“I was in Cap City. Left at ten on Tuesday morning, got back late Wednesday night. Well, nine thirty or so, late for me.”
“I don’t suppose you had anyone with you,” Samuels said. “Just off on your own and kind of gathering your thoughts, right? Getting ready for the big game?”
“I—”
“Did you take your car or the white van? By the way, where did you have that van stashed? And how did you happen to steal one with New York plates in the first place? I’ve got a theory about that, but I’d love to have you confirm or deny—”
“Do you want to hear this or not?” Terry asked. He had, incredibly, begun to smile again. “Maybe you’re afraid to hear it. And maybe you should be afraid. You’re in shit up to your waist, Mr. Samuels, and it’s getting deeper.”
“Is that so? Then why am I the one who can walk out of here and go home when this interview is over?”
“Cool it,” Ralph said quietly.
Samuels turned to him, cowlick springing back and forth. Ralph saw nothing comical about it now. “Don’t tell me to cool it, Detective. We’re sitting here with a man who raped a kid with a tree branch and then tore out his throat like… like a fucking cannibal!”
Gold looked directly up at the camera in the corner, now speaking for some future judge and jury. “Stop acting like an angry child, Mr. District Attorney, or I’ll terminate this interview right here.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Terry said, “and I don’t know anything about a white van. I went with Everett Roundhill, Billy Quade, and Debbie Grant. The entire Flint High School English Department, in other words. My Expedition was in the shop because the air conditioner died, so we took Ev’s car. He’s the department chairman, and he’s got a BMW. Plenty of room. We left from the high school at ten.”
Samuels looked temporarily too perplexed by this to ask the obvious question, so Ralph did it. “What was in Cap City that would take four English teachers there in the middle of summer vacation?”
“Harlan Coben,” Terry said.
“Who’s Harlan Coben?” Bill Samuels asked. His interest in mystery stories had apparently peaked with Agatha Christie.
Ralph knew; he wasn’t much of a fiction reader, but his wife was. “The mystery writer?”
“The mystery writer,” Terry agreed. “Look, there’s a group called the Tri-State Teachers of English, and every year they hold a three-day midsummer conference. It’s the only time everyone can get together. There are seminars and panel discussions, that sort of thing. It’s held in a different city each year. This year it was Cap City’s turn. Only English teachers are like anyone else, it’s hard to get them together even in summer, because they’ve got so many other things going on—all the paint-up, fix-up stuff that didn’t get done during the school year, family vacations, plus various summer activities. For me it’s Little League and City League. So the TSTE always tries to get a big-name speaker as a draw for the middle day, which is when most attendees show up.”
“Which in this case was last Tuesday?” Ralph asked.
“Right. This year’s conference was at the Sheraton, from July 9th—the Monday—to July 11th, the Wednesday. I haven’t been to one of those conferences in five years, but when Ev told me that Coben was going to be the keynote speaker, and the other English teachers were going, I arranged for Gavin Frick and Baibir Patel’s dad to take the practices on Tuesday and Wednesday. It killed me to do it, with the semifinal game coming up, but I knew I’d be back for the practices on Thursday and Friday, and I didn’t want to miss Coben. I’ve read all his books. He’s great on plot, and he has a sense of humor. Also, the theme of this year’s conference was teaching popular adult fiction in grades seven through twelve, and that’s been a hot-button issue for years, especially in this part of the country.”
“Save the exposition,” Samuels said. “Get to the bottom line.”
“Fine. We went. We were there for the banquet lunch, we were there for Coben’s speech, we were there for the evening panel discussion at eight PM, we spent the night. Ev and Debbie had single rooms, but I split the cost of a double with Billy Quade. That was his idea. He said he was building an addition on his house, and had to economize. They’ll vouch for me.” He looked at Ralph and lifted his hands, palms out. “I was there. That’s the bottom line.”
Silence in the room. At last Samuels said, “What time was Coben’s speech?”
“Three o’clock,” Terry said. “Three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon.”
“How convenient,” Samuels said acidly.
Howie Gold smiled widely. “Not for you.”
Three o’clock, Ralph thought. Almost the same time that Arlene Stanhope claimed to have seen Terry putting Frank Peterson’s bicycle into the back of the stolen white van, and then riding away with the boy in the passenger seat. No, not even almost. Mrs. Stanhope said she’d heard the bell in the Town Hall clock announce the hour.
“The speech was in the Sheraton’s big meeting room?” Ralph asked.
“Yes. Right across from the banquet room.”
“And you’re sure it started at three.”
“Well, that’s when the TSTE chairman started her introduction. Which droned on for at least ten minutes.”
“Uh-huh, and how long did Coben speak?”
“I think about forty-five minutes. After that he took questions. It was probably four thirty by the time he finished.”
Ralph’s thoughts were whirling around in his head like loose paper caught in a draft. He could not remember ever having been so completely blindsided. They should have checked Terry’s movements out in advance, but that was Monday morning quarterbacking. He, Samuels, and Yune Sablo of the State Police had all agreed that questions about Maitland ahead of his arrest would risk alerting a very dangerous man. And it had seemed unnecessary, given the weight of evidence. Now, however…
He glanced at Samuels, but saw no immediate help there; the man’s expression was a mixture of suspicion and perplexity.
“You’ve made a bad mistake here,” Gold said. “Surely you two gentlemen see that.”
“No mistake,” Ralph said. “We have his prints, we have eyewitnesses who know him, and pretty soon we’ll have the first DNA result. A match there will clinch it.”
“Ah, but we may also have something else pretty soon,” Gold said. “My investigator is on it as we speak, and confidence is high.”
“What?” Samuels snapped.
Gold smiled. “Why spoil the surprise before we see what Alec comes up with? If what my client told me is correct, I think it’s going to put another hole in your boat, Bill, and your boat is already leaking badly.”
The Alec in question was Alec Pelley, a retired State Police detective who now worked exclusively for lawyers defending criminal cases. He was expensive, and good at his job. Once, over drinks, Ralph had asked Pelley why he had gone over to the Dark Side. Pelley replied that he’d put away at least four men he later came to believe were innocent, and felt he had a lot to atone for. “Also,” he’d said, “retirement sucks if you don’t play golf.”
No use speculating about what Pelley was chasing this time… always supposing it wasn’t just some chimera, or a defense attorney bluff. Ralph stared at Terry, again looking for guilt and seeing only worry, anger, and bewilderment—the expression of a man who has been arrested for something he hasn’t done.
Except he had done it, all the evidence said so, and the DNA would put the final nail in his coffin. His alibi was an artfully constructed piece of misdirection, something straight out of an Agatha Christie novel (or one by Harlan Coben). Ralph would begin the job of dismantling the magic trick tomorrow morning, starting with interviews of Terry’s colleagues and moving on to a back-check of the conference, focusing on the start and end times of Coben’s appearance.