“You don’t have to do any more selling, Gordon. Your theory fits like a glove and I even like the suspect. There’s only one little problem.”
He left a pregnant silence filling the room. Lilly finally broke it.
“No evidence,” he said. “Although that test … ”
“Right you are, deputy. But we need to ship the test off to an outside lab, and that could take a while.”
“There must be something, sir. If Mr. Gordon’s idea is right, and our killer’s already attacked a second person, well, we’re leaving people exposed to danger if we don’t make an arrest.”
Both men looked at Rogers, who picked up the water glass on the table and took a swallow. He set it down on the table and closed his eyes for half a minute, then opened them again.
“There is one thing I could do,” he said. “It’s risky and it’s not exactly according to Hoyle, but I could try bringing in our person of interest and seeing if I can’t get a confession with a bluff. I’ve actually been thinking about that for a couple of hours, and it might be a blessing of getting older.”
“I don’t understand, sir,” Lilly said.
“Ten years ago, I would have killed this idea the minute I had it. If it went wrong, it could ruin my career. But you know what? I’m retiring in seven weeks, and if I screw up now, there’s not much they can do to me. I have the freedom to take a chance, and by God, I’m going to take it. “
He looked at Lilly. “Deputy, go find our suspect, but wait ten minutes before you come back. I need to think it over one more time.”
Lilly rose and walked to the door. Rogers spoke again as he reached it.
“And, deputy, one more thing. If you’re so inclined, you might want to say a little prayer that this works.”
Lilly cracked the barest of smiles.
“Not a good idea to pray for results, sir. But I’ll ask for God to guide us.”
“Whatever. We’ll need all the help we can get.”
The deputy left, and Gordon stood up.
“I guess this is where I leave it to the professionals,” he said. “Good luck.”
“Not so fast, Gordon. I want an independent witness here when I try this, so get your ass back in the chair.”
Gordon sat down. “You mean in case it goes badly?”
“Even if it goes well.”
The next several minutes passed in silence and at a pace that felt like an hour in a dentist’s chair. Exactly on schedule, there was a knock on the door, after which Lilly came in with the suspect, who saw Gordon and did a double-take.
“Gordon. What are you doing here?”
“Don’t get excited,” Rogers said. “I haven’t questioned the two of you together yet, but I want to do it now in the hope of clearing up a couple of points.”
The suspect shrugged.
“I’m going to be talking to a few more people tonight, and just to be on the safe side, I’m reading everyone their Miranda rights. I’ve already done that with Gordon, and I’d like to do it with you. Like I said, just to be on the safe side.”
“Sure, but you’re wasting your time. I know my rights, and I don’t have anything to hide.”
Rogers read the warning, and Gordon, trying not to look at the suspect, thought the detective was hamming it up a bit.
“I’ll try to make this as succinct as possible,” Rogers said. “This case has been a bear from the beginning, and not the least of it is the question of how Wendy Van Holland could have been killed in a cabin locked from the inside, and how there were no footprints in the snow leading in or out. The snow was melted by the time we got here, but three people have told me there were no footprints in it beyond Gordon’s cabin. Yet the killer apparently left the Van Holland cabin after the snow had stopped. For a long time the only explanation for that seemed supernatural, but I don’t believe in that stuff.
“And then I realized that the answer was right under our nose the whole time.”
The suspect remained impassive, but Gordon thought he could read signs of nervousness.
“I now believe the killer didn’t walk to the cabin after all. It would have been risky walking across that open lawn, where anyone in the lodge or in the other cabins could see you.” The suspect flinched. “I meant you in a general sense, not you particularly. No, I think our killer took the river to the Van Holland cabin. There’s a kayak tied up at the pier, and it would have been easy as pie to hop in and quietly paddle a little ways upstream, then come ashore just past that last cabin — the one that Wendy was in by herself that night. That kayak has a stake that can be driven into the bank of a river or lake to anchor it, and our deputy here found a cavity in the dirt of the river bank just the other side of the cabin this afternoon. That seems to support our theory so far.
“Our killer then could have walked along the back side of the cabin, out of sight from Gordon’s place, and knocked on the window or the front door. Whoever it was, Wendy knew her killer and let that person in. I expect that person wanted something from her, and when she wouldn’t go along, she signed her death warrant.”
Rogers paused for a sip of water. The other three people in the room were barely moving or breathing.
“Afterward, the killer decided to wait and see if the snow would let up, and it did. The footprints made on the way in were mostly obliterated by then, and a couple of swipes of the front steps would have gotten rid of all but a trace of them there. The killer could have gone out the window on the back side of the cabin and rolled along the ground for 25 to 30 feet back to the kayak. That would have pretty much wiped out the incoming footprints and ensured there weren’t any going out. It was a neat little trick and also very simple when you know how it was done.
“And from a legal point of view, the act of taking the kayak to the cabin could be taken as an indication of premeditation, which could make this a first-degree murder instead of a crime of passion. I’m not sure our killer thought that one all the way through.
