Chris Jordan - Torn

Troy grins, which makes him look about fifteen. “You’re famous, dude. At least on the Internet. When Haley told me, first thing I did was run a Google search on you.”

“Don’t believe everything you read on the Net.”

“You saying you don’t actually walk on water?”

Shane smiles. “Ever seen Wile E. Coyote attempt to walk on water? That’s me.”

“Nah, nah,” says Troy with a dismissive wave. “Bet you can do it when you need to. I read all about that deal in the Everglades, where you found the girl in the swamp? Everybody else gave up, but not you.”

“Not her mother, either,” Shane says, with a glance to me. “She never gave up.”

“Anyhow, I’m real pleased you’re looking into Haley’s case. Fresh eyes.”

“Thanks. Please understand this is preliminary. I’m still looking into the possibility that Noah Corbin survived, and have reached no final conclusion. Not yet.”

“Yeah,” says Troy, shooting me a look. Wanting to know how I’ll react. Understandable. He’s seen me at my worst.

Both men seem concerned that I’ll freak out if they say the wrong thing. What they don’t seem to understand is that once you’ve been to the worst place, once you’ve confronted the unthinkable, talking about it doesn’t make it worse. If I freak out-and I might, you never know-it will be on my own time, for my own reasons, and not because someone mentions the possibility of Noah being dead. I live with that possibility every moment, awake or asleep.

“I’m hoping you’ll tell me everything you know about the perpetrator,” Shane is saying, leaning forward. “Past history, habits, rumors, whatever. Your personal impression.”

“That’s easy. He impressed me as a weasel.”

“Mrs. Corbin says he had a long history with your department.”

“Mostly with Leo, yeah,” Troy says. “I didn’t grow up around here, so I didn’t know Roland when he was a kid, or when he first got in trouble. But Leo always said he was a sad case. Mother a tweaker-excuse me-a methamphetamine addict, father in prison. To be truthful I never saw the sad part of Roland. What I saw was a mean-spirited, self-centered creep who for some reason thought he should be treated like a celebrity. Famous-in-his-own-mind kind of guy. For what reason I could never figure out.”

“He’d been picked up numerous times?”

“Yeah. Charged twice, convicted once for possession of less than a gram. Meth, just like Mom and Dad.”

“Incarcerated?”

“Naw. Slap on the wrist. Probation, I think.”

“He was a dealer?”

Troy makes a face. “In his dreams, maybe. Following in the footsteps of dear old Dad. But no, we never saw indicators of dealing. Leo used to stake out Roland’s trailer now and then, but there was never enough traffic to indicate dealing. Nobody trusted the guy enough to front him.”

“Was he cooking?”

“Roland? Cooking up meth? No way. He didn’t have the means or the skill.”

“But he had the means to obtain a significant quantity of C-4 and construct a bomb?” Shane points out.

Troy sighs, studies the ceiling. “I know, I know. It doesn’t fit. Roland going nuts with a gun, shooting Leo, I get that. Didn’t see it coming, but it fits. The bomb, the smoke machine, that’s what puzzles me, Mr. Shane. That’s why I thought it was a good idea, bringing a guy like you in to have a look around. Like I say, fresh eyes.”

“I assume the plainclothes have been thorough? In your estimation?”

“The state police detectives? Oh yeah. Real pros. Departments this small, we don’t have the facilities or the experience to investigate major crimes. The trooper investigators handle it, that’s in their charter. And I got no real complaints on that score. They were all over it. But once they got the DNA match it was case closed, on to the next. Who really cares what motivated Roland Penny? He did it and he acted alone, that was their conclusion.”

“But not yours?”

He glances at me before responding to Shane. “I haven’t come to a conclusion,” he says uneasily. “Maybe Noah was killed in the explosion, maybe he wasn’t. I’m keeping that possibility open in my mind. But for sure something is off about Roland Penny being the big bad master bomb maker.”

“You think he may have had an accomplice?”

“It’s a possibility. Yeah.”

“Any likely candidates?”

“No leads toward one. And I can’t think of one. And I’ve tried, believe me.”

Shane takes a break, goes back over his notes. To fill the void, Troy attempts to reassure me with a smile. He’s been so nice, so cooperative, I can’t hold it against him that he thinks my son is dead. He says otherwise, about keeping an open mind, but I can tell. A mother can always tell.

“Any thought on where Roland got three grand to put down on a new car?”

Troy sits up straighter, keenly interested in this particular subject. “It wasn’t dealing, I’d stake my life on that. Even if he was dealing, which I highly doubt, he’d have been small-time. A hundred bucks here or there, five at the most. This guy lived hand to mouth. No way he’d get his hands on three grand all at once, let alone the rest of the fifty or sixty grand.”

“So you checked it out?”

Troy shrugs. “I was curious. Figured no harm, no foul, follow the money like they say.”

“Even though the troopers were investigating. Had come to their own conclusions.”

“Yeah. Happened on my watch, right? Even with the Staties in charge, I still got an interest. So I drove over to the dealership, checked it out. Strange thing, the salesman who took the down payment couldn’t identify Roland.”

“A bad memory? Too many customers? I’m not really surprised.”

“Yeah, but he did remember the guy who put the money on that particular vehicle. Because the salesman has been trying to unload it for months, it gets about what, two miles a gallon? It’s just he doesn’t remember Roland, he remembers a guy with a dark mustache, had an accent.”

“Yeah?” says Shane, perking up. “He say what kind of accent?”

“That’s where he gets vague. Maybe Russian, maybe Greek. Could have been Polish. He really had no idea.”

“His impression was a mustache and a foreign accent. Maybe.”

“Yeah, which is why it’s not really helpful. All he really knows, he’s positive it wasn’t Roland. A dude that scruffy and slimy would have made an impression. He said the guy with the accent was handsome, like a movie star or something. And Roland was no movie star, believe me.”

Shane makes more notes, writing firmly in a legible hand.

“I assume the troopers searched his domicile?”

“That dump of a trailer?” Troy scoffs, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “Yeah, they tore it apart, looking for more explosives. It was clean. No trace of C-4 or detonators or any sort of bomb-making equipment. They went over the place with a chemical sniffer. All they got was the fumes off Roland’s dirty socks. The detectives told me wherever he put the bomb together, it wasn’t there.”

“Anything on his computer?”

“You mean, did he download an instructional manual, something to show him how to wire up the C-4? Maybe, but not on his home computer because he didn’t have a home computer. I dunno, he could have used a library computer, or gone to an Internet café in Penfield or Rochester or somewhere. Nobody knows, and at this point nobody really cares. Other than, you know, us,” he says, catching my eye again.

“So there was no computer in Roland’s trailer?”

“Nope. And no phone lines, either. He had a cell, not a landline. No cable hookup, no satellite. So no Internet connection, even if he did have a laptop stashed somewhere. Which I find highly doubtful.”