Is it just bad grammar? Am I taking the ramblings of a nut job and inferring too much?
“Shit.” Something about this is wrong.
My phone rings, an internal call, but not from anyone in the office-their caller ID would show up. It’s not from Betty because she’s not here. It’s a call from outside, being routed through the directory to me.
“Paul Riley,” I say.
“Mr. Riley, this is Gwendolyn Lake.”
Speak of the devil. I don’t say anything. If she has something to tell me, she has to want to do it.
The phone line goes quiet. There is background noise, someone shouting an order, people talking. She’s at her diner, presumably.
“I wasn’t honest with you yesterday,” she says.
“I-” I decide not to comment.
“You figured as much.”
“I had my suspicions.”
“I said I didn’t want to help. But I do. I want to talk to you.”
“I’m free now.” I sit back in my chair.
“Good,” she says. “I’m across the street.”
McDERMOTT STEPS OUT INTO the fresh air for only the second time in six hours. He savors it, despite the thick humidity. The neighbors and press have gathered around the police tape surrounding the perimeter of the property. An officer, taking statements, walks over.
“This guy’s a friggin’ ghost, Mike. Neighbors say he stayed in his house practically all the time. He’d leave at night sometimes, at most. Hardly ever saw him. Said he orders pizza or Chinese food every night, and him answering the door was about the only time anyone laid eyes on him. He even paid someone to mow his lawn. Neighbors said they kept their kids away from his property. Looks like he creeped everyone out”
“Keep talking to ‘em,” McDermott says. He turns to Powers, one of the detectives. “I want Professor Albany at the station,” he says. “I don’t care what he’s doing. Grab the ACA”-the assistant county attorney assigned to the station house-“and start with affidavits for warrants. We’re moving this morning.”
“Got it, Mike.”
He grabs his arm. “And do the same thing for Harland Bentley.”
He uses his cell phone to call Sloan, one of the detectives on the case, the same one who called him earlier.
“Hang on, Mike:” Sloan takes a minute, giving instructions to someone. “Okay. So here’s what we have so far. The Vicky is one Brenda Stoller. Grad student and part-time model. Found in her SUV, backseat, in the parking lot of E-Z Days Hardware. Her throat was slashed.”
“And?”
“And yeah, a guy came in yesterday asking for a Trim-Meter chain saw. We got the store vids and an ID from the salesman. It’s our offender. Why this lady, Mike? She walks in and buys some lightbulbs and this happens?”
“Hell if I know. She got in the way somehow.” He thinks about that a moment. “Describe her to me, Jimmy.”
“Young, pretty, dressed to the nines.”
“Describe her outfit”
“Oh, hot pink shirt, black pants, heels. Nice body. I mean, this was a very pretty lady”
“Any chance she could be confused for a pro?”
“A pro? Well, shit-I guess so. Pretty sexy outfit, but not that-oh, yeah, I suppose. Why you asking?”
“I’m not sure.” He wipes the sweat off his forehead. The basement turned into a sauna, once everyone was down there working on it. “Something about this guy and prostitutes. Run a sheet, just for the hell of it. Anything from the vids in the parking lot?”
“Not yet, but we’re working on it”
“Get me the car he was driving, Jimmy. His own car is in the garage. He’s using a rental. Get me plates. He’s on the run.”
“Got it”
McDermott sighs. They were so close to getting this guy. “Tell me about the other one.”
“The male vic is one Ray Barnacke, the owner of Varten’s Tools and Construction. His neck was broken. And you were right, Varten’s was one of the distributors of Trim-Meter chain saws. One of the employees says there’s a Trim-Meter missing from the wall.”
“Shit.” McDermott shakes his head. “He was supposed to call us.”
“No vids, either. Place had no cameras.”
“Great. And it was a broken neck? That’s it?”
“That’s it. No signs of torture. No signs of any of the other weapons from the song. But obviously, now he’s got the saw.”
“Yeah. Jesus Christ. Listen, Jimmy-have them check the victim’s left foot, between the pinkie toe and the fourth toe, for an incision.”
“Huh?”
“Just have them check, Jim.”
“Okay. Left foot. Okay. So you have a motive for this guy yet? You find anything good?”
McDermott squints into the sunlight. “I’m beginning to wonder if there is a motive. That assumes we can apply rational thought to this guy.”
“Okay. I’ll get back to you, soon as I have anything. What are you doing now?”
“I’m going to brief the commander,” McDermott says. “And then I’m going to see Harland Bentley’s ex-wife.”
I MEET GWENDOLYN LAKE at the diner across the street from my office. She is sitting in a booth with her hands around a cup of coffee.
“I don’t like being here,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “I don’t want to be here.”
Like an alcoholic returning to a bar, I suppose she means. This is where she lived when she started self-destructing. She even looks like she doesn’t belong, at least in the commercial district, wearing a soft blue T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. Her hair is hanging, as before, straight past her shoulders. Her bright green eyes peer sadly through her glasses at me.
“It took me so long to wipe the grime off. Y‘know?”
I tell the waitress I’ll have some coffee, because I could use the boost. “I’m not your psychiatrist, Gwendolyn.”
She smiles, her face blushing. She takes a deep breath and says, “I pretended I didn’t know who Frank Albany was. That wasn’t true. I do.”
That much, I’d already suspected, when she slipped up and referred to “Frank” during our conversation after claiming not to know him. Okay, so score one for her.
“What a creep.” Her lips curl inside her mouth. A hand comes off the counter. “Hanging out with college girls. Girls in his class.”
“Tell me,” I say.
“I can’t say for absolutely certain. But I thought that-I thought that the two of them-”
I take a sip of the coffee put in front of me, burning my tongue.
“Professor Albany and Cassie were having an affair. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I thought so.” She looks up at me. “Ellie thought so, too.” She gauges my reaction before continuing. “I’d have thought you, of all people, would know this.”
“And how in the hell would I have known that?” I ask, de fensively. “Ellie was dead, you were gone, and Professor Albany wasn’t going to publish that information.”
Gwendolyn moves her hands around the coffee cup, as if she were molding pottery.
“Okay” I cool down. No point in going backward. “What else, Gwendolyn?”
She continues with her nervous, fidgety hands. “Ellie told me that Cassie was pregnant”
I close my eyes. A suspicion confirmed. The lawyer in me is thinking through admissibility problems, the hearsay rule. Cassie told Ellie told Gwendolyn. “When?” I ask.
She shrugs, still staring at the countertop. “Sometime during the school year, is the best I can tell you. When it was warm. May or June.”