Skeleton Key

by Jane Haddam

  “And they were out here?” Gregor asked.

  “You bet.”

  “Why?”

  “They closed her accounts at the banks and those places,” Mark Cashman said. “They just came in and shut it all down. The ones at the local banks, I mean. She had this checking account at Webster.”

  “They could do that on a Saturday?”

  “Well, they did it. That’s the thing, isn’t it? They did all kinds of things, on a Saturday, that maybe you and I couldn’t do. And they don’t talk worth a damn.”

  Gregor considered this. “Did they say they were interested in anything else? Besides closing her accounts? Besides the money?”

  “They asked to be kept informed on the progress of the investigation.” Mark Cashman’s voice was dry. “I thought the whole time that they’d do better just bribing the hell out of somebody to feed them the news, and maybe they did. They were certainly well-heeled enough to manage that kind of thing.”

  Gregor sat down at the table. The papers in the middle of it, unlike the ones on Stacey’s table in Caldwell, were actually in use. Gregor saw several black-and-white photographs of what he was sure was the body of Kayla Anson, spilling out of her car. He pulled one of them toward him and looked at it. She had been alive when she had been strangled. If she hadn’t been, her eyes would not have protruded in that characteristic way.

  “Those don’t amount to much,” Tom Royce said. “We’ll have better ones coming in a day or two. Those were—just to be going on with.”

  “Tom wanted to have a little show-and-tell with the governor,” Mark Cashman said.

  “Well, you’d think he’d take an interest, wouldn’t you? Even him. This is going to be an enormous case. As big as JonBenet Ramsey. You’d think he’d at least pay attention.”

  “He’ll talk to Dr. Lee when Dr. Lee gets back,” Mark Cashman said. Then he turned to Gregor and explained, “That’s Dr. Henry Lee. The state medical examiner. Big wheel. Testified in the O. J. trial. He’s on vacation in Colorado. He’s flying back tonight.”

  Gregor had heard of Dr. Henry Lee. Now he put the photograph of Kayla Anson back on the table and said, “She was alive when she was strangled.”

  Tom Royce shook his head. “That’s my guess, too, but it’s still a guess until we’re finished running all the tests. And until Dr. Lee has had a chance to check over the work. This one isn’t going out of the office without his personal say-so.”

  “But you were the one who actually examined the body?” Gregor asked.

  “Yesterday morning, yeah. I did an autopsy and set up the lab work.”

  “And?”

  Tom Royce sighed. “And it looks to me like she was strangled and strangulation was how she died. The cord was still around her neck, by the way.”

  “What kind of cord?’

  “A white nylon shoelace. New. The kind you use for athletic shoes.”

  “She had a whole package of them in one of the bags from Sears,” Mark Cashman said. “You know she’d been to Sears?”

  “Mr. Spratz told me.”

  “Stacey,” Stacey said automatically.

  “The problem with the shoelaces is that they’re everywhere,” Mark Cashman said. “We ran across a half dozen of them in Margaret Anson’s kitchen the night of the murder. They were sitting in a kitchen drawer right next to the mudroom. You couldn’t go anywhere in the rich part of Litchfield County without finding them by the dozens. At the Swamp Tree Country Club. At Rumsey Hall and Taft. Everybody’s athletic these days.”

  “Rich people have always been athletic,” Tom Royce said.

  “What about the strength required to get the job done?” Gregor asked. “Was she a strong young woman? Would she have struggled?’

  Tom Royce shifted unconifortably from foot to foot. “Here’s where we get into territory I don’t like. I really couldn’t tell you that unless I’d talked to Dr. Lee. There are things—”

  “What things?”

  “Well, for one thing, how much strength was required would depend on whether or not she was conscious when she was strangled. She could have been alive and not been conscious.”

  “Do you have reason to believe she wasn’t conscious?”

  “Sort of. Maybe. But it’s all speculation. Completely speculation. I don’t have any proof of it at all.”

  “Would you like to tell me proof of what?” Gregor asked.

  Tom Royce started to pace. From the way Mark Cashman was staring at Tom, Gregor knew that this was the first of this Tom had mentioned to anybody. Holding back the information wasn’t going to do him any good, at least with the Washington Police Department. Tom’s pacing was jerky and uneven. He kept taking his hands out of his pockets and putting them back in again.

  “Okay,” Tom said. “This isn’t even speculation. This is a guess. A pure and simple guess. I think she was hit on the back of the head.”

  “Why?” Gregor asked him.

  “If you mean what makes me think so, it’s because she had a bruise. On her forehead. Her left temple just above the eye.”

  “And, that makes you think she was hit on the back of the head?’

  “And fell forward into the steering wheel and got a bruise. Yes. That’s it exactly.”

  “But there was no mark on the back of the head?’

  “No obvious mark, no. But there are ways to do that. You can knock somebody out cold without causing any visible damage. And that’s a good place to go for, because it’s effective but it’s covered with hair. Especially in women. Lots of hair. So if you do some damage, it’s not necessarily going to be seen.”

  “But what about the autopsy? Didn’t that reveal any evidence of concussion?’

