Death Under the Lilacs (21 page)

“Plea-bargain!” Bea spluttered. “How can you say that? I spent days locked up in a hole. I died half a dozen times. I don't want any plea-bargain.”

Rocco looked beseechingly at Lyon. “Bea, we may have to. The evidence is circumstantial, and with Reuven dead, there's no living witness.”

“I'm the evidence,” Bea said firmly.

Rocco hesitated. “Well, to tell you the truth, we've let Traxis know that you are prepared-to identify Reuven as your abductor.”

“Oh, great!” Lyon said as he slammed down his cup. “And where is he now? You know, he may be but to kill Bea.”

“We've thought of that,” Rocco said softly. “Which is why he is under constant surveillance.”

“And if he makes an overt move against Bea, you've really got him.”

“Something like that.”

“I'm not sure I like being the fox in this game,” Bea said.

“I wouldn't do it if I wasn't completely satisfied as to your safety. Traxis will always be under watch.”

“What about Reuven's murder?” Lyon asked. “Are you going to try and nail Traxis on that?”

“Hell! We can't even come up with how it was done.”

“Have you gotten the address of the girls the Winthrop twins were with the night Bea was taken?”

Rocco looked at him quizzically. “Yeah. But I haven't had time to track it down and don't see that it makes any difference now.”

“I'd like to.”

“Be my guest. Call me at the station, and I'll give you the address.” He placed a hand on Bea's shoulder. “I promise it's going to be all right, and we're going to nail him.”

Bea gave him a limp smile.

Lyon glanced down at the slip of paper on the car seat by his side and then up at the street sign. He turned the car down Warren Street and peered at front stoops for a legible house number. The street, filled with two- and three-family frame dwellings built along a tree-shaded sidewalk, was located two streets away from the campus of Middleburg College.

Number 322 was on the right-hand side of the street, and he was able to park directly in front of the walk. A G. Fowler was listed on the mailbox located on the porch. He pressed the buzzer under the box.

No answer. He rang again. Still no answer. The box indicated that G. Fowler lived in apartment 2, which he imagined was the upper unit. He tried the door and found it opened directly into a narrow hall with steep steps leading to the next floor.

“Anyone home?” he called.

Again no answer. He started up the steps. The door at the top of the stairs was partially ajar, and he pushed it open. “Anybody here?” he called again.

The dull whir of an ancient refrigerator was the only sound in the small apartment. He stepped inside.

The rooms were furnished in early trash. A short hallway, narrowed by several large green plastic bags stuffed with unimaginable objects, led into the living room that ran the length of the building. Overstuffed chairs in conflicting color schemes were piled high with newspapers and old magazines. A table by the front window had the remnants of several meals cluttering its surface.

“Anyone home?”

“Yeah,” a voice answered. “Out here.”

Lyon followed the sound of the voice and went through the living room into the kitchen to the double windows at the far end of the room. A small porch, its balustrade covered with hanging sheets, functioned as a sun deck. The blond girl on the large beach towel was nude. He half turned. “Oh, pardon me.”

“Hey, wow, you've come to attack me, huh?”

“I don't think so.”

“You're uptight around people with no clothes on.”

“You could say that.”

She climbed in the window, brushing up against him in the process. She ran the cold spigot at the kitchen sink and splashed water on her face. “It's hot out there.”

“They say too much sun isn't good for people of light complexion,” Lyon said.

She shrugged naked shoulders. “All the fun things aren't good for you. What can I do you for?”

“Do you always greet callers without any clothes?”

“Usually.” Her hips canted to the side in a caricature of sexuality.

“I want to ask you about some people we both know.”

“Sure. Shoot.” She turned from him and ran half a glass of water into a misty jelly glass. She palmed a yellow pill into one hand and gulped it down.

She was a young woman still containing partial traces of plump adolescent sexuality, and yet her body was thin. Lyon realized that he was looking at someone who had recently lost a great deal of weight and had still not conceptualized the loss into her own sense of identity. An offshoot of the speed addict. “You know Rob and Roy Winthrop?”

