Night Work Page 17

  It was his father I was thinking about as I drove through town. The more I thought, the more it all came back to me … All the times I encountered him in his house and then drove away thinking to myself, that man is a monster. He was obviously abusing his wife. He was obviously abusing his son. He was obviously an absolute, raging lunatic, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

  So now … Hell, I’d just run into Sandra Barron’s husband the night before, an abusive husband himself, and he wanted to take my head off my body. Maybe that’s how it works. If you abuse people when they’re alive, maybe when they’re taken from you, you react in a way that’s just as backwards and fucked up. All that uncontrolled rage, it has to get directed somewhere.

  That was the idea, anyway. That’s why Hubert Gayle was on my A-list and I was driving all the way out here to see him.

  I made the turn and headed up Rock City Road. There were twenty or thirty people gathered on the village green today, most of them wearing tie-dyes, some of them beating on drums or dancing on top of the stone benches. There’s an old cemetery as you go up the mountain, then the houses begin—first a few little bungalows and then, as you go higher up the road, you start to see the money. All the people from New York with their second homes up here, next to the local artists and musicians. If you keep going far enough on this road, you’ll eventually come to a Buddhist monastery. So bottom line, you’re an artist, you seek enlightenment, or you just have a boatload of money. That’s Woodstock.

  I had to look hard for the house. It had been over two years since my last trip, and things didn’t look quite the same. There were new mailboxes, new houses going up on the last available lots. When I was just about certain I had missed it, I finally found the driveway. I made the turn and cut in between the two maple trees. Then the whole world opened up and I was in the meadow, looking at the big farmhouse sitting up there on top of the hill.

  Such a beautiful place, with Overlook Mountain looming just behind it, and yet the sick feeling came back to me, the same feeling I’d have every time I came out here.

  I drove up the long driveway and parked the car near the house. It looked like the original barn had been turned into a four-car garage, but the doors were closed and I didn’t see any other cars around. I had to wonder if anybody was even home.

  As I headed up the front steps, I saw Mrs. Gayle standing there, looking down at me. Usually that wouldn’t have startled the hell out of me, but I think I had reason to be a little jumpy that week.

  “Mrs. Gayle,” I said, catching my breath. “You surprised me.”

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Do you remember me? My name’s Joe Trumbull.”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “I was Brian’s probation officer,” I said. “Remember?”

  “Oh, of course. I apologize. So many things have happened since then.”

  “I understand,” I said, climbing the steps. There was a pot of flowers on either side of the first step, then another pair of pots on the next. Herbs this time, or something green, anyway. When I got to the porch, I saw at least another dozen pots with more flowers and climbing vines and one big palm tree.

  “You have some lovely plants here,” I said.

  “Thank you. Can I get you something? A drink, maybe?”

  “No, thanks. I’m okay. Actually, I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Please sit down.” She took one of the wicker chairs and extended her hand to another. She looked a little younger than I remembered. Maybe a well-preserved fifty. Her hair was tied up with a scarf, as if she’d just been gardening.

  “Thank you,” I said. I sat down. This one wasn’t going to be easy. Brian was one battle I felt like I had lost completely.

  Before I could open my mouth again, a cat came from nowhere, the way only a cat can, and jumped up on Mrs. Gayle’s chair. It was a Persian, and before it settled down in her lap it gave me a look as if to say I should definitely mind my manners.

  “I see you have a cat now.” I didn’t mean to sound so surprised, but at the far reaches of my memory I pulled out something about Mr. Gayle hating animals, just one more on his long list of charms.

  “His name is Karma.”

  “Mrs. Gayle, I’ll get right to the point.”

  “Call me Agnes.”

  “Agnes,” I said. “Okay, then. The reason I’m here is, well, I was hoping I could speak to your husband.”

  She looked down at the cat and ran her hand slowly down its back. “I’m afraid Mr. Gayle left us,” she said.

  I was a little slow. I admit it. Lack of sleep, the distractions, whatever the reason. It took me a moment just to figure out who “us” was. Her and the cat, I finally decided. Once I solved that one, I got to the fact that Mr. Gayle had “left” them. Then everything else came to me in a rush. After what happened to his son, Hubert Gayle flips out and takes it out on me by killing my fiancée. He gets scared by what he’s done, so he tries to go back to a normal life, holds on to that as long as he can, but he can’t do it, so finally he has to leave his wife and his home and he has to go live by himself, the one last thing in his life, the simple idea of finding me and making me pay again and again until everyone I know is dead.

  In one second, I built up that whole scenario.

  “When you say that Mr. Gayle left you …” I finally said.

  “He died.”

  “I see,” I said, the whole thing falling apart in my head. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Trumbull, but it’s all okay now. We’re holding our own out here.”

  She looked down at her cat again.

  “It’s just you and your cat,” I said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “It’s lonely sometimes. But yes, we’re doing fine.”

