by Lee Goodman
The Bureau gave us two cars for the trip. No one thought Smeltzer was actively tracking Tina; rather, that he was waiting for an opportunity. He was probably on his own, without much money or technical sophistication. But to be cautious, we drove to the FBI building, left our cars there, and took the cars they offered. Henry drove one; Tina, Barnaby, and I went in the other. Agnew followed in a third.
The Bureau had been looking for Tony Smeltzer for a week without success. The midnight prowler had never been identified or located. Chip and Isler thought it would be best if Tina stayed out of sight for a while. They talked about using a Tina look-alike (a law enforcement professional, carefully surveiled) to lure him into the open.
We thought of going to our cabin, but if Smeltzer had done any research at all, he already knew about that getaway. The Bureau was taking the guy pretty seriously. They considered him a lone wolf and a little psycho, but they also believed he was organized enough, smart enough, angry enough, and vicious enough to, say, go after one of Tina’s friends or coworkers, violently extract information on Tina’s whereabouts, shoot the informant, and come after Tina. Thus, Tina’s whereabouts would be need-to-know only.
Chip proposed some locations; the Bureau kept a few places around the country for this type of situation. Tina kept vetoing every place he proposed. In the end, she settled on a cabin in the lake system several hundred miles northwest of the city. Tina’s cousins owned it. In summer the region was bustling with canoe campers, but in early November, with freeze-up imminent, the place was perfect. Tina would feel right at home because the environment was similar to that of our own cabin. In fact, she seemed excited. There’d be wood fires, flapjacks, canoeing on the lake—at least until freeze-up—and long evenings of contemplative silence. There would be red plaid wool jackets, rubber boots and hiking shoes, and if she got lucky, she’d hear loons calling across the lake at sunset and maybe, just maybe, the far-off song of wolves howling at the moon. Tina loved that stuff.
I wouldn’t be going into hiding with Tina and Barn. There was too much to do at my office, and we didn’t know how long this would last. Besides, the simple threat of a vengeance-fueled assassination wasn’t enough to overcome Tina’s need for a marital time-out. I did go along on the trip to get them settled. I refused to let her take Barnaby off into exile without having some part in it.
We left from the FBI early on Friday morning. I promised myself that on the long drive, I wouldn’t keep asking her about “us.” Instead I would focus on being the perfect coparent and traveling companion. We’d sing “Old MacDonald” and “Baby Beluga” and we’d read Henry Hikes to Fitchburg and A Light in the Attic. I felt if I could just chill, then our conversation would quietly and lovingly and organically stretch out into a map of the next thirty or forty years—about work and play and kids and grandkids; about places we hoped to travel, books we wanted to read (and write), and all the other unconquered items on the to-do list of life. I knew Tina wanted to remove the partition between the kitchen and dining room in our home to give it a more open and airy feel. We’d talk about that. I wanted a sailboat. We’d talk about that.
The drive takes seven hours without a four-year-old. With a four-year-old, it took ten. Barnaby needed to pee. He had to poop. He got carsick. He cried. He was hungry. Tina rode in the backseat with him for hours. We never got to talk. When Barn finally fell asleep, Tina said, “Pull over at the next wayside. I’ll ride with Henry for a while. I need a break.”
Henry would be staying with Tina and Barn as my stand-in. He had nothing better to do, having been put on suspension by Pleasant Holly. There was a second cabin he could live in, and now that he’d been so decisively delivered from the role of prime murder suspect, he was the natural choice. Also, since he’d been engaged to Lydia, he was family. Henry had grown up in the rural country around Renfield. He knew the rural lifestyle, and as an AUSA, he was a law enforcement professional. Barnaby loved him, and Tina was comfortable around him.
It was dark when we arrived. The night sky was an explosion of stars. It was well below freezing. The cabins were great; actually, the big one was more of a small log house than a cabin. Agnew and Henry went to claim spots in the little cabin behind the main house. The bedroom of the main house had a double bed and a bunk bed. I got Barnaby snuggled into a sleeping bag on the bottom bunk. Tina looked at the double bed and at the top bunk of the bunk bed and weighed her options. We shared the double.
