Storm of Suspicion - 5. Chapter 5

Thom slumped down in his chair as the police continued drilling him about his whereabouts for the last 24 hrs, how the business had done over the summer, and what his relationships had been with Johanna and Danny. “What does any of this have to do with anything?”, he bolted back at the younger officer now questioning him. Thom had long ago grown weary of the inquisition and was now losing his patience. Karla had now been dismissed from her interview and walked towards Thom with her back bolt straight and her chest puffed out, trying to appear more authoritative.

“It seems to me like you people don’t have anything to go on right now and are just wasting everybody’s time. I think it only appropriate if your going to continue this nonsense that Thom and Steven both be allowed to have a lawyer present before they answer anymore of your bullshit!”, Karla spoke calmly and forcefully, directing her intentions to Detective Wallace who had been standing watching the proceedings from the middle of the room.

“Well nobody has been placed under arrest so there is no need for a lawyer Ma’am. You should know that!”, Wallace responded with deliberate sarcasm.

“If nobody is under arrest then you have no reason to hold us here any longer! It seems the only thing you have is circumstantial nothing!”, Karla declared. “I know I don’t have jurisdiction here but I have connections everywhere and wait, isn’t this an election year?”

“Don’t try threatening me missy...”, Wallace warned.

“Boss, we’re really not making any lee-way here, pretty much everything we already knew”, declared the young officer. Wallace shot him a piercing glare.

“ Fine, it’s not like you can go anywhere. We have the state police setting out on Rt 6 out of town, even if you get beyond that the Sagamore and Bourne bridges are both shut down and God help you if you try leaving by sea.”

“Come-on, let’s get out of here before he decides to charge us with the Whitey Bulger murders”, Karla stated, motioning for Steven to join them.

“I’ve got my eye on you three”, Wallace sternly warned as they left the room. Mr. Sawyer stood up, holding a pad of paper and walked towards the detective.

“At least we finished the sketch first,'' he declared, turning so the detective could see the image.

“Good, I was wondering what an imaginary person looked like,'' he mumbled, taking the paper from his hand. With a grin he motioned for the younger officer to come view the image. “You better keep an eye on those clowns, something isn’t right here at all. Oh, and don’t let them give you the slip!”.

As the trio exited the police station,Thom turned to the others. “So what’s your big plan NOW Miss Karla?”, Thom inquired sarcastically.

“Hey, I got us out of there Mr…” she abruptly quipped back.

“Well I’m starving”, Steven chimed in.

“Yeah, me too actually”, Karla added.

“Ok, we can go back to the Admiral. The power is still out in most everywhere so it’s probably the only place we can get anything right now”, Thom stated.

§

When they arrived at The Admiral’s Inn, the dining room was still quite full, considering it was now mid afternoon. “I guess everyone else in town had the same idea as us,'' Thom commented.

Carter immediately noticed Thom and approached the group. “Thom, How are you today? Is everything going alright? I heard about the fire… dreadful, simply dreadful… I didn’t expect you back so soon today, I’m so used to you sneaking in here all hours of the night. I heard the roads are still closed so I kept your room ready though. And whom is this lovely specimen?” Now turning his attention to Karla while giving Steven a wink. Carter may have been a flaming queen but he was still an unsuppressable flirt when the opportunity presented.

“This is an old friend from the Army, Ms Karla Eastman; and of course you remember Steven from the Pilgrims Landing.” Thom replied.

“So wonderful to meet such a fabulous lady”, shaking her hand with just his fingertips. “And always good to see you Steven. Business good this summer I trust?”, turning back towards Thom, not really interested in waiting for an answer.

“I see it’s a little crowded down here” Thom commented. “Do you think we could get something brought up to the room? The three of us haven’t been together in ages and we could use some catching up…”

“But of course, anything for you Thom,'' Carter sang in response.

As the trio turned and began up the staircase, Thom happened to notice his handsome stranger seated alone in the far corner of the dining room, peeking from behind a newspaper. Turning back to Carter he whispered, “Who’s that blond guy sitting over there in the corner?”

