I reached down to pet her, my hand unsteady. “I guess it shouldn’t be surprising they’d try to kill a dog—I mean, they’ve already killed two people.” But Roxy, I thought to myself. Who only wants everybody to love her. “I’ll be sure to always check her run before I let her out. No, best I go out with her.”
“When I’m not here there’ll be a patrol car toward the end of your driveway. It should be okay. But Val, we do have to realize: they’re escalating. Maybe close to panicking. Which means we’ve got to find a way to escalate, too. Did you get anything useful from Emil Kanser?”
I told him about the two branches of the track and the bat cave, then about my speculation as to what it might have been used for.
“That sounds like a higher part of the track than we could get to. I don’t know. My first thought is it seems a little farfetched.”
“That’s been my second, third, and so on thoughts.”
“Still … It fits the parameters for a secret somebody would pay to have kept. If that plateau was known to be sitting on top of a toxic waste dump, Hudson Heights would not be viable. Did you get hold of Skip?”
“I left two messages on his answering machine. He can at least tell us if it’s feasible.”
“If he says yes, is this something we can check out?”
“My best guess is that cave is now somewhere under the parking lot. Mr. Kanser could narrow down the possibilities on a map, but could he pinpoint it? It would be a long way to bore in from the side, and as for drilling holes in the parking lot—”
“Unless we can show a compelling reason, we’ll never get permission to do either.”
“Say we did, and found this cave chock full of noxious chemicals. It torpedoes Hudson Heights, most likely, but it doesn’t prove who did the murders. There’ll still be the same old suspect pool. Or did today’s alibis pare down the list? Willem and Matt both said you were asking around. By the way, have you any idea why Matt’s got a big bandage on his left hand?”
“He cut it handling a broken piece of siding on Tuesday; five stitches. There were witnesses. And no, today’s alibis weren’t much of an improvement. These folks do spend a lot of time in one another’s company. Everybody was paired off except Willem, as you know, and his father, who has a reasonable claim to having been home alone since Eleanor and Kate went shopping for glassware in Albany. They didn’t find anything they liked enough to buy. Clete and Matt were checking lot boundaries in Sector C of Hudson Heights. Kyle was helping Thurman take soil samples up by the north entrance, after which they unofficially admit to having done a little outof-season rabbit hunting. They showed me a bunch of labeled jars and a fresh pelt. The only verified scratch is Johnny Armitage. He was working at Hudson Heights till quarter to six.”
“You’re still keeping Willem in your mix?”
“I’ve never considered Willem a very serious suspect— frankly, he seems too inept. But the man keeps refusing to eliminate himself. It’s his ‘How could you possibly suppose I need an alibi?’ that frosts me.”
“That’s not arrogance. It’s just so far beyond his conception that he could possibly kill anybody.”
“It must be hard going through life needing an interpreter.”
“He didn’t usually, until his relatives started screwing up. Which, though? All of them? Some of them? One with an outside helper?”
“I wish I could claim to be closer to telling you than I was a week ago.”
“I assume nothing you’ve found out about Mariah narrows it down?”
“Not yet. Steve’s taken her picture to all the places in Albany we talked about. No flash of recognition. The Department of Commerce and the SUNY Albany library he has to go back to—the people she’d most likely have encountered earlier in the week weren’t there. They might or might not be tomorrow.”
“If it’s toxics, dating back that far, it’ll be Commerce.”
“I’ll have him stop there first. The hair dryer was a two-year-old model which went to most of the discount stores and drug chains. Last Christmas season several of them featured it as a sale item. We’ve checked as far as Riverton and East Greenbush; nobody had any left, or remembers selling their last one recently. My guess is one of our killers already had it on hand.”
“It doesn’t sound like there’s much hope of tracing it.”
