Suspects (34 page)

“Your work must be very interesting,” Mrs. Keller said when he had deposited her on the living-room couch. “What is the nature of it?”

LeBeau had brought Keller along behind them, and now put him in the big chair.

“I'm in law enforcement,” Moody told her, supporting the skirt of his jacket with a hand, compensating for the sag of the weighty bottle.

“Gordie was in wholesale office supplies,” said she. “I did substitute teaching. We're both retired.” With the black evening dress she was still wearing the worn loafers in beige. She continued to smile as her husband was asked to stand up, turn around, and put his hands in the small of his back.

Keller's wrists proved so thick that the cuffs had to be fastened at the second-to-last notch.

When the social-service people, a solemn man and a young woman with a matronly air, arrived to deal with his wife, the detectives took Keller upstairs and had him show them the bathroom window from which he had looked down on Donna Howland's bedroom. Then they took him out to their car. They pulled out of the eleven hundred block just as Moody, on a cue from LeBeau, who was watching the rearview mirror, turned and saw the van from
Five Star Report
swinging into the other end of the street.

Keller continued to be agreeable when interrogated at the Homicide Bureau. The video camera was back in working order, and the partners used it to record the confession that the man willingly repeated. He seemed to be enjoying himself, perhaps considering this as at least moral compensation for missing the
Five Star Report
deal. After several hours of such, he was asked whether he'd like a bite to eat, and he gleefully gave his order: two cheeseburgers with the works, apple pie à la mode, strawberry shake. But the detectives, who had to pay out of their own pockets for the treats, explained what they had in mind was coffee and sinkers. LeBeau made the run, bringing back a six-pack of mixed plain and powdered. Keller ate four and a half doughnuts.

Keller signed the typewritten version of the confession and several other forms averring that everything he said was of his free will, without official duress, and giving permission for the videotaping. He was also reminded from time to time of his constitutional rights but continued to dismiss the idea of a lawyer.

When the interrogation was finished at long last, at least in this phase, and all three men stood up from the table, Keller, cuffless throughout the questioning, extended his large right hand, that which had, reinforced by the fancy perfume bottle, killed Donna Howland with a single blow.

“You fellas do one whale of a job,” he told Moody before including Dennis with a twist of his chin. “I'm glad to give what help I could, even if I did have to postpone the
Five Star
interview.”

“What were you gonna tell them?” Moody asked. “That you did it?”

“I got to take care they don't get the wrong impression. I'm not going to let them call me a criminal. I've got to defend my good name. Okay, I might not of gone about it in the right way, but this was something new for me: I'm not some street-corner trash. Call it an error in judgment, but don't blow it out of proportion. Mistakes were made on both sides. A lot of any situation hinges on how it looks.” He smiled again and extended his hand to Moody for a shake.

Moody, however, deftly used it to revolve him, and seizing Keller's left hand as well, manacled both in the small of his back.

“Is this necessary?” Keller asked when facing the detectives again. “I've got to get over to the TV station. It might not yet be too late for tonight's show.”

“You're going to jail,” LeBeau said. “You're under arrest.”

“But I been cooperating with you. I thought we had a deal!”

After elaborating on his complaint and getting nowhere, he now demanded a lawyer.

“Place never looked this good before,” said Molly, admiring the paint job. Lloyd had finished the living room.

He opened the door to the screened-in porch. “Come and see your bird.” The sparrow landed on his extended finger while he was still speaking, and after a brief explosive flutter of wings established a balance that was not affected when Lloyd moved the hand to Molly's shoulder, onto which the bird gravely stepped.

Molly turned her head to try to get eye-to-eye with the sparrow, but it prudently moved around to the base of her nape, plodding, on its big but delicate feet, back toward her shoulder when she looked forward again.

“It will be cautious for a while,” said Lloyd. “It trusts me now because I feed it.”

Molly winked. “I know how birds are.”

“I didn't want you to think I was alienating its affections.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“Oh. Well—”

“I was just kidding you, Lloyd: I can figure it out. It was never
my
bird.”

