East Salem Trilogy 01-Waking Hours

by Lis Wiehl

  “Thanks for stopping by,” Tommy said, feeling his throat again.

  “Anytime.”

  The officer drove away, and Tommy walked back to the edge of the pond. He saw the frog the old woman had given him, floating belly up, torn open, guts exposed.

  He crouched low to examine it again. Why had she wanted him to see it? Her words, if they were Latin as DeGidio suspected, might have been the genus or species. What was she looking for?

  It made no sense to him, but he supposed it might make sense to somebody else. She’d been clear about one thing—the message she wanted him to understand had something to do with the disemboweled frog.

  He reached down to pick it up, thinking he could throw it in the freezer and send it to a biologist or laboratory. But when his fingers touched the amphibian, they passed right through it, and the animal that minutes earlier had been solid in his hand simply dissolved like bath salts, a murky gray cloud that dissipated in the dark water. He pulled his hand back reflexively. He found a stick and stirred the water, then threw the stick into the pond when there was nothing more to see.

  These were the first to go, she’d said. “You’ll be the last.”

  He was nearly back in bed when his cell phone rang.

  “Tommy, it’s Frank—you’re still up, right? I didn’t wake you?”

  “Still up,” Tommy told the cop.

  “You said to call when we found out who she is. We got a missing persons from High Ridge Manor. Her name’s Abigail Gardener. You know her?”

  “Not personally,” Tommy said. “She used to be the town historian.”

  “You okay?”

  “A little shaken, to tell the truth,” Tommy said. “The doctor said I was lucky her fingernails weren’t longer.”

  “You already saw a doctor?” DeGidio asked.

  “The one on the ambulance,” Tommy said. “Blue jean vest and tattoos? Looked sort of like a biker?”

  “What are you talking about?” the cop said. “There wasn’t any doctor there—just the two EMTs, Jose and Martin. And nobody who looked like a biker.”

  Tommy thanked Frank and said good night. Then he went to his computer, hoping his surveillance system might solve the mystery. His property was covered by both high-definition video and infrared cameras capable of registering the heat signatures of warm-bodied visitors. The video feed showed only darkness at first, and then, once the ambulance arrived with its headlights pointed directly at the camera and its lights flashing brightly in the night, he saw only silhouettes crossing back and forth, making it impossible to count the number of people present, even in slow motion.

  The infrared imaging was slightly more useful but still inconclusive. It clearly showed his own silhouette, and Frank’s, and the old woman’s, but once the ambulance arrived, the bright red heat signatures from the engine and the headlights again made it hard to sort out what he was seeing. Sometimes it looked like there were five images, sometimes six. He even saw some sort of digital shadow or negative ghost image in blue, flickering in and out of view.

  He was tired and he’d given it too much thought already.

  He knew what he knew—he’d spoken to a man who looked like a biker. Frank just must have missed him.

  2.

  Dani Harris was still in bed when her phone rang. The journal article she’d been reading, “Genetic Markers for Gender-Specific Disorders on the Autism/Asperger’s Scale Among the Huli Tribesmen of Papua, New Guinea,” by a team of researchers from Australia, lay open on her stomach. Her reading light was still on and her comforter, which she’d taken from the linen chest for the first time since the previous spring, had slid to the floor, where she found her cat, Arlo, curled up in the middle of it. She’d awakened from a bad dream sometime after two and read herself back to sleep.

  The phone rang a second time. Her caller ID read “John Foley.” Her boss.

  “I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked.

  “I was up,” she lied. She tried to remember her dream, but she could retain only a vague image. Her father had been holding a stone in his hands, as if he wanted to show it to her.

  “Sorry to call so early,” John apologized. “Listen—I got a call from Irene. They want you at the Mt. Kisco office.”

  Irene Scotto was the district attorney for New York’s Westchester County.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Homicide,” John said. “The victim appears to have been a juvenile. The only suspect is too. You turned on your TV yet?”

  “Not yet,” Dani said.

  “It’s a weird one,” John said. “You can do this, Dani.”

