The mercury had to be pushing 95 by now.
I was about to do the finishing touches on her yard when I heard my cell phone, which I’d left on the dash of the truck, ringing. I opened the door, sat on the edge of the seat, and grabbed the phone. It was home calling.
“Yeah?”
“You might want to come back,” Ellen said. There was something in her voice, like she was keeping a lid on her emotions.
“What?”
“There’s something going on at the Langley house. There’s half a dozen cop cars, they’re putting up police tape. And there’s a cop walking up the lane headed this way right now.”
“Holy shit,” I said, and Derek, now in the truck, glanced my way. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ask around, give me a call back.”
“I went up there once but they wouldn’t tell me anything. But I figured, with some of the contacts you made back when you were at city hall, you’ll find out more than I will.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll head back now.” I flipped the phone shut and said to Derek, “There’s cop cars all around the Langley house.”
He just looked at me.
THREE
WE COULD TELL something was going on even before we got there. A quarter mile ahead, there were Promise Falls police cars, marked and unmarked, parked along both sides of the highway out front of the lane that led first to the Langley house, and then further on to ours. I slowed the truck as I approached the phalanx of vehicles, thinking, stupidly as it turned out, that I’d be able to turn down my own drive. But it was blocked with even more cars, and I could see officers stringing up more yellow police tape.
I drove on about a hundred yards and pulled the truck and trailer over as far onto the gravel shoulder as I could. Because we were on the outskirts of town, there were no curbs or sidewalks, but there were ditches that the Cutter’s Lawn Service trailer could slide into if I didn’t exercise caution.
Derek had his door open before I had the truck in park and was hoofing it back to the scene. I grabbed my keys and was out the door, running to catch up with my son, who hadn’t said a word the whole way back.
I caught up to him as we reached the end of the drive. A cop raised his hand to us and said, “I’m sorry, you can’t come onto this property.”
I pointed down to the end of the lane, where you could just make out part of our house. “I live down there,” I said. “I just got a call from my wife that—”
“Jim!”
I looked around the cop and could see Ellen, who’d been standing with a couple of officers, running my way. The cop who’d been blocking my path stepped back and let Derek and me pass. Ellen, in a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt, her hair slightly askew, looked as though she’d had to face the world sooner than she’d planned, and if she’d had a chance to do her makeup, the tears running down her cheeks now would surely have made a mess of it.
She ran up, threw her arms around me, then reached out to grab Derek by the arm and pull him toward us.
“Ellen, what the hell’s going on?” I asked.
She sniffed, looked at me first, then our son, her eyes lingering on Derek, as though the news she had to tell was going to be harder on him than me.
“The Langleys,” she said. “Last night, someone, they came in, and . . .” Tears were welling up in her eyes again.
“Ellen,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “Just get ahold of yourself.”
She took a couple breaths, sniffed again, felt with both hands in her pockets for a tissue. Finding none, she ran her index finger across the bottom of her nose.
“They’re all dead,” she said. “Albert, Donna.” She squeezed Derek’s arm. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Adam too.”
I thought he would say something. Maybe a “What?” or an “Are you kidding?” or even a simple “No.”
I know that I was about to ask, “What happened?”
But Derek said none of these things. Instead, his lip began to tremble, and almost instantly, tears welled up in both his eyes. He fell into his mother’s arms and began to sob. The emotions overwhelmed him so quickly, it was like he’d been holding them in all morning.
“HEY, CUTTER!”
I glanced away from my wife and son holding each other to see Barry Duckworth, a detective with the Promise Falls Police Department, heading my way. Early forties, like me, we’d often crossed paths during the time that I’d worked for the mayor’s office. I liked to think I was, at least in the last couple of years, in a little better shape than Barry, whose paunch was slightly visible where his white dress shirt pulled apart just above his belt, letting us in on a small triangle of hairy belly. There was more hair there than on his head, which was mostly bald save for a pitiful comb-over near his crown. He had his tie pulled down and his collar open, and his jacket must have been left behind in his car. It was too hot to wear one, but even without it, there were sweat stains under the pits.
I’d always thought he was an okay guy. A straight shooter. And while I couldn’t claim he was a close friend, we’d spent more than a few nights sitting in a bar together, and that tends to count for something around these parts.
“Barry,” I said solemnly. He extended his hand. We shook, both our palms sweaty. “What’s going on, Barry?”
He ran his hand over his head, like he was squeegeeing off the perspiration. “You mind if I ask you a few questions first, Jim, before I fill you in?”
So we were going to be professional, at least at first. I could accept that. “Sure,” I said as Ellen and Derek released their hold on each other and turned to see what they might learn.
“I’ve already asked Ellen some questions, but I’d like to go over some things with you,” Barry Duckworth said. “You were home last night?”
“Yeah. Came home from work, never went out again. I was beat.”
“Did you see the Langleys at all last night?”
“I didn’t.” I was about to say that Derek had, but I figured Barry would get to him.
“Hear anything at all last night, after ten o’clock or so?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “We had the house closed up pretty tight, the air on.”
