“Agreed.”
“Any gut reaction?” she asks him.
“Yeah. Either one or the other or both followed him back to the pond.”
Kennedy smiles. “I think that’s right on the money. Let’s go on that assumption and see where it gets us.”
Peering up at the dimly lighted apartment, they figure McKinnon is probably at home. Kennedy gets out of the car, climbs the stairs and knocks on the door. Nobody responds. It’s going on ten thirty. She returns to the car. “Absolutely frigid out there.” They continue waiting. At last, somebody wearing a long dark wool coat crosses the street, approaches the ground-level door, opens it and heads inside. “McKinnon. So that’s one down,” Kennedy remarks. Five minutes later, Taft returns. “I guess it’s now or never.”
Jenkins says, “So I’ll mosey Taft to Maplefields?”
The plan: When Kennedy is done questioning McKinnon, she will text Jenkins and then head over to find Elizabeth, who will either be in her dorm or in the library. Whether or not Jenkins is through questioning Taft, he’ll keep him tightly under watch to make sure he doesn’t try and contact either of the other two. The detectives glance at each other and each gives a final nod to say they are in agreement about strategy. They then venture out into the unforgiving, blustering night. “Jesus, it’s deeper than the grave,” Kennedy says with a slight Irish lilt as they head toward the apartment stairs.
“I’d rather this than roasting in a D.C. summer,” Jenkins says.
“Right now that roasting sounds pretty fine to me.”
Jenkins climbs ahead this time and knocks. A moment later, Taft opens and looks miffed, a line of apprehension knitting itself across his dusky features.
“We need a quick word, can we come in?” Jenkins says.
“Do we have a choice?” they hear McKinnon say from somewhere in the near background.
Taft says nothing in reply, shrugs and admits them into the kitchen, which smells of frying and oil. McKinnon, shirtless at the stove, is cooking what appears to be scrambled eggs and generously adding hot sauce from a pencil-thin bottle. His pale freckled body is muscled and pumped up and defined; he looks particularly powerful. There is a rash of acne on his broad shoulders—according to Kennedy, a telltale sign of steroid use.
“A little late for dinner isn’t it?” Jenkins asks.
“Dinner number two.” McKinnon greets them with a wave of a spatula. Increased appetite, another sign of steroid use, Jenkins thinks. “Looks like you spice your eggs.”
McKinnon gulps and nods his head and says, “Yeah, sometimes.”
“So what’s going on?” Taft asks them.
“I thought you were done asking us questions,” McKinnon says.
“We thought we were but we have some things to clarify and thought you could help us,” Kennedy says.
“Okay, so what are they?” Taft says nervously.
“I’d like you to get your coat and come with me,” Jenkins says to him.
“Can’t we talk here?”
“We’d prefer to speak to each of you separately,” Helen says.
Both men stare at them, as though stunned. Then McKinnon says, “Not without a lawyer.”
“Absolutely within your right,” Kennedy says. “You can each call a lawyer, but we’d like Mr. Taft to come with Detective Jenkins and Mr. McKinnon to stay here with me. If neither of you have a lawyer on tap, we’ll help find you one.”
Taft grabs his heavy sweatshirt and begins jabbing his arms into the sleeves.
Jenkins follows him down the stairs. “Make a left,” he orders as Taft opens the outer door and a forbidding blast of sleet hits them, “and keep going until you hit that Ford.”
“It’s too dark to see the make of these cars,” Taft complains.
“Then just keep walking until I tell you to stop.”
The air inside the car is still warm from Kennedy’s and his vigil, and sleet is slamming softly against the windshield. Jenkins sits there, waiting.
“Are we going to just hang here?” Taft asks.
Jenkins starts the car and maneuvers out of the parking space.
“Where we headed?” Taft asks.
“To the police station. Where you can call a lawyer.”
“I don’t want to go to the police station.”
Jenkins explains this is necessary to get the name and contact information for a public defender.
“I’d rather find one on my phone.”
“How about a cup of coffee?” Jenkins suggests.
