Dancing in the Dark (23 page)

How had things gone so horribly wrong?

After such care had been taken to make sure
there would be no prints, the police said they had fingerprints. Arthur
must have been the one who’d taken off Carly’s blindfold and gag. How
dumb of the poor man to leave his fingerprints behind.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to
happen at all.

Arthur Tomkins was innocent, but it was
always convenient to pin things on somebody who was mentally ill.

“I think we need to get another interview with Leslie,” Diane said
to Matthew after the press conference was over. “Get her reaction to
all this.”

“I have a feeling she’ll agree to talk with you,” said Matthew.
“This must be quite a vindication for her.”

“You know what else we should do?” asked Diane.

“What?”

“Let’s Google Arthur Tomkins and see if there’s anything on the web
about him.”

When they typed in “Arthur Tomkins” and “Ocean Grove” on Matthew’s
laptop, they got over thirty hits, but only one appeared to be what
they were looking for. Two years before the
Asbury
Park Press
had done a series of stories about former mental patients living in Ocean Grove and
Asbury Park. Arthur Tomkins had been interviewed. . Diane read aloud
from the laptop screen.

“With no job and nothing else to do each day, thirty-eight-year-old
Arthur Tomkins wanders the boardwalk starting early in the mornings.
Tomkins, originally from Spring Lake, suffered a nervous breakdown when
he came home after the Gulf War, the stress of the war compounded by
his fiancee’s rejection. He spent three months in the psychiatric ward
at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Lyons, New Jersey, went home
to his family in Spring Lake, and got a job. But six months later, he
was back in the hospital again after he snapped during Mass at St.
Catherine’s Roman Catholic Church, punching one of the ushers in the
face.” Diane looked at Matthew. “This is so sad,” she said.

Arthur was quoted at the end of the article, and Diane read his
words out loud. “After I got out of the VA that time, my parents didn’t
want me coming back to Spring Lake. I don’t really blame ‘em, I guess.”

Matthew pulled out his cell phone. “Let me check with New York and
see what they want.” The executive producer had decided that he didn’t
want another full package about the Ocean Grove story on the
Evening Headlines
that night. Since
there was no new video except the police press conference, the
development of Arthur Tomkins’s arrest would simply be told by the
anchorwoman Eliza Blake.

“That leaves us free to do whatever we want,” Matthew said as he
snapped the phone closed.

Diane had phoned the Patterson home and left her cell phone number,
asking Leslie to return the call. “Who knows if or when Leslie will
call back?” she said. “How would you feel about taking a little drive
down to Spring Lake? We could get some pictures of the town that police
say spawned a killer.”

With Sammy pointing his camera out the window, Gary drove the two
miles up Ocean Avenue in Spring Lake and the two miles back again. On
the way up, Sammy captured shots of the noncommercial boardwalk and the
immaculate beach. On the return trip he
shot the other side of the road, dotted with rambling Victorian
mansions with wraparound porches and sprawling lawns.

“It’s absolutely beautiful here,” Diane said from the backseat.

The car turned west and cruised up and down the manicured streets.
One home was more gracious and charming than the next. In the center of
town, swans swam in a large spring-fed lake, which was lined with
graceful weeping willow trees. At the top of the rise, overlooking the
lake, was a church that bore a striking resemblance to St. Peter’s
Basilica in Rome.

“That’s St. Catherine’s,” said Matthew with enthusiasm. “The place
where Arthur beamed the usher. Be sure you get a good shot of that,
Sammy. After that, let’s stop someplace for a drink.”

Gary found a space in the middle of the downtown area, parking the
car in front of the Who’s on Third Deli. The three men went inside to
buy some soft drinks while Diane remained in the car and used her cell
phone to call information. The operator said there was a listing for a
Tomkins in Spring Lake and gave Diane the number. But she wouldn’t
supply an address.

Diane hung up and then called the
Hourglass
office and asked for Susannah.

“How’s it going down there?” Susannah asked.

“Pretty well, pretty well,” Diane said. “But I have a favor to ask.”

“Go ahead. Shoot,” the researcher said.

“Take down this number and look it up in the reverse directory,”
Diane said. “Then call me back with the address.”

