Flat Lake in Winter

by Joseph T. Klempner

  They were heading south on Route 30. Fielder turned to his passengers. “Anybody need anything before we leave civilization?” he asked.

  Jennifer laughed, but said nothing. Perhaps it was her way of saying that, like Fielder, she had everything in the world she needed at the moment.

  But apparently not so for Troy. “Food?” he asked.

  “Food?” Fielder was incredulous. “You just finished eating, ten minutes ago!”

  “But I didn’t have dessert.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve got a lot to learn about nine-year-old boys,” said Jennifer.

  “I guess so,” Fielder admitted. “There’s a bakery over in Raquette Lake, might be open.”

  “If I remember correctly,” Jennifer said, “there’s an all-night Dunkin’ Donuts place near Pine Hollow, if you take County Twenty-seven. If it’s still there.”

  And that was it, right there. The single blink in time when things changed yet again. Changed ever so slightly, ever so subtly. But changed in such a way that from that instant on, for Matt Fielder, nothing would ever be quite the same.

  The point, in other words, when the momentum shifted once again.

  THEY WENT FOR donuts, and ended up buying a baker’s dozen - chocolate cream and jelly-filled and sugar-coated and the special of the day, key lime. Troy worked it out so that no two of the thirteen flavors they ended up with were the same. He even included a Dutch apple just to make things work out, despite the fact that he hated cinnamon. He began sampling his favorites even before they were out of the store, giving high marks to the blueberry and black raspberry, but thumbs down to the lemon and banana.

  Out in the parking lot, Fielder took a bite out of the key lime. Pale green filling oozed out and dripped onto his jacket. “Damn!” he said. “I’m going back in to get some water, see if I can wipe this stuff off before it stains.”

  Heading back to the store, he was vaguely aware of Jennifer calling after him, but he couldn’t make out what it was she wanted. All he kept hearing, over and over again, were the words of Bass McClure, describing the very same Dunkin’ Donuts place. “Nice folks,” McClure had told him. “Only been there about a year or so.” If McClure had been right about that, how was it that Jennifer, who claimed not to have set foot in the state in almost ten years, could possibly remember the place?

  Unless, of course, she was lying.

  Back inside, he dabbed at the spot with a moist paper napkin. “So tell me,” he said to the woman behind the counter. “How long you folks been open here?”

  “Come the first of March,” she said, “it’ll be just a year.”

  “What was here before then?”

  “Oh, it was a donut place, but not a Dunkin’ Donuts place. There’s a big diff’rence, you know.”

  “I sure do,” he said.

  * * *

  THEY STAYED ANOTHER day, Jennifer and Troy. The chicken pot pie that night was good, even if no bears showed up to share it with them. In the middle of the night, Jennifer again came into Fielder’s bed, whispering to him that Troy was a sound sleeper who wouldn’t wake up. They made love slowly, silently, falling asleep afterward in each other’s arms. When Fielder awoke sometime later, it was still dark, but his arms were empty.

  IN THE MORNING, they drove up to the north end of Stillwater Reservoir, where they hiked a five-mile loop. They saw deer, moose, and bald eagles. And when Jennifer and Troy left that afternoon for New Hampshire, it was with hugs and kisses, declarations of love, and solemn promises to see one another as soon possible.

  And through it all, Fielder had the bizarre sensation of being outside of himself, of watching his body going through the motions. He desperately wanted to say something to her, to ask her about the donut place, to clear up what he hoped was nothing but a silly mistake on her part.

  But he didn’t.

  LATER THAT DAY, after Jennifer and Troy were gone, and quiet had returned to the cabin, Fielder phoned Hillary Munson in Albany.

  “Remember how that letter from Jennifer to Sue Ellen referred to photos?” he asked her. “As in more than one?”

  Hillary remembered.

  “I want you to find out what Sue Ellen did with the photo she didn’t save,” he said. “I want to know if that’s the one Jonathan ended up with.”

  “First thing tomorrow,” Hillary said. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “I really don’t know,” he said.

  Which was pretty much the truth.

