Harry Dolan

by Bad Things Happen

  There ought to be shouting, she thought. There ought to be neighbors coming out of doors. There was nothing but Billy whispering, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  Her own voice was scarcely louder.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Chapter 31

  ON A YELLOW LEGAL PAD, WITH A CHEAP BALLPOINT PEN, DAVID LOOGAN composed a story.

  An ocean of cars surrounded him. He had parked in the lot of a cineplex south of Lansing, sixty miles from Ann Arbor. Behind him, on the backseat, lay his duffel bag and his leather coat. The guitar case and Wrentmore’s shotgun were in the trunk.

  On the passenger seat beside him there were three small items arranged in a row. The first was his cell phone; the second, a thin canister of pepper spray. The third was the flashdrive that Michael Beccanti had recovered from Sean Wrentmore’s condominium. The flashdrive figured into the story Loogan was writing.

  He had looked through Sandy Vogel’s e-mail and read the memo she’d written about finding Beccanti in Tom Kristoll’s office. The memo had gone to Laura Kristoll, Nathan Hideaway, Casimir Hifflyn, and Bridget Shellcross—the members of the Gray Streets board. He knew the board would meet for brunch tomorrow at Laura’s house. He planned to join them there and tell them his story.

  The story was a simple one, but Loogan was a fastidious writer. He drafted and redrafted and edited. He tore pages from the notepad and tossed them over his shoulder into the backseat.

  Shortly after eleven, he produced a final draft. He read through it one last time, put the pad aside, and thought about settling in for the night. He had a reservation at a bed-and-breakfast in Okemos, east of Lansing, fifteen minutes away.

  He had stayed away from hotels. There were bed-and-breakfasts everywhere, and their owners were glad to take cash and didn’t require a lot of paperwork. He had searched for listings on a computer at an Internet café, and had made his reservations from pay phones, using the names of his old high school teachers. His pattern was to arrive late and leave early and never stay at the same place twice.

  The owner of the place in Okemos had assured Loogan that he and his wife would be up at least until midnight. That gave Loogan some leeway. He glanced at his cell phone, lying dormant on the seat beside him. He could turn it on and check his messages, and then turn it off again and be on his way. He debated for a few seconds and then pressed the power button.

  The screen showed him two missed calls, both from Elizabeth Waishkey, both within the last hour. He considered the wisdom of calling her back, and his curiosity got the better of him. She answered on the third ring.

  “Mr. Loogan,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “I like hearing you say that,” he told her. “It reassures me that you haven’t caught up with me yet. If you didn’t say it, I’d have to assume you had me surrounded.”

  “You’re not surrounded. Why don’t you tell me where you are?”

  He opened the car door and got out to stretch his legs. “I’m standing in a parking lot,” he said, “an undistinguished parking lot, in an unspecified city.”

  “Do you see lights flashing, red and blue?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then you’re safe for now.”

  He walked along the side of the car. The marquee of the cineplex hung suspended in the distance.

  “You called me twice,” he said. “You must be working late.”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Tell me what you were doing in Ann Arbor today.”

  “I already told you, I went to the cemetery. I visited Tom’s grave. Are you all right?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “You said you couldn’t sleep. Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “Why did you visit Tom’s grave?”

  “It’s been a week since Tom was buried. I’m a sentimental man. Did you know there’s a headstone already? A thick chunk of granite. I don’t know why that surprised me, but it did.”

  “So you risked a trip to Ann Arbor just to visit Tom’s grave,” she said. “Because you’re sentimental.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think you’re telling me the truth,” she said.

  “I don’t think you’re telling me the truth when you say nothing’s wrong.”

  He stared at the marquee and listened to her silence.

  Eventually she let out a long breath. “I almost shot a sixteen-year-old today.”

  Elizabeth paced in her bedroom with the phone to her ear. She stopped at the window, pressed her fingers against the glass. Moonlight came from behind a cloud.

  She heard Loogan ask, “What happened?”

