فصل 08 - بخش 02

8

Jeanette Anderson rose at quarter of seven and found her husband’s side of the bed empty. The kitchen smelled of fresh coffee, but Ralph wasn’t there, either. She looked out the window and saw him sitting at the picnic table in the backyard, still in his striped pajamas and sipping from the joke cup Derek had given him last Father’s Day. On the side, in big blue letters, it said YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT UNTIL I DRINK MY COFFEE. She got her own cup, went out to him, and kissed his cheek. The day was going to be a hot one, but now this early morning was cool and quiet and pleasant.

‘Can’t let go of it, can you?’ she asked.

‘None of us will be letting go of this one,’ he said. ‘Not for awhile.’

‘It’s Sunday,’ she said. ‘Day of rest. And you need it. I don’t like the way you look. According to an article I read in the New York Times Health section last week, you have entered heart attack country.’

‘That’s cheering.’

She sighed. ‘What’s first on your list?’

‘Checking with that other teacher, Deborah Grant. Just a t to cross. I have no doubt she’ll confirm that Terry was on the trip to Cap City, although there’s always a chance that she noticed something off about him that Roundhill and Quade missed. Women can be more observant.’

Jeannie considered this idea doubtful, perhaps even sexist, but it wasn’t the time to say so. She reverted to their discussion of the night before, instead. ‘Terry was here. He did do it. What you need is some forensic evidence from there. I guess DNA is out of the question, but fingerprints?’

‘We can dust the room where he and Quade stayed, but they checked out Wednesday morning, and the room will have been cleaned and occupied since then. Almost certainly more than once.’

‘But it’s still possible, isn’t it? Some hotel maids are conscientious, but plenty just make the beds and wipe the rings and smudges off the coffee table and call it good. What if you found Mr Quade’s fingerprints, but not Terry Maitland’s?’

He liked the flush of Junior Detective excitement on her face, and wished he didn’t have to dampen it. ‘It wouldn’t prove anything, hon. Howie Gold would tell the jury they couldn’t convict anyone on the absence of prints, and he’d be right.’

She considered this. ‘Okay, but I still think you should gather prints from that room, and identify as many as possible. Can you do that?’

‘Yes. And it’s a good idea.’ It was at least another t to cross. ‘I’ll find out which room it was, and try to have the Sheraton move out whoever is in there now. I think they’ll cooperate, given the play this is going to have in the media. We’ll dust it top to bottom and side to side. But what I really want is to see the security footage from the days that convention was in session, and since Detective Sablo – he’s the State Police’s lead on this – won’t be back until later today, I’m going to take a run up there myself. I’ll be hours behind Gold’s investigator, but that can’t be helped.’

She put a hand over his. ‘Just promise me you’ll stop every once in a while and acknowledge the day, honey. It’s the only one you’ll have until tomorrow.’

He smiled at her, squeezed her hand, then let go. ‘I keep thinking about the vehicles he used, the one he used to kidnap the Peterson boy and the one he left town in.’

‘The Econoline van and the Subaru.’

‘Uh-huh. The Subaru doesn’t bother me much. That one was a straight steal from a municipal parking lot, and we’ve seen plenty of similar thefts since 2012 or so. The new keyless ignitions are the car thief’s best friend, because when you stop somewhere, thinking about whatever errands you have to run or what you’re going to put on for supper, you don’t see your keys dangling from the ignition. It’s easy to leave the electronic fob behind, especially if you’re wearing earbuds or yakking on your phone, and don’t hear the car chiming at you to take them. The Subaru’s owner – Barbara Nearing – left her fob in the cup holder and the parking ticket on the dashboard when she went to work at eight. Car was gone when she came back at five.’

‘The attendant doesn’t remember who drove it out?’

‘No, and that’s not surprising. It’s a big garage, five levels, there are people coming and going all the time. There’s a camera at the exit, but the footage gets wiped every forty-eight hours. The van, though …’

‘What about the van?’