  “Okay,” Dani said, mystified by his encouragement. Not that he wasn’t normally encouraging, but this sounded like a farewell. “See you there?”

  “Uh, yeah,” John said. “Maybe.” He hung up.

  Maybe?

  Once she cleared her head and felt slightly more awake, she realized she needed to rethink her wardrobe. If she was going to spend the day at the DA’s office, she needed to wear something other than the blue jeans and sweater she’d had in mind.

  She showered quickly, dried her hair on high and ironed out the frizzies, applied her makeup minimally, and told herself it would have to do. She took a pair of lightweight wool dress slacks from the closet and a black cashmere turtleneck from a drawer.

  As she dressed, she paused to look at the framed photograph on her dresser, a group picture of sixteen African boys lined up in order of height, with Dani in the middle. The smaller boys were smiling naturally. The older boys’ smiles looked forced. It had been three years since she’d seen them.

  She looked at another photograph, one she’d taken of her parents on the runway of a small airport in the African bush, the two of them squinting into the sun and grinning, palm and towering Kakum trees in the background. It was the last time she’d seen them as well.

  She found a pair of black boots in the closet and stepped into them, then zipped up the sides. A thin gold chain and a pair of gold earrings, shaped like leaves, and she was finished dressing.

  In the kitchen Dani put on a pot of coffee, threw a cup of milk, a banana, a handful of organic blueberries, and a measuring spoon of whey powder into the blender along with a half cup of Greek yogurt, then hit Liquefy.

  “No-ooo!”

  Too late. She’d forgotten to put the lid on the blender jar, and before she could turn the switch off, a few ounces of smoothie splattered the counter, the backsplash, and, unfortunately, her clothes.

  The day was off to a great start.

  She ran upstairs to change. By the time she returned to the kitchen, the coffee was done, so she filled a cup and dumped it in with the rest of her smoothie to kill two birds with one stone.

  Dani admitted to being an indifferent cook. Her sister, Beth, who was far more accomplished at the girlie arts, suggested that inept or inedible was more to the point.

  She turned on her kitchen television as she sipped, clicking to the Westchester News channel. She read the crawl at the bottom of the screen: GRUESOME MURDER ON BULL’S ROCK HILL IN EAST SALEM, NORTHERN WESTCHESTER.

  Bull’s Rock Hill was only four miles from her house.

  On the TV screen, she watched a live shot from a helicopter of police activity below, cop car and ambulance lights flashing. Then a montage of the northern Westchester County landscape, elegant horse farms with split-rail fences, opulent mansions with slate roofs and circular driveways, wooded hillsides resplendent in the jacquard weave of peak autumn colors.

  It was the shot TV news programs always used when there was a story in East Salem, the rolling woodlands and tree-lined dirt roads, all within fifty miles of New York City. The stock images depicted farm stands, waterfalls, polo matches, reservoirs with pairs of swans swimming, discreet pubs and trattorias where loving and attractive couples dined by candlelight. Sometimes it seemed to Dani as if the TV news producers never bothered to send camera crews to the actual locations but used images from travel broch
ures instead. They never showed the houses where people of modest means lived. Whenever something terrible happened in Westchester, the headlines were large font and bold, followed by exclamation marks, as if it were inconceivable that something heinous could happen in homes so large and well furnished.

  She reached for the remote control to turn up the sound, but before she could, her phone rang again. Was the whole day going to go like this?

  “Dani, it’s Claire.”

  She’d known Claire Dorsett since she’d babysat for Claire’s son back when Dani was in high school, Liam was a toddler, and Claire was a young mother. Now the two women were in the same book club … but from the distress she could hear in Claire’s voice, Dani knew her friend wasn’t calling about Moby Dick.

  “What’s up, Claire?”

  “I know I shouldn’t be calling you,” Claire said. “But Jeffrey’s out of the country, and I just couldn’t think of anyone else. This is unbelievable.”

  “Claire, slow down,” Dani said. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  “It’s Liam,” she said. “They said they just want to ask him questions. It’s too horrible …”

  “What’s horrible?” Dani asked. “Who’s they?”

