He looked at us. We looked at him. Five cops, all with burning questions. But he wasn’t done yet. We didn’t want to stop his tale here. So we said nothing.
“She went to the car and started it and waited for Peg to come out. She waited for some time, it seems. She said that it seemed like a very long time. But she eventually became convinced that Peg wouldn’t come out. Then the door opened, and she saw him again. She backed the car out and drove away as fast as she could.”
Silence. “Where did she go?” asked Hester. I was proud of myself—somebody else asked before I did.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t think she is, either. But she eventually went to her friend’s house and called the police.”
“What friend?” I asked, jumping in ahead of Hal by about a tenth of a second.
“The neighbor lady, the one who wanted to join our group—Helen.”
“Helen Bockman?” I asked.
“Yes, I think Bockman is right. The one that Phyllis was playing with. Rachel knew her. One of the few people that Rachel knows in this area, I’m sure. And she had expressed an interest in us.”
“Yes.” Well, what do you know.
“She said that this Helen was very frightened and that she, Rachel, called the police from her house. She wanted to stay there, I think, but this Helen’s husband woke up, heard part of the phone conversation, and came out and unplugged the phone from the wall, to stop her from saying where she was. He was quite angry and told her that she had to leave. That they didn’t want to be involved at all.”
“Did she know who this man was, the one she thought was Satan?” asked Hal.
“She said not.” He thought for a second. “But I think she was lying.”
“You think she knew him?”
“I’m sure of it. She’d been seeing this man, if it’s the one I think it is, for a while. She’d said he communes with Satan often. That he has ‘used’ her for some time. Just the two of them used to go off together.” He took a sip of coffee. “I think he was the father of the child.”
“But you never knew him?” Hal.
“Never laid eyes on him.”
“Did she ever say what he looked like?” From Hester.
“She said he was very dark, very large. That he moved like a cat, very swift.”
“What does she mean by dark? Was he black?” I asked.
“No, no. Dark means evil. He was very evil.”
“Oh.”
“Do you know what she meant by very large?” I asked.
“Those aren’t her exact words. You have to know Rachel. What she said was something like ‘he was a tall dude,’ if I remember correctly,” he said dryly.
“No other description?”
“Well, yes, there was.” Traer actually giggled. “She’d said that he had a big dick … and that she could see it that night …”
“What?” said Hester.
“A big dick. You surely know what a dick is.”
“Yeah, I know. But how could she tell that?”
“That night or before?” Traer asked rhetorically. The look he got from Hester made me flinch, and it had missed me by a couple of feet. “I’m sorry, I must have forgotten to tell you. He was nude, you see.”
I looked at Hester. I couldn’t resist. “This could complicate a lineup …”
Traer looked at me. “You have a rather unique sense of humor … I like that.”
“I try to control it.”
“You shouldn’t. It makes it easier to talk.”
“So what did you do with Rachel, decide to hide her?” asked Hal.
“Of course not,” said Traer. “I was trying to confirm the incident, and I was trying to decide on the best course of action for her.”
“Big of you. Thinking of her like that,” Hal said.
“Not at all,” said Traer. “After all, I’m her attorney of record. I am constrained by my professional ethics to maintain a constant awareness of the best interests of my client.” He smiled.
“Unless it interferes with yours,” said Hester.
“What do you mean?” Traer asked.
“You give her up to help us get somebody off your ass.”
“Not at all … It is obviously in her best interests for her favorite attorney to continue to stay alive.” He grinned at me. “You’ll appreciate that.”
“I do,” I said, grinning. And thinking, alive in prison, you dummy. For quite a while. It was fascinating to see this man manipulated by his own ego.
“One more question?” said Hester.
“Surely.”
“What Rachel told you doesn’t exactly add up with what we know.” She looked at him for a moment, interested. “What makes you think she’s not lying to you?”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
Hester grinned. “Don’t be too sure. You middle-aged men are pretty easy.”
31
Monday, April 29
07:11 hours
By the time we got Traer back in his cell, everybody was looking tired, but nobody felt that way.
CRPD had notified us that they had Rachel Larsen in custody. Lamar had been notified and had decided to call Ed Yarnell out early and send him down for her. Ed would take his wife as matron. They would stop at the DCI office and pick up the fax of the Cleveland PD file. Things were falling into place.
We had found the key. Now it was just a matter of bringing her to the lock. Or so we thought. Everybody was sort of congratulating one another, and the mood was pretty euphoric.
“We’re on a roll again,” said Hal. “Let’s talk to Pastor Rothberg and his wife. They’ve got to be up by now.”
That settled things down a little. You have a tendency to set a sequence of goals in a case, and you sometimes get a little high when you achieve one of them. The reality of Rachel as a goal would settle out soon. She was just a step, but the only one we had been able to define for what seemed to be so long.
“Shouldn’t we get the file from Ohio first?” asked Hester.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Hal. “We have our energy up now, and the file should be here within an hour or two. We can use the fact that it’s coming to put a little pressure on him.”
“True,” said Saperstein. “We have most of the file data, anyway. Anticipation may well do us more good than the file itself.”
