King City (23 page)

“I’m going to be parked right in your driveway until we talk. We can do it now, inside your home, or we can do it out here, in front of your neighbors, whenever you get around to it. Makes no difference to me. But we will talk.”

“I’m going to call my lawyers,” Ethan said, “who are going to call the district attorney, who is going to call the chief, who will order you to get your ass off my property.”

“But I won’t,” Wade said.

Billy smiled. He was loving this. Ethan Burdett, however, was not. Far from it.

“He’ll send officers to drag you out.”

“Wow,” Wade said, looking back and smiling at the man in the bathrobe and the two joggers, “looks like your neighbors are in for quite a show this morning.”

Gayle stepped up behind her husband and tugged at his arm.

“Ethan, please, everyone in Havenhurst is probably already wondering why the police are here. The faster we get them out of here, the better.”

Ethan reluctantly stepped aside and let the officers into the dimly lit entry hall. “You are way off the reservation.”

Wade was sure Ethan’s choice of cliché was intentional, given that the majority of those arrested in King City were minorities, specifically Native Americans.

“My badge is good all over this city,” Wade said.

“Enjoy the feeling,” Ethan said, closing the door behind Billy, “because you won’t be wearing it much longer.”

Seth Burdett trudged down the stairs in loose sweats and a tank top that showed off his tats. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. His hair was askew and his eyelids were heavy.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I got the autopsy report on Glory Littleton this morning,” Wade said, “and I thought you’d all be interested in hearing the coroner’s findings right away.”

“Why would you think
that
?” Gayle asked. “She was our maid, not our daughter. We hardly knew her.”

“Somebody knew her well,” Wade said. “She was two months pregnant.”

None of the Burdetts were very good at hiding their shock, although it flashed across their faces for only an instant, long enough for Wade and Billy to both spot it. The Burdetts showed an awful lot of interest for people who claimed to have none.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ethan said. “But I fail to see what that has to do with us.”

“Glory did a Lewinsky,” Wade said.

“A what?” Billy asked.

“As in Monica Lewinsky,” Wade said.

Billy shook his head. “Is that someone I should know?”

“Lewinsky had a sexual encounter with President Clinton and saved her semen‐stained dress as a memento.” Wade reached into his paper bag and pulled out a plastic evidence bag containing one of Glory’s pieces of lingerie. “Glory did the same thing, saving this in her locker at Mr. Burdett’s building. I guess so she’d have no trouble proving who the father of her unborn child was.”

Ethan was stony faced, but Wade couldn’t have gotten a more horrified expression from Gayle if he’d pulled a decapitated head out of the bag.

Seth had an entirely different reaction. He let out a sound that was as much a growl of rage as it was a cry of pain and marched right up to his father, getting nose to nose with him.

“You were fucking my woman?” Seth asked, his fists balled, but his eyes filled with tears.

Ethan took a step back, holding his hands up in front of him. “I didn’t know about the two of you, but it wasn’t what you think. She threw herself at me one night at the office.” He looked pleadingly at his wife. “I’d had too much to drink, she was all over me, and I couldn’t control myself. I’m so sorry.”

Seth shoved his father hard in the chest, nearly knocking the man to the floor. Billy took a step forward, but Wade put out his hand, motioning him to stay where he was.

“Bullshit!” Seth said. “You
made
her fuck you. Because you can’t let me have anything. You have to control it all.”

“No, no, that wasn’t how it was at all,” Ethan said, scrambling back. “She was using us, don’t you see? All she wanted was our seed so she could get at our money.”

“Is that why you killed her?” Seth asked and launched himself at his father, pummeling him like a child instead of throwing punches, Ethan offering little resistance.

Gayle stepped back, watching the clash with a bitter smirk on her surgically wide‐eyed face, her arms crossed under her stony breasts. It was almost as if she was pleased to see the fight. Wade nodded at Billy, who pulled Seth off his father without much effort.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Ethan said, his nose bleeding, drops staining his golf shirt. “It was an accident.”

“Which part? The fucking or the killing?” Seth asked, sagging weakly against Billy’s hold, the fight in him gone, his anger sapped by the loss.

“Your father didn’t kill Glory,” Wade said, then looked at Gayle. “Your mother did.”

“Wow,” Billy said. “I didn’t see that coming.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Gayle said. “I had nothing to do with any of this.”

“I don’t know what made Glory tell you about the baby,” Wade said. “Maybe you were just more irritating than usual. What did she say? Was it something like, ‘Clean your own damn toilet, I’m carrying your grandchild’?”

Seth was crying softly now, and Billy let him go. Gayle turned to Ethan, who pinched his nose, stemming the trickle of blood.

“Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Get those men out of our house. This fiasco is over.”

But Ethan stayed where he was and tilted his head back, his nose pinched, and looked at his wife without saying a word. This was Wade’s show now, and Ethan was too stunned to do anything but watch it unfold.

“That must have really pissed you off,” Wade continued, putting the lingerie back in the paper bag. “Were you upstairs when she mouthed off to you? Let’s see.”

Wade handed the bag to Billy, took a tiny flashlight from his belt, and wandered over to the staircase, aiming an ultraviolet beam at the steps, revealing a trail of previously invisible purple spots.

“Yeah, you were angry all right. It looks like you gave her a shove,” he said, following the illuminated spots to a huge purple stain at the base of the stairs and purple splatter on the walls. “And gave her a few good kicks when she was down.”

“That never happened,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re having a sick fantasy.”

“The thing about blood is, just because you don’t see it, that doesn’t mean it’s gone,” Wade said. “Haven’t you ever watched
CSI
? This would probably be a good time for me to remind you of your right to remain silent and that anything you say can and will be held against you. You also have right to have a lawyer present.”

