The Hollow Girl (25 page)

“Hey, Nancy.”

“God, it’s good to hear your voice. I got your messages. If you’re close to my house, forget it. Don’t go there. It’s not as crazy as you expected, but it’s pretty bad. I had to get out of there.” Her voice was a tired whisper. “I had one of my girlfriends come over, and I hid in the trunk of her car as she drove out.”

“Very sneaky. That’s two house escapes in one day.”

“I’m sorry about leaving your place like I did, but—”

“I’m teasing. Don’t worry about it.”

“Moe, there was another message from Sloane waiting when I got back home.”

“Let me guess. She said not to worry, that no matter what you saw on the post last night, everything was fine and everything would be explained soon enough.”

After a long painful silence from her end, she said, “It’s a lie, isn’t it, Moe?”

“Maybe. I don’t know anything for sure.”

“You said something about a lead.”

“We’ll talk when I see you. Where are you?”

“At Maggie’s house in Crocus Valley.”

“Gimme the address. I’ll be there in a half hour.”

Just as she finished giving me the address, my car told me that I had another call. Devo. I got off the phone with Nancy as calmly and as quickly as I could manage.

“The house was, until last week, still in his father’s name,” Devo said. “Once the deed was amended, the house was immediately put on the market.”

“No surprise there. He lost his job and he’s just gone through a messy divorce. It’s an old story.”

“And one too familiar in our business. Now all his recent banking activity makes sense. Mr. Dillman has very little cash in reserve, Boss.”

“Listen, Devo, I’m gonna hang up in a minute. When I do, text me all the details you have. I need you to do me another favor. I need you to make a phone call for me.” I gave him Nancy’s number.

“What should I say to her?”

“As little as possible.”

I hung up, pulled off the expressway, and waited for Devo’s text to arrive.

We were almost there. Bursaw riding up front with me. Vincent Brock in the backseat, nervous as a cat. I didn’t begrudge him his anxiety. It had been a long ride to the northernmost tip of the island, a long ride and a dark one. The North Fork of Long Island was the unfashionable, countrified counterpoint to the Hamptons on the South Fork. The forks were separated by only a few miles of bays, sounds, and inlets with quaint names, but might as well have been on different continents.

Orient was a tiny humpbacked wedge of land northeast of Shelter Island that sat out in between Gardiners Bay and where Long Island Sound met the Atlantic Ocean. It was also only a few scant miles from Plum Island, where the government had established an animal disease laboratory in the 1950s to study lovely things like anthrax. The only reason anyone outside of Long Island knew about Plum Island was because Nelson DeMille had written a thriller novel set there and so titled. The island had also gotten a nod in
The Silence of the Lambs
. But the drama we were about to engage in wasn’t just words on a page or lines spoken in a movie.

Both Bursaw and Brock had their separate motivations for joining me in what had the potential to be a fool’s errand. Bursaw, because he loved the job and was willing to do just about anything to stay on it. Brock’s motivation was both more complicated and simpler. He loved Siobhan, and he worked for her father. When he agreed to come, I’d been tempted to talk him out of it by giving him a cold shower of the truth. Siobhan was unlikely to ever return his affection, whether she needed rescuing or not. But like I said, I had a dicey relationship with hard truths. I was also a pragmatic son of a bitch. Sometimes, three guns are better than two. I’d called Bursaw first because I needed a cop’s opinion about Dillman. He agreed with me that Dillman was the perfect candidate to go off the deep end and pull a stunt like this.

“I went through a messy divorce, too, Moe. I didn’t lose my kids or my job, not yet, anyhow, but trust me, it was
ugh
-
lee
. My credit got completely fucked. They repoed my car. I had to sell everything I had, including stuff I’d inherited from my dad. I also lost half my friends. There were a few times I almost ate my gun. And when I wasn’t trying to get up the balls to kill myself, I wanted revenge. It wasn’t even on my ex all the time. It was her lawyer, the judge, my in-laws. Sometimes it was just a guy in the car next to me because I didn’t like the way he looked, or a woman texting while she was driving. This guy, Dillman … shit! You throw in losing your kids and your job … forget about it! Plus, I’m sure he’s held a grudge for years. He probably said, fuck it, if I’m going down, I ain’t going down alone. I’m taking that Sloane bitch with me.”

