The Long Dark January: A Nadine Kelso Mystery

by A. S. Andrews

  Tim Miller was tall and slender, unshaven, and had the look of an outdoorsman. He’d been travelling through the night, after learning that Susan Gordon was dead.

  “I felt I should be here for her,” he said.

  Kelly happily disposed of the gas station pastries and laid out the fresh ones that Ingrid had brought. She sat down at the piano bench, a muffin and napkin resting on her lap. Jen didn’t know if she was helping Nadine, had been invited to attend, or was simply here for the entertainment.

  A bedraggled Gary Gordon was next, wearing yesterday’s clothes, eyes covered by sunglasses which he didn’t bother to remove. He nodded once at Ingrid, looked sheepishly at Jen, ignored the others and sought the chair in the corner.

  Noon came. Then 12:05.

  “Anyone know why we’re here?” Gary said.

  “We all know why,” Jen said.

  “What I mean is, if one of us is a killer, they could save the rest of us some time and confess to it now.”

  “Go ahead if you want to, Gary.”

  The room was silent. Till then Jen hadn’t truly thought of one of them as a murderer. Someone she’d known and said hi to on the streets had killed Susan and Andrew Gordon. The odds were that person was in the room with her now.

  Where was Nadine Kelso?

  On cue, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Nadine came down slowly, grimacing, obviously in pain. She leaned on the railing as she took the last step, and walked over to the parlor.

  “Can I share this?” she asked Kelly, seating herself on the other end of the piano bench.

  She leaned forward and sighed, settling her elbows on her knees. “Thanks everyone for coming.”

  “Where else would we be?” said Gary. He rubbed at his arm uncomfortably. Jen noticed his hands were still gray with grease. She moved to stand opposite Nadine, near the bay window that looked onto the parking lot. If one of them ran for the door, she’d be in place to intercept them.

  Peter Quayle sat next to Ingrid on the couch, nursing a coffee. His heel tapped the carpet at an upbeat pace. He’d changed into a clean dress shirt he kept at the station, but the collar was open and the sleeves unbuttoned, and his face showed the toll of the night in prison. The entire group looked like it had been rescued after a night in the woods. Hardly their best Sunday-go-to-meeting outfits.

  “We’re still waiting for one,” Nadine said. “But I think we can start now. Chief Eng and I appreciate your cooperation.”

  This was news to Jen. Nadine looked at her from over the brim of her coffee. Serene, Jen thought. Like it had already played out in her mind, and this was merely the encore performance.

  “You mean you’re not going to wait until Roach gets here?” asked Quayle.

  Nadine sipped her coffee and didn’t respond directly.

  “Everyone in this room has a vested interest in finding the Gordons’ killer,” she said. “Yet everyone here has also lied to us—some people, several times. It hasn’t been easy to piece together the truth of what happened. But why don’t we try?

  “We’ll start with what happened the afternoon of January 1st. Andrew Gordon was at home by himself. Susan and Bobby were at her mother’s. In the afternoon Andrew talked with Kelly Wells, and invited her over for dinner that night. Later, around seven, his brother Gary phoned Ingrid’s and asked Susan if she’d walk with him. He had something important he wanted to tell her.

  “Gary and Susan went for their walk around seven thirty. We don’t need to get into what was said. Whatever it was, it upset him, and by the time he’d walked Susan back to her mother’s house, he was ready to drink and be alone.”

  Gary shrugged. He was slumped in the chair, head reclined back to stare at the jeweled glass light fixture hanging from the ceiling.

  “Kelly was at the Gordon house until Andrew received a call shortly after seven,” Nadine continued. “It was Ingrid, saying that Susan was out and Bobby was still there. Could he come and pick his son up? His dinner with Kelly hadn’t been going smoothly—again, no need to get into details—and he asked Kelly to leave.

  “We can presume that Andrew drove straight to his mother-in-law’s house, spent about ten minutes inside rounding up his son, and then drove home. He would have gotten there around 7:30. That gives us about thirty minutes where the house was empty. Kelly walked back here, Gary was still walking with Susan, Ingrid was at home, and Peter Quayle was on patrol. None of which can be confirmed one hundred percent.”

