'Mrs Clements...' Evan started.
'You must be the private eye,' she interrupted, looking him up and down in a way that made him feel that he didn’t quite pass muster. 'Linda Clayton rang Ray and told him she'd hired someone to find out what happened to her husband and boy. You've got that sort of look about you.'
Evan wasn't sure what she meant by that but he didn't suppose she was being complimentary. Probably meant he looked a bit seedy, whatever that was supposed to mean. Luckily she was on her way out, because his brief encounter with her gave him the impression she would have dominated any conversation he tried to have with her husband. He hadn't met the man, but already he was feeling sorry for him.
'Ray's inside,' she continued. 'You go on in. I've got to go out.'
She left the door open and got in her car and drove away. Evan knocked on the still open door and called inside.
Clements appeared from somewhere at the back of the house. He was tall and painfully thin with the beginnings of a stoop. He was the complete opposite of his wife. If he used her as a lawn roller, she'd surely use him as a rake. Evan was vaguely disappointed that he didn't have a neat row of pens tucked into his shirt pocket or any leather patches on his elbows. At least he had a full head of mad scientist style silver hair.
'You must be Evan,' he said, sticking out a surprisingly large hand and shaking energetically. Evan was surprised by the firmness of his grip. He supposed he'd been expecting someone old and broken from the allegations made against him. 'Come on in and call me Ray.'
'Word spreads fast.'
'You can't blame Linda. You're the first person to take her seriously for years. She told me you wanted to talk to me.' Evan smiled to himself; he’d been right that Linda was busy lining up teams.
Clements led him through the house and out into the back yard. A couple of uncomfortable looking metal garden chairs sat on a deck at the back of the house. Looking at them, Evan wondered how Clements’ wife managed to get her substantial butt into them. Or if she did, how she ever got it out again. He pictured her walking off with it sticking out behind her, completely oblivious as it followed her around.
They sat down and Evan’s suspicions were confirmed; they were as uncomfortable as they looked. It was obviously a yard for working in, not relaxing in, and it showed. Another immaculate lawn was surrounded by perfectly manicured shrubs and trees. There was a pond with a waterfall and Evan was disappointed again to see that there were no garden gnomes fishing in it. Next to him there was a magnificent Oleander in a pot. He was tempted to say nice bush but thought better of it.
'I hope you don't mind talking to me - I'm sure it'll resurrect some unpleasant memories,’ he said instead.
Clements shook his head and opened his arms wide. 'I've got nothing to hide...unlike some people.’ He leant forward towards Evan in a conspiratorial way as he said it. It made Evan think of a large vulture inspecting the carcase of a dead elephant. ‘Besides, if there's any chance of finding out what happened, I'm more than happy to help.'
Evan thought the guy seemed a bit too good to be true. And what was the unlike some people crack about? Perhaps Clements would turn out to be a better source of information. Evan leaned back to enjoy the warm afternoon sun on his face and asked him to give his version of things.
'As far as I'm concerned there are two known facts and that's all. One; Daniel left my classroom same as usual, without a scratch on him and two; he was never seen again. Unfortunately as far as some people were concerned, that made me the last person to see him alive, and, as we all know, two plus two equals five.'
'You're talking about Faulkner.'
'Who else? When you add the testimony’ – he made a show of coughing into his hand – ‘of Carl Hendricks into the equation, supposedly proving that Daniel never left the campus, that was just about all Faulkner needed.’ He raised his finger in the air in a eureka-style gesture. ‘Except some evidence of course. The small matter of some proof, or it that an unreasonable demand from a man whose life is on the line?'
Evan wondered if he’d taught drama at school. Failing that he must have been a leading light in the local amateur dramatics society. 'Faulkner said you didn't have an alibi.'
'Well, I must be guilty then. Just take me away.' He jumped up and held out his wrists as if Evan was going to cuff them. Evan took the opportunity to get out of the uncomfortable chair himself. 'Or was I just unlucky to be the one person out of a hundred thousand other innocent people who don’t go around with a verifiable alibi covering every minute of their day, who was asked for one.'
'He said you went for a drive.'
Clements let out a short, humorless laugh. 'Yes, while that scumbag Hendricks went to a strip club. They probably took the dried stains in his underwear as evidence he was really there. That, and the word of the tired old whore who'd been busy wiping her syphilitic twat on his face all afternoon.’ A speck of saliva flew from his mouth and landed on Evan’s chin. Evan tried to ignore it and not be obvious about wiping it away. ‘At least he wasn't up to something really disgusting like driving his car.'
Evan was taken aback by the outburst. His mental image of what retired school teachers were like had been completely blown out of the water. Clements was clenching his jaw so hard by the time he finished, Evan was surprised he didn't crack a tooth.
'Faulkner also thought he'd caught me out in some huge, incriminating lie and cover up.'
'Giving Daniel a ride home a few times?'
'Yes; as you can see, we only live a few blocks away from each other.’ He took a deep breath and made a visible effort to relax his bunched shoulders, and then set off towards the pond. Evan followed. Clements picked up a tub of fish food and started feeding the fish that had swarmed to the edge. ‘It helps calm me down,’ he said. ‘Linda could be a bit strange at times and had this thing about Daniel walking home. She was brought up on a farm. She thought everyone should get lots of fresh air and exercise, that sort of thing, but you can take it too far.'
