by Con Lehane
Something about Moses’s expression told Cosgrove he had something to say about Esposito, something he wasn’t sure he should say, or wasn’t sure he wanted to say, so Cosgrove moved cautiously. “Did you ever see him with Sandra Dean, the woman you knew as Shannon?”
Moses nodded. “As soon as I saw this picture, I wondered why you hadn’t asked me about him before.”
Cosgrove’s attention spiked. “Why’s that?”
It turned out Moses had been working the bar the evening of Peter Esposito’s confrontation with Sandra Dean and the man she was talking with. He told Cosgrove essentially the same story Esposito had told him about the confrontation that ended with Sandra Dean and Esposito being asked to leave the bar. “I saw that coming, too.”
“You saw there’d be a confrontation?”
“Mr. Esposito met the lady sometime before. I don’t know about that. I don’t remember if I witnessed them meeting. Mr. Esposito thought I did witness it and he knew I knew the lady in question. Every time for maybe a year—a half-dozen times—he came in, he’d ask if I’d seen her. Maybe I had once but I didn’t remember much about it. He’d ask me and then he’d tell me about her.” Moses glanced around the room—the bar was a kind of sectioned off part of the lobby—as if he were hoping a customer or two might come along to rescue him. He turned a pained look toward Cosgrove. “I don’t like to talk about folks who tell me things at the bar. Folks expect us bartenders to be discreet. I’m telling you this because you’re a cop and we’re talking about a lady who got killed.”
“I understand. I appreciate it. Everything you saw, everything you tell me, is important.”
“The liquor talks, you know. Mostly what folks tell me goes in one ear and out the other. I don’t hold them to it.” Moses fixed his gaze on Cosgrove. “Men talk about woman trouble.” He laughed good-naturedly. “I don’t understand women any better than they do. None of us do, right?”
Cosgrove agreed.
“He told me he and Shannon had fallen in love when they met here. That was okay. She’s a pretty woman. Any man could get taken with her. The thing with Mr. Esposito was he told me she was in love with him.” Moses opened his eyes wide in mock surprise. “She was married, he told me. He said it was complicated. She denied it to herself, he said. Yet he knew she was in love with him. They talked on the phone a lot, he said. And everything was going to work out. I’d nod my head and let him talk.
“And then that night he saw her with this other man, I knew there’d be trouble. I felt like I should have told him before he should let her go, forget about her. His ideas about her being in love with him didn’t make no sense. This night, it was too late. Nothing was going to keep him away from her.”
“Did he come back after that? Has he been in the bar since then?”
“He’s been back. He didn’t talk about her no more, though.” Moses chuckled. “We had a what do you call it? A kind of silent understanding that none of that ever happened.”
Cosgrove looked at his notebook. “Do you know when he was here last?” Cosgrove was looking for the date of Ted Doyle’s murder. “Is there a way to find out if he was here on or around September 7?”
Moses didn’t remember and told Cosgrove he’d need to ask the manager for the hotel records.
“Credit card dupes?” Cosgrove asked.
“I’m pretty sure he’d charge everything to his room.”
Once more, Cosgrove needed the hotel records. This time, he might have enough to persuade the manager to let him take a look. Failing that, he might have enough to get a warrant.
Chapter 29
Ambler took a United Airlines flight out of Newark Airport at 8:15 the morning after he discovered Wainwright’s cabin in the woods and arrived at Bradley International Airport north of Hartford, Connecticut, an hour later. He drove another hour north to Amherst, Massachusetts, and took a seat in the office of Amelia Hamilton, the chair of the Pine Grove College English Department.
He had what he thought was a plausible scenario for seeking out Wainwright and thought he’d try it out on the person who first told him Wainwright was missing. Perhaps he’d also find out what folks at the college thought of Wainwright, though it was unlikely anyone thought of him as a murderer on the loose.
Professor Hamilton was friendly, yet formal and cautious, measuring each word and keeping a shrewd eye on him.
“I’m not familiar with the author … Jayne Gardner, is it?”
“Jayne Galloway. She’s a mystery writer.”
Something went on behind Professor Hamilton’s eyes. “And you say you’re a curator at the New York Public Library? I love the library. We go to New York a few times a year for the theater … but always to the library.”
“I curate the crime fiction collection.”
She seemed to sniff when he said this. “Crime fiction? I didn’t know there was such a thing.” She raised her head and sniffed again. “Not crime. Not crime fiction. I meant that the library would hold such a collection.”
Ambler tried to keep the irritation out of his voice. “It’s a minor collection.”
“I’m sure.” She flipped back her hair.
He told her about Jayne Galloway’s connection to Wainwright. “There might be correspondence; perhaps Professor Wainwright held onto an unfinished manuscript or drafts of her manuscripts.”
When Professor Hamilton talked about Wainwright, she used a lot of words without saying much. “What reputation he has would be for his scholarly work on the dark romantics rather than his literary work. I’d forgotten he wrote fiction.… Early in his career, I remember, he published in some literary journals. His fiction was part of his portfolio for his tenure review if I remember correctly—”
Ambler didn’t mention the fraud accusation. “Was that important to his gaining tenure?”
