Helen knew—I don’t know how, perhaps it was that uncanny journalistic instinct of hers—that I knew more than I would tell, but we didn’t have to put this communication in words. She nodded. “Talk to you later,” she rasped, and buzzed away.
Every so often, I looked out into the newsroom at Dennis Duffy. He no longer exhibited the self-satisfied air of a plundering roué. Instead, his dissipated face had the stark bleakness of a man trying to find his way through earthquake ruins, all the familiar landmarks obliterated, the smell of death cloying the air. Had Rita Duffy been right? Had Dennis known Maggie a lot better than he should have?
Angel Chavez slipped in during the lunch hour. She stood by the city desk, her back to me.
Of course, the news of the murder was of interest to everyone in the J-School, including the staff.
But somehow I doubted that Angel usually kept abreast of breaking stories. She looked so stolid, wearing a white cotton blouse with a scalloped collar, a navy skirt, and sensible blue leather flats.
That demure demeanor didn’t fool me now.
I remembered the sharp feel of the wind at the track and Angel’s hair streaming away from a face raddled with anger.
And fear?
Yes, she looked like such an unlikely person to have starred as a defense witness in a notorious murder trial. But appearances do deceive—or mislead. Who would ever forget the scholarly young professor who’d been fed the quiz-show answers?
Reporters have to remember that the surface doesn’t reflect the depths.
And I was sure I had no grasp of what Angel thought or feared at this moment.
Buddy was flapping his hands. “…jogger found her body about seven this morning. Out on Lovers’ Lane. But Kitty says the cops just picked up Maggie’s car from the J-School lot.”
Angel said sharply, “A jogger found the bodies that spring.”
For an instant, Buddy looked blank. The year 1988 was long before his time at Thorndyke. But he was quick. “You mean those students? Huh.”
It was hardly a world-class coincidence. Ever since the Kennedy days, joggers are everywhere, especially on college campuses. I was more interested in the fact that Maggie’s car had been spotted in the J-School lot. I wondered if her car keys were in her purse.
“Her car was in the lot. So somebody drove her to Lovers’ Lane,” Angel said.
“Looks like it.” The phone rang. Buddy turned away, snagged the receiver. “City desk.” He scrawled notes on a pad.
Angel waited patiently.
Buddy muttered, “Yeah, yeah. Cover it. Okay.”
When he hung up, he swiveled to his computer.
Angel moved closer, spoke over his shoulder. “Those articles Maggie was writing…”
Buddy looked up impatiently. “Yeah?”
“Do you know if she’d turned anything in yet?” Angel’s face was somber, intent.
The phone rang. “I don’t know, Angel. Check with Duffy.” Buddy grabbed the receiver. “City desk.”
Angel crossed to Duffy’s station. “Dennis, do you have Maggie’s stories on the old crimes?”
Dennis didn’t even look up. He grunted, “No.”
Angel waited for a moment, but he continued to stare at his computer. Slowly she turned away.
I glimpsed Angel’s round, usually pretty face. Her eyes were dark with worry, her lips set in a grim line.
I turned to my computer and checked to see if Maggie had filed any stories in the series.
I didn’t find anything. That would no doubt please Angel.
But that didn’t matter. What mattered was the fact that Angel Chavez was worried.
I made a note—“Watch Angel”—then turned back to the papers I was trying to grade. I kept a close eye on the newsroom through my window.
It was almost three when Buddy jolted up from his chair, clutching the telephone receiver.
When I reached the city desk, he’d just slammed down the phone. He stared at Dennis, then blurted, his voice an octave higher, “The cops have brought in Mrs. Duffy.”
Rita Duffy’s arraignment was at four-thirty that afternoon. That meant the police investigator—Lieutenant Urschel—had convinced the prosecutor’s office that there was sufficient evidence to prove the case against Rita. I had a gut feeling there had to be more evidence than we—the press—knew about.
I elbowed my way into the jammed country courtroom.
Rita huddled at the defense table, her face slack with shock. I’d seen survivors of train wrecks and bombing raids with that same look of incredulity. And horror.
