by Lis Wiehl
Kids gathered in small groups, holding hands or leaning against the landing pad by the pole vault pit or sitting on tackling dummies, but the largest group had gathered at midfield between the thirty-yard lines, more than five hundred kids but fewer than a thousand, Tommy guessed. On the first riser of the bleachers, a few feet above field level, a microphone had been set up, connected to a portable PA system. Tommy stood to the rear of the crowd and listened. The first speaker was the school principal, who cautioned students against spreading unsubstantiated rumors, urged them to support each other, and told them the school guidance counselors would be available after school every day until five thirty for any students who needed someone to talk to.
When she said the microphone was open for anyone who had anything to say or share, no one came forward at first, a silence that grew more awkward with each passing second. Then a girl stepped up and said she just wanted to say what a good friend Julie was to everybody, how she watched other people’s pets for free when the owners went on vacation, and how she cheerfully shared her food when other kids forgot to bring their lunch money. Another girl remembered how Julie had organized a campaign to send letters and Girl Scout cookies to soldiers. A boy said Julie was the kind of person who always remembered the names of new students. Her younger sister, Kara, spoke of how her big sister taught her how to read and let her sleep in her bed when there were thunderstorms and never ate the last brownie in the pan.
Tommy listened, trying to hear any reason why someone might want to hurt Julie or take advantage of her. From the sound of it, Julie Leonard had led a sheltered life. There were no stories of Julie traveling in Europe with friends or trekking in the Himalayas. She was a nice kid who just wanted to have as many friends as possible.
Vulnerable, Tommy thought. Victim began with the same letter.
Tommy felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He reached to shut it off, but when he glanced at it, he saw he had a text message from Dani.
ARE YOU HERE? WHERE ARE YOU?
He texted back: I’LL MEET YOU WHERE THEY DO THE COIN TOSS.
WHERE IS THAT?
YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT?
OF COURSE I’M KIDDING.
MIDFIELD.
THANK YOU. BY THE WAY, KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN. WE THINK THE KILLER IS PROBABLY HERE.
It made sense, Tommy thought, if they were dealing with a killer who was trying to make a statement of some kind. What good was making a statement if you missed the reaction?
He surveyed the crowd, seeing mostly the backs of people’s heads and silhouettes in the darkness. There should be some sort of scientific device that could pick up someone’s evil aura, he thought, maybe an infrared camera that could discern between normal human beings and the cold-blooded variety. But the truth was that killers looked just like everybody else, had mothers and fathers, ate when they were hungry, felt hot in the summer and cold in the winter. What made them different? Dani could probably answer that. It was odd to think he could be within a few feet of a murderer and not know it.
Dani was dressed in a black turtleneck sweater, jeans, and black boots that came to just below the knee.
“Let’s not keep meeting like this,” he said. “How you holding up?”
“Long day,” she said, smiling weakly. “I went through something like this earlier at the Grange Hall. Town meeting. People are scared.”
“Then count me as ‘people,’ ” Tommy said.
“I didn’t think of you as someone who was easily scared,” Dani said.
“Define ‘easily,’ ” Tommy said. “Maybe shocked is a better word. Things are happening in this town that aren’t supposed to happen in this town. Or anywhere. It’s hard to put into words.”
“You don’t have to. I know what you mean.”
“If you had to guess,” Tommy said, “off the record, would you say whoever did it is likely to do it again?”
“If I had to guess?” Dani replied. “Yes. Likely. But not right away. Meanwhile, everything seems suspicious. We had a garage fire out on West Ridge Road. I didn’t go. They think it was a nine-year-old kid who was trying to help his mom clean up after his birthday party, and he accidentally threw away one of those birthday candles that keeps relighting itself after you blow it out.”
“I hate those things. But I’m pyrophobic. I lit my bangs on fire when I was six, blowing out the candles on my cake. And those were just the regular kind.”
“So how was your day?” she said.
“Unproductive. I asked some of the high school jocks who work out at the gym if they knew anything. They’re pretty freaked out. Talking about what they’d do to the killer if they got their hands on him. Just macho bluster. You see anything here of interest?”
