"Then one day I found this spot. I remembered the fallen tree from a storm we'd had that year. But the tree didn't look right, and I realized it was because of all the flowers. There were flowers other places, but there hadn't been any here and now there were lots and lots of flowers, but mostly in this one little spot. At first I thought that God had put them here special, special for her and special for me so I could find her."
He rubbed his right forearm across his eyes. I found myself doing the same.
"Then I read in a botany book that flowers grow over bodies that aren't… in coffins. That's when I was sure she was here. I came to visit every day, but I'd walk in from a different direction each time, so as not to make a path that would let the judge know I'd found her. Some days, I wouldn't even come right up to her, because I didn't want the plants around her to look trampled." He finally swung his face toward mine. "Did you ever have anybody close to you be buried?"
I hadn't stopped thinking about Beth since he'd begun. "Yes," I said in a choked voice.
He tried to examine me in the moonlight. "You're crying," he said. He looked back down at the grave. "I'm ready to see the judge now," he said.
So was I. So…was…I.
TWENTY-SEVENTH
– ¦ "He'll probably be in the library," Stephen whispered as he beckoned me toward the back of the house.
"Does the house have an alarm system?" I asked, still winded from my hike up the path.
"Yes," he said as we approached the back door, "but he never turns it on until he goes to bed."
Stephen produced a key, and we entered the house.
I followed him to a turn in the corridor. He took the turn, and we approached two large polished double doors.
Stephen looked up at me. "Ready?" he whispered.
"Does he keep a gun at his desk?" I asked.
Stephen shook his head. "Only upstairs, in the bedroom."
"Then I'm ready."
We opened the doors.
The judge was standing in front of a mirror. He was dressed in an Izod Lacoste sport shirt and khaki pants. He had notes in his hand and appeared to have been rehearsing his speech.
"Practicing a eulogy?" I asked.
He looked at us as if we'd entered the Debutante's Ball naked.
"Sit down, Judge. We want to have a little lobby conference."
The judge looked over at the telephone. Stephen briskly walked over to the wall and pulled the plug from the wall jack. The judge moved unsteadily toward his desk chair. I took an easy chair and tried to maintain my smile as I lowered my rib cage into it.
Stephen sat to my right and a little behind me, keeping me between him and his father.
It was a beautiful room, with carefully polished wainscoting and natural-wood bookshelves. I would say "restored" wood, but I doubt that that particular wood had ever been allowed to deteriorate. The books I could see were mainly law titles, with some leather-bound, gold-lettered fiction classics by Defoe, Dickens, and assorted others sprinkled around.
The judge slumped into his chair and then tried a fine, arrogant recovery.
"Mr. Cuddy, I must say I underestimated you. I want to thank you for returning Stephen to me."
"Aren't you even curious about Blakey?" I asked.
The judge lost a bit ot? his regained color. "What about him?"
"He didn't fare too well after he called you yesterday."
The judge started, then must have inwardly cursed for thus confirming my suspicion about the call.
"What did he do, Judge, happen on you as you dumped your wife in the river?"
The judge tried a snarl that queerly came off as a smile. "I don't know what you're talking about. I intend to call-"
"Or more accurately, as you dunked your wife's car?"
The judge lost his queer smile.
"Where did you bury her, Judge?" I asked.
"We know," said Stephen. His voice was very flat.
The judge looked from me to Stephen and back to me.
"Officer Blakey will deny every one of these ridiculous…"
I leaned back farther in my chair.
Stephen said, "Blakey's dead." Still the flat voice. The judge jerked violently.
"That's what I meant by eulogy when we came in," I added.
The judge said, "Blakey wasn't there. Blakey only helped me afterwards. After he-"
"It's too late to deny things," said Stephen, changing his inflection to a sing-song, as though he were the adult explaining the world to a dull child. "I told Mr. Cuddy everything?
