Naive Charles Royce (great novels .txt) 📖

for Shawn’s reaction, which is nothing more than a closing of the eyes. “Come on, Shawn. Heck, I don’t know. It wasn’t Josh. He is way too much of a wuss. Plus, I saw him at the event.”

“I’ll definitely put my men on it. No stone unturned.”

Shawn types again and then turns to Micah, watching to see Micah’s reaction to what he was about to ask. “Hey, you don’t think he was doing drugs again, do you?”

“Who? Lennox? Hell, no. He was working that program better than even me. And he had two sponsees who called him every day. He’d go out and meet with them all the time. In fact, maybe that’s who he was supposed to see that night!” He throws his hands up and back. “Oh my God, I’m a horrible person.”

“There could be a sponsee who saw him that night too?” Shawn begins typing frantically. “Do you know their names?”

“Just their first names. Talbot and Frank. Frank’s last initial is ‘J’ I think, not sure about Talbot.”

“Good, good, this is good. There could be a shit ton of people we could at least throw at them as having access to Lennox that night, and work on potential motives.”

“Christ, Shawn, that’s awful.”

“Not as awful as your spending the rest of your life behind bars.”

Micah nods and looks down. Shawn continues typing.

“Why would you ask about the drugs?” Micah says. “Cuz if he was, well …”

Shawn looks up. “Well, what, Micah? No stone unturned.”

“Well, there’s this letter Lenny wrote, said if anything ever happened to him, to read the letter and it would lead you right to him. ‘Him’ meaning whoever did him harm, I guess.”

“Micah, what the hell? You’re just now bringing this up? Something did happen to Lennox, Micah. He was brutally murdered, in case you forgot. And you basically confessed to it.”

Micah releases his tense grip on his chair and looks up with tears in his eyes. “Shawn, if Lenny was even thinking about drugs again, then this guy woulda known about it. Hell, he could even be the cause.”

“What guy?”

“The guy in the letter! He’s definitely the one that woulda killed Lennox, if he had reason to. Lenny was petrified of him.”

“By ‘what guy’ I mean do you know this guy’s name? Where he lives? What the letter says?”

“I never read it. The envelope was sealed, and I buried it in Lenny’s files.”

“Buried it how? Where?”

“The only thing I know is that this guy had something to do with Lennox’s past. The drug stuff. All Lennox told me was to file the letter under some silly title that didn’t mean anything.”

“Micah. For God’s sake, what title is this goddamn letter or fucking folder under, so I can go find it?”

“Oh my God, geez.” Micah, feeling annoyed, grabs Shawn’s pen and searches for a nearby sheet of paper. Feeling Shawn’s impatience, he begins to write on one of the light maple slats on the wooden table between them.

“Okay, so it’s a folder, and it’s under this … okay, well, it’s not really a title, it’s more of a picture. Lennox told me exactly how to draw it.”

Micah scribbles the outline of a skinny house, colors it in, then draws a thick line through it.

C h a p t e r   1 8

“At approximately 10:50pm on August 17, I was called to the home of Micah Breuer and Lennox Holcomb, to ascertain the events that had unfolded at 142 Henry Street earlier that evening.” Detective Bronson Penance addresses the slew of media that have gathered to hear an update on one of two murder cases that had happened in the city on the same night. A bouquet of microphones is directly in front of him, with the Seventh Precinct brick façade in the background. A crowd of both local and national media has overtaken the entire parking lot outside the station.

Dressed in a light tan summer blazer, Detective Penance straightens his black-and-white-striped tie and looks directly into a camera in front of him.

“Upon entering, we found Lennox Holcomb, age thirty-six, brutally stabbed and dead on the living room floor of his home at the Garfield Building in lower Manhattan. The suspect, Micah Breuer, was taken downtown for questioning, and confessed to the murder of his husband of two years, Lennox Holcomb, the victim. Micah Breuer is currently being held in custody, and murder charges are pending.”

No stranger to media press conferences, Detective Bronson Penance is adept in interacting with the media, and prefers being the one on camera. He has experienced too many untrained police commissioners and other personnel divulging information too early, resulting in botched cases before they had even started.

Having been prodded by influential players like Elaine and Wallace Holcomb, Penance feels pressured into this particular media event. Yet he also wants to fulfill his responsibility of getting ahead of public opinion, to secure a quick conviction should the case go to trial.

“What evidence do you have that Micah Breuer is the one and only suspect?” asks a reporter from the Times.

“Blood evidence and a confession.” He flinches, but the statement is factually correct.

“Two murders in the same night. Both victims worked at Élan International. Are the two connected?” asks a reporter from CNN.

“At this time, we’re pursuing the two murders as being separate cases, with no known link other than the fact you just stated.”

“My sources say there were drugs involved in the Micah Breuer/Lennox Holcomb case. Do you have any comment on that?” The Times reporter presses closer.

“That information is part of an ongoing investigation, and we cannot divulge any details at this time.”

Shawn, watching from the back of a taxi, pounds on the monitor. “You sack of shit. She got to you. Elaine Holcomb got to you. Fuck me.”

C h a p t e r   1 9

“You know you have to think like Elaine Holcomb,” the district attorney says to Astrid Lerner, the assistant district attorney handling the case of The People vs. Micah Breuer.