“How did you expect DeBrough to pay you? He’d been disinherited, remember. It’s Burden’s money now.”
“In a couple of months Burden’s going to die in the chair—if he lives that long. Then DeBrough hires the best lawyer money can buy and contests the will. I don’t know if ‘contests’ is the right word there. I mean, who is there to contest, with Burden dead? He has no relatives to take up his case. With no opposition, even a halfway decent lawyer should be able to make the case that Mrs. DeBrough was already suffering from the effects of her stroke when she signed the will.”
“You know that Burden didn’t kill Laurel Rose.”
“Do I?”
“Doesn’t it matter to you that the person who killed Laurel be made to pay for it?”
“Versus half of a million dollar fortune? No. Anyway, how do I know who killed Laurel? I know that DeBrough ‘couldn’t’ have done it: he was with me at the time. From what I read in the paper, Burden was found standing over Laurel’s body with a knife in his hand. How do I know that he didn’t in fact kill her?”
“You haven’t been hiding from Burden for the last month,” Langley said. “Did you and Laurel ever take his feelings into consideration when you were hatching your scheme?”
“His feelings? He was getting fucked by the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid his eyes on. In his dreams he never fucked a woman like Laurel. At worst, he was going to wind up rich and lonely, instead of poor and lonely like he started out.”
Langley started to draw his fist back. He felt a touch on his arm: Wickersham.
“Relax, O.”
Langley lowered his hand. “Where did the baby figure into all this?” he asked Ricky.
“Baby?”
Langley could see he wasn’t pretending ignorance. “When she was killed, Laurel was four months pregnant.”
Ricky digested the news. It didn’t go down well.
He said, “The little cunt was going to double-cross me.”
CHAPTER 15
“God damn them all,” Langley said. “Laurel and Ricky. DeBrough and his mother. God damn every last misbegotten one of them to Hell.”
Turning his head, he stared out at the snow-covered fields. Typically, when it snowed the Island would receive several inches less than the city. But this time the situation was reversed: for every ten miles farther out they drove, the snow deepened by another inch.
Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the head rest. Lulled by the rhythmic rattle of the chains against the road, he felt himself begin to drift off. The loss of a night’s sleep was finally starting to take its toll.
But then the sound of Wickersham’s voice snapped him back. In the voice of Lon Chaney, Jr. playing Lennie in Of Mice and Men, he said, “Tell me again about the rabbits, George.”
Langley knew what Wickersham was trying to do: wake him up to the absurdity of what he was planning to do. But Langley didn’t need to be told. He knew from the moment he conceived the idea that it was absurd, that it had a snowball’s chance in Hell of succeeding. But he didn’t have a better one. And neither did Wickersham.
Langley was going to arrest DeBrough. A citizen’s arrest. After he took DeBrough into custody, he was going to haul him back to the city and dump him on the front steps of the News or the Mirror. He wasn’t sure how the tabloids would play up the news of DeBrough’s “arrest,” but one thing he knew: they wouldn’t ignore it. Tomorrow morning when John Q. Public got through reading “Dick Tracy” or “Li’l Abner” and opened his paper to the main section, he would be brought up short by headlines screaming the lurid story of Terence DeBrough and his brother and his brother’s dead wife.
Langley did not expect the police to endorse his arrest. They were more likely to turn around and arrest him. It didn’t matter. By then he would have accomplished what he had set out to do: generate so much publicity the police would think twice before shooting Burden on sight. At this point all Langley asked was that Burden be brought in alive to stand trial.
And stand trial he would. Despite all that Langley had learned that morning, he did not kid himself: DeBrough would never face charges for the murder of Laurel Rose. At the time of her murder wasn’t he having drinks in the presence of several witnesses? As for the claim that he was being blackmailed by Laurel, prove it. There would, Langley was sure, be no witnesses who could put DeBrough together with Laurel after the time they had been caught by her roommate. Their subsequent meetings, by Ricky’s account, had been in remote places, and his testimony to that effect would, as hearsay, be disallowed in a court of law. As would his claim that DeBrough had paid money to Laurel for her silence about the will.
