THAT FLESH IS HEIR TO
The Strange Death of Carlton Boyce BarltonBy Joseph F. HannaiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Joseph F. Hanna
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-6957-5Chapter One
It was around four thirty when the phone next rang. I didn't recognize the number or even the area code. The display just said "official".
"Lawton Close and Associates. This is the head associate. With whom am I speaking?"
"Max?"
"Carrie! Are you all right?"
"Where's Mr. Close? I have to talk to him. It's urgent."
"He's in the country. You know the number. Are you okay?"
"I only get one phone call," she said. Then she caught her breath strangely.
"Where are you?"
"Palm Beach Police station at Gold Coast Highway and Hawaii Avenue."
"Don't hang up. Stay right there. I'll call him in East Hampton on the other line."
"I have to stay right here; I'm in a freaking holding cell!"
"Yeah. He'll be right there for you. Don't worry about anything."
"They think I killed him!"
"They are just trying out suspects at this stage. It just happened, and you were on the boat. It doesn't mean anything."
"I don't know! It's all crazy. They say they've got evidence! What kind of evidence could they have? I didn't do anything!"
"Slow down! Take a breath."
"They said I could go to prison for the rest of my life!"
"Yeah, they do that to try to scare you into cooperating. Don't say anything. Tell them they can talk to your lawyer."
"But I didn't do anything. If I refuse to talk to them, they'll think I have something to hide!"
"Listen to me! Don't tell them another thing. It doesn't work that way. I'm sure they read you your Miranda rights. Anything you say— remember that part? Anything can be used against you. Don't say another word until you have representation. This is really important. The less you say, the less LT and your lawyer will have to untangle."
"I don't have a lawyer."
"LT is working on that. Who else was on the boat when the bomb went off?"
"There were just two of us, me and Mr. Barlton."
"Where was the captain?"
"I don't know. I was in my cabin. He hasn't been around for two days."
"Where is your father?"
"In Arizona on a camping trip. Someone is trying to get word to him. Max, I have to talk to LT!"
"Calm down. LT is arranging for me to fly down there. Don't hang up. I'm going to call him on the other line, and if he answers we'll do this as a conference call. Hold on."
LT picked up at the first ring. He was obviously hovering by one of the phones in the country house, probably in the library.
"Carrie?" he said.
"I'm here."
"This is Lawton. It is my understanding that they have detained you as a material witness."
"Something like that. I was in shock when they brought me here. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't even know what happened to Mr. Barlton. They told me he was killed by a bomb that was delivered to the boat by Groundway Express. They made it clear that they think I did it, and they want me to tell them about it, or it will be much worse for me."
"That's boilerplate intimidation. Ignore it," said LT sternly.
"That's easy for you to say. I'm the one they are threatening."
"They are trying to break you down. That is their job, and it isn't an easy job. They have to assume that everyone they deal with is lying, and the assumption is usually valid."
"I'm not lying. And I'm scared." Her voice sounded more angry than frightened, but I know her moods better than LT. He never saw her at the wheel of a five hundred horsepower Mustang when she brought every single horse out to play. LT romanticizes women. He thinks Teddy needs his old-school gallantry. Ha! When the chips are all down and the last hole card is crisply turned, it won't be his elegant hands reaching for the pot.
"I understand the fear, but try to minimize it. You have people on your side with imagination, intelligence, and resolve. You also have the truth on your side."
"I was beginning to wonder. This is so disorienting, I almost wanted to confess just to stop them from treating me like I am a mad bomber."
"Carrie, I have been talking with some people I know in Palm Beach. They tell me that someone wanted to create the impression that you were involved with the death of your employer. The reason the authorities have singled you out for their attention is because, in their opinion, there is probable cause that you were involved in the murder."
"But I swear to you that I had nothing whatsoever to do with any part of it! I'm getting tired of saying that. And I don't have any idea who might have done something like this. I would hate to think it was anyone I know or have ever met."
"Then prepare yourself, because the logic of the facts, as known at this moment, points to someone who must know you well enough to know where you live."
"Why? What facts? Why would someone want to do something like that?"
"We don't know anything about motivations yet. I would prefer not to speculate. I do want to assure you that I can already see some rather difficult problems for the authorities if they continue to treat you as a prime suspect."
"Anything you would care to share with us?" I asked.
"Not yet," he said firmly.
"I didn't think so." LT is selfish with facts. He was never taught to share when he was a little brat in Mrs. Megger's extremely private prep school. It's possible they teach hoarding. It would explain a lot.
