by Sam Reaves
She could not even approach the task of processing everything she had seen and heard in the last half hour. All she wanted was to get help. Lights had begun to show above her through the trees, distant windows, the backs of houses. She approached the bank on her right, found it too steep to climb, went on. The streambed seemed to open out on her left onto a low bank and a gentle slope beyond it. Abby slogged out of the water and began to climb.
The slope got steeper and the underbrush thicker; Abby was accumulating injuries, scratches on her arms. She pushed on and then suddenly there were lighted windows above her and she came out of the woods and clambered up a grassy bank to the edge of a gravel parking lot behind a large house, a few cars haphazardly clustered near the back door. Abby could see through uncurtained windows: the corner of a bunk bed, two boys peering into a refrigerator in a big kitchen. It took her a moment to realize where she was: she was looking at the Tau Kappa Zeta house where she and Graham Gill had had lunch weeks before.
Abby trotted across the gravel to the back steps, took them two at a time, and started pounding on the back door.
“Detective Ruffner’s on his way,” said the Lewisburg police chief, gazing down at Abby. He was a man in late middle age, heavy around the middle and the jowls, black browed and buzz-cut. “He was called out to a crime scene, but he seems to think maybe you had something to do with it. ‘Don’t let her go,’ he said.”
“I just saw a man get shot,” Abby said. She was wrapped in a blanket, shivering in her wet clothes, her knee aching, blood running down her leg. “He was the man who killed Jud Frederick and Rex Lyman. He had Frederick’s head in a plastic bag. I don’t know who shot him, but whoever it is, he’s driving a dark-gray Honda. He’s probably the same one who shot Lisa Beth Quinton this afternoon.” Abby was pleased that she was able to speak calmly. Her rage had subsided, leaving an arctic cold.
The chief just looked at her for a moment, frowning. Then he turned to the sergeant who had driven Abby to the station from the Tau Kappa Zeta house, siren on and lights flashing, leaving behind a fraternity house in an uproar where not much homework was going to get done tonight. “Did Ruffner say anything about a head?”
The sergeant shook his head. “He’s got an ID on the body and he’s bringing the witness back here.”
“OK.” The chief turned back to Abby. “You’re shivering.”
“It’s the air-conditioning.”
“You’re probably in shock. That’s a nasty cut on your knee.”
“I’m fine.”
“If you need medical attention, I can have somebody run you out to the hospital. Ruffner can interview you there.”
Abby scowled at him. “I’ll live. I need to talk to Detective Ruffner.”
The chief shrugged and made for the door. To the sergeant he said, “I’ll be in my office, talking to the ISP guys again. Call me if there’s a riot or Al-Qaeda invades.”
Abby accepted a cup of vending-machine coffee and tried to drink without spilling it, not an easy proposition with shaking hands. She sat with her eyes closed, thinking about what she had seen, what she had heard, what she had read in Lisa Beth’s notes. Voices sounded in the hallway and she looked up to see Ruffner and Ned in the doorway.
The bottom fell out of Abby’s stomach. Ned called her name and came across the office, knelt in front of her, put his hands on her arms. “Are you all right?”
Abby stared at him. “Get your hands off me.”
She watched as his face fell. He released her and said, “Abby, I didn’t know you were home.”
The chill in Abby had deepened; she remembered talking to Ruffner about leads, about Everett Elford’s secretary. She remembered Ned telling her about his old friend Mitch. She remembered Lisa Beth saying, “In a place like this they all know each other.” Ned and Ruffner were staring at her. “I think I would like the chief to be here, too,” Abby said.
Ruffner looked only slightly more haggard than he had the last time he had talked to Abby, four hours before. He said, “What do you think is going on here?”
“I don’t know. All I know is, this man here was helping the man who killed Lyman and Frederick to escape.”
Ruffner nodded once. “This man here was the one who called me to tell me the killer was sitting in his kitchen. If he’d done what I said and stayed clear of the house, we’d have had a nice quiet arrest.”
