Crime of Privilege: A Novel (37 page)

She was confused. That was what her expression was meant to show. “If the Gregorys
really were involved in a murder, why would they send you someplace where two people
who aren’t part of the family could tell you what actually happened?”

“Well, there are a number of possibilities, Barbara. One is that they knew Jason and
Leanne wouldn’t tell me the truth because they’ve made good lives for themselves off
the Gregorys’ largesse. But given the fact that Jason wasn’t there when I arrived,
I’m not thinking that’s the most likely answer. I think it’s entirely possible that
his absence means I’m supposed to suspect him.”

“You’re not making sense, George.” Now Barbara’s expression was sad. It said she was
concerned for me, that maybe she should get me an aspirin and a blanket and have me
lie down.

“Oh, I’m making perfect sense,” I assured her. “The noose is closing on the Gregorys
and somebody’s head has to be stuck in it so that Peter Martin’s isn’t. Whether it’s
mine or Jason Stockover’s, it really doesn’t make any difference, as long as it’s
not Peter’s.”

She continued to look concerned. “George, don’t you think you’re being paranoid?”

“Oh, I am, I absolutely am. In the past couple of months I’ve been
shot at and knifed and learned that my wife was a plant. I also found out that I’ve
been followed for twelve years, so don’t you think I have a right to be paranoid,
Barbara?”

“Who …” The hands came up, the fingers stayed together. Like me, she was finding it
hard to keep this conversation on a civil level. “Who’s been following you?”

“The father of the girl down in Florida. And his minions. Or at least one black-belt,
Green Beret, Special Forces, show-up-anytime-anywhere minion.”

“So … couldn’t he have … you know, down in Costa Rica?”

“He wants me to prove the Gregorys’ guilt, not steer me to someone else.”

“And you think that’s what’s been going on, that you’re being steered—”

“What would anybody think in my position? First I’m told not to do anything, then,
when I do it anyway, when I start learning things that I wasn’t supposed to learn,
all of a sudden my job is changed and I’m put in full-time charge of the investigation.
Find the real killer, George. And, hey, make sure it’s Jason now, okay?” I pointed
to the ceiling. “Mitch White practically directed me back to Tamarindo a few minutes
ago.”

“Well,” Barbara Belbonnet said, and then she waited a moment. “Good luck, George.”

CAPE COD, August 2008

I
WAS NOT PREPARED
.

I probably had not ridden a hundred miles in the entire calendar year. I needed to
get to Sturbridge and had made no arrangements for transportation. I needed a place
to stay the night so I could be there for the 5:30 a.m. start time and I had made
no reservation.

It was possible, I realized, to call Sean Murphy, see if I could catch a lift with
him, sleep on his floor, if there was nothing else. I sat at my desk in my new office
surrounded by unpacked boxes and thought about it. Pledge a hundred bucks to Sean’s
ride, don’t tell him I’m riding myself, wait till the day before the ride starts and
then tell him I need help.

Weird George. Wacky George. The guy they just moved upstairs. Can you believe it?
Can’t even plan a bike ride.

I GOT OUT OF BED
at 4:30, ate a banana and an energy bar, drank some orange juice, and began riding
at 5:00. I had to go five miles just to reach the starting line from the motel I had
been lucky enough to get at the last minute. The motel wasn’t much, but the owner
agreed to let
me leave my car. I would ride five miles to the start, ride one hundred and ten miles
to the finish, and then catch the bus back to Sturbridge at 7:00 p.m., pedal five
miles back to the motel, and drive home.

I would ride, and then ride, and ride again. Up at 4:30, be home on the Cape by midnight.
It didn’t make any difference. I wasn’t sleeping much these days, anyhow.

WE STARTED OUT FAST
, the sun not yet up, several thousand riders bunched together, chattering excitedly,
feeling good about what we were about to do. I had begun close to the front, and for
half a mile I was in sight of the leaders. I hit the first hill too hard and wasted
a lot of energy. There were no hills to speak of on the Cape and I was winded by the
time I reached the first crest.

People began passing me in droves. I concentrated on what I was doing, knowing the
hills would keep coming, forty-five miles’ worth, none of them killers … well, maybe
one, out in farmland, but I kept pushing, telling myself to take my time, locking
onto those other riders who didn’t look to be in riding shape, trying to stay at least
with the older people, the women with large bottoms and the men with big bellies,
those whose gears clanked as they tried to downshift lower and lower as the road took
us higher and higher.