“However, this theory doesn’t stop there. We still have to account for two more things. There’s the medical evidence that suggests an earlier time of death, and there’s the fact that in the story I’ve just told, the killer couldn’t have locked the cabin from inside. It’s a single-pane window, and there’s no way it could be both shut and locked from the outside. Yet it was shut and locked the next morning. There’s only one way that could have happened. The killer had to be someone who went into the cabin the next morning.
“And that’s why I called you in here, Don.
“You see, I think our killer got a bit too smart for his own good and gave himself away. It probably occurred to him to turn off the heat and leave the window open so the body would cool down faster and cloud the time of death. If he stopped there, he probably would have gotten away with it. But then, on Wednesday morning, it worked out that another opportunity came up, and our killer couldn’t leave well enough alone.
“When Charles Van Holland went out to the cabin, you probably figured he’d go around to the side when the door wouldn’t open and find the open window. But he was so unnerved, he turned around and came straight back without trying to look in. Then you headed over to the cabin, and that’s where you started thinking a bit too much. You kicked in the front door and took off the deadbolt, but the door still closed properly. Once you were inside, it would have taken just seconds to make sure all the windows were closed and locked from the inside and to turn on the heater.
“Your satisfied customers gave you away on that one. Everybody says your electric wall heaters get those small cabins heated up really fast. It was several more minutes before the doctor and Gordon got to the cabin. It might not have warmed up to 70 yet, but it would have been a lot warmer than the outside, and they would have been focusing on the body, not the thermostat. And of course by the time the investigators arrived an hour and a half later, you could have been growing orchids in that place.
“You want to say anything about that?”
Don laughed nervously. It looked to Gordon as if Rogers’ narrative had shaken him, but Gordon was acutely aware of how thin the actual evidence was.
“That’s a tidy explanation, detective. But I guess you don’t seem to think you need a motive before you make a serious accusation like that.”
“I’m glad you brought that up, Don,” Rogers said. “I was going to get to that next. We’re still looking into the financials, but it seems there could be a very powerful motive indeed. Because if I’m right, you stood to lose Harry’s.
“It took us a while to get somebody to let us into the county recorder’s office on a Saturday, but when we ask for something like that, we usually get it. It turns out the deed to this place is in your wife’s name, which makes sense when you consider it was her family money that paid for it. Now I’ve only known Sharon a few days, but she seems like a fairly upright woman who might not take it lying down if she found out that her husband had been sleeping with one of the guests. A younger and more attractive one, at that. You know, Don, in my experience, women don’t tend to be very understanding about that. She just might want to throw you out and keep Harry’s herself. So when Mrs. Van Holland threatened on Tuesday night to talk about what was really going on here, that had to freeze your heart.
“Everybody but Gordon forgot about it, but that morning, Mrs. Van Holland was complaining about the heat in her cabin, and you went over to fix it. Given the way she was behaving here, I’m guessing she put the moves on you, just because she got a kick out of doing that. I never saw her alive, but she was obviously a looker, and when a woman like that starts coming on to a man, well, most of the time he stops thinking. With his head anyway. No, as a man of the world, I couldn’t blame you if you gave in. A lot of us would. But once you did, she owned you.
“I hope it was the best ten seconds of your life, Don, because it’s going to cast a long shadow over the rest of it.”
Don was even more visibly shaken by now, but he pulled himself together for one last stand.
“Again, a nice theory. But I don’t see any proof.”
“No, but we know where to look. You may remember that we took the sheets in that cabin as evidence. Back in the sixties, when they were a bit more delicate in the courtroom than they are now, the sheets in that room would have been described as ‘soiled,’ which is basically shorthand for saying the people in the room were having at each other like deer in season. I didn’t order a DNA test on those sheets because Drew Evans had already admitted having a roll with her that afternoon. I figured that accounted for it. But now I’ve ordered those sheets sent to the lab first thing Monday, and when we finish this discussion, I expect that I’ll have an order from one of the judges ordering you to give a sample.
“When that happens, it’s over, Don. A competent defense attorney might be able to get the death penalty taken off the table in exchange for a guilty plea, but that’s the best you can hope for. You killed her to keep Harry’s, but you’re going to lose it anyway.”
For a minute the room was silent. Gordon saw that Don had his eyes closed and was balling his fists up tight, and Lilly apparently noticed it, too, straightening up and moving a half step closer.
Finally, Don opened his eyes and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“You know what the worst part was? Even worse than killing her? It was knowing I gave in to her. My first wife cheated on me because I was working so hard she said I never paid any attention to her. I swore that if I ever got married again, I’d never cheat and I’d pay more attention to my wife. That was one of the reasons I wanted to buy Harry’s. I thought it would give Sharon and me a chance to work together and keep the marriage strong.
“And then, this happened anyway. Fuck!”
The air had gone completely out of Don, and Gordon realized that Rogers had been holding his breath; he finally exhaled with Don’s expletive.