“How about one,” Taft says.
Jenkins drives down Weybridge Road, continues onto the Pulp Mill Bridge Road and drives slowly across the covered bridge. By now the sleet has evolved into snow, and he notices what looks like a group of college students staggering out of Flatbread into a vortex of flakes. Eyeing them, Taft grunts with disdain and perhaps, Jenkins wonders, maybe even with a bit of envy.
When they come to Greg’s Market, which is a minute’s drive from Maplefields, Jenkins decides he needs a few more minutes to strategize and takes a longer route. Glancing at Taft, he makes a left onto Exchange Street and drives them along a curving road with tall, sil0-like structures that almost look as though they might conceal nuclear warheads but are actually state-of-the-art microbreweries of beer and hard cider. Deep in a silence of his own, Taft doesn’t even seem to register the detour. They pass a do-it-yourself carwash and then an Agway parking lot, where two pickup trucks with headlights blazing are facing each other in an automotive showdown, a slanting curtain of snow illuminated between them. Jenkins hangs a right on Route 7, and they proceed a quarter mile to the parking lot of Maplefields.
“There are a few seats in the back,” he says once they are inside.
On a winter night full of uncertain precipitation, the gas-and-convenience store is nearly empty of customers. A bored-looking cashier with tattoos and piercings in her eyebrows, nose and mouth watches them with a scowl. Rap music is blaring. Jenkins fishes out his wallet. “Get yourself a coffee,” he tells Taft.
Taft walks stiffly over to the line of cylinders supplied by Vermont Coffee and pumps himself a tall hot drink but doesn’t put anything in it. He goes and stands at the counter while Jenkins, now filling a small cup and adding half-and-half, calls “Just got snag us a table and sit down.”
Taft sits in one of the vinyl booths in the back. Jenkins arrives at the table to find him staring worriedly into his coffee and sits down opposite him.
Taft looks up, dark eyes flashing. “So?”
“Let’s just talk.”
“Okay.”
Leaning toward Taft, Jenkins says, “Why don’t you tell me about the soccer team.”
Taft looks miffed. “The soccer team?”
“You’re at Carleton on a soccer scholarship, right?”
Taft nods.
“So you must be pretty good to get a scholarship.”
“I’d like to think so. My family can’t afford this place.” He guardedly looks around the chain convenience store as if it were a proxy of the Carleton campus. “I guess the college wanted me enough to help out.”
It strikes Jenkins again that Taft, thickly muscled, swarthy and dark-eyed like a Latino, probably stuck out in his small Vermont border town. Pointing to the bold lettering on Taft’s sweatshirt, he says, “Carleton’s a far cry from Newport, isn’t it?”
Taft looks at him warily. “Oh, for sure.”
“Anyway, you consider yourself to be pretty good friends with Luc Flanders, right?”
Taft colors. “Well, he’s my roommate.”
“Roommates aren’t always good friends, though, are they?”
“I guess not always.” And then well before Jenkins expects it, the opening comes. “Why do you want to keep questioning me?”
“Like I said. To make sense ou
t of some unrelated facts we have. And we think talking to you will help us.”
“But what unrelated facts?”
“Well, for starters, your aunt, Greta Thornhill, seems to have hidden her connection to you.”
“But if you’d asked me if I was related to her to begin with, I would have told you, no problem.” Taft was obviously prepared for this.
“I can appreciate that. By the way, Detective Kennedy, who is back at your apartment taking to your roommate . . .” Jenkins waits a moment. “She went up to Newport.”
“Why?”
“Let’s call it a fact-finding mission.”
“Facts about what?”
Jenkins says, “Facts about you.”
“Facts about me,” Taft says slowly.
“Because we found out you wasted somebody up there in Newport and we wanted to learn more about it.” Jenkins inverts the truth.
Taft, who has been sitting up straight, suddenly deflates in his chair. Then he glares at Jenkins. “I didn’t go around wasting anybody. It was a fight.”
“What was the fight about?”
