Edited Out

by E. J. Copperman

  I hung up on Walt. I’ve never done that to a fan before. I hope never to do it again.

  A few seconds went by while I breathed heavily and not for a good reason. Ben watched, then turned his head to watch some more and let the curtain drop. He looked at me.

  “Your pal Walt was watching the hotel from his car,” he said. “That’s assuming he drives a ridiculously old MG with duct tape holding the front right fender on.”

  I blinked. “I saw that car in front of his office when Duffy and I went there,” I said.

  “As soon as you hung up, he started it up and drove away.”

  Chapter 22

  Suffice it to say I did not have a lot of confidence in the rest of the words I wrote that night. I had plenty of time to write them, though, because I certainly couldn’t sleep after all that had gone on that day.

  Ben slept well, I took it, if the snoring was any indicator. He didn’t keep me awake, because everything else did until about three in the morning when actual fatigue finally smacked me between the eyes, and my neuroses could no longer hold their own in the battle. So I’d had about four hours of rest when Ben nudged me gently to get up and go begin the process of getting Duffy out of jail. If such a thing was possible.

  We began with breakfast in the hotel lobby, which had been advertised as “continental” and “free.” That second part was true if you didn’t factor into your calculation the idea that the hotel had included the breakfast in your room rate. So not eating it would have been silly. I got a cheese omelet, home fries, an English muffin, and a large coffee, which I had every intention of refilling at least twice before leaving.

  “What’s the game plan for today?” I asked Ben as he hunkered down into his choice, a bran muffin and coffee. The man had a lot to learn about the word free and how to take advantage of it.

  “Well, the first order of business is obviously to get over to the cop shop and find out what Duffy’s status is after they question him further,” Ben said. I could see the rest of the day would be easier for me if I could find a quick app for my phone that would translate from cop speak into English. “After that I think our top priorities should be finding out who Barry is—and whether he has a last name—and locating him.”

  I chewed a bite of English muffin. Would it actually kill these places to pay for Thomas’s? This was a piece of puffy white bread with a second-rate publicist. “I’ll call Paula and see what she can do,” I said. “Just because our peeping buddy Walt says Barry wasn’t in high school with the gang doesn’t mean it’s true. What do you make of old Walt, anyway?” I asked Ben.

  “He seems unnaturally interested in you and who you might be with at any given moment,” Ben said. “I think it’s a good thing we’re together on this so I can look out for him.”

  “Don’t pull your punches, Ben. Tell me what you really think.” Having met Walt, it was difficult to be unnerved by the thought of him, but if Ben kept talking like that, I was sure I could scrape some fear together. I’d leave it open as an option.

  “I’m not saying the guy is Hannibal Lecter.” Ben held up his hands in a defensive posture. “It’s just that he followed us to the hotel last night. How could he have known we were going to be there?”

  “He didn’t know we were going to be there,” I reminded him. “He knew I was going to be there. He doesn’t know who you are yet.”

  “That’s interesting all by itself, and maybe it’ll come in handy. Did you say anything on any of your social media accounts about coming up here last night?”

  I shook my head. “It would never occur to me to broadcast my movements to a lot of people I don’t know,” I said. “Most of my readers—probably all of them—are lovely people, but I’m not going to be sending them an itinerary of which hotel I’m staying in on a given night.”

  “So how could Walt have found out?” Ben wasn’t asking me so much as he was opening the subject to discussion.

  “I’m thinking he knows somebody in the police department, and when he found out Duffy was being held, he staked out the most likely hotel in town because he knew I’d be coming.” Which was a real feat, since even I hadn’t known I was going to make the trip to Poughkeepsie again.

  “Except he didn’t know Duffy had been held. He only knew Michelle was listed as a murder victim and someone was in custody. He thought Duffy was with you.” Ben finished his coffee and looked at me. I only had a few home fries left and was feeling, you know, how you feel after you’ve gorged yourself on free food. Walking was going to be a challenge.

