Intent to Kill (5 page)

The insomnia, his grief counselor had told him, was partly about guilt. At least a million times Ryan had replayed in his mind the things he could have done differently—things that might have kept Chelsea alive after the accident, things that might have kept her from getting into the accident in the first place. He should have made a nuisance of himself in the emergency room, whipped those doctors into shape, let them know that they had better not let his wife die young. He should never have insisted that Chelsea come to the PawSox game, should have let her go to her night class at Suffolk, should have bought her a bigger and safer car, should have asked for a damn trade to the Dodgers and moved the whole family to Los Angeles—should have, should have…

Three years of guilt, much of it connected, ironically, to the game he loved so much. But no one knew about the fear that kept him walking the floors at night.

Ryan rose from his chair and went to the closet. On the top shelf, in a shoe box, was a collection of old DVDs. He grabbed one at random and shoved it into the DVD player. A smiling Chelsea in a white veil suddenly appeared on-screen; it was the video of their wedding day.

Ryan’s counselor had told him to put the old movies away, but on anniversaries and other milestones—the nights he knew would be sleepless—he couldn’t help himself. It was all tied to the fear, which in some ways felt a lot like the grieving and the panic attacks. But the fear went beyond chills and breathlessness. Emma had no idea how much she had exacerbated it tonight by telling Ryan about the possible lead on a suspect.

The fear of what he might do once he knew.

I’m gonna kill him.

Ryan went to his chair, fighting back tears in a lonely, dark room where the only source of light was the on-screen image of his beautiful bride.

I’m sorry, Chelsea. But I just know I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.

RYAN WOKE WITH ONLY A SEMICONSCIOUS AWARENESS THAT
someone was nudging his arm. He grumbled, and the nudge turned into a shove with the force of a linebacker.

“Mr. James,” said the soft but urgent voice of a woman. “Mr. James, wake up.”

Things slowly came into focus. Ryan discovered he was still in his living room, slouched in the armchair. The light from the lamp across the room was only sixty watts, but it assaulted his eyes like lasers.

“You have to get up, sir.”

The bowfront window was black with night. “What time is it?”

“Five thirty.”

Only upon her mention of the ungodly hour did Ryan recognize the voice.

Claricia Castillo had been Connie and Glenda Garrisen’s full-time housekeeper for years, but they’d offered her services to Ryan when he and Ainsley moved to Boston. At first it was merely a second job for Claricia, but soon she was like a grandmother to Ainsley—
la muñeca
, she called her, “the doll,”
un regalo de Dios
, “a gift from God.” Claricia arrived with a smile every weekday morning at five thirty sharp to straighten up the house, get Ainsley ready for school, and drop her off at Brookline Academy by eight. From there Claricia went to the Garrisen’s brownstone on Beacon Hill for her regular day job. The arrangement gave her extra money to send to her five sisters in Bogotá, and it was the only way Ryan as a single dad could do a morning radio talk show at six.

“You’re going to be late,” said Claricia.

Ryan was in a daze. The last time he’d checked the clock, it was almost four
A.M.
He’d finally broken down and taken one of the sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed.

“I can’t do the show this morning.”

Claricia shot him a reproving look and said something in her native tongue that needed no translation.

“You’re upset,” he said.

“Upset? Why would I be upset?
La muñeca
—of course she needs a father who is a drunk. What little girl doesn’t? I’m not upset.”

“I wasn’t drinking,” said Ryan.

“You said that last time.”

She was right. A couple of months back, the police had stopped him on suspicion of drunk driving and taken him in. It was the lingering effect of a sleeping pill that had made his driving so erratic, but the media got wind of the situation and reported that he’d been arrested for DUI. He was eventually vindicated and the charges were dropped, but it didn’t stop people—even Claricia—from suspecting a drinking problem. Never mind the studies showing that people who stayed awake for twenty hours drove worse than people with a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit. Ryan could only imagine where he would have fallen in that study—awake for twenty hours or more
every day
for the past three years.

“I’m going up to bed,” he said.

Claricia was already busy straightening up the living room.

“La muñeca
needs a father without a job, too,” she said, never looking up from her work.

Ryan climbed the stairs slowly. On some level he appreciated her well-intended tough love, but going to work in this condition was more likely to earn him a pink slip than not showing up at all. Upstairs, Ryan found his BlackBerry on the dresser and fired off an I’m-not-feeling-well message to his cohost. His head hit the pillow, and he hoped the sleeping pill he’d swallowed ninety minutes earlier would kick back in and carry him off to dreamland. He worried that it wouldn’t. He worried that worrying about it would keep him awake.

Just close your eyes, relax, breathe in and out, relax, think happy thoughts, relax.