Saturday was fun. We all slept late. We had breakfast and then went out canoeing. Agnew was a solid young woman with her hair in a French braid, and she seemed dour, like enforcement people do sometimes.
“Agent Agnew,” I said, “how do you like working for the Bureau?”
“I like it,” she said.
I waited for more, but there was no more. We were in two canoes, paddling side by side. Agnew and Henry and ZZ were in one; Tina, Barn, and I in the other. The day was gorgeous: blue sky, no wind, golden leaves lying on the surface along the shoreline. The lake had a feeling of unboundedness. Vastness. It felt like it beckoned us into the great beyond, and I imagined that Agnew was not Agnew but Lydia or some other woman—Henry’s girlfriend or wife. Without meaning to, I imagined her pregnant and we two couples and Barnaby bravely and exuberantly paddling into the vastness.
“Have you had any word about the evidence in the Kyle Devaney case yet?” Henry asked Tina. He was definitely interested in the Devaney case. He had gone to hear the oral argument at the state Superior Court. He’d asked me for updates several times.
“Nothing yet,” Tina said. “You should come over to my office when things are back to normal. I’ll set you up with a case of your own to work on. We need pro bono lawyers.”
“Yes,” Henry said, “maybe I will.”
Henry was coming back to life. I’d grown to admire him. He had handled his fiancée’s murder and his status as a prime suspect with amazing dignity. I thought of how poorly I’d behaved on the phone with Tina the other day, exploding because I hadn’t been notified about the prowler. As far as I knew, Henry had never acted out like that during his whole ordeal. I felt embarrassed.
Henry liked to fish. He trailed a line behind his canoe, and by dinnertime he’d caught two big trout. I didn’t know whether the fishing season was open, and Henry probably didn’t have a license, but we were refugees who had fled from a killer and landed here on the edge of civilization. We didn’t worry about a fishing license.
Back onshore in the evening, Henry filleted the trout. He knew his business with a fillet knife, handling it with practiced confidence, producing four clean and bloodless fillets in just a few quick motions. We pan-fried the fish, made a salad, and opened some beers.
Agnew left on Sunday. I drove back to the city on Monday.
CHAPTER 30
I moved back into my house. Inside, I found the lingering vapors of my previous exile, and of Tina and Barnaby and ZZ’s absence. The house felt like a discarded shell; the life I had lived there was dried and gone. I actually considered returning to the Executive Suites, where I’d at least achieved the bunker mentality of digging in, holding on, and making do until the siege ended.
There was plenty to keep me busy, though, so I got busy. If I could have everything running like a well-tuned machine when Tina and Barn returned, Tina couldn’t help but revel in our return to normalcy. I called a contractor to come over and give me an estimate for removing that wall she’d talked about. If I’d known for sure when she was coming home, and if the contractor could have promised to have it done by then, I’d have gone ahead. But I didn’t want her returning home to a construction zone.
At work, I tried to focus on Subsurface, but I was distracted. Days passed slowly.
On Friday afternoon I drove over to Turner to have dinner with Flora and Chip and Lizzy. It was nice. I always liked being there because the house is homey and Flora has the knack for making everyone feel like a valued member of the family. Her marriage to Chip has been great for her. She had been
well on her way to becoming the stereotypic old lady in purple: half a bubble out of plumb, as they say. Now with Chip, she seems well shored up, though not completely righted. As for Chip himself, he’s my buddy, though I admit I get miffed with his newfound smugness. He acts like he invented the whole idea of contentment. (As if, following the collapse of his previous marriage, I’d never heard him wailing to me over the phone about the agony and futility of life.)
Dinner was curried stir-fry over rice stick noodles. I asked Chip if he’d heard anything about the physical evidence in the Kyle Runion/Daryl Devaney case.
