by Stephen Frey
“I don’t want to talk about it.” It’s a flimsy answer but it’s all I can think of to say. I wasn’t ready for this. “I, I—”
“I don’t blame you, Professor. If I were you I’d think I had something to do with it, too. I mean, of course I made her write down that note before she left.”
I want to put my hands over my ears, but instead I take a long drink of soda. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. What am I supposed to do now? Arrest my best friend?
“I’m going to have her come to Bruner tomorrow so you can see for yourself that she’s alive.”
I stop gulping in midswallow. “What?”
Bear grabs three sausages and two pieces of bread and makes a sandwich and the whole thing is gone in a few seconds. All except for a piece of bread stuck between his two front teeth. “I’m having Karen come to Bruner tomorrow. I figured we’d meet at my house.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yup,” he says, making another sandwich, this time with four pieces of sausage. “Let’s make it ten o’clock at my house.” He wags a finger at me. “Nobody else can know about this. Not even Maggie.”
“But—”
“No,” Bear says firmly. “This is the way Karen and I have it all worked out.”
“Why?”
“I told you before. She ran off with another guy. This is how I want it. No questions.”
“Karen will want to see Maggie,” I say, still processing what I’m hearing as relief floods through me. “Don’t blame me because I won’t be able to stop her.”
Bear smiles grimly. “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning at my house. Nobody else knows. Okay?”
I nod slowly.
“Swear to keep this absolutely between the two of us?”
It sounds silly for him to ask for my silence that way, but I agree. “Okay, I swear.” It sounds like we’re back in high school again, but I’m so glad about tomorrow and so relieved that he wasn’t telling me what I thought he was telling me that I don’t hesitate for a second.
“Okay.” Bear nods and finishes his second vodka.
Just in time for Shank to deliver a third one along with two heaping salads.
“What did Darrow Clements want this morning?” Bear asks, starting to root through his salad like a wild boar roots around a field.
“He wanted me to take a test.”
Bear stops going through the greens and glances up at me, eyebrows crunched, eyes narrowed. “Huh?”
I exhale heavily. I’m convinced I’m going to see Karen tomorrow morning and suddenly I feel terrible for all the things I’ve thought about Bear over the last few days. Hell, for the last month and a half, really. “Cindy and I had sex the afternoon she was murdered,” I say in a low voice, swallowing hard. It’s tough to admit, but it feels good to tell him. It feels good to talk about it, and he’s the only person in the world I can talk to about it. “At the estate.”
Bear’s gaze drops to his plate. “Oh.”
I shake my head. “I can’t believe I actually did it with her.”
“That’s the first time, isn’t it? I mean, since you got married.”
I nod regretfully, but it feels good to know Bear believes that I’ve been faithful to Vivian all these years. “She just kept coming on so strong, and Viv and I had just had a terrible fight.”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever cheated on Viv, isn’t it?”
I nod again. “Yeah.”
“Well whatever you do, don’t tell her what happened.”
“I have to.” I do, too. Not right now, but someday I’ll have to admit to the awful thing I did. I have to be honest with her. Maybe she’ll end up leaving me, but I can’t live with the lie. “I do.”
“No, you don’t,” he shoots back quickly. “Cindy’s gone. That’s all Vivian cares about.”
It’s shocking to actually hear him say that. “Do you really think she’s glad that Cindy’s gone?”
Bear rolls his eyes. “Come on, Professor.” He glances out at Shawmut Lake. “But what does all of this have to do with Darrow Clements?”
Bear was exactly right to pull me out of my office chair and bring me out here. I’m glad he did now because we’re back to normal, we’re back to being best friends, and I can tell him anything. “When the coroner did the autopsy he found two different semen samples inside Cindy.”
Bear grimaces. “Uh, oh.”