“You saved its life.”

“You can't own something living, no matter what,” Molly said. “Not even if you save its life.”

“It can leave any time it wants. Look at all the holes in the screening.”

Molly looked around, hands on hips. She had left her baseball cap behind and instead of a workshirt wore a thin sweater in bright blue. “He wouldn't lose much if he pulled this whole darn thing down.”

“Don't say that. It's my next project.”

Molly snickered. “Fixing up this porch? That's big-time skilled labor. Joe has to pay you decent money for that. He oughta put you on hourly. I hope he don't think you're gonna do all his dirty work for just room and board.”

Lloyd could chide her now. “You got him wrong. All I want is to do a good job. That end of the floor has to be jacked up. Then we got to think about putting some support underneath: railroad tie, maybe, Joe says. All the screening should be replaced, and this floor painted with deck enamel. I just hope I have enough time to finish it before—”

Molly impatiently broke in with, “Summer?” He had not meant that, and she probably knew it. “Don't put yourself on a deadline. This porch has been completely neglected for years, along with the rest of the house.”

The sparrow left her shoulder and flew toward Lloyd. When it disappeared from his line of sight, he assumed the bird had gone past him to another destination. But then he felt a slight pricking from its pointed toes as they took a purchase on his crown.

“Bet it's a female,” said Molly. “Jealous of me. It's giving me a dirty look.”

“Hey, how you doin', Moll?” Joe came onto the porch, his weight having an effect on the floor. He proceeded to stamp on the worn boards, aggravating the tremor and scaring the bird off Lloyd's head. It flew to perch on the folded-back edge of one of the openings to the outside, but stayed inside the screen.

Molly complained to her cousin, “Are you nuts? It's gonna fall in any minute.”

Joe shrugged. “Only a two-foot drop. Just break a leg or something.” He smirked at Lloyd. “Save us jacking it up. Have to build a new one, which would make more sense anyway.”

“When they handed out the brains, you must of been on vacation. I hope you don't think Lloyd has to do all this work to earn the gourmet meals and luxury accommodations.”

Lloyd was quick to say, “Come on, Molly.”

“Listen,” said she, throwing a punch that did not quite meet Joe's midsection. “I know this guy from away back.”

“Who taught you how to box?” Joe cried, putting up his dukes and further agitating the porch floor with a heavy-toed prizefighter's shuffle-dance.

Molly addressed Lloyd. “He's telling the truth for once. And he never heard of the idea that you don't hit a lady. I saw stars more than a few times.”

Joe too appealed to Lloyd. “She keeps begging me not to take it easy on her because she's a girl. ‘Slug me,' she says. ‘I can take it.' She keeps this up till finally I throw a slow-motion left hook that takes about five minutes to get there, and I also pull it so I barely touch her chin. Jesus, you should of heard the blubbering!”

“Damn you, Joe, I never cried once!” Molly said. “You big bully. I was eleven.”

Joe stopped moving and lowered his arms. “You're having a good effect on her, Lloyd. See how she cleans up her English when you're around?” Suddenly he thrust his head down and forward. “Is that the phone? … Yeah.” He dashed into the house.

Molly looked fondly in the direction in which her cousin had gone. “Isn't he the greatest guy? But I don't ever flatter him to his face: that would spoil him rotten.… Did
you
hear the phone?”

“Not really.”

“I think he must of done something weird to the bell,” said Molly. “Only he can hear it if you're outa the kitchen.”

Joe returned in a moment. “It's for you, Lloyd.”

Lloyd did not ask who it might be. Only the detectives had this number for him.

He went to the kitchen and lifted the handpiece that dangled from the wall phone. “Lloyd Howland.”

“Detective Nick Moody. You might have heard the news. But then I figured the kind of person you are, you might not have, either.”

“No, I haven't.”

“We made an arrest. I thought you'd like to know.

Lloyd shouted desperately, “Not Larry!”

Moody said, “No. Take it easy. Listen to me, Lloyd. Before I tell you, I want your promise you're not going to do anything foolish.”