  “Maybe that’s it,” I countered. “He heard there was a suspect in custody and figured Duffy Madison would be riding up here to solve the case all by himself, like he does in the books. And since Duffy and I were together when Walt met us, he assumed I would just naturally appear by his side, chronicling his every movement for my readers in The Strand Magazine.”

  “The what?”

  I gulped down my coffee. “Let’s go see a guy about a guy,” I said. That was like cop speak, right?

  Ben just grinned and stood up. “Let’s,” he said.

  * * *

  We drove to the police station and parked a block away. There’s parking near the headquarters, but Ben said it was a nice day and we should walk. He probably was concerned Walt was watching the building with binoculars. Our lack of a car didn’t seem like a huge advantage.

  So perhaps you can imagine our surprise when we arrived at the main entrance of the Poughkeepsie Police Department headquarters and found Duffy Madison standing just outside the front door, grinning.

  He clearly enjoyed the moment he had as we approached, no doubt with both our mouths hanging open in shock. It was Ben who actually recovered first.

  “This is your idea of being grilled by the cops?”

  Then a thought occurred to me. “You didn’t actually escape that cell, did you?” I asked.

  Duffy, possibly for the first time since I’d met this version of him, laughed. “No, although it was certainly plausible. The configuration of the hinges in the cell doors—”

  Ben held up his hand. “Not now, Duffy. Why are you standing out here when they were holding you on suspicion of a five-year-old murder?”

  “Because the police didn’t have enough evidence to charge him, and they knew it.” The voice was familiar from the phone, but of course neither Ben nor I had ever met Nelson Sanders before.

  He was a short, stocky (not fat) man in a dark suit who was currently walking through the front door of the police headquarters with a briefcase in one hand and an iPad in the other. He stuck the tablet computer under his left arm to shake hands with Ben, then me. “Nelson Sanders,” he said.

  “You got him out,” I said, indicating Duffy. Just in case Sanders wasn’t aware of what he had just managed to accomplish.

  “We let them question your friend last night, and over my objections they held him until this morning, but ten minutes into the questioning, we were getting nothing but repetition, and I made it clear that they either had to charge my client or let him go. They opted for the latter, and I’m fairly sure they’ll have somebody watching him until he gets himself back over the state border into New Jersey.” He turned toward Duffy and looked him sternly in the face. “Which is the very next thing you’re going to do, Madison.”

  Duffy did not seem intimidated in the least. In fact, he was still smiling from ear to ear. There’s nothing he likes better than cops, and he’d gotten to spend the night with some, in a perfectly professional way of course. “I think I can be of more use here,” he told Sanders.

  “I don’t care where you can be of more use,” the lawyer said. “I care about where you’re least likely to look even more guilty.” He turned to face me. “See what you can do with this guy, would you? He’s a pip.” Like I needed to be told.

  Wait, me? How did this get to be my responsibility? “Mr. Sanders is right, Duffy,” I tried. “The top priority right now is to make sure that we can keep you from getting
charged in Michelle Testaverde’s murder.” I figured I’d better keep talking before Duffy could come up with seventeen reasons he should stay, so I quickly added, “Why do they think you were involved, anyway?”

  Sanders picked up the question, probably because he wanted it answered in legal terms and not whatever it is Duffy speaks. “They say his knowledge of the murder weapon’s whereabouts indicates he’s the one that put it there. The fact that he was poking around in Damien Mosley’s disappearance is not enough for the detective here; to him it’s Duffy trying to set himself up as a hero and not him actually trying to solve the crime.” Looking at Duffy, he added, “Why were you trying to solve that one, anyway?”

  Knowing Duffy was going to be honest, the last thing we needed if Sanders was going to remain even a little convinced that his client wasn’t crazy, I said, “It was something I asked him to do,” which wasn’t technically true but came close enough since I had been the impetus. “It’s for something I’m writing.” That part was true; I had been convinced, sort of, that Duffy solving Damien Mosley’s disappearance would help me get past the difficulties with the new book. I’d wanted to believe it, anyway.