Ned scowled at him. “More likely a shoot-out. And if I’d stayed clear of the house God knows what Kyle would have done to her.” He turned to Abby. “I had no idea you were home. When Kyle showed up I told him to make himself at home and I’d go out and get some beer. Instead I called Mitch. I knew Kyle was the guy they were looking for. Mitch told me to get clear and wait for him but I was afraid Kyle would split if I didn’t come back, so I grabbed the beer and went back. And there you were.”
Abby looked from Ned to Ruffner and back. Was this something she could believe? “OK. Talk to me. Who the fuck was Kyle?”
Ned exhaled, shoulders sagging. “It’s a long story.”
The desk sergeant appeared in the doorway and beckoned to Ruffner, who went out into the hall. A few words were exchanged in a low murmur and then Abby heard Ruffner say, “OK, put her in the interview room.” He leaned into the room, frowning, and said, “All right, just sit tight for a while. I gotta talk to someone.” He pulled the door shut, leaving Abby and Ned alone in the office.
Ned pulled a chair out from behind a desk and sat down opposite Abby. He rubbed his face for a moment with both hands and Abby saw that he was having his own issues with stress. “Kyle was a kid I knew in grade school.”
“You and Everett.”
“Yeah, we were all in the same class. Kyle had a twin sister named Kayla. They were hardscrabble kids. I think their father was a drunk. They’d come to school with holes in their clothes, dirty faces, that kind of thing. Kids made fun of them, but I felt sorry for them. Kyle and I were playground buddies for a little while in like, fourth grade. After that I’d see him around, say hi sometimes, but he grew into kind of a hoodlum, started getting in trouble, and I steered clear of him. And Kayla was one of those girls my mother used to say grew up too fast.”
Abby watched Ned stare at the floor for a while. “What happened?”
“I was off at college, up at Purdue. I came home one weekend and there was a party. I went with Everett. I don’t even know whose house it was, out by the creek somewhere. A bunch of people I didn’t know. Kayla was there, getting drunk. It wasn’t really my kind of thing, but at the time I was really into rebelling, flouting that strict morality I’d been raised with. So there I was, drinking and scheming to pick somebody up, get laid, like the teenage dope I was, and then the word went around that Kayla was upstairs pulling a train.”
Abby could see something naked and pleading in Ned’s face. “Pulling a train.”
“Yeah. Having sex with a bunch of guys one after the other. That’s what they called it. Now we’d probably call it a gang rape.”
“Oh, God.”
“And to my eternal shame, my first thought was, wow, that’s exciting, maybe I can get in on that. But Everett and I kind of looked at one another, and that brought me back to earth. So we left. I dropped Everett off and I went to find Kyle. Yeah, you don’t need to say it. I should have gone to the police. But I was just thinking, her brother should know about this. So I found him and I told him about it. But it was too late. By the time he got there it was over. The next day Kayla went to the cops and said she’d been raped, and she named names. A guy named Duane Schipp, Jud Frederick, and Everett Elford.”
“Everett? Wasn’t he with you?”
“Yeah. I think Kayla was too drunk to know who they were after a while. Other people told the cops Everett never went upstairs, so he wasn’t charged. Schipp and Frederick were charged, but Rex Lyman got them acquitted at trial. Kayla had a reputation, she was pretty promiscuous, and he used that to the max. So they skated. And then a few days after that,
Kayla jumped off the arch and killed herself.”
Abby put a hand to her face.
“A week later, Kyle went into the bowling alley out on Lafayette Road and broke up league night by beating Duane Schipp to death with a bowling ball. He didn’t skate. He went up to Michigan City for twenty years.”
“My God.”
“When Lyman and Frederick got killed, I thought of Kyle. Right away, and I told Mitch about it. He remembered the case. But Lyman and Frederick were into so many things, the other theories seemed to make as much sense as anything. Mitch showed me the video from Frederick’s house and it didn’t look like Kyle to me. Twenty years inside changes you. But I went and talked to his mom, at the trailer park.”
“That’s who he was there to see that night when I saw him.”
“Yeah. He was laying low there, and moving around town at night in the streambed. His mother told me she hadn’t heard from him since he got out of prison, but I could tell she was lying. I told Mitch about that, so he was aware. But nobody else had seen Kyle, or at least was willing to say so. And then he came to my house tonight.”
