Too Close to Home

  I sat on the edge of his bed and lightly touched his shoulder. He woke with a start.

  “What?” he said, turning over and opening his eyes.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Sorry to wake you.”

  He blinked a couple of times. “What’s going on? We’re not working today, are we?”

  “No,” I said. “Barry Duckworth is here.” Derek, who didn’t instantly recognize the name, looked blank. “The cops. He’s the detective in charge. The one who talked to us yesterday. He wants to have a word with you.”

  Derek swallowed, blinked again. “What does he want me for? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Nobody’s saying you did. He’s just got a lot of questions for a lot of people. He’ll explain it to you when you come down.”

  “Should I get dressed?”

  “That’d be a good idea,” I said. “But don’t worry about a tie.”

  “A tie?”

  “A joke. Just throw something on and come down.”

  I returned to the kitchen and Derek showed up two minutes later. He’d pulled on a New York Islanders T-shirt and some torn jean shorts, and his black hair was still going every which way.

  “Hey, Derek,” Barry said.

  Derek nodded without saying anything.

  His mother said, “You want some French toast?”

  “I’m not even awake, Mom,” he said.

  “Have a seat,” Barry said, and Derek pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “How you doing this morning?”

  “Tired,” Derek said.

  “Yeah, sorry about rousting you out of bed so early, but I’d like your help with something.”

  Derek eyed him, warily I thought.

  “You were with the Langleys until shortly before they left, right?”

  Derek nodded very slowly, like he had to think about the answer. The question seemed pretty straightforward to me.

  “That was around eight?”

  Derek nodded again.

  “So that means you’re the last person who may have seen the Langleys alive, unless they stopped for gas or something after they headed off, but you’re also the last person to see their place, the inside of their house, before they got killed.”

  Derek swallowed. “I guess,” he said.

  “So what I’d like you to do is, the reason I came by is, I’d like you to come over to the Langley house with me, see if anything looks out of the ordinary.”

  Ellen took in a sharp breath. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “You can’t be thinking of dragging our son through that house, where all those . . . things happened.” I could almost imagine her saying to herself, You son of a bitch, you eat my French toast, and then come up with this?

  Barry looked unapologetic, even though he said he was sorry. “I need Derek’s help. He’s a very important part of this investigation, Ellen. He might see something out of the ordinary. Something missing. Maybe a painting, or—”

  “A painting?” Ellen said. “You think the Langleys were killed because someone wanted to steal a painting?” She looked at me, supposedly the art expert. “Did the Langleys have valuable art?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said.

  “It’s just a for instance,” Barry said, trying not to sound impatient. “I don’t know that they have any expensive paintings at all. Maybe someone came into the house, I don’t know, to steal Mrs. Langley’s jewelry or—”

  “What on earth would Derek know about Donna’s jewelry?” Ellen said. “Why would you even think—”

  “Ellen,” I said.

  “—he’d know anything about that?”

  “Again,” Barry said, still very patiently, but it seemed to be a strain, “it was just an example. There might have been things in full view in the house, things I don’t know about, but Derek here might notice if they were gone. That’s all I’m talking about.”

  “Well,” Ellen said, “I absolutely forbid it. There’s no way—”

  “I’ll do it,” Derek said.

  “That’s great,” Barry said.

  “No you won’t,” Ellen said. “You’re not going over there.”

  “I’ll do it,” Derek said again, still looking at Barry. “If you need me to do it, I’ll do it.”

  Ellen’s mouth opened. She was ready to voice her objections again, then stopped. Derek said to her, “It’s okay, Mom. If there’s anything I can do to help catch whoever killed Adam, I want to do it.”

  Barry reached his hand out to Derek to shake it. Derek, awkwardly, extended his in return and they shook. “Good man,” Barry said. “You want some breakfast first? That’s okay. Get something in your stomach. I don’t mind waiting. Your mom’s French toast, it’s pretty goddamn amazing. Although, I don’t know, maybe it’s better to go over on an empty stomach, you know what I’m saying? Just a bit of advice from a guy who’s been there.”

  Ellen was giving me an imploring look, indicating that she wanted me to ask Barry something. I took a shot at what it must be. “Barry,” I said, “you mind if I come along with Derek?”

  I could see the relief in Ellen’s face. I’d guessed right. Barry said, “Sure, that would be fine, Jim. That’s a real good idea.”

  Then no one said anything for a couple of seconds, until Derek said, “Well?”

  As the three of us headed out the door, me trailing behind Barry and Derek, Ellen touched my arm to hold me back and whispered, “I’m sorry. I can’t go over there. I just, I can’t do it.”

  “I understand.”

  “Be there for him.”

  I touched her on the shoulder and went out the door, taking a few steps at a gallop to catch up.

  “So you’re working for your dad for the summer?” Barry was saying.

  “Yeah,” Derek said. And I thought, Even under the circumstances, could he not say “Yes”? You’re always a parent.

  “Pretty hot week to be doing yard work, huh?”

