“I haven’t seen Frank in a long while,” she said, “but if I hear anything, I’ll tell you.” She added, eager to change the subject, “Did you find out anything about Karl Roach and Peter Quayle?”
“Roach was a solid suspect, but there were others for the Cover Model Killings. A jealous boyfriend of one of the victims. The father of another.”
“Evidently Quayle didn’t think too much of those,” Nadine said.
“Quayle was never a detective,” Teddy said. “He was a beat cop who did some canvassing on the Seattle murder. He talked to Roach first. That’s how he got it in his head Roach was the culprit.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a cop overstepped his bounds.”
“But it’s more than that with Quayle. He became obsessed. I talked with one of his supervisors. Roach was all Quayle talked about. Once, he even attacked him. Claimed Roach had taunted him. Quayle’s early retirement was a face-saving gesture by his bosses. Quayle had no choice. To hear his supervisor tell it, everyone knew Quayle had crossed the line.”
Nadine knew there was enough about Roach to invite suspicion from a seasoned investigator. For a patrol officer, perhaps one not in possession of all the facts or the necessary interpretive skills, Roach would seem like an enormous red flag. Quayle had spent a large portion of his life hounding the man. Nadine wondered if he hadn’t moved to Castle Rock to continue that pursuit.
Teddy said he had to go.
“There’s a lesson in that, Nadine. Don’t get hung up on what’s not your job. Do what you can and come home.”
Nadine promised she would, silently marveling at how easy the words were to say.
She was contemplating a third cup of coffee, looking over the incident reports from the night before, when Jen entered, looking worried.
“Have you seen Peter?” she asked.
“Not since yesterday. Why?”
“When he left us he was supposed to relieve Bill, outside Ingrid’s house. Peter never showed.”
As they drove to Quayle’s house, Nadine filled the chief in on what Teddy had told her. It seemed to confirm Jen’s worst suspicions.
“On any other subject he’s normal,” she said. “Funny, smart. Maybe a bit entitled. But when it touches on Roach, he’s a different person entirely.”
“The nature of obsession,” Nadine said. “I think we all flirt with it sometimes.”
“But this badly?”
Nadine didn’t have an answer for her.
Quayle’s house was a nondescript rancher, white and chocolate, buried under fresh snow. They parked and trudged up the driveway. Knocked. Jen tried the door buzzer, then rapped on the inset glass.
“Peter,” she said, “open up.”
She turned the handle and the door opened.
A sense of wrongness came from the dark hallway. Jen seemed to feel it too. She drew her weapon and entered, Nadine close behind. Flyers and junk mail piled in a box by the door. A windbreaker hanging on the wall along with a wide-brimmed hat. There was a similarity to Roach’s house, Nadine thought, appreciating the irony. Quayle’s home was cleaner, but neither looked like it saw many guests.
Dishes stacked in the kitchen sink. Boots by the back door. A fishing rod and tackle box propped in a corner. A combination smoke alarm and CO detector was installed in the main hallway.
The bedroom was cleaner than the rest of Quayle’s house. The bed was made. A clothes hamper held only a moderate amount of dirty laundry. A clean robe and towel hung on the back of the door. Sitting on a chest of drawers was a photo of Quayle in his Seattle PD dress uniform. Next to it was one of Quayle with two older people. Parents, most likely.
Quayle wasn’t in his home. Jen holstered her weapon. “Hopefully he’ll show up,” she said.
Nadine saw white through the vented doors of the closet. She opened one of them a hair. “Let’s not poke around,” Jen said, but the door was already cracked enough. Peter Quayle’s secret peeped out from inside.
Kraft paper had been taped to cover the entire back wall of the closet. Photos and newsprint had been affixed to it. A mugshot photo of a much younger Karl Roach stared out from the center. Clipped news articles, maps, print-outs. Index cards with dates and locations. A visual map of the Cover Model Killings, centered around its only suspect.
