Before He Finds Her

by Michael Kardos

  Evidence. Building a case. Meaningless words. My father killed my mother. My father did not kill my mother. Her vision became swirly. She wasn’t listening to the detective. She was thinking about every mysterious sound she’d ever heard over the years, all the times she felt as if she were being watched or followed. None of it was real. The tens of thousands of hours fearing that the smallest mistake would mean her death. Being terrified that her father was always just beyond the hedges, always around the next corner.

  “Melanie?”

  Her attention returned to the police station, to this detective who in a single day had shaken every belief she’d ever had. It wasn’t the detective’s fault, yet Melanie knew she would never forgive her.

  “I want to hear all of it,” Melanie said.

  “Hear what—the interview? No, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  But Melanie was done enduring everyone else’s explanations and theories and justifications. She was done learning about every-thing after the fact. If Magruder was guilty, she wanted to hear it firsthand. If he wasn’t, she wanted to hear that, too, from his own lips.

  “Sure, you can,” Melanie said. “Through one of those one-way mirrors or whatever.”

  “We don’t have any of those.”

  “Then a microphone. Or a video camera. You’ve got to have some way of—”

  “We use a webcam—but Melanie, I’m afraid the answer is no. We have a way of doing things to preserve the integrity of the evidence.”

  “Is that so?” Melanie was infuriated by her own powerlessness, and she felt the childish urge to hit something. “Then I’m leaving.”

  “Melanie...”

  “I take back my whole story. I won’t sign this.” She shut the file folder and slammed it on the table. “My father killed my mother. You can’t change that. And my boyfriend will be coming soon, and as soon as he gets here I want to go.”

  “We simply can’t do what you’re asking,” the detective said, struggling not very successfully to control her own frustration. “I wish I could.”

  “You wish you could?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Melanie looked right into the detective’s eyes and said, “I fell down the stairs. I hit my head at the bottom of it. And my stomach.”

  “Melanie, don’t do this.”

  “It was stupid of me,” she continued, “but that’s what happened. I fell down the stairs and that’s the last thing I’ll ever say about it, and I refuse to sign this statement. I don’t know why I ever said those lies. Probably because of the concussion. But you can charge me with stuff if you want—for wasting your time or telling lies or whatever. But I want to make a new statement that I fell down the stairs. I’ll swear to it and sign it.”

  In the ensuing silence, the detective looked at the closed file folder, and Melanie could see her weighing the risks.

  “You can watch one of the computer terminals.” The detective sounded displeased, but she was saying the right words. “Officer Bauer will sit with you. But I’m telling you now, you can’t utter one word about what you hear to anyone. You could jeopardize your own case. You could jeopardize your mother’s. Am I being clear?”

  Melanie was so stunned, having gotten what she’d demanded, that all she could do was nod.

  24

  If David Magruder had been taken to a formal interview room—which was as inviting as a jail cell and meant to arouse a person’s anxiety—he would have known instantly that he was under suspicion, and that Detective Isaacson’s request that he “help them deal quietly with a delicate situation regarding his employee” was at best a half-truth. This was why, Officer Bauer explained to Melanie, the detective had arranged to speak with Magruder in the station’s “swing room”—typically the site of brief officer meetings and coffee breaks.

  There were two vending machines, soda and snacks, humming against one wall, and four chairs surrounding a circular table on which sat a small vase of plastic flowers. There was also a small webcam, its lens one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter and nearly invisible, taped to the top of the door frame, recording everything in the room. A cork board was attached to the wall, and pinned to it were news-paper comic strips of police officers. Magruder, wearing a suit with the tie loosened, sat beside a uniformed officer, chatting. At one point, the officer laid a hand on David’s arm and they both smiled about something. Either the setup was having the intended effect or Magruder faked being relaxed amazingly well, especially for a man who’d just worked a long day after drinking too much the night before.

  “This won’t work,” Melanie said to Officer Bauer, suddenly certain of it. Bauer sat in a creaky chair in front of the monitor. Melanie sat beside him. Watching David on the monitor was like watching him on TV, where he was in total control, always. “David does interviews for a living,” she said. “He’s a master at this.”

  Bauer raised the volume on the monitor. “So is the detective,” he said.

  Together they watched Detective Isaacson enter the swing room and shake Magruder’s hand. She was intentionally short of breath and acting distracted, sitting down and flipping through a file folder.

  “Thanks again for coming in, Mr. Magruder,” she said.

  “You can call me David.”

  She smiled. “I will, David.” She turned to the other officer. “We’re all good here. Thanks for keeping David company.”

  He smiled, and shook Magruder’s hand. “A real pleasure, sir. I like your show.”

  Magruder nodded.

  When the officer left, he swung the door casually behind him so that it closed most, but not all, of the way. Nobody was being held here against his will. It was all strictly voluntary, a matter of mutual respect.

  Detective Isaacson sat on the chair beside Magruder. “Like I said in the car, you have no idea how helpful this is, wrapping every-thing up quickly. I’m afraid that Bill Suddoth—” She frowned. “Do you want coffee? Soda? Anything? I should’ve asked.”

