by J. Thorn
The hall ended and opened out into a large foyer stuffed to bursting with vegetation. Planters hung on chains hung from the vaulted ceiling, spidery green legs trailing down to meet the explosion of growth from what looked like a variety of wild and frenzied shrubs anchored in a huge rectangular marble tomb. Tall thin plants with glossy spade-shaped leaves and bamboo sticks lashed to their stems stood guard in the corners, struggling upward to where a segmented glass window threw squares of light against the wall.
Kaplan didn't spare the jungle a glance as he turned left into another narrow hall. Finch followed close behind.
"Take a seat," John said, as they entered a small but impressive lounge. In here sat a brown leather armchair, positioned at a right angle to a matching leather couch, as if the Kaplan's interior decorator had aspirations of becoming a psychiatrist, or specialized in decorating for them. Sports and hunting magazines sat in a tidy pile atop a glass coffee table. The walls were lined with oak bookshelves, but Finch didn't bother to scan the titles. He wasn't much of a reader, and doubted anything he'd see there would be of interest.
"You'll have a drink," Kaplan said, and although it sounded more like a statement of fact than a request, Finch nodded and took a seat on the couch. The cushions yielded beneath him with a soft hiss. The lounge smelled faintly of cigar smoke.
"Scotch?"
"That'd be great, thanks."
As Kaplan poured the drink from a crystal decanter into two smoked glass tumblers, Finch wondered how rehearsed and tired this whole practice was for the guy. How many people interested or connected in some way to the murders had stopped by here to console, or seek comfort in a kindred spirit over the past couple of months? Finch envisioned Kaplan leading the latter kind to this room, perhaps with the intent to numb them enough with alcohol that they'd be left with the false impression that he had somehow eased their pain for a time.
Kaplan set Finch's drink down on the coffee table, then took a seat in the armchair. He sighed and took a sizable draw from his glass before studying his guest. "So, Mr. Finch. What can I do for you?"
Finch sat forward and clasped his hands. "I'm here to talk about what happened to the kids. To my brother, and your daughter, and their friends."
"Why?"
"Because we need to."
"I disagree."
"That so?"
"It is."
"Well if it's all the same—"
Kaplan sat back and crossed his legs. He held up his glass, examining its contents as if it was something he had never seen before. "Mr. Finch—"
"Thomas."
"All right, Thomas. It's not my intent to be rude—though you'd be far from the first person to leave this house with such an impression of me—but I'm a busy man. If you've come here to reminisce about how great our kids were and how they had such a good time together, and to tell me as if it's breaking news how goddamned awful it was what happened to them, I'm afraid all I can say is amen to it all and see you out. Does that seem cold?"
Finch set down his drink. "Until I can see my breath, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."
Kaplan smiled tightly. "I have to meet with my attorney at noon, Thomas," he said, making the name sound like punctuation, "so the sooner you cut to the chase, the better your chance of a less terse reception."
"I'm here to tell you my plans, so you know what they are, and to hear what you think. Maybe even to get your blessing."
"Almost sounds like your asking for my daughter's hand," Kaplan said. "But as you know, I'm all out of those. My wife will be coming on the market soon though, if you're interested."
That explains the attorney, Finch thought, his estimation of Kaplan dropping the longer he listened to the man speak. There was no emotion in his voice, none at all. Even the words he chose—I'm all out of those—suggested a man who either wasn't too torn up about his daughter's death, or wasn't yet fully aware of it, his mind protected from the horror by an impenetrable wall of shock. But no, Finch decided. This didn't look like shock. The man appeared fully in control, and eerily calm.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Finch said.
"Don't be," Kaplan replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "This has made an addict out of her. If she's not popping Valium, she's out fucking the gardener. This has been a long time coming. At least something good came of Katy's death."
Finch frowned, embarrassed by the man's candor, and quickly scooped up his drink.
"See your breath yet?" Kaplan asked, amused.
Finch ignored him.
"My wife and I haven't loved each other in over ten years. In all that time she stayed with me for my money, fully aware that if we divorced she'd stand to get very rich very quickly and have her freedom on top of it. I stayed with her for Katy. But now Katy's gone, and I can afford to lose millions."
"Why?"
"Are you married?"
"No."
"Then you don't yet know what it's like to have the person you swore to love until the end of your days become your enemy overnight, to watch them with other men as they plot to destroy you. In my line of work, you expect to come up against predators and backstabbers every single day. But you expect to leave it there when you come home. Instead, it becomes everything. You get paranoid and you seek out the only thing you've got left. For me, that was my Katy. She resisted every effort Linda made to corrupt her. She stayed loyal to me, and I loved her for that."
He leaned forward and put down his drink. "Now she's gone, so what else is there to lose? Money? I can afford to lose it if it means getting that bitch out of my life. The only reason to keep this pretense, this sham, going is dead and buried."
"And what about you?"
