Favorite Sons (21 page)

I hit the little button under my desk that summoned Margaret. She walked in and I said, “Please escort Mr. Vukovich to the lobby.”

Margaret stared down at the aluminum foil candy wrapper and her face pinched up like someone had stuck a turd under her nose.

“Well, it has certainly been a pleasure reacquainting myself with you, Mr. Van Buren,” he said. “Let me give you my cell phone number in case you want to call me.” He held a new phone up for my inspection. “Aren't these the damnedest things?” He tapped a few buttons and held the screen a few feet from my face, holding it steady until I took my pen and scrawled the number on an index card that I kept by my phone for just that reason. When he was satisfied
that I had recorded his number, he snapped it shut and said, “Yes, sir, it's the damnedest thing. But then, you miss a lot of interesting things when you're in prison for thirty years.” As he stood, he reached into the candy dish and grabbed all but two of the candies and put them in his pocket. “I have a bit of a sweet tooth.” He started walking toward the door, then turned back and said, “You have one week, Mr. Van Buren.”

“We'll see.”

Margaret was holding open the door. “One week,” he repeated.

When the door closed, I took the glass dish and dumped it and the remaining pieces of candy in the trash.

Tick-tock.

J
ack Vukovich had one hand firmly around my scrotum and was squeezing for all he was worth, the veins in his forearm erupting through sallow skin like mountain roads. And he was enjoying every minute—twisting and laughing. As a prosecuting attorney I was certainly familiar with such treatment, but I had always been the one doing the squeezing and twisting, and I can tell you for a fact that it was absolutely no fun being on the receiving end. I was panicked. My stomach hadn't roiled so much since that June day in 1971.

As I stated, prior to running for attorney general I had no great political aspirations. But with victory so close and virtually assured, I certainly wanted to grasp it. The revelations that Jack Vukovich could unleash would end not only my statewide political career, but my days as a prosecutor, as well. The fact that I had been present at Petey Sanchez's slaying would not hurt me, but my three-plus decades of silence was a career-ender for someone sworn to uphold justice. Acid gurgled in the back of my throat and I was once again fifteen years old and angry with myself, Adrian Nash, and that damn Petey Sanchez.

There was always the possibility that Jack Vukovich was telling the truth and there was nothing to the Portage Township investigation, but I knew I was just kidding myself. If the allegations were baseless, he wouldn't have wasted his trump card. Rather, he simply spread his cards on the table. It was my move.

I hit my intercom and asked Margaret for the phone number of the Portage Township Police Department. She brought in an index card, the number written neatly on the top line, and set it on my desk. I thanked her without looking up, attempting to avert the steely eyes that I knew were boring into the top of my head. She bent over and snatched the foil candy wrapper off the carpet. “What was that all about?” she finally asked, her fist clenched tight around the foil.

I was forced to raise my head. “No big deal.”

“What's that mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. I didn't offer up any additional information. She puckered up her lips and raised her brows. Trying to lie to Margaret was like trying to lie to my mother. She knew a shit storm had just rolled through my office. As she grabbed the doorknob, she turned, pointed to the lobe of her left ear with an index finger and said, “You know, when you lie, your ears turn the color of tomatoes.” She pointed the finger at me like it was a revolver and left without further comment.

*    *    *

The chief of police in Portage Township was Jerry “Amana” Adameyer, a profane former Akron city cop who was never without a cheek full of chewing tobacco and rarely without a caustic remark, to which four former Mrs. Jerry Adameyers could attest. He had been nicknamed Amana by his fellow cops, who said he looked like a refrigerator with arms. While he had a room full of trophies and medals for power lifting, he was better known for his vociferous dislike of lawyers, newspaper reporters, child molesters, and blacks. His days on the Akron force became numbered when women and minorities began to fill the fraternity of white males. The times changed and he didn't, or, more likely, simply refused. He longed for the old days when a little street justice could be dispensed to settle problems, and he didn't have to check over his shoulder every time he wanted to utter the words nigger or cunt.

