Outsider Read online

  It’s going to be all right, Gold had said, and that was what Terry hung onto.

  But of course it wasn’t.

  SORRY

  July 14th–July 15th

  1

  The battery-powered bubble-light Alec Pelley kept in the center console of his Explorer was in sort of a gray area. It might no longer be strictly legal, since he was retired from the State Police, but on the other hand, since he was a member in good standing of the Cap City Police Reserve, maybe it was. Either way, it seemed necessary to plonk it on the dashboard and light it up on this occasion. With its help, he made the run from Cap to Flint in record time and was knocking on the door of 17 Barnum Court at quarter past nine. There were no news people here, but further up the street he could see the harsh glare of TV lights in front of what he assumed was the Maitland house. Not all the blowflies had been drawn to the fresh meat of Howie’s impromptu press conference, it seemed. Not that he had expected it.

  The door was opened by a short sandy-haired fireplug of a man, his brow creased, his lips pressed so tightly together that his mouth was almost nonexistent. All ready to let fly with his go-to-hell speech. The woman standing behind him was a green-eyed blonde, three inches taller than her husband and much better looking, even with no makeup and her eyes swollen. She wasn’t currently crying, but somewhere deeper in the house, someone was. A child. One of Maitland’s, Alec assumed.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Mattingly? I’m Alec Pelley. Did Howie Gold call you?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said. ‘Come in, Mr Pelley.’

  Alec started forward. Mattingly, eight inches shorter but undaunted, stepped in his way. ‘Could we see some identification first, please?’

  ‘Of course.’ Alec could have shown them his driver’s license, but opted for his Police Reserve ID instead. No need for them to know that most of his duty shifts these days were a kind of charity function, usually as a glorified security guard at rock shows, rodeos, pro wrestling fuckarees, and the thrice-yearly Monster Truck Jam at the Coliseum. He also worked the Cap City business area with a chalk-stick when one of the meter maids called in sick. This was a humbling experience for a man who had once commanded a squad of four State Police detectives, but Alec didn’t mind; he liked being outside in the sunshine. Also, he was something of a Bible scholar, and James 4, verse 6, proclaims, ‘God opposeth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mr Mattingly said, simultaneously stepping aside and holding out his hand. ‘Tom Mattingly.’

  Alec shook with him, prepared for a strong grip. He was not disappointed.

  ‘I’m not normally suspicious, this is a nice quiet neighborhood, but I told Jamie that we had to be super careful while we’ve got Sarah and Grace under our roof. Lot of people angry at Coach T already, and believe me, this is just the beginning. Once what he did gets around, it’s gonna be a whole lot worse. Glad you’re here to take them off our hands.’

  Jamie Mattingly gave him a reproachful look. ‘Whatever their father may have done – if he did anything – it’s not their fault.’ And, to Alec: ‘They’re devastated, especially Gracie. They saw their father led away in handcuffs.’

  ‘Ah, Jesus, wait until they find out why,’ Mattingly said. ‘And they will. These days kids always do. Goddam Internet, goddam Facebook, goddam Tweeter birds.’ He shook his head. ‘Jamie’s right, innocent until proven guilty, it’s the American way, but when they make a public arrest like that …’ He sighed. ‘Want something to drink, Mr Pelley? Jamie made iced tea before the game.’

  ‘Thank you, but I better get the girls home. Their mother will be waiting.’ And delivering her children was only his first job tonight. Howie had rattled off a to-do list with machine-gun rapidity just before stepping into the glare of the television lights, and item number two meant racing back to Cap City, making calls (and calling in favors) as he went. Back in harness, which was good – a lot better than chalking tires on Midland Street – but this part was going to be hard.

  The girls were in a room that, judging from the stuffed fish leaping on the knotty pine walls, had to be Tom Mattingly’s man-cave. On the huge flatscreen, SpongeBob was capering in Bikini Bottom, but with the sound muted. The girls Alec had come to pick up were huddled on the sofa, still wearing their Golden Dragons tee-shirts and baseball caps. They were also wearing black and gold facepaint – probably applied by their mother a few hours ago, before the previously friendly world had reared up on its hind legs and bitten a hole in their family – but the younger had cried most of hers off.

