Lie in Wait (25 page)

 

Chapter 61

V
ICTOR HAD THOUGHT
his son's attempt on his life would make it clear that Brad was innocent; a desperate act of a boy scared he'd be railroaded into serving a sentence among truly violent criminals, subjected to heinous acts Victor dared not entertain. That was why Brad had done what he'd done. But the cops had twisted it to use it against Brad, trying to say that Brad knew he was guilty and had no way out, that's why he tried to kill himself.

Now, Victor feared, the state police detective was going to coerce Brad into a confession. All hope for bail was lost, as Brad was being held under strict suicide watch. Brad's lawyer had begun to hint that Brad consider a plea bargain. Impossible. Yet, despite Victor and Fran's prayers, the noose seemed to be tightening rather than loosening around his son's neck.

Victor had to sacrifice himself to save his son. He thought all this as he set out of his house to walk into town to Merryfield's office; where he'd tell Jon that he knew Jon had killed Jessica and why, and to tell him he'd never get away with it.

It was early morning, too early for Merryfield to be at his office yet. But Victor decided he needed time to think of every angle and to write down notes of what he would, and wouldn't, tell the police.

The streets were damp and desolate in the early-­morning gloom. The snow had already begun to melt here in town.

Victor stood across from the Beehive Diner now. From the alcove entrance of the library, his jacket collar pulled up against his face, he watched the usual suspects go in and out of the diner. He could see Larry Branch speaking to Gwynne. She laughed as Larry slid his coffee cup toward her to freshen. The seat beside Larry was empty.

Victor pushed onward and walked around the corner. As he crossed through the back part of the parking lot behind the Lamoille Bank, he saw a pickup truck idling. A plume of exhaust hung in the air around its back bumper, its odor noxious. The side and back windows of the truck were fogged but Victor knew who was inside. The license plate read
IMKING
.

What was King doing there?

The truck faced toward the home of Merryfield's homosexual clients.

A ­couple days ago, Victor would have jogged over to see King, nearly desperate to be part of whatever it was King was up to, without a thought. Not today. For the first time it seemed in his adult life, he was thinking straight. He was seeing the world clearly.

He had no urge to speak to, or even look at, King. His back still ached where it had been punched by King. His stomach turned at the thought of what the man might be doing so early in the morning across from the gay ­couple's house. Whatever he was planning would come back to him in ways he could not imagine. His schemes had left him twice divorced and alone, just as Fran had said. What Victor had seen as strength in King he saw now as arrogance and ignorance. And fear.

King was a frightened man. A frightening man. Who was King to judge others?

Who are you to cast stones, Victor Jenkins?
Victor suddenly thought.
After what you did.

 

Chapter 62

T
EST PARKED HER
Peugeot in front of what she thought of as Location A; the Village Fare restaurant. Puddles of slush sloshed beneath her boots on the sidewalk. She knocked on the building's front glass door. The place was closed, but the proprietor was expecting her.

The door opened and Test was greeted by a woman dressed in chef whites, flour dappling the very tip of her sharp, severe nose. Test recognized the woman's face from ads that ran in the local weekly. But the face was somehow off in real life. What, in the ad, seemed a classic face of elegant bone structure was, in reality, bony, with a chin that jutted just enough to be of proportion to the rest of the face, and one eye slightly smaller than the other. And this woman was pushing her mid-­sixties. The photo in the ad must have been a good decade old.

“Please,” the woman said, beckoning with long fingers graced with the same white powder as was her nose, “come in.”

Test stepped inside, blinking back the darkness that temporarily blinded her after being outside. The woman locked the door behind them and walked to a table graced with a fine white linen tablecloth, again gesturing with wriggling fingers for Test to have a seat across from her. The place was impressive, refined. Too refined for Test's taste. Not that she would mind the food. She'd likely love it. Just not the prices or the atmosphere. She preferred a homey, family setting where duct tape served to repair a punctured booth cushion, and crayons and coloring books were brought out first thing, rather than a setting of white linens and candles afloat in scented water where the first thing ushered out to you was a choice between two ten-­dollar bottles of sparkling or natural water.

