Smoke Screen

CHAPTER 24

PAT JR. DIDN’T SEE RALEY UNTIL HE GOT BEHIND THE STEERING wheel of his car and Raley splayed his wide hand upon the younger man’s chest. He cried out in fright.

“I’m not going to hurt you. But we’re going to talk, and every word out of your mouth had better be the truth. Understand?” Raley’s voice, while soft and calm, was also steely. Britt imagined the other man sensed his resolve. She could practically smell Pat Jr.’s fear as he wobbled his head in agreement.

“H-how did you know I was here?”

“Do you have your service weapon?” Raley asked.

He shook his head no, then nodded yes. “In…in the glove box. Were you following me?”

Raley opened the glove box to verify that the pistol was there, then closed the door of the compartment without touching it. “That’s not too smart of you, Pat, leaving your police-issue gun where anybody could break into your car and get it.”

“Why are you following me? What do you want?” By now, having realized that Britt was in the backseat, he addressed the question to her reflection in the rearview mirror.

“As Raley says, we want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About your face,” Raley said.

“My face?”

“What happened to it?”

“It…I…I used to do a lot of cycling. I ran into a tree on my bike. Injured myself so bad, I gave up the sport.”

Raley didn’t move, not even his eyes. He continued to hold Pat Jr. with his resolute stare. The man turned his head and looked hopefully toward Britt. She slowly shook her head. “That’s the story you told, but that’s not what happened, is it, Pat?”

He swallowed, visibly and audibly.

“Tell us about Cleveland Jones.”

Pat Jr. let go of the small measure of courage he’d been clinging to. His misshapen face contorted with his effort not to cry. His marred lower lip began to tremble.

Britt could hardly bear to watch his meltdown. Raley had shared with her his theory on Pat Jr.’s involvement, how the whole sordid mess began with him. It wasn’t a pretty story, and what they were doing to him now was as cruel as holding a mirror up to his disfigured face. But it was also necessary. Raley had cautioned her not to let her compassion for the man’s plight soften her determination to wring the truth from him.

“He’s pathetic, yes. But he might also be the key that will open up everything,” he’d said. “We’ve got to get from him as much as he knows, and it probably won’t be easy. It for sure as hell won’t be pleasant.”

“I don’t look forward to it.”

“Neither do I,” Raley had said.

Now, no doubt feeling as rotten as she did about this ambush, Raley said, “Along with all his other crimes, Cleveland Jones was into gay bashing.”

Pat Jr. nodded.

“And you were one of his victims.”

Another nod. A sniff. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “He and two others.”

“Where?”

“Hampton Park.”

“Tell us what happened.”

“I…I’d…gone to the park. Actually, I was riding my bike. But I was…I stopped at the men’s room.”

“You and another guy had sex in the restroom,” Raley said. “Was this a date, like the guy tonight?”

“No. I went in. He was there. Older guy. We…” He shrugged self-consciously. “After, I left ahead of him. When I came out of the restroom, they were there. Three of them. They jumped me. Jones-”

“Did you know him?” Britt asked. “Had he done this to you before?”

“No. But I knew the type. I’d been warned, you know, by guys I hooked up with. Charleston is a fairly gay-friendly city now, but this was five years ago and there had been several recent attacks. More than the standard name-calling. Brutal, physical attacks. A bunch of local skinhead types had decided we weren’t fit to live,” he said bitterly.

“But you went out cruising anyway. In a public park, for godsake.” Raley sounded angry over the other man’s carelessness.

“I didn’t have a choice!” Pat Jr.’s ragged cry reverberated in the car. For a moment nobody said anything, then he repeated, “I didn’t have a choice. I hadn’t come out. My dad was a cop. He’d worked vice. He’d arrested guys like me who met in public restrooms, parking lots, whatever.

“At the dinner table, he and George McGowan would laugh about the homos they’d caught blowing each other. I laughed with them, knowing that’s what was expected.”

Watching him in the rearview mirror, Britt could see tears forming in his eyes.

“Then one day Dad caught me and one of my friends in my bedroom. I think he had suspected, but when the truth was right there…” He paused, shuddered. “He went berserk. He actually drew his pistol. I think he might have killed us if Mom hadn’t stopped him.”

