JAKE CHANGED into khaki shorts and a dark green polo shirt. It was, after all, a backyard barbeque. He swallowed two more codeine pills, then followed the directions Marty had given him, turning off Route 20 and heading south toward Owasco Lake. A mile before it, he turned off and wound his way through a few backstreets before finding a rugged drive that dipped down into some trees. Late model cars and trucks lined the shoulder, half in the ditch. Jake had to back into a driveway and swing around, going almost all the way back to the paved street before he pulled the Cadillac over to the side and got out. He followed a young couple where the wife wore a pale yellow sundress and carried some kind of casserole wrapped in aluminum foil. Her boyfriend or husband groped her rump through the dress until he realized Jake was following.
The couple turned down a dirt drive marked by a wooden sign, hand-painted with the name Zarnazzi. Jake followed, his shoes clapping the hard-packed mud in one of the tire tracks and leading him toward the twang of a live bluegrass band. The single story red summer cottage lay in the midst of dozens of picnic tables filled with revelers that stretched to the grassy bank of the lake inlet. Two Jet Skis buzzed by on their way to the lake, their drivers hooting and waving to friends in the crowd. A giant, half-round black grill hitched to the back of a heavy-duty pickup truck had been pulled onto the back lawn and poured smoke into the treetops from a stovepipe smokestack. Whole chickens in blackened suits disrupted the snarling flames while a fat man in a white chef’s hat basted them with a four-inch paintbrush.
The couple in front of Jake deposited their offering among the others on a checkered cloth that stretched across three picnic tables. Diners with paper plates worked the other side of the table, picking through the dishes before receiving their own char-grilled chicken from the fat man. Men crowded the beer keg’s icy tub while kids ran through the hubbub trailing balloons. Jake breathed deep the smell of food and cold beer and his mouth watered.
“Jake!”
Jake turned and shook Marty’s hand. The young lawyer was wearing pleated golf shorts and a Greg Norman straw hat. His collared shirt sported a litany of ketchup stains. He didn’t appear to notice, though, as he introduced Jake to a bucktoothed girl with dark hair and a deep tan. Jake thought she had the judge’s eyes and he couldn’t help but notice the ample curve of her breasts in the tight lime green tank top whose color matched her hair band.
“Let’s get something to eat,” Marty said, raising his voice above the band. “We’ll sit with you.”
Jake followed them through the line, loading his plate and sitting across from Marty and his fiancée before accepting a cup of beer Marty poured from a half-empty pitcher. The beer would go good with the codeine, make it a real party. They raised their plastic cups.
“Here’s to a victory for the Freedom Project,” Marty said.
His fiancée batted her eyelids at Jake, offering him a sly smile that let him know she was drunk.
“Is your dad here?” Jake asked her.
She shook her head.
“Had a conference in Houston,” Marty explained. “About everyone else is, though.”
“This the chief’s place?” Jake asked. “I saw the sign.”
Marty shook his head. “No, the chief’s here, but this place is his brother’s. He’s a fireman. Most of the cops are here, too. Those guys stick together.”
“And you think the chief might talk to me?” Jake asked, tearing into a chicken leg, hungry now from the drugs and the beer.
Marty shrugged. “I don’t know, Jake. My uncle says people are going to choose sides on this.”
“And you and your uncle are on my side?”
“It’s the right side, right?” Marty said, hugging his fiancée to him as he took a swig of beer from his plastic cup. “We’re fixing a twenty-year wrong and you’re-well, the Project-is our client. Spreading the message is only good for them.”
“Patricia Rivers still has friends, I assume?” Jake said, loading a forkful of beans.
“Sure,” Marty said, the blotches on his face reddening. “She still owns the big place on the lake. Lives in Pittsford, though, really.”
“Because it’s going to get ugly,” Jake said, lowering his voice. “You know that, right?”
Marty shrugged and stuck a pinkie finger in his ear, working it. “It’s TV. If you’re in public service, you got to expect it.”
Marty turned to his fiancée. “Your dad says that, right?”
“Your uncle know I’m here?” Jake asked, looking around.
“I was wondering, Jake,” Marty said. “You know, CNN and those morning shows, how they always have these lawyers on? You know, expert opinions on things? I could really see myself doing some of that.”
Jake studied him. Marty’s eyes were on his plate as he traded his ear for a fork and pushed a lump of potato salad into a pile of Jell-O. It looked like he’d clasped his fiancée’s hand under the picnic table.
“Don’t see why not,” Jake said, clearing his throat and enjoying the feel of the sunshine filtering down through the trees onto his face. “Send me your tape and I can pass it on to some people if you like.”
“Tape?”
“You know, work you’ve done on TV,” Jake said. “Doesn’t have to be anything fancy, local news, cable shows, anything. Just so they can see you.”
“But if you don’t have that?” Marty asked, looking up.
“Well, just go out and make one,” Jake said. “You can do it. Maybe take a class up at SU, or a community college or something, but you gotta get on tape.”
“Then you can plug me in?” Marty asked.