  Several mouths began to open in rebuttal, but Nadine held up her hand.

  “During this time period, someone entered the house and tampered with the carbon monoxide detector, cutting the alarm so that the machine would still seem to be operating, but wouldn’t make a sound. The garage door clicker and the automatic starter for the Jeep were likely taken before this, giving the killer access to the vehicle and the garage.”

  Nadine paused and refilled her cup. Jen glanced around the room. Gary continued to examine the ceiling. Quayle kept up his rhythmic tapping. Kelly finished her muffin and flung crumbs off her knees. Ingrid and Tim sat still, weighing what they’d heard.

  “Some of what follows is conjecture,” Nadine admitted. “That night Susan came home shortly after Andrew and Bobby. If she and Andrew fought—and I don’t think it likely—then they made up and went to sleep, together, in the same bed. The generator was left on at night for heat, and to charge the battery for the morning. They were all asleep, with the sound of the generator masking the noise of the garage door being raised.

  “The killer drove Susan’s Jeep into the garage and opened the door connecting the garage to the hallway. The killer left the same way they had come in, closing the garage door with the clicker, and then, once it was shut, starting the engine.

  “The engine ran for hours, flooding the house. A lethal concentration of PPM would happen quickly given the circumstances. Such an amount would be enough to trigger a laryngeal edema, the cause of death for Andrew and Susan.

  “Imagine them in their beds, unable to hear the running engine, unable to smell the fumes that would kill them. Imagine then the killer, opening the garage, holding their breath, driving the Jeep out to the driveway, and closing the garage door. In a minute or two the scene was arranged in a way that almost fooled us into thinking it was an accidental death.”

  Peter Quayle seemed close to tears. Kelly handed him a napkin.

  “No one here has an alibi that completely rules out the two short intervals in the night necessary to kill the Gordons. And all of you stand to benefit in some way from their deaths.”

  “I don’t,” Tim Miller said hotly.

  “Neither do I,” said Kelly.

  “Check with your grandmother,” Nadine told the young man. “You’ll find you’re the benefactor of your mother’s estate. Whether that’s enough to commit murder or not is beside the point. As for Kelly, perhaps Andrew’s intentions weren’t as pure-hearted as you’ve told us.”

  “He was always looking at her,” Gary said. “Leering. Any time we came to the Lodge for drinks, my brother would sit with an eye to the door.”

  “He was only ever nice to me,” Kelly said.

  “In any case,” Nadine said, “ridding oneself of an unwanted admirer is only one possible motive. Hello, Karl. Come on in.”

  Karl Roach stood in the doorway, watching them. Jen hadn’t heard the man enter. He was dressed as always in his beige jacket and slacks. A green fishing hat was clasped in his hands.

  Nadine waved him in and pointed to a seat next to the bench. Roach scowled as he stepped past Peter Quayle. Instead of sitting, he stood in front of the empty chair, looking towards the center of the group.

  “Anything you’d like to say, Karl?” Nadine asked him.

  “It was me that did it,” Roach said. “I hurt the Gordons. The other murder, too, in Spokane. All of it was me.”

  Chapter 54

  In his halting English, Karl Roach laid out what had happened in Spokane years ago. He’d
been a janitor and maintenance man, on the run from a wife who didn’t love him, and various minor crimes. His official duties involved sweeping and painting and checking the rat traps, though in actuality he repaired ovens and fridges, rigged lighting when necessary, and tested smoke alarms. He was in and out of most suites so often that the landlord had given him his own set of keys.

  He saw the tenants, and how they lived. One woman, Sadie Trevor, captured his attention in particular. She had done some modelling, and would occasionally answer the door in provocative clothing. Roach began to suspect it wasn’t accidental, that the woman meant for him to see what she revealed, and that an unspoken offer of more was behind the display.

