Suspects

by Thomas Berger

  “Larry Howland came home.”

  The partners went down to their car, and Moody drove to 1143 Laurel. Across the street from the crime scene was a crowd of onlookers and also a scattering of media people. LeBeau and Moody ignored the shouted questions of the latter, ducked under the yellow tape, and walked to the house.

  The officer on duty had detained Howland in the living room. The detectives took over.

  Howland was a tall man going a little soft around the middle. He had curly dark hair cut neat and short. He was closely shaven but had the kind of beard that always casts a shadow. He wore a suit of medium gray, a shirt with a thin blue stripe, and a blue tie with a small red figure. His only visible jewelry was a gold wristwatch and a wedding band. He looked a few years older than the thirty-two they had established from Motor Vehicles records. The blue Escort parked up the street, just beyond where the yellow tape turned the corner at the driveway of 1143, was his, according to the number on the plate.

  Howland’s face was colored with indignation. He shouted at the detectives. He claimed not to know what had happened here.

  Moody asked him, “You are Lawrence Howland, and this is your home? Your wife is Donna Howland, and your daughter’s named Amanda?”

  The answer was given at high volume. “How much longer do I have to put up with this? Where are they? What’s happened to them?” He seemed more angry than worried. But the visible evidence of emotion could be highly deceptive.

  “This won’t take a minute,” Moody said. “Would you mind just telling us where it was you really went yesterday? Because you weren’t on any of the airlines that fly in and out of Los Angeles—at least not under the name Lawrence or Larry Howland. Also your employer, Glenn-Air, states they never sent you to any kind of conference or convention or whatever, in L.A. or anyplace else.”

  Howland was suddenly no longer angry. “God Almighty,” he pleaded, “show me a little decency. What’s happened to my family?”

  LeBeau spoke, with a harder voice than Moody’s. “We’ve got some serious business here, and therefore I’m going to give you your rights at this point. You have the right to remain silent…” He went through the litany, pretending to read from the card he took from the leather folder that also contained his ID and shield.

  But before he had finished, Howland cried, “Do I have to get my lawyer to force you to answer a simple question?”

  Moody decided it was time to hit him with it. “Mr. Howland, your wife and your daughter are deceased.”

  Howland nodded his head for a moment, looking at nothing. At length he lowered his fleshy chin and closed his eyes. The two detectives stood flanking him, in front of the couch he refused to take a seat on when they asked him to. There were all sorts of possible reactions to such news as he had now received—if in fact it was news to him—and in Moody’s experience none was likely to be indicative of either guilt or innocence, though you might pretend otherwise. The most ruthless of murderers was quite capable of a display of shock and grief that was at face value much more credible than the sometimes mild reaction of the clean-souled.

  “Now maybe you want to sit down,” Moody told him, gesturing. “Mr. Howland?” The man seemed in a stupor.

  “Excuse me,” Howland said finally, turning as if in appeal to LeBeau, who previously had been the less friendly; but it was not LeBeau who had brought the worst news. “I want to get this straight.” His eyes seemed to have shrunk in diameter as his chin receded and his nose grew more pointed, but his color stayed the same.

  Moody repeated the curt statement, this time replacing “deceased” with “dead.” When the substance of what you said was of this character, there was no means of not being brutal, at least so he believed. But he still might try when addressing someone who could not possibly be a perpetrator, such as Donna’s mother. Which is why he was relieved that Dennis had taken that job off his hands.

  Howland nodded as he had earlier.

  “Sit down,” LeBeau said sternly. He touched Howland’s shoulder.

  Howland flinched. He cried defiantly, “This is my house. Don’t tell me what to do! You’re on my premises here.”

  “Mr. Howland, you listen to me,” said Moody. “Something happened here that changes a lot of things. You don’t want to work against us. You want to help us find out what happened to your wife and little girl. At least I’m hoping you do.”