Similarly, although he would order Wickersham to look under every stone, Langley was sure no one would ever be found who could put DeBrough together with Charles Luray. Which left the authorities with nothing on which to base a case against DeBrough, even assuming they were so inclined.
As Burden had said, it was impossible to prove him innocent. It was, however, possible to raise serious doubts as to his guilt; and Langley was now in possession of enough evidence to punch a hole of doubt in the State’s case so large that a hundred Burdens could walk through it abreast. By the time he got through presenting all the facts to the jury, he was sure they would be ready to convict DeBrough for the murder of both Laurel Rose and Charles Luray. Unable to do that, they would have to settle for the next best thing: to find Burden innocent of all the charges against him (please God, he hasn’t hurt the nurse or the other hostage). So the problem now was to make sure Burden stayed alive long enough to be brought to trial.
“Has it occurred to you you could wind up getting shot, O? You’ll be forcing your way into DeBrough’s house. He’d be perfectly in his rights to shoot you.”
Even that, he thought, would suit his purpose. “If he does,” he told Wickersham, “make sure the news gets onto the front page of tomorrow’s papers.”
“You’re not thinking right, O.”
Langley remembered something Burden had said, about how he had almost gone over the edge in the days after Laurel’s murder. Langley tried to imagine what it must have been like: to come across the body of your wife, whom you haven’t seen in four months; to find your co-worker standing over her, holding your knife in his hand; and then to find yourself arrested for the murder…
“Harry, for the first time since this case began I am thinking right. If I hadn’t fucked up every step of the way up until now, I wouldn’t have to do what I’m about to do.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself, O. Nobody could have figured this case out. Even now I’m not sure I understand it. Why, for example, didn’t DeBrough simply kill Burden and Laurel Rose? Why go to all the trouble of framing Burden for Laurel’s murder?”
“Because it was necessary,” Langley said. “If they had still been living together, he probably would have killed the two of them, arranged an ‘accident’—a fire, a car crash—that claimed them both at the same time. But two separate accidents? That’s another story. Look at it from DeBrough’s angle, Harry. He’s in one hell of a fix. He can’t kill Burden: that leaves Laurel alive and still in possession of the will. On the other hand, he can’t just kill Laurel and hope the will never surfaces. If it does, DeBrough instantly becomes the prime suspect in Laurel’s murder unless—unless it’s obvious to all the world that somebody else did it.”
“But that still leaves Burden alive. How does that help DeBrough?”
“Maybe Burden wasn’t going to be left alive. You’re forgetting things didn’t work out as planned. Burden was not supposed to come upon Luray in the park. What was supposed to happen? Was the plan to have Burden killed, too, perhaps set up in such a way as to make it look like suicide? For that matter, what was supposed to happen to Luray? We’ll never know what was supposed to happen. All we know is what did happen. Luray gets caught at the scene. DeBrough has to improvise. Which he does. He hir
es a dimwit lawyer, the biggest dimwit lawyer he can find, hoping that with this dimwit lawyer at the helm, Burden will be tried and fried before his mother kicks off.”
“If that was his strategy, O, it misfired pretty badly, didn’t it?”
Would DeBrough think so? Since he had effectively been disinherited, Langley had to concede that he probably would.
“Which still leaves Ricky,” Wickersham said.
“Ricky,” Langley said. They had left Ricky in the care of Wickersham’s man. “Ricky’s not as smart as he thinks he is. Those photographs he thought would net him half the DeBrough fortune are worthless.”
“Can’t we use the photographs against DeBrough?”
“To get him disinherited, maybe. To help Burden, no: we have no proof DeBrough knew the photographs existed.” Langley shook his head. “Remember the phone call Ricky said DeBrough received at the restaurant. Unless I miss my guess, that was one of DeBrough’s men calling in with the news that he had finished ransacking Laurel’s apartment and Ricky’s. And what odds would you give for that guy still being alive?”
