Murder 101 (34 page)

CHAPTER 34

A
RMS FOLDED ACROSS
his barrel chest, Lance Terry was flushed and sweating. “You have no right to come down here and harass me. If my father was here—”

“If your father were here, I’d tell him that you were in danger and your best option is to talk to the police.” Decker looked around the hallway. “You already think people are following you. Who knows? Maybe someone is spying on us right now.”

The boy’s face drained of color, red to white. “Is someone following you?”

“If he is, he can see us talking. So how about if we come in? It’s a good first step.”

“Yeah . . . right.” Terry swung the door open and let the crew inside, his eyes on Rina, wondering about the new person in the mix. The place was quiet except for the distant clatter of laundry being spun in a dryer. There was a half-packed suitcase on the couch, another closed one on the floor.

Decker’s eyes went to the valise and then to Terry. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s your housekeeper?” McAdams asked.

“I gave her the afternoon off.”

Oliver said, “You didn’t want her to see you packing and asking questions.”

Terry said nothing. He wore a body-hugging long-sleeved gray shirt and jeans. There were hiking boots on his feet. His sandy hair swept across his damp brow.

“Where did your friend go? Livingston Sobel?”

“How should I know?” A pause. “He left last night. I suppose he went home.” His eyes refused to focus on any one spot. “Do you really think I’m in danger or is that just a pretense?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Decker said. “Obviously you think you’re in trouble. You’re packing way too much to be going back to school.”

“I’m not going back to school,” Terry said. “At least not this semester. Too much has happened.”

“What are you worried about, Lance?” When Terry didn’t answer, Decker said, “Why don’t we all sit down and you can tell us the truth.”

“I have been telling you the truth!” Terry insisted. “I didn’t have anything to do with Angeline’s death . . . or the dude.”

“His name was John Latham.”

“I didn’t kill her and I didn’t kill him!”

“I believe you,” Decker said. “But you certainly know more than you’ve been telling us. There have been hang-up calls. You think you’re being followed. We’re here because we’re concerned about your welfare.”

Terry seemed to wilt. He sat down next to his open suitcase. “You showing up here isn’t good for my health.”

“On the contrary,” Oliver said. “Our presence tells the bad guys that we got to you before they did. So hurting you wouldn’t serve any purpose for them other than to spur us to redouble our efforts. Right now the more people you tell, the better off you are.”

McAdams said, “What’s your password for your Wi-Fi?”

“My password?”

“The password for the apartment. I’d like to get on the Internet.”

“Terrypark. Capital T.”

“Thanks.”

Decker opened up his notepad. “Tell me about the hang-up calls.”

He whispered behind his hands. “A blocked call would come through my cell. When I answered it, I’d get heavy breathing—to let me know someone was there. And then whoever it was would hang up. I put in a *82 feature on my phone . . . so no one could get through without revealing the number. The calls would still come through as blocked. It freaked me out.”

“How long has this been happening?” Oliver asked.

“They began a few days after Angeline was murdered. And then after you guys were shot at, I—”

“Detective Decker was shot at,” McAdams interrupted. “I was shot.”

“I know, I know. I got nervous. I had to get out of there.”

“And you thought you were being followed,” Decker said.

“Could have been my imagination.”

“Probably not,” Oliver said. “Tell us about it.”

“I’d see things. Fleeting shadows but then I’d turn around to really look and it wouldn’t be anything.”

“So you felt like a person was following you?”

“As opposed to a dog, yes.”

“As opposed to a car, Lance.”

“Oh. I get what you’re saying. It’s hard to tail someone on campus with a car because you’re walking across quads and fields and things that don’t intersect streets. So no. I never noticed a car following me.” He furrowed his brow. “Like what kind of car?”

Decker said, “Silver Hyundai Accent van. Maybe two years old.”

Terry shuddered while he shook his head no.

“Detective Oliver is right,” Decker told him. “The more people who know your secrets, the better off you are. So start at the beginning.”

“I’ve told you everything.”

“No, you haven’t, Lance. So either tell us or you’ll wind up telling someone who’s holding a gun to your head.”

