East Salem Trilogy 01-Waking Hours

by Lis Wiehl

  Amos didn’t answer.

  “It’s okay, Amos,” she said. “I understand you. You don’t have to feel alone anymore.”

  “Shut up!” he said, raising the poker over his head.

  41.

  Tommy saw the squad car idling at the end of Dani’s driveway. The officer was a state trooper, not a local cop, which was why Tommy didn’t recognize him as he pulled up to the opened window. He turned off the motorcycle and leaned in to have a word with the trooper, and only then saw that the man’s throat had been cut, the blood soaking his shirt and pants.

  He tried to call for help on the squad car’s two-way radio, but it had been disabled. He searched his pockets, but in his haste to get to Dani’s house, he’d forgotten his cell phone.

  He left the motorcycle by the squad car and moved to the house on foot, keeping away from the drive where he might be seen, moving instead through the trees.

  He saw lights shining from the kitchen windows.

  As he approached, he saw two people. Dani was one of them. The other had his back to Tommy, but Tommy knew who it was.

  He was grateful that all the lights were on in the kitchen. It meant that no one inside the kitchen would be able to see out into the yard.

  He stepped quietly onto Dani’s back porch and drew his gun. From where he stood, Tommy couldn’t get a clear shot at Amos without Dani being in the line of fire. He wished he’d found time to practice with it, given that he’d never fired it before. He realized, upon closer examination of the weapon, that it also would have been a good idea to put the bullets he’d unloaded when he’d slept on the floor of Dani’s bedroom back in the gun before he left his house.

  When he saw Amos raise the poker, he was out of options.

  Tommy flipped the switch.

  He charged full speed, striking the lock stiles above the midrail with the top of his head, his forearms taking the rest of the blow, the doors splintering inward as glass flew across the kitchen.

  Dani screamed.

  Amos turned and brought his arm down, cracking the brass fireplace poker against the padded right shoulder of Tommy’s leather motorcycle jacket, his Kevlar absorbing the rest of the blow.

  Tommy felt a tongue of fire in his right shoulder but ignored the pain and kept his head low, his powerful legs driving him into Amos as he speared the boy, the top of his skull connecting with Amos’s sternum, a move that would have been illegal on the football field, but Tommy didn’t hear any whistles.

  Something cracked.

  His momentum drove the chairs aside and tipped the table over. He kept driving with his legs, grabbing Amos by the wrist as Amos tried to slam the cleaver into Tommy’s head. Amos crashed against the stove. Tommy heard the air press out of the boy’s lungs, and then the two of them fell to the floor. He grabbed Amos by the sweatshirt to throw him into the cupboards.

  But Amos had a strange look on his face, not quite a smile, as he stopped resisting and went limp.

  Tommy let go of the boy, threw him down and moved back, rising from his knees and struggling for solid footing amid the debris.

  Dani took a step closer, then stopped when Tommy held up his hand.

  Amos opened his mouth, and a stream of blood poured from it. He made a gurgling noise as his eyes turned glassy and began to deaden. He looked up at Dani, then at Tommy, then again at Dani.

  Tommy lowered his gaze and noticed a broken shard from the half-inch-thick glass kitchen tabletop piercing Amos’s torso, the point of the glass spear sharp and coated in liquid red as blood pulsed from the wound and flowed across the floor.

  Tommy moved to Dani’s side.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked her.

  She shook her head, then picked something up from the floor.

  He saw a syringe in her hand.

  He watched as she pulled the sleeve up on Amos’s limp arm and injected him.

  “What’s that for?” he asked.

  “The pain,” she told him.

  Dani knelt beside the boy. “Mir,” she said softly. “Mir. Mir.”

  As Amos died, Tommy hoped to see an expression of peace on the boy’s face, some kind of final resolution or recognition. Instead, Amos’s eyes opened wide, as if he saw something terrifying.

  FRIDAY,

  OCTOBER 22

  42.

