by Stephen King
“Call my wife,” Terry said. “Tell her I’m okay.”
Howie grinned. “Number one on my list.”
“Go up to the end of the hall,” Ralph said. “You’ll get five bars.”
“I know,” Howie said. “I’ve been here before. It’s kind of like reincarnation.” And, to Terry: “Say nothing until I get back.”
Officer Ramage took the swabs, one from each inner cheek, and held them up to the camera before putting each into its little vial. Officer Gould placed the vials back in the bag and held it up to the camera as she sealed it with a red evidence sticker. She then signed the chain-of-custody sheet. The two officers would take the samples down to the closet-sized room that served as the Flint City PD’s evidence locker. There it would once more be shown to an overhead camera before being filed. Two more officers, probably State Police, would convey it to Cap City the following day. Chain of evidence therefore remains intact, as Dr. Bogan would have said. Which might sound a bit prissy, but was no joke. Ralph intended that there should be absolutely no weak links in that chain. No slip-ups. No way to break free. Not in this case.
DA Samuels started to return to the interview room while Howie was making his calls by the door to the main office, but Ralph held him back, wanting to listen. Howie conversed briefly with Terry’s wife—Ralph heard him say It’s going to be okay, Marcy—and then made a second, even briefer call, telling someone where Terry’s daughters were and reminding the someone that there would be press clogging up Barnum Court, and to proceed accordingly. Then he came back to the interview room. “Okay, let’s see if we can’t sort this mess out.”
Ralph and Samuels sat down across the table from Terry. The chair between them remained vacant. Howie elected to stand beside his client, a hand on his shoulder.
Smiling, Samuels began.
“You like little boys, don’t you, Coach?”
There was no hesitation on Terry’s part. “Very much. I also like little girls, having two of my own.”
“And I’m sure your daughters play sports, with Coach T for a dad, how could they not? But you don’t coach any girls’ teams, do you? No soccer, no softball, no lacrosse. You stick to the boys. Baseball in the summer, Pop Warner in the fall, and Y basketball in the winter, although I guess you just spectate at that one. All those Saturday afternoon trips to the Y were what you might call scouting expeditions, right? Looking for boys with speed and agility. And maybe checking out how they looked in their shorts, while you were at it.”
Ralph waited for Howie to put a stop to this, but Howie kept silent, at least for the time being. His face had become an absolute blank, nothing moving but the eyes, going from one speaker to the next. He’s probably one hell of a poker player, Ralph thought.
Terry, however, had actually begun to smile. “You got that from Willow Rainwater. Must have. She’s a piece of work, isn’t she? You should hear her bellowing on Saturday afternoons. ‘Box out, box out, pick up your feet, now GO TO THE HOLE!’ How’s she doing?”
“You tell me,” Samuels said. “After all, you saw her Tuesday night.”
“I didn’t—”
Howie grabbed Terry’s shoulder and squeezed before he could say anything else. “Why don’t we stop Interrogation 101, okay? Just tell us why Terry’s here. Lay it out.”
“Tell us where you were on Tuesday,” Samuels countered. “You started, go ahead and finish.”
“I was—”
But Howie Gold squeezed Terry’s shoulder again, this time harder, before he could go on. “No, Bill, it’s not going to work that way. Tell us what you’ve got, or I’ll go right to the press and tell them you’ve arrested one of Flint City’s premier citizens for the murder of Frank Peterson, thrown mud all over his reputation, terrified his wife and daughters, and won’t say why.”
Samuels looked at Ralph, who shrugged. If the DA hadn’t been present, Ralph would already have been laying out the evidence, in hopes of a quick confession.
“Go on, Bill,” Howie said. “This man needs to get home and be with his family.”
Samuels smiled, but there was no humor in his eyes; it was your basic show of teeth. “He’ll see them in court, Howard. At the arraignment on Monday.”
Ralph could feel the fabric of civility fraying, and put most of the blame for that on Bill, who was genuinely enraged at the crime, and at the man who had done the crime. As anyone would be . . . but that didn’t pull the plow, as Ralph’s grandfather would have said.
