Too Close to Home (29 page)

“Sherry. Sherry Underwood.”

He nodded right away. I expected him to have to think about the name for a while. “Yeah, sure, I remember her.”

“She comes to this shelter?”

“She did, for a while. But then she was gone. Someone’s here for a while, then they take off. Happens all the time. No one exactly gets their mail sent here.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Listen,” he said. “I run this place to help these kids out, not rat them out to parents and others who fucked them over and turned their backs on them.”

“It’s not like that. I just needed to know.”

“I can tell you this much. She had a mother who was useless and a father who wasn’t there and she gave old guys blowjobs and let them fuck her so she’d have money to eat, and when I last saw her she was high, which is how these kids pass a lot of their time, because if you had to live like they do you’d want to be high a lot of the time, too. I’d love to be able to tell you her story’s unique, but it’s not. What else can I do for you?”

“Do you know what happened to her after she stopped coming here?”

“She married a prince and lived happily ever after,” Art said. “Look, I don’t know, and good luck trying to find her. I’ve got a staff of four, a constant parade of heartbreak, and we do the best we can.”

“Sure,” I said. “How about any of the men who might have been her customers? Do you know who any of them might have been? You ever see any of them around here?”

“If she’d ever tried to run her hooking operation out of here, we’d have kicked her out. But I’d see her in here after, sometimes, counting her money, writing stuff down in her little notepad.”

I was pretty sure I knew that notepad. I’d written down my name and number in that notepad.

THIRTY-FOUR

T
HE MAYOR planted his tree, nearly putting the spade of his shovel through the foot of a seven-year-old, and on the drive back to city hall said, “Big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m keeping my schedule pretty clear through the day. A couple things in the morning, but they’re in the building, then I’m leaving the afternoon wide open, getting ready for my announcement in the evening. You okay to work tomorrow night?”

“Your wish is my command,” I said.

“You know,” Randall Finley said, “when you’ve already told your boss you’re going to quit on him first chance you get, it gives you a lot of fucking latitude, doesn’t it?”

“Works for me,” I said.

Because he had nothing else on for tonight, Randy said I might as well take the Grand Marquis home with me. Saved calling Ellen for a lift, or seeing whether Derek could pick me up with the truck if he and Drew were done for the day.

As I was coming out of the underground parking, there was a thin, silver-haired woman standing there, and when she saw me behind the wheel, she flagged me down. Powering down the window, I recognized her as Elizabeth Hunt, Conrad Chase’s literary agent. Who’d met up with him after the Langley funeral.

“Mr. Cutter,” she said. “I’m so glad I was able to catch you. I was told I might find you at city hall.”

“You’re looking for me?”

“I wonder,” she said, almost apologetically, “if I might have a moment of your time.”

I was blocking the ramp and there was no obvious place to pull over, so I motioned for her to come around to the passenger side and hop in. She walked around the front of the car and got in next to me.

“I’ll just pull ahead,” I said.

“Oh, just drive around the block a couple of times,” Elizabeth Hunt said. “Then you can drop me off right where you found me.”

“Sure.”

“So you’re working for the mayor now. I understand from Conrad that’s a job you used to have.”

“At one time,” I said. “You’re still here. I saw you at the funeral, but figured you’d have gone back to New York by now.”

“I’m still staying at my place on the lake. This is supposed to be a bit of a holiday, but Conrad’s found a way to make it a busman’s holiday,” she said, and then smiled awkwardly. “He’s nearly finished with his manuscript and he’s a bit anxious as he nears the end of the process. I don’t know whether you know a lot about writers—I’m sure you do from your wife—but sometimes they need a bit of hand-holding.”

That was a bit hard to picture with Conrad, but I let it go.

“And I just wanted to say, I hope you and your wife are all right, after that horrible incident out at your house the other night,” she said.

I glanced over at her. “Yes,” I said. “We’re fine.”

“And your son, the charges have all been dropped.”

I nodded, made a right turn.

“You must be wondering what the hell I want,” she said.

“I figure you’ll get to it,” I said.

“First of all, I have to tell you, I’m here because Conrad asked me,” she said. “I told him, ‘Conrad, don’t worry about this,’ but he can be very persistent. And a bit of a pain in the ass.” She sniffed.

I had no idea where this was going, but decided I’d just drive.

“Conrad thinks very highly of you,” Elizabeth said. “He has a great deal of respect for you.”

I looked over at Elizabeth. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Evidently, your opinion’s important to him.” There was something in her voice that suggested she was as surprised as I was.

I shook my head. “He has odd ways of showing it.”