  Duffy looked at me but did not offer a protest, which I appreciated.

  But he was not as happy when I finished by saying, “And you’re right, Mr. Sanders. We’ll get Duffy back to New Jersey as soon as possible.”

  “But this aspect of the case opens so many more avenues of questioning!” Duffy protested. “We can go back to each of the people we questioned before and talk about Michelle’s murder. I’ll bet they know quite a bit.” I had no idea what made him think that, but there was no use arguing with him.

  Ben, I think, was trying to reason with Duffy, but in a manly and professional way (men think that way), when he said, “You’re coming home because you’ll just muddy the waters here, Duffy. Come back to the hotel with Rachel and me, and we’ll pack our bags. We’re all driving home today.”

  “But—” Duffy said no more. He knew when he was beaten.

  We said our thank-yous to Sanders, who said he would be calling in a day or two to help devise a strategy going forward. He also said to call “if anything else happens,” which meant he’d gotten a really strong sense of who Duffy Madison actually was and wanted to be ready.

  Duffy got into the back seat of my Prius c, which is not as small as you might expect, and immediately began trying to convince Ben—not me—that we should stay the morning at least and interview one or two suspects. What could it hurt?

  Ben countered by trying to distract Duffy, telling him about Walt’s vigil at the hotel and his suggestion we look for Barry, but noted we did not even know Barry’s last name.

  “It’s Barry Spader,” he said.

  I stole a glance at Ben as I drove. He looked at me with a “what?” expression. “How do you know that?” he finally demanded of Duffy.

  “He was not just a bartender, but the owner of Rapscallion’s, the bar where Louise and Damien were working,” he said plainly. “We’d been told he was a waiter, but the fact was he owned it and only served tables on occasion. A quick check of the business records showed that. He moved out of Poughkeepsie a little over two years ago after selling the business for a decent, but hardly astonishing, sum.”

  “So he could have been around when Michelle and possibly Damien died,” I said.

  “Possibly Damien?” Duffy echoed back.

  “Well, there hasn’t been a positive identification yet,” I reminded him.

  “The body at the bottom of the ditch is Damien Mosley’s,” Duffy insisted. “There is no question in my mind. And he was murdered, certainly. It’s possible the same person was behind both killings, but I tend to doubt it.”

  That took a moment to sink in. “You think we’re dealing with two killers?” Ben said as I pulled the car into the hotel lot and parked as near to a door as I could. We didn’t have much luggage, but I like to keep the trip to the car short when I can.

  “It seems likely,” Duffy answered. We all got out of the car, and he looked around as if sizing up the surroundings. It was a hotel parking lot. The end. No sign of our pal Walt sitting in his car with a pair of binoculars and . . . I don’t like to think about it. “The method is the same in that both victims were shot, but Michelle’s body, the Jane Doe the police discovered, was in an alley across the city. Damien’s was in a public park. And I’m not sure the gunshot was the plan in Damien’s murder; I think the killer might have been trying to frighten him into falling over the edge. It wasn’t until he or she realized Damien wouldn’t comply that the gun was fired, and even then the first shot was not at the victim but into the woods.”

  “You think he was trying to get Damien to flinch?” Ben asked.

  We walked in through the main lobby and headed toward the elevators. “That would be my first guess, but the crime scene was five years old. Rachel and I saw photographs but not the scene from every angle. There was evidence of some ritual or intimidation. Damien was wearing no shoes when he was shot.”

  I saw two older ladies at the other bank of elevators widen their eyes and walk away in the direction of the coffee shop. They’d wait until we were out of the way.

  The elevator came at that moment, and the three of us got on. Ben pushed the button, and the doors closed. “What significance do you think the shoes had?” he asked Duffy.

