Pieces of a Whole

by: Betsy J. Bennett

CHAPTER 15

Kimble left Fairgreen and drove to the Stafford police station. He’d been here several times, the first, the night of the murder, wondering how he was going to live without his wife, when he was trying to process grief and he wasn’t thinking. An innocent time when he had no idea that he was the suspect. He had arrived in the back of a police car. He had been questioned here, and two days later, he was charged with murder, photographed and fingerprinted. And every time he’d been back here, he had worn handcuffs.

As he shut the car door, Kimble tried his mantra, “I’m free. I’m free,” wished he found it more comforting. He wished too for a cigarette as he entered the building. He took time to look around the lobby, seeing the past and he prayed, the future where he’d never have an excuse to visit here again. Not much had changed, and he supposed, everything had changed.

He pulled a chewable antacid from his pocket and ate it, hoping it would do something for the churning stomach acid eating a hole in his gut. He wondered what Olivia would say if she took his blood pressure now. He had promised her he would try to control it.

“Dr. Kimble, what can I do for you?” The desk sergeant recognized him. Of course. This was Stafford. How could he not? Could he have been on the desk that night years ago? He supposed that was certainly possible.

“I’d like to speak with Lieutenant Gerard, if he’s available. I know it’s late, and I know it’s a weekend…”

“I’ll have an officer escort you back.”

Why did that sound like a death knell? Maybe he should run, find some dark hole to hide in until his equilibrium returned. Or it didn’t have to be that drastic. He could drive north to Michigan, go back to the medical recertification program. Maybe he was destroying his life on this one foolish fear. Olivetti had said there was no getting back in if he dropped out. Was knowing the truth of what happened to his wife worth his future, especially now that he had been exonerated? He had nothing to gain and everything to lose if he followed this path. He needed his career for his self-respect, to hold his head up and help the patients who came to Olivia’s clinic. He didn’t need answers.

Except he did. He would never be whole until he understood why she had been killed.

Trying to hide his panic, he followed the officer, remembered the turns, the smells, the fears that rose slowly, because the first time he was brought here, he had been grieving, had no thought of his own vulnerability. Innocent men weren’t arrested, weren’t given the death penalty. Innocent men didn’t lose their wives to senseless murder.

Gerard sat at his desk, typing a form that looked to be in triplicate. Physicians were not the only profession drowning in paperwork. He seemed a competent typist, but then he was a competent policeman so it should come as no surprise.

Gerard looked up, noticed his former prisoner and the armed uniformed officer beside him, did a double-take. “Dr. Kimble, what can I do for you?”

“I can see you’re busy, but if I can have a few minutes of your time?” It didn’t surprise him that this was a Saturday, and that Gerard likely was not scheduled to work, but he had no doubt that he would be here.

“Of course. There’s a conference room right here. We can speak there.”

Richard smiled, tried to keep his racing pulse under control. “Good, because if you’d suggested the interrogation room, I’m not sure how I would have reacted.”

“Memories there would hardly be pleasant.” He sat in a chair, indicated with a negligent flip of his wrist that Kimble was to sit opposite him. “How can I help you?”

“I’m trying to put together the things you’ve told me, about Johnson, and well, I have some questions, if you don’t mind.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t have questions. I have them myself.”

“You’ve got me thinking, and I’ve done some research. I’ve got a name, someone I think might have hired Johnson. It’s not logical, and it certainly isn’t an obvious choice, but all the pieces fit. But I’m not in law enforcement and I don’t have a real grasp on evidence, so I don’t want to give you the name because it might make me look insane.”

Gerard pulled a small notebook from his jacket pocket, held a pen. “How did you come upon this name?”

“I remembered something Helen was trying to say, the night before she was murdered. I wasn’t really listening. I had children who were sick, and I only wanted to change clothes, maybe eat something and get back to the hospital. There was influenza and a lot of my patients needed to be watched and the one girl with leukemia.”

“Yes, of course I remember.”

“I’m not playing games. I want you to know that.”

“Dr. Kimble, I never suspected you would.”

He shifted in the seat. He had been far more comfortable in his first interrogation even when his wife was newly murdered. “I don’t want to give you the name. If you come up with it on your own, I’ll show you my evidence, and maybe we can finally end this thing.”

“If you won’t give me the name, how can I help you?”

“I’m excited about this, and I don’t want to make a mistake, because I’d really like closure. And if I’m right, there’s a time limit. We’ve got to get our evidence soon.”

“A time limit? After all this time?”