“He says you don’t believe he wrote his first book,” she said bluntly.

When she didn’t say anything, I guessed she expected me to respond. “That’s right.”

“So why’s that?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t see any reason to get into it. Let’s just say yeah, he’s right, I don’t think he wrote it.”

“That’s a very serious allegation,” Elizabeth said.

“So sue me.”

“There’s a lot of buzz about his new book. It’s not very helpful, tossing around allegations that the man is a fraud.”

I shrugged. “You really think anyone’s going to listen to a grass-cutting chauffeur?”

“Maybe not.”

“Ms. Hunt,” I said, growing weary and wanting to get home to see how Derek’s first day on the job with Drew had gone, “cut to the chase, no pun intended.”

“He wants you to read his new book,” she said. “You and your wife, Ellen, but you in particular.”

I glanced over at her again. “He mentioned something about that. I thought he was kidding.”

“He’s not. I think he feels he has to prove something to you. He wants you to read it, and then, I guess, you’ll believe that he wrote
A Missing Part,
too.”

“I’m sure he did write this book, and I don’t care.”

Elizabeth Hunt sighed. At that moment, I felt some sympathy for her. It wasn’t her fault Conrad Chase was an asshole. “I could make the book available to you on disc, I could e-mail it to you, or I could give you an actual paper copy of the manuscript.”

“I’m not interested,” I said.

“All right then,” she said. “I asked.”

I flashed her a smile. “You can tell him you gave it your best shot.”

We rode along in silence for a moment. I was heading back to the ramp where she’d first spotted me.

She said, “You really despise him, don’t you? You think he’s a fraud?”

I thought about that as I steered the car over to the curb. “I think he’s worse than a fraud,” I said. “I think he’s a killer.”

Elizabeth Hunt blinked. She had nothing to say. We were back where we’d started from. She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out.

“HE DOESN’T TALK MUCH,” Derek said over a dinner of baked chicken and rice. “I mean, Drew’s a good guy and all, and he’s a really good worker, like, I could hardly keep up with him, but he doesn’t have a whole lot to say.”

“I’ve noticed,” I said. “I don’t think he’s a very happy guy.”

“I thought we’d have lots in common,” Derek said, “because we’ve both done time.”

“Derek!” Ellen said. “You have not
done time
.”

“I was in jail,” he said. “Not for as long as Drew, but I was there.”

“You were never convicted of anything,” Ellen told him. “Drew was. That’s a big difference. He did something wrong. You didn’t.”

“Yes I did,” Derek said. “I did plenty wrong.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Ellen said. I couldn’t have agreed more.

“I asked him about what it was like, killing that guy, the one who scared you the other night,” Derek said.

“Jesus, Derek,” I said. “Don’t ask him stuff like that. He’s probably having a hard time dealing with it.”

We were all quiet for a moment, until Ellen asked, “What did he say?”

“He didn’t really say anything,” Derek said. “He just asked me a question instead, what it was like, being in the Langley house when they all got killed.”

If Derek could ask difficult questions, I suppose Drew was entitled to do the same.

“And what did you say?” Ellen asked.

“I said I’d probably have nightmares about it for the rest of my life.”

Ellen reached out and grabbed Derek’s arm and squeezed. I was about to do the same, but the phone had started ringing.

We’d been pretty much ignoring the home phone the last few days, not eager to talk to reporters, or endure abusive comments from the nutbars of Promise Falls who knew how to block their caller ID. But now that all the charges against Derek had been dropped, and that fact was becoming increasingly known, we weren’t quite so anxious every time we picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” I said.

“It’s Barry.”

“Hi,” I said. I didn’t want to say his name out loud, expecting it would spark angry scowls from Ellen, if not Derek as well.

“You and Ellen busy?” he asked.

“Just finishing up dinner,” I said.

“I need you to come into the station. Got somebody for you to have a look at in a lineup.”

“Who?”

“Maybe the partner of that guy who ended up dead in your shed. How’s an hour?”

“We’ll be there,” I said.

I hung up and told Ellen. She went white. The idea of being anywhere near the other man involved in the attack on us, even if there was a sheet of one-way glass separating us from him, filled her with dread.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she said.

“It’ll be okay. It’ll be like on TV. He won’t be able to see us. We’ll just be able to see him.”

“He wore that mask the whole time,” she said.

“But they can get him to say a few words,” I said. “We heard him talk plenty. And there was the tattoo on his arm.”

Ellen nodded. I leaned in, kissed her on the neck. “It’ll be okay. I’m gonna jump into the shower, put on some fresh clothes.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll clean up here.”

