“You're going to visit him in the hospital?"
"Yes."
"What if he says that he murdered Teddy?"
"Then I want to know why."
She traced the lines of my face for a while, and I did the same to her, stroking her hair. So many huge decisions loomed nearby, and it seemed like I was the only one who felt any pressure from them, a coward at heart. I let my fingers continue to glide across her throat in the playful way we sometimes did when not thinking of so much that might come between us. I ran my palm lightly over her belly and could almost sense our child growing there, heading toward the world.
"He came back in," she said.
"Who?"
“That football player who still hates you, Arnie."
"Devington," I said. "He came here again?"
"Yeah."
I thought of him unchanging through the years, emotionally and mentally stagnant while his body grew to fat, balding prematurely, his knees probably not in the best of shape, so that they sounded full of sand when he got up in the morning. Perfecting his pettiness. "What did he say?"
"Nothing. He just watched me."
"Watched you?"
"Stared a little while he wandered around the store. Don't get upset. It was nothing, really. I sort of feel a little sorry for him. He seems like he's trying to find something he already knows is gone, but can't help checking for it anyway."
"Okay," I said.
Watched her.
I spent a half hour downtown shopping until I found what I needed, then called Lowell.
"What's that noise?" he asked.
"A Suburban with a bad transmission in the left lane."
"So you finally bought a cell phone. Keep a set of fresh batteries on you. I've got a feeling you're going to be on that thing a lot."
"It's a rechargeable."
"You buy two. Keep one always charged so when the other starts going you just switch them."
"Oh."
"Give me the number."
I gave it to him. I also gave him the doubts that had been stacking up like firewood in my mind. "Listen, this might sound stupid-"
"Hell, when you admit it yourself, I know it's going to be bad."
"-but are you sure it was Teddy?"
He sighed heavily and there was a long pause that kept lengthening until I thought he might have gotten into his car and was about to drive up behind me. "You're dogging my steps, Jonny Kendrick."
I couldn't argue, and waited until he decided whether he'd threaten me, give me a lecture, or let it roll. We'd played it every way in the past. The cell phone had clear sound, and I could hear his slow, regular breathing while he ran it through his mind and wondered if I'd trip him up on this. He'd stand for a lot, but never that.
I thought I might have stepped over the line this time, as the silence thickened, but eventually Lowell said, "Cause of death, about what you'd expect. Multiple blunt trauma to the head. We matched fingerprints from the victim to Teddy's passport."
"Dental records?"
"No dental records on Theodore Harnes, Jr. that we could find. They spent most of their time in Asia, Africa, South America, and the Netherlands. The kid didn't put in a single grade in our school system. Harnes had private tutors, he's a certified tutor himself, and taught Teddy at home when they were in the country, which wasn't often over the past twenty years. Teddy was born in Roggeveldberge, Cape Province, South Africa. He'd never been in jail or the service, never been printed outside of his passport."
"You matched him to latent prints found in the house? In Teddy's room?"
"Hey, 'latent prints,' you been reading Ed McBain novels again, Jonny? You even know what 'latent' means? The mansion has six maids from Burma who can't speak English and have nothing to do all morning and night except cook, scrub, dust, vacuum, and do little things like pluck hairs out of brushes. Entire place gleamed like a sheet of ice, and smelled of four daily coats of furniture polish. They're teenage girls, and not one of them can so much as raise her chin high enough to look a person in the eye. More than likely, they're also Harnes' personal harem and he uses them to keep business associates happy."
"Jesus."
"Harnes probably bought them from their starving families for twenty bucks total. The man makes his fortune off slave labor." Lowell's tone didn't waver. "Not everybody is lucky enough to grow up in Felicity Grove."
It sounded like sarcasm, but he meant it sincerely.
"Okay," I said.
"Teddy wasn't murdered in his bedroom, there was no legal impetus to perform a full forensic investigation there once we established his identity. Sheriff Broghin was satisfied with the passport match. Why wouldn't he be?"
"And you?" I asked.
"I got Harnes' permission to inspect Teddy's room, but there were no grounds to bring in the lab boys and start dusting and pulling hair samples. I searched around, but didn't find much. Kid lived like monk in a cloister. Just a few books and some clothes. No posters, videos, or CDs. No love letters from Alice Conway, none of the usual stuff you'd expect from your average twenty-year-old."
''Art supplies?"
"No, though Alice and Harnes both mentioned that Teddy enjoyed painting. He didn't have any brushes or easels in his room or anywhere else I looked in the house."
"What about his driver's license?"
"Didn't have one."
"A kid rich enough to own a fleet of Lamborghinis, and he couldn't even drive? So Alice Conway wasn't exaggerating about him being a recluse."
"He sure didn't go to any father-son picnics."
I knew my time was running out; I could tell I'd just about reached my limit with Lowell, and was surprised he'd allowed me as much leeway as he had. He would be about this close to hanging up on me, anyway, so I went for broke. "Teddy could have faked his passport if he needed to get away from his father badly enough."
Lowell had considered it, of course, and any other angle I could possibly come up with. "Badly enough to kill somebody and cut the guy's face off? No, it doesn't play out. Not like he just found a hitchhiker and laid him to waste. He would've needed the accomplice in order to use his prints on the passport."
"But-"
"Like most people, you think it's easy to get a solid print. You have no idea how easily they smudge and smear, and how difficult they are to get off an unwilling party, or a corpse. Like some talcum powder and scotch tape are all you need." A passing eighteen-wheeler drowned him out for a couple of seconds. ". . . assume he did want to get out from under the old man. If even half the rumors about Harnes are true, you know you're dealing with someone capable of cracking your head open or poisoning you in your sleep. He's not on any corporate boards, he runs his shop the old-fashioned way. Alone, and in complete control. If I had a millionaire father like that, a man who makes most of his money from slave labor around the world, and my father was pissed at me about something, I'd probably run-"
"No, you wouldn't, but Teddy might."
"-but nobody would do it by leaving a faceless corpse in the cemetery. If he had the money and resources to fake a passport, he's got the brains to go for the long haul. A fire, a car explosion, a rock-slide, those are more effective ways to erase yourself, if you wanted to play dead. Why leave room for questions and doubt afterwards? No, it doesn't play out. Teddy Harnes is dead."
How did any of it fall back to Crummler? What had he seen the night before the murder that brought him miles out of town in the middle of a freeze searching for me? What had scared him that much?
"Can you get me in to see Crummler?"
He thought about that for a while too, turning it over. He was right, I should've bought an extra battery. "Beats the hell out of me. I'm not sure I can. Why?"
"I don't know. But if I'd talked to him before I'd started pounding him, maybe we'd have some answers and understand what happened."