Darkness peering (32 page)

"So you're saying ... there was nothing out of the ordinary about his
behavior that night?"

"If his behavior could be called ordinary, no."

"Would you mind if I asked him?"

"Porter?" He seemed surprised. "Be my guest."

Russell corralled Porter onto the plaid sola, where he bounced
excitedly up and down and shook his massive head.

"Porter," Russell said, "this is Detective Storrow--"

"Rachel."

"Porter, this is Rachel. She wants to ask you some questions, okay?
Okay, buddy?"

"Yup." He bounced up and down, avoiding eye contact.

"Hello, Porter," Rachel said.

"Yup," he said.

"Do you remember Billy?"

"Uh-huh."

"He's your volunteer, isn't he?"

"Uh-huh."

"Remember when he picked you up about four weeks ago? It was a
Wednesday night, do you remember? Middle of October?"

"Yup."

"Do you remember that night? It was sort of foggy. You and Billy went
out to eat, I think. You shot hoops in his backyard. Remember?"

"Yup. Billy and me ..."

"That's right. Do you remember what happened that night?"

"Who you sittin' in for?" Porter asked with an abrupt shake of his
head.

"Excuse me?"

"Who you sittin' in for?"

She looked at Russell.

"He thinks you're a substitute teacher."

"Oh." Rachel smiled. "No, I'm a police detective, Porter."

"Police?"

"Yes."

"What's that?" He pointed at her lap.

She looked down. She had her notebook out. "These are my notes."

"What for?"

"I'm writing down your statement."

He clapped his hands excitedly and bounced up and down on the squeaky
sofa, loose as a rag doll.

"You're really revved up today," Russell said. "Did you eat your
Wheaties this morning. Porter?"

"Yup. What're you doin'?"

"I'm writing down everything you say," Rachel responded.

"What for?"

"It's my job."

IT

"What's that:1" He pointed at her chest.

She glanced down. Her coat was open, the handle grip of her gun
exposed. She smoothed her coat shut. "That's my weapon. I'm a police
detective. Don't worry, I'm not going to use it."

"On bad guys?"

"I try not to use it, Porter." She glanced at Russell, worried she
might've frightened them both, but Russell only shrugged. "Porter,"
she said, "do you remember anything about the night you and Billy spent
together about a month ago?"

He abruptly stopped bouncing and stared at the floor, making itsy-bitsy
spiders with his fingers.

"Do you remember anything about that night?"

"Girls," he said cryptically.

"What's that?"

"Girls."

"What about girls?"

"We got girl."

She leaned forward. Did he mean Rachel herself? Was he still
confusing her with a substitute teacher? "I'm sorry?" she said.

"We got girl." He was bouncing violently now.

"What girl?" she asked with growing alarm. "What girl, Porter?"

"Porter," Russell said, "cool your jets."

He obeyed instantly, hands steepled in front of his face. "We got
girl."

"What girl?"

"Yup."

She glanced helplessly at Russell, who merely shrugged. "I doubt he
remembers much of anything," he said softly. "Porter has severely
limited cognitive capacity. His family has unrealistic expectations,
I'm afraid."

Porter was rocking violently now, head ducking lower and lower toward
the ground. Russell intervened, reaching for Porter's shoulder and
gently, physically steadying him. Porter stopped rocking long enough
to rub his eyes and Hap his large, fleshy hands.

"I'm really disappointed in you," he said, flapping his hands as if
he'd burnt them on a stove. "I'm really disappointed in you ..."

"Okay, buddy, calm down."

He jumped up and ran across the lobby toward the counter in front of
the receptionist's desk, bumping into it with his sneakered feet.

"Porter!" Russell called out.

He folded the bouquet in a firm handshake, brought the flowers to his
nose and inhaled, his broad fleshy face lit by their yellow ness "I'm
really disappointed in you ..."

Russell slowly approached. "Chill out, buddy."

Porter's fingers tightened around the stems. When he released his
grip, yellow petals fluttered to the floor. "I'm really disappointed
in you ..." He bolted up the stairs.

"Porter, no!" Russell took off after him.

