'I still remember that day in court when he came over the railing of the witness stand and grabbed me,' she said.
'It was those eyes. A moment before he grabbed me I looked into those eyes and…'
'And what?' Vail asked. 'What did you see?'
'They turned red for just an instant. It was like… like they filled with blood. I've never seen such hate, such malevolence. I still dream about those eyes.'
Suddenly Vail was no longer interested in the conversation. He stared into his coffee cup, thinking about Linda and Alex, about the Altar Boys and Bishop Rushman. All had been Stampler's friends and he had turned on them. Vail had been his friend during the trial and he was sure that this madness was being directed at him. He remembered Stampler's words again.
'Suppose there never was an Aaron.'
Stampler hadn't been joking that day, Vail was more certain of that now than ever before. And if Stampler had been cool enough and smart enough to trick all of them before, he was smart enough to figure out how to orchestrate these murders from inside Daisyland. Vail was no longer concerned about why Stampler was doing it or whether he, Vail, was responsible in some way for the madness. Stampler had to be stopped. And as long as he was safely tucked away in the mental institution, they had to focus on his accomplice.
Catch the accomplice, turn him against Stampler, and end it once and for all. And the accomplice was near, Vail was certain of that.
He had run out of victims everywhere else.
Twenty-two
Vail snatched up the car phone and punched out a number. Paul Rainey's smooth voice answered. 'Paul Rainey speaking.'
'It's Vail. Where is he, Paul?' Vail demanded.
'I, uh… I can't, uh…' Rainey stammered.
'You can't put your finger on him, right? Like you couldn't put your finger on him last night.'
'It's no big deal, Marty, he doesn't know there's paper out on him. Probably fishing or hunting. He's been through a lot.'
'So has his wife.' Vail snapped back. 'You're acting pretty damn cavalier for a guy with a murder-one warrant in his pocket and a client on the run.'
'He's not on the run, damn it!'
'You accepted service, Paul. I'm putting out an APB on him.'
'Another four hours, Marty. I'll have him there by noon.'
'Four hours for what, a tutor session? What's it going to be? He was sexually abused by his mother and took it out on his wife, or he was afraid she was going to cut off his dick because he was running around with Poppy Palmer? The Menendez or the Bobbitt defence?'
'Damn you!'
'Get off it, Paul, don't pull that indignant shit on me, I've known you too long. We're going to find him. And Poppy Palmer while we're at it. And the deal's off. He's going to get the needle. Goodbye.'
Vail hung up. He looked at St Claire and Stenner. 'Darby turned rabbit, I can tell. I could hear Rainey sweating over the phone.'
St Claire rubbed his hands together very slowly, stared out the window for a few seconds.
'I want a search warrant for the entire farm,' Stenner said, keeping his eyes on the road. 'We've checked airlines, buses, car rentals, trains. Nothing so far on the stripper.'
'You think he off'd her, don'cha?' asked St Claire. When Stenner nodded grimly, he said, 'Well, it ain't like he's not up to the task.'
'And he thinks he's off the hook,' Stenner said.
'Unless Rainey's got 'im in tow, maybe working' up a new yarn to get by the shot sequence.'
Vail shook his head. 'No, I don't think Rainey's up to anything. He accepted service of the warrant. If he hides Darby, he could be disbarred. The case isn't worth it to him. He's got to be thinking we have more than just the tape and he knows Darby hasn't a sou to his name. You two better get started as soon as you drop me at the airport.'
'Yeah.' St Claire snickered. 'It's almost eight-thirty. Day's half over.'
He was totally bald with a tattoo of a lizard down the middle of his skull, its tongue arched down his forehead. The sleeves of a Hawaiian shirt were rolled up tightly against his machine-tooled biceps, from which other tattoos formed a tapestry of daggers, names, and pierced hearts down to his wrists. His trousers were belted by a braided leather thong tied in a sailor's knot just below his belly button. In place of a toothpick, he had a ten-penny nail tucked in one corner of his mouth while a silver tooth gleamed from the other side. He was checking the stock behind the bar.
