by Lee Goodman
I called Tina. “The Bureau wants you to stay put until they actually have their hands on Smeltzer,” I said, “but that will probably be before morning.”
“Come get us,” she said. “We’ll stay a few extra days. It’s so nice here.” I agreed to leave the next day to go pick them up. I’d swing by the office midmorning, drop a few things off, and be on the road by noon. Tina put Barnaby on the phone before I hung up.
“I miss you, Daddy.”
“I miss you, too, Barn. I’ll see you tomorrow night, okay?”
“Can we go canoeing, Daddy?”
“Of course.”
“I want to be in Henry’s canoe.”
“We’ll see, Barn. I love you.”
“And Henry’s car. I want to ride home in Henry’s car.”
Isler called in the morning: “We’ve had Smeltzer all night. We’re releasing him.”
“Releasing him!” I yelled.
“It wasn’t him, Nick. The guy was an open book. He hasn’t left Frisco since he arrived there in April.”
“Maybe he hired someone to kill Lydia.”
“Yeah, the guys out there thought of that. It’s hard to rule out, of course, but there are no indicators. He seems more like a derelict than someone who’s hiring contract killers. Believe me, the team in San Fran is good. The best. They sweated him hard. They assured me it wasn’t him. So I’m assuring you, it wasn’t him.”
Isler convinced me. He told me they’d get back to work figuring out who killed Lydia. They’d go through all of Tina’s prosecution cases, looking for anybody who might have a vendetta to settle. For now, without the specter of an enraged Tony Smeltzer on the loose, it was probably okay to bring Tina and Barnaby home.
I packed what I needed for the drive, then headed over to my office. I kept the car radio off. I needed to think. If Isler was right about Tony Smeltzer—that he wasn’t involved—then we were back where we started; and where we started was that Henry was the main suspect in Lydia’s murder. We’d gotten so fixated on the idea of the murder as an act of mistaken identity that we’d forgotten about the possibility of somebody intending to kill Lydia as Lydia. And in that version of reality, Henry was still the only identified suspect.
I thought of Philbin’s five fingers waving at me: the five points of his certainty that Henry was the perp.
Maybe I’d been too quick to dismiss it all. I hadn’t been able to see Henry as an enraged killer even though, in my business, you learn that anybody can fool you. Henry was quiet, brooding, and seemed contemplative. If somebody had claimed that he was a quiet psychopath with dark secrets, maybe I could have believed it. But that he was a time bomb of violent rage—it didn’t fit him.
On the other hand, who knew what indignities Henry had suffered? Who knew the psychological component of his physical scars? Who knew the accumulated bitterness of all the rejection and humiliation he must have endured in his life? First was the rejection by his natural parents, then by the girl in high school (whatever the actual facts of that fiasco), and then maybe every day of his life by schoolmates and pretty girls and professional colleagues. Who knew the emotional toll of being gawked at, feared, reviled? I had no idea what it would be like to live in Henry’s body. But for a second, as I drove to the office and happily anticipated going to pick up Tina and Barn, I thought of Lydia stepping out on Henry. And I asked myself the question that Henry must have asked himself a million times: If he looked normal, would it all be different? I thought about how it might have felt to Henry, thinking he’d finally found, in Lydia’s arms, a safe haven from the inevitable cruelty of life. And then to discover that her supposed love was not the deliverance he had thought but, rather, the cruelest ruse of all. It must have felt like a repeat of his high school humiliation, played out on a grander scale: to be sucked in by a desirable woman only to find he was merely the ridiculed victim of a hoax. For that second, as I pulled into the parking garage beside my office, all these thoughts swirled in my imagining—the trauma, the rejection, the humiliation, followed by the relief, the surrender to love, and then full circle back to betrayal and rejection.
I’d have killed her, too.
I wouldn’t tell Tina that Smeltzer had been cleared of suspicion until she and Barnaby were well away from Henry. I’d let her go on thinking Smeltzer was the killer and everything would be fine. I wanted to get to them as fast as I could. I’d drop off some things at the office, and then I’d get right back in the car and drive. I wouldn’t stop until I could position myself between Henry and my family. Because if he was the killer, and if, on hearing that Smeltzer had been cleared, Henry figured the gig was up and we were closing in, who knew what desperate measures he’d resort to.
