“Puddentane. Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same. Your story isn’t here, so leave these people alone, okay? They had nothing to do with this.”
Knowing he might as well have been speaking in Russian. Already the neighbors were back on their lawns, eager to view the next episode of Barnum Court’s continuing drama.
Alec backed down the driveway and headed west, also knowing that the cameraman would be videoing his license plate, and soon they would know who he was, and who he was working for. Not big news, but a cherry to put on top of the sundae they would serve the viewers who tuned in for the eleven o’clock news. He thought briefly of what was now going on in that house—the stunned and terrified mother trying to comfort two stunned and terrified girls still wearing their game-day facepaint.
“Did he do it?” he’d asked Howie when Howie called and gave him a quick shorthand version of the situation. It didn’t matter, the work was the work, but he always liked to know. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Howie had replied, “but I know what your next move is, as soon as you get Sarah and Gracie home.”
As he saw the first sign pointing him toward the turnpike, Alec called the Cap City Sheraton and asked for the concierge, with whom he had done business in the past.
Hell, he’d done business with most of them.
2
Ralph and Bill Samuels sat in Ralph’s office with their ties yanked down and their collars loosened. The TV lights outside had gone off ten minutes before. All four buttons on Ralph’s desk phone were lit up, but Sandy McGill was handling the incoming, and would until Gerry Malden arrived at eleven. For the time being, her job was simple, if repetitive: The Flint City Police Department has no comment at this time. The investigation is ongoing.
Meanwhile, Ralph had been working his own phone. Now he put it back in his coat pocket.
“Yune Sablo and his wife went upstate to see his in-laws. He says he put it off twice already, and this time he had no choice, unless he wanted to spend a week on the couch. Which, he says, is very uncomfortable. He’ll be back tomorrow, and of course he’ll be at the arraignment.”
“We’ll send someone else to the Sheraton, then,” Samuels said. “Too bad Jack Hoskins is on vacation.”
“No, it isn’t,” Ralph said, and that made Samuels laugh.
“Okay, you got me there. Our Jackie-boy might not be the worst detective in the state, but I admit he’s right up there. You know every detective on the Cap City force. Start calling until you get a live one.”
Ralph shook his head. “It should be Sablo. He knows the case, and he’s our liaison with the State Police. This is no time to risk pissing them off, considering the way things went tonight. Which was not quite as we expected.”
This was the understatement of the year, if not the century. Terry’s complete surprise and seeming lack of guilt had shaken Ralph even more than the impossible alibi. Was it possible that the monster inside him had not only killed the boy, but erased all memory of what he had done? And then . . . what? Filled in the blank with a detailed false history of a teachers’ conference in Cap City?
“If you don’t send someone ASAP, that guy Gold uses—”
“Alec Pelley.”
“Yeah, him. He’ll beat us to the hotel’s security footage. If they still have it, that is.”
“They will. They keep everything for thirty days.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“Yes. But Pelley doesn’t have a warrant.”
“Come on. Do you think he’ll need one?”
In truth, Ralph did not. Alec Pelley had been a detective with the SP for over twenty years. He would have made a great many contacts during that time, and working for a successful criminal lawyer like Howard Gold, he would be sure to keep them current.
“Your idea to arrest him in public is now looking like a bad call,” Samuels said.
Ralph gave him a hard look. “It was one you went along with.”
“Not very enthusiastically,” Samuels said. “Let’s have the truth, since everyone else has gone home and it’s just us girls. With you it was close to home.”
“Damn straight,” Ralph said. “It still is. And since it’s just us girls, let me remind you that you did a little more than just go along. You’ve got an election coming up in the fall, and a dramatic high-profile arrest wouldn’t exactly hurt your chances.”
“That never entered my mind,” Samuels said.
“Fine. It never entered your mind, you just went with the flow, but if you think arresting him at the ballpark was just about my son, you need to take another look at those crime scene pictures, and think about Felicity Ackerman’s autopsy addendum. Guys like this never stop at one.”
Color began to mount in Samuels’s cheeks. “You think I haven’t? Christ, Ralph, I was the one who called him a fucking cannibal, on the record.”
Ralph slid a palm up his cheek. It rasped. “Arguing over who said what and who did what is pointless. The thing to remember is it doesn’t matter who gets to the security footage first. If it’s Pelley, he can’t just put it under his arm and carry it away, can he? Nor can he erase it.”
“That’s true,” Samuels said. “And it’s not apt to be conclusive, in any case. We may see a man in some of the footage who looks like Maitland—”
“Right. But proving it’s him, based on a few glimpses, would be a different kettle of fish. Especially when stacked up against our eyewits and the fingerprints.” Ralph stood and opened the door. “Maybe the footage isn’t the most important thing. I need to make a phone call. Should have made it already.”
Samuels followed him into the reception area. Sandy McGill was on the telephone. Ralph approached her and made a throat-cutting gesture. She hung up and looked at him expectantly.
“Everett Roundhill,” he said. “Chairman of the high school English department. Track him down and get him on the phone.”
“Tracking him down won’t be a problem, since I’ve already got his number,” Sandy said. “He’s called twice already, asking to speak to the lead investigator, and I basically told him to get in line.” She picked up a sheaf of WHILE YOU WERE OUT notes and waved them at him. “I was going to put these on your desk for tomorrow. I know it’s Sunday, but I’ve been telling people I’m pretty sure you’ll be in.”
Speaking very slowly, and looking at the floor instead of at the man beside him, Bill Samuels said, “Roundhill called. Twice. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all.”
3
Ralph arrived home at quarter to eleven on that Saturday night. He hit the garage door opener, drove inside, then hit it again. The door rattled obediently back down on its tracks, at least one thing in the world that remained sane and normal. Push Button A and, assuming Battery Compartment B is loaded with relatively fresh Duracells, Garage Door C opens and closes.
He turned off the engine and just sat there in the dark, tapping the steering wheel with his wedding ring, remembering a rhyme from his raucous teenage years: Shave and a haircut . . . you bet! Sung by the whorehouse . . . quartet!
The door opened and Jeanette came out, wrapped in her housecoat. In the spill of light from the kitchen, he saw that she was wearing the bunny slippers he’d given her as a joke present on her last birthday. The real present had been a trip to Key West, just the two of them, and they’d had a great time, but now it was just a blurry remnant in his mind, the way all vacations were later on: things with no more substance than the aftertaste of candy floss. The joke slippers were the things that had lasted, pink slippers from the Dollar Store with their ridiculous little eyes and their comical floppy ears. Seeing her in them made his eyes sting. He felt as if he had aged twenty years since stepping into that clearing at Figgis Park and viewing the bloody ruin that had been a little boy who probably idolized Batman and Superman.
He got out and hugged his wife hard, pressing his beard-stubbly cheek to her smooth one, saying nothing at first, concentrating on holding back the tears that wanted to come.