“Actually, the evidence went back to the state,” he said. “They’re testing it. But no, nothing yet.”
Lizzy said, “Devaney? Is that the one with the little boy they found near the reservoir?”
Immediately, I regretted mentioning it. Lizzy might be almost nineteen with an occasional live-in boyfriend, but I still didn’t need to be making dinner conversation about the most vile human depravity.
“Chip, what do the profilers say about a perp like that?” Ethan asked.
Chip cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “The fact that the victim was clothed and wrapped in a sheet tells us the perpetrator felt remorse. The nature of the crime suggests a shy perp, probably not real confident among peers, and especially shy with women. They say he was probably abused as a child, both sexually and generally, and that owing to the traumas of his upbringing, he has no self-esteem. He is meek. He may or may not be intelligent. The remorse he feels would cause him to—”
“Does Daryl Devaney fit this profile?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Chip said.
“Dessert,” Flora said. She clapped her hands and started clearing. Everyone jumped up to help. Lizzy playfully hip-checked Chip out of her way. Chip bumped her back. They tussled.
After dessert, Flora said, “Nickie, let’s walk.”
We took Bill-the-Dog on a leash, and the two of us walked the road. She linked her arm through mine. “How come you’re not with Tina and Barnaby?” she said.
“I figured I’d be more valuable here, keeping tabs on the hunt for this Smeltzer guy.”
“I see.”
“What?”
“That’s your pattern, Nickie. It’s what you do.”
“What pattern?”
“It’s how you deal. You rush out and take charge.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Who’s with Tina?”
“Henry.”
“Exactly. And who was with her after Lydia was killed?”
“I was.”
“That’s not how I heard it. I heard you were everyplace but. Running, shooting, meeting with Captain Dorsey.”
I stopped and stared at her.
“I know you, Nickie. Better than anybody. I bet I know you better than Tina does. You’re always charging into battle.”
“Don’t shrink me, Flora,” I snapped. Flora is a couples counselor. Flora and I had been a great couple once, but our marriage collapsed along with everything else in the wake of our son Toby’s death. She likes to get me under her microscope, but everything she comes up with is hogwash.
I drove home alone. I envied Chip and Henry. Chip was living in the rural suburb of Turner, being a family man in the cinnamony home of my ex-wife, and standing in as dad to my daughter, Lizzy. Henry was with my current wife, Tina, and with my son, Barn. None of this meant anything, of course, it was only owing to the exigencies of the moment, wasn’t it? But still . . .
CHAPTER 31
Yes, still. That conversation with Flora was well over a month ago, and I’m still not back with Tina. I’m up here in my own cabin on my own lake, preparing for the trial by writing this account of everything that has happened—especially what happened in the days after I left Tina and Barn in the supposed safety of that wilderness retreat.
In my solitude here at the lake, my mind sometimes drifts away from all that criminal unpleasantness, landing instead on the unpleasantness of my personal life.
Naturally, I’ve asked Tina for more information about her unhappiness: What went amiss? She talks about my not being there for her in the right way at the right time. I ask what I can do to fix it. She shakes her head and sighs. When I try fixing it on my own, being more attentive, she says I’m hovering and that she needs more space.
During the times in our marriage when everything else in life is smooth sailing—when we both have energy and time to absorb each other’s more irksome traits—we do great. Love blossoms. But in tough times, the incompatibilities come to the surface. And most of our marriage has taken place during tough times.
I stayed in the city, leaving Tina and Barn with Henry in their wilderness hideout. Days passed without news. Sometimes I’d run in the evening and sometimes I’d shoot in the morning and between times I’d work long days on Subsurface and other cases. Tina had a satellite phone with her, and she’d call at night and tell me in a few clipped sentences about their day—how great it was to have Henry with them in “hiding,” how Barnaby loved the lake and canoeing and being “home” with his mother all day instead of having to go to preschool and day care.
Sabin called me about a week after I got back. “Let’s swap notes,” she said.
