* * *
Denver traffic did not faze the intrepid Isabelle McWilliams. She had volunteered to drive from our meeting place near the interstate outside of Longmont, and I was happily a passenger. She navigated our way to the warehouse gallery in the RiNo area, where we spent a long time enjoying our friend Cass’s photographs, and then to lunch at a restaurant housed in a converted taxi dispatch building with large open doors linking the outside garden patios to the urban energy inside. I could have sat outside all day in the October sun, surrounded by the restaurant’s boxed but overflowing beds of tomatoes, herbs, and flowers, but we had to head over to the CBI office in the suburb of Lakewood to meet Henry Wade at two o’clock. Isabelle negotiated getting back on I-25 to 6th Ave. and from there it was easy to find the building off of Kipling.
Henry Wade’s office was on the third floor and it had a clear view west to the mountains, if one craned one’s neck to peer out of a narrow slit of glass in the corner of the room.
“Sorry, I can’t show you more of the view,” he said as he ushered us into his small beige box of an office.
“It’s too bad you can’t see much of it,” I agreed as I grabbed the one chair next to the missed opportunity of a window. Isabelle pulled another one up in the small space beside me; Henry Wade’s desk was crammed against the opposite wall, just a few feet away.
“Yeah,” Henry said, turning to squint at the window, “but I’m not here very much. Just to get reports done, do paperwork.” I noticed the toppling stacks of paper, binders, and printed materials covering every flat surface with some piles spilling onto the floor. His suit jacket, however, was neatly pressed and hung carefully on the back of the closed door.
“I need to get some stuff filed, I guess,” he said ruefully, looking around. “Never seems to be time for it, probably because I’d rather be out in the field.”
Isabelle looked at a small, framed photo behind his desk and asked, “Your kids?”
“Yeah,” he smiled as he glanced at the photo. “Shirley and I are really proud of ‘em, all four of the girls. The oldest just got married, and we got two in college, doing real well. The youngest is starting track this year.” He nodded at Isabelle, turned back to his desk, and got down to work. I hadn’t thought of Henry Wade as anything but a cop; or having a family, or a life. But Isabelle McWilliams thought about that stuff, while I was focusing on only my own story.
Despite the disorder, Henry Wade seemed very organized as he pulled folders from a table and printed out a file from his computer to assemble on his desk before he got down to business.
“First of all, Lily, thanks for all the information you’ve passed along to me. It’s been very useful. It gave us some new directions for our investigations.”
I nodded, and he continued, “While there are areas in our investigations that I cannot discuss with you, I believe you are entitled to some of the information we have, since you have been so helpful and forthcoming.” He put on black reading glasses, opened a manila folder, and began skimming the reports.
“Here’s where we are,” he said as he looked up at us. “Particularly with the reappearance of Barry Correda, the cases have taken on an expanded scope. First of all, I can tell you that Shannon Parkhurst’s case has been reopened, and I believe that she died under suspicious circumstances. Her death is no longer considered a suicide.”
Isabelle McWilliams’s foot knocked into mine as if to silently telegraph her excitement.
Henry Wade coolly peered at us over his glasses. “At this point in time, I’d like to remind you that what I am telling you is confidential information about an open case, and I am sure I don’t have to remind you that you must keep this information confidential, and not discuss it with anyone.”
Isabelle and I glanced at each other, thinking of all the friends we’d had endless discussions with about Shannon Parkhurst and Barry Correda, and the countless hypotheses we’d bandied about. But we only solemnly nodded at Agent Wade.
“Upon the Bureau’s reevaluation of the autopsy data, it is no longer clear that Shannon was severely inebriated at the time of death, but it is clear that alcohol poisoning leading to drowning was the cause of death. Just not in the way it was originally analyzed.” He grimaced. “Our investigation found that the blood samples had been tainted, so the original ruling could not be verified.
