Waking Hours (16 page)

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t seem to have a lot to say.”

Today, because it was Sunday and the DA’s office was closed, but also in deference to the families and to keep the names of the teenage suspects out of the newspapers, Irene had decided to use a safe house away from prying media eyes and telescopic camera lenses. She’d chosen the Peter Keeler Inn, just off the East Salem town square. It was a large slate-roofed multigabled building with white clapboard siding covered in ivy, black shutters, and a wraparound porch. Inside were a four-star restaurant and, upstairs, a dozen elegant rooms and suites.

The Empire Suite was comprised of a master bedroom and a sitting room, separated by double doors. Each room had its own hall entrance. In the sitting room, a pair of video cameras on tripods pointed at a pair of easy chairs and a sofa. Cables snaked from the cameras through the double doors to recording equipment and monitors in the bedroom. The witnesses were made to wait in a room across the hall, which was also under surveillance. Their parents and their lawyers waited downstairs in the lobby; the lawyers were summoned when it was their client’s turn to answer questions.

Dani had learned to recognize the signs of guilt, the body language where crossed arms served as protective armor and a backward slouch was an effort to gain distance. She’d seen how guilty people waived their right to counsel with surprising frequency and were willing to talk to investigators simply because they wanted to learn how much the cops already knew. She’d seen how exhausting it was to lie, to carry the burden of guilt. Criminals who tried to remember everything and keep their stories straight and out think the cops sometimes actually fell asleep during breaks in questioning. It was one reason the cops often made the interview sessions last as long as possible.

“If you tell the truth,” Mark Twain said, “you don’t have to remember anything.” The corollary was if you lie you have to keep track of everything.

Detective Casey had requested a lie detector in the room, not to actually use, just to scare people into telling the truth. Sometimes implied threats were more effective than explicit ones.

Dani and Casey questioned the witnesses, accompanied by their lawyers. The law required that a uniformed officer be present as well to provide corroborating testimony as to what went on during the interrogation. Stuart, assisted by a technician, watched on the monitors in the bedroom, which also provided a secure video feed over the Internet to Irene in her office twenty-five miles away.

“When we’re done, walk the kid all the way back to the parents and chat him up,” Casey advised Stuart. “One time I was questioning a guy we thought was breaking into apartments. Three hours, I get nothing. We tell him he can go, I’m riding down in the elevator with him, and he laughs and says, ‘Actually, I broke into all five of those apartments.’ Like now that we’re in the elevator, he’s free to confess.”

The people Liam named had been invited to come in voluntarily. Two, Logan Gansevoort and Amos Kasden, had failed to respond to the invitation. Blair Weeks had a soccer game and would be late.

Dani’s early impression was that Julie Leonard was a sweet girl who wanted to be something more. She’d been invited to a party with the “cool kids” and she was trying hard to simply fit in and not make any mistakes or social faux pas. She was lonely, and desperate not to be. Dani hoped to have a full picture of the victim by the end of the day.

Dani and Detective Casey next questioned Parker Bowen, who’d arrived accompanied by a pair of lawyers in expensive suits and by his father. Parker Bowen Sr. was a lean man in his late forties with hair a bit too black and a tan a bit too orange for either to be natural.

Parker Bowen Jr.’s story differed little from the one they’d just heard. He’d been to a party, got wasted, passed out, couldn’t remember anything. Yes, he’d passed out at parties before. No, he didn’t think he had a drinking problem. No, he didn’t remember what he’d been drinking, a little of this, a little of that. No, he didn’t know Julie Leonard before the party, though he’d heard she had a reputation.

“A reputation for what?”

“You know.”

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

“For hooking up.”

“Based on what?”

“It’s just what some people said.”

“What people? I have to tell you, this does not fit with what we know about Julie Leonard. It doesn’t sound like her.”

“I didn’t say it was true. It was just what people said.”

“That why you went to the party? Hoping maybe she’d have too much to drink and then you’d hook up with her?”

“No.”

“What else do you remember?”

“Nothing.”

They paused when they were finished with Parker to consult with Stuart. Blair Weeks had arrived and was waiting across the hall with Rayne Kepplinger and Khetzel Ross, though Rayne and Khetzel sat together while Blair kept herself apart.

“Something’s going on between them,” Stuart said. “Also, we got early labs back from serology. Now we know what the delay was all about. Guess what the blood type was for the blood used to draw the symbol on the body? O, A, B, negative, positive—guess.”

“None of the above?” Dani said.

“Try all of the above,” Stuart said. “They think they have DNA from at least five people. Banerjee wants STRs and SNIs. We’re getting swabs from the kids. Once they’ve isolated the sample, they can run them through CODIS, but I’d be shocked if anybody here is in an FBI database.”

“At least it gets us warrants to search the houses,” Casey said. “Irene’s gonna like that.”

“Also,” the assistant DA said, “while you were talking to Mr. Bowen, I met in the lobby with Davis Fish.” He paused to see who recognized the name. “Logan Gansevoort’s lawyer. The one who’s on TV all the time, commenting on prominent cases. Apparently Logan has a medical emergency”—Stuart made quotation marks in the air with his fingers—“and won’t be joining us.”

“They sent his lawyer to tell us that in person?” Casey asked.

“No,” Stuart said. “They sent Davis Fish to tell us Logan is being advised by the one and only Davis Fish. We can still get Logan to talk to us, but not by sending a polite request to stop by the office for a chat.”

