by Stephen King
"It's nice to meet you."
"Uh-huh, that's good, but if I'm going to put my job on the line for you, it will cost two hundred." She paused, then added: "And fifty."
"All right," Holly said. She guessed she could talk the woman down to two hundred, maybe even a hundred and fifty, but she wasn't good at bargaining (which her mother always called haggling). Also, this lady looked like she needed it.
"You better come inside," Wilson said. "The neighbors on this street have long noses."
8
The house smelled strongly of cigarettes, which made Holly really crave one for the first time in ages. Wilson plunked down in an easy chair, which, like her taillight, was mended with duct tape. Beside it was a standing ashtray of a type Holly hadn't seen since her grandfather died (of emphysema). Wilson plucked a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her nylon pants and flicked her Bic. She did not offer the pack to Holly, which was no surprise, given the price of smokes these days, but for which Holly was grateful, anyway. She might have taken one.
"Money first," Candy Wilson said.
Holly, who had not neglected to stop at an ATM on her second trip to the Memory Unit, took her wallet from her purse and counted out the correct amount. Wilson re-counted it, then put it in her pocket with her cigarettes.
"Hope you're telling the truth about keeping your mouth shut, Holly. God knows I need this money, my asshole husband cleaned out our bank account when he left, but Mrs. Kelly doesn't kid around. She's like one of the dragons on that Thrones show."
Holly once more zipped a thumbnail across her lips and turned the invisible key. Candy Wilson smiled and seemed to relax. She looked around the living room, which was small and dark and furnished in Early American Yard Sale. "Ugly fucking place, isn't it? We had a nice house over on the west side. No mansion, but better than this pit. My asshole husband sold it right out from under me before he sailed off into the sunset. You know what they say, there are none so blind as those who will not see. I almost wish we'd had kids, so I could turn them against him."
Bill would have known how to reply to this, but Holly didn't, so she took out her notebook and went to the matter at hand. "Heath Holmes worked as an orderly at the Heisman."
"Yes indeed. Handsome Heath, we used to call him. It was sort of a joke and sort of not. He wasn't any Chris Pine or Tom Hiddleston, but he wasn't hard to look at, either. Nice guy, too. Everybody thought so. Which only goes to prove that you never know what's in a man's heart. I found that out with my asshole husband, but at least he never raped and mutilated any little girls. Seen their pictures in the paper?"
Holly nodded. Two cute blondes, wearing identical pretty smiles. Twelve and ten, the exact ages of Terry Maitland's daughters. Another of those things that felt like a connection. Maybe it wasn't, but the whisper that the two cases were actually one had begun to grow louder in Holly's mind. A few more facts of the right kind, and it would become a shout.
"Who does that?" Wilson asked, but the question was rhetorical. "A monster, that's who."
"How long did you work with him, Ms. Wilson?"
"Call me Candy, why don't you? I let people call me by my first name when they pay my utilities for the next month. I worked with him for seven years, and never had a clue."
"The paper said he was on vacation when the girls were killed."
"Yeah, went up to Regis, about thirty miles north of here. To his mother's. Who told the cops he was there the whole time." Wilson rolled her eyes.
"The paper also said he had a record."
"Well, yeah, but nothing gross, just a joyride in a stolen car when he was seventeen." She frowned at her cigarette. "Paper wasn't supposed to have that, you know, he was a juvenile and those records are supposed to be sealed. If they weren't, he probably wouldn't have gotten the job at Heisman, even with all his army training and his five years working at Walter Reed. Maybe, but probably not."
"You speak as if you knew him pretty well."
"I'm not defending him, don't get that idea. I had drinks with him, sure, but it wasn't a date situation, nothing like that. A bunch of us used to go out to the Shamrock sometimes after work--this was back when I still had some money and could buy a round when it was my turn. Those days are gone, honey. Anyway, we used to call ourselves the Forgetful Five, on account of--"
"I think I get it," Holly said.
"Yeah, I bet you do, and we knew all the Alzheimer's jokes. Most of them are kind of mean, and lots of our patients are actually pretty nice, but we told them to kind of . . . I don't know . . ."
