by Jill Kelly
“Roger?” said Hansen.
Ellie looked at him and nodded.
“I went by your place right after you went to France. I met Roger Gerstead then.”
“He was house-sitting for me,” Ellie told Capriano.
“Do you have a number for him?” Capriano asked.
Ellie pulled out her cell phone, found the number, and wrote it on a slip of paper from her wallet.
The two men stood then. The silence seemed awkward to Hansen, like a date gone bad, no one knowing what to do next. He spoke up. “Ellie, do you need your car?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to leave Sandy alone.”
“How long will it take?” Capriano said.
“Twenty minutes at most,” said Hansen. “It’s not far.”
“Jackson and I will stay then. Just make it quick.”
Hansen nodded. Ellie hugged Sandy, who sat like a statue, and she and Hansen went out the door.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Ellie asked as they drove away.
Hansen looked straight ahead at the road. How much would keep her safe? How much would terrify her? Was there any middle ground? Then he shrugged and decided to tell her the truth, or most of it, anyway.
“There have been other incidents.”
“Other incidents? What does that mean?”
Hansen looked over at her, at the confusion on her face, a confusion that was morphing into panic.
“A woman was found dead in February in a hotel in the city. The circumstances were similar to what happened to you.”
“Was her boyfriend killed, too?”
Hansen shook his head. “No, she was alone at the scene. And her death may have been accidental.”
“Accidental?” Ellie put her hand on his arm.
“Asphyxiation through overdose. She had a lot of drugs in her system.”
“Prescriptions?”
“No, street drugs.”
“Did she know Joel or Arlen?” Ellie’s voice was small, almost child-like.
“No, we found no connection at all.”
Ellie was quiet a long moment. Then she said, “You said incidents. Plural.”
“Arlen.”
“What about Arlen?”
“It was all similar to Gettysburg. They were found in a hotel. Arlen was in a chair with pentobarbital. The girl in the bed, like you.”
Her hand slipped away from his arm. The car felt as though all the air had been sucked right out of it. He looked over at her. Her face had gone blank. He watched to see if she was breathing and was relieved to see her chest rise and fall. He wanted to put his arms around her and reassure her that it would be all right, but that wasn’t the truth. He couldn’t guarantee anything.
“How did the girl die, the girl with Arlen?”
“The same way. Asphyxiated.”
“He choked her like he choked me?”
“No, she died some hours later, hours after the assault. Vomited and it got into her lungs.”
“Accidental.”
Hansen heard the bitterness in Ellie’s voice, but there was nothing he could say.
They had come to her street and her red Honda Civic sat to the right. Hansen was conscious of the time and yet he couldn’t leave her like this. He took a deep breath “Do you need to go inside?”
She nodded. She didn’t look at him.
“I’ll come with you.”
They walked up the street and then up the outside stairs. The house was quiet and dark except for the two porch lights, one over the door on the long front porch, one over Ellie’s door. He reflexively went in first, checked the rooms, but he knew that the killer wouldn’t be there. That wasn’t what this was about.
Ellie gathered her things from the bathroom and the bedroom, stuffing them into a cloth bag. She fed the two cats. She said nothing and she still didn’t look at him. When she was ready to go, she looked at him and nodded. And they went out.
Once in her car, she rolled down the window.
“I’ll follow you over,” he said.
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Yes, I do. Ellie, I …” he paused. “There seems so much to talk about and I don’t know what to say.”
She looked up at him with a sad smile. “Bad timing, Doug. We’ve had bad timing. And …” she gave a little bitter laugh, “bad karma.”
“I guess.”
She hesitated and he hoped she felt as reluctant to part as he did.
“Are we in danger, Doug? Sandy and I?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so. But it would be best if you and Sandy stayed together at night. Capriano and I will talk to the locals and get a patrol to come by her house.”
“Actually, I’m going to try to talk Sandy into coming here to stay with me. I’ve got cats and she doesn’t. And maybe it would be better for her to get out of that house.”
“Just let Capriano know that when you get back over there.” He was silent a moment. “We’re going to get him, Ellie. I know it.”
She smiled that same sad smile and rolled up her window. He drove right behind her to the Gerstead house and waited until she had gone inside. Then he started the long drive back to Gettysburg.
45
Ellie put off talking to Al for a few days after her session with Mona. The feeling of being watched faded, and things stayed in place in her room. Only one thing spooked her: Coming down the hall to her room after dinner one night, she thought she saw gold cords on the carpet outside her room. There were two of them, and her throat seized up in fear. But when she put her glasses on and got closer, she saw that they were ordinary pieces of rope, beige, harmless. Only the light in the hallway had made them look familiar. She chided herself for interpreting everything as scary and wished Sandy were there to laugh with her. She knew that some of this was a result of nothing much to do, no purpose, no structure, and no one to confide in. She knew Al would love to be that one person, but something held her back.
Ellie had always shied away from marriage. When she was younger, her circle of friends didn’t believe in any of the old institutions. They believed in careers for women, free love, sexual experimentation. Having kids and a family was for later, much later, and then it was only one option among many. And without kids, there was no need for marriage. It was a philosophy that resonated with something in Ellie, who felt a need to be attached and free at the same time. That had been fine with the men in her life, the early lovers, then Danny, then Joel.
