To Darkness and to Death (41 page)

His first surprise was seeing a squad car parked right up front, by the offices. Its headlights were trained on some little green car. Not that he was going to complain. The farther away Russ stayed from the old mill, the happier Shaun would be. He coasted to a stop a few spaces away from the mystery car and, retrieving tissues from Courtney’s center compartment, hastily wiped his palms dry.

Russ and a uniformed cop were flanking the car. Shaun walked forward, arm outstretched, on the offensive. “Russ, my man. What’s going on? What’s this car?”

Russ shook his hand. Then his eyes widened. “What the hell happened to your face?”

Shaun was ready for this one. He touched his cheek with two fingers and laughed ruefully. “This is what happens when you try Rollerblades at our age. I flew straight off the sidewalk and ran into a tree.”

“I hope the tree looks worse.”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

Russ gestured toward the green car with a solid-looking flashlight. “You recognize this car?”

“Never seen it before. It’s one of those hybrids, isn’t it?”

“Yep.” Russ shone the flashlight into the interior. Shaun could see a cheap tapestry overnight bag.

“Is it stolen?”

“Nope. It’s been missing, though.”

Shaun felt an electric prod against the small of his back. Christ. What if it was Millie van der Hoeven’s car? What was it doing here?

“It belongs to a young woman named Becky Castle. You know her?”

What the hell
? “No.”

Russ made a grunting sound. “There should be a fancy dress hanging in here. I don’t see anything, do you?”

“No.” What was going on? What was Russ suspicious of? Shaun felt himself stretching out, seeking balance, looking for the right path through a potential minefield. Information was power, and he had precious little of it right now.

“This is where someone would park if they came to your office, right? It doesn’t look like the layout’s changed since your dad’s time.”

“There was no need to change it.”

“Were you in the office today?”

“Yes.” That sounded too bald. “It’s not unusual for me to come in on a Saturday for a while. I can get a lot of work done without any calls and faxes coming in.”

“I bet. About what time were you here?”

Shaun calculated rapidly. “Noon until two-thirty.”

Russ tipped the flashlight so the beam pointed at Shaun’s starched white shirt. The edge of the light splashed across his face. “Could we take a quick look inside your office?”

“Sure.” He needed to know what Russ was looking for. He had nothing to do with this car, and there wasn’t anything in his office that might point toward the van der Hoevens. But why did Russ have him come out to see Becky Castle’s car? Wait a second. Castle. He knew a Castle. “Is this Becky Castle related to Ed Castle? Castle Logging?”

“His daughter.” Russ pointed his flashlight toward the station wagon. “Is that your car?”

Shaun’s face tightened. He forced a light tone into his answer. “Sure is.”

“Were you using it earlier today?”

“Yeah,” he lied. He dug into his pants pocket, fumbling for the office keys. “Here we are,” he said when he found them. “Let’s go on in.”

Inside the door, he flicked on the lights. The reception area sprang to life. Thank God, there was nothing amiss. He crossed the floor and unlocked the door to the inner offices. He flung it wide open. “Here they are. Nothing much has changed. Mine is where my dad’s used to be.”

Russ strolled into Shaun’s office, his gaze taking in everything. “Looks like you did some redecorating.”

“Courtney,” Shaun said.

“Nice couch. Long enough to really stretch out on.”

“Yeah, she has an eye for—” He spotted the pale pink fabric wedged in the cushions the same time Russ did.

Russ leaned forward and pulled it free. It was a pair of pink thong panties. Russ held them up on one finger. “Yours?”

“Where the hell did that come from?”

Russ bent over and pulled the leather cushions away from the couch frame. There was a scattering of coins, some crumbs, and, balled into one side, another piece of fabric. Russ lifted it, and it unfolded into filmy pale pink pantyhose. He looked at Shaun.

“I swear. I have no idea how those things got here. I never saw them before in my life.”

“Where’s that door lead to?” Russ nodded toward the far wall.

“It’s my bathroom.”

“Anybody else use it? Your secretary, maybe?” Russ opened the door and switched on the light.

“Not… usually.”

Russ’s large frame blocked Shaun’s view into the bathroom. “You sure you don’t want to rethink your statement about not knowing Becky Castle?”