  Roach had prepared himself specially that morning. Showered and shaved, donned his best work suit, and purchased a bouquet of flowers. He wasn’t sure why he’d taken the umbrella with him. Roach had stolen a box of them from a previous job in Seattle, intending to sell them. However, the weather in Spokane was more arid, and his side job yielded little other than another box of junk for him to trip over.

  He returned with the flowers and the umbrella only to see Sadie Trevor entering her building. He’d anticipated having a few minutes to compose himself and decide what he wanted to say. No time. She was already walking past him.

  Everything from there ran together in a jumble. He stuttered out his words, his tongue tripping on syllables he thought he’d long mastered. She smiled, but he saw it wasn’t sincere. It was a mask atop worry, a way to get him to leave her alone.

  She rushed past him, into her room, and locked the door.

  He debated what this meant for his chances, and decided that he’d press the issue now, hear a definitive no, or the yes he knew she desired as much as he did. He unlocked her door, and calmed her by saying how much he loved her, and these flowers are for you.

  She screamed.

  Rejection and heartbreak and anger flooded him—to lead him on like that!—and he reached for her. She fought. They fell to the floor and his hands sought out her neck almost as if that had been their desire from the beginning. His thumbs pressed into the soft center of her throat.

  Before it was over her boyfriend came home. Roach was prepared for him. A length of cord ripped from one of the appliances served as a ligature. Once he was dealt with it was easy to reattach the cord, plug in the toaster or coffee maker as if nothing had happened. No murder weapon would ever be found.

  He’d thought of a killing he’d read about where an umbrella had been left at the scene. The victims posed in fancy dress attire. Had part of him known from the start that this was the reason he’d brought the umbrella? Perhaps. He placed it near the dead man and began dressing him in the nicest coat Roach found in the man’s closet.

  That was when the woman woke up. Coughing, confused as to where she was.

  Roach knelt by her and began to finish what he’d started, when he’d heard a noise from the front door. A voice accompanied the knocking. He’d left the apartment to see to the door, and by then his passion had cooled, and rather than revenge for being spurned, all he wanted was to get away from there.

  He’d run, first to Seattle, then to Castle Rock, where no one knew him. He’d wanted only peace. A chance to fish. That didn’t seem a lot to ask for.

  Peter Quayle had listened to the story with what looked to Jen like relief. He was grinning by the end of it, hearing his suspicions borne out. But at the mention of the other murder, his grin faded.

  “What about the couple in Seattle?” he said.

  “I was not responsible,” Roach said. “Only the man in Spokane.”

  “Impossible.”

  Roach smiled at him. “Why would I lie?”

  The former officer stared at the floor, realizing what that meant. Jen understood. Quayle’s relentless dedication had played a part in bringing about the confession from Roach. At the same time, his efforts had undermined another investigation, and perhaps aided the original Cover Model Killer in escaping justice. It was hard to stomach, the ways our intentions veered from the desired outcomes.

  “What about the Gordons?” Jen said to Roach. “Explain to us why you thought they needed to be killed.”

  “He hated me. You saw the sign.”

  “A lot of people hate you, yet you targeted Andrew Gordon and his family.”

  Roach nodded. He sat down and accepted a cup of coffee and a plain cake donut from Kelly. He looked neither apologetic nor triumphant. Jen would describe him as looking at a loss. Where to start with things?

  “Since I moved here I’ve always been watched,” Roach said. He pointed a finger at Quayle. “He and I spend our time together, on opposite sides of the river. He wanted to keep an eye on me. To punish me.”

  Quayle was nodding, still unable to raise his gaze from the carpet.

  “As the time goes by, he is getting desperate. Why am I not in jail? He begins to realize he has wasted much of his life. But he won’t give up, so instead he finds another man to help him.”

  “Andrew,” Nadine said.

  “He talks about how I am a killer and why I am not in jail. He says I will attack the man’s family. He should be afraid. Like I am a monster.” Roach looked at Quayle. “Yes?”

  “That’s right,” Quayle said.

  “He and Andrew make a sign to frighten me. They use the bible quote, to the ends of the earth, to show that I can’t hide. They want me to leave town, to be afraid of them.”