Britt could only imagine this scene and the chasm it must have created between father and son, between husband and wife. The whole dynamic of the family would have changed after that. Gently she prodded him to continue. “Cleveland Jones and two others attacked you.”

He stirred, drew a breath, expelled it slowly. “I never got a good look at the other two. But Jones swung a baseball bat at my shin and broke the bone. Once I was down, he and the others kicked me. One got my nose with the toe of his boot. Pulverized it. I couldn’t breathe out of it for months.

“Before I passed out, Jones grabbed me by the hair and forced me to look up at him. He was grinning. ‘Suck this,’ he said, then used the end of the bat like a pile driver on my mouth.” He looked at Raley, then at Britt and, almost apologetically, added, “The surgeons put everything back as well as they could.”

“The man with you in the restroom, what happened to him?”

“While they were working me over, he ran away. I’d never seen him before, never saw him again. I lay there for almost an hour, but it seemed like ten. Some kids doing dope happened on me. They called 911, then split, too.

“The ambulance took me to the hospital. My folks were notified. I was barely conscious, about to go into surgery, but Dad leaned over me and said, ‘I told you it was dangerous to ride your bike at night.’ That was his way of clueing me in to the lie we’d tell. I’d had a biking accident.”

Another car pulled into the parking lot, sweeping its headlights across them. Two well-dressed young men got out and walked along the alley toward the entrance of the club. “Nice place?” Raley asked.

Pat Jr., surprised by the question, replied, “I hear it is. I’ve never been inside. I’m still not out. Officially.”

Raley picked up the story. “Pat Senior covered your beating with a lie, but privately he wanted to catch the guys who’d done it.”

“Right,” Pat Jr. said. “I guess he still loved me. I was gay, but I was his son. Maybe it was more of an honor issue with him than love. Anyway, when they’d reduced the dosage of painkillers so I could think straight, Dad brought several books of mug shots to my hospital room. He promised they were going to get the guys who’d done this to me and make them sorry.”

“‘They’?”

“Dad, George McGowan, and Jay Burgess.”

“He admitted to his best friends and fellow detectives that you were gay?”

“I suppose. He must have. George McGowan has barely spoken to me since. His contempt is plain. Jay never paid much attention to me one way or the other. I was beneath his notice even before this happened. I saw through him, and I think he knew it. Anyhow, Dad enlisted him and George to help flush out my attackers. I could only identify Jones, and did so as soon as I saw his most recent mug shot.”

“How long before they found him?” Raley asked.

“Couple of days. Dad called my hospital room and told me they had him in custody. He said Jones had copped an attitude, denied the attack, said he wouldn’t go out of his way to bust a queer, but Dad was certain they’d get a confession out of him by the end of the day, and that, if they didn’t, he’d get Cobb Fordyce to throw the book at this little Nazi. His exact words.”

“What day was that?” Britt asked.

He looked at them in turn, then reluctantly said, “The day of the fire.”

Raley leaned toward him, and Britt was struck by the difference between the two men. Raley’s superior size and physicality would cause Pat Jr. to feel threatened even if that weren’t Raley’s intention. The younger man recoiled, leaning as far away from Raley as he could.

“Did they get a confession out of Jones?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did your dad mention that Jones had two skull fractures when they arrested him?”

“No.”

“Did he call you with progress reports?”

“No. I didn’t hear from him again. Just that once when he told me they would be interrogating Cleveland Jones until he cracked.”

“What happened while they were interrogating him?”

“Nothing!” Then he repeated it with a firm shake of his head.

“But you suspect-”

“I don’t suspect anything.”

“That’s bullshit, Pat,” Raley said, with heat.

“I was in the hospital for weeks. I was on painkillers. Groggy. My recollections of the fire aren’t even clear, so how would I know what took place before it started?”

“You don’t want to know.” Raley’s accusation struck hard. The other man lowered his head to avoid Raley’s piercing gaze. “You don’t want to know, because then you’d have to acknowledge that seven people died because you got blown in a public men’s room.”