"Whistle past the graveyard?" Holly suggested.
"Yes, that's it. You want a beer, Holly?"
"Okay. Thanks." She didn't have much of a taste for beer, and it wasn't really recommended when you were taking Lexapro, but she wanted to keep the conversation rolling.
Wilson brought back a couple of Bud Lights. She offered Holly a glass no more than she had offered one of her cigarettes.
"Yeah, I knew about the joyride bust," she said, once more sitting in the mended easy chair. It gave a tired woof. "We all did. You know how people talk when they've had a few. But it was nothing like what he did in April. I still can't believe it. I kissed that guy under the mistletoe at last year's Christmas party." She either shuddered or pretended to.
"So he was on vacation the week of April 23rd . . ."
"If you say so. I just know it was in the spring, because of my allergies." So saying, she lit a fresh cigarette. "Said he was going up to Regis, said he and his mom were going to have a service for his dad, who died a year ago. 'A memory service,' he called it. And maybe he did go, but he came back to kill those girls from Trotwood. No question about it, because people saw him and there was surveillance video from a gas station that showed him filling up."
"Filling what up?" Holly asked. "Was it a van?" This was leading the witness, and Bill wouldn't have approved, but she couldn't help herself.
"I don't know. Not sure the papers said. Probably his truck. He had a Tahoe, all fancied up. Custom tires, lots of chrome. And a camper cap. He could have put them in there. Drugged them, maybe, until he was ready to . . . you know . . . use them."
"Oough," Holly said. She couldn't help it.
Candy Wilson nodded. "Yeah. Kind of thing you don't want to imagine, but you just can't help it. At least I can't. They also found his DNA, as I'm sure you know, because that was in the paper, too."
"Yes."
"And I saw him that week, because he came in to work one day. 'Just can't stay away from this place, can you?' I asked him. He didn't say anything, just gave me a creepy smile and kept walking down B Wing. I never saw him smile like that, never. I bet he still had their blood under his fingernails. Maybe even on his cock and balls. Christ, it gives me the willies just thinking about it."
It gave Holly the willies, too, but she didn't say so, only took a sip of her beer and asked what day that had been.
"I don't know off the top of my head, but after those girls disappeared. You know what? I bet I can tell you exactly, because I had a hair appointment that same day after work. To have it colored. Haven't been to the beauty parlor since, as I'm sure you can plainly see. Just a minute."
She went to a little desk in the corner of the room, came up with an appointment book, and flipped back through the pages. "Here it is, Debbie's Hairport. April 26th."
Holly wrote it down, and added an exclamation point. That was the day of Terry's last visit to see his father. He and his family had flown home the following day.
"Did Peter Maitland know Mr. Holmes?"
Wilson laughed. "Peter Maitland doesn't really know anybody, hon. He had some clear days last year, and even early this year he remembered enough to get to the caff on his own and ask for chocolate--the things they really like are the things most of them remember the longest. Now he just sits and stares. If I get that shit, I'm going to take a bunch of pills and die while I still have enough working brain cells to remember what the pills are for. But i
f you're asking if Heath knew Maitland, the answer is sure, you bet. Some of the orderlies switch around, but Heath stuck pretty much to the odd-numbered suites on B Wing. He used to say that some part of them knew him, even when most of their brains were gone. And Maitland is in suite B-5."
"Did he visit Maitland's room on the day you saw him?"
"Must have. I know something that wasn't in the paper, but you can bet your ass it would have been a big deal at Heath's trial, if he'd ever had one."
"What, Candy? What was it, what?"
"When the cops found out he'd been in to the Memory Unit after the murders, they searched all the B Wing suites, paying especially close attention to Maitland's, because Cam Melinsky said he saw Heath coming out of there. Cam's a janitor. He noticed Heath especially because he--Cam, I mean--was washing the hall floor, and Heath took a slip and went on his ass."
"You're sure of this, Candy?"
"I am, and here's the big thing. My best friend on the nursing staff is a woman named Penny Prudhomme, and she heard one of the cops talking on his phone after they searched B-5. He said they found hair in the room, and it was blond. What do you think of that?"
