East Salem Trilogy 01-Waking Hours

by Lis Wiehl

  “What happened to the father?” Dani asked.

  “Alex killed his father, Dani,” Mr. Stanley said. “When he was five. The KGB element in the government, and that goes all the way up to the Kremlin, buried the details to protect one of their own and farmed the brothers out to separate orphanages.”

  “May I ask how he killed his father?”

  “He hit him with an ax. Repeatedly. While he was sleeping. And when he was done …”

  It was clear that the man did not wish to continue. Dani recalled an old nursery rhyme about Lizzie Borden.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t think the details are important.”

  Ed Stanley explained that the KGB never revealed why they left five-year-old Alex Kalenninov on the orphanage’s doorstep. At the time, the number of people waiting to adopt children from the Soviet Union was far greater than the number of available children. Placing Alex in a home in America was easily accomplished. The adoption agency didn’t know Alex’s history when the Kasdens chose him.

  As the older man spoke, Dani saw Tommy in the doorway and waved to him. When he sat down, Dani put her thumb over the microphone of her BlackBerry and whispered that she was talking to the man from the State Department. Tommy asked if he could have a word with him when she was done.

  “You’ve been very helpful,” Dani said finally. “This is useful information.”

  “May I ask,” Mr. Stanley said, “is Alex in trouble?”

  “We’re not sure,” Dani said. “He may be connected to something. I have a friend who wants a word with you.” She handed her phone to Tommy.

  “Real quick,” Tommy said, “I just wondered if you knew what the Russian word igun means? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Thanks.” He hung up and gave her back her cell. “Tell you later. You eat already?”

  “Not hungry,” she said. “Are you?”

  “A little.”

  The Pub was just off the square in an old mill building next to a manmade waterfall. It was as fancy as the Miss Salem Diner was plain, but at the same time, it was a gathering spot where horse people and CEOs and celebrities could find a dark corner of their own or mingle with the auto mechanics and soccer moms. The decorations were equestrian, saddles and bridles and riding crops and carriage traces and whippletrees on the walls, mixed with framed engravings of horses and horsemen in hunt clothes.

  When the waitress approached, Dani ordered tea. Tommy asked for a cup of coffee with cream and two Sweet’N Lows and a slice of pecan pie.

  “Two forks?” he asked Dani.

  “Why not?”

  She filled him in as to what Ed Stanley had just told her, how Amos had been abused, how he’d killed his own father with an ax, and how the adoption agency appeared to have either covered up his origins or else were ignorant of the facts of Amos’s early childhood. When she’d finished, Tommy leaned back in his chair to make room for the waitress to set down their drinks and dessert.

  “Remember that woman in the newspapers who adopted a kid from Russia and put him on a plane to Moscow when she couldn’t deal with all his psychological problems?” Tommy said.

  “Terrible,” Dani said. “But not uncommon. Amos’s father was KGB.”

  “So how does it factor in?” Tommy asked.

  “When we started this case,” she told him, “they asked me how a group of kids could do such a thing, and I told them I suspected one person leading the rest. I said it was unlikely that you could find more than one person capable of doing what the killer did to Julie’s body.”

  “And Logan is obviously the leader of this crowd,” Tommy said. “With Rayne Kepplinger as his accomplice.”

  “He is,” Dani said. “I’m not ruling him out. But now it’s pretty clear there’s more going on with Amos than we’ve known.”

  “Agreed,” Tommy said.

  “Have you ever heard of something called DID?” she asked him.

  He shook his head.

  “Dissociative Identity Disorder. I worked with kids in Africa who’d been forced to become soldiers,” Dani said. “They were taken from their parents and isolated and forced to accept a substitute authority figure who told them they were somebody else. They were assigned new identities, and they lived with these false names for so long that some of them forgot who they were to begin with. Which is almost a technique with some cults, because the new identity has to do things the old identity never could. The new identity dissociates.”

  “I don’t understand,” Tommy said.

