“Looks like somebody’s still at home,” Spinney murmured. “Son of a bitch never leaves the place,” Smith said. I looked at Smith out of the corner of my eye. For the first time, I sensed a small bounce to his voice. And earlier, while Spinney and I were being debriefed on the Earle Renaud bust, I’d felt somehow that the rigidity with which he’d addressed me from the start had melted a couple of degrees. It was nothing measurable, but it was more than my wishful thinking. For some reason, I’d finally been elevated from being a mere 5A investigator and a thorn in Smith’s side. It shouldn’t have mattered to me one way or the other, but I was pleased nevertheless. It justified the number of times I’d resisted simply writing the man off, as I always sensed Spinney had, perhaps to his own loss. We continued up the hill, drove around the edge of the building, and parked next to the Cherokee with the “ORDER” license plate. It was only six at night, but already pitch-dark. Sarris answered our knock with a flashlight in his hand. He led us without uttering a word through the gigantic gloominess of the meeting room to his private inner sanctuary. Hamilton and Smith had never been in that part of the building before, and were obviously surprised by its Greenwich, Connecticut gloss.
Sarris seemed totally distracted, which made me wonder what might have happened during the few hours since Spinney and I had last %235 sat in this room. It might have been that Sarris had had time to mull over Spinney’s dire prediction of his fate and that of his organization, but I sensed there was something more, something tangible that had made him realize just how thin the ice was beneath him.
After we were all seated, he fixed me with his large, dark eyes. At some early point in this case, he had focused on me, first as his primary antagonist, and now I thought, almost as a personal nemesis.
“What do you want?” I looked at the others. Hamilton gave me a slight nod to go ahead.
“We arrested a man named Earle Renaud a few hours ago, for the murder of Rennie Wilson.” “Good for you. Of what interest is that to me?” Sarris crossed his legs nonchalantly, but I felt the gesture belied a subtle tension in his features.
“It turns out Earle had been watching Rennie for quite some time before he stuck him with a knife, long enough to see him meet with you and Julie Wingate.” Sarris remained silent.
“Do you admit to meeting Rennie the day he died?” “You’re the one with the witness, Lieutenant.” “What did you three talk about?” Sarris propped his elbows on the arms of his chair and made a steeple of his fingers in front of his mouth. I recalled his earlier comment that he’d had a lot of practice appearing in court. He had to walk a fine line with us-to appear accommodating and yet stay clear of self-incrimination. But I sensed from his curtness he was also running on limited reserves, and that the game of cat and mouse was becoming increasingly less rewarding. It was a weakness I hoped to work on.
He finally cleared his throat, opting for a half-truth. “Our meeting was clandestine, not illegal. Mr. Wilson invited us there.” “Why?”
“Oh, he was concerned that Julie Wingate was somehow involved in implicating him in her father’s death.” “By planting his lighter under Wingate’s body.” Sarris hesitated. “He did mention a lighter.” “Why did you agree to meet with Rennie at all? You were under no obligation to him, were you?” “Of course not, but Julie was quite upset over her father’s death. I thought this meeting might be of some help to her, maybe shed some light on why Bruce Wingate was killed.” “Weren’t you a little nervous about being alone in the woods with a suspected murderer?” “I had no quarrel with Wilson.” %236 “You had no quarrel with a man who’d been blackmailing you for months?” Sarris sat absolutely still.
“A man to whom you’d been supplying women, including Julie Wingate, because he had information that would shut the Order down overnight?
Seems to me that might constitute grounds for a quarrel, even a rather violent one.” “You said yourself you’d captured Wilson’s murderer.” “But Rennie Wilson had been framed by the man who killed Bruce Wingate.
Wilson wasn’t supposed to die; he was supposed to take the fall for the death of a man that had caused you grievous harm. In fact, Bruce Wingate was a challenge to your credibility within the Order.” I paused here for a theatrical mix of fact and bluff. “He had killed five of your followers, burned one of your houses to the ground, and was intending on kidnapping his own daughter from under your protection.
With Wingate’s death and Rennie taking the blame, you took care of two major problems with one fell swoop. Very efficient.” Sarris’s eyebrows shot up, in what I was afraid was genuine surprise. “You’re saying I killed Wingate?” “It fits. We have a witness to his murder, and another who will testify that Rennie Wilson was blackmailing you.” Sarris was now visibly perturbed. “You have a witness who says I killed Bruce Wingate?” “Paul Gorman was also at the bottom of that ravine. Wingate had asked him to come along for backup. He saw the whole thing.” “Well, he didn’t see me. I was nowhere near that ravine. Do you think I’d be stupid enough to jeopardize all I’ve built to kill Bruce Wingate?
He wasn’t undermining my credibility. The idea’s absurd.” “I hardly thought you’d like it. A jury probably will, though, especially when they hear how far you went to keep Rennie quiet, first by paying him off in sexual favors, and then by framing him for murder.’z My mind was whirling by now, flipping though the facts we’d built up over the past several days, looking for the connections that would widen the cracks in Sarris’s composure. Rennie had begun blackmailing Sarris six months ago, more or less. He’d also lost his lighter to Julie Wingate at that time, and she’d been the first woman Sarris had supplied. What had happened six months ago that gave Rennie the ammunition he needed to put the squeeze on Sarris?
And then it came to me, like a bolt from the blue. It fit perfectly, gave a logic to it all. But it needed to be confirmed. Only Sarris could do that, and only if he believed I was already sure of my facts.
I sat back in my chair and smiled at him, trying to hide my nervousness.
%237 “That must have seemed like a nice piece of irony-framing Rennie for murder-since that’s exactly what he was holding over you.” The room was absolutely still. I could hear my own heartbeat thumping away behind my temples, its rapid rate belying my outward calm.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sarris said in a flat voice, devoid of conviction.
“The child that fell from the bridge, the toddler that supposedly shook off his companion and went running to his death on the streambed below.
The child that was actually murdered, and whose murder you conspired to cover up.” “You’re bluffing.” “Really? Did you think Rennie would keep that information to himself, a good-ol’-boy redneck like that? Hell, the first thing he did was share some of those women with his best friend in East Burke. Discretion wasn’t his long suit-he had you by the balls and it tickled him pink.” Sarris dropped his eyes to the floor.
His hands were on his knees, his feet flat on the ground. It was the posture of a far older man, browbeaten and tired, whose resistance had all but drained from his soul. He let out a long sigh. The bluff had worked. “That child was mentally retarded, did you know that?” “Yes, I did.” “In previous centuries, its death would have been seen as a blessing, God calling His own back to His breast. And in the animal world, it wouldn’t have survived its first day of life. We have surely turned the world on its ear, we civilized men.” His voice was bitter.