“If I have, I won’t know until later,” she said. “We have people taking pictures. Discreetly.”
“I was thinking somebody should do that,” Tommy said. “By the way, the mother’s name is Connie Leonard. The father is unaccounted for and skipped out on his child support payments ten years ago. Kara and the mom live on Lake Kendell.”
“And you know all this how?” Dani asked.
“Gerald Whitney told me,” Tommy said. “The funeral director. I called him. He was my scoutmaster. What have you got going on tomorrow?”
“I’m impressed. Casey is questioning the other kids at the party,” Dani said. “He wants me there.”
“What time?”
Dani took a moment to choose her words. “Tommy,” she said, “you’re not allowed. Even as my paid assistant.”
“I prefer the term flunky.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I can get you coffee,” he offered.
“If I need something, I’ll text you,” Dani said. “You’re more than a flunky, Tommy. I’m glad you’re part of the team.”
“How about Executive Director of Investigative Services?”
“Don’t push it,” she said, smiling. She checked her BlackBerry to make sure she hadn’t accidentally deleted his contact information.
“I hope your phone number is unlisted,” he said.
“I unlisted my phone numbers and deleted my address from as many databases as I could two years ago,” Dani said. “When your job involves meeting face-to-face with insane psychopaths, you want to keep a low profile.”
“Tell me about it,” he said. “I used to date cheerleaders.”
Tommy realized that the crowd had begun to sing, led by the school glee club, as beautiful a rendition of “Amazing Grace” as any he’d ever heard. As he and Dani listened, Julie Leonard’s mother walked past them, supported by her daughter Kara, who hugged her as they walked.
“If the killer is here,” Tommy asked Dani, “what do you think he’d feel if he saw what we just saw? If he knew how much pain he’s caused Julie’s family?”
“He wouldn’t feel anything,” Dani said. “That’s the difference. So be glad you feel something.”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “But I can’t say I’m glad.”
When Dani said she’d check in with him tomorrow, he offered to walk her to her car, but she declined. He watched her go and then, as the glee club began an a cappella version of the Beatles’ “In My Life,” he backed away from the crowd and walked to a large oak tree beyond the end zone at the end of the field opposite the scoreboard. He took a seat on a bench beneath the tree. The leaves above him were brown but had yet to fall—oak leaves were always the last to drop, he recalled. He sat in the darkness as the waning moon struggled to emerge from behind the clouds.
It had been his habit to sit on the bench, alone, before every game, his “moment of solitude” according to the caption beneath the photograph of him in the high school yearbook. He’d never told anybody why he needed such a moment before every game. Some speculated that it was where he performed some secret ritual to psych himself up, but in fact it was simply where he prayed. He took issue with coaches of any team sports who believed God favored one team over any other, but
in his private and personal conversation before each game, he kept it simple and asked the Lord only to give him— and everybody else on the field—the full capacity of his gifts and talents, so that everyone would play to his personal best, and nobody would get hurt.
Tonight, he had a different prayer in mind.
Lord, he prayed silently, I know I don’t have to tell you how much pain Julie’s mom is in. If it’s part of your plan, make me … make us, everybody who’s working on this, your instruments in solving this thing. Help us use the gifts you gave us, and help us bring this woman some sort of closure. She doesn’t deserve any of this. I mean, who does? But she needs peace. Amen.
When he got to his car, he turned the key in the ignition and paused a moment to let the engine warm up. While he waited, he used his phone to check his e-mail. He scrolled through a half-dozen requests from freelance writers and literary agents who wanted to help him write his memoirs, and another request forwarded to him by his talent agent from a new television show on ESPN that wanted to have him on as a guest.
Keep forwarding these, but for now my answer remains the same—no thanks, he typed. Sooner or later, to keep all his business ventures going, he’d have to do publicity, but for now he picked his spots. He’d been there, done that.
He paused when he came to an e-mail from Liam:
Tommy—I don’t know what to do w/ attached video but I trust you’ll know. Girl in vid is Rayne Kepplinger. She used a pixilation filter but it’s her. My mom’s lawyer thought it would be a bad idea if we came to the memorial service. I don’t know what to do.