At first glance there was no order to the data. Quayle’s writing was sloppy. His lines sloped, curled, and overlapped. If you gave him the benefit and assumed it was supposed to be a grid, then a card was missing from the square directly below Roach’s photo. Nadine could see the tear in the Kraft paper where the tape had been torn away.
Nadine crouched to see if the missing card had fallen. As she did, she noticed something jutting from beneath the bed. She slid it out by its barrel.
“A rifle,” she said, holding it up for Jen to see.
“What make?”
She checked the stamp on the barrel: SEKO ARMS, 7.62mm.
“Peter, what have you done?” Jen said softly.
Chapter 35
Quayle wasn’t at the station, and wasn’t answering his phone or the dispatcher. Jen dialed Bill Coker, waited for Ramona to wake her other officer up.
“No, haven’t seen the guy,” Bill said. He sounded surly, more than half-asleep.
“Hate to ask this, Bill, but it’s urgent. Will you get to Peter’s house and keep an eye on it while I find him?”
“Owe me big time for this,” Bill mumbled.
Fifteen minutes later, Bill took up position in Quayle’s doorway. Jen and Nadine set out to find the stray officer.
They tried the Traveler’s Lounge first, but the restaurant was closed. Kelly Wells said she’d call if she saw Quayle. Jen didn’t know his other haunts, but they drove down the main street and inquired at local businesses he might have frequented.
At Castle Rock Truck-N-Tow, Gary mentioned seeing a prowler earlier that morning, but couldn’t be more specific. The tellers at the bank hadn’t see him. Ingrid’s Café was closed.
“Odd that she’d close today of all days,” Nadine said.
“She’s probably getting ready for Bobby to move in. I called the hospital last night, and he’s allowed to go home tomorrow.”
“Good news.”
“Doesn’t help us find Peter, though.”
“No,” Nadine said. “But we know there’s one place in town he always keeps an eye on.”
The fresh snow atop the ice and slush made driving the side streets near the river perilous. But Jen negotiated the prowler down the lane that led to Karl Roach’s house. The road was as pristine here as the parking lot had been when Nadine first woke up. If Quayle was here, he’d come last night.
They knocked on Roach’s door and were greeted by the man in long underwear and boots, drinking from a thermos. His face showed irritation.
“Have you seen Peter Quayle today?” Jen asked. The house’s ramshackle interior seemed to make her uncomfortable.
“I see him everyday. He is always making sure of that.”
“I meant specifically this morning, or late last night, sir.”
“No,” Roach said. “I just wake up and have tea. Would you like some?”
“Another time,” Nadine said. “Is there any place you tend to see Quayle? Restaurants, for instance?”
A white brow wrinkled. “He is missing?”
“We’re just trying to sort something out.”
Quayle’s misfortune seemed to brighten Roach’s mood. He stopped short of a grin, but he seemed to drink from his thermos with more relish.
“Try the river,” he said.
“Right.”
“I am being serious. I see him most often when I’m fishing. He likes to also. Sometimes on the opposite side of the river.”
“Did the sign he put up bother you?” Nadine asked.
Roach shook his head. “I already know how he feels.”
With no better leads, they took Roach’s suggestion and crept along the riverbank, keeping an eye
out for Quayle, the sign, or anything else. The world was under snow. Nadine couldn’t recognize their location. Disorienting, like being trapped in a hedge maze. It reminded her of an old movie she’d seen, a child wiping his tracks out of the snow.
They reached the bridge where, days ago, they’d talked down Gary Gordon. No sign of Quayle. As best she could, Nadine directed Jen towards the sign. After a few minutes, she spotted the silver plank, a thick icing of snow atop it. Jen stopped the car.
No fresh tracks around the sign. Nothing on the other bank, either.
Jen clambered down the bank to read the words Quayle had written. Nadine helped her back. The chief’s face was downcast.
“I let him get away with this,” she said.
“Not true,” Nadine said. “You set limits for him and he broke them.”