“Yes. I’ll explain later. I would look like an idiot if I said anything. As I said, I’m willing to hope I’m wrong. I need you, someone who can follow evidence, someone who understands police work and has been researching this, to let me know if I’m on the right track.”

“I told you I would help and I will. I may have almost the same vested interest in this as you do.”

Kimble pulled a sealed business sized envelope from his pocket, set it on the conference room table, kept his hands on it, as if it would jump up, try to escape. “I am willing to believe that Fred Johnson was hired to hurt or kill Helen, either /or, at this point it doesn’t make much difference.”

Gerard nodded encouragement. “I’ve almost got enough information that I can prove that.”

“Ok, here comes the first question. Why was Helen’s murder and my arrest such national news? Stafford has had a murder before, and yes, I know it’s a friendly little town, but the other murderers get their time in court, and the stories dry up. Mine just kept getting bigger and bigger.”

“You ran. People were interested.”

“Yes, I accepted that for a couple of years, but not now. I’ve gone through the archives. No other murder trial has a fraction of the coverage mine got. The trial went national, picked up by all the wire services. Even before the train wreck, the publicity was out of line with the crime. Even if I had been guilty, there was nothing more to it than a husband killing his wife. That happens so frequently it’s become cliché.”

Gerard looked intrigued. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I suppose you’re right.”

“Coverage would die down, especially while I spent almost two years in prison, then every few months my case would go national and everyone had my name on their lips.”

“You were sighted.”

“Even before I was sighted. It wasn’t a local story. Papers as far away as Los Angeles were picking up the feed.”

“You have a theory.”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Let me ask another question. Who put up the $10,000 for my reward?”

“I’m sure you could find that out in your archives. Colin Pierce, editor at the Stafford Chronicle.”

“Yes, but who put him up to it?”

“No one. I think he was trying to make a fool out of me. He wrote a front page editorial, How to Murder Your Wife and get Away With it.”

“I read it, a few weeks ago. I wasn’t always able to get my hands on a Stafford paper, and Donna, who had—occasionally—sent  me updates, never bothered to send me that one.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Olivia found it, and made a copy for me. I have to say I found it inventive. And you’re right, it was written more to make a fool of you than to cast blame at me, although there was certainly enough of that.”

“His son had been arrested for stealing a car.”

“I didn’t realize that. Ok, let’s go off on a tangent here. What happened to that charge?”

“It was eventually dismissed by the judge, something about police overlooking something, that I swear was a false accusation. My men don’t make mistakes like that. It was a clean arrest.”

“I’m willing to accept that, that it was false,” Kimble clarified, not that Gerard’s men were sloppy or in any way negligent. “And somebody made it go away.”

Gerard said nothing, but Kimble could see that his interest was piqued.

“Ok, let’s go back to the editor. He gave the reason for the reward money to show the police incompetent.”

“Yes.”

“But think, Gerard, let’s suppose that editorial was a cover. The editor was vulnerable. His kid was facing jail time, or if not that, maybe a nice big black mark on his record that a university admissions office would pick up on, or someone doing a background check for a job.”

“All right.”

“I don’t have any proof.”

“I get that. I’m following you. We’re in supposition mode.”

“I think maybe there was a possibility someone went to him, said, I can make this go away. All you have to do is something for me, something that isn’t illegal, and will make you look like a hero. All you have to do is have your paper put a nice fat reward out on the capture of Richard Kimble. It didn’t even say “Dead or Alive.” It didn’t have to. It was the reward that brought my name back into the news. Think back. My name hadn’t been in the papers in a while. I’d been sighted here and there, and chased by local law enforcement, and even you came out after me a couple times, but none of that was making the big times.”

“Who do you think this backer is?”

“Do me a favor. Call the Stafford Chronicle and ask him.”

“Ordinarily I wouldn’t, but you’ve got me intrigued, and like you, I’d like to find the end here.”

Gerard picked up the phone, dialed the newspaper office, asked to speak with Colin Pierce, the editor.

“Mr. Pierce, hello, Lieutenant Gerard. Good, good, and you?”

“Good to hear. How’s your boy?”

“He got accepted to State? That’s great. I’m sorry to take your time but I’ve got some residual questions about the Kimble case. Just tying up some loose ends, then I hope to never hear the name Richard Kimble again. Yeah, me too. Mr. Pierce, where did you get the idea for the reward on Kimble?”

Gerard listened for a few seconds, then spoke again. “Yeah, I know, but someone must have put a bug in your ear. I know the paper put the money up, but while I suspect you had the idea all along, something made it urgent that you put it on the front cover when you did.”

He tapped his pen against the notebook, did not make any notations. “Oh? Really? Over cards? No, thanks, that’s all I needed.”

