Code 61

by Donald Harstad

  “Me, too. And she asked for help.” I shook my head.

  “The little shit was there, all right. She asked for help. She had to know, then, didn't she? That she was going to die.”

  Hester nodded her head. “Yeah.”

  “Makes you wonder just who else was there, doesn't it?”

  “Of those we know, Hanna, Melissa, and Kevin come to mind.” Hester grabbed a paper towel, and wiped up a small coffee spill on the table, from the previous occupant. Busywork.

  I hated to ask, but, “How about Huck? Think she was there?”

  Hester shook her head. “At the murder scene? No. But she knows who was, I'd bet my life on it.”

  I called Lamar, and got him thinking about my trip to Lake Geneva. I could tell on the phone he'd approve it, but it would take him a little while.

  I called Harry over in Conception County. I wanted to have him connect me with the local cops in Lake Geneva, but he went one better. He said he'd just come along, since he thought we were pursuing the same suspect. Great news.

  Hester and I decided against calling Jessica Hunley to make an appointment. We both agreed the element of surprise, or at least unexpectedness, was going to be the key when we came calling on her. We'd just have Harry contact the locals and make sure she was in town.

  On the other hand, we wanted to be expected, if not downright anticipated, at the Mansion.

  We left instructions with Dispatch that we would give them a “ten-twenty-one” over the radio, at which point they would telephone the Mansion. We told them exactly what to say when they called to tell the group we were coming.

  “Just handle it all as code sixty-one traffic,” I said. “Everything to an absolute minimum.”

  About thirty minutes later, we'd driven all the way up the Mansion lane, until we could just see the door of the house over the crest of the hill. We stopped. It placed us about a hundred yards out, with just the edge of the car roof and about two thirds of the windshield visible to anyone looking our way from the house.

  I picked up the mike. “Comm, Three … ”

  “Three?”

  “Ten-twenty-one.” She knew what I meant.

  “Ten-four. Stand by One … ”

  A few moments later, after having informed whoever answered that Hester and I would be there in a while to bring them up to date on the situation with Toby, she came back on the radio.

  “Three, ten-sixty-nine, they said 'Fine.' ” A ten-sixty-nine is the code for message received.

  “Ten-four.”

  It was that simple. Then we waited; to see if anybody did anything unusual, like try to leave. Although we weren't able to see the rear of the house, the relative lack of success of people leaving via the back door should have been having some effect. Well, with the mere mortals, anyway.

  We waited two minutes, by the dash clock. Nothing.

  “They're still pretty confident, aren't they?” Hester shifted in her seat.

  “They sure seem to be.”

  “Well, let's go see what we can do about that.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday, October 10, 2000

  15:17

  We drove ahead, and as we got out of the car, Kevin came to the door. Excellent.

  “What do you want?”

  Direct, and to the point. I was encouraged.

  “We want to tell you about Toby, where he is, and what's happening with him.”

  “Can't he just call us himself?”

  “Not just yet,” I said. By that time Hester and I had ascended the steps, and we were standing just outside the front door. “May we come in?”

  He hesitated. Even better. Then, “Sure. Why not.” He stepped back, and held the door for us.

  We were met by Huck, who was just coming down the stairs.

  “Hello, again,” she said.

  I could see Melissa in the kitchen, with her back to us, doing something at the counter. She turned as she heard us in the parlor, wiped her hands on a towel, and moved to join us. She didn't look particularly happy to see us.

  “Can we get you some coffee, or anything?” asked Huck.

  “Sure.” I almost never refuse.

  Melissa and Huck passed each other.

  “Hi, Melissa. How's it going today?”

  She regarded me with the sort of look you'd expect a girl to give her parents, when she knew she'd pissed them off, and was going to be defensive about it.

  “Fine.”

  We were all still standing. Permitted in the house, but not welcomed. We get that a lot, and it's pretty understandable. It's also pretty uncomfortable.

