فصل 18 - بخش 04

18

It was Alec Pelley who answered his knock and led him across the living room and into the kitchen. From upstairs he could hear the Animals again. This time it was their biggest hit. It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, Eric Burdon wailed, and God, I know I’m one.

Confluence, he thought. Jeannie’s word.

Marcy and Howie Gold were sitting at the kitchen table. They had coffee. There was also a cup where Alec had been sitting, but no one offered to pour Ralph a cup. I have come unto the camp of mine enemies, he thought, and sat down.

‘Thank you for seeing me.’

Marcy made no reply, just picked up her cup with a hand that wasn’t quite steady.

‘This is painful for my client,’ Howie said, ‘so let’s keep it brief. You told Marcy you wanted to talk to her—’

‘Needed,’ Marcy interrupted. ‘Needed to talk to me, is what he said.’

‘So noted. What is it you needed to talk to her about, Detective Anderson? If it’s an apology, feel free to make it, but understand that we reserve all our legal options.’

In spite of everything, Ralph wasn’t quite ready to apologize. None of these three had seen a bloody branch jutting from Frank Peterson’s bottom, but Ralph had.

‘New information has come to light. It may not be substantive, but it’s suggestive of something, although I don’t know exactly what. My wife called it a confluence.’

‘Can you be a little more specific?’ Howie asked.

‘It turns out that the van used to abduct the Peterson boy was stolen by a kid only a little older than Frank Peterson himself. The kid’s name is Merlin Cassidy. He was running away from an abusive stepfather. In the course of his run between New York and south Texas, where he was finally arrested, he stole a number of vehicles. He dumped the van in Dayton, Ohio, in April. Marcy – Mrs Maitland – you and your family were in Dayton in April.’

Marcy had been raising her cup for another sip, but now she set it down with a bang. ‘Oh, no. You’re not putting that on Terry. We flew both ways, and except for when Terry went to visit his dad, we were together the whole time. End of story, and I think it’s time for you to leave.’

‘Whoa,’ Ralph said. ‘We knew it was a family trip, and that you went by air, almost from the time Terry became a person of interest. It’s just that … can’t you see how weird it is? The van is there when your family is there, then it turns up here. Terry told me he never saw it, let alone stole it. I want to believe that. We have his fingerprints all over the damn thing, but I still want to. And almost can.’

‘I doubt it,’ Howie said. ‘Stop trying to suck us in.’

‘Would it help you to believe me, maybe even trust me a little, if I told you we now have physical evidence that Terry was in Cap City? His fingerprints on a book from the hotel newsstand? Testimony that has him leaving those prints at approximately the same time the Peterson boy was abducted?’

‘Are you kidding?’ Alec Pelley asked. He sounded almost shocked.

‘No.’ Even with the case as effectively dead as Terry himself, Bill Samuels would be furious if he found out Ralph had told Marcy and Marcy’s lawyer about A Pictorial History of Flint County, Douree County, and Canning Township, but he was determined not to let this meeting end without getting some answers.

Alec whistled. ‘Holy shit.’

‘So you know he was there!’ Marcy cried. Red spots were burning in her cheeks. ‘You have to know it!’

But Ralph didn’t want to go there; he had spent too much time there already. ‘Terry mentioned the Dayton trip the last time I talked to him. He said he wanted to visit his father, but he said wanted with a funny kind of grimace. And when I asked him if his dad lived there, he said, “If you can call what he’s doing these days living.” So what’s the deal with that?’

‘The deal is Peter Maitland is suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease,’ Marcy said. ‘He’s in the Heisman Memory Unit. It’s part of the Kindred Hospital complex.’

‘So. Tough for Terry to go see him, I guess.’

‘Very tough,’ Marcy agreed. She was warming up a little now. Ralph was glad to discover he hadn’t lost all of his skills, but this wasn’t like being in an interrogation room with a suspect. Both Howie and Alec Pelley were on high alert, ready to stop her if they sensed her foot coming down on a hidden mine. ‘But not just because Peter didn’t know Terry any longer. They hadn’t had much of a relationship for a long time.’

‘Why not?’

‘How is this relevant, Detective?’ Howie asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. But since we’re not in court, counselor, how about you let her answer the damn question?’

Howie looked at Marcy and shrugged. Up to you.

‘Terry was Peter and Melinda’s only child,’ Marcy said. ‘He grew up here in Flint City, as you know, and lived here all his life, except for four years at OSU.’

‘Where you met him?’ Ralph asked.

‘That’s right. Anyway, Peter Maitland worked for the Cheery Petroleum Company, back in the days when this area was still producing a fair amount of oil. He fell in love with his secretary and divorced his wife. There was a lot of rancor, and Terry took his mother’s side. Terry … he was all about loyalty, even as a boy. He saw his father as a cheat, which he was, of course, and all of Peter’s justifications only made things worse. Long story short, Peter married the secretary – Dolores was her name – and asked for a transfer to the company headquarters.’

‘Which were in Dayton?’

‘Correct. Peter didn’t try for joint custody or anything like that. He understood Terry had made his choice. But Melinda insisted that Terry go to see him from time to time, claiming that a boy needed to know his father. Terry went, but only to please his mom. He never stopped seeing his father as the rat who ran away.’

Howie said, ‘That fits the Terry I knew.’

