“Wait, so that’s your gun this guy had?”
“Yeah. And when you’re done with it, if it’s not too much fucking trouble, I’d like to have it back.”
Duckworth felt blood rushing through his neck.
“What did I say to you this morning? About sending someone with her experience to act as a decoy?”
“If I’m supposed to report to you, it’s news to me,” Duncomb countered. “You don’t sign my paycheck.”
“No, but the college president does, and if he’s got any sense, you’ll be a nursery school crossing guard before the end of the week.”
“I closed more cases working the Boston PD than this town sees in a decade. You can’t talk to me like—”
“I just did. If you say one more thing I’ll cuff you and lock you up for the night. God, what a clusterfuck. Does anyone know who this kid is?”
A member of the security team spoke up. “I’m Phil. Phil Mercer? Uh, I’ve got his wallet here.” He held it up, shined a light on it. “He’s a student here. Well, was. His name is—”
“You’ve touched the body?” Duckworth asked.
“I couldn’t have gotten at his wallet otherwise,” he said, as if he’d just been asked the stupidest question he’d ever heard.
The detective sighed. “Who is he?”
“Hang on; let me look at this license again. Okay, Mason Helt. His student card is here and everything. Here you go.”
And he tossed the wallet in Duckworth’s direction.
The detective, stunned, managed to catch the wallet and still hang on to the flashlight.
He looked at Duncomb. “You must be so proud,” he said.
Duckworth found Joyce Pilgrim sitting on a wooden bench in an empty gymnasium. He dismissed the officer who was standing near her, then parked himself next to her on the bench.
“How are you doing?” he asked after identifying himself.
“I’m okay,” she said, her legs pressed tightly together, her fingers knitted into tight double fist. She was hunched over, her shoulders tight, as if she were trying to close in on herself.
“I’m sorry about what you went through. Have you been seen by the paramedics?”
“I’m not hurt,” Joyce said. She shook her head slowly. “I can’t work for that asshole anymore.”
Duckworth did not have to ask.
“I don’t blame you.”
“I’m not trained for this. I can’t do this kind of thing. I can’t.”
“Duncomb shouldn’t have put you in this position. That was wrong.”
“I have to call my husband. I don’t think I can drive home on my own.”
“Sure.”
“I still can’t believe what he said to me,” Joyce said.
“What did he say to you?”
“Clive didn’t tell you?”
“Why don’t you tell me,” Duckworth said gently.
“When that kid got my gun, he pointed it away from me. Said he was sorry, that he’d never have actually, you know, that he wouldn’t have raped me.”
“Go on.”
“He said it was . . . what was the word? He said it was a gig. That he was, like, conducting a social experiment.”
“A gig?”
“That was the word. He said that was what ‘he’ wanted. Like another person. Like he was asked to do it, or hired. Does that make any sense?”
It didn’t. It was an entire day of things that hadn’t made sense. The hanging of twenty-three squirrels, three mannequins in a Ferris wheel carriage, a—
Wait a second.
Duckworth closed his eyes for second. Thought back to only an hour ago, as he walked around the base of the Ferris wheel.
All of the carriages were numbered.
The carriage holding those three mannequins had a number stenciled on the side of it. Duckworth closed his eyes, trying to picture it.
The number painted on the side was 23.
The hoodie worn by Mason Helt was emblazoned with the number 23.
And how many squirrels had been found hanging by their necks that morning in the park?
Twenty-three.
It probably meant nothing. But . . .
“That is one hell of a coincidence,” he said aloud.
“You talking to me?” Joyce Pilgrim asked.
THIRTY-THREE
David
SINCE the first person Jack Sturgess had cautioned me against visiting was Bill Gaynor, I decided to see him first. I didn’t know what I’d ask him, but maybe now, some twelve hours after our first encounter, we’d be able to have something approaching a civil conversation.
Maybe, given that I was the one who’d shown up with Matthew, he’d even want to talk to me. Ask questions about how it all happened.
So I parked Mom’s Taurus out front of his Breckonwood house, and made the trip to the front door. You wouldn’t know anything had happened here earlier in the day. No police cruisers, no yellow crime-scene tape, no news vans. Everyone had been and gone.
The street was quiet, and most of the houses were dark, including this one, save for the light over the front door. At the house next door, however, several lights were still on.
I rang the bell.
I could sense steps within the house, someone approaching the door from the other side. The curtain at the window immediately left of the door opened, and I saw Bill Gaynor take a quick peek at me.
“Go away,” he said. Not shouting, but just loud enough for me to hear through the glass.
“Please,” I said.
The light over my head went out.
And that was that. I wasn’t going to ring that bell a second time. Not after what this man had been through.
I could think of only one other place I might drive by this late at night before I went home to bed. A place I’d been thinking about for a while now.
