The Thin Edge

by Peggy Townsend

  “Like the book that was pulled out the first time I came here. Aoi No Ue.”

  “A story about the power of jealousy,” Davenport said. “Why didn’t I see it?”

  “My dad used to say life follows its own path, like water. You can’t really control it.”

  “So he believed in fate too?”

  “In a way. He believed life was the way it was, but that we shouldn’t simply surrender to it. He thought if we didn’t expect too much and looked for the simple beauty of just being alive, we would be happy no matter what happened.”

  “An interesting guy. A biology teacher, right? Sorry, I had Kyle check you out after you came here the first time.”

  “He was pretty incredible.”

  Silence fell.

  “So what do we do?” Davenport said after a time. “Do we call the detectives?” He swiveled the chair toward her.

  “Not quite yet.”

  She wondered if the Brain Farm had found what they were looking for.

  “Would you mind if I poked around? Maybe I could find the stuff he used on me,” she asked.

  “Do you read Chinese? I doubt if anything’s labeled in English.”

  “You’re right.”

  “It’s probably better to let the police find it, anyway. Chain of evidence and all.”

  The mourning dove flew off with a whistle of its wings.

  “I’d like to talk to Kyle, to see his reaction,” Aloa said.

  “He should be back in an hour.”

  “I need to get one more piece of evidence before I do.”

  “You remind me of her, you know. Strong and smart, but full of doubts. That’s why you had your problem, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Starving yourself. It takes strength to do that. You have to fight against every instinct. You were down to eighty-nine pounds, if I remember right.”

  “How about we don’t discuss body size?” Aloa said. A memory needled her brain but disappeared.

  “I was just saying you have incredible discipline. I like that. It’s why you’re good at what you do, but discipline can also be destructive.”

  “I didn’t ask for your psychoanalysis,” Aloa said.

  “Sorry. You’re right. I have a tendency to do that. Psychoanalyze.”

  “How would Kyle know about your wife’s affair? Did you tell him?”

  “There weren’t a lot of secrets in this house. I imagine he overheard us talking and read her texts. He liked to snoop. I caught him reading my emails a few times.”

  “Would he have confronted Corrine about the affair?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s more of a sniper. Hit without being seen.”

  An interesting analogy.

  “If Corrine fired him that night, would she have told you?”

  “She probably wouldn’t want to upset me any more than I already was. Remember? It was the night she was going to tell the professor to leave her alone. She was basically taking a vow of chastity for me. That was pretty heavy for both of us.”

  “So Hamlin never showed up?”

  “If I believe what you say—that Hamlin has an alibi—then I guess he didn’t.”

  “Was anything missing from your house after that night?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m wondering where Kyle got the knife. If he brought it or if it was here. If it was something you had.”

  “I don’t keep daggers around the house, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “So Kyle brought the knife?”

  “Apparently. He also must have taken it with him, since the murder weapon wasn’t found. What are you thinking, Aloa?”

  “I’m thinking I need to ask him more questions.”

  “Excuse me.” The Russian nurse appeared on the deck. “Is time for medication.”

  “In a minute,” Davenport said. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

  “Da.” The nurse disappeared.

  “So when will you have this evidence of yours?”

  “Soon, I hope.”

  He looked away, then back at her. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll get him ready for you. Stir up his insecurities, get him off-balance, maybe bring up some of his old memories. Open up the crack so you can break him: the way we did it in the army.”

  “There’s no need,” Aloa began.

  Davenport pressed his lips into a tight line. “There’s every need for me to do it, Ms. Snow. If that bastard killed Corrine, I want him so tied up in knots he won’t be able to get loose. I want him to confess. I want him to pay.”

  Aloa opened the front door of the mansion and slipped inside, following the sound of voices into the kitchen where P-Mac was hunched over a laptop on the table.

  “We got him, Ink,” Tick crowed when he saw her. “The little weasel can run but he ain’t going to be able to hide.”

  “Yup. We found something. Something the guy won’t be able to explain away,” P-Mac said.

  Aloa pulled up a chair.

  Tick dropped a sealed sandwich baggie in front of her. “Whoop, there you go,” he said. Inside was a jagged rectangle of something black embedded with one half of a snap fastener.

  “It’s a piece of your jacket. From the sleeve,” P-Mac said. “We found it wedged under the rear bumper of his truck.”

  “While he was grocery shopping,” Tick added and beamed. “Doc followed him inside and me and P-Mac crawled around under his Toyota. We’re pretty sure the leather even has your blood on it.”

  Aloa groaned and put her head in her hands.

  “I told you not to bring up the blood,” said Doc.

  “It’s not about the blood,” Aloa said. She lifted her head to look at the men. “I asked you to look for evidence, not to take it. Remember that thing I told you about chain of evidence? If it’s not there, the judge will just throw everything out.”

  “The hell with chains,” P-Mac said. “We got something better: a video. Just in case that little lizard tried to wash his truck or something.”

  He turned the laptop toward Aloa and started a shaky video showing the exterior of Kyle’s truck, the bumper, the wedged piece of leather, and Tick lying on the ground and removing the bloodied fabric.