“See anything? Car headlights maybe?”
I shook my head again. “Sorry.” I pointed to our place. “We’re quite a ways down.”
“How about you?” Barry said, turning to Derek.
“Huh?” he said. There was a small trail of clear snot running down to his upper lip. Derek turned and wiped his nose into the shoulder of his T-shirt, still flecked with grass clippings from our morning tour.
“Did you see or hear anything last night?”
“No,” he said.
“But you saw the Langleys last night, right? Before they left? Your mother was saying you went over there to say goodbye to Adam, before he and his parents went away for a week to some lodge?”
Derek nodded.
“What time was that?” Barry asked.
Derek half shrugged. “I think around eight? Maybe a little after? I left just before they got in the car and took off.”
Eight? We hadn’t seen Derek at all that evening. He must have done something else after leaving the Langleys. Hung out with Penny, probably.
I decided it was time to press for some information. “Barry,” I said. “Come on. Tell us what’s happened.”
His cheeks puffed out as he blew out some air.
I persisted. “This place will be swarming with news crews in a minute. You’re going to have to tell them something. You can practice on us.”
He paused another moment, then said, “It was like an execution in there. Somebody, maybe two people, we don’t know yet, came in last night and shot them. All three.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
Ellen gripped my arm. “Dear God,” she said.
I looked up at the house, cops still going in and out, talking quietly, shaking their heads.
<
br /> Barry continued, “Mr. Langley, he’s by the front door, looks like his wife was shot coming down the stairs to see what was going on, and the boy—Adam?” He looked at Derek for confirmation, and my son nodded. “Adam, he was shot going down the stairs by the back door. Looks like he was trying to make a run for it, took a bullet right about here.” Barry touched himself at the back of the neck, just under his left ear.
I was numb. And despite the kind of weather we were having, I felt chilled.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought they’d gone away. They were taking a vacation or something.” To Derek, I said, “Weren’t they going away for a week?”
“Yeah,” he said, his face still wet with tears.
“Wife got sick,” Barry said. “They were well on their way, but she was having stomach pains or something, it’s a bit sketchy. But on the way back, around ten, Langley phoned one of the secretaries from his law firm, phoned her at home. Said his wife was sick, they were postponing their trip and coming back home, that if she got better by the morning they’d try heading off again, but in the meantime, there was a case he’d been thinking about, wanted her to bring a file out to him this morning so he could work on it, maybe take it with him if they managed to get away again.”
“Okay,” I said.
“So she drives in here about nine this morning to drop it off, knocks on the door, nobody answers. She tries a couple times, figures maybe they’re sleeping in or something, so she phones the house from her cell, can hear the phone ringing in the house, but nobody’s picking up, which seems pretty weird to her, right?”
We were all listening.
“So she happens to peer in through a window by the door.” He pointed over to the house, the vertical windows flanking the door. “She can see Mr. Langley lying there, can just barely make out the wife on the stairs. That’s when she called 911.”
Ellen said, “The poor woman. How horrible. Imagine, finding something like that.”
Barry continued, “When Langley phoned his secretary last night, he said he was only about ten miles from home, so they must have arrived back here not long after ten. So whoever did this, it was sometime after that, and probably not that much later. They were all still dressed. No one in their pajamas, not even the mother. You figure, she was the one not feeling well, she would have gotten ready for bed pretty soon after they got home. They still hadn’t brought their stuff back into the house.”
“They might not have unpacked,” I said, “if they thought they were going to go back up this morning.”
“True,” Barry said. “It’s very early in the investigation. We’ve got a lot to do. Forensic guys are only just getting here.”
Barry said to Derek, “Adam was a pretty good friend of yours, right?” My son nodded. “He ever say anything to you, you ever hear anything when you were over to the house visiting him, to suggest that someone might have it in for them? That his dad might have been worried about anything, anyone threatening him maybe? Some case he might have been working on?” He glanced at me. “He handled a lot of criminal cases.”
“Yeah,” I said. “There was that one I just read about in the paper. That gang fight or something? One kid beat up another kid, killed him, Langley got him off?”
Barry nodded. “That’s right. The McKindrick case.”
Ellen said, “I read about that, too. Tom McKindrick, that was the boy? The one that died? He was in his teens, right?”
Barry nodded again but said nothing, deciding to let Ellen do the work.
“He took a blow to the head, and Albert, Mr. Langley, he got the jury to believe that he’d more or less provoked it, that the other boy—what was his name?”
“Anthony Colapinto,” Barry said hesitantly, as though he’d been forced to admit something that wasn’t common knowledge.
“That’s it,” Ellen said. “Albert persuaded the jury that Anthony Colapinto was acting in self-defense when he went at the McKindrick boy with a baseball bat. When they read out the verdict, not guilty, the boy’s father, Colin McKindrick, collapsed right there in the courtroom.”
“Yeah,” Barry said. “I was there.”
“But then didn’t he get up? And threaten Albert?”
Barry nodded. “He told Albert Langley he’d pay for getting the son of a bitch off.”