  Detective Phillip Casey had moved quickly after dispatch put out the code when the officer posted at the end of Dani’s driveway failed to respond to his radio. Dani told Phil as much as she could remember from the night, and he took notes.

  She’d been grateful when Tommy handed her her overnight bag, packed with pajamas, toothbrush, toothpaste, an assortment of skin care and hair products, and a few books to read in case she had trouble sleeping. She declined his offer of the guest room for a second night. He told her, as he drove her to the Peter Keeler Inn, that by tomorrow afternoon the cleanup crew he’d contacted would have her house looking as if nothing had happened.

  “Maybe when you feel ready, we can make a trip to IKEA and get you a new kitchen table,” he said.

  “How is it that you seem to know exactly what to do and say?” she asked him.

  “I’m just making it up,” he told her when they reached her room. “I think I’m going to talk to Carl tomorrow. Irene asked us if we could come in tomorrow morning. You think you’ll feel up to it?”

  “Hard to know,” she said.

  “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  “Thank you,” she told him. “You’ve been … kind of amazing.”

  “Have room service bring you some warm milk,” he said. “It’s over.”

  The next morning in Irene Scotto’s office, the DA asked Dani and Tommy how they were managing. Dani admitted that she’d been unable to fall asleep the night before.

  “If you need to take a week or two to clear your head, do,” Irene told her. “There’s a clinic in Maryland that specializes in treating PTSD in first responders. We learned that after 9/11. Nobody can walk around scooping up body parts and think they’re going to come out of it unchanged. You do what you have to do. I need you.”

  Phil and Stuart arrived and then Irene debriefed the case, making sure they had all the evidence in place. They had proof that Amos had altered his school’s security system video files. They found bottles of ammonium nitrate and zinc in his room, as well as traces of GHB and Rohypnol in his dresser drawer. Amos had borrowed a classmate’s computer to send incriminating e-mails to Julie, in which he’d explained the elaborate prank he wanted to play. One of the e-mails talked about how they were going to split the $10,000 and how they were going to spend their shares. Julie was going to save hers for college. The clothes the teenagers had worn the night of the party showed blood and DNA only on their shoes, but none anywhere else, consistent with Dani’s redaction of events. There was no evidence to suggest that Amos had acted in concert with anyone else. Logan was in on the prank but not the murder. Amos had planned and executed both the crime and the cover-up.

  And Amos was dead.

  Case closed.

  “So next,” Irene said, “I’ve got the kids from the party and their lawyers and their families waiting in the conference room down the hall. I asked Stuart to make me a list of any further charges we might file. Aiding and abetting. Obstruction. Thoughts?”

  Dani felt the need to speak up. She pointed out to the DA and everyone else that none of the kids had any recollection of what happened the night Julie was killed. She hoped they could leave it that way.

  “Amos wanted them to feel haunted,” Dani said. “He wanted them to feel stigmatized. He wanted to ruin their lives. If we release the names, we’re going to be carrying out Amos’s plan. Even if they’re innocent, they’ll always be associated with this. I don’t see the need.”

  “Agree?” Irene said. “Disagree?”

  “Agreed,” Phil and Stuart said in unison.

  “All right then,” Irene said, rising from her chair. “It stays where it is, with one exc
eption Stuart and I discussed. Dani, would you care to join me?”

  Dani accompanied Irene into the conference room, where the DA told the parents that all pending charges against their children had been dropped. Davis Fish barely acknowledged Dani’s presence. He told Irene that Andrew Gansevoort Sr. would be most grateful to hear the news about his son and would show his gratitude the next time Irene was holding a fund-raiser.

  “I appreciate that,” she said, handing Fish a letter-sized envelope. “When Logan gets back, tell him he’s been served for obstruction.”

  The next day the newspapers talked about “the Preppy Murderer.” Amos Kasden died while trying to escape police custody, according to the official report. Dani read an account in the New York Star, under the byline for Vito Cipriano, saying that part of the evidence, a strange occult symbol found on the victim’s body, had to be thrown out of court because of the bungling of young forensic psychiatrist Danielle Harris, who’d been assigned the case after her boss resigned.