  The glass cooled her fingertips. “He’s a friend of Sarah’s,” she said. “Her boyfriend, though I didn’t know that for sure until today. I came home tonight and saw them making out on the porch. He got a little aggressive.”

  “Is she all right?” said Loogan. Sharply, fiercely.

  “She’s fine. She handled him—told him no, pushed him away. He was a little slow getting the message, and I overreacted. Before I knew what I was doing, I had him pinned against a tree, my nine-millimeter in my hand. It was a close thing.”

  It had been closer than Elizabeth would have liked. Sarah had been the one to bring it to an end. She could have panicked, she certainly had cause, but she never raised her voice. She came down from the porch and put her palm against her mother’s back. Elizabeth felt it there, a soft touch between her shoulder blades. She heard her daughter say, “Okay. I’m okay. Let him go.”

  And she holstered the gun and let Billy Rydell loose and sent him home. She went inside with Sarah and calmed down enough to talk. The talk was reassuring. Billy had never done anything like that before, Sarah told her. He had never tried to force her.

  They had talked for an hour and then fixed a late supper. Sarah had gone to bed. Elizabeth had been unable to sleep. And now she stood at the window in her room, in a T-shirt and sweats, her raven hair tied up. And now she said to David Loogan, “I wanted to shoot him.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “That wouldn’t have gone over well. There’s a term for it: disproportionate force.”

  “You didn’t shoot him,” Loogan said.

  “If I’d shot him, I might not have stopped with one bullet.”

  “It’s over now.”

  She left the window and paced across the room. “That’s what I keep telling myself, and it’s comforting to think so. But it isn’t really over, is it? Because I know how close I came. This time I’m safe. I got through it. But what happens next time?”

  “You controlled yourself this time,” he said. “You’ll do the same thing next time.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Because you’re an honorable person.”

  “Is that enough?”

  “It should be.”

  “But you can be an honorable person and still do the wrong thing. Isn’t that right?”

  The question echoed in the confines of her room. Silence on the line. She imagined him standing perfectly still.

  “Do you know why I wanted to talk to you tonight, David?”

  The smallest of delays before he answered. “Yes.”

  “I shouldn’t say David. I should say Darrell. Darrell Malone.” She braced her back against the bedroom door. “I like David better.”

  “So do I.”

  “We’ve heard from the Nossos police,” she said. “We know about Jimmy Wade Peltier.”

  No response to that. She realized she had been hoping for puzzlement—Who’s Jimmy Wade Peltier?—or a denial.

  “I’ve talked to Roy Denham,” she added after a moment. “Do you know what he said about you?”

  “What?”

  “He said he thought you were an honorable man.”

  “That was nice of him.”

  “He also said you stabbed Jimmy Peltier seventeen times.”

  David Loogan, who had once been
Darrell Malone, leaned against the fender of the car.

  “That sounds about right,” he said.

  “Denham said you stabbed Peltier until he went down, then came back and stabbed him some more. I didn’t want to believe that.”

  He tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. “Elizabeth—”

  “I came up with an alternative,” she said. “The woman you were with—Charlotte Rittenour. She could have played a part. You started the job, and then went off to call for help. And while you were gone, she finished it.”

  Loogan watched the blinking light of an airplane passing overhead. Slow progress, east to west. “It could have gone like that,” he said. “I’m sure it would have—if it was a story in Gray Streets.”

  “But it wasn’t a story in Gray Streets,” she said.

  He reached for the handle of the car door, feeling suddenly cold and tired. He got in and dragged the door shut after him.

  “I wish I could give you what you’re looking for,” he said. “But there’s no mistake. I did what I did to Jimmy Peltier. I’m not going to try to make excuses now.”

  Quiet on the line. He was about to turn off the phone when she said, “Are you getting ready to leave?”

  He touched the key in the ignition. “I’ll have to, soon. I can’t stay here all night.”

  “I mean leave leave,” she said. “You went to Tom’s grave. That’s the action of a man who’s moving on—who’s not sure when he’ll come this way again.”

