The Night Caller (3 page)

The first potential witness Coop talked to was the rent-a-cop manning the kiosk at the entrance to Breezy Point. It didn’t go very well. Yes, the police had already interviewed him, and no, he didn’t have anything to tell them. He didn’t remember any suspicious vehicles or any strangers passing him on the afternoon of the murder. And as Coop knew, there were ways to sneak onto Breezy Point without passing him.

Coop thanked him and drove on to park across from his beach cottage. He sat in the car for a while. The narrow street lined with one-story wooden cottages was as quiet as it had been last week. Only a few houses had cars parked in front of them. An old neighbor named Jack Reynolds, who never remembered Coop’s name, sat on his deck, reading the
Daily News.
He didn’t look up when a couple passed by, heading for the beach. They were well bundled, for the wind was strong and chilly. Coop sat and watched for several minutes without seeing anybody else.

He supposed he had to accept it: someone could have come here, killed his daughter, and gone without being seen or heard. It was possible.

He got out of the car and crossed the street. Jack Reynolds didn’t look up from his paper.

Coop was braced for the silence inside the cottage but it still took the breath from him. Violent death did that, left a vacuum in its wake.

There was an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, and his head felt the way it did when he was on airliners dropping fast in their final approach to land. The silence persisted. He coughed for no reason other than to break it.

As if cued by the abrupt sound, the refrigerator motor clicked on and droned in the kitchen, the way it had been droning when Coop discovered Bette’s body.

He wasn’t surprised to see the faint, dusty footprint on the tile floor just inside the front door. Drawing the digital photo from his pocket, he stooped and compared image with reality.

The computer had done a good job. The enhanced likeness of the print was doubtless a perfect match with the actual shoe sole.

The print had been made because Bette hadn’t gotten around to cleaning up the place, including sweeping away accumulated dust on smooth surfaces. That kind of untidiness wasn’t like her.

But then it wasn’t like her to be murdered by someone she knew.

Coop felt as if the world had been rearranged like a kaleidoscope. Previous patterns seemed to mean nothing.

If a similar print had appeared in soft earth outside, Billard would have told Coop. But he went back out and looked around the perimeter of the house anyway, making sure.

Back inside, he kept his eyes averted from the couch where his dead daughter had reclined, and he went about duplicating the NYPD’s efforts. It was always possible he’d find something they’d overlooked. He knew they’d been professional and thorough, but he cared more.

Aware that he was probably wasting his time, he examined the soles of the two pairs of shoes Bette had brought with her and made sure neither was a match for the dusty half footprint. Then he checked the cottage’s closets to see if anyone had left behind shoes that might make similar prints. He found none.

In fact, there wasn’t anything very revealing in the cottage. Bette’s clothes, still hung in the closet or folded in dresser drawers, were all casual; she hadn’t planned on getting dressed up while in New York. Beneath a folded sweater in a bottom bureau drawer was a penis-shaped rubber vibrator. Coop didn’t like seeing it but knew he shouldn’t be surprised. In another drawer was a packet of condoms. Okay, no surprise there, either. Bette was—had been—an attractive and vital twenty-seven-year-old woman.

He wondered how thorough the Queen’s South detectives had been. Was there a list in a file drawer somewhere, an inventory of his daughter’s possessions? Probably. He didn’t like thinking about that, either.

There was nothing in the desk or her luggage that was connected with her work. She’d meant it when she’d told Coop she wanted to get away from her job for a while, from the small town of Haverton, New Jersey. He wasn’t sure exactly what she did in her job at Prudent Stand Real Estate, but apparently it had been getting to her. Or maybe something else entirely had been upsetting her, and only incidentally making it difficult for her to concentrate on her work. Coop wished now their conversation had been longer, that he’d asked more about her, how she was, what was bothering her, did she know he loved her and did she love him?…

A lump had formed in his throat. He pushed away thoughts of Bette. Those kinds of thoughts. He was on the job now, with added purpose and more than a little rusty, but on the job.

He felt unexpected great relief when he closed and locked the cottage door behind him.

He wasn’t sure if he’d ever stay there again.

The Night Caller watched Georgianna Mason trudge up Vector Street in downtown Seattle. She was breathing hard, not in very good shape to live in such a hilly part of town.