Liam
Tommy texted a reply. PRAY FOR HER. I WILL PRAY FOR YOU.
After he hit Send, he returned to Liam’s e-mail and opened the video file the boy had attached. It was short and to the point, a pixilated image of a girl’s face speaking into a webcam in a voice that was measured but intense. “If you tell anybody about what we did, Liam, we will kill you,” the girl in the video said.
Tommy thought a moment, then forwarded the video to Dani, adding:
Liam sent this and said he hoped I would know what to do with it. I am sending it to you for the same reason. Not sure what the rules are re. evidence/confidentiality. He identified the girl as Rayne Kepplinger. The filter she used is a standard feature with all HP Media Smart webcams and a lot of others. Your tech people should have no problem removing the filter to see exactly who the speaker is. If they don’t know how, have them call me because we covered this in my cyber-criminology class two weeks ago. Good luck tomorrow.
Magnum
SUNDAY,
OCTOBER 17
12.
She woke up in the middle of the night when she heard her alarm go off. She’d gone straight to bed, exhausted. The sky beyond the window was dark, the leaves on the trees motionless.
She looked at her clock.
It was 2:13.
This time she was certain she’d set the alarm properly.
She pulled the radio’s plug from the wall outlet and sat in the dark, watching the moonlight pour through her bedroom window. She remembered the dream she’d been having. Her parents were sitting side by side on the limb of a large tree, looking down at her. She was not particularly Freudian when it came to dream interpretation, but it made a certain kind of sense, given that her parents’ plane had gone down somewhere in the northern reaches of the Congolese jungle. She’d pictured them before, in her waking thoughts, hung up high in the canopy, upside down and lifeless. Like the deer.
The dream’s message was loud and clear, a representation of the guilt she felt, the unbearable guilt, hanging over her head.
In the morning she checked her e-mail. She opened one from Beth, who informed her that the head lice problem at school continued and the horses were sneezing uncontrollably. Cause still unclear, lab results pending, but the immediate problem was equine insomnia. And how was seeing Tommy?
Dani checked her voice mail next and saw a message from an “unknown caller.”
“This is the Westchester Ripper,” the caller said. “I’m going to kill you next, Dani.”
She shuddered involuntarily, then felt a dull pain in her stomach.
Breathe, she told herself.
The caller was either a male with a high voice or a female trying to sound like a man. She guessed the former. The tone was measured, the affect flat, the volume just above a whisper.
“If it was sent from a cell phone, it could be tough,” Casey told her later, after she let him listen to the message. “I’ll get someone on it, but it could take awhile. Any wacko who reads the New York Star could think it would be a funny prank. Was your name in the papers?”
“No,” Dani said. “But anybody at the town meeting would know about my involvement.”
“How’d they get your cell number? You don’t give it out.”
“Not if I can help it,” Dani said. “But someone who has it could have given it out.”
“If we ID the cell tower that made the initial relay, that’ll narrow it down,” Casey said. “You want me to post an officer outside your house?”
“No,” Dani said. “Just let me know if you learn anything.”
Her day continued with a meeting in Irene’s office, where the DA shared an e-mail from Dr. Baldev Banerjee, displayed on the flat-screen monitor on the wall. Stuart looked like he hadn’t slept much the night before. Detective Casey looked like he’d slept, but in his clothes.
Re. Bull’s Rock Hill b.#A847TS
1. Serology reports complications. Only result for now: blood on Liam Dorsett shirt [E#18.76et] is match to blood of victim. T cell DNA molecules indicate blood on victim (not hers) is 17 years (+/-9).
2. Burn wounds consistent with exit vector, not entry. No external tracheal/ naso-sinal scorching.
3. COD still unknown. Exsanguination likely. Tissue damage likely postmortem.
4. Victim @ t.d. [0200 hours e.s.t. +/- <.50 hours]. No signs of struggle.
“Thoughts?” Irene said to open the discussion. “Reactions?”