This was such bullshit. Falling asleep was like hitting a baseball—the insomniac who tried to achieve sleep step by step was no better off than the hitter who tried to break out of a slump by overanalyzing his swing.

Ryan’s eyes popped open. The clock said 6:25
A.M.

Shit! Why did Claricia have to wake me?

The sleeping pill he’d taken at four was now an official waste of time.

Ryan rolled out of bed, unplugged the alarm clock, and hid it in the closet. His mattress beckoned, but he hesitated before sliding back beneath the covers. Reconditioning rule number one: never climb into bed until you are ready to go to sleep. Ryan, however, had been ready for three years. It didn’t seem to matter.

He returned to the closet. There was an assortment of pillows on the top shelf, from extra soft to extra firm, goose down to synthetic. It brought to mind Ivan’s old Dominican saying about the inverse relationship between the number of pillows on a bed and the number of times a couple used it to make love—Ivan’s way of saying, Don’t let the things you accumulate in a marriage get in the way of what’s really important.

Ryan grabbed a half-dozen pillows and tossed them onto the empty side—Chelsea’s side—of the bed. He chose one made of “memory foam” to cover his face and force his eyes shut, determined not to lose another battle to the single, tiny muscle in each eyelid. Tonight, or this morning—whatever the hell time it was—these eyes were going to shut and stay shut, and Ryan James was going to the Land of Nod, damn it.

How can I be so dead tired and not fall asleep?

The telephone rang. Ryan couldn’t tell if it was a minute later or a day later. Maybe that sleeping pill had worked after all, and he had only dreamed about not being able to fall asleep. He grabbed the phone from the nightstand and checked the caller ID display for the time—8:10
A.M.
—and the number. It was his in-laws. Rachel probably wanted to know why he wasn’t on the radio. He let it ring through to the answering machine. All hope of falling back to sleep was lost, but he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He didn’t feel like getting out of bed. He didn’t feel like turning his head three inches to the right to avert the annoying ray of sunlight that was streaming through the window. He didn’t feel like anything.

He just couldn’t believe that Chelsea had been dead for over three years.

“No answer,” said Rachel Townsend.

Her husband shrugged it off. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“If we’re going to talk to the police, I’d like Ryan to be here.”

Paul Townsend went to his wife, looked her in the eye, and rested a reassuring hand on each of her shoulders—the near embrace that had come to define their marriage.

“It will be fine,” he said. “Come on.”

Paul led her into the living room. A clean-cut man dressed in a blue suit and white shirt rose as they entered. He’d been waiting patiently during the few minutes it took for Paul to pry his nervous wife out of the kitchen.

“Rachel, this is…” Paul stopped himself. “I’m sorry. Your name again?”

The man offered a courteous smile and a business card. “Benjamin. Lieutenant Keith Benjamin. Rhode Island Sheriff’s Department,” he said, pronouncing
Roe-Dyelin
the way all the department veterans did.

He shook Rachel’s hand as Paul checked his business card. He also reached for the badge he’d shown Paul earlier, but Paul waved it off, as if too much officiality might be upsetting to Rachel.

“This won’t take long at all,” said Benjamin. “It’s just routine follow-up to the tip the attorney general’s office received. I’m sure you saw the report on the news last night.”

“Actually, our son-in-law called to tell us about it before it aired.”

“Good. Basically, we’re just trying to do everything we can to determine if this tip is legit or not. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask a few questions.”

“Well—” Rachel began to say.

“Sure,” said Paul.

The couple looked at each other and sat down on the couch. Benjamin seated himself in the adjacent armchair. A framed photograph of Chelsea rested on the cocktail table between them.

“I know we’ve never met,” said Benjamin, “but I’m one of the many folks at the department who’ve worked behind the scenes. I don’t need a lot of background, so I’ll keep this short and sweet.” He took a pen and notepad from his coat pocket. “Any idea who this tipster might be?”

“No,” said Paul.

Rachel shook her head.

“What do you think of the list of possibilities the attorney general’s office has come up with so far?”

“List?” said Paul.

“I don’t mean a formal written list,” said Benjamin. “Just some of the names the prosecutor’s office is considering.”

“If they have any names, they haven’t shared them with us,” said Paul. “Isn’t that right, Rachel?”

“I haven’t heard any names,” said Rachel.

“So no one from the AG’s office, the sheriff’s office—no one—has expressed any thoughts or theories as to this tipster’s identity?”

“No,” said Paul.

“Oh, I see.”

“Can you share them with us?” said Paul.

“I’m sort of reluctant to, without Ms. Carlisle’s approval. She may want to handle that personally.”

“Can you call her?”