“Happy to help.”
While they ate, Marty pointed out various Auburn dignitaries and VIPs, the Bombardier plant manager, the fire chief, a restaurant owner, the cop who also played on the national paintball championship team.
Finally, Jake asked if Marty could direct him to the chief. Marty nodded and stood up, signaling for his fiancée to wait for them. Jake followed Marty into the cottage itself, where the furniture of the front room had been pushed to the walls to accommodate a green felt card table where eight old men sat smoking cigars and playing cards under the breeze of a box fan propped up on an armchair. The room was a sanctuary amid the din. The band, screaming kids, and laughter of drunken adults became a muffled backdrop to the box fan and the rattle of chips and the snap of cards.
“Hey, chief,” Marty said with a wave, walking right over to the balding, rigid-backed chief. “Look who’s here, Jake Carlson from American Sunday. You’ve seen his show, right? Jake, Chief Zarnazzi.”
“Marty, refill these pitchers for us, will you, kid?” the chief said, offering Jake a nod before he turned his attention back to the cards.
Marty hustled out with three empty plastic pitchers as Jake searched for a sign of the current that celebrity could create in certain intimate groups, especially in a small town. People loved a face from TV, whether they’d seen it themselves or not. But the other cardplayers kept whatever interest or excitement they had contained, glancing at the chief’s face just as often as they examined their own cards. The chief clicked two blue chips down on the table, raising the stakes. After a call around the table, the chief laid down three aces and everyone else groaned.
Jake waited for the chief to rake in the pot and when he still didn’t look up, Jake said, “Chief, I wanted to talk to you about this Rivers situation.”
The chief narrowed his eyes behind the wire-rim glasses, peering through the screen door and out at the water. “River looks a little high for this time of year, I guess. Other than that, we’re all good.”
“Patricia Rivers,” Jake said patiently, the codeine putting just the right emotional distance between him and the chief, “and her son, Nelson. The one with the white BMW no one bothered looking into twenty years ago. Cassandra Thornton’s boyfriend. I’m chasing that story and I’d love to find someone who worked the case, maybe someone who knows why so many questions got left unanswered.”
“Can’t recall who worked that one,” said the chief, lifting the corner of his first card off the table just enough to identify it.
“Martin Yancy,” Jake said.
“What?” the chief asked, looking up with cold blue eyes.
“The police report said Detective Martin Yancy,” Jake said. “I read it.”
The chief smiled. “Yancy left the force so long ago I can’t recall his face, so you’re out of luck, bub.”
“I’m sure there must be others who worked it,” Jake said, keeping his spirits up despite the chief’s obvious lack of interest.
The chief shrugged, called the first round of bets, and peeked at his second card when it came around as though Jake were a puff of smoke.
“Marty told me his uncle said people are going to have to take sides on this one,” Jake said, standing firm, oblivious to the tension that was quickly taking hold. “He’s right, and I don’t think you’re going to want to be on the losing side of this, chief. It would look well for the department if it helped out on the back end because the way it’s looking, you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do about the front end of this little story.”
The chief picked his smoldering cigar out of a glass ashtray, drew on it until the ember perked up, exhaled, then raised his leg and passed gas. The table of old-timers erupted with adolescent chuckles.
Jake twisted his lips and said, “I hope you don’t make a habit of writing notes on your hand.”
The chief wore a puzzled look. “Why’s that?”
“The network has this lawyer down in the city who specializes in Freedom of Information requests,” Jake said. “When he gets done with this backwoods outfit, you’ll be handing over every Post-it and paper napkin you ever wrote on and if you scribbled on your palm, I wouldn’t put it past him to have that flayed off your greasy mitt and delivered to my office in a manila envelope along with everything else.”
Jake turned and shoved open the door, nearly causing Marty to spill all three of his pitchers.
“How’d it go?” Marty asked from behind him as Jake strode across the grass.
“Wrong side,” Jake said, waving his hand without looking back. “Thanks, anyway. Send me that tape.”
Jake reached the end of the driveway and went right. He’d nearly reached his car before he heard his name and looked back. An old man with a full head of white hair and a crooked hip hobbled toward Jake holding a single bent finger up in the air. Pale legs the color of skim milk flashed at Jake from beneath the man’s floppy shorts. Brown dress socks reached halfway up his calves, and his sneakers scuffed the dirt road, kicking up little dust devils.
By the time the old man reached him, he had to bend over to catch his breath before he could speak and before he did that, he extended a hand toward Jake, which he shook politely.
“Myron Kissle,” the old-timer said, looking up from either side of a flattened nose with two dark eyes. “Formerly Detective Kissle, Auburn PD. Get kicked in the back of the head by a mule?”
“Hi, Myron,” Jake said, touching the wound on the back of his skull. “What can I do for you?”
Myron rose as high as his bent frame would allow. Looking Jake in the eye, he said, “It’s what I can do for you. I heard Marty Barrone talking to the judge’s daughter about why you’re here. I worked that Cassandra Thornton case, and I can tell you some things.”