“What’s to swap? Tony Smeltzer killed Lydia.”
“Still and all,” she said, “let’s make sure there’re no dangling threads.”
We arranged to meet after work at the Rain Tree.
Late in the afternoon Dorsey called. “Nick, I just got off the phone with someone from the state crime lab. I have news you may want to pass along to your wife: They’ve recovered a few hairs from the Kyle Runion remains. Not his hairs, someone else’s. And get this—they also found a stain.”
“A stain?”
“Semen.”
“On what?”
“Not sure. Underpants or the sheet he was wrapped in or something.”
“Are they good samples? Testable?”
“Yes, they’re very good. The stain especially. Not too much degradation.”
“I’m amazed,” I said. “After all this time.”
“I know. Apparently, he was wrapped up. Protected from the elements. Tough stuff, DNA, if it’s out of the weather.”
“What all was in that box of evidence?”
“I never saw it. Detective Philbin saw it. He transported it from the Bureau over to the state lab. He said it was just the boy’s clothes and that sheet.”
“When will you have results?”
“Soon. I’ll let you know.”
Sabin got to the Rain Tree before I did. I found her at the bar with a glass of red. I ordered the same. We clinked. She said, “The real reason I called you was to apologize.”
“For what?”
“Trying to hustle you with that good cop/bad cop thing. Philly and I really thought Henry was the one. We thought you had a blind spot.”
I shrugged. “Just doing your job, I guess.”
“And Philly, he thought you might be susceptible to some female compassion.”
“Oh, and you played no part?”
“Guilty,” she said.
“Why did Philbin think I’d be so susceptible to your charms?”
“Just rumors, Nick. Word is that you and the Mrs. are in a rough patch. But no hard feelings?” She held her glass up again. We clinked again. She sipped her wine, wiped her mouth on a napkin, stretched, and sipped again. “I did a year of law school,” she said.
“Dropped out?”
“Got pregnant. I thought I could go back later, but you know how it is. Everything gets complicated.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
She laughed. “I mean, I love police work, but sometimes I have regrets.”
“Careful of your scarf,” I said. It was silk; earth tones with fringed ends. Some of the fringe was dangling above the wine. She looked nice. The scarf was elegant, and she wore earrings of tourmaline. She was attractive. She must have changed he
r clothes and tidied up before coming to meet me, because she always looked more gritty and detective-like when she was on the job. “You’d be a good lawyer,” I said, though I had no idea if that was true. “And you’re young enough. You could go back and finish.”
“Don’t be silly.” But a second later, she said, “You really think so?”
We talked about lawyering and about the investigation of Lydia’s murder. She ordered more wine. She looked at her watch. “We could get a table,” she said. “Have some dinner.”
It sounded nice, having dinner with Sabin. There was nobody waiting for me. Even ZZ was away. It was lonely at home, and I felt good here in the lively atmosphere of the Rain Tree. There were couples all around us clinking glasses and holding hands and reaching their forks across the table to try a taste from each other’s plates. Sabin was attractive and exotic, and I liked how she could flip between being a shrewd detective and being an engaging dinner date.
We got a table. Sabin went to the ladies room. My cell rang. It was Isler.
“I think we’ve located Tony Smeltzer,” he said. “The guy is in San Francisco. He’s been using an alias. He isn’t in custody yet, but I expect we’ll catch up with him pretty soon.”
“Are you sure he’s physically there?”
“No,” Isler said. “Until we have cuffs on him, we can’t be sure.”
I stood up and put some bills down on the table for the wine and the dinner that I wouldn’t be eating. I wanted to call Tina on her satellite phone to tell her it was almost over. And I didn’t want to be having dinner with Sabin when I talked to her. I liked Sabin okay. But I was a married man and didn’t want to send any false signals.
“Critical developments,” I said when Sabin got back to the table. “I’ll explain when I can.”
She was gracious. Cops understand things like this. I walked toward the exit and turned around to wave before stepping through the door.