by Dave Balcom
She allowed a little chuckle, and then returned to her official voice. “As this investigation progresses, I’ll let you know if anything develops that has any bearing on you or yours, Mr. Stanton.”
“I thank you, Agent Reynolds. You have a great...” But I’d heard the click before I’d finished my sentence.
66
I was mopping up for the day when my phone rang, and it was Randy. “Just got back into town, and you’ll never guess who I saw... Max Hennessey.”
“Really? So he’s back. How was the fishing?
“Not bad, not bad at all. But today’s front page made it all worthwhile. Mary did a pretty neat job, don’t you think?” He sounded proud, as anyone who mentors someone can understand.
“She did really well. You and I could conceivably both go to a conference together as long as she’s around.” I could almost hear his chest swelling with pride.
“Did you happen to mention that to her?” He asked.
“I haven’t. I want her to hear it, but I thought it might be better if she heard it from you.”
“I’m not sure of that; if you’re worried about my ego, feel free to share with her yourself. She pretty much thinks the world revolves around you.”
“That’s a pretty big load to lay on a guy late in the day.”
His laugh was genuine, “Really, I only called to let you know Max is back on the street...”
I didn’t respond right away, and he, of course, picked up on that instantly, “What’s wrong, Jim? Gag order in place?”
“I don’t know what you mean...”
“You don’t think there’s a story in his being held by the Feds and then released?”
“I have no idea, but I can tell you with assurance there is no way he’s implicated in the Suzanne case or any of the others.”
“Is that a fact we can report or just Stanton reasoning?”
“If you can get that fact confirmed, I’d say run with it, but be careful. You may be among the only people in town who know, or think they know, that he’s been questioned. If you report it, and there’s nothing on him, then everyone will know, and you’ll be hurting an innocent victim.”
“You know something, Jim? If I didn’t know better, I might think you’re going soft. Instead, I just take that as confirmation that you know more about this than you should, and I trust you’ll tell me when you think it’s the right thing to do.”
“Thanks, Randy.”
“Now, to the important matters. I’ve got a cooler full of lake trout fillets. Can I bring a bag over to your house this evening?”
“I don’t see why not as long as you’re in the mood to share. I think Sandy’s home, and I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”
“I’m still unpacking, so it’ll probably be later, but hopefully not after dark.”
“Perfect. I’ll look for you.”
I was just walking out the door when my phone rang again, and this time it was Marcia Reynolds. “Jim, I’m glad I caught you. I tried your house, but nobody answered.”
“What’s up?”
“This is getting pretty exciting. We executed the subpoena this morning in Riverside, and our guys just called. There’s an immaculate paper trail tracing Jennifer’s activities for the past eight years in those bank records.
“Jennifer has spent a lot of time in the past four years in and around Lake City. She has paid rent on an apartment at... here it is, twelve-thirty-two Lake Shore Drive. You know that area?”
“I do; so do you. It’s about a block from Silva’s Restaurant. Do you think she’s there now?”
“We have no idea, but I think you should try to be home with your family for the next few days... maybe the flu bug is biting early this year.”
“Thanks for the heads up, I was just heading home when you called.”
“Be safe; I’ll check in on you later.”
67
When I pulled into the garage, I noticed that Hans was in his kennel, and the other bay was empty. I closed the garage door behind me, freed Hans from his pen and walked out into the backyard with him.
He didn’t do much sniffing around, but headed right for the deck and back door, telling me he hadn’t been locked up for long.
I called out to Sandy when I let myself into the kitchen from the deck, but there was no answer. I went to the blackboard that hung by the pantry and found her note, “At the store with Anne Crawford, be home before six.”
I read the note and realized as I did that I had relaxed a bit. I went through the house, absently looking at things, checking windows and such, and I had to admit that my thinking had changed since hearing that the woman I suspected of serial murder was keeping an apartment in town. I wondered, for the first time, what she looked like.
Even as I had that thought, I heard the phone ring. I went to the kitchen to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Jim, it’s Max; I was hoping you’d be home. Can I come over for a minute?”
“Sure, is it something that would be better meeting in the office?”
“No, nothing bad, believe me. I feel you did me a great service yesterday. No, Reynolds thought it would be a good idea if I had pictures of Jennifer that I should send them to her, and I just did that, but then I thought it might be a good idea if you knew what she looks like, or at least what she used to look like.”
“That’s ironic, Max. I was wondering what she might look like just as the phone rang. Sure, come on up.”
He was at the front door just minutes later, and as I opened the door for him, I handed him a cold beer. He traded me a folder with several photos in it.
We walked to the kitchen, and he took a seat at the island. I stood over the file that opened to an eight-by-ten black and white photo taken of a beautiful woman from a distance of maybe twenty-five or thirty feet.
She was standing on a set of outdoor stairs with her back to the hand rail. Her left foot was on a lower step than her right giving her a hip-shot look. One long-fingered hand, her left, was resting on the railing; the other was on her hip. She seemed relaxed, but intent, not smiling.