“Why else do guys fight? Somebody rubs somebody else the wrong way.”
Jenkins pauses for effect. “He must’ve made you really angry. I understand he only has one good eye left.”
Taft spits out, “Fucking Christ!”
“I am amazed you weren’t arrested for that.”
“It started mutually. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. So no arrests, okay?”
“But usually somebody starts a fight,” Jenkins points out reasonably.
“Maybe somebody swings first. But the other person says something that makes them swing.”
“So, in this case, who said something first. And who swung first?”
“I actually don’t remember. It wasn’t a good thing. I don’t like to think about it.”
“I don’t blame you.” Jenkins knows it’s time to move on. “So let me ask: How well does your aunt, Greta Thornhill, know Elizabeth Squires?”
Taft says, “Her roommate got stalked. They met then. Other than that, my aunt doesn’t know her.”
Jenkins hesitates and then asks, “So what do you think of Elizabeth Squires?”
Taft shifts uneasily in his chair. “What do I think? She was Luc’s girlfriend. They kept to themselves. She’s seems okay.”
“Ever run into her on campus?”
“It’s a small school. You run into everybody you know.”
“So you don’t hang out?”
Now Taft realizes where it’s going and stops, pondering his next move. “Sometimes we’ll see each other and talk. Mainly about Luc.”
“Have you talked with her about Luc recently?”
Taft is glaring at him. “She tell you that?” His voice croaks.
Jenkins lets several moments pass, watching carefully how Taft hunches nervously forward, one of his legs pumping up and down. “She was outside your apartment tonight. You two seemed pretty upset. What were you talking about?”
Taft manages to say, “I was just giving her a pep talk. She’s been really depressed.”
“Didn’t look like that to us. Looked like you guys were having an argument.”
Taft remains silent.
“When I asked you about her a few minutes ago, why didn’t you tell me you saw her tonight?”
Taft looks perplexed and stares at Jenkins for a moment. “I think I need to have that lawyer.”
“Okay, then let’s finish our coffee, head to the police station, and I’ll get you a list of public defenders.”
“I told you I don’t want to go to the police station. I—”
There is a sharp clattering and both turn to see that the young woman with the nose piercings has accidentally dropped a glass coffeepot, which has shattered on the floor. A few of the shards bounce up close to where they’re sitting. Lackadaisical, she hunches her shoulders and bends down to start picking up the pieces. Turning back to Taft, Jenkins continues, “I can’t call you a lawyer here. You’ll just have to come with me.”
“Why can’t you lay off me?” Taft says softly.
Jenkins ignores him. “But before we go, can you tell me: How long have you been on the juice?” Jenkins is satisfied by Taft’s expression of pained recognition, and then adds, “McKinnon’s on it, too. I saw tonight he’s all broken out in acne on his back.”
Taft doesn’t respond.
“Detective Kennedy is pretty good with questioning. I wonder what he’ll say when she asks him about the juice. There won’t be any reason for him to lie. He doesn’t really have anything to worry about. Detective Kennedy will assure him she’s not looking to bust him for steroids and that he’s not a suspect in the disappearance of Luc Flanders.”
“But I am?”
“Did I say that?”
Taft is now shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“You bought the steroids from the Newcombe twins. Who were up in Carleton the night Luc disappeared?”
“If you say so.”
“Did you and McKinnon buy steroids from them that night?”
“I can’t. No more. I demand a lawyer.”
“Fine.” Jenkins stands up. “Come on, let’s go.”
February 23; Carleton, Vermont; 1 degree, snow, wind gusts
“You’re a smart guy,” Kennedy says to McKinnon. “Lots of your friends look up to you.”
He looks at her strangely. “Yeah, so?”
“So, we have a bunch of gaps. And I have a feeling you can help me fill them.” She leans back in the chair that is pulled up to the kitchen table, the chair Taft had been sitting in before Jenkins whisked him away.
“So we found out that your roommate, Mr. Taft, wasn’t at home at six p.m. on the night of February eleventh. So why did you lie and say he was?”
