Authors: Elizabeth Adler
Harry let him out and the dog ran immediately into the trees. They could hear him snarling as they threaded their way after him, saw he had a man backed up against a tree. The man held his hands protectively out in front. Slumped at his feet was the body of a young woman. Harry would have recognized that flame-colored hair anywhere.
His heart fused into lead as he took in the chilling scene. That same heart was telling him to get the bastard, to kill as he must have killed. Adrenaline surged. Then his brain reminded him that he was a detective, that his job was to catch killers, not to kill them. No matter who the victim was.
His hands shook as he called off the dog, who came immediately to his side, never once removing its eyes from the man who still stood, too terrified even to move.
Rossetti swung his flashlight over Jemima Forester’s body, then up into the man’s face. It was Wally Osborne.
Out of the corner of his eyes he caught a glimpse of something else. A movement. Rossetti saw it too. The Sig Sauer was already in Harry’s hand, safety off. He yelled, “Stop or I’ll shoot.”
The person stopped for a split second, then took off, fast, into the night. The rat-tat-tat of gunshots ripped into the trees, echoing across the lake, black under the moonless sky. Harry was running hard, the dog ahead of him, while Rossetti cuffed Wally, calling for medics and reinforcements.
“Stop or you’re dead,” Harry was yelling. “Arms over head, down on the ground. Now!”
The person stopped suddenly, did as he was told, flung himself onto the gritty path, arms and legs splayed, hands flat. Snarling, the dog stood guard.
Gun in hand, Harry walked carefully toward his prisoner. “Bastard,” he groaned softly, almost to himself, thinking of Jemima Forester lying back there and this killer … on the ground in front of him …
He walked closer, knelt, went to check for weapons, saw his prisoner was a woman. Blazing, he grabbed her hair, lifted her head to face him.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, stunned.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Bea said so loudly Harry thought the shots must have deafened her. “I didn’t mean anything, I just came out for some air, I saw her there, I wanted to see what was wrong, see if I could help … I don’t know who she is … I don’t know why she’s there … I don’t know why she’s dead … oh God, oh God…”
Harry let go of her hair and Bea put her face in her hands, muttering to herself about not knowing what she should do.
Harry noticed she did not ask who the girl was, did not ask what had happened, did not ask if she was hurt or dead. Did not ask what the girl was doing there. Bea did not ask one thing about the victim.
Squeeze stood guard while he