  Howland all at once screamed, taking the officers by surprise, and thus was able to dash as far as the hallway before LeBeau, with his quicker reflexes, could pursue him and halt his progress, being careful, however, to avoid strong-arming the man. Luckily nothing of the sort was needed, despite his apparent burst of hysteria. Howland came to a rigid stop at the touch of his elbow.

  “Mr. Howland,” Moody said. “Listen to me. I’m sorry there’s been a misunderstanding. We’re going to tell you everything we know. The reason why we want you to sit down is you’re going to hear some nasty stuff.”

  Howland violently shook his head, without, however, disarranging his hair. He did not focus his eyes anywhere. He came slowly back into the living room, touching the woodwork and the pieces of furniture he passed, as though seeking orientation. He still would not sit down.

  Moody told him about the murders. Howland covered his face, and his shoulders heaved, though he made no sound and no tears emerged from beneath his fingers. After a while LeBeau returned to the questioning, for one of the best times to get straight answers was when a subject was genuinely overwrought and grief drained the supply of energy needed for misrepresentation. But it was also true that one of the worst times was when the emotion was being faked. It would take a while before they could decide about Howland.

  Howland took his hands off his dry face. Between shattering sobs, he proceeded to admit he had invented the story of going to L.A. for business or in fact for any other purpose. He had not been out of his home county since leaving 1143 the morning before. But the lie had been fabricated to delude his now dead wife, certainly not the police. The truth was that he and a lady friend had been at the Starry Night, one of those motels specializing in facilities for romantic trysts, the rooms of which featured hot tubs, water beds, erotic videos on closed-circuit TV, and bottles of pink champagne. Moody and LeBeau remembered the place as where, some years earlier, a transvestite was beaten to death by a man who picked him up at a bar. When the victim’s body was found next day, a faint growth of beard had pushed through the heavy makeup on his cheeks: whiskers take a while to learn the game is finished forever. The killer, a manual-arts teacher at the public high school, turned himself in by late afternoon. He said what enraged him was being taken by surprise, that he had nothing in general against the type.

  “I believe that,” Moody said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have sodomized the body after killing the individual, would you?”

  “What I figured,” the husky teacher said, “was I was out an awful lot of money, adding up the drinks, the expensive room, and what I gave this, uh, person, and I still hadn’t gotten what I went there for, so I had something coming.”

  Howland finally began actually to weep tears. He sat down or rather fell onto the sofa, where he continued to sob. “The cop wouldn’t tell me what happened. I kept asking to talk to Donna, but he wouldn’t put her on. I thought, well, maybe it’s a burglary or something.”

  “You weren’t that worried,” LeBeau said coldly.

  “I’ll tell you what worried me,” cried Howland. “You don’t know Donna. If she knew I was with somebody else—look, maybe she’d rather be dead.” His eyes became wild. “You think I’m kidding?”

  “Is that why you killed her?”

  Howland’s expression immediately turned bland. It was a remarkably rapid transition, but Moody had seen its like on people who proved guiltless. Howland proceeded to loosen the knot of his necktie. Then he ripped his shirt at the top button—the cloth tore, the button remained. The shirt was probably ruined, as Moody did not fail to notice and,
considering his own meager wardrobe, to deplore.

  “I know how it might sound at a time like this,” Howland said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” It was LeBeau.

  “See, if this hadn’t happened, it would have been just sex. It looks so bad now because while I was—well, you know, in bed and so on with someone else.… But look”—his eyes flared wildly again—“I wouldn’t have been home in any case. I would have been calling on customers or doing paperwork in the office. I’m never home before past six.”

  “Who could have done a thing like this?” asked Moody.

  “Nobody!” Howland shouted. “Everybody loved Donna.” He sank to the couch. “And my little girl.”

  Moody leaned toward Howland and said, “Take your best guess, Larry.”

  Howland was moaning softly into the hands over his face. After a moment his thick fingers parted to make a fence through the interstices of which he peeped at the carpet. “I could never get her to keep the door locked. Maybe the front door, okay, but never the back. It was just too much trouble when you were running in and out, she said. I should have insisted more, but I could never argue with Donna.” He lowered his hands and frowned. “She was real straidaced, you know. But I won’t go into that.”

