Code 61 ch-4

by Donald Harstad

  “She didn't see it coming?” asked Hester.

  Darcy shook her head. “It was her mother. Well. It was, and she just always loved her mother, regardless. She just couldn't stand her, you know?”

  Hester nodded.

  “And then the lawsuit started, for custody of Shanna,” said Darcy. “It's still going on, as far as I know.” She thought for a second. “I suppose it's not, is it? Not now. It's finally over.”

  Darcy then told us what she knew about the “older man.”

  “She met him after she moved into the Mansion,” she said. “Edie thought that was such a nice place, and there was no rent, so she could save and get Shanna back in a year or so.”

  She said that Edie met him at a party thrown by the owner.

  “You sure it was the owner?” I asked.

  “Yes, that's what she told me. The Hunley woman, the dancer, from over by Chicago. She needed house-sitters.”

  That would have been Jessica, all right.

  “Edie told me that he was an unusual man.” Darcy looked at Hester. “He was a very strong personality. Very sophisticated. Well educated. She thought he was very upper class. You must understand that. She was just enthralled with that. She was in love with him, I think. But she was afraid of him, too. Well. He was into some strange things. Very personal, but spooky, strange things.”

  “Like what?” I was hoping, I guess.

  Darcy pursed her lips, and then said, “Well, I suppose it doesn't matter. Not now. Well. She said that he liked to tie her up sometimes, and liked to, uhm, well, drink her blood. Just a little.” By the time she'd ffnished, a blush had crept up from her neck to the lower part of her face.

  Son of a bitch. I said it, in fact. “Sonofabitch” sort of all came out as one word. I startled Darcy, so I apologized. I didn't explain.

  “What was his name?” asked Hester.

  “Dan,” said Darcy.

  “Dan who?” I asked.

  “Peale,” she said.

  “How do you spell that?” Hester asked what turned out to be the best question of the day.

  “D-a-n,” she said, “P-e-a-l-e.” She paused. “Daniel, actually, I think.”

  “You're sure?” I asked.

  “Yes. I have it in a letter, somewhere. Wait… No, I don't, it was on my old computer, and I got rid of that when I got my laptop.” Darcy shrugged apologetically. “But she did write it. And that's the way it was spelled. He's from England, somewhere around London, I think.”

  I looked at Hester. London?

  “London? England?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. Didn't I say that earlier?”

  “Uh, no. No, you didn't. You said something about 'upper class,' but not English.”

  “Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Houseman. Yes, English. Edie thought he might be sort of incognito. Yes. She thought he might be a nobleman or something.”

  “Any idea why?” Hester asked. “Any evidence to suggest that?”

  “Just the way he behaved,” she said.

  “Ah,” said Hester. “Did Edie have any experience that would help her tell that?”

  “No,” said Darcy. “Well. Just movies, I guess.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Oh, God,” said Darcy.

  It turned out that she was feeling especially guilty since she and Edie had grown apart. She felt that she let herself be romanced, as she put it, away from her old friend by college and then her job.

  “It was just circumstance,” said Hester. “Different paths, and her child and everything. And you just grew apart.” She sounded so wistful, I began to think that she was speaking from experience.

  We gave Darcy our cards, and told her to call us if she either discovered or remembered anything we might want to know.

  The upshot was that if my conversation with Knockle had been good luck, our talk with Darcy had been serendipity.

  Hester and I decided to leave as soon as we could gracefully get out. I was really eager to get to the office and run Daniel Peale through the system in both the U.S. and U.K.

  As we worked our way to the main entrance, I noticed that Melissa and Hanna were still occupied in their small room, and that Toby and Kevin were still talking to the two friends who had come in with Darcy.

  Huck was standing by herself, looking intently at a nondescript oil painting of some idyllic countryside, with horses and birds. The visual equivalent of elevator music. I think she'd turned her back to avoid the hostility emanating from most of the other mourners. I stopped beside her.