She took a moment to answer. “I’m certain it would have been. His scholarly publications came later. Those were impressive, monographs on Poe. Because of those, at one point he was a sought after scholar. Pine Grove made a handsome offer to retain him—reduced teaching time, research support, an early sabbatical—as a university was wooing him.” She paused. “He’s not lived up to his promise.” She said this wistfully, reflecting perhaps her wish the college had let him go when they had the chance.
“At the time he disappeared had he been under pressure of any sort at the college? Anything on campus or in his personal life that he might want to escape from?”
She made a face like swallowing bitter medicine. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Ambler softened his interrogator’s tone. “Were there any complaints against him … criticism, questions about his teaching or scholarly work, his relationships with students?”
Her expression softened as she took a moment to consider this. “Dillard was idiosyncratic, not to say an oddball. He thought a lot of himself, as if having accepted a position here at Pine Grove when he might have been at a university entitled him to more approbation than he received. His colleagues took notice of his disdain.… He wasn’t well liked. We’re a small collegial faculty and pride ourselves on that collegiality. We act courteously toward everyone. With him, it required effort.
“Dillard had always been aloof. The past year or two, he’d been even more remote. If he hadn’t been a no-show for his class, we might not have discovered he was missing.”
“What happens when he comes back?”
She raised her eyebrows. “If he comes back…”
“You don’t expect him to?”
She folded her hands on the desk in front of her. “Nothing like this has ever happened at Pine Grove College. I don’t want to judge before the facts. His disappearance might have been beyond his control. Something might have happened to his mind.”
“To his mind?”
She shook her head. “As I said, he was odd, and lately more erratic.”
“Do you suspect foul play?”
“Foul play?” She recoiled from the quest
ion. “What a remarkable term to encounter in the day-to-day life of the college. It’s a concept out of your world, Mr. Ambler, not ours.” Her gaze, out of nowhere, was piercing. “Do you suspect foul play?”
For a moment he was tempted to tell her what he did suspect but decided not to. It wouldn’t help him. And it wouldn’t help her to think of her colleague as a murder suspect, especially if Wainwright was innocent. He asked if Wainwright had a second home or a family vacation place he might visit. She didn’t know of any. He asked if Wainwright had been with or talked with anyone on campus in the days before he disappeared. She said no.
This was probably all he was going to get. Professor Hamilton didn’t question his reason for searching out Wainwright; though once she’d thought it through she might wonder why a curator would search for a missing person on the off-chance he might have a manuscript or some letters to add to his collection. Leaving her to her soon-to-come misgivings, he headed out into the country with directions to a cabin owned by the missing Dillard Wainwright.
Forty-five minutes later, not far outside a small town, he found the turnoff to Wainwright’s cabin, a worn one-lane macadam roadway. The tightness that had been building in his chest became an iron grip as he closed in on the cabin. Excitement more than fear caused the tightness, though he wasn’t aware of the cause. He thought of himself as a calm man. If he was afraid, it was measured. He knew there was some danger in front of him. Wainwright might see through his charade, might freak out at being found, might have a gun.
The undertaking had risks but it wasn’t foolhardy. He didn’t know what he’d do if Wainwright wasn’t there, and he didn’t have much of a plan if he was there. He wouldn’t try to apprehend him and had no plan to bring up Sandra Dean’s murder or even mention her name—any of her names. Finding Wainwright would be enough … for now. He’d ask a few questions about Jayne Galloway, inquire about letters and drafts of manuscripts, and see where that took him.
The man who opened the warped wooden door and stood tentatively in the doorway of the weathered, shingled, one-story structure, something between a shack and a cabin, blinked at Ambler with the dazed amazement of someone coming into daylight after a long time in the dark. His hair was long, stringy, and unwashed, his facial hair more scruff than beard; only a couple of the buttons on his flannel shirt were buttoned and those were in the wrong buttonholes, leaving the tail of the shirt a couple of inches longer on one side than the other.
Ambler’s heart sank; he almost sank with it as the adrenaline and excitement he’d built up gushed out. “Sorry to bother you,” he said after they had stared at each other for a long moment. “I’m looking for Dillard Wainwright.”
“Who?” The man’s expression became even more puzzled.
Ambler kept calm. “I understand Dillard Wainwright owns this property. I thought he might be here. You—”
“He does?”
Something was off with this man, Ambler saw now. His movements, slight as they were, were awkward, disjointed. Something was missing in his expression; what should have been interest or inquiry was at once vacant and too curious. “Do you know Dillard Wainwright?”
“No.… No. I don’t think so.”
Ambler wasn’t going to let this go. He stuck out his hand and introduced himself. The man stared at the hand for a long moment before he grasped it, or more precisely, placed his hand gently in Ambler’s, as if he were making a present of it.
“I wonder if I might talk with you for a moment?”
The man nodded but didn’t move.
Ambler scrutinized the face in front of him. In the only photo he’d ever seen of Wainwright on the book jacket, he was much younger with no beard. The resemblance might be slight but he had a sense this was who stood in front of him, a disheveled and deranged version of Wainwright. He didn’t want to let go. “Have you been here long?”