“Why?”
“His mom had told him I’d talked to her. And he wanted to ask me about Everett, to make sure he was guilty, before he killed Everett like he killed the other three. He trusted his old playground buddy to give him the straight dope, I guess. I had no idea you were downstairs or I never would have left. Why didn’t you come in through the house like before?”
Abby didn’t answer him right away; she was too busy looking at everything she had spent the evening working out and wondering if it could be wrong. Finally she said, “I came in through the back because I was too pissed off to be scared anymore. I thought your pal Everett and that guy, Ingstrom, were behind Lisa Beth getting killed.”
“Ah, Jesus. No. Everett wouldn’t be in on anything like that. Never.”
“I didn’t make this up. It’s all about the scandal Lisa Beth dug up. I can show you her notes.”
“Mitch is aware. He’s looking at her computer.”
“Then he’ll see. Everett and Ingstrom had a plan to make a killing on a piece of land in the south part of the county by selling the state government an easement so they could put the new interstate extension through. But Everett sold the land to Frederick before the payment was made. Lyman and Frederick were blackmailing Everett, forcing him to cut them in on the deal. Everett must have told Ingstrom. And how do you react to blackmail if you happen to know a bunch of outlaw bikers? I thought Kyle was the guy they got to do the dirty work for them. I’m still not convinced he wasn’t. Who was that that shot him? Whoever shot Lisa Beth was in a dark-gray Honda, too. I think Ingstrom sent somebody to clean up after he realized what a loose cannon Kyle was.”
“I don’t think Kyle was involved in that,” said Ned. “But you’re partly right. Lyman and Frederick were blackmailing Everett.”
Abby gaped at him. “You knew about it?”
“Everett told me about it a couple of days ago. Frederick found out about the deal from Everett’s secretary. But when Frederick and Lyman came to put the arm on Everett, he just bailed and sold them the land. He didn’t want any part of it anymore. It was Ingstrom’s idea from the start. And the word going around Indianapolis is that Ingstrom’s about to be indicted for it. So Everett withdrew his candidacy for the House seat today. He’s decided he doesn’t want to get into politics after all.”
Abby felt things slipping out of her grasp. The door opened and Ruffner came back in. Rage stirring again, Abby said, “So what about Lisa Beth? She didn’t kill herself.”
Ruffner said, “Kyle didn’t shoot her. At least not with the gun he had on him tonight. That was Jud Frederick’s forty caliber. Lisa Beth was shot with a nine millimeter. And so was Kyle, it looks like.”
“By whoever it was who set Lisa Beth up. Her source.”
“It wasn’t her source,” said Ruffner, shaking his head.
“How do you know?”
“I just talked to the source.”
“Who is it?”
Ruffner walked to his desk and sat down heavily, sighing. “All I’m gonna tell you is, it’s someone close to Elford. She knew the land deal was crooked and she had agreed to talk to Lisa Beth about it. But she showed up late for the meet and our guys were already there, looking at a crime scene. So she panicked and drove off. Then she realized she had to talk to us. That was her just now.”
Abby and Ned traded a look. Ned said, “So where does that leave us?”
Ruffner exhaled, a long weary sigh. “Well, we got plenty of suspects.”
“Like who?”
“Like Jerry Collins, to start with.”
There was a silence. Abby said, “No. That’s impossible.”
“Is it? According to the doctor in Lafayette, he left the office up there in plenty of time to drive down here, shoot his wife, and then get home in time to be there when our officer showed up.”
Abby glared at him. “No. Why would he do that?”
“Who knows? She cheated on him, more than once. For years. That might get to a man after a while. Anyway, he’s the first guy we gotta look at.”
Abby shook her head, not finding the words to refute it.
Ruffner went on. “Seems to me, if she wasn’t set up, Lisa Beth had to have been followed to the Azteca. So who was sitting on her house, watching it? Who knew where she lived?”
“All kinds of people,” said Ned. “I’m not buying Jerry.”
Ruffner shrugged. “OK. There’s no shortage of people who didn’t like Lisa Beth in this town, if you want to know the truth.”
