The Outsider_A Novel Read online

  “You can go down tomorrow. Pick out the coffin, and all.”

  “Where?”

  “Donelli Brothers. Same as Frank.”

  “She’s dead,” Fred marveled. “I don’t even know how to think of it.”

  “Yeah,” Ollie said, although he had been able to think of nothing else. How she’d kept trying to apologize, right to the end. As if it was all her fault when none of it was. “The funeral guy says there’s stuff you’ll have to decide about. Will you be able to do that?”

  “Sure. I’ll be better tomorrow. Something smells good.”

  “Shepherd’s pie.”

  “Did your mother make it, or did someone bring it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, it smells good.”

  They ate at the kitchen table. Ollie put their dishes in the sink, because the dishwasher was full. They went into the living room. Now it was baseball on ESPN, Phillies against the Mets. They watched without talking, each in his own way exploring the edges of the hole that had appeared in their lives, so as not to fall in. After awhile Ollie went out on the back steps and sat looking up at the stars. There were plenty of them. He also saw a meteor, an earth satellite, and several planes. He thought about how his mother was dead, and would see none of these things again. It was totally absurd that such a thing should be so. When he went back in, the baseball game was going into the ninth all tied up, and his father had gone to sleep in his chair. Ollie kissed him on the top of his head. Fred didn’t stir.

  20

  Ralph got a text on his way to the county jail. It was from Kinderman, in State Police Computer Forensics. Ralph pulled over at once and called back. Kinderman answered on the first ring.

  “Don’t you guys take Sunday night off?” Ralph asked.

  “What can I say, we’re geeks.” In the background, Ralph could hear the bellow of a heavy metal band. “Besides, I always think that good news can wait, but bad news should be passed on right away. We’re not done exploring Maitland’s hard drives for hidden files, and some of these kiddy-fiddlers can be pretty clever about that, but on the surface, he’s clean. No kiddie porn, no porn of any kind. Not on his desktop, not on his laptop, not on his iPad, not on his phone. He looks like Mr. White Hat.”

  “What about his history?”

  “There’s plenty, but all stuff you’d expect—shopping sites like Amazon, news blogs like Huffington Post, half a dozen sports sites. He keeps track of the Major League standings, and he appears to be a fan of the Tampa Bay Rays. That alone suggests there’s something wrong with his head. He watches Ozark on Netflix, and The Americans on iTunes. I enjoy that one myself.”

  “Keep digging.”

  “It’s what they pay me for.”

  Ralph parked in an OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY slot behind the county jail, took his on-duty card from the glove compartment, and put it on the dashboard. A corrections officer—L. KEENE, according to his name-tag—was waiting for him, and escorted him to one of the interview rooms. “This is irregular, Detective. It’s almost ten o’clock.”

  “I’m aware of the time, and I’m not here for recreational purposes.”

  “Does the DA know you’re here?”

  “Above your pay grade, Officer Keene.”

  Ralph sat down on one side of the table and waited to see if Terry would agree to make an appearance. No porn on Terry’s computers, and no stashes of porn in the house, at least that they had found so far. But, as Kinderman had pointed out, pedos could be clever.

  How clever was it for him to show his face, though? And leave fingerprints?

  He knew what Samuels would say: Terry was in a frenzy. Once (it seemed like a long time ago) this had made sense to Ralph.

  Keene led Terry in. He was wearing county browns and cheap plastic flip-flops. His hands were cuffed in front of him.

  “Take off the bracelets, Officer.”

  Keene shook his head. “Protocol.”

  “I’ll take responsibility.”

  Keene smiled without humor. “No, Detective, you will not. This is my house, and if he decides to leap across the table and choke you, it’s on me. But tell you what, I won’t tether him to the cuff-bolt. How’s that?”

  Terry smiled at this, as if to say You see what I have to deal with?

  Ralph sighed. “You can leave us, Officer Keene. And thanks.”

  Keene left, but he would be watching through the one-way glass. Probably listening, as well. This was going to get back to Samuels; there was simply no way around it.

  Ralph looked at Terry. “Don’t just stand there. Sit down, for God’s sake.”