  “I’m not leaving yet,” he said. “There are one or two more things I want to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said lightly. “You wouldn’t approve.”

  He expected protest—the familiar admonition to turn himself in. But he heard her laugh softly, and then she added two words: “Be careful.”

  Chapter 32

  A BRIGHT YELLOW LEAF BROKE FREE OF A HIGH BRANCH AND DRIFTED down, spinning slowly through the autumn air. David Loogan followed its descent and at the last moment reached out and caught it on his palm.

  From his vantage point at the edge of the woods, he could see the Kristoll house: the lines of the slate roof, the broad windows, the path of crushed stone that led to the front door. He had watched the four guests arrive. Nathan Hideaway first, then Casimir Hifflyn and Bridget Shellcross in Hifflyn’s Lexus. Sandy Vogel had shown up last, and had parked her minivan away from the other vehicles. Laura Kristoll had come to the door to greet each of her guests.

  Loogan held the stem of the yellow leaf between his finger and thumb and spun it slowly. His car was parked on the side of an unpaved road about a mile away. He had left it there and had hiked up the side of a hill and through the woods. After a while he broke onto a path that he remembered—he and Tom had used it once to walk down to the river. He followed it up to the Kristolls’ backyard, then skirted around to the front.

  He had been waiting for more than two hours now. He wasn’t sure how long they would be. A leisurely brunch, he thought, and then a discussion of Gray Streets business. He spun the leaf side to side and let it go and watched it drift to the ground. Yawning, he stood on his toes and stretched his arms over his head.

  He had not slept well at the bed-and-breakfast in Okemos. His dreams had been troubled. In one of them, he had stood shoulder deep in Sean Wrentmore’s grave, holding Wrentmore’s pistol up to the moonlight.

  Now he leaned his back against the trunk of a birch and watched as the front door of the Kristoll house opened. He had assumed and hoped that Sandy Vogel would be the first to depart. She was the outsider, the employee. The other four were old friends.

  He was right. Sandy came out; Laura waved her good-bye and went back in. Sandy, in her navy blue coat, walked down the crushed-stone path and got into her minivan.

  Loogan watched her drive away and then crossed quickly to the front door of the house. The knob turned and he slipped inside, through the entry hall, into the living room. He heard voices from the back of the house. He made his way past Tom’s study—empty. A right turn at the stairs and there was the dining room. Casimir Hifflyn was coming through the doorway. He saw Loogan and stopped short.

  Loogan put on a friendly smile. “You’re not leaving, are you, Cass?” he said. “You can’t leave. I just got here.”

  The curtains in the dining room had been drawn back, and the windows were panes of glass over canvases of autumn leaves, dots and strokes of orange and yellow and red. The plates from brunch had been cleared away to a sideboard, and the main table held a smattering of papers and copies of the latest issue of Gray Streets.

  “Don’t get up,” Loogan said, but they were already rising. Laura rushed forward to embrace him. He felt her fingers on the bare skin of his scalp. “David, are you all right?” she whispered. Nathan Hideaway clapped him on the shoulder. “The remarkable Mr. Loogan,” he said.

  “We’ve been discussing you,” said Hifflyn. “Where’s David Loogan? we’ve been asking ourselves. And how will we find someone to replace him?”

  “Don’t tell him that,” said Bridget Shellcross. “He’s back now. We won’t need to replace him.” She stood on tiptoe to peck him on the cheek. “We’ve mostly been talking about how ridiculous it is—that anyone could think you stabbed Michael Beccanti.”

  “Of course it’s ridiculous,” said Laura.

  “But now you’re back,” said Bridget. “I hope that means you’ve been cleared.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, it’s a lot of nonsense,” Hideaway said. “We need to get you a lawyer, someone who knows how to handle the police.”

  “Nate’s right,” said Hifflyn. “Laura, why don’t you get Rex Chatterjee on the phone?”

  “I didn’t come here for a lawyer,” Loogan said. “Why don’t we all sit down.”