  “I don’t know. What I have is inconclusive as hell.”

  “I see.”

  Tom Royce sat down abruptly. “If Henry responds the way you’re doing, I’m dead in the water. But nothing else makes much sense. She was a young woman in good health and good shape. She played a lot of tennis. She worked out. There should have been—I don’t know. More signs of a struggle. Something. She should have kicked out or hit at things—”

  “Maybe she did,” Mark Cashman said. “Maybe she wasn’t killed in the car. I’ve said before—”

  “She was killed in the car,” Tom Royce said. “I’ve said before. She was killed sitting in the passenger seat of that car. If she hadn’t been, there would have been other kinds of bruising that came from getting her in there, and there wasn’t anything like that at all. Not a thing.”

  “Not a thing,” Gregor repeated.

  He was just about to ask them all the most obvious question—what was Kayla Anson doing in the passenger seat of a car she’d been driving when she left Waterbury?—when the door to the little conference room swung open and a harried middle-aged woman came bursting in.

  “The governor’s here,” she announced dramatically, “and he’s got about half the state with him, and I don’t know what to do next. You guys had better come on out and take care of him before something goes wrong and I get blamed for it.”

  “When Ella Grasso was governor of this state,” Tom Royce said, “she could get to a press conference with fewer people than Elvis’s entourage in attendance.”

  “Tom is a Democrat,” Stacey Spratz said. “Let’s go.”

  2

  Gregor Demarkian had never seen the governor of the State of Connecticut in person before. The only time he had ever seen him in action on television was after the 1997 mass shootings at Connecticut Lottery headquarters in Newington, when a disgruntled employee just returned from medical leave had shown up for work armed to the teeth and then walked around the facility blasting away at one lottery corporation executive after another. Gregor could remember, in the aftermath of that case, thinking that for once the killer had got it right. He had gone after the people in power instead of the people he worked with, although that was going to be cold comfort to the families of the people who had died. All Gregor remember
ed about the governor was a round fair face at a press conference—that, and a very good suit.

  “The governor doesn’t really travel with an entourage the size of Elvis’s,” Stacey Spratz said unnecessarily. “From what I hear, he’s actually pretty easy to work with. You should hear some of the stories going around about some of the others.”

  Gregor had a few stories of his own about various government officeholders, including two speakers of the House and a president, left over from his days at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He let himself be led down the narrow corridor to the front of the building. The governor was standing with a small clutch of people near the station’s front counter, enveloped in a very good winter coat. This governor seemed to like good clothes. Bennis Hannaford would have approved.

  “Governor?” Stacey Spratz said, “I’m Stacey Spratz, of the state police. I’m the resident trooper in Caldwell? And this is Gregor Demarkian.”

  The governor’s face did not look blank, even for an instant. Either he’d been very well briefed for this meeting, or he liked reading true crime stories in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. He put his hand out and grabbed Gregor’s.

  “Mr. Demarkian,” he said. “You have no idea how grateful I am that you agreed to come. We’re all grateful. This is a terrible situation. The murder of any young person is a terrible situation, but the ramifications here—”

  “Governor?” It was one of the men in the plain black suits.

  The governor dropped Gregor’s hand and turned away. “Are we ready?’

  “You’d better be ready,” somebody else said. “They’re ready to eat raw meat out there. And they’re cold.”

  “Does everybody know what it is we’re doing?” the governor asked.

  A young woman raced up to Gregor and brushed his hair out of his eyes. She had a clipboard and her hair held back in the kind of hairband Hillary Clinton had favored before the professional handlers had gotten to her.

  “The governor’s going to make a short statement,” she told Gregor, “and then he’s going to introduce you and you’re supposed to make a short statement. Just that you’re glad to be here and that you’ll help in any way possible. That kind of thing. You don’t actually have to say anything. Would you like to have something written out for you?’

  “No,” Gregor said.

  “It wouldn’t be any trouble. In fact, I’ve already got something. I took the liberty—”

  “No,” Gregor said again.

  “It will be all right,” the governor said. “Mr. Demarkian has handled press conferences before. I’ve seen him.”

  “If they try to ask you any questions, don’t answer,” the young woman said. “Or don’t be too specific. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”

  “Let’s go,” the governor said.

  Somebody opened the police station’s front doors. Gregor wondered what a person would do if he actually needed police protection at this moment. Nobody who didn’t know about the back door would even be able to get into the station. Was the dispatcher sending out cars when people called in? He hadn’t seen a dispatcher.

  The governor stepped outside first, followed by two men Gregor assumed to be either aides or security personnel. The young woman in the hairband pushed him out immediately afterward, followed by Stacey Spratz and Mark Cashman. Tom Royce stayed behind. As soon as the group of men filed out onto the station steps, the people in the minivans came to life. Men with cameras on their shoulders moved in close. Gregor saw that, between the time he and Stacey Spratz had left the car on the side of the road and now, somebody had put up extra folding chairs.

  “Sit here,” the young woman in the hairband told Gregor. Then she nodded at the governor and retreated.

