Savage Lane (25 page)

“Sounds good to me,” Larry said, putting his pad away and taking a business card out of his wallet and placing it on the breakfast bar. “I’m sorry for any stress I caused you, and I hope your wife turns up shortly.”

On his way out, Larry saw the kids, scampering upstairs, so they’d probably listened in on the whole conversation.

From outside, Larry heard the dog barking again. He felt bad for the family and hoped Deborah Berman came home soon, but driving back along Savage Lane he was much more concerned about this situation than he’d been a half hour ago. He had nothing solid to go on—it was just instinct—but he had a feeling that Mark Berman was hiding something, and Larry could spot a man with a secret better than just about anyone.

A
T WORK
on Sunday afternoon Owen was in a great mood. Walking through the club he smiled and said ‘hi’ to everybody he passed which was unusual for him because he usually kept to himself and didn’t give a fuck about people. But today was different; today he wanted to spread the love.

As he worked, pruning the shrubbery near the clubhouse and along the back nine, and then watering the greens and setting up sprinklers in the rough, he was still thinking about Karen. He didn’t think about Deb at all until later. During a break, he went to the storage shed and, after making sure nobody was around to see, hosed down the wheelbarrow the best he could, just in case there was some kind of evidence from last night, even though he didn’t think there was any or that anybody would have a reason to check.

The rest of the day, Owen went about his business. Every now and then he heard the giggling, but now that he knew it wasn’t Deb, it didn’t bother him as much. It was actually, like, comforting, like he had an angel following him wherever he went. The angel wasn’t mocking him; it was letting him know that,
It’s okay, I’m here, and nothing can hurt you when I’m here
.

When Owen’s workday ended, at eight p.m., he left the country club, imagining what was going on at the Berman’s. Mark had probably called the cops by now and maybe Deb was officially missing. They’d find her car in the high school lot, but so what? The cops would look around for months, maybe years for her, but it didn’t matter because they’d never find her.

Owen drove with the front windows open, loving the rush of cool air against his face.

Several minutes later, as he approached his house, Owen’s great mood turned to shit. What was up with all the boxes and garbage bags in front of the house? He parked on the street, ran around the car toward the lawn, and saw that it was stuff from his room in boxes and his clothes in the bag. He picked up one of the bags and flung it toward the house, shouting, “Fuck you! Fuck you, you son of a bitch!”

Then he tried to open the front door but his key didn’t fit and then he noticed that the lock had been replaced. Owen marched around the house, telling himself that he didn’t care that Raymond was bigger and stronger—he was going to do whatever he had to do to get him out of his life, once and for all. If his mother wouldn’t leave him, Owen would have to do it himself.

He rang the bell a bunch of times and banged on the door. The door didn’t open, and Owen didn’t hear any movement in the house, but Raymond’s car was in the driveway and when he backed away from the house he saw the light was on in the master bedroom. He was probably up there with his mom, both of them ignoring the ringing and banging. He hated his mother so much; he didn’t understand why she was doing this to him. He couldn’t let this happen; he had to do
something
. The light wasn’t on in Kyle’s room, so maybe Kyle wasn’t home; maybe he was away on a play date or sleepover or something.

Owen went to the trunk of his car, took out the heaviest object there—the carjack. Then he stormed back toward the house, ready to smash one of the living room windows. He imagined himself climbing in, going upstairs, finding Raymond and…

He stopped himself, with carjack cocked behind his back like an axe. He was telling himself,
You gotta be smart, bro. You gotta be chill
. He remembered everything else that was going on in his life, the big picture, and knew that getting into a fight now with Raymond and then maybe some neighbor calling the cops wasn’t the smartest idea in the world. It definitely wouldn’t make his life any better anyway.

So he put the carjack back in the trunk and then filled up the car with the rest of his stuff, making a bunch of trips back and forth to the car. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve this. He knew Raymond hated him — that was different, Raymond was just a prick—but what about his mother? How could his mother do this to him? His mother was his
mother
; wasn’t a mother supposed to love her kid no matter what? Yeah, Owen knew he’d given her a hard time over the years, but he was still her kid. Wasn’t that supposed to mean
something
?

As he drove away, he looked toward the house and saw his mother, watching from one of her bedroom windows. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he knew she wasn’t crying or even sad. He glared at her, wanting her to see him, but she moved to the side, out of view, and, just like that, was gone, out of his life, probably forever.

H
E WENT
to a motel off the Saw Mill River Parkway, not too far away, where his family—and Raymond—had stayed for a few days once after a Nor’easter had taken out the power at their house. There were vacancies and no problem for Owen getting a room for as long as he wanted, but it wasn’t cheap—ninety-five dollars a night plus tax. He had a bankcard, with about two thousand bucks in savings, and his paychecks from the country club, but that wouldn’t be enough to last very long at a motel, or anywhere. He’d planned to take it slow with Karen, try to woo her a little first before he made his big move, but he’d have to move faster now. If he didn’t hook up with her soon and move into her house he’d be in trouble in the fall when his job ended—he was a seasonal employee—and his savings ran out. He didn’t have any friends, and his relatives were all in Arizona and California. He wasn’t close with them and, besides, they probably wouldn’t want to put him up anyway after Raymond and his mother finished badmouthing him.