I thought about that. Yeah. The file is coming. Might be even better than “the file is right here” … yeah. If it’s coming, you don’t know what’s in it. When it’s here, it’s going to be a letdown.
“Lamar’s on his way in,” I said. “Let’s let him call it.”
That was reasonable, because hauling in a clergyman was going to be a sensitive sort of thing.
In the meantime, it was decided that I’d call the county attorney and explain it to him. I used the intercom to ask Sally to place the call, so it would be logged. Just in case. There was no answer at his residence. I knew he and his wife were joggers—may well be out. Good, maybe he wouldn’t be back before Lamar arrived at the office, and then Lamar could talk to him.
I went out to the kitchen to get my umpteenth cup of coffee, and on my way back through dispatch, Sally flagged me down.
“Phone call for you.”
It was Mark Fueller, county attorney. Sally’d left a message with his kid.
I picked up one of the phones in dispatch and told Fueller what was happening. This was the first time Sally had known much of the detail of the case, and I had her full attention, too. When I got to the part about interviewing Rothberg, I told Fueller all about the Cleveland file.
“Oh, my God. Are you sure?”
“About what?”
“About his connection,” said Fueller. “With the killer.”
“Well, as sure as we can be without talking to him.”
“Carl, this is pretty sensitive. Can it wait?”
“We don’t think so, but it will be cleared with Lamar as soon as he gets in.”
“Oh
, damn … let me think a second …”
I could hear one of his kids yelling in the background, and his wife admonishing to “get dressed or we’ll be late.” And here was Mark trying to make the decision to bring in the county’s best-known man of the cloth.
“Can’t it wait?”
“Jeeze, Mark, I don’t think so. The word is getting around, and we don’t want our suspect to get wise and skip. We don’t even know who he is yet.”
He thought for a few more seconds. “Okay, then, go ahead. But keep me posted. I’ll probably drop over after I check in at my office.”
He lived in a truly small town about fifteen miles from Maitland.
I went back to the main office, after swearing Sally to silence, and found that Lamar had come in.
“Well, the county attorney says go.”
“He does?” said Lamar.
“Just talked to him.”
“Well, then, I guess that’s what we do.” He turned to Hal. “Let me go with you in an unmarked car. Less attention that way.”
“Right,” said Hal. Lamar was in civvies. Monday is his day off, and he wasn’t supposed to be in.
I, on the other hand, was supposed to have been home hours ago. The specter of overtime was looming over my head. Well, comp time, actually. We didn’t get paid for OT.
“Okay if I stick around for this?” I asked Lamar.
“You bet,” he said on his way out the door.
I called Sue and told her I was all right but that I would probably be pretty late. She asked why, and I told her it had to do with the homicides. Tacit approval.
Lamar and Hal returned very quickly, with the Rothbcrgs following in their car. I watched them from the main office window. The Rothbergs were both wearing jogging outfits, and he put his arm around her as they walked to the door. Mutual support, I thought. We’d have to separate them for the interviews.
When they got inside, Lamar had them sit down and offered them coffee. They declined. He indicated Hal and said, “This officer has some questions to ask you.”
Hal was standing with his back to the filing cabinets, leaning against them. He looked long and hard at the Rothbergs and then began.
“We’ve got a lot of questions to ask you. A lot of them. First, I’m going to advise you of your rights according to Miranda.”
He did, asking them if they understood at each step. They did.
“Now,” he said, “I’m going to share some information with you before I ask you anything. I want you to think carefully about what I’m about to tell you, and not say anything until I’m done. Do you understand?”
They did.
“We’ve gotten information about a case in Cleveland, Ohio. About a homicide they had a few years back.”
The Rothbergs exchanged glances. Both of them, but particularly Betty, began to tense up.
“The case where your brother, Betty, committed suicide? The case where they suspect he was one of two perpetrators in the murder of three people?”
As instructed, the Rothbergs said nothing, but it was hard.
Hal told them about the similarities between the crimes, about the possible matchup with the suspect in both the Cleveland case and ours. About Mark Rothberg “counseling” a man who had been close to the suicide, according to his own statements. About the file from Cleveland being on the way to the office. He didn’t mention Rachel, or most of what happened with Traer.
“We believe the two suspects are the same man, and we believe that you know who he is, and where he is. We want to know.”
Silence.
“Do you have any questions?” asked Hester.
Silence.
“Do you want to make any statements?”
“I think,” said Mark Rothberg, “that we’d better talk to an attorney first.”
“Sure,” I said. “Do you have one in mind?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll just have to pick one at random,” said Lamar.
“That would be fine,” said Rothberg.
We had a list of attorneys posted on the wall. Lamar found the first one from Maitland, Edward Phelps. He called him.
“Mr. Phelps? This is Lamar Ridgeway, the sheriff. Look, we have two people up here that need an attorney right away … Yes, it’s a criminal case … No, it’s not like that at all … I know you don’t usually, but right now you’re going to have to … Yes, right away … No, not good enough. This is extremely important, and they need you right now … Thank you.” He hung up the phone. “He’ll be right up.”