“Hey, before we get started, I’ve got a question,” Ralph said, striving for cheeriness. “Just one. Okay, counselor? It’s nothing we won’t find out, anyway.”
Howie seemed grateful enough to turn his attention away from Samuels. “Let’s hear it.”
“What’s your blood type, Terry? Do you know?”
Terry looked at Howie, who shrugged, then back at Ralph. “I ought to. I give six times a year at the Red Cross, because it’s pretty rare.”
“AB positive?”
Terry blinked. “How did you know that?” And then, realizing what the answer must be: “But not that rare. If you want really rare, you want AB negative. One per cent of the population. The Red Cross has people with that type on speed-dial, believe me.”
“When it comes to rare, I always think of fingerprints,” Samuels remarked, as if just passing the time of day. “I suppose because they come up so often in court.”
“Where they rarely figure in the jury’s decision,” Howie said.
Samuels ignored him. “No two sets exactly alike. There are even minute variations in the prints of identical twins. You don’t happen to have an identical twin, do you, Terry?”
“You’re not saying you have mine at the scene where the Peterson boy was killed, are you?” Terry’s expression was pure incredulity. Ralph had to give it to him; he was a hell of an actor, and apparently meant to play the string out right to the end.
“We’ve got so many fingerprints I can barely count them,” Ralph said. “They’re all over the white van you used to abduct the Peterson boy. They’re on the boy’s bike, which we found in the back of the van. They’re on the toolbox that was in the van. They’re all over the Subaru you switched to behind Shorty’s Pub.” He paused. “And they’re on the branch that was used to sodomize the Peterson boy, an attack so vicious that the internal injuries alone might well have killed him.”
“No need for fingerprint powder or UV light on those,” Samuels said. “Those prints are in the boy’s blood.”
This was where most perps—like ninety-five per cent—would break down, lawyer or no lawyer. Not this one. Ralph saw shock and amazement on the man’s face, but no guilt.
Howie rallied. “You have prints. Fine. It wouldn’t be the first time fingerprints were planted.”
“A few, maybe,” Ralph said. “But seventy? Eighty? And in blood, on the weapon itself?”
“We also have a chain of witnesses,” Samuels said. He began ticking them off on his fingers. “You were seen accosting Peterson in the parking lot of Gerald’s Fine Groceries. You were seen putting his bicycle in the back of the van you used. He was seen getting into the van with you. You were seen exiting the woods where the murder took place, covered with blood. I could go on, but my mother always told me that I should save some for later.”
“Eyewitnesses are rarely reliable,” Howie said. “The fingerprints are iffy, but eyewitnesses . . .” He shook his head.
Ralph jumped in. “I’d agree, at least in most cases. Not in this one. I interviewed someone recently who said Flint City is really just a small town. I don’t know if I buy that completely, but the West Side is pretty tightly knit, and Mr. Maitland here is widely known. Terry, the woman who ID’d you at Gerald’s is a neighbor, and the girl who saw you coming out of the woods in Figgis Park knows you very well, not just because she lives a little way down from you, on Barnum Street, but because you once brought back her lost dog.”
“June Morris?” Terry was looking at Ralph with fran
k disbelief. “Junie?”
“There are others,” Samuels said. “Many.”
“Willow?” Terry sounded out of breath, as if he’d been punched. “Her, too?”
“Many,” Samuels repeated.
“Every one of them picked you out of six-packs,” Ralph said. “No hesitation.”
“And was the photo of my client perhaps wearing a Golden Dragons cap and a shirt with a big C on it?” Howie asked. “Was that one perhaps tapped by the finger of the questioning officer?”
“You know better,” Ralph said. “At least I hope you do.”
Terry said, “This is a nightmare.”
Samuels smiled sympathetically. “I understand that. And all you have to do to end it is to tell us why you did it.”
As if there might be a reason on God’s green earth that any sane person could understand, Ralph thought.
“It might make a difference.” Samuels was almost wheedling now. “But you should do it before the DNA comes back. We’ve got plenty, and when it matches those cheek swabs . . .” He shrugged.
