by Amy Pershing
I was explaining my theory about preconceptions.
“I got Roland Singleton all wrong. He doesn’t take Jenny for granted. He’s doing the best he can. He’s a warm, caring man.”
“Well, he hides it well,” Helene said dryly.
“And I got Jenny all wrong. She wasn’t starting a new life. She was just starting a new business.”
“Which you couldn’t know until she saw fit to tell you,” Helene pointed out.
“And I got Krista all wrong. She wasn’t in McCauley’s pocket. She was just doing her job, trying to keep me out of his—and harm’s—way.”
“And she was maybe just a little bit envious of your investigatory skills,” Helene pointed out.
I didn’t tell her the other thing I’d gotten wrong about Krista. I didn’t tell her about my friend’s affair with Curtis Henson. I didn’t tell her about the incriminating photo. Because before I’d handed Estelle’s cell over to the authorities, I’d made a few swift keystrokes and, voilà, no more picture on her phone. So sue me.
“And, boy, did I get Trey wrong. I thought he was just the weak-willed son of a bullying father. I remember once asking myself what kind of a man stomps on baby birds? And now I know the answer—a man who enjoys stomping on baby birds.” I shivered, either with the cold or at the thought.
Helene stopped walking for a moment. “Don’t blame yourself there,” she said. “I should have seen how deep the damage was. A boy who had been emotionally, perhaps even physically, abused by his cold, distant father. A boy spoiled by a mother determined to make up for the father’s failings, a mother who thought the sun rose and set on her son. That’s a recipe for a callous narcissism.”
I shivered again and took another sip of tea from the thermos. “But all this pales beside how completely and utterly wrong I was about Mr. Logan.”
“It does appear that we might have read some of the players incorrectly,” Helene said. It was nice of her to say “we,” I thought. “I must admit I was surprised when you told us out on that patrol boat that it was Logan who’d killed Estelle.”
“Why were you all out there on the bay in the patrol boat, anyway?” I asked. “Surely that’s not the normal protocol.”
“Well, when Jason woke up and saw your note, he waited for a while and then got a call from work and had to go out on the bay for a bit. He tried to call you when he got back to the Harbor Patrol offices. When you didn’t answer, he came back to the house, found your truck but no you and naturally assumed you’d come over to see me. You can imagine his concern when I told him you hadn’t. We thought maybe you’d gone for a walk, though it seemed odd that you hadn’t taken Diogi with you. I called Jenny, Miles, Krista—anyone who might have come by, picked you up for some reason. Of course, none of them had. But within minutes, they were all at your house—”
“Aunt Ida’s house,” I corrected her automatically, but Helene continued as if I hadn’t spoken.
“It was Miles who saw that the shed door was open, the bicycle missing. He’d seen it in there when he was looking for that snake thingy to fix the drainpipe. We figured the bike being gone was a good sign. At least you hadn’t been abducted.”
I snorted. “Abducted. That sounds a little dramatic.”
Helene stopped short and looked at me reproachfully. “No more dramatic than what actually happened, surely?”
I was properly ashamed. “Point taken. Please go on.”
“It was Miles who suggested we follow your bike’s tire tracks. We all piled into the Harbor Patrol van. The tracks were clear in the sand. We followed you to Logan’s new place. Your bike was there. But no you. No anybody. Krista started talking about how maybe you were following up something you’d found out about some politician, but then Jason noticed that the motorboat usually moored out front was gone. Somehow he knew it was Trey Gorman’s.”
“The harbormaster is in charge of mooring permits,” I explained. “They keep a strict limit on how many new moorings are allowed. He would remember that one. Trey probably had to get a special permit for it.”
Helene nodded. “At that point, Jason drove at, I must say, a very unsafe speed back to the municipal pier. He sent out some kind of all-points bulletin, then jumped into the patrol boat and so, of course, we all jumped in behind him. He tried to make us get off, but we weren’t going anywhere and he decided not to waste time arguing with us.”
She stopped and took the thermos of tea from me. “The rest you know.”
“Thank you,” I said, patting her arm. “Thank you for coming to save me.”
“Well, we didn’t actually save you,” Helene pointed out. “Jason was right. You saved yourself.”
I shrugged. That was true. “Still,” I said, “I appreciate the effort.”
“And just for the record, we all got it wrong, too. We were all sure by that point that we were looking for Trey Gorman.”
“Believe me,” I said, “nobody was more surprised than I was when I figured out it was Mr. Logan.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have pegged him as a murderer,” Helene said, “but I never liked the man.”
“Really?” I said, astonished. “Because I liked him a lot. I felt sorry for him, always under the thumb of his wife, always trying to be the good guy to make up for her bad guy. Everybody liked him.”
Helene shook her head and her silver locks waved in the breeze. “I’ve seen that type before. Letting their wives do the dirty work, while they get to play the nice guy. It’s a good gig.”
We stopped talking for a moment, distracted by Diogi, who’d discovered a dead skate on the beach, probably discarded by a surf fisherman. I hate it when they do that. Why not throw it back if that’s not what you’re fishing for? Better yet, why not keep it and eat it? Skate wing sautéed in browned butter and capers is fantastic. Every French chef knows that.
