“JIM.” I turned to him, myself not feeling the best. “Jim, can you come down to the station and give us a few minutes? Please?” I nodded and the young cop who lost his breakfast beckoned to me, putting me into a patrol car, then drove me to Cider Hill Police Station. Once there, he helped me from the car and led me inside.
12.
A lady brought me a hot cup of coffee a short time later and told me that the chief would be along shortly. He didn’t disappoint, walking through the door before I finished half the beverage, carrying a cup of his own. Once seated in Rademeyer’s chair, he lent forward and looked at me for a moment. I think he was contemplating how he was going to talk me, not so much as what he was going to say.
“Jim, I appreciate the help you have given this department in recent days,” he began, and from experience, knew that this wasn’t going to end well. He continued, still watching me intently, “and I understand you yourself have suffered some incredible personal loss as well.”
“Here it comes,” I thought, “the big BUT.”
“But I need you to understand that you are no longer a police officer. This department is eternally grateful for the help you’ve given Officer Connor, and I hope she makes a speedy recovery. God knows we need all the help we can get. Jim, I need to know what happened. If you are going to be playing with our department, then I need to be kept in the loop ALL the time. Warden Thomas rang me and said that two very irate officers were harassing a prominent doctor in the prison.” I wanted to scream at him, tell him just what a fine and upstanding doctor he really was. But I held back, still unsure of the man sitting before me. “Then come running from a building where a dead man is found in some secret tunnel, only to drive off in his car after flashing police badges and demanding to be let out. How did you know he was there in the first place?” I considered telling him everything, bringing him up to speed and having his men out looking for Lightman. But I didn’t. I still don’t know why, but I just didn’t.
“We didn’t know he was there, or that there was a secret tunnel. We knew that he had been seeing Lightman every single day thanks to the box of files they gave us. When we heard Lightman had been released and saw Levinson’s car in the parking lot, we wanted to talk to him.”
“Why?” I pondered the question, then figured I’d throw him a bone, a little one, wrapped in a little white lie.
“Because Lightman is Stephanie Connor’s father.” His eyes grew so wide that for a moment, I had an amusing image of them popping out and bouncing on the table like ping-pong balls. His jaw hung open as he put his cup down.
“Aaahh, but, what?” was all he could manage in total disbelief.
“And we needed to know if Lightman knew, because if he did, then there was a real possibility that he would go after her daughter.”
“Not her sister?” he suddenly asked.
“No. Judith is Stephanie’s child. So, as you see, once we found him and knew that Lightman wasn’t as innocent as they were making him out to be, we had to go and find Judith, in case Lightman went after her, which he obviously did.” He took this new information and tried to understand its implications, trying to make sense of it all. He didn’t speak for a long time, finally taking a cigarette out and firing it up. He didn’t offer me one.
“Did he say anything?” he finally asked.
“Who?”
“Levinson,” he said. I shook my head, again wondering why I wasn’t sharing the information.
“No. He had time to say one final, garbled word and then he died.”
“How did you find him?”
“We had been in the adjoining room before, the day we first met him. Lightman had been in the room, but then when we came back in, he was gone. We figured there was a corridor or holding cell or something back there. When it turned out to be a dead-end kitchenette, we poked around a bit and felt a breeze coming from the pantry. After that, it wasn’t long before we were climbing down the stairs. The rest you know.” He took his time, filing the information into his mind. I was about to stand, to shake his hand, thank him for his concern and then head to the hospital. But just as I was getting ready, he opened his mouth and spoke, his words coming so unexpectantly, that it was my turn to be dumbfounded.
“Jim, I want to be straight with you. You understand what it’s like to be an officer of the law. You know how important it is to be honest.” I wondered whether he knew my story was bullshit, had seen right through it from the beginning. But then he continued. “To have secrets in this job is to play Russian roulette, because if you ever lose one, that secret can give someone the opportunity to hold something over you. And then, that secret becomes power for the other person, leaving you in a rather painful predicament. Secrets like Levinson had. I am not a man to hide secrets, never have. I’m sure by now you will have heard about certain ladies in this town providing services that, well, good Christian folk might see as a very big sin. I’m sure you know that this girl, Tami, was one of them. I’m sorry for your loss, by the way.” He paused for a minute, sipped his coffee again, then continued. “I have indulged in their services on more than one occasion and I am not ashamed to admit it. I’m not