  “We were trying to teach these boys how to reintegrate. When you’ve been exposed to the kinds of things they were exposed to, at minimum you develop a hypersensitivity to anything resembling a threat. That’s post-traumatic stress disorder. They’d magnify simple misunderstandings, things other kids wouldn’t even notice.”

  “So,” Tommy said, “with Amos, if kids at school giggled at the way he pronounced something, he’d take it as a threat?”

  “Possibly,” Dani said. “Or find refuge in revenge fantasies. DID is more than just identity confusion. It’s how the mind copes with torture or abuse that repeats itself. Sometimes people who experience something so awful they can’t bear it—torture or extreme physical or emotional abuse—find a way to leave their bodies,” she continued. “It’s a way to survive. Especially kids who are highly intelligent or creative. Animals have a fight/flight response, where they either run away as fast as they can or stand and fight. Trauma happens to humans when they can’t do either. When something so severe happens, beyond what they can process, they disengage from what’s going on, say to themselves, ‘That’s happening to my body, but it’s not happening to me.’ So one part is under attack, but the other part is safe and doesn’t feel anything. And with enough repetition …”

  “It becomes permanent?”

  “It can,” Dani said. “In some instances it leads to multiple personalities. My boss, Sam, had a woman come in once and when he asked her what was wrong, she said she felt like she was already dead. Nothing seemed real to her. She asked him, ‘Am I a ghost?’ Part of being human is being able to empathize with the world around us and feel connected to it. And she didn’t feel connected. That’s why some girls cut themselves with razors, just to feel something real. The cutting reconnects them.”

  “Or why people torture animals?” he said. He told her about the dog carcass they’d found and the burn indications.

  “Why did you want to talk to Ed Stanley?” Dani asked.

  “I needed to talk to somebody who speaks Russian,” Tommy said. “You saw the video I made. Amos asked me if I felt glad when Dwight Sykes … went down. I said no. But the truth is, for a second … before I knew how bad it was …”

  “Tommy, it’s okay.“

  “I know. So when we said good-bye,” he continued, “I said, ‘Mir,’ which means peace, and he said, ‘Igun’.”

  “Which means?”

  “Liar.”

  “Tommy,” Dani said, “you have to know something. There are patients psychiatrists talk to who can be crazy as the proverbial loon, but they figure out how to read people and how to push their doctors’ buttons. Their madness gives them some sort of special insight …” She reached across the table, took his hand, and squeezed it.

  “Being a private detective isn’t exactly the barrel of monkeys I thought it was going to be,” he said, squeezing back. “Maybe Amos is psychic?”

  “Psychic-schmychic,” Dani said. “Don’t confuse astrology for astronomy. We still can’t place him at the scene.”

  “You don’t believe in the supernatural?” Tommy said.

  “Tommy …”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to.”

  “Science—”

  “Can explain a lot,” Tommy said. “But not everything. Science can only take you so far.”

  She paused, thinking. What Willis Danes had told her was, of course, protected by patient-doctor privilege. She couldn’t say anything about it. The figurine he had give
n her was in her purse. She wanted to show it to Tommy, to see what he made of it. The message was clear. The blind can see. Open your eyes.

  “Do you believe in angels?” she asked Tommy.

  “Absolutely,” Tommy said. “Why do you ask?”

  She hesitated.

  “Nothing,” she told him. “Just something somebody said to me.”

  “Dani,” Tommy began. He was interrupted when her phone beeped.

  She didn’t recognize the number, but sat up when she read the text. She showed it to Tommy.

  I WANT 2 TALK 2 U BT DAD WN’T LET ME.

  “Logan?”

  “I think so,” she said. She texted back.

  LOGAN?

  YES.

  Dani typed with her thumbs as fast as she could.

  WHERE’S YOUR FATHER NOW?

  FRNT SEAT. LIMO. IF HE TURNS ARND, IAM DEAD. DO NOT CALL.

  OK. I WON’T.

  She waited. Had Logan’s father caught him texting?

  I THINK I KLLD JULIE.

  Dani showed the text to Tommy, who moved around to sit next to her in the booth so that he could read her screen too.

  WHY?

  IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A PRANK TO MAKE EVBODY THINK WE KILLED JULIE & THN VIDEO REACTIONS.