  “Mind if we sit down?” With the offer of coffee, it was reasonable.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  There was a woman singing, obviously a recording, coming from the music room. It sounded kind of old, and not in English. Vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it.

  “Is that French she's singing?” Just killing time until Huck got back with the coffee.

  Melissa rolled her eyes. “It's Edith Piaf.”

  “Oh, sure.” I remembered. “Boy, I haven't heard her for a really long time.”

  Silence.

  “Iowa City, in the dorm. About '64 or so.” I smiled. “Long time.”

  Huck returned with the coffee, in time to hear most of the conversation. She gave me a pretty genuine, if weak, smile. “Black for both of you, right?” From last night.

  “Yep.”

  “So, you're here to tell us all about Toby?” Kevin asked, sarcastic as ever.

  “Well, as much as we can,” said Hester.

  I began, “You all know we arrested Toby this morning.”

  Silence, interrupted by footsteps on the main stair. Hanna came around the corner. “Oh!”

  Melissa explained why we were there. Hanna stood in the doorway.

  “Do you know why he was arrested?” I asked.

  “You said it was trespassing,” said Melissa. “That's about all we know, except that you pointed guns at him, and scared him nearly to death. That really wasn't necessary.”

  “Well,” I said, “Toby broke into the funeral home last night, and drove a stake through Edie's chest.”

  That hit most of them pretty hard. It was meant to.

  Hanna said something along the lines of “Oh my God, what did he do that for,” and promptly sat on a small bench just inside the door. Huck just looked stunned, Melissa sat abruptly on the couch, saying to Huck that that explained the closed coffin at the funeral.

  Kevin, on the other hand, didn't have any visible reaction at all.

  “Why are you accusing Toby of that?” asked Melissa. “He couldn't any more do such a thing.”

  I held up my hand. “We have witnesses. He was seen. He had cuts on his fingers from the broken glass. The soles of his shoes matched the footprints outside the broken window. And,” I finished up, “he told us so. Without prompting.”

  “I just can't believe it,” Melissa said, with the tone of someone who simply didn't want to. “That's so, so, gross. Disgusting.”

  “Why can't they leave her in peace?” asked Hanna, much more to the point.

  “Did you know this last night?” asked Huck.

  “When we talked?”

  I shook my head, and Hester said, “It hadn't happened yet.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “we'd like to talk to each of you for a few minutes at a time, if that's all right.”

  “About what?” asked Kevin.

  “The case in general,” I said.

  Kevin said, calmly, “I think I'll just leave, now, if nobody minds.”

  “You might want to stay,” I said. “We've got some interesting stuff.”

  “Really?” He said it with that same cynical tone he always seemed to use, but he stayed. The hook was being scrutinized by our fish.

  “Yep. I think so. Like I just said, we busted Toby, and now you all know what for. When we got him, he was also very wired,” I said, “and as a direct consequence, h
e's en route to the Mental Health Institute at Independence, for detox.”

  I swear every one of them winced.

  “I feel for him,” said Huck. “Believe me, it doesn't get easier as you get older.”

  Melissa and Hanna both nodded. Kevin just stood there, being as much of a nonparticipant as he could.

  “Not for detox for me,” Hanna said. “I went in for being 'rebellious' and 'uncontrollable.' Well, according to my parents.”

  “We were there at the same time,” explained Melissa. “Up on four. Where the crazy kids go.”

  Four was the floor where those who needed close attention were kept. It was interesting to find they were bound by another common experience.

  Melissa spoke in a soothing voice. “Take your Thorazine, dear, like a good girl, and mommy will like you better.”

  “But, I've found happiness in depression.” That came from Hanna, doing a passable little girl impression, and both Huck and Melissa nodded.

  Huck chuckled. “But Doctor, if I'm manic-depressive, how come I'm never manic anymore?”

  “Well, at least in detox,” said Melissa, “he'll be back here in three days. Seventy-two and out, the detox shuffle.”