Even though Bursaw’s rant made it pretty clear he was far from over his own divorce, his logic jibed with mine. Dillman was perfect. He got even more perfect when I received Devo’s text. It seemed Dillman’s house in Orient had undergone an update about a year ago during which the basement had been expanded and refinished. And—this was what sealed the deal—he had purchased an expensive digital camera a few weeks back. I didn’t know how Devo got that kind of information. I didn’t want to know.

The one decision we’d put off until we got off the LIE for the last substantial leg of the trip—through wine country—was whether or not to call the cops. No knock on the Town of Southhold PD, the department with jurisdictional responsibility for Orient, but neither Detective Bursaw nor I had much faith that such a small department would have a lot of experience in hostage situations. If we had been sure the Suffolk County cops—who we knew were prepared to handle this sort of thing—would be called in immediately, we would have alerted the Southhold PD. But one thing I knew as an ex-cop, and one thing Bursaw knew as an active one, was that cops are as territorial as lions. I wasn’t willing to take that gamble with Siobhan’s life, whether I cared for her or not. Besides, there was no catching anyone by surprise when you had two police departments involved in anything.

“Okay,” I said as we headed across the slim thread of highway over the water between East Marion and Orient, “so we all know what the plan is, right?”

Bursaw nodded yes. He was calm. Vincent, not so much. I hoped his nerves would work in our favor since it was up to him to distract Dillman. There was that word again,
hope
. Always trouble. We didn’t have much choice. Dillman knew my face. Bursaw was the steadiest gun hand, and had the most training at handling potentially dangerous situations.

“Vincent?” I prodded.

“Yeah. I drive the car up to the house, get Dillman to the door, and act like I’m totally lost and say that I’m having car trouble.”

“Right. You say you’re lost and your car won’t restart. Ask him for a boost. I’ve got cables in the trunk. Just get him away from the house for as long as you can, but nothing stupid. Don’t pull your gun on him or anything. No hero shit. We just need him away from the house long enough to break in through the back.”

“I got it. I got it.”

At the point where we had to turn off Village Lane onto Orchard, I stopped the car.

“Two minutes for us to get into position,” Bursaw said, turning around to Vincent, holding up his right middle and index fingers. “Two minutes.”

“I got it, for chrissakes! I got it.”

Vincent switched places with me. Bursaw and I got out of the car, closing the doors silently behind us. Neither Bursaw nor I asked Vincent if he was okay before we took off for the big white farmhouse on the hill. He was so clearly not okay that we were afraid of setting him off completely and blowing any chance we had for surprise. It was chilly and deathly still this far out on the island. Even in the dark, it was obvious why some people chose to live or summer out here—all the water and the fresh air and the quiet.

We made it to the back of the house in about ninety seconds. There hadn’t been any tall fences between the lots. We sat behind a low hedge that lined the back of the Dillman property. The house was pretty big, but the lot was only about a half acre. The ground and second floors of the house were completely dark. At one side of the house, there was a drop in elevation that afforded a scenic view from the basement. Apparently, a window had been built into the foundation at that point to take advantage of the view. But it was the light leaking out of the basement into the night, and not the view from the basement, that encouraged us.

Bursaw checked his watch. I checked mine. We nodded to each other as we heard Vincent pull my car up in front of the house and screech to a halt. So far, so good. He was doing really well, stomping up the granite block steps that led to the front door from the street below. He rang the bell, patiently waited, and rang again. Bursaw and I heard the bell’s chiming drift through the walls of the house into the silence of the night. But that’s when it started going wrong. Vincent pounded on the door. Not knocked, pounded, and there was no more patient waiting. There was just more pounding. Harder and harder. Louder and louder.

Bursaw and I shrugged our shoulders at one another. Even if this was a deviation from the plan, it was no doubt distracting. Dillman wouldn’t be paying much attention to the back door of his soon-to-be former vacation home with crazy Vincent trying to punch down his front door. So we walked, guns drawn, slowly, quietly, to opposite ends of the back wall of the house. Then we took measured steps toward one another until only the width of the back door separated us. That’s when Vincent just lost it.

“Open up, dammit! My fucking car broke down,” he screamed between pounding. “Open up.”

It wouldn’t be long before neighbors got curious. I knew it. Bursaw knew it. He shrugged again and I nodded for him to go ahead.

“Your guy’s sure there’s no alarm, right?” Bursaw whispered.

“If he says there’s no alarm, there’s no alarm.”

Bursaw holstered his Glock, turned toward the back of the property, and then jerked his right arm so his elbow punched a hole in the glass of the back door. He calmly reached inside, undid the deadbolt, and unlatched the door lock. His Glock was back in his hand before we were even inside.