“One of the samples belongs to Jack,” I go on. “He told them he had sex with Cindy and somehow Lewis Prescott found out I was at the estate after Jack was supposed to have left. So now Clements wants to see if that other sample is mine. He’s made the connection, which I guess wasn’t real hard to make. He says he hasn’t told Prescott yet but he will. He claims he told Prescott about the cult but not about the two semen samples. Nobody wants to tell Prescott his daughter was a cheater.” I exhale heavily. “So he wants me to take a blood test so he can prove it’s me.”
Bear gazes at me for several seconds. “So what if it is yours? That doesn’t prove anything except what a lot of people up here already assumed for years. That you and Cindy had a thing for each other. As screwed up a thing as it was for both of you,” he adds under his breath.
“So what? I’ll tell you so what. I think Prescott told Darrow Clements to do everything he can to implicate me in Cindy’s murder. I think once Clements proves the semen is mine he’s going to tell the world I raped and killed Cindy as part of a ritual. He’s going to tell everyone I’m in the cult.”
Bear shakes his head. “Even if you’re right about what Prescott and Clements are trying to do, which I don’t think you are, it would never stick. You don’t have anything to worry about, Professor. You aren’t in any cult and you didn’t kill Cindy. We both know that.”
“I wish I was as confident as you are.”
I go silent when I hear Shank coming down the hallway pushing a cart loaded with food. He’s fixed an amazing filet and lobster entrée with grilled vegetables and boiled potatoes all mixed together with the meat and seafood, and it’s as good as any meal I’ve ever had. He’s also brought three plates to the table, so the discussion immediately turns to sports and fishing when he sits down and digs in with us.
When the meal’s over Shank reloads the cart with dead dishes, then heads off to the kitchen swerving from side to side along the hallway. It’s a good thing he’s driving the cart and not the Hummer. We offered to help him clean up but he wouldn’t hear of it.
Bear leans over the table when Shank’s gone. “So, how you feeling?” he asks me with a drunk chuckle.
I smile at him. “Fine. I think the better question is, how are you feeling?”
He takes a gulp of his fourth vodka without answering, then does something he’s never done. He reaches across the table and touches my arm. It’s a simple friendship tap but it’s a first for him. This shocks me. “I got a question,” he says, slurring the words as he pulls his arm slowly back across the table. “It’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time, Professor.”
“What?”
“If I’m prying just tell me to shut up. Okay?”
“Okay.” I will, too. Bear can ask some pretty crazy questions when he drinks.
Bear gathers himself up while he stares into his glass. “Why did your father move your family from Los Angeles to Bruner. What the hell did he do in L.A.?”
“He strangled a woman,” I answer evenly. I’ve been waiting a long time to tell Bear that. I’ve been waiting a long time to tell anyone that. I haven’t even told Vivian. “A woman he was having an affair with.”
Bear’s eyes streak to mine.
“He told me all that,” I say in a low monotone, “right before he put the gun to his head and blew his brains out in front of me in our barn.”
I like my Dakota County precinct at night when there’s no one else around. It’s quiet and it feels like a fortress I could defend by myself if I had to. There are always pros and cons to everything, there’s al
ways an upside and a downside to every issue. Maybe it doesn’t intimidate people the way the ones I worked out of in Minneapolis and Madison did, but it’s cozy. It’s a precinct one man can control. Ought to be able to control, anyway. If Mrs. Erickson weren’t around. Of course, if it wasn’t her, it’d be someone else. So this is about the only time I can control it, completely, anyway. When I have it to myself.
After I made two copies of the financial data that was inside the taped-up box Chelsea gave me, I actually spent fifteen minutes checking around for listening devices despite how anxious I am to watch the Jenkins tapes. I didn’t find any, but I still don’t feel completely secure. That’s how paranoid I am right now.
I put the first Jenkins tape into a TV I have in my office that also has a VCR built in it. Disk and DVD equipment is just starting to make it to the north-country on a widespread basis so a lot of us still use old technology. I stand beside the TV and keep the volume low in case anyone comes through the front door. Mrs. Erickson and all the guys have keys, but there’s an alarm that’ll chirp even if the person disarms the siren using the code on the pad by the door.
