“You did good work, Dana,” Bouchard said. “I don’t know if I like the way you did it, but. . .”
Dana became self-conscious, she felt sweat on her brow. She turned her head to face Bouchard. “Thanks.”
Yarrow looked at her with his cool blue eyes. “Any idea how we reconcile the times of death? Two of them around this Friday class?”
She cleared her throat. “Thursday nights was when the girls — and sometimes Perry Brady — liked to go to the bar. Ladies’ night. Plume put it in their drinks, is my guess. Holly Arbruster is first. Monkshood takes time to act, so Plume follows them, intercepts them, takes their bodies and dumps them, unconscious, but still alive.”
Yarrow spoke in a low voice. “You understand we need to present this a certain way.”
“I’m not sure I . . .”
“Here’s how it could work. Okay? Let’s say you went to Teresa Dunham’s trailer having found out that Angie Gilroy was the babysitter, alright? Plattsburgh can corroborate that information.”
“That’s what happened.”
“Right. Once you found out, well, you’re such a diligent detective you risk life and limb and venture out into the storm. Teresa Dunham attacks you in the home, ties you up. You escape, but don’t make it. In the storm you get turned around, go off in the wrong direction, you’re bleeding badly, head trauma. Snowplow guy finds you, calls emergency services.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. Dana didn’t like him there.
“I don’t understand. What about Plume?” Dana glanced at Bouchard. He looked like the cat who’d swallowed the canary.
“We just have to handle it a certain way.” Bouchard said.
Dana felt a knot tightening in her stomach. She was hot now, increasingly uncomfortable, and shifted about in the bed. She thought of paging the nurse. Yarrow watched her squirm as she began to understand.
Charlie Plume was dead, and you couldn’t charge, let alone convict, a corpse. They were going after Teresa Dunham, but they wanted the story airtight, with nothing for a defense team to exploit, nothing to get sensationalized by the media. It was already a shit-show. Because it sounded like the police — state and federal combined — had fucked things up royally. It sounded like they’d had the killer from day one, and not known it. They’d chased down blind alleys and suffered casualties. What it sounded like, really, was that the matter was drawing to a close not solely due to deliberate action, but because of coincidence, things they couldn’t account for. In an era of cops being denigrated by the media, it could mean more smearing of the troopers, of the police in general.
All the guilt you have, all the anger, that’s the truth trying to get through. Charlie’s voice.
“I can only speak to what happened,” Dana said. “I’ve told you what I know.”
Yarrow patted the bed. “Fair enough. But just consider something. Plume is someone you met on day one. He gave a false statement, and you bought it. Never looked at his ID? Press would love that. You think you carry around the baggage of your dead brother? Well, this would be a lot heavier. You and your boozy partner, who paid the bouncer to take the night off before you went into the bar to investigate. And another girl died: Maggie Lange. If all that comes out, Dana, you’d probably want to move to the North Pole. And we like you. We want you to stick around.”
“Alright,” Bouchard said. He held out an arm as if to pull Yarrow away.
Yarrow stared at her for a moment longer. “Plume, you know, he’s a sad case. And he’s dead. Dunham is the wife of a state inmate. She’s a real bad apple.”
It became even clearer to Dana: Charlie Plume had been abused by his mother, therefore he looked too much like a victim. Some people might even sympathize with a criminal whose mother had put a knife to him. A man who got off to a bad start, not given a chance, and ended up hating women. Saw his twisted mother in the faces of the girls he’d killed.
Yarrow wanted nothing to do with any of it, and Dana knew it. The Feds wanted to quash the story about Plume’s mother and focus on Dunham as an evil killer. They would omit the parts about the knife, the eye, Plume’s academic achievements.
Dana thought about the boy, Scott. In his room with all those drawings. His mother convicted as an accomplice was one thing, but pinned up as a murderer was another.
Yarrow touched her arm and she almost recoiled. “You should get some sleep,” he said, getting up from the bed. “You need your rest. We’ve gotten what we need to . . .”
“No,” Dana said. She realized there was desperation in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. Her shoulder was aching again, bolts of pain shot through her ribs.
Yarrow stopped and slowly turned.
She chose her words carefully. “This guy, Charlie Plume. He watched these girls. He took a drawing one of them had, he gave it to Scott Dunham, a ten-year-old boy. Then he took his second victim, Sonia Taylor, and he put her in the river by Scott Dunham’s house. That’s the route the boy walks home from school every day. He wanted Scott to find it, to show him — ‘this is what happens to girls like this.’ So however you plan to spin this, the both of you, to cover your asses, leave me out of it. Anyone comes to me, I’m telling them what I know, the truth, and nothing less.”