But before I made it back to the car, I heard the door open on the neighboring house that was still lit up. A man I guessed to be in his eighties, thin and elderly, wearing a plaid housecoat, had taken a step outside.
“Something going on out here?” he asked.
I said, “I’d come by to see Mr. Gaynor, but he’s not in the mood for visitors right now.”
“His wife got killed today,” the man said.
“I know. I was here when he found her.”
The man took another step out of his house, squinted in my direction. “I saw you this morning. I was watching from the window. There was a fight on the lawn, a woman with their baby.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What the hell’s been going on? I asked the police but they didn’t tell me a damn thing. They had plenty of questions, but weren’t interested in answering mine.”
I cut across the lawn and met him at his front step. “What do you want to know?” I asked him. “My name is David, by the way.”
“I’m Terrence,” he said, nodding. “Terrence Rodd. I’ve lived here twenty years. My wife, Hillary, passed away four years ago, so it’s just me here. But I’m not moving out unless I have to. Guess how old I am.”
“I’m not good at ages,” I said. “Sixty-eight.”
“Don’t mess with me,” Terrence said. “Really, how old do you think I am?”
I pondered. “Seventy-nine,” I said. I really thought eighty, but it was like when you put a four-dollar item on sale for three ninety-nine. It looks better.
“Eighty-eight,” Terrence said. He tapped his temple with the tip of his index finger. “But I’m still as sharp up here as I ever was. So you tell me, what happened there?”
“Someone stabbed Rosemary Gaynor to death,” I said. “It was pretty horrible.”
“Who did it?”
I shook my head. “Far as I know, there hasn’t been an arrest.”
<
br /> “So it wasn’t Bill, then,” he said, nodding.
That threw me. “If it had been, would you have been surprised?” I asked.
“Well, yes and no. Yes, because he sure doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d do it, but no, because isn’t it usually the husband who does it when a wife gets killed? I spent a lifetime analyzing statistics, so you kind of look at what’s most likely to happen. What’s your interest in this?”
“Like I said, I was here when Mr. Gaynor found her.”
That seemed to be enough for him. He nodded. “Nice couple. Hell of a thing. Everybody on the street’s probably making damn sure their doors are locked tonight, but most of these things, it’s somebody you know that does it. Even if it wasn’t Bill, which I’m not saying I think it is.”
“I get that.”
“Cute little baby, too. Baby’s okay, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Thank God. I’m freezing out here in my bathrobe. Nice talking to ya.”
“You mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
He hesitated. He’d have to invite me in if he wanted to warm up. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
“No,” I said.
“Hang on one second.” He went back into the house, closed the door. It reopened in ten seconds. Now he had a phone in his hand.
He held it up in front of me. “Smile.”
I smiled. There was a flash. He turned his attention to the phone, tapped away.
“I’m just gonna e-mail this to my daughter in Des Moines. If I end up dead, they’ll have your picture.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
There was a whoosh as the e-mail was sent. “Come on in,” he said.
I followed him into the house. He said, “I keep a lot of lights on until I go to bed. I don’t sleep too well, wander the house a lot. Don’t usually go to bed till about one in the morning. Try watching one of those classic movies on Turner, then I go to bed, but I wake up early.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Usually can’t sleep in past six. Used to read the paper in the morning, but the goddamn assholes shut the Standard down.”
“I heard,” I said.
“Come into the kitchen. Want some hot chocolate? I usually make some hot chocolate at night.”
“That’d be nice.”
The place was done in lots of wood: wood cabinets, wood floor, even wood panels over the fridge and other appliances. Not one thing out of place, either. Nothing in the sink, no piles of bills and envelopes by the phone. A real estate photographer could have walked in and not had to do a moment’s prep.
“Beautiful home,” I said.
He filled two mugs with milk from the fridge and put them into the microwave. Set it for ninety seconds. “I’ll give it a stir halfway through,” he said.
“Did you know the Gaynors well?”
Terrence shrugged. “Said hi coming in and out, that kind of thing. And they have a nanny, too, comes by most days. Name of Sarita. She was the nicest of the bunch, really.”
“Yeah?”
“Sweet girl. I know you’re not supposed to call them girls anymore. She was a woman. Tough little thing. Went from one job to the other. I think she was sending money back to family in Mexico. Don’t think she was here legally, but hey, people do what they have to do.”
“Do you know what her other job was?”
“Nursing home. I was trying to remember the name of it earlier, when the cops were here asking questions, couldn’t think of it. There’s only about fifty of them in the area. Reason I know she worked at one is, I asked her what it was like there, in case I get to the point I can’t look after myself here on my own, and it sounds like an okay joint, but truth is, I hope one day, when it’s my time, I just go.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. I go to bed one night and just don’t wake up the next day. What do you think about that?”
“Who was it who said, ‘I expect to die at one hundred and ten, shot by a jealous husband’?”