Was Rita terrified of this proceeding? Or was she trying desperately not to remember the tautness of her own muscles pulling, pulling, pulling a silk scarf until it would tighten no more?
Rita’s pudgy fingers gripped the edge of the wooden table. Her faded blue eyes were blank, her plump face pasty. Her broad shoulders hunched defensively. She was powerfully built for a woman.
Lieutenant Urschel had indicated that Maggie’s body had been moved after death. Rita Duffy appeared to be a strong woman, quite capable of that feat.
But why? Where was Maggie killed, and why was her body moved an hour or so later? What possible reason could there be?
I edged to my left for a better view of Rita.
Someone should have told her to comb her hair, put on makeup, sit up straight.
Dennis Duffy sat stiffly in the first row. It was the only time I’d ever seen him without his perpetual sneer. His big hands were clenched tight and his usually cocky face looked scared and perplexed.
The machinery of the law—in the persons of Circuit Court Judge Edward Merritt and Prosecutor Paul Avery—moved with juggernaut precision. The arraignment took a quarter hour from start to finish.
Rita’s lawyer, B. B. Ellison, pleaded her not guilty to the charge of murder in the first degree.
Paul Avery stood. “If it may please the court.” The prosecutor approached the bench.
I was familiar with Avery’s name from trial stories in The Clarion. This was the first time I’d seen him. Gary Cooper, I thought suddenly, the same lean, powerful frame, and bony, quizzical face. Avery’s features were memorable—high-bridged nose, cleft chin, piercing light-green eyes. He was about my age, and he moved with an easy, confident slouch. He had the air of a man who never hurried, a man who imposed his tempo on the world.
“If it please the court, the prosecution requests a million-dollar bond. This is an especially brutal crime, Your Honor.” Avery had a magnetic voice, not the super-proud slickness of a radio announcer, but the full, rich timbre of a lawyer at ease with an audience of one or a thousand. “The young victim was knocked unconscious”—he paused for a definite beat—“then strangled.” Once again Avery let silence fill the courtroom, and the ugly image took shape in every mind. “Your Honor, this demonstrates a cold and deliberate premeditation.”
“Motion granted.” Judge Merritt’s waspish face, beneath a high curl of stiff gray hair, remained remote, untouched. He banged his gavel and rose.
Everyone stood.
As the door to the judge’s chambers closed, a deputy gestured for Rita to come.
Rita Duffy would remain in jail. There was no way she and Dennis could come up with enough money to make that bond.
Murder in the first degree.
At the preliminary hearing, set for December 4, Ellison could argue for a charge of second-degree murder.
I doubted he’d get it.
If Maggie Winslow’s killer strangled her as she lay helpless, this could not be considered a crime of passion.
Murder in the first degree. If convicted, Rita Duffy could be sentenced to death.
Deputies walked on either side of Rita as she left the courtroom.
Cameras flashed and reporters trotted alongside as she was led down the hallway.
She looked back over her shoulder, her eyes brimming with tears. Her mouth formed a plaintive cry, “Dennis, Dennis!”
And then she was in the eleva
tor. The doors slid heavily shut.
The reporters turned toward Dennis.
A local television reporter pressed forward. “Mr. Duffy”—he stumbled over the name because this was Dennis and they played poker together—“Mr. Duffy, is your wife guilty?”
Dennis’s chest heaved. Perspiration beaded his face. He flung up his head. “Rita’s innocent. I’ll prove it. I swear to God I’ll prove it!”
For the first time in our acquaintance, I admired Dennis Duffy.
Dennis whirled away from the elevator. For a moment, our glances met and held. He still had that punchy look, a man who’d lost his place and had no idea which way to go. He grabbed the arm of B. B. Ellison.
Dennis bent his big head close to the lawyer’s and talked fast.
