“Did you question the people who live around the lake?”
“Of course. No one admitted being out there, but local kids sneak onto the property all the time and they wouldn’t have come forward.”
“Who were your other suspects?”
“That’s obvious. Vanessa Wingate was staying at the house and she was acting very strange.”
“But you didn’t arrest her.”
“We didn’t have probable cause. There was no blood on her, and we never found the knife, which suggested that the killer had taken it with him. If she and the congressman were lovers she might have had a motive, but she denied it. When we searched the house it looked like she was staying in the guest room. Glass slept in a king-size bed and only one side looked like it had been slept on. We wanted to ask more questions, but General Wingate spirited Miss Wingate away before we could interrogate her.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I said. I found Miss Wingate’s name and a California address in her purse. It took a while to track down the General, but we notified him as soon as we could. He told us he was coming to the hospital, and he was there a few hours later.”
Harney shook his head, still awed by the memory of the General’s arrival.
“That was some entrance. He came in by helicopter with two bodyguards and a psychiatrist who worked at a place called Serenity Manor. The General just took over. He was like that. One of the most forceful and charismatic men I’ve ever met. I don’t doubt he’ll be our next president. Being in his presence is like standing next to bottled lightning.”
They drove around a curve, and Ami saw large black metal letters that spelled out “Lost Lake Resort” attached to a low stone wall. Harney turned onto a paved two-lane road that wended its way through an evergreen forest for a quarter-mile. Blocking access to the grounds was a gate that could be raised or lowered by an access card or by a security guard in a small brick gatehouse. The gate and the guard didn’t look as if they afforded any real security-anyone could sneak through the woods on either side, and the guard was old, fat, and slow-moving-but they gave the illusion of protection and an air of exclusivity to the wealthy owners of the expensive homes that dotted the lake.
“Hey, Ray,” Sheriff Harney said.
“Sheriff,” the guard replied with a nod.
“Going to take a ride around, if that’s okay with you.”
The guard nodded again, raised the gate, and waved them through. After another eighth of a mile Ami saw signs for the lodge. The road forked and Harney turned left, away from the lodge, toward a range of low green hills. Every so often a driveway appeared. Most of the houses were screened from view by trees, but occasionally Ami could see one of the summer homes. For the most part, they were overbuilt-massive ranches, imitation Spanish villas, or huge stone fortresses. Ami felt as if she were in the midst of an architectural battlefield.
“What happened to Vanessa after her father arrived at the hospital?” she asked, her eyes turned toward the landscape but her mind on the sheriff’s story.
“All hell broke loose. She started screaming when the General walked into her room. They had to sedate her. Then the psychiatrist who was with the General had a conference with the doctors at the hospital. Next thing we knew, our star witness was lifting off in that helicopter and that’s the last we saw of her.”
“Didn’t you try to stop them from taking her away?”
“Not really. We’re just small-town cops. The General, he was something else. Earl did say something about her being our only witness, and the General promised he’d make his daughter available whenever we needed her. What could Earl say? Wingate was her father, and Lost Lake Hospital couldn’t provide the type of psychiatric care Wingate’s doctor said she needed.” Harney shrugged. “That was that, except for the FBI man.”
“Who?”
“Name was Victor Hobson, a real tough guy. The FBI was involved because Glass was a congressman and Hobson had been assigned to the case. He showed up a few hours after the General left, and he was furious when he heard what the General had done.”
“Was any progress ever made with the case?”
“Not really. The General brought Rice’s army records with him. Rice had been discharged for psychiatric reasons. Wingate said he was a very disturbed young man. Seems he and Miss Wingate went to high school together, and he had a crush on her. Then they’d met again in D.C. where Miss Wingate was going to law school and working for the congressman. Wingate thought that Rice was obsessed with his daughter and probably killed Glass because he imagined the congressman and his daughter were lovers.”
“Was Rice ever arrested?”
“No. We put out an APB, and the FBI had him on the ten-most-wanted list for a while, but I never heard anything else about him except for a second murder of some General on the east coast where Rice was a suspect. After that, nothing.”
A driveway appeared and Harney turned into it. At the end of the driveway was a two-story log cabin set back behind a manicured lawn and some flower beds.
“I thought you might like to see the place. The Reynolds family owns it now. He’s a banker in San Francisco. They come out a lot in the summer, but they’re in Europe now. I can’t let you in.”
“I understand.”
“The place was hard to sell after Glass died. You can imagine the problem. When the Reynoldses got it, they redecorated, knocked down a few walls. I’ve been inside, and it doesn’t look the same. But the grounds are pretty much the way they were that night.”
Ami got out. It was hot and the midday air was still. She stared at the house and turned slowly in a circle, trying to imagine the way it would look in the dead of night. The sheriff waited patiently, then followed Ami when she walked around to the back. The house had blocked the breeze from the lake, and it felt cool and welcome.
“That dock was there then,” Harney said, pointing out a short wooden pier. “Glass had a speedboat he tooled around in. And that’s the path to the tennis court where I first saw Miss Wingate.”
Ami looked at the dock for a moment before turning her attention to the path that led to the tennis court. She imagined Vanessa Wingate wandering out of the darkness in her white nightdress.
“The path goes past the tennis courts to a narrow rocky beach you can swim off or picnic on. We think Rice put it there.”
“It’s all so peaceful, so beautiful,” Ami said. “It’s hard to imagine a murder happening here.”
“It’s our first and only one, thank God.”
Ami wandered back across the lawn. The curtains were closed, but there was a slit between the curtains and the sill. She looked into the kitchen.
“That’s new,” Harney said. “The Reynoldses put in the island and the convection oven. Those marble countertops weren’t there either.”
Ami wondered how much remodeling you would have to do before the ghosts left you alone. She turned away from the house.
“Thanks for the tour.”
“Did you learn anything helpful?” the sheriff asked.
“No. Maybe there’ll be something in the files.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The file for the Glass murder was waiting for Ami when she and Sheriff Harney returned from the lake. She went through everything, including the pictures from the crime scene. Ami had never seen a murdered man, and the way Glass had been killed was so horrible that she felt light-headed after looking at the photographs.
The only new information Ami gleaned from the file was that no army records were inventoried during the search of Glass’s house. Either Vanessa was lying and she had never brought the files to Glass or Rice had taken them with him when he fled. One thing in Vanessa’s and Rice’s favor was the fact that they had both told the same story about the records, and Ami was certain that they’d had no opportunity to talk since Carl had been arrested. Of course, the fact that Vanessa had found records of military personnel, including Carl, in her father’s safe didn’t necessarily mean that the secret unit existed.