by Lee Goodman
“Okay. So.”
“Lizzy says maybe you won’t.”
“But maybe I will.”
“I gotta pee.”
We take a bathroom break and get an ice-cream cone for Barn and one for me, and a tiny vanilla one for ZZ, which Barn gives him on the sidewalk in front of the shop. Barn and ZZ are the cutest boy-and-his-dog pair you’ll ever find. Sometimes this ice-cream cone shtick gets people out of their cars taking pictures. Not today, though.
It’s cold out. When we get to the cabin, the lake looks frozen, but I don’t trust it. I warn Barn against walking out on the ice. He listens, looking very serious. “Okay,” he says. Then he eyes ZZ and says, “If ZZ runs on the ice, I’ll yell, ‘Bad dog, ZZ. Bad dog. The ice is too thin.’ Okay, Daddy?”
“Good plan, Barn.”
We make a fire to get the cabin warmed up, then we go over to Flora’s cabin and heat that one, too. Lizzy and Ethan will be along later to stay in Flora’s. I want to make it welcoming.
Tina arrives as it’s getting dark. I’m making dinner, and Barn is watching a movie about penguins on my computer.
“How was your drive?” I ask her.
Tina says her drive was fine, and I say that mine was fine, too, and we talk about how it’s cold, but not really cold for this time of year, and how it’s nice to have snow but there’s not much snow compared to last year, and then I say finally, “What’s the deal with Craig?”
“You mean my ex?”
“Yes, that’s who I mean.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “We’ve reconnected. He heard about Lyd and got in touch.”
“And came to visit,” I say.
She studies me a moment.
“I recognized him at that hearing,” I say. “From your photos.”
“I should have told you,” she says.
I shrug. “We don’t talk that much anyhow. Probably slipped your mind.”
“It’s not anything.”
“Whatever,” I say. “You’re a free agent.”
She stares at me a few seconds. “No,” she says, “not really.”
Tina mixes some dinner for ZZ and puts it in his bowl. I watch her. The past several years have taken a toll: postpartum depression; breast cancer; Lyd’s murder. Then we believed Lydia’s killer was coming after Tina. And now the horror of Henry. I should be glad she’s doing as well as she is, and maybe she’s beyond the worst of it. She is opening up to me again in minor ways: coffee sometimes in the morning when I pick up Barnaby for school; a beer sometimes at night. Now this weekend. “Don’t walk out on the ice,” I tell her. “It’s still not safe.”
She comes over to where I’m sautéing vegetables at the stove and gives me a kiss on the cheek, just below my eye.
Lizzy and Ethan arrive. Bill-the-Dog comes in with them and, after some butt-sniffing with ZZ, curls up by the woodstove. We get dinner on the table.
“Daddy,” Lizzy says, “I’ve got more info on Subsurface.”
“You want to brief me later?”
“It’s all public knowledge,” she says. “Remember, I promised. No sleuthing. Just researching.”
“Okay. Tell.”
“That representative who added the amendments . . .”
“Porter,” I say.
“Right. Turns out he got, like, these huge construction projects in his district. Tons of jobs.”
Across the table, Tina and Ethan are talking between themselves. I’m able to hear a little: “She might meet up with me in June,” Ethan says to Tina.
“You haven’t talked to Porter directly, have you?” I ask Lizzy.
“Only CD,” Lizzy says. “I called him to talk it through. He’s going to call me back.”
Tina overhears Lizzy. “CD,” she says. “Who’s CD?”
“Calvin Dunbar,” Lizzy says. “He’s a friend of Dad’s. He was a legislator.”
Ethan says, “Of course, we’ll miss each other between now and June, won’t we, babe?”
“Wait a second,” I say. “You’ll miss each other when? Meet up where?”
“In the Andes,” Ethan says.
“Ethan’s leaving soon,” Lizzy says. “Didn’t you get my email?”
“Who’s Andy?” Barnaby says.
“Andes,” Lizzy says to Barn. “They’re mountains. We’re going to hike in the Andes. At least to start. Not sure after that.”
I’m dumbfounded. It sounds like everybody else knows. “When, Liz? When are you leaving?”