I could see in the black and white tones that she was strikingly lovely. A beautiful face, she was tall, I thought, and lean – she looked like a runner... or a model.
I flipped that photo over and found another, this time she was coming out of the surf, and it was in color. She was radiant; laughing and completely at ease in her near nakedness.
“She was a beautiful woman, Max.”
“Probably still is. Her mother aged beautifully, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s doing well in that department.”
“And you’ve never just bumped into her as you cruised the night spots here?”
He looked shame-faced as he dropped his eyes and shook his head. “You make me sound worse than I am. I don’t cruise all that much any more. I’m older, Jim; I’ve got other interests that bring me in contact with women in a setting more apt to lead to meaningful conversation, mutual understanding, and, sometimes a deeper relationship...”
“I was just wondering that’s all.”
We both heard the garage door opener, “That’s probably Sandy and the kids,” I said.
“Well, I’ll just be getting on; I thought you should see those shots.”
“You want them back?”
“Eventually, I think, but you can keep them for now.” He started to walk away, and stopped, “You know what? You may think this is weird, but I don’t want to believe she’s capable of this stuff, you know? I don’t want to think it for a lot of reasons, and maybe one is a feeling of dread that I may have been part of creating such a monster if she’s indeed a monster.
“But even more than that is that I don’t want to think that I could have been around somebody – that intimate with somebody who could turn into that kind of monster – and not have the slightest idea... Does that make any sense?”
“Max, we can talk about this another time, but I think you should stick aro
und for a minute and see Sandy and the kids.”
“I’m not sure she’ll want...”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She knows how I feel about you and what I heard yesterday. She was as relieved as I.”
I turned and headed into the garage where Sandy was struggling to get Jeremy out of his car seat. Sara was at the rear of the open trunk, looking at the bags of groceries. I hurried to her side, and picked out a bag of carrots. “Honey, can you carry this in for me, please?”
Her smile spread across her face, “Sure, Daddy.” Armed with her load, she headed for the stairs. I saw Max at the top of the steps, smiling at her as she hurried inside.
“Good move, Mr. Stanton,” Sandy said behind me.
“Not my first rodeo, Mrs. Stanton.” I loaded my arms with grocery bags and followed her up the steps.
“Max, how nice to see you!” I heard her exclaim as she entered the kitchen. “Let me get His Highness settled, and I’ll welcome you properly.”
I put my load of bags on the counter and returned to the garage for the next load. When I returned, they were standing by the front door, and Sandy had a hand on Max’s elbow. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but both of them were smiling.
I heard the door close behind Max, and Sandy came into the kitchen, “That was a bit of a shock, but he seems truly grateful for your help yesterday. I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about your role in all that.”
“Me neither, but it seems he was okay with it. He brought some pictures of his ex. The Feds asked him to wire them, and after that he thought we might want to see them.” I pointed at the manila folder on the kitchen island.
Sandy opened the folder and the photo in the surf was face up. “Wow! One thing’s for certain.”
“What’s that?”
“Looks aren’t everything for Max Hennessey.”
“She’s something, that’s for sure.”
Sandy took a few more seconds looking at the other shots, but none of them spoke to the former Mrs. Hennessey’s beauty the way that surf photo did.
As she was looking at the shots, she finally flipped the black and white photo over just as Sara crawled up onto a stool to look.
“It’s the lady from the gas station,” Sara said, pointing.
“What gas station?” Sandy asked.
“Daddy, you remember? We were going to see Gram and Gramps, and we stopped and Mommy and Jeremy went to the bathroom and I helped you with the gas. Don’t you remember? That was the lady staring at you...”
I remembered with a bit of a shock. I walked over and looked again at the photo. Sara had her finger on the face in the photo. “That’s her, Daddy.”
“I think you’re right, honey.” I looked at Sandy, “And she hasn’t changed all that much, at least from a distance.”
Sandy focused on the photo again, “That’s a great suit, very expensive, and she wears it well... She would be, what now?”
“Early to mid thirties.”
“Our age,” she said with a sigh. “I wish I looked like that... hell, I wish I’d looked like that before I had kids.”
“You look just fine to me.”
“That’s very smart and proper for you to say, Mr. Stanton, and if you keep lying like that in a timely manner you may well be in the running for a long-lasting and happy marriage.”
“Are you two teasing again?” Sara asked. “I think I can tell when you’re teasing, you call each other mister and missus.”
“We’re being very honest with each other, and that often sounds like teasing,” I said to her. “You shouldn’t make too much of it when you hear us talking; you should just be happy that your mommy and daddy love each other very much, almost as much as they love you and Jeremy.”
She smiled at that. “I know that, silly. I feel very lucky.”
68
Just after dinner, as I was reading to Sara, I heard the doorbell downstairs, and remembered that Randy was bringing fish.
“Excuse me, honey,” I said to Sara. “Look at the pages here for a minute. I think that’s Randy at the door. I’ll be right back, okay?”