  On her television she saw a picture of a crime scene, followed by a picture of East Salem High School, a large modern brick building that Dani thought looked more like a technology company’s corporate headquarters than a public school.

  “The police,” Claire said. “They took Liam to the district attorney’s office. I’m headed there now.”

  On the TV Dani saw a wooded crime scene, police cars, and a strand of yellow DO NOT CROSS police tape flapping in the wind. The crawl read GIRL’S BODY FOUND.

  “This is about Bull’s Rock Hill?” she asked.

  “Apparently,” Claire said, sobbing now. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  “Take a deep breath,” Dani said. “I honestly haven’t heard anything. Was Liam home last night?”

  “I don’t know,” Claire said. “I thought so, but I have trouble sleeping when Jeffrey’s out of town, so I took a sleeping pill.”

  It wasn’t hard for Dani to imagine the scene at the high school. The police probably had a squad car in the high school parking lot with the flashers on to generate as much wireless conversation among the students as possible … evidence they could potentially use later.

  Dani tried to think of what to say. Claire was a friend, but Dani was a forensic psychiatrist whose firm consulted with the DA’s office. Her boss, John Foley, and his senior partner, Sam Ralston, both psychologists, had hired her because she was young and female and a psychiatrist.

  “Claire, before you say anything else,” Dani said, “I have to remind you, I’m an officer of the court. If there’s anything you want to say to me that you don’t want included as evidence, don’t say it. I want to help you, but be really clear about who I work for. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I do,” Claire said. “I do. Of course. I just don’t know where else to turn. Why did they take him to the DA’s office?”

  “They may just want to talk to him where things are a little less crazy,” Dani advised her friend. “What did Liam say when he called you?”

  “He didn’t call me,” Claire said, and began to cry again. “He called his coach. His coach called me.”

  “Who’s his coach?”

  “His trainer or whatever. Tommy Gunderson.”

  “He called Tommy Gunderson?”

  “Tommy called me and said he was meeting Liam at the district attorney’s office. I’m going there as soon as … Why? Do you know him?”

  Dani’s pulse quickened.

  Probably just the caffeine kicking in.

  “We went to high school together,” she said. “Let me see what I can find out.”

  She heard a beep.

  “I have another call,” she told her friend. “I have to take it. I’ll be in touch, Claire. Be strong.”

  Dani turned off the television, donned her Tory Burch trench coat, pulled the kitchen door closed behind her, and return-dialed the number for the call she’d missed as she headed for her car.

  Stuart Metz answered. He was the assistant prosecutor for Northern Westchester, and when Irene Scotto needed something, Stuart was usually the one who asked for it. He was lean and wiry and surprisingly awkward for someone who’d graduated from Harvard Law.

  “Good morning, Stuart,” Dani said.

  “Good isn’t the word I’d use,” Stuart said. “You heard about Bull’s Rock Hill?”

  “Just what was on television,” Dani said. “What do we know?”

  “More than we want to,” Stuart said. “Are you on your laptop?”

  “I’m in the car,” she said, turning the key in the ignition of the black BMW 335i coupe she’d inherited from her father.

  “So am I. Don’t log in on a full stomach,” he said. “This one’s hideous. Probably bled out between one and two o’clock this morning. Almost beheaded. Banerjee just got the body.”

  Baldev Banerjee was the county medical examiner, a soft-spoken English expat whose quiet efficiency Dani always appreciated.

  “They’re still going over the scene, but it looks like the killer cleaned up,” Stuart continued. “The body was discovered by a yoga instructor leading her class to greet the morning sun. Some greeting. We also got a new investigator on the case. Detective Phillip Casey. Just transferred in. Haven’t met him yet.”

  “Transferred from where?” Dani asked.

  “Providence,” Stuart said. “He got into some sort of hot water. They say he’s good. Old school.”

  “What time did they find the body?”

  “Just before six,” Stuart said. “It looks ritualistic.”