“Ethan is leaving in a week, Daddy. I’m meeting him in, like, a month or two.”
“I never got an email.”
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I sent one. I figured you were just, you know, stressed about your little girl growing up, so you didn’t say anything.”
“Have you told your mom?”
“Of course.”
Tina pats my hand. “Don’t worry, Nick, you’ve been busy with Henry’s trial.”
I’m disconcerted to know that there’s a bit of truth in Lizzy’s assessment of me. I am choked up. My little girl is growing up and going away. “We’ll have a party,” I say.
“Okay,” Liz says, “but Mom’s planning something, so you should just combine.”
After dinner, we get the place cleaned up. When Barn falls asleep, we all play Scrabble. Then Lizzy and Ethan get their boots on for the walk over to Flora’s cabin. “C’mon, Bill,” Liz says. Bill-the-Dog gets up. ZZ goes along, too. They leave. I shut the door behind them. Then I open it. “Stay away from the lake,” I say. “The ice isn’t safe.”
I can’t see them, but Lizzy answers from within the darkness: “We know, Dad. You told us.”
CHAPTER 46
Gregory calls Arthur Cunningham, who steps into the witness box and takes the oath. The sequence of Gregory’s witnesses was thrown off by Dr. Farquar’s schedule. Normally, Farquar would have been called at the end to give his ironclad scientific proof of Henry’s guilt after all the background testimony of his motive and opportunity. No matter. This order of presentation will work just fine. Instead of ending with the rock-solid scientific proof of Henry’s guilt, we started with it. And instead of introducing the gut-wrenching description of unearthing Kyle’s decomposed remains at the beginning of the case, we can present it at the end. Either way, it tells the story.
Arthur is taller than I remember. He’s average height and average build, but in my memory from when I went with Tina to the reservoir, I see him as small and unobtrusive.
Gregory takes extra time putting Arthur at ease with background questions. “Where do you live?” (Right there outside the reservoir preserve.) “What do you do for a living?” (He calculates bids for a large construction firm.) “And are you married?” (He’s divorced.) Et cetera.
Gregory is good. He gets Arthur settled in and even gets him to chuckle by commenting on his own ineptitude with numbers when Arthur explains his job. And then Gregory begins in earnest:
MR. NATIONS: Living near the reservoir as you do, do you spend much time in the woods there, walking or hiking or anything?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Almost every day.
MR. NATIONS: Doing what?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Well, I’m . . . I’m . . . I have dogs, you know. I’ve always had a yellow Lab. That one was Bo-Jangles. Not that I hunt. I don’t hunt, but I work them, and you know how energetic Labs are.
Cunningham seems shy and fragile, traumatized by having to remember finding Kyle’s remains. I understand why I thought of him as small and slight. He has a paunch and sits bent over and avoids eye contact with Gregory. He tends to inflate his cheeks like a chipmunk when thinking. Gregory handles him gently: “On the day we’re talking about, Mr. Cunningham, what did Bo-Jangles do that caught your attention?”
Arthur inflates his cheeks. “She dug.”
“Oh,” Gregory says, “you mean like with her front paws?” He imitates a digging dog.
“Yes. Like that.”
Gregory nods. “And sh
e didn’t do that often, is that right?”
“Not often. No.”
“So she wasn’t a digger by nature. I mean, some dogs are. I had a dog once that dug up my whole backyard. Dug till his paws were bloody.”
Nobody here cares about Bo-Jangles, and we care even less about Gregory Nations’s backyard. We care about Kyle Runion’s remains, and I’m enjoying watching how deftly Gregory lures the skittish Arthur Cunningham into the open. Jurors like shy witnesses. Some identify with them, and others enjoy feeling superior. Gregory works Arthur slowly at first, and then he hands him photographs from the scene, evoking from him the slow and horrific recognition of what Bo-Jangles had found.