“Thurgood Marshall, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court,” Terrence said, and chuckled. “That sounds good, too.” The microwave beeped. He took out the mugs, gave each a stir, and put them back into the oven for another minute and a half.
“I think I had more conversations with Sarita in the last ten months she’s been coming over than I’ve had with the Gaynors since they moved in. Although, a year back or so, they weren’t around much anyway.”
“Where were they?”
“Boston. Bill, he works for some insurance company based there, and he had to be away for several months, so Rosemary went and lived with him. Did the last few months of her pregnancy there; first time I saw them after they came back, she had the baby.”
The oven beeped again. He took out the mugs, handed one to me. I blew on it before taking a sip. It was good hot chocolate.
“I don’t have any marshmallows,” he said apologetically. “Used to buy them once in a while, would forget I had them; I’d open up the bag and they were hard as golf balls.”
We ended up straying off topic, at least from the topic I’d come to discuss. Terrence used to own horses, and he wanted to tell me all about it. I didn’t pay much attention, but he was a nice man, and the time passed pleasantly.
I thanked him for the hot chocolate and the conversation, and as I was heading back to the Taurus he said, “Davidson.”
“Sorry?”
“Davidson Place. It just came back to me. That’s where Sarita works.”
I headed back in the direction of my parents’ house, not sure I really knew anything more than when I’d set off from there. At least, not anything useful. But the following morning I’d do the same again. Ask questions.
I’d go to Davidson Place. I would look for Sarita.
I didn’t drive straight home. Made a couple of turns along the way that took me into a neighborhood I’d visited earlier in the day.
I pulled the car over to the curb and killed the engine. Left the key in the ignition. Sat behind the wheel, watching a house. There were no lights on.
Probably everyone had gone to bed.
Carl, as well as his mother, Samantha.
I stared at the house for about a minute, feeling hungry all over, before I turned the key and continued on my way.
THE SECOND DAY
THIRTY-FOUR
THE naked woman was sitting on the edge of the bed, weeping.
The man who remained under the covers on the other side of the bed stirred, rolled over. He reached out and touched the tips of his fingers to the woman’s back.
“Hey, babe,” he said.
She continued to cry. Her face was in her hands, her elbows on her knees.
The man threw off the covers and huddled behind her on the mattress, on his knees, pressed his naked body up against hers and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
“How can it be okay?” she asked. “How can it ever be okay?”
“It just . . . I don’t know. But we’ll find a way.”
She shook her head and sobbed. “They’ll find me, Marshall. I know they’ll find me.”
“I’m going to look after you,” he said comfortingly. “I will. I’ll keep them from finding you.”
She broke free of him and walked to the bathroom of his small apartment, closed the door. He put his ear to it, said, “You okay in there, Sarita?”
“Yes,” she said. “I just need a minute.”
Marshall stood outside the door, wondering what he should do. He looked about his place, which consisted of a single room, not counting the bathroom. A small fridge, hot plate, and sink over in one corner, a bed, a couple of cushioned chairs he’d scored on junk day when people were putting things out on the street.
A toilet fl
ushed, a tap ran, and then the door opened. Sarita stood in front of him, head down, and said, “I’m going to have to go home. I’m going to have to go back to Monclova.”
“No, you’re not going back to Mexico,” he said, taking her into his arms again. “You’ve got a life here. You’ve got me.”
“No, I have no life here. I go home, or I just disappear somewhere, get a job, start doing the whole thing all over again.” She sniffed. “I need to make a living. I have people counting on me. I can make more money here.”
“I can lend you some,” he said. “Shit, I can give you some money. I don’t have a lot, but I got two, three hundred I could give you.”
Sarita laughed. “Seriously? How long would that last me?”
“I know, I know. It’s not like I’m a fucking millionaire, you know? But now that you mention money, I was kind of thinking about something in the night.”
She pushed past him and found her underwear on the floor at the foot of the bed. She stepped into her panties, then slipped on her bra while Marshall stood and watched her.
“Whatever it is, I don’t want to know,” Sarita said.
“Come on, you have to at least hear me out. It could be the answer to your problems. For both of us, really. If you need to get away, that’s cool; I get that. But I could come with you.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Come on,” he said. “We’re in this together.”
“No,” Sarita said. “We’re not. You haven’t done anything wrong. Except for hiding me. When they find out you’ve been keeping me here, you could be in all kinds of trouble, and not just because I’m not supposed to be here.”
She pulled on her jeans, then put on a blouse and began to button it up. Marshall glanced around, saw his boxers on the floor, and stepped into them. “I’m gonna call in sick,” he said. “We’ll figure out something.”
He picked up a cell phone on his side of the bed. “Yeah, hey, Manny, I’ve got some kind of bug, been puking my guts up all night. Can’t afford to give something like that to the geezers. Yeah, okay, thanks.”
He put the phone back down.
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