“But I should have known he would.” Jen gestured at the sign. “What’s his endgame with all of this? Was he trying to drive Roach to confess, or worse?”
“A more productive question is, how did Andrew Gordon come to have the same words written down in his office? He must have seen this some time before his death.”
Jen scraped the snow from the top of the board and began working it loose from the snow. Nadine took the other side and heaved. The board splintered and the top two thirds came off in their hands. They threw it in the trunk of the prowler and drove back towards the center of town.
“Why would Peter shoot at Ingrid and Kelly?” Jen said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“To make it seem like Roach did. To frame him, perhaps.”
“I don’t believe it. But then maybe I don’t know Peter as well as I thought.”
Before they reached the station they heard Bill Coker say, over the radio, “Peter’s been spotted at the Lounge. Want me to meet you there?”
“Hold your position for now,” Jen said.
“Roger that.”
The chief brought the prowler into the parking lot of the lounge, stopping at a diagonal to block in a red Mazda which Nadine assumed must be Quayle’s. It was quarter past eleven. The restaurant had just opened.
Quayle was at his usual table, a pitcher of beer in front of him. His salt and pepper hair was disheveled. The front of his uniform was open to expose a grubby gray undershirt. He looked miserable, yet forced a wide smile as Nadine and Jen approached him.
“I don’t know what to say, Chief. Seems like I’m not such a good fit for your job after all.”
“Let’s talk, Peter,” Jen said. “Do me a favor, first? Put your gun on the floor.”
Quayle looked quizzical and didn’t move.
“Now,” Jen said, her hand on her gun.
Nadine sidestepped, moving behind the chief to Peter’s righthand side. If he drew the weapon, assuming Jen didn’t shoot, could she tackle him from there, disarm him?
“What’s going on?” he said. “Did Roach do something?”
“The gun, Peter. I won’t ask you again.”
Nadine tensed, ready to move.
But Quayle unclasped the holster and removed the weapon by the butt, and placed it on the dark blue carpet with the barrel facing the window.
“Thank you,” Jen said. “We’d like permission to look in your house.”
Quayle’s mouth opened and shut without a sound escaping. From his expression, he seemed to guess that they already knew what they’d find there. He gave a fatalistic nod, then quaffed the rest of his glass and ran his sleeve across his dribbling mouth. They led him to the prowler and the three of them drove to Quayle’s house.
Chapter 36
“I was so certain you’d see it,” Quayle said. He was sitting in the back seat and looking forward. Nadine glanced in the rearview, met his eyes, realized Quayle was talking to her.
“When you came back from Karl’s and said you didn’t know if he was guilty, it got me thinking. Either you were being objective, or lying. I left and drove to meet Bill, but then got to wondering if I should. Was I really cut out for police work? If everyone sees it differently from me, what am I doing wrong?”
They’d reached Quayle’s house. Jen slotted the car in on top of the same tracks she’d made hours prior. Bill Coker nodded at them from the doorway.
“I should’ve told you, Chief,” Quayle said. “I’m sorry for letting you down.”
He seemed contrite. But then Nadine knew that it was easy to be contrite once you’d been caught. Quayle hadn’t exactly turned himself in.
The four of them stepped inside the house, Quayle leading the way. He walked down the hall to the bedroom, leading them right to his closet.
“I’m guessing either you’ve seen this or someone told you about it,” he said.
“Who would’ve told us?” Jen asked.
Instead of answering, Quayle opened the doors, revealing the crime scene board. He stepped back to allow them to look. Bill Coker let out a long whistle.
“That’s a heck of a lot of work, Peter,” he said.
“I kept thinking I could prove it on my own. Then the Gordons died, and it all became serious. I know Karl did it—I know it—but I see now that I’ve poisoned the case by not being square with you.”
“What went there?” Nadine said, pointing to the squarish blank space in the middle of the kraft paper. She kept her eye on the bed, specifically the edge of the rifle butt. So far Quayle hadn’t acknowledged it. The officer’s attention was fixed on the board.