  “It’s not fair,” Tommy told her, calling her on the telephone the next day after he’d read the article. “It’s my fault. I oughtta lock that fat bucket of lard in the sauna and leave him there until he melts into a puddle of grease and polyester.”

  “Let it go,” Dani told Tommy. “As long as it’s me and not the kids they’re looking at, I don’t care.”

  “I had a long workout with Liam this morning,” Tommy said. “I told him to take it out on the weights. He’s still pretty freaked out.”

  “He should talk to someone,” Dani said. “Or to me, if he wants to. But I’d think it would feel a little weird to have your old babysitter for a therapist.”

  “I already suggested Carl,” Tommy said. “Just as a friend. He has a way of saying really smart things and making you think you thought of them yourself. Liam started to cry when we were working out. I told him God gave us tears the same way he gave us laughter. All part of the same system.”

  “You’re a good trainer,” Dani said.

  “He needs to know he’s got people on his side,” Tommy said. “He also asked me if he could come to church with me on Sunday. I gather his mom and dad don’t see eye to eye on that subject.”

  “Claire hasn’t mentioned it to me,” Dani said.

  “How about you?” Tommy said. “You busy Sunday morning? I’ll buy you a nice new bonnet to wear.”

  “I’ll take a rain check,” Dani said. “I’m flying down to Maryland to talk to those PTSD specialists for first-responders Irene mentioned. I just can’t get to sleep. I keep seeing Amos’s face …”

  “When will you be back?” Tommy asked.

  “I don’t know,” she told him. “My reservation is for a week. It might not take that long … I just don’t know.”

  “You can always talk to me,” Tommy said.

  “I know I can,” Dani said, realizing that she’d never felt that way about a man before … a complete sense of trust, and the knowledge that someone saw her for who she really was. Even when she’d fallen in love with the brilliant chemist in Africa, she’d realized in hindsight that he’d loved talking about himself. She’d loved it too, loved how his mind worked, but he’d never shown as much interest in her as she’d shown in him. It occurred to her that Tommy was someone she could fall in love with, and perhaps she already was, except that falling in love was something she could not possibly think about until she straightened out everything else in her head. One thing at a time.

  “I’m counting on it,” she told him. “But right now I think I need somebody totally neutral. Somebody I can start from scratch with and see where it goes.”

  “I gotcha,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything while you’re gone. Call me when you get back.”

  She drove to the clinic the next day, where she talked about what had happened until she was tired of talking about it, and in doing so created her own narrative, which she could revisit or avoid according to her own free will. The counselors explained to her how it was common for policemen and firefighters and first responders to feel they were immune to the things normal people would be traumatized by, that part of their job was to suppress their feelings and do the difficult work and not let it get to them. One of her counselors had been one of the first American military personnel to visit the compound in Jonestown, Guyana, where 918 members of The People’s Temple had committed mass suicide at the behest of a madman named Jim Jones.

  “My job was to collect the remains,” the counselor said, “bodies of men and women and children, bloated by the sun … and I told myself I’d been trained for it, but nobody can be trained to handle something like that. Nobody’s that tough, so don’t try to be tough, Danielle, because tough doesn’t work.”

  She explored the supernatural elements of the case with her counselors, who told her that survivors of trauma often feel superstitious, pawns in a larger game, or blessed with extremely good luck. “People think, Why me? Why did I survive? Some think, I’ve been blessed—nothing can hurt me—I’m charmed. It’s completely normal to feel the way you do.”

  They were good, Dani thought. They helped her. She talked, and she listened, and she talked about her parents, and about Tommy, and then one night she was able to sleep. She slept the next night too. She felt back on track.

  She’d decided not to return any e-mails while she was in Maryland, but did respond to a text message from Tommy, who asked her how she was doing and when she’d be back.

  I WILL CALL YOU ON FRIDAY – FLYING INTO WHITE PLAINS MIDMORNING.

  FRIDAY,

  OCTOBER 29

  43.