He slapped his hands over his face. “It . . . God . . . it was so long ago.” No one spoke. “Just a stupid dare.” He looked up. “Hazing. To get into the frat.”

Everyone waited.

“I had to steal something from the cemetery. Not the one near the school, the big one in Bainbridge about ten miles away.”

“When did this happen?” Oliver asked.

“When I first started Littleton about three and a half years ago. That’s why I’m having a hard time believing that this whole mess has anything to do with me!”

“What did you steal?”

“A stone statue. It was maybe about three feet high. Some stupid goddess dressed in a Roman toga. It was in terrible condition. One arm was broken off. I found it buried in some ivy bushes and covered with dirt. So I took it because it didn’t look like anyone would miss it. Heavy motherfucker.” He exhaled. “Not my finest moment, but I was drunk and eager to please. Anyway, it sat in my dorm room for about a month or two months. And then I met Angeline. A few months later—after we were an item—she asked about it. I told her what I did. She was cool about it.”

Silence.

“More than cool. She was intrigued. She told me she had seen something like that at an antique store in Boston. She asked me if she could try to sell it and we’d split the profits. It was just sitting in my dorm so I said okay.”

Decker said, “Do you know who she sold it to?”

“No idea but she told me she got two hundred bucks—one hundred for each of us, which I blew by taking her out to dinner. I’m a moron.”

“Go on.”

“Nothing more to tell. She sold the statue, we split the money, and I never saw it again.”

“Lance, the statue was just the start. We know you did other thefts because
we
know the gallery owner who purchased the hot items.” A little white lie? Decker preferred to think of it as an educated guess. “So just get it all out.”

The kid deflated, drawing in his shoulders into his torso and then doubling over as if in stomach pain. “I can’t believe how this blew up in my face. It was just a stupid college prank, something you do when you’re drunk and when you’re getting pus—” He looked at Rina. “Girls can do weird things to your mind.”

“I’m aware of that,” Rina said.

“Tell us the rest of it,” Decker said.

“It was a couple of months later. She asked if I could get more things like it.”

“Like the statue.”

Terry nodded. “I told her I could look around.” A sigh. “So I lifted another statue from Bainbridge again: a smaller marble one. And then I lifted a couple of marble urns. She sold them and we split the profits. Because they were made from marble, she got more money for them.”

Decker turned to McAdams. “Check to see if the items are on the inventory list.”

“Already on it.”

“If you stole anything else, Lance, we’ll find out about it,” Decker told him. “So now is the time to tell us everything.”

He lowered his head. “I told her I wasn’t going to pinch any more statues. Too heavy and too risky a venture. So Angeline asked if there was anything else valuable in the cemetery that was smaller and less heavy . . . so I wouldn’t have to take a big risk lugging it around.”

“And you said?”

“God . . .” He shook his head. “I told her there was a meditation room that held cremated ashes in metal urns. Some of the urns looked like genuine silver.”

“You stole people’s remains?” Rina asked.

“No! No, I didn’t. Just the urns!”

“So what did you do with the remains? Dump them on the floor?”

“No! Of course not.” Everyone waited for Terry to continue. “She asked if I could get inside the room. I said the door wasn’t locked, but I wasn’t about to steal remains. That’s bad karma. Instead she told me to take pictures on my phone of the silver urns. Detailed pictures: close-ups. She said it was for a project, but I knew she was lying.”

“But you did it anyway,” Oliver said.

“I sent her the pictures. I figured what she did with them was her own business.”

“And what did she do with them?”

“She copied the urns but used a cheap metal that she painted silver. She even engraved them with the same markings using a dremel tool.” A big sigh. “This took her about six months. When she was done, she cajoled me to go back just one more time.”

A long pause. “So I swapped out the real ones for the cheap ones.”

“This substitution is sounding very familiar.” McAdams showed him a picture on his iPad. “Uh . . . take a look at this marble urn, Lance. Does it look familiar?”

“Maybe it was one of mine, but I couldn’t swear to it.” A pause. “Wow, he’s asking a thousand dollars.”

Oliver said, “What did you two do with the silver urns?”

