The Caller (21 page)

‘What?’ said Joe.

‘The rule of nines.’

Joe frowned. ‘What? The burns thing?’

‘Yeah, that diagram of the body to work out
the – what is it? – TSA? Total Surface Area of burns. With all the different sections marked out with percentages? I couldn’t get it out of my head when I was in there, when I smelled the flames. The head and the arms are nine per cent each. The front of the torso and the back are eighteen per cent each. The legs are eighteen per cent each …’

‘Yeah?’ said Joe slowly.

‘Know what that adds up to?’ said Danny. ‘Ninety-nine per cent.’

Joe nodded. ‘And?’

‘Do you know what’s the remaining one per cent?’

Joe started to smile.

‘Yeah,’ said Danny. ‘Your … genitalia. I’m lying there in the dark and I’m thinking my nuts could go up in flames at any minute. And I’d be marked off in the hospital as having one per cent burns and, you know, my prognosis mightn’t be too bad.’

Danny’s face was so serious, Joe was afraid to laugh.

‘But that’s not what was freaking me out,’ said Danny. ‘I was thinking – one per cent for such a huge part of my life. The centre of my fucking universe. The source of my marital problems. And, obviously, some of my marital happiness. But I’m, like, it could all be over, just like that. And I was thinking of Gina and all the grief from this one per cent and—’

‘Excuse me for just one second,’ said Joe, holding up a hand. He walked across the floor to the men’s room, opened the door of the stall, pushed it closed and laughed silently until tears streamed down his face.

He walked back out and Danny was sitting in the same position, frowning. ‘One Line. One per cent. One year on, still no answers. One life. It’s a small word – one. And it can mean so fucking much.’

‘One deep and meaningful detective,’ said Joe. ‘Right. I need to call Anna.’ He dialled Anna’s cell. He got voicemail. ‘Honey, it’s me. Me and Danny got caught in a building collapse earlier. I’m just calling to say I’m OK, I got checked out at the hospital. I’m fine. Sorry I’m leaving this on your voicemail. See you later. Love you.’

He turned to Danny. ‘OK – has your life finished flashing before your eyes? Are you fit to work?’

Danny nodded and knocked back the last of his beer. They lasted an hour back at the office before they both went home.

Joe arrived at the house and went straight into the living room. He pulled off his jacket, threw it on the back of the sofa, sat down, turned on the television and put his feet up. He channel-hopped until the screen became a blur. Anna walked in.

‘What happened?’ she said, kneeling in front of him, putting her hand to his face.

He struggled up. ‘Sorry, I was drifting off,’ he said. ‘I’m OK. We went to check this house out, the guy had rigged it up—’

‘Rigged up? Like a bomb?’

‘Nah. It was nothing, something small. It just shook us up more than anything.’

‘I was so worried,’ she said. She wrapped her arms around him.

‘You never need to worry about me, honey, OK? You just take care of yourself. Of the two of you. And that big guy upstairs. That’s all that matters.’

She kissed him.

‘Honey?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. About everything … how could I have been such an asshole?’

‘It’s OK,’ said Anna.

‘It’s not,’ said Joe. ‘I was a total jerk. I hope you can forgive me. I haven’t been there for you.’

She squeezed his hand. ‘Me neither.’

‘Let’s start again,’ he said. ‘From right now. You, me, Shaun and … little Giulio.’

They looked at each other and laughed.

Danny arrived home to a quiet house. The kids’ toys were all tidied away in boxes in the living room. Everywhere was neat. He went into the kitchen. He pressed play on the answer machine. It was his own voice, choked up and broken:
Honey,
if you get this, it’s me. I’ve been in an accident
…
it
was terrible
…
a fire
…’ His breath caught. ‘
Please,
sweetheart. Change your mind. I
…
the kids need me
…
us
.’ He didn’t care about how desperate he sounded. He just cared that she had heard this message and she had still gone. He listened to the last of it. ‘
I need you
.
I love you
…
we’re a team
.’

He reached down and opened the drinks cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey.

‘You total asshole,’ said Gina, rushing over to him from the door. She whacked him across the shoulder. ‘You asshole. You scared the shit out of me.’ She hit him again. Then she hugged him tight. Tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘You
asshole.’ She kissed him on the lips. He kissed her back.

‘Where are the kids?’ he said, looking behind her.

‘With my ma.’

‘You’re not going to leave me, are you?’ said Danny.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Now, get me a glass … you asshole.’