  Dani had called and agreed to meet him for lunch, driving straight from the airport. In the week that she had been gone, a windstorm had blown all the leaves from the trees; their branches were bare and stark against a dark gray sky. While he waited for Dani at the Miss Salem Diner, Tommy stared out the window at the pouring rain, the kind of hard, steady autumn rain that knocked the leaves to the ground and beat them to pieces where they lay.

  The old cook was at the grill with his spatula and tongs, his apron tied behind his back. His daughter was at the cash register, trying to read a number in the phone book by holding it at arm’s length.

  Tommy had once considered buying the diner and putting a sign in the window that said Now Clean. Business would triple overnight.

  He wondered if Halloween was going to be rained out. The diner was decorated with artificial cobwebs and masks and pumpkins. Kids enjoyed being scared. If they only knew what there was to be frightened of, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t enjoy it quite so much.

  He saw Dani park her black BMW in the lot. She was wearing an orange North Face waterproof shell over an Irish cable sweater, jeans, and a pair of red rubber rain boots. Her hair was in a ponytail that stuck out the back of her Mets cap. She walked quickly from her car with her head down, splashing in the puddles. The waitress arrived at the booth the same time she did.

  Dani ordered a cheeseburger, a chocolate shake, and a side salad as she hung her coat from a hook at the end of the booth. Tommy ordered a bacon cheeseburger, onion rings, and a Diet Coke. They both ordered coffee.

  “It’s good that you’re watching what you eat,” Tommy said. “You’ve got the empty calories from the shake, and then the salad—balanced diet. Something healthy, something not. You look great, by the way.”

  “Great? I don’t think so,” she said. She sounded subdued, or maybe just tired. “But thank you. You’ll be pleased to know I started running again when I was in Maryland. I won’t be able to keep up with you, but it’s a start.”

  “If you want to go running together, I don’t mind a slow pace,” Tommy said.

  “We go off daylight savings next weekend, right?” she asked. “Spring forward, fall back. I never liked ‘fall back.’ It gets dark so early.”

  “I think of the song ‘What a Wonderful World,’” Tommy said. “Bright precious day, dark sacred night …”

  “That’s a good w
ay to look at it,” Dani agreed.

  “So this is checkin,” Tommy said. “How’re you doing?”

  “Better,” she said, stirring her coffee slowly. “I’m glad I took the time off.”

  “What did you talk about? I mean, I know what you talked about, but how did you talk about it?” he asked. “And tell me if I’m being too nosy.”

  She smiled. “They help you define your narrative until you take possession of it,” she told him. “Sorry if that sounds like psychobabble. It’s interesting how far we’ve come. Soldiers coming home from World War I with what the army called ‘shell shock’ were told not to think about the things that traumatized them, not to ever talk about it. They sent them to nursing homes and told them to paint pretty pictures of flowers. Now it’s the opposite. You talk about it until you can’t stand to talk about it anymore, and when you’re done you have a narrative that contains the trauma. A story you can choose to either tell or not tell. That oversimplifies it a little, but that’s the gist. How about you? Have you thought about it?”

  “I have,” Tommy said. “I met with Carl a couple of times. I know what you’re saying. But for me, it’s not like it was with Dwight Sykes.”

  “How is it different?” Dani asked.

  That had been the first question Carl had asked him. He’d given it a great deal of thought. He’d felt guilty, beyond terrible, for the macho posturing he’d done on the field after knocking the life out of Dwight Sykes. He’d been at a loss to explain why it had happened.

  “How do you feel about killing Amos?” Carl had asked.

  “Not good,” Tommy said. “But not terrible, frankly. He was going to kill Dani. He had to be stopped.”

  Carl had agreed.

  “With Dwight, I wondered why it happened,” Tommy told Dani. “It didn’t make any sense. But with Amos, I don’t have any doubts. I don’t feel any remorse. And I don’t think I should. Actually, the thing with Dwight helped me understand Amos. Did I ever tell you what happened? After the accident?”