by Brad Parks
“You’ve heard about his girlfriend by now, yes?” I asked.
“I heard some rumors, but nothing I really put stock in. He must have kept it pretty quiet.”
“Well, she’s not a rumor. Her name is Akilah Harris,” I said as he pulled out one of those small cop notepads and wrote down the name. “And she’s not just a girlfriend. She’s practically his second wife. She’s had two kids by him.”
“Whoah!” Raines said.
“That’s not even the best part. Windy bought her a house.”
“A what?”
“A house,” I said. “It was a little more than two years ago.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
“But there’s more,” I said. “The house he bought her was the one on Littleton Avenue, the one that burned down with two kids inside.”
“Yeah, I heard about that.”
“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an accident,” I said.
He nodded and asked, “When did it happen?”
“Sunday night, around nine P.M.”
“Which is also around the last time anyone saw Windy Byers alive,” Raines said, shaking his head. “I’ll be damned.”
“So what do you think,” I said. “Sound like jealous wife gone nuts to you?”
He leaned back and took a swig of his water.
“I certainly haven’t heard a better theory,” he said.
“Okay, so I’m going to go ahead and write that Rhonda Byers is the Newark Police Department’s chief suspect in Windy’s disappearance,” I said, winking.
“Oh, hell no,” he said. “But, strictly, strictly off the record, I like her for this. I really like her. I’ve been going all through Windy Byers’s council career and there’s not a single red flag. And nothing else has jumped out at me. Now maybe there’s a big political conspiracy out there, but I don’t see it.”
“Me, neither,” I said. “What do you make of the blood in his house?”
He flashed a look that was somewhere between chagrined and, well, just a grin.
“You heard about that, huh?”
“I got my sources,” I said, smiling back. “Is the blood his?”
“Don’t know yet. This isn’t CSI. Our lab doesn’t turn stuff around during commercial breaks.”
“Fair enough. So where do we go from here?”
“Let me think about it for a second,” he said.
He leaned back in the booth and finished the rest of his water in one long swallow while I chewed my pizza. He crushed the bottle between his hands, screwed and unscrewed the cap once or twice, keeping his attention focused downward. Then he looked up.
“I think I got something you can do for me,” he said, then added, “if you’re up for it.”
“Shoot,” I said.
And that’s how I found myself heading back to Fairmount Avenue to interview Rhonda Byers.
* * *
My deal with Raines was that I would approach Rhonda Byers with questions about the last few days, so I could assemble a timeline of the hours leading up to her husband’s disappearance. I’d take careful notes, of course-that’s sort of what I do-and then I’d call Raines and we’d compare the story she gave me to the one she had already given Raines, searching for the kind of inconsistencies you usually find when someone is pulling a story off the fiction shelves of their brain.
For Raines, it was a way to grill a suspect without her realizing she was being grilled-or that she was a suspect. It also allowed him to sidestep or at least delay the rather prickly task of accusing a councilman’s wife of a felony.
For me? It was a good way to make sure the lead investigator on the biggest crime of the year kept taking my phone calls. And it might even give me something useful for the paper.
I was glad I didn’t have Sweet Thang in tow, because I didn’t feel like explaining that, once again, I was walking a very fine ethical line. Should I be doing a cop’s work for him? Of course not. But it’s not like he asked me to slap cuffs on Rhonda Byers. He just wanted me to talk to her, which is what I do for a living anyway. So what’s the harm in sharing a little information with my newfound source when it might lead to greater understanding of a story?
Besides, Sweet Thang was a bad fit for this particular task in at least one other way. For as good as she was at getting people to talk, I don’t think Rhonda Byers was going to be in the mood to spill her heart to an attractive younger woman, i.e., the kind of woman who stole her husband. There had been enough bodies dropped in Newark already.
As I drove back toward Fairmount Avenue, I called Tommy. It was mostly a courtesy. This was his beat, after all, and he deserved to know what was happening.
“Hey, what’s up,” he said, without the usual Tommy zip in his tone.
“That’s all you got? ‘What’s up?’ ” I asked. “No snappy rejoinders about how my clothes make you think of Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties? No catty comments about how my family ought to organize a hairstyle intervention?”
“No. I just don’t have the energy to point out the obvious right now,” he said, heaving a melodramatic sigh.
“Oh, come on, what’s wrong? Boy troubles?”
“I wish. I’m going over ELEC documents.”
ELEC was the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Center. Every candidate and political group in the state has to file reports stating where they get their money and what they do with it. Most politicians give the bare minimum of information-you’ll see line items like “$28,350 … Miscellaneous expenses”-while staying (pretty much) within the law. Usually, the only worthwhile thing we get from ELEC reports are donor lists filled with names of individuals and businesses that are getting rich off government contracts. And, this being New Jersey, bribery of this sort is not only prevalent but legal.
Still, wading through the reports takes time, concentration, and the ability to resist butting your head into your computer while you wait for another PDF document to load.
“ELEC reports,” I said. “What’s the matter, you having trouble sleeping?”