“Tell us,” Ralph said. “I don’t know if it was temporary insanity, or something you did in a fugue state, or a sexual compulsion, or just what, but tell us.” He heard his voice rising, thought about clamping down on it, then thought what the hell. “Be a man and tell us!”
Speaking more to himself than to the men on the other side of the table, Terry said, “I don’t know how any of this can be. I wasn’t even in town on Tuesday.”
“Where were you, then?” Samuels asked. “Go ahead, lay it on us. I love a good story. Read my way through most of Agatha Christie in high school.”
Terry turned to look up at Gold, who nodded. But Ralph thought Howie looked worried now. The stuff about the blood type and the fingerprints had rocked him hard, the eyewitnesses even harder. He’d been rocked most of all, perhaps, by little Junie Morris, whose lost dog had been returned by good old reliable Coach T.
“I was in Cap City. Left at ten on Tuesday morning, got back late Wednesday night. Well, nine thirty or so, late for me.”
“I don’t suppose you had anyone with you,” Samuels said. “Just off on your own and kind of gathering your thoughts, right? Getting ready for the big game?”
“I—”
“Did you take your car or the white van? By the way, where did you have that van stashed? And how did you happen to steal one with New York plates in the first place? I’ve got a theory about that, but I’d love to have you confirm or deny—”
“Do you want to hear this or not?” Terry asked. He had, incredibly, begun to smile again. “Maybe you’re afraid to hear it. And maybe you should be afraid. You’re in shit up to your waist, Mr. Samuels, and it’s getting deeper.”
“Is that so? Then why am I the one who can walk out of here and go home when this interview is over?”
“Cool it,” Ralph said quietly.
Samuels turned to him, cowlick springing back and forth. Ralph saw nothing comical about it now. “Don’t tell me to cool it, Detective. We’re sitting here with a man who raped a kid with a tree branch and then tore out his throat like . . . like a fucking cannibal!”
Gold looked directly up at the camera in the corner, now speaking for some future judge and jury. “Stop acting like an angry child, Mr. District Attorney, or I’ll terminate this interview right here.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Terry said, “and I don’t know anything about a white van. I went with Everett Roundhill, Billy Quade, and Debbie Grant. The entire Flint High School English Department, in other words. My Expedition was in the shop because the air conditioner died, so we took Ev’s car. He’s the department chairman, and he’s got a BMW. Plenty of room. We left from the high school at ten.”
Samuels looked temporarily too perplexed by this to ask the obvious question, so Ralph did it. “What was in Cap City that would take four English teachers there in the middle of summer vacation?”
“Harlan Coben,” Terry said.
“Who’s Harlan Coben?” Bill Samuels asked. His interest in mystery stories had apparently peaked with Agatha Christie.
Ralph knew; he wasn’t much of a fiction reader, but his wife was. “The mystery writer?”
“The mystery writer,” Terry agreed. “Look, there’s a group called the Tri-State Teachers of English, and every year they hold a three-day midsummer conference. It’s the only time everyone can get together. There are seminars and panel discussions, that sort of thing. It’s held in a different city each year. This year it was Cap City’s turn. Only English teachers are like anyone else, it’s hard to get them together even in summer, because they’ve got so many other things going on—all the paint-up, fix-up stuff that didn’t get done during the school year, family vacations, plus various summer activities. For me it’s Little League and City League. So the TSTE always tries to get a big-name speaker as a draw for the middle day, which is when most attendees show up.”
“Which in this case was last Tuesday?” Ralph asked.
“Right. This year’s conference was at the Sheraton, from July 9th—the Monday—to July 11th, the Wednesday. I haven’t been to one of those conferences in five years, but when Ev told me that Coben was going to be the keynote speaker, and the other English teachers were going, I arranged for Gavin Frick and Baibir Patel’s dad to take the practices on Tuesday and Wednesday. It killed me to do it, with the semifinal game coming up, but I knew I’d be back for the practices on Thursday and Friday, and I didn’t want to miss Coben. I’ve read all his books. He’s great on plot, and he has a sense of humor. Also, the theme of this year’s conference was teaching popular adult fiction in grades seven through twelve, and that’s been a hot-button issue for years, especially in this part of the country.”