  An intergroup conversation was starting, off subject, and I thought Melissa was deliberately orchestrating it.

  “I hate to interrupt,” I said, “but could we get back on track?”

  “If you can show us the track to get on,” said Melissa, “sure.”

  It was time for the punch line, before we lost their curiosity.

  “Okay. How about this? Toby was there when Dan killed Edie,” I said.

  I took a sip of coffee, just to appear totally in charge, and the clunk when I put the cup back down seemed to resound throughout the house.

  Melissa broke the silence. “That can't be right.”

  “Why not?” interjected Hester.

  “Well, he just couldn't. He followed Edie around like a little puppy,” said Melissa.

  “That's right,” said Hanna. “They weren't in love, but I think he was.”

  “It was an accident, anyway,” said Kevin, with a tone of dismissal. “Nobody meant to really kill her.”

  Every eye in the room was on him.

  “Well, you know,” he said, talking to Melissa and Huck more than us, “it was just Dan and the pheromone thing. He messed up, that's all.” He looked around, and spread his hands, palms up. “I don't know what all the fuss is about, it was just an accident.”

  It was working.

  “How do you know that?” Kevin and I locked gazes again. “How do you know?” I asked again. Quietly. Always quietly.

  “Toby told me.”

  “He did? When?”

  He shrugged. “That morning.”

  “What,” asked Hester, “did he say?”

  “He said, 'Well, it was a mistake.' That's what he said.”

  “Want to explain that a little more?” asked Hester.

  “Look, lady,” he said, “all I know is this. About three-thirty that morning, Toby came into my room and woke me up and said that Edie was having a little problem. He wanted me to help get her to her room.”

  “And?”

  “And I told him to fuck off, it was a workday and I had another hour to sleep. So he went away.”

  “Did he say what was wrong with her?” I asked.

  “No. He just said, 'There's been an accident. Dan really fucked up this time.' That's what I remember. I was asleep, like I said.”

  “Did he say where she was?”

  “No, he didn't say where she was. Like I said, he was in a hurry and I was pissed off. We didn't discuss the thing, he just woke me up.”

  “What did he look like when he came into your room?” asked Hester. “Was there anything unusual about him?”

  “How would I know? It was dark, and all he had was a flashlight.”

  “So,” she asked, “he just went away?”

  “Look, I remember he was all whiny, like a dorky little kid. But he left, and I went back to sleep.”

  “When did you find out she was dead?” I asked.

  “When they called me and Huck at work,” he said.

  “So,” asked Hester, “when did Toby tell you about the 'mistake' that was made?”

  “When we got back,” he said.

  “Not on the phone?” I asked.

  “He just talked to me,” interrupted Huck. “I told Kevin she was dead.” She looked squarely at him. “You never told me anything about Toby coming to you that night.”

  “That's because you don't matter,” he said simply.

  Huck flinched.

  “Who does matter, in this?” asked Hester, quickly. This was no time for an argument between Huck and Kevin.

  Kevin smiled, enigmatically. “Depends.”

  “Well right now,” I said evenly, “it better be us.” I was getting really irritated with his attitude. “So tell me what Toby told you.”

  It worked. Better than I'd hoped.

  “All he said was that Dan and him and Edie were together, and Dan wanted to do that 'secondhand' experience thing he kept talking about, and he had Toby and Edie get it on, and then Edie got all wild on them, and things just went all ugly from there.”

  Well, at least it was fairly succinct.

  “And, where did he say they were when this was going on?”

  He sighed, all exasperated and put out. “I told you, Toby didn't tell me.”

  He was, of course, lying. He was an easy tell, too.

  After that, it was pretty much a communal effort to inform us about what Dan Peale considered a good time.

  Because Dan Peale apparently believed that he would be able to experience emotions “secondhand” if he ingested the blood of another, at a time when that other person was experiencing a strong emotion, he had tried his theory out first with pleasure being the target. He said it worked, and was able to “experience the afterglow” of a woman's orgasm with Edie. Given the fact that he was probably doing some meth or ecstasy at the time, and so was she, go figure.

