Red Herring

by Archer Mayor

  Their eyes interlocked, Joe merely nodded.

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you about my mother when you first asked,” Elise continued. “I had to be sure in my mind that Mary hadn’t done the same thing.”

  “But I told you she’d been murdered,” he protested, his voice very quiet.

  “The police tell people all sorts of things,” she countered gently.

  He was slightly taken aback, less because of the truth of her comment than because of her being the one uttering it. In his mind, he’d always seen her as the more sheltered of the two women. But sheltered obviously didn’t mean ignorant, and given what she’d just said, she clearly wasn’t that.

  “Why did you call me now?” he asked.

  “Because of the second thing I avoided,” she confessed, her voice beginning to tremble and her eyes to glisten. “I found Mary just as I’d found my mother. At that moment, when I walked into that room, I asked myself what the message was. It lasted only a second, maybe less, before all the rest came caving in—the panic, trying to lift her, being overtaken by grief, now all this numbness. But when you asked me if someone had been trying to get to me by doing that to her . . .”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “Who do you think it was?” he asked, his body tense with anticipation.

  But she disappointed him. Tears now flowing freely down her pale cheeks, she exclaimed, “I don’t know, but don’t you see? It had to have been somebody who knew me, knew my history, knew that my mother had used herself to guide me away from my father.”

  “Is that something you’ve always kept a secret?” Joe asked hopefully.

  Again, she let him down, shaking her head. “No. Mary thought I should tell people whenever appropriate, so it came up now and then in company. I’ve been trying to recall if anyone ever showed a special interest. I knew you’d ask. But I can’t think of anyone. These are usually old women I’m talking about—people sitting around over tea, trading intimate details nobody else would care about.”

  Again, her voice faded away, only this time, he let her be, in part distracted by the greater impact of what she’d just told him. Up to now, Elise Howard had been the holdout in a theory voiced earlier—that in each of these three homicides, an intimate knowledge of the victim had been displayed in the manner of death.

  Joe got to his feet, came around the coffee table, and squeezed Elise’s frail shoulder, conscious of the fact that every time they parted ways, he left the poor woman in shambles.

  “Thank you, Elise,” he said softly. “This was valuable. It’ll help a lot. I am so sorry to keep putting you through it, though.”

  She reached up and patted his hand, although speaking to her own lap. “It’s all right. It has to be done.”

  He showed himself out.

  Joe slid behind the wheel and stared out the windshield for a moment, still pondering what he’d learned and how it fit with everything else. Ahead of him, Church Street T-boned into Elliot, where he was parked—an intersection constructed like a river delta meeting the sea, wide and broad, allowing traffic ample room to negotiate.

  He started the engine and nosed away from the curb, moving by instinct up Church, around its short and gradual curve, to where it blended with Green, his own street. Two minutes later, he pulled into his driveway.

  Lyn was peeling an orange in his small, low-ceilinged kitchen. “Joe,” she said happily, coming into the mudroom section to give him a kiss. “What’re you doing home? I didn’t think I’d see you till crack of dawn.”

  Lyn had the shift at her bar tonight, and would have been gone in half an hour, until probably two or three in the morning.

  “I took a shot and got lucky,” he admitted. “I never know which house you’ll be at, but I was around the corner and thought, what the hell.”

  She kissed him again. “Well, I’m glad you did. You want an orange? Or something hot to drink? I just took the kettle off the stove.”

  He accepted a cocoa and shucked his coat, moving to one of the stools lining the counter between the kitchen and the living room. There, he watched her move around, preparing his drink, taking in her body language as he had a few years ago, when he’d first seen her tending bar in Gloucester. Who would’ve guessed?

  “What were you doing around the corner?” she asked without turning around.

  “I got a call from an earlier witness—the roommate of the woman we found hanging at the school. She had something to add to what she’d told me back then.”

  Lyn faced him briefly. “Really? Something she forgot?”

  “Something she held back,” he admitted, and then told her what had just transpired.

  Lyn listened carefully, interrupting rarely, and only for small clarifications, as he detailed how each victim had been accompanied by a bit of theater designed, it seemed, to show that these had not been crimes of chance.

  Finally, seated opposite him, she suggested, “You’ve been trying to connect all three killings. Isn’t this what you’ve been after?”

  He didn’t disagree. “Maybe, but what is it?”

  “Well,” she said simply, “if it’s a message, it sure as hell wasn’t for the dead. So what did it tell the living left behind?”

  He merely shook his head before taking a sip of his cocoa.

  “Who was left behind?” she then asked.

  He thought about that. “Mary left Elise, obviously,” he began slowly. “Bobby left . . . I don’t know. I guess the closest person in his life is Candice. And Doreen . . . Well, her mom’s dead.”

  “But she wasn’t right then, correct? She committed suicide.”

  Joe paused a moment, considering that in a new light. “Right.”

  Lyn was looking at him. “Three old women,” she said.

  He didn’t answer, the point of her revelation growing in his head.

  “You ever run this by them?” she asked.

  He rose in his seat enough to lean across the counter and kiss her.

  “I will now,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Candice Clarke had been asleep the last time Joe had visited her home in Post Mills, and he had gathered what he could from his mother.