  “What does that mean?” asked LeBeau.

  “Well, nudity and so on.” Howland wet his lips. “You know…”

  “No, I don’t,” Moody said. “Tell me.” He drew up an upholstered chair and sat down facing Howland. “I could use some help here, Larry.” He moved his chair closer, so that their knees were almost touching.

  “I’m in no position to hold back on myself,” Howland said, red-eyed, wet-cheeked, sneering bitterly at the ceiling. “Man, what this must look like!” He appealed to Moody. “It was just sex, believe me. This woman, she’s married, and she didn’t want a divorce any more than I did.”

  Moody was holding his open notebook. “I really have to get the name. Things have gone too far, Larry. We’ll find out anyway.”

  Howland stared at him. “Where are my wife and daughter now? They have got to be given a decent burial.” He found a bright white handkerchief in an inside breast pocket and without undoing its crisp folds he blotted his wet eyes.

  “It won’t be much longer. I’ll give the ME a call and find out when. Now let’s have your friend’s name.”

  Howland sighed. “Do you know what would have happened if Donna found out? She didn’t understand the first thing about any kind of sex, but—I mean, she knew it existed, but out in the world somehow, with people who had something wrong with them, and so on.”

  Moody gestured with the notebook. “The lady’s name is…?”

  “Gina Bissonette. She lives over on Lowell Drive. She’s my boss’s wife. She’s got nothing to do with this and doesn’t deserve to get in trouble for it. If you could check with her when he isn’t around, it would be the right thing.”

  “You let us decide what’s right, Larry,” LeBeau told him, coming across the room, staring him in the eye.

  Howland did not look away. “I want to get my wife and child,” said he. “I don’t care about myself, but I’m going to phone my lawyer now. You’re not going to keep me away from my family.”

  “What you could have done,” LeBeau said, “was call from just around the corner. You lied about calling from L.A. Maybe you’re not telling the truth now about calling from the motel.” An instant later he added disingenuously, “Oh, I forgot: the call would show up on your bill, wouldn’t it?”

  “No,” said Howland. “I made it from the pay phone outside the office, there near the parking lot.”

  Moody said, “Larry, we’re going to ask you to come down to the bureau with us. I know you want to cooperate in every way you can. If I promise you that the bodies of your loved ones will be released as soon as possible—you have my solemn word on that—can you see your way clear to going along just a little while longer?”

  He did not wait for an answer. He went to the front window and peeped out through the draperies that had been pulled shut so as to discourage TV cameramen, who were denied access to the lawn but might have been able to get a shadowy picture from the street, using the zoom.

  Moody returned to Howland and used the situation to advantage. “We’re not going to embarrass you in front of that pack out there. We’ll have the officer lower the ribbon so we can pull right back into the driveway, and you can exit through the rear door. You’ll be in the car before they get focused. You can put a raincoat over your head.”

  Howland seemed grateful for Moody’s kindness, having lost all energy. His nod was feeble.

  Moody kept his promise, taking Howland out the kitchen door while LeBeau brought the car back, but the Kellers, the old retired couple whose property was just across the blacktop driveway on the west, had, for the excitement of it or perhaps even a fee, admitted some members of the electronic press to their side yard, and there was nothing the detectives could do about the cameras that were trained on them and their charge from close range. To the shouted questions, though, they could and did remain silent, and Moody advised Howland, his face swathed in the coat, not to be provoked by the raucous cries, “Didja kill your wife and child?”

  Lloyd was awakened by the urgent need to urinate. In the aftermath of his monumental drinking spree of the day before—at least he assumed it was only one day earlier—he carried on his shoulders a head that felt as though encased in one of those old-fashioned diving helmets, the kind with a window behind a cage, offering only remote and fragmented visibility. He felt so dizzy that he had to take another few minutes of sleep, and it was during this period that he pissed the bed. After the briefest instant of wet warmth, he understood what was happening but went ahead anyway and emptied his bladder. Any attempt at self-discipline would have been useless at this point. It was not the first time, nor the tenth, that the malodorous, stained old mattress had been urinated on by someone, though he had never done so before. He would not anyway be sleeping on it again.