She'd always favored casual restaurants; perhaps because her father had dragged her to Gene and Georgetti's steakhouse since she could walk. A place where she was told to sit up, sit straight, keep her napkin tucked, and forced to breathe cigar and cigarette smoke.

“Can I get you a bottled water? We have sparkling or natural,” the woman asked as she picked at some invisible thread on the tablecloth.

“I'm fine,” Test said, swallowing a laugh. “I have a few questions.”

The woman smoothed her hand over a wrinkle in the white linen tablecloth. “I'll do my best to answer.”

“They're easy. One. Are your bathrooms unisex?”

She seemed perplexed. “We have a gents' and a ladies'.”

“Do they accommodate more than one person at a time?”

“No.” The woman now seemed genuinely amused.

“The CCTV you have, does it cover the back of the restaurant, the hallway to the restrooms?”

“Some. Not much past the back door by the dish room.”

The answers the owner gave both muddled and partly clarified the case for Test, as Test began to understand it in a new way. Her blood fizzed with the urgency of culminating facts; she felt like she was George, shimmying and pushing a sled to the edge of a hill. And once she got the momentum and gravity got hold of it, the case would accelerate rapidly, beyond her own ability to stop it, even if she wanted to.

“May I see what we spoke of on the phone?” Test asked.

The woman handed Test a DVD of the CCTV footage taken the night of the murder.

“It's all there, the time span you asked for.”

“And the restrooms, in an establishment like this, they must be seen to regularly.”

“Oh yes, hourly.”

“On the hour?”

“Not quite.”

“May I speak to the person who cleans them?”

“Drew. He's not in yet. Give it a half hour.”

“May I take a look at the restrooms?” Test asked.

The woman smiled. “Be my guest.”

T
EST WALKED DOWN
the hallway off that ran from the bar at the rear right side of the restaurant. She eyed the CCTV camera in one corner of the hallway ceiling as she walked to the men's restroom.

The restroom told her nothing. It was clean and appointed with high-­end fixtures, a marble floor. Candles. But it was, after all, just a bathroom.

Standing outside the bathroom she saw the hall went past the dish room to a door that must have opened to the back. She did not know if the door was set to trigger the alarm system so went back out to the front door.

Outside, Test walked around to the back of the place, startled by a crow that burst into flight from the Dumpster.

She stared at the back of the building. It was plain enough. Brick with one door that led to the Dumpster, and a single window farther down.

She looked into the woods behind the place. From the Google Earth imagery she'd studied earlier, it had appeared that if she cut through the woods to the other side, and skirted along the edge of the school park and ball fields, she'd end up on Lincoln Street in minutes.

There was only one way to find out.

T
H
E WOODS WERE
not vast by any means, but they were thick with understory and gnarled masses of blowdowns and vines that slowed her progress significantly. One aspect Google Earth did not show well on such a small scale was the few deep and soggy gullies to navigate.

After bushwhacking for several minutes, Test came out at the edge of the school fields and looked at her watch. Five minutes. OK. She edged along the ball fields and the playground and came out toward the end of Lincoln Street. From there, if she were to walk between two houses and cross the street, she'd be at Location B; The Merryfields' house.

Another two minutes. Tops.

It was possible.

Physically.

In the daylight.

But in the dark?

A flashlight would have been risky, and a light in such a dark place did not help you find your way, it only lit up the confusion of branches right in front of you. But without any light, the trek would be impossible in the time span needed.

Perhaps there was a path she'd missed, one the local kids used as a shortcut.

No. On the way back she found no such path.

She'd have to come back in the dark, with a headlamp.

When she did, she would ask the staff a ­couple questions too.

Even with the lowered odds, her new premise pestered at her. There was something here. If the DVD revealed what she hoped, the rest might be moot.