  Terry sat and folded his hands on the table. The handcuff chain rattled. “Howie Gold wouldn’t approve of me meeting you.” He continued to smile as he said it.

  “Samuels wouldn’t either, so we’re even.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Answers. If you’re innocent, why do I have half a dozen witnesses who’ve identified you? Why are your fingerprints on the branch used to sodomize that boy, and all over the van that was used to abduct him?”

  Terry shook his head. The smile was gone. “I’m as mystified as you are. I just thank God, his only begotten son, and all the saints that I can prove I was in Cap City. What if I couldn’t, Ralph? I think we both know. I’d be in the death house up in McAlester before the end of summer, and two years from now I’d be riding the needle. Maybe sooner, because the courts are rigged to the right all the way to the top and your pal Samuels would plow over my appeals like a bulldozer over a kid’s sand castle.”

  The first thing that rose to Ralph’s lips was he’s not my pal. What he said was, “The van interests me. The one with the New York plates.”

  “Can’t help you there. The last time I was in New York was on my honeymoon, and that was sixteen years ago.”

  It was Ralph’s turn to smile. “I didn’t know that, but I knew you hadn’t been there recently. We back-checked your movements over the last six months. Nothing but a trip to Ohio in April.”

  “Yes, to Dayton. The girls’ spring vacation. I wanted to see my dad, and they wanted to go. Marcy did, too.”

  “Your father lives in Dayton?”

  “If you can call what he’s doing these days living. It’s a long story, and nothing to do with this. No sinister white vans involved, not even the family car. We flew Southwest. I don’t care how many of my fingerprints you found in the van that guy used to abduct Frank Peterson, I didn’t steal it. I’ve never even seen it. I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s the truth.”

  “Nobody thinks you stole the van in New York,” Ralph said. “Bill Samuels’s theory is that whoever did steal it dumped it somewhere in this vicinity, with the ignition key still in it. You re-stole it, and cached it somewhere until you were ready to . . . to do what you did.”

  “Pretty careful, for a man who went about his business with his bare face hanging out.”

  “Samuels will tell the jury you were in a kill-frenzy. And they’ll believe it.”

  “Will they still believe it after Ev, Billy, and Debbie testify? And after Howie shows the jury that tape of Coben’s lecture?”

  Ralph didn’t want to go there. At least not yet. “Did you know Frank Peterson?”

  Terry uttered a bark of laughter. “That’s one of those questions Howie wouldn’t want me to answer.”

  “Does that mean you won’t?”

  “As a matter of fact, I will. I knew him to say hi to—I know most of the kids on the West Side—but I didn’t know him know him, if you see what I mean. He was still in grade school and didn’t play sports. Couldn’t miss that red hair, though. Like a stop sign. Him and his brother both. I had Ollie in Little League, but he didn’t move up to City League when he turned thirteen. He wasn’t bad in the outfield, and he could hit a little, but he lost interest. Some of them do.”

  “So you didn’t have your eye on Frankie?”

  “No, Ralph. I have no sexual interest in children.”r />
  “Didn’t just happen to see him walking his bike across the parking lot of Gerald’s Fine Groceries and say ‘Aha, here’s my chance’?”

  Terry looked at him with a silent contempt that Ralph found hard to bear. But he didn’t drop his eyes. After a moment, Terry sighed, raised his cuffed hands to the mirror side of the one-way glass, and called, “We’re done here.”

  “Not quite,” Ralph said. “I need you to answer one more question, and I want you to look me right in the eyes when you do it. Did you kill Frank Peterson?”

  Terry’s gaze didn’t waver. “I did not.”

  Officer Keene took Terry away. Ralph sat where he was, waiting for Keene to come back and escort him through the three locked doors between this interview room and free air. So now he had the answer to the question Jeannie had told him to ask, and the answer, given with unwavering eye contact, was I did not.

  Ralph wanted to believe him.

  And could not.

  THE ARRAIGNMENT

  July 16th

  1

  “No,” Howie Gold said. “No, no, no.”