“On some of them, Angeline was able to polish out the inscription. On the others where the inscription was too deep, she said they were no good on the retail market. So she melted them down for the metal price. But I want you to know that I did transfer the ashes into the cheap urns. So I didn’t steal Uncle Gomer or Aunt Dottie. They’re right where they’re supposed to be . . . just not in a fancy package . . . not that it matters to them.”

His self-serving declaration was met with accusing silence.

Lance blushed. “I’ll reimburse out of my own pocket if you promise no jail time.”

“Kid, right now, that’s the least of your worries,” Oliver said.

“What other items did you steal?” Decker asked.

“Nothing after that.” Terry winced. “I swear it! I refused to go back to the cemetery. The last job gave me the creeps. Not that she didn’t try to change my mind. But when she saw that cemeteries were out, she pushed me into other things.”

“Like?”

“Razoring out antique maps from old atlases.”

“When was this?”

“About a year and a half ago, must have been in the start of our junior year. And FYI, I refused to do it. For one thing, you saw how careful they are at the reference desks. I knew I’d get caught. Then Angeline suggested that we could go to local libraries along the Hudson. Small towns are often filled with antique books. And no one cares about them. But I told her no. If she wanted to do it, she was on her own. She dropped it, but I knew her schemes weren’t over, especially when she showed up with a Movado watch on her wrist. She dumped me because I wasn’t of any use to her anymore. Finally, when she started sporting expensive stuff, it dawned on me that she got herself a new partner.”

“How’d John Latham come into the picture?”

“I don’t know how she met him. Maybe her contact in Boston fixed them up.”

“And you don’t know who this Boston contact was?”

“No.” A pause. “I thought you said you knew the contact.”

“I want to hear what you have to say.”

“I don’t have anything to say! I never knew her contact but I damn well knew she was doing something: her bling got bigger, her ski equipment was top of the line, and her sunglasses and purses were plastered with designer logos. How else did she afford any of that shit if she wasn’t doing something illegal.”

“And you have no idea how she met John Latham?”

“No, I don’t know. Why don’t you believe me?”

“Are you asking me that seriously?” When Terry reddened, Decker said, “When did you find out about Latham?”

“I already told you guys that.”

“So tell us guys again.” McAdams held up his iPad. “Just for my notes.”

“About a year ago, I tailed her into Boston. I saw Latham. I turned around, I went home. I was pissed. I admit it. And I thought very hard about punching his lights out. But I was tired after the long drive. And I guess the drive also cooled me off. I didn’t kill him and I didn’t kill her.” He slumped into his chair, regarding Decker with beseeching eyes. “I’m scared. No offense, but I don’t want to end up like him.” He pointed to Tyler.

“None taken,” McAdams said. “I’m not happy about it, either.”

“What do I do now, man?”

Oliver said, “Stop stealing stuff would be a great start.”

“I was a fucking moron. I’ll reimburse whatever I took in cash. I’ll write apology letters. I’ll do community service. But badgering me won’t help because I have no idea who killed either of them.” His eyes moistened. I repeat, “What do I do now?”

“A few more questions, Lance,” Decker said. “Do you know a man named Alex Beckwith?”

Terry shook his head. “Who is he?”

Oliver said, “How about Martin Kosovsky?” When he didn’t get a response, he said. “Lars Dotter Hemellvich?”

“Never heard of them. They sound Russian.”

“What about Victor Gerrard?” Decker said.

Terry thought long and hard. “Is he kinda like in his early thirties?”

“He kinda is and he’s kinda missing.”

“Oh God—”

“What do you know about him?”

“The name sounds vaguely familiar.”

McAdams did an image search and showed the pad to Terry. “Any of these faces ring a bell?”

Lance studied the pictures. “I think I might have met this one at a college party. He might have been a friend of Angeline’s. Beyond that . . .” He shrugged.

Decker said to McAdams. “Show him a picture of Jason Merritt.”

“Sure.” McAdams punched in search letters. “Here you go.”

Terry shook his head with conviction. “Don’t know him.”

“Take another look,” Decker said.

“I don’t have to. I don’t know him.”

Decker pointed to his suitcases. “Where were you planning to go?”