Yarrow stared across at her. He glanced at Bouchard, who jerked his head toward the door. Bouchard then pointed at Dana. “Rest,” he repeated, an order.
He took hold of Yarrow’s arm and ushered him out the door.
* * *
Shawn had been coming every day, multiple times, bringing the girls after school. Twice he had spent the night, getting a sitter for the kids. Two state troopers were parked in the Gates’ driveway every night, courtesy of Captain Bouchard. So when she first glimpsed the dark-haired man in the doorway as she came out of a morphine-induced sleep, she thought it was her husband.
Then she realized it was Robert Hamill.
“How are you feeling? I mean, you look great.” He stopped at the foot of the bed and turned on one of his grins.
Dana tried to sit up, but realized it was pointless. She was a woman in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of her. Hamill looked better than the last time she’d seen him, sitting in the interrogation room, but there was still something in his face, a kind of sorrow beneath the trademark smile.
“Piss off,” she said, and scowled at him. “I look better than you.”
He studied his hands for a moment. He nodded to himself and then looked up. “I got five days sober.”
“That’s great, Rob.”
He met her gaze for a moment and then looked out the window.
“Weather just let up. Planes were grounded at La Guardia and JFK all the way up to Albany and Burlington. They’re calling this one of the storms of the decade. Four days straight.”
“I heard.” She glanced out the window. It was day, the light wan under a gray sky, the snow falling gently.
“I, um . . .” Hamill began.
“Don’t even go there,” Dana said suddenly.
Hamill looked directly at her, his face open and guileless. “I have to.” His mouth trembled. “Dana. I’m sorry. For everything.” The last words dropped into a breathy whisper.
She cleared her throat, felt the stinging of her own tears, but then pressed on. “You didn’t abandon me, or something. You know? You were in trouble. I understand what you did.”
“I lied. I compromised the investigation. I compromised you. I was so intent on Perry Brady that I didn’t see . . .”
“You weren’t seeing straight, I’ll give you that. But you had good instincts. Okay? Even if . . . you know? We never would’ve found that book, Rob, those names, if you hadn’t gone in without a warrant.” She tried on a smile. It felt right, for the first time in a long while.
Hamill was not smiling. “Yeah,” he sighed. “But, I’m done.”
They were both silent, just the machines in the room beeping.
Then Dana spoke. “Where will any of us be without your sexist,
racist, homophobic sense of humor?”
“Well, I’m going to become a stand-up comedian,” he joked.
But she could read the fear in her partner’s eyes. Even if he managed to get through the hearings and internal investigations, he wouldn’t have a future with the state police. Or even a future in law enforcement. The Charlie Plume case would forever be hanging around his neck, despite all his efforts to stay clean and sober, to be a good detective. She understood. She knew what it was like to live with a past, to know people were thinking about it, even if they didn’t voice it.
She put her hands on her stomach and looked up at the ceiling. There was some slight water damage there, a brown stain that started in a quarter-sized ring and radiated out in three winding tentacles. She remembered being on her back in Teresa Dunham’s trailer, ready to give up completely.
But she was still here.
She brought her gaze back to Hamill, who was watching her.
“What about you?” Hamill asked. “What’s in your future?”
She pointed to the newspaper on the table beside her bed. “Grab me that, would ya?”
Hamill retrieved the paper, which had been folded up so the crossword faced out. She was only a few clues through, but her mind was sharpening. “Open it up. Front page.”
He did as she asked. “Yeah, seen it,” he said. The front page showed a picture of Lori Stender. The caption read, Plattsburgh Student Sole Survivor Of The Kill List. The story said the police had discovered a list with her name on it but had managed to protect her.
“We did that, Rob. We saved that girl’s life.”
“Three of them died,” muttered Hamill.
“That wasn’t us. That was him. What we did was save her.”
He dropped the paper and looked at her, letting it sink in. “Thank you, D.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He nodded to himself. He asked, “So? You still haven’t said where you shake out. What’s your plan?”
“I’ve got eye surgery tomorrow,” she said. “Going for the full workup while I’m here. Might even get my boobs done.”
He clucked his tongue and rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Afterwards, I’m going home.”
“To convalesce,” he said.
“Spend time with my kids. My husband.” She tilted her head, watching him. “Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”
“I do. I really do.”
He went to the window and stood, looking out at the pale day.
She let the moment linger. “Then,” she said, “I’ll get back to work.”
He turned to her and smiled — for real this time.
“Now you’re talking.”
THE END
9/21/15
TJB
ETOWN
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