“You’ve got a name?” Richard asked.

“Yes, but I can’t believe—“

“No, don’t tell me. I really don’t want to jump to any conclusions.”

“What now? There must be something else, or you’d be at my throat for the name.”

“Yeah. Stafford is a small town, and I’m sure the budget for the police department reflects that.”

“We have our share of belt-tightening around here.”

“Yet every time I was sighted and you got word, sometimes when it was only a rumor, or it wasn’t me, you went.”

“I was…interested.” He would not use the word obsessed, although the paper did, and both Kimble and Gerard accepted that definition.

“Where did the money come from to allow you travel? Did your Captain give you a hard time about going?”

“No. For the most part I wouldn’t say he encouraged me, I think rather he was resigned to me closing the case. You were after all, Stafford’s only Capital case, since the city was incorporated. It was a blot on our record that you were a fugitive.”

“He didn’t argue something along the lines of let the local sheriff handle it, or maybe we’ll send in the FBI fugitive retrieval or the US Marshals? Any of those would have been more logical. And every time you went, it made the national papers. Think too, if you had stayed here, attended to your other cases. I want you to think clearly about what you might have been keeping on the back burner.”

“Ok.”

“You got a case?”

“Yes. I haven’t looked at it in a few years. It’s been set aside.”

“Were there suspicious deaths involved?”

“Yes. But I doubt Johnson had anything to do with them.”

“I’m sure he didn’t. Johnson was called to clean up the mess, and remember, before me, he’d never, or rarely been seen. A man that easily identifiable, going about assaulting or killing people, and no one before me says anything. That’s neither here nor there, right now. I need you to ask your Captain if anyone told him to allow you to have free rein in hunting me down.”

“Hunt you down, why? You were innocent. This person, this name you think you have, should have been happy letting you go.”

“You’d think so, but it’s my belief, and I’ve not got enough evidence to take to a grand jury or even admit to you, that every time something suspicious happened in Stafford, to keep you occupied, there would be Richard Kimble sightings, even if I was nowhere near. More than once I’d pick up the paper in one state saying you were hot on my trail one or two time zones away. I don’t know anything about the police force here, other than you, but I’m willing to make a hypothesis, that you are their best investigator, the one who would hunt down every last clue, and here’s the important part: unless you were preoccupied doing something else, hunting me for example.”

“You think my Captain is behind this?”

“No. Actually no. I don’t have any clue if he’s an honest man or not, but I think someone more powerful than he would whisper in his ear to let you have your head on this Kimble thing. If Gerard wanted to hunt, Stafford police department would let you go, regardless of what it cost.”

“Give me a minute.”

“Sure. It’s a lot to take in.”

“Stay here. I’ll be back.”

“With the understanding that I thought I’d never say this to you, I’ll be here when you get back.”

Gerard laughed as he disappeared.

“Captain,” Gerard said, knocking at Carpenter’s open door.

“Yes, I hear Richard Kimble is in the building.”

“He is. He’s come to me with a question. I feel I owe it to him to look into it.”

“Contrition?”

“No, not necessarily. But I owe him something, I’m not sure what, so I’d like to help him.”

“Good plan, Phil. So, what can I do for you?”

“I’ve got a short question.”

“Shoot.”

“I know our budget is tight, hell, we have to bring in our own copy paper, but you never once denied me a trip after Kimble.”

“Yeah, we spent serious money on him. I’m glad we finally closed that.”

“Me too, and I have to say Marie says so every single night. So why weren’t there budget hearings over my travel? Why were they always approved?”

Carpenter saw nothing unusual in the question. “We needed to get Kimble. We thought him a killer.”

Gerard was willing to accept that, to go back to Kimble and tell him there was nothing to his supposition, but he turned back and faced his captain. “Was that all?”

“Well, Judge Reistling always said I could have whatever money I needed. He’s not in charge of our budget, nothing like that, but every couple of months he’d invite me over to play poker with a few of his buddies, and he’d ask about Kimble, and tell me to take all the money I needed.”

“Reistling was the judge over the Kimble murder trial.”

“Yes. I think it reflected badly on him that Kimble got away. Sometimes I think he felt personally responsible for the train wreck.”

“I know that feeling myself.”

“And the Kimble trial didn’t hurt him. Reistling is up for confirmation hearings this coming week for the Supreme Court.”

“Is that so?” Gerard asked.

“Yup. Seems he’s a shoe-in for the highest court in the land. Imagine, someone from Stafford on the Supreme Court. Kimble made his career. Anything else?”

“No, that about covers it. I’ll have that report on your desk before close of shift today.”