  The older girl saw a strange man looming in the door and hugged her weeping sister tighter. Although Alec had no kids himself, he liked them fine, and Sarah Maitland’s instinctive gesture hurt his heart: a child protecting a child.

  He stood in the middle of the room, hands clasped before him. ‘Sarah? I’m a friend of Howie Gold’s. You know him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Is my father all right?’ Her voice was little more than a whisper, and husky from her own tears. Grace never looked at Alec at all; she turned her face into the hollow of her big sister’s shoulder.

  ‘Yes. He asked me to take you home.’ Not strictly true, but this was hardly the time for splitting hairs.

  ‘Is he there?’

  ‘No, but your mother is.’

  ‘We could walk,’ Sarah said faintly. ‘It’s only up the street. I could hold Gracie’s hand.’

  Against the older girl’s shoulder, Grace Maitland’s head went back and forth in a gesture of negation.

  ‘Not after dark, hon,’ Jamie Mattingly said.

  And not tonight, Alec thought. Not for many nights to come. Days, either.

  ‘Come on, girls,’ Tom said with manufactured (and rather ghoulish) good cheer. ‘I’ll see you out.’

  On the stoop, under the porch light, Jamie Mattingly looked paler than ever; she had gone from soccer mom to cancer patient in three short hours. ‘This is awful,’ she said. ‘It’s like the whole world turned upside down. Thank God our own girl is away at camp. We were only at the game tonight because Sarah and Maureen are best buds.’

  At the mention of her friend, Sarah Maitland also began to cry, and that got her sister cranked up again. Alec thanked the Mattinglys and led the girls to his Explorer. They walked slowly, heads down and holding hands like children in a fairy tale. He had cleared the front passenger seat of its usual load of crap, and they sat in it squeezed together. Grace once more had her face socked into the hollow of her sister’s shoulder.

  Alec didn’t bother trying to buckle them in; it was no more than two tenths of a mile to the circle of light illuminating the sidewalk and the Maitland lawn. There was only a single crew left in front of the house. They were from the Cap City ABC affiliate, four or five guys standing around and drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups in the shadow of their truck’s satellite dish. When they saw the Explorer turn into the Maitland driveway, they scrambled into action.

  Alec powered down his window and spoke to them in his best halt-and-put-your-hands-up voice. ‘Not one camera! Not one camera on these children!’

  That stopped them for a few seconds, but only a few. Telling media blowflies not to film was like telling mosquitoes not to bite. Alec could remember when things had been different (back in the antique days when a gentleman still held the door for a lady), but that time was gone. The lone reporter who had elected to stay here on Barnum Court – a Hispanic guy that Alec recognized vaguely, the one who was partial to bowties and did the weather on weekends – was already grabbing his mic and checking the power pack on his belt.

  The front door of the Maitland house opened. Sarah saw her mother there and started to get out. ‘Wait one, Sarah,’ Alec said, and reached behind him. He had taken a couple of towels from the downstairs bathroom before leaving his house, and now he handed one to each girl.

  ‘Put these over your faces, except for your eyes.’ He smiled. ‘Like bandits in a movie, okay?’

  Grace only stared at him,
but Sarah got it, and draped one of the towels over her sister’s head. Alec swept it over Grace’s mouth and nose while Sarah fixed her own towel. They got out and hurried through the harsh light from the TV truck, holding the towels closed below their chins. They didn’t look like bandits; they looked like midget Bedouins in a sandstorm. They also looked like the saddest, most desperate kiddos Alec had ever seen.

  Marcy Maitland had no towel to hide her face, and it was her that the cameraman focused on.

  ‘Mrs Maitland!’ Bowtie shouted at her. ‘Do you have any comment on your husband’s arrest? Have you spoken to him?’

  Stepping in front of the camera (and moving with it nimbly when the cameraman tried to get a clear angle), Alec pointed to Bowtie. ‘Not one step on the lawn, hermano, or you can ask Maitland your bullshit questions from the next cell.’