“I don’t need a lawyer. We’ve lived in this house for years,” Gayle said. “Those are just stains left by sloppy cleaning. If Glory did her job, they wouldn’t be there. You have nothing but despicable insinuations.”

“Blood doesn’t lie,” Wade said. “I’m sure we’ll also find traces in the boat, which you used to take her body downriver to King Steel. You scraped the side of the boat on a pylon, so we’ll find the paint too. You’ve left enough forensic evidence that the DA could have his dog try this case for him and still win.”

“Jesus, Gayle,” Ethan said, his voice altered by the pinched nose. “What have you done?”

“
Me
?” she asked, pointing her finger at Ethan and then at her son. “This is on the two of you.
You’re
the ones who couldn’t keep your pants zipped.
You’re
the ones who had to get dirty with the help. I wasn’t going to let that slut and your stupidity ruin this family.”

Billy looked at Wade. “Maybe I’ll stick with days.”

“Secure the scene until the forensic unit gets here,” Wade said, taking out his handcuffs. “Then come back to the station.”

“Sure thing,” Billy said. “Think the crime lab guys will come this time?”

“Within minutes,” Wade said and stepped up behind Gayle Burdett. “Put your hands behind your back. You’re under arrest.”

Wade cuffed Gayle, then led her to the door past Seth, who leaned against a wall and cried, wiping the tears from his face with his arm and the Twenty‐third Psalm.

____

He made a call as soon as he got Gayle stowed in the back of the squad car.

“I’ve arrested a suspect in Glory Littleton’s murder and I’m bringing her in,” he said. “You might want to spread the word.”

Wade drove slowly, taking his time and using surface streets. On the way, he contacted the dispatcher, ordered a forensic unit to the Burdett house, and notified her that he’d made an arrest. He was sure those bits of news would get the chief’s notice, if Ethan’s lawyers hadn’t contacted Reardon already.

Gayle didn’t say anything when they passed through Meston Heights. All she did was frown, one of the few expressions she was still capable of despite her face‐lift and Botox injections.

It wasn’t until they drove through One King Plaza, passing the landmark city hall castle and heading down Division Street, that Gayle got an inkling that something was wrong.

“You’ve passed police headquarters,” she said.

“Yes, I have.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“To my station,” he said.

“Darwin Gardens?” She leaned forward, nearly pressing her face against the iron mesh that separated Wade from her. “You can’t. You have to take me to the station in Meston Heights. That’s the one closest to where I live.”

“But it’s not where you dumped Glory’s body,” he said.

“You can’t bring me there,” she said. “I’m not one of those people.”

He glanced up at her in the rearview mirror and met her gaze in the reflection. “I don’t see a difference.”

She sat back and kicked his seat again and again with both of her feet. “You can’t do this!”

He ignored her.

Gayle gave up her kicking as they crossed into Darwin Gardens and looked sullenly out the window at the people milling on the sidewalks, watching the car as they passed.

The crowd grew as the car reached the intersection of Division and Arness. Just about everyone that Wade had seen outside of the King Steel factory when Glory’s body was found was back on the streets again.

He made a U‐turn in front of the Pancake Galaxy, where Mandy and her father stood with Ella Littleton, and pulled up in front of his station.

Gayle stared at the plywood‐covered windows, which, in Wade’s absence, had been freshly decorated with a spray‐painted mural of a dopey‐faced, smiling cop on his hands and knees, his pants pulled down, getting gleefully screwed in the ass by another cop.

“No,” Gayle wailed. “I don’t belong here.”

Wade got out of the car, acting as if he were unaware of all the eyes on him, and walked purposefully to the sidewalk and opened the back door.

“Get out,” he said.

Gayle shook her head and retreated deeper into the car. “No. I’m not going out there.”

Wade reached in, grabbed her by the legs, and dragged her to the door, then yanked her up by her arms and hauled her out, kicking and twisting.

“No,” she screamed. “No!”

The people on the street all got a good look at her having her tantrum. It was as clear to them as it was to her that she didn’t belong there.

Wade kicked the car door shut behind him, wrapped his arms around Gayle Burdett’s waist, and practically carried her into the station.

The residents of Darwin Gardens saw a lot of ugly things in their everyday lives. Junkies smoking crack and jamming syringes into their sunken flesh. People getting beaten, raped, stabbed, and murdered. Hookers giving hand jobs and blow jobs in whatever shadows they could find. Corpses decomposing on the sidewalks and in alleys and crumbling parking lots.

But they had never seen anything like this.

Which was, of course, exactly why Tom Wade did it.

Wade was asleep in his apartment on Sunday afternoon when he was awakened by someone pounding on his door. He lay there, trying to imagine the person who went along with that knock, though it was just an excuse not to move for another moment or two. The knock sounded strong, urgent, authoritative. It was a police knock.

Billy didn’t project that kind of authority, not yet, and he wouldn’t leave Gayle unattended to come up to Tom’s door. Charlotte had the authority, but she had no reason to be here early or to take that tone with him in her knock.

No, this was someone else.

ADA Lefcourt, perhaps? It was possible. But he didn’t think she had the knuckles for the knock he was hearing.

For a moment, he thought it might be the chief, but he doubted that Reardon would come down to Darwin Gardens for Gayle Burdett, no matter how much her husband contributed to politicians in town, not with something as toxic as a murder on her head.

Wade sat up, shirtless, grabbed his cell phone, and checked the time. It was almost 1:00 p.m.

“Hold on, I’m coming,” Wade said. “You don’t have to break it down.”

He found a pair of jogging shorts in a moving box, put them on, and went to the door, opening it to find a man standing there in a wrinkled off‐the‐rack suit, his hair colored an unnatural shade of brown, his thin body curled inward as if he’d taken a blow to the stomach that he’d never recovered from.