Justice is Served?

September 16, 2014:

Sometimes I wonder if my whole life is a caricature. Here I am, a cop in Boston, Irish name, Irish descent, sitting in an Irish bar, drinking beer with other Irish cops. Oh well, I guess that stereotypes have to come from somewhere.

I had just closed the books on the Mel Trainor and Shea Gibson murder cases, after they'd been open for decades.

"Hey, Danny boy, I hear you finally closed the books!" That was the unbelievably named Seamus O'Reilly, a detective captain, who'd been walking this green earth for less time than the cold case had been open. "So, what finally happened?"

Seamus was that other Irish stereotype, an alkie, who still had to hang out with us, but was drinking his O'Douls, a supposedly non-alcoholic beer. He tried to act like one of the boys, but sometimes he could get too serious; I had to be careful in what I told him.

"Yup, Seamus, I put 'er to bed, case is closed."

"Well, what happened? I never did get the case."

"Perp is dead, Seamus, pushing up daisies out in some hollow in Kentucky."

"Ahhh, well I guess that the Lord finally meted out justice to him."

"Yeah, He sure did."

Truth be told, which I would never tell Seamus, or anyone else, is that the perp was still alive. Oh, he wasn't enjoying life all that much, not in the shape he was in, but he was still alive, and if justice was served, it was to Mel Trainor and Shea Gibson.

oo0oo

January 12, 1983:

The Trainor murder had really rocked Boston. Oh, it wasn't that killings were that uncommon, not in the black areas, and not in Southie, but Mel Trainor lived in Beacon Hill, the most sophisticated and expensive and old money area in a town full of old money. It was Thanksgiving Day of 1982, and Trainor had just sat down to dinner, holding court over his extended family, despite being only 42 himself, when, just as he was bending over to carve the turkey, the dinner table got covered with blood and brains from his exploded head. His lovely, hysterical wife, from old money herself, was so frantic that she never realized, not until forensics got there, that there was a piece of her husband's skull down her now-bloody cleavage.

Mel Trainor had been an investment banker. Not only had he inherited the bank, but he was just naturally gifted at picking stocks. He always made sure that there was no way to tie his stock picks to the bank itself, but I knew that the Feds were quietly checking up on him, over insider trading. Still, they never found anything they could use, at least not before his career came to a very abrupt end.

I had just made detective, as a sergeant, when Trainor was killed, and while I wasn't the lead in the case, I did most of the work. Yet another Irish cop, detective captain Matt Finnigan, would get all of the glory for solving this case, but, how 'bout that, it never got solved.

I got put on the case because I had a degree in accounting. As shitty as the economy was when I graduated in 1978 - thank you, Jimmy Carter! - there just were no jobs in accounting, not for an Irish boy from Southie, not in Boston. Fortunately, I had an uncle and two cousins on the police force, and they wrangled 'legacy' treatment for my application, even though I still had to pass all of the tests to become a cop.

I put over a hundred hours into pouring over Trainor's books, and his secret notes, and his hidden diaries, because everyone assumed that it was his financial dealings that turned him as dead as the Thanksgiving turkey. The shot that killed him didn't come from a street punk; it was a professional hit by a top sniper, one shot, through a closed window, using a Steyr SSG 69 using a Winchester .308 cartridge, from a vantage point in a tree across the street. The assassin, and that's the right word for him, took the shot, dropped to the ground quietly, and was out of there in less than thirty seconds, the mark of a real professional. He didn't peel rubber, but seemed to walk calmly to a car he had parked down the street, got in, and left. It just had to be over Trainor's financial dealings.

It was a few weeks later, going through yet another one of his 'confidential' papers, that I encountered a brief note, not written in the book itself, but on a scrap of paper, which said "Shea, Tuesday".

That was it. "Shea" was a fairly common last name in the Boston area, so we started looking; did Trainor have any business dealings, or other dealings, with anyone named Shea. There was a low level grunt at his bank, a bookkeeper, and I investigated him quietly, but thoroughly. He didn't seem to have more money than his position justified, I could find no concealed accounts, and a quiet search of his home didn't turn up any hidden stash of cash or drugs or anything else interesting. As nearly as I could tell, he had no real interaction with his top boss other than perhaps an 'Hello' in passing; whether Trainor knew an underling as insignificant as Shea I never found out.

