“Where’s the letter?”
“Clay left it where he found it. The police will eventually get her address, probably from the phone company, we hope as early as tomorrow. They’ll find the letter then. They need to find it, they need to know what’s going on. Like I said, we don’t fuck around with evidence in murder cases—or in any case we’re involved in, for that matter. My only problem with the letter is that it was printed out, not handwritten. The font and spacing was identical to the manuscript Clay found, but still . . .”
“She wrote on her computer,” Kane said. “I can tell you that much.”
“You know that for certain.”
“I never once saw her handwriting.”
Gregor nodded, thought about that.
“But I don’t understand something,” Kane said. “She told me she didn’t know the Professor by name. She said Dean never called him anything but that.”
“Apparently she was lying to you. About that, and other things, I think. Among her papers, Clay found a newspaper clipping. It was a story about Krause, his life, his escape from Germany. She obviously knew all about him. And the letter wasn’t exactly the letter one would expect someone who was being blackmailed to write, is it? It’s not the letter written by an innocent victim.”
Kane said nothing.
“She called your number from her place last night,” Gregor continued. “Clay saw her number on your caller ID; that’s how they found out where she lived. So you can add that to the list of things the police are going to want to talk to you about.”
“I had nothing to do with Larry Foster’s death. I had nothing to do with any of this.”
“Mercer believes that. But he also knows that you missed classes all day yesterday, that your behavior of late has been at best erratic. There are plenty of witnesses to that, and you know how the cops and the media eat up those kinds of details, get on TV and speculate. All you need is to look guilty these days, and your life is just about over.”
Kane looked at the Baggie in his hand. “Someone’s setting me up,” he said.
“It looks that way, yeah. If not setting you up, then at least leaving you with a lot of things you’d have a difficult time explaining. Mercer said that when he saw you at your place yesterday afternoon, you looked like you were hung over. Only he had seen you hung over before, and this time you looked and acted differently. He said you claimed you could only remember having two glasses of scotch the night before.”
“Yeah.”
“Was there anything different about yesterday?”
Kane nodded. “Yeah.”
“It felt different.”
“Very different. I mean, I’ve drunk myself stupid before, felt like shit the next day, maybe couldn’t remember some things. But like you said, it was like there was a hole in my memory, like someone had gouged it out of my head or I had fallen off the face of the earth for sixteen hours or something.”
“So maybe someone had put something in your scotch.”
“My door was open when I got home the day before. Clay looked at the lock, saw that someone had picked it.”
“And since you were out cold, you have no alibi at all for that night.”
Kane looked at Gregor. “I started drinking around eight, I think. Next thing I knew it was the next day, four in the afternoon.”
“Clay and Miller are fairly certain the shirt was planted in your garbage. There was a good deal of blood on it, and we had Sophia look you over, but she didn’t see any cuts on you, aside from those scratches on your face, and those clearly weren’t deep enough to cause the kind of bleeding that would account for what was on the shirt. No, someone brought that into your apartment after the shirt had dried and put it in your garbage for the cops to find. That’s the only explanation I can think of. You’re lucky that we’re the ones who found it. If you hadn’t gone missing, we wouldn’t have been looking for you, and the shirt would probably still be there, waiting.”
“But I don’t understand,” Kane said. “Whose shirt is it? Whose blood is on it?”
“Foster was found fully clothed. So were Carver and the first boy. And none of them had a mark on them, no cuts, nothing. If our guess is right, if what we think is going on is what in fact is going on, then that shirt probably belongs to someone who hasn’t been found yet. Someone no one knows is even missing. Someone who went missing either the night you were passed out or the night you spent with Colleen Auger.”
“You think there’s going to be another boy.”
“I have no doubt of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns up in the next thirty-six hours.”
“Why do you think that? Why the next thirty-six hours?”
“Because that’s when the disposal company your landlord uses picks up the garbage at your apartment. Assuming you take out your trash on time, the bloody shirt wouldn’t be in your apartment, or even the Dumpster behind it, after thirty-six hours from now. Whoever is doing this to you has to be clever enough to know that and take it into account.”
“Jesus,” Kane muttered.
“The cops already talked to you once, and we know that they’ve labeled you a ‘person of interest’ in the Foster case. My guess is it wouldn’t take much more than an anonymous phone call to send them to your place. And there’s already been a phone call like that in this case.”
Kane considered all that, then looked at the trash bag hanging from Gregor’s hand. It still hung heavy.
“What else do you have in there?” Kane said.
“The shoes I had given you to wear to the chapel. You had them on when Clay and Miller brought you here. There’s a small amount of blood on the tip of one of them. You were supposed to throw these away after you were done.”
“Dean jumped me that night.”
“Where?”
“At the chapel.”
“He was there?”
“He showed up right after I got there. He took your camera and my sneakers. I didn’t have anything else to wear on my feet, and it’s cold out there.”
“Why didn’t you get in touch with us?”
“I didn’t know if I should trust you. It could have been a setup. It seemed like one, the way he just happened to show up. I wasn’t thinking straight. He’d bounced up and down on my head pretty good. I went back to my office to try to think things through. That’s when Colette showed up.”