Older people passed me. Women with large bottoms got away from me. Men with big bellies
discussed the Patriots as they cycled along.

I couldn’t have done that. I couldn’t have talked even if I had the chance.

I thought of giving up, but then what would I do? Walk? Wait by the side of the road
for the race marshals to come by and load my bike and me into a van? The van of shame.
It would be like riding to jail in the back of a police cruiser.

One of the great things about cycling is that even when you think you can’t do something,
you’re in the process of doing it. I told myself that’s what I was doing. What I was
doing on the road, what I was doing in the Heidi Telford case.

I won’t quit the race.

I won’t quit the search for Heidi’s killer.

I know who killed Heidi.

I won’t give up till I prove it.

Till I nail him.

Fat bastard.

Gets away with everything.

Just because he’s a Gregory.

Not even a Gregory by last name.

Only by middle name.

Has to go around telling everybody.

I can make it halfway.

I can make it three-quarters.

Rape a girl. Lie about it. Let her life be ruined. Beautiful girl. Used to ride horses.
Rich. Beautiful. Could have done so much. I could have said something.

Get up, get up. Over the top. Now you can coast.

He didn’t ask, though, did he? Fucking Ralph Mars. Fucking state attorney. What’s
he now? Congressman Mars. And I was just a kid. A college kid. Who kept his mouth
shut.

I didn’t lie.

Peter lied. And probably Jamie.

I just kept my mouth shut. Answered what I was asked. No, the Senator wasn’t there.
He stuck his head into the library, that was all. Saw we were there. Peter, Jamie,
Kendrick, and me.

No, he didn’t come in.

No, he didn’t say anything.

Drunk? I don’t know.

I was drunk. I know that.

We all were.

Peter, Jamie, Kendrick, and me.

I told him what I was doing.

Looking at the Homer. The Winslow Homer. The boat with the big fish. Covered with
dust.
Fucking Winslow Homer. Fucking big fish
.

Kendrick. On the couch.

Reclined. Did I say reclined?

Peter. Just standing there. Next to the couch. When the Senator looked in.

I didn’t lie.

I answered what I was asked.

Fuck you, George. You fucking wimp
.

WE TURNED ONTO
a shaded lane in a rural town. There had been people all along the route cheering
us on, sometimes offering water, clanging bells, blowing air horns. But this street
was different. Cherry Street. Families were gathered out in front of their homes,
displaying poster-size pictures of cancer-stricken kids. Big-eyed kids, hairless kids
in nightgowns, kids who had terrible things happen to them that never should have
happened to anyone.

The families clapped as we went by. They called out encouragement. They yelled, “Thank
you, riders!” They made us feel like heroes.

If only they knew.

I WOULD RIDE
. I would ride until I fell off. Until I blacked out. I would never give up. I would
never surrender. I will push the investigation. I will go wherever it takes me. I
will ask all the right questions.
All
the right questions. Of anyone and everyone. Even if I have to go back to Costa Rica.
Back to California. I will go wherever I have to go. Do whatever I have to do.

IT WAS ABOUT
3:30 by the time I arrived at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on the west bank
of the Cape Cod Canal, the end of the first day’s leg. The end of the ride for me.

A huge tent had been pitched, and inside was all the free food a person could possibly
want. I went right for the beer. Harpoon Lager. Poured by people who thanked me for
what I had done.

I sat down at a long picnic table that happened to have an open space and listened
to the others at the table talk. Some were eating burgers, some clam chowder, some
ice cream. Some, like me, were just
drinking beer. Those guys, the beer drinkers, wanted me in the conversation. We all
agreed that nothing in the world could possibly taste better than a fresh, cold beer
after one hundred and ten miles of riding in the midsummer heat.

Where was I from?

What did I do?

“George?”

Somebody had heard me identify myself. I turned. It was Sean Murphy, a large cookie
in one hand, a beer in the other, staring at me as if I were an apparition.

“Hey.”

He looked at the rest of my table, searching for a familiar face. He didn’t find one.
“You rode?”

“I did.”