As he pulled a couple of changes of clothes out of the Hefty bags in the car and went up to his room, he was scared about the future, and he hated being scared, being weak. He wanted to hear the giggling now, to know he wasn’t actually alone, but there was just silence.

“Come on,” he said. “Now, when I need you, you disappear on me?”

Still nothing. Angry and hurt, he wanted to break something so he did—grabbing a lamp, yanking the cord out of the wall, then tossing it against the wall. The bulb shattered.

It figured that she’d take off when he needed her, that she’d
change
, because that’s what she did the last time. But he didn’t need
her
, or Deb, or anyone else because he had a new woman in his life now—Karen Daily. Karen was here, she was alive, she was real, and soon she’d be his.

It was only a matter of time.

W
HEN
L
ARRY
got word early Monday morning, via state troopers, that Deborah Berman’s Pathfinder had been discovered in the parking lot of John Jay High School in Cross River he knew this case wouldn’t have a happy ending. He also knew that it wouldn’t be his case for long.

Sure enough, at around ten a.m., after he’d been in the office for about an hour, he got a call from Nick Piretti, a squat, graying homicide detective from the Westchester County Police in Bronxville whom Larry had met before. Nick said he and his department would be taking over the investigation, and he was on his way over to be briefed. In the past it would have bothered Larry when a detective from County took over one of his cases, but over the past few years—well, the past year especially—he’d lost most of the ego and ambition about his job. His career used to be everything. He used to dream of scoring a promotion to detective at County and had even thought about relocating to the city, to pursue opportunities with the NYPD. But now Larry had lost his career ambition because he’d found something that was more important to him. His new dream was of riding out eight more years in Bedford Hills, getting an early retirement package, and then living happily ever after with Stu. The fact that he’d sacrificed his career ambition, and a major part of himself, for a fantasy that might never come to fruition was fucked up, but it was what it was.

Later, at Larry’s office at the Bedford Hills precinct, Larry filled Nick in about the discovery of Deborah’s car and the search for her.

“Her husband said she’d left her car at the Oak Ridge Country Club,” Larry said. “He said a friend picked her up at the house.”

“Well the friend may have driven her to the club to get her car,” Nick said.

“To drive to a high school parking lot?” Larry asked.

“I heard it’s a popular hookup spot.”

“Yeah, for teenagers, not forty-four-year-old married women.”

“Well, if she doesn’t turn up soon, we’ll need to expand the search beyond Westchester,” Nick said. “Connecticut, New Jersey, New York City, and Long Island for starters.”

“I’m already on it,” Larry said. “We have a description of her out already, and we’re getting a photo to go along with it from her husband.”

“Have you gotten any calls?” Nick said. “Any possible sightings?”

“Nothing yet.”

“And what about her family and friends? Have they been contacted?”

“Deborah’s husband said he made some calls yesterday evening.”

“We can’t rely on that,” Nick said. “Let’s get somebody down there to get all that contact information immediately. What’s your take on the husband?”

Larry knew why Nick was asking—the husband was always the first suspect.

“I talked to Mark Berman yesterday evening, but it wasn’t a long conversation,” Larry said. “He seemed upset and I think hopeful that his wife would return soon.”

“You think?” Nick asked.

“Honestly, my instinct was that something seemed off,” Larry said. “I’m not sure what it was or why I felt that way. He seemed upset, yeah, but maybe not as upset as he should have been. He seemed a little aloof about the whole thing, but apparently there was trouble in his marriage. He and Deborah were apparently getting a divorce, or talking about getting a divorce, so maybe that’s what I was picking up on. I don’t really know for sure.”

“So he’s divorcing his wife and then his wife disappears,” Nick said. “Does he have an alibi?”

“I didn’t interrogate him,” Larry said. “It was just a preliminary conversation.”

“Well, he definitely should be a focus right now,” Nick said. “I’ll talk to him again when I leave here, see what his whole story is, and we’ll take it from there. Now what’s this about this woman, Karen Daily?”

When Larry had arrived at the precinct this morning he’d heard about Karen Daily from a few reporters who were assembled outside.

“I swear, sometimes it feels like these reporters are one step ahead of us,” Larry said. “When word got out we’re searching for Deborah, they started getting calls about Karen. Apparently there was an incident Saturday afternoon at the Oak Ridge Country Club.”

“And this has been confirmed?” Nick asked.

“Yeah, people filmed it on their phones,” Larry said. “Right before you got here I spoke to the woman the reporters spoke to, Jenna Frisco, a waitress at the club—she filmed the end of the fight. She confirmed what the reporters are saying. Karen and Deborah were having an argument and it escalated. The film shows Karen and Deborah wrestling on the floor.”