As I was about to step into the shower, I heard the phone again, but someone grabbed it after the first ring, so I got in and let the water rain down on me for a good five minutes. When I got out, the bathroom was filled with steam, the mirror clouded over. I used a towel to make a clear spot on the glass and took a look at myself. My face was still bruised from my run-in with the late Lance, there were bags under my eyes, and my cheekbones seemed more prominent than they had two weeks ago.

“You,” I said, “need a vacation.”

ON THE WAY TO THE STATION, I said to Ellen, “Who phoned?”

“Fucking telemarketer,” she said. “Windows.”

Barry met us at the station entrance, led us down a hallway, up some stairs, talking the whole way.

“Cops in New York picked him up for us, shipped him back up here for you to have a look at.”

“Who is it?” Ellen asked. “What’s his name?”

“I’d rather not say anything at this point,” Barry said. “I’d like you to view the lineup cold.”

Barry had already told me that they were interested in a partner of Mortie’s by the name of Lester Tiffin, believed to be related to Conrad’s wife, Illeana Tiff. I had not, as yet, shared this information with Ellen. I was worried that throwing this kind of unsubstantiated detail into the conversation might be like tossing a stick of dynamite into a campfire.

We were taken into a room that really was like the one in the movies, one wall a sheet of glass that looked out on a mini-stage wide enough to hold half a dozen people. Barry was in the room, as well as another, unidentified man in a well-tailored suit. A lawyer, I was betting.

Barry grabbed a phone handset hanging from the wall and said to someone in another room, “Showtime.”

Six men walked into the room on the other side of the glass. All white, all with dark hair, all around six feet tall. Three had short-sleeved shirts on, three had sleeves that went down to their wrists.

“Face forward,” someone barked at them.

“Have a close look,” Barry said to us.

I scanned the faces of all six men and recognized no one. “You know he was wearing a mask,” I said. “A stocking mask.”

“I know,” Barry said. “I thought we’d get them all to say a few words for you.”

Ellen nodded. “That might help.”

“What would you like them to say?” Barry asked.

“Have them say,” I said, “‘This mask is so fucking hot.’”

Barry grinned, nodded, picked up the handset, and repeated my instructions.

In turn, each of the six men said, “This mask is so fucking hot.”

There was something about the way the fourth man, who was wearing his shirtsleeves down to his wrists, said it.

“That guy,” I said.

Ellen said, “Maybe, I’m not sure.” The guy in the suit made a snorting noise.

“Would it be possible,” I asked, “for all of them to put on stocking masks?” The suit looked at me like I was an idiot. “All I was thinking was, there might be something familiar in the way their faces get mashed down.”

The suit said, “That’s ridiculous. Everyone up there will look like the suspect, including my client. I’ll make laughingstocks of all of you all the way to Albany.”

Barry said, “I don’t think that’ll fly, Jim.”

I nodded. “What about their arms? The other man, he had a tattoo of a knife on his arm. His right arm.”

Barry spoke into the handset and then a voice on the other side of the glass instructed the men wearing long sleeves to roll them up.

The fourth guy, the one whose voice sounded familiar, was very slow about it.

“Let’s go,” someone barked at him.

He rolled up the sleeve, and once it was past his elbow the tip of the knife appeared. He rolled it up farther, exposing more of the blue blade, then the handle.

“That’s it,” I said, my pulse quickening. “That’s the tattoo I saw on the guy.”

Barry said to Ellen, “You recognize it?”

Ellen shook her head slowly, and said, “No.”

I whirled around. “What?”

“I don’t recognize it.”

“What are you talking about? You were with him even more than I was. He went back into the house to get you, he brought you out to the shed.”

“It was dark,” she said. “And I was so scared, I don’t know.”

Barry sidled up next to Ellen and whispered, “He’s denying everything, we haven’t got anyone who can put him with his pal Mortie, so if you can’t—”

“Detective Duckworth, something you’d like to share with the class?” the suit asked.

“Ellen,” I persisted, “how could you not recognize—”

“I think we’re done here,” said the suit. “It’s clear the woman can’t make any kind of ID, Detective Duckworth.”

“Ellen, are you sure that’s not the guy?” Barry asked. “Jim recognizes the tattoo.”

“No,” she said. “It’s all wrong. That’s not how I remember it at all. It was much longer, and skinnier. It went down below his elbow.”

“Ellen,” I said, trying to control my voice, “what the hell are you doing?”

The suit, heading for the door, said, “I’ll expect you to be releasing my client momentarily.” And then he was gone.

I was still looking at Ellen, but she couldn’t look me in the eye.