When I stepped out of the elevator, the criminal division felt different. Down the hallway by my office, I saw Chip standing with Pleasant Holly and Upton. Without saying a word, Chip tipped his head toward my office door. Something was very wrong. Something terrible had happened up at the lake. Upton and Pleasant and Chip stood like mourners as I walked past them into my office. They followed. Upton closed the door.
“We’ve got DNA results in the Kyle Runion case,” Chip said. “The lab tested both the hair and the semen stains. They’re from one individual, and that person is not Daryl Devaney. My guess is Devaney will be cleared of Kyle Runion’s murder, as well as involvement in two similar disappearances.”
This was good news. Tina would be excited. I’d been sure they were about to tell me that Henry had gone on a rampage, or maybe that a canoe had tipped over. I made my way to the desk and tried to look like I was sitting down in the chair as opposed to falling into it. But the three of them, Upton, Pleasant, and Chip, were still staring at me, as somber as undertakers. It didn’t take the three of them and a closed door to tell me Daryl Devaney had been vindicated.
“What is it?” I said.
“The lab ran the DNA results through the national database of violent offenders,” Chip said. “They got a match.”
“And?”
“They were clean samples. At my request, they ran the test a second and third time. It’s conclusive.”
I waited.
“The hair and semen from Kyle Runion’s clothing and remains matched a DNA sample from a date rape case twenty years ago down in Renfield. The offender’s name was—”
“Henry Tatlock,” I said.
CHAPTER 32
The second most important thing was to make sure Barnaby didn’t witness anything. I didn’t want him seeing Henry handcuffed and thrown in the back of a cruiser, didn’t want him watching SWATs tackling Henry from behind, didn’t want him watching a dozen gun barrels appearing from nowhere. I didn’t want him seeing agents tackling Tina to get her out of the way. I didn’t want Barn himself being scooped from the ground, terrified to find himself in the arms of an artillery-clad commando, and I especially didn’t want him seeing his uncle Henry getting gunned down if things got nasty. Barn had to be taken out of there before we moved against Henry.
Henry was an unpredictable psycho. He had not only perpetrated unspeakable crimes against Kyle Runion and, in all probability, several other disappeared juveniles, he’d also wantonly shot his fiancée in the head, probably when she stumbled upon the truth about him. So the first, most important thing was to make sure Henry never felt threatened until Tina and Barn were far away.
We went in two helicopters and were met at the other end by local law enforcement. I was given a car. It was decided that instead of our driving multiple cars to the cabin, and instead of my bringing officers or agents in the car with me, two SWAT-trained agents would crouch under a blanket on the backseat floor.
It was early afternoon. I turned onto the windy road that dead-ended at Tina’s wilderness hideout. The escort vehicles hung back out of sight. Most of the leaves had fallen; we could see the cabin from far off. The car lent to Tina by the FBI was parked outside.
“Almost there,” I said to the blanket behind me.
“Signs of activ
ity?”
“Not yet.”
I pulled up beside Tina’s car.
“Be careful,” the blanket said. I had my Glock in my jacket pocket. We had discussed many versions of how this might play out, and how I should respond in different scenarios. If I could get Tina and Barn out of the house with Henry inside, I’d pick Barn up and tell Tina “Run!” and get back to the car as quickly as possible. The agents would have climbed into the front, and we’d go spinning out the driveway. If Tina and Barn were in the house and I could get Henry out, I’d slam and bolt the door, and agents would come from the car and take him.
I got out of the car, walked to the cabin, and went in. Everything was orderly. The woodstove was warm, coffee cups on the table, dishes in the sink. Nobody home. I went back out and updated the agents, then walked to the bunkhouse. Ditto: It was lived in but currently vacant. I went to the shore and counted canoes. I was pretty sure one was missing. I went to the car and consulted. One of the agents radioed the status to his reinforcements. More agents arrived and took up positions in hiding.