The sun came out as she stepped from the woods to the back of the building. The crow took flight from the Dumpster, and Test caught a whiff of that sour cabbage-­y odor Dumpsters gave off. It made her stomach roil.

She looked at the woods, her eyes scouring for the sign of the most scant trail. There was none.

As she turned to go, something caught her eye. Then it was gone. She stepped closer to the woods, but did not see it again. A glint. A tiny flash.

She walked back a few feet and looked. There it was again. Then gone.

But her eyes were locked on its location now.

She walked up to a tree at the edge. Looked back at the sun in the sky.

She searched the tree, an old cragged maple tree. She almost missed what she was looking for though she was nearly staring right at it from a few feet away. A thumbtack.

Except, she saw, not just a thumbtack. It surface was coated with a sparkly dust. A reflector. It would be almost impossible to find more of them in the daytime. She decided she would return that night with a flashlight to see if there were more of them, strung together, to make a lighted path someone could see easily at night.

Had Jon Merryfield left out the back way when he'd said he'd been in the bathroom? Was it possible he had sneaked out and slipped through the woods to return to his own house and murder Jessica?

Yes, logistically, if there were reflectors to light the way, it might be possible.

But even if so, the question remained: Why?

 

Chapter 63

V
ICTO
R WALKED DOWN
the alley to come out on River Street. Merryfield's office would not open for a half hour, and Victor needed the coffee he'd normally put down at the Beehive. He stood outside the Brew Ha Ha, a new spot that prided itself on gourmet coffees, organic scones, and tofu omelets. He'd never been inside the place, but it was directly across the street from building that housed Merryfield's office on its top floor. Beside the entrance, the wall was marked with a slash of red paint at eye level and the words, “Height of 1927 Flood.”

Victor went into the Brew Ha Ha and ordered a cup of coffee. The girl behind the counter did not so much as glance his way and none of the few ­people in the place paid him any mind. This was a new crowd to him, a younger generation raised and schooled elsewhere. Kids who moved here from the likes of Brooklyn and Boston and Boulder. Girls with thick black eyeglasses and goateed boys with retro fedoras cocked precariously atop their heads.

Victor sat by the window where he could keep an eye on Merryfield's building and began to take notes in his pad for his meeting with the police later. He sipped at the black coffee. Sipped again. It was house coffee. Something called Kenyan Dark. It was pretty good. Really good. He'd never tasted coffee like it.

As he settled in with a second cup, he watched for Merryfield.

Where was he?

Daryn Banks ambled past the window and glanced inside the place. Spying Victor, he waved and smiled, entered the café. Victor did not want interruption. He needed to keep an eye out and be able to react as soon as he saw Merryfield.

But, if anyone was going to interrupt him, he supposed Daryn was the most welcome. He'd proved an ally when others had abandoned Victor and his family.

“Victor,” Daryn said and eyed the seat opposite. “May I?”

Victor nodded, then eyed the door to Merryfield's office building across the street.

Daryn sat. “What brings you here? This isn't exactly your kind of place, I would gather. Nor mine.” He laughed and glanced around, rolled his eyes.

Victor said nothing as he watched Merryfield's office building.

“I won't keep you, I just saw you and thought I'd come in to apologize,” Daryn said.

“I don't understand,” Victor said.

“I've not put together the prayer circle yet. And with what's happened with your son, I imagine it might have been of use. I
am
reaching out to ­people though. So, soon, I hope. I can't say how sorry I am for your suffering.”

“I have new hope since this morning,” Victor said.

“Well, good! It will make a fine starting point for the prayer circle.”

Victor tapped his wedding ring on the edge of his mug. “I don't know. I don't know where I might be after today. So much has changed.”

Daryn looked taken aback. “I hope in a good way,” he said.

“For what's best,” Victor said.

“Good. Good. Well. I'll leave you in peace. This place is too rich for my blood anyway,” he said with a laugh.

“Sorry. I'm not much company.”

“Understandable. I hope you and your family get all you deserve.”

“Thank you,” Victor said.

“My pleasure. God bless.”