I tried to call Diogi back to us before he did that thing that dogs do and rolled on the skate. He looked at me and rolled on it.
“Stupid dog,” I muttered. “And stupid me. I just couldn’t see how someone so nice could turn into someone so . . . bad.” I meant Mr. Logan, of course, not Diogi. “Mr. Logan told me he’d had a sign. I thought he meant his successful therapy, but he meant the stroke that killed his wife. It was a sign, he said. And all he had to do was . . . nothing.”
Helene took a swig of tea from the thermos. “I have to say, though, it’s a big step from doing nothing while your wife has a stroke to actually drowning someone yourself with your bare hands. One is passive murder, the other active. It just seems so out of character for the man.”
“But it wasn’t out of character for him to try to mow me down out on the bay?”
“Not really. Even mild-mannered people become substantially more aggressive when driving cars. In a car—or a powerful motorboat in this case—people feel anonymous, and when we feel anonymous, we lose our moral compass and are more likely to behave badly. Psychologists call it deindividuation. It means a loss of self-awareness and along with it, individual accountability. And when you add anger into the mix, it can be deadly. Hence road rage.”
I was speechless. “Okay,” I said finally. “Spill. You weren’t always a librarian were you?”
“No,” Helene admitted. “I was a legal psychologist for the Manhattan DA’s office for twenty-five years. And let me tell you, twenty-five years was enough.”
“What does that even mean, legal psychologist?”
“It means I evaluated people facing criminal charges, talked with witnesses, consulted on murder investigations, that kind of thing.”
I stared at her.
“So,” Helene continued as if she hadn’t just blown my mind, “while I think it makes some kind of sense that Logan could use the Mad Max to try to kill you, it’s difficult for me to imagine him drowning Estelle with his bare hands.”
I wasn’t conv
inced, not by a long shot, but Diogi interrupted our discussion once again by dropping the dead skate at our feet. No wonder he had rolled in it. It stank to high heaven. Stinky dead things are doggy perfume.
“You do understand what you need to do next, right?” Helene asked me.
“Bury it?” I said, beginning to kick sand over the fish.
“Don’t deliberately misunderstand me,” Helene said in her I-will-brook-no-nonsense-from-you voice.
I gave in.
“Yes,” I said. “I need to talk to Jason.”
“How many times has he tried to call you?”
“Three,” I said sulkily. It was true. Jason had been leaving a message on my cell every hour on the hour this morning. Each time it was the same: “Hi. It’s Jason. Call me.” Super romantic.
“And you let them all go to voice mail,” Helene said accusingly.
“I’m not sure what to say to him . . .” My voice trailed off uncertainly.
“Well, you’d better figure it out soon, because, unless somebody else has adopted his distinctive coiffure, that’s the man coming down the beach now.”
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
FORTY-THREE
As it turns out, dogs are the perfect answer to social anxiety. Not only do they break the ice in difficult encounters, they can actually do what you wish you could do.
Diogi, for instance, once he’d realized that the man walking toward us was the Man with the Boat, ran up to Jason and showered him with kisses.
Jason in turn wasted a great deal of time giving Diogi a tummy rub. So once again, Sam, you’re jealous of a dog?
Finally he turned his attention to me. “Where’d Helene go?”
I looked around wildly. Helene had indeed done one of her disappearing acts. I was alone with Jason. And I highly suspected that she had engineered the whole thing.
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
“You’re shivering,” Jason said.
“Well, it’s cold out here.”
He took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. It was warm from his body and it smelled like him and I wanted to bury my face in it and never give it back.
“Thanks,” I said inadequately and waited for him to ask why I hadn’t returned his call.
He must have seen my apprehension.
“I’ve got some updates for you.”
Thank you, Jason. Thank you for the reprieve.
“Did Mr. Logan confess?” I asked. “A real confession?”
“Well, it’s complicated,” Jason said.
I just looked at him.
“He’s confessed to letting his wife die. He kind of had to do that, since you found the evidence that he was there that night. Plus, Estelle’s photo has an electronic date stamp, of course. But in your case, he insists he wasn’t trying to run you down, just wanted to talk to you, misjudged the distance.”
“Yeah, he tried that one on me, too,” I said. “For a minute I almost believed him.”
“I’m glad it was only for a minute,” Jason said. “If he had managed to . . .” His voice went wobbly and he stopped, cleared his throat, began again. “If you hadn’t made it to the sandbar . . .” Another pause. “The bastard might have got away with it.”
“Well, he didn’t,” I said, trying to give Jason some time to collect himself. “And he won’t get away with killing Estelle, either.”
“Ah, yeah,” Jason said. He looked very uncomfortable. “There’s that.”
“What?” I didn’t like where this was going.
“He categorically denies killing Estelle.”
Of course he does.
“And here’s the thing.”
I waited.
“On this, I believe him.”