She was totally hooked by the book, and didn’t respond. I extricated myself from her, padded down the stairs and headed for the front door, but I came to an immediate halt.
Sandy was standing with her back to the wall, and Jennifer Crawley was standing in front of her with a knife in one hand and what looked like an automatic handgun in the other.
“You think I don’t know what you did, Stanton?” She hissed at me.
“I’m not sure what you mean by that or by showing up here and threatening my wife, Jennifer.”
She feinted with the knife, Sandy stepped sideways towards me, and Jennifer then waved with the handgun for us to move toward the kitchen. I backed up, and Sandy hurried to me. Together we worked our way through the kitchen and into the living room.
“Sit down, both of you,” she pointed at the couch. She took my favorite arm chair. “Where’s the little girl?”
“Upstairs in her room,” I said evenly.
“Go get her,” she said to me. “I’ll wait here with Sandy. If you’re not back inside a minute, I’m going to start the party, you understand?”
I didn’t answer, just got up and hurried to the stairs. My mind started to race trying to think of any way I could turn this situation around, but what could we do? I focused on my core and my breathing as I climbed the stairs, willing my pulse into line. “First things first, Stanton,” I thought to myself. And first thing was to get Sara to play a game for me.
When I got to Sara’s room, I picked her up and put my eyes right up close to her eyes, and I whispered, “Honey, you need to be a real brave little girl right now, okay?”
“Why?”
“There’s a bad woman downstairs with your mom. She’s thinking about doing bad things to us, and we can’t let her see how frightened we are. Can you help me not be afraid?”
“It’s the woman from the gas station, isn’t it?”
I nodded slowly. “But she only thinks she’s going to hurt us. If we’re brave, we can keep that from happening, okay?”
“Oh, Daddy, I am afraid.”
“Me too, but it’s important we don’t let her know. We have to pretend we’re not afraid, okay?”
“I’ll try,” she whimpered.
“You’ll do fine.”
I carried her down the stairs and to her mother. She curled into her mother’s arms, and Jennifer told me to sit down at the other end of the couch.
“What’s the purpose here?”
“You are the purpose. You think I don’t know you’ve got the FBI thinking that Max is an innocent victim? You think I don’t know they’ve interviewed my household staff and, by now probably know everything about what I’ve been doing?”
I tried to reason with her. “Then you must know that the best thing you can do right now is let me call the police and end this once and for all.”
“That’s the idea, smart guy. That’s the idea. You call Max, he comes here alone, and I let you folks go. Sound good?”
“You turn yourself in to Max and the authorities, and I’m sure that’ll sound good to everyone concerned.”
“What planet do you come from?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m not going to turn myself into anything. I’m going to turn Max Hennessey and all four of you into a dim memory. You thought I wanted to see him convicted of multiple murders; spending the rest of his life on death row. You think you’ve ruined that plan, don’t you? Call Max, now.”
I went to the phone and started dialing, but stopped when I heard her voice, “You go ahead and complete that long distance number, Stanton, and you’ll watch me kill both of these folks right before your eyes.”
I disconnected.
“I have to look up his phone number. I don’t know it by heart.”
“Then look it up, and make it snappy.”
When I had the number before me, I dialed and
waited for him to answer. It rang and rang. “What happens if he’s not home?”
She seemed to swell in fury at the thought. “That’d be just about perfect,” she hissed. “That prick walks away, and you all get butchered because he can’t be where he belongs when he’s needed.”
The call had been picked up by his machine and I heard his message and the beep, “Max! Max, this is Jim Stanton. If you’re there, please pick up.”
I heard the phone lift off the receiver. “What’s the matter, Jim?”
“Max,” I started slowly and calmly, “I need you to process this carefully. Jennifer has my wife and daughter under the gun, right now in our living room. She wants you to come here alone, right now. If you aren’t here ...”
I heard Jennifer hiss from the living room, “Five minutes, not one second more.”
“...in five minutes, she’s going to attack. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I got it. I’ll be there.”
I hung up and walked back to the couch. “He’s on his way.”
“I knew he would be.” She seemed to have regained control, and I was checking my center and wondering what was going on inside Sandy’s head. Sara looked to have fallen asleep in her mother’s arms.
“I don’t see why you would want to hurt Sara,” Sandy started.
“Shut up, bitch. Just figure it’s an acquired taste. Young girls, Scotch...” She let the thought trail off. “Where’s the little boy? We need him here, too.”
“He’s upstairs, sleeping,” Sandy said in her gentlest voice.
“Go get him, too,” she said to me. “You’ve got one minute, no more.”
“I may need to change him.”
“Really? You think that?”
I turned and hurried away. I heard her cackling laugh and it sent a shudder through me. I found Jeremy dead to the world and he didn’t even twitch when I picked him up, wrapped a blanket around him and brought him downstairs.
“About time, I thought maybe you were feeling heroic...” She lost the thread again, and we all sat silent until she seemed to snap out of a daydream. “I wonder what an infant would be like. It would be a first, I’ll bet...”