Lie in Wait (4 page)

He trotted over to her and said, “Sorry. I moved the car. There was so much commotion around it. I was worried the kids were scared. I've been here the whole time. I didn't think—­”

Test exhaled a long breath of relief and looked up at the full moon. The air was crisp and cold. She could see her breath. “It's OK.”

“They're fast asleep,” Larkin said.

“No sign of my husband?”

Larkin glanced over Test's shoulder as headlight beams flooded his face.

Claude was just pulling up in his old Bronco II.

He got out and trotted over, hands tucked in his peacoat pockets, eyes darting as he tried to take in the scene outside the home, to understand it.

“Sorry,” he said. “Done?” He peeked inside the car at the kids.

“I was,” Test said. “But if you take them home in my car, I'd like to go back in.”

Claude ran his hands through his dark hair. “See you at the house then,” he said. “Sorry to be late. The roads . . .”

 

Chapter 6

J
ON
M
ERRYFIELD
DREAMT.

He was a boy, cowering in a corner. He did not dare look up. He could hear breathing. Close. Feel breath on his neck. Too close. He screamed. “Look at me,” a man's voice said. Jon looked. It was himself, older. “No,” Boy Jon said and shrank from his older self. “No.”

Jon awoke, someone shaking him. His skin was feverish. Vision blurred. He lay on the sofa, curled in a ball. The room was dark, the cops gone.

“You had another dream,” Bethany said.

“Nightmare,” Jon said and took her hand and gave it a squeeze. She took her hand away.

“You should never have taken up this case,” Bethany said. “You put our family at risk over nothing. Damn you.”

 

Chapter 7

I
T WAS LAT
E
when Test tried to enter the house quietly, but Charlie, the beloved Labrador –retriever-­and-­German-­shepherd mutt Test had rescued years earlier, before Claude and the kids, came waddling up to her anyway, working a squeaky toy in his jaws and swishing his tail in greeting as he wove between Test's legs. He whined and wedged his snoot between her knees. His muzzle had gone white. His eyes runny. Time was catching up with him.

“Hi boy,” Test said, her voice strained. Charlie nuzzled. Test nudged him away. She was too burned out to give him her usual love of getting on the floor to rub his belly. He was such a needy galoot.

Charlie pressed, tried to plant his paws on Test's chest, but his rear legs were too lame to get him up that high anymore. It was a habit Test wished she'd quashed in the early days. But back then, single and living alone in her studio apartment in Lebanon, New Hampshire, freshly graduated from the Vermont Police Academy on this side of the river, she'd found it endearing; and knowing the abuse the poor dog had endured at the hands of his previous owner, she had permitted it. Hell. She'd encouraged it; spoiled him and let him have his way. But now, when she was wiped, she had no patience for it.

Charlie whined and gave her his best forsaken look.

She wasn't buying it.

He tried once more to get his paws on her, and Test snipped, “Enough Charlie,” and shoved her knee hard into his chest. Charlie limped off into the living room, where he plopped down with a harrumph and began sulking.

As Test made her way upstairs, she promised herself to love him up doubly first chance she got.

S
KIPPING HER NIGHTLY
regimen of cleansers and lotions, Test washed her face briefly with hand soap, gave her teeth a quick once-­over, fished the mouth guard she wore for grinding teeth from a plastic Solo cup of Scope and wedged it in her mouth. She shed her clothes and left them where they fell, replacing them with flannel pajama bottoms.

In the bedroom, she set the preliminary case file on the nightstand. Before she'd left the station, she'd downloaded and printed photos and the notes that North had sent her via an encrypted e-­mail. She'd expected the detective to hold out on her; but he'd come through after she'd sent two texts requesting the information.

She slid into bed beside Claude, who had fallen asleep with his latest Ivan Doig novel resting on his chest beside the pint of nearly melted Chubby Hubby ice cream.

He came to, pretending he'd only been out a moment, though judging by the state of the ice cream it had been at least a half hour.

Both of them sat topless in their matching blue drawstring flannel pajama bottoms, their backs cushioned by twin husband pillows. She said nothing for a long spell. Test liked that they could sit in comfortable silence together.

Test watched the bedside clock change from 1:11 to 1:12
A.M
.

Claude slipped a spoon into the pint, mined a hunk of dark chocolate from the soft ice cream.

From her room down the hall, Elizabeth cried out in a dream, “Mommy!” then fell abruptly silent, though not before sending a chill through Test.

Claude spooned another chocolate chunk into his mouth. “Ah,” he said and slid his tongue around his mouth lecherously. He licked a smear of melted ice cream off the back of his hand.