Chewing over the information, Gerard returned to Kimble. He sat behind his desk before he spoke. “Ok, I’ve got a name.”

“The same name?”

“The same name. But that doesn’t prove anything.”

“I know. I told you that up front.” Kimble handed him a sealed envelope. “Open it.” Gerard did, and there was a Xeroxed sheet from a book.

It was a woman’s handwriting, Gerard guessed, from the stroke of the capital ‘J’ to the slant of the letters. “So this creep in this expensive suit comes in bothering my patient, says he’s some kind of bigshot. I tried to get him out, but he wouldn’t budge. There was yelling, and I told him this was a hospital, and he told me he was Judge Dwane Reistling, and to remember that name. He was going places, important places, and he would walk all over me.”

“Helen wrote that. She was always writing down bits and pieces of her day, especially when something annoyed her and she knew she couldn’t chart it. It’s almost as if she wanted to keep track anyway. I don’t know who the patient was. No idea. Our professional careers never crossed. And I can’t prove she wrote it, except if you can get a handwriting analyst to say it’s her. As you can see, she didn’t sign it.”

“You know what this means?”

“Yes. I have no proof.” He offered his fleeting smile and wished for a cigarette, in Olivia’s clinic. “Everything I have is circumstantial. But then I suppose criminal cases have been tried on less.”

“Agreed. If he is confirmed, we can’t touch him. It’s always hands off Supreme Court justices.”

“I know. And the Senate background checks aren’t likely to find anything, if you can’t.”

“What next?”

Kimble knew Gerard, knew he had him intrigued. “If I’m remembering correctly, Helen’s patient died, and she wasn’t happy about it. We won’t be able to tie Reistling to that death, whether it was murder or not. Never. Hospitals don’t keep track of visitors, and whoever the patient was, I am assuming there was no autopsy.”

“Ok. So, the fact that Reistling was there proves nothing.”

“I know. The death could have happened anyway. As I mentioned, I am assuming there was no autopsy on record, which is a rather moot statement, since I don’t know the patient’s name. I would have loved to know if his hyoid had been broken, if there was petechial hemorrhaging in his eyes. Even if we found his name, and got an order of exhumation, and the hyoid was broken, it wouldn’t do us any good.”

“Broken hyoid?” Gerard asked.

“Strangled,” Kimble explained. “It’s a thread, isn’t it? Another piece of circumstantial evidence which might lead to something bigger. Do you think this is enough to start an investigation?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know where it will lead. This might be nothing. Doctor, this probably is nothing, or at least nothing we’ll be able to prove. So what do you think he’s guilty of?”

“I only have supposition, and I’m no cop, so I might be off base. That’s why I wanted, need,” he corrected, “your opinion. I think Reistling’s the man who hired Johnson. I think he was ambitious, criminally ambitious, and was using his time on the bench to make himself more attractive to whoever makes the decisions for filling federal judgeships.”

“So, first degree murder?”

“I’m not lawyer, and heaven knows I can’t stand them, but I don’t know if first degree would stick. Even if we could prove he hired Johnson, he could argue he only wanted her frightened. But there might be other things, cases in your files that you haven’t solved yet, or that have been giving you a bad feeling that there might be more to them if you had a thread to pull.”

“I do.”

“I’d like you to see what you can pull together. I won’t tell you where to look, because frankly I have no idea. This is your area of expertise. There might be nothing. I hope I’m willing to accept that, first that he’s guilty and we’re never going to be able to prove it, or conversely that he’s innocent of anything I’m thinking, and I’m the one drawing the wrong conclusion. But Lieutenant, if he is complicit in Helen’s murder, I’d like to know. I’d like that much closure, especially if there is a Supreme Court opening in his future. I don’t want that animal making decisions for the entire country.”

“If Reistling is involved, he’s had years to cover his tracks. He probably wasn’t leaving a lot of clues anyway. But he was an ambitious man, a judge who was used to getting his own way in a small town who wanted to start swimming with the bigger fish. This is a powder keg. This thing could destroy us, if we’re wrong.”

“I’ve been destroyed before. You’ve got a wife, a family, if you want out of this, I’ll understand.”

“No, I’m intrigued enough that I’d like to see if I can tie this name to any of the other cases that have bothered me over the years.”

“One other thing. Three of my jurors held out for six days, then all at once, all three flip to guilty.”

“He was the trial judge.”

“He could have said something, put a bug in someone’s ear. Again, I don’t have proof, and I am looking for some vindication, so obviously that angle is personal. Is it possible that I could speak to one?”

“What do you mean, possible?”

