Nancy Warren - Aftershocks

She felt as though someone had kicked her. For a long time there was only silence punctuated by muted traffic sounds from the main road and the ticking of a clock.

“How can you remember it so clearly?” She was startled and it must have showed. “That was more than twenty years ago. You must have performed hundreds, thousands of arrests in your time. How can you be so certain you remember this one?”

“Because Cecil Thomson was a prominent man, even then. He wasn’t president of the bank back in those days, but he was already a councilman.”

“Right.” Her stomach was starting to feel funny, as though she might be coming down with something. “What happened?”

“What’s your interest in this?”

How much to tell? How much to withhold? “Some damaging information about Councilman Thomson was leaked to the press during the mayoralty race. There’s been some suggestion…” She looked over at the older man whose eyes had seen so much and decided to trust him. “I’d like to keep this visit, and this conversation, confidential for the moment. There’s been a…suggestion made that the arrest and the photograph were false. That they were planted to ruin Councilman Thomson’s bid to become Courage Bay ’s mayor.”

Joe chuckled, then he laughed out loud. But it wasn’t the kind of laugh that made you want to join in. It had a bitter sound. The feeling in her stomach grew worse.

“Oh, it was real all right. The photo. The arrest. The whole ball of wax.”

“But-but I don’t understand. Why was he never charged? And why did it take twenty years to come to light?”

“You look like a nice young woman, but if you’re involved in any kind of politics, even as the mayor’s secretary, you must know there’s dirty tricks even at the lowest level.”

“I hate to think that’s true, but I suppose you’re right,” she said.

The old man nodded, then settled back to tell his story. “I was out on the beat one summer evening in eighty-four. It was a quiet night. A couple of kids had a few open beers on the beach. I could smell marijuana, but they’d got rid of that before I caught them, so all I could do was give them the usual talking to about drinking underage and then I drove them home to their parents.”

He stopped to sip his tea. Briana was amazed at how clear his recall was of an incident two decades old.

“On my way back to the precinct, I cruised The Lair, which was and still is the meanest part of Victory Park.”

Briana nodded.

“Prostitutes hung out there. Some drug deals went down. There were bar brawls and plenty of petty theft. I was doing a routine drive through and I saw a couple in a car. I might not have noticed them, but the car didn’t belong in the area. It was a new model Cadillac.”

Her heart sank still further. Her uncle had always driven Cadillacs. Always. He got a new model every four years without fail, and Aunt Irene got the four-year-old one.

Joe cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. “Well, I could see inside the car that there was a couple going at it, so I got out the camera and turned on the flash. There was a lewd act happening in a public place, and the woman was a prostitute I knew well enough. I’d arrested her before.”

“And the man?” Her throat felt so dry and scratchy she could barely get the words out. She knew, of course. Realized that on some level she’d suspected this for a while but had refused to believe it.

“It was Cecil Thomson. I knew him pretty well, too. So I snapped their photo, and Cecil, well, he got himself pretty riled up. When I look back on it now, I think I probably would have let him off with a warning-it was a first offense and I’d never seen him down in that part of town before-but he got belligerent on me. I remember I smelled booze, so I guess he’d had a few drinks and wasn’t acting too smart. Anyhow, I arrested the pair of them and took them down to the station, filled out the paperwork and attached the photograph to the file. Cecil Thomson must have sobered up some by then, because he demanded the phone, and guess who he called?”

“His lawyer?”

Joe shook his head and his mouth twisted in a cynical grimace. “No, he did not call his lawyer. He called the police chief. They were great buddies in those days. Old Chief Conway’s gone now. Died of lung cancer. Let me just say, I don’t mourn his passing.”

“So, Un-So, Cecil Thomson called Chief Conway. What did the police chief do?”

Joe gave another humorless laugh. “He let Cecil Thomson go. Told me I’d been too quick to judge, that there was insufficient evidence and we wouldn’t be taking this one to trial. He even let the hooker go free.”

“But…” Briana’s head was reeling. “He was the police chief. Surely it was his duty to support his officers.”

“That’s not the way he saw it.”

“But how could he stop you going above his head, or even to the newspapers if you’d wanted to?”

“I guess he knew I wouldn’t do either of those things.”

“You mean you’ve kept this secret all these years?”

Joe Carlton stared down at his hands, and suddenly she wished she didn’t have to press him for answers. He obviously didn’t want to talk about this, something which he confirmed when he said, “Here’s the part of the story I wish I didn’t have to tell you, but it wouldn’t be right not to. I got a promotion the next week. Now, I was in line for one and sure as hell deserved it, but I always thought the timing was too much of a coincidence. Yeah. I kept my mouth shut, and I probably would have anyway. But I also took the promotion.” He shook his head. “Never felt right about it. But I had a wife and kids to support. And that’s the story.”

Her head was whirling. But one huge piece of the puzzle was still missing. “It’s not quite the end of the story, though. Why did you leak it to the papers twenty years later? Was it for revenge?”

He chortled. “That’s a good one. If I’d ever thought of it, I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to leak information the way they love to do these days. No. The photo from the arrest disappeared very conveniently that same night. I guess the chief figured that if I did try anything, it would be my word against his and the good councilman. But I’d taken a couple of pictures, see? I always did. In case one didn’t turn out.”

He sat back and sipped more tea. “I clipped the clearest one to the file and I kept the backup.”

“Why?”

“I suppose that photograph was a reminder to myself that I wasn’t any better than the next man.”

“So you kept that photo all these years?”

“Sure did. I probably should have tossed it when I retired, but I’d mostly forgotten about it by then. My daughter was up here a few months back. She’s married to a fellow that works for the Sentinel. She was going through some old boxes in the storage locker, looking for I don’t know what, and she found that picture. Like I said, I’d almost forgotten about it. Well, after she got through wondering what I was doing with a picture of two people going at it, I told her the story. I guess maybe it eased my conscience a little.

“I never expected she’d take that picture with her and run straight to her husband.” Joe stopped to rub his jaw and a sly twinkle flickered in his eyes. “At least, I don’t think I did.” He chuckled a little. “Maybe I wasn’t sorry, though, that the truth finally came out.”

Oh, and was the truth ever coming out. She felt ill. Faint and nauseous. Her uncle had always been someone she admired and looked up to. He loved his wife, and he loved her. How could he go to a prostitute in the first place? Then use political influence to get the charge dropped, and then lie to his own wife and niece about the incident? The only truthful thing he’d told them was that he believed Patrick had planted the story.