A Tap on the Window

  “Go on.”

  “There’s actually a fire extinguisher on the wall, so Dennis, he grabs it, and pulls that little pin or whatever they have on them.”

  “Okay.”

  “And he squirts out all this foamy stuff and he puts out the fire pretty fast.”

  “Smart thinking,” I said. “Although it might have been smarter for him to stay out and just call the fire department.”

  “Yeah, well, he sure wishes he’d done that.” Claire realized she’d spoken of him in the present tense, and bit her lip. Tears welled up in her eyes almost instantly. I wanted to keep her focused on the story, so I asked her what happened next.

  “That was when Dennis heard someone coughing.”

  I turned and looked at her. “So someone was home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Phyllis Pearce?”

  “No,” Claire said. “It was a guy. An old man. I mean, Dennis didn’t know he was an old man at first. All Dennis heard was the coughing. It was coming from the basement, just down this hall from the laundry room.”

  She took another sip of her water.

  “So Dennis goes to this door, but it’s got a lock on it. Like, with a key? Kind of like what you have on your locker at school, but not a combination. There’s someone behind the door, locked in. He’s coughing and shouting, ‘Fire,’ but he can’t shout very loud because it’s all smoky and the man is really old and sick.”

  “What’d Dennis do?”

  “He figures he should get the guy out right away, get him some fresh air, and he looks around for a key, and it’s right there, sitting on a windowsill, so it’s really easy to find, and he takes off the lock and opens the door and he’s, like, totally freaked out by what he finds.”

  Claire stops her story. She seems almost afraid to continue it.

  “What did Dennis find, Claire?”

  She swallowed. “First of all, Dennis said, forget the smoke. It was the other smells that just took his breath away. Like, shit and piss and stuff like that. So there’s this guy in there, he’s, like, seventy or eighty years old or something, and there’s a wheelchair in the room, and this guy’s sitting up in bed, he can’t walk or anything and he wants Dennis to get him out of there if the place is on fire. And Dennis calms him down, says the fire is out, but he’s, like, what the fuck, right? Who is this guy and what’s he doing down there?”

  I got out my phone and handed it to Claire. “Open up Safari,” I said. “Google ‘Harry Pearce, Griffon, Niagara Falls’ and see what you get. While we’re waiting, keep talking.”

  She tapped the app, typed the words into the search field. “It’s taking a while.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “So anyway, when the old man realizes he’s not going to burn up, he tells Dennis he has to get him out of there. That he has to do it fast before his wife gets back because she’ll get really mad. But then Dennis hears this noise from upstairs. Someone racing into the house. See, what Dennis figured was, the house had, like, an alarm system, but instead of going to a security company, it just sent a message to a couple of people.”

  “Phyllis Pearce, and Ricky Haines,” I said.

  “Yeah. The old man knows someone’s coming, so he throws this thing to Dennis. That notebook I was going to show you.”

  I tapped my chest. “I got it.”

  “Okay. So Dennis picks up the book and stuffs it in his pocket just before Ricky shows up, yelling ‘Dad, Dad, Dad!’ And he comes into the room, and he finds Dennis standing there. Ricky’s all, like, who the hell are you, and Dennis says there was a fire, and by the way, what the fuck is this? You got an old guy prisoner in your basement?”

  She looked down at her phone. “Okay, some stuff’s coming in. There’s a story here about Niagara Falls tragedies.”

  “See what it says about Harry Pearce.”

  Claire moved the story up the screen with her thumb. “Okay, so it says here he went out in a boat one night, didn’t have oars with him and the motor didn’t work, and he went over.”

  “What else?”

  “Okay, it was, like, seven years ago and—”

  “What’s it say about a body?”

  “A body?”

  “Did they find him?”

  “Hang on.” She continued reading. “Okay, they found the boat, but his body was never found.” Claire looked up from the screen. “So, that’s him? In the basement?”

  “Evidently,” I said.

  “That’s messed up,” she said.

  “So Ricky finds Dennis with Harry Pearce. Then what?”

  “Ricky says something like, ‘You’re a dead man,’ to Dennis, and starts to go for him, except Dennis is still holding the little fire extinguisher, right? And he aims it up and shoots shit right into Ricky’s face. It buys Dennis enough time to get past him and get the hell out of there.”

  “Why doesn’t Dennis go straight to the cops?” I asked.

  Claire looked at me like I was an idiot. “How many reasons do you want? First, Dennis tells me, when you’re black, you don’t ever go to the cops. Not for anything, not ever. Second, Ricky is the cops. Then Ricky shouts out to Dennis as he’s leaving, ‘You go to the police and you’re dead. Totally dead.’ That if he goes to the cops, Ricky’ll know.”

  I wasn’t convinced. If Dennis didn’t feel it was safe to go to the Griffon cops, he could have gone to the state police.

  “And there was one more thing,” Claire said. “Ricky says to Dennis, he says, ‘You tell anyone, and I’ll find your girlfriend, that fucking mayor’s kid’—that’s what Dennis says he said—‘and slice her goddamn tits off.’”