Racism and sexism were two of Adameyer's more endearing qualities. He had a reputation for extracting “elevator confessions,” which were obtained by putting a handcuffed suspect into the old
freight elevator in the police station, stopping it between floors, and beating a confession out of a suspect. I always assumed there would come a day when I would end up defending Adameyer on a civil rights violation for his cowboy ways, but it never happened. Despite these reprehensible qualities, he also had a reputation as a solid investigator and his investigative files were always neat, complete, and without holes. But he had a cops-versus-the-world mentality, and there were times when I had to remind him that we were on the same team.

He was a sergeant in the homicide squad when it was announced that the first female captain on the Akron police force had been assigned to the detective bureau. The next day he retired after thirty-two years, seven months and four days of service. He worked as a private investigator for eighteen months before he was named chief of the small Portage Township Police Department.

I called him from my office and asked if he knew if one of his officers was conducting a molestation investigation. I should have known better than to ask Jerry Adameyer such a question, and he rightfully skewered me for it.

“You think I don't know what the hell's going on in my own damned department?”

“It's just a question, chief.”

“There's me, two sergeants, and eight patrol officers down here. I know every time one of 'em takes a shit. Of course I know about it. What of it?”

“I need to talk to the investigating officer,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I'm the county prosecutor and I want to know what the hell's going on, that's why. I'll be there in about a half hour.” I hung up without giving him a chance to ask me more questions. As I walked past Margaret I said, “I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Um-humm,” she responded, not looking up.

As I walked to my car I replayed the conversation with Jack Vukovich in my head. He had to be lying, I thought. There was no way Vukovich could have been on Chestnut Ridge that morning. If he had actually seen what he had claimed to have seen, why in God's name did he plead guilty? It made no sense. I dismissed the
polygraph results. There were polygraph operators out there with morals only slightly higher than prostitutes, and they operated in the same manner. If you had the money, they would tell you anything you wanted to hear. Unfortunately, if he released the documents to the media they would be taken as gospel, and it would blow my campaign out of the water. It was, however, perplexing that he had such details on Petey's killing, and I suspected the ultimate source of the information was a penitent Deak Coultas.

During the drive to Portage Township, Shelly blew up my cell phone. As soon as one call went to voice mail, she would hang up and hit redial. I turned off my phone ten minutes before I got to the police station, having lost track at eighteen the number of times she had called. Somewhere along Interstate 77 between Cleveland and Akron, she was speeding and cussing into her cell phone. My brain was racing with memories of Petey Sanchez dropping in the weeds. I didn't have the energy or the focus to talk to her.

The Portage Township Police Department was headquartered in an historic, red-brick Gothic Revival house with two pointed-arch windows at the corner of Tallmadge Road and Church Street. A bronze plaque adhered to the brick near the front door noted its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places as it was a stop on the Underground Railroad and once the home of abolitionists Reverend Josiah and Annebelle Clelland. Jerry Adameyer was working in the former home of Akron's most noted abolitionists. I suppressed a smile as I walked through the door.

The front of the building had been sectioned off so that visitors stood in a five-foot by eight-foot rectangle surrounded by bulletproof glass, observation cameras, and a microphone built into a pane that separated the lobby from the receptionist, a humorless-looking woman who was straining the seams of her gray uniform slacks. “Can I help you?” she asked, her voice tinny through the speakers.

The chief stood behind the receptionist. It had been several years since I had seen Adameyer, but he had not changed much. He still carried a thick paunch that looked like it could stop a bullet and wore the same half-inch-long gray crew cut that he had sported since his army days. He was holding a Styrofoam coffee cup into
which he was spitting tobacco juice created by the bulbous wad he carried in his cheek. Years of chewing had stretched his jowls and stained brown a tiny crease that ran from one corner of his mouth down around his jawbone. In his familiar baritone, he said, “Let him in.”