The following morning, Joe and Danny were back in the office at eight. Joe took out his notebook and found Sonja Ruehling’s number.

‘Mrs Ruehling, it’s Detective Joe Lucchesi. We were wondering if we could speak with you again as soon as possible.’

He nodded to Danny.

‘We just have some questions to clear up, that’s all,’ said Joe. ‘Yeah, OK. Sure. We’ll see you there.’

They drove to a coffee shop near Sonja Ruehling’s office on 43rd Street. She was waiting for them in a corner with three large coffees in front of her.

‘Thanks,’ said Joe. ‘OK, we need to know a little more about Alan Moder. We’re having problems tracking him down.’

‘Alan? OK. You mean what he looks like and stuff?’

‘Whatever you got,’ said Danny.

‘OK. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, long face …
long body too, actually. A cyclist’s build, he cycles or, at least, he did. He was from Maplewood, New Jersey. He’s, well, he would be … I guess, thirty-three years old now.’

‘Actually,’ said Joe, glancing down at his notes, ‘he’s thirty-five.’

‘Ugh,’ she slapped the table. ‘The guy is, like, unbelievable.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Joe.

‘He’s such a liar,’ she said. ‘He’s thirty-five. I mean, that’s not what’s bothering me, but it’s like, even now, he is getting to me with his bullshit.’

‘He was a bullshitter,’ said Danny.

‘He was a pathological liar,’ said Sonja. ‘I know it’s one of those terms that’s thrown about out there, but he really was. He could not help himself.’

‘What do you mean exactly? What did he lie about?’

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘What time he got up in the morning, what he had for breakfast … like, you would come down in the morning and there would be a pan with bits of scrambled egg at the bottom and he would say, “I just grabbed a bagel.” Or I’d say, “where’d you get the shirt?” and he’d say one store, then I’d see the label and it would be from somewhere totally different.’

‘Men,’ said Danny.

‘It’s not that. It sounds like none of this was a big deal, but it was. I didn’t know where I stood with him. And I’d make excuses. If little things in
his stories didn’t add up, I’d put it down to bad memory. A lot of guys have bad memories, right?’

‘I do,’ said Danny. ‘Drives my wife crazy.’

Sonja smiled. ‘And can you imagine how good a liar you can get by practising with all the little lies? How much easier it would be, then, to lie about the big things?’ She shook her head. ‘It makes me so mad. He would be there all the time defending himself. It would wear you out. And in the end, you start to feel like you’re the freak. That was the worst part.’

‘You said the other day that it ended badly,’ said Joe.

‘When I caught him cheating, I left. I had suspected, but I thought I was being paranoid, of course.’

‘Did you confront him there and then?’

‘No. That’s not my style. I turned and walked out. I left him a note. And I was gone.’

‘Did he try contacting you afterwards?’

‘For a few weeks after, once or twice, nothing too heavy. In the meantime—’

‘Was he ever violent?’

‘What?’ she said. ‘No.’ She looked at both of them. ‘You don’t think … ohmygod … you don’t think he had something to do with Dean do you?’

‘We’re just talking here,’ said Joe. ‘Sorting through some information.’

‘Well he was never violent. I mean, that time in the restaurant when he went nuts, but there
was never anything physical …’ She slowed down as she realized she was probably saying something they had heard over and over from innocent people found sucked into homicide investigations.

‘Sorry, I interrupted you,’ said Joe. ‘What were you about to tell us?’

‘Just that for a while after we broke up, I was obsessed with finding out why Alan was like that, more to convince myself that I wasn’t crazy for going out with him, do you know what I mean?’

‘Makes sense,’ said Danny.

She nodded. ‘It turned out most of what he told me was bullshit. He said his father was a multimillionaire, they owned homes around the world, his mother worked in the United Nations as a translator. The detail he gave me was unbelievable—’

‘We see that all the time,’ said Joe. ‘Liars give way more detail than people who are just telling the truth.’

‘I mean, some parts of it were true,’ said Sonja. ‘His family did live in a huge house in a nice part of Maplewood, but they hadn’t a lot of money. His father had built the house – he had a construction company. Then it went bust, so they had the house but no money, even though they looked like they did and their parents seemed to encourage them not to say or act otherwise. So I think from very early on in Alan’s life, he was trained to lie. And I think it went from there. He had, like, six brothers and sisters, but was only
close to this one sister. But she died. He wasn’t responsible, but he felt he was, because he covered for her the night she was going out. She and a group of friends were going to hang out by this quarry which, if her father had known, he would have forbidden her to go to, because it was unsafe, there had been major rain that week. Anyway, Alan covered for her and she fell while she was at the quarry, the ground gave way, whatever. And she died shortly afterwards.’