He cleared his throat and ran his bony hand through his hair, leaving little bits of fish food in it. Everyone Evan talked to seemed to do that. He wondered if he did it himself. 'So I used to drop him off now and then.' He cleared his throat again. He obviously wasn't comfortable talking about it. 'But there's no such thing as an innocent act of kindness, is there? There has to be something sinister going on. Surely some payment is required for the ride. And since young boys don’t have much money, they have to pay in other ways. Q.E.D.'
'And you didn't volunteer the information because you knew Faulkner would do exactly what he did do with it.'
'Yes. People like Faulkner always like the easy answer. They get sent on a half-day profiling seminar in East Bumfuck, and suddenly they're Professor of Psychology at Harvard. Then they look at my wife and they look at me and you see their eyes narrow. You can actually see the wheels turning and see them thinking, "Will you look at the size of her. And look at him, the skinny runt. I bet she makes his life hell at home. I bet he goes out and abuses little boys to make himself feel better. I bet he's got a really small pecker." It's pathetic. It makes me sick.'
Evan felt a twinge of guilt for thinking the same thing - not the part about abusing little boys, just that his wife dominated him. It was too early to comment on his pecker.
Clements put the tub of fish food back down and stared absently into the dark water. 'Of course it then looked much worse when it did come out,' he said.
'How did it come out?'
Clements looked up and beamed at him. 'Guess.'
Evan thought about the whole situation. There was only really one explanation that he could be expected to guess. 'Hendricks?'
'Give the man a cigar!' Clements shouted, clapping his hands. 'First of all he convinced Faulkner that Daniel didn't walk off campus, and then he tells him I know someone who likes to give little boys a ride in his car. You'd think he was trying to set me up.'
'What do you think about Hendricks' stateme
nt?'
'Carl Hendricks was and probably still is a disgusting, useless piece of shit. If we were talking about whether a naked woman walked past his bus unnoticed, that's a different matter.’ His mouth curled into a sneer. ‘She'd have tripped over his fat tongue hanging down to the sidewalk. The way he looks at women in the street, I'm surprised he hasn't been arrested for jerking off in public. But one kid out of all the hundreds milling around? He didn't have a clue who passed his bus that, or any other, day.'
'Which became obvious when Faulkner switched his focus to the father.'
'Exactly. But it was far too late for me by then. Faulkner had me firmly in his sights and it had been in all the papers. People start out standing by you, but then they start to think there's no smoke without fire. You can see it in their eyes.’ He looked down despondently. Evan knew what it was like when people you thought were friends started to avoid you.
‘There are also a lot of people who have so much faith in the police they think it must be true or why else would they be looking at you. A presumption of guilt, you could call it. Then there's all that unwelcome publicity for the school, of course. We need to punish the man who brought all this shit down on us.'
Clements had been picking at his fingernails the whole time. He stopped and stuffed his hands into his pockets. 'End result was, I lost my job and the next thing you know Faulkner has changed his mind and it's the father, not me. Sorry about your career, sorry about your life, you're free to go. Except you're not. Not in people's minds.'
There wasn't anything Evan could say to make him feel less bitter about the almost casual way his life had been destroyed as part and parcel of the investigation. Clements headed back up towards the house then made a sharp right towards a plant that obviously required his immediate attention.
'What do you think about the theory that the father did it?' Evan said, trailing behind him.
Clements stopped and turned to face Evan. 'I think it's a crock of shit. I knew Robbie Clayton and I can guarantee he couldn't have hurt that boy. He wasn't perfect by a long stretch, but he adored that boy. He'd have done anything for him.'
'You say he wasn't perfect...'
'I'm sure you must have heard about the rumors that went around.' Evan nodded and told him to go on. 'I know for a fact that Robbie sometimes had trouble keeping it in his pants, but that doesn't mean he killed his son because he caught him with another woman and then they ran off together. That would take a monster.'
'Why was Faulkner so convinced?'
Clements gave a small shrug. 'I can’t say for sure, but most people like easy answers and half-baked solutions.’
The way he said it made Evan wonder if he was being put in the most people category. He got the impression that Clements thought he was back in school in front of an unusually dim class. He had that sort of impatient, waiting-to-be-disappointed look on his face.
‘And Faulkner likes it nice and easy, that’s for sure. An expert in half-baked. More than that, it’s no longer an embarrassing, unsolved double murder on his patch just before he retires; now it's a nationwide manhunt and somebody else’s problem. Much better all round. Not his fault when they come up with Jack Shit.'
'You really don't like him do you.'
'Can you blame me? He ruined my life, and his laziness ruined Linda's too.'
'Do you think Hendricks could have had anything to do with it?'
'Not really. He was a disgusting creep but it was the women he was after. You ask any of the women teachers who worked there back then. They couldn't stand him. Apparently one of them saw him in town one time wearing a T-shirt that said "When I want to hear your opinion, I'll take my cock out of your mouth" on the front.'