“And she took you to that bar?”
“Yeah.”
“You know what goes on there.”
Kane nodded. “I didn’t before. But I do now.”
“You’d never been there before.”
“No.”
Gregor thought about that, nodded, then said, “We found blood in the chapel.”
“You went out there?”
“Mercer did. When you didn’t come back. He was hell-bent on finding you. We tested the drops he found. That blood is the same type as the blood on the T-shirt. And, of course, what’s on your shoes. The thing is, the drops Mercer found were spaced out very evenly around that makeshift altar. Not in a spray pattern. Not in the way drops would naturally fall from a wound. But like someone had poured it around carefully, poured it out a drop at a time.”
“Then you think it was staged.”
“Yeah.”
“Colette said that whole Satan thing was maybe part of some diversion. Something to throw the cops way off the track.”
“That might have been the one true thing she told you.”
“But she told me about her past, that she had a police record. And in the morning she said she felt bad about what had happened to Larry, that she was afraid she couldn’t live with what she had done. She was talking about going to the cops, but she was afraid of what Dean would do. Why would she tell me all that and lie about the other things?”
“I think it’s safe to say that everything she told you was carefully chosen.”
“But why?”
“Because I think she was working with whoever it is that’s s
etting you up. Maybe she changed her mind and was trying to help you. Or maybe that was just all part of the act. I mean, if the cops asked you where you were last night, what were you going to say?”
Kane was shaking his head. He couldn’t believe that, didn’t want to. But more than that, he couldn’t get his tired mind around it, around the idea of something so big, so carefully orchestrated, in place, working against him.
Gregor watched him for a while, said nothing. Then, finally: “You can show the T-shirt and the shoes to your lawyer, tell him everything, tell him we sent you to the chapel. Or you can toss them both into the ocean and forget about it. It’s up to you. It’s your life on the line.”
“If I tell them you sent me to the chapel, wouldn’t that mean trouble for you?”
“I can handle a little trouble, if I have to.”
“I told you before, I wouldn’t roll over on you. I keep my word.”
Gregor looked at him a moment more, then nodded. “We shouldn’t have sent you there. I’m sorry about that. We were desperate. We wanted to help Larry Foster’s family, give them some peace. It was a mistake.”
Kane shrugged. “Well, like you said, if I hadn’t disappeared, Clay wouldn’t have gone looking for me at my place. Things might have turned out a lot worse for me.” He waited a moment, then said, “Were you able to do that? Help Larry’s family?”
“We got hold of copies of the coroner’s reports, leaked some information to a reporter we know. She’s going to do what she can. But the funeral’s tomorrow, and the preliminary report still says Larry’s death was a probable suicide. Unless something happens tonight to change that . . .” Gregor trailed off, was quiet for a time, then said, “It’s an unpleasant thing, you know, having to sit around, hoping that a fourth boy is found dead so that you can earn your money. It’s a . . . helpless feeling.”
“Yeah,” Kane said. “I wouldn’t like that either.”
Gregor tossed him the garbage bag then. Kane caught it with his free hand. He looked inside the bag, saw the shoes, saw the blood on the tip. He tossed in the clear plastic Baggie with the T-shirt and tied the open end of the bag into a knot.
“It’s almost high tide,” Gregor said. “Wait about an hour, then toss that into the ocean. The tide should take them out. Put a rock in the bag, and poke a few holes in it, just to play it safe.”
“I appreciate this. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”
“I’m doing it for Mercer, not you. And anyway, it isn’t evidence if it’s been planted. And you should know that everything we found might not necessarily be everything there was to find. Whoever is trying to set you up probably didn’t just pin all his hopes of connecting you to this on a bloody T-shirt.”
“What else could there be?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had a case like this before.”
“Who would do this? Who would do this to me? I’m no one.”
“Everyone’s got enemies, whether they know it or not.”
“It’s certainly not the work of a friend, is it?” Kane said.
“The woman you’re seeing, she’s married, right?”
Kane nodded. “Yeah.”
“Does her husband know about you?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“I don’t think he’s the kind of man to know something like that and let it go.”
“Have you failed any students?”
Kane laughed.
“What?”
“If anyone in any of my classes deserved a failing grade, it was me.”
“Mercer said you’ve had a rough few years.” Gregor waited a moment, watching him, then said, “The driver wasn’t too far away when I called, so the cab should be here in a few minutes. Liv’s putting together some food for you, to get you through tonight and tomorrow.”
“Liv?”
“My wife. It’s important that you never call me or Clay. Do you understand that? Clay came to your apartment the other night, to ask you about the Foster kid. But as far as you and I are concerned, we have never met. You’re okay with that?”
Kane nodded.
“Mercer will call you tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t have much money. Maybe enough for the cab, but definitely not enough for the room.”
“The cab ride is no charge.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. And Mercer already put the room on his credit card, under his name. The guy at the desk will just give you the key, won’t ask for any identification. He’s a friend.”
“Thanks,” Kane said.
“I’m sorry about this, but I’m going to need you to wait down the road for the cab. I know it’s fucking cold out, but that’s the way it has to be. I’ve got a lot to lose, and I’ve already done too much as it is.”