  I shot Claire a look.

  “Yeah,” Claire said. “Harsh, huh?”

  FIFTY-NINE

  “So that’s why Dennis had to see me. He was scared for me, and he didn’t know what he should do,” Claire said.

  “After a couple of days, you must have come to some decision.”

  Claire nodded. She found another napkin, blew her nose. “I said to him that we should talk to my dad, that he’d know what to do. Dad doesn’t trust the Griffon cops, but he would probably know someone, like, in the FBI or something like that.”

  “That was a good plan,” I said.

  “He was still scared to do it, but we talked about it for hours and hours, looking at the pluses and minuses. But we both realized we couldn’t go on like this forever, hiding out.”

  “No.”

  Claire nodded. “I can’t believe they’re both dead. Hanna and Dennis. My best friend, my boyfriend.” She started to sob quietly.

  I let her cry for the next few miles, figured she might as well get it out. Not that she was likely to be finished before we got to Griffon. She’d be doing this for weeks. When her crying subsided somewhat, I got out my phone and placed a call.

  I thought it was time.

  Augustus Perry answered. “What?”

  “I didn’t know one of your guys—Ricky Haines—was Phyllis Pearce’s son.”

  “If you’re going to start telling me things you don’t know, I’m gonna be on the phone with you all day,” he said.

  “Why’s his name not Pearce?”

  Augie let out a long sigh. “What the fuck does this have to do with anything?”

  “Bear with me, okay?”

  “Okay, from what I know, Phyllis was married once before to some guy with the last name Haines. They had Ricky, but when Ricky was a kid his dad had lung cancer or a heart attack or something. Few years after that, Phyllis started living with Harry Pearce and eventually married him, but she wanted the kid to keep the real dad’s name. And Harry Pearce is dead, too.”

  “Which leads me to my next question. He went over the falls seven years ago.”

  “Why are you wasting my time if you already know this stuff?”


  “They never found his body, right?”

  I could almost hear Augie thinking through the connection. “That’s right. Just bits and pieces of the boat.”

  “There’s a reason,” I said. “Harry Pearce is alive. He’s living in Phyllis’ basement.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “He’s been there for years. He’s some kind of invalid. Can’t walk. They’ve been keeping him in a locked room.”

  “Where are you getting this shit?”

  “You think I just make this stuff up, Augie? If I had time to explain all this now, I would.”

  “Where are you?”

  “About an hour from Griffon. I found Claire Sanders. Her boyfriend, Dennis Mullavey, cut the lawn for Pearce. There was smoke coming from the house one day. He broke in, put it out, found Harry Pearce locked up downstairs.”

  “Jesus. You got Mullavey with you, too?”

  “No,” I said. “He’s dead. Haines killed him.”

  “What?”

  “Hanna Rodomski, too, by the look of it.”

  “What?” Augie asked. “You know we’ve got the Skilling kid for that. They found—”

  “I know what they found. I think Haines planted it. He could have done it anytime during the night.”

  Another long pause from Augie. I filled it. “Soon as I drop Claire off, I’m going to that house. I’m getting Harry Pearce out of there.”

  “Not without me,” my brother-in-law said quietly.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll meet you down the corner from the Pearce house. I’m still the better part of an hour away.”

  “I’ll be there,” Augie said, and hung up.

  Claire looked over at me as I put the phone away. Her hand was full of damp tissues. “You really trust him?”

  “Not entirely,” I said. “But I have to right now.”

  I reached back into my jacket and handed her my phone. “Call your dad.”

  She entered the number, put the phone to her ear. “No, Daddy, it’s me,” she said. Bert Sanders must have seen the caller ID and been expecting to hear my voice.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” she said. “But Dennis, oh Daddy, Dennis is dead.” And she began to weep again.

  I reached back into my jacket for the black notebook. With one hand on the wheel, I opened the book on my lap, got my thumb jammed in the middle to prop it open, then raised it to dashboard height so I could glance back and forth between the pages and the road.

  I read a few parts at random.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  A different date was written at the top of every page in a small, precise handwriting. Then, Breakfast: Rice Krispies with milk, orange juice, banana, coffee with cream. Lunch: Peanut butter sandwich on white bread, two chocolate chip cookies, milk, apple. Dinner: Lasagna, Caesar salad, chocolate cake, tea.

  I flipped to another day. Breakfast: Oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar, orange juice, coffee with cream. Lunch: Big Mac, french fries, Coke, apple pie. Dinner: Shake and bake chicken, rice with butter, peas, glass of water, no dessert.

  Every page was the same.

  Harry kept a record of every single thing he ate.

  * * *

  Claire had been talking to her father for about five minutes, filling him in on what she’d done, where she’d been, when she handed the phone to me. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Mr. Weaver, I can’t thank you enough. You saved her life.”

  I wasn’t so sure it would have needed saving if I hadn’t led Haines to the cottage. “We’ll be back soon.”

  “I’ll meet you on the way in,” he said. “I want to see her as soon as possible.”

  “Okay,” I said. “The police are going to want to talk to her. First thing I think you should do is take her to a doctor. She may be suffering mild shock. She’s been through a hell of a lot.”