I simply was not going to listen to any more “the crime doesn’t fit the psychology of the man” nonsense. First Helene, then Jason.
“You believe him? How can you believe him? He had her cell phone.”
“Which he says he found under the deck when he went to meet her, to pay her. He says she didn’t show.”
“Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” I knew my exasperation showed in my voice.
“Bear with me, Sam,” Jason said. “What if Estelle made two appointments? If she was blackmailing more than one person, why not arrange to meet them both, one after the other? If she left fifteen minutes or so between them, she could save herself a trip.”
I nodded reluctantly.
“You remember the reconstruction?” Jason continued. “How the killer is surprised by someone coming under the deck before he’s had a chance to grab the phone? How he pushes the body down, sinks down himself up to his neck until that person goes away. And how, when the other person leaves, the killer goes to get the handbag with the phone in it and it’s gone?”
“Of course I remember that,” I muttered rebelliously. “It was my reconstruction.”
“Well, I think you were right all along,” Jason said. “It could have happened that way. Logan could have been the second appointment. He could have arrived at the meeting place and taken the bag with the phone in it when he didn’t see Estelle.”
“Because her killer was hidden by the darkness, holding her down in the water . . . ,” I finished for him.
“Right.”
And then I remembered something Mr. Logan had said in his rambling monologue on the river behind Nickerson Island: “After Estelle had her accident, I thought the problem was solved.” I realized then that something about that was off, but fearing for my life at the time, I hadn’t had the luxury of considering its implications. Now I did. Mr. Logan still thought Estelle’s death had been an accident. And he hadn’t known that the police were looking into it as a possible homicide, so he wasn’t worried about keeping her phone. Until I’d found it and he’d seen me looking at that incriminating photo.
I told Jason what Mr. Logan had said, confirming his theory. Which brought us to the next and final question.
“So if it wasn’t Mr. Logan who killed Estelle,” I asked, “who was it?”
“It was Trey Gorman, of course. Gorman. Not Logan.”
Trey, not Mr. Logan.
“There you go,” I said to the Universe. “Got it wrong again.”
“No,” Jason said firmly. “If you remember, you were the one who got it right. You were the one who thought in the first place that Gorman had done it.”
I felt somewhat better. “But you haven’t got any solid evidence that ties him to her death,” I pointed out.
“That’s what McCauley says, too,” Jason admitted.
Great, Sam. Now you’re on the same wavelength as McCauley. Not a good sign.
“But I’ll get it,” Jason added grimly. “In the meantime, we need to get you a restraining order against Gorman.”
I stared at him. Was this nightmare never going to end?
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Yesterday, after I talked to Logan, I staked out Gorman at his motel. Waited. Eventually some guy in a Lexus drives up, goes straight to Trey’s room. Even from where I was in the parking lot, I could hear the yelling. So I go knock on the door, identify myself, tell them to open the door. They go quiet. Nothing.”
“So what did you do?”
“I kicked the door open.”
“Really?” I said, thrilled in spite of myself. “Just like in the movies?”
Jason grinned. “No, of course not. I had a passkey from the motel manager.”
“Darn,” I said. “It was such a good image. So what happened next?”
“I opened the door, and they stood there like deer caught in the headlights. Gorman and this other guy. Who turns out to be his father.”
“His father?” I said. “What was he doing there?”
“The father says the son called hi
m at his office, asked him to come out, said he’d tried to get some of his confidential work papers from you, but you sicced your dog on him.”
I was incensed. “They were not his confidential work papers. They were my mother’s confidential notes. And I did not sic my dog on him. My dog barked at him. And besides, Diogi’s not even a dog. He’s a puppy.”
Then I had a thought. I paused in my defense of Diogi. “But why?” I asked. “Why would Mr. Gorman tell you that?”
“Because he needed to explain why he was standing there with a gun in his hand.”
“A gun,” I repeated blankly. Uh-oh.
“He said his son asked him to bring him the handgun he keeps in the office. Trey said he was going to go back and get the papers when you were out. So obviously, he’s still worried about anything that connects him with Estelle. That right there is enough for McCauley to bring him in for questioning. I really doubt he’s going to have an alibi for the night she was killed. And now that we know what we’re looking for, we’ll find someone who saw something. This was no perfect crime by any stretch.”
I nodded. Trey really wasn’t very bright. I had no doubt they’d find the evidence they needed. Even if it was McCauley doing the looking. But now something else was bothering me.
“But if he was going to steal the notebook while I was out, why did he need a gun?”
Jason looked uncomfortable. “He said he needed it to ‘take care of the dog.’”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “He was going to shoot my dog?”
Jason took one look at me and gathered me into his arms. He said nothing, just held me close. I leaned into the reassuring bulk and warmth of his chest, resting my head on his shoulder. I felt as if I could stand there forever, wrapped in Jason’s arms. Nothing bad could happen there. It was paradise.
FORTY-FOUR
I eventually managed to tear myself away from paradise, but only after Helene did one of her uncanny reappearances and convinced me that Jason had better things to do with his time than “canoodle” with me on the beach.