“Attractive,” Test said, noting the irony as she adjusted her mouth guard to speak. “How can you eat ice cream with so much junk in it? You can barely find the ice cream. Give me vanilla. Chocolate. Strawberry. Real ice cream.”

“But look at all the treats left even with the ice cream half melted.”

Test used to love ice cream, but since training for marathons, limited herself to eating it on Saturday, her off day. She seldom had the appetite for sweets now, anyway. She preferred dates and jumbo raisins and other naturally sweet snacks that had at least some nominal nutrients. Ice cream seemed to coat the inside of her stomach like an oil slick.

“Vanilla and chocolate are for amateurs,” Claude said and kissed her cheek.

Test opened the folder and placed her finger on a photo of Jessica's face.

Claude grimaced, set his ice cream on the nightstand. “God,” he said.

“Whoever did it was either very lucky with the blow. Or practiced.”

Claude sat up against the headboard. “Practiced? You saying he's done this before?”

“I'm not saying anything. Just. Maybe the perp chose Jessica as a smokescreen, to make it look like it had to do with something else. The case, or whatever. But it didn't. I don't know what I'm saying. I made an ass of myself most of the night.”

“You're too hard on yourself.”

“I'm realistic. I should have listened more, talked less. Noted how Detective North handled witnesses, and himself—­”

Sonja flicked her finger against a photo.

“He whacks her once. Out of anger,” Test said. “Or passion. Or revenge. One of the trio. Then he freaks and flees.”

“He knows her?”

“Statistically. Absolutely. At least saw her around. But I think he
knows
her. I think it was the boy Jon saw. A boyfriend. Or a kid she rejected as a prom date or something.”

“Why not some old perv?”

“I'd be up for that scenario more if Bethany hadn't seen a boy previously,” she said. “But, there's no outward sign Jessica was molested. No sign of struggle. All her clothes were on her. Lloyd, the ME, might conclude differently. But usually, a stranger, it's sexual violence.”

“So if it is a jilted kid . . .” Claude sat up farther against the headboard, yawning. The Doig novel slid off his lap and thunked on the floor.

“Could explain why he doesn't have it in him to keep pounding away,” Test said. “Anger gets the best of him. But when he sees her on the cellar floor like that, he can't bring himself to hit her again, to make sure. I mean, for all he knew, she could have been just knocked out, and woken up. Though the damage that was done—­” She tried not to think of it.

“He got seen at least.”

“Not enough for a positive ID.”

“If it's a kid that was hung up on her, other kids will know about him,” Claude said.

“I plan to hit the school tomorrow morning, after I go back to the house.”

“Are you allowed to do that? If the school is even open after this, the kids will be a mess. And. Don't the state police handle—­”

She cut him a sidewise glance.
Allowed
was not part of her vocabulary.

“They lead the investigation. Everything I learn that's important, I need to pass on to them. But all I've got going now through the department is a domestic violence case that's open and shut. The wife's talking, for once.”

“Why do you need to go back to the house?”

“I want to ask a few questions I didn't get a chance to ask the wife last night. I got a sense there was a rift there between she and her husband.”

“You think—­”

“I don't know what I think.”

She sighed and closed the folder, placed it on the nightstand.

“So you won't be able to get Elizabeth to her annual checkup at one tomorrow?” Claude said.

“Shit. I forgot.”

“I'll do it.” Claude kissed her forehead and settled in under his blankets.

Test sat in bed for a long time, playing the evening over and over in her head. She was exhausted, but wired; jacked on adrenaline.

She picked up the folder and started going through it again.

 

Chapter 8

D
AWN'S PALE LIGHT
edged through the Venetian blinds. Jon peered at Bethany across the room, asleep on the sofa. He went and stood over her. She looked so peaceful as her chest rose and fell, and air whistled from her nose. Their baby son lay asleep in the portable crib in the corner of the room. Jon lay a palm on him. So warm. So unaware. He stooped and kissed his son's forehead.

In the kitchen, Jon listened to his voice mail. The state police were due to come and listen to all the messages today. Three messages Jon listened to now were from attorneys working with him on the case. A dozen were from reporters regarding the previous night. Another dozen or so were from strangers, as far as he knew, who left messages along the lines of him being in league with Satan and a faggot lover and a fucking cocksucker.

Jon went through the messages until he found the one he was seeking.

He listened as revulsion washed through him.

The same voice he'd heard from for the past week or so. The first message had been just eight words that left him feeling drained of blood. There were five messages total. Each more demanding and threatening.