  This time, things were going to have to follow more conventional lines.

  Still, Candice and he had known each other since his youth, she and his mother were best of friends, and he saw no reason not to make his return visit as supportive and friendly as possible. He therefore called ahead before he left Brattleboro and, ninety minutes later, collected his mom before arriving at Candice’s.

  They found her subdued but composed—a small, friendly, gentle woman, as fresh and tidy in appearance as the home around her. She’d laid out little sandwiches and a choice of tea in preparation, and had dressed for the occasion.

  To Joe, however, who knew her so well, Candice’s bravery was all in the wrapping. In her eyes, he could see the bafflement, the loss, and the irredeemable pain.

  Ushering them in from the cold outdoors, she took their coats, asked for their preferences in food and drink, and made sure they were seated according to their comfort. The small talk went back and forth for a quarter hour, a few safe memories were revisited, and the first few bites of sandwich were complimented.

  But the inevitable hung in the air like a mist, and when he felt he could do so with decorum, Joe fixed their hostess with a steady gaze.

  “Candice?” he began.

  She smiled sadly. “I know. This is not a social call.”

  “Well, not entirely.”

  His mother, whose wheelchair had been placed beside her, reached out and silently slid her hand into Candice’s.

  “What would you like to know, Joseph?”

  “It’s actually not much to do with Bobby,” Joe reassured her. “At least, we don’t think it is. Have you been listening to the news at all lately?”

  “No,” she admitted quietly, her voice barely floating across the utterly still room. “I haven’t had the he
art.”

  “I totally understand,” he told her. “It has come out, though, that Bob was one of three people killed by the same person.”

  Her eyes widened. “What? But why? He was just a boy.”

  “It may have had nothing to do with him,” Joe repeated. “We’re thinking that Bobby could have been a means to an end.”

  Candice was shaking her head. “An end? What end? Revenge against Taco Bell? It’s crazy.”

  Joe leaned forward for emphasis. Here, he had to be careful. The emotions were high enough, along with her sense of lapsed responsibility. Candice had taken over Bob’s upbringing; she had made it her mission to set things right by doing so. To tell her now that the boy had possibly been killed to get to her—with no proof—would be careless and destructive.

  “The three people I’m talking about,” he explained slowly, “are Bobby, of course, a woman named Mary Fish, and another named Doreen Ferenc. Are either of those last names familiar?”

  Candice paused to think, her head slightly bent as if in prayer. “No,” she finally said.

  “How about Elise Howard and Maggie Agostini?” he asked.

  She gasped and raised her eyes to meet his. The sadness he saw there caused a skip in his chest.

  He reached out at her sudden pallor and touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked as his mother leaned in from the other side and murmured, “Candice, Candice.”

  She blinked a couple of times and held her hand up shakily, patting Joe’s fingers. “Yes, yes. It’s okay. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Joe’s mother said, adding without a glance at her son, “and we can stop this immediately if you’d like.”

  “Absolutely,” he echoed.

  “No,” Candice said. “I’m fine. It was just a shock, hearing those names from so long ago. That horrible time. I did all I could to forget it . . .”

  Joe remained silent, the obvious nature of his next question making the phrasing of it superfluous.

  Candice didn’t move for a few moments, collecting her thoughts.

  “We were all on a bus trip,” she eventually began. “It was one of those social things—the garden club. Something like fifteen women and a few family members, all packed together for a weekend to Burlington—two days of plays and museums and a boat ride out on Lake Champlain. It was supposed to be the highlight of the summer . . .”

  “How long ago was this?” Joe asked in barely a whisper.

  “Seventeen years this past August,” she answered without hesitation.

  “Something went wrong,” he suggested.

  She nodded. “Oh, yes. One of the women, Gini Coursen, had brought her son along, a crude and swaggering boy named Ben. An awful person, it turned out later, but at the time just someone who seemed like so many other boys who are careless and a little stupid. He’d gotten in trouble with the police—nothing very serious, according to Gini—and she’d brought him for the change of scenery. I remember her using that phrase. He was eighteen.”

  “Was his last name Coursen, too?”

  This had come from Joe’s mother, who was intently studying her friend’s profile. Joe smiled at the question, and considered how many times he’d felt her influence upon him in how he conducted his job.

  “Miller,” Candice said. “Benjamin Steven Miller. Lord knows, I heard that often enough.”

  “What did he do?” Joe asked.

  “He raped a girl,” she told them simply. “One of the other children on the bus. Actually, it was Betty Frasier’s niece—a sweet, frail girl named Alice. On the morning of the second day—we’d been put up in a motel south of Burlington—Betty found Alice crying in her room but couldn’t find out why. The poor girl was a wreck and we were terribly concerned. Betty came to us—that is, me, Maggie, and Elise—and asked for our help. The four of us met with Alice, telling the bus tour to go on without us, and we spent hours with the child, trying to get her to open up.”

  Candice sighed heavily. “She did at last,” she continued, “and told us everything. Benjamin had become friendly the night before, and had tried to get fresh. She’d told him no, and had gone to her room to go to bed. Of course, he followed her, and forced his way in when she opened the door . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Joe exchanged glances with his mother and raised his eyebrows wonderingly, but she minutely nodded, encouraging him to keep going.