  There was something about her voice, like she was talking to me from far away. I guess it was understandable after what she had lived through. It wasn’t a thought I’d have about most widows, but there was no doubt in my mind she was better off now that her husband was gone, even if that meant she had to live in a big house with just her cat to keep her company.

  “I know this won’t help any,” I said, “but for what it’s worth, I feel terrible about what happened. I think about Brian a lot.”

  It wasn’t a lie. It was only a few months that I had spent with him, but I couldn’t count the number of times I’d wondered since then if I could have done anything different to reach him.

  “Mr. Trumbull,” she said. “Can I call you Joe?”

  “Of course.”

  “You can’t blame yourself. All the time I’ve spent thinking about it, that’s the one thing I’ve realized. If you blame yourself, it consumes you. I think that’s what happened to Hubert, in fact.”

  “I know what you’re saying, but—”

  “But nothing. He’s gone. Our Brian is gone. Maybe someday we’ll see him again.”

  Hopeful words, but she sounded so weak saying them. I reached out and touched her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I came all the way out here and made you go through this again.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you came. Maybe it’s just what you needed. You look like you’ve been having a tough day.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “But you’re right. Thank you.”

  I sat there with her for a few more minutes, neither of us saying anything. Eventually, I got up to leave. I thanked her again. Then I got in my car and drove away. Once again, I didn’t find what I was looking for, but it hadn’t felt like a total waste.

  As I drove back to Kingston, I felt totally drained. I felt like I could actually sleep for a few hours, and the last thing I wanted to do right then was to go visit more old clients. I headed straight for Broadway.

  My cell phone rang. It was Detective Shea. I told him I was on my way back home. He said he’d meet me at the gym.

  Little late to help me today,
I thought, but whatever.

  They were both waiting for me when I got there. They were sitting in an official-looking car, parked illegally, right in front of the gym. The engine was running. When I pulled up, they both got out in perfect synchronization.

  I didn’t get one word out before Rhinehart told me it was time for us to have another conversation. I told him I didn’t like our last conversation very much. I told him I was tired and thirsty.

  That’s when he read me my rights and put me in the back of his car.

  THIRTEEN

  I sat in the interview room a lot longer this time. I knew the setup. It was standard procedure, make your man stew inside his own skin for so long he’s desperate to talk to somebody. I figured knowing the trick would help rob it of its power, but it was still hard as hell to sit there and wait.

  When they had read me my rights and told me I was now officially a suspect in the murder of Marlene Frost and Sandra Barron, I had called Jay Starr, the first lawyer I could reach. He said he was tied up at the moment but would get down to the station as soon as he could. It was now my job to keep my mouth shut until he got there.

  The door finally opened. The two men came in, Rhinehart leading the way, as usual. They sat down on the opposite side of the table, a few feet apart this time, so that neither was directly in front of me. Another standard trick to make me slightly uncomfortable, having to shift my focus back and forth between them.

  They sat there and looked at me for a while. I forced myself to be silent.

  “So,” Rhinehart finally said.

  Not a word, Joe.

  “If you’re willing to answer a few questions,” he said, “I think we can get to the bottom of this.”

  “I’m waiting for my lawyer.”

  “As soon as he gets here, we lose our opportunity to resolve this tonight.”

  I looked at my fingernails as the seconds ticked away.

  “What I was hoping to do was to go back to the beginning,” he said. “I think we got off the track pretty early in the game here.”

  Rhinehart took out another one of his damned manila folders. It made me want to never use a folder again. I’d just carry my papers around in one big loose pile.

  One of the photographs came out. I took one look at it, saw Laurel’s face. I swept it off the table.

  “I told you never to show me that again,” I said.

  “He speaks.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “You see, this is what’s interesting to me. It doesn’t bother you when I show you the other photographs …”

  “Of course it bothers me,” I said, knowing full well that I shouldn’t be saying another word to them. I kept going anyway. “I can look at the others if I have to. But Laurel … God damn it…”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but I think that’s where we took our wrong turn.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My working premise all along was that if you were guilty of killing Marlene Frost and Sandra Barron … and that’s a big if, I know … a huge if … but if you were, the driving force would be some sort of mental and emotional breakdown brought on by the trauma of your fiancée’s violent death. That seemed like the only possible scenario. If you did it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “For the last two days, we’ve been focusing on the physical evidence surrounding the two recent murders. The red tie. The shoelaces.”

  “I’ve already been over this with your partner. We need to figure out how this person got my tie.”

  “Forget the tie, Joe. Forget the shoelaces. Let’s talk about something else.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. You need to shut the hell up, Joe. You need to shut the hell up right now. Where is that stupid lawyer, anyway?

  “First of all, can we talk about your juvenile record for a moment?”

  “No, we cannot.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because it’s sealed.”

