All the Things You Are (7 page)

With Ken, it's the urge to bring everyone downtown, no matter how counter-productive it'll turn out to be: kids, old people, informants who don't want to be outed, rich people who alternately despise and think they own the cops. It doesn't matter to Ken: come on over to my place. The shame of it is, he is twice the interrogator Nora is: subtle, empathetic, able to manipulate and steer a conversation without anyone being aware of it, even him, or so it sometimes seems. In that interview room, Ken can seem like some kind of intuitive artist, an actor improvising a scene, seamless, flawless, just pulling it out of the ether, etching it on the wind. Provided, of couse, he hasn't queered the pitch by insisting on jumping the gun, Nora thinks, smiling at how the cliché overload would make Ken wince. Between them, they make one good cop: the Pantomime Detective, Don Burns, their sergeant, calls them, occasionally with the capper that it's just too bad they're each the ass end.

So it's second nature to Nora this morning to pay as much attention to Ken as to Claire Taylor, and just when it looks like he's going to succumb to the temptation to invite Claire down the station, Nora clears her throat and catches his eye. Sometimes, stubborn, ingenuous, he can affect not to understand what she means; this morning, he takes the point clear enough, as well he might, given the thorough-going complexity, not to say epic weirdness of the situation. For a start, when Claire Taylor initially saw the body, an exhumed corpse lying in her own backyard, her reactions were, firstly, to yell with laughter, like she was …
relieved
, it looked like, almost triumphant. Then, having identified the body, she burst out crying. And then, when the tears banked down, this:

Claire: ‘Where's Mr Smith?'

Nora: ‘I beg your pardon?'

Claire: ‘Mr Smith! Mr Smith!

Nora: ‘I don't understand, Ms Taylor. Mr Smith?'

Claire: ‘Yes, Mr Smith. Last night, this guy wasn't here.'

Nora: ‘By “this guy”, you mean the body you have identified as being that of Gene Peterson?'

Claire: ‘Yes, yes, Gene, Gene Peterson. He wasn't here. Mr Smith was here. Mr
Smith. (Sobs.)
Oh God. Oh my God. Sorry, I'm sorry. I stepped on him, you see. Mr Smith's body, last night, in the dark. I got blood on my shoes. Mr Smith's blood. The poor little
guy.
And so … so someone must have taken his body away and put this body here … why would anyone have done that? Jesus Christ, this is so fucked up.'

Ken: ‘Ms Taylor. Is Mr Smith … a dog?'

Claire: ‘Of course he's a dog. What did you think I was talking about?'

This is when Ken looks like he's beginning to flail a little, and his fringe falls in his eyes, and Nora clears her throat and suggests to Claire that maybe they could go in the house and talk, her manner as gentle and solicitous as she can manage. And Claire says OK, but they'll have to sit on the floor, as all the furniture has been cleared out. Like she said, weird.

As it turns out, there is some furniture remaining, a couch and a couple of chairs and an oak desk in a kind of den up a spiral metal staircase, and that's where they're sitting now. Kind of a student crash pad, Nora thinks, with plenty of actual student memorabilia, posters and photographs and so on, but more, or less, than that: a messy, uncertain, semi-formed feeling, the couch and chairs not really matching the carpet or the wallpaper or each other, dolls and soft toys and postcards and concert tickets and theater programmes scattered about, as if the room belonged to an actual university student and not the extremely well-kept late-thirties-looking woman sitting across from her.

Ken arrives back with some takeout coffee from Michael's Frozen Custard on Monroe, since there's nothing left in the kitchen to make coffee with or in, or drink it from, and once they've had some, and tasted some pastries, Nora makes eye contact with him. He flicks his fringe and gives her the raised-eyebrow invitation: ‘Whenever you're ready.'