  He bit his donut in half and swallowed it after one chew. Guzzled a third of his coffee, and continued speaking with a full mouth.

  “So yes, I find out where this man lives. I go there at night and open his garage. I run his car and poison him, to show that I do what I want and no one stops me.”

  “You bastard,” said Tim Miller.

  Jen was ready to step in if the young man pounced on Roach. Tim trembled. His grandmother held his shoulder and wrapped an arm around him.

  “Why kill Susan, too?” Jen said. “Why not just kill Andrew?”

  Roach shrugged. “What do I care? Maybe I didn’t know she was at home.”

  “What about shooting at Ingrid and Kelly? Why do that?”

  “To frame me,” Quayle muttered.

  “Let him say it,” Jen told her former colleague.

  Roach nodded. “Yes, to frame. And to scare her.” He looked at Ingrid. “I see you at your coffee shop, try to talk to you, but you wouldn’t let me in.”

  Tim was out of his seat, Ingrid’s arms flung away, and struck Roach in the mouth. Roach fell back into his chair and Tim struck him again. Nadine put her arms between the two, while Jen and Quayle pulled Tim off the fallen man.

  When they were separated and had settled down, Nadine said, “Finish your account, Karl.”

  Roach wiped at the spilled coffee on the leg of his clothes. His breathing was heavy from the attack, but otherwise he seemed undisturbed by what had happened. Tim, for his part, had returned to his grandmother’s side, but seemed barely able to control himself.

  “There’s nothing more,” Roach said. “I do these things for my own reasons. No one in town would have known, if not for you.”

  “Thank you,” Nadine said to the killer. “It couldn’t have been an easy story to tell, especially to a group like this. And now that we’ve heard your confession, let’s talk about what really happened on January 1st.”

  Chapter 55

  Nadine Kelso stood up, grimacing, and leaned back against the side of the piano.

  “It all comes down to lies,” she said. “Lies on top of lies, told for a myriad of reasons. To hide guilt of course, but also to hide innocence. To hurt others, but also out of kindness.

  “Gary lied about where he was that night. Ingrid lied about where her daughter was. Kelly lied about meeting Andrew for dinner. Quayle enmeshed himself in a lie, pursuing it to the point it cost him his job. I could go on, but I think we all agree on the point.

  “What Karl told us about the killing in Spokane is the truth
. In a way, those events set in motion what occurred on the 1st. He committed murder and ran, first to Seattle, then here. On the way he attracted the attention of an inexperienced cop named Peter Quayle, who’d pursue Roach at the cost of his career, settling in Castle Rock so as to keep an eye on him.

  “After years of watching Roach, something snapped in Quayle. He could no longer tell himself that keeping an eye on the killer was good enough. He was getting older, for one thing, and his obsession was beginning to damage his relationships at work. Chief Eng no longer trusted him when it came to Roach. The killer had to be flushed out, and to do that he needed allies. Do I have that right?”

  “Pretty much,” Quayle said. “So I went to Andrew.”

  “Why would a thirtysomething businessman wish to be embroiled in something like that? I can’t say for certain, but I can hazard a guess. Andrew had gone from running his father’s business to a small town existence of raising his kid. He had an interest in the garage where his brother worked, but other than bookkeeping, had no skills in the matter. The money he received from selling the family business was dwindling. He didn’t even have enough for a new car.”

  “But Susan was doing well,” Ingrid said.

  Nadine smiled. “And that’s why he joined up with Quayle. Andrew had begun to feel like less of a provider. Ferrying Bobby to school, making meals, doing the books at the garage—it wasn’t enough. He’d been a boss at one time. Now, other than his brother, who was there to lord over?”

  “Believe me,” Gary said, “he lorded plenty over me.”

  “His wife was thriving and he felt useless. Suddenly, here was a Big Important Threat for Andrew to focus on. A murderer was in town, and only he and Quayle could stop him. Andrew happily helped with the sign, borrowing Ingrid’s station wagon to help Quayle place it where Roach would see it. He felt like he now had a purpose in life. Doing this played to his vanity as a man.”