  “Yeah, it’s been kinda brutal,” Derek said. “We had that rain early in the week, gave us a bit of a break, although then we got behind, you know?”

  “I hear ya,” Barry said, like he and my son were suddenly best friends. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, but that gave me an uncomfortable feeling.

  The conversation died out as we neared the Langley house. I felt that I was seeing the place for the first time. There wasn’t anything structurally different about it from a week or a month ago, aside from the decorative yellow police tape surrounding it, but now it had this ominous presence. I wondered, momentarily, what would happen to the house, now that the Langleys were all dead. Relatives would have to come in, sell the place. I’d hate to be the real estate agent brought in to find a buyer for a house where three people had been slain.

  We were coming up to the back of the house, but Barry said, “We’ll be going in around the front. Still a bit of a mess around the back door there.”

  My son was very quiet. But then, “They’re, like, they aren’t still there, are they?”

  Barry smiled. “No. The bodies have been removed, Derek.”

  Derek nodded quickly, as if to suggest he knew that, he was just kidding, as if anyone was in the mood for jokes.

  We came around the front of the house, where there was a patrol car in addition to Barry’s unmarked cruiser, an officer parked behind the wheel. Barry sidled over, talked to the cop through the open window, said we were all going in for a tour. Barry hardly had to ask the guy for permission, but he was being extremely polite today.

  “Okay,” he said, leading the way to the front door. “Let’s go in.”

  As we entered the house he said, “Don’t touch anything.” He held the door for us. “In fact, you might want to put your hands in your pockets just to be sure.”

  We complied. Derek went in ahead of me, and once the three of us were just inside the door, we all stopped, like we were on some sort of historic house tour and Barry was our guide.

  It didn’t take long for us to realize we weren’t on
that kind of tour.

  The carpet immediately in front of us, and at the base of the stairs, was nearly black with blood. And even though the bodies of the Langleys had been removed, the stench in the house took our breath away. A hand came out of my pocket and went instinctively to my mouth.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Barry said as I slipped my hand back into my pocket.

  I took a look at Derek to see how he was coping. Trying to breathe through his mouth, eyes darting around. I could make out his fists clenching in the front pockets of his jean shorts.

  “Right here,” Barry said, pointing to the blood closest to us, “is where Albert Langley died, where his body was found. We think he went to the door, that one or more persons had knocked on it and he was shot very shortly after opening the door. And then over here,” he said, guiding us around the blood and over toward the stairs, “was where Donna Langley’s body was discovered.” There seemed as much blood there as by the front door. “She must have come downstairs when she heard the commotion, and that’s where it happened.”

  “Dear God,” I said, and took another look at my son, who was stone-faced. Hesitantly, I said, “And Adam?”

  “Down the end of the hall here, at the bottom of a half flight of stairs, by the back door.”

  Before we could proceed any further into the house, Barry wanted us to slip on some booties in a bid not to contaminate the crime scene any further. He pulled three pairs of them from his pocket, and we all took a moment to get them on. This, of course, necessitated taking our hands out of our pockets, and Derek and I leaned against each other, taking turns, to slip them over our shoes. They were crinkly, a bit like paper, but much stronger.

  Once that was done, Barry motioned for us to follow him along the hallway, which we both walked down as though we were tightrope walkers, hands back in our pockets, careful not to let our shoulders brush the walls. I noticed light-colored powder on many surfaces within the house. On doorknobs, stair railings, the corners of walls.

  Barry, who’d been watching me, said, “Fingerprinting.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  To Derek he said, “We’ll be wanting to get a set of your prints.”

  “Huh?” said Derek.

  “Not to worry,” Barry said. “We already know you’ve been over. But if the killer, or killers, left any prints behind, we have to be able to weed out the ones that don’t matter.”

  “Right,” said Derek.

  We’d reached the end of the hall, where the steps came up from the back door. We looked down onto a third puddle of dried blood. I felt myself getting woozy.

  “Derek,” Barry said, “have you noticed anything? Something that seems out of place? Something missing? Something that’s there that wasn’t there before?”

  I’d been inside this house several times over the years, and to my eye everything looked in order, aside from the obvious signs. The place had not been ransacked. Cushions hadn’t been tossed. It didn’t look, for example, as though someone had been searching for drugs after murdering the occupants.

  Unless, of course, they knew exactly where to look for whatever it was they’d come to get.

  “I just . . . I don’t notice anything,” Derek said.

  “Let’s do a slow walk-through,” Barry said, directing us to turn around and head back down the hallway. “We’ll start in the kitchen.”

  It was a relief to go in there. So long as you didn’t actually breathe, there wasn’t anything to tip you to what had transpired on the other side of the wall. Donna, who’d had more than her share of quirks, was also something of a neat freak, and the kitchen showed it. Nothing out of place, no dishes in the sink, everything in perfect order in the fridge, which Barry opened by pulling on the side of the door itself, and not the handle, which had also been dusted for fingerprints.

  “Mrs. Langley was here, packing stuff for the trip,” Derek said. “She was feeling kind of woozy.”