“Raley.” Britt’s softly spoken chastisement went unheard because of Pat Jr.’s harsh sob. His shoulders shook. The raw, choppy sounds of his weeping were heart-wrenching.

“You’re right. I didn’t want to know,” he said miserably. “I heard that guy didn’t die because of the fire, but I never asked Dad about it. I can’t tell you any more because I don’t know any more. If they knew I’d told you this much, they’d kill me.”

Raley pounced on that. “Who? George McGowan? Was he there when your dad interrogated Cleveland Jones? He and Jay Burgess?”

“I don’t know,” Pat Jr. sobbed.

“Fordyce was there, too, wasn’t he, Pat? He’d come over to the police station to throw the book at Jones if he didn’t confess. Wasn’t that the plan?”

“I told you, I don’t know. I swear!”

Raley eased up and sat back against the passenger-side door, staring hard at the other man but giving him a moment to collect himself. When the crying had subsided into an occasional sniffle, Britt asked, “Why did you get married, Pat?”

Raley answered for him. “For the same reason he became a cop. It’s part of his cover.”

Pat Jr. looked over at Raley, obviously impressed that he had guessed so accurately. “I made a pact with Dad.”

“After the fire?” Raley asked.

He nodded. “He made me swear that nobody would ever know about the incident in the park. My attacker was dead, and he was nobody’s loss. It was over, he said. But it could never happen again.

“He told me to enroll in the police academy. He and his friends would make certain I got a spot. He told me to get married and have kids. He told me I had to stop…stop being a fag.” He gave a caustic laugh. “As if being gay was something I could reverse or turn off.”

“Why did you agree to this pact?”

“I owed him, didn’t I? Even though I had disgraced him, he and his friends had come to my defense. So whatever Dad said to do, I did. It would have been selfish of me not to.”

“It was selfish to deceive a woman into marrying you,” Britt said.

He looked back at her and nodded forlornly. “She was a girl from my mom’s church. Brought up very strict. She was younger than me, and innocent. She didn’t know exactly what to expect from a husband, so I wasn’t a disappointment to her.”

“The children?”

“I can do it when I have to.”

“She doesn’t know?”

He shook his head, looking at her imploringly. “She can’t find out, either. I can’t do that to her.” Then to Raley, he said, “Please. She’s great. Truly. I don’t want to hurt her.”

Britt felt that the lie he was living was more hurtful to his family than the truth would have been, but that was a conversation for another time.

Raley said, “You told us earlier today that Pat Senior didn’t enjoy being a hero.”

“He didn’t. That fire ruined his life,” Pat Jr. said with vehemence, showing more mettle than he had up to that point.

“How do you mean?” Britt asked.

“Just that. He was never the same after, and it was more than what happened to me in the park that changed him. He didn’t like all the attention heaped on him. The commendations, the praise, the spotlight. Burgess and McGowan got off on all that. Fordyce used it to get himself elected AG, but Dad just wanted it all to go away. It didn’t. Things really got bad after-”

He stopped and looked nervously at Raley, who asked, “After what?”

“After the business with you and that girl.”

“What do you know about that?” Britt asked.

“Only what everybody else knows. What the newspapers said, what you reported on TV.”

“Did your dad talk about the Suzi Monroe case?” Raley asked.

“Not in my hearing, but I knew he was investigating it. That was the last big case assigned to him. After that, he became depressed. More so every day. Drank a lot, alone, late into the night. Most mornings I think he woke up still drunk. He started missing work. Nothing Mom said seemed to get through to him.”

“Did she know about you, Jones, the park?”

Pat Jr. shook his head. “She believed the bicycle story because that’s what Dad told her. But I think she always suspected there was more to it. I guess she wanted to think I’d been cured after being caught in bed with my friend. Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

There had been a lot of denial going on in the Wickham household. Britt thought that was a terrible way to run a family.

“Okay, go on,” Raley told him.

“Well, Mom could see that Dad was getting more depressed by the day. She begged him to get counseling, but he refused, said he could work it out by himself, but he never said exactly what ‘it’ was.

