Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

His briefcase remained.

“Step away, counsel,” Dingus said to Gilbert, “or you’ll be joining your client.” Gilbert moved aside. Dingus addressed Haskell. “This has nothing to do with your financial matters, sir, but with something more flesh and blood.”

Haskell’s face went as white as the frozen lake. For a second I thought he might collapse. Felicia Haskell jumped up and put her arms around him from behind, screaming, “No, no, no!”

Their son stood, alone and looking around.

“Dad,” he said.

Darlene moved behind Haskell with the cuffs. A TV camera lit the circle of cops and citizens pressing around Haskell. Tawny Jane Reese pushed a microphone in Haskell’s face as Catledge peeled Felicia away from him.

“Mr. Haskell,” Tawny Jane said. “How are you feeling?”

Darlene cuffed him. Harder than she needed to, I thought.

“You have the wrong man,” Haskell said. “He’s getting away.”

Dingus used his big body to ease Tawny Jane aside, and she angled the mike over the back of his shoulder.

“Anything you say,” he told Haskell, “can and will be used against you-”

“No, Sheriff, listen to me, you have the wrong man. My God, he was standing right there.” He tried to point with his shoulder. Darlene started to push him through the crowd.

I slipped down the side wall and around to the back as Darlene shoved Haskell through the door. I tried to catch her eye, to no avail. I squeezed out and trotted down the corridor to the main entrance. Across the street, the man with the cratered face was frantically circling the Suburban, illegally parked and blocked in by the Channel Eight van.

I ran back to the meeting room. The cops were bringing Haskell out. Darlene pushed him past me, trailed by Catledge and Dingus. I grabbed Dingus by the elbow. “Sheriff, look,” I said. He yanked himself away.

“What are you doing?”

“You want another Zamboni bomb?”

He stopped and followed me back into the room. I pointed at the briefcase still sitting on the floor against the wall.

“The guy who left that behind just bolted out of here in a big hurry.”

Dingus stared at the briefcase for a hard second. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. He yelled into the corridor, “Frank!” and D’Alessio hurried over. “Stay here,” Dingus told him. “I’ve got to call the damn bomb squad again.”

We had waited for almost an hour in the shift room at the Pine County Sheriff’s Department when Dingus swept in followed by Darlene, D’Alessio, and Skip Catledge. The deputies lined up in front of pop and candy vending machines on the back wall, their hands folded behind their backs. Dingus stepped to a lectern set up between two long white folding tables. A TV camera light shined on his face.

“We are on the record,” he said. “But, Ms. Reese?” He motioned to Tawny Jane, who stood with her cameraman behind the two rows of folding chairs where the rest of us sat. “No cameras, please.”

“But Sheriff, we need some live-”

“I’m sure you have plenty of pictures from your little episode on the street this afternoon. Be thankful we didn’t give you a ticket.”

The Channel Eight van had blocked in the illegally parked Suburban. License plates were checked. The briefcase was whisked away. Now Crater Face waited in a cell somewhere in the building where we sat.

The camera light went dark.

“Thank you,” Dingus said. He faced eight reporters, including Philo, Tawny Jane, me, the Associated Press guy from Grand Rapids, and others from as far away as Petoskey. Reporters from the Detroit papers were probably on their way. Maybe even Michele Higgins.

I sat at one end of the back row of chairs. In one jacket pocket I carried the Build it and they will die note; in another was Gracie’s blackmail note to “L.”

“First,” Dingus said, “a little housekeeping. We will try to be as helpful as we can with information about the pending case. But we will not try this case in the media. We understand that you all have your jobs to do. We hope you’ll understand that we have our jobs to do.”

“Sheriff Aho?”

It was Jim Kerasopoulos, sitting ten chairs away from me in the back row, near Tawny Jane. I’d ignored the dirty look he had given me when I came in with a notebook in hand.

“Sir, I will take questions when I’ve-”

“I apologize, Sheriff.” Kerasopoulos stood. “But there’s something you probably should know before you continue. One of the journalists here-I believe you know him, Mr. Carpenter-has been suspended by our publication, the Pine County Pilot. I don’t believe he legitimately belongs.”

The deputies and all the reporters turned their heads toward me, except Darlene, who stared straight ahead, and Dingus, who said to Kerasopoulos, “Excuse me, sir, but who are you?”

Kerasopoulos looked surprised. He cleared his throat. “Forgive me. I am James Kerasopoulos, president and chief executive officer of Media North Corporation, parent company of the Pilot.”

“What exactly is your interest in this matter?”

Keraspoulos clapped an earnest hand to his chest.“I believe we share an interest, Sheriff, in making sure we make a clear and factual record of what you’re doing while not in any way hindering you in your endeavors.”

“And what does Mr. Carpenter have to do with that?”

“Quite frankly, Sheriff, I think he should be removed.”

Everyone looked at me again. I shrugged. I was a lot more useful to the sheriff than fat ass. Dingus turned to Kerasopoulos. “I’ll take that under advisement,” he said. “Meanwhile, do you have anything identifying you as a journalist?”

“Identification? My driver’s-”

“A press pass perhaps?”

“No, sir, I do not have a press pass.”

Kerasopoulos was growing annoyed. I was enjoying it.

“Then I’ll have to ask you to leave, sir.”

“I beg your pardon? Sheriff, please. This is really not-”

“This briefing is for journalists, sir, not the general public. I believe your paper is adequately represented. Deputy?”

Darlene ushered Kerasopoulos out. Again I hoped she’d look my way. She did not.

“Let’s proceed then,” Dingus said. He put his right hand on the butt of his holstered gun, the other at the top of the lectern. “As some of you may know by now, we arrested Laird Kenneth Haskell and charged him with murder in the first degree related to the Monday, February eighth death of Grace Maureen McBride.”

Haskell was being held in the Pine County Jail. He would be arraigned the next morning in front of Judge Horace Gallagher.

Other “persons of interest,” Dingus said, were being held for questioning: Jason Thomas Esper, of Starvation Lake, and Kazmierz Lubomir Geremek of River Rouge. Police also were seeking for questioning a man identified as Jarogniew “Jarek” Vend, of Windsor, Ontario.

“That’s all I have for now,” Dingus said. “I will take a question or two.”

A few hands went up. Not mine. I figured Dingus would talk to me afterward.

“Yes?” Dingus pointed at Philo.

“Sheriff, can you give us an idea what evidence you have against Mr. Haskell?”

Dingus smoothed his mustache over with a hand. “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t normally discuss evidence until we’re in court.”

“But Sheriff,” Philo said, “Mr. Haskell, as you know, is a very well respected man in these parts and known well beyond Michigan, let alone Starvation Lake. His case is likely to get an enormous amount of attention.”

Nice, Philo, I thought. I watched him squint skeptically at Dingus through his horn-rims, tried to imagine him at a White House press conference. Not quite there, I thought.