The case went cold; there just weren't any leads.

oo0oo

March 22, 1985:

It was three years later that Shea Gibson turned up dead. She wasn't my case, and really, I didn't even hear about her death for weeks, not until I was at the bar, having a cold one, on St Patrick's Day. St Patty's Day is always big in the Irish community, but the Police Department doesn't close for holidays, and I had to work. I got to the bar around 7:30, after work, and got to chatting with yet another Irish cop, name of O'Toole, when he mentioned his case; even in the bars, cops talk shop.

Gibson was shot, right through the heart, by a Model 1911 Colt .45 automatic. Naturally, her husband was the first suspect looked at, but they had nothing, no murder weapon, and no clues. The only thing they had was a neighbor who said that Gibson had been cheating on her husband, though she didn't know with whom.

We had been chatting for a while before O'Toole mentioned that Gibson's first name was Shea.

Naturally, that caught my attention; it had never occurred to me that Shea might have been a first name, a woman's first name. Still, the weapon that killed her was in no way similar to the top-of-the-line sniper rifle used in my now cold case.

It wasn't my case, but I read the files on the Gibson murder, looking to see if there was any connection to Trainor. She didn't work at Trainor's bank, nor did her husband. He seemed like a regular Joe, Vietnam vet, worked as an electrician for a contractor. He provided a decent income for her, though nothing spectacular. She was a waitress, at a higher end Italian restaurant, and that was the closest thing I could find to a connection: the restaurant was only two blocks from Trainor's office.

Still, that didn't prove that they knew each other.

So, I had to do some digging. I talked to the restaurant manager, trying to find out if Trainor had been a customer there, but, as luck would have it, the manager hadn't started there until after Trainor had died. The wait staff, the cooks, everyone, proved to be just as transient as restaurant workers everywhere are.

So, my next stop was his old bank. I once again questioned his friends, trying to find out if he had frequented that joint. Thing is, you could tell that they were reluctant, being able to tell right away that I was digging to see if their old boss had been having an affair. They didn't want anything to do with besmirching his name, saying that there was no reason to hurt Alison's, his widow's, feelings by exposing a possible affair by a dead man.

It took tracking down Trainor's old Administrative Assistant, a woman in her sixties who had retired after her boss was killed, to make any headway. Yes, she said, Trainor did frequent that restaurant, and yes, she thought that he might have had a lady friend on the side, but no, she'd never heard of Shea Gibson, or anyone else named Shea.

oo0oo

August 12, 2014

It was amazing, sitting on that ramshackle front porch, talking to my suspect. It's taken me 39 years to track down his ass, 39 years before he would be brought to justice. His place? It looked to be 150 years old, a cabin in what looked like a bigger clearing, then overgrown, with a smaller clearing cut into it. There were three junk trucks sitting around, one of which might run - it had a current license plate on it - and two more that had obviously been scavenged for parts. There was a shed full of cut firewood, and an old 2500 gallon chemical tank being used as a water cistern; it collected rainwater running off the roof. There was a set of solar panels, just three of them, plus an old windmill, not turning in the breezeless afternoon. Guy had a fierce looking German Shepard running around, but he was just a friendly-to-everyone galumph dog.

Old Beau Gibson - I'd thought that it was spelled Bo, but was corrected - was sitting in a bentwood rocker, one that had seen better days, with half the finish gone, and a layer of grime in the places not worn clean by hands and arm movement. He had a small table there, with an over-full ashtray, and there was a garbage can nearby, with old beer and Diet Mountain Dew cans in it.

"Well, boy, what is it you want to talk about?"

oo0oo

October 25, 1985:

It was seven months later that the Gibson case was finally dropped. Her husband was still the prime suspect, but there was absolutely zero evidence that he was the one who had killed her. He had no weapons in his home, nothing at all, certainly not a high-tech sniper rifle or a top-of-the-line Colt .45.

It was hard to keep digging, in that it wasn't my case, and if the Trainor one was, it was ice cold, and there were other, fresh cases that needed to be worked. It took me a long time, but I finally found out: Bo, short for Beauregard, Gibson was a country boy, grew up in DeGarde, Louisiana, an avid hunter in the Bayou country, before he got drafted.