“I’ve never met the woman!” Shaun struggled to keep his breathing even. In with the calm. Out with the fear. It didn’t matter what Russ thought about this Castle woman. In that, Shaun was completely, utterly blameless. The important thing was to make sure they didn’t link him to Eugene van der Hoeven. And that they stayed away from the old mill.

“Come on in and take a look.”

Shaun squeezed into the bathroom next to Russ. There, on the vanity, was a woman’s makeup bag, unzipped. Next to it was a pair of dangling chandelier-style earrings, the kind that would go with a—Shaun caught a flash of hot pink out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see a full-length strapless satin dress on the shower rod. It was dangling crookedly from its straps, as if someone had hastily looped them over the hanger and then hurried away.

“It looks to me,” Russ said, “as if a woman came in here to give someone a private showing of her fancy ball gown and all its accessories. And then she let someone take them all off.” He looked down at Shaun. “Or I suppose it could be that you’re a transvestite.”

“I am not a cross-dresser!” Shaun managed to get out.

Russ nodded. “Pink would be a lousy color for you, anyway.” He moved toward the door, forcing Shaun to back out ahead of him. “We’re still missing Becky’s coat.”

“This is ridiculous. You have no proof these are Becky Castle’s.”

Russ ignored Shaun’s protest in favor of walking back to the reception area. “This where you hang your coats?” He rolled the closet door open.

Thank God, there weren’t any strange articles of clothing hanging there. “That’s my secretary’s raincoat,” he said, “and the other two are mine.”

Russ ran his boot across the floor of the closet before patting down the coats. He dipped his hand into Shaun’s jacket’s pocket and came up with a shiny clutch of keys.

“Yours?”

Shaun shook his head. He was speechless.

“Let’s see if the slipper fits, huh?” Russ crossed to the door and stepped outside. Shaun hurried after him. Next to the green Prius, Russ bent over and, careful not to touch the car itself, inserted one of the keys. He turned it. There was a popping sound as all the locks sprang free.

Russ straightened and spoke to the uniformed cop. “Noble, will you get on the horn and get a crime scene investigation unit over here? And since Lyle headed up Becky Castle’s questioning, let’s get him on the scene, too.”

The cop nodded and disappeared into his squad car.

Russ turned to Shaun, a mournful expression hanging from his face. “So, old friend. Anything you want to tell me?”

7:15 P.M.

So how come you’re going to let him go?” Lyle cocked an eyebrow at Shaun Reid, sitting slumped on his receptionist’s desk while a state police evidence technician powdered his leather sofa for prints. Reid was staring at his fingers, smudged black with ink. He had volunteered his prints after Russ told him they needed to be able to rule out the things he had touched in the office. Russ hadn’t pointed out that the prints might also rule in Shaun if he had been in Becky Castle’s car.

“We’ve got her stuff in here,” Lyle continued. “Her car parked out front. And he looks like he’s gone three rounds with a baseball bat. Skating injury, my ass.”

“Where’s he going to go?” Russ crossed his arms. They were standing in the doorway to the office, out of earshot, able to keep an eye on the work going on inside and outside, where the second technician was going over the Prius. “He and his wife are attending a dinner dance. If he were scheduled to fly out of the country, I’d be worried. The Algonquin Waters, I think we can cover.”

Lyle’s expression was half in light, half in darkness. He reminded Russ of an Iroquois false face mask, lips curving, eyes piercing. “Are you sure you’re not bending over backward to give an old friend the benefit of the doubt?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been hunting with Ed Castle for the last four years. The man handed your head to you on a platter an hour ago. I’m not saying you two were best buds, but that’s gotta hurt. I’m just wondering if you’re not hedging your bets to keep it from happening again.”

“If Shaun Reid had anything to do with Becky Castle’s assault, I’ll be first in line to haul him in. As far as letting him loose now, I have two good reasons. One.” He held up a finger. “The simplest story is the one most likely to be true. Schoof beat up Becky Castle. In support of that theory, we have the victim’s own testimony—”

“Which may be unreliable.”