‘It belonged to a part-time carpenter and handyman named Carl Jellison, who lives in Spuytenkill, New York, a little town between Poughkeepsie and New Paltz. He took his keys, but there was a spare in a little magnetic box under the rear bumper. Someone found the box and drove the van away. Bill Samuels’s theory is that the thief drove it from mid-state New York to Cap City … or Dubrow … or maybe right here to FC … and then left it with that spare key still in the ignition. Terry found it, re-stole it, and stashed it somewhere. Maybe in a barn or shed outside of town. God knows there are plenty of abandoned farms since everything went blooey in 2008. He ditched the van behind Shorty’s Pub with the key still in it, hoping – not unreasonably – that someone would steal it a third time.’

‘Only no one did,’ Jeannie said. ‘So you have the van in impound, and you have the key. Which has a Terry Maitland thumbprint on it.’

Ralph nodded. ‘We actually have a ton of prints. That thing’s ten years old and hasn’t been cleaned for at least the last five, if ever. Some of the prints we’ve eliminated – Jellison, his son, his wife, two guys who worked for him. Had those by Thursday afternoon, courtesy of the New York State Police, and God bless them. Some states, most states, we’d still be waiting. We’ve also got Terry Maitland’s and Frank Peterson’s, of course. Four of Peterson’s were on the inside of the passenger door. That’s a greasy area, and they’re as clear as fresh-minted pennies. I’m thinking those were made in the Figgis Park parking lot, when Terry was trying to pull him out of the passenger seat and the kid was trying to resist.’

Jeannie winced.

‘There are others from the van we’re still waiting on; they’ve been out on the wire since last Wednesday. We may get hits, we may not. We assume some of them belong to the original car thief, up in Spuytenkill. The others could belong to anyone from friends of Jellison’s to hitchhikers the car thief picked up. But the freshest ones, other than the boy’s, are Maitland’s. The original thief doesn’t matter, but I would like to know where he dumped the van.’ He paused, then added, ‘It makes no sense, you know.’

‘Not wiping away the prints?’

‘Not just that. How about stealing the van and the Subaru in the first place? Why steal vehicles to use while you do your dirt if you’re going to flash your face to anyone who cares to look at it?’

Jeannie listened to this with growing dismay. As his wife, she couldn’t ask the questions that his prompted: If you had such doubts, why in God’s name did you act the way you did? And why so fast? Yes, she had encouraged him, and so maybe she owned a little of this current trouble, but she hadn’t had all the information. A cheap out, but mine own, she thought … and winced again.

As if reading her mind (and after almost twenty-five years of marriage, he could probably do that), he said, ‘This isn’t all buyer’s remorse, you know – don’t get that idea. Bill Samuels and I talked about it. He says it doesn’t have to make sense. He says Terry did it the way he did because he went crazy. That the impulse to do it – the need to do it, for all I know, although you’d never get me to put it that way in court – kept building up and up. There have been similar cases. Bill says, “Oh yes, he planned to do something, and he put some of the pieces in place, but when he saw Frank Peterson last Tuesday, pushing that bike with the broken chain, all the planning went out the window. The top blew off, and Dr Jekyll turned into Mr Hyde.”’

‘A sexual sadist in a full-blown frenzy,’ she murmured. ‘Terry Maitland. Coach T.’

‘It made sense then and it makes sense now,’ he said, almost belligerently.

Maybe, she could have replied, but what about after, honey? What about when it was over, and he was sated? Did you and Bill consider that? How come he still didn’t wipe his fingerprints, and went right on showing his face?

‘There was something under the driver’s seat of the van,’ Ralph said.

‘Really? What?’

‘A scrap of paper. Part of a take-out menu, maybe. Probably means nothing, but I want to take a good close look at it. Pretty sure it was checked into evidence.’ He threw what remained of his coffee into the grass and stood up. ‘What I want more is a look at the Sheraton security footage for last Tuesday and Wednesday. Also any footage from the restaurant where he says that bunch of teachers went to dinner.’

‘If you get a good look at his face in any of the footage, send me a screen-grab.’ And when he raised his eyebrows: ‘I’ve known Terry as long as you have, and if that wasn’t him in Cap City, I’ll know.’ She smiled. ‘After all, women are more observant than men. You said so yourself.’