Jon had erased the most recent message. Then he erased the other messages left by the same voice. In a spontaneous, reflexive panic, he erased all his messages and the caller ID history.

He called his work phone and erased all the messages from the same voice.

Then he slipped out of the house to get to the office and think about what it was he was going to do to try to keep his life from blowing apart.

 

Chapter 9

B
ETHANY LOOKED AR
OUND
the room, blinking back sleep. Jon was gone. From where she lay on the couch, she could see the open doorway to the cellar stairs. A phosphorescent glow pulsed from below, as if from a laboratory where bizarre experiments were being conducted. You'd think they'd turn off the equipment, she thought.

She wanted to close the door but did not want to get closer to it. She wanted to flee. Now. Leave her dream house. She felt filthy and afraid in it. She wanted to scour herself, let hot water rinse her flesh if not her mind of last night. She wanted to dress in new clothes, cut her hair, transform herself into a woman who knew nothing of this world. Take her son out in the fresh air. Breathe. She feared whoever had killed Jessica would be back. That this was not the end of things; but just the beginning.

She admired Jon for his work. He'd made a career of taking cases for underprivileged victims of violence. Especially juveniles. Boys. But this case. It was trouble from its inception. Dangerous no matter how you looked at it. The ­couple he was representing had had their civil rights violated, and Bethany believed in their cause; but they were not victims of the sort Jon normally took. He did not take civil cases. He prosecuted. Yet, he had taken this case
,
against Bethany's wishes. They'd quarreled. Bethany had warned him the case would bring out a radicals. They'd blame Jon. Target him. Target his family. Jon had called her paranoid.

It could have been me in the cellar
, Bethany thought.
Me.

Bethany lifted baby Jon from his crib. She stroked his head as she saw the detective from the night before, the woman, out on the back lawn.

 

Chapter 10

T
HE MOR
NING AIR
was biting cold. The sky was gray and glary in a way that pained Test's eyes and made her squint. She felt listless from her pittance of sleep and from a brain that had refused to shut down even in her scant two hours of restless sleep.

She snapped on a pair of surgical gloves, tight as a second skin, and stepped across the dead, November grass of the backyard, which edged up to the woods. She walked with the deliberate, mindful motion of one navigating a minefield. After each step, she paused, sometimes for so long she had the sensation of turning into a painting of herself. She'd first experienced this phenomenon when she'd sat for Claude so he could paint her portrait to hang in his studio. She'd resisted at first. Could there be anything more preposterously vain or archaic than getting your portrait painted?
It's not for you, it's for me
, Claude had said. So, of course, she'd granted it.

She scrutinized the patch of earth where she was about to step. She stooped to poke at the lawn with an extendable pointer that reminded her of her old high-­school geography teacher.

She poked at something now. Something stuck in the semi-­frozen ground at the edge of the woods behind the house; woods anyone could have slipped out of and back into and hardly be seen, even in daylight. Except that these woods, even with aid of a flashlight, were so dense and tangled, one would never be able to find one's way deftly at night.

Test could not see clearly the object she poked at now. She knelt over her find, feeling like a girl with a magnifying glass. With the camera around her neck, she took two photographs, one photo up close, another from a standing position. Then, with a precise movement, she plucked a metal pincers from her shirt pocket and extracted the artifact from the grass and held it before her eyes. It was a simple thumbtack. She fished an evidence bag from her jacket pocket anyway and dropped the tack inside. Sealed the bag. Marked the time and date and location on the outside of the bag, in each appropriate field, with permanent marker.

“Can I help you?” a voice calcified with contempt said from behind her.

“No,” Test said without acknowledging the voice in any other way.

“What are you doing here?” the voice said.

Clearly, Test was not going to be left alone, so she stood and turned, planted her hands on her hips.

Bethany Merryfield stared at her, the fuzzy pink slippers she wore on her feet tapping on the dead grass. Except for the slippers, she remained dressed in the clothes she'd worn the previous evening, her makeup smeared and face puffy. She had the baby done up in a front-­riding baby sling. She seemed unsteady. Her color was no good, her eyes hidden behind the enormous sunglasses that were all the rage, with a certain type.

“You okay?” Test said with an empathy she'd lacked the previous night. She came and stood at Bethany's elbow.

“Fine,” Bethany said.

“You're doing better than I am,” Test said. “Your baby is adorable.”

Normally, a mother would have melted with pride at such a comment. Test sure had, and still did. She couldn't help it.

“Thanks,” Bethany managed.

“I have two,” said Test. “Not babies. A boy and a girl. Just turned four and seven a week ago, born on the same day, three years apart.”