CHAPTER
81

At Jersey Shore University Medical Center, the gossip was all about
the patient who had been arrested because police thought he was guilty
of kidnapping and murder. Dr. Caroline Varga, who was usually so
certain and self-assured, was in a quandary. Should she go to the
police with what she’d heard Arthur Tomkins say to the young man who
came to visit him yesterday? Or had Arthur’s words meant nothing really?

“Okay, Shawn. I always do what you tell me to do.”

Caroline had heard Arthur say that when she came back into the
double room, thinking she might have left her good pen behind. Just as
she realized she had stuck the pen in the pocket of her slacks rather
than her lab coat and turned to leave again,
she heard the words from the other side of the drawn curtain.

“Okay, Shawn. I always do what you tell me to do.”

At the time, Caroline had just been glad that Arthur had finally
spoken. But now she wondered if his words meant something important.
Could the mentally ill man possibly have taken orders from his young
friend? Could Shawn be the mastermind behind the abductions of two
women and the death of one of them? Was Arthur just an addle-minded
pawn who’d carried out the deadly directions he was given?

Stranger things had happened.

Or maybe she was making a mountain out of a molehill.

“What do you think?” asked Diane. “Should we call first or just show
up?”

Matthew took a long swig of his cherry Dr Pepper. “In this case, I
vote for just showing up. With their son accused of murder, I doubt the
Tomkinses are going to invite us on over if we call first. If we just
go and knock on the door, they’ll have no
time to think. That could work to our advantage.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense/’ said Diane. “But this sort of
thing is the least favorite part of my job. It makes me feel like a
vulture.”

The brick-and-clapboard homes on Washington Avenue were lovely and
well-tended. Lush green lawns and mature foundation shrubbery gave the
impression that the houses were inland somewhere rather than blocks
from the sandy beach. The Tomkinses’ house was on the corner, a big
gray Victorian with white shutters and a black door.
Gray-and-white-striped awnings crowned the windows. Red and white
petunias flourished in window boxes and in the planters on the
wraparound porch.

“I want this place,” said Diane as the car pulled up to the curb.
“It’s picture perfect. I want to sit in one of those wicker rockers and
rock my days away.”

“Appearances can be deceiving, can’t they?” Matthew observed.
“Looking at this place, the last thing in the world you’d expect would
be that the boy who grew up here became a man who lost his mind and
killed someone.”

The crew got out of the car. Sammy stood in the street as he took
video of the house. Diane noticed the curtain move at one of the
downstairs windows.

“Well, they know we’re here,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be nice if they
just came on out and chatted with us?”

“Don’t hold your breath,” said Matthew.

“Okay, I’ve got plenty of the house,” said Sammy as he slid his
camera down from his shoulder. “Now what?”

Matthew considered the question for a moment. “Why don’t we get
Diane to do a bridge we can use in the piece somewhere? Diane, you can
walk down the sidewalk and stop in front of the house and say something
general enough that we’ll be able to slide it in later.”

“I get it.” She nodded. “Pin the wireless mike on me, Gary, and give
me a couple of minutes to think of what I’m going to say.”

She walked halfway down the block, mentally composing her script.
She turned to face Matthew and the crew, who were waiting on the
sidewalk just past the Tomkins home. “Ready?” she called.

“Go ahead,” yelled Sammy.

Diane started walking slowly toward the camera as she began to
speak. “Many consider Spring Lake to be the prettiest town on the
Jersey Shore. It is also one of the wealthiest. There is a feeling of
well-being on these gracious streets dotted with large, carefully
tended homes. Many would dream of raising their children here because
it looks like a place where nothing bad ever happens.”
She slowed down as she reached the Tomkins house. “But for Arthur
Tomkins, who grew up in this house in these affluent surroundings,
beautiful Spring Lake is a distant memory.”

Diane stopped. “What do you think?” she called to Matthew.

He held his thumb upward. “We’ll check it, but I think you got it
right on the first take.”

“Want me to do it?” asked Matthew.

“No,” said Diane. “It’s better if I do.”

She climbed the brick stairs and rang the doorbell. After a minute,
she rang it again before hearing someone coming to answer. An elderly
man with a shock of white hair and dressed in carefully pressed khaki
slacks and pink short-sleeved Oxford shirt opened the door. The
expression on his face told Diane she was not welcome.