by Noel Hynd
Chapter 41
Sergeant David Chandler pulled his patrol car to the perimeter of the road and edged the right-side tires onto the dirt shoulder of Tremont Lane. The Connecticut state trooper turned on the emergency flashers and stopped the car. He stepped out.
He stood at the roadside and tried to make sense of the jumble of trees and woods before him. Back in February and March, when he had first been working on the Moore case, Chandler had come back here several times with Rebecca to reenact the alleged crime. Back then there had been snow on the ground. Today, seven months since he had last given the area a look, there was only the normal blanket of dead leaves and underbrush on the floor of the woods.
Chandler placed himself where Rebecca claimed she had fled among the cover of trees. He let his line of vision carry among the scrub and underbrush. He saw nothing other than the hopelessness of finding any evidence after all this time. But something told him to take a walk.
He took his first few steps. He felt dead leaves and twigs crunch beneath his shoes as he stepped into the woods. Rebecca had run a zigzag path among the trees. That’s how she had described it. So David Chandler once again tried to put himself in her position and tried to figure from where an assailant might have fired after her.
Finding a spent bullet in this mess was one pop in a million. And yet, the task was no more daunting now than it had been months earlier. If the rounds that had been fired at Rebecca Moore had traveled straight, they could have carried hundreds of yards into the woods. Equally, they could have hit the ground within seventy or eighty feet and dug themselves little graves in the topsoil. Or they could have hit branches and ricocheted wildly, flying in any direction.
People sometimes still found arrowheads in these woods, Chandler thought to himself, untouched for two hundred years. He hoped he might find a couple for his kids. But how was he to find specific rounds ten months after the fact, rounds from a crime that he personally doubted even happened?
He sighed. His head was lowered and the toe of his shoe pushed through the brush and decomposing leaves at the base of trees. He spent the better part of an hour wandering. In another few weeks, he mused as he explored, another settling of snow would be upon this same ground.
“Five more minutes,” he said aloud. “That’s all I’m giving it.”
Four of those minutes passed. Chandler looked back toward where he had come from, trying to position himself again, and something surprised him. He saw a man walking near his car.
The man stopped and looked at the police cruiser, as if to wonder what the vehicle was doing there. It was unusual to see a man on foot in that location. This was the suburbs; most people drove everywhere.
Then the man stopped. Chandler watched the stranger. But the man seemed to offer no threat. The pedestrian turned and quickly saw the policeman. The man raised a hand and called. “Hello?”
Chandler waved back. Not that Chandler needed help, but the man diverted himself from his stroll. He walked into the woods. He was about forty, Chandler guessed, with a face that was almost handsome. Brown hair, neatly cut. Just a shirt on and a pair of slacks. The cut of both struck Chandler as a little old fashioned, but never did the policeman consider himself an arbiter of fashion.
“Everything okay, officer?” the man asked.
“I’m fine,” Chandler said.
“Anything I can help you with?”
Chandler smiled grudgingly. “Not unless you’re a magician.”
“A magician?” The stranger laughed. “I’m afraid I’m not,” he said. The stranger watched the policeman.
Chandler’s eyes examined the man carefully. There was something not quite right about him, but Chandler couldn’t place what it was.
“It’s a little chilly today, isn’t it?” Chandler asked. “Aren’t you cold?”
“The chill doesn’t bother me. Invigorating. Can I help you? You must be doing something out here,” the man said.
Chandler hesitated then answered. “I’m trying to find a spent bullet. From an incident that took place several months ago.”
“Oh?” The stranger was thoughtful. “The time that woman was assaulted? Is that it?”
Chandler’s suspicion rose. “Yeah. How’d you know that?”
The man shrugged. “I know about the incident. Horrible.”
“You live around here?” Chandler inquired.
The man shook his head. “Just visiting.”
“Who do you visit?”
The man suddenly laughed. It was a funny sort of laugh. “Am I suddenly a suspect?” he asked.
“Not at all. But I interviewed everyone in the neighborhood. You have a name?” Chandler asked.
After a pause, the stranger said, “Paul Hammond.”
The cop knew a lot of the names in town. But he didn’t know this one. “And you live up there?” Chandler asked, motioning with his head.
“Yup.”
Chandler shook the man’s hand. The man’s hand was chilly, as if he had been out in the cold too long. But Sergeant Chandler had long since stopped worrying about the health of adults. He had enough on his plate already.
“Where up over the hill?” Chandler pressed. “I thought I knew everyone up there.”
“You don’t know me. Or didn’t until now. But now you do.”
Frequently there were small homes tucked away on quarter-acre residential parcels zoned in the 1920s. It was strange, but, within context, believable. And he was, after all, a state cop, not a town gendarme. But…
“Funny I’ve never seen you before,” Chandler said, still angling.
“Real funny,” the man said, watching the policeman. “You sure you’re looking in the right area?”
“I’m not sure at all,” Chandler said. “The evidence is several months old. The trail is cold. Who knows what’s out here?”
Chandler glanced at the stranger and then glanced away. The visitor was starting to irritate him. If this had been a normal crime scene search, which it wasn’t, Chandler would never have tolerated the presence.