  “Ugliest painting I ever saw in my life,” I said.

  She turned, and actually smiled. “You got it.”

  “You be coming right down to the office?”

  She looked over her shoulder toward Toby and Kevin. “We're all in the same car. When the boys”-and she inflected the word disparagingly-“get done trying to score with typically quiet grace, we'll have to take Hanna back, and then maybe we can come on down.”

  That could take a while, and I really wanted to keep going with Huck, and not give her much opportunity to reflect and withdraw, or to support the others.

  “You could ride down with us, so we can get started,” I said. “They could pick you up at our office.”

  “That sounds all right, actually,” she said. “If you can give me a few minutes to say good-bye to some people.”

  I found Hester again, passing by Toby and Kevin, who were still hitting on Darcy's friends. I idly wondered how their efforts would be rewarded after Darcy talked with her buddies.

  I told Hester about the plan to take Huck with us, and she thought it was a pretty good idea. We wanted to catch the reaction of Toby, Kevin, Melissa, and Hanna when Huck told them she was going with us, so we used the old cop trick of facing one another and making small talk. That way, each of us could see about half the room, and yet appear to be looking at each other.

  “At about your five o'clock position,” said Hester. “William Chester just approached Huck.”

  “Really… ”

  “Don't look. They seem to be talking.”

  “Does it look like he knows her?” That would be interesting.

  “I don't know. He seems to be doing most of the talking.” Hester paused. “Whoa, she just took a really fast step back. He's moving closer… ”

  I couldn't wait. I turned, just as Huck backed up one more step, quickly, abruptly, almost into the wall behind her. Her eyes were wide, and she looked startled and frightened.

  I was beside Chester in three or four fast steps. “Mr. Chester,” I said softly, “why do I see you everywhere I go?”

  He'd been speaking pretty intensely to Huck, and it took him a second to change directions. “What? Oh, Deputy… uh, Heightman?”

  “Houseman. Remember what I told you? About licenses? Hunting?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. But I think you should know some things.”

  “Then I suggest you look me up back at the sheriff's department in about three hours.”

  “Fine,” he said. He started to turn back to Huck.

  “I'll arrange for a ride. Until then,” I said, “I'm afraid this young lady is committed to talking to me right now.” I glanced at Huck. “Are you ready to go?”

  She sure was. I extended my right arm between her and Chester, and gestured toward Hester with my left. “Why don't you go over there?”

  As she brushed by me, I turned back to Chester. “Look,” I said, as pleasantly as I could, “she's a potential witness. I can't have you bothering her. What on earth did you say to her, anyway?”

  He shrugged. “It's of no consequence to you.”

  “Don't get cute.”

  “Right. Look, Deputy, I don't mean to interfere with the secular authorities on this. Really I don't.”

  When someone who's not ordained starts calling me “secular,” I get nervous. “I'd really suggest you not bother anyone else here. There are several cops present, out of uniform. I'll pass the word to keep an eye on you.”

 
; “I can talk to whom I wish.”

  I figured I might as well be a complete hypocrite. “This is a funeral home, for God's sake.”

  I snagged Knockle as we were headed out the door, and gestured toward Chester. “Get that son of a bitch,” I whispered, “back to the office in about three hours. If he can, let him rent a car. If not, you bring him.”

  “Sure, Carl,” he whispered back.

  “In the meantime, get his sorry ass out of here before he causes trouble. He resists, bust him, but do it very quietly. Got it?”

  “Sure.”

  “And try to steal me a cookie, before you go.”

  As we got to the door, I half whispered to Hester, “You know? This has got to be the most interesting wake I've ever been to.”

  “Glad you had a good time, Houseman, you ghoul.”

  The media were still outside, of course. I spoke to Huck, who was right with us. “Engage us in conversation as we go by the news people. Don't laugh or anything, but make it look as if you ride with us every day.” I was glad I'd switched to my old unmarked car. No cage for prisoners.