Not aware that she was being observed, Georgianna, a slim, attractive woman in her forties, had met two friends for lunch at a hotel restaurant. She and the other women talked incessantly through lunch, exchanging stories and laughing. Then all three women lit up cigarettes. The Night Caller disapproved.

Georgianna had walked to the restaurant from her apartment ten blocks away, possibly because the day was so beautiful and without a hint of rain.

When she was halfway up Vector she turned on a side street and entered a large business building. She was going to do what many savvy Seattle residents did to avoid walking the downtown hills, where the buildings were built into the grades; she would take one of the elevators up several floors and use an exit leading out to the next, higher block.

The Night Caller walked faster, breathing harder and feeling the strain from the climb in thighs and buttocks, and reached the end of the block soon enough to see her walk from the building’s glass revolving door. Back on the sidewalk, Georgianna hesitated. Instead of continuing in the direction of her apartment, she crossed the street and entered a department store.

The Night Caller didn’t bother following her. This was fortunate. She’d be occupied for a while. Her time shopping would create opportunity.

Fifteen minutes later, in a room at the Holiday Inn, the Night Caller used a notebook computer to go on-line, accessing Georgianna’s service by typing her password.

The cursor darted, the built-in mouse clicked, and Georgianna’s e-mail files were read, her on-line banking and brokerage accounts were examined, and the log of her most recent Web site visits was called up.

Back to the e-mail. There had been something there. The Night Caller’s breathing became deeper, more rapid. He felt the familiar tugging, subtle but there, like intimations at the very outer edges of a whirlpool. Georgianna seemed to have a new boyfriend, one she’d encountered on-line but never met personally and who lived in San Francisco. Backtracking thorough e-mail and message boards led to a pattern of increasingly sweet and soulful exchanges between the two cyberlovers. Some of them were absolutely cloying.

This was tragic and wonderful. So intimate and revealing. Georgianna merited closer and more frequent contact.

The Night Caller liked to keep in touch.

Coop had never been to visit Bette in the town where she lived and worked during the last months of her life. He drove the Honda into Haverton just before noon the next day. He’d exited the Holland Tunnel hours before, and he kept thinking he was about to leave the suburbs and enter the country. But though the roads got narrower, the traffic didn’t diminish. He continued to pass malls and new subdivisions where huge houses were springing up close together on treeless flatland.

In Haverton, waves of development were lapping at the edges of a quaint old town that reminded him of New England. A white, steepled Congregational church faced a gray stone city hall across the town square. From the center of the square, a statue of a Union soldier kept watch.

Coop drove slowly around the square and turned onto Main Street. The home of Prudent Stand Real Estate, where Bette had worked, was a brick building with white columns. It had probably been built in the forties or fifties, but the architecture made it look older.

He drove around to the side of the building and parked. It was a sunny day but cool, so he left the Honda’s windows up. There was an expanse of still-green lawn in front of the building, and the heavily tinted glass entrance was flanked by tall pine trees. A rectangle of brick bearing the company’s name, like that of the deceased on a tombstone, was surrounded by low shrubbery.

For the next ten minutes Coop watched people walking in and out of the building, until one of those leaving was Hillary Bland, a young woman who had identified herself as one of Bette’s best friends when she’d introduced herself to Coop after Bette’s funeral.

Coop got out of the car and stood leaning back against a front fender with his arms crossed. He could feel warmth rolling out from beneath the car. The cooling engine ticked slightly in the brisk fall air.

He’d phoned ahead and Hillary had been expecting him. She was a petite woman, about thirty, with dark eyes and a magnificent head of auburn hair. She’d worn dark clothing and her hair had been pinned back at the mortuary and funeral; now she had on a white blouse and flowered skirt and her hair flowed shoulder length and bounced slightly as she walked. As with many small women, her walk was precise, high heels clacking with perfect rhythm on the sidewalk. When she saw Coop she smiled and picked up her pace.

“You should have come inside,” she said.

“I like it out here,” he told her. “And I wanted to get a look at the company’s clientele and employees.”

“When they weren’t aware they were being watched,” she said.

He smiled. “An old detective habit.”

Hillary hesitated. “Is that all it is? I mean, when you called and said you were coming out, I wondered if you were—I mean if you had suspicions—”

He interrupted her. “The deal was, I offered to buy you lunch while we talked about Bette. Is there a place around here where we can do that?”