“No, I’ve just been looking into everything about big, fat old Windy I could find and I wanted to make sure I was thorough.”
“Tina said you were on the streets, running down some rumor?”
“Yeah, that’s what I told her,” he said. “I just knew if she saw me in the office she’d keep bothering me. So I’m sitting in a coffee shop, doing it on my laptop. Don’t tell her.”
I felt a surge of paternal pride: my little intern Tommy had already learned the virtue of lying to his editor. Sniff. They grow up so fast.
“Oh, your secret is safe,” I assured him. “I was just calling to give you a heads-up. I’m going over to Rhonda Byers’s place.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. “What’s happening there?”
I told him what I had learned about Windy’s extracurricular activities and their unintended consequences.
“And you think Rhonda Byers did all that?” Tommy asked when I was all done.
“Yep,” I said.
“Really? Rhonda Byers?”
“You don’t buy it?”
“Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure you’re right. It’s just … I just-”
“Spit it out!”
“She seems so nice.”
I laughed at him. Apparently, grasshopper still had much to learn.
“No, I’m serious!” he protested. “I met her a bunch of times at council meetings. I think she’s the only one besides me who goes to all of them. She’s not over-the-top friendly or anything, but she’s always very kind to me. She explains things to me all the time when I don’t get them. She probably has a better idea than her husband what’s actually going on in this city.”
“Yeah, I already figured she was hogging most of the IQ allotted to the Byers household,” I said. “But to me that makes it fit even better. A smart, with-it woman like her learns that her idiot husband is two-timing her in the biggest way possible. Can’t you just see her losing it?
”
The line was quiet for a moment as Tommy considered it.
“No,” he said at last. “Not really.”
“Well, you got a better idea for what happened?”
Another pause.
“No. Not really.”
“Well, there you go,” I said as I pulled up in front of the Byers residence. “I’m off to the black widow’s web. Wish me luck.”
* * *
The TV trucks had all departed the Byers’s neighborhood-off to find Shocking Things You Might Not Know About Your Deodorant, no doubt-and the crime scene tape that had been stretched across their front gate was now flapping in the late afternoon breeze. It was only four o’clock, but the sun was already getting low. The wind rustled some dead leaves as I opened the gate, which creaked as I swung it shut behind me. I was starting to feel like a character in a slasher flick-and not the wily brunette who survives to the end. I was the bubble-boobed blonde who somehow ended up getting killed in her underwear.
And why shouldn’t I be a bit queasy? If I was right, Rhonda Byers had killed three people. And even though one of them had it coming, two of them were innocent children. I didn’t want to talk to a person like that. I didn’t even want to be breathing the same air.
Still, there was a story to be written. So I rang the doorbell. I heard footsteps, then a woman who was probably Rhonda Byers’s sister-same height, same build, same bearing-answered the door.
“May I help you,” she said without emotion.
“I’m Carter Ross. I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner and-”
“She’s not here,” the woman said immediately, and started closing the door with all due haste.
Under normal circumstances, I’m all for getting a door slammed in my face. It’s the sort of thing that lets a reporter know he’s still alive. But I couldn’t let it happen this time. So I stuck my foot across the threshold before the door could shut.
“I know this is a difficult time for the family,” I said, as the door bounced off my shoe. “But we’re just trying to make our coverage as complete as possible and I was hoping for her help.”
The woman was about to find a new way to tell me to get lost. But then, from an inside room, I heard that authoritarian voice.
“Let him in,” Mrs. Byers said.
I was escorted into a dim living room, where Rhonda Byers was sitting on a Queen Anne-style couch with the shades drawn. Her bare feet were propped on a nearby coffee table. She was no longer dressed in the gray suit and uncomfortable shoes. It was now a sweatshirt and jeans. I surmised a girdle had been removed as well.
The room did not have a television, just a lot of shelves packed with books, all of them spine out. She was a reader, obviously. There were knickknacks, but the room didn’t feel especially cluttered. I sometimes get my decorating styles a little mixed up, but I was fairly certain the room would qualify as Victorian. Except it wasn’t your charming Aunt Beverly’s Victorian, where all the little baubles have stories behind them. It was your stern Aunt Helga’s, where everything had a brittle feeling, like you couldn’t move anything-not even the air-or something would break.
“Mrs. Byers, Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner,” I said.
She offered no greeting, smile, or handshake, which was fine by me. I didn’t particularly feel like returning any of them.
“We’re writing a story about the hours leading up to the councilman’s disappearance,” I continued. “I was hoping you could fill in some blanks for me.”
She looked at me with the same expressionless face her sister wore.
“Mr. Ross, I’ll be honest, I don’t want to talk with you, just like I didn’t want to go on television today,” she said, without much enthusiasm. “But the police tell me that media attention is good, because it will help them find Wendell. So I’ll do what I can.”
Okay, so that’s how she was going to play it: the dutiful wife sacrificing herself to bring her poor husband back home. I could roll with that.
“I’d like to go through the final forty-eight hours before he disappeared,” I said. “It would start Friday evening. What were you and Mr. Byers doing that night?”
