They are not your secrets. They are mine—all that I have loved and suffered for and lost is mine.
Not quite. Not now. Not anymore.
The master bedroom was at once vast and tomblike. The windows faced out towards the front of the house and it was not much more than two in the afternoon, but so impenetrable were the heavy curtains that Kinkaid had to switch on the overhead light to reveal anything beyond the sense of empty space.
Even the light, when it came on, seemed to struggle against a gloom so thick it was almost palpable.
The massive canopied bed was the only piece of furniture in the room which was not covered with a dustcloth, but everything was clear enough in outline. A vanity with a tall mirror stood beside the closet door. Against the front window was a low circular table and two chairs, and in the center of the room was another table, this one a blocky rectangle.
The bathroom door, which was on the left, stood slightly open, enough to provide a glimpse of pale green tile. The bed was against the opposite wall, on the other side of which was another door. It would not have been a convenient place to put a second closet and in fact the door led to a small sitting room, hardly large enough to hold a chair and an old roll top desk. It was locked, but the lock yielded easily to one of the keys Kinkaid had brought with him.
Inside the desk was a mass of pigeon holes, all of them filled with envelopes and bits of paper. Kinkaid did not have to search very long to find what he was looking for.
Several of the envelopes were embossed with a return address for Sherman’s Crest Private Hospital, Route 23, Vermont 02324. One of them contained the commitment papers for Angela Preston Wyman, diagnosed as suffering from catatonic schizophrenia. Another contained a death certificate, the date was filled in as “approx. November 8,” almost seven years back. The cause of death was listed as hypothermia.
16
The train from Philadelphia was only about five minutes late and Warren Pratt had taken a seat in the lead car, so he was one of the first people to come through the double doors from Track 23. Kinkaid was sitting on a little circular bench in the middle of the concourse floor, looking as if he had been waiting for hours.
“Did you have a good trip?” he asked, smiling tensely as he relieved Pratt of his suitcase after they shook hands.
“It was short, at least. I got on at Princeton.”
A good cop will always notice that flicker of uncertainty, but James Kinkaid’s face didn’t register a thing. He was smart without being a smartass, which was rare in college boys, and he didn’t need to be reminded that Terry Vogel had worked for a company based in Princeton.
“Have you had lunch?”
Pratt shook his head, thinking to himself that Kinkaid had nice manners, which was rare in anybody. He could be polite before he was curious. Pratt decided that he liked him.
“I know a good seafood place on the way out of town. Of course maybe you’d . . .”
“Sounds fine,” Pratt interrupted. “It’s not something you get a lot of in Ohio.”
“Fine, then. I’m parked just across the street.”
They walked to the main exit together and might not have exchanged another word if Pratt hadn’t decided to take pity on the kid.
“I don’t think Terry Vogel committed suicide,” he said, as if he were announcing a perfectly neutral fact. “He had booked a flight to Austin, Texas just twelve hours before he died. He was supposed to make a big pitch to some computer company down there, an account his firm had been trying to get for months. It looked like he’d probably get it. Then he drives off to some flophouse in East Philly and goes to bed with a shotgun. That’s not the way people kill themselves when they do it on the spur of the moment.
“There’s also the fact that Vogel’s corpse was found nude.”
They were descending the ramp of a basement garage, and as he walked Kinkaid had been fishing around in his jacket pocket for the parking stub. He found it at the last possible moment and handed it to an attendant, who snatched it away as if he were reclaiming stolen property.
“You find that significant?”
“Yes.” Pratt nodded, to no one in particular since Kinkaid was watching the attendant as he disappeared into an elevator the size of a phone booth. “Suicides are fairly predictable. The ones who worry about making a mess usually leave their clothes in a neat little pile somewhere and then kill themselves in the bathroom—it’s easier to clean up. Our boy’s things were lying around on the floor and, besides, why would anybody get undressed if he planned to spatter his brains all over the wallpaper?”
Kinkaid appeared not to be listening. He waited for his car to be brought up—a Mercedes in a particularly unappealing shade of green—tipped the attendant two dollars and then climbed in behind the wheel. In all it was probably about five minutes before Pratt heard his voice again.
“Then why did the Philadelphia police list it as a suicide?”
It was an intelligent question, but it showed that James Kinkaid, Esq. hadn’t done a lot of criminal work. Pratt caught himself just in time to keep the note of condescension out of his voice.
“I probably would have done the same thing,” he answered. “Homicide has a heavy case load in that town and they had no physical evidence. As a suicide the Vogel case is closed. As a murder it would stay open on their books forever. I’m sorry, Counselor, but that’s the way it works.”
As if he were negotiating some sort of urban slalom run, Kinkaid drove down a side street that had been reduced to one lane by a broken pattern of double parked trucks. The Dayton traffic squad would have written enough paper to cover the city’s budget for a year, but things must be different in New York.
“Did he check into the hotel alone?”
“Yes. And nobody saw anything. But it’s a place that caters to the trade, so nobody would.”
“What about Princeton?”
“Just one thing.”