  Lloyd’s intent, when he could finally extricate himself from the slough of standing urine (which for some reason was not being absorbed), was to clean himself up soon as possible, leave town, and keep on going. It had been a mistake to come here in the first place. He had put himself under too much pressure while at the same time having no clear aim. How could anything good come of that combination?

  Once he got to his feet he was not quite as weak of leg as he had anticipated, but his head throbbed with an aggressive pain, and his tongue was so sour that his teeth tingled from contact with it. At the corroded tap of the stained sink he made a drinking fountain of his hand, childhood-fashion, and swallowed water, which no matter how long it ran remained at the same tepid temperature as that from the hot-water faucet.

  Had he single-handedly drunk the entire half gallon of scotch? But where was the empty bottle? And where had he emptied it? Instead of a memory of places and events, he retained only impressions, shadows, fragments of sound, textures, sensations, some unpleasant but not all.

  Having gulped his fill of the water, rinsing with and spitting out the last mouthful, he raised his head to the mirror and saw the scabbed wound that extended on a long diagonal from the cheekbone to the edge of his upper lip. He had no immediate memory of its origin, but examining the nearby skin by eye and then by touch and, detecting only a faint shadow of beard, he supposed that at some time since the ruining of his electric shaver the morning before, he had found an edged razor somewhere and, using it, cut himself.

  The matter sent him on a search of the medicine cabinet, some of the items in which had been left behind by former tenants. And there the implement lay, between an empty bottle that had once held rubbing alcohol and a plastic jar a quarter full of Vaseline. It was one of those disposable razors. Had he found it and used it before going to work, the day might have turned out differently.

  If the water in the washstand was always warm, that which emerged from the showerhe
ad, in the curtainless rusty-metal stall, was habitually unheated. Today it was as cold as ever, but in his current condition, with a body temperature that felt feverish, he derived some strength from the icy gush. In turning to clean his back, he encountered underfoot a soaked grayish cloth which when eventually retrieved and examined proved to be a T-shirt, presumably his own. The water had smudged but not washed away the streaks of red in its weave. He had apparently bled more from the facial cut than he would have thought.

  Obviously the garment would not dry before he hit the road, so he took it to the kitchenette and stuffed it into the plastic bag he kept under the sink for refuse. There was no other garbage on hand because he had bought no food recently, except for the box of chocolate-covered doughnuts that was still in the half-refrigerator under the counter. It had probably been a long time since he had last eaten, but his sour stomach ruled out any thought of breakfast. He would leave the doughnuts behind for the obese super, who was the kind that pilfered from tenants anyway.

  He stuffed his sparse supply of extra underwear into the old backpack he had found the year before among the junk Larry and Donna had gathered to contribute to a Goodwill bin.

  “Don’t tell me you’re taking up the great outdoors,” Larry said in the joshing tone that was standard with his brother.

  “And why not?” asked Donna, in gentle challenge. She was playing her habitual role of defender of each against the other. As happened so often, this served to make her Larry’s target.

  “Listen to who’s talking,” he cried. “When did you ever haul your fat butt along a woodland trail?” He reared back, hands on hips. “I don’t mean now. I mean way back when you were young, if you can remember that far back.”

  Lloyd could have punched him, but Donna did not seem to mind. “Hey,” she said, laughing in the throaty manner, chin thrown up, which was at odds with her normal ladylike ways but never less than attractive. “If you remember, my backside wasn’t fat in those days.”

  Nor was it now, but it was not Lloyd’s place to make such an immodest observation. He turned his head away, so she would not be further humiliated. He addressed his brother. “The pack might come in handy. I move around a lot.”