  Bowtie gave him an insulted look. ‘Who you calling hermano? I have a job to do here.’

  ‘Hassling a distraught woman and two little kids,’ Alec said. ‘That’s some job.’

  But his own job here was over. Mrs Maitland had gathered her daughters to her and taken them inside. They were safe – as safe as they could be, anyway, although he had a feeling those two kids weren’t going to feel safe anywhere for a very long time.

  Bowtie trotted down the sidewalk, motioning for the cameraman to follow as Alec returned to his car. ‘Who are you, sir? What’s your name?’

  ‘Puddentane. Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same. Your story isn’t here, so leave these people alone, okay? They had nothing to do with this.’

  Knowing he might as well have been speaking in Russian. Already the neighbors were back on their lawns, eager to view the next episode of Barnum Court’s continuing drama.

  Alec backed down the driveway and headed west, also knowing that the cameraman would be videoing his license plate, and soon they would know who he was, and who he was working for. Not big news, but a cherry to put on top of the sundae they would serve the viewers who tuned in for the eleven o’clock news. He thought briefly of what was now going on in that house – the stunned and terrified mother trying to comfort two stunned and terrified girls still wearing their game-day facepaint.

  ‘Did he do it?’ he’d asked Howie when Howie called and gave him a quick shorthand version of the situation. It didn’t matter, the work was the work, but he always liked to know. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ Howie had replied, ‘but I know what your next move is, as soon as you get Sarah and Gracie home.’

  As he saw the first sign pointing him toward the turnpike, Alec called the Cap City Sheraton and asked for the concierge, with whom he had done business in the past.

  Hell, he’d done business with most of them.

  2

  Ralph and Bill Samuels sat in Ralph’s office with their ties yanked down and their collars loosened. The TV lights outside had gone off ten minutes before. All four buttons on Ralph’s desk phone were lit up, but Sandy McGill was handling the incoming, and would until Gerry Malden arrived at eleven. For the time being, her job was simple, if repetitive: The Flint City Police Department has no comment at this time. The investigation is ongoing.

  Meanwhile, Ralph had been working his own phone. Now he put it back in his coat pocket.

  ‘Yune Sablo and his wife went upstate to see his in-laws. He says he put it off twice already, and this time he had no choice, unless he wanted to spend a week on the couch. Which, he says, is very uncomfortable. He’ll be back tomorrow, and of course he’ll be at the arraignment.’

  ‘We’ll send someone else to the Sheraton, then,’ Samuels said. ‘Too bad Jack Hoskins is on vacation.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Ralph said, and that made Samuels laugh.

  ‘Okay, you got me there. Our Jackie-boy might not be the worst detective in the state, but I admit he’s right up there. You know every detective on the Cap City force. Start calling until you get a live one.’

  Ralph shook his head. ‘It should be Sablo. He knows the case, and he’s our liaison with the State Police. This is no time to risk pissing them off, considering the way things went tonight. Which was not quite as we expected.’

  This was the understatement of the year, if not the century. Terry’s complete surprise and seeming lack of guilt had shaken Ralph even more than the impossible alibi. Was it possible that the monster inside him had not only killed the boy, but erased all memory of what he had done? And then … what? Filled in the blank with a detailed false history of a teachers’ conference in Cap City?

  ‘If you don’t send someone ASAP, that guy Gold uses—’

  ‘Alec Pelley.’

  ‘Yeah, him. He’ll beat us to the hotel’s security footage. If they still have it, that is.’

  ‘They will. They keep everything for thirty days.’

  ‘You know that for a fact?’

  ‘Yes. But Pelley doesn’t have a warrant.’

  ‘Come on. Do you think he’ll need one?’

  In truth, Ralph did not. Alec Pelley had been a detective with the SP for over twenty years. He would have made a great many contacts during that time, and working for a successful criminal lawyer like Howard Gold, he would be sure to keep them current.

  ‘Your idea to arrest him in public is now looking like a bad call,’ Samuels said.