Shivering, Rachel stood and cinched her belt. Perhaps she shouldn't
have corner The stairwell shook as Porter pounded back down the stairs
again. He charged toward her, breathing noisily through his nose,
snorting like a bull, and for an instant she thought he might bowl her
over. Instead, he made a U-turn and hammered toward the reception
area.

"Yikes!" The receptionist turned right around and went back inside the
ladies' room.

Porter snatched the silver balloon by its string and gave a sharp tug.
The string snapped, and Porter gleefully ran with it out the front
door.

Russell was hot on his heels. "Porter Powell, you come back here!"

Rachel headed after them, keeping a safe distance.

Outside, Russell grabbed Porter's shirtsleeve and the fabric ripped as
Porter twisted away, surprisingly agile. He looked up at the sky and
let go of the balloon. He let out an exultant cry as the balloon
ascended into the wide blue yonder.

Russell turned to Rachel with an embarrassed grin. "He's been
plotting that for days, I'll bet."

"I'LL TELL YOU SOMETHING FOR A FACT. MOST PEOPLE'S DOORbells don't
work," Boomer Blazo said as Rachel struggled to keep up. They were
walking door to door, reading meters in an area where some of Flowering
Dogwood's oldest homes were located. Boomer wore a blue shirt
inscribed with the gas company logo. He'd been at it for ten years
now, and his wife was expecting twins soon, and he wasn't sure how they
were going to make ends meet.

"You know, I like this neighborhood," he said. "I got a real juicy
book today. All outside meters. I can do about fifty an hour, that's
a real juicy book.

"When you have to do a lot of walking," Boomer went on, "that's a bad
book. Too many busted doorbells, you gotta knock. People get mad if
you knock. "What's wrong with my doorbell? "Twenty-five houses an
hour, that's a bad book."

"I wanted to talk to you about the night Melissa D'Agostino was
murdered, Boomer."

"You know, Officer ... should I call you Officer?"

"Rachel's fine."

"Rachel, I've struggled practically my entire life trying to put that
episode behind me. I don't particularly like the fact that you're
cracking the case wide open. I mean, this is my life now. I've got a
wife and kids. I'm a decent, hardworking citizen just like anybody
else. I don't think I should be harassed for something that happened,
hell... a lifetime ago, to be perfectly frank with you."

"I respect your honesty, Boomer," she said, struggling up a short hill
toward a brown house where the family's laundry was draped over the
second-floor balcony. "But iNeal Fliss said I should talk to you about
where Billy was that night."

He stopped her with a broad, ink-stained hand. He was lanky, almost
gaunt, and reminded her so much of the shy, pimple faced adolescent who
used to hang out in her brother's room, smoking pot and throwing open
the windows in the dead of winter to get rid of the smell. "She lied,"
he said, his gravel voice lowered to a whisper.

"Who lied?"

"Gillian Dumont."

"About what?"

"About afterward. When we all took off." Boomer shook his head in
frustration. "First we dropped Melissa off near the exit, right? Then
Neal and I drove to my house where we shot pool all night, and Ozzie
and Dolly went to the Dairy Joy, and Billy dropped Michelle off, then
supposedly drove over to Gillian's, right? That's what they both said,
right?"

Rachel nodded, fingers gripping her pen.

"Well--" Boomer's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "They lied."

"You can prove this?"

"No, I can't." He continued up the hill, and Rachel lost her footing
and nearly slipped in the mud. "Let Gillian tell you herself."

"I haven't been able to locate her." She shuffled through the Melissa
D'Agostino case file, searching for Gillian's yellowed statement.
"Both parents dead, no living relatives. She moved around a lot. I
tracked her to Seattle, but there's no forwarding address."

"Well then, I can't help you." Boomer's hands were balled into fists.
Approaching a robin's-breast-red door, he depressed the button, but the
doorbell didn't work, so he knocked, knuckles scraping the peeling
paint.

"Wait." She made him stop. "Tell me what she said. Tell me
everything."

He worked his teeth over his lower lip, silently debating, then
wrinkled his nose. "She told me--and this was years after it
happened--she told me Billy never came over to her house. Not at
five-thirty, I mean. He went over later on, around eight o'clock, but
not earlier. She lied to the police. She would've done anything for
Billy."

The sun broke through the clouds, and Rachel squinted up at him. "She
told you that?"