“Is it illegal?”

“No, certainly not after your exoneration. But while I can dig up the names of the jurors, I will have no way of knowing who the three holdouts were. And again, I have to say it’s a long shot.”

“Good. I’m not ready for that. I will, and if he is guilty, just jury tampering might be enough to keep him off the High Court and perhaps ruin his career. There’s something I need to do first.”

“What?”

“Speak to Lloyd Chandler.”

“He testified at the exoneration.”

“Yes. I still haven’t forgiven him. I don’t know if I ever will. But think, he put up money, big money he didn’t have to pay Johnson’s bail.”

“Yes.”

“Why? He, Chandler wasn’t guilty of anything. Cruelty on an unprecedented scale, but that isn’t a crime. Johnson was arrested. Whether or not Johnson was charged with Helen’s murder shouldn’t have affected him. He was safe with his filthy little secret. Why would he pay the bail?”

“Maybe he thought Johnson would mention him?”

“That doesn’t make sense for a lot of reasons. First, before Chandler paid the bail, Fred Johnson had no idea who he was. For all he knew, Helen could have been having an affair with the milkman. Then, after the bail was paid, Johnson only had the name Leonard Taft, and Len could prove he wasn’t at my house that night. He had an alibi. There was no way to tie Lloyd Chandler to Johnson or to Helen’s murder. Next, if Johnson started spilling his guts to you, or any other policeman, and brought up the fact that there was a witness to Helen’s murder, he’d be condemning himself. He knew enough to keep his mouth shut. As far as Chandler was concerned, Johnson in jail was a lot safer for him than Johnson on the way to Stafford to take him out. So why did he pay the bail?”

“It couldn’t be guilt. If he was feeling guilty, he could have come to me.”

“Exactly. Or he could have gone to Donna. She didn’t always know where I was, but I checked in often enough.”

“What are you thinking?”

“It might be nothing. It’s probably nothing. I’d just like to know why. He almost cost me my life. If people are blaming you for hunting me, the real blame should have been on Chandler. I never should have been a suspect. I’m going to see if anyone asked him to pay the bail.”

“Ok, so what do you want from me?”

“This is the hard part. I need you to go back through police records, not necessarily arrest records, but reports of things that didn’t quite add up. Something that might have given you a bad feeling at the time. Nothing so overt as dead bodies found in a ditch, but maybe a death here and there that you might have thought suspicious if you’d had time to analyze it.”

“Anything else?”

“There might be other things not quite right, business deals that were a bit shady, or a highway project that went to someone people complained was not the lowest bidder, or a building half started that never got finished, or that fell down when it shouldn’t have. Someone maybe you trusted who all of a sudden was looking at an embezzlement charge, even if that never stuck. Anything you personally would have looked into, had you not been chasing around the country after me.”

“And you think I’ll find something.”

“I know you will.”

“And Judge Reisling is behind it?”

“I only have suspicions and a hell of a lot of coincidences. While that might be enough to convict me, I want you to be sure about this.”

“You’ve got my interest.”

“Think too, he would have the power to get the highway patrol to run me out of town.”

“I hadn’t forgotten that. That’s another string I could pull.”

“And he’s moved up to a federal court. He’s made friends with some very influential people. I know judges are supposed to be impartial, but think how nice it would be if you thought you could have a Supreme Court judge in your pocket, for life.”

“He is making friends with people who count.”

“And remember, if Reistling is behind this, I think Johnson could have identified him. With Johnson dead, that cleared up a painful loose end so he might not be suspicious. I’m going to wish you luck. I don’t suspect you’ll find something right away. I can’t see how you will, but I’d like to have something. I think the evidence is there, but it’s buried. I don’t know anyone better to find it.

“Now I’m going to get out of here. I’ve taken enough of your time, and I don’t want it to look like I’ve got something, when I don’t.”

“Going back to Michigan?”

“No. Not for a while. I’m not sure I have anything to go back there for.”

“Have a fight with the doctor?”

“No, exactly the opposite, but in coming to you, in chasing this, I might have lost a piece of my soul.”

“And you’re not going to explain that.”

“No. No, not now.”

“If we can put an end to this, that should be a big step in getting your soul back.”

“I can only hope.”

“Shall we meet tomorrow, say noon, that little diner off Main Street? We can compare notes. Richard Kimble might come to me one time, but I think it might raise too many flags if you showed up here twice in one weekend.”

“Whatever you think is best.”

“Until then, Doctor,” Gerard said, and Kimble didn’t have the heart to tell him that because he was here, he’d never be a doctor again.

Link to Chapter 16