Nora takes it with a barely perceptible nod, but is in no hurry to get started, or rather, is biding her time until she figures out what to start with. She looks at Claire Taylor, who is sitting perfectly still on the couch, long legs tucked beneath her, fingers steepled above her empty coffee cup, head tilted back, eyes staring at the ceiling. For someone who has been through what Claire has just told them she's gone through, she's looking pretty together: long auburn hair sleek and straight and shining, skin clear and creamy, blue eyes startling in their intensity. Claire has the look, Nora thinks, the tall and slender with long straight hair look Nora once thought she maybe might contract as a teen. Then she realized, somewhere around fifteen, when other girls had grown into it and she was still five-three, and, not exactly squat, quite shapely actually, but with hair that had kinks and waves an iron couldn't satisfactorily remove, and always only a pound or two away from fat, that she was never going to morph into tall and slender with long straight hair. And twenty years later, when the look is triumphantly back in style, it kills her just a little that she still minds quite so much. Nora nods her head briskly, her face creasing into a characteristic smile, as if a little embarrassed by her narcissistic reverie (but then she is always a little embarrassed by something) and clicks the top of her pen a couple of times.

‘So, Ms Taylor … maybe we should start with the dead body. You say his name is Gene Peterson. Could you tell us, what was your relationship to the deceased?'

Claire lays her cup on the sofa beside her and looks directly at Nora, her blue eyes cold, her expression haughty. ‘I didn't have a “relationship” with Eugene Peterson,' she says, with some heat.

Nora doesn't exactly lean forward, but it's all she can do to keep still: the most innocuous question in the book meets with a XXL-sized tell, which she doesn't want to flag by greeting it with one of her own.

‘All I mean by a relationship is, how did you know him?'

‘He was an old friend of my husband's. They were at school together.'

‘And you've seen him over the years? Your husband kept up with him?'

‘Not really, no.'

‘Then how do you know who he is, Ms Taylor? How were you able to identify him so confidently?'

Color rushes into Claire's face, and she looks away.

‘I understand your reluctance to speak, Ms Taylor …
Claire.
I know you want to think the best of your husband, and of course you want what's best for your children. But you've got to understand that these two wishes may not be compatible. The facts as we know them are, without your knowledge or consent, your husband has left, with your kids, having let the bank – I took the trouble to talk to the Sheriff's deputies before they left – having let the bank initiate foreclosure proceedings, right from underneath you, so to speak. On top of that, we've got the body of a dead man, who you claim was one of your husband's oldest friends, in the backyard. Now, at the very least, you have been lied to, Ms Taylor. At the very least. And I know you want what's best for your children, and I can certainly tell you that I – that is to say, Detective Fowler and I, on behalf of the Madison Police Department – want to find your children safe and sound. That's our number-one priority. And I can assure you, in cases like these, where the husband has absconded with the children – well, let's just say time is a significant factor. Urgency is what's needed now. You understand me? So maybe the first thing you should do is tell me about this man, Gene Peterson.'

Claire blinks and nods and begins to speak.

‘I met Danny at UW, and we were together for three years, and then we broke up and I went to Chicago and lived there about eight years. And then I came back and married Danny and we had our babies and we've been together ever since, twelve years? And when I was in Chicago, there were men, a couple serious, a couple not. And one of the nots was Gene Peterson. He … I'd never met him before, but he knew who I was – I was working as an actor back then, and he came to see a show, and stuck around after, and introduced himself, said he'd heard about me from Danny. And … he was nice, at first, and I was broke, and he took me out to dinner, and he was only in town for the night, and … well, in the end, nothing really happened, it … we didn't hit it off. And that was that until Sunday a week ago.'

‘What do you mean, that was that?'

‘I mean, Danny never wanted chapter and verse on who I dated when we were apart. So I never told him. I mean, he knew about a couple guys, the serious ones, but I wasn't going to say, “Oh, you know that friend of yours from way back?” As far as I was aware, he never knew. Until Sunday a week ago, we had a barbecue here, a lot of friends, last day in the outdoors before winter, a big party. Suddenly, there's a guy appears at the backyard gate. Gene Peterson.'

‘Did you recognize him?'

‘No, he was … he was wearing a mask.'

‘A mask?'

‘A cowl, actually. You know, the Angel of Death. It was a Halloween party. Early, because I was on my way to Chicago.'

‘So you didn't see his face?'

‘No.'

‘All right. Tell me what happened.'