  Laura slipped her hand into his. “David, I’d be happy to call him.”

  “I don’t have much time,” Loogan said. “My car’s parked not that far away. If the police see it, they’ll be able to guess where I am. But there’s something—”

  Hideaway interrupted him. “That’s more nonsense: having to skulk around like a criminal.”

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Loogan continued. “It’s the only reason I came here. To warn you.”

  He drew a wooden chair out from the table and settled into it. The rest of them followed suit, returning to their places.

  “To warn us about what?” asked Casimir Hifflyn. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about what’s been going on in plain sight for the past two weeks. Tom, and Adrian Tully, and Michael Beccanti. Someone is murdering people associated with Gray Streets.”

  Loogan spoke the words to the tabletop, then looked up to see Laura’s blue eyes regarding him intently.

  “And I don’t think it’s over yet,” he said. “All of us are at risk.” He let his gaze shift to each of the others. “The police are on the wrong track. They’re focusing on Sean Wrentmore. I thought he was part of it too, at first. But I’ve come to realize I was wrong. Wrentmore was an isolated case. Adrian Tully killed him, and Tom covered it up. But Wrentmore’s death has nothing to do with the other three: Tom’s and Tully’s and Beccanti’s. Those three were all killed by the same person, and it’s somebody no one suspects.”

  Hideaway spoke up. “Are you saying you know who killed them?”

  “Yes,” Loogan said. “I figured it out yesterday.”

  He let the words hover in the air. Waited for someone to ask the obvious question.

  Laura obliged him. “Who?”

  Loogan turned to her. “It’s someone you just ate brunch with,” he said.

  Hifflyn’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “That’s in poor taste, Mr. Loogan—suggesting that one of us is a murderer.”

  “No,” said Loogan, waving the idea away. “It’s not one of you. It’s Sandy Vogel.”

  Chapter 33

  LOOKS WERE EXCHANGED AROUND
THE TABLE. HEADS WAGGED FROM side to side. Indulgent smiles appeared. Hifflyn seemed about to speak, but Bridget Shellcross cut him off.

  “You can’t really expect us to believe that Sandy Vogel is a serial killer.”

  “I know how it sounds,” Loogan said.

  “Sandy is the mother of two teenagers,” Hifflyn observed.

  “On the night Tom died,” said Loogan seriously, “he and Sandy Vogel were alone in the office together. As far as anyone knows, she was the last person to see Tom alive.”

  Laura frowned. “She left at five o’clock. It was after seven when Tom died.”

  “She says she left at five. I’m not sure the police even bothered to check her alibi.” Loogan shrugged the issue away. “And consider Adrian Tully. Someone convinced him to drive out to a cornfield late at night. Sandy Vogel is a good-looking woman. I don’t think she would have had any trouble luring him to a secluded spot.”

  “That’s awfully thin,” said Nathan Hideaway. “Just because she could have lured him out there, that doesn’t mean she did.”

  Loogan continued as though Hideaway hadn’t spoken. “And then there’s Michael Beccanti. He’s the clincher. Because Sandy had a motive to kill Michael Beccanti. It’s one of the oldest motives there is. They were lovers, and he left her for another woman.

  “I admit I’m speculating about Tom and about Tully,” he said. “But Sandy’s affair with Beccanti is a fact. I went to the Gray Streets office last night and I got onto Sandy’s computer. The evidence is there. Tom told me the story once of how he met Beccanti. Beccanti was in prison, and he sent a fan letter to the magazine, and later he submitted stories. Sandy handled Tom’s correspondence. And at some point she struck up a relationship with Beccanti. It’s all there on her computer: the letters she wrote to him while he was in prison, then the e-mails they exchanged after he got out.”

  Loogan looked around the table—at Hideaway on his left, Laura across from him, Bridget and Hifflyn on his right. He had their attention. Casually he reached into the pocket of his leather coat. His canister of pepper spray was there, and Sean Wrentmore’s flashdrive. He would need them in a moment.