  “Nothing, please.” He crossed his legs.

  “All right.” Another friendly smile. “But if you change your mind. So Bill Suddoth assaulted a young woman this morning. I told you that in the car. Forgive me. Anyway, she got pretty banged up—bruises, contusions, concussion.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you. Well, fortunately, she—Alice Adams is her name—she was able to identify Mr. Suddoth shortly after the attack. When I spoke with her this morning, she could only figure that Mr. Suddoth must have become obsessed with her yesterday while driving her around. She said she’d found him a little odd at the time. I think she used the word creepy. And this morning—well, like I said, he beat her up. We don’t believe it was an attempted sexual assault, but we’re looking into the possibility.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Have you ever known Mr. Suddoth to be unstable?”

  “I wouldn’t hire someone who I thought—”

  “No, of course not. I’m not suggesting you could have known he might do something like this. But he has a prior record.”

  “He does?”

  “No felonies, but he’s no boy scout, either. I’m sure you didn’t know that when you hired him.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “In the future, you can always check with us.” Detective Isaacson got out her wallet and removed a business card. Slid it across the table. “Check with me—I’ll personally run the search.” She smiled. “One of the benefits of living in a small town.”

  “Thank you.” Magruder glanced at the card and put it in his shirt pocket.

  “Oh, I’m happy to. We’re living in really litigious times, and you want to be extremely careful.”

  Magruder nodded. “You know, I hadn’t thought of it until just now, but Bill has been acting somewhat erratic. In fact—”

  “Just so I have my notes correct, Bill Suddoth drove Ms. Adams to your house last evening around what time?”

  David Magruder looked
momentarily bothered. He wasn’t used to being cut off. Then: “I’d say around six o’clock.”

  She jotted it down in her notes. “Okay, and Ms. Adams said that she’d come over to interview you for a school assignment. That you’d talked for a while, and that you dropped her off later that night at her hotel. So it was during the initial drive to your house that Mr. Suddoth must have become obsessed with her. Would you say that’s the only time he’d have been with her? I’m just trying to get the chronology right.”

  “That sounds right,” he said, and leaned forward. “Just out of curiousity—what did he say about all this? Or is that confidential?”

  The detective let out a laugh. “Bill Suddoth knows he could be facing jail time, so I don’t take anything he says very seriously.” She coughed into a closed fist. “Pardon me. Can you think of any other reason why he might have wanted to hurt her, other than some kind of sexual obsession? Could she have said something to him to make him angry?”

  “I really have no idea. But I doubt it. He’s just a driver.”

  Detective Isaacson nodded. “I honestly think this is a pretty straightforward case of a young, attractive girl being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She smiled knowingly.

  “What is it?” Magruder asked.

  “Nothing, it’s just—well, you asked what Mr. Suddoth said. Would you believe he said you put him up to it?”

  “What?” Magruder uncrossed his legs and sat up straight. “Why the hell would he—”

  “Because Bill Suddoth is basically a thug in nice shoes, and he did a bad thing, and now he’s trying to blame the bigger fish because he has a prior record and is worried about jail time.” She shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t take him too seriously. Anyway, you shouldn’t let it worry you—it’s what guys like him always say. Would you believe he said you ordered him to kill her, and that he decided to warn her instead to leave town?”

  “My god!”

  “I know—welcome to the police force. We deal with guys like him all the time. ‘The president made me do it.’ ‘The pope made me do it.’”

  Magruder risked a tentative smile. “‘Jesus and Buddha conspired...’”

  “Exactly!” Detective Isaacson returned the smile. “Tell me something. What did you and Ms. Adams talk about at your home?”

  A nearly imperceptible tightening of his face. “Well, like you said. She interviewed me. About my job and my life.”

  “I never said she interviewed you.”

  He tilted his head. “Yeah, you did.”

  “I said she went to your house in order to interview you. According to her, you quickly identified her as Meg Miller, presumed to be dead. Needless to say, that trumped a school interview, am I right?”

  Through the computer monitor, Melanie watched Magruder’s body stiffen. For maybe ten seconds—an eternity—nothing got said. Magruder glanced around, as if for the first time realizing where he was.

  “I’m not following,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” the detective said. “I know she asked you to keep her identity a secret. That’s why I’m letting you know that I know. She told us, too. It’s remarkable that she’s been alive all these years, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Yes. It absolutely is.”

  “Amazing coincidence, though, wouldn’t you say?” said the detective.

  Melanie could tell that David didn’t want to take the bait. But he couldn’t not. “What coincidence?”

  “Well, think about it: A woman is murdered, and her daughter disappears. Fifteen years later, the daughter returns to town and within a couple of days gets violently assaulted herself. I mean, that family has some really bad luck.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Magruder said.

  “Because there’s no way those two things could be connected, is there?”

  Magruder stared at the detective for a few seconds. Then he smiled broadly, his excellent white teeth gleaming. “Detective Isaacson, what is this?”

  “What is what?”

  He shook his head. “You’re interrogating me, aren’t you? This”—he motioned toward the vending machines, the partly opened door—“this is all show.”