“Not without possibly drawing attention to what you’re doing. We need to drive a few miles out of town for that.”

Smart woman. He opened the car door for her and held it while she got in.

Within fifteen minutes they were seated in a back booth of a roadside bar and restaurant called Bentley’s. The place considered itself a pub, and the walls were covered with photos and drawings of classic British cars: MGs, Bentleys, Morgans, Rolls-Royces, Jaguars…. Coop always thought that if he ever won the lottery he’d fancy a Jaguar.

“Bentley’s is owned by Anglophiles,” Hillary said. “I went to school with the owners.”

“Here or at Oxford?”

“You’re joking.”

“Sure.”

“The only time any of us ever left the country was on our senior trip to Canada. I’m an actual native, born and raised in Haverton. I remember when it was a quiet town and New York seemed worlds away.”

“You resent all the development? The strangers moving in?”

Hillary grinned. “Not all of them. Not Bette. She was no stranger after five minutes. She could have adapted wherever she went. Everyone liked her. I mean that.”

“Here’s where I say ‘Not everyone,’” Coop told her.

Hillary’s dark eyes went sad as her smile disappeared. “Yeah, that has to be true, I guess. You think the—the crime is connected to her life here?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, the police were here, of course, asking questions, but I didn’t think anything of it. I figured, you know, in New York bad things happen all the time.”

“Generally not without a reason, in New York or elsewhere.”

A blond waitress dressed like a serving wench came over and took their orders for bangers and mash. Hillary ordered ale. Coop asked for decaf coffee, caught the waitress’s arch look, and changed his order to tea.

“How long can you be away at lunch?” Coop asked, when the wench was gone and out of earshot.

“I take long lunches. Don’t have to be back in the office until one-thirty, when I’m supposed to discuss Bette’s murder with some woman named Deni Green. Probably a local reporter.”

“The press been on this big in Haverton?”

“Oh, sure. It’s a major story here. I can mail you back issues of the papers, if you want.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Coop said. “Did Bette tell you where she was going before she left for my cottage?”

Hillary didn’t have to think it over before answering. The police must have asked her this already. “No. She didn’t even tell me she was going to New York. Just that she was going away for some peace and quiet.”

“Did you think that was odd? That she should want to be alone, I mean.”

“No. That is—” Hillary’s brow furrowed as she chose her words. “She’d been a little down the last few weeks.”

“Pressures at work?”

“There was that. They’ve been restructuring her division and a lot of work got dumped on her desk. But I think the real problem was the breakup with Lloyd. She told me it was a mutual consent thing, but it still hit her hard.”

“Lloyd is?…”

“Her boyfriend she was always trying to get up the nerve to introduce to you. You didn’t know about him at all?”

“Bette kept her intimate life private. There was nobody named Lloyd at the visitation or funeral.”

“I tried to get him to come but he couldn’t. He was shattered by the news of her death. Absolutely shattered.”

“When did you talk to him?” Coop asked.

“Right after the police called at work. That’s how we found out about Bette. Lloyd is a commercial real estate appraiser at Prudent Stand, in the separate appraisal division. That’s how he and Bette met.”

“He was at work when the police called?”

“Yep. Happened to be in the office. That was about ten the night after Bette was—after they found her. He was so broken up by the news he had to go home.” The serving wench brought the ale and tea. Hillary took a sip from her glass and wiped foam from her upper lip. “I know what you must be thinking, you being a former policeman, but Lloyd couldn’t kill anyone or anything. Besides, he has an alibi.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, the police were here questioning people. Everybody talked about it for days afterward. The afternoon Bette—died, Lloyd was with clients all day, appraising a factory site, or he was at the office. After work, he was with a bunch of us who went out to dinner. Then two people from work went with him to a bar and they drank and talked until past midnight.” She caught the way Coop was looking at her and took another sip of ale. “Yeah, I remember all that. I always wanted to be a cop,” she said with her bright smile.

“Then why didn’t you apply for the job?”

“Hate guns. Hate violence.”

“Me, too,” Coop said. “Will you give me Lloyd’s address?”

“Here are a list of Bette’s friends and acquaintances,” she told him, pulling a folded sheet of typing paper from her purse and handing it to him.

He gave her another look.

“Like I said, as soon as you called I had a pretty good idea why you were coming out here.”