The first tape has nothing on it but Jenkins and his kids hunting deer. Illegally, too, because they’re shooting does, and that’s not allowed up here. The kids kill two of them while Jenkins handles the camera and whoops with pride when the knees of the deer buckle and the things staggers around for a few seconds before finally keeling over.
The second tape is very different. I catch my breath instantly because I can’t believe what I’m seeing. On the screen in front of me are hooded figures huddled around the embers of a bonfire chanting something I can’t understand. It looks exactly like that fire Bear and I were investigating out west on Route 7 when Cindy called me. It’s hard to tell for sure because everything’s so dark, but it sure looks the same.
Then the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up, and I almost feel as if I’m going to pass out. The hooded figure just to the right of the camera turned left to face the lens for a split second. But a split second was all I needed to recognize the face.
Why do people have this insatiable and stupid desire to record themselves doing stupid things? I’ll never understand it.
23
I GAZE AT Karen without uttering a word for several moments after I come through the front door of Bear’s cluttered home. It occurs to me that I haven’t been here since she left, and the place has definitely gone downhill since she did. “Hi,” I finally manage. It’s like seeing a ghost when you assumed the person you’re now looking at was dead. Which I did.
“Hello.”
She looks good, better than I’ve ever seen her look. She’s taken off some weight, she’s doing something different with her hair, and she’s wearing makeup. Not a lot, just the right amount—some mascara and a little blush. Her clothes are edgier, too. She’s wearing a black leather jacket, a pair of snug jeans, and heels. Not the frumpy, typical north-country stuff I’ve always seen her in. It’s amazing how much a person can change in seven weeks. Bear’s explanation that she left him for another man seems on target now that I see her, and I feel bad all over again that I ever doubted him. This is what women and men do to themselves when they’re in that first few months of a love affair, in that infatuation stage. They work hard to look good. Then it all goes downhill. Until they have another affair.
“I’m glad to see that—”
“Is this all you needed?” she asks, turning to Bear. “Can I go now?”
I guess a person can only change so much in that short a time. “Have you seen Maggie?” I ask her.
“Hey,” Bear snaps, pushing himself off the wall he was leaning against. “You promised you wouldn’t do this.”
“I don’t want to see her,” Karen says in an irritated tone.
“But she—”
“Look, Paul,” Karen snaps, interrupting me again, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I’m sure she’s telling you how worried she is about me and how she cries herself to sleep every night wondering what’s happened to me.”
“Well, yeah. I think it’s natural for her to do that when she thinks you might be dead.”
“She didn’t seem worried about me at the table in Superior when the lawyer read the will after our parents died in that car accident. When they gave her fifty grand and me five.”
Jesus. I had no idea Gus and Trudy Van Dyke even had that kind of money to give. The realization overwhelms me for a second because it makes it very clear to me that I’m way behind. Vivian and I have less than ten thousand dollars invested and that figure’s gone down in the last few years thanks to Wall Street.
“It’s not Maggie’s fault your parents did that,” I say quietly.
“She could have made it right.”
“Maybe they figured you have a better chance to make it on your own than she does. If you know what I mean.”
Karen’s gaze drops to the floor. “Thanks, Paul,” she says quietly. “That’s nice of you to say.”
I’m about to add to it when my cell phone rings. It’s Davy Johnson. “Hello.”
“Sheriff?”
His voice is shaking like it did the night he discovered Cindy’s body. “What is it, Davy?”
“You got to get over to the motel right away.” He can barely get the words out. “We’ve got another problem.”
Bear and I make it to Room 10 of the Friendly Mattress in less than five minutes. Right away I understand why Darrow Clements didn’t make our nine o’clock meeting this morning. He’s faceup on the mattress, tied spread-eagle to the bed, his throat slashed from ear to ear. And there’s a pentagram carved into his forehead with one of its points going directly down the bridge of his nose.