“Now we wait,” Chip said.
“You wait,” I said. “I’m going out looking.”
They tried to talk me out of it, but sitting around waiting felt like the worst idea. If another gargantuan cyclone was swirling into existence, I’d be damned if I was going to sit around waiting for it to make landfall. Henry might have caught wind of something. He might have fled out the road with my family as hostages, or maybe he’d decided on some warped survivalist tactic, taking to the woods, perhaps even heading for the Canadian border in a bizarre attempt to flee from justice at two miles per hour in the stern of a canoe. Or maybe he was taking Tina and Barnaby off into the woods to indulge his unspeakable proclivities. Who knew what his festering wounds would cause him to do when he was playing family with Tina and Barn a zillion miles from anyone else’s eyes? I pushed a canoe into the water, jumped in, and went.
I had been on the water about an hour, well out of sight from the house, when I saw the tendril of smoke rising from the trees on a tiny island. I tried Chip on the two-way radio he’d given me, but his response was unintelligible. I told him I’d found them, though I doubted he understood me; I switched the radio off so it wouldn’t give me away.
When I got close to the beach, Barnaby ran to the water and started jumping up and down, screaming, “Daddy, Daddy!” ZZ barked. Tina and Henry stood on the beach shoulder to shoulder, waving.
“Cooking hot dogs,” Barn yelled, and the second I was out of the boat, he had me by the hand and pulled me to the fire, where they had everything for their cookout ready to go.
“I hoped we’d have some fish,” Henry said. “I guess I’m not such a great provider.” He laughed. Tina laughed. She grabbed Henry’s arm and said to me, “He’s been so great.”
They wanted to know if there was news: anything new about Smeltzer; anything about Lydia; anything about Kyle Runion.
“Nothing,” I told them. “Nothing about anything.” But Tina saw how agitated I was. She went from happy and affectionate to wary and standoffish. They’d been in their own world, the three of them, far from the horrors of Lydia’s death and of Tina being stalked by a killer. From Tina’s perspective, she and Henry had a bond in their grief over Lydia that I didn’t share. It made me the outsider, the intruder. They’d put on a good show for a few moments, but with my conspicuous agitation, I’d brought all the unhappiness of the outside world to this wilderness paradise of theirs. I was unwelcome.
I had allowed myself to forget that Tina and I were on the outs. Now I remembered loud and clear. Her body language and tone of voice said it all. In subtle ways, she oriented toward Henry, not toward me. The connection between them was palpable. I was sure, as fellow refugees and partners in grief, they’d found solace in each other’s company that felt better to her than her fraught relationship with me.
But Henry would be on his way to life in prison (or worse) within the hour.
“We should go,” I said.
“Why?” Tina said, her voice heavy with resentment.
I had no answer for her. I should have thought something up ahead of time: We have to go because . . .
Because there’s a storm coming?
Because Lizzy was in an accident?
Because I ate a bad burrito, which is about to be ejected from both ends at once?
Because if I’m gone too long, the FBI is apt to send one of the helicopters out to look for me, perhaps causing your new best friend, Henry, to go off like a Roman candle, forcing me to shoot him right here by the shore as our four-year-old son looks on?
“Henry, can I have a word?” I said. I walked away from the fire, beckoning him to come with me.
“What is it, Nick?”
I walked until we were out of sight from the campfire. “Everything okay, Nick?” he asked, brimming with innocence. In his tone of voice, in the pronunciation of every syllable, every inflection, and in the way he walked, the swing of his arms, the solicitous bend of his back, the way he now stopped and turned toward me, the way he blinked at me questioningly, the lifting of his arms in a “what gives” gesture, I felt his calculating, remorseless psychopathic deception. I thought about the excitement he must have felt at first snatching up young Kyle Runion, and of his self-congratulatory efficiency at dealing with Lydia when she became a threat, and I thought about the smug satisfaction he must have gotten these past two weeks while lavishing fatherly attention on Barnaby and husbandly compassion on Tina.