It took a trip to Ft Benning, Georgia, to dig into the records. Remember, this was the 1980s, and there were no computerized records. It took some digging, plus some fast talking, since I didn't have a warrant, to get into Gibson's Army records. Turned out that he was a crack shot, and wanted to go to sniper school, but he didn't really have the temperament for it; he just wasn't patient enough. The only other thing in his record was his transfer to the 1st Air Cavalry, and was going to Vietnam.

I needed to get to Washington, to the Department of the Army, to get the rest of Gibson's records; Benning only had his stuff from basic and infantry training.

That took some time, because I had to get back to Boston. I'd be allowed to check on this stuff on my next vacation, and I was even able to get a warrant this time; fast talking like I had done at Benning wouldn't work in the Pentagon.

Thing is, there wasn't much in them that was of any use. He did two tours in Vietnam, but was discharged early, though still honorably, when it was discovered that he'd developed diabetes.

So, what did I have? Only that he was a good shot, maybe good enough to have made the one that killed Trainor, and that he was certainly familiar with weapons, but that was all circumstantial. Trainor apparently frequented the Italian restaurant where Shea Gibson worked, which meant that he probably saw her, but that was it; I had no evidence that he was having an affair with her, and that would have been the only reason that Bo Gibson would have had to shoot Trainor. And if that was the reason, why did he wait three more years to kill his wife?

The only thing left was to talk to Gibson. The police had grilled him several times before, but got nothing. Still, they had only questioned him about the killing of his wife; no one had ever brought up the murder of Mel Trainor.

oo0oo

August 12, 2014

"Well, Mr Gibson," I began, but he stopped me quick.

"It's just Beau, detective, I ain't puttin' on no airs."

"OK, Beau, that's fine. Do you remember the murder of Mel Trainor, back on Thanksgiving Day of 1982?"

"Yup, sure do. It was in all the papers, and seemed like the TV stations never shut up 'bout that killing."

"He was killed by a real sharpshooter, Beau, with a top-notch sniper's rifle. You know anything about that?"

"Well, I sure knows my weapons, and I was a fair shot, back in the day. Still am, I guess, 'cause I've got plenty of deer meat, along with some pheasant an' some squirrel. Ain't bought no meat from the store in years."

That made me wonder about the chickens; there were five or six of them running free around the yard, and an old henhouse off to the side, far enough I guess from the house where you wouldn't smell it. I guessed that when their egg-laying days were over, it was into the pot they went!

"I tried to track down the killer for years, Beau, we all thought that it had to be some hired gun by one of his financial enemies.

"Then I found a note, which tied him in with your late wife. Can you explain that for me?"

Gibson rocked a little in his chair. He hadn't been fooled; he knew what I was there for.

"I'm gonna tell you a story, detective, not that this story bears any resem'blance to real life."

"Go on," I said.

"I heard once about this guy, came back from 'Nam, where he'd caught diabetes." I ignored the fact that you can't 'catch' diabetes, and let him ramble on. "Seems like diabetes messes with your blood flow.

"Anyways, he meets this girl, really cute girl, when he gets back to the states. They have a good time, and kind of cotton to one another, and next thing you know, they's married.

"Well, a lot of years pass, an' that blood flow thing kind of gets to the feller. An' that means that, well, he has some troubles doin' for his wife the way a man should. Anyways, his wife is still young, an' you know how girls are, she's missin' what her husband cain't do anymore."

Gibson hesitated at that point, as if trying to screw himself up to say more.

"Well, what can a man do, if he can't do what he need to? So, turns out that his wife, she met this banker, rich fella, who was good lookin' an' all, an' one thing led to another. The husband knew about it, 'course, an' figured well, Hell, not much he can say about it, an' he just let it go.

"That was up until the rich feller decided to rub his nose in it. It's one thing to let a wife get what she needs on the side if'n she has to, but somethin' else entirely when the rich bastard comes over an' talks shit."

oo0oo

Hallowe'en, 1985:

Unfortunately, Bo Gibson had disappeared. His house, which he had rented, not owned, now had another family living in it. The landlord didn't know anything, just that he'd given his month's notice of moving out, and left the place neat enough that he got his security deposit back. No, the landlord didn't know where he'd moved to.