  She nodded. “Think they'll notice anything wrong?”

  I looked at her black hair, black lips, and black nails.

  “Nah. We'll get by 'em with the least fuss.” I thought she looked a little green around the gills. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she said. “I'm fine.”

  When we got to the car, the first thing Huck said when she got in back was, “You always have this much crap in your car?”

  Hester turned around and said, “I think he cleaned it last month. You should see it when it's really cluttered.”

  I picked up my mike. “Comm, Three.”

  “Three, go.” It was Sally.

  “Three and I-486 ten-eight, ten-seventy-six S.O., ten-sixty-one one female subject.”

  “Ten-four, Three ten-eight, ten-seventy-six. 17:42.”

  Just to reassure Huck, I turned to the backseat, and said, “That meant that Hester and I are back in the car, that we're en route to the sheriff's office, and that we have one noncop female person with us.”

  “Oh.”

  “And she said okay, and repeated that we were headed in that direction in case any other officer needs to know that, and then said the time, to let anybody else know that she was done talking to me and that the channel was clear.” I always do that, when I have a passenger. They like to know.

  As I pulled away from the curb, Hester asked Huck to hand her my camera bag, which was sitting among the other debris in the backseat. When she got it, she rooted around for a minute, and produced my bag of Oreo cookies.

  “Cookie?” she asked Huck.

  We all had one.

  “You guys,” said Huck, with her mouth half full of Oreo, “travel in style.”

  The ice broken, Hester turned to the backseat. “What did William Chester have to say?”

  “Was that the last dude I talked to?”

  “Yes.”

  “That man is weird. Really. Scary weird. He said that I was going to have to atone for all the evil, and that he would see that I went back to my grave.”

  “No shit?” Hester sounded angry.

  “Yeah.” She paused. “You happen to know what he does for a living?”

  “He hunts vampires, as far as I can tell,” I said.

  I could see Huck in the rearview mirror as she hugged herself, as if she were very cold. “Yeah. That's kinda what he said he did.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Monday, October 9, 2000

  18:45

  We got Huck to the office and interviewed her at length. She seemed to be in that semi-euphoric state you reach after some heavy emotions, and was pretty frank and cooperative.

  I'd given the new spelling of Daniel Peale to Sally as soon as we got in the door. She produced the basics in a few seconds. I put on my reading glasses, and read the descriptors to Huck.

  “Okay, closest one we get, from the national computers, is this.” I held up the torn-off perforated sheet. “It says here that Daniel Gordon Peale is a white male, thirty-five, six feet one, one eighty-three pounds, black and brown.” I glanced up. “That would be black hair and brown eyes.” I purposely left out the address information and put the paper down. “That sound like him?”

  “Yes it does.” She mused, “Gordon? Gordon. Never knew that.”

  “And… we have a black '96 Lexus, and a green '81 Dodge four-door. Ever seen either of these cars?”

  “He doesn't own cars here,” she said. “He either gets a rental car when he gets into O'Hare, or we go pick him up in Dubuque when he gets a commuter connection.” In answer to the question of who transported him, she said that it was often Toby, and sometimes Kevin. This last time it had been Toby.

  “Why does he fly?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said, “it's a really long swim from London.”

  “London?” asked Hester.

  “Well, yeah. He's an Englishman, after all.” Huck looked perplexed.

  “How about this,” I said. “He lives in Moline, Illinois.”

  “Oh, no,” said Huck. “No, that's not the right man. Dan lives in London. England.”

  “Well,” I said, trying to sound immensely competent, “we'll check that.” I picked up the phone and got Sally. “I need a really fast check, U.K., London. For the same dude. Dan Peale.”

  “This one is gonna cost you big,” said Sally. “How soon is really fast?”

  “Five or ten minutes or less.”

  “Shit, Houseman… I can't be any quicker than the machines. Okay. Lemme see what I can get… ” And her voice trailed off as she began concentrating. I hung up.