During the next hour or so, she went over everything, and I drilled her on every inane detail. It was a long succession of political fund-raisers, pancake breakfasts, civic association meetings, high school basketball games, and so on. It was the sort of thing you expected from a local politician-the hobnobbing with the moneyed set, the glad-handing with the constituents, the seeing and being seen. Windy was a man on the go.
But, strikingly, he wasn’t on the go with Mrs. Byers. At every stop on Windy’s itinerary, I kept asking where she was. And she always seemed to be somewhere else-reading at home, or at a church function, or at her sister’s house. She admitted she had no idea where Windy was at certain times, or that she had only learned where he had been after the fact. She often was uncertain about when events began or ended. She never seemed to be able to offer an exact time when her husband arrived back home.
It gave me the window I felt I needed to see if I could bait her a little.
“You and your husband didn’t seem to spend much time together,” I offered.
“We were both very busy,” she said, trying to dismiss it easily.
I didn’t let her.
“I know this is difficult to talk about,” I pressed. “But I have to ask: Were there problems between you and Mr. Byers?”
Rhonda glanced nervously at her sister, who had been sitting in the room quietly listening.
“I … I wouldn’t say problems…”
She was faltering, if only slightly. This was my chance to see if I could start playing with the dials on her thermostat and add a few degrees to that icy blood of hers.
“Well, what would you say then?”
“Is it … is it really necessary to bring my … my marriage into this? Into your article?”
“At this point, everything is relevant,” I insisted. “I don’t mean to be rude”-actually, I did-“but I have to ask the question: Is it possible your husband was having an affair?”
Finally, the sister exploded.
“How does that matter?” she demanded. “The man’s been kidnapped!”
“It’s-” I began but was drowned out.
“You have a lot of nerve-”
“Jeannette, I’ll handle this,” Rhonda insisted.
Jeannette leaned forward as if she was going to object some more, but Rhonda held up a hand, “I’ll handle this.”
“Young man,” she said, turning toward me, having already cooled herself back down. “Can we talk off the record?”
“Sure,” I said, and put down my pen, which up to this point had been waving furiously.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“No.”
“Well, Wendell and I have been married for twenty-eight years,” she said. “After a while it gets … well, it’s not like I thought it would be.”
“How so?” I asked, and resisted adding, you mean on your wedding day you never envisioned murdering him in cold blood and making it look like he disappeared?
“I don’t know how it happened, but we drifted apart,” she said. “We were in love when we were younger. I really believe that. But it was always hectic, with me chasing after the children and him in politics. After the kids were out of the house, I thought it would get better because we’d have more time to spend together. But it got worse. He did his thing. I did mine. Separate worlds.”
“So why not divorce him?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sighing and looking away. “I think you have to be angry with someone to go through all the trouble of getting a divorce. And I couldn’t summon enough feeling for him to hate him that much. But to say we had a marriage anymore?”
She shook her head.
“Yet I’m told you always went to the council meetings,” I said. “Why?”
She stopped and thought for a moment.
“I gu
ess I found it interesting,” she said. “That was maybe the one area where we still shared a common interest. We could talk about that. I’d like to think he … I guess I think he valued my opinion on those matters.”
Uh-huh. Probably Windy was like Tommy. He needed Rhonda to explain stuff to him.
“But other than that, you barely saw each other?” I asked.
“That’s true,” she said, shaking her head again. “I can’t believe I’m saying it, but it’s true.”
“So, and again I hate to be rude”-no, really, I didn’t-“but is it possible your husband has met someone else and is off with her somewhere right now? It happens, you know.”
Yes, Mrs. Byers, your husband just ran off. No, Mrs. Byers, I’m sure you didn’t do anything untoward. Wasn’t that the illusion she wanted the world to believe? Isn’t that the story she hoped I would buy? The offer was on the table. All she had to do was take it.
But she didn’t. Maybe she was too smart to be that obvious.
“I … I don’t know,” she said. “I’m so … More than anything, I’m sad for him. I worry he’s gotten himself in trouble. I just hope he’s all right.”
She looked at me and blinked, like she was trying to keep tears from tumbling out her eyeballs. Maybe she was. She was so convincing, I actually believed her for a moment.
God, I felt like a cub reporter. Where was my cynicism? My natural suspicion? That little voice in my head that told me to distrust everything I heard? What was I, going soft?
“Do you think you have enough for your story?” the sister asked, finally taking control of the situation.
“Enough for now,” I said, because we had been at it for an hour and I wanted to leave while I still had my disbelief.
“Then I think it’s time you go,” she said. “My sister has been through too much already.”
And this time Rhonda didn’t object.
Neither did I. Short of a tearful confession-which Rhonda Byers was far too cagey to give me-I had gotten what I came for. Raines and I could go over everything now. It was time to leave.
I bid the Byers sisters farewell and led myself to the door, with Jeanette close on my tail. As I walked through the foyer, I lingered slightly, pretending to fumble with my jacket until I saw what I was looking for: a big, smudgy streak of blood, about two feet long and as obvious as a snake on a sidewalk, on the molding near the floor.