"Carrie, Teddy has booked Max on a flight out of LaGuardia tomorrow early. I have already spoken to three of the best lawyers in Palm Beach on your behalf. Two of them have assured me that you are only in danger of being temporarily inconvenienced. The third individual is going to get back to me later this evening about deciding to represent you. He has to see if he can clear his desk first. He has agreed to meet Max tomorrow at the facility where you are being held. I am hoping that you will be free by this time tomorrow. Max will be bringing a change of clothes. Teddy is out shopping and, as you remember, she knows your sizes and your taste."
Teddy likes to shop, and if practice makes perfect, she is ready for Carnegie Hall. She would get a standing ovation. The broken economy had pinched back her "flare for extravagance," as LT put it, so an excuse to get back out there and tickle the Amex ... well ...
"Do you think they will really let me go?" asked Carrie; I thought I could hear little hope in her voice.
"I am cautiously optimistic. You may well be required to remain on hand in the area, at least until they are able to establish the investigation along alternative lines. I have spoken to a bail bondsman and the Department of Public Safety Justice Services Administration. I think we have taken care of everything."
"Bail bondsman? I don't have any money, not enough for bail," said Carrie.
"That is not important at the moment. We will have to take this one step at a time," said LT. Bail bondsmen? Teddy out shopping? Grim austerity was getting slapped around by an even grimmer necessity.
"What kind of money are we talking about?" she asked him.
"That's not important at this moment," said LT gruffly. He hates talking about money. He hates even using the word. He usually has to wash his mouth out with scotch afterwards—oh, and he swallows.
"Tens of thousands?" she asked.
"A bit more than that, but nothing unthinkable; we pay a small percentage of the total to the bail bondsman, and he puts up the bond. He gets the bond back after the issue is settled by either a trial or more likely in your case, a hearing in which sanity is affirmed and the whole business is tossed out for lack of credible evidence. The only hazard would be if for any reason you fled the jurisdiction, and I can't imagine any scenario in which you would do something so egregious and foolish and costly."
"It's not fair. Why should I have to be responsible for thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of dollars in expenses if I didn't do anything? How is that fair?"
"It isn't," said LT. "You are becoming acquainted with the nightmare. This is an ancient ritual. We are about to begin the discovery phase of a complicated and time-consuming process. It is fraught with difficulties, chief among them is that legal niceties and comforting rhetoric aside, we are faced with having to prove a negative. We have to summon sufficient empirical information and frame it with a compelling logical narrative to prove (I use the word with ironic quotes imagined) that you did not do something."
"But I didn't."
"You have touched on an epistemological boundary."
"LT, please talk English. No one knows what epistemological means," I said. He likes big words. He likes to hear himself say them. He says them well.
"I do," said Carrie.
"You do?" I asked her voice.
"I was a philosophy major. Epistemology is the study of what can be known."
"Well don't mind me. I was a hotel restaurant manager major."
"Carrie," said LT, as if I wasn't on the line, "you have to understand that we may never discover important facts about the explosion on the boat, but it is critical that we discover enough to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that you could not have been responsible in any way."
"What if we can't?" she asked. Her voice was calm and strong, but she wanted to know.
"We will. It is what I do best. Even so, I need help on this because I am not able to practice law in Florida, and I think it is going to be important to have two sets of eyes focused on the problem. I have already made a number of phone calls to individuals that I cannot name who live in Palm Beach. More than one of the individuals has access to persons who are intimately connected with operations in the West Palm Beach Police Department. One of them is a friend of the chief. From these calls I have already learned enough to cast a first impression. I am convinced on the basis of this impression that the police have blundered in their preliminary hypothesis. I have an advantage in that you lived for a time under my roof. It must be said that one may share a roof and indeed a bed with a fellow creature and be completely wrong about that individual in matters of character. I offer my first marriage in evidence. However, I have watched you carefully under conditions of extreme stress, and you handled yourself admirably. If the police knew you as I know you, they would swing wide the steel doors and beg your forgiveness, but, alas, they are only human. It is my fear that during this time you are going to discover the limits of human wisdom, insight, intelligence, and love. You will see why those of a spiritual persuasion refer to us as fallen creatures."
"LT," I said, and I'm sure my frustration was audible, "could you dial it back to something a little less dramatic than the Twilight of the Gods?"
"I could, and I concede that it would be more comfortable for all concerned, but I want Carrie to know that while I have every confidence, complete confidence, in the outcome, this is going to difficult, and I believe it will get quite nasty. Carrie, Max will be with you through this. Dickie called his father in West Palm and has offered his boyhood room to Max. His father has agreed to the arrangement. Mr. Douglas has a room for you as well, if you are required to remain in the jurisdiction. I believe that is highly probable until we can find some other subject to divert their attention from you. I understand that you have your own apartment in town, but until we are able to neutralize the person or persons who caused the explosion, I think it would be prudent for you not to be alone. Whoever is responsible has taken the time and trouble to implicate you in the violence. We don't know who or why yet, but Mr. Douglas lives in a gated community. You are already the object of media speculations. You will need to be shielded from that destructive glare for some time to come. As soon as you are allowed to leave the jurisdiction, I want you to come straight here. I have talked this over with Teddy, and we both feel you should get as far away from that setting as possible. I feel somewhat responsible because I found you the position with Rodd Rock, and he provided the introduction to Mr. Barlton."