Evan smothered a laugh and made a mental note to ask Hendricks where he bought it. 'How did he manage to keep his job?' he said.
'Beats me. Maybe he had friends in high places, or he had some kind of hold over someone.'
'So you don't think he was trying to point the finger at you to take the heat off him.'
'The heat was never on him, but no, I don't think that was it. I'm sure he thought he was just doing his civic duty, fine upstanding citizen that he is. What's sick is the obvious pleasure he got from watching what it did to me.' Linda had said the exact same thing. The Clements-Clayton team were solid in their opinion of Hendricks. Evan found it ironic that the two people who had suffered most as a result of Hendricks' statement, also agreed that he wasn't responsible.
'Okay, forgetting Hendricks, what do you think happened?'
'I really don't know. I don't think anything happened to Daniel on campus. I think he walked out the gate like normal and Hendricks had his nose stuck in some stroke mag or something and didn't see him go past. I don't think he made it home - something happened to him on the way and it had nothing to do with his father. A random attack by someone passing through most likely.'
'That doesn't give me a lot to go on does it?'
Clements shook his head. 'I'm afraid it doesn't, but it's only my opinion. I could be wrong.' He shrugged as if to say it has been known to happen.
Evan was about to leave it at that when he remembered what Clements had first said. 'You implied earlier you thought some people had something to hide - what did you mean?'
Clements considered him carefully. Again Evan got the feeling he was being assessed for his level of trustworthiness. He put on his best open and approachable face. It worked; he passed the test.
Clements leaned in conspiratorially again and dropped his voice to a whisper. He didn’t actually put his hand up to his mouth, but Evan was sure he wanted to. He looked around to see who might be listening in, but there was no-one. 'This didn't come from me, but I think Faulkner was hiding something. Maybe he still is.’ He leaned back and held up his hands. ‘I'm not saying he had anything to do with Daniel's disappearance, but I always felt he was hiding something; some guilty secret. In fact, I got the feeling long before any of this happened. That's not just me talking out of spite, because of what he did to my life, either.'
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any idea what it might be?’
‘No. It was just a feeling.’
'Did you ever say anything to anyone?'
Clements looked at him like he really was an idiot. 'Are you serious? Who would I talk to? Besides, who's going to listen to a man accused of abducting a child? A de facto pervert.'
Evan thanked him for his time and left him to his plants and fish and seething resentment. No doubt his wife would bear the brunt of his anger and frustration when she returned from her tupperware party or wherever else she'd been, but she looked like she could take care of herself.
CHAPTER 12
Evan came away with something very different to what he expected when he went in. He'd been hoping Clements would have some ideas about what might have happened, but he'd got nothing new that he hadn't heard before. One thing that he was picking up loud and clear, was how much everyone involved seemed to hate each other. And then the unexpected revelation that Clements thought Faulkner was hiding something. He didn't know what to make of that. Was there something and Clements had picked up on it, or was he just being vindictive, despite what he'd said?
Admittedly, Faulkner hadn't wanted to talk to him at first, but the case hadn't been his finest hour so why would he? What kind of a secret could he have that might have any bearing on the case? Besides, if Clements' intuition was right, it pre-dated the disappearances anyway. Evan certainly didn't think Faulkner could have committed the crime, but was he involved in some way beyond his police duties?
His thoughts were interrupted by his cell phone. It was Guillory. 'That was quick'
He could feel Guillory smiling into the phone. 'Well, we've got these new-fangled computer things here now, so I asked one of the grown-ups to show me how to use them...'
'Grown-ups in the police department? Whatever next?'
'Who knows - we might even offer you a job.'
'Okay, okay. I'
m assuming you found something.'
He heard Guillory tapping away two-finger style in the background.
'Okay, here we go. Don't go jumping to any conclusions, but there was a woman called Barbara Schneider who went missing about the same time Robbie Clayton disappeared. Reported missing by her husband, Max, and never heard of again. Right sort of age for Clayton to be fooling around with too.'
'So what happened?'
'Nothing happened. People go missing everyday of the week. If it's an adult and there's nothing to suggest any foul play, then what do we care if some woman gets sick of her husband and runs off with some guy with a bigger dick.'
'Nobody made any connections?'
'That's just it, isn't it - you'd be making connections that probably weren't there. Fabricating them yourself.'
'You know what I meant; did anybody consider the possibility that these disappearances were connected?'
'What, like Robbie Clayton ran off with Mrs Schneider and his little boy and they're all playing happy families in California or wherever. And none of them ever showed up on the radar again.'
'It's possible. Was it even considered at the time?'
'You'd have to ask Matt Faulkner that - there's nothing on the files to suggest it.'
'Do you think he'd tell me?'
'Depends if you ask nicely. That’s not something you’re very good at, is it?'
'I don’t know what you mean. You’ve got to admit it's hard to ask anything without it looking like I'm judging him with the benefit of hindsight.'
'I can't help you there. And before you ask, no, I'm not going to ask for you. You’re a big boy now. Besides, he'd know it came from you anyway.'
Cruel Comfort (Evan Buckley Thrillers Book 1) Page 7