  “Absolutely not. I’m completely confident that Mr. Suddoth is at fault here. That’s why he’s the one who’s under arrest. But he insisted it came from you—”

  “Which it didn’t—”

  “Which it didn’t. Obviously. But Melanie—that’s what Meg likes being called these days, though I guess you know that—anyway, Melanie says that when she was assaulted this morning, Suddoth told her to, quote, ‘leave town.’”

  “Okay...”

  “Well, that’s a strange thing for him to come up with on his own, isn’t it? I mean, why would someone obsessed with a girl order her to leave town?”

  Magruder sighed deeply. “I haven’t a clue. He’s obviously a nut. Obviously, I never should have hired him.”

  The detective waved the statement away. “Oh, we all make mistakes. Live and learn, right? But okay. I’m sure that when this is all said and done, Bill Suddoth will be charged and either plead guilty or be found guilty. But what—and this is just a hypothetical—but what if you did want Melanie to leave town? Why would that be?”

  “Detective, I don’t want—”

  “I know—that’s why I said it’s a hypothetical. Just let me finish. Why would he want Melanie Denison to leave town? I asked myself. And then I remembered—actually, I didn’t remember. I checked the file—but okay. I checked the file and saw that you didn’t have an alibi for the time of Allison Miller’s murder—”

  “Stop.” David Magruder had his palm out like he was directing traffic. “We’re done here.”

  “Please, Mr. Magruder,” said the detective. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Now detective, you know that’s a load of—”

  “I really am. Hear me out. I’m seeing this through the eyes of a thousand newspapers and TV stations—if they were to learn a couple of simple facts. Now, I don’t want to give Bill Suddoth’s story credence, because I don’t want you to become fodder for... well, for journalists. You know how they can be.” When Magruder said nothing, she continued. “It just seems a little weird to me that Bill Suddoth’s story—that he told her to leave town—actually matches what the victim herself told us.” She paused again. “Is it possible that maybe you asked Bill Suddoth to talk to Ms. Denison? That maybe you told him specifically not to hurt her, but just to make this helpful suggestion that she was better off somewhere other than Silver Bay?”

  “What you’re saying is all very ridiculous, detective. Still, I’ll have my lawyer present before this goes any further.”

  “Mr. Magruder, of course you can have your lawyer here. Of course you know that anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. But you aren’t under arrest or even a suspect. What I’m doing is just trying to wrap this up fast, get you out of here before anyone in the media knows you’re here. See, if I knew that you had directed your driver to politely ask Ms. Denison to return to wherever it was she came from, for whatever reason you might have had—that’s not my business—and if he—all on his own—took things too far and became physical, then I should have all I need. It would explain why he talked to her about her leaving town. And her injuries certainly prove that he took things too far. We could get this wrapped up and no one will ever have to know you were here. Because it’s certainly no crime for you simply to ask your employee to speak with Ms. Denison. So is that maybe what happened?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “Because otherwise, I’m going to have to look into the ridiculous claim that you ordered Ms. Denison to be killed, and I really don’t want to start investigating the wild claims of unreliable thugs. Especially when it threatens to put a man like yourself in the spotlight—in the news, online—where it will undoubtedly damage your career. That isn’t right.”

  “And I don’t want to start investigating a
corrupt and incompetent small-town police department. But I will if I have to, and I have more resources than you do.”

  “You don’t have any evidence of that, Mr. Magruder.”

  “And neither do you,” he said.

  “I have the sworn testimony of the victim and the accused,” she said calmly, “plus the business card of every journalist who’s ever shaken my hand over the past seventeen years. We both know this is a juicy news story, Mr. Magruder. It’s your call.”

  Magruder stared down the detective for maybe five seconds—five seconds of fast calculations and cost-benefits and, quite possibly, an awakening to the notion that his invincibility was neither inevitable nor everlasting—and then he broke eye contact and his posture sagged. He looked down at the table until he had collected himself somewhat. “I made him promise to treat her nicely—I specifically told him not to hurt her or even threaten her. Just to speak to her nicely. I’d have talked to her myself, but I had to get to New York early this morning.”

  “See? That’s what I figured.” The detective sounded almost cheerful as she wrote a few fast notes in her pad. “So help me to understand just one more thing, will you?”

  “I’ll try,” Magruder said. He still sounded extremely wary. He was in uncharted waters, and he knew it, and he knew that the detective knew it.

  “You were happy to learn that Ms. Denison—who you once knew as Meg Miller—was alive, is that fair to say?”

  “Of course. I was very glad to learn that her father had spared her life.”

  “That’s what I’d assume. So then why did you want her out of town so quickly?”

  “Why did I...” He bit his lip. “Well, I didn’t really want her to—”

  “You did. I mean, you just admitted to that.”

  “Detective.”

  He took a breath as if he were going to chastise her, and the detective even gave him time to put his words together. But when no words came, the detective said, “Mr. Magruder, did you kill Allison Miller back in 1991?”

  “What!” He snapped bolt upright in his chair.