“Thanks,” Coop said, as he folded the list.

“Let me know if I can do anything else. Bette really was a wonderful person. We were close.” A hardness came into her moist dark eyes that surprised Coop. “I want to see the bastard caught!”

After dropping Hillary back at Prudent Stand, Coop drove to Bette’s apartment and let himself in with the extra key she’d left with him last year.

It was a small one-bedroom unit in Beau Jardin, a new-looking condo project just east of town, possibly built by a Francophile who had remained in Haverton. All of the buildings were two stories, constructed of white or tan brick with mansard roofs.

The silence here wasn’t as bad as in the cottage, but it still stopped Coop just inside the door and seemed to drain his energy. He wondered sometimes if silence might be the language of the dead in a lament to the living.

The apartment had about it the look of a place that a woman had left hurriedly and expected to return to soon. The closet door was still open and a few clothes, probably considered, then rejected for the trip, lay folded on the bed. A pair of red high-heeled shoes sat near the dresser as if they’d just been slipped off, one of them lying on its side. Coop figured the Haverton police might have searched the place and left it as they found it, but more likely someone from NYPD Homicide would be showing up soon to search more thoroughly. He knew that when he was finished he’d better leave things pretty much as they were.

He put on the tight latex gloves, just as he’d done countless times before beginning a search. Then he went to work.

It saddened him to find so much of what he remembered about his daughter there, the compulsion for order along with a sort of frenzied impatience that left order frayed at the edges. Though clothes had been left on the obviously hastily made bed, the clothes remaining in the closet were hanging by category—dresses, slacks, blouses, casual, more formal—and the bed
had
been made. Her shoes were arranged in a compartmentalized hanging plastic holder in the same fashion—other than the pair left lying haphazardly on the floor, the pair that tore a hole in Coop’s heart. Neatness tainted by carelessness. It was a contradiction in Bette’s personality that had long intrigued him, and he wondered if in some way it had led to her death.

Nothing in the apartment provided any clue as to why she’d been murdered. The usual household bills were in her desk, and her checkbook pads revealed no irregularity in her spending habits. The few work papers in the desk were amortization tables and routine business correspondence that seemed innocent enough. There were postcards from vacationing friends, a birthday card from Coop himself, a few newspaper clippings Maureen had sent, about bioengineering and animal rights, with her fierce red felt-tip scrawl in the corners:
Can you believe?
or
Here’s progress for you!!!
Maureen was always sending people clippings that reflected her interests rather than theirs. He found no personal letters. That was no surprise. He couldn’t remember when he’d last written a real letter to Bette, or to anyone else. The phone was so much easier. Or e-mail.

That reminded him to look for a computer. He couldn’t find one, and there hadn’t been one in the cottage. Bette was always carrying around a laptop; she might have left it at work. He’d check.

One interesting item in the apartment was the framed photo on the nightstand near Bette’s bed. It was of a smiling, dark-haired man in his early thirties, reasonably handsome but for eyebrows too bushy for him to play the leading man, and with a deep dimple in his chin. The photo was signed
Love you, Bette. Forever, Lloyd.

Coop drew from his pocket the folded piece of paper Hillary Bland had given him on which were written the names and addresses of Bette’s friends and acquaintances. Lloyd Watkins was first on the list, at 2733-1A Rue de Montre. Coop remembered seeing the street name on a sign recently, and since he’d never been to France, it figured to have been in the Beau Jardin condo complex. Lloyd Watkins lived very close to Bette’s condo.

Coop took a last, lingering look around, then left the condo as he’d found it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was leaving Bette, or something of her. So palpable had seemed her presence in the condo that he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her say his name.

It didn’t take him long to drive around and find 2733 Rue de Montre. It was a white brick, mansard-roofed building much like Bette’s, landscaped with low-lying shrubs. Coop remembered Hillary telling him Lloyd was too upset to have returned to work yet. Maybe he’d be home.

Coop parked at the curb in front of the building, then made his way along an unnecessarily curved walkway to its entrance. The foyer provided access only to the units on the second floor. Ground-floor units had separate, private entrances.

Coop went back outside, found 1A, and knocked on a white door faintly gilded in gold enamel. Within seconds he heard the muted rustling sound of someone approaching from inside.

The door opened, and he was looking at the man in Bette’s bedside photo.