  “What did you do next?” he asked.

  “We went to the police,” she said. “We talked and talked, and did our best to involve Alice. We were hoping that it might help her, at least a little. We knew it could never be taken away, but maybe it might start getting her back on her feet.”

  Joe’s mother looped her arm awkwardly across Candice’s trembling shoulders and murmured, “Keep going, Sweetie. Get it out.”

  Candice nodded and spoke, her voice broken and weak. Her eyes once more bore into Joe’s. “I am so sorry, Joseph, but I think it was the worst thing we could have done. And now, with what you’ve told me, I think that even more.”

  “What happened, Candice? Did they drop the ball?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “Oh, no. I wish they had. They pulled over the bus, they questioned everybody, they arrested Ben. The motel room was searched and evidence found. Ben eventually confessed. He went to jail for the rest of his life, as things turned out.”

  Joe frowned. “What? I’m not sure . . .”

  “He died in prison,” she explained. “That was years later. I don’t know the details. I heard it by accident and never pursued it.”

  Joe’s mom had been rubbing Candice’s back with her open palm, and now offered her a Kleenex from her purse.

  “Candice . . .” Joe began, but again, she interrupted him.

  “She killed herself. Alice did. All the attention—the police, the prosecutor, the lawyers, the judge. She had to explain again and again what had happened, reliving it every time. It was too much. And Betty followed a few months later, of a heart attack, although we all knew what caused that. She’d never been sick a day in her life.”

  She paused to dab at her eyes and blow her nose. “I understand that things are better now,” she then said. “That there are special police officers and laws to handle these things better. But back then . . .”

  He was already nodding. “I know. I understand, Candice.”

  “And now you tell me,” she resumed, “that Bobby was killed for the same reason.” She spread her hands, the tears flowing once more. “How could that be? How could something so long ago . . . ? We were all trying to do the right thing, to help a poor girl in trouble. And now, so many people dead; so many broken hearts . . . What happened, Joseph? How did it all happen?”

  He was starting to have a pretty good idea. The thread they’d all been searching for, from the moment Doreen’s murder had been linked to Mary Fish’s, and from there to Bobby Clarke’s, was beginning to emerge in his mind like a shape looming out of the fog. The problem all along, of course, had been a simple matter of focus—they’d been analyzing the victims, trying to establish a common link, and missing the second rank of walking wounded. These were the people who’d been left alive to suffer, and presumably the intended targets all along.

  Just as someone else had been left to suffer in the course of Candice’s story.

  “What happened to Benjamin Miller’s mother?” he asked. “What was her name? Gini Coursen?”

  Candice straightened, stopped her crying, and stared at him wide-eyed. “Oh, my God.”

  “What?” her best friend asked.

  “Do you think she had anything to do with this?” Candice asked.

  He shook his head cautiously. “I don’t know what to think right now,” he stressed. “I’m hearing this for the first time. For all I know, Gini Coursen’s dead. Do you know otherwise?”

  Candice blew her nose again. “No. I’m sorry. The last time I saw her, I’ll never forget. It was in the courtroom, right after the sentencing.
She was screaming at us—Elise, Maggie, Betty, and me. She called us terrible things, and said awful things about poor Alice. How Alice had lured her son into a trap; how Betty had trained her to do so; how we’d all conspired to put him in jail and ruin her life. It was insane. They finally pulled her out of the room.”

  In the brief silence that followed, Candice passed her hand across her forehead, as if wishing for the removal of all that was pressing against it from within.

  When she spoke again, her voice, though still soft, was clear and direct. “Gini said she’d make us pay. I think she was true to her word.”

  Joe wasn’t about to argue.

  “Can you hear me?” Joe took the cell phone away from his ear and stared at it, as if he’d find a wire dangling loose or a gerbil in need of food.

  “God damn it,” he muttered and watched the small screen for the appearance of any tiny bars. They cropped into view at the crest of the hill, where he gave up and pulled over into the interstate’s breakdown lane.

  “You still there?” he asked Sammie. He’d found her at the office in Brattleboro, where he knew she and Spinney had been combing through an ever-growing pile of employee and customer rosters.

  “Loud and clear now,” she answered. “What was that name? Gini what?”

  “Coursen.” He spelled it out. “You’ll have to run it through Spillman to get her DOB, but look for an elderly woman. More to the point is the next name: Benjamin Steven Miller. He’s definitely in the system—died in jail a while back; I don’t know when. He was inside probably for aggravated sexual assault. Those names are mother and son, by the way, which means that if you can’t find her normally, she might be listed with him as a person of interest.”

  “Got it,” Sam responded. He could hear in the background both her typing and her restrained note of impatience.

  “Sorry,” he responded to the latter. “I know you know all that. Anyhow, they’re the ones we’ve been looking for. Ben raped a girl on a bus tour outing to Burlington almost twenty years ago. Most of the other passengers were old ladies blowing off steam, and three of them—Elise Howard, Candice Clarke, and Maggie Agostini—helped to put Benny in the slammer.”