“Foolish?”
He was still desperate.

“Do I have to spell it out?” Moody asked laconically. “Way you acted at the funeral? … You'll be back in trouble if you do. We won't put up with it.… Lloyd? You there?”

“Yeah.”

“You sound like you still have some doubts. Take my word for it, you're off the hook. We've got our man. It all checks out.”

“What a time to get blind drunk,” said Lloyd. “I could have saved them if I had gone there. It was where I was heading.”

“No, you couldn't. It was too early. If you had gone there mid-morning you wouldn't still have been around when the homicides occurred. The little girl was taking her nap.”

Lloyd groaned. “Donna would have thrown me out long before noon. She couldn't stand bitterness. Donna hated anything negative, especially in me. She thought it held me back. Donna was always full of hope.” He kept talking so as not to sob. “But maybe she could have gotten me out of it. She was good at that. That was why I was heading there.” He resisted learning who had committed the murders: he would have to cope with knowledge no human being not a policeman should be forced to accept.

“I want your word, Lloyd. I don't want you to do anything you'll regret. You can hear it on TV, but I wanted to talk to you myself.”

His account was clear, measured, and in a language that employed police terms in certain passages.

Lloyd stayed silent so long after the account was concluded that the detective asked again whether he was still there. “Yeah. I'm all right. I mean, I'm not all right, but I'm not—you don't have to worry about me. I won't go after him. What would be the use? … Oh, God…” Now his defenses crumbled, and he wept.

“The little girl would not have felt a thing,” Moody said after a moment. “And Donna was deceased as a result of the blow to the head. She wouldn't have known of the rest. She was gone.”

“You've already told Larry.”

“He was duly notified, that's correct.”

“He's not still scared of me, you think?” Lloyd was trying to make his voice less tearful. His grief was his own.

“I wouldn't know about that,” said Moody.

“I haven't tried to get in touch with him. I didn't think I was supposed to. But it would be okay now, wouldn't it?”

“I'm not stopping you, if that's what you mean.” Moody paused. “Uh, listen, Lloyd. The DA's office is going to drop the gun charges…Lloyd, you hear me?”

“Sorry.… Detective?”

“Yes?”

“Is there any way I can get the gun back?”

“You got to be kidding.… Am I wrong about you, Lloyd? Are you really hopeless?”

“I don't mean for myself. It never belonged to me. I stole it from a friend, not a gun shop.”

“Joseph Littlejohn?”

“No, not him. Someone I don't want to get into trouble, somebody who didn't have anything to do with—”

“It's been confiscated, Lloyd,” Moody said in the harsh version of his voice. “Lucky for your friend there's no record it was ever used in the commission of a crime—other than that stunt of yours. Best thing you can do for your friend is tell them not to play with firearms in the future, or at least apply for a license.”

“Yeah.”

“What are you going to do now?” Moody asked in a gender tone. “Work there for Littlejohn, doing carpentry and so on?”

Lloyd breathed out. “I don't know. It's all so sudden, not to have this hanging over me. It'll take a while to get used to.”

“You sound like you expected to be found guilty. Mind telling me why? You weren't the perpetrator.”

“Okay,” said Lloyd. “I owe you an answer. First, I wasn't really sure I didn't do it. I've never been that drunk before. I wet the bed during the night, something I haven't done since I was a little kid. I woke up with this cut on my face, and apparently it bled enough to get on my undershirt, which was on the shower floor. I don't know if I had tried to wash it out or just threw it in there. The whole night is still a blank. That's the only time in my life anything like that has occurred. If I could black out for seventeen, eighteen hours, maybe it was because of something terrible that I did during that time.” He paused. There was still no point in going into where and how he had stolen the half gallon of scotch: he could provide no information as to the identity of whoever had shot the liquor-store clerk and emptied the cash drawer. “The other reason I thought I might be charged with murder is—you say you want to hear it—I thought so long as you didn't have anyone else, you might just go ahead and nail me.”