“Did she tell you that you were set up? That she did it?”
“How did you know?”
“Because I saw her yesterday afternoon and told her that she had to tell you or I would.”
He nodded sadly. “I asked her straight up why she did it. She told me that I knew why.”
“Did you?” I found that if I focused entirely on Haley’s face, the room dimensions remained stable and I was able to function.
He looked down at his hands and after a moment twisted his wedding ring. “Selena was complicated. Her grandfather was a monster. The longer we were together, the more those issues came between us.”
The lawyer cleared his throat and spoke. “One thing that I know about murder inquiries is, they tend to uncover layers of secrets. If there are issues that you think may be relevant, this is the time to air them. Before the prosecution finds them.”
I gave the guy credit for loosening up enough to see that I really was trying to help and that Haley’s full cooperation might be key.
Haley stared at him as though trying to read his mind. Then he seemed to make a decision. “Our marriage was in trouble for a very long time.” He stumbled over the last couple of words and stopped. When he began again, he spoke very quietly. “Early on, she was very into me. I mean, she was very into sex with me.” His temples flushed a deep red. He was blushing. It was both funny and touching and it made me believe that I was hearing the truth. “Anyway, it was great. I’d always had an easy time with women, but this was something else. We were living in Cambridge after grad school. Things began to go wrong, though, as soon as we moved back here. I didn’t put it together for a long time. I blamed her drinking, but that was just another symptom, not a cause.”
I had been married to a drunk also. It’s an ugly word, an ugly way to describe someone you love, but if you’ve lived through it, you know just how accurate it is.
“Meanwhile, you’re trying to start a business together.”
“We never had any problem working together. I set up the lab, Selena worked her contacts, put together a board, began exploring future distribution avenues.”
“But?” I stifled a sneeze. Someone had once told me that you can’t sneeze with your mouth closed. They were wrong, you can. But you can just about give yourself a concussion. My eyes were already seeing strange patterns in the air from the migraine; now I had added butterflies and spinning stars.
“Eventually, she moved back to Park Avenue. There were just too many ghosts at that house.”
I concentrated and forced my brain back on track. “We’re back to the grandfather?”
He nodded.
“Was it abuse?” I asked.
He looked up in surprise.
“A guess,” I said.
He looked down again and spoke to his hands. “It was rape.”
“When did you find out?”
He shook his head to dispel a cloud of ugly images that all of us could see. “Last night. She told me last night.” A single tear ran down his cheek.
“Jesus Christ!” the lawyer said, blowing up his patrician reserve in one explosive breath. “You were married to her for fifteen years and she never told you?”
“I was a bastard to her. When she stopped sleeping with me, I blamed the booze and gave myself permission to sleep with anyone I chose.”
“But eventually you came back,” I said.
“She promised to stop drinking.”
“How many times?” I’d heard the same line from Angie, but never when she was drinking. Only when she was hungover or sick with remorse about the fight the night before.
“It worked for a while.”
“This was after the affair with what’s-her-name, the actress?”
He sat straighter and pulled his shoulders back. “Jo Harris. I take full blame on that, and I earned it, but I did not break up a marriage. There never was one. It was all image. The two of them hardly ever slept together. Their marriage was cooked up by publicists and agents. Give it another year or two and the Hollywood machine will start working and they’ll be reconciled and remarried and People will pay them a few million for exclusive pics of the wedding.”
“The pregnancy?”
“That was real.”
“And that’s what your wife couldn’t forgive.”
“Selena couldn’t have children.”
“Finish the story. What happened last night?” I said. “Did she tell you how the setup worked? Who helped her?”
He shook his head. “She was barely intelligible. We screamed at each other for a while and I left.”
I was sure that I knew who her accomplice was, but until I had proof I wasn’t prepared to say anything.
“What time did you leave?” I asked.
“Ten, maybe.”
“And she was alive?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“We had run out of ugly things to say—the fight was getting repetitive. I got in the car and left.”
“Who found her?”
“I don’t know.”
The lawyer answered. “Security. The housekeeper heard two people—a man and a woman—arguing on the rear porch.”
“No one heard a shot?” I said.
“The gun could have had a suppressor.”
“What’s the timeline? When was this?”
“Just before midnight,” he said.
“So where were you at midnight?” Turning back to Haley.
“Sitting on my boat—at the dock—trying to decide whether to go back home or go get drunk.”
“Anyone see you? A watchman, maybe?”
“I doubt it. And it was coming down sleet, snow, and rain. I stayed down below.”
“Below? The boat has a downstairs?” The boat that Penn bought for his son had at least three levels.
“A cabin,” he said.
“How long were you there?”
“I don’t know. Until twelve-thirty or so. One, maybe?”
My throat was on the verge of giving out. The rasp was getting noticeably worse, and I could feel another giant sneeze building. “That’s a long time to be just thinking about it.”