“Sloppy work makes our job that much harder,” he said in a hard tone, “but it happens. At any rate, there was a large amount of alcohol in her stomach, but it appeared that it hadn’t been digested into the blood stream, suggesting that it had all been consumed in a very short time. Almost an impossibly short time for a person to actually drink that amount of fluid. There was also a small amount of a sedative still in the stomach. Again, we could not verify any results because of the tainted samples.”
“Suggesting?” I asked.
“Suggesting that the alcohol was force fed into her stomach to cover up the effects of the sedative, something that may have been overlooked, particularly in an botched autopsy with tainted blood samples. Sedated, Shannon was put in the water, where, her body compromised with alcohol—poison—she drowned.”
“How could she be force fed alcohol?” I wondered.
“If she was sedated, with a tube. It’s not pretty. A person would choke on it if they were conscious,” Henry Wade said. I felt my chest expand in grief as I imagined Shannon’s last hours. I hoped she was unconscious, not realizing what was happening to her. I hoped her final minutes were not spent in terror. I hoped the last thing she saw was not her killer.
“The alcohol was used as a prop, wasn’t it?” I asked, a bitter taste in my mouth. “First, to cover up drugging her, and then to complete the picture of an alcoholic Shannon killing herself.” I looked out the slit of a window as if the blue-purple mountains in the distance could give me answers about the world’s inhumanity.
“That’s how it appears. If someone had read the data correctly,” he said, frowning again, “it would have been obvious that other organs were not recently damaged with frequent alcohol abuse. There was evidence of years’ old damage, but nothing within the last six - seven years. Shannon wasn’t drunk; she was drugged by oxycodone.”
So Shannon hadn’t started drinking again; she really was sober. That made sense to me, finally. “So the Facebook photos had to be a sham?”
“My curiosity was piqued by your email, so I lit a fire under the guys on the Facebook accounts, and got them going. First of all, they were posted on Shannon’s page after Shannon was reported missing—strike one. Only someone with access to her account and password could post the photos—strike two. And they’re fakes: images of an unconscious, probably drugged, Shannon superimposed on party scenes—strike three. If we hadn’t been looking at Correda before, we would have about then,” Henry Wade said. “He left them up long enough to cause the damage to Shannon’s reputation, and then took them down. Probably thought he’s covered his tracks, but he hadn’t.”
My suspicions about it all being a cover-up of Barry Correda’s to discredit her were true. He had something to hide, and I knew now that he’d killed her to keep her from revealing it.
“And what about the accounts she supposedly messed up, you know, ‘the reason’ for her ‘suicide’,” I asked.
Henry Wade flipped through several pages in the file, and then ran his finger down the side of the report he’d selected. “When Correda was originally interviewed in August, he stated that when he and Shannon returned from a business trip in early July, he discovered the irregularities in Shannon’s accounts, and tried to help her get them right before it was discovered. He stated that Shannon’s drinking just made things get worse, and that he had to ‘throw in the towel and do the right thing’.” I rolled my eyes thinking of Barry Correda acting the caring, straight up guy.
“He stated that he went to his boss, Phillip Binder, and told him about the situation. He said that at that time Shannon started to drink nonstop and became mo
re depressed, and ‘incapable of making decisions’, as his statement reads. He and Binder assessed the damage and made the needed money exchanges to correct Shannon’s mistakes. All of this panned out. We checked the books of Shannon’s accounts, and saw the entries just as Correda stated. He and Phil Binder didn’t do anything wrong by using Binder Enterprises funds to refund the missing money into the accounts.” Henry Wade pulled off his glasses to give them a wipe with his shirt. The Lilliputian office was stuffy with the door closed, and just our talking seemed to make the space more hot and humid.
“It’s just that companies are not usually that generous with negating employee illegalities; but they did, and eventually everything was square. Shannon was dead, but there was no case to prosecute. Nothing could be pinned on Correda: no motive, and he had a tight alibi,” he concluded.