24
BY THREE O’CLOCK I’m sitting in the storage room in the back of Cam Riley’s hardware store with all of my deputies: Bear, Davy, Frank, and Chugger. I asked Cam if we could use his place because I didn’t want Mrs. Erickson or any kind of listening device to overhear what’s being said during our meeting. I didn’t call the meeting, my deputies did. Davy, specifically, but he said he was doing it on behalf of Frank and Chugger, too. Peter Schmidt and his crime scene team are in Room 10 at the Friendly Mattress with Clements’s body and since it’s pretty straightforward to monitor who goes in and out of a single door, Schmidt was all right with the Dakota County force leaving the scene for a while. After all, there wasn’t much we could do except stand around the door and get in the way.
I can tell Schmidt’s getting real edgy about what’s going on in Bruner. Hell, we all are. But what got to me was that he seemed different today. He was wearing an odd look when our eyes met and there wasn’t any of that usual friendliness he has about him. He was all business; it almost seemed as if he didn’t want to deal with me at all. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I don’t think so.
Cam’s got an unpainted picnic table and some spindly metal chairs set up in one corner of the chilly room—he only keeps it at sixty degrees in here. It’s where the town council meets and he had no problem with us using it. He didn’t even ask me why I wanted to meet here. I think he knew.
After Bear slowly eases his huge frame into the seat to the right of mine, I nod at Davy, who’s sitting at the other end of the table. “Go ahead, Davy, say what you’ve got to say. And everyone keep your voices down,” I add. At this point I don’t trust anyone except my deputies—maybe not even all of them. “What’s said in this meeting is for our ears only.” For all I know the town council is huddled on the other side of the wall a few feet away from the table, trying to listen in. “Is that understood?”
Everyone mutters their agreement.
I nod at Davy again. “Go on.”
After I give him the go-ahead, Davy looks down and unfolds a piece of paper that’s in his lap. He stares at it for a few seconds, then crumples it up and curses. “We’re scared, Sheriff,” he says. “I had a big speech all ready for you, but I’m just going to lay it out for yo
u in my own words. We think—”
“Scared?” Bear interrupts loudly, his expression twisting into one of irritation, then flat-out rage. “You called us together like this to say that you’re scared? Well I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t have time to waste—”
“Keep your voice down, Billy,” I snap. Christ, as loud as he is, people sitting across town at the Kro-Bar will hear him.
“When we’ve got a bad situation like this on our hands,” Bear keeps on going, barreling through my warning, “the last thing we should be doing is acting like a bunch of babies in a thunderstorm crying for our mamas. Jesus.” He stands up and heads for the door. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I got work to do. I don’t have time to be scared.”
“What a prick,” Davy mutters when Bear’s disappeared through the doorway. “I’m glad he’s gone, Sheriff.”
“Me, too,” echoes Chugger. “Maybe now we can really talk.”
Frank doesn’t say anything, but judging by his expression he’s right there with Davy and Chugger. And it seems to go deeper for them than just being glad Bear left this meeting. The rift in my tiny force is bigger than I suspected. I was wrong to think that they weren’t bitter about how close I am to Bear. Jealousy is a powerful emotion. In my opinion it sits right beside money at the core of all evil.
“Finish what you had to say,” I order. I don’t agree with Bear’s delivery but I agree with his message. We don’t have time for this crap. “Hurry up.”
“We think you should call in the state guys and let them lead this investigation,” Davy explains. “Let us step back into a support role. It’s not that we don’t have faith in you, Sheriff. We’re just not sure we have the technical resources to handle the case.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Peter Schmidt’s over at the Mattress right now. He’s the best guy around for what we need.”
“He’s good,” Chugger agrees. “But investigating the scene is only one piece of the puzzle. We need more resources in the field.”