"Years after it happened. Right before she moved to Chicago."

"And you believed her?"

"She had no reason to lie to me."

Something clutched at her, and for an instant she almost couldn't
breathe. She struggled to remain calm, or at least to look as if this
information hadn't rattled her viscerally. "Boomer," she said, "it's
critical you remember correctly ... if Billy didn't go over to
Gillian's at five-thirty, then where did he go?"

"Okay, that's the weird part. He told her he went back for Melissa
because he felt guilty just dropping her off like that. But when he
got to Black Hill Road, she was gone. He drove around looking for her
but couldn't find her anywhere. And Gillian believed him. He said if
she didn't lie for him, he'd be in big trouble, since there was a whole
hour unaccounted for."

"Five- thirty to six-thirty."

Boomer nodded.

An elderly woman opened the door. "Yes?" She eyed them suspiciously.
"What is it?"

"Meter reader," Boomer announced, rifling through his logbook.

"Why didn't you ring the doorbell, young man?" she asked angrily, and
Boomer gave Rachel a sly wink.

RACHEL FOUND THE SPARE KEY BILLY HAD GIVEN HER IN CASE

of emergencies and unlocked the door. He wouldn't be coming home for
several hours, and her stomach contracted sourly as she entered the
chilly house. This was not what a professional did; this was not what
a loving sister did.

Quickly, she searched the downstairs area, knowing full well that a
warrantless search was inadmissible in a court of law. She risked
tainting herself and the case in her search for answers, but this was
no longer about following procedure, it was about saving lives. Her
head felt swollen to twice its size and there was a knot inside her
blistered heart the size of a basketball.

The chartreuse-painted living room was clean and neat, magazines
stacked on an 1843 dowry chest--National Geographic, The New Yorker,
Scientific American; pillows propped against sofa arms; remote on top
of the TV set; books placed neatly back on their scrub pine shelves.
Billy was an avid reader. He was a member of several book clubs and
read anything he could get his hands on. His exercise equipment was
located in the closed-in porch just off the kitchen: rowing machine,
Nautilus. There were no dirty dishes in the sink. Everything had been
put away, and the linoleum floor was dotted with Roach Motels.

Upstairs, she checked the bathroom, damp towels folded over the towel
rack, then gazed at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and told
herself it didn't matter; none of this mattered. Billy was incapable
of such monstrous behavior. There were two dried starfish in the
medicine chest, along with a dozen pill bottles-aspirin, Advil,
Sudafed, Nytol, Tylenol, Sleep-Eze, No-Doz, laxatives She found a
discarded razor blade and several rumpled tissues in the wicker
wastebasket.

Now she'd done it. Might as well go the distance. Inside Billy's
tangerine-painted bedroom, she fished through his bureau drawers,
careful not to disturb the T-shirts, socks and folded underwear. An
empty cigar box with a red clay pipe inside. Her thoughts swam without
a frame of reference, disassociated words twisting through her head.
She tried to concentrate as she looked in Billy's closet, where she
found several unopened Yves Saint Laurent shirts on the top shelf, then
her fingers touched a Ziploc bag.

Gingerly, she pulled it out. Pot and rolling papers. She slid these
back into their hiding place. She wasn't there to bust her brother for
possession. The academy didn't encourage recruits to rat out
lawbreaking relatives, but rather to avoid them. To not associate with
them. Down on the closet floor where shoes and sneakers made soldierly
rows, she found a box of family photos and other memorabilia tucked
behind a folded quilt. She sorted through the photographs: herself at
seven, smirking at the camera, striking a bathing-beauty pose; their
parents holding each other tenderly, laughing with their heads thrown
back, eyes incandescent. She remembered how, when they were kids,
Billy used to tell her he could catch time in ajar. He'd sweep his
hand through the air as if he were snatching fireflies, then screw the
lid on tight. "I've got a whole hour in this jar," he'd say. It had
been Rachel's idea to poke enough holes in the Jid so that Time could
breathe.

Peeking beneath the bed, she couldn't find a single dust bunny. Her
heart grew heavy. Neat, he was neat. That fit the profile. She
glanced at all the books on his built-in bookshelves. The house was a
virtual library.