“You mean the hunky guy reading?” Carter replied. “Well, I really shouldn't say anything but that’s Mr. Frye, a famous news reporter from the New York Post. I guess our little murder here is really big news! I’m sure he’d love to talk to you sometime being the owner of the place where the crime happened and ohhhh, I just thought…” turning quickly to Steven, “I’m sure he’d really like to talk to the prime suspect himself….”

“I really don’t…” Thom interrupted. “I mean I’m certainly not up for reporters right now and Steven hasn’t been charged with anything. Just send us up some sandwiches or something but otherwise I don’t want to be disturbed, ok?” he sternly warned. Thom again glanced to look at the mystery man who had suddenly disappeared. He still couldn’t help but feel that he was somehow familiar to him, and not just from having seen him at breakfast this morning, somewhere else. As the trio made their way along the hallway to Thoms room, the blond man appeared from around the corner along the back stairway. Thom sighed, expecting him to come and start asking a bunch of questions however he quickly turned completely around and receded back down the rear stairwell.

“Hey guys!”, Steven screeched, “That’s the guy I rented my room to!”.

Thom quickly raced down the stairs to follow him but the man had already made his way out the back door and across the small courtyard. The picket gate at the end of the garden flapped wildly, now unsecured in the wind. Thom searched both left and right outside the gate with no sign of the man anywhere. As he walked back upstairs with a feeling of defeat to where Karla and Steven had remained, he decided he would have to ask Carter more about the man later. He needed to know more from Steven first. Unlocking the door and leading them into his room, he turned to Steven, “Steven, are you absolutely sure that’s the guy that rented your room to?”

“Absolutely!” Steven declared. “I mean… I think so. He shaved his beard but you’d expect that if he dressed up in a drag and… oh Shit! I didn’t even think about that when we did the sketch at the police station! I told them my guy had a beard but we know he stole my shit to go out in drag last night!” Steven speculated aloud. “They won’t even be looking for this guy! What’s he still even doing….. Oh my Gawd!!!” I bet he’s still here so he can kill me!!! I’m the only one that can identify him so now he’s gonna kill me next!”

“Now Steven, calm down a second. Nobody is going to try to kill you”, Karla tried reassuring him as she wrapped her arms around him, sitting them both down on a bench at the foot of the bed.

“Besides, you’d already be dead by now if he wanted to kill you,'' Thom chimed in.

“Bitch”, Steven snapped back, rolling his upper lip and showing his teeth like a growling dog.

“Well, think about it. If the killer went back to your room to change then he could have just killed you then. You’d be the only one that can identify him,” Thom rationalized, not entirely convinced himself however.

“Hey, Your right!”, Karla yelled, almost as if she believed it as well, jumping up from her seat.

“Huh?”, Steven asked.

Thom knelt in front of Steven, slowly spelling the concept out to him as if he were a child,” Look, If the man that rented your room, went back there to change, then wouldn’t he had killed you then if he wanted to?”

“Unless he wanted to frame me for it, duh”, Steven bantered back, much in the childish manner he had just been addressed.

Karla quickly injected, “Naw, it doesn’t make any sense. The guy you rented the room to didn’t even know you. I don’t even think he did it.” She speculated further. “What would he even still be in town for? If that’s the same guy Thom was just asking about downstairs then Carter said he was a news reporter.”

“Shit, nobody can ever believe anything that tired old queen has to say,'' Steven added.

“No use standing here bickering, let’s try to get a plan together”. Thom turned to light the fireplace and an oil lamp on a small table in the corner of the room. “Hopefully Carter will be here shortly with something to eat. I can hardly think clearly right now. This whole thing is like a bad dream.”

As she sat on the edge of the bed, Karla declared as if the solution had until that moment been so glaringly obvious that they had overlooked it, “Now all we have to do is find this guy so we can get you cleared Steven”.

“And how the hell do you propose we do that?”, Steven belted back, as he threw himself down into an overstuffed chair next to the fireplace. “I told you before that I have no idea where he was from, not that he would have told me the truth anyway”.