  Duffy shrugged. “It’s possible it was just a way of ensuring that Damien couldn’t run away. The path is rugged, and it would be uncomfortable at least to try to escape with nothing to protect his feet. It could have been more complicated than that, but there’s no way of knowing until we have more information about the killer.”

  The elevator doors opened, and we got out. I let Ben lead the way toward our room because I wanted to see the venue as Duffy saw it. He has a way of sizing up an area that is infuriatingly accurate when you ask him about it. The man’s memory is astonishing as long as you don’t go back more than five years.

  “What about Michelle’s shooting?” Ben asked. “How did you know the gun would be in . . .”

  “In Rosalind Woo’s ceiling,” I finished for him. “Just because there was a compartment, it had to hold the weapon?”

  “I didn’t know,” Duffy said. “As it turned out, the gun was hidden even inside the compartment. Another panel had to be removed to find it. Ms. Woo did not even know it was there.”

  “Then why was she so adamant about not letting anybody look there?” I asked.

  “It was where she was keeping her stash of marijuana,” Duffy answered.

  We got to the room, and Ben keyed us in. This was where Duffy’s observational abilities would be especially interesting to me. I wanted to see what information he got and what he was looking for.

  I was not disappointed. Duffy looked around the room in sections of thirty degrees at a time. He turned his head a little at a time as if taking a snapshot of the room to store in his head, then turned some more. It was such a gradual process, you almost didn’t notice him moving his feet to keep turning all the way around for a 360-degree look, in sections.

  He spent the most time looking at the two beds, both of which had clearly been slept in. I wondered why that was a priority for him.

  “Did the cops bust Rosalind?” I asked him. “I’d hate to be the cause of trouble for her.”

  The question didn’t stop his circular momentum. “They gave her a quick glance when they found it, but Ms. Woo was clever and asked them what that was in the bag. They looked at each other and considered, but once they found the gun, the cannabis was not really a high priority for them.”

  Ben started throwing his things into his tiny traveling bag, so I took the cue and went into the bathroom for some of my stuff. “How do you think we’ll be able to find Barry Spader?” I asked Duffy.

  There was no immediate answer. I looked out through the bathroom door and saw Ben facing the window, putting his socks from the day before in his bag. I wouldn’t q
ualify the action as endearing, but it was cute.

  I walked out of the bathroom looking at Ben but asking Duffy the question again because he obviously hadn’t heard me the first time.

  When I got to the bedroom, I looked around and asked Ben, “Where’s Duffy?”

  Ben stiffened and turned around to look. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  Duffy Madison had taken the opportunity when both of us had our backs turned (Ben literally) to bolt from the hotel room.

  Ben sighed and started unpacking.

  Chapter 23

  “Look, I haven’t seen anybody at all since you were here the last time,” Rod Wilkerson said to me.

  I know. You’re wondering why Ben and I didn’t run directly through the hotel room door and try to catch Duffy before he could get away and, in his zest to solve Michelle Testaverde’s murder, manage to incriminate himself even further. Certainly it would have seemed an option at the very least.

  But Duffy being Duffy, he would have found the least obtrusive, least obvious way to make his way out of the building. Yes, I have thought Duffy’s thoughts for him many times, but under duress I couldn’t be sure my Duffy and his Duffy would definitely do the same thing.

  Besides, Ben had wanted to talk to the witnesses we’d already met and try to track down Barry Spader. “We’ll use this as an excuse to stay and see what we can find out,” he said when I was wildly gesticulating at him only moments later. “We know Duffy wants to keep investigating. If we go back and talk to each witness, we might get lucky and find him in one of their houses.”

  Since my suggestion was going to be calling the police and getting Duffy arrested again, and since there were no charges upon which to arrest him at the moment, I had to agree. So we’d decided to start with Rod first, mostly because Duffy was on foot and Rod’s house was closest to the hotel.

  But Duffy must have figured that was what we would do because he was not at Rod’s place, and Rod had quickly confirmed that Duffy had not visited since the time he and I had dropped in a few days earlier.