Pratt held his breath for a moment as they slipped through an intersection, only just avoiding a cab that had jumped the light. It would be nice to get back to Dayton.
“I talked to a friend of Vogel’s from work,” he went on. “The friend said Vogel had mentioned something about an old flame.”
“When was this?”
“The friend thought it was maybe a day or two before Vogel died. He had wondered at the time if maybe there wasn’t some connection.”
“Did he tell the police?”
“No. The Philly police never sent anyone to Princeton and the locals didn’t care. It wasn’t their case.”
“I guess it isn’t a good idea to die away from home.”
“It isn’t a good idea to die anywhere.”
Eddie’s was on Second Avenue near 86th, and there was a parking lot across the street. It was the sort of place where the napkins were the size of bed sheets, the waiters wore aprons that hung to within six inches of the floor, and there was a big gray crockery bowl full of oyster crackers in the center of the table. The bartender knew his business but the desserts were terrible, which after all is the defining test of a good seafood restaurant.
“What’s a scallop when it’s at home?” Pratt asked, staring at the menu as if he just couldn’t quite believe it.
“Damned if I know, but they come in little medallions about the size of a poker chip. They cook them with a garlic sauce here.”
That, it seemed, was sufficient recommendation. The former homicide lieutenant closed his menu with a snap and laid it flat on the table.
“You’ve found something out,” Pratt said, after the waiter had come and gone, leaving a vodka gimlet next to his water glass. “But you’d be happier if you could keep it to yourself. Probably it would be best if you just told me.”
It pleased him that just for an instant Kinkaid let his composure slip. It meant he had been right.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You’re paying me a lot of money, Counselor, and you barely show more than a polite interest. I
have to ask myself, what soured you?”
“You can strike Angela Wyman off your list of suspects,” Kinkaid said, tearing the corner off a dinner roll as if all he wanted was a look inside. “She’s been dead for seven years.”
Now it was Pratt’s turn to be surprised, but he had the feeling Kinkaid wasn’t paying attention.
“You know this for a fact?”
“I have her death certificate in my desk drawer.”
“What did she die of?”
“She froze to death.”
“Where?”
“In some private loony bin up in Vermont.”
“Were you in love with her?”
Kinkaid made a slight gesture with his left hand. It could have meant almost anything. It could even have meant no. But it didn’t.
I was twenty years old and she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen,” he answered, with the tone of one dismissing his own feelings as beside the point. “I think I was probably responsible for pushing her over the edge, but I’ll never know for sure. She killed a man.”
“How did she do that?”
“She beat him to death with a shovel.”
“She didn’t happen to beat his face in, did she?”
Kinkaid actually changed color—he was very far from being a fool and he saw the significance of the question at once. Very slowly, and with obvious reluctance, he managed a slight nod.
“It’s just amazing how many people in this case end up that way,” Pratt said, with studied casualness. He was careful not to look at Kinkaid. “Billinger had his face sliced off. The whole front half of Terry Vogel’s skull was blown away. George Tipton disappeared altogether.”
“She couldn’t have done it if she’s dead,” Kinkaid said, with something like real anger in his voice.
He kept it hidden, probably even from himself, but somewhere down there he was still in love with Miss Angela Wyman. Poor sod.
“That she could not.” Pratt took a sip of his drink, which was so cold it didn’t matter whether it was any good or not. “But somebody ought to check.”
It was probably just as well the waiter chose that moment to come back with two dinner salads in wooden bowls. “Now—who has the blue cheese?” he asked, smiling broadly from behind his walrus moustache. “Ground pepper?”
For a long time after he had gone again the two men ate in silence.
“I want to know what happened to all the other members of that football team,” Kinkaid said at last. “Will that be difficult?”
“You’re talking about twenty-two men, not counting the second stringers.”
“My father’s list only included the first team offense, and five of them we know about.”
“Five? I thought the body count was only up to four.”
“One runs a filling station in town—I see him every day. That leaves six names.”—
“Then if none of them are actually in hiding, I shouldn’t have much trouble.”
“Good.”
“What about Angela Wyman? Do you want me to confirm the death certificate?”
For several seconds Kinkaid appeared not to have heard—appeared not even to be conscious of the other man’s presence—but, as Detective Pratt has beginning to figure out, these vacant silences were merely a series of curtains pulled down to screen the man’s inner life, a little trick he had picked up somewhere and used whenever he needed a moment to think, or perhaps to reassure himself that his self-mastery remained in place. Finally he shook his head.
“That’s something I prefer to see to myself.”
. . . . .
“With some people it’s like an aura—they were born to serve as raw material for the murderer’s art. All you have to do is glance at them and you find yourself imagining how they’ll look in the crime-scene photos.”
“Is murder an art?”
“In the hands of a true virtuoso, like our killer? Oh, yes.” Detective Pratt nodded gravely. “But can’t you see your neighbor over there as a natural victim?”
