“No, that’s all right.Tell him to stay there.And be careful.”
“Give Pudge’s family our sympathy.He was a very nice man,” Sweets said as we were hanging up.
Danny stood in the doorway to Pudge’s office, waiting for me.
“Come smell this,” I told him, holding out the fixative tube.
He shrugged.“I got a lousy sense of smell.”
I said, “You ever tasted an almond that’s gone bad? Bitter?”
After he smelled the compound in the tube, I told him to go ask Gert if the bridge was back in Pudge’s mouth, and if it was, she should run tests in the autopsy for cyanide.
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DANNY AND Istood back from the metal table in the autopsy morgue while Gert finished her postmortem on Pudge.
Pudge had died from acute myocardial infarction and pul-monary edema—a massive spasm of the heart that shut down his lungs as well.But he’d been dead before his face went into the oil.Cyanide poisoning had caused the heart failure.
“Good for you, Jamie,” Gert said, drying her hands at the sink.“If you look at his eyes, ja? You see that bright red in the retinal veins? That is a sign of the cyanide.”
I didn’t feel good and I didn’t want to look in Pudge’s eyes, but I’d been right.The lab test showed traces of the soluble salt, potassium cyanide, mixed in the fixative.Compounded with water, it had released HCN (hydrogen cyanide gas) into Pudge’s system.It wasn’t far from the way they killed people in gas chambers.And his symptoms could have 2 2 0
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easily been mistaken from the onset by Pudge himself for a coronary: dizziness, confusion, chest pains and shortness of breath, nausea.It wouldn’t have taken long.
“And one more thing,” Gert said, pulling off the lab coat, tossing it in a hamper as we left.“You sent this Styrofoam coffee cup in for the saliva test?”
“Yes.I was off the case.I know.Somebody give you a rough time?”
“To compare with the semen we got from the Mercedes car seat?”
“The chief chewed Abu out about doing it for me?”
“No.” She waved good-bye to her assistant, who would finish up with Pudge and remove his body.She patted me on the back.“Your same fellow.
Saliva, semen, also the paternity of the fetus we examined in Mrs.Morgan.
Same.This is just preliminary, I have to say that.But there it is.Your Barclay Ober.”
“Gert, thank you.”
She gave me a smile of flawless white teeth.“We had a playwright in Sweden, you know him, Strindberg.Well, he said, ‘To learn something makes me happy.’ Also for me.It’s late.Let’s all go to our beds.”
BACK AT DANTE’S,I’d assured Connie and Rod that I was doing just that, going home to bed.And if Rod had sent a squad car to drive by my house, the house would be dark and my Mustang would be parked right outside.But I wasn’t home.
In his Corvette, as we sped east along the river, Danny managed to keep from skidding in the melting snow despite going twenty miles an hour over the speed limit.“It’s in the tires and hands,” he told me.“They were talking about putting tolls on this road, remember that?”
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“Yeah, that’d slow you down, I guess.”
He laughed.“I’d need a ‘shitload of dimes.’ You know that movie where all the cowboys have to pay a dime highway toll right out in the middle of the desert?”
“Blazing Saddles.”
“Love it.”
I think Danny was trying to take my mind off Pudge but I brought him back to the case, describing how one of my murder plans in the Death Book had been to put cyanide salt in someone’s antihistamines.
Danny scratched his head under his cowboy hat.“So, what’s the point, just rubbing your face in this Killing Club crap? I mean, why double up? Why dump the guy in the fryer if you already brushed his false teeth with cyanide?” He glanced over at me.“Excuse me, okay.I shouldn’t talk like that about your friend.”
“The best thing you can do for my friend is let me help you find out who killed him.”
He laughed, smacking his steering wheel.“You want to ‘help’ me?
That’s a joke.You want to run the show.”
“That’s true too.”
By now it was past two A.M.Danny and I were on the outskirts of Gloria, climbing over the chain-link fence that locked up Ober Land Development and Realty at night.There were no dogs, no security guards; just a light at the entrance and a light over the parking area.Why should they need more protection than that? It was just a real estate office.I doubted they’d ever been broken into before.Certainly not by the Gloria police.
