it took a good twenty minutes for his mind to accept what his eyes were seeing. Even then he harbored some doubts.

Until he found the remains of a torn tennis shoe . . .

DeNoux was so shaken, he wasn’t sure who to call. So he rang up the conservation department. And they called me.

Ordinarily the district attorney would check out a crime scene personally, but Derek Patel’s skeletal remains were tied to a case Todd Girard had stepped away from. I guessed he’d be stepping away even farther now. Faster than a buck on the run.

ADA Harvey Bemis arrived at the coyote den dressed for heavy weather. In his L.L. Bean down-filled parka, with matching tanker cap and furred earmuffs, he looked ready for a trek across the polar ice cap. I was wearing my usual leather car coat and jeans. In the shelter of the tall pines, twenty degrees doesn’t seem that cold. Especially when you’re seething.