It was a neat little place. One room, basically, with a bathroom notched out of the corner. An aged, hulking refrigerator with sides thicker than a steel vault, a counter with a big porcelain sink, no cabinets under it, but a wooden shelf that held a few pots and pans. In one corner, an actual old woodstove with a pipe that led up through the roof. The folks who rented it out had left a small stack of wood alongside it, plus a wrought-iron stand that held a small shovel, tongs, a poker, and tiny broom.
Quaint.
But Cory didn’t think it was cold enough to bother lighting a fire. As a backup, there was a small electric fan on the shelf he could plug in if he needed it.
Before he went to check out Cape Cod Bay, he parked his van behind the cottage. The back end was slightly visible to anyone driving by, but they’d really have to be looking for it.
Strolling along the beach, standing there with his toes in the sand, feeling the water rush in around his ankles, filling his lungs with the cool sea air was pretty damn nice.
And you met the most interesting people.
Now, back in the cabin, he had to think about how he was going to do this. There was a time when he believed that his subjects should live with their punishment, but his position on that was evolving.
He took a seat at the small table in the kitchen nook of the cabin and took out his cell phone. He’d powered it off hours ago. He didn’t want to run the risk of using it to track Pilford, in case they were on to him, which he now understood was a real possibility.
Maybe just for a few seconds.
He turned on the phone and saw that he had a message. He put it to his ear and listened.
“Cory, it’s your father. Call home immediately.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to do that,” he said aloud. He deleted the message and powered the phone off once again.
“What do to, what to do, what to do,” he said. “I don’t suppose you have any bright ideas?”
Carol Beakman, unconscious and tied to one of the two single beds in the small room, did not.
FORTY-THREE
CAL
BACK at the beach house, Jeremy and I resettled ourselves on the deck. Soon, we would have to start thinking about dinner, but there was still time to chill out. The only problem with that was that Jeremy was more than a little preoccupied by the discussion we’d had while walking along the beach.
“That was quick thinking, saying your name was Alan,” I told him, looking out over the bay from my chair.
“Well, I’m not an idiot,” he said.
I gave him a smile, but the young man did not return it.
“I’ve been giving what you said some thought,” he said. “You know, about how I drove the car.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Maybe it’s because I was drunk that I was able to drive it,” he said.
“I’m not following.”
“Like, okay, don’t they say that if you fall down or something while you’re sober, your muscles tense up, and you might actually break some bones. But if you’re drunk, you’re all kind of rubbery and you don’t tense up, so you don’t get hurt as bad.”
“That sounds like a study funded by teenage boys,” I said. “But carry on.”
“So maybe I’ve always known in my head how to drive a stick shift, but when I tried it in your car I was so tense I did a really bad job of it, but because I was drunk, I was relaxed and did it just fine.”
“That’s quite a theory,” I said.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know what to think.”
“If you don’t know what to think, why’d you have to bring it all up in the first place?”
I sighed. “It’s kind of what I do.”
“That’s what bodyguards do? Mess with people’s heads?”
“I’m not a bodyguard, Jeremy. I’m a detective.”
“Well, you haven’t really been doing any detecting. You’ve just been looking out for me and driving me all over the place. It’s kind of like you’re taking me on a vacation, is all.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I hope you’ll give me a good review on TripAdvisor. I’m trying to up my five-star ratings.”
“I’m just sayin’, you’re messing with my head with all these crazy questions, but you don’t have any answers.”
“I’m hoping maybe you do.”
“Well I don’t, okay?” Jeremy shook his head with disgust and frustration. I certainly felt the latter. The feeling was disrupted by the ringing of my cell phone, which I had left on the small table next to me. I snatched it up, looked at the caller.
“I’m gonna take this inside.” I got out of the chair, slid open the sliding glass door, and took a seat on the couch. I put the phone to my ear. “Weaver.”
“It’s Bob.”
Bob Butler.
“Hi, Bob.”
“Glad I was able to catch you. I know you must be on the road somewhere.”
“Yeah,” I said. If he didn’t know where I was, then Madeline Plimpton clearly had not told him. And I was even more certain that she had not told Jeremy’s mother, Gloria.
“How’s Jeremy?” Bob asked.
“He’s good,” I said. I thought back to when he was pounding his fist into his leg, how I’d wondered whether the kid needed some kind of help, but decided this was not the time to get into that. “How are things at your end? How’s Gloria?”
“Well, she’s Gloria. But she’s okay.”
“You’re still at Madeline’s, right?”
“That’s right.”
“What can I do for you, Bob?”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “I had the strangest call from Grant Finch.”
“Okay.”
“He said you called him speculating that maybe Jeremy wasn’t driving the car that night.”
“That’s right,” I said evenly.
“Like, tell me about that.”
I told him, briefly, about our experiences in my Honda earlier that day.
“Jesus,” Bob said. “I mean, I don’t know what the hell to make of that.”