“You’re sure?” Danny asked me again before he snipped the external wires on the alarm system.He’d found the hookup and dismantled it so 2 2 2
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quickly that I suspected (not for the first time) that Danny Ventura had turned to the law only after a teenaged life of crime.
“Danny, we’ve fucked the case if we get caught.”
“You’ve gotta say these things sooner.” He was shoving me through a rear window in the building.“Besides, I’ll just say I’m Donny, and that Sergeant Dan’s home in bed.Hey, you see Donny’s new ad on TV?”
Everybody in town had seen it.If you turned on your television, it was almost impossible to avoid.“ ‘Donny’s Dreamworld’? Where he’s lying on one of his mattresses dressed like Scrooge, and the three teenaged girls in bathing suits are Christmases Past, Present and Future?”
“You saw it! That was my idea!”
“Well, it’s some idea.”
Danny grabbed my arm.“No! That was me in the ad! Donny didn’t want to do it.He thought it was dumb.”
I was thinking I hadn’t been fair to Donny Ventura.
Five minutes after that, we’d popped the lock to Barclay’s private office (“Piece of cake,” Danny had whispered), and in just a half-hour more, I’d found Barclay’s motives for murder.
IF YOU DON’T WANT your family to find things, you don’t leave them at home.So while I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d learn by illegally rummaging through Barclay’s office, I thought I’d find something to tie him to Ben or Amanda or Pudge in some way I could use.What I wanted was the motive for the first killing.I didn’t expect to find any cyanide tablets, or instructions on crossbows, or blackmail notes about the affair with Amanda or anything of that nature.But Barclay’s desk calendar did 2 2 3
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list his lunch with Ben Tymosz on the same day as Ben’s death.And an unsigned real estate contract did sit right there in the bottom of the in box, with the same ominous date on it.In the contract, OLDR was offering Ben Tymosz and his mother $675,000 for the dilapidated Pine Barrens Playhouse, which they had co-owned.It was a lot more than you would have thought that rotted building was worth, until you found the surveyors’ maps, blueprint plans and faxed copies of other contracts of sale for the four, also derelict, commercial docks on the Deep Port River, and for the five-block street front that ran between the docks and the theater and the half a dozen brick warehouses, also in ruins.
Danny and I studied the rolled draft papers and the blue-covered contracts that we’d pulled from files and drawers and from the top of a Shaker armoire that also held a plasma TV.Then we accessed Barclay’s computer files just by turning it on.There was no ID needed to open it.
Clearly Barclay wasn’t worried about secrecy here at Ober Land Development and Realty.Right there on the desktop of his PC were design draw-ings, elevated models and construction blueprints for a “recreational, commercial and residential center,” all in a folder labeled “ETTEN LAND-ING.” Danny whistled. “I’d say Barclay’s planning a big demolition derby on that old stomping ground of yours.That theater, docks, warehouses.
All that shit’s coming down.”
“They’ll be ‘rest
ored.’ They’ll turn it into something like South Street Seaport, Penn’s Landing.Look at this.Promenade, plaza.Residential lofts.Museum.That buys off the history buffs.Galleries.Restaurant and cineplex.”
“In Gloria?”
We shrugged at each other.
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“Too bad,” Danny said.“We can’t get into Barclay’s e-mail.”
But I thought we could.
Clay answered his cell phone, sounding wide awake despite the hour, claiming to have heard from Dino, who was on his way home.“Dino’s okay,” he told me.
“You tell him to turn himself in to the police, Clay.”
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”
“Are you with him?”
“No way.”
“Where are you?”
He said he was home on his computer, out in his hideaway, the old summer kitchen at River Bend.Maybe he was.He told me that he’d heard about Pudge and wanted to know if we’d arrested his father yet.I said we couldn’t find him.
Clay’s voice was so bitter it gave me a chill.“Dead mom, psycho killer dad.Guess I’m ready-made for Devo-land, whatever.”