  Ralph gave him a hard look. ‘It was one you went along with.’

  ‘Not very enthusiastically,’ Samuels said. ‘Let’s have the truth, since everyone else has gone home and it’s just us girls. With you it was close to home.’

  ‘Damn straight,’ Ralph said. ‘It still is. And since it’s just us girls, let me remind you that you did a little more than just go along. You’ve got an election coming up in the fall, and a dramatic high-profile arrest wouldn’t exactly hurt your chances.’

  ‘That never entered my mind,’ Samuels said.

  ‘Fine. It never entered your mind, you just went with the flow, but if you think arresting him at the ballpark was just about my son, you need to take another look at those crime scene pictures, and think about Felicity Ackerman’s autopsy addendum. Guys like this never stop at one.’

  Color began to mount in Samuels’s cheeks. ‘You think I haven’t? Christ, Ralph, I was the one who called him a fucking cannibal, on the record.’

  Ralph slid a palm up his cheek. It rasped. ‘Arguing over who said what and who did what is pointless. The thing to remember is it doesn’t matter who gets to the security footage first. If it’s Pelley, he can’t just put it under his arm and carry it away, can he? Nor can he erase it.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Samuels said. ‘And it’s not apt to be conclusive, in any case. We may see a man in some of the footage who looks like Maitland—’

  ‘Right. But proving it’s him, based on a few glimpses, would be a different kettle of fish. Especially when stacked up against our eye-wits and the fingerprints.’ Ralph stood and opened the door. ‘Maybe the footage isn’t the most important thing. I need to make a phone call. Should have made it already.’

  Samuels followed him into the reception area. Sandy McGill was on the telephone. Ralph approached her and made a throat-cutting gesture. She hung up and looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Everett Roundhill,’ he said. ‘Chairman of the high school English department. Track him down and get him on the phone.’

  ‘Tracking him down won’t be a problem, since I’ve already got his number,’ Sandy said. ‘He’s called twice already, asking to speak to the lead investigator, and I basically told him to get in line.’ She picked up a sheaf of WHILE YOU WERE OUT notes and waved them at him. ‘I was going to put these on your desk for tomorrow. I know it’s Sunday, but I’ve been telling people I’m pretty sure you’ll be in.’

  Speaking very slowly, and looking at the floor instead of at the man beside him, Bill Samuels said, ‘Roundhill called. Twice. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all.’

  3

  Ralph arrived home at quarter
to eleven on that Saturday night. He hit the garage door opener, drove inside, then hit it again. The door rattled obediently back down on its tracks, at least one thing in the world that remained sane and normal. Push Button A and, assuming Battery Compartment B is loaded with relatively fresh Duracells, Garage Door C opens and closes.

  He turned off the engine and just sat there in the dark, tapping the steering wheel with his wedding ring, remembering a rhyme from his raucous teenage years: Shave and a haircut … you bet! Sung by the whorehouse … quartet!

  The door opened and Jeanette came out, wrapped in her housecoat. In the spill of light from the kitchen, he saw that she was wearing the bunny slippers he’d given her as a joke present on her last birthday. The real present had been a trip to Key West, just the two of them, and they’d had a great time, but now it was just a blurry remnant in his mind, the way all vacations were later on: things with no more substance than the aftertaste of candy floss. The joke slippers were the things that had lasted, pink slippers from the Dollar Store with their ridiculous little eyes and their comical floppy ears. Seeing her in them made his eyes sting. He felt as if he had aged twenty years since stepping into that clearing at Figgis Park and viewing the bloody ruin that had been a little boy who probably idolized Batman and Superman.

  He got out and hugged his wife hard, pressing his beard-stubbly cheek to her smooth one, saying nothing at first, concentrating on holding back the tears that wanted to come.

  ‘Honey,’ she said. ‘Honey, you got him. You got him, so what’s wrong?’

  ‘Maybe nothing,’ he said. ‘Maybe everything. I should have brought him in for questioning. But Jesus Christ, I was so sure!’

  ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll make tea, and you can tell me about it.’