“Don Potter, you’re under arrest for the murder of Wendy Van Holland. Your rights have been previously read to you, but if you have any questions or want a re-reading …”
Don shook his head.
“Cuff him, deputy, and take him outside into the hall. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Lilly did as ordered, leaving Rogers and Gordon alone in the room.
“Pretty gutsy, bluffing him like that,” Gordon said. “I probably would have waited for the test results.”
“I thought about that, too. But once we asked him for a swab, he’d have known we were on to him, and he would have had some time to think about it. And if he was thinking straight, he would have realized it was still a circumstantial case, aside from the DNA evidence, and he might have tried to tough it out. That’s why I took a chance and confronted him now.”
“Good call.”
“It’s always a good call when it works. It could just as easily have blown up in my face. But, hey, I’m a short-timer. A few more weeks and it would have been somebody else’s problem.”
“I don’t think you really believe that. It would have been hanging over you.”
“Well, now, I guess we’ll never know, will we?”
Gordon looked at the door to the room and shook his head.
“Poor bastard,” he said. “He deserves what he’ll get for killing Wendy, but I do feel a bit sorry for him for getting caught in her snares. He was a hugely unlucky 80 percenter.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Rogers said.
5
THE FOUR OF THEM followed the hallway to the front desk. April was at the bar, chatting with Peter, who had a pint in his hand. They were clearly taken aback to see Don being led up in handcuffs.
When they got to the desk, Don turned to Rogers.
“Could I ask you something? I know this is unusual, but could I be the one to break this to Sharon? It’s going to devastate her, and it’s the least I can do.”
Rogers hesitated.
“She’s in the office just down the hall. You can watch from here.”
Rogers was silent for several seconds.
“All right,” he said. “You have five minutes. And don’t make me regret it.”
He nodded at Lilly to remove the handcuffs. Don walked to the turn in the hallway and knocked on the office door.
“Honey, it’s me.”
He opened it and went in. Rogers looked at Lilly.
“Something bothering you, deputy?”
“Not by the book, sir. But it’s your call.”
“He’s older and more out of shape than our usual detainee. If he makes a run for it, you and Gordon will have him inside a hundred yards.”
Gordon slipped into the bar and gave Peter the short version of what had happened. Peter whistled.
“That’s really something. How did Rogers figure it out?”
“He had a little help.”
Peter looked at him askance. In the still of the lodge, Gordon could hear the purr of an electric motor in the distance and assumed Johnny was coming back with his client for the day.
“Six minutes, sir,” Lilly said.
“Give him one more, then go fetch him,” Rogers said.
“Anybody seen Don?”
Sharon asked the question as she walked around the corner from the dining room.
“Is something wrong?” she said, looking at the men staring at her in amazement.
Gordon ran to the window and looked at the river. One of the boats was leaving from the pier, and the clothing identified its operator as Don.
“He’s on the river!” Gordon shouted. “Heading downstream.”
“Shit,” Rogers said, slamming his notebook on the front desk. “Get to your car, deputy, and see if you can get to the bridge before he does. You two,” indicating Gordon and Peter, “come with me.”
They ran down the lawn to the pier as fast as they could. Don was 200 yards away from the pier by the time they reached it, going five miles an hour with the quiet electric motor. The boat also had a larger, gasoline-powered motor, and Don was fidd
ling with it as he slowly moved downstream. A kayak and another motorized boat were tied to the pier.
“Whose boat is this?” Rogers asked.
Gordon shrugged.
“It’s ours now. You know how to operate it?”
“I think I can,” Gordon said.
The three of them piled into the boat, Gordon at the rear by the motor and tiller, Peter in the middle, and Rogers in front. Gordon untied the boat from the pier, started its electric motor and pointed them downstream. They were 300 yards behind Don’s boat now.
At the first bend below Harry’s, they encountered Johnny and his clients coming back to Harry’s. Because of the bend, they didn’t see him until he had passed Don’s boat, and so were unable to signal him to head it off.
Don was trying to work the more powerful gasoline motor into place to power the boat, but was having difficulty doing that and steering with the electric motor at the same time. The result was some weaving, which allowed Gordon, keeping the following boat moving resolutely forward, to make up part of the distance. They had closed to just over 100 yards as the two boats turned round the bend leading to Indian Hollow Bridge.
The bridge was a quarter mile past the bend, and not long after they turned it, they could see the patrol car roar onto the bridge and stop in the middle. Lilly jumped out, drew his weapon, and pointed it in the direction of Don’s oncoming boat.
“We got him now,” Rogers said.
“Gordon!” said Peter. “Look!”
“What?”
“The sun’s out. First time we’ve seen it all week.”
It was true. The cloud cover had lifted, and they could see the setting sun just above the top of the mountains surrounding the valley. It cast a warm, golden glow on the landscape, showing off Paradise Valley in its best light — not that anyone was noticing at the time. It had even cleared enough that for the first time since their arrival, they could see The Mountain in the distance, the white of its snow-capped sides taking on a golden tinge.
Wash Her Guilt Away (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 2) Page 23