“There never was. It was going cheap enough that most men and a fair percentage of women wouldn’t put it on plastic. Something like that works better backwards, if at all: we find our killers, maybe we can locate somebody who’ll remember one of them making the purchase and be willing to say so. We have some lab results. There wasn’t much of a fiber harvest, with all that water involved, so it’s not looking promising. My men found a slew of fingerprints it’ll take us weeks to identify from all around the patio area, but none on any critical item. The most interesting on-site evidence was her answering machine—it didn’t have a tape in it. From what you said about her being on the phone so much, that seems off.”
“Way off.”
“It would’ve been easy enough to use a pencil or something of that shape to push the button that opens the tape compartment and close the lid again. There were also no prints, not even Mariah’s, on the gate that’s around the other side from the patio. A little farther over, though, we found some not quite smoothed over indentations that would fit a ladder. On both sides of the wall. Maybe she didn’t let her killers in.”
“There’s plenty of cover on that side for someone who didn’t want to be seen.”
“And it’s a straight shot through the woods, on all those goddamn pine needles, over to Agway’s back parking lot.”
“That’s dirt, so aren’t there tire tracks? Forget it—there must be zillions.”
“Somewhere in that range. Though again, we might come up with corroborating, working-back sort of evidence. Somebody seeing a car, or a person, they recognized, around the right time. If we get the chance.”
“What do you mean?”
“Val, there’s some heavy big-bucks worrying going on here. Serious power lined up behind the scenario that Mariah’s death was accidental and totally unconnected to Ryan Jessup’s. I was given to understand this morning that if I subscribe to this version, all will be well, regarding my place in the scheme of things.”
“But you didn’t subscribe.”
“No, and the district attorney’s office will not back me on investigating Mariah’s death as a possible homicide. Which means—Phil made this amply clear this morning—warrants and subpoenas are going to be damn hard to come by. For example, Patroon Tel needs that sort of authorization before they’ll provide a record of her telephone activity.”
“So you won’t be able to get any numbers?”
“With that answering machine tape missing? I’ll have the past two weeks’ worth tomorrow. I called in a big favor.”
“Can’t Phil make defying him pretty expensive?”
“Sure, but he knows he won’t be looking at a one-way flow. The point is, I’m the only sheriff this county’s got. All right, so I didn’t want to be. I still took an oath of office swearing to enforce the law, and nowhere does the law say it’s okay to commit murder. I am not going to call a murder an accident, and I am not going to stop searching for who did either murder because the truth is likely to make problems for some VIPS.” He reddened. “End of impassioned speech,” he muttered, getting up and going to put more wood in the fire.
“What’re you doing, jockeying for top spot on the target list?”
“You’ve been alone there long enough. Maybe I should write my memoirs, too.” He sat back down.
“That reminds me. Jack Garrett was the first and thus far only person to ask if I had an alibi for Mariah. How come you told those TV people I was ‘definitely not’ a suspect without finding out where I was at the time?”
“Because I know you didn’t kill her.”
“You make a habit of giving people blanket clearance? That doesn’t seem
like very sound sheriffing.”
“I don’t make a habit of that, and I may yet turn out to be a damn good sheriff. Besides, your pal Jake called to explain to me where you were till almost six.” His expression was somewhere between a grin and—I couldn’t identify the other component until: “I also don’t go around stashing people in my house or camping out in their yards, which maybe should tell you something.”
This isn’t likely to be a good idea, was my first thought as he made his move. Once into the kiss I decided (if verdicts based ninety-plus percent on flushes of warmth can be termed decisions), that it also wasn’t likely to be a very bad one. And anyhow I wanted this.
Pulling apart, we gave each other a decent amount of back-out time, then moved together again, working into a less awkward configuration. Our bodies got busier and busier, the layers of clothing separating us progressively thinner. “My bed?” I suggested when he drew back to fish in his discarded pants for his wallet, then extracted a condom.
In my room I watched as he slipped the condom on before lying down beside me on top of the covers. “I’m a little tight,” I apologized, after a bit, reaching down to help. “It’s been a while.”