"I think they must have run a DNA test on it, to see if it belonged to one of the Howard girls."
"Bet your ass they did. CSI stuff."
"Those results were never made public," Holly said. "Were they?"
"No. But you know what the cops found in Mrs. Holmes's basement, don't you?"
Holly nodded. That detail had been made public, and reading it must have been like putting an arrow in the parents' hearts. Someone had talked and the paper had printed it. Probably it had been on TV, too.
"A lot of sex-killers take trophies," Candy said authoritatively. "I've seen it on Forensic Files and Dateline. It's common behavior with these whackos."
"Although Heath Holmes never seemed like a whacko to you."
"They hide it," Candy Wilson said ominously.
"But he didn't try very hard to hide this crime, did he? People saw him, and there was even that surveillance video."
"So what? He went crazy, and crazy people don't give a shit."
I'm sure Detective Anderson and the Flint County DA said the exact same thing about Terry Maitland, Holly thought. Even though some serial killers--sex-killers, to use Candy Wilson's term--keep getting away with it for years. Ted Bundy for one, John Wayne Gacy for another.
Holly got up. "Thank you so much for your time."
"Thank me by making sure Mrs. Kelly doesn't find out I talked to you."
"I'll do that," Holly said.
As she was stepping out the door, Candy said, "You know about his mom, right? What she did after Heath offed himself in jail?"
Holly stopped, keys in hand. "No."
"It was a month later. Guess you didn't get that far in your researches. She hung herself. Just like him, only in her basement instead of a jail cell."
"Holy frack! Did she leave a note?"
"That I don't know," Candy said, "but the basement was where the cops found those bloody underpants. The ones with Winnie and Tigger and Roo on them. If your only son does a thing like that, who needs to leave a note?"
9
When Holly was unsure about what to do next, she almost always sought out either an International House of Pancakes or a Denny's. Both served breakfast all day, comfort food that you could eat slowly without being bothered by things like wine lists and pushy waiters. She found an IHOP close to her hotel.
Once seated at a two-top in the corner, she ordered pancakes (a short stack), a single scrambled egg, and hash browns (the IHOP hash browns were always delicious). While she waited for her food to come, she fired up her laptop and searched for Ralph Anderson's telephone number. She didn't find it, which was no huge surprise; police officers almost always unlisted their phones. She could almost certainly get it, even so--Bill had taught her all the tricks--and she wanted to talk to him, because she was sure they both had pieces of the puzzle the other lacked.
"He's Macy's, I'm Gimbels," she said.
"What was that, hon?" It was the waitress, with her evening repast.
"I was just saying how hungry I am," Holly said.
"You better be, because this is a lot of chow." She set the plates down. "But you could use some feeding up, if you don't mind me saying so. You're too skinny."
"I had a friend who used to tell me that all the time," Holly said, and suddenly felt like crying. It was that phrase--I had a friend. Time had passed, and time probably did heal all wounds, but God, some of them healed so slowly. And the difference between I have and I had was such a gulf.
She ate slowly, going heavy on the pancake syrup. It wasn't the real deal, not maple, but it was tasty, just the same, and it was good to eat a meal where you sat down and took your time.
By the time she finished, she had come to a reluctant decision. Calling Detective Anderson without informing Pelley was apt to get her fired when she wanted--it was Bill's turn of phrase--to chase the case. More importantly, it would be unethical.
The waitress came back to offer more coffee, and Holly agreed. You didn't get free refills at Starbucks. And the IHOP coffee, while not gourmet, was good enough. Like the syrup. And like me, Holly thought. Her therapist said these moments of self-validation throughout the day were very important. I may not be Sherlock Holmes--or Tommy and Tuppence, for that matter--but I am good enough, and I know what I have to do. Mr. Pelley may argue with me, and I hate arguments, but I'll argue back if I have to. I'll channel my inner Bill Hodges.
She held that thought while she made the call. When Pelley answered, she said: "Terry Maitland didn't kill the Peterson boy."