“Sure.” She went into the living room, threw a pile of newspapers on the floor, and plunked down into a fading red armchair. “The terrible twins. They're a thousand laughs.”

“Were they here the night of June the twelfth?”

She shrugged again. “If they say they were here, they probably were. We party a lot.”

“You and a girl called Lucy?”

“Lucy's always ready for a good time. She crashes here most of the time. She's probably in class now.”

“You both go to Middleburg?”

Again the shoulder movement. “I don't go anymore, but my folks think I do.” Her eyes narrowed, and she straightened her frail body. “Hey, now! My dad hire you to check up on me? Are you a private investigator or something?”

“No.”

“Then what's with the questions?”

“It's important to me that I know where the twins were that night.”

“They were probably here.”

“You'd testify … swear to that?”

“Listen, mister, I don't even know what day of the week it is. If they say they were here that night, they were here. Like I said, we party a lot.”

“Then you don't really know?”

“I don't really not know.” She walked toward him with an exaggerated sway of her hips until she stood directly in front of him. “You want to make it with me?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“'Cuz I been out there in the sun thinking sexy thoughts, and it made me horny. Besides, I never made it with a guy your age.”

Lyon was shocked to realize that her blunt statement had caused a reaction within him and he had nearly reached for her, if only to prove that youth had no monopoly on sexuality. He felt only slightly older than she. His internal clock had stopped somewhere in his twenties, and unless he looked in the mirror intently or exercised little-used muscles, he still felt on the cusp of thirty. She obviously did not view him that way, and he was chagrined to realize that he wanted to change that perception in this wandering girl-child. “Not today,” he finally replied.

Her smile was skewered. “You don't ball girls, or you're over the hill, huh?”

“Neither.”

“You'd better go, mister. I don't like old guys staring at my bod and thinking dirty thoughts.” Her petulance camouflaged his rejection.

Lyon started for the door. “Is there any way you can reconstruct what happened the night of the twelfth?”

She held to the door frame and swayed slightly. “Who the hell knows? The days and nights are all the same, aren't they?”

“Maybe so.” He started down the stairs and could feel her presence behind him. Her eyes had compressed into a squint that would in the near future change to astigmatism. He felt the ripples that she radiated of a hopeless future.

“And don't come back!” she yelled after him as she slammed the door.

He thought about lost young people as he drove back to Murphysville. During the years he had taught, he had seen the few that began to nod in class. In the beginning they forced themselves into occasional attention, but gradually they gave up and attended class only spasmodically and showed little interest, until they stopped attending at all. They sometimes lived in dorms, but more often in off-campus housing, and the drugs-and-liquor combination changed from weekend parties to a way of life that spiraled them into stupor and lethargy.

He forced the girl from his mind. The twins would reach her soon, if they hadn't already. She would be their alibi, and undoubtedly there would be others who would swear to their presence during the party in the trash-strewn apartment.

Bea was right.

They were living on the battlements of fear, a fear so all-encompassing that it was dictating their movements. It would continue. Traxis would be charged—maybe—and he would walk free on bond pending his trial a year or two hence. And they would continue to live in fear.

It had to end.

He knew what had to be done and the critical risk that Bea would have to take.

He drove the last few miles thinking about the two phone calls he would have to make: one to verify a suspicion, the other to ensure a course of action. The second call would have to be worded strongly, very strongly.

16

Lyon stood outside the Murphysville police station with a stopwatch clutched in his right-hand pocket. As he walked up the short walk to the front door he set the watch in motion.

He stepped through the door into the small anteroom before the communications desk. Elsie Summers looked up and waved at him through the glass.

“Rocco wants me to look at a file on his desk.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Wentworth.” She made a note on the sign-in sheet and slid a visitor's badge through the small aperture in the glass. Lyon stuck the badge into his pocket so that the edge was exposed. Elsie glanced at the clock by her side, noted the time on the clipboard, and pressed the buzzer releasing the door.