Benjamin checked his watch. “It wouldn’t do any good. She’s in trial. So for now, I don’t see any reason to take up any more of your time,” he said as he started to rise. Then he sat back down. “But—by any chance, is your son at home?”

“Yes,” said Paul. “He’s upstairs in his room.”

“I have a few questions for him, too.”

Rachel sat up, and Paul could almost see her mother-bear protective claws emerging. “What kind of questions?” she said.

“Along the same lines I asked you.”

“I’m sure Babes doesn’t know anything,” she said.

Benjamin gave her a polite but firm smile.

“If it’s all the same to you, ma’am, I’d like to hear it from his own mouth. It’s just me—I do things by the book.”

Rachel matched his smile with a polite but firm one. “You obviously don’t understand. Babes—Daniel—has Asperger’s syndrome.”

“So…is he deaf?”

“No.”

“Mute?”

“No.”

“Mentally incompetent?”

“Not at all.”

Benjamin shrugged. “Then what’s the problem?”

Rachel was now at the edge of her seat, almost leaning over the coffee table. “The problem is that—”

“There is no problem,” said Paul.

Rachel raised a hand, blinking slowly to emphasize her annoyance at the interruption. When it was clear she had the floor, she continued. “Asperger’s syndrome is a pervasive development disorder that is often grouped under the unofficial term autism spectrum disorder. Daniel was not diagnosed until…”

Blah, blah, blah.
Paul Townsend had heard Rachel’s speech a thousand times, and he’d been tuning it out for as long as he could remember.

“As a child with higher-than-average intelligence,” said Rachel, “he appeared to be progressing normally in terms of expressive speech and motor development: sitting, crawling, standing, walking. He was on schedule for basic self-help skills, toilet training, self-feeding, and manipulation of common objects.”

Good Lord, the woman talks like a textbook.

Paul longed for the fun and spontaneous Rachel who used to tell jokes and make him laugh. Not that they hadn’t enjoyed Babes. When their little boy stood up at his third birthday party and not only recited but spelled the names of all fifty states, Paul was the proud daddy. When Babes heard the story of the infamous Chicago “Black Sox” and transformed part of the Shoeless Joe Jackson dialogue—It ain’t so, Joe—into “Is too, Jane,” Paul laughed right along with everyone else. Paul even went out and bought baseball equipment. That didn’t fly. None of the plans Paul had for his son worked out. By elementary school it was obvious that something was different—
really
different—and that Babes was never going to change. Rachel changed. The life that Paul, Rachel, and Chelsea had known and hoped for was forever changed.

“Babes!” Paul shouted.

“What are you doing?” said Rachel. “I haven’t finished.”

“Yes, you have,” said Paul. “Babes, come down here!”

“Leave him be,” said Rachel.

“If Detective Benjamin wants to talk to him, he can talk to him.”

“What, Dad?” asked Babes. He was standing in the hallway, as if afraid to enter the room.

“Come in here,” said Paul.

Babes took a half step forward.

“All the way in. Sit down.”

Babes shuffled more than walked across the room, his head down and making eye contact with no one. He went to the armchair closest to his mother and almost slid into the sitting position, his posture perfectly erect, his knees together, the palms of his hands flat atop his thighs.

“Babes, this is Detective Benjamin,” said Paul. “He has a few questions he’d like to ask you.”

Babes was silent.

Benjamin looked at Paul and said, “I hope this isn’t a problem, but I’d really prefer to talk to Babes one on one. Man to man, so to speak, just the two of us.”

Rachel dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Well, I’m afraid that just isn’t poss—”

“It’s fine,” said Paul. “Rachel, let’s go. We’ll wait in the kitchen.” He rose, started out of the room, and then stopped. Rachel hadn’t moved.

“Rachel, I said we’ll wait in the kitchen.”

She breathed out her anger, then leaned toward Babes to pat the back of his hand. He withdrew, and she backed off, giving him only verbal support.

“If you need me, sweetheart, I’ll be just a few feet away.”

Rachel rose and followed Paul through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. He went to the counter and took a seat. Rachel stood at the door, leaving it open a crack, and watched her son.

“You have always coddled him,” said Paul.

“Shush. I’m trying to hear.”

“Don’t shush me. Look at yourself. Do you think that’s good for Babes?”

She shot him an angry look. “Don’t pretend to know what’s best for him. You don’t even know his doctors.”

“How could I? How could
anyone
? Let me see, are you referring to his psychologist? His psychiatrist? His neurologist, neuropsychologist, psychotherapist? The family doctor? Or maybe you’re talking about the world of pediatrics, which I say he should have left behind when he turned eighteen. His developmental pediatrician, pediatric psychologist, pediatric psychiatrist, pediatric neurologist, general pediatrician? Which one do you mean, Rachel?”