She tripped the electronic lock and I entered. Adameyer shook my hand, then pointed toward his office with the index finger that was wrapped around his spit cup. Seated at the chief's conference table was one of the most perfectly sculpted human beings I had ever seen. Officer Clarence Davidson appeared to be about six-foot-four, with broad, square shoulders that tapered down to a narrow waist, and biceps that stretched taut the white material of his uniform shirt. He had a square jaw, light brown skin, and looked as though he had just stepped out of a Marine Corps recruiting poster. I had not expected to find a black man in Adameyer's department and I was afraid my face may have revealed the surprise.

Adameyer did the introductions, identifying me as “Mr. Van Buren, our esteemed prosecuting attorney.”

“Mr. Van Buren is interested in your investigation of Jack Vukovich,” Adameyer said.

Davidson nodded and one eyebrow crinkled like a caterpillar in mid-stride. “How did you find out about the investigation?” he asked.

“Well, let's just say it's not my first rodeo with Mr. Vukovich,” I said. “He saw fit to pay me a visit this afternoon.”

“Let me guess,” Adameyer interjected. “It's all just a goddamned misunderstanding?”

I grinned and nodded. “Yeah, pretty much.” I turned back to Davidson. “What can you tell me?”

Davidson opened a manila folder that had been pressed beneath his long, slender fingers. He handed me a photocopy of the initial police report, the transcribed notes of his subsequent interviews, background information on Vukovich from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections and the Ohio Parole Authority, and an envelope of photographs. Like several of the smaller departments in my jurisdiction, Portage Township had no full-time detectives. The
officers who took the initial report were responsible for conducting the investigations. This method produced myriad results, most of them extremely bad. At first glance, however, Davidson's report looked especially thorough, and I assumed it was at least partially due to Adameyer's tutelage.

Davidson began, “The victim is Oscar Francis Gentry—male, white, fifteen. He has Down syndrome, an extreme case, and some physical disabilities. I was alerted to the possible sexual assault by a social worker at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. A therapist who regularly visits the boy to give him physical therapy noticed he had bled through his pants in the rectal area and called the emergency squad. An examination revealed gross tears of the rectum.” He pointed to the envelope in my packet of information. “The social worker took those photographs at the emergency room.”

My gut roiled as I flipped through the photographs of the boy's torn rectum, recalling a day long past when Deak Coultas said he never wanted his uncle to hurt another kid. “Parents?” I asked.

“Single mom—Delores Gentry.”

“How'd you get on to Vukovich?”

“According to the mother, Mr. Vukovich showed up at the door one day claiming to be from a church-related group that provides respite care to parents with mentally retarded or developmentally disabled children.”

“Did she ask for any identification?” I asked.

“What the fuck do you think?” Adameyer interjected. “Of course not. She's a dipshit.”

“No,” Davidson said, ignoring his superior's outburst. “She said he was dressed neatly and had a clipboard. He conducted an interview with the mother and returned a few days later and said she qualified for the services. She said Vukovich began showing up at the house two or three times a week for up to six hours at a time while she went out. This occurred over a three-month period.”

“And she never asked any questions?” Davidson shook his head. “What about the blood in his pants?”

Davidson flipped through the report until he found a passage. He read: “I asked Mrs. Gentry if she had seen the blood in her son's pants prior to him being taken to the emergency room. She
responded, ‘Oh, yeah, there's been blood in his diaper for a month or so. Oscar has a lot of health issues and I didn't think it was a big deal.'”

I had been a prosecutor for more than twenty years and privy to some astoundingly stupid remarks, but those words stunned me. “How does a mom think blood in her fifteen-year-old's diaper is no big deal?”

“Apparently, Mr. Vukovich began making social calls on Mrs. Gentry. He started coming over to the house from time to time, bringing donuts and coffee, or hamburgers or groceries. Supposedly he took Mrs. Gentry shopping for clothes. She believes Mr. Vukovich is in love with her and in no way believes he is capable of such an assault.”