“I had a lot to think about.”
“Okay.” I stopped and did a preventative nose blow. The nose still tingled, but I had deferred the explosion. “Tell me about the security at the house. The camera at the front gate. It must show you leaving three hours earlier.”
“It also shows another car coming in and leaving again later on,” the lawyer said.
That was the first bit of good news for our client.
“Have you seen the tape?” I asked the lawyer.
“No. I called out there and spoke to Carl Jenkins. He’s head of security.”
“How would anyone get in? Don’t you have to be buzzed in by security?”
“Not if you have the code. It changes daily,” Haley said. “But there are only four people on the distribution list. Selena, me, my secretary, and Jenkins. Anyone else needs to be cleared every time.”
“All the staff?”
“Jenkins keeps security tight.”
Not tight enough. But that wasn’t the time or the place to start explaining how my friend, Dr. Benjamin McKenna, was exploring all the loopholes in the system. “How is the code delivered?” I said.
“Email.”
“So any one of you could have been hacked.” I turned to the lawyer. “I hope you’re taking notes. I can see alternative versions of the crime heading in at least eight different directions.”
“I will pass all of this on. Any one of them could have added someone else to the distribution list,” the lawyer said.
“Your wife could have let her killer in,” I said.
Haley broke. He gave out a single strangled sob and then
began to cry again. The lawyer and I sat back and took turns staring at the ceiling until Haley pulled himself together.
“Can you get a call to this Jenkins?” I said. “I’ll want to go out and talk to him and he won’t see me without your say-so.”
Haley looked to the lawyer.
“Here,” he said, reaching into his briefcase, “use my phone.”
I left them there, dialing the security guy. A deep, phlegm-filled, angry cough caught up with me halfway down the hall. I wanted to be back in bed.
29
For once, the traffic behaved. I pushed the little rental until it was on the verge of lifting off, bouncing over every seam on the highway.
“Virgil, I’m on my way out to talk to security at Haley’s house.” I had my iPhone plugs in with the little microphone built into the wire.
“Who is this?”
Sometimes the mic worked better than others. I pulled the wire around in front of my mouth, wondering if this still counted as “hands-free.”
“It’s Jason Stafford. I need you to do something for me.”
“You sound terrible.”
“It’s just a cold.”
“How’s Haley?”
“A bit of a shipwreck. He answered some questions, some of them a bit vaguely, but he was adamant he didn’t do it.”
“Did he do it? What do you think?”
“I’ll know more after I talk to security out at the house. But I think he’s got a chance at pointing the finger elsewhere. While I’m out here, have one of your people check on Charles Penn. Where was he last night between, say, nine and midnight?”
“I can’t just call up Chuck Penn and ask him where he was when Selena Haley was getting murdered.”
“No. I was hoping you could be a touch more subtle than that. Give it some thought.”
I clicked off before he thought of any more reasons why he couldn’t do it. I stopped at a drugstore on the way and loaded up on cough drops and tissues, pretty much guaranteeing that I would start getting better immediately and not need any of it. I sucked on a mentholated Ricola and put a few more in my pocket.
There was a mashed mound of gray and black fur at the side of the road, a quarter mile or so before the turn to Haley’s house. Raccoon. We’d have them occasionally in Montauk. They would find a way to scramble over the fence, defecate in the pool and all over the slate walk, and screech horribly at each other—whether in anger or in lust, I had no idea. They always made me wish I owned a shotgun and had the heart to use it.
—
“Jenkins!” I yelled at the disembodied voice at the gate. “It’s Stafford. Let me in.”
“Who do you wish to see?” the implacable voice said.
“Is this Carl Jenkins?”
“You wish to speak with Mr. Jenkins?”
“Listen up, sport. I’m a bit rushed. Tell Jenkins that Jason Stafford is here, then let me in. I’ll give you three minutes before I drive through the gate. It’s a rental, so I’m not afraid to try.”
“One minute.”
He was as good as his word. The gate started moving and an older, tougher voice came from the invisible speakers. “Take the first right. I’m down at the guardhouse.”
—
The guardhouse was obviously what would have been called the gatekeeper’s cottage in times long gone by. It was a whimsical concoction of deeply slanted slate roofs, a crenellated square tower, lead-paned windows, and a heavy wooden door that I half expected to lower down on chains, rather than swing open on wrought iron hinges.
A heavyset man in a khaki uniform and a Sam Browne belt, with a holstered black Glock on one side and a handheld radio on the other, greeted me at the door. It was the man I had seen riding the golf cart on my first visit. Without the mirrored sunglasses, his eyes looked watery and a little sad.
“I’m Jenkins. Mr. Haley called. No need to push your way in, you were expected.”
“It’s an old habit.” That would have to do for an apology. Impatience is not always a bad trait for a trader. A bit of push is often needed to get something done—and expected. But it doesn’t always travel well to the outside world.