  “So,” I said, “while we check that out, what can you tell us about Dan Peale?”

  Even now, Huck was a little reluctant. I honestly think that it was William Chester who had disturbed her the most. Well, with a boost from seeing Edie in her coffin, and the death of Randy Baumhagen. But Chester had dropped in a dollop of fear from an unknown and unexpected source. I decided it was time to push her over the top.

  “Oh,” I said, almost as an afterthought. “Before you start, did you know that Alicia Meyer was reported missing last night, over in Conception County?”

  “What?” said Hester. “When did we get that?”

  “That's what Byng was telling me up at the funeral home,” I said, watching Huck. “I was interrupted just as I was going to tell you.”

  Huck took a deep breath, and said, “I can't go with this. Not anymore. This is just so over. So damn over.”

  We both looked at her expectantly.

  “What is it you want? All the sordid little details, I suppose. Right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I'm afraid so. Start wherever you need to.”

  At that point, Sally knocked at the door, stuck in her head and one arm, and held out a computer printout. “For you.”

  I was impressed.

  I read it to Hester and Huck.

  “This is from a computer search, done at our request, by the Metropolitan Police, London. City Directory. There is no such person as Daniel Peale, Dan Peale, or D. Peale in all of North London.” I handed the sheet to Hester. “Not one single one, Huck,” I said.

  After a second, Hester handed the printout to Huck.

  She looked at the sheet for some time, then handed it to me and said, “He has an English accent. He may not live in London itself… ”

  “We're checking with Scotland Yard on that,” I said. “I'm afraid it looks like he's an American, though.” I put the sheet down on my desk. “Anyway, while we wait, what else do you know about him?”

  “Well, he's from England… ” and she gave a forced smile. “At least, that's what I was told, anyway. He visits us along with Jessica about three or four times a year. He's Jessica's guest, not ours.” She dropped her voice. “Lately, he's been showing up maybe every other month, when she's not along. She doesn't know about that, I think. Well, didn't.”

 
As she talked, any reticence disappeared, and she began divulging some of the more sordid details about the Mansion.

  For example, Huck thought Daniel Peale had been sexually active with all the young women in the house, and she thought maybe he'd had sex with Toby as well. No real surprises there, but I was rather startled that she was starting off with these details.

  “Everybody up there's poly, you know? But he's the full-time lover of Jessica Hunley,” she said. “She owns him, like.”

  Blow me down. So to speak. I had to nail down just one term.

  “Poly? Poly what? Sexual?”

  That elicited a smile. “Polyamorous. You can love more than one person at a time.”

  “Okay.” You have to be sure. “But he's mostly Jessica's full-time lover?”

  “He is as far as she's concerned. She was really pissed off that he was there without her this time,” she said, “because he's not supposed to do that.” She tossed her hair. “They've been down that road before. I've never heard a screaming match like that one.”

  “Anybody get hurt?” asked Hester.

  “Well,” she said, “they both had a little blood on them after… but they're into that anyway.”

  “Violence?” I picked the one that was easiest for me to handle.

  “Nope. Blood.”

  Blood games were something I'd heard about, but had never encountered in more than twenty years of police work. One of the things I'd enjoyed about working in the rural areas. As it turned out, everybody that Dan Peale had relations with ended up donating a little blood to his fetish.

  “How about Jessica?” asked Hester. “Does she sleep with everybody up there?”

  “Well, I don't know about Toby, maybe some heavy snogging, but he told Kevin that she only screwed him once, and I think she was a little higher then than she usually lets herself get, you know? A little carried away. Anyway, it made Toby's whole year, but she never did him again. I know that Kevin did her a few times, about a year ago. Then she dumped him, and she just never came back for more.” She smiled wickedly. “I like to bring that up once in a while, when he gets obnoxious in bed.” She found her thread again. “But to answer your question, yes, she drew a bit of blood from him.” She shrugged. “Jessica and I got into a smoochy phase for a while, too. It happens.”