“Oh, shit!” we said in unison.

“Only one thing smells like that,” I said.

“I hope we only find one body, not two.”

I agreed. “And I hope the one is his.”

“Go open the front door for that asshole and tell him to wait in the car,” Bursaw ordered, shifting into detective mode. “I’ll make sure we’re not dealing with one body and one living nut with a gun.”

I ran to the door, did what Bursaw asked, but Vincent wasn’t about to wait in the car. I wasn’t going to waste time arguing with him either. Bursaw needed backup, and I meant to give it to him.

“Keep your weapon holstered and keep far behind me,” I growled at Vincent. Then he caught a mouthful of air, made sense of the smell, and got weak in the legs. I grabbed him. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’ll get used to it,” I lied. “Shallow breaths. Shallow breaths.”

I hurried to find the steps to the basement, heard Bursaw’s steps on the stairs. Then, “Fuck! Fuck! Clear. It’s clear. Come down, Moe. Come on down.”

When we got down to the basement, we didn’t find exact replicas of Sloane’s teenage basement and bedroom. We didn’t find ropes or a photograph covered in strips of black electrical tape. We didn’t find Sloane or Siobhan or the Hollow Girl. What we found was a beautifully finished basement and a huge flat screen TV with Bang and Olufsen surround sound. We found a superb audiophile system with tube amps, preamps, massive speakers, and a turntable that cost more than my car. We found a red leather sofa, loveseat, and recliner. We found that expensive camera on a tripod, its lens pointed at the sofa. We found a Heckler & Koch 9mm on the dark gray carpeting at the foot of the sofa. We found Michael Dillman’s lifeless body slumped on the sofa with a chunk of the back of his head missing. We found that on the wall and sofa cushion behind him.

Vincent fainted, falling against the loveseat before hitting the floor. I left him there while I talked to Bursaw.

“Suicide. He bought the camera to record his goodbyes,” I said.

“Looks that way. We’ll know after the cops look at what’s on the memory.”

“He was so perfect. I thought he had to be the guy. Now I’m back to square one.”

“Maybe he was too perfect, Moe.”

“I guess. I’ll call it in.”

“Don’t bother. I hear the sirens.”

“I know you’re the detective, Mike, but let me do the talking. If anyone’s gonna take a hit here, it’s gonna be me, but I think I can explain it so that we’ll be all right.”

He didn’t argue with me and went over to revive Vincent. We had to get upstairs, outside, and put our weapons on the deck before the cops got there. Vincent came to and Bursaw shouted for us to go. I turned behind me to take one last look at Dillman. The dead often seem enviably peaceful, but not always. This was one of those times. Dillman didn’t look at peace. He just looked brutally, horribly dead.

It was nearly 4:00
A.M.
when I got to Maggie’s house in Crocus Valley. Nancy had been up, waiting, pacing when she saw my headlights flash through the living room window as I turned into the driveway. She opened the door and came out to me as I was getting out of my car. Even worried and stressed out of her mind at four in the morning, she made sure to be put together. God, I thought, the terrible weight of that, the pressure she put on herself. On the other hand, I must have looked like shit. I could see it in her eyes. I was falling down exhausted. My mouth was dry and I could smell my own sour breath. She put my arm over her shoulders and walked me into the house. I liked the feel of her against me.

The Southhold cops had bought my narrative without much skepticism. I was a licensed private investigator and I was doing a favor for a family friend. In the course of my investigation into another unrelated matter, I was alerted to the fact that Michael Dillman might be suicidal. I knew he was already in bad shape because of his recent divorce, the loss of his children, his job, and his pride. I was afraid that calling in the police might push him over the edge. Having met the man earlier in my investigation and having established a rapport with him, I felt it was safer for me to approach him on my own. After all, I had been twice divorced myself. I’d enlisted the aid of two close friends, both of whom I trusted and both of whom were licensed to carry firearms, to come along as backup in case things went awry or if we felt we needed to restrain Mr. Dillman for his own safety and the safety of others. When he didn’t answer our urgent pleas to open the front door, we went around to the side of the house and looked through the basement window. Seeing Mr. Dillman slumped on the sofa and unresponsive to our pleas, I broke through the back door window, let myself and the others in. Unfortunately, we found Mr. Dillman had already committed suicide. We were about to call it in, but heard the sirens approaching.