“George and Jay tried to boost him. Took him fishing. Stuff like that. But nothing they said or did helped. He sank lower and lower. One night I woke up to a strange sound. I found him sitting out on the back porch, crying his heart out. I’d never known him to cry before. Never. But I’ll never forget the awful sound of it. I crept back to bed. He never knew I had witnessed that.” He paused to wipe his nose again. “The very next night, George and Jay showed up at our door to tell Mom that he’d been fatally shot.”

After a short silence, Raley said, “I knew your dad. Only slightly, but I knew he was a good and conscientious cop. Why did he place himself in such a dangerous situation that night, Pat? Why did he break the first rule of self-preservation by not waiting for backup?”

“To prove to himself that he was the hero everybody believed him to be.”

It sounded like a stock answer, something he might have heard a therapist say. Raley picked up on it just as Britt did. “That’s not what you really think, is it?”

Pat Jr. seemed ready to take issue, then slowly shook his head. “I’ve wondered if maybe he was just tired of it all and wanted it to be over. I know that feeling.” He looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror. “I know how it feels to just want out of your body, out of your life.”

He paused for several moments before continuing. “Maybe Dad went into that alley hoping that he wouldn’t come out, but knowing that, if he didn’t, Mom could still collect on his life insurance policy.”

Britt had never actually heard anyone admit to suicidal feelings, and it shook her. Apparently the confession subdued Raley, too. For at least a minute no one said anything, then Raley spoke.

“I have another theory, Pat. I think maybe the crying jag you heard was your father’s surrender. He’d reached his breaking point. He’d decided to unburden himself of the guilty secret he’d been keeping along with his buddies.” After a significant pause, he added, “Maybe one or both of them wanted that secret protected at all costs. Your dad could have been lured into that alley and killed to make certain he wouldn’t rat them out.”

Pat Jr.’s nervousness returned. He wet his lips. His eyes darted to Britt, then back to Raley. “You didn’t hear that from me. In fact, I don’t know anything about a secret. What secret?”

Raley frowned at his attempt to play dumb. “Jay had something important he wanted to tell Britt. He was killed before he could, but I’m dead certain that it related to Cleveland Jones, that interrogation room, and the fire.”

“You need to get off that track,” Pat Jr. said nervously.

“And let Britt go down for a murder she didn’t commit?”

“No. Of course not, but this talk…what you’re alleging…is dangerous.”

“I’ll take my chances to get to the truth,” Raley said.

“But in the meantime you’re placing me and my family in danger.” His face twisted with emotion again. “Look, I’m a lousy husband. I lie to my wife every hour of the day. But I do love her and my kids. They’re innocents. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them.”

“I don’t want anything bad to happen to them, either.” Raley leaned closer to the other man. “So tell me who you think killed your father and Jay.”

“You think that, not me.”

“You’re lying, Pat. You know I’m right.”

“If you keep talking like this, you’re going to get us and yourself killed.” His voice was tearful, his eyes wild with fear.

“Who’s going to kill me? McGowan? Fordyce? Both of them? Which one? Who?”

Pat Jr. was shaking his head.

“Who is it?” Raley pressed.

“Please don’t ask.”

“But you know, don’t you?”

“I can’t say anything more.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because nobody knows about me!”

His face crumpled with misery. His cry was so loud, so raw, that for a moment Raley remained quiet.

Then he nodded, as though saying he got it now. “They didn’t betray your dad’s trust about your homosexuality, so you can’t betray theirs. Is that it?”

Pat Jr. nodded.

“Even if it kills you?”

“My life’s shit anyway.” He broke down into sobs again.

Raley regarded him closely, then looked at Britt. She indicated with a small shake of her head that she didn’t believe the weeping man would give up any more information. He was held in a grip of fear more threatening to him than Raley.

“Pat?” Choking back sobs, he responded to Raley’s softer tone and raised his head. “I think you’re a creep for doing what you’re doing to your family. It isn’t fair to them, and it isn’t even fair to you. You all deserve a happier life than the one you’re leading. If it’s true that you love your wife, tell her now. It will hurt, but it won’t hurt as much as it will if you let this pretense continue.