“Ricky said he thought DeBrough was waiting for another phone call.”
“That call, if I am right, was supposed to come from Luray, reporting that he had dealt with Laurel. And then what would have happened to Ricky? Does DeBrough arrange to have him killed? It’s probably not necessary. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past DeBrough to go to the police and report Ricky for trying to blackmail him. With Laurel dead, with Burden framed for her murder, with DeBrough in possession of a bunch of witnesses as to his whereabouts at the time of Laurel’s murder, are the police going to arrest him? Are they even going to suspect him? If Ricky tries to tell his story, are the police for one second going to believe him? Which is my problem right now. The police are not going to believe Ricky’s story. They are not, on the Saturday before Christmas, on the basis of Ricky’s cockeyed story, going to call up the Suffolk County police and ask them to arrest one of the most prominent citizens of the state of New York. Nor on any other day. DeBrough will never go to trial for any of the things he has done. He will never even be indicted. The best I can hope for is that the jury will throw out the charges against Burden, which I’m sure they’ll do once I get through presenting all the evidence I have. The problem is to keep Burden alive long enough for that to take place. There would be no small measure of satisfaction in seeing him walk out of the courtroom a free man—and with all the money. That, for DeBrough, might even be a fate worse than death.”
“That’s another thing I don’t get,” Wickersham said. “How could Mrs. DeBrough make such a mistake in her will?”
“She had forgotten Burden even existed, I guess. As soon as her own son was born, Burden became an afterthought. And then after he left and years passed, I suppose she forgot all about him.”
“You would think that somebody at PrestonPierce would have remembered.”
“It’s been a lot of years, Harry. I don’t suppose there’s anyone there today who remembers that part of the family’s history.”
“I don’t know,” Wickersham said. “That’s still a pretty big fuck-up.”
An idea suddenly occurred to Langley. “I wonder…”
“What?”
“I wonder if Mrs. DeBrough took her glasses off.”
“What glasses?”
Burden had mentioned that at one point Mrs. DeBrough was becoming just the tiniest bit uncertain about her son. She had gotten over it and had rallied to him again, as she always had in the past. But then later, after Burden had left, leaving no one to take the rap for DeBrough’s thefts and for his other antics, had Mrs. DeBrough’s suspicions been piqued once more? At that point did she take off her glasses?
“I wonder if she finally got wise to DeBrough and… disinherited him. Sort of paying him back from beyond the grave for all the ways in which he had failed her. And perhaps making amends to Burden for the way she had treated him.”
He glanced up at the sky. The day, which had been gray, was beginning to darken into twilight. It would be dark by the time they reached Sea Vista.
“More likely, it was just an oversight made by a senile old woman. We’ll never know.”
***
The car stopped with a jolt, awakening Langley. The lack of sleep had caught up with him at last: he had dozed off. Sitting up, he looked out the window expecting to see Sea Vista.
They were on a village street. Main Street, apparently: off to the right was the railroad station. Langley turned to look at Wickersham.
“This is as far as I go, O,” Wickersham said. “You can take the car if you want.” He nodded past Langley to the station. “I’ll catch a train back to the city, if they’re running.”
The cobwebs hadn’t quite cleared from Langley’s head. While he was thinking of something to say, Wickersham went on.
“Your plan is not going to work, O. All you’re going to accomplish is get yourself arrested. And disbarred. Worse, it’s not going to do Burden a fucking bit of good. If he has any sense, he crossed over to New Jersey during the night, and even as we sit here, he’s riding a freight south.”
He had said his piece, but he didn’t make a move to get out of the car. Langley realized he was being given one last chance to come to his senses. Everything Wickersham had said was logical; unarguable, even. And yet—
“I have to have it out with him, Harry.”
“What does ‘have it out with him’ mean, O?”