  “That’s what the dog blood was all about,” Tommy said. “They needed blood to make the prank convincing.”

  “Then why pour it into the tree stump?” Dani asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tommy said. “Change of plans?”

  WHY A PRANK?

  $$$. FEAR WEBSITE WWW.SCREAMSCHEMES.COM—$10,000 4 BEST SCARE PRANK VID. SMTHING WNT WRONG.

  WHAT?

  D-KNOW. D-RMBER ANYTHING.

  “Ask him who he means by we,” Tommy said, but Dani was already sending a different message.

  WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

  ARPORT. WSTCHSTR.

  “They’re flying him out of the country,” she told Tommy.

  They raced to the parking lot. Tommy drove while Dani tried to reach Detective Casey on her phone, frustrated once again by the poor cell coverage between East Salem and the freeway. They were on 684, tearing south at speeds topping a hundred mph, before Dani was able to get through to the dispatcher.

  It took a minute for the dispatcher to reach Phil. It took another minute to learn there were no more flights out of Westchester, and another to learn the location of Andrew Gansevoort’s private jet, a black Gulfstream G650 that he kept in a corporate hangar at the end of Tower Road.

  Tommy took the airport exit and followed the signs to Tower Road, navigating the corners as fast as he dared in the Jeep, not the car he would have chosen had he known he’d be driving at high speeds. He reached the end of Tower Road just in time to see a black Gulfstream G650 lift from the ground and soar into the night sky.

  “I can call Irene,” Dani said as the lights on the plane disappeared from view, “but I’m guessing hiring a plane to follow it isn’t in the budget.”

  “Not a G650,” Tommy said. “The owner of my old football team had one. He told me I could use it if I came back to play. That thing doesn’t have to stop until it hits Dubai. Will a text message confession stand up in court?”

  “He didn’t confess,” Dani said. “He said, ‘I think I killed her.’ That’s not the same thing as saying, ‘I killed her.’ ”

  35.

  Tommy followed her home, saying he wanted to check to make sure the cat hadn’t locked himself in the basement again. Irene had reassigned the officer she’d tasked to keep an eye on Dani after the threatening message on Dani’s voice mail proved to be a hoax, but Tommy still felt protective. When they reached Dani’s house, she paused at the end of the driveway. Tommy pulled up next to her and waited for her to roll down her window.

  “I think I’m going to go to a hotel,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Don’t,” Tommy said.

  She waited.

  “What hotel?”

  “Maybe the Peter Keeler,” she said. “I don’t want to stay in my house tonight.”

  “Because?”

  “Because it’s a mess,” she said. “That’s a lie. I’m just feeling a little iffy.”

  “Why don’t you stay in my guest room?” Tommy said, knowing what she was afraid to say. “It’s totally private, and you’ll be completely safe there. Seriously.”

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  “Positive.”

  She thought a minute, then nodded and followed him.

  At the wrought iron gates, Tommy punched a code into a keypad and the gates swung open. She followed him and paused when he hit the garage door opener. Six garage doors opened. He parked the Jeep next to his Jaguar XKR convertible, botanical green. His camper van occupied the next bay, and beyond that, a silver ten-year-old Ford Focus station wagon. He also owned three motorcycles, two bicycles, and a go-cart. Dani parked her BMW in the empty bay next to the Jeep that the Mustang had occupied. She regarded his vehicle collection.

  “I get why you might want all the other toys,” she asked, “but why a Ford Focus station wagon?”

  “You kidding me?” he said. “That thing is a chick magnet.”

  “Which end of the magnet?” Dani asked.

  “It’s for surveillance,” he said. “My other cars sort of stick out. This one is inconspicuous.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m standing right next to it and I can hardly see it.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  It was a short walk across the courtyard to the main house. Dani paused a moment.

  “I like your house,” she said. “Lots of stone. Doesn’t the ivy hurt the mortar?”

  “They took that into consideration when they built the place,” he said. “You probably read about the guy who owned it before me. The Ponzi mutual fund guy? He had to sell this to repay his investors. It’s a bit of a fort, but I like it.”