“When was everything square?” Isabelle McWilliams wondered. Her foot had been nudging my foot every five seconds as Henry spoke.
“According to the report, he went to Binder with his concerns about a month before Shannon’s death, right after a business trip, when it became clear the accounts were in danger. He said that Shannon was too depressed to understand that he was ‘helping her’, and that she killed herself before the process was complete. The accounts were cleared up about a week after she died.” He looked at the report. “She died on August 4, and the accounts cleared August 13.
“When we re-opened Shannon’s case after Correda’s reappearance, there were a couple of things that bothered me about Shannon’s computer files in general, but they weren’t clear ideas I could link to anything. Until the information about Nueva Oportunidad came in, and that I can thank you for, Lily,” he said. “We didn’t have the link between Shannon and Nueva Oportunidad until I talked with you. No one else had mentioned it, and there was no trace of it in Shannon’s hard drive.”
“What? No one mentioned that she volunteered there?” I asked.
“She was more involved than just a volunteer,” he said, tapping a finger on the file. “She was involved in a lot of day-to-day activities up to a month and a half before her death. But the thing that interested me was the condition of Nueva Oportunidad’s files. They were just as clean as Shannon’s had been—clean in the same way.”
“You mean scrubbed by somebody?” Isabelle asked.
“Looks like it. Our IT guys noticed it in Shannon’s files—just the stuff Correda seemed to have an answer for was in there. But after they looked at a few of Nueva Oportunidad’s files they saw minute evidence of the same hand, if you will. A type of signature of the hacker. The tech guys say some of the big time criminal cleaners leave a clue, a type of signature in their work. Their egos are so big that they can’t resist bragging and throwing it in our faces. They’ve been pretty successful so far,” he said grimly, sorting into the next section of reports in the file. He pulled down his tie a bit more from his open collar. “We think he’s out of the country, probably China.”
“Could Barry have been the one to scrub the files? Or Phillip Binder?” I asked, knowing how Henry felt about getting some air. Isabelle, even in her long-sleeve red blouse and jeans, looked cool and serene. She draped a long leg over the other, and bounced her foot on the carpet.
“Doubt it,” he said. “Guess it takes a rare genius to be that good at recreating reality in files. They don’t qualify.”
“What about the list of numbers Shannon made?” I asked. “Any evidence linking anything to that?”
“As I said, the computer was scrubbed clean. No lists,” he said. I remembered now that it was written by hand, and that Shannon had probably not wanted a digital trail to it. “We only have the copies you gave me. Our cryptographers have the numbers now. That’s all I can tell you.”
That was not the answer I was looking for, but I had to let it go.
“When we returned later with a full warrant, Nueva Oportunidad had vanished before we could subpoena more files,” he added. “The two individuals that had been previously interviewed left the country before their visas expired. Now that’s out of our jurisdiction; we had to pass it to the feds.”
“So that link has disappeared, too,” I mused. “Speaking of disappeared links, did you find out anything on Bernice Thorton, Shannon’s aunt?” I’d thought about her on and off all summer, and Isabelle had expressed that, especially because of her own Aunt Gladdy, she had been concerned about Bernice, too.
“Yes, it turns out she did go for a world cruise,” he said, consulting a page in the reports. “It was booked at the last minute, someone paid cash. Reportedly having the time of her life on the Empress of the Seas. Last time we checked she was with a church group sailing into Istanbul.”
I was glad my intuition had been only partially right about Bernice’s departure. Still, it smacked of getting her out of the way. It didn’t seem that Bernice had the thousands it took to go on a cruise; someone else had paid for it. Henry agreed it added another layer of suspicious activity to the case, but said as long as she was safe on the boat there wasn’t much he could do, or wanted to do, at that point.
“Back to the case at hand,” he said. “We are investigating Shannon’s case as a homicide, and now we have a warrant out for Barry Correda. We’re intensifying our focus on Binder Enterprises, but at the moment, don’t have any evidence we can take to Justice for a search warrant.”