“Save the exposition,” Samuels said. “Get to the bottom line.”
“Fine. We went. We were there for the banquet lunch, we were there for Coben’s speech, we were there for the evening panel discussion at eight PM, we spent the night. Ev and Debbie had single rooms, but I split the cost of a double with Billy Quade. That was his idea. He said he was building an addition on his house, and had to economize. They’ll vouch for me.” He looked at Ralph and lifted his hands, palms out. “I was there. That’s the bottom line.”
Silence in the room. At last Samuels said, “What time was Coben’s speech?”
“Three o’clock,” Terry said. “Three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon.”
“How convenient,” Samuels said acidly.
Howie Gold smiled widely. “Not for you.”
Three o’clock, Ralph thought. Almost the same time that Arlene Stanhope claimed to have seen Terry putting Frank Peterson’s bicycle into the back of the stolen white van, and then riding away with the boy in the passenger seat. No, not even almost. Mrs. Stanhope said she’d heard the bell in the Town Hall clock announce the hour.
“The speech was in the Sheraton’s big meeting room?” Ralph asked.
“Yes. Right across from the banquet room.”
“And you’re sure it started at three.”
“Well, that’s when the TSTE chairman started her introduction. Which droned on for at least ten minutes.”
“Uh-huh, and how long did Coben speak?”
“I think about forty-five minutes. After that he took questions. It was probably four thirty by the time he finished.”
Ralph’s thoughts were whirling around in his head like loose paper caught in a draft. He could not remember ever having been so completely blindsided. They should have checked Terry’s movements out in advance, but that was Monday morning quarterbacking. He, Samuels, and Yune Sablo of the State Police had all agreed that questions about Maitland ahead of his arrest would risk alerting a very dangerous man. And it had seemed unnecessary, given the weight of evidence. Now, however . . .
He glanced at Samuels, but saw no immediate help there; the man’s expression was a mixture of suspicion and perplexity.
“You’ve made a bad mistake here,”
Gold said. “Surely you two gentlemen see that.”
“No mistake,” Ralph said. “We have his prints, we have eyewitnesses who know him, and pretty soon we’ll have the first DNA result. A match there will clinch it.”
“Ah, but we may also have something else pretty soon,” Gold said. “My investigator is on it as we speak, and confidence is high.”
“What?” Samuels snapped.
Gold smiled. “Why spoil the surprise before we see what Alec comes up with? If what my client told me is correct, I think it’s going to put another hole in your boat, Bill, and your boat is already leaking badly.”
The Alec in question was Alec Pelley, a retired State Police detective who now worked exclusively for lawyers defending criminal cases. He was expensive, and good at his job. Once, over drinks, Ralph had asked Pelley why he had gone over to the Dark Side. Pelley replied that he’d put away at least four men he later came to believe were innocent, and felt he had a lot to atone for. “Also,” he’d said, “retirement sucks if you don’t play golf.”
No use speculating about what Pelley was chasing this time . . . always supposing it wasn’t just some chimera, or a defense attorney bluff. Ralph stared at Terry, again looking for guilt and seeing only worry, anger, and bewilderment—the expression of a man who has been arrested for something he hasn’t done.
Except he had done it, all the evidence said so, and the DNA would put the final nail in his coffin. His alibi was an artfully constructed piece of misdirection, something straight out of an Agatha Christie novel (or one by Harlan Coben). Ralph would begin the job of dismantling the magic trick tomorrow morning, starting with interviews of Terry’s colleagues and moving on to a back-check of the conference, focusing on the start and end times of Coben’s appearance.
Even before beginning that work—his bread and butter—he saw one possible gap in Terry’s alibi. Arlene Stanhope had seen Frank Peterson getting into the white van with Terry at three. June Morris had seen Terry in Figgis Park, covered with blood, at around six thirty—the girl’s mother had said the weather was on the local news when June left, and that pegged it. That left a gap of three and a half hours, which was more than enough time to drive the seventy miles from Cap City to Flint City.