  “Right,” Barry said. “That’s what Langley’s secretary said was the reason they’d come back. The cooler with the food in it, some other groceries, they were all still in the SUV, they hadn’t had a chance to bring it back in yet before they were killed. So nothing here, nothing looks out of the ordinary?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, let’s head upstairs.”

  Stepping over Donna Langley’s blood at the bottom of the stairs was like trying to straddle a puddle at the edge of a curb after a rainstorm. Thankfully, once we were up the carpeted stairs, there were no more blood pools.

  “Again,” Barry said, “try not to touch anything.” We’d kept our hands in our pockets, except for when we navigated the blood and needed our arms to maintain our balance.

  “Okay,” said Barry, easing himself into the first door on the left. “This is Adam’s room, but you probably already know that, right, Derek?”

  Derek nodded.

  “Just have a look, see if you notice anything out of place, out of the ordinary.”

  I figured Barry Duckworth, who had kids of his own, realized the fact that this room looked as though it had been tossed was not necessarily evidence that some bad guy or bad guys had been here searching for something. It was a teenage boy’s room, and at a glance, it could have been Derek’s. There were heaps of clothes on the floor here and there, the bed was unmade, magazines about computers and skateboarding and girls littered the top of his desk. Posters adorned the walls, including one that was drawn in the style of a World War II recruiting ad, showing a smiling soldier holding up a mug of coffee and saying, “How about a cup of shut the fuck up?”

  Also like Derek’s room, there were computer parts everywhere. Three monitors, half a dozen keyboards, countless wires and cables, boxes from computer games, an old-generation Nintendo system shoved under a desk, three computer towers.

  Barry sighed. “I don’t know how you’d tell, exactly, whether something was missing from here, but what do you think?”

  Derek studied the room from where he stood, didn’t say anything for about half a minute, then, “It looks fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Barry moved us back into the hall. The next room was a guest bedroom and looked as pristine as a hotel suite, not much to spot in there. We all poked our heads into the bathroom, and it looked as though Donna had left it ready should company drop by.

  Well, somebody dropped by.

  All that was left on this floor was the master bedroom. “I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen this room or not,” Barry said to Derek, “but go ahead and have a look.”

  I was relieved he hadn’t said the same thing to me. I looked in over Derek’s shoulder, and the bedroom looked pretty much the same as it had the only other time I had seen it, except maybe for the fingerprint dust all over the dresser.

  “Nothing,” Derek said.

  “Okay, that’s okay,” Barry said. “If you don’t see something, that probably means that there’s nothing much to see. So we’ve got just one thing left to check out.”

  “What?” Derek said, surprised.

  “The basement.”

  “Oh,” he said. “You think anyone was in the basement?”

  “Well, we need to check out everything,” he said.

  And so we went back down the stairs, over the puddle of Donna Langley’s blood, then down the hall, and down the half flight of stairs to the landing at the back door, where Adam Langley had died. Barry maneuvered himself around the bloodstains and went down the last few steps into the basement, but Derek, who had been behind him, stood breathless on the last step before the landing.

  “You okay?” I asked him. Maybe Ellen had been right. This was too much to put our son through. Barry shouldn’t have made him do this. And so far, dragging our boy through this hadn’t provided any new insights.

  “I can just . . . I can just picture him there,” Derek said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “If he could have just gotten out the d
oor. If only he’d run a little faster,” Derek said.

  Barry poked his head around the wall. “What do you mean, Derek?”

  “Just that, if he’d been quicker, he might have gotten away.”

  “He was shot in the back of the head,” Barry said, “so he was probably already running, trying to get out, but it’s hard to outrun a bullet.”

  Derek’s breathing was quick and shallow. “If he could have made it out the door, he could have hidden in the woods.”

  “I think Derek’s had enough,” I told Barry.

  “We’re almost done,” he said. “Just try to get around without stepping in anything and come downstairs.”

  “You need a drink of water or anything?” I asked my son.

  “We’ll be out of here in no time,” Barry said. “And I don’t want us using any glasses from the Langleys’ cupboard, you know?”

  We got around the blood and walked down into the rec room. The lights were already on. It looked like a million other basements. Wood paneling on the walls. A couch that had seen better days, had probably belonged upstairs at one point. A TV, about a thirty-six-inch screen, I figured, but not a flat screen that hangs on a wall.

  To my eye, the room looked pretty undisturbed.

  “What do you think?” Barry asked. “You and Adam must have hung out down here a lot.”

  “Yeah, we did,” he said quietly.

  “Anything look out of place?”

  Derek shook his head slowly.

  “You’re sure?”

  A slow nod.

  “What about over here?” Barry said, pointing to the far end of the room.

  “What?” I said. I didn’t know what he was getting at.

  Barry walked across the room and pointed to a panel, about three feet wide, that ran from the floor up to a chair rail molding that ran around the perimeter of the room. The panel was open about an inch or so.

  “What do you make of this?” he asked Derek.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This panel, to the crawlspace. It’s open an inch or two. You see that?”