The judge's eyes went wide in terror. "Where's the gun?" he whispered to me, like an aside in a Shakespeare play.
"The twenty-two?" I asked.
"Yes, yes!"
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it's the one thing that can clear me, you idiot! I thought he'd been cured after he came back from Willow Wood. I couldn't have the publicity, the madness in the family and all. I wanted to be elevated to the superior court, but I had to protect myself The gun had his fingerprints on it. I hid it so well, I thought he'd never find it-so well I thought he'd given up looking for it." Then turning to Stephen: "But you never did, did you? You found it, and I realized it and Blakey missed you, and you ran, you little bastard. I authorized the absolute minimum search possible. I prayed to God that some hobo would slit your throat in a ditch."
"Judge, maybe if you told me what-"
"I have to tell you, can't you see that? Now that Blakey's dead, I have to." He was becoming unglued.
Stephen remained silent.
"After she wouldn't shut up that night, drunk and vile as she was, about how much she'd enjoyed making love with Tel, about how much she'd enjoyed having his baby and making me act the father, then after he was born, him being so much like Tel, even down to the… Ah, but he didn't tell you that part, did he? Did he!"
I began to feel weak in the gut. I glanced back at Stephen. He was staring straight ahead, his face unsmiling but his eyes twinkling.
I turned back to the judge. "Tell me what?"
The judge began to shake. "Where's the gun?" he demanded.
"Stephen buried it. After he killed Blakey with it."
The judge shook more violently.
"Did you see him bury it?"
"No."
"Dear God, first his mother, now Blakey, and I can't-"
"Are you trying to tell me that Stephen-"
I heard the zipper sound but didn't tum immediately. By that time Stephen had my. 38 out of the crotch of his pants and leveled at the judge. He must have hidden it under the passenger side of the front seat when he found Blakey's car at the ranger station and then retrieved it when he "stumbled" out of the car at the beginning of the path.
In my peripheral vision I caught the judge standing up too quickly as he yanked open the middle drawer in his desk, banging his knees on the drawer as he did so. Then the first shot. The bullet knocked the judge back into a bookcase niche with a brandy decanter and cut-crystal liqueur glasses and brandy snifters. Stephen probably was not used to the greater kick of the more powerful weapon. His second shot ruined a painting above the niche.
My rib was screaming at me as I dived at Stephen, my left fist aimed at his face. He ducked as he swung the barrel toward me. The blast deafened me. I felt a sledge hit my left shoulder. The follow-through sent me into Dreamland.
TWENTY-EIGHTH
– ¦ I've always suspected that patients could go snowblind in hospitals. They are some of the very few semipublic buildings that are still glaring white and usually clean.
The last few times I'd opened my eyes, I'd been surrounded by blurry, white-furred polar bears growling and grunting and poking at me. Now I could narrow my focus down to a nurse and a doctor. The doctor spoke first.
"Can you hear me, Mr. Cuddy?" she asked.
"No," I replied.
The doctor mumbled something to the nurse, who nodded and left the room.
"Do you have any pain?"
; "Doctor," I said as sweetly as I could, "a gunshot wound always produces a numbing effect."
She smiled. "With your problems, you'd better be nice to me. The schoolteacher and I seem to be the only friends you've got right now."
"Why is that?"
"I've been told not to talk with you."
"Then send Valerie in."
"If that's the schoolteacher, I can't."
"Why."
"District attorney's orders."
"Oh." A bad sign. I turned my head. There was a cop with a notepad sitting on a chair in the corner and scribbling furiously. Otherwise, no other people. Nor any other beds. There were some trees outside the window.
"If I've been here more than ten minutes, this private room has bankrupted me."
The doctor laughed. "The county's paying the tab." Another bad sign. A very bad sign.
I tried to hunch up in bed. The doctor stifled a smile as I yelled. The cop jumped up. The doctor placed her hand lightly on my left shoulder as I decided lying down was a very good position to maintain. The cop looked at his watch, sat down, and returned to scribbling.