“For me, too,” he said.
And a little later—I must’ve moaned—“Did I hurt you?”
“Oh no,” I assured him, smiling. “That’s a nice smile,” he said, and then we were too focused on moving together to bother talking.
“That is also not part of my normal sheriffing procedure,” he said eventually. “In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.” But I had to say it, because she kept wet-nosing at my exposed side: “Roxy may have been.”
Unhurried, he shifted position so we both could see the thick blond head and inquiring eyes. And start giggling. Which led, a bit later, to him asking, “That’s the only condom I brought. Do you—?”
“No,” I said regretfully. “With two kids in the house …”
Things quieted down, sort of, but it soon became apparent that neither of us was committed to ongoing chastity. “All right, lady,” he said, pulling back, “I’d best turn down the covers, tuck you in, and banish myself to the RV.”
“Forget the tucking. I hate tight covers.”
He sighed. “Then I’ll turn them down and kiss you goodnight.”
Rather lingeringly, that turned out to be, until I finally said, “Would you get out of here?” Which wasn’t meant as a question, or surely as a complaint.
CHAPTER 19
Is it ever without awkwardness, that next encounter after you’ve made love for the first time? What did it mean? What does he/she think it meant? Maybe if you’re committed to a lifestyle of one-night stands you can banish such uncertainties, but I have my doubts. Even Willem, who knows a brief encounter when he’s had one and who considers long-term, exclusive attachments uncivilized, concedes the likelihood of discomfort in the early going.
Fortunately, that Saturday morning Baxter and I had no time for a meaningful discussion and plenty of other things to think about. I was already up when he knocked on the kitchen door a little past six-thirty, looking as if that night’s sleep hadn’t been much of an improvement over the previous one. By way of greeting, we went for a medium-strength hug.
I’d scrounged in the bottom corner cabinet for the rarely used coffee machine. “How many invaders did you run off last night?” I asked, handing him a cup and nodding toward the sugar and creamer.
“I lost count. How did you sleep?”
“Mmm,” I evaded. To tell the truth, I’d slept amazingly well. I did lie awake for a while—when you’ve got a good afterglow, float with it, and besides it was nowhere near my usual bedtime. Then suddenly the clock read shortly after five A.M. I’d genuinely conked out: no corpses shimmering behind my eyelids, and if there’d been bad dreams I didn’t remember them. “What do you like for breakfast?”
“Whatever’s handy. Cereal and milk? Toast, fruit, anything I can wolf down. Frank’s picking me up in ten minutes. I want to put today’s agenda into play as early as possible.”
“The boys’ cereal collection is in that cabinet to the right of the sink. Take your pick. Get me out the box of cornflakes while you’re there. The fruit’s already on the table, I’ll bring the milk and bowls. Do the men all line up at attention while you read off the assignments?”
“That sounds picturesque.” He took a sip of his coffee, carefully set it down, and started constructing his cereal. Too strong, too weak, too stale? People fudge when you ask them. Since I refuse to taste-test, maybe I should bow to reality and toss the coffeemaker? “The day shift is nine guys up here, plus four down at the Clarksburg substation and the three assigned to the courthouse. Usually a few are on some detail and there’s no reason for them to check in first. Whoever’s around, we get together.”
“Kind of like a football huddle?”
“We’ll have to try that someday. Break with a rousing communal grunt.”
“How many of your nine up here are on the murders?”
“That’s a variable, depending how many people we can spare from the routine stuff and what there is to do.” He paused for a couple spoonfuls of cereal. “Frank’s the lead officer days, and I switched Calvin to the three-to-eleven shift so he could take over then. Winston Moeller is in charge nights. You probably haven’t met him. Winnie’s caretaking, basically. There’s not much active investigating to do on his watch.”
“I don’t suppose he called with any hot developments last night?”