He seemed surprised by the question, but considered it. After a moment he sighed. When he sat back again, the cuffs of his pants rode up a little and Finch noticed something odd. Despite the man's apparently flawless dress and perfectly manicured appearance, his socks didn't match. It seemed significant somehow, as if he was being shown the man's true nature, a glimpse behind the facade at the frightened and slowly crumbling creature that cowered behind the armor.
"I'll do what I always do," Kaplan replied. "Persevere."
Finch imagined this man at night, alone and weeping, his eyes bloodshot from a cocktail of barbiturates and alcohol as he looked down at a picture of his daughter. Even when he'd professed his love for Katy, his voice had retained the same lack of emotion that seemed to characterize him, but Finch was no longer so sure that's who he really was. The other parents he'd met had all displayed the expected pallor and vulnerability that death leaves in its wake, and he had recognized it as an accurate reflection of his own, but though Kaplan stood out in his apparent callousness and calm, Finch guessed that, even though it might take a year, or ten years, sooner or later the grief would claim him, if it hadn't already. And the longer he looked, the more he saw in Kaplan's eyes the defiance, the struggle to remain standing as currents of suffering tried to sweep his legs out from under him.
"So, what's your plan?" he asked Finch, after a moment of contemplating something beyond the arched window at the far side of the room.
Finch drained his glass. "I'm not letting it go," he said. "What they did to the kids. I'm not letting it die."
"Is that so?"
"It is."
"What are you going to do?"
Finch told him.
*
Afterward, Kaplan did not offer to see him out, so Finch left him sitting in a chair that suddenly seemed bigger, as if it had gorged itself on the man's restrained emotions, and made his way out. Before he exited the lounge, however, Kaplan mumbled something.
Finch hesitated at the doorway and looked back at him. "What?"
"I said you let me know if you need anything." Then he added, "My vampire bride hasn't drained me yet. I still have money."
Finch nodded. And no amount of it is going to buy you back what you've lost, he thought, but said, "Thank you," and left.
As he
sat into his car, his cell phone chirped, startling him. He hated the goddamn things and had successfully avoided them all his life, but had realized the need to have one almost as soon as he'd spoken to Beau about the plan. With a sigh, he removed his hand from the car keys, reached into his inside pocket and grabbed the phone, fully expecting to see Beau's name and number displayed on the small rectangular LCD screen as he flipped it open.
But it wasn't Beau calling, and Finch felt himself go numb, a not entirely unpleasant tingling capering through him as he studied with feverish interest and a modicum of disbelief the name that flashed on the display.
Gray letters against glowing green.
He told himself to be calm, just be cool hoss, and pressed the small round button to answer the call.
"Hey you," he said, immediately wincing at how forced the casual tone had sounded.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Kara asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You know goddamn well what I mean. I saw you outside our house the other day. Are you stalking me or something?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Then what were you doing there?"
Excuses were appallingly slow to present themselves, so he opted for the truth. "I wanted to see Claire."
"Why?"
"To see what they'd done to her. To see how she looked."
"Who are they?"
"The men who did this to her."
Her sigh sounded like thunder in his ear. "There is no they, Finch. The man who did this to her is dead and buried. Don't you dare try to make us believe anything different."
"Who said I was going to?"
She laughed dryly. "Your door-to-door conspiracy meetings. Ted Craddick was here last night and we heard all about your little crusade."
Finch nodded to himself. He was not at all put out by this, had expected it in fact, and welcomed the word spreading among the families as a means of giving everyone a heads up, so his visits would not come as a cold hard slap across the face when they already had enough to worry about. He hadn't relished the thought of dispelling the illusion the police had given them, but so far they had greeted the revelation with grim resignation rather than rage. Though they were of course eager to see the true culprits held responsible for the murders, the fact remained that their children were still gone, and no amount of justice would ever return them. There were no hysterics, only silent assent at what he had proposed, or as in Kaplan's case, offers of financing.
It would work as long as no one decided the police needed to be let in on things. This was his concern now. That Kara had no love for him was painfully obvious, so she might have no bones about calling the cops to thwart him if it meant shielding her sister from further trauma. If nothing else, he had to appeal to the woman he'd known and hoped was still there beneath the hard shell she'd developed in the years since leaving him.
"Listen to me," he said. "You're not a fool. We both know that. And I'm no fool either, so don't pretend Claire hasn't talked to you about what happened to her down there. As soon as she was able she told the Sheriff they'd blamed the wrong man, that the doctor tried to help her get away from a bunch of lunatics. They didn't listen to her. I guess they were afraid after all their bluster and mutual glad-handing they'd look like morons. I mean, they'd managed to pin a bunch of unsolved murders on a guy who wasn't in a position to object, right? They took the easy route, and with no one left alive to corroborate her story, they just baby-talked Claire until she was out of their way. What about forensics? Did you see any reports? Me neither. The cops say anything about DNA extracted from the scene, or Claire's body? No. Someone did a thorough job of tidying things up. Case closed and the circle-jerk goes on. "
Kara was silent, which he took as a positive sign, but quickly continued just to be safe.