‘How do you know that was true?’ said Joe.

‘Well, that was the final straw for his parents. They cut him off completely. I knew it had to have been something big for them to do that. Dean Valtry confirmed the story, he knew people involved. Also, I spoke with Alan’s mother, so I had it all squared away. I felt terrible for him because of it all. But wouldn’t you think that would
stop
him lying? That’s how obsessed he was.’

‘Do you think he could be any different now? Any more likely to tell some of the truth?’ said Danny.

She smiled. ‘I’d say it’s even more difficult now to work out if he’s lying. I’m not a stupid person. And he fooled me. That was years ago. He’s a seasoned pro now.’ She shrugged. ‘Also, there’s more than one way to lie: sometimes, he’ll tell you the whole truth, sometimes a doctored truth and then there’s the all-out fantasy stuff.’ She looked at the two detectives. ‘For Alan, there is
no distinction between telling the truth and telling a lie, so when he’s sitting right there in front of you, you will not see a flicker of a change across his face, nothing that you would be familiar with in a regular person. You won’t see a tic, he won’t touch his face a certain way, he won’t blush, he won’t sweat, he will calmly sit in front of you and lie through his teeth.’

Back at the office, Joe’s phone rang.

He picked up. ‘Yeah?’

‘Detective Lucchesi? It’s Taye Harris, fire marshal.’

‘Hi, good to hear from you.’

‘Just to fill you in, we found three propane cylinders in the rubble and some scraps of tape. So I’d say your guy left the cylinders in a taped-up room, releasing gas. So you wouldn’t have got any odor even if you’d have been up there. That rear room was the source point. It was used as a gym. You were lucky you weren’t hit with any of that equipment falling down. ‘

‘How did it all happen?’ said Joe.

‘The switch your partner flicked. It’s real easy to create an explosion. Looks like your guy used a light bulb. You soak a bit of twine in gasoline, wrap it around a light bulb base, just above the screw. You light it, let it burn a little, then dip it in water. That creates a crack. The bulb is intact, but basically, once you switch it on, you’ve got a naked flame in the room. He just set up the switch
in the basement, made it look like it was going to light down there …’

‘Jesus,’ said Joe.

‘Guys do it in prison,’ said Harris. ‘Nice way to take someone out. They crack the bulb and fill it with glue they’ve robbed from the shoe department or the woodwork room, wherever. When the cell doors are unlocked at meal times or exercise times, a guy will hang back, slip into the other guy’s cell and swap the regular bulb for the one with the glue. The guy comes back to his cell, turns the light on, there’s an explosion, he’s covered with flaming glue he can’t get off and basically, he’s burned alive. Sometimes they won’t bother with the light bulb, they’ll just throw some glue over the guy, then throw a match after it. I don’t care how many tattoos you have, everyone’s terrified of being burned alive.’

Joe glanced over at Danny.

Heavy rain pounded the green awning of the Bay Ridge Manor. Denis Cullen stood underneath, smiling as he saw Joe and Danny running in, holding their jackets over their heads.

‘Thanks for coming, fellas,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here after yesterday—’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ said Joe, putting on his jacket. ‘It’s a pleasure.’

‘This is my daughter, Maddy,’ said Cullen. She stood with her arm around him, leaning lightly against him, pale and thin, with bright blue eyes.

‘You look beautiful, sweetheart,’ said Danny. ‘It’s very nice to meet you.’

She gave him a huge smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You too. What happened yesterday?’

‘Someone gave Detective Lucchesi here a pretty big fright,’ said Danny. ‘He was crying, you should have seen him. Like a baby.’

She laughed.

‘Your daddy’s done some pretty cool things in this investigation we’re working on,’ said Joe.

Maddy smiled again and hugged Cullen’s arm.

‘My wife gave me this for you,’ said Joe, reaching into the pocket of his tuxedo. He handed her a bracelet of pink beads.

‘That’s so sweet, thank you,’ said Maddy. ‘How did she guess I was wearing pink?’

‘The wives are the real detectives,’ said Cullen. ‘We know that from Mom, don’t we, sweetie?’ He squeezed her shoulder gently. She laughed.

‘Go ahead in,’ said Denis. ‘Get a few drinks into you.’