  “It’s for his own protection,” Ralph said. “Surely you see—”

  “What I see is a front-page photograph in the paper. What I see is lead story footage on every channel, showing my client walking into district court wearing a bulletproof vest over his suit. Looking already convicted, in other words. The cuffs are bad enough.”

  There were seven men in the county jail’s visitors’ room, where the toys had been neatened away in their colorful plastic boxes and the chairs had been upturned on the tables. Terry Maitland stood with Howie at his side. Facing them were County Sheriff Dick Doolin, Ralph Anderson, and Vernon Gilstrap, the assistant district attorney. Samuels would already be at the county courthouse, awaiting their arrival. Sheriff Doolin continued to hold out the bulletproof vest, saying nothing. On it, in bright accusatory yellow, were the letters FCDC, standing for Flint County Department of Corrections. Its three Velcro straps—one for each arm, one to cinch the waist—hung down.

  Two jail officers (call them guards and they would correct you) stood by the door to the lobby, meaty arms folded. One had supervised Terry as he shaved with a disposable razor; the other had gone through the pockets of the suit and shirt Marcy had brought, not neglecting to check the seam down the back of the blue tie.

  ADA Gilstrap looked at Terry. “What do you say, chum? Want to risk getting shot? Okay by me if you do. Save the state the expense of a bunch of appeals before you take the needle.”

  “That’s uncalled-for,” Howie said.

  Gilstrap, a long-timer who would almost certainly choose to retire (and with a fat pension) if Bill Samuels lost the upcoming election, only smirked.

  “Hey, Mitchell,” Terry said. The guard who had monitored Terry’s shave, making sure the prisoner did not try to cut his throat with a single-blade Bic, raised his eyebrows but didn’t unfold his arms. “How hot is it outside?”

  “Eighty-four when I came in,” Mitchell said. “Going up close on a hundred come noon, they said on the radio.”

  “No vest,” Terry said to the sheriff, and broke into a smile that made him look very young. “I don’t want to stand in front of Judge Horton in a sweaty shirt. I coached his grandson in Little League.”

  Gilstrap, looking alarmed at this, took a notebook from inside his plaid jacket and jotted something.

  “Let’s get going,” Howie said. He took Terry by the arm.

  Ralph’s cell phone rang. He took it from the left side of his belt (his holstered service weapon was on the right) and looked at the screen. “Hold it, hold it, I have to take this.”

  “Oh, come on,” Howie said. “What is this, an arraignment or a dog-and-pony show?”

  Ralph ignored him and walked to the far side of the room, where there were coin-op snack and soda vending machines. He stood beneath a sign reading FOR VISITOR USE ONLY, spoke briefly, listened. He ended the call and returned to the others. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Officer Mitchell had stepped between Howie and Terry long enough to snap cuffs on Terry’s wrists. “Too tight?” he asked.

  Terry shook his head.

  “Then let’s walk.”

  Howie took off his suit coat and draped it over the cuffs. The two officers led Terry out of the room with Gilstrap in the lead, strutting like a majorette.

  Howie fell in step next to Ralph. He spoke in a low voice. “This is a clusterfuck.” And when Ralph made no reply: “Okay, fine, clam up all you want to, but between now and the grand jury, we have to sit down—you, me, and Samuels. Pelley too, if you want. The facts of the case aren’t going to come out today, but they will come out, and then you won’t have to worry about just state or regional news coverage. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, the Internet blogs—they’ll all be here, savoring the weirdness. It’ll be OJ meets The Exorcist.”

  Yes, and Ralph had an idea Howie would do all he could to make that happen. If he could get reporters to focus on the question of a man who appeared to have been in two places at the same time, he wouldn’t have to worry about them focusing on the boy who had been raped and murdered, perhaps partially eaten.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not the enemy here, Ralph. Unless you don’t give a shit about anything except seeing Terry convicted, that is, and I don’t believe it. That’s Samuels, not you. Don’t you want to know what happened?”

  Ralph made no reply.