When I asked him if there was any chance he could figure out for me what Barclay’s e-mail password was, he didn’t even ask me why I wanted to know.“My dad’s a friggin’ moron.He’s always asking me to tell him how to fix things on his computer.His password’s Etten 3-9.Like, wow, who’d think of that—his middle name and his birthday? He’s so proud he’s an Etten, it’s probably tattooed on his butt.”
“Clay, tomorrow you and I are going to have another talk.About whether you pasted those Halloween notes together and had Dino stick them in our front door.And whether you put one under Amanda Morgan’s windshield?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
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“I’m talking about letters cut out of magazines.”
“Yeah, blame me! Maybe I killed your pals too.Maybe you’re next.”
“If you don’t lie to me, Clay, we can get through this.But if you do?
You think a prep school in Vermont will be a drag? It’ll be Paradise Island compared to a youthful-offender cell block.”
Clay hung up on me.
Barclay had a lot of e-mails he hadn’t opened.I didn’t open them either.They seemed to be mostly about his sports enthusiasms (his squash court reservation, his hunting license renewal).Or about the realty business (sales were brisk).Or his political aspirations (judging from the subject headings, Barclay spoke at a great many public events, attended a great many parties and gave away a great deal of money).The rest of the unopened e-mails were trying to sell him something.I went to “Old Mail.” There were a dozen from Amanda. She wanted Barclay to leave her alone.Their affair was over.If he couldn’t accept it, she was sorry, but she didn’t want to divorce Jim and marry him, she didn’t even want to see him anymore.She was tired of sneaking around, tired of being looked at in that way by his mother, tired herself of the “old Amanda.” There was an odd sentence in one of the e-mails that became clear to me only later.
Amanda said that while she was calling off their affair, she would stick by her agreement not to block his plans, adding that he was going to need more than her vote anyhow.
It made sense in relation to two interesting e-mails sent to Barclay in the past month, the only ones written by two particular people.One was from Pudge, and it predated Ben’s death by a few weeks.It was very formal.Pudge was writing as Dante Salerno Jr., chair of the Gloria, New Jersey, Planning and Zoning Board, to advise Barclay Ober, applicant for 2 2 6
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construction permits, that the board had a historic interest in preserving the Pine Barrens Playhouse as well as the old town docks.It said that Ober Land Development and Realty would have to persuade the planning board that any projects OLDR had under consideration took into account the board’s many questions about restoration and preservation.
This e-mail was cc’d to the nine other members of the planning board.
One of the members was Amanda Morgan.
The second e-mail was from Barclay’s mother, Meredith, or so I assumed from the return address—M.E.Ober. There was no salutation and no signature.It was brief.It was blunt.All it said was, “Are you deter-mined to destroy your life? Don’t think she won’t enforce that prenup.”
Danny asked me, “What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I bet it means that if Tricia Ober divorces Barclay for screwing around with Amanda, she’s going to walk away from River Bend with a shitload of dimes.”
THERE WASN’T ENOUGH snow left on the roads to keep Danny Ventura from driving the Corvette eighty miles an hour back to town.
“Maybe you can keep this up, but I gotta get some sleep, Jamie.I’ll meet you at Dixon at ten, okay? It’s four fucking thirty A.M.”
He didn’t stop for more than five seconds when he let me out in front of my house.“You’re okay, right?” And then he was gone, racing around the corner in the slush onto Fourteenth Street.
I didn’t see until after Danny had driven off that the front door to our house was open.
The minute I stepped inside the hall, I could smell the gas.
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NATURAL GAS DOESN’T SMELL;neither does carbon monoxide.You just get sick.And if you replace enough of your oxygen with gas, you die.So it’s very useful that gas companies add an odor as a warning that there’s a leak.The odor I smelled was like a houseful of rotten eggs, and it was nauseating.
Running down the hall, yelling for my father, I wrapped my scarf around my face.I threw open the door to Dad’s room.I knew I shouldn’t flip on a light switch, since electric current can ignite an explosion.I ran to the bed in the dark and shook my father.“Dad! Dad!”