“But isn’t Phillip implicated in Barry’s ‘accident’? Didn’t I hear that he ID’d the body?” I asked.
“He only confirmed the ID from circumstantial evidence gathered at the crash site. That’s about all I can tell you. What I can tell you is that our investigation has traced Correda to New Mexico where he worked, briefly, at Brubaker Distinctive Properties, just as you discovered. His path seemed to coincide with that of Ernesto Mondragón during his brief time in Santa Fe. Before that, things get hazy. Mondragón’s trail leads back to Miami, but there’s nothing for Correda.”
“Coincide? What do you mean?” I asked, as Isabelle’s foot whacked mine again.
“They both seemed to appear on the New Mexico scene at the same place at the same time. Correda started working at Brubaker within weeks of Mondragón’s connection with Andrea Brubaker, both at her immigrant relief foundation and at Brubaker Real Estate. Correda didn’t really have any background for it, yet Mondragón hired him for a top-rung position at Brubaker.”
“Andrea said he had an impressive resume,” I remembered.
“Well, she didn’t read it too closely because he had no experience, no contacts. Yet he immediately made huge sales involving millions of dollars. Doesn’t compute, but that’s what she probably paid attention to rather than lack of past experience.”
“Yeah, between the truth and money, my guess would be that Andrea Brubaker would choose money every time,” I said, turning to look out the window again. Some clouds were gathering over the mountains as they often did in the afternoons, and in their shadows the far slopes now looked midnight blue. I was ready to be outside, but I wanted to get as much information as I could from Henry Wade. I didn’t know how long he’d be as forthcoming.
“All of this coincided with the saving of Brubaker Distinctive Properties from going under. Mondragón appeared and reorganized the company and, along with the Correda sales, pulled it from disaster into wealth almost overnight,” Henry continued.
“Real estate sales brought in enough money to pay off the called in loans?” Isabelle asked.
“Apparently there were a dozen sales of multi-million dollar properties that netted Brubaker millions in commissions,” Henry said.
“If Barry Correda was so successful in Santa Fe, why did he move to Colorado? Why start over here?” I asked.
“Don’t know why he decided to move, but it seems that he was on track to repeat his success here. Once at Binder Enterprises, he sold several multi-million dollar properties that had been on the market for years. It’s an almost dead market for expensive properties here, too, but maybe he had the
touch,” Henry Wade said with a twist to his lips.
“Were those sales part of Binder Enterprises’ huge success in real estate of late?”
“Absolutely,” Henry said.
“So almost anything Barry Correda is connected to here, the Binders could be connected to as well?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
“I thought Andrea Brubaker bragged about getting Barry and Shannon jobs at Binder Enterprises,” Isabelle said. “So, is she connected to any of this? And you said Mondragón had a ‘trail’ from Santa Fe. Does that mean he has a record?”
“I can’t reveal our information on that,” Henry said.
“Why did Barry fake his death? Were you all on his tail?” I asked on another tack.
“I can’t reveal our information on that, either,” Henry said with a slight smile. “I can tell you this: we found out who the woman was, sitting with Correda at the Rockies game—PaTay LaRouche, a hooker working off East Colfax in Aurora. The guy’s so lame he has to pay for sex. Loser. PaTay only remembered him as Small Dick.” Isabelle and I leaned into each other, laughing. That was the appropriate name for Barry Correda.
Henry stood up, and started gathering files on his desk. “Is Barry Momo Morgan?” I asked as a final try for information.
Henry Wade gave me another hint of a smile, and said, “I can tell you that Maurice “Momo” Morgan disappeared about the time Correda appeared in New Mexico. The details of it seem suspicious to me, in light of what we know now. We’re still working on that angle with our friends in New Mexico. Now, I’m sorry, I have to excuse myself for a meeting. Thank you for coming.” He picked up more files on his desk, and ushered us out the door. He shut and locked it, and escorted us down to the exit.