“Grant was rather dismissive,” I said. “But he clearly thought it was important enough to call and tell you.”
“Well, yeah. And he was still a bit dismissive about it, but he thought we needed to know you’d raised the point. The thing is . . .” His voice trailed off.
“The thing is what?” I asked.
“I’m not as inclined to discount it the way Grant did.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, what do you make of it?”
“At the very least, I think it should have been mentioned at the trial. Would have raised some reasonable doubt.”
“Reasonable doubt of what?”
Now it was my turn to hesitate. “Reasonable doubt about whether Jeremy was in the car to begin with.”
“That’s what I thought,” Bob said. “But we were there, we saw him get out.”
“But I haven’t heard of anyone who saw him get in.”
“God, Weaver, what are you saying?” When I didn’t answer right away, he said, “Are you thinking someone could have put him in the car? That someone else took the car, hit that girl, and then put Jeremy behind the wheel?”
“It’s one theory,” I said evenly.
“Do you have another one?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“What do you know about Charlene Wilson?”
“Jeremy’s friend?”
“That’s right. She’s made a point, twice, of seeing Jeremy in the last two days. I’m guessing she’s kept in touch with him before that.”
“Sure, yeah. They’re pretty close friends.”
“How close?”
“Uh, what are you asking?”
“Does Jeremy love her?”
“Love her?” Bob asked. “I mean, who knows what kinds of thoughts are swirling around in a boy’s head? I know he likes her. They’ve known each other a long time
.”
“Do you think he loves her enough to take the blame for something she did?”
“Christ, Weaver, what are you getting at?”
“Look, this is just a theory at the moment. Maybe Charlene wasn’t driving that Porsche, but I’m as sure as I can be that Jeremy wasn’t.”
“This is . . . this is making my head spin.”
“You were at the party. Do you remember seeing Charlene? Was she drinking, too?”
“I just . . . I just don’t remember. I remember Alicia—that’s her mother—being there, and her husband, too.”
“The thing is, if Galen was dumb enough to leave that key in the car, even after the first time Jeremy tried to start it up, then anyone could have taken it. And whoever that was probably knows how Jeremy ended up behind the wheel.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what to do with this speculation. I don’t know whether to tell Gloria. I think it would send her into a tailspin or something. But do you think, I mean, do you think there might be grounds for an appeal? That we could get this whole thing opened up again?”
“Did you ask Finch that question?”
“In a manner of speaking. But he said we as much as acknowledged Jeremy did it when we went with the defense that he didn’t understand the consequences of his actions. So we wouldn’t have much chance taking another run at it.”
“He’s the lawyer,” I said. “He knows this stuff better than I do.” I didn’t know if it was my place to say what I was going to say next, but what the hell. “I’m not sure Finch is acting in Jeremy’s best interests. Maybe you need to find him a different lawyer.”
Nothing at the other end of the call.
“Bob?” I said.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. God, what a fucking mess. Look, I want to talk to you more about this, at least before taking it to Gloria. Where are you?”
“Like you said, we’re on the road.” For all I knew, someone might be listening in to Bob’s call, and I didn’t want to give our location away. “But we might be back soon. Why don’t we give it another day? Maybe we’ll be back in Promise Falls by then.”
“Okay, sure, that . . . that sounds good,” Bob said. “What’s Jeremy say about all this?”
“He’s either entirely baffled or doing a good job pretending to be. But Bob, something is not right about this.”
“I agree,” he said. “Well . . . keep in touch.”
“Sure thing.”
Bob ended the call.
When I went back out to the deck, Jeremy asked, “Who was that?”
“Bob.”
“You tell him your nutso theory?”
“What’s to tell? Like you said, you must be the first person in history who mastered the art of shifting while impaired.”
Jeremy nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
FORTY-FOUR
ALBERT quickly wheeled his car into the driveway, bringing the nose to within an inch of the garage. It was a separate building at the back of the lot, large enough to hold two cars, with two doors.
He leapt from the car, engine running, and twisted the handle in the center of the right door. He hoisted it up, pushed it into the ceiling, then got back in behind the wheel and hit the gas. The car jumped so abruptly that he didn’t have a chance to fully close his door before it hit the frame of the garage opening.
He slammed on the brakes, killed the engine, jumped out and brought the garage door back down. Then he leaned forward and placed his hands atop his knees, struggling to catch his breath.
From inside the car, he heard, “Uhhh.”
Albert allowed himself three more deep breaths, then stood and opened the back door of the car. The backseat and floor were drenched in blood. Ron Frommer was on his stomach, his torso on the seat, left arm and leg dangling over the side. Although he was making some soft, guttural noises, he was not moving.
“What’s going on?”
Albert whirled around. The side door to the garage had been opened and Constance was standing there.
“You drove in here like a madman,” she said. “I was watching from the window. What the hell has gotten—”
“Shut up!” he screamed at her. “Shut the fuck up!”