At ten in the morning, the bar smelled of stale cigarette smoke, old sweat, and spilled beer. A sliver of sunlight slanted through the front door, revealing an unswept floor littered with cigarette butts, wadded-up paper napkins, and dirt. Stenner held up his ID.
'I'm Major Stenner, Chicago DA's office. This is Lieutenant St Claire.'
'Major. Lieutenant. A lotta weight fer two guys,' the bartender answered with a lopsided grin.
'Is the manager around?'
'Lookin' at him. Mike Targis.'
He held out a melon-sized fist and shook hands as if he was trying to inflict pain on the two cops.
'Yer lookin' fer Poppy, I told you people all I know. She split day before yesterday, didn't even come by, called it in.'
'What time was this?'
'I dunno, lessee… One, maybe, one-fifteen.'
'She have any money coming?'
'Yeah. Three days, three bills.'
'She sneezed off three C's, she was in that big a hurry?'
Targis shrugged. 'Easy come…'
'Does she have a car?' Stenner asked.
'Whaddya think? She pulls down three, four K a month in tips, plus a hundred a day salary. She's my big attraction, gents. A red mustang ragtop, last year's model.'
'Know the tag number?'
Targis gave St Claire a sucker look. 'No, and I don't know the engine number either.'
'Know where she lives?'
'Sure. Fairway Apartments, over near the golf course. Straight down 84 two miles. Can't miss it. This is about the Darby thing, right?'
'Do you know anything about it?' Stenner asked.
'Only what I read in the papers, if you can believe that.'
'You don't?'
'What, that Calamity Jane-Wild Bill Hickok shootout?
Shit.'
'That's just a guess, right?'
'Oh, yeah, man.'
'Did Poppy talk about it at all?'
'You kiddin'?' He leaned across the bar and lowered his voice even though they were the only people in the room. 'She was scared shitless.'
'Of what?'
'Everything. The cops. You guys. Big Jim.'
'That's what you called Darby, Big Jim?'
'That's what Poppy called him. Everybody else picked up on it. A guy leaves a dollar tip after drinkin' for four hours? Big Jim, my ass. But who can figger women, y'know? Poppy's smart, got a figger'd give a statue a stiff, looks like Michelle… What's her name?'
'Pfeiffer?' said Stenner.
'No, the other one. Used to be a canary.'
'Phillips,' St Claire said.
Targis jabbed a forefinger at him. 'That's the one.'
'Did she ever mention this sister of hers before?' Stenner asked.
'Uh, maybe once'r twice.'
'So you didn't get the idea they were real close?'
'I didn't get any idea at all. I don't give a shit about her sister. I got enough trouble with my own family.'
'Thanks, Mr Targis,' Stenner said, handing him a card. 'If you think of something, give us a call.'
'Is she on the lam or sompin'?'
'We just want to talk to her.'
'I thought you already did.'
'We forgot a coupla things. She happens to call in, give her that name and number, okay?'
'She ain't gonna call in. I been in this business almost twenty years, I know a goodbye call when I hear one and that call from her was definitely a goodbye call.'
'Maybe she'll call about the three hundred you owe her.'
He shook his head as he took out a
towel, held it under the spigot, then twisted it damp and started cleaning the bar.
'It mattered, she'd a come by and got it. Had to drive right past the front door on her way to the interstate.'
'That's what she told you, she was driving out to Texarkana?'
'Didn't say. I just figgered she drove down to O'Hare.'
'Thanks.'
'Sure. Come back later and have a drink. On the house.'
'Thanks, Mike, you're a real gent.'
On the way out the door, St Claire said, 'Targis is an ex-con.'
'How do you know?'
'He's about ten years behind in his vernacular. Besides, I know everything. I even know who Michelle Phillips is.'
'Mamas and the Papas,' Stenner said, opening the car door. St Claire stared at him with disbelief. 'I wasn't always fifty, Harve.' They got in the car and headed back to Darby's farm to see how the search was going.