The man turned to look at the bare-bones room behind him. “Here? I guess so.”
“Where were you before?”
He withdrew into himself, seeking answers somewhere in his memory. “I’m confused,” he said. “Who are you, again?”
Ambler told him.
The man shook his head. “I’ve had some problems, memory failure; I might as well tell you. I don’t know how I got to this house. I’m pretty sure I belong here, but I don’t know the name you mentioned.”
“You have amnesia?”
“That’s what they tell me.” He scrutinized Ambler’s face. “I do recall bits and pieces.”
They had, without either mentioning it, moved to the interior of the cabin and seated themselves across from one another on the only two chairs at a plain rectangular wooden table. “You’ve lost your identity? You don’t know who you are?”
“I’m told it’s temporary.” The man’s gaze searched Ambler’s, an engagement with him that wasn’t there before. “Dissociative fugue.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Neither do I. They told me but I don’t get it.”
“Are you alone here? Do you have anyone to help you?”
“Folks around and in Greenfield help me out. I’ve been seen by doctors there.”
“Did they try to find out who you are?”
He waited to answer, perhaps deciding how much to tell. Ambler got the sense that this coyness was a practiced art. “I didn’t want them to.”
“Didn’t they trace you through the cabin, find its owner?”
“No one knows I live here. I don’t want them to.” He watched Ambler for his reaction. “It might be I thought they could trace me through the cabin and that’s why I didn’t tell them.… I didn’t think of that at the time. To them, I’m a homeless eccentric who lives in the woods and through the generosity of strangers is given food and sustenance; I go to a soup kitchen. Folks give me handouts. I stand in front the hardware store in Greenfield. Someone picks me up now and then to do laboring work. I’ll do lawn work or painting or filling nail holes for drywallers.” He looked at his hands and then turned his palms toward Ambler. There were dried blisters on their way to becoming callouses.
The cabin was rustic, rudimentary, yet with most of the essentials, an indoor toilet, a galley kitchen with a propane stove, electricity for a small ancient refrigerator and lights. The walls and floors of the main room were wood, probably pine. A door opened to what was most likely a small bedroom. A good-sized bookcase leaned against one wall. No television, no computer in sight.
“Do you read?” Ambler gestured toward the books.
The man looked toward the bookcase also. “I pick up books at a thrift store in Greenfield; some days I read in the library.”
Ambler felt his way carefully. The man appeared to enjoy their chat, making no effort to end it. You wouldn’t know anything was wrong with him when he talked about the present. “When you read a book, do you ever remember you’ve read it before?”
The question energized Wainwright. He leaned forward eagerly. “Yes. Yes.…” He went to the bookcase, took out a book, and handed it to Ambler. “Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The first time I picked up the book I remembered the stories as I read them.”
This made more sense to Ambler than it did to the man telling him. Wainwright said he was told there was a good chance his memory would return on its own. It was curious that he wanted to wait for that, rather than be told his identity. You’d think he’d be anxious to find out who he was, unless he was afraid of what he might find out about himself.
Ambler scrutinized the man. Could this be an act? Dillard Wainwright, sound of mind, hiding in plain sight so to speak by playing the role of a hermit? “You do have some memories, I think you said.”
He met Ambler’s gaze. “I remember a childhood I assume is mine. Bits and pieces of other places and situations. No family or a job. I remember being in college.… I dream about a college. I need to complete a course, in math I think, in order to graduate; in the dream I realize it’s the end of the year and I’ve forgott
en to attend the class. In another dream, I’m teaching the class. Again, I’ve forgotten to attend. The students come to class anyway and are there when I arrive finally, again too late in the semester.”
“Do you have any dreams that are violent?” Ambler thought of asking about memories of violence, but dreams were safer.
A dark cloud passed behind Wainwright’s eyes. He took a long time to answer. “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?” He was perceptive for someone without all his marbles.
“It’s hard to explain.”
The man fidgeted. He’d look at Ambler and then look away, at his bookshelf, at the table. After a moment, he said. “I’m torn between asking you to tell me about the man you think I am and asking you not to, to leave me in peace and let my memories return of their own accord.”
Ambler didn’t want to tell him about Dillard Wainwright yet; he certainly didn’t want to tell this man he was a suspect—at least in Ambler’s eyes—in a murder case. Even a rough outline of what Ambler knew might kick-start other memories that would remind him, if he was Wainwright, of what he did and cause him to disappear for real and purposefully this time. “I don’t think I should tell you,” Ambler said. “I’m not qualified to help you work through whatever’s going on with you.”
“I think that’s best also.” The man’s expression was friendly and more open than at any other time since they’d begun talking. “The down side of that approach is—I guess—my memory might not come back.”
* * *
Ambler’s new friend told him a believable story of what happened to him. He’d found himself one afternoon in the cabin they were now in, not knowing how he got there and with memories only of a long-ago past. He remembered going to college and he remembered his childhood; he had disassociated memories of people and places that weren’t linked to each other or to him. He’d been diagnosed and was told there was no medical treatment for his disorder, except talk therapy with a psychiatrist or psychologist, which he chose not to do, preferring to wait for his memory to come back.