by Mason Cross
“We could go off on tangents all day, David. Let’s focus on you. Did you leave the Marion house between getting there and us showing up?”
He considered the question, then shook his head.
“Any reason someone would think they saw you on the north road around eight-fifty this morning?”
He looked puzzled for the first time, like this was the first question he hadn’t expected. “Why would I be there? It’s all the way across …” and then a light came on in his eyes as he worked it out. “That’s where you found the victim.”
“You were identified driving away from the scene, Connor. You want to explain that, seeing as how you were all the way across town in your version?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll explain it easily.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The explanation is, that’s total bullshit.”
“Not my information.”
“Well, get the source of your information in here and tell him to pick me out of a lineup.”
Isabella looked at McGregor out of the corner of her eye. His face was expressionless. “Maybe we’ll do that.” He got up and looked at Isabella, signaling for her to follow suit. “We’re going to leave you alone for a while, David. We have a lot of paperwork before we move this forward, as I’m sure you’ll understand. Take the time to have a think over things. It’s in your interest to be as forthcoming as possible with us, remember that.”
McGregor rapped on the door. Dentz appeared and escorted Connor back to the cell. They watched until they had turned the corner and the double doors had closed behind them. Isabella gave McGregor a look that said, “What now?” He said nothing, opened the door to the anteroom where Blake and Feldman were observing.
Except Blake was alone.
“Feldman went to take a call,” Blake said. “Only been gone a couple of minutes.”
“What did you make of that?” McGregor asked Blake, the hint of a rueful smile on his lips.
“Same as you, if I had to guess. Worst of both worlds. Nothing to incriminate him, nothing to exonerate him. Unless you come up with that anonymous caller.”
The tone of Blake’s voice said they might have more luck tracking down the Loch Ness Monster. If McGregor noticed, he didn’t let on.
“Do I need to ask what you think? About whether he killed Roussel this morning, I mean, let’s leave everything else to the side for now.”
Blake shook his head. “He didn’t do it. And the only real reason he’s here is because of an anonymous call, added to the fact he made himself look guilty by running. You’re damned lucky Feldman missed him.”
McGregor listened, expressionless, and then turned to Isabella.
“And you?”
She addressed Blake. “Do you mind if the sheriff and I talk in private for a moment?”
“He can stay,” McGregor said, before Blake had a chance to answer. “I think we both know what you’re going to say anyway.”
She shrugged. “I agree with Blake. I don’t think he’s our man. Should we keep him under arrest? Absolutely. But we should be back out there, making sure.”
“You might want to reconsider that, Isabella.”
She turned to see Feldman at the door. He had a habit of just appearing. She hated it. There was a weird look on his face. Like he wanted to be looking satisfied with the knowledge he had and they didn’t, but something about what he had learned had disturbed him. Like he hadn’t entirely been expecting it.
“What’s up?” McGregor prompted.
Feldman gave Blake a suspicious glance before continuing.
“That was Bianchi down at Connor’s house. They found something.”
“Something?”
“A body.”
55
Carter Blake
“A body.” The two words echoed in my ears as Green and I drove up the hill toward David Connor’s house.
Green and McGregor had looked as surprised as me. McGregor had sent men up to the house to search it looking for evidence in the killing of Roussel or the other three. Perhaps he thought they would even turn up a weapon, if they were lucky.
But a body? I didn’t think anyone had been expecting that.
As we rounded the last corner on the steep approach to the house, I saw three Bethany cops were outside the house. Specifically, they were grouped around the deck at the front. A big, dark brown dog on its leash was pacing around, held back by one of the cops. The other two were on their knees, looking under the deck.
Green let out a long sigh as she pulled the car in. She saw my questioning look and waved at the house.
“You ever have one of those days where you’re drowning in work, and then something bigger than all the things you were worrying about comes along and blows everything else out of the water?”
“Maybe a couple of times a month.”
“I didn’t think Connor did it. It wasn’t just the funny tipoff, it was …” she let the pause hang in the air. “I didn’t think it was him.”
“Maybe it still isn’t.”
She unbuckled her seatbelt and stopped to look back at me as she put her hand on the door handle. “You think this is all a big misunderstanding, that it? They’ve mistaken a dead cat or a raccoon for a dead body up there?”
“No. But I think we should keep doing what we’re doing. Looking closely at everything.”
We got out and approached the house. The cop holding the dog’s leash called out a greeting to Green, then moved his eyes meaningfully from her to me. He looked old enough to be pushing retirement, and his gut hung over his belt.
“He’s with me, Jerry,” she said distractedly. “We recognize the vic? Somebody local?”
The deputy she had called Jerry shrugged. “I don’t know, these guys all look the same to me, know what I mean?”
He stepped aside and in a second we saw what he meant.
The victim looked the same to him because eventually all of us look the same, after enough time. Beneath the deck was a partially excavated grave. They had dug down three or four feet and exposed the skull and upper torso of an adult human skeleton.
“We were all set to toss the house after we got the warrant. We didn’t even make it to the front door before Lucifer started barking up a storm. We let him go and he started digging right over there. We picked up a couple of shovels and helped him out and …” he gestured at the remains, the skull grinning out at us from the shade beneath the porch.
“Coroner?” Green asked, as she crouched down at the edge of the porch.
“On his way over. Told us not to dig anymore.”
She nodded.
“David Connor admit to killing the others yet, Isabella?”
“No. Not yet.” She said it absently, her mind elsewhere. Jerry didn’t notice the dismissal, kept talking quickly.
“Looking pretty likely now, I guess. I mean, this means the sick bastard has been doing it for a long time. That body has to have been under here for years.”
Green wasn’t listening. She was staring intently at the skull, as though she expected it to turn to her and start talking.
“Isabella?”
She straightened up and looked around her, as though coming out of a hypnotic trance. She looked up at the open front door.
“You search the place yet?”
Jerry grimaced. “Started. Kind of got a little distracted by this, to tell you the truth. Why, you think there’s more in there?”
She shook her head and walked up the stairs. I followed her. She walked down the hall, ignoring the cop who looked up from inspecting the underside of the couch as we passed by the door to the dining room and went straight into the kitchen.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She said nothing. Moved with increased urgency to the sink and turned the faucet on hard. She cup
ped her hands beneath the water and splashed it over her face. She leaned over the sink and I saw her throat spasm, like she was going to be sick. She fought it back, gripped the edge of the sink, and then shivered. I handed her a towel that had been hung over the back of one of the chairs. She took it and dried her face.
“Sorry,” she said.
“What’s the matter? I’m guessing it’s not your first time seeing a body, so …”
She grimaced. “You know how old that body looks, Blake?”
I answered carefully. “Difficult to tell. Decomp rate depends on a lot of factors. Could be a hundred years, could be six months.”
She shook her head. “Or fifteen years. And that means someone is … it means. Jesus.”
She wasn’t looking for an answer from me, that much I knew. Which was just as well, because I didn’t have the first idea of what to tell her. Had Connor killed the people over the last few days? Wheeler too? Had it been him all along, and he had somehow faked his alibi fifteen years ago? By any objective measure, it wasn’t looking good for my client. But if he was the killer, why draw attention to himself by stirring up the past?
We sat across from each other at the table for a long time. I heard more footsteps in the house, as the other cops started searching the rooms.
“Let’s go talk to him again,” I said.
“While you’re at it, you could ask him about this.”
We turned around to see the cop Green had addressed as Jerry, standing in the door clutching a large transparent evidence bag.
Inside was a wood-handled Smith & Wesson .38 Special.
56
Carter Blake
A half hour later, I was back where I had been a couple of hours before. Behind the glass, watching Deputy Green and Sheriff McGregor sitting at one side of the table, while David Connor sat in handcuffs across from them. A manila file folder lay on the table by McGregor’s right hand. He had carefully squared it up with the right angle of the corner.
Before anyone spoke, I could see there was something different about Connor this time. Where he had been bewildered, gradually moving into anger before, he seemed calmer now. Maybe he knew something was up. Or perhaps he had seen it in the eyes of his interrogators.
He shifted his gaze to look at the mirrored glass, and I had the eerie sensation he was looking right through it and into my eyes. I studied his gaze, seeing … what? I wasn’t sure, but something had definitely changed.
“We’ve had some developments, David.”
Connor looked back at the sheriff and blinked, waiting for him to continue.
“We’ve found another body.” Another pause. Once again, Connor refused to take the bait.
“Do you know where we found it?” Again, no response, if you didn’t count the ripple below his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. It was at that moment I came to a firm realization: he knew, all right.
McGregor and Green exchanged a glance. McGregor pushed his chair back and got up. He leaned across the table, putting both palms flat down, his fingers within inches of Connor’s cuffed hands.
“I think you know exactly where we found it. Who is it, David? Who did you bury down there?”
Nothing.
The sheriff sighed and reached for the manila folder. He flipped it open and began producing color printouts of the first round of crime scene photographs taken at Connor’s house, before the coroner investigators had arrived to carry out the painstaking task of completing the excavation. Or exhumation, to be exact.
“This is your house, correct?” He waited a beat for an acknowledgment, and then carried on. “This is your porch. This is the decomposed body you buried underneath it. When did you do it, David? How many more people are buried under your house?”
Connor’s eyes shifted from the photograph. He looked at Green, who seemed to be playing the silent partner this time.
“Don’t look at her,” McGregor said. “She can’t help you. Look at me. Tell me who you killed.”
Connor chose to obey the first part of the instruction, closing his eyes.
“Who is it, David?”
He kept his eyes closed and murmured something. I could see his lips move, but no sound. Evidently it was too quiet for the people in the room, too.
“What was that?” McGregor asked.
Connor opened his eyes and stared back at him. “I want a lawyer now.”
McGregor stared back at him. I wondered if he was calculating whether he could get away with asking anything else. I didn’t think he would. It was an unambiguous declaration.
Instead, he nodded and got out of his chair, glaring at Connor. “I bet you do.”
Green got up and banged on the door. A couple of seconds later, it was opened and Deputy Dentz arrived to take Connor away.
Green and McGregor walked to the opposite corner of the room and spoke in hushed voices. I looked at the empty chair where Connor had sat, trying to work out what the hell had just happened. I had been so sure he wasn’t responsible. But the David Connor sitting in that chair this time had seemed like a different man from the scared, surly, pissed-off guy from earlier. It was all the difference in the world. The difference between an innocent man worried about being railroaded, to a guilty one realizing he was in trouble.
I knew his guilt wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility, either. Psychopaths are great liars. They can fool people. They can fool lie detectors.
But in that case, why had he done such a poor job of concealing his emotions when he knew they had found the body under the porch? A psychopath wouldn’t have broken a sweat. He would have known that a body found beneath your house, damning as it may seem, is still circumstantial evidence. They still have to prove you put that body there. A psychopath would have bluffed it out. Maybe that was what he was doing.
No, despite everything, I still thought I was right. On the evidence of those last two interviews, I had two conclusions. Conclusion one: he probably didn’t kill the hunters or Haycox or Roussel. Conclusion two: he may well have killed the person buried beneath his house.
I knocked on the glass to get Green and McGregor’s attention. They turned and looked in my direction, seeing only their own reflections. They both looked startled to be reminded there was someone back here. I’ve spent a little more time than I would like in rooms like that, and it’s surprisingly easy to forget you’re being watched, even though everybody knows what’s behind the mirror.
I watched them exit the room by the reinforced door, and a second later, the door to the anteroom opened.
“What?”
“I need five minutes with him.”
Green shook her head. “No can do, you heard him.”
“I heard him say he wants a lawyer. He didn’t say anything about not wanting to talk to me. Ask him.”
McGregor chewed his lower lip. “It’ll take some time to get a lawyer out here, even if he’s going with a PD. What did you have in mind?”
“Just give me five minutes.”
57
Carter Blake
David Connor looked up as I entered his cell. I waited for the door to close behind me.
“Thanks for agreeing to talk to me.”
“I didn’t kill those people, Mr. Blake, you have to believe me.”
I leaned back against the wall. “None of them? You didn’t kill anyone?”
His head jerked up and his eyes burned into me, shocked, questioning. Definitely not a psychopath. He was easier to read than a Times Square billboard.
“You know what they’re going to be thinking?” I asked. “That it’s Adeline. That would be neat, it would explain why you thought you saw her in Atlanta. Like her body underneath the house was crying out to you, making the guilt overwhelming, like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story.”
“She isn’t dead,” he said quietly. For the firs
t time in a couple of hours, I thought about the email from Honorific again. The email that proved nothing, just opened up another question.
I waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t oblige, I tried a different tack.
“Why did you let me past? Back there when I was chasing you.”
He looked confused for a second, and then remembered what I was referring to. The moment when he may just have saved my life by allowing me to pull ahead of him, losing the chance to escape at the same time. He waved a hand dismissively, as though not fully realizing what he had done. “There was no room on the road, had to let you in.”
“Well, thanks.”
He sighed and looked down at the floor.
“Whose body is it, David?”
“You couldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“It’s all or nothing with these bastards. You think they’ll be satisfied with that? They’ll pin it all on me. This week, fifteen years ago, everything.”
I sat down beside him. “I believe you. You don’t have to tell me anything right now. Who’s your lawyer?”
“A guy named Edward Brown. Used to live here but he moved to Gainesville. He helped out on my parents’ estate.”
“You trust him?”
“Yeah.”
“When he gets here, tell him everything.”
58
Carter Blake
McGregor and Green were waiting for me outside the cell. McGregor turned the key in the lock and took a look through the peephole to confirm his prisoner was still there before he turned to me.
“I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking if he confessed?” McGregor asked.
I shook my head. “He’s waiting for his lawyer.”