The chopper swerved off the main highway and swept down over the town of Daisyland. From the air, it was a modest village surrounded by old Victorian houses hidden among oak and elm trees. As the chopper headed north of town, the residential area became sparse and then quite suddenly the trees ended and the Stevenson Mental Health Institute appeared below them, a group of incompatible though pleasant-looking buildings separated from the town by tall, thick hedges and the brick wall that surrounded the place. Two new wings adjoined the older, rambling main structure of the hospital. Together they formed a quadrangle. Vail could see people moving about, like aphids on a large green leaf. Vail remembered one of the structures from his visits a decade earlier - a three-storey building with a peaked atrium, its slanted sides constructed of large glass squares. Maximum security - Stampler's home for the past ten years.
Down below, in one of the buildings facing the quadrangle, a man watched the chopper chunk-chunk-chunk overhead. He was pleasant-looking, verging on handsome, and husky, his body tooled and hardened in the workout room, and he was dressed in the khaki pants and dark blue shirt of a guard. He had intense blue eyes with blondish hair trimmed just above the ears, was clean shaven, and smelled of bay rum aftershave lotion. There was just the trace of a smile on his full lips. He stood with his arms bent at the elbows, his fists under his chin, his fingers intertwined except for the two forefingers that formed a triangle that pressed against his mouth. His attention was pure, focused intently on the chopper. He watched it veer off and disappear beyond the trees. Finally he said, in a voice just above a whisper:
'Welcome, Mr Vail.'
And his smile broadened.
'You say something, Ray?' a voice said from the hall.
'No, Ralph, just hummin' to myself,' he answered. His voice was like silk. He sat down at the worktable and went back to work.
As the chopper fluttered down on a large practice football field near the institution, a black, four-door Cadillac pulled down the service road and parked. The chopper settled lightly on the ground, its blade churning up dust devils that swirled around it.
'You could land on eggs, Sidney,' Vail said, flipping off his safety belt and opening the door.
'You say that every time,' the pilot answered.
The driver of the sedan was a trim man in his late thirties with an easy smile. He wore khaki pants and a dark blue shirt and did not look like a guard, which it turned out he was.
'I'm Tony,' he said, opening the rear door. I'm here to run you over to the Daisy.'
'The Daisy? They call it the Daisy?'
'Yeah,' Tony answered, holding the door for him. 'Daisyland wasn't stupid enough.'
Vail slid in and Tony slammed the door. The drive took five minutes. As they approached the sprawling complex, the large iron gates rolled back and Tony drove through and headed up a gravel road bordered on either side by knee-high winter shrubs. Vail felt vaguely uncomfortable. Perhaps subconsciously, he thought, he was afraid they would keep him there. Or, more likely, he did not look forward to seeing the unfortunate patients locked away from the world in the place cruelly known as the Daisy.
For Shana Parver, the objective of the deposition was to get as much information on the record as possible, enabling her to stand tough on a plea bargain. She was certain that Stoddard would never go to court and Venable would be manoeuvring to get in the best position for a deal. She was partly right.
Jane Venable had to defend a client who did not want to be defended and manoeuvre into position for the best plea bargain she could get. Venable had to, at the very least, convince Edith Stoddard to let her continue to whittle away at and weaken Parver's case. Getting Stoddard to recant the confession was a big step. Now, hopefully, she could prevent Stoddard from incriminating herself during the Q and A with Parver.
They had a few minutes together before Shana Parver arrived. Edith Stoddard was brought to the interrogation room in the annex by a female guard who stood outside the door. Stoddard looked wan, almost grey, her mouth turned down at the corners, her eyes deeply circled. She was wearing a formless blue dress without a belt and white, low-cut tennis shoes. Her hair was haphazardly combed. Wisps of grey and black dangled from the sides and back.
'How are you this morning?' Venable asked.
I'm not sure,' was Stoddard's faint, enigmatic answer.