“His car?”, Thom took his turn at the questioning.

“I never saw it, I supposed he’d parked up at the monument lot”, Steven replied.

“Gee, that’s a little odd….” Karla puzzled aloud.

“How’s that?” Thom responded, taking a seat next to her on the bedside.

“Well”, she continued. “That parking lot is kinda far from the Pilgrims Landing for him to have ‘just-happened’ to end up there last-minute”, she theorized. “Which means he must have tried getting a room at a bunch of other places before he got to the Pilgrims Landing and someone else had to have seen him too”.

Outside Thoms room, Carter stood quietly listening to the conversation within. “Ooooh, I wonder who this mystery man is”, he thought to himself.

A sudden knocking at the door interrupted their conversation. “Yes?”, Thom yelled out.

“Carter here, I have some goodies for you”.

“Come in, it’s open”, Thom replied.

Carter rolled a small cart into the room neatly dressed in a linen cloth and covered with an array of small sandwiches, sweets, sodas, and a pot of coffee with three cups. Silently a green light blinked on a small hand-held tape recorder, duct taped to the underside of the cart.

stopped.

 §

Frantically, the man Thom had been chasing, raced to his car around the front of the Inn. He wanted to get out of Provincetown as soon as possible. The airport was closed from the storm and if it wasn’t, most likely the police would be posted there as well. “Surely Rt 6 isn’t the only road off the Cape”, he thought as he wrestled with a map, swerving quickly, nearly missing the guardrail. He resolved that he would take the one road out of town as far as he could, and get gas, he thought as he glanced down at the fuel gage, then he could ask for directions back to the Sagamore bridge. The darkening sky carried with it nightfall and threats of impending storms. Nearby buildings remained mostly obscure shadowed against the backdrop, indicating the power to still be out everywhere along that end of the Cape. As he passed through the sand dunes just along the outskirts of Truro, much of the sand had drifted over the pavement, concealing the road, making travel difficult and dangerous. As he maneuvered the last curve through the sand and resumed contact with the wet asphalt, he lost control of the vehicle and veered off the road into a ravine. His head struck hard against the windshield as he landed, rendering him unconscious, while blood trickled down his face and his arm lay bent awkwardly across the dash of the car in a billow of white fabric from the airbags which had deployed, only after the vehicle stopped.

 §

Karla, Thom, and Steven quickly devoured the sandwiches with only an occasional comment on the food or asking if anyone wanted the last of this or that offering. Finally after Karla took a long swig of Pepsi directly from the can and placing it back on the cart she resumed the conversation. “So Thom, what do you think we should do now?”. She still felt a little defeated by her earlier remarks and was trying to rationalize the situation more slowly. “Surely he’s long gone by now,'' Karla went on.

“Most likely”, Thom agreed. “But maybe someone saw him either coming or going from the parking lot and at least noticed where the plate was from. I think we should check with the attendant.”

“Yeah unless the car was a rental and that wouldn’t do us any good,'' Steven observed.

“Well that’s true but if the attendant saw him we can at least get an idea of the car or color or something!”, Karla explained.

“Come-on, we can go by on the way back down to the police station. I still need to see about claiming Johannas body so I can start the funeral arrangements”. Thom stood up and began organizing everything neatly back on the service cart for Carter to come pick-up.

“Agh”, Steven groaned. “I forgot all about going back there today. I’m really not up for it”.

“Well I guess Wallace didn’t specifically say for you to come back. You finished what you were doing didn’t you?”, Thom inquired.

“We were working on the sketch of the guy I rented the room to, and Yeah, I had finished it,'' Steven justified.

“In that case, you and Karla go snoop around and see what you can find out about our mystery man”, Thom suggested. “I’ll go see about Johanna”.

“What exactly is this ‘tie’ you have with Johanna anyway?” Steven stood, holding the door closed in front of Thom, as if demanding an answer before being allowed to pass.”You despise drag queens, you say they’re fucked up in the head…”, he continued.

“It’s complicated”, Thom declared simply as he pushed Steven aside and opened the door.