  “When you became a probation officer, weren’t they curious about your background? I mean, I know you didn’t have to tell them anything …”

  “I told the director everything there was to know. He didn’t have a problem with it.”

  “Okay. I’ll accept that for now. If it was something serious, I’m sure you wouldn’t be wearing a PO badge right now. I’m just wondering if the nature of whatever trouble you got into as a juvenile would shed any light on what may or may not have developed later.”

  “Speak English,” I said. “You want to know what I got arrested for when I was a kid?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering, yes.”

  “When I was sixteen, I took my mother’s husband’s car and tried to drive it to California. He reported it as stolen.”

  “Your mother’s husband. You mean your stepfather.”

  “No, I mean my mother’s husband.”

  “Where was your natural father at this time?”

  “You got me. He took off when I was three years old.”

  Rhinehart looked at Shea. Shea took a breath and shook his head maybe one quarter inch to each side.

  “Once again, on paper …” Rhinehart said. “On paper, mind you, this might suggest some issues.”

  “Such as what?”

  “An absent father. Another man, whom you won’t accept as an authority figure.”

  “You lost me. I’m sorry.”

  Rhinehart bent over and picked up the photograph of Laurel from the floor. He put it back in the folder.

  “We talked to your mother,” he said. “She says you haven’t called her in a while.”

  “Why in God’s name would you talk to my mother?”

  “It’s all part of the picture, Joe. You don’t get along with her very well, do you …”

  “She made some bad choices in her life. I never did deal with it very well. Maybe I still don’t. That’s all I can say.”

  “That’s not much.”

  “Anything else is between her and me, and none of your business.”

  “You know who else I talked to today?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Harrington.”

  That one landed. He could see it in my eyes. “You talked to Laurel’s parents?”

  “Under the circumstances, we had no choice.”

  “You have no idea what you’ve done to them,” I said. “You just destroyed them.”

  Rhinehart put up his hands. “We had to, Joe.”

  “Her father …” I tried to picture the man, sitting in that chair by the window while Laurel’s mother talked on the phone. He was the one who had found her in the bedroom. He was the one who touched her cold skin. I had tried to keep in contact with both of them those first few months, but one day Mrs. Harrington had told me it was killing him a little bit more every time he heard my voice. I told her I understood. I hadn’t spoken to either one of them in over a year.

  “Both Mr. and Mrs. Harrington were quite upset to hear about these recent murders,” Rhinehart said. “Understandably.”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. Understandably, he says. A two-year living nightmare starting all over again, and this man says they’re understandably upset about it.

  “We talked about you, Joe. Again, it was something we had to do. Mr. Harrington had some things to get off his chest, I’ll say that much.”

  “Laurel’s father and I never did quite hit it off.”

  “One more person you didn’t get along with.”

  “Three people in the entire world,” I said. “In Laurel’s father’s case, he just didn’t want his daughter to marry a probation officer. He wanted her to go back to her old boyfriend, the big-shot stockbroker. That’s who he wanted as a son-in-law. End of story.”

  “He painted a different picture for me, Joe. He said he always thought you were a little unstable. His exact word. Unstable.”

  “Like I said, we never hit it off. I was in a no-win situation.”<
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  “He said you had quite a temper. He said he was even afraid for his daughter’s safety sometimes.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said. “Don’t you see what you’re doing here? You’re giving the man something to grab on to. After two years of not knowing who killed his daughter, some cop calls up, says, ‘Hey, we think it might have been the boyfriend. We’d like you to help us put together a case against him. Whaddya say?’”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “You could have told him it was Bigfoot. Or a man from outer space. He would have been all over it.”

  “I understand what you’re saying … But no, I don’t think so. There are just too many other things adding up here.”

  “Meaning what? What’s adding up?”

  He opened the folder one more time. Instead of pulling out the photo again, he pulled out several sheets of paper. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the original police report on the murder of your fiancée.”

  “Okay…”

  “Have you read it?”

  “I don’t believe I ever did, no. I didn’t need to. I know everything that’s in it.”

  “I glanced at it when I first got down here, but I admit, I never really read it carefully until today. You want to know the interesting part?”

  “I’m not sure any of it is ‘interesting,’ but go ahead.”

  “The interesting part is that she was killed somewhere between two thirty and three o’clock in the morning. Now, I know you had to answer this two years ago, and it’s all written down here … but just for the heck of it, tell me where you were when your fiancée was murdered.”

  “You can’t be serious.” I could feel the room tilting now. “You’re not seriously asking me that question.”

  “The only information I see here in the report is the fact that you were apparently out with your friends. Including Detective Borello. That’s the whole thing right there, Joe. There’s no direct statement about exactly when you came home, or exactly how much alcohol you may have consumed that night. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that whoever was writing this report wasn’t really motivated to fully pursue those questions.”