'This won't take long,' said Venable. 'Just a formality.'
'When is it going to be over? When are you going to make whatever deal you're going to make?'
'This is part of it, Edith. I'd like to make a good, solid showing here today. It will help when we discuss your plea.'
Stoddard shook her head in a helpless gesture.
'She's going to go big on the gun, Edith. I'm not going to ask you where you lost it or even if you lost it. When she asks about it - about losing the gun, I mean - be vague. Also she's going to bear down on where you were the night Delaney was killed. Just remember, the less Shana Parver knows, the better.'
'Why can't you just tell her… why can't you do whatever it is you want to do? What do you call it?'
'Plea bargain.'
'Just do it today. Get it over with, please.'
'Please trust me. Let me set things up right.'
'I just want it to end.'
'I understand that, Edith, but let me do my job, too. Okay?'
Stoddard's shoulders sagged. She took several deep breaths.
'Good,' Venable said. 'You'll do just fine.'
Shana Parver, dressed in a teal silk pant suit, her black hair cascading down her shoulders, arrived a few minutes later with a stenographer, a tall, slender, pleasant-looking woman from the courthouse named Chorine Hempstead. There were pleasant 'Good mornings' and offers of coffee from Hempstead, which everyone but Edith Stoddard gratefully accepted. She sat beside Jane Venable and across the table from Parver, her hands folded in front of her. She reminded Parver of a frightened bird.
Parver dropped a bulging shoulder bag on the floor, opened her briefcase, and took out a legal pad, a sheaf of notes, several pencils, and a small Sony tape recorder, all of which she placed on the table. Hempstead brought back the cups of coffee and sat at the end of the table with a shorthand tablet and waited.
'Are we ready?' Shana asked pleasantly, arranging in front of her her notes and those taken by Shock Johnson the day Stoddard had suddenly blurted out that she killed John Delaney.
'Let's get on with it,' Venable said tersely.
'For the record,' Parver began, 'I would like to state that this is a formal interrogation of Mrs Edith Stoddard, who is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Mr John Farrell-Delaney on February 10, 1994, in the city of Chicago. I am Shana Parver, representing the district attorney of Cook County. Also attending are Ms Jane Venable, representing Mrs Stoddard, and Chorine Hempstead, a clerk of the Cook County Court, who will transcribe this meeting. This interrogation is being conducted in the courthouse annex, 9 A.M., February 16, 1994. Mrs Stoddard, do you have any objection to our tape-recording this meeting?'
Stoddard looked at Jane Venable.
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'No objection,' Venable said.
'Good. Please state your full name for the record.'
'Edith Hobbs Stoddard.'
'Are you married?'
'Yes.'
'What is your husband's name?'
'Charles. Charles Stoddard.'
'How long have you been married?'
'Twenty-six years.'
'And where do you live?'
'At 1856 Magnolia.'
'Do you have any children?'
'I have a daughter, Angelica.'
'How old is she?'
'Twenty-one.'
'Does she live at home?'
'She goes to the university. She lives in a dorm there, but she has a room at the house.'
'Is that the University of Chicago or the University of Illinois?'
'Chicago. She's a junior.'
'And you support her?'
'She has a small scholarship. It covers part of her tuition and her books and lab fees, but I - we - pay for her room and board and other necessities.'
'How much does that run a month?'
'Five hundred dollars. We give her five hundred a month.'
'And you have a full-time nurse for your husband?'
'Not a nurse. We have a housekeeper who attends to Charley, cooks meals, keeps the place clean.'
'Do you have separate bedrooms, Mrs Stoddard?'
'What's that got to do with anything?' Venable asked.
'A formality,' Parver answered casually.
'We have adjoining bedrooms,' Stoddard answered wearily. 'I keep the door cracked at night in case he needs something.'
'You work at Delaney Enterprises on Ashland, is that correct?'
'I did,' Stoddard said with a touch of ire.
'And how long does - did - it take to get to work every day?'