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, Fielder got a phone call from Gil Cavanaugh. Judge Summerhouse was away, he said. The beginning of February each year, he and his wife flew down to the Florida keys, where they had a time-share in a condominium. The judge was a big sport fisherman, Cavanaugh said. He’d probably come back with a sailfish, or a marlin.

  Great, Fielder thought. So Jonathan’s fate lay in the hands of a man whose idea of fun was taking beautiful fish and killing them - not for food, but because they might look good hanging on the walls of his chambers.

  He thanked Cavanaugh for the call.

  THAT SAME DAY, Hillary Munson drove three hours from Albany to Silver Falls, to re-interview Sue Ellen Blodgett. Once again, the meeting took place in Sue Ellen’s kitchen, and once again it was attended by Sue Ellen’s three daughters.

  “There’s one thing we’d like to clear up,” Hillary said. “From the letter Jennifer sent you, it looks like she enclosed more than one photo of Troy. But there was only one in the envelope.”

  “Right,” Sue Ellen said, lacing up one of her daughter’s sneakers. “I brought the other one to Jonathan.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know if I can tell you,” she said. “Jennifer swore me to silence about this.”

  “Jennifer needs you to tell us,” Hillary lied. “And so does Jonathan.”

  “God’s honest truth?”

  “God’s honest truth.”

  “Jennifer called me a short time after she sent me the letter,” Sue Ellen explained. “She asked me to bring one of the snapshots to Jonathan. She wanted him to have it, to keep.”

  “So you did?”

  Sue Ellen nodded, as she began brushing the hair of a second daughter. “It was like a trade,” she said.

  “A trade?”

  “Jennifer had asked me if I could get something of Jonathan’s, in exchange, like, for her to keep.”

  “And you did that?” Hillary asked.

  “You sure it’s okay for me to be telling you this?” Sue Ellen asked.

  “I’m very sure.”

  “Well, okay. She asked me to get a lock of his hair.”

  “Oh?”

  “Only we didn’t have a scissors or a knife, or anything else to cut with,” Sue Ellen said. “So I pulled some hairs out of his head. He let me,” she added. “He didn’t seem to mind the pain none.”

  “And what did you do with them?” Hillary asked.

  There was a pause while Sue Ellen held her daughter’s barrette in her mouth. “I put ‘em in a little Ziploc baggie, and mailed ‘em to Jennifer.”

  “How many of them were there?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A dozen, I guess.”

  “And that was it?”

  Sue Ellen nodded. “You won’t tell Jennifer I told, will you?”

  “No,” said Hillary. “I won’t tell Jennifer.”

  BUT SHE DID tell Matt Fielder, first chance she got, from a pay phone at a Mobil station. And as soon as he heard about it, Fielder called Pearson Gunn.

  “Remember that business about only six of the seven hairs from the crime scene matching Jonathan’s?” he said.

  Gunn remembered. It had bothered him, too.

  “What’s the story with the seventh hair?”

  “I don’t know,” Gunn said.

  “I need you to find out,” Fielder told him.

  * * *

  THE URGENCY IN Fielder’s voice made it clear to Gunn that more was called for than an evening at the De
w Drop Inn in Cedar Falls. Ever protective of his confidential source, CS-1, Gunn still hems and haws when asked to reveal exactly what it was he did that day, or perhaps that night, in pursuit of the solution to what by that time had become known in the defense camp as the Mystery of the Seventh Hair. What is certain, however, is that when Gunn dropped in at Matt Fielder’s cabin the following afternoon, he had some answers.

  “The hairs were all collected from the immediate area,” he reported. “Either picked up from the bed itself, or the floor right next to it. There were maybe two dozen, all told. Most of them matched up with samples later taken from the victims. Of the remaining seven, all were blond, and all had roots, meaning the lab people were able to extract DNA from the follicles. Six proved to be positive matches with DNA found in Jonathan’s blood sample.”

  “And the seventh?”

  Gunn looked at his notes. “They’ve ruled out the Armbrusts, both of whom have gray hair. Turned out one of the crime-scene investigators was blond, but they took his blood and compared DNA, and it’s not a match. So they’re still classifying it as an X, for ‘unknown.’ Cavanaugh and his people think there mighta been contamination in the collection process. Or the lab mighta messed up, or something like that.”