He jolted awake, coughing.“What! Jamie? What’s the matter! What the hell is that smell?”
I figured if he could curse, he wasn’t dying.
“Dad, here.Keep your mouth and nose covered.It’s a gas leak.”
I shoved both windows wide open, already on my cell phone to 911, 2 2 8
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talking fast.“This is Sergeant Jamie Ferrara, GPD.I need an ambulance and Gas Emergency here ASAP—1419 Dock Street.”
The dispatcher said, “Jamie?”
“Sarah? We’ve got a bad gas leak.And a handicapped person.Get somebody here!” I gave her the address again and hung up.Dad had pulled himself to the edge of the bed.I helped him into his wheelchair and raced him back down the hall and out onto the stoop.By then both of us were coughing nonstop.
On the street behind us a black Land Rover squealed out of a parking space, banging with a loud thunk into the car in front of it, then skidding noisily away.Even in that moment, I thought, It’s River Bend.Tricia’s car.
It’s Barclay.
“Stay here, Dad!” I pulled my flashlight out of my pocket.
“Don’t go back in there!”
“I heard somebody in there!”
“Jamie, you come back here!”
My eyes were burning, hard to keep open, as I ran down the hall to the rear of the house, where I could hear someone coughing, making choking noises in the kitchen.
The beam of my flashlight caught the tight glittery bronze curls first, then the slim shape next to the gas stove.Then I saw everything at once.
I kicked the box of kitchen matches out of Dino’s hand.It was the fastest thing I could do.My brother was leaning over the stove with the unlit match pinched in his other hand, all ready to strike it against the box.
With a terrified shriek, Dino fell to his knees, then looked at me as he dropped onto the floor and passed out.
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“Jesus Christ, are you crazy, Dino!” Pulling him by the armpits, I dragged him
to the kitchen door, slid him down the wheelchair access ramp and toppled him over onto the cold ground in the backyard.Rubbing wads of snow in his face, I slapped him a few times before he shook himself to a groggy consciousness.“I couldn’t see,” he mumbled.“I thought Dad had left a burner on.It was gas, right?”
“Jesus Christ, Dino!”
“Did you get Dad?”
“Yes, I got Dad!”
He rolled over and threw up.Leaving him there, I ran back into the kitchen.The stove burners weren’t even on; but the source was definitely the kitchen.It had to be a leak in a pipe or a fitting.I was opening every window I passed when I heard Dad trying to wheel himself back inside the house.He was coming along the hall.
“Dad! Will you fuckin’ get out of here?! Nine-one-one’s on it!”
“Somebody in the kitchen?”
“Dino.I dragged him into the backyard.He’s okay.”
Strong arms pumping, Dad shot past me in the hall like he was headed for the finish line of a wheelchair marathon.“Dino? Dino!”
I let him go.The whole family was crazy.
I COULDN’T STOP THINKING “IF.” If the killer hadn’t thrown off the main electrical switch after uncoupling the pipe fitting, Dino might have sparked an explosion by flipping on every light switch in the house, not understanding, stoned as he was, why the lights wouldn’t come on.
Any more than he could figure out to get Dad first, or how to turn off the 2 3 0
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gas burners on the stove in the kitchen (which weren’t on) without being able to see them.If the lights weren’t coming on, then he figured the only thing to do was to light one of the matches in the box above the stove.The whole place would have blown.
But what if Dino hadn’t even come home? What if he hadn’t remembered where we kept the extra key, under the loose brick on the steps of the stoop? What if he hadn’t at least noticed the gas smell and tried to solve the problem, even if he didn’t know how?
And what about me? If I hadn’t gone with Danny to Barclay’s office, if I’d gone home, would I have caught the killer? Or would I be dead, along with my dad, and maybe Dino?
EMS gave all three of us oxygen.Then they took my father and Dino to St.Anthony’s to check them for respiratory distress.Dad wouldn’t let go of Dino’s hand anyhow, so they went in the same ambulance.The gas company shut off the gas, the neighbors left and I locked the house.
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