“On Flatbush… Avenue.”
So he'd already left the park. Burden had expressed the fear that, given too much time to think, Luray would fabricate an explanation for being where he was. Well, he'd had a whole week to think it over and his explanation, Langley thought, was a pretty feeble one. Why not check behind the cushion, in the glove compartment, wherever, before turning the car around to drive back to the park house? And having started back to the park house, what made him decide to check behind the cushion before arriving there? The very flimsiness of the explanation was, paradoxically, its strength. If Luray needed to concoct a story to cover up his guilt, he could easily have come up with a better one.
“I understand you taunted Burden as you were leaving the playground.”
“Not me… Cooney.”
Langley didn't pursue it. Either Cooney was lying or Luray was. Or maybe both of them. For what it was worth, unless one of them changed his story before the trial, he would set them to playing Not-me on the stand.
“Did you know Burden was married?”
Luray shook his head.
“He never said anything to you or to Cooney?”
“Not… to me.”
“Or showed you a picture of his wife?”
A shake of the head.
“When did you find out he was married to the girl?”
“In the… paper.”
“What was your reaction?”
Luray opened his eyes wide in a display of outsized surprise.
“You were surprised? Why?”
“Not… his type.”
“What do you think is his type?”
“Streetwalkers.”
From the window came a sound like fingertips drumming on a desk. Langley turned. A hard, wind-driven rain had begun pelting the glass.
He rose. “You've been very helpful, Mr. Luray. One last question,” he said. “According to the police report, your car was found with its lights off.” This was another shot in the dark to see what Luray would say.
“Turned… them… off.”
Was he saying he turned them off?
“You turned them off?”
Luray nodded.
“Why?”
“To be… invisible.”
“Why?”
“Thought about…” Long pause. “… driving away.”
“You thought about leaving the girl there?”
Luray bowed his head.
***
Langley didn't know what to make of Luray's story. If Luray was telling the truth, his headlights had pinned Burden as he was dragging Laurel Rose off into the woods. Which meant Burden had to know he'd been seen. According to the police reports relating to blood stains and such, Laurel had been killed in the woods, a good hundred feet from the road. Now to have somebody stumble upon you in the middle of your crime, especially if you're committing it in some remote place where you have every right to expect there'll be no one about, is one thing. Call it bad luck. But to be seen before you've done anything (at least anything final), to know you've been seen, and still to go ahead with the crime, is something else. That's stupidity. And whatever else Burden was, Langley thought, he wasn't stupid.
How would a jury react to Luray's story?
You say you saw a girl being dragged off into the woods, Mr. Luray. What did you do? You turned off your headlights? Really. And then what? You sat in your car. For how long? Two minutes? Three minutes? More? You say you got out of the car finally. Why? You were worried about the girl. If you were worried about the girl, why didn't you act sooner? You might have beeped your horn, for example. Did you beep your horn, Mr. Luray? No. Did you yell out the window of your car that you were going to call the police? You didn't do that, either? What did you do? That's right, you got out of the car and ran into the woods. Because you were worried about the girl. Did you stop to arm yourself? No? Why not? I forgot: You were worried about the girl. But you'd already waited—how long? four minutes? five?—couldn't you have spared an extra ten seconds to arm yourself, say, with a tire iron?
When he got Luray on the stand, Langley thought, he could no doubt make him look like a damn fool. But people often behaved like damn fools in times of stress. Would it help Burden to make Luray look foolish?
CHAPTER 7
Langley said, “You didn’t tell me it was your knife.”
After his usual eternal pause, Burden replied, “Who says it's my knife?”
“Cooney does.”
Burden shrugged. “Let him.”
“At your trial he'll say it from the stand.”
Again Burden shrugged. “Let him. Let him swear to it on his mother's grave. When he does, hold up a fistful of knives like it and ask him to pick out mine from among them.”
“All he'll have to do is pick out the one with the chip on the handle.”
“Not if they all have chips on their handles.”
The interview had not gotten off to the start Langley had envisioned. By dropping the news of the knife on Burden, he'd hoped to catch him off guard, putting him on the defensive. Instead, he was the one floundering all over the place.
“Do you remember the first thing I said to you the last time we talked? I said if you ever lie to me—”
“I haven't lied to you.”
“You didn't tell me about the knife.”
“There are a lot of things I didn't tell you about.”
“That doesn't make any sense at all.”
Langley waited for a reaction. But this time the pause went on for so long that it finally became clear that Burden was not going to respond.
“Is the knife yours, or isn't it?” Langley said.
“It is.”
“So you had it all the time.”
“Luray had it.”
“How did he get it?”
“How do you think he got it?”
“I'm asking you to tell me how he got it.”
“He stole it from me.”
“You saw him take it?”
“Of course I didn't see him take it. Do you think I'd have stood by and watch him take my knife?”
“Then how do you know he took it?”