I offered them coffee again. They accepted. Hester went for it, her turn.
I watched the Rothbergs sitting there in complete silence, both very self-possessed. Damn, I thought, this could drag on till noon tomorrow. They aren’t going to talk. They aren’t going to say a word. We’re going to bomb on this one for sure. Saperstein can’t bail us out on this one. And maybe we’re wrong. Maybe I’m wrong. The anxiety level was skyrocketing, and the acid in my stomach was about to burn through my ballistic vest.
Phelps drove up and walked toward the door. He looked like he was in a bad mood. Blue jeans and a plaid shirt. Jacket. No papers or briefcase. As he got closer, I could see his jaw muscles working. I opened the door for him.
“Good morning.”
“I think not.”
He stepped around the corner and saw the Rothbergs. “These people?” he asked, visibly astonished.
“The Rothbergs, yes.”
“What’s going on here?”
Hal told him. In the same detail he’d explained it to the Rothbergs.
“I’d like to confer with my clients in private.”
“Sure,” said Lamar, and opened the door to his private office. “In here. We have coffee, if you like, and I’m going to go get some doughnuts.”
The three of them disappeared into his private space.
They were in there for a long time.
“You wanna go on home?” Lamar asked me.
“Oh, I think I’ll stick around for a while, if it’s okay with you.”
“Don’t forget you gotta work tonight.”
“I won’t.”
Lamar went for doughnuts. The rest of us sat around, making small talk and waiting. Lamar came back. We ate. We waited, and then waited some more. The momentum was going out of the case fast. Fatigue began to set in with all of us, and boredom.
I finally sat down, put my feet on a desk, and leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. The doughnuts were absorbing some of the acid, but I had popped some Rolaids, anyway. Relax, I said to myself. Just relax.
I must have dozed off, because I was suddenly aware of a minor commotion. Ed and his wife had arrived with Rachel and the fax file.
I’d never seen Rachel before, but she looked shot to me. She appeared very small, in a large green quilted jacket, with a red stocking cap on her head. Set off by handcuffs on her wrists, in front of her. Rumpled, disheveled, and very lonely. Our witness.
“Folks,” said Ed, “I’d like you to meet Rachel.”
“Hello, Rachel,” said Hester. Nobody else said anything.
Neither did she.
Ed handed Hal the fax file and had him sign a receipt for it. It was thick. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it, but DCI had dibs.
“Why am I under arrest?” said Rachel. Out of the blue.
“Did you read the warrant to her?” Lamar asked Ed.
“Yes, I did.”
“Then you know why,” said Lamar.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” said Rachel. Flat, but convinced.
“Well, you just let us worry about that,” said Lamar.
“I don’t know where you got your information,” said Rachel, “but somebody’s lying to you. That’s all I have to say.”
Flat, again. Not angry. She was reciting.
Just then the door opened, and Attorney Phelps and the Rothbergs came out of Lamar’s office. Rachel saw them and just exploded.
> “God damn you, can’t you leave me alone!”
Betty Rothberg looked like she’d been slapped. Mark’s jaw actually dropped.
“You fuckers! I should have known it was you!” Rachel whirled on Lamar. “Get my fucking sister out of here!” she screamed. “Get her out of here!”
Pandemonium. Rachel turned for the door and tried to leave the building. Ed grabbed her, and she started kicking him. I went to help Ed, while Betty Rothberg started yelling, “Rachel, Rachel!” and came running toward us. Hal intercepted her, and Mark Rothberg was yelling at the same time about “whore, whore of Satan!” The fax file flew off the counter and onto the floor, Hester jumped up and spilled her coffee. Sally, who was just ending her shift, and was coming down the hall, jumped back as Ed and I went waltzing through with Rachel, who was doing everything she could to bite my arm. It was a very busy ten seconds.
I finally wrapped my arms around Rachel’s waist from behind and just picked her up off the floor and carried her back to the office. Hester had her hand on Betty’s chest, stiff-armed, and was backing her toward Lamar’s office. Hester and Hal had turned their attention to Mark Rothberg and were shutting him down in the corner. Lamar grabbed Rachel’s flying feet as I walked by, and we laid her down on the desk. Saperstein was looking very amused, and Attorney Phelps looked like he wished he’d been a lit major.
Ed reached around me and grabbed Rachel’s hair, holding a large handful firmly on the desk surface. She went inert. Hester had pushed Betty back into a chair, and Mark was holding his hands at chest level, palms outward, and saying, “I’m sorry, I apologize.”
A few seconds later, I realized that we were mopping up Hester’s spilled coffee with Rachel, so I sat her up and told her to be quiet. She just nodded.
Everybody sort of caught their breath.
Sally cautiously poked her head into the office.
“You need anything else before I go home?” Big grin.
Hal picked up the fax file, straightened it out, and looked at Betty Rothberg. He was still breathing hard. “So … Rachel’s your sister?”
Betty nodded, and tears began to run down her cheeks.
Eleven Days Page 24