But the violation of her body and her spirit had changed how she was with herself. She thought about Al’s words the night they had met. “Can someone else come along? Be there to pick up the pieces. Bring you back home to yourself.” It hadn’t worked with Hansen, or maybe she hadn’t been ready yet. She knew that if she asked Al about Annie—and Gracie—that it would only be fair to answer his questions about her past, if he asked them. She also knew that the only point in having these conversations was to get closer to each other, to become husband and wife. The big question was if she was ready now.
46
Hansen didn’t see Ellie again until the funeral for Arlen Gerstead. When he arrived, the fifty or sixty mourners were being urged to take the front rows of the large gothic chapel buried in the heart of the campus. In the back, under the massive pipe organ, sat several rows of ancient nuns. Ellie and Sandy Gerstead sat in the front. Both women wore black, the dresses similar enough that Hansen couldn’t tell them apart. Behind them sat the son Roger and a stout, gray-haired woman in a very tight navy blue suit. Gerstead’s first wife, he assumed. They looked tired and strained. Hansen wondered where the other son was. Ellie had said there were two boys. Toward the back sat Ellie’s student-friend Michelle and the boyfriend from Paris. The girl looked different. Older, tired. The first deaths of people we know will do that. The guy looked the same, though his hair was short now and darker than Hansen remembered. He was sorry to see they were still together. He wouldn’t want one of his girls to be going out
with Lenny.
The chapel was impressive. Hansen’s own religious experience had been meager and Lutheran. This was old-style Catholic with vaulted ceilings, gleaming hardwood pews and floors, rich stained glass with a preponderance of blue. The air was heavy with incense. He wondered idly if Ellie was Catholic, if Gerstead had been, or if the chapel had been chosen because both women worked on campus.
There was no casket. He knew from Capriano that the body had been cremated once the autopsy was done. Gerstead had died of an overdose of pentobarbital and Valium, but there was nothing to indicate that the second man had had a hand in his death. Just like with Joel Richardson, the only prints on the syringe were Gerstead’s. But this copy-cat suicide cast strong doubt on what had happened to Richardson. Often with serial events, the more it happened, the more they knew. But not this time.
Hansen walked up the side aisle and crossed in front of Ellie so she would see him. She looked good, better than he expected. He’d noticed earlier that she had put on some weight and she carried it nicely. She smiled at him, a real smile of warmth and greeting, and he felt his earlier desire for her well up. Bad timing, she had said. That’s for sure. But could they overcome it? Did he want to?
He nodded at Jackson, Capriano’s partner, but saw no sign of his friend. It was only in the movies that the police hoped to catch the killer at the funeral. Jackson’s appearance was a courtesy to the family, a visual memo that they were still on the case. And his own appearance? Ellie was his friend. They had been lovers. He wanted her to know that he was there for her.
He took a seat a dozen rows back from the front, several empty pews between him and the mourners. The priest went through the unfamiliar ritual and people rose and sat and kneeled and sat, Ellie and Sandy among them, and Hansen watched.
Several people got up and spoke platitudes about Arlen Gerstead. One was a former boss, another a fellow salesman. Roger Gerstead got up and spoke for the family. He thanked people for coming, he spoke warmly of his father in the vague way of the young. Hansen didn’t really listen. He hadn’t liked Arlen Gerstead one bit.
The whole service took about thirty-five minutes. There was a small reception in an adjoining room. Cookies, fruit juice, coffee. The large photo of Arlen that had stood on an easel in the front of the chapel now stood by the trash can. Hansen couldn’t help but note the symbolism.
Roger Gerstead and his mother stood to one side while most of the others greeted and consoled Sandy. Ellie stood close to her friend, anchoring her, it seemed. Michelle spoke to the two older women. Lenny wasn’t with her and Hansen didn’t see him anywhere.
Then Hansen saw an opening and approached the two women. He spoke briefly to Sandy, then asked Ellie if they might talk a moment. She nodded and they moved to the far end of the room.
“How are you two holding up?”
Ellie tilted her head at the question. “Well, I’d say a little better each day. She was pretty upset at first. She hadn’t really come to grips with the separation, Arlen’s affair, that whole mess. And then suddenly for him to be dead. Just like Joel. It all seems so complicated, so messy. Who are these men that we know so little about?”
“I wish I knew, Ellie. I wish I could explain it all to you.” He touched her shoulder and felt her move a little closer to him. He wanted to embrace her.
She sighed. “I’m not glad Arlen is dead, but I must say it’s been helpful to have someone else to worry about, and nice to be able to be there for Sandy after she was so good to me. I was pretty uncommunicative when I was in France, really mired in my own misery, and I’m glad to be able to do something for her. It helps to try to get us both back to normal.”
He nodded and held himself back from touching her again.
“I’m back at work finally, teaching a class up here. Trying to keep some structure going. That feels therapeutic too.”
“I can relate. Work is really important.”
She smiled at him again. “I should get back.”
“Ellie, one question. I thought Arlen had two sons.”