  Marcy Maitland was waiting in the lobby, looking very small between the hugely pregnant Betsy Riggins and Yune Sablo from the State Police. When she saw her husband and started forward, Riggins attempted to hold her back, but Marcy shook her off easily. Sablo only stood pat, watching. Marcy had just time enough to look into her husband’s face and kiss his cheek before Officer Mitchell took her by the shoulders and pushed her gently but firmly back toward the sheriff, who was still holding the bulletproof vest, as if he didn’t know what to do with it now that it had been refused.

  “Come on, now, Mrs. Maitland,” Mitchell said. “That’s not allowed.”

  “I love you, Terry,” Marcy called as the officers moved him toward the door. “And the girls send theirs.”

  “Same goes back to all of you doubled,” Terry said. “Tell them it’s going to be all right.”

  Then he was outside, into the hot morning sunshine and the incoming fire of two dozen questions, all hurled at once. To Ralph, still in the lobby, those mingled voices sounded more like invective than interrogation.

  Ralph had to give Howie points for persistence. He still hadn’t given up.

  “You’re one of the good ones. Never took a bribe, never pitted evidence, always walked a straight path.”

  I think I came close to pitting some evidence last night, Ralph thought. I think it was close. If Sablo hadn’t been there, if it had just been me and Samuels . . .

  Howie’s expression was almost pleading. “You’ve never had a case like this. None of us have. And it’s not just the little boy anymore. His mother is dead, too.”

  Ralph, who hadn’t turned on the television that morning, stopped and stared at Howie. “You say what?”

  Howie nodded. “Yesterday. Heart attack. That makes her victim number two. So come on—don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to get this right?”

  Ralph couldn’t hold back any longer. “I do know. And because I do, I’m going to give you one for free, Howie. That call I just took was from Dr. Bogan, in the Pathology and Serology Department at General. He doesn’t have all of the DNA back yet, and won’t for at least another couple of weeks, but they crashed the semen sample they took from the backs of the boy’s legs. It matches the cheek swabs we took Saturday night. Your client killed Frank Peterson, and buggered him, and tore away pieces of his flesh. And all that got him so excited that he spunked on the corpse.”

  He strode away quickly, leaving Howie Gold temporarily unable to move or speak. Which was good, because the central paradox still remained. DNA didn’t li
e. But Terry’s colleagues weren’t lying, either, Ralph was sure of it. Add to that the fingerprints on the book from the newsstand, and the Channel 81 video.

  Ralph Anderson was a man of two minds, and the double vision was driving him crazy.

  2

  Until 2015, the Flint County courthouse had stood next to the Flint County jail, which was convenient. Prisoners up for arraignment were simply led from one gothic heap of stones to the other, like overgrown children going on a field trip (except, of course, kids going on field trips were rarely handcuffed). Now a half-constructed Civic Center stood next door, and prisoners had to be transported six blocks to the new courthouse, a nine-story glass box that wags had dubbed the Chicken Coop.

  At the curb in front of the jail, waiting to make the trip: two police cars with flashing lights, a short blue bus, and Howie’s gleaming black SUV. Standing on the sidewalk next to the latter, and looking like a chauffeur in his dark suit and darker shades, was Alec Pelley. On the other side of the street, behind police department sawhorses, were the reporters, the camerapersons, and a small crowd of lookie-loos. Several of the latter were carrying signs. One read, EXECUTE THE CHILD KILLER. Another read, MAITLAND YOU WILL BURN IN HELL. Marcy stopped on the top step and stared at these signs with dismay.

  The county jail corrections officers halted at the foot of the steps, their job done. Sheriff Doolin and ADA Gilstrap, the men technically in charge of this morning’s legal ritual, escorted Terry to the lead police car. Ralph and Yunel Sablo headed for the one behind. Howie took Marcy’s hand and led her toward his Escalade. “Don’t look up. Don’t give the photographers anything but the top of your head.”

  “Those signs . . . Howie, those signs . . .”

  “Never mind them, just keep moving.”

  Because of the heat, the windows of the blue bus were open. The prisoners inside, most of them weekend warriors bound for their own arraignments on an array of lesser charges, caught sight of Terry. They pressed their faces against the wire mesh, catcalling.