“What about the other kid?” Casey asked, looking at his notes. “Amos Kasden. Did we send somebody to his house?”

“Doesn’t have a house,” Stuart said. “He’s a student at St. Adrian’s Academy. Which has
en loco parentis
grandfathered into their charter. Since Detective Casey was in diapers. We need a writ.”

“I didn’t wear diapers,” Casey said. “Went straight to boxer shorts. When you get the warrants for the kids’ houses, make sure to get the shoes they were wearing. We got wholes and partials in the mud at the crime scene.”

Dani watched the three teenage girls yet to be questioned on the monitor. Rayne had beautiful black hair that shone like a crow’s feathers. Khetzel had short blond hair and severe bangs that made her look like the art director at a fashion magazine. Blair had long blond hair and was both the prettiest and the least adorned of the three.

According to what Dani had found out from perusing their Facebook pages, Rayne was the leader of the cool clique at East Salem High, and Khetzel was her consigliore. They’d skied on the ski team together, swam at the same swim club, boarded their horses together at Red Gate Farm, and formed the East Salem High School Girls Equestrian Club. More significantly, they’d both dated Logan Gansevoort, Rayne in sixth grade and Khetzel in ninth.

Dani wondered how exactly you “dated” someone in sixth grade. It was her recollection that in sixth grade boys were still covered head to toe in cooties and boy germs. When did that change?

At Dani’s suggestion, Stuart asked Khetzel Ross to step into the sitting room of the Empire Suite. If Rayne was the alpha female in the pack, they might get Khetzel to flip on her. Her mother, the actress Vivian Ross, had called the front desk of the inn to ask them to tell the police she’d been held up and to please wait for her before getting started.

“Who does she think she is?” Casey had asked.

To which Dani answered, “She thinks she’s Vivian Ross.”

Khetzel, proving herself to be every inch the diva her mother was, announced that she wanted to fire her lawyer and represent herself. As her lawyer objected, Dani explained that as a minor, Khetzel was required by law to have representation. Khetzel countered by saying she’d been held back a year before starting kindergarten and was eighteen.

“You can make that decision,” Dani said, “but I would advise against it.”

“Fine,” Khetzel said. “It’s made.” She turned to her lawyer. “You can go.”

“But . . .”

“Please. I’m sure Mother will pay you your retainer or whatever it is.”

When the lawyer was gone, she dropped a second bombshell.

“Rayne and I want to talk to you,” she said, looking at Dani. Then, turning to Detective Casey, she added, “Alone. And I can’t tell you the reason why until we’re alone.”

“Khetzel,” Dani said, “I’m an officer of the court. Anything you tell me, I’m going to relay to Detective Casey and the district attorney anyway—you understand that, don’t you?”

“I understand that,” Khetzel said. “But you’re a psychiatrist, and you went to East Salem High. We Googled you.”

“I can’t talk to Rayne without a lawyer,” Dani said, “for the same rea—”

“She’s eighteen too,” Khetzel interrupted. “Our moms held us back together. We’ve already agreed. We want to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“I can’t say.”

“If you can’t tell me why—”

“People could die,” Khetzel said. “That’s why—okay?”

15
.

During the six years that Tommy played professional football, his aunt Ruth, who worked at the town library, had kept him apprised of the local news. She wasn’t a gossip, but as the coordinator of so many town activities, she usually had an inside track on the village scuttlebutt. Tommy found her in the children’s room at the end of story hour, reading to a small group of preschoolers.

She smiled when she saw him waiting for her. “You really should get one of those,” she told him when she’d finished, nodding over her shoulder at the room full of children. “They’re a lot more fun than motorcycles.”

“Someday,” he said. “I need to get a learner’s permit first.”

That his aunt had never married and was childless had always seemed to Tommy to be one of life’s greatest injustices. He couldn’t think of anybody who’d be a better mom. Her hair, which she wore in a dignified braided ponytail, was partly gray and mostly blond. Her face was round, with a bright smile and sparkling blue eyes. So far she’d resisted his efforts to set her up with his friend Carl, but he was still working on it.

“Oh beans,” she said. “You’d be a natural. What brings you here?”

“Research,” he said.

“All yours.” She gestured to the computer room, filled with computers and monitors and servers purchased with money Tommy had donated.

“You’re the only resource I need,” he told her. “What do you know about Abbie Gardener?”

His aunt sighed. She explained that Abbie had once been a vital life force in the town, active in the church, an avid letter writer to the local paper, a favorite dinner guest, and as the town historian a tireless chronicler of the town’s narrative and chairman of the East Salem Historical Society. She’d been outgoing and extroverted until her health began to fail.

“What do you want to know?”

“Who’d she marry?” Tommy asked.

“Who says she did?” Ruth replied. The identity of George’s father had long been the subject of speculation, most of it pointing to a hired man who’d lived on the farm before the war and left shortly before George was born. The rumor was that he had died in World War II, killed on D-day. “I couldn’t say one way or the other. But she was always such an independent spirit. She might have planned to be a single mother from the start. It used to be looked down upon, you know. But Abbie always went her own way.”

Ruth knew little of the Gardener family ancestral history, even though the farm had been held by the Gardener family since the town first started keeping records.

“Abbie seemed to think it wasn’t fitting to talk about herself,” Ruth said. “She never wanted people to think she was in any way different or special. Which is part of what made her so special.