“Randy Schoof’s disappearance,” Russ continued, “and the fact that your informant on the Reid-Castle affair is none other than Mrs. Randy Schoof.”

“Okay, okay. I agree, Schoof is the number one suspect. I still think there’s something weird about Reid.”

“Which brings me to point number two. I can keep an eye on him at the party tonight. Who he talks to, if he leaves, whatever.”

“Speaking of which, aren’t you supposed to be home right now? Getting all prettied up?”

Russ looked at his watch. “Crap. Yeah. Look—”

“I know. Cell phone, beeper, check-ins. We’ll stay in touch.”

Russ smiled. “Thanks, Lyle. The only reason I can do this for Linda is because I know you’re on the job.”

“You’re making me blush. Get outta here.”

Russ strode into the office. “Shaun!” Reid looked up quickly. “Thanks for all your help. Better hit the road. You and I are already going to be late to this thing.”

Shaun blinked. “I’m free to go?”

“Course you are.” Russ bared his teeth in a grin. “We can’t be disappointing the ladies, can we?”

7:20 P.M.

Lisa Schoof drove slowly past the gates to the Reid-Gruyn mill for the third time since seven o’clock. When she had first approached the mill, she had been ready to drive through the entrance and on to the employee parking lot but had been frozen with terror at the sight of a cop car idling outside the offices. She had slammed on the brakes, coming to a dead stop in the middle of Route 57, expecting at that moment to see her husband escorted out of the building in cuffs. It was only the honk of a driver approaching from her rear that got her moving again. She took the first cross street she could and circled back toward the mill.

The second time she slid slowly, slowly past, a panel van had joined the squad car. She couldn’t make out the writing on its side, but the state seal and the lights on top made it clear it was another sort of police vehicle. Every light in the office appeared to be on, and she could make out a uniformed cop standing between the squad car and a small green car.

Now, on her third pass, the cop car, the van, and the lights were still there, but a pickup and a station wagon that had been parked next to the squad car had disappeared.

Could they have taken Randy away while she was driving in circles? Should she loop around a few more times in the hope they would all clear out? The dark pressed in all around her sister’s car. She wanted to hide in it, to scurry away from the mill office, lit up like the guard tower in a prison.

She clamped her hands around the steering wheel and turned through the gates. She wanted to think of herself as brave, but she admitted to herself it was hopelessness that propelled her across the parking lot, the knowledge that if her husband had been arrested, she couldn’t effect his release, and if he was still free, somewhere in the mill, she had to pass by the police. She had no choice. He was waiting for her.

She drove slowly, steadily, curving past the carnival of light that was the administration building, but not going so far out of her way that it would look suspicious. She had a cover story in her head: If she were stopped and questioned, she was delivering a meal to her husband, who worked on the floor. She knew that a lot of guys working second shift brought a big bag lunch to take the place of dinner with the family.

She was not stopped. No one emerged from the offices to wave or shout or blow a whistle. Instead, she slipped around the corner into the employee parking lot, a rectangle of asphalt running from the edge of the offices to the bank of the river. A dozen or more vehicles, almost all trucks and SUVs, clustered beneath a few fluorescent lights on aluminum poles. Three picnic tables sat near the featureless mill wall, scoured flat by cold and darkness. Cigarette butts littered the lot like spent casings.

Lisa got out of her sister’s station wagon. Randy had said he would meet her, but she didn’t know if he would recognize or trust the Durkees’ car. She walked toward the black and rushing river, passing one truck, then another. The third one was Randy’s.

“Babe?” she whispered. Nothing. She kicked the door gently. “Randy?”

His face appeared in the window. She almost screamed, clamping her hand over her mouth to still her surprise. He motioned for her to come around to the passenger side.

When she got into the cab he clutched at her, and she dug her hands into the back of his coat, and they held each other as if it had been four years instead of four hours. Lisa couldn’t stop patting him. “Are you okay?” she asked, over and over. “I was so scared when I saw the cops at the office.”

“I know. They were there when I tried to leave the mill. I nearly pissed my pants. I was going to go back to the old mill to wait for you, but I decided the truck was safer.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She sat back, separating them by a few inches. “Tell me what’s so important that we’re both here in the parking lot where we could be spotted any minute.”