‘Melinda died in 2006. Heart attack. Peter’s second wife died two years later, of lung cancer. Terry kept on going to Dayton once or twice a year, to honor his mother, and kept on reasonably civil terms with his father. For the same reason, I suppose. In 2011 – I think it was – Peter began to get forgetful. Shoes in the shower instead of under the bed, car keys in the refrigerator, stuff like that. Because Terry is – was – his only close living relative, it was Terry who arranged to get him into the Heisman Memory Unit. That was in 2014.’

‘Places like that are expensive,’ Alec said. ‘Who pays?’

‘Insurance. Peter Maitland had very good insurance. Dolores insisted. Peter was a heavy smoker all his life, and she probably thought she’d inherit a bundle when he went. But she went first. Probably from his secondhand smoke.’

‘You speak as if Peter Maitland is dead,’ Ralph said. ‘Is that the case?’

‘No, he’s still alive.’ Then, in a deliberate echo of her husband: ‘If you want to call that living. He’s even stopped smoking. It’s not allowed in the HMU.’

‘How long were you in Dayton on your last visit?’

‘Five days. Terry visited his father three times while we were there.’

‘You and the girls never went with him?’

‘No. Terry didn’t want that, and neither did I. It wasn’t as if Peter could have been grandfatherly to Sarah and Grace, and Grace wouldn’t have understood.’

‘What did you do while he was visiting?’

Marcy smiled. ‘You speak as though Terry spent huge wallops of time with his father, and that wasn’t the case. His visits were short, no more than an hour or two. Mostly the four of us were together. When Terry was at the Heisman, we hung out at the hotel, and the girls swam in the indoor pool. One day the three of us went to the Art Institute, and one afternoon I took the girls to a Disney matinee. There was a cinema complex close to the hotel. We hit two or maybe three other movies, but that was the whole family. We went to the air force museum as a family, and to the Boonshoft, which is a science museum. The girls loved that. It was your basic family vacation, Detective Anderson, with Terry taking a few hours away to do his filial duty.’

And maybe to steal a van, Ralph thought.

It was possible, Merlin Cassidy and the Maitland family certainly could have been in Dayton at the same time, but it seemed farfetched. Even if that had happened, there was the question of how Terry had gotten the van back to Flint City. Or why he would have bothered. There were plenty of vehicles to be stolen in the FC metro area; Barbara Nearing’s Subaru was a case in point.

‘Probably ate out a few times, didn’t you?’ Ralph asked.

Howie sat forward at that, but said nothing for the moment.

‘We had a fair amount of room service, Sarah and Grace loved it, but sure, we ate out. Assuming the hotel restaurant counts as out.’

‘Did you happen to eat at a place called Tommy and Tuppence?’

‘No. I’d remember a restaurant with a name like that. We ate at IHOP one night, and I think twice at Cracker Barrel. Why?’

‘No reason,’ Ralph said.

Howie gave him a smile that said he knew better, but settled back. Alec sat with his arms crossed over his chest, his face expressionless.

‘Is that everything?’ Marcy asked. ‘Because I’m tired of this. And I’m tired of you.’

‘Did anything out of the ordinary happen while you were in Dayton? Anything at all? One of your daughters getting lost for a little while, Terry saying he’d met an old friend, you meeting an old friend, maybe a package delivery—’

‘A flying saucer?’ Howie asked. ‘How about a man in a trenchcoat with a message in code? Or the Rockettes dancing in the parking lot?’

‘Not helpful, counselor. Believe it or not, I’m trying to be part of the solution here.’

‘There was nothing.’ Marcy got up and began collecting coffee cups. ‘Terry visited his father, we had a nice vacation, we flew home. We didn’t eat at Tommy and whatever it was, and we didn’t steal a van. Now I’d like you to—’

‘Daddy got a cut.’

They all turned to the door. Sarah Maitland was standing there, looking pale and wan and much too thin in her jeans and Rangers tee-shirt.

‘Sarah, what are you doing down here?’ Marcy put the cups on the counter and went to the girl. ‘I told you and your sister to stay upstairs until we were done talking.’

‘Grace is already asleep,’ Sarah said. ‘She was awake last night with more stupid nightmares about the man with straws for eyes. I hope she doesn’t have any tonight. If she wakes up, you should give her a shot of Benadryl.’

‘I’m sure she’ll sleep through. Go on, now.’

But Sarah stood her ground. She was looking at Ralph, not with her mother’s dislike and distrust, but with a kind of concentrated curiosity that made Ralph uncomfortable. He held her gaze, but it was difficult.

‘My mother says you got my dad killed,’ Sarah said. ‘Is that true?’

‘No.’ Then the apology came at last, and to his surprise, it was almost effortless. ‘But I played a part, and for that I’m deeply sorry. I made a mistake I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.’

‘Probably that’s good,’ Sarah said. ‘Probably you deserve to.’ And to her mother: ‘I’ll go upstairs now, but if Grace starts yelling in the middle of the night, I’m going to sleep in her room.’

‘Before you go, Sarah, can you tell me about the cut?’ Ralph asked.

‘It happened when he visited his father,’ Sarah said. ‘A nurse fixed it up right after it happened. She put on that Betadine stuff and a Band-Aid. It was okay. He said it didn’t hurt.’

‘Upstairs, you,’ Marcy said.

‘Okay.’ They watched her pad to the stairs in her bare feet. When she got there, she turned back. ‘That Tommy and Tuppence restaurant was right up the street from our hotel. When we went to the art museum in the rent-a-dent, I saw the sign.’