McKinnon’s hand shoots up. “I’d like a lawyer.”
Kennedy stands up. “Okay, then let’s go to the station and we’ll find you one.”
“Okay, okay,” McKinnon decides to go on. “I lied because he—Taft— asked me to.”
“Why did he ask you to?”
“Because he was afraid of being a suspect.”
“Ah, I see.”
McKinnon has put on a pale green T-shirt for this interview. They are sitting at the table, facing each other. The pan of eggs is on the stove, still uneaten.
Kennedy decides to move on for the moment. “Did you know that your roommate and Elizabeth Squires had a dispute tonight outside this apartment?”
Kennedy carefully watches the flicker of skepticism on McKinnon’s face; with her experience, she believes she can identify unalloyed surprise.
He says, “I didn’t know they were even hanging out.”
A text pings on her phone and it’s Jenkins. He asked for a lawyer. Headed to the station. She types back, Keep me posted.
And then another text from Jenkins arrives and it makes Kennedy smile to herself. She turns her palms up toward the ceiling. “What would you say if I told you that the night Luc Flanders disappeared, Squires and Taft followed him back to Skylight pond?”
“I think Taft would have told me if they had.”
“Well, according to this text, he just told my partner,” she says, holding up her phone. “He did go back to the pond. As did she. I wonder why didn’t he tell you?”
McKinnon recoils. “What are you implying? That he did something to Luc?”
“I don’t know,” Kennedy says and notices that McKinnon looks perturbed. “Do you know anything about Taft’s past?”
“Like what?”
“Like that he has violent tendencies.”
McKinnon blinks and frowns. “You mean he attacked people?”
“Yes. Seriously hurt people. As in sending them to the hospital
.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” McKinnon says, looking spooked.
“Any idea why, if both Squires and Taft were at Skylight Pond on the night of February eleventh, they never told you or anybody else?”
“Like I said before, he was probably worried about being suspected.”
“So let’s do a timeline of the evening of February eleventh, shall we?”
“Okay.”
“When did you guys get home from playing pond hockey?”
“Just before six.”
“And contrary to what you stated previously, Taft actually did go out again.”
“Yeah, he did.”
“Did he say where he was going?” McKinnon shakes his head. “That’s not a very convincing ‘no.’ Look, I’m not here to arrest you for illegal purchase of a banned substance—the steroids.”
McKinnon looks astonished.
“I could give a shit about what you inject into your body,” Kennedy persists. “Steroids are not my jam.” She deliberately uses a millennial expression. “So he went out to get the score. But do you have any idea why he went back to the pond?”
“No.”
“How long would you say he was gone for in total?”
“Maybe an hour or so.”
Kennedy feels the table vibrate. Another text from Jenkins. See if Taft’s computer is there. Trying to get a warrant.
She looks up at McKinnon. “Is Taft’s computer in his room?”
“I assume so. Why?”
“I just need to go and check if it is.”
“Go all the way down the hall. It’s the last room on the right.”
Kennedy pushes back from the table, stands up and walks down the dim hallway, glancing up at a naked, anemic-looking light bulb haloed by a cobweb whose pendent mesh contains a scattering of dead flies. She passes Luc Flanders’s room, shut and secured by a police locksmith, with a bar across the door, and then another room, which is quite messy with gym shorts and T-shirts and fleeces strewn everywhere, thick college textbooks in piles on the floor—obviously McKinnon’s room. Taft’s door is closed, and she opens it to a space meticulously in order, scrupulously clean, redolent of cheap drugstore cologne, which she notices all the young guys seem to wear these days. The walls are bare, except for a relief map of the Northeast Kingdom—with a red dot pinpointing Newport—and a poster of a soccer scrum with the block lettering REAL MADRID. There is very little furniture: a simple metal writing table and chair and a tensor lamp arcing over the table. In the midst of this Spartan order is the titanium rectangle of a Mac Book Pro. Glancing around the room, Kennedy divines that this is the sort of person who’d carefully cover his tracks.
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