“I didn’t know you even— Hey, can I talk to you?”

The Murph-Dog, with a cookie and a beer, in tight Lycra shorts, a colorful Pan-Mass
riding shirt, and click-clackety bicycle shoes, wanted to talk to me in private.

WE FOUND A TABLE
off by ourselves. Sean sat without using his hands. He was looking at me in a way
he never had before. I assumed it was because he was impressed at my performance,
my accomplishment, the mere fact that I was here in the beer tent at the finish line.

He said, “Pretty good gig you got there on the Telford investigation.”

I drank because it gave me a chance to lower my eyes to my plastic cup.

“Office next to Reid Cunningham’s, huh?”

He knew it was. I just nodded.

“I saw all those uniformed officers delivering files, so obviously something big is
going on.”

“It’s been going on for a while, Sean.”

“Cold case suddenly heats up, something new has happened.”

Sean was leaning forward, his wrists resting on the edge of the table, his hands still
holding his beer and his cookie.

“You taking it before the grand jury?”

“Taking what, Sean?”

He smiled as if he recognized that a certain code had to be used, certain protocol
had to be followed. “Rumors are going around that there’s new evidence the Gregorys
might have been involved.”

I did not respond. This did not bother Sean in the slightest.

“Is the Senator going to testify?”

“Sean, tell me exactly what it is you’re hearing.”

He looked left and right. He lowered his voice. “I’m hearing there might have been
an orgy going on at the Gregorys’ that night the girl was killed. I’m hearing she
might have been there and seen too much.”

There was something childish about the way Sean was addressing me. Maybe it was the
cookie.

“You believe that?” I asked.

“What I believe,” he said, his eyes sparkling, “is that Anything New Telford has been
making the rounds for years telling people the Gregorys had something to do with the
death of his daughter. What I hear is that he’s got your ear now. What I see is you’ve
suddenly got prime office space and stacks of files. And I want in.”

“Want in how?”

“To assist you. To co-counsel with you. Whatever you’ll give me. I heard you turned
down Barbara.”

He took a big bite out of the cookie, what I thought was a rather vicious bite. Crumbs
shot all over the place.

“Guys are talking,” he went on, his mouth full. “They’re saying, ‘Why would he do
that?’ People are saying, ‘Well, she doesn’t have enough experience.’ But me, I looked
at it, I figured something else out altogether.”

He washed the cookie down with beer, dropped his voice even lower, and said, “I figure,
Barbara, she’s from around here. She’s tied in with those people. You can’t have her
going after them like you and I could.”

“By ‘those people,’ you mean the Gregorys?”

“Damn right.”

“And you wouldn’t care which Gregory might be involved, as long as it’s one of them.
Is that what you’re saying?”

Sean Murphy looked at me as if I had just spoken a profound truth, one that was going
to make us great friends now that we shared this understanding. “You got it,” he said.
“Case like this, fucking career maker, I’d go after the Senator’s mother. Fry her
ass, if I had to.”

S
EAN WASN
’
T THE ONLY ONE WHO WAS EXCITED
.

On Monday I got a call from the
Cape Cod Times
, then one from
The Boston Globe
, then
The Wall Street Journal
, and finally the dreaded Fox News. I referred them all to Reid, who repeatedly denied
that there had been any developments. He said the matter had never been closed, and
praised Bill Telford for his diligence in never letting them forget that the killer
was still at large.

There was other news in the office, too—news that was not worthy of journalists’ attention,
but that was of some significance to me. Barbara Belbonnet had unexpectedly announced
she was taking a leave of absence. This threw operations into a tizzy because nobody
wanted to cover her caseload. “Domestic relations?” a woman said to me as she was
trying to talk her way onto my project, “
yuck
.”

THERE WAS PRECIOUS
little in the police files that I had not seen already. I read them and reread them.
I interviewed the officers who had responded to the crime scene and who either were
still with the force or lived in the area. I explored the possibility that Heidi had
been chased across the golf course and tried to get someone, anyone, to give me information
about a drag path. There wasn’t any. Not even the last few feet, as Reid Cunningham
had implied. Which meant that she had
to have been killed somewhere else and someone had to have carried a hundred-and-fifteen-pound
dead girl at least from West Street across a fairway to where she was found in the
trees. Someone. Or some two.