Inside, the cottage had been reduced to an architectural style more akin to functional minimalism. There was nothing quaint about it. The walls and ceiling were a neutral gray—the gray you would expect to find on an aircraft carrier. Two metal desks faced a wall of television monitors. The images changed every ten seconds, showing different views of the property and the lab from varying heights and perspectives both indoors and out. Computer keyboards—one on each desk—were there to override the automatic changes.
A younger man, almost painfully overmuscled, wearing a similar khaki uniform with the same accoutrements, sat at the far desk. He looked away from the monitors and gave me a quick nod of acknowledgment. Not exactly hostile, but not far from it, either.
“I was in the can,” Jenkins said, sounding only slightly aggrieved.
TMI. “Show me your system and tell me anything you can about last night.”
Two hundred forty cameras located at various points around the property and in the buildings gave a continuous feed to a bank of computers. The system was wireless, which occasionally caused problems due to severe weather, electronic interference, or even sunspot activity. The images were reviewed by a filter program. All images with no movement were immediately sent to a trash file that was automatically dumped. All images that showed movement of any kind went through a second filter to remove leaves falling, rain or snow, wind blowing treetops, and animate objects too small or too slow to be deemed a threat, like squirrels or birds. Everything else was reviewed by a human eye.
“That’s the biggest part of the day. Going over the tapes. There are deer on the property. We pick them up all the time. But the only time we hit save is when there is something unusual.”
“Show me.”
He opened a file. “Here’s Mrs. Haley arriving yesterday. That’s unusual in itself. She doesn’t get out here very often.”
I watched as a light-colored Porsche convertible stopped at the gate and paused. It was almost dark and a light mist was falling. A moment later, the gate swung back and the car proceeded.
“How did she open the gate? Did anyone speak to her?”
“We don’t need to. There’s a code for Mr. and Mrs. Haley. Fay, the housekeeper, gets one, too. And me. Oh, and Mr. Haley’s secretary. My staff. A couple of the senior technicians at the lab, in case they’re working early or late. Each one is different, so we can keep track of who’s on the grounds.”
And any one of whom could have shared their code with another party. No matter how good the technology, it still required humans to operate it—and make exceptions to each and every rule. And Haley’s belief that only four people had a code each day was a fond delusion.
Jenkins was still talking. “The codes change every day. It’s set up as an app. You plug in the eight digits on a smartphone and the gate opens.”
The lock was about as effective at keeping out the unwanted as a doorknob.
“So that could have been anyone in her car. You never saw her face.”
“That’s the way she wanted it.”
“Did she ever give the code out? I mean to friends or delivery people.”
He looked uncomfortable. “When we first installed the system. Mr. Haley spoke to her about it.”
I took that as a yes. “Finish about last night.”
He raced through the file, stopping again a minute later. “Here’s Mr. Haley leaving.” The bottom of the screen had the time and date. A few minutes after ten, a black sedan exited the gate. Though it was lit from a spotlight above, it was hard to make out the make or model. It was raining harder, and the car splashed through a small puddle as it turned out onto the main road.
“And how do you know that
’s him?”
“That’s his car.”
It was most likely his car, but you couldn’t have proved it by the images that I was looking at.
“All right. Keep going.”
“An hour later.” Headlights flickered in the darkness and a large automobile turned into the drive. The overhead spotlight went on, revealing the distinctive front grille of a Rolls-Royce. There was a vague shape behind the wheel, but whether man, woman, or chimpanzee, it was impossible to see. The gate opened.
“Whose code did he use?”
“Mr. Haley’s.”
“Now, that’s very interesting.”
“The police thought so.”
“They would. Can you get the license plate?”
“Not from this angle. The camera can get it, but the light’s too high.”
“Why not lower the light?”
“It would blind the driver.”
“Really?”
“According to Mrs. Haley.”
“What do you say?”
“I say it’s her house. The camera picks up all the license plates during the day. There’s not much traffic at night. Mostly Mr. Haley. Sometimes one of the lab techs stays late, but not many people coming in.”
“They don’t have guests? Parties? No one stops by to say hello?”
“Mrs. Haley is hardly ever here. Mr. Haley is either working or out on his boat.”
“Back to the files. Who else have you got coming in?”
“No one. We’ve got the Rolls leaving an hour or so later and that’s it, until the police arrived.”
“When was that?”
“First car arrived at eleven forty-two. The shift supervisor called them at eleven thirty-five.”
“Nice fast response time.”
“They don’t skimp on police in this part of the world.”
“Who found the body?”
“The shift supervisor. He was going through the evening’s files before end of shift and found a glitch.”
“What was that?”
“The cameras along the cliff were all in and out of service for a couple of hours. It could have just been the weather, but he went out to check.”
Long Way Down Page 17