I had my hands in my jacket pockets. My Glock was in the right-hand pocket. I held it. I wanted to use it. It would have been so much easier than keeping up the charade, pretending all was well.
I could do it. I could save everyone a lot of trouble. He knew something was up, I’d say. He jumped me. We wrestled for the gun. I won.
Nobody would doubt me. Nobody would care.
“Nick,” Henry said. He touched my shoulder. I jumped backward—now would be the moment . . .
The moment passed.
“It’s Lizzy,” I said. “I just got word. There’s been an accident.”
“Oh my God. How . . .”
“I don’t know anything yet. I don’t want Barnaby to know. You tell Tina,” I said. It was easier lying to Henry like this than to Tina. If I’d tried lying to Tina, everything would have gotten too confused. The emotions in that lie would have overcome me. But it was easy with Henry. My hatred for him masked everything else.
We loaded the canoes and left. Tina and Henry went in one boat. I took Barn and ZZ with me.
CHAPTER 33
We hit the beach in record time, propelled by the urgency of my lie about Lizzy. I hurried Tina and Barn into the cabin, asking Henry to secure the boats.
Within minutes Henry had been handcuffed, loaded into a helicopter, and was gone.
The detention hearing was two days later. Henry shuffled into the courtroom, chained up like Marley’s ghost. I sat in the gallery behind Gregory Nations, hoping my presence would add federal gravitas to the proceedings. The judge was Wendell Ballard, a former private lawyer, new to the bench, and not expected to last long because he was already talking about how much he missed being a combatant in the tooth-and-claw grappling of trial law.
He called court to order: “. . . detention hearing of Henry Tatlock on one count of murder in the first degree . . .”
Just murder? I wondered why they weren’t charging him with kidnapping or any of the possible sex crimes. So I almost missed it when the judge said: “. . . for the killing of Lydia Trevor.”
Lydia? I looked around in the courtroom, and yes, a couple of rows back, Detectives Sabin and Philbin were there to watch.
Henry’s lawyer stood. “We believe there is insufficient probable cause for an arrest in Lydia Trevor’s murder, and so—”
Judge Ballard interrupted: “Ms. Brill, are you moving to quash the arrest warrant?”
“I am, Your Honor.”
“Fine. Subm
it your motion. We’ll schedule arguments. But today’s hearing is on the question of whether Mr. Tatlock, being charged with Lydia Trevor’s murder, should be detained or freed on bail.”
It took me a few moments to realize what a shrewd move it had been for Gregory Nations to charge Henry in only Lydia’s murder right now, not Kyle Runion’s. Prosecutors never want to admit they’ve convicted an innocent man. It causes the public to lose confidence in the system. Some of the old-school prosecutors claim that no innocent man or woman has ever been convicted in their jurisdiction—though I doubt they believe this. What they really believe is that a few wrongful convictions are a small price to pay for a society that trusts the police, prosecutors, and courts. So Nations would resist caving on Daryl Devaney’s eight-year-old conviction as long as possible. If the DNA evidence against Henry held up, Daryl would go free, and the state would write him a big check for his trouble. But Gregory Nations wasn’t giving up this bone without a fight, especially seeing as he could, for now at least, keep the new suspect—Henry—in jail for something else.
Monica Brill, Henry’s lawyer, argued that considering his good reputation and ties to the community, he should be free on bail. She said there was no good evidence linking him to Lydia’s murder, and it was an atrocious misuse of the system that he’d been charged for the crime. She said he posed no danger to the community.
But we all knew about the DNA results. So even though Henry was being arraigned for a crime having nothing to do with the Kyle Runion killing, there was no way a judge was going to put him back out into society. “The suspect is to be detained pending trial,” Judge Ballard said. His gavel hit the bench.
The officers got Henry to his feet and started walking him toward the exit, but he swung around violently, jerking his arms from the guards’ hands. He looked toward all of us in the gallery. I saw savage terror in his eyes. He barely looked human. It was a split second before the officers had him facedown on the floor. He screamed in pain at having his arms wrenched up tight behind his back. But there were words in the shrieks; “I didn’t do anything.”