“Police, ma’am. From Baltimore.”
Tess looked at him, wide-eyed. Of all the lies she had told, she had never ever pretended to be a cop. Utility worker or secretary— absolutely. Someone’s long-lost relative, disinterested passerby—why not? There was no law against those impersonations. But pretending to be a cop could get you arrested.
“I was a cop,” Carl whispered to her. “And we were working with the state police. It’s not such a big lie if you think about it.”
She shrugged. Big lie or not, it was out there. She couldn’t take it back.
It seemed to take Drey Windsor forever to come to the door and open it. Yet when she did, she was much younger than Tess had expected, barely in her fifties. She must have given birth to Billy when she was all of twenty.
Still, it was a hard fifty-something. The sun had left her face scored with deep lines, and Tess guessed she had been a smoker as well. She had those telltale lines around the lips, the ones that come from drawing hard on a butt end. Her hair was the flat noncolor that comes from a bottle, a minky brown. But it was arranged neatly and she was dressed in a pair of flowery cotton pants and a bright T-shirt. She was one of those older women who kept their hourglass figures.
“Police?” she asked. “Has something happened?”
Tess looked at Carl: It’s your lie, go with it.
“No, ma’am, quite the opposite. We think we might have some good news. Could we sit down?”
The bungalow was built in what Tess thought of as the new ass-backward style, with a small formal living room at the front, a large kitchen–family room across the back. She understood why this floor plan was desirable to families with children, but she didn’t see why a retirement village had decided to ape it. Older people should be encouraged to move away from television sets, to have meals at tables, to entertain in formal rooms. With children grown and gone, this should be the time of life to eat from fine china, not from a television tray set up in front of a Barcalounger. If not now, when?
Mrs. Windsor took a seat in just such a Barcalounger, perching on the edge, folding her hands in her lap. Tess and Carl dragged two wooden chairs from the low counter that separated this room from the kitchen.
“You believe you have good news?” she asked, her voice cautious, almost skeptical. It seemed to Tess that she found it all too credible for police officers to be on her doorstep but was less convinced that they might bring glad tidings.
“Possibly,” Carl said. “I don’t want to overstate it or get your hopes up. There’s still a lot of work ahead of us. But, Mrs. Windsor—do you think it’s possible your son is still alive?”
Mrs. Windsor swallowed hard and blinked her eyes rapidly, as if trying to fan back tears. “Billy? My Billy’s been dead for almost fifteen years.”
“Well, technically he’s been missing, right? They never found him.”
“Under the law, I could have him declared dead. But there’s never been any reason to do that.”
“Really?” This was Tess, remembering the old crone’s statement that Audrey Windsor had probably done just that, to collect the insurance that enabled her to live among the rich at Golden Shores.
Or maybe she had merely allowed people to assume this was where her newfound wealth came from.
“If he had been my husband—but he’s not. Or if there had been life insurance—but there wasn’t. What seventeen-year-old boy needs life insurance? There didn’t seem to be any point to it. Besides, I didn’t want—”
She broke down, quite convincingly. But it occurred to Tess that Audrey Windsor could have finished that sentence in any of a number of ways.
“You didn’t want to make his death official?”
She nodded through her tears, face downcast so her expression was unreadable.
“I suppose a mother can’t help feeling that way. You’d want to hold on to the hope that he was alive, as long as his body was never found.”
Mrs. Windsor nodded again. Tess thought she saw a cunning glint at the top of her eyes, as if she were studying them, trying to figure out if they were buying her act.
“Well, that’s the possible good news,” Carl boomed. “You see, there’s a man of Billy’s age and description, up in Washington County Rehabilitation Hospital.”
He paused. Tess realized he was gauging Audrey Windsor’s reaction to that piece of information. After all, it was a temporary home to at least two of Billy’s various personas over the past few years. But all she showed was genuine concern and even more genuine confusion.
“He’s been in a car accident and there was a lot of head trauma. He has short-term memory loss and what he does remember about his past is kind of scattered. But he says his name is Billy Windsor. Now, that’s not an unusual name. Could be any number of people—”
“A bad car accident?” There was no doubting the fear in Audrey Windsor’s voice. “When?”
“Oh, six–eight weeks ago.”
Her body relaxed. So she had seen her son since then. She knew he was okay more recently than that. “And you think it’s my Billy?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“What does he look like?”
“Blond. Hazel eyes. About five-ten, with a small frame.” Carl, who had the advantage of having seen Billy Windsor once, was flipping the information, describing the man’s polar opposite.
“Oh.” Audrey Windsor’s voice was almost a purr. “Well, that’s not my Billy, I’m afraid. He was brown-haired and hazel-eyed, and he grew to be much taller than that. I mean—even at seventeen, he was already six feet.”
“I’m so sorry, ma’am. As I said, it was possible good news. Now I feel as if I got your hopes up for nothing.”
“No,” Drey Windsor assured him. “I know my Billy’s gone. I know. He made sure of that.”
“A suicide,” Tess said, hitting the word hard, and the woman recoiled a little bit, as if no one had ever dared to speak that word in her presence.
“Yes.”