  “I used a roach clip. No fingerprints,” Tick said proudly. “So when do we make our move on the guy?”

  “It better be soon,” Doc said. “I saw on Nextdoor that the cops were all over Burns’s house. They were hauling stuff out.”

  “Does Burns know that?” Aloa asked.

  “I told him last night, after you went to bed,” said Tick. “But I said you were hot on the trail and everything was cool.”

  Aloa remembered the evening’s conversation with Hamlin and doubted everything was cool. “Has anybody seen him? It’s almost noon.”

  The men looked at each other.

  “I’ll go check,” Tick said.

  Five minutes later, Tick was back in the kitchen.

  “He’s gone,” he said.

  They stood in the garage, the Escalade and the BMW motorcycle gleaming under a row of spotlights, right next to the empty space where the Maserati had been.

  “I didn’t even notice it was gone,” Doc said.

  P-Mac walked a circle around where the sports car had rested. “We were pretty hyped up, I guess.”

  “What am I going to tell Barbara?” Doc said. “That was her dead husband’s car.”

  “The bigger question,” Tick said, “is where do we find Burns? If the cops get to him first . . .” He let his voice trail off.

  “Maybe he’s headed south, like we talked about,” P-Mac said.

  “He wouldn’t leave the kid,” Tick said.

  The answer bubbled up and overflowed.

  “He went to get him,” Doc said.

  “Son of a jackrabbit,” Tick said.

  “Let’s get moving,” said P-Mac.

  “Wait,” Aloa said. “Do you know where the boy lives?”

  T
ick threw a look at the rest of the Brain Farm. “It’s possible we do.”

  “You have to tell me,” Aloa said.

  The Brain Farm scratched their heads and shuffled their feet.

  “Tell me,” she demanded.

  “Time’s a’wasting, boys,” P-Mac said and threw open the side door of the Escalade while Doc climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “Your grandson is Burns’s alibi, Tick. You have to tell me where he is,” Aloa said.

  Doors banged closed.

  “If he takes the boy, that’s kidnapping,” Aloa said.

  “Sorry, Ink,” Tick said, climbing into the passenger seat. “I have to help him. I can’t betray him again.”

  He slammed the door and Aloa heard the locks click. The garage door rolled upward.

  She pounded on the side of the car. “Wait,” she called. “You’re going to make things worse.”

  The Escalade glided backward into the street.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she shouted. “At least tell him to come back.”

  The last thing she saw was Tick mouthing a single word at her.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Aloa wandered through the huge house, cursing the Brain Farm for their disregard for rules, and Hamlin for making it so hard to prove him innocent.

  Even if Quinn trusted her—which he didn’t at the moment—she had no proof that Kyle had tried to kill her beyond a jerky, amateur video of his truck. She also had no solid evidence he’d drugged her in an attempt to stop her. Plus, there was the tricky question of what she’d say if she called Quinn and he asked if she’d been in contact with Hamlin and the Brain Farm.

  Her best option, as far as she could see, was to question Kyle, record the interview using a phone app the Novo tech team had showed her, and hope Kyle stumbled. Then she could present Quinn with proof.

  She looked out the bedroom window to the neighborhood below. A gardener in overalls clipped a boxwood hedge in front of a huge Spanish Colonial–style home. Next door, a Range Rover pulled out from the garage of a house that looked like a grand chateau had gone missing from the French countryside and somehow landed here. She wondered about the stories inside these houses. Did the rich suffer as much as the poor or did money buffer you from pain?

  Before Aloa could get too far with her thoughts, she heard the doorbell chime. For the briefest of moments, she wondered if Quinn had discovered Hamlin’s hideout; it would be very hard to explain why she was here. She considered sneaking out the back door but instead retraced her steps and peeked out one side of the window. A black Porsche SUV was parked in front of the house.

  What was Michael doing here?

  The doorbell chimed again and she thought about not answering. But since he owned Novo and was technically her boss on this story, it was probably better to open the door. She went downstairs.

  “Aloa?” he said when he saw her.

  “Good. You remember my name.” She didn’t know why she was being so snarky to him. “I’m sorry. I mean, come in.” The ibuprofen she’d taken was wearing off and a headache threatened.

  Michael was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. His brown hair was tousled as if he’d been on a sailboat or gone windsurfing or done one of those sports pictured on his Instagram page, which she sometimes stalked late at night but always hated herself for doing.

  “I wanted to talk to Tick,” Michael said. “I heard through the grapevine the police served a search warrant on Hamlin’s house. It may be time for his son to turn himself in. I know a good lawyer.”

  “Well, I think Hamlin is going to need one,” Aloa said. “He split this morning and Tick, Doc, and P-Mac went after him. They think he’s going to take his son and go into hiding.”

  “Tick has a grandson?” Michael said.

  “Why don’t I make some coffee and I’ll catch you up?” she said and headed for the kitchen with Michael in her wake.

  Thirty minutes later, they were outside on a flagstone terrace finishing up their coffees. The sky was blue and Aloa could smell the faint scent of salt air on the breeze.

  “So it was Kyle Williams who killed Corrine Davenport,” Michael said.