So, I checked with his employer, or at least his former employer. He'd quit, a while back, and no, they didn't know where he had gone. The only thing of interest that I had gotten was that his diabetes had hit him hard, and he was having some trouble with his hands and feet. Wiring houses was hard, physical work, and pulling wire was tough on him.

Fortunately, his helpers did most of that work, but the more intricate work of wiring up receptacles and switches and light fixtures was hard on his hands; his production had been dropping, because he just couldn't work that fast anymore.

There were several Gibsons in the Boston phone directory, but none of them were him. I hit all of the electrical companies in the area, but he hadn't worked for any of them, nor could anyone even remember him applying. The one rumor I had was that he was doing side jobs as an electrical handyman, they guessed because that meant he wouldn't have a boss over him telling him that he had to get his production up. As far as I could tell, Gibson simply wasn't in the area anymore.

oo0oo

All that I had left was a guess that he'd gone back to DeGarde, so I called up the local police department.

"Hi, this is detective sergeant Danny O'Neal, in Boston. I was wondering if a Beauregard Gibson, who went to high school there in the 1960s, had moved back home?"

The sheriff had a mouth full of marbles, or maybe chewing tobacco, and it was hard to understand him. "Boston, huh? Hmm. Beauregard... Oh, must be talking 'bout Beau there," the man said. "Yeah, think he went to that Northside High School. Weren't nothing but dirt road back then. "Far as I know, ain't been back here no."

"Could you do some checking up for me, and see if they know where I can find him?"

"Yeah, my momma goes church with T-John; they was cousins. I'll do me some axin' around," the man agreed. "Let me get your number there; I'll call you back yeah."

It took a couple of days before Sheriff James Robert Thibodreux called me back.

"James, how are you doing? Thanks for calling me back."

"Hmm? Naw, naw, ain't no one calls me James. I'm Jim Bob yeah. Anyway, found Beau's cousin T-John. Said ain't no one heard nothing. Last anyone known, Beau up and married some girl and they living in Boston there."

"OK, thanks, Jim Bob. I guess that wherever he went, it wasn't back to Louisiana."

"Don't look like it no. Need you something else you call me, hear?" the man said and disconnected the call.

oo0oo

I was coming up on nothing but dead ends, when it hit me: I could just get up with the Treasury Department, and find out from where his payroll taxes were being paid.

That meant another warrant, but at least this could be handled with a telephone call and faxing a copy of the warrant to Washington.

But, after almost two weeks - damn the bureaucracy is slow! - I got back my answer: no payroll taxes at all had been paid on that Social Security number since he'd left his job in Boston! What the fuck?

Then I thought back to the rumors: he'd been side-jobbing it, probably been paid in cash, and living that way. That, or maybe he'd died, or beat feet to Canada. No way to know. It was 1987, and Gibson would have been 40 years old. Maybe he'd eventually show up in Social Security tax records again, but who the heck knew when that would be. Right now, this case was cold as ice, Bering Sea ice.

oo0oo

August 12, 2014:

"So, the husband felt disrespected, I can understand that. What did he do then, Beau?"

"Well, he mighta tracked the rich feller down, you know, and even waited for the right opportunity. Wouldn't do to just kick his ass, 'cause a rich guy like that'd just get him throwed in jail."

With that, Gibson stopped talking. So far, he hadn't directly admitted killing Trainor, but I had all the confirmation I needed.

"So, what about this guy, and his wife?"

Gibson rocked back, and I could see that this was painful for him. "Well, anyways, see this husband had done as much as he could to let the stuff go, but the wife, well, she was still needful, y'know? An' when she found another stud to take care of her, the husband purt much ignored it, long as she didn't bring shit home with her. She was still a purt good wife an' all, takin' care of her husband and the home.

"But, things couldn't just keep goin' like that, y'know?"

oo0oo

March 31, 1999:

Cases come and cases go, and I had earned a rep as a good man in solving crimes, but there was the Trainor and Gibson murders, still open but not worked for a decade. The economy was booming, and the big year 2000 was going to open on the New Year. With the lower unemployment rate, and the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, a whole lot of chronically unemployed people were getting jobs, and the crime rate in Boston had really come down. Me? I was looking at the big four-oh, turning 40 in 2000, and it looked like I'd finally make detective lieutenant; that was a long time coming.