Langley sighed. “I don’t know. Punch his lights out. Tell him off the way he’s never been told off in his life…”
“What about arresting him?” Wickersham asked.
“I guess that was never a very good idea.”
“If I have your word you won’t try to arrest DeBrough, I’ll take you as far as the house. I’ll wait in the car while you have it out with him, and then we’ll go home.”
Not waiting for Langley’s response, he started the car.
***
Wickersham pointed toward the snow in the driveway leading up to Sea Vista.
By now, night had fallen; but for the illumination provided by the car’s headlights, Langley wouldn’t have been able to see what Wickersham was pointing at. Just as that morning he had been able to detect the railroad tracks as two parallel mounds under the snow, so now he could make out the trail of tires in a pair of parallel indentations in the snow. Sometime after it had begun to snow and long before it had stopped (like maybe early this morning), a car had been through here.
“Should we preserve the tracks,” Wickersham asked, “for the police to examine?”
“Right. Let’s do that,” Langley said sarcastically. “Let’s call up the local police and summon them out here to look at these tracks… I’m sorry, Harry. I’ve told you, DeBrough has beaten the rap. I’ll tell you what else he did. Last night before he left the house, he tore down the telephone wire so that if someone should call him—one of his cronies in the D.A.’s office, say—he wouldn’t be left with the embarrassing problem of having to explain why he didn’t pick up the receiver. I’ll tell you another thing he did. Either before he drove into the city to kill Luray or after his return here, or maybe both, he stopped off someplace out here, a gas station, a 24-hour pharmacy, to provide himself with an alibi on the off chance anyone should suspect him. So, fuck the tracks. Drive on.”
Around the final bend of the road, Sea Vista came into view. The house was in darkness, but because of the peculiarity of snow by which it seems to generate light, the house looked as if it was spotlighted. The white of the house against the gray of the sea against the black of the sky.
“Shouldn’t there be a light on somewhere?” Wickersham asked.
“Maybe the storm knocked the power out.”
The tracks they had been following led around to the side of the house, and straight into the garage, the doors of which stood open to the cold night air. Directly ahead, caugh
t by the headlights of Wickersham’s DeSoto, was a Lincoln Continental. Deeper in the recesses of the garage, there were two other cars. One of them was a Bentley. Wickersham pointed to the second car, as if Langley could somehow have missed it: a late ‘40s Hudson.
“Notice anything about it, O?”
Besides the fact that it didn’t belong in this garage?
“Like what?”
“Like the license plate.”
It was a West Virginia license plate, Langley saw.
“How many relatives do you think the DeBroughs have in West Virginia?” Wickersham asked. He answered his own question by reaching inside his coat and taking out his gun. “Step carefully, O.” He opened his door and got out.
The garage was connected to the house by a glass-enclosed breezeway. At the end of the breezeway, Wickersham pointed to the jamb of the door leading to the house. Even in the dim light, Langley could see the markings in the wood where the lock had been jimmied. Wickersham motioned to Langley to step to one side and then he pushed the door wide.
Beyond, it was pitch black. Wickersham didn’t move and Langley, bowing to Wickersham’s superior knowledge of such circumstances, didn’t move either. After a minute Wickersham stepped inside, Langley following. They were in a kitchen, Langley could see, his eyes having adjusted to the gloom during the wait in the breezeway. An electric clock buzzed on the wall over the sink. So the power hadn’t failed. The kitchen was white all over: ceiling, walls, cabinets, refrigerator, stove. Standing in the middle of all the white, Langley felt vaguely disoriented, like someone swallowed up by fog.
Wickersham crossed the kitchen. At the door that led to the hall, he stopped again. He made no move to turn the lights on, but stood still, listening, Langley thought, for some sound that might tell him what the situation was. The house was perfectly quiet. A house that is occupied has a feel that is different from one that is empty. Even when you can’t see or hear the other person, you can, by some kind of sixth sense, know he is there. Langley knew that he and Wickersham were not alone.
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