Twenty-Five

On the long drive home, I took stock. I turned off the tape I had in the cassette deck (Invisible Band by Travis), so I could think more clearly.

First, talking to Preston Burke had been a huge mistake. I couldn’t understand why Barry Dutton had been so in favor of the move. It had just gotten Burke mad at me, Dutton mad at me, and worst of all, Abby really mad at me. So I was driving away from a man who had probably thrown a rock at my window, and toward a wife and a police chief who might very well throw rocks at my head.

Meanwhile, back in the detective business, the “Case of the Mysterious Stink Bomber(s)” was far from solved. Here, a problem that would have taken Encyclopedia Brown maybe a page and a half to solve, and I was no closer to a solution than I had been a week and a half before. I didn’t so much as have a plan of action.

And then there was the investigative reporter business, where I was seriously stumped in my examination of the Crazy Legs Gibson murder. The cops were probably staking out Stephanie’s house, other reporters were down in D.C. interviewing actual witnesses and players in the case, and I was in New Jersey, having spoken to a grand total of one person who had been involved at all. Luckily, she was the one who everybody else wanted to talk to, and who wouldn’t talk to anyone but me. That, and that alone, was the edge I held in this story. And so far, it had gotten me almost as far as I had gotten in the stink bomb case.

This wasn’t turning out to be my October.

My cell phone hadn’t rung since Burke’s house. This was not a good sign, as it indicated that my wife didn’t actually care whether I was in the clutches of a possible serial killer.

I had to concentrate on just one problem at a time, and since $10,000 was riding on only one, I chose Crazy Legs. If there were DNA evidence, it would have to place Stephanie at the scene of the crime to get the cops moving on her so quickly. If it wasn’t DNA, but a witness who was actually there, it would be weird. The only people who could be in a place like that would be the killer, the victim, who in all likelihood wasn’t talking, and the girlfriend, who had already been interviewed and insisted she’d been in the shower and hadn’t heard anything. Maybe she’d recanted her previous testimony. (You freely use words like “recanted” when your nightly bedmate is a lawyer. And when you have impersonated one unsuccessfully in the recent past.)

Could there have been someone else there? Stephanie had definitely been in New Jersey a couple of hours after the killing— I could personally attest to that. If she’d been in D.C. in time for the murder and New Jersey in time for the reunion, she’d have had to fly. But she’d had her car—the D.C. plates were evident on the BMW she was driving at my house that night. For that matter, on my block, the BMW was pretty evident all by itself. And a BMW is not the kind of thing you can place in the overhead bin as a carry-on item.

DNA evidence would rule out Stephanie hiring someone to kill Legs, unless she hired someone who could be directly tied to her, like a member of her family. So it became that much more important that I get some solid information from Abrams as soon as possible.

I’d have to talk to Legs’ mother, too. I couldn’t imagine she’d have vital information. But you never know where the good stuff is going to come from, so you talk to everybody and rule out most of them.

I was off the Garden State Parkway by then and onto Rt. 27, driving into Midland Heights, when the phone rang. It wasn’t a number I recognized, so it was entirely possible it was someone who wasn’t furious with me at the moment. I picked up.

“Hello?” I said tentatively.

“Hi, Aaron, it’s Stephanie.”

“Hi, Steph. Are you in jail?”

She laughed, as if I hadn’t meant it. “No,” she teased. “I’m at my mother-in-law’s house.” Ah. So she was putting on a cheery exterior to deal with the old lady. “We were wondering if you might be able to do the interview now. Lester has a business appointment later.”

“Now?” I checked the dashboard clock—it was still three hours before the kids would come charging through the door.

“Is this a bad time?”

“No, I can do it now. But you’ll have to give me directions. The ones I wrote down last night are still in my office.”

She gave me the directions as I made a U-turn on Edison Avenue and risked the wrath of the Midland Heights Police Department, whose chief, already on the warpath, probably had added my scalp to his Ten Most Wanted list. “There’s just one thing,” she said when she was done.

“What’s that?” I always serve up the straight line.

“Lester is here, and he’s going to sit in with you two.”

“We’d already discussed that. What about talking to Lester?”

There was a hesitation in her voice. “Lester is not willing to talk to the press right now,” she said. “I’m sure you understand.”

“Sure I understand,” I replied. “You tell Lester that I’m not willing to have him sit in on his mother’s interview unless he agrees to do one himself. I’m sure he’ll understand.” Stephanie stuttered, which was extremely unusual for her. “B-b-b-but Aaron, you said. . .”

“I never said he could sit in, listen to everything I’m going to ask, then prepare his answers ahead of time and be ready for any possibility. I never said he could gain the advantage before I even enter the room. I never said I’d agree to any of this. All I said was that I’d write a story for Snapdragon, and I can do that with or without Lester and his mother. Their participation is entirely up to them. But my participation with them is entirely up to me. I don’t exist to act as their public relations manager.”

There was a long pause, and I got the impression Stephanie, hand over the mouthpiece, was talking to Lester and/or his mother. When she came back, her voice was different, small and obedient.

“Lester says okay,” she said.

“He’ll talk to me?”

“That’s what I said,” and she hung up.