  “In what way?”

  Dani turned onto the blacktop and headed into town on Main Street. None of the roads in East Salem were flat or straight for more than a hundred yards, and over half the time they were lined by stone walls or split-rail fences, and the hills were heavily wooded, which meant you could never see for more than a quarter mile in any direction unless you were looking across a lake or reservoir. Some people found the topology closed in and suffocating. She found it cozy.

  The sky was blue, the air clear and clean-smelling, a brilliant fall day. The night before had witnessed one of the brightest full moons she’d ever seen. She recalled the theory held by a criminology professor she knew, about why so many crimes happen during the full moon: it’s easier to see what you’re doing.

  “How the body was displayed,” Stuart said. “Method. I don’t know what else.”

  Dani swallowed hard. It was at times like these that she questioned the path she’d chosen—she wanted to do work that was important, that made a difference, and she was good at what she did, but she was still shocked and disheartened by the evil things people did to each other. When she’d interviewed for the job, she’d told Sam Ralston that if she could use her education and her gifts to stop a single crime from happening, she’d know she’d made the right choice. He’d smiled and said, “Well, I hope that happens for you.”

  About 90 percent of the work the firm did was with the judicial system, determining whether defendants were sane enough to assist in their own defenses or evaluating defendants or witnesses who were usually involuntary and often hostile participants. The other 10 percent was corporate, when the firm was hired to help businesses that wanted to settle issues in-house. Dani had a fantasy of opening a part-time clinical practice on the weekends to help kids, but so far she was so busy with the rest of her job that the notion remained a dream.

  “Why did they bring in Liam Dorsett?” she asked.

  “I thought you hadn’t logged in.”

  “His mother called me. She’s a friend.”

  “Is there anybody in Westchester you don’t know?” Stuart said. “He’s the only lead we’ve got. Found his cell phone in the weeds. Get this—we’re standing there, and the thi
ng rings. ID blocked. I got people doing the phone records. Irene is waiting for you before she talks to the boy.”

  “Is John there yet?”

  “Foley?” Stuart asked.

  “I’m meeting him there.”

  “He said that?”

  “He called me,” Dani said. “He asked me to come in.”

  “He said he’d meet you there?” Stuart asked again. “You haven’t heard?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “John got popped for DWI last night on the Cross-County Expressway,” Stuart said. “Blood alcohol one point eight.”

  Double the legal limit. He didn’t have to spell out the implications.

  Dani’s boss was frequently called upon as an expert witness for the state in prosecutions. With a Driving While Intoxicated arrest on his record, the DA couldn’t possibly put him on the stand, because anything he might say would be permanently impugned. That was what Foley had meant by maybe.

  “That’s awful,” Dani said. Her boss was in the middle of a nasty divorce, with two teenage daughters caught in the crossfire. It was no excuse, but she felt sorry for him. “He’s been under a lot of stress lately.”

  “Who hasn’t? Life goes on. I’m stopping at Starbucks,” Stuart said. “The usual?”

  “Venti vanilla soy latte,” she said. “Full strength.”

  “You got it.”

  As she spoke, she drove past her office at Ralston-Foley Behavioral Consulting, a large old Victorian house on East Salem’s Main Street, on the square opposite a row of boutiques and antique stores. The town always felt more like New England than New York to her, with its broad green commons with a gazebo in the middle, a white steepled church on one side of the square, a row of shops and stores including a hardware store where the wooden floor still squeaked, and a quaint old brick library opposite the church. From her desk she could look out the window and see children playing on the green, young moms with babies in strollers, and sometimes nannies from Germany or France chatting on park benches by the swing sets while their charges played.

  Sam was too arthritic to sit in court but maintained his practice from the Main Street offices—he’d be available to give Dani advice, but to a great extent, she was on her own, sink or swim. So far she had assisted John with evaluations and competencies, but he was still grooming her to testify. An experienced defense attorney could make mincemeat out of an inexperienced forensic psychiatrist if she didn’t know what she was doing. She hoped she wasn’t in over her head.