  At a federal press conference, there would have been more of a sense of ceremony. Here, although there was a press officer to make introductions and serve as a sort of informal director of the proceedings, he seemed to be mostly making it up as he went along. He stood at the lectern, leaning toward the microphone, until the people in the parking lot started to settle down. Then he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the governor will speak first, followed by a short statement from Gregor Demarkian. When Mr. Demarkian is finished talking, the governor will take questions.”

  “Will Mr. Demarkian take questions?” somebody asked.

  “Yes,” the press officer said.

  “What about somebody from the medical examiner’s office? What about somebody from the police?” somebody else asked.

  “The medical examiner’s office has no statement to make at this time,” the press officer said, “and will not have such a statement until Dr. Lee returns from Colorado and can review the evidence. The Washington Police Department also has no statement to make at this time.”

  “What about the state police?” a third person asked. “I thought this was being handled by the state police.”

  The press officer ignored the question, and the statement, and everything else that was going on in the parking lot. He leaned into the microphone and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the governor.”

  The governor stepped up to the lectern, and Gregor let his mind drift. The press officer should have said “the governor of the State of Connecticut” instead of just “the governor.” It would have sounded better. This press conference should have been held inside someplace, at the town hall or in a movie theater. That way it would have been warmer and less chaotic. They should have announced a time limit for questions. It would have helped keep things from getting out of hand.

  The governor stepped back. He did not sit down. The press officer went back to the lectern and announced, “Mr. Gregor Demarkian.”

  Gregor went up to the lectern. He never took the canned statements he was offered before press conferences, but sometimes he thought he should. He never really knew what to say in situations like this.

  “I have been asked,” he said, “by the governor’s office and by the Connecticut State Police, to provide consultation and aid in the investigation into the murder of Kayla Anson, and I have agreed to do so most willingly. I will be serving in an advisory capacity only. I hope that my experience, both in the Federal Bureau of Investigation and more recently as a consultant to police departments faced with difficult homicide investigations, will prove valuable for all the parties concerned in this case.”

  Gregor stepped away from the lectern and sat down. He thought he’d sounded more bureaucratic than most bureaucrats. At the very worst, he’d sounded like a pompous ass. He wondered if Bennis was back at the inn, watching this.

  The press officer had stepped up to the lectern again. “We’ll bring the governor back and you can start your questions. If you could try to raise your hands instead of calling out, I’d much appreciate it. I—”

  There was a sound from behind him, and he turned. So did the governor and Gregor and everybody else on the station steps. The people in the parking lot did not have to turn. The front doors of the station were opening.

  “Excuse me,” a woman said—it took Gregor a moment to recognize her as the one who had come to the conference room to tell them that the governor had arrived. She looked, out at the sea of faces in the lot and nearly retreated. Her confusion was as plain as the bold red print on her dress. “Excuse me,” she said again.

  The young woman with the hairband rushed up to her. “We’re having a press conference here,” she hissed. “If you need to leave the building, go out to the back. You can’t—”

  “But I don’t need to leave the building. I don’t. I need to talk to Mark. I have to talk to Mark. He’s the only one here who can do anything about it.”

  “Whatever it is, it can wait,” the girl in the hairband said firmly, pushing the older woman forcefully back into the building. “Right now, we’re having a press conference, and anything short of bloody murder—”

  “But that’s just it,” the older woman said, pushing back hard enough so that the younger woman stumbled. “It is bloody m
urder, it is. It’s another bloody murder and nobody else is on duty right now but Mark and he’s the one I have to talk to. He’s the one I have to talk to right now.”

  Suddenly, she seemed to realize that they were all frozen—the people on the steps, the people in the parking lot. They were as still as statues and they were all staring at her. She pushed her way out farther onto the steps, clear of the young woman with the hairband. Once she was out there on her own like that, her posture improved. She threw her shoulders back and stood up straight. She seemed to gain two inches in height.

  “It’s happened again,” she said, in a stentorian voice that needed no help from a microphone. “There’s another body lying dead in Margaret Anson’s garage.”

  PART TWO

  PART TWO

  One

  1

  The first thing Gregor Demarkian noticed about Margaret Anson’s house was that it was enormous, a parody of a big old house, with long one-story wings stretching out from a boxlike central two-story core. It looked more like an institution than a private house, except that the low white-picket fence that ran along the road in front of it was so studiedly domestic. The flowerpots in the windows near the front door were studiedly domestic, too, but they looked out of place. It was late fall and cold. The flowers were dead.

  The second thing Gregor Demarkian noticed about Margaret Anson’s house was that it was almost aggressively ugly. For one thing, it was painted a garish yellow color with black shutters. The color would have done well on the walls of the kind of nursery school that has become overanxious about its pupils’ self-esteem. For another, the proportions were all wrong. The central core was clearly early eighteenth century. The additions were clearly later. The collection didn’t match. Gregor looked up the long gravel drive to the long garage at the back. That had once been a barn, and it still looked like one. It was as out of place here as a pig would have been, penned up in a mudhole on the front lawn.

  “CNN was faster than we were,” Mark Cashman said, turning the police cruiser into Margaret Anson’s drive.