“No. But guess who did call—at a quarter to six, which is astonishing given the hours he normally keeps. Phil Thomson is not happy with me. He insisted I come down to Riverton for a conference this morning. I said I’d try to squeeze out the time.”
“But you won’t.”
“No point. Phil isn’t going to tell me anything useful I don’t already know. Any more than I’d tell him. What are you planning to do this morning?”
“Well, first, I’ll be painting a big blue rectangle. Then I want to check out several things in the Hudson Heights material. I need to run an errand—there’s a good paving supplier this side of Pittsfield, and I want to see if he’s got anything I can use for the new garden in Platteville. On the way home I may pop in on Skip where he’s working—he’s not great about calling back.”
“Good idea.”
“Yesterday I asked Denny to help me find somebody to keep an eye on the property when I’m not around. He’s checking if the Yardley brothers are available. So I might be meeting with them later to set up a schedule.”
He smiled, tipping his cereal bowl to access the last of its contents. Someday I’d have to make the boys watch him eat. “One or more of them on the premises should discourage all but the hardiest intruders. At least make ’em wait till you’re home alone. Which you are not going to be, for as long as it takes me to get these people.”
“That doesn’t sound like you plan to solve the case today.”
“You never know. Not to worry—except for one drugstore item, I’m provisioned for an extended camping trip.”
I helped him lug in the Hudson Heights binders and site plans, getting a milk-tasting goodbye kiss for reward. The paint-over quickly taken care of, I spread out the site plans and arranged them in chronological order, then extracted from the binders the two earlier maps of the area they’d submitted with the application. One was a simple atlas-type map made in the early thirties as part of a federal public works project. The other, much more detailed, came from a topographical survey of the entire county done in the late eighties. Neither indicated the existence of any caves on Crane Hill, but the latter showed a very minor road winding part of the way up it, perhaps to where Baxter and his friends had parked for their lunatic high dives. From the contour lines the height looked feasible, though they’d have needed to walk some to get the right angle on the quarry pond. How much farther on had Mr. Kanser gone? If his estimate of more than three-fourths up was correct, it mus
t’ve been at least a hundred feet. Then if you allowed for a thirty-some-foot reduction of the top—by very rough estimate, the top of the bat cave mightn’t be all that far underneath the present surface.
You tend to think of hills as being symmetrical, though most of them aren’t. The 1980s topo map showed that Crane Hill certainly wasn’t. The contour lines indicated sheer cliffs fronting the river and an almost as steep rise up from the quarry pond, a portion of which had been dug out from the hill’s base. Between these two strong verticals the lines confirmed a series of broad, gentle downward rolls in the southeast—the pool/tennis-courts area has been leveled off on the uppermost one—and, around to the north of the quarry pond where the old logging road came up, terracing that grew sharper and steeper the closer you got to the river. This remained the most heavily forested face of the hill, even after the carving out of the Hudson Heights approach road and some reshaping to create a gradually sloping access to the golf course.
Even before Clete got to work on it, Crane Hill had been pretty fat. The map showed a summit walking-around area maybe 200 by 400 feet overall. Uneven and pockmarked it must have been—you’d have to keep watching where you planted your feet—but negotiable. Between taking off the top and building up the sides, the surface area had been nearly tripled, and the leveling process had made it much more usable.
Carefully, I studied the sequence of site plans. The first several, as expected, showed a pool/tennis-courts complex up top. But from then on, that area was parking lot. Rationale for the change? “Owner preference” was the only enlightenment the binders had to offer. In the specs, the paving material got considerably thicker as things went along. Engineers’ demands, or had somebody gotten nervous? Unsurprisingly, the binders refused to clarify that point.
Driving toward Pittsfield and walking around the supplier’s yard I stubbornly focused on the Platteville garden. But even before my order was written up, Hudson Heights reassumed control. There had to be some way to take things to the next level. It felt so close. Maybe Skip could provide the necessary boost up.
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