‘Danny went down to see him. He vanished outside and … and that was that.'

‘There you go again. That was what?'

‘Well, I was on a plane that night to Chicago, it was a big party, a lot of drinks had been taken, I was more concerned with making my flight than, who was that guy? And you know, the gate gives on to the Arboretum, it's public access there, it could have been anyone.'

‘Did you ask?'

Claire shakes her head.

‘I was somewhere between don't forget to do the lunch boxes and feed the dog and passport-ticket-money, I just forgot about it. If I even registered it as anything.'

‘But you don't think it was just anyone?'

‘I saw … I saw Danny look at the guy as if
he
recognized him. Cowl or no cowl. And now we see, here's Gene Peterson, he's dead. So I guess we make the assumption. Or at least, I do.'

‘Ms Taylor, is your husband the jealous type?'

‘There's nothing to be jealous of! And no, he's not the jealous type. He's not the violent type. I don't believe he did it, or could have done it. For God's sake, the idea he would do that to Mr Smith!'

‘You're taking it for granted that the same person who killed Gene Peterson killed your dog.'

‘Well. At first, I maybe thought it was some kind of horrible Halloween prank. But that was before a man was killed. And that's another thing, Gene Peterson's body wasn't here last night, so whoever put it there must have done it in the early hours of the morning.'

‘You're sure you didn't just miss the body?'

‘There was a moon – not full, and it was cloudy. But OK, say I did miss the body, say the body was out there. Mr Smith's body was what I stepped in. He was there, for certain. And now he's not there any more. So at the very least someone must have moved the dog's body.'

Claire says this without a flicker. Nora nods her assent.

‘Now there's absolutely no way Danny is going to kill a man and leave his body in our yard, or bury the body but leave the eviscerated carcass of the dog he loved, then come back the following night when he knows I'm home and secretly dig up the man's body while burying or otherwise removing Mr Smith. Does that make any sense, Detective Fox?'

Nora nods again, as if conceding the point, which on the face of it does make considerable sense. The problem is, nothing else about this case does.

‘What about you, Claire? You say you made it back from Chicago last night. Presumably you have proof of that.'

‘I have a plane ticket. I was on the flight. I stayed at the Allegro Hotel in Chicago. I can show you receipts, I have them somewhere.'

‘Detective Fowler will want to see all of your documentation, along with names and numbers of the people you spent time with in the city.'

‘You don't think I killed him? That I could do anything like this?'

Claire's voice is suddenly shrill with indignation.

‘What we're trying to do is eliminate all the possibilities, Claire,' Nora says, turning to her partner.

‘Time of death, Ken?'

‘The medical examiner was only getting started. But indications are, the body is comfortably post-rigor, so we're talking thirty-six to forty-eight hours at least. Abdominal swelling is still relatively minor, which would indicate no more than four days on the other side.'

‘So, Claire, provided you were where you say you were, that pretty much rules you out. Now, at the risk of repeating ourselves here, your husband's vanished with your children and all your possessions, he knew your house had been foreclosed against, he hasn't told you where he's gone or why. Not a note, not a message. That's right, isn't it?'

Claire nods, unable or unwilling to meet Nora's eye now. She is fidgeting with a coil of her long auburn hair, teasing it between her fingers, then moving to a silver sleeper, twisting it around in the lobe, then back to the hair. For such a poised, controlled lady, Nora reckons this is Claire's idea of a freak-out.
Let's see if we can stir the pot
.

‘
That
doesn't make any sense to
me
,' Nora snaps. ‘So what are you telling me here?'

Nora looks up and catches sight of Ken Fowler, briefly: he nods and flashes a wry smile. She acknowledges it, while shrugging it off; she's still feeling her way; too early to come to any judgements or conclusions.

‘I'm telling you the truth,' Claire says. ‘Isn't that the easiest thing? Because I would like you to help me.'

And when Claire looks at Nora Fox, they are both surprised to find that Claire has tears in her eyes.

‘All right then,' Nora says. ‘Tell me about the money, Ms Taylor. Your husband must have been under huge financial pressure.'