"This has nothing to do with you," said Carrie. "This is all about Mr. Barlton. They are motioning to me that my time is up."
"Okay. When Max arrives tomorrow, he will have some questions for you that I have written down for him. Time is important. Please answer him fully and completely. Sometimes small details that may seem unimportant to you make a dramatic difference to the pattern that the facts must fit. You will have some empty hours in the next few days. Please don't waste that time on worry. I will be sparing no effort in the background. Instead of giving in to anxiety, I want you to begin making a list of all of the people connected with Mr. Barlton, however tenuous. The person or persons responsible had access to the boat. You probably have met. I would change that to most probably. I will need to know everything I can about those close to your late employer. Can you do that for me?"
"I will. I need something to do. They may not let me have a pencil or pen in jail. I think they believe I may want to kill myself."
"Ask for crayons or pastels. Do you have thoughts like that? Do you have thoughts of doing violence to yourself?"
"Not me. I want to do violence to whoever put me here. I am really buzzed about it. I never understood the attractions of revenge until now."
"Yes, but I would advise you to keep such thoughts to yourself."
"I have to go."
"See you tomorrow," I said.
"See you. Thanks, Mr. Close."
Her phone was hung up.
"They have her on suicide watch?" I asked LT, who was still on the line.
"It makes sense in their narrative," said LT. "She has just blown up her lover. She has been caught, and they are determined that she will be punished. They have told her she is going to spend the rest of her life in prison. We live in a time when many believe there is nothing beyond the self-experience. We believe in self-creation, and what the creator proposes, the creator disposes. It makes for recurrent headlines of little mass murder-suicides. In their narrative, formed by years of experience, the authorities are only being prudent."
"They don't know Carrie at all," I said.
"No they don't. They only know the people they deal with in their line of work, and their line of work is to clean up after the rest of us."
Chapter Two
I was reading an ad for a little red-light gizmo that you pass around your scalp to make your hair grow. I was thinking of Dickie. For years he had a ponytail, even after his hair had begun to thin on top. He was starting to let his hair in back grow longer again. I hoped it wasn't going to be a mullet or a new ponytail, but, either way, the balding spot made the whole enterprise a little ironic. For a couple of hundred bucks from the Mall of the Sky, he could inject some kind of weird LED light into his scalp and get a full, bushy regrowth—or so the description said. You tend to believe in things like that on a plane. I mean, there you are in your little seat at thirty-seven thousand feet going 550 miles per hour in a metal tube being held up by air. What's a little red-light hair next to that? There were lots of interesting things for sale in the Mall of the Sky catalog. The Ion Wind Stick looked like something a guy should really have. The black and brushed nickel look matched the noise canceling sleep headphones on page twenty-three. I could carry it all in my real leather carry-on with the twelve internal pockets and six external pockets and a special detachable pouch for my cell phone. I was reading the catalog because there was nothing outside the window except clouds and blue sky. The clouds were below, and the sky was so bright it hurt to look at it.
"Peanuts?" she said, bending into my space. She was blonde and well endowed by her creator or her cosmetic surgeon and well endowed right down the line that flared dramatically in the hip vicinity. The professional uniform was having trouble containing her bodily enthusiasms. The flesh was obviously willing though the spirit was somewhat sour. "Would you like some?" she said with a frown. She dangled the two-inch by two-inch pack enticingly in front of my face. Her frown was contagious.
"That's lunch?"
"You get a complimentary soda or coffee."
"That's it?"
"You can purchase a drink from our bar service."
"How much is a beer?"
"Five dollars."
"Ouch!"
"When was the last time you were on a plane?"
"My boss is afraid of flying."
"What, do you live with your boss or something?"
"Yes."
"What's her name?"
"He is Lawton Close, and he's a famous consultant."
"You want 'em or not?" Her frown had deepened.
"Oh! You think ..."
"Whatever. I got a planeload of people to feed. You want peanuts?"
"Sure, but I don't call this food."
"What do you call it?"
"A snack, a very light snack."
"Uh-huh." She moved to the next row of seats and gave me her back. The stranger in the seat next to me sighed. Then she adjusted her bulk and said, "I brought my own damned food, but they took it."
"They took your food?" I said as the subject gaped before me like a pothole.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THAT FLESH IS HEIR TOby Joseph F. Hanna Copyright © 2010 by Joseph F. Hanna. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