  “Of course,” Sanders said. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  It occurred to me I’d be passing the hospital just south of Griffon on the way. I told Sanders to meet me at the emergency room entrance. I was guessing no more than forty minutes.

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  When I was done with the call I said to Claire, “Almost home.”

  She nodded tiredly.

  I handed her the book. “Have you looked at this?”

  “Yeah. Dennis and I looked all through it. It’s kind of nuts.”

  “Did you read through the whole thing?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is there anything else in it? Did he write about what was being done to him, about being kept locked up?”

  “Nope. It’s just all about food. What he ate every day. Why would someone do that?”

  “It might be a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder,” I ventured.

  “Dennis and I couldn’t figure out why he’d have wanted Dennis to have it.”

  I thought about that. “It’s dated. And someone might recognize the writing. And Harry Pearce’s obsession with his diet probably predates his so-called death. It’s proof that he’s alive, that he has been for the last seven years.”

  I wanted to take the conversation in another direction. “You said something, a while ago, that you haven’t explained. About Officer Haines. You said—your words—about him feeling you up. What was that about?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “That’s actually a story about Scott.”

  “Scott? What do you mean?”

  “Okay, so, I told you the other night I didn’t really know Scott all that well.”

  I glanced over. “Uh-huh.”

  “And I didn’t, but sometimes he’d hang out with me and Hanna and Sean. Like, not a lot, but sometimes.” She paused. “He was okay. Kind of different, and a bit weird, but okay.”

  “Thanks.”

  “The thing is, he really stood up for me once. And it had to do with Ricky Haines.”

  “What do you mean, he stood up for you?”

  “Like, sort of protected me, that kind of thing.”

  I gave her a look that said I wanted to know more. “When was this?”

  “I don’t know. Not long before he, you know, before he died.”

  “What happened?”

  “A bunch of us were at Patchett’s, and okay, we’re all underage, I get that, but everyone does it. But we were coming out one night, and Scott happened to be there, kind of hanging around, and I was going down the side of the building, to the parking lot, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And Haines, he stops me and says, ‘We have to check you for drugs.’”

  “Did you have any on you?”

  “Jeez, no,” she said.

  “So Haines, he says he has to search me, and I tell him he’s got no right to do that, but you know our cops, like they’ve ever worried about that kind of shit.”

  “Go on.”

  “So he puts me up against the wall, with my arms spread and everything, and he starts patting me down. And he starts coming up my body, and when he gets here”—and she pointed to her breasts—“he starts really checking them out.” She made her hands into cups. “Like that.”

  I felt my cheeks flush with anger.

  “So anyway, Scott, he’s been watching the whole thing, and when he sees the cop, you know, getting his rocks off, Scott kind of goes nuts.”

  “What . . . did he do?” I asked. I remembered Scott telling us this story.

  “He starts yelling, ‘Hey, pervert, why don’t you grab onto yourself!’ and other stuff, like ‘Rapist!’ and just general stuff like leave me alone,” she said.

  I felt a small lump in my throat.

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  “The co
p looked at him and told him to get lost or, you know, worse, and then Scott says something like ‘I’m gonna tell my uncle’ and ‘I’ll remember you.’ That kind of thing.”

  “Scott threatened him?”

  Claire nodded. “Yeah, kinda. Later, Scott says I should charge the guy with sexual assault, but I just didn’t want to get into it. I mean, it was all so complicated, with my dad having this political kind of fight with the chief, and I thought, right, if I say some cop assaulted me, the chief’ll just say my dad put me up to it to make the cops look bad. It’d be, like, this huge can of worms, you know? So I never even told my dad about it, because I knew he’d just go insane. But Scott, man, he was something, telling that cop he’d get him fired. He wasn’t even high when he said it.”

  She winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that or anything. But I wanted you to know. Scott, he really hated that cop. He even had a run-in with him another time, saw him in his cruiser, pointed to him and called him a perv again. Took off running when the cop started to get out of his car and come after him. Haines really hated Scott, you could tell. That might even be why he rousted me a second time, not that long ago, just to get even for what Scott did. Took my purse and we had to go in and get it the next day.”

  I felt numb.

  “Oh yeah, and here’s another thing,” Claire said. “Scott told me, that time he saw Haines in his cruiser, Haines did that thing where you shoot somebody with your finger.”

  Ricky Haines, the cop who found Scott’s dead body in the parking lot of Ravelson Furniture, the cop who’d come to our door to deliver the bad news, the cop I now knew wasn’t afraid to kill anyone who presented a threat to him.

  He knew our son, and had it in for him.

  SIXTY

  I was rattled when those kids nearly pitched me into the Niagara River. I was more than a little shook up a couple of hours earlier when we were being stalked at the cottage.

  But that was nothing compared to this.

  All this time we’d believed Scott had killed himself. Maybe not intentionally, but he’d been the author of his own misfortune, as they say. He was under the influence of ecstasy and either jumped off that roof thinking he could fly or stumbled over the edge while he was high.