With a wave, Lyon stepped inside the station. “Thanks.” He walked briskly down the hall toward Rocco's office. It was twelve-fifteen, and he knew that Rocco would be at Sarge's Place for at least another half hour. There would be plenty of time to do what had to be done.

He continued down the hall past Rocco's office and stopped near the rear door and the stairwell that led to the basement. He turned to look back down the corridor. There was no one in the hall, and little other movement or sound inside the nearly deserted station house.

Lyon stretched toward the alarm system hung high on the wall near the stairs. He flipped the “off” switch and watched the red indicator light flick off. He went back down the hall to Rocco's office and let himself inside.

The cabinet containing the articles he needed was against the far wall, secured by a heavy padlock attached to wooden paneling.

He pulled up his pants leg and ripped off the screwdriver taped to his ankle, wincing at the sharp pain caused by the adhesive's removal. He inserted the screwdriver into the holes at the end of the hasp.

The screws had been countersunk and were difficult to turn. He strained on the screwdriver until the first one began to turn in its slot.

It took him four minutes to remove the remainder of the screws and fold the hasp away from the paneling. The doors to the cabinet could now be opened.

From time to time Rocco had displayed the police department's newest equipment as if they were newly discovered toys that would never be used. Lyon knew where to find the items he needed, and he quickly took them off their shelves.

He took down one of the bulletproof vests that had recently been purchased by the town.

“For our SWAT team,” Rocco had said with a laugh. “As soon as we form one.”

Next he selected a starlight scope and carefully laid it on the floor next to the body armor. The scope was an electronic device that amplified dim light and helped surveillance teams penetrate the darkness.

“Great for getting the goods on flashers,” Rocco had said.

The final item was a pump-action .12 gauge shotgun with a short barrel. He checked to see that the magazine was full. There were weapons at the house that Rocco had forced on him, but to prove his point he felt it necessary to take another.

He removed the plastic lawn bag he had tucked around his waist and placed the stolen items inside.

He closed the closet doors and debated over reinserting the screws. He decided not to and left his tools neatly aligned on Rocco's desk. It would give his friend pause when he discovered them.

The lawn bag was too bulky to carry past the communications desk without comment, but he had never intended to do so.

Carrying the bag, Lyon peeked out of the office to find the corridor still empty. He stepped into the hallway, shut the door behind him, and walked the few feet to the rear door, which he carefully opened. He placed the lawn bag outside against the side of the building.

He closed the rear door, checked to make sure it was secure, and reached up the wall to switch on the alarm. The red indicator light flashed on.

At the communications desk he flipped the visitor's badge to Elsie, saw her log the time, and left the building. As he walked down the walk toward the driveway leading to the rear of the building he clicked the stopwatch and took it from his pocket. Seven minutes had elapsed.

Lyon stood on the widow's walk of Nutmeg Hill, trying to decide from which direction the attack would come. The trap lines had been strung, and Bea was the bait. It was now imperative that he calculate the direction that the killer would take.

It would be tonight. The phone calls had set the events in motion, and the killer would feel trapped by the time limitations Lyon had created.

Lyon turned toward the river. From his position at the apex of the promontory, the river below seemed distant. Attack from that quadrant would be very difficult. The killer would have to float down the river in a small, silent craft and anchor it below the house. It would then be necessary to climb a nearly sheer cliff, and even if successful, he would end up below the terrace with a poor field of fire.

At this point the Connecticut River was nearly a half mile across. The rocky shoreline at the far bank was even more formidable than on this side. A firing position in the trees across the river would require an accurate shot of nearly 880 yards. It was not an impossible shot by an expert marksman, assuming his weapon was properly aligned and zeroed and he took proper compensation for the brisk river winds, which shifted constantly; but it was an improbable one, with many chances of error.