Constance Gaffney shut up. In thirty-two years of marriage, she had never been spoken to that way by her husband. The words nearly knocked her off her feet.
“Close the goddamn door!” he bellowed.
“What . . . what have—”
“The door!” He was pointing.
She turned and shut the door. Then she took in the scene before her. The car with blood down the side. Her husband, covered in more of it.
And then the man in the backseat of Albert’s car.
She opened her mouth as if to scream, but Albert closed the distance between them and clamped a hand over her mouth. He put an arm around her, allowing him enough leverage to hold his hand there and keep her quiet.
“Listen to me,” he whispered. “You are not going to scream. You are not going to make a sound. Do you understand?”
Constance Gaffney’s eyes looked as though they might pop out of her head and shoot across the room.
“Do you?” Albert asked again.
She managed to move her head up and down. Albert took his hand from her mouth and released his grip on her.
“Albert,” she said softly, her lip quivering. “Albert, what’s going on here?”
“He’s the one!” he said, pointing at Frommer. “He’s the one who beat up Brian. The son-of-a-bitch motherfucking bastard. Him!” Starting to shake himself, he added, “And I bet he’s the one who kidnapped Brian. He’s the one who marked him up.”
Albert put a shaky hand to his mouth, ran it over his chin.
“Has to be,” he said. “He just . . . has to be.”
Constance took a hesitant step forward, but she remained a good six feet from the car. She leaned her head to one side, trying to sneak a better look at the injured man.
“Uhhh,” Frommer said.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“Frommer,” Albert said. “Ron Frommer. He . . . he came at me. I think, I think he would have killed me. I did what I had to.”
“For God’s sake, he needs to get to the hospital,” Constance said. “He looks like he might . . . Albert, he looks like he might—”
He turned on her, his eyes fierce. “I thought he was dead. I thought I’d killed him. But then . . . he made a noise . . .” He looked around the garage, first at the floor, which had a drain in the center of it, then over to the wall, at a coiled garden hose. He walked to the rear of the building, to a small workbench that sat next to a plastic utility sink. Below the bench were drawers and cupboards. Above, on a pegboard, various tools hung.
He began looking through the drawers.
“I might need bags,” he said. “Thick ones.”
Then he looked up at the pegboard. His eyes settled on a hacksaw. He grabbed it.
Constance said, “You’re scaring me.”
He shot her a look. “Really. Isn’t that something.” He changed his focus from the workbench back to the car. “I’ll have to clean it down. The inside . . . that’s going to be hard. The outside, that’ll be easy. Your steam cleaner.”
“What?”
“Listen to me, you fucking cow. Listen to me. I’m going to need your steam cleaner.”
Constance took a step backward, toward the side door.
“And get me some clothes,” Albert said.
“Clothes?”
He gestured to himself. “Look at me. I have to get out of these. I can’t be seen like this. Shoes, too.”
Constance stood there, dumbstruck.
“Now!” he shouted.
She fled the garage. In her haste, she did not close the side door. Albert went over and shut it, then turned back to look at the car.
He stood there for the better part of a minute, steeling himself. Finally, he walked over to the trunk and opened it. Picked up the
crowbar he’d taken from Ron Frommer’s truck. Felt its heft in his hand. Then he went around to the other side of the car and opened the back door.
Ron Frommer’s head was directly in front of him.
Albert raised the crowbar over his head and brought it down.
Whack.
Again.
Whack.
Ron Frommer made no further sounds.
Albert staggered two steps back and rested his back against the garage wall.
“You hurt my boy,” he said. “You did it. I know you did it. I know it was you.”
He dropped the crowbar. It hit the cement floor with a loud, dead clang. Slowly, he regained control of his breathing, felt his heart rate getting back to something approaching normal. He felt oddly calm.
For the first time in perhaps his entire life, Albert Gaffney felt empowered.
He looked at the dead body of Ron Frommer and thought, I did that. I actually did that.
The door opened again. Constance entered carrying a bundle of clothing and a pair of running shoes. Slowly, he turned his head to look at her.
“Albert,” she said softly. “Albert, you’re smiling.”
He said, “It’s done.”
She said nothing. She set the clothes and shoes on the workbench. “I got you some fresh boxers, too. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know if it had sunk through your pants.”
Albert went back to the other side of the car, grabbed Frommer by the legs and dragged him out of the vehicle. Frommer’s body slithered out, his arms stretched above him. When Albert let him fall to the concrete floor, Constance let out a small gasp.
Her husband took another moment to catch his breath. He looked down at the body for the better part of a minute, pondering how he was going to go about this.
“I heard something,” Constance said.
Albert, who seemed to have drifted into some sort of trance, looked up. “What?”
Constance had walked to the garage door. There were two small, grime-covered windows at shoulder height in each of the two doors.
“Someone’s here,” she said. “There’s a car stopped on the street.”