I realized as I turned away that Dennis was looking toward me.
five
MY desk was in disarray. In the center were papers I’d tried to grade as I kept tabs on the coverage of the police investigation into Maggie’s murder. But to one side was the material I’d spread out early that morning in anticipation of my expected meeting with Maggie. I wouldn’t be instructing my student in how to find out more about the most famous unsolved crimes in Derry Hills.
I perched on the edge of my desk, unable to forget the terror in Rita Duffy’s eyes. I checked my thermos. There wasn’t even a vestige of warmth in the coffee.
I stared at the papers I’d put together for the pep talk that never took place.
Three piles.
The Rosen-Voss case.
The Curt Murdoch case.
The Darryl Nugent case.
Maggie Winslow was murdered as she sought fresh answers to old questions. And Maggie’s body was found in Lovers’ Lane.
But I knew quite well that The Clarion was read by almost every household in Derry Hills. The placement of Maggie’s body in Lovers’ Lane could have been prompted by her ad in the Wednesday issue.
I’d met Rita Duffy a few times. She was smart, quick, clever, a hearty woman with a booming laugh. She worked for the Chamber of Commerece knew everybody in town, was interested in ever person she met. She wasn’t the kind of person to miss an ad as provocative as Maggie’s. So, Wednesday night, when she was desperately seeking a place to leave Maggie’s lifeless body, Lovers’ Lane could easily have seemed a brilliant location.
But why would Rita—if she killed Maggie—take the body anywhere?
That brought up the most puzzling question: Where did Maggie die? In her apartment? Somewhere on campus? Or in someone else’s car? Rita’s, for example?
I slipped into my chair and stared at the three piles. I should be feeling relieved. If Rita Duffy murdered Maggie, no fault could lie with me.
But—
Why Lovers’ Lane?
I pulled my pad close, scrawled “Lovers’ Lane,” then listed some possibilities:
1. Lovers’ Lane chosen because it was the most secluded, remote, private area on campus.
2. Lovers’ Lane chosen because Maggie’s murderer wanted to link her death specifically to the Rosen-Voss murders.
3. Lovers’ Lane chosen because murderers repeat themselves.
The first possibility was the simplest and likeliest. For some reason, it was important to the murderer of Maggie Winslow that her body not be discovered where the actual death occurred, and there was no better place on campus to get rid of a body than Lovers’ Lane.
Was the murderer unsophisticated enough not to know the police would determine that Maggie had not died in Lovers’ Lane?
Possibly.
Was Rita Duffy that unsophisticated?
I doubted it.
Perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps what mattered was leaving the body far from the site of death.
The second possibility required a murderer knowledgeable about the earlier crime and quick to take advantage of Maggie’s efforts to discover fresh facts about the Rosen-Voss case. It could mean the murderer was involved in the Curt Murdoch case or the Darryl Nugent disappearance and was trying to focus attention on the Rosen-Voss case.
The third instance meant Maggie had indeed discovered something that could reveal what happened in Lovers’ Lane in 1988. If that was true, the murderer was either going back to a pattern that had worked before or was confident only Maggie had an inkling of the truth. In either event, leaving her body in Lovers’ Lane was an arrogant, taunting display of power.
None of this led me any closer to knowing whether Maggie died because she screwed the wrong husband or because she’d pressed too close to a previous crime for comfort.
But was it reasonable to think that Maggie in a matter of hours could solve puzzles that had baffled hardworking investigators for years?
Larry Urschel seemed to be a careful and capable detective. He was apparently convinced yesterday’s murder and the 1988 slayings had nothing in common.
I remembered Maggie’s confident observation: Somebody always knows something.
And her body was found on Lovers’ Lane—
My office door opened.
Dennis Duffy was a man in emotional turmoil, his eyes glazed, his skin gray. Patches of sweat stained the armpits of his cotton dress shirt.
“Henrie O, I need help. Please. Jesus, you’ve got to help me.” His outstretched hands trembled.
Gone was the bullying and sarcasm and snickering suggestiveness that laced his usual verbal assaults.
“Sit down, Dennis.” My voice was gentle, but also remote.