“That’s why he never came up, right? He weighted himself down with something.”
“Most likely.”
“What a jerk.”
The contradiction was swift, automatic. “You shouldn’t say that.”
“Why not? I think suicides are selfish. When Billy decided to drown himself, he was thinking only of himself. What about you? Didn’t your feelings count for anything? If someone I loved did that, I’d hate them forever. On some level, he was trying to hurt you, to punish you. What was that about?”
“You have no right to talk about Billy that way. He was a good boy. He tried to do right in every way. That girl broke his heart. He couldn’t help himself.”
Tess shrugged. “If you say so. But all I know is, it’s fifteen years later and you’re sitting here, unable to have your son declared officially dead. I think that’s because you don’t want to admit he is dead. And maybe that’s because he isn’t. Is that possible? He faked his death, just to get away from you?”
Drey Windsor’s mouth opened and closed, like a beached fish trying to breathe. Finally, she said, “Are we done? Is that all you wanted to ask me?”
Carl looked at Tess, unsure of what was going on. But Tess just nodded. “We’re done. But Mrs. Windsor—we do have some bad news for you.”
She stood up and leaned over the woman, as if to whisper in her ear. But her voice was clear and cold. “Billy is dead to you now. He can’t come back here ever again. Do you understand that? He can’t visit you or even risk calling you here because we’re going to have you under surveillance. If Billy tries to see you, we’re going to have him arrested. We know what he’s done. Tell him that, if he calls. We know what he’s done and we’re coming for him.”
“Something come up, didn’t it?” Mrs. Windsor was crying now. “I always said something would come up, that it was only a matter of time they’d find a piece of bone or something. But he didn’t mean to do it, you have to understand. It was an accident. And it was so long ago. A boy
shouldn’t be held accountable for such things.”
“What about a man, Mrs. Windsor? What about a man who keeps doing this, over and over again?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Billy made a fresh start, that’s all I ever wanted for him. What he does for a living—well, what else is he to do? At least he’s responsible. Really, he’s protecting the rest of us, don’t you see? It has to go somewhere.”
Tess looked back at Carl, but he was as baffled as she was by Drey Windsor’s sobbing confession.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re DNR, aren’t you? Not real police, but the damn DNR. Well, I’ve never talked to you folks before and I’m not going to start now. You get out of here unless you have a warrant or a reason to take me in. And I don’t think you do.”
“Why do you think we’re from the Department of Natural Resources, Mrs. Windsor?”
Something shifted. Tess had betrayed some ignorance and Drey Windsor had regained control of herself. She knew something they didn’t, and that gave her power. Her tears slowed. She drew herself up, proud and closed off.
“We may very well come back with a warrant,” Tess said, knowing they could never come back, that they had pushed this lie too far already. “For you and your son, because you clearly knew all this time what happened to Becca Harrison and that makes you an accessory. But remember what I told you, Mrs. Windsor. Billy is dead to you now. Your only hope of seeing him again is turning him in to the police. At least that way you’ll be able to visit him in prison.”
“Billy won’t go to prison,” his mother said. “He could never live so confined. He’ll kill himself before he lets you take him.”
“He’ll probably pretend to kill himself. But I don’t think he’s brave enough to die, more’s the pity.”
CHAPTER 35
“You went too far back there.”
Carl had beaten Tess to her own accusation.
“I went too far? Pretending to be a cop is stupid. It’s something you can get arrested for.”
“I was a cop.”
“Was being the operative word. I noticed you didn’t say you were a Toll Facilities cop.”
“A cop is a cop.”
“If you are a cop. But you’re not, not anymore. We agreed to pretend to be social workers from the hospital. Which would have allowed us to be warm and friendly, gain her confidence. The moment you said police she was on alert, looking for traps. She may not know everything her son has done, but she knows something.”
“She knows a lot more than she did, thanks to you. Billy Windsor’s going to run now, because of you. He’s out of here, we’ll never find him. When you’re in an investigation, you play your cards close to your vest.”
“From what movie did you pluck that cliché?”
Carl ignored the taunt. “All we had to do was wait, and he would have come back.”
“Do you seriously believe the two of us were going to pull off surveillance in a gated retirement village with a private security force? They would have thrown us out in the first fifteen minutes. True, Billy Windsor won’t be able to go near his mother, may not even dare to call her at home. That will make him more desperate to accelerate his plan, whatever it is. And speeding up might make Billy sloppy.”
Carl was driving for the first time since Mickey Pechter took batting practice on his knee four days earlier. He suddenly wrenched the steering wheel to the right and pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned restaurant.
“Let me ask you something. When did we decide you were the boss? I thought we were partners on this, but you’re always calling the shots, the one who’s always right. Is it because I didn’t tell you about what happened to me, or because I didn’t tell the cops about Mary Ann Melcher? Well, I’ll remind you that I was right—he isn’t dead. I’ll also remind you that I saved your life.”
“Saved my life?”
“When that creep broke into your house.”
“You saved me from the hellish inconvenience of killing him, but he wasn’t going to hurt me.”