“So did the man spray bullets all over the area?” the man asked. “Or in one spot?”
“The victim was fleeing,” Chandler said. “She knows two shots came near her at first. If I recall, she said she ducked down near a fir tree. After that? Who knows?” He looked around. “And you know how many fir trees there are out here?”
Chandler’s self-appointed helper nodded. His eyes swept the area along with Chandler’s. There were evergreens of all sizes, standing like little sentries among the bare branched birches, oaks, dogwoods, and maples in the woods. And yet, his expression appeared serious.
“Seven thousand one hundred fifty-two in this stretch,” the man said.
Chandler was now convinced he had a nut on his hands. Hammond was nosing around a clump of small pine trees. Then, as Chandler watched him, he inclined forward. Then he knelt. He was looking at something toward the base of a fir tree.
Chandler felt himself fascinated, watching the man. There was still something about him that wasn’t quite right, but Chandler remained unable to place it.
“Maybe right here?” the visitor asked softly.
Chandler walked toward him, pushing his way noisily through brittle branches, some of which cracked as he pushed them. The man never moved, but looked upward to the policeman as Chandler arrived.
For a second, the eyes of each of the two men locked into each other’s. And Chandler sensed something with which he was deeply uneasy. A fathomless look in the other man’s eyes. A wateriness, a liquid nature, an unusual depth. There was also even a sadness and a sorrow which he had never encountered before.
Chandler wondered if Hammond was some sort of psychic. That, or a mental patient who had walked away from the local sanitarium that was normally reserved for suburban alcoholics to do a convenient dry out. Then Hammond interrupted Chandler’s free-floating thoughts. “Don’t look at me. Look at the tree,” the stranger said softly. “Look at these scars.
”
Chandler pulled his eyes away from the man and looked. About eighteen inches up from the ground was a gash in the flesh of the tree. The bark had been ripped away, as if by high impact. There was a tear in the trunk of the tree as well. Chandler knelt.
“‘Incredible,” the cop said as he examined it.
There it was. A nine millimeter slug was lodged in the tree trunk. The logistics of it looked just right. The injury to the tree looked as if it had had several months to recover. But not enough time had passed for the tree to fully absorb the steel bullet.
Rebecca’s words echoed from nine months earlier:
“First one shot, then another quick one, right where I was hiding at the base of an evergreen. I ran and he fired wildly after me.”
Was this the spot? Chandler ran his hand higher up the tree and found nothing. No second scar in the bark. When he looked lower, however, he found another bullet.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
Chandler’s helper stood. He stepped away so as not to block the light that filtered through the branches above.
“Be thankful you’re not,” Hammond said. After a second, Chandler asked,
“Not what?”
“‘Damned,’” the man said. “Damned to hell. That’s a terrible thing.” He wasn’t kidding. Chandler glanced uneasily at his companion.
“Yeah,” he muttered. He put on some latex gloves. He pulled a utility knife out of his pocket. He dug into the trunk of the tree and pried loose the upper bullet. He let it fall into his palm. He hefted it.
“That what you were looking for?” the man asked.
“I can’t believe this,” Chandler said. “It could be.”
Carefully, Chandler tucked the bullet in a secure shirt pocket and clipped the pocket shut. Methodically, he used the blade of the knife to go after the second round. Within seconds, he had pulled it from the body of the evergreen. It seemed to match the first bullet, but a lab would have to tell him for sure.
“You got some kind of magic touch after all, mister,” Chandler said. He glanced at his benefactor long enough for the stranger to give him a cryptic shrug.
“Glad to help. I got lucky, that’s all,” the man said. “Now I got to be on my way.”
“Sure,” Chandler answered, distracted by his discovery.
“And, hey. Thanks, Mr… What was your name again?”
“Hammond,” he said. “Remember me as Paul Hammond.”
“Sure,” Chandler said again. “Nutcase,” he thought, but didn’t say.
The stranger looked down and something caught his eyes. “Hey!” he said. “Look at this. We got spirits from all over the place here today.”
Chandler watched as the stranger leaned over and ran a finger through some leaves. He flicked away a bit of dirt and his fingers settled upon something that looked like a jagged stone pointing upward through the soil.
Hammond drew it up from the ground and brushed more dirt away from it.
“You have kids?” Hammond asked.
“Two boys,” said Chandler.
“This is an arrowhead,” the stranger said. “Still find them occasionally in these areas. Take it home.” The stranger winked.
“I was just thinking about that earlier,” Chandler said.
“Yeah.” The stranger toed around a little more. “Often where there’s one, there’s two,” he said. “Like it’s a male and female. Need to stay together to make things work.”
He bent over and poked into the dirt. “Here’s another,” he said. “Make both your boys happy. I love kids. So precious.”
He smiled. Then the stranger dropped the two arrowheads into the astonished detective’s hand. The man turned to leave. Chandler watched the visitor move through the woods, back toward the road, pushing quietly through chilled branches. Then, as Chandler marked the evidence, he was aware of being alone again. He stayed with his work. He wrapped a piece of yellow tape around the base of the fir tree so that he could return to the exact location. Then he turned and stood.