“I carry a canvas bag with me to and from work, to hold my work clothes, lunch, a book to read. The knife was in the bag when I left for work that morning. When I came upon Luray that afternoon, he had the knife. I didn't give it to him. Ergo, he must have taken it out of my bag sometime during the day.”
Q.E.D. “Where do you keep the bag when you're working?”
“In my locker.”
“Is the locker locked?”
“It is. I have a combination lock on it.”
So much for logic. “Which means Luray would have had to try umpteen thousand combinations—”
“One thousand combinations. It's one of these locks that has three wheels, each numbered zero to nine. It would take fifty minutes to try them all, allowing for one combination every three seconds. I've done the calculations. He had two and a half months to try the various combinations and find the right one.”
It was Langley's turn to be silent. His mind spun with images of Luray diddling with Burden's lock. Why? So that at some future time he would be able to spring open the locker. Why? So that he could steal Burden's knife. Why? So that he could use it to kill Burden's wife. Why?
Why, Langley thought, did he pretend to believe one word that Burden said? He should call him out for the liar/nutcase that he was. He should demand that Burden start leveling with him or find another lawyer.
“Why didn't you tell me about the knife last time?”
“I wanted to be sure you weren't in on it.”
“In on it?” Langley said. “Is there anybody in the world that you trust?”
“Not as far as I could throw him.”
“What made you decide I wasn't ‘in on it’?”
“I haven't decided that—yet.”<
br />
Langley was silent for almost a minute while he decided how to respond.
“Mr. Burden,” he said then, “listen very carefully to what I'm about to say. You must trust your lawyer. To withhold information from the man who'll be representing you in court is the worst thing you can possibly do. If you don't trust me to do right by you in this affair, you should fire me now, not tomorrow or next week but right now, and replace me with someone you have confidence in.”
“Shouldn't that work both ways?” Burden said.
“Shouldn't what work both ways?”
“Trust. Don't I have the right to expect my lawyer to trust me?”
Aware that he was opening the door to new and even more bizarre stories, Langley said, “Fair enough. Why don't you begin by telling me what else you've been holding out on me?”
Burden said, “My fingerprints will be on the knife and Luray's won't.”
“Explain that.”
“Well, since it's my knife I've handled it and my fingerprints will be on it.”
“According to you, Luray used the knife to kill your wife. So his fingerprints should be on it too.”
Burden shook his head. “He was wearing gloves. And that's significant. Why was he wearing gloves?”
“It was a cold day.”
“No, it wasn't.”
“It snowed.”
“Not until later. The day started out mild. As the afternoon wore on, it got progressively colder. But not that cold. It didn't start to snow until after I was arrested and was sitting in the patrol car. Even then it didn't stick right away. What does that make the temperature? Thirty-five? Forty? That's not so cold. Besides, Luray was sitting in his car, remember? Do you wear gloves when you're driving?”
“Sometimes. When did you recognize the knife was yours?”
“As soon as I picked it up.”
“How could you be sure?”
“Same kind of knife as mine. Same nick in the handle. What were the odds? Have you spoken to Luray?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask him what he was doing in the park?”
“I did.”
“And?” Burden said.
Langley told him.
“Pretty weak,” Burden said.
“Yes,” Langley agreed, “pretty weak. With all the time he had to think it over, you'd think he'd come up with a better story.”
“Maybe there isn't a better story,” Burden said. “Did you get the police to search his car?”
“For what?”
“I told you for what last time. For evidence that Laurel was in it.”
“She wasn't in Luray's car.”
“Then how did she get to the park?”
“She came by cab. My investigator interviewed the driver. He dropped Laurel off at the bridge, at the spot where you say Luray was parked. There was, according to the cabbie, no other car on the bridge.”
Burden frowned. Hadn't expected that, Langley thought.
“What time did he drop Laurel off?” Burden asked.
“About 4:30.”
“Luray must have come along right after. He must have been watching. The road curves: he could've parked his car over by the cemetery and watched from there. All he'd have to do is wait until the cab leaves and then drive up to where Laurel was waiting.”
“How did he know she was going to be there?”
“He told her to meet him there. Has your investigator found the link between them?”
“Not yet.”
“Tell him to keep looking, because it's there.”
And there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Langley thought. “The guy you caught Laurel Rose…”—he couldn't think of the right euphemism—“… with. I don't suppose that was Luray.”
“I told you, I didn't know Luray then. At the time I was working in a playground in Red Hook. But no, it wasn't Luray. He was younger than Luray, about twenty-five I'd guess. He was—what do you call it?—swarthy. He had dark skin.”
“He was black?”
“No. Italian. Portuguese. Something like that.”
“Okay, then let me ask you something else. For Luray's plan to work, Laurel Rose's body and your knife, with your fingerprints on it, had to be found in a location where it was possible you had been. I mean, if you had been in a bar at 4:30 on that Wednesday, tossing back a few beers in view of a dozen or so witnesses, that would leave the State with an unpatchable hole in its case. Luray had to know you would be passing by that spot. How could he know that?”
“Obviously he'd followed me.”