Kane nodded. He wasn’t a fugitive yet, but there was the chance that he would become one soon enough. And the sooner Gregor cut ties with him, the better off Gregor would be. This house, his wife, his business—it was the wealth of Midas compared to what Kane had at stake. What was it Miller had said about Gregor? He’s obsessed with not becoming corrupt. About as righteous as they come. So it was more than just things to lose, a wife to think about.
“I understand,” Kane said.
“If we find anything else, anything else that isn’t legitimate evidence, we’ll let Mercer know.”
“Thanks again.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gregor said. “Your stuff is downstairs.”
Kane left the room, started down the steep steps. He held on to the railing as he went—or started to, anyway, then thought Gregor probably wouldn’t want him to leave fingerprints and let go. He made it down all right without holding on. At the bottom of the stairs, on a Chippendale chair by the door, lay Kane’s coat. Beneath it was a brown paper shopping bag. He picked up the coat, put it on, looked around the room. Small, cottage-style, old-world-looking. A stone fireplace and a sofa and some chairs, wood floors and whitewashed walls, shelves filled with books. No television, no stereo, no computer that Kane could see, anyway. Timeless. The way people had lived back in the twenties and thirties, when all there was at night were books and the company you kept.
Kane saw Liv, Gregor’s wife, then, waiting just inside the kitchen door, her arms folded across her stomach, her thick, curly black hair framing that sturdy oval face. He nodded to her, nodded his thanks, for the food, for sitting with him during the afternoon, for everything, then picked up the bag and tucked it under his arm. He opened the front door, stepped through it and out into the freezing cold. He walked with both his hands plunged deep into the pockets of his coat. He got maybe ten feet, and then behind him the porch light, the only light to be seen, went out.
Montauk was desolate, little more this far out than a finger of land reaching into the Atlantic. The wind was raw, and Kane walked along the shoulder of the dark road, got maybe two hundred yards from Gregor’s house, felt the cold in his bones, felt he couldn’t last more than a few minutes in this, when he heard over the wind the sound of a car approaching behind him.
He turned. It was a cab, an old Checker that had been painted red. The paint job was cheap, the paint flat. The cab pulled to a stop just past Kane, and Kane climbed in.
The driver was an old, wiry Jamaican man, with silver bristles sprouting from worn skin and an unlit cigar between what was left of his yellowed teeth. He looked at Kane in the rearview mirror, said, “Cold, man.” Kane nodded, held his coat tight around him, waited for the heat to find its way into him.
The cabbie drove Kane in silence to an empty motel in the dunes off Old Montauk Highway. The man behind the desk barely looked at Kane as he handed him the key. His room was around back, faced the water. Kane figured that Mercer had asked for that; maybe Gregor had told him to. It seemed something Gregor would consider. The room was cold and dark. Kane turned the heat on and waited in the watery blackness, waited for an hour to pass. When he could see the shift in the tide thro
ugh his window, see each wave fall just short of the one before it, he walked out onto the beach, picked up a rock as he went, stood at the shoreline, untied the bag, put the rock in, then tied the bag closed again, tore a few air holes into the soft plastic with his index finger, and flung the trash bag as far out over the steely water as he could.
The ocean took it with a gulp. Kane stayed there for a moment, till each gust of wind that passed his face felt like the dull edge of an old razor, then went back inside the motel room and sat at the window and looked out, waiting for morning, for what would be found next.
Miller hung up the phone, got out of bed, quickly wrapped his knee with an Ace bandage—it was killing him, this cold—and pulled on his jeans and boots and went downstairs. He was alone tonight, so there was no need to write a note, not that there would have been time for that. He grabbed his coat, ran out to his beat-up truck, got in, and sped the half mile to town. He knew that Job’s Lane would be closed off to traffic at both ends, so he turned his pickup onto Captain’s Neck Lane and parked at the curb. The sign said no parking, but no one would care about that now. Every cop in town would be at the park, with more important things on their minds than handing out parking tickets. Miller hurried from Captain’s Neck, crossed Hill Street, walked past the movie theater, then crossed Windmill Lane to Job’s. His limp was bad tonight, but he did what he could to ignore it. A crowd was gathered on Job’s Lane—workers from restaurants and those who had apartments in town, maybe twenty people wrapped in coats, all standing on the north side of the street, staring at the park. There were cop cars, a half dozen of them, forming an arcing blockade in front of the park’s entrance. A fire truck and ambulance, too, and their lights, combined with the lights from the cop cars and the glaring floodlights the cops had set up beyond the blockade, by the shore of the lake a hundred yards away, lit up the bare trees and the night sky beyond, cast a glow over town like the glow of a carnival. Parked not far from the fire truck was a van, the logo of a television station out of Hauppauge printed on the side and a satellite dish mounted on its roof. Its sliding side door was open, and a reporter, in her own pool of harsh white light, was speaking, stone-faced, into a camera. Miller was too far away to hear anything that she said—everything was silent except for the occasional squawking police radio chatter—but he didn’t really need to hear her, the near-quiet chaos spoke for itself.
The Darkest Place Page 26