  He led her to the kitchen door and opened it for her. At his kitchen table, an African-American man the size of a refrigerator was eating a sandwich.

  “Dani Harris, this is Lucius Mills. He takes care of my dad when I have to go out,” Tommy said, turning to the man. “How’s Pops?”

  “Fell asleep while I was reading him a story,” Mills said. “I can carry him to bed if you want, but he’s pretty comfortable, so I thought I’d leave him be.”

  Mills looked at Dani, then back at Tommy.

  “You want me to go somewhere?” he asked Tommy.

  “No, no,” Tommy said, realizing that Mills assumed they needed privacy. “Actually I was hoping you could stay the night. Did you bring the girls?”

  Mills called out, “Beyonce! Aretha!”

  A pair of massive black rottweilers trotted in from the television room, cropped tails wagging. Dani took a step back, then held out a hand for the beasts to sniff.

  “They’re friendly,” Tommy said. “Unless you don’t belong here, and then they’re not. That’s what I meant about being safe. Plus …”

  He crossed the kitchen to a panel by the door, where he pressed a sequence of buttons on another keypad.

  “The Ponzi guy I was telling you about was paranoid,” Tommy said. “With good reason. Anyway, the security system he put in is state of the art. Watch.”

  He showed her the video feeds on his computer monitor. One revealed a pair of bright orange shapes moving along the side of his garage.

  “Tommy!” Dani said, pointing at the screen in alarm.

  “Relax. That’s infrared,” Tommy said. “Heat vision. Those are raccoons trying to get into my garbage. The cans are sealed, but they won’t give up.”

  “I thought you said the security system was state of the art,” Dani said. “You can’t even keep raccoons out of your garbage?”

  “Nothing can keep raccoons away from the garbage,” Tommy said.

  He led her upstairs. He’d done most of the decorating himself, choosing the furniture and the carpets and the art on the walls. The house was
masculine, but not in a way that made women uncomfortable—no deer heads mounted on the walls or beer can pyramids to step over. He’d picked up a house’s worth of mission furniture at an estate sale. They turned right at the top of the stairs. At the end of the hall, he opened the door to Dani’s room.

  “I have two more guest rooms for guys, when my friends come by to hang out,” he told her. “The bathroom has shampoos and creams and body lotions and whatever. I just told the girl at the spa shop to give me a bunch of stuff women like. The bathtub has bubble jets, so if you want a bubble bath, don’t use too much or you’ll fill the room with suds. There’s a terry cloth bathrobe in the closet, and just use the intercom if you need anything.” He pointed to a panel and speaker set into the wall by the door. “My room is #1. Press All Call if you want to reach every room in the house.”

  “I think I’m good,” Dani said. “Can I just ask you—did Cassandra Morton ever live here?”

  “Nope,” Tommy said. “I bought this place after the whole Tom-Sandra thing blew up. I was living in Laurel Canyon when we … dated.”

  “Just curious,” Dani said.

  “I’m at the other end of the house,” Tommy said, “but I’ll leave the intercom open. Lucius’s room is off the kitchen. The dogs will stay downstairs.”

  He suddenly remembered something. “Oh, man …”

  “What?”

  “We ran out of The Pub without paying the tab,” he said.

  “Without eating too,” Dani said.

  “I’m hungry,” Tommy said.

  They returned to the kitchen, where Tommy told her he could make a pasta alfredo with fresh prosciutto, whip up a quick chicken pad Thai, throw together an omelet with fresh eggs from his French Marans, or she could choose from a variety of breakfast cereals. She said cereal sounded fine.

  He set two bowls on the table and filled two glasses with orange juice, grabbed a twelve-pack of single-serving cereals from the cupboard and a gallon of milk from the refrigerator, set them on the table, and retrieved a pair of spoons from the silverware drawer. He tore two sheets of paper towels from a roll suspended on a rack above the sink and handed one to Dani. He watched as she tore open a box of Corn Flakes, a box of Raisin Bran, and a box of Froot Loops, emptying all three into her bowl before adding milk.