"A friend of mine is an investigator, sort of, and he did some digging for me. We found reports of people going missing down in Elkwood and the surrounding area going back twenty, thirty years. That was the mistake the police made. In their statements to the media they played up the part about Doctor Wellman going crazy and cutting people to bits because his wife died a sad and painful death."
"So?"
"So his wife died in '92. If he wigged out and went postal after her death, who snatched all those people for the twenty-odd years before that?"
"That was just a theory," Kara said. "Who's to say he wasn't dabbling in a little psychotic surgery from the moment he got his degree? You said he couldn't speak for himself now that he's dead, and you're right. He can't protest his innocence, but he can't confess his guilt either. So for all you know, maybe they did get the right man. Maybe that town has been harboring The Demon Barber of Fleet Street for thirty years. We don't know, and you sure as hell don't either. "
"Wrong."
"Oh?"
"What did Claire tell you?"
"Nothing."
"Bullshit."
"How the hell do you know? Were you there?"
"No. I wasn't. But someone else was."
She fell silent, but he could hear her breathing. Then she said, "Who?"
"There was a kid. The one who brought Claire to the hospital. He took off as soon as the orderlies tried to talk to him. I called them, got a description, then called the Sheriff down in Elkwood. The kid's name is Pete Lowell. His father died the same night all this went down. Suicide apparently, and it happened shortly after he sent his boy off to Wellman's. So explain to me why a father would send his son off to the town lunatic and then kill himself."
He could hear the shrug in her voice. "Guilt? Maybe he wanted to kill them both but didn't have the heart to pull the trigger on his boy, so sent him to—"
"C'mon, Kara," he interrupted. "You don't buy that shit, do you? If you're going to kill yourself and you want your kid to die too, are you telling me that instead of giving him sleeping pills or something quick and quiet, you send him off to be tortured and chopped to pieces by a homicidal maniac? You're reaching and you know it."
"Reach—" She scoffed. "Reaching for what, Finch? This is a closed case. You can spin all the theories you want and it won't change what happened down there."
He frowned. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying it doesn't matter."
He had his mouth open, ready to tell her what he thought of that, especially coming from someone whose sibling had survived, but she continued as if aware of how he would take what she'd said.
"It doesn't matter because what happened happened. Claire was raped and beaten and damn near killed. She won't ever be the same girl she was before. You lost Danny, and I can't tell you how sorry I am about that. I loved him; you know I did. But he's gone, Finch. He's gone and you have to let this go. It doesn't matter if that doctor did this to them, or some bunch of carnival freaks. Nothing will change the fact that it happened, and now its over."
Now it's over. Abruptly, Finch realized he didn't know who he was talking to, didn't recognize this woman as anyone he had ever known. He had fully expected a change from the If You're Going To Hell, I'm Ridin' Shotgun girl he'd loved, still loved, but this...this was like talking to a stranger.
"Tell me what Claire said," he told her, his voice flat, and cold.
"No."
"I have a right to know."
"She hasn't told me anything."
"You're lying. Kara, I—"
"I don't want you coming by here again, Finch. I mean it. If I see your car outside or your face at our door, I'll call the cops and let them in on your little game plan, understand?"
He said nothing for a moment, felt the anger colonize him. He reached up a hand and grabbed the steering wheel until his knuckles were white as bone.
"Look...just listen to me, okay? I need your help with this, if only to let me see her, just to talk, that's all, just to—"
"Stay away from here. I'm sorry about Danny, you have to believe that. But nothing can come of this but more hurt and grief and we can't take any more
of that. We can't, Finch, so don't bring it down on us."
"The Merrill family," he said, as he let his gaze rove over the austere facade of the Kaplan house, and dropped his hand to the keys.
"Goodbye, Finch."
"That's their name. Merrill. That's who did this to Claire, and Danny, and Katy, and Stu. That's who—"
A drone in his ear told him she'd hung up.
"—hurt us," he finished, then snapped the phone shut so hard it sounded like a bone breaking.
Teeth clenched, he started the car.
-20-
Despite what the boy had said earlier, after talking long into the night, Louise convinced him to stay. The later it got, the less tolerant Wayne seemed to grow. Aware that she had yet to tell him about getting fired from her job, she advised him to go to bed with a promise to follow soon after. Then she cleared the coffee table of their cups and trash and dragged it to the far wall, exposing the stained narrow space of carpet between the sofa and the TV.
All the while, Pete stared at her.
Louise sighed. "I know you're hurtin'," she told him. "But I'm not sure this is such a good idea. Do you know how dangerous this is? You're just a boy. And what if you're wrong and it really was the doctor? You might just end up hurtin' innocent folk."
"It weren't the doctor," he replied. "It weren't. That much I know for sure."
She shook her head. "Why not just go to the police? Tell them to talk to the girl. Surely if you're right, she can tell them what she knows and back you up."
"I'm guessin' she don't remember much, not after what they did to her. I'm guessin' her mind didn't let her see all of what happened, so she'd be protected, like when you have a real bad dream but soon's you wake up it starts goin' away until you can't remember it no more?"