I couldn't remember how hard I'd hit Stephen. As far as I could tell, my memory was otherwise intact.
"How's the boy?"
"The Kinnington boy?" she said. "He's doing quite well. The X rays say a broken jaw, but he'll be going home soon, and-"
"Home!" I thundered as the door burst open. The cop half-rose and reached for his gun. Through the door came Stanley Brower, the district attorney of Norfolk County. Behind him in the corridor I could see the Boston-area version of the paparazzi pushing in on a small barricade of police officers. A young man who looked a year or so out of law school followed Brower in.
Brower gave the cop a dirty look and a beckon. The cop released his gun. His notepad fluttered as he followed Brower and his assistant into a corner of the room. The assistant clicked on a tape recorder as the cop mumbled heatedly. Brower asked a question, got a negative shake of the head from the cop, and disgustedly waved him back to his chair. The DA spoke briefly to his assistant, and then they approached my bed.
"Mr. Cuddy. I am Stanley-"
"I know who you are, Mr. Brower. What's this I hear about the Kinnington boy going home soon?"
Brower waited for my interruption to cease. "Mr. Cuddy, you have the right to remain silent. If you speak, anything you say-"
"… can and will be used, and I can have an attorney, or one will be appointed for me if I can't afford one, thanks to Messrs. Miranda, Escobedo, and Gideon. Now why are you releasing the Kinnington boy?"
Brower regarded me. "Why are you so interested in him?"
"Mr. Brower, I will be happy to speak to you on a number of conditions. Condition number one is that Tommy Kramer be in the room with a stenographer of his choice. The other conditions will be explained to you when he arrives."
Brower thought it over. Kramer, the lawyer I had called about my Empire firing, was the most respected attorney in the city of Dedham, the Norfolk County seat. "Kramer doesn't do criminal work, Mr. Cuddy."
"I know," I replied. "No lawyer's going to persuade you that I didn't do whatever it is you think I did. I just want a fair witness present."
Brower spoke to his assistant. "Call Tom Kramer and see if he'1l come down."
"I want you here when he arrives," I said. "Meanwhile, I'd like lunch. Or is it still breakfast?"
"Early supper," said Brower as the doctor hit the nurses' call button at the side of my bed. "But I'm afraid you missed the July Fourth barbecue. You've been unconscious for a day and a halt."
***
Tommy Kramer came into the room with a young woman carrying a stenographer's case. The cop relinquished his chair, and she set up. When she nodded to Tommy, he said, "Stan, I'd like to speak to Mr. Cuddy alone first."
"No," I said. "I want everyone here to realize that I'm speaking without advice of counsel."
"John, I have to advise you-"
"No, Tommy, I'm being set up, and not by Mr. Brower's office. My only conditions beyond your presence and your stenographer's taking notes are one, that nothing of what we say will be off this record, two, that I will be allowed to speak in a narrative style instead of answering questions, and three, that nothing we say will be communicated to any of the Kinnington family by anyone except you, Mr. Brower."
Kramer looked at Brower. Brower said, "Agreed."
Kramer looked at the young lawyer with the tape recorder. Kramer said, "Stan?"
Brower sighed. He looked at the kid and said, "Doug, leave the room."
The young DA started to open his yap, then closed it. He handed the tape recorder to Brower.
"You, too," said Brower to the cop.
"The chief told me-"
"I said leave," said Brower in the same tone.
The cop and Doug left. Brower had each of us identify ourselves and our voices for the tape. He gave background on time, place, and purpose. It was the investigation into the deaths of Blakey and the judge.
"I assume that you've spoken with Stephen, and he has told you that I killed Blakey or the judge."
Brower said, "The boy told us you killed both."