"What? Did you just say what I think you--"
"Yes. I've discovered some very interesting things here in Dayton, Mr. Pelley, but before I make my report, I need to talk to Detective Anderson. Do you have any objections?"
Pelley didn't give her the argument she had dreaded. "I'd have to talk to Howie Gold about that, and he'd have to clear it with Marcy. But I think it will be okay with both of them."
Holly relaxed and sipped her coffee. "That's good. Clear it with them as fast as you can, please, and get me his number. I'd like to talk to him tonight."
"But why? What have you found out?"
"Let me ask you a question. Do you know if anything unusual happened at the Heisman Memory Unit on the day Terry Maitland visited his father for the last time?"
"Unusual like what?"
This time Holly didn't lead her witness. "Like anything. You may not know, but then again you might. If Terry said something to his wife when he got back to their hotel, for instance. Anything?"
"No . . . unless you mean Terry bumping into an orderly when he went out. The orderly fell down because the floor was wet, but it was just a chance thing. Neither of them was hurt, or anything."
She clutched her phone so hard her knuckles creaked. "You never said anything like that before."
"I didn't think it was important."
"That's why I need to talk to Detective Anderson. There are missing pieces. You just gave me one. He may have more. Also, he can find things out that I can't."
"Are you saying an excuse-me bump as Maitland was going out has relevance? If so, what is it?"
"Let me talk to Detective Anderson first. Please."
There was a long pause, then Pelley said, "Let me see what I can do."
The waitress put down the check as Holly pocketed her phone. "That sounded intense."
Holly gave her a smile. "Thank you for such good service."
The waitress left. The check came to eighteen dollars and twenty cents. Holly left a five-dollar tip under her plate. This was quite a bit more than the recommended amount, but she was excited.
10
She had barely returned to her room when her cell rang. UNKNOWN CALLER, the screen said. "Hello? You've reached Holly Gibney, to whom am I speaking?"
"This is Ralph Anderson. Alec Pelley gave me your n
umber, Ms. Gibney, and told me what you're doing. My first question is, do you know what you're doing?"
"Yes." Holly had many worries, and she was a very doubtful person even after years of therapy, but of this much she was sure.
"Uh-huh, uh-huh, well, maybe you do and maybe you don't, I have no way of telling, do I?"
"No," Holly agreed. "At least not as of this moment."
"Alec said you told him Terry Maitland didn't kill Frank Peterson. He said you seemed very sure of it. I'm curious as to how you can make a statement like that when you're in Dayton and the Peterson murder happened here in Flint City."
"Because there was a similar crime here, at the same time Maitland was here. Not a boy killed, but two little girls. Same basic MO: rape and mutilation. The man the police arrested claimed to have been staying with his mother in a town thirty miles away, and she corroborated that, but he was also seen in Trotwood, the suburb where the little girls were abducted. There's surveillance footage of him. Does this sound familiar?"
"Familiar but not surprising. Most killers toss up some kind of alibi once they're caught. You might not know that from your work collaring bail-jumpers, Ms. Gibney--Alec told me what your firm mostly does--but surely you know it from TV."
"This man was an orderly at the Heisman Memory Unit, and although he was supposed to be on vacation, he was there at least once during the same week that Mr. Maitland was there visiting his father. On the occasion of Mr. Maitland's last visit--April 26th, this would have been--these two supposed killers actually bumped into each other. And I mean that literally."
"Are you shitting me?" Anderson nearly shouted.
"I am not. This is what my old partner at Finders Keepers would have called an authentic no-shit situation. Is your interest piqued?"
"Did Pelley tell you the orderly scraped Maitland when he fell down? Reached out and grabbed for him and nicked his arm?"
Holly was silent. She was thinking about the movie she had packed in her carry-on. She wasn't in the habit of self-congratulation--just the opposite--but it now seemed like an act of intuitive genius. Only had she ever doubted there was something far out of the ordinary about the Maitland case? She had not. Mostly because of her association with the monstrous Brady Wilson Hartsfield. A thing like that tended to widen your perspective quite a bit.