Jim Kinkaid couldn’t see him at all, since he was facing away and at a slight angle so Pratt would be able to get a good look without seeming obvious about it. They were standing just in front of the public library, across the street from the Exxon station where Charlie Flaxman was filling somebody’s Voyager from the Supreme pump.
“Either that or in the jug for a good twenty-to-life. Charlie’s what you might call an authentic bad boy.”
“Has he got a record? Any chance I could see it?”
Kinkaid shook his head. “As his lawyer I’d have to object.”
This made Pratt laugh, so that he seemed to lose interest in Charlie Flaxman and the two men continued down the sidewalk and away from the library, where they had been looking at old high-school yearbooks.
“I didn’t see your girlfriend in there,” he said, conscious that he was needling Kinkaid and not quite sure why.
“She went to a private school in Greenwich. I’ve never seen a photograph of her.”
“Isn’t that a little surprising? After all, you’d think her grandmother would have kept at least a snapshot or two.”
Kinkaid didn’t answer, but Pratt had grown used to having his leading questions ignored.
And yes it was surprising. They had spent part of the morning going through the contents of Mrs. Wyman’s writing desk—Kinkaid had apparently cleaned it out, since he had a large cardboard box full of old letters, cancelled checks, photographs of deceased relatives and all the other customary detritis of a long life. Yet there was nothing relating to Angela Wyman except her death certificate and a couple of pieces of correspondence from the hospital where she was sent after flattening out the gardener.
“Are you on good terms with Flaxman?” he went on, deliberately changing the subject. “Do you think he keeps up with his old team mates?”
“I’m his lawyer—or, more correctly, I’m his father-in-law’s lawyer—but that isn’t the same as being on good terms with him.”
“He told you about George Tipton.”
“It’s a safe bet he wouldn’t have if George hadn’t been dead. I think I’ve probably exhausted his fund of confidence.”
“Then maybe I could have a word with him.”
“Not a chance.”
Kinkaid laughed, gently kicking a neighbor child’s basketball back up on his front lawn, where it came to rest in a tangle of garden hose.
“You’d be surprised how few people take me for a cop.”
“You’re an outsider,” Kinkaid explained, as if afraid he had somehow given offense. “Guys like Charlie Flaxman live in a very narrow world, and you weren’t born in New Gilead. You also didn’t play football with him.”
“I’m just as happy about it, considering the fates of some of the ones who did.”
They continued on in silence until they reached the wooden sign that announced the law offices of Kinkaid & Kinkaid. The surviving partner looked up and studied the front windows of his house with what seemed to Pratt a peculiar mingling of affection and regret.
“Do you speak any French?” Kinkaid asked unexpectedly.
“Not a word.”
“Neither do I.” He smiled, expressing the comradeship of a shared affliction. “I wonder if you’d care to go to Paris for me some time or other.”
“Does it relate to this case?”
“Possibly—probably not. I don’t know.”
They walked up the stone steps to the front door. There were no clients in the waiting room, which was hardly surprising on a Saturday, and the chair behind the receptionist’s desk was empty.
Kinkaid’s office was small and rather dark, possessed of but a single window that looked out on a narrow strip of lawn and a white board fence. Except for the computer on the desk, it looked like a room out of the last century. There was a very comfortable leather sofa against one wall, and Pratt took his position there while Kinkaid rummaged around in the bottom drawer of his desk.
“How d
id you happen to put your office in here?”
The question evoked a look of faint surprise, so Pratt smiled.
“I’m just curious. It’s the vice of my profession.”
Kinkaid glanced about the room as if noticing it for the first time. “It was my grandfather’s office,” he said.
“Were you particularly fond of him or something?”
“He’d been dead ten years before I was born, so it was available. I guess it’s just inertia. I started doing my homework in here when I was a kid.”
At last he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a large manila envelope and undid the clasp, letting the contents spill out over his desk.
“The Wymans had only one child,” he explained, as if they had been the topic of discussion all along. “A daughter, Blanche. Hence, if Angela is the granddaughter, Blanche must have been her mother. Angela grew up in Paris, presumably living with her mother, since that is where Blanche died. I have everything here—death certificate, passport, a handful of singularly uninformative letters postmarked over a fifteen-year period, even the rent receipts for her apartment.”
“Let me see the passport.”
The photo was of a woman in her middle thirties, still girlishly pretty but beginning to show some wear. It was a color photo, so you could see that Blanche Wyman—that was the name under which the passport had been issued—had pale blond hair and used too much makeup.
“This is in her maiden name,” Pratt said. “Did she ever marry?”
“There’s no record of it.”
“Is that what you want me to find out in Paris? Who Angela Wyman’s father was?”
“I doubt you will.” Kinkaid registered the faintest possible shrug. “If you can find out, great. But what I really want to know is why Blanche Wyman’s daughter ended up in a mental hospital.”
“Do you want this before or after I find out what happened to your football players?”
“After, but not by much.”
17
There was no town of Sherman’s Crest. The nearest town was Guilford, some five or six miles to the east, where the man at the Chevron station couldn’t identify the spot in terms of local landmarks.
Angel Page 17