He wanted to thank the stranger again, afraid that he had been abrupt in not thanking him sufficiently the first time. Chandler looked for him, expecting him only to be at the edge of the woods by now. But the visitor was nowhere in sight. Chandler walked back to the road. He didn’t see the man there, either. For a moment, the state policeman stood where Rebecca had fled into the woods. And now he was perplexed.
“Hammond” had disappeared with remarkable speed. He wondered whether this was some sort of weird setup: Chandler gets asked by an out of state cop to revisit a crime scene then a helper just happens to be on hand to guide him.
It made him suspicious. Chandler looked up and down the road in both directions.
No one. After another moment’s thought, he got back into his car.
His curiosity piqued, Chandler drove back to State Street, the main thoroughfare between Westport and Fairfield. He didn’t come across a single person walking. And near the church, as he had expected, he found no small plots as the stranger had suggested. There were only full one and two acre lots, plus the church property, which included the parish house and the small old cemetery. No one anywhere was named Hammond.
Chandler drove back to the State Police headquarters, thinking things over. The two spent rounds were both nine millimeter. A forensics expert guessed that they might have been in the tree for more than a few weeks, but less than a year.
All of which made a strong but circumstantial case that an attack on Rebecca Moore really had transpired. It was enough to make Chandler lean back in his chair to rethink the entire case. He cursed the fact that he had given up on the case rather than pursuing it. And he blamed himself for allowing the case to drop.
What kind of amateur cop was he, anyway, he demanded of himself. And where did this stranger get off, flitting in and out of a case like that?
The two bullets lay on their sides on his desk. He stared at them, wondering what they were trying to tell him. Also on his desk were the two arrowheads, which Chandler found almost equally perplexing. And even more difficult to figure, for that matter, was what higher message the stranger might have brought, as well. Chandler felt a queasiness and a shiver when he replayed to himself the events of the morning.
It was a feeling that would not go away.
Chapter 42
On the other side of the country, Ed Van Allen stepped out of his car in front of 2136 Topango Gardens. He was prepared to do what he had refrained from doing all along. Confront his two chief suspects, one at a time.
The flock of reporters in front of the house had dispersed several days earlier. He brought along Alice Aldrich in order to have a policewoman present when he confronted Rebecca Moore. And he had called ahead to make sure that the suspect was home.
“No, nothing new, Mrs. Moore,” Van Allen said when Rebecca inquired upon his arrival. “We’d just like to ask you a few more questions.”
Rebecca eyed him and his partner at the door, then allowed them in.
“I wonder if we could chat upstairs,” Van Allen suggested. He wished to be closer to where the children had last lived. Better vibrations, he felt, and possibly better to wrench a confession from his suspect.
“I’m really not sure what this is about,” Rebecca said. “If you don’t have anything new, what are we talking about today?”
“I have a new thesis,” the detective began. “And I’d like to try it on you. May I?” Rebecca shrugged. She led them into the turret room.
Ronny’s room.
Rebecca sat down on a folding chair while Alice stood near a window. Van Allen positioned himself at the room’s center. For a moment, he thought he heard piano music from somewhere. Then he was sure he didn’t.
“Mrs. Moore,” Ed Van Allen began, “I think it is about time that you began to tell me the truth.”
Rebecca’s mouth went open in astonishment. “I have told you the truth,” she said.
“The complete truth,” he suggested.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she countered.
“Mrs. Moore, you’ve told me part of the truth,” Van Allen said. “But you haven’t told me all of the truth. Another way to say it, Mrs. Moore,” he said, “is that you’ve lied to me from the beginning.”
“I haven’t,” she said.
“You flunked your polygraph,” Van Allen said. “And we’re going to get a court order to force your husband to take one. But why don’t you make it easier for both of you? Why don’t you start telling us what we need to know before we talk to him?”
Alice leaned against the windowsill and watched the proceedings. When a tree rustled behind her, she turned, glancing at it with disinterest. For a moment her eye drifted to San Angelo. Then she turned and looked back to the room.
“I’ve told you the truth,” Rebecca said.
“You flunked the polygraph on three questions in particular, Mrs. Moore,” Van Allen continued. “I asked you if you were hiding anything. I asked you if you knew where your children were. And I asked if there was anything significant that you hadn’t told us.”
He paused, his own anger and resentment building.
“Know what, Mrs. Moore?” he then went on. “You concealed something when you answered each of those questions.”
Rebecca was incredulous, failing to understand.
“And I want to know what the proper answers are right now, Mrs. Moore, because I’m asking you those same questions again.”
She went to the window, moving closer to Alice, wringing her hands. Once again, her children were missing, and she was being treated like a criminal.
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said.
“Yes, you do, Rebecca,” Alice said gently. “And you’re going to have to tell us.”
“I’m waiting, Mrs. Moore,” Van Allen said.
From somewhere a cold draft struck him. He found it uncomfortable and unpleasant. He shifted his position in the yellow room and was okay for a moment. Then the draft found him again. Now it was an extreme chill.
“I know there was an incident with the police in Connecticut, Mrs. Moore,” Van Allen said.