She frowned. “He does. He did. Twins. But only Roger came today.”
“Bad blood?”
“What? Oh, with Arlen? I don’t know. You’d have to ask Sandy. I know they were both unhappy when Arlen divorced their mom, even though it was her idea. She had another man at the time. They all live in Ohio.” She turned to leave.
“One more thing. Is the other son named Jason?”
“No. His name is Michael.”
“Have you ever met him?”
“Once. A few years back at a graduation party for Roger. Michael was there briefly. He never warmed up to Sandy as stepmother although she and Roger get along fine.”
“Then, did you ever hear Arlen speak of a Jason Dirrelich?” He spelled the last name for her.
She shook her head.
“Okay, Ellie. Take care of yourself.”
He watched her move across the room, stopping to talk briefly with two or three small groups of people. Then she rejoined Sandy and he was alone again.
47
Then somehow, life went back to normal. Ellie spent some of each day on campus, teaching her class and taking care of the endless personal and professional paperwork that had piled up during her absence. She had her apartment cleaned and her bedroom painted. She got a new mattress and springs. She felt in a hurry to move on now.
Sandy stayed with her another week after the funeral, then moved home to get the house ready to sell. The same reporters who had plagued Ellie now plagued the Gerstead property for a week, but then the shooting of a black kid fleeing a robbery in Squirrel Hill took all the juice out of the Gerstead scandal and things quieted down.
Ellie thought about Hansen. She went over their conversations word for word, looking for an opening, a way back to the potential that had come off him in waves in Paris, but it hadn’t been there. Clearly, he cared about her and wanted her to be well. But he didn’t want to be with her and she couldn’t blame him. She felt downhearted.
In mid-June, Sandy went to upstate New York to visit her ancient father. “I hate to leave you, Ellie,” she said. “But I need to go and I need to get out of town. Maybe that damn house will sell while I’m gone.” She’d already found a condo closer to Pittsburgh, which she wanted to buy and was trying to talk Ellie into getting one in the same complex.
“That’s okay. Now that I’m working, I’m doing much better. And I think this must be all over.” She needed to believe that. That the killer had been after Joel and Arlen and now that they were dead, it was over. “You go and have the best time you can.”
Sandy rolled her eyes at the thought and both women laughed.
48
As it turned out, Hansen and Capriano were of the same mind. In their weekly phone conversations about the three cases, they had come to the decision that Richardson and Gerstead were the targets, that the women—Ellie, the Carlyle woman, the nurse-prostitute—had been collateral damage. Not all the evidence pointed that way, but enough of it did for the idea to be feasible.
“What do you think about the other Gerstead boy? Do you think he’s good for it?” Hansen asked on a Tuesday in late June. He heard Capriano slurp, coffee probably as it was just past ten in the morning.
“We did some checking, Doug. He has a solid alibi for the whole weekend of Arlen’s murder. He works at a halfway-house in Akron for disabled adults and he was on duty the whole weekend, sleeps there and everything.”
“He couldn’t have slipped away while people were asleep?”
“Doesn’t seem feasible. First, Akron is quite a drive, as you well know. And there are three caregivers at the home at all times, and two have to be awake and on duty at a time. It’s just too far and too many hours to be gone. Besides, there would have been a DNA connection with Arlen’s blood.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Arlen would have been a partial match if it was his kid.”
“Do you have some need for this to be oedipal?”
“No,” he said, “I just want a good suspect.”
“Me too.”
“Do you think there could be more than one killer?”
“I don’t think so. There’re too many details that are the same in each incident. The guy had to have been at the first one to stage the other two.”
“I know. I’m just fishing. I want this guy off the streets.”
Capriano slurped again. “Are you still seeing Ellie McKay?”
“I’m not seeing her, Larry.”
Capriano looked him in the eye. “I know you went to Paris last Thanksgiving.”
“I did. And I saw her there. But nothing came of it. Nothing.”
“Hmmm. Okay, if you say so. She’s a good-looking woman. And smart too.”
“Both those things, but we aren’t seeing each other. However, that doesn’t preclude me from wanting to get whoever raped her behind bars.”
“Of course not. I was just asking.” He paused and then cleared his throat. “My captain wants you to step back from this now. What with the last three deaths squarely in our jurisdiction, he wants Jackson and me to be full-tilt on this. It’s not that we don’t appreciate your help and we’ll certainly keep you posted with the outcome, but it isn’t going to be a joint case anymore. Your captain agrees. Sounds like he wants your attention on cases there.”
Hansen felt a surge of anger. Then another surge. But he kept his mouth shut and pushed the feelings down.
Capriano spoke into the awkward silence. “It’s nothing personal. Your work has helped get us this far but we’ve got to take it now.”
“I know. Just keep me informed then.”
“Sure. Take it easy.” And Capriano was gone.
49
The summer lurched by in full-blown heat and humidity. Capriano and Jackson worked the case in the time between gang fights and hit-and-runs and drug busts and bar brawls. There were other murders but none were of ordinary citizens—none were the kind of murders that get big press, and most were quickly solved. The second man seemed to have vanished with the death of Arlen Gerstead.