  “Why’s that?” Fielder asked.

  “According to the lab, the DNA from the seventh hair is similar to Jonathan’s, but not identical.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Funny,” said Gunn, stroking his beard. “I wondered the same thing. So this morning, before coming over here, I looked through the DNA reports the DA supplied us, found the name of the lab that did the testing, and gave them a call.”

  “And?”

  Gunn leafed through his notes some more. “Got ahold of a woman named Yvonne,” he said. “Yvonne St. Germaine. Works for an outfit called GenType, someplace near Rochester. She’s the one who did most of the testing. And I gotta tell you,” Gunn observed, “it’s pretty interesting stuff.”

  Fielder sat back. Gunn generally liked to tell a story when he reported in with results, and there was never any use in rushing him. Sooner or later, he’d get down to the important part.

  “Yvonne sticks to what she told the troopers,” Gunn said. “Number seven is similar to numbers one through six, but it’s not identical. So I asked her the significance of that. She said it could very well be nothing but pure coincidence. Or there might possibly be - let’s see - ‘a genetic relationship between the donors,’” he read. “That might explain it, too.” Gunn paused to look up from his notes, to make certain Fielder was still following him. “You know,” he said, “like parent and child?”

  Or, for that matter, like brother and sister.

  THE SUN CAME out that afternoon, and the temperature rose uncharacteristically, causing what snow was left on the ground to melt and puddle. By nightfall, with the mercury still up in the mid-forties, the local radio station was broadcasting predictions of an early spring.

  That night, Fielder allowed himself the luxury of an open stove for the first time in what seemed like ages. He turned off all the lights in his cabin and sat in front of the fire, hypnotized by the licking flames and dancing sparks. And he thought about the unthinkable.

  For weeks now, indeed for months, he and his team had been operating on the assumption that Jonathan Hamilton had killed his grandparents in his sleep. They’d unearthed an ancient letter that documented his propensity to sleepwalk. They’d searched for precedents in the literature, and found them, both in medical publications and case law. From there, it was as if the idea had suddenly sprouted wings and taken flight. They’d brought in experts to test the likelihood of the scenario, and the experts had agreed with everything they’d suggested. Next they’d gone to the public and asked whether, since Jonathan wasn’t awake at the time, he ought to be held criminally accountable for his actions nevertheless. The public had answered with a resounding no. That answer had convinced the prosecutor as well, who in turn now was going to try to sell it to the judge. Thus, from a tiny scrap of information, they’d succeeded in taking a surefire candidate for death row, and transformed him into a poster boy for forgiveness.

  But where had it all come from?

  It had come from Jennifer.

  It had been Jennifer who’d casually let slip her fear that Troy might turn into a sleepwalker, and made Fielder coax out the basis of that fear, which turned out to be Jonathan’s sleepwalking. It had been Jennifer who’d sent them looking for Sue Ellen Simms for corroboration; Jennifer who’d mailed the letter off to Sue Ellen years before, knowing her friend well enough to know she’d save it. Sue Ellen herself knew nothing of Jonathan’s sleepwalking, other than what she knew from Jennifer. The Armbrusts knew nothing of it, either, only that special locks had been installed on the doors. Jonathan’s own brother, P.J. (who certainly should have known about it if anyone did), knew nothing about it, despite his willingness to come and testify. Even Jonathan himself knew nothing about it.

  It all went back to Jennifer.

  Every single bit of it.

  Then there’d been her slip about the Dunkin’ Donuts place. If she hadn’t set foot in the state since fleeing her family almost a decade ago, how on earth did she know about a place that had been there less than a year?

  Or had she been back?

  Had she been back on the night of the murders?

  What was it that had possessed Jennifer to ask Sue Ellen for a lock of her brother’s hair? Did she have some diabolical plan in mind way back then? Some plan she knew she’d need it for, someday? It seemed almost too crazy to be thinkable. Yet why else would she have gone to such lengths, and sworn her friend to such secrecy, over something that seemed so innocent? And why else would she have omitted any mention of it from the letter (the letter she knew Sue Ellen would obediently save), choosing instead to phone with separate instructions? Certainly she’d meant all along for one of the photos to be delivered to Jonathan. Otherwise, why would she have placed two of them in the envelope in the first place?