I think my eyebrows must have shot up. “I hadn’t heard about that,” I said.
To Derek, Barry said, “You ever hear Albert Langley, or even his son, Adam, talking about that? Like maybe they were worried this Colin McKindrick might try to get even?”
“No,” Derek said, almost dreamily. “I never heard anything like that at all.” His words were trailing off, like he was getting woozy. Spending the morning cutting grass in these sizzling temperatures would be enough to send someone into heatstroke. Add to that the shock of what had happened at the Langleys’, it was little wonder Derek looked as though he was about to collapse.
I grabbed him under the arms. Ellen said, “Derek? Derek?”
“Water,” I said to Barry. “I’ve got some in a cooler in the truck.”
Barry clearly had another plan and barked to a uniformed female officer, “I need some water here!” The woman bolted to one of the nearby cruisers, where evidently a few bottles were stashed. I eased Derek over to the closest Promise Falls police car and leaned him up against it. The cop was running back, cracking the plastic cap along the way, and handed the bottle to me. It was warm, but it was still water, and I brought it up to Derek’s lips and tipped it.
He took a few swallows, breathed shallowly.
“We need to get him inside, where it’s cooler,” Ellen said. Our house was still a hundred yards away, and the female officer offered to drive him. “I’ll go with him back to the house,” Ellen said to me, figuring, I guessed, that if I stayed behind with Detective Duckworth I’d learn even more about what had transpired in the night.
“It’s like he’s in shock or something,” Barry said as the car rolled up to our house.
“Wouldn’t you be?” I said. “Your best friend gets killed along with the rest of his family?”
Barry nodded slowly in agreement.
“So’s that your theory?” I asked. “That this is related to the case Albert was working on? Was there anything taken? The house torn apart?”
Barry appeared thoughtful. “I don’t know why the fuck this happened, Jim. All I know is, three people dead? There’s gonna be a shitstorm of interest around this one. Don’t think we’ve had a triple murder around here in some time, if ever. A few single ones of late, but something like this . . .” He paused, then looked back to the highway. He seemed to be staring at our mailbox.
There was just the one, with the name Cutter on it. Last winter, I’d had to fix it after a snowplow took it down. The Langleys had their mail sent to a P.O. box in town. Albert didn’t like the idea of his mail sitting in a box by the highway, available to anyone passing by.
“What you looking at?” I asked Barry.
“Huh?” he said, as though he’d been daydreaming. “Nothing.”
FOUR
BEFORE I COULD ASK BARRY anything else, our attention was caught by an approaching car. It was a big black vehicle, and it was slowing down at the end of the lane. Barry rolled his eyes and said, “Oh boy, we can all rest easy now, the big man is here.”
It was a Mercury Grand Marquis with heavily tinted windows. I could only see the car in profile, but I knew that the license plates on it read “PF 1.” What with all the other police vehicles up there, there was no room for the Mercury to pull over, so the driver opted to put on the flashers and block a lane of traffic.
Barry and I were standing side by side now, waiting for the great man’s appearance. Barry said to me, “Tell me why you did it.”
“Excuse me?” I was still thinking about the Langleys, and found Barry’s question a bit jarring.
“Why’d you punch him in the nose? How many times you going to make me ask you?”
/>
“That’s just a rumor, Barry.”
“There’s not a civil servant in Promise Falls, or anybody else in town for that matter, who doesn’t know you punched the mayor in the nose,” Barry said. “It’s like our own urban legend.”
“You can’t believe everything you hear,” I said.
“Well, this is one of those stories I choose to believe,” Barry said. “This, and the one about Elvis working as a short-order cook at that diner just north of town.” He was watching the driver get out of the Grand Marquis. He was a tall man, lean, late thirties, with short blond hair except around back, where it hung down over his collar, mullet-style. “I mean, the mayor shows up at a council meeting, his nose the size of an orange, and guess who just happens to no longer be on the mayor’s payroll? Just think, you could still be working with Lance there if you hadn’t gone and fucked things up.”
“I’m happy with the way things have worked out,” I said.
The driver had his hand on the back door of the town car.
“What I heard is, even though you punched the mayor right in his fucking nose, you asked him for a letter of reference afterwards, and you got it,” Barry said. “I guess that was before you decided to go into business for yourself. Anyway, that tells me that you’ve got something on him that’s pretty fucking amazing. I mean, he never even pressed charges, and if there was ever a vindictive bastard out there, it’s Randall Finley.”
And with that, the door opened, and Mayor Finley emerged from the car.
He was a small man, a textbook case of the Napoleon complex. Carried himself like he was six-four instead of five-four. He’d opted to leave his jacket in the car, too, and gave his trousers a hitch as he stood on the hot pavement, gazing at the crime scene through a pair of Oakleys.
“Detective Duckworth!” he called out to Barry.
I whispered to him, “Show me how you scurry.”
But Barry approached the mayor at a regular pace, like he was trying hard not to run, not wanting me to think he jumped every time the mayor asked him to, even if that was exactly what he did.