“But in the meantime, I don’t want to be responsible for your family’s safety or yours. Talking to Britt and me could prove dangerous, you’re right about that. I suggest you leave tonight.”

“Leave?”

“Go home, pack up your wife and kids. Take them to the beach, to the mountains, just get lost for a while, a couple of days at least. Empty your ATM and don’t use your credit cards. Throw away your cell phone. Cover your tracks.”

Pat Jr. looked back at Britt as though asking, Is he nuts? “Take his advice, Pat,” she said. “I was drugged the night Jay was murdered. But on the outside chance I might recover my memory of what happened, someone tried to kill me. My car was run off the road. It’s submerged in the Combahee River. If Raley hadn’t been there to rescue me, I would have drowned. Anyone who would do that wouldn’t hesitate to harm your children, if only to punctuate their threat. Take your family and go tonight.”

“If you notify your boss at the PD, don’t tell him your destination,” Raley advised him. “It might get back to George McGowan or Cobb Fordyce.”

Pat Jr. looked at them, swallowing hard. “They’ve known me since I was a boy. I really don’t think they’d do anything to me.”

“That’s probably what your dad thought,” Raley said grimly. “Jay, too.”

He and Britt walked back to the gray sedan still parked down the street, got in, and watched as Pat Wickham, Jr., drove away from the nightclub he’d never seen from the inside.

“Do you think he’ll do what we advised?” Britt asked as they watched his car disappear around the corner at Meeting Street.

“Either he will or he’s already on his cell phone calling in the cavalry.”

“Which would mean he lied when he said he didn’t know what had happened to Cleveland Jones after his arrest.” She considered it a moment, then said, “I think he was telling the truth. He doesn’t want to know what happened in that interrogation room because of the implications to himself. Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“He may not know specifically what happened, but I don’t think he believes Jones had two skull fractures when he was arrested. He knows that whatever did go down was consequential. He also knows who killed Jay. And he must be scared out of his wits of him.”

“Or them.”

“Or them. Because if he wasn’t, he’d have exposed them when Pat Senior was shot. He let them get away with murdering his own father, which is incomprehensible. He-” Suddenly he reached out and clamped his hand over her head, shoving her down. At the same time, he slouched low in his seat.

“What?” she asked.

“Our friends just came out of the club.”

“Butch and Sundance?”

“The very ones.” He’d seen them in the side mirror. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him, he slid the pistol from his waistband.

Alarmed, she said, “You’re not going to shoot them, are you?”

“Not unless I have to.”

“Do you think Pat Junior called them?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. If he had told them we were right outside, they’d have torn out of there. They’re in no apparent hurry. See for yourself. They’re going the other direction, their backs are to us.”

He removed his hand from her head, and she raised it far enough to peer over the seat. The two men had set off down the sidewalk, walking toward King Street. They weren’t dawdling, they looked like they meant business, but she figured they always walked with a purposeful stride. But, as Raley had said, they didn’t seem to be in a huge hurry, either.

“They don’t look like a gay couple on an evening out,” she said.

“Nope.”

“Then funny they should show up here.”

“Hmm. The same way it was funny they showed up at The Wheelhouse the night you and Jay met there. At least the one did. This is the first time you’ve seen the second one. Look familiar?”

“No. But I haven’t seen his face yet. Do you think they were looking for Pat Junior tonight?”

“God, I hope not. He wouldn’t last ten seconds against these guys.”

Britt said, “It’s a small triumph, but it sort of does my heart good, knowing they were in there wasting time while we were within yards of them.”

The pair met three men on the sidewalk and moved aside to let them pass. Butch watched them over his shoulder until they entered the bar. He said something to his buddy, who took umbrage and gave him the finger, which caused him to chuckle. Then the two continued on their way.

“Did you get a better look at Sundance when he turned around?” Raley asked.

“Yes, but I don’t think I’ve seen him before. I didn’t have the reaction I did when I saw Butch through your cabin window.”

The two reached the end of the block and turned the corner, disappearing. Raley poked the pistol back into his waistband and started the sedan. “How ’bout a little role reversal?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna follow them.”