  What was it she’d really wanted with her brother’s hairs? Had she simply been interested in a keepsake from her past - the same past she’d fled and vowed never to return to, going so far as to change her name to cover her tracks? A keepsake from the very one who’d raped her, continued to carry on his incestuous relationship with her, and fathered her illegitimate child?

  Or had she wanted the hairs for some far darker purpose, preserving them in their little plastic bag over the years as part of her grand design? Had she then slipped the bag into her pocket one evening, toward the very end of August, and driven through the night to the place she cursed for all her misfortune? Had she fingered the plastic bag nervously as she sipped coffee in an all-night donut place, where she tried to summon up the courage to continue on to her destination? Had she later sprinkled them over the mutilated bodies of her grandparents, even as they lay dying of their wounds? And had she perhaps grown careless during the process, and lost one of own hairs?

  But why?

  Whatever could have driven her to destroy her grandparents and, at the same time, ensure that Jonathan would be blamed? Hadn’t she said she’d forgiven him for what he’d done to her?

  Or had that, too, been a lie?

  And it was Bass McClure’s words that came flooding back to Fielder once again. “Can’t remember if it was the older brother who was responsible, or the father.” Fielder had held his tongue at the time, knowing that McClure was wrong, but respecting what little was left of Jennifer’s privacy.

  But maybe McClure had been right. Maybe it was P. J. who was Jonathan’s father - P. J., who’d smiled crookedly at Pearson Gunn and Hillary Munson when the subject of Jennifer had come up, and told them that his sister had always had “a little bit of taste for things.”

  Or maybe it was Jennifer’s own father.

  Which was a notion that opened up a whole new can of worms. The fire - the fire that Spider Squitieri insisted
had been no accident. Suppose it hadn’t been a matter of Jonathan’s sleepwalking and playing with matches? Suppose it had been Jennifer, bent on revenge? And had Jonathan himself been meant to die in it, along with his parents? Hadn’t Klaus Armbrust had to break through a window in order to pull him out, and even then, not in time to save Jonathan from further brain damage? And when had the fire been, for that matter? Not too long after Jennifer’s flight to New Hampshire, just after the birth of her son, when her anger was still simmering, perhaps even boiling over.

  Fielder got up from the floor and walked over to the woodpile. He picked up a couple of pieces of maple and placed them on the fire. He gave them a shove with the poker, and there was a bright spray of sparks. After a moment, the lower log ignited into orange-and-blue flames. Fielder sank back down to the floor, resumed his position, and tried to pick up his train of thought.

  But it was difficult. The problem was, it was all so iffy, so far-fetched, so utterly preposterous. Was Jennifer really capable of murdering four people over the course of eight and a half years? Had she decided finally to spare Jonathan’s life only so that he could become the scapegoat, ensuring that she herself would never be suspected of anything? Did her lust for revenge against a dysfunctional family really run that deep?

  This time it wasn’t just something Bass McClure had said that came back to him. It was the words of Gil Cavanaugh - Fielder’s two-faced adversary, whom Fielder had so successfully outmaneuvered and duped and painted into a corner, until now he was all but ready to surrender. “I’ll do whatever I have to,” Cavanaugh had said, “in order to cut my losses. But do me a favor, Matt. Don’t give me this sleepwalking bullshit. I know a murder for money when I see one.”

  Was Cavanaugh right, after all? Were these killings the result not of sleepwalking, and not even of revenge? Had Jennifer acted out of nothing but good, old-fashioned greed? Fielder thought back to the wills. Jennifer had known that both she and P. J. had been disinherited by their family, that neither of them would see any of the millions that had been handed down from generation to generation of Hamiltons. There, at least, she’d been telling the truth. Next she must have figured out that, upon the deaths of her grandparents, everything would go to Jonathan, as the only one who’d stayed on at the estate. But if Jonathan happened to be convicted of the murders - even if he pleaded guilty and received the short sentence Fielder was trying to work out for him - he’d be disqualified from inheriting a penny.