Arthur tells us how, when he walked over to where Bo-Jangles was busily tugging and excavating, the dog tore some of the shroud free from around the child’s face. Nothing can prepare you for the first glimpse of the leering skeletal grin, dried flesh clinging in places and dirt filling the eyeholes. It is vile. The joy and love and hope that once lived there seem not merely to be gone but to actually be undone. It makes you feel that all of life might be no more than a cruel hoax. As the photos are passed around, jurors press hands against their mouths. I hear gasps. And though she is in the gallery and can’t see the photos from where she sits, Kyle’s mother weeps openly. The jurors, I’m sure, wonder how they’d have reacted if they’d been in Arthur’s place that day. They gaze with watery eyes at Kyle’s mother and at poor Arthur, who had to unearth this horror.
And they look at Henry. This case has stopped being about the molecular structure of DNA and strings of nucleotide pairs. It has stopped being about the handing off of evidence from the state to the feds and back. It has stopped being about semen stains, hair follicles, electrophoresis, and random match probabilities. It is now about evil. And evil sits in the courtroom with us. Henry wears the mark of Cain. He comes to us in a nightmare.
“I have nothing further,” Gregory Nations says.
Monica Brill cross-examines. She asks some questions about Bo-Jangles and about the bit of forest where Arthur and the dog walked that day. There is nothing she really wants to know about the dog or the woods. She just wants to try and replace this horrific vision of Kyle’s remains with the image of a happy dog and peaceful woods.
Gregory’s last witness is the medical examiner, who reminds me of Lurch: tall, gaunt, eyes deep in gray sinkholes. His responses to Gregory’s questions, though monotonal, are quick and confident. He is not the doctor who examined the remains eight years ago, but he tells us he has performed a complete review of the record: Cause of death was undeterminable, and though the date of death couldn’t be pinpointed with any accuracy, it was probably quite soon after Kyle’s abduction. No foreign DNA was recovered from the remains, but seeing as there had already been a confession, a guilty plea, and a sentencing by the time they were recovered, they hadn’t been examined as closely as they might have been otherwise.
Gregory turns the witness over to Monica for cross-examination. She has no questions.
The state rests. Henry is as good as convicted.
CHAPTER 47
It’s almost noon. Judge Ballard announces that trial will resume first thing in the morning. I go to my office. Work has been piling up. I install myself at the desk and make a list of priorities as I drill down through the piles, delegating as much as possible, writing memos to assistants and status updates to Pleasant Holly. Everything on Subsurface and all related matters, including the annoyingly unsolved Jimmy Mailing murder, stays with me. There isn’t much on Mailing: mostly updates from the Bureau confirming that they’ve made no progress but they expect to soon. I think this is code for the fact that it’s been deemed low priority. True, Jimmy Mailing had found semi-legitimate work as Bud Billman’s fixer at Subsurface, but I’m sure he was still involved in nefarious moonlighting. The hit on him looked professional, making it nearly impossible to solve. Also, since Mailing was a player in the scandal, there was no innocent victim in whose “defense” we needed to bring the perp to justice.
I write a quick email to Isler over at the Bureau about all of this, and I cc: Chip and Upton.
Last I knew, the Bureau was going to look at Voss for Mailing’s murder. I know I’d have heard something if anything had turned up, but just to be sure, I send a quick follow-up email asking if investigation of that possible suspect is proceeding.
A moment later, Upton is in my office. “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” he says.
“About Mailing?”
“Yes. How about if you and I sit down and take a fresh look?” Upton has a mischievous twinkle, because what he’s really saying is that maybe he and I can find something that the Bureau missed. This is like Upton: He’s cocky and audacious. He’s a good lawyer, but I’ve often thought he’d be a better agent or detective because he seems to have an intuitive sense of human behavior—or to put it less discreetly, he can think like a criminal.
He almost was one once. He was a juvenile delinquent who caught a few lucky breaks that steered him onto a safer path before his youthful “ethic” of self-serving expedience had fully taken root. With his innate intellect, his physical coordination, and a good high school football coach, he landed himself a brief career as an NFL kicker instead of what could have been a long career in prison. I’m sure he’s clean now, but he does seem to know an awful lot about the shadowy side of things.
He sits now in one of my office chairs, tipping back on two legs, feet on my desk.
“A fresh look?” I say. “Yes, let’s. We ought to be able to outsmart the Bureau.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he says.
