Ten days after my meeting with Katherine Davis, and only three days before Christmas, I got a text from Grace around 5:30 p.m., asking me what time I would be home. It was Saturday, I’d finished up some Christmas shopping, and I told her I’d be there in about an hour. I drove to her apartment around 6:30 p.m. When I walked into the apartment, all my things were piled in the kitchen. Grace was standing with her back to the refrigerator. Her arms were folded across her chest.
“The ring you gave me is on the counter,” she said. “I think you should leave. Be sure you don’t forget your prepaid cell phones.”
I set my briefcase on the floor and looked at her. I put on my best dumbfounded face. “What the hell? What’s the matter with you?”
“I got another visit from those two detectives today. They came to my office. Do you know what they wanted this time? They wanted to know where you were the day Ben Clancy disappeared, and do you know what? I couldn’t tell them where you were because I didn’t know. What I do know is that you left at four thirty in the morning that day. You told me you had an early meeting with a client and that you were going to the gym early.”
“That’s exactly what I did,” I said.
“Stop lying, Darren. I go to the same gym, and you know it. You should also know that I have some good friends who work there. I called one of them after the detectives left and asked whether you punched your member number into the registry that morning. They keep track of everybody that goes in and out of that building. You didn’t punch in your number, and you can’t get through the security gate that early in the morning if you don’t enter the number.”
“Your friend is mistaken,” I said. “I went to the gym that morning.”
“Why do you have three prepaid cell phones, Darren? Why do you have a pistol with a silencer?”
“I’m paranoid about my phone. I’d think you would understand that after what I’ve been through. And the gun is just for protection. If you’ll recall, someone blew up my mom’s house trying to kill me not long ago.”
“That doesn’t explain the silencer.”
“It came with the gun when I bought it. I got it at a gun show in a parking lot. It was a package deal. I haven’t even fired the damned thing, Grace.”
That last statement was a blatant lie, too. I’d already put hundreds of rounds through the Walther. It was a sweet little pistol.
“Who do you call on your prepaid phones? What kind of business do you conduct? I’ve never once seen you on a prepaid cell phone. I think you started using them when you went on your so-called fishing trip to work some things out. I thought it was strange that you left your cell phone here that weekend. You didn’t want it pinging off any towers in West Virginia, did you?”
“You’re talking crazy,” I said.
“Who was your early-morning meeting with? The one you didn’t go to after you didn’t go to the gym.”
“It was with a client.”
“Which client?”
“You know I can’t tell you that. It’s privileged.”
“Bullshit,” Grace said. She rarely cursed. She’d moved off the refrigerator and was standing only a few feet from me. “Take your ring, take your things, and get out.”
“Grace, please. You’re overreacting. Listen to yourself. Do you really think I’m a murderer?”
“At this point, I don’t know what to think,” she said. “You went through a great deal when Clancy put you in prison. I was so proud of you when you started to come back to life, and I was so happy when you asked me to marry you. But then your mother was killed, and you changed. I already lied to the police once for you, Darren. That weekend those two men were killed in West Virginia, I told them you were here with me. You told me you were fishing. But you weren’t, were you? You weren’t camping. You were killing people. You said you caught two big ones and you left them where you found them. And then you came back here, and all you wanted to do was have sex after you hadn’t touched me in weeks. Do you know how creepy that makes me feel? You go and commit two murders and then come back here and practically rape me?
“And now Ben Clancy is gone, and the police think you killed him, too. Why didn’t you want to have sex with me after you killed him, Darren?”
She was freaking me out by that point. She knew it all. My primary concern was that she was going to pick up her phone and start dialing the police. Had she done that, she would have witnessed my suicide, the same way I’d witnessed James Tipton’s. But she didn’t call the police, and I simply thought about the criminal defense lawyer’s mantra: Deny everything.
“I didn’t kill him. I haven’t killed anyone.”
“You’re lying. I’m not going to help the police. I’m not going to tell them a thing, because at some level, I understand why you’ve done what you’ve done. But I can’t live with a murderer. I can’t love a killer. I’m going into my bedroom now. When I come back out, I expect you to be gone.”
She turned away from me and walked down the hall. I heard her bedroom door close, and I started gathering my things.
CHAPTER 41
A light snow was falling as Big Pappy Donovan pulled off the interstate and into the parking lot of the TravelCenters of America truck stop in Hurricane, West Virginia. The trip had been facilitated by a cryptic phone call from an old friend and business partner, Rex Fairchild. Fairchild had said it was urgent that they talk in person, as soon as possible. Pappy was running a load of windows from a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Chicago, Illinois, and decided to take a detour and meet Fairchild in Hurricane.