“Still, I was there for you. I had your back. And yet you talk to me in that—that mommy voice, as if I’m your little boy and I have to do what you say. Well, I’m not your little boyfriend, okay? I’m not pussy-whipped like that dust-mopping, dog-walking sissy you keep around to service you. I’m a real man. A real man!”
Tess felt the conversation getting out of control, saw it heading toward a place where horrible things would be said, things that could not be forgiven or forgotten. She wanted to fling herself out of the car and run away. She wanted to hit Carl in the stomach or hurl insults at him that would cut even deeper than his rude comments about Crow. She wanted to plug her ears and chant so she could no longer hear his voice.
Count, Dr. Armistead had told her once. It really works. She counted to ten. Then twenty. Then thirty. Halfway to forty, it was as if the needle on a blood-pressure gauge had started to fall, and she said, “I’m sorry.”
Carl, with the look of a man who has been dangling on a cliff ‘s edge, beat his own hasty retreat. “I’m sorry too. It’s just that I want you—I want everyone—to listen to me, to realize I have something to say, something to contribute.”
“I know. I want the same thing. I want people to—” What did she want, anyway? What button had Carl just pushed? Mickey Pechter and Major Shields had found it too, almost without trying, provoking the same odd mix of rage and shame. Now Billy Windsor was playing her, taunting her. He wanted to be found. He wanted to escape.
“I’m tired of people underestimating me,” she told Carl, who nodded. “And condescending to me. When I get stuff wrong, I’m stupid. When I get it right, I’m just lucky. If we find this guy, people are going to say it was all luck, that we wouldn’t have stumbled on his name if it weren’t for your gimpy leg and your knowledge of the disability system. If we screw up, we’ll be the fall guys.”
Carl looked out his window, so she couldn’t see his face. “Do you want to go to the state police, tell them what we’ve found?”
“No. Because they’ll take it away from us.”
“Take it away from me, you mean. I’m the one with no standing here.”
“We’re a team on this. If they don’t want to work with you, I don’t want to work with them.”
He turned back, his smile so broad that his eyes almost disappeared in his freckled face.
“They say it’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart,” Carl said. “Frankly, I’ve never been accused of being either.”
“It’s one of my favorite sayings. But, truthfully, here’s the real luck, the only luck. You get born to two nice people who can provide a comfortable life for you, who don’t abuse you—” She broke off, embarrassed.
“That’s okay. Keep talking.”
“Who are kind to you and to each other. Your DNA doesn’t carry any time bombs. You do all the dumb shit that teenagers do, and you come out unscathed. Then you’re a grown-up and you make your own luck. You know what word I really hate?”
“What?”
“Overachiever.”
Carl looked puzzled. “I thought that was a good thing.”
“It’s the most subtle insult in the English language, because it implies predestined boundaries and limits. You’re supposed to stay in this little box, only you’re too stupid to realize it. When people tell you you’re an overachiever, they’re really saying they could do so much better than you if they ever lowered themselves to giving a shit.”
She felt her anger rising again, at some nameless faceless enemy, and she wondered what Dr. Armistead would think about this diatribe. Dr. Armistead—she glanced at the dashboard clock. “Shit. I have thirty minutes to make it to therapy, or I lose a hundred and fifty bucks.”
“Physical therapy?”
Funny how Carl, who knew both kinds, who knew she was in anger management, still assumed a doctor’s visit had to be for a physical ailment.
/>
“No, you know, it’s the guy the judge ordered me to see at Sheppard Pratt. Because of what I did to that guy who broke into my house.”
“You told me you had been accused of assaulting him, but I never got the particulars.”
She gave him those, even as they raced across the narrow two-lane roads that would take them to the highway and back to Baltimore. It was gratifying to see Carl laugh at certain points in the story, to be reminded that it really was a prank—except for the part where Mickey Pechter had ended up in the emergency room with that severe allergic reaction. She began to laugh too, thinking about how he looked in the parking lot, like one of those hairless cats. Really, the whole story did have a certain comic element.
But it was probably better not to share that insight with Dr. Armistead, who thought she was making so much progress.
There were twenty minutes left on the faces of the multiple clocks staring at her when Tess ran out of things to say to Dr. Armistead. Until she had sat down in the frayed wing chair, she had not realized how much she wanted to withhold from him, at least for now. She could not speak of Carl’s reentry into her life, for that would take her to the subject of Mickey Pechter, which should be avoided at all costs. But if she told him she believed Billy Windsor had laid this elaborate trap for her—using a powerful foundation, passing a list of his victims to her, even killing a woman—Dr. Armistead would probably ring for an orderly and lock her up in one of the dormitories.
“What are you thinking?” he prompted, after she had stared into her lap for several seconds.
“I thought my face was supposed to be so readable,” she said, trying for a light tone.
“Not always.”
Now other professionals who charged by the hour—a lawyer, for example, or a plumber, even a private detective like herself—would be satisfied to end the hour early. But Dr. Armistead clearly didn’t bill by the part-hour. He just continued staring at her, his bushy brows drawn down as low as they could go. Tess met his gaze with what she hoped was a blank face and guileless eyes.
“What are you thinking, Tess?” he asked again.
The Last Place Page 32