As we emerged from the building, we saw that the weather was turning, with grey-bottomed clouds scudding from the northwest to the southeast. The wind had picked up, and blew grit at us as we scurried to the car. “Hope it doesn’t storm yet!” Isa exclaimed as we plopped into the front seats. It didn’t smell like rain, but it would be welcomed in the dry landscape. Usually just the wind blew, and we got nothing; it hadn’t rained in weeks.
“What did you think of Henry? I like the guy. He seems pretty straightforward,” I said.
“I was impressed with him, too. He’s a ‘just the facts, ma’m’ kind of guy. And I appreciated the fact that he didn’t try to blame anything on the bad economy causing a short staff. He just does his job with no excuses.” Isabelle told me her own department had lost a third of its staff to the economic downturn, and that, as a manager, she knew how difficult it was to maintain the same performance levels. Henry Wade and four other agents were responsible for a huge district that ran from the Wyoming border south to include Colorado Springs and El Paso County, and from the mountains in the west to Kansas.
“Yeah, I’m sure he has a huge caseload. But the screw-ups at Shannon’s original autopsy, the tainted blood samples; that really bothers me. I know Henry’s group didn’t have anything to do with that mess, but still, it bothers me,” I said. In reflection, I acknowledged , “At least her case was re-opened and the truth came out, finally. That’s what important.”
“Yeah, it is. Though her case re-opening seemed to freak out the Nueva Oportunidad guys. What’s the connection—between Shannon and those guys—all about? What do you think about the ‘computer cleaner’ information? Wow. Think of the implications of that! That’s going to warrant its own box on your blackboard!” Isabelle joked.
As she steered us back east on 6th Ave. to our last stop at the wholesale pottery yard, we jabbered and picked out details of Henry’s information like two magpies on a fence with a piece of foil. The soothing flute of the R. Carlos Nakai CD in the background helped keep the pitch of our voices down from a high C. I was mindful of Henry Wade’s warning of keeping the information confidential, but it was difficult not to want to talk about it with someone, so I was glad Isabelle McWilliams had gone with me.
“I know it was important to you to finally have verified what your instincts told you about Shannon’s death. It doesn’t bring her back, of course,” Isabelle said as she made the turn onto the Lowell exit. “But it can move one down the path of grieving, allowing a chance for acceptance and for letting go.”
“Yeah, I’ll let go when they get Barry Correda!” I grimly snapped, staring out the window at the grimy industrial buildings, many with banners advertising vacancies whipping in the wind.
But then, hearing the wisdom of her words I said, “To me, it is important to have the record straight, to have her life remembered for her joy and integrity, not for some lies designed to make her look bad, and blame her for something she didn’t do.
“It really bugged me that Barry Correda used lies about her recovery to make other people believe that she was the liar, not him, that she had lost her honesty, not him. If she had died a drunk, it would have been sad, but I would have dropped it. Don’t have much time for the real drunks, the ones continually choosing to drink, blaming external circumstances and other people for their problems. End of story.
“But from what I knew of her and how she lived her life, I really felt that she had such a loving embrace of her recovery, and her life, that she wouldn’t have let it all go. The people who so readily believed Barry Correda’s lies betrayed Shannon, too, you know. Nobody stood up for her. Now I know she didn’t give it away, and I can set the record straight. As you said, it doesn’t bring her back, but bringing the truth to light honors her life, and clears it of the stain Barry Correda tried to leave on it. At least there’s that.”
We pulled into the pottery yard and parked. Isabelle reached over and gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. I smiled in return, although the smile felt automatic and superficial, since I didn’t feel very cheerful. Pushing open our doors, we put our heads down into the wind, and made a dash to the pottery sheds. On the way, I wanted to cast my vengeful thoughts about Barry Correda out onto the rut-filled gravel lot, and let the coarse, pervasive wind suck them off to Kansas, and out of my head.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN