Secrets Of Eden (2010)

by Chris Bohjalian

  Nevertheless, I wondered that day in the museum and I speculate sometimes even now what I will do if I ever have before me a capital offense. In Vermont that would demand something like a kidnapping across state lines with a death resulting. Or using the Internet as part of the abduction. At the moment I work for the county, so I won't face this dilemma unless my career takes me to the U.S. Attorney's office in Burlington. But someday I might wind up there. And when I thought about the blood and the bodies I had seen in the Haywards' living room and the kid who was transformed overnight into an orphan, I would find myself angry and appalled and a little unnerved at the pain and the violence that we still inflict on one another daily.

  IN ADDITION TO a variety of reporters wanting an indictment, there was my boss, Jim Haas. When I was throwing papers into my attache and preparing to leave for the day, he knocked gently on my door. It was open, but Jim was feigning deference--which meant, as it did always, that he wanted something. And while I might have assumed it would have something to do with the death of the Haywards, I did have other cases, and so I honestly didn't know which of the dead victims or breathing criminals--the sex offenders, the embezzlers, the drug dealers--was about to postpone my picking up Marcus and Lionel at their after-school programs. Paul had a soccer game at a high school twenty-five miles distant, and so I was getting the boys that afternoon. Jim looked tired and aggravated, and he had loosened his necktie. He paused in the frame after tapping the door's hollow metal with his knuckles.

  I was already on my feet, and so I murmured a greeting but didn't stop scanning the papers I was retrieving and the folders I was collecting from different corners of my desk.

  "Got a minute?" he asked.

  "Barely."

  "I want to talk about the Haywards."

  I grunted something that could have been interpreted as a willingness to listen.

  "Are we any closer?" he asked.

  "Than when we talked on Monday? Nope."

  "But you still believe it's the pastor."

  "Yes, but only because I don't have anyone better."

  "What can I do to help? What would it take to get an indictment?"

  "Against Stephen Drew?"

  "That's right."

  I thought about this for a brief moment. "Well, evidence would be good," I said finally.

  "You have none ... "

  "None that says he murdered either George or Alice. I have plenty that says he was having an affair with Alice. I have a motive for killing George. But nothing to link him either to the murder of his lover or, more likely, the murder of his lover's husband. Any special reason for the sudden urgency? It's not like we're in an election year."

  "Very funny."

  I smiled, but I honestly hadn't meant it as a joke.

  "Really, it's not sudden," he went on. "But I just got off the phone with Sondra Norton, and she says that people are scared. Some are beyond scared. They're mad. No one likes an unsolved murder--or, in this case, two unsolved murders. It makes folks edgy, especially now that Stephen Drew lives in the neighborhood."

  Sondra ran the shelter for battered women and their children. She was also one of our representatives in the Vermont House. And Stephen Drew, for reasons of his own, had now left the parsonage in Haverill and was living like a three-dimensional wanted poster in an apartment in downtown Bennington.

  "We all know there isn't a killer on the loose who's preying on people he doesn't know," I said. "Whoever killed the Haywards knew them and had a clear motive. Sondra must know that, too. She's grandstanding. After all, it is an election year for her."

  "Sondra doesn't grandstand. You know that."

  "She does great work. She's a great person. But I don't think she has to worry about the safety of her constituents. Whoever killed the Haywards isn't about to strike somewhere in downtown Bennington."

  "You're not worried about the reverend?"

  "I think he had a concrete motive."

  "You snap once, it's much easier to snap a second time."

  "I really don't believe anyone needs to add extra locks to their doors."

  "That's not the point. I've also heard from both county senators. I've heard from our mayor. And I seem to be hearing from the media far more often than I would like."

  "Is that the point, Jim? Is that what this is about? People are frustrated? You're frustrated? You're spending more time than you want to holding people's hands on the telephone?" Immediately I knew I had sounded more exasperated than I should have. He stood a little more erect, and his eyes narrowed.

  "Alice Hayward was a battered wife who was murdered. Strangled. Someone wrapped his hands around her throat and crushed her larynx, broke the bones in her neck, compressed the carotid arteries, and caused her to asphyxiate. And that someone was almost certainly her husband. Almost certainly. But it also might not have been her husband, because another person--and it sure as hell wasn't Alice--took his gun and discharged the weapon into the right side of his skull, splintering bone, causing brain trauma, hemorrhaging, and a serious mess on the family's living-room windows, walls, and couch. That is the point."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "Sometime this week or next, when we can clear everyone's calendars, I'd like us to sit down with the folks at Criminal Investigation and see exactly what we have and what avenues we haven't pursued."

  "I have a gut feeling you'd like me to be there."

  "Go with your gut," he said, and then he turned on his heel and left.

  PERHAPS A DOZEN times in my life, I've run into people while we're investigating them. Bennington County is like that: It's a deceptively small corner of Vermont. I've run into suspects and perps out on bail while squeezing chickens at the supermarket, while getting gas at the convenience store (with Marcus in his car seat in the back), and at the annual colonial fair over Father's Day weekend in June (with, thank you very much, my whole family present). Of those dozen or so encounters, all but once the individual knew exactly who I was. And of those times when it was clear that the suspect and I knew precisely where we stood with each other, only twice have I felt the hairs rise up along the back of my neck. One time was when I was having new brake pads put on my car and the wagon tuned up for winter. One of the mechanics, I realized, was an angry young guy charged with aggravated assault and felony unlawful mischief: He had walked into a downtown bar with a steel pipe in his hands and beaten the crap out of some poor dude who'd smiled at his girlfriend. He ended up breaking the guy's arm. Then, on his way out, he smashed the bar's plate-glass window for good measure. With his grandparents' help, he had managed to post 10 percent of the twenty-five-thousand-dollar bail. (It never ceases to amaze me how many people are out on bail and shouldn't be. Presume this guy was innocent? Yeah, right. I could have filled a dinner party with witnesses. I was also convinced that he was the person who'd been burglarizing vehicles for weeks in a city parking lot and robbed an older couple one night as they unlocked their minivan using--surprise!--a steel pipe as a weapon. And yes, later we would charge him with those crimes, too.) We saw each other at the car dealer just after I'd arrived at the service counter, while I was waiting for them to sign me out a loaner for the day, and our eyes met. He looked seriously pissed at me: His bangs were plastered to his forehead, and he glowered like a petulant schoolboy. Then he motioned with his head out toward my car, which was in the lot just outside the service-garage window.

  "That yours?" he asked.

  "It is."

  He studied it for a moment as if he were checking out a girl in a bar and then wrinkled his nose dismissively as if it didn't measure up in some way. Finally he turned back to me and smirked. "We're gonna get some ice tonight, I hear," he said. "A lotta ice." Then he disappeared back into the shop. That night, after I had picked up the car, I was sure my brakes weren't going to work when I needed them most. For almost a week, I found myself braking long before I normally would have--just in case.

  The other suspect who unnerved me when I ran into
him outside the safe confines of court was none other than the Reverend Stephen Drew. I knew he was living in Bennington, and I knew he was renting an apartment not far from the courthouse. Nevertheless, it took me a moment to put a name to his face when I came across him on the sidewalk about fifty yards from the courthouse entrance. It was almost six o'clock in the evening, and there was a chill wind blowing in from the west. There were still another two weeks of daylight saving time, but it was overcast, damp, and dusky outside--and there was almost no one on the street. I was racing to the bookstore, which I knew was about to close, because I wanted to pick up a couple of picture books for a pal of Lionel's who was having a birthday party that coming Saturday. And there the minister was. He was leaning against the brick side of a recessed doorway, and he had the collar turned up on a gray jacket that fell to midthigh. He pushed himself off the wall and blocked my path.

  "You're Catherine Benincasa," he said. "We met the last Monday in July. I'd recognize you anywhere." It is always a tad alarming when a suspect in a murder investigation calls you by name on a deserted street at twilight, and his tone was somewhere between menacing and weary. The nearest people were either the security guards back inside the double doors at the metal detectors of the courthouse or the patrons at a bar shut tight against the cold nearly a block away.

  "I am," I said warily. "Hello, Reverend Drew."

  "Stephen. Please. I was just about to give up."

  For a split second, I misconstrued what he'd said, misinterpreting "give up" for "give myself up," and I thought he wanted to turn himself in. But his demeanor was too chilly, too confrontational for that. I realized then what he had actually meant. "You've been waiting for me?"

  He nodded. It was just cold enough that I could see his breath. "I waited yesterday, too, but I never saw you leave the building."

  I had to restrain myself from saying something catty about how I'd never before met a pastor who was also a stalker, because I honestly didn't know yet whether I was in danger. Instead I said simply, "I wasn't in court yesterday afternoon."

  "Ah."

  "You know I can't talk to you."

  "Why?"

  "And your lawyer would be furious if he knew you were trying to talk to me."

  "My lawyer does not tell me what to do. I think we should chat."

  "I'm sorry," I told him. "I am not going to speak to you without your lawyer present."

  "But you will if Aaron joins us?"

  "Aaron Lamb won't let you talk to me. I promise."

  His hands were burrowed deep inside his jacket pockets, and when he removed them suddenly, I must have flinched. He shook his head and said, smiling, "You really believe I killed both of them, don't you?"

  "We're not having this conversation," I reiterated simply.

  And it was then that he started to tell me about crucifixion. The connection, in his mind, was injustice. At least that's what he said. But he started talking about injustice and execution and the barbarity that always marks the human condition. It was erudite and hypnotic and deeply disturbing. If I lived alone, that night I would have pushed furniture against the front and back doors of my house. I was able to extricate myself only when another lawyer, one of the public defenders who had spent that afternoon at court coping with calendar calls before a judge, came up beside us. It was a friend of mine named Rosemary, and I immediately introduced her to Drew and then allowed myself to be led by her down the block until we had reached the bookstore and the reverend was behind us in the distance. Still, that evening I would insist that she walk with me to my car, and the following night I was careful to leave my office with another lawyer in the state's attorney's office.

  When Aaron called me the next day, he tried to feign fury that I had spoken with his client, but it was clear Drew had told him that he had initiated the conversation. I could also tell that Aaron wished that his client hadn't decided to share with me in visceral detail what it must have been like to die on the cross.

  THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, Jim Haas, Emmet Walker, and I spent nearly four hours in Waterbury with BCI--the Bureau of Criminal Investigations. David Dennison joined us from Burlington. We examined all of the evidence we had amassed and we analyzed all of the interviews we had conducted. And when Jim and Emmet and I sped back to Bennington in Emmet's freakishly clean unmarked detective sedan, we were no closer to indicting Stephen Drew than we had been the day before. At the same time, we were no closer to finding a new direction--a new suspect--worth pursuing.

  We were on Route 7 in Wallingford when Emmet abruptly chuckled from behind the wheel. I was sitting in the backseat behind Jim and Emmet, and so I caught Emmet's eye in the rearview mirror.

  "What's funny?" I asked.

  "You know, maybe this Stephen Drew did us all a favor," he said. He was driving with one hand, and he shrugged. "Maybe we should just stop spending the taxpayers' money."

  "Yeah, it's crossed my mind, too," I admitted, and I didn't have to glance at Jim to know he was glaring at us both from the corner of his eye.

  "I mean, think about it. If Drew hadn't shot George Hayward, we really would have to try the bastard and jail him--and jail him for at least twenty years. Maybe longer. And a trial and two decades of incarceration doesn't come cheap."

  Jim wasn't completely sure how serious the state trooper was. "There is a principle here, Emmet," he said, his tone his professorial best. It was the voice he used when he was making his opening statement or closing remarks to a jury: patient and avuncular and wise.

  "Oh, I know, I know. George Hayward may have been the O. J. Simpson of Green Mountain batterers, but that still doesn't mean someone had the right to shoot him in the head. But think about it: not a bad death, especially given what he did. He passes out drunk and never wakes up. And justice is done. Frankly, I think we should send the reverend a thank-you card and move on."

  We wouldn't move on, of course. At least not completely. For me it was always going to be a bit like the gnawing frustration we all experience when we misplace something and know it's somewhere in the house--but where, we haven't a clue. The cell-phone charger, the car keys, the cap to the felt-tip marker that will dry up if we don't find it soon. It's annoying as hell. But I think I knew at that moment in Emmet's car, as he flipped on the directional and accelerated into the passing lane to get ahead of a lumbering milk tanker, that if we solved either of the homicides in Haverill--found something to link Stephen Drew definitively to the murder of George Hayward--it would be more the result of very good luck than very good work. We had done our best, and, it seemed, we'd been outdone by a country pastor.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The cosmology of angels is neither problematic nor puzzling. Nor is it sectarian. Virtually all religions have spiritual messengers or escorts. Someone to take our hands when we need their grasp most, someone to pull us hard and fast from the fire. Someone to yank us off the pavement as that oncoming pickup truck whizzes past while we are strolling at dusk, so that the vehicle may transform our windbreakers into sails but we continue on unscathed. Or, just maybe, someone to yank from our fingers that orange vial of pills because it has become too painful to live. My father's brother and an older cousin of mine had both spent time in McLean, and so depression had never been a taboo subject at the breakfast table in my home growing up.

  In my case it was indeed going to be a prescription drug that I was contemplating for my last act. My roommate my first year at college had a prescription for sleeping pills, and between Thanksgiving and Christmas I fell into a funk deeper than any I had known since my parents had died. (And those initial months after their deaths had been a fog; I was so buffered by large dollops of shock and small ones of relief--yes, relief--that the first year had been considerably easier than the ones that immediately followed.) I had been deteriorating all semester, but it had begun to accelerate as the days grew precariously short. I had gone to my aunt and uncle's home in Fairfield for Thanksgiving, and the four days there had been more dispiritin
g than usual, and already I could see the changes in Amanda--how caustic her humor had become, how dark. How she was intent, it seemed, on starving herself to death. So many of the things I cared for most or associated with moments of comfort in my childhood--dolls, a couch, my childhood bed, a teakettle my mother had cherished--were scattered to the attics of relatives and friends or had been sold in the estate sale. There was just no more debris from the sinking ship that had once been my life that I could cling to. And I was miserable at college. I was lonely, I was doing poorly in class, and I was grappling with the reality that I was enrolled in a university rather than a conservatory. Unfortunately, I was five-ten--at least two inches too tall for even the more statuesque dancers--and I had never completely recovered from a series of ankle and toe injuries that had dogged me as a junior and senior in high school. It had been clear for a couple of years that I was never going to be a ballerina. And though I was in the dance program at the school, I had begun to realize that my voice was going to be my undoing when I began to audition for Broadway shows. It was adequate at best, and that was after four years of work with vocal coaches and voice teachers. What did that leave? The Rockettes. And no one, in truth, makes a living as a Rockette. Perhaps I could be a choreographer. Or a dance teacher. But I was never going to be a performer.