Obviously. “Wouldn't that be just a bit chancy?”
“No. All he'd have to do is park along Center Drive beyond the bridge, the same spot from where, if I'm right, he watched the cab arrive. From there, you can watch the whole Nethermead. And he'd only have to do it once.”
“Why once?”
“If you knew me or had worked with me, you'd know I do everything the same way every time.”
Cooney, Langley remembered, had said the same thing.
“Do you know how all this sounds?” he asked Burden.
“Just the way it's supposed to sound. I'm supposed to sound like some kind of paranoid nut. But what do you call someone who thinks he's being followed—and he is being followed? Do you remember what I said last time about Cooney and Luray ragging me about staying late, when ordinarily they never said a word to me? They wanted me to stay late.”
“Cooney and Luray?”
“I don't know. Maybe just Luray. The plan was for him to be finished with his handiwork before I came on the scene. If I hadn't caught him in the act…” Burden shook his head. “I never would have figured it out. Not in ten million years. I probably would have gone crazy with the trying. Even as it was, I came close to going over the edge.”
Langley said, “I want you to tell me again the story of the night of the murder. But this time leave out the clouds and the birds. Tell me what you see and what you hear and what you are thinking. Take it from the point where you see the car on the bridge. Did you recognize the car as Luray's?”
“I already told you I didn't.”
“Why not? Presumably, you'd seen Luray's car.”
“I may have. So? I couldn't tell you even now the make of his car. Or the color. All I saw was a car sitting on the bridge. The car was dark and pointed in the wrong direction.”
“And that made you suspicious?”
“Curious. It was odd for a car to be parked in that spot.”
“What, if anything, did you think it was doing there?”
“I don't think I thought about it at all at the time. If I had stopped to speculate, I probably would have figured there was a couple inside making out in the dark.”
“So you pass the car and take the path that leads into the woods.”
Burden nodded.
“Don't make me tell it. You tell it.”
“Same as I told it last time. About a hundred feet along the road, I see these two people rolling on the ground. A man and a woman. At first I think it's two lovers fucking. But that doesn't make sense: it's cold and it's dark; any minute now it's going to snow. And then I saw him hit her. And hit her again. And then I saw the knife. Before I could get out of there, he turned and saw me.”
“Before you ‘could get out of there’?” Langley said. “Were you just going to go away and leave her there?”
Burden said, “Of course.”
“What kind of man are you?”
The skin tightened over Burden's face. He leaned across the table toward Langley.
“One who wants only to be left alone. I ask nothing of anyone else unless I can pay for it; in return, don't ask anything of me. That's fair, isn't it? You look out for you; I look out for me. If someone's stupid enough to get herself murdered, that's her lookout. Who are you to judge me, anyway? I suppose you would have run to her rescue?”
With the question put to him, Langley wasn't sure. “I don't know what I would have done,” he said. “But I do know this: if I had just left her there, I would be ashamed to admit it.”
“That makes you dumber than me. To even consider risking your life for someone you don't even know makes you a fool. Not a hero or a white knight, but a shit-for-brains fool.”
“You did know her, Burden. She was your wife.”
“I didn't know it at the time, did I?”
“You know it now,” Langley said. “And you don't feel anything at all, do you?”
“Not true,” Burden said. “If there's a silver lining in all that's happened, it's that Laurel got hers.”
For a moment Langley didn't dare speak. At length he told Burden to go on with his story.
“It's like I told you last time.”
“When did you put it all together: that you had been ‘set up’?”
“I don't know exactly. Sometimes it's hard to go back and reconstruct things in the correct order. I recognized the knife first. Then Laurel. And then Luray. As for putting it all together… I've had a week to think it over and I still haven't put it together.”
“Let's get back to the knife. I gather that not only did you carry the knife but you threatened people with it.”
“Who says so?”
“Can't you just once answer a question without asking one back?”
“Who says I threatened people with the knife?”
“Cooney does.”
“Cooney's a powder puff.”
“Did you threaten Cooney with the knife or didn't you?”
“I've told you about how Cooney and Luray were deadbeats. You can do all sorts of finagling with the log book: it's in pencil—and the dope who thought that up should be flogged; the system positively invites cheating. Cooney and Luray used to come to work half an hour late every day, leave half an hour early and take two- or three-hour lunch hours. If they worked five of the eight hours they were supposed to, it was a lot.”
“Are we talking about the knife?”
“I'm getting to it. One afternoon in October, a troubleshooter—”
“What's a troubleshooter, by the way?”
“A foreman. Every district has a foreman. Once a week he stops by each of the playgrounds in his district to collect the previous week's log sheets and to check the ones for the current week. After he visits your playground, you can be sure he won't be back again that calendar week. Which would seem to give deadbeats like Cooney and Luray carte blanche to disappear for the remainder of the week, right? The Parks Department's clever answer to that problem is to have the foremen make occasional unannounced visits—and by ‘occasional’ I mean once every other blue moon—to playgrounds outside their district.
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