Quayle squinted. “It was a clipping about his name change. The Rasmussen family, the woman he’d suckered into marrying him.”
Jen bent and retrieved the rifle. “How about this, Peter?” she asked.
Quayle stared at it, uncomprehending. His mouth opened and after a few seconds, he managed to say, “No, that’s not mine.”
“Peter,” Jen said. “It’s time to come clean about all of this.”
“I mean it, Chief, I swear. I’ve never seen that gun before in my life.”
Quayle turned from the closet, glanced longingly at the doorway. Then shifted to face Jen and Nadine. Gone was the contrition. His face had gone a deep pink.
“He’s set me up, the son of a bitch. Don’t you see? My door was unlocked and he put the gun there just to get me out of his way so he can keep going, keep hurting people. It’s obvious.” He was pacing now, furious. “If you don’t see it, then you must either be dumb, or in on it.”
He lunged for Nadine. Bill Coker snagged his fellow officer’s arms before they reached their target. He struggled but Quayle managed to pull free. He charged.
Nadine waited until Quayle’s hands were almost on her lapels, then spun into him, driving her elbow into his throat.
Quayle stopped in his tracks. He gurgled, staggered, and sunk to his knees.
Jen made sure he could breathe, then cuffed him. “That was a hell of a shot,” she said.
“Not enough to hurt him, I hope.” Nadine crouched. “You all right, Peter?”
He coughed, but managed to nod. Already his breathing was slowing to normal.
“Listen,” Jen said. “I want to believe you, Peter. I’ve known you for years and you’re not like this. But by struggling and shouting, you’re doing exactly what he wants you to.”
That made Quayle pause.
“Stop fighting us,” Jen said. “Come back to the station and let’s talk. If you’re honest with us, maybe there’s a way out of this.”
Quayle relented.
Chapter 37
They sat in the break room rather than an interview room. Jen took the cuffs off Quayle. Nadine made a pot of coffee and set a mug down in front of the officer. Or former officer, she guessed. Whether the rifle was his or not, Peter Quayle was probably not long for the job.
Quayle had regained his calm on the ride over. He accepted the cup with a nod of thanks. Jen explained to him that he wasn’t under arrest just yet, but that he’d have to be candid with her if she was going to accept that he wasn’t the person who’d shot out the window of Ingrid’s Café.
“To start with,” she said, “give me your whereabouts on January 1st.”
“I was working,” he said. When that proved insufficient for the chief, Quayle added, “I was on patrol from seven in the morning to five at night. I took my break for dinner in the Traveler’s lounge.”
“Did you see the Gordons that day?”
“No.”
“Go near their house?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Did you see or go near the house of Karl Roach?”
Quayle hesitated, but shook his head.
“You’re sure.”
“I didn’t see him that day.”
“When did you see him last, leading up to that day?”
“December 31st, in the morning before the storm,” Quayle said.
“What were the circumstances?”
“I approached him while he was fishing. I told him his time was almost up, and that he should admit what he did.”
“Why tell him that now, Peter?”
Quayle hesitated, closed his eyes. And then the words seemed to race out of him.
“Because this year wasn’t going to be like the others,” he said. “Before now I’d kept an eye on him, tried to keep him in line, but this year I was going to get him put away, even if it killed me.” He barked a laugh. “My New Year’s resolution.”
“What were you going to do differently this year?”
He finished his coffee and didn’t respond immediately. Jen rapped the desk and said his name, to bring him back to the question. Quayle still seemed reluctant.
“No one wants to live near a murderer,” he said.
“Why is that significant?”
“I’d been after him long enough. I talked to people about him sometimes.” He looked at Nadine. “Like I did with you. Once people know that a guy like Roach lives in their town, they’re eager to help get rid of him.”
“Who?” Jen said.
The Long Dark January: A Nadine Kelso Mystery Page 15