  “I’m pretty sure,” she said.

  “And Hamlin is kidnapping his son right this moment?”

  “Probably already done it.”

  “What was he thinking?”

  “That he didn’t want to lose his son.”

  The words, combined with the sight of Michael, set off a sudden memory of her long-ago child—their long-ago child—but she shoved it away. Now was not the time.

  “Did you try calling them?”

  “I did but they aren’t answering.”

  “Maybe I could look for the boy. If Hamlin didn’t take him, you could get the alibi and Hamlin could come back.”

  In addition to Novo, Michael Collins was the founder and CEO of a tech company that dealt in big data. If anybody had the resources to locate Hamlin’s son, it would be Michael and his team.

  “That would help.”

  Michael inched forward as if he might stand up. Instead, he studied Aloa.

  “It feels like you’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

  “Just busy,” Aloa said.

  He wove his fingers into a dome, resting his elbows on his thighs.

  Up close, Aloa could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes.

  “I know you said you didn’t want to know why I left, but there was a good reason, Aloa.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does,” Michael said. “It matters to me.”

  “I don’t need to hear it.”

  “I’d like to tell you, though.”

  Aloa heard the faint cry of a seagull in the distance. It was time to face what she hadn’t wanted to face. “OK,” she said.

  “I left because I got a lead on Michelle’s killer and I had to check it out.”

  Michelle, Michael’s teenage sister, had disappeared on a trip to the mall, her body found two months later with a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck. A few weeks after that, police had arrived at Michael’s home with a search warrant, hinting Michael’s father was a suspect. Afterward, Michael’s father had taken a Winchester Model 70 hunting rifle and put an end to his family and to himself. Michael never knew why he’d been spared.

  “I thought your dad . . .” Aloa’s voice trailed off.

  “I never believed it. My father wouldn’t have strangled Chelle with a scarf. He would have done it with his bare hands.”

  “Oh, Michael.”

  “Yeah, right?” He unlaced his hands and sat up straight in the chair. “Anyway, I was always looking, you know. Even when I was living with you and your family. You remember Michelle had an abortion right before she died?”

  Aloa nodded.

  “Well, I got a lead on a guy, somebody she was seeing secretly and who left town right after she disappeared. I heard he went to New York and I went after him. I was stupid and confronted the guy. He left and I chased him. To California, and after that to India, doing odd jobs and learning how to program so I could track him. Then he OD’d in Darjeeling and I just kept wandering. Africa, Turkey, Spain. I don’t know. It was like I couldn’t stop moving. Then I met my partner, Vikas, in London and we started our company and, well.” He lifted his hands and let them fall.

  “You could have called,” Aloa said.

  “I know.”

  “Dad wasn’t the same after you left.” Michael had been like a son to him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t think sorry cuts it. He had a heart attack. Because of the stress.” Even as Aloa said it, she knew, and had known for some time really, that she couldn’t blame Michael for her dad’s death. It had just been easier to do it all these years.

  Michael stood. “You’re right. I’d better go.”

  “No. What I said wasn’t fair.” She stood too.

  “I have to catch a plane.” Michael’s eyes searched hers. “Can we
talk about this when I get back?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Aloa said, although part of her wanted him to cancel his flight, to sit on this patio and figure out why their lives had gone the way they had.

  Michael turned toward the house. “I’ll have my guys find Hamlin’s kid. I’ll give them your number.”

  “OK, thanks.”

  He looked back over his shoulder. “I’ll call you,” he said, then opened his mouth as if to say more but stopped. With that, he was gone.

  Aloa stayed outside a few minutes longer. For all these years she’d believed Michael had left because she wasn’t enough for him, that he’d fled rather than have to stay with her. Her mother hadn’t helped, with her daily reminders that Aloa was too fat or wore ugly clothes or needed to “try looking like a girl for once.” Her mother’s criticisms had plowed the soil for the seeds of restriction, and Michael’s sudden disappearance and her father’s death had fertilized her need to control what was around her. It had been easy for her sickness to bloom. Now he was saying he’d been chasing his sister’s killer? How did you deal with being wrong for so many years?

  She gathered up their cups, went into the house, and swallowed two more ibuprofen, washing them down with a tall glass of water. Then she tapped her phone out of airplane mode.

  There were two voice mails from Erik, one from Quinn, and one from an unknown caller that had come two minutes ago. She touched the last message.

  “Hey, um, this is Keisha, you know, at the Jungle.” The young mother’s voice was almost a whisper. “You said to call you and, um, well, that guy is back. The one who was hanging around Star’s place before she got offed. And, um, well, I saw him drag Elvis out of here the night before they found his body, you know, and I didn’t say anything because, well, I didn’t want them to start investigating or something and take Destiny away, ’cause they would. So I was wondering if you could call? The cops, I mean. The guy is wearing jeans and a black jacket and cowboy boots and I don’t know if he knows we’re here but he’s just waiting and staring. Like he’s some vampire or something. I got a little hole in my tent and I can see him. He’s over by Peacock’s place. It’s a red tent, and I’m, um, really afraid. Please call the police. Hurry. OK?”