  Anyway, things progressed, as they always seem to, toward more and more extreme events. It dawned on him at some point that blood coming directly from the brain would contain the most undiluted pheromones or endorphins, or something. He obtained some needles, and as far as they knew, did his first jugular stick in June 2000.

  “That was me,” said Hanna. “I was pretty high, and it still hurt like hell, and it was the scariest thing I ever did. I never let him do that again. Ever.”

  “Why did you let him do it in the first place?” asked Hester.

  Hanna gave it about one second's worth of thought. “Because he scares me to death,” she answered. I think the irony escaped her.

  As it turned out, it wasn't just the pleasures life offered that Dan Peale wanted to experience.

  “The next step,” murmured Melissa, “was fear. Well, he called it 'terror,' and I suppose it was.” She looked up. “That was me. Back in August.” She shook her head. “Terror isn't the word. You really can't move, you know. I mean, with that thing stuck in your neck. Hell, he tied my hands, but he really didn't need to. 'If you move, you could kill yourself,' he said. No joke.” She shuddered, and rubbed the right side of her neck with two fingers. “He told me that it made such a small hole, there was no problem. Then, after he got it in, he said he'd lied. The prick stuck it in there, and starts telling me that, if I moved, I'd bleed to death. That the hole was bigger than he'd said. Then he'd, like, make sudden moves, you know? Clap his hands. Yell. Just to startle me, scare me. Shit.” She seemed to get more of a grip on herself. “But I made it, didn't I? He didn't use too big a needle, after all. He said he was sorry. Afterward. I didn't know whether to hate him for scaring me or for lying to me. But he didn't really injure me,” she added quickly.

  I was dumbfounded, truly, that he could get them to do that. But this wasn't the time to go there.

  “See?” said Kevin. “That's probably what happen
ed to Edie. Like I said, an accident.”

  “But you don't know?” Hester was starting to press him.

  “Well … ”

  “So you don't, then.” She said it with finality.

  “Don't jump to conclusions, lady.” Kevin was getting insulting with the “lady” business.

  “I'm not the one jumping,” said Hester. “So Toby only told you that's what happened? Right?”

  Right, but with a twist. It seems that Toby had told Kevin that he, Edie, and Dan Peale were involved in a threesome, and that both he and Edie had been surprised when the blood thing had been brought up. They weren't expecting more than just some heavy sex, apparently.

  “So,” I asked, “he didn't always get into the blood?”

  “No,” said Huck.

  “Not all that much,” said Melissa. “Just sometimes. Sometimes you could tell when it was going to be, sometimes you couldn't.”

  “Edie got a little reluctant,” said Kevin. “So Dan had Toby hold her.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “If Toby was in love with Edie, why would he do that?”

  There was a long enough pause that I began to think I had really missed something obvious. Huck finally spoke.

  “He'd help Dan,” she said, “because the only time Edie would let him get into heavy duty snogging with her was when Dan was there, too. Edie did it for Dan, and without Dan, Toby would never have had a chance with her.”

  It took me a second to digest that.

  “Right.”

  “See,” said Kevin, “Toby wouldn't have helped kill her, though. Like I keep trying to tell you, it was an accident.”

  It was left to Huck to play the last card.

  “No, it wasn't. It was not an accident.” Huck put her chin in her hands, and regarded me for a beat. “I know for a fact that the times with Hanna and Melissa were 'test flights,' like he called them.” She stopped my question by saying, “Dan. Dan called them that. He told me what he really wanted, and he told me that I'd have to die if I told anybody else.”

  She folded her arms across her chest, defiantly. She took a deep breath, and then said very rapidly, “He told me that he wanted to experience death secondhand. But that to do it right, the donor would have to know they were going to die, and he'd probably have to kill them.”