The melting frost was seeping through Bethany's slippers. “Do you want to go back inside?” Test said.

“What have you got in that bag?” Bethany said. She seemed almost in a trance.

“Nothing,” Test said and held up the bag. “You need anything? You want a doctor?” The trauma of the night before might just now have been seeping into the woman, just dawning on her the magnitude of what had happened. Test worried she was in shock.

“No.” Bethany said and gave a pained grin. “Yes, actually. I need help back inside. I feel I might collapse. I seem to be stuck in place and feel like I was struck in the head.”

Test took her by the elbow and led her back into the house through a screen door.

Inside, Bethany sat on the couch with the Test's help.

“What are you doing here?” Bethany said.

“I'd come by to ask a few more questions and have a look around in daylight.”

“I thought the state police were in charge.”

“I'm helping in whatever capacity I can.”

“I don't want to have to tell ten ­people the same thing over and over.”

“I appreciate that. I just have a few questions. They may spur something new. Your husband and you were out last night at the Village Fare?”

“We went over that already.”

“What time?”

“Six until about seven. I told you all this.”

“I just want to re-­confirm. It was an emotional evening. I want to make sure none of us missed anything. And now with daylight and your head a bit clearer—­”

“I'm not so sure about that.”

“What time did you get home?”

She sighed heavily. “Maybe seven fifteen. Why aren't you writing this down? Why are you bothering me if it's not important enough to write down?”

“Because it's what you told me last night.”

“Which is why I just wish to be left alone and not have to repeat these boring questions.”

“A child was murdered in your home. Sorry if you find it boring. It's not to me.”

Bethany gave her chin a tiny petulant shake and hugged her baby closer to her chest.

“So you drove to the restaurant?” Test said.

“Right.”

“Why?”

“I don't understand.”

“It's a fifteen-­minute walk or so. It was a beautiful if crisp night.”

“My husband's been sick, for one. Two: We were running late. Three: It was actually cold last night. With that wind. Not
crisp
. I don't see how any of this germane.”

The prickly demeanor bothered Test. Had from the start. Why the abrasiveness? Why the disdain? Did this woman think somehow that she was the one most victimized in all of this? Or was there something else at work? Test scribbled nonsense in the pad to buy herself time.

“About the voice-­mail messages you received,” Test said. “The threats. I'd like to listen to them if I may.” She nodded at the cordless phone sitting on the coffee table. “If you could dial your voice mail and bring it up for me.”

The baby started to wriggle awake, stretching; he uttered a short, sharp cry so abrupt it startled Test.

“I'll give you the number and password,” Bethany said, standing, rocking in place to try to lull the baby. Test picked up the phone and punched in the numbers as Bethany Merryfield recited them to her.

Test listened. Stared at the phone in her hand. “I thought you and Jon said you'd leave any threatening messages on the voice mail. There's not a single message, that makes a threat or otherwise.”

“Maybe you did something wrong.”

Test handed the phone to Bethany. “Check for yourself.”

“I'm busy with the baby,” Bethany said.

“Check later. But there are no messages on your phone.”

“Did you accidentally erase them?”

“I don't accidentally do anything.”

Test did not mention what she found even more odd: that the caller ID history had been erased completely.

“May I speak with your husband?” Test asked.

“Why would Jon erase the messages?”

“I'm not saying he did. On purpose. He mentioned perhaps there weren't any threatening ones saved. It happens. As I said, last night everyone was in a state. I'd like to speak to him, however.”

“He's not here. You can see his Rover's not out front.”

“I thought perhaps it was in the garage.”

“We hardly ever use the garage. I hate that it's not attached. What's the point? You can check for yourself for the Rover.”

“That won't be necessary. Do you know where he is?”

“He was gone when I awoke.”

Test wondered what could possibly have been so pressing that a husband would abandon his wife and his child the morning after such a heinous night? Why would he erase those messages? He, or someone else, had done so. If not, someone had certainly deleted the caller ID history.

“I'll show myself out,” Test said. “I may be in your yard a while yet.”

B
ETHAN
Y WATCHED THE
detective from the kitchen-­sink window.

She knew for certain messages had been on there as of the day before because she'd had to skip over more recent ones to get to one left by her Pilates instructor about the change of time for a weekly class.

Bethany turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face.

In the hallway, she inspected her image in the mirror. Ghastly. She plucked an eyelash from her cheek. As a girl, she would have made a wish and blown the eyelash off her fingertip. She flicked the eyelash away, not so naïve as to believe a wish could help her now.