Abby said, “And what about Kyle? Why the hell would Jerry shoot Kyle?”
Ruffner shot her a look. “You’re assuming the same person did both shootings. We’re not.”
The silence had a certain stunned quality this time. Ruffner said, “Here’s another question for you. Tonight, where did this dark-gray Honda pick you up, when he followed you out to the arch? At the Tarkington?”
Abby leaned forward and put her face in her hands. She was exhausted and light-headed and her head was full of nightmare images, but she knew there was nothing more important than to think it all through. She thought about everything and after a time she said softly, “Oh, my God.” She took her hands away from her face and opened her eyes to find Ruffner and Ned staring at her.
“I know who killed Lisa Beth,” Abby said. “And Kyle. And I’m pretty sure he’s not finished.”
“A doctor will be with you right away.” The nurse backed out and tugged at the curtain, closing off the alcove where she had led Abby and Ned. Abby’s knee was throbbing and she had been grateful to be delivered to the hospital in a squad car. Ned pulled a chair to the side of the gurney where Abby lay. She put a hand over her eyes to shield them from the fluorescent light. “I had it all wrong. There was never any reason to think the person who killed Lisa Beth was the same one who killed the other two. As soon as I started thinking about Lisa Beth in isolation I saw it. I should have seen it sooner.”
“Give yourself a break. Nobody saw it.”
“But it was obvious. If Lisa Beth’s source didn’t set her up, then the killer followed Lisa Beth from her house. Specifically from the front of her house, where my car was parked. Not from the alley in back, where her garage was, where any competent stalker would watch. So he wasn’t there to watch her. He was there to watch me. He followed me from the campus, from behind the library.”
“And then he saw Lisa Beth come out and get in your car.”
“And that set him off. And tonight, he didn’t pick us up at the Tarkington. You said he was already behind us when we got there. So it was somebody who was interested in me. He must have been watching my house. But where was his car?”
Ned gave it a moment’s thought, brow wrinkled. “Across the stream, on that gravel patch by the shed at the corner of the soccer field. He saw us leave, he ran across the stream and got in his car and waited for us to
go by on Jackson.”
Abby shuddered. “He’s been following people all day, and we never saw him.”
“You had no reason to look for him.”
Abby took her hand away from her face. “Now I’ll be looking for him everywhere.”
“They’ll get him. If you’re right about him and the frat house, they’ll get him.”
Footsteps sounded beyond the curtain and they looked to see it pulled aside. A man in a doctor’s white lab coat came into the alcove. It took Abby a second to recognize him and then she went cold with horror. “Hello, Abby,” said Ben Larch.
“What are you doing here?” Abby said, stupidly.
“I’m stalking you, what do you think?” Ben’s voice held just a bit of an edge. A nice-looking boy, almost pretty, dark-eyed with a faintly Asian cast. “You thought you could ditch me, huh? Where else am I going to wait for you to show up except the police station? I guess I’m smarter than you think. Smarter than that dumb-fuck cop who drove you here, for sure.”
“Hey, kid.” Ned had risen and was moving around the foot of the gurney. “Let’s take this outside.”
“I know who you are,” said Ben. He was reaching inside the unbuttoned lab coat. “You’ve been trying to get in Abby’s pants, haven’t you?” Ben brought out the black 9mm automatic and pointed it at Ned. “And that’s why you have to die.”
The gun went off as Ned whipped the chair at him. It went off again as Ned sprang, knocking him back against the counter, and then Ned was staggering back, saying, “You little shit,” in a ragged hollow voice and Abby was off the gurney and clawing at Ben’s eyes.
Ben clubbed her with the butt of the pistol, stunning her with a flash of pain, and then he was dragging her by the hair, through the curtain and out into the hall, and people were shouting. Ben squeezed off another shot, there were more screams, and then Ben jerked her upright and jammed the muzzle of the gun under her jaw. “Freeze or I’ll blow her head off!” His voice cracked as he yelled it, the first time Abby had ever heard him raise his voice. Abby caught a glimpse of shocked faces, nurses in scrubs, another doctor in a white coat running away, and then Ben was crashing through doors, pulling her down a hallway and pushing through an exit door out into the night.