I’m not sure if this is true, but I agree with him anyway, and the two of us sit there a few moments, feeling like old cowboys talking about swinging up into the saddle to ride again. He looks very content.
I still see evidence in Upton of the unusual path he took into legal prosecution: He sometimes sees rules as things not to be guided by but to be danced around when needed. If he were a cop, he might turn off the video recording anytime a suspect needed some extra persuading. He is lenient and sympathetic with youthful defendants in nonviolent crimes. He thinks of them as less fortunate versions of his younger self. Conversely, he is remorseless with the ones he calls “the disrupters of our urban utopia.” These are the real criminals. They are the powerful ones—kingpins, people of violence with no regard for the lives they ruin along the way. This is a thing with Upton: He talks about the shining city on the hill. He’s a true believer. He’s a little kooky about it, and I used to worry that his zealous belief in the urban utopia could get him into trouble. But years have passed, and for the most part, he has colored within the lines.
I say, “I can’t do this fresh look right now, unfortunately. I kind of need to get caught up. How about tomorrow, after Henry’s trial ends for the day?”
“Not tonight?”
“I have Barnaby.”
“Tomorrow, then. It’s a date.” Upton sits there smiling at me, fingers interlaced across his stomach. He does this occasionally, just stares at me with an affectionate grin. He means well, but it’s unnerving. Upton feels he owes me, because a few years back I did him a good turn when an old gambling problem came back to haunt him. I kept it quiet for him. I don’t feel like he owes me anything, but it’s nice to know if I ever need him, he’ll show up.
He leaves. I continue drilling into the stack of paperwork. It’s all humdrum except for a memo Chip sent along to me:
TO: Agent d’Villafranca
FROM: Stan Taylor, NTSB inspector
RE: Billman fatality
Agent d’Villafranca: in response to your recent inquiry, we have little hope of recovering the wreckage of Bud Billman’s V-tail Cirrus. As you know, it was lost offshore in an area where ocean depths exceed 500 feet. The chances of locating it are slim. In circumstances like this, the most common cause of aircraft accidents is pilot error. I’ll be in touch if we get any more information.
/> I’m amazed. I had no idea Chip was looking into Billman’s crash. I don’t know if this is standard or if Chip suspects something.
I go home to Friendly City. I have Barn. He has a stomach bug, and I stay in the bed with him, keeping a pot close at hand for him to puke into and getting cool rags for his forehead. We’re up most of the night.
CHAPTER 48
Monica Brill’s first witness is Ron Bauer, a police detective from Orchard City. He is African-American, bald, and has beefy forearms, which we can see because he’s wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up above his elbows. He tells us he has been retired from police work for the past five years, and that he now spends most of his time working in his wife’s florist shop. Monica smiles as Ron Bauer tells us this. She speaks to him amiably. It all seems friendly.
MS. BRILL: And before you retired, Detective, were you involved at all in the investigation of Kyle Runion’s disappearance?
DETECTIVE BAUER: I was.
MS. BRILL: At some point the police zeroed in on one Daryl Devaney as the prime suspect, is that right?
DETECTIVE BAUER: Yes.
MS. BRILL: What evidence or facts made you suspect Mr. Devaney?
DETECTIVE BAUER: Well, that was back then. It was based on what we knew then. But with what we know now, it’s obvious that—
MS. BRILL: Please answer the question, Detective. What made you suspect Daryl Devaney was responsible for Kyle Runion’s disappearance?
DETECTIVE BAUER: He was known to us.
MS. BRILL: Known how?
DETECTIVE BAUER: Always in trouble.
MS. BRILL: Can you elaborate on that?
DETECTIVE BAUER: No.
MS. BRILL: Had you ever arrested him before?
DETECTIVE BAUER: I don’t know. Maybe.
It continues like this. Detective Bauer, who apparently once was the tenacious pursuer of Daryl Devaney, now wants to disown the case. Monica keeps after him; he keeps dodging and feigning ignorance. She keeps asking. Gregory keeps objecting that she is leading the witness. Finally, long after I expect it, Monica says, “Your Honor, I’d like permission to treat Detective Bauer as a hostile witness.”