“Cause of death unknown?” Casey said. “Call me old-fashioned, but I saw the pictures. ‘Exsanguination likely’? Does he mean she was dead before she bled out?”
“He’s saying he needs to be certain. Dani?”
“I’d like to know what the complications are,” Dani said, “but given that she didn’t struggle, I’m thinking she might have been drugged. Ketamine is strong enough to cancel out any pain she may have been feeling. Army field medics use it to stabilize combatants with wound trauma.”
“We’re still waiting on toxicology. What about ‘exit wounds’?” Irene said. “How does somebody have fire shooting out of their body?”
Dani had no answer.
“Blowtorch?” Casey said.
“It’s a stretch. I want to bring Liam in,” Irene said. “The blood and the phone put him at the scene. I don’t want him going anywhere.”
“If I may?” Dani asked, and the DA nodded permission. “There’s no flight risk—”
“You told me, Dani,” Irene said. “You babysat him.”
“I’m not speaking as his babysitter,” Dani said. “He knows he’s in trouble, and he’s scared out of his mind. He wants to help. Stuart—did they finish working on the video I sent you?”
“Got it right here,” he said, clicking until the Windows Media Center screen appeared on the monitor. “They were able to wipe the filter, just like you said.”
“It wasn’t me,” Dani said. “My … assistant came up with that.”
Stuart clicked the Play icon, and they watched the message Rayne Kepplinger had sent to Liam.
“If you tell anybody about what we did, Liam, we will kill you …”
Stuart played it again, and then again.
“Does he need protective custody?” Irene asked. “What’s she saying?”
“I think we should hear what she says when we talk to her,” Dani said.
“Is this a literal threat?” Casey asked.
“People say ‘kill the ump,’ but they don’t mean kill the ump.”
“She says we,” Irene said. “Who’s we? She and Liam? Everybody at the party? She’s talking about the murder?”
“Not necessarily,” Dani said. “We can’t infer that.”
“They always say they don’t know,” Irene said. “She’s obviously telling him not to talk about it.”
“But we don’t know what it is. It could be something else. Liam said he didn’t know what happened on Bull’s Rock Hill. I believe him,” Dani said. “He wouldn’t have sent me—sent my assistant the clip if he knew what it was he wasn’t supposed to say. I mean, he doesn’t feel guilty, because he doesn’t know what happened. She’s warning him not to talk, but he sent us the clip anyway. He’s trying to help. You don’t need more leverage. You need him to feel safe. He’ll feel safe at home.”
Irene considered Dani’s words.
“I appreciate your input,” she said. “I’m going to agree with you. But if any witnesses make him a person of interest, I’m going to have to pull him in.”
“Liam’s a follower,” Dani said. “He’s not a leader.”
“Okay,” Irene said. “Let’s see if we can figure out who the leader was. We have one hour before we meet at the Peter Keeler Inn. Stuart, have the techies finished setting up?”
“Not quite,” he answered, “but they’ll be ready when we get there.”
“All right then. One hour. Check to see if you’re being followed. And, Dani,” she said, taking her aside and lowering her voice, “Detective Casey played me the threat you received. I’m assigning an officer to protect you until we figure this out. You just do what you do, but if you see someone in your rearview mirror, it’s him, so don’t worry about it.”
“Irene—” Dani began.
“This killer doesn’t like women,” the DA said. “Don’t argue with me.”
13.
Tommy called All-Fit and told his day manager he wouldn’t be in, then donned his barn coat and headed out to gather breakfast. His property had come with a horse barn, which he’d converted to a six-car garage where he kept his cars and other boy toys. Attached to the barn was a chicken coop, which he’d left intact when he’d decided on a whim to keep exotic chickens. He’d stocked it with white tufted Sultans and green-black Sumatras, but his best layers were the French Marans, lustrous black with copper hackles and bright red combs. Their eggs, with their dark-chocolate colored shells, sold for as much as $200 a dozen. They made nice gifts for friends, but the best thing they made was an omelet. He’d recently added a rooster, a giant twelve-pounder named Elvis, hoping to increase the size of his flock.