I drew a long breath. "Stephen is lying. Stephen is psychopathic. He was institutionalized in a sanatorium four years ago after he shot his mother to death. The judge covered it up to protect his own ambitions and got Blakey to help him in it. Stephen killed Blakey and the judge. Stephen's insane, but has an incredible intellect, and he therefore must be examined by at least three of the smartest psychiatrists you can find, because I'm betting he'll fool at least one. What I want to do now is tell you what really happened?
I then droned on for more than two hours, going through the entire chronology of the case, both before and after I entered it. When I wasn't sure what really happened, I stated that I was assuming facts. The only parts I deleted were my meetings with Nancy DeMarco in the bar and with Thom Doucette in the park, and I also held back a few of Kim's statements. "Therefore," I concluded, "it is vital that you protect the following pieces of real evidence: Stephen's fingerprints on the plastic phone jack in the judge's library, his fingerprints on the wooden handle of my thirty-eight, the pistol-oil traces that have to be on the inside of the crotch of his pants and have to match the oil from my thirty-eight, the trajectory paths of the bullets in the judge and in the wall, which will show they were fired from Stephen's chair, not mine, and these," I said, extending my hands. "The rope bums on my wrists. And ankles. Add these to the fact that with a broken rib I could never have handled Blakey. Add them to the fact that if I were going to kill Blakey and the judge, I'd need a motive. And if I were going to kill them, tell me why I'd try to pin it on a fourteen-year-old and do such a damned poor job of it."
Brower had sat at the foot of my bed about fifteen minutes into my monologue. He listened with his arms folded across his chest.
"Are you finished?" he asked.
"Yes." I was fighting my sleep reflex.
Brower made some concluding remarks for the tape and the stenographer. Then he turned off the tape, and the stenographer disassembled and exited.
Brower looked at me, then at Tommy. "Two days I've been chewing on this case," Brower began. "No motive for Cuddy past a routine pissing contest with Blakey, an angelic little kid with a home life like a soap opera, guns galore, deputies digging by a ranger station in the forest, and a flower bed Stephen told us about behind his house. It didn't add up, but I had to be awfully right before I acted. I couldn't afford to be wrong here. Not with this family."
Brower turned to me. "Nancy DeMarco called me just before lunch and told me she'd talked to you, and she corroborated enough of what you just told me. She's also bringing me a letter that she says she received from you, spelling out where you were going and why. Not the sort of thing a murderer precedes his crimes with. Cal Maslyk called me with similar support. I did enough other checking on you to be pretty sure you wouldn't be doing something like this. Keep in
touch for testifying." Brower headed for the door.
"By the way," I said, "Nancy DeMarco is likely to be in the job market soon. You'd do well to give her a shot with your office."
Brower squared himself to face the press and replied over his shoulder. "Thanks, Cuddy, but I didn't get where I am today by following staff advice from private eyes who get taken by fourteen-year-olds."
I looked over at Tommy, who'd been sweating bullets and would probably never forgive me.
TWENTY-NINTH
– ¦ The good doctor advised me that my marathon with Brower had weakened me so that she wouldn't release me for another day. She also instituted some sort of sedative-painkiller for the hole in my shoulder. The nurse gave it to me, then said, "The schoolteacher is here to see you. I told her you'd be sleeping again in about fifteen minutes."
"Send her in." The nurse left.
Valerie edged in. We exchanged the sort of pleasantries you hear at high school reunions between acquaintances who don't see anyone else to talk to. There really was nothing there for her, and she sensed it. She left. I drifted off
Something woke me. The nurse stuck her head in the door. "Stil1 awake, bright eyes?"
"Yeah."
"More visitors."
"Do they have an appointment?"
She looked behind her. "One of them has probably never needed one."
I blinked my eyes. "Send her in."
The nurse beckoned over her shoulder and held open the door as Mrs. Kinnington came in, crablike on her braces. Mrs. Page followed and arranged a chair near my bed. Mrs. Kinnington leaned the braces against the side of my bed. The housekeeper gave me the same look she'd greeted me with that first day and then exited with the nurse.
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