He lunged toward my desk, glared down at me, big and mad. “Goddammit, you’re the one who told Maggie she had to come up with new stuff. I asked her about that damn ad and that’s what she told me. You’re the one.” It was an accusation.
We stared at each other.
His eyes were wild, beseeching, desperate.
“Sit down, Dennis.”
“That cop won’t listen to me. I tried to tell him about Maggie’s series. He won’t listen! You’ve got to talk to him—”
“I already have.”
It was as if Dennis had run as fast as he could, using every breath, every muscle, and slammed full force into a wall.
Slowly, like a pricked balloon, Dennis sagged into the chair. “Henrie O, Rita didn’t do it. She couldn’t. Never. She’s—oh yeah, she explodes. She’s got a rotten temper, but to hurt someone—to kill someone—she couldn’t do it. I swear to God, she couldn’t.”
I didn’t know Rita Duffy that well, but last night her corrosive anger had shocked the newsroom into immobility.
“Why was Rita so upset?” Implicit in my question was the judgment, So what else is new this time, you sorry, unfaithful bastard?
He clenched his hands, stared down at them. “Yesterday—it was November 15.”
I waited.
“The day”—each word was as hard and distinct and unyielding as a granite gravestone—“our daughter Carla died. Of leukemia. Six years ago.”
I understood the agony in his statement.
My son Bobby died twenty-seven years ago.
I looked at the photograph in a leather folder on my desk. Bobby is running toward me in Chapultepec Park, his face alight with an exuberant grin. I remembered the laughter in his voice—“Mom, hey, Mom!”—and the way he skidded into my arms, alive and eager and happy. It was his tenth birthday.
The emptiness is as great today as it was then, a void that nothing will ever fill, a grief that will never ease.
I had to believe that somewhere, on a far distant, sunnier shore, Bobby and now Richard awaited me. I had to believe that or sink into numb despair in an empty, meaningless world.
Dennis groaned.
I reached out, gently touched my son’s picture.
Dennis’s voice shook. “And she thought, Rita thought—” He broke off; his face crumpled.
Rita thought he was being unfaithful yet again on a day that was forever seared into her soul.
“Were you?” My words dropped like ice pellets.
“N
o.” He almost shouted it. “No way. God, no.”
I straightened the stack of papers on the Rosen-Voss case. “Where were you last night?”
He groaned again, pressed his palms against his temples. “No place. I’d told Eric to handle it. There was probably a late story coming in on that hotel explosion in Cairo, but nothing else. The front page was ready to put to bed. I just wanted—I couldn’t sit there any longer. I got in my car. I drove around.”
“You didn’t stop anywhere, talk to anybody?”
“No.” He rubbed his face wearily.
“You didn’t see Maggie anytime during the evening?”
His head jerked up. “No. Absolutely not.” He stared straight at me.
Like the barely heard rattle of a snake on a hot, still day, a warning flickered in my mind. Such a straight-from-the-shoulder, honest, sincere gaze…
Dennis’s yellow-gray eyes were opaque.
“Where did you drive around?”
He flipped over his hands. “Everywhere. Nowhere.”
“Did you go over to Maggie’s apartment?”
“I might have gone that way. It’s a small town, Henrie O.”
I let it drop, but the buzz continued in my mind. Maybe he didn’t see Maggie. But I’d bet he looked for her. So what price to put on his soulful protestations of innocence? “What time did you get home?”
“Midnight, I guess. About that.”
“Was Rita there?”
“Yeah.” His voice was empty.
“What did she say? What happened?”
“The bedroom door was locked. She wouldn’t let me in. She screamed about Maggie. She wouldn’t listen.”
“What did you try to tell her?”
“That it was bullshit. Bullshit.” His voice rose. “I ended up standing there by that goddamned locked door, yelling that I hadn’t fucked Maggie, but I sure as hell was going to give it a try.”
“Are you telling me you weren’t having an affair with Maggie?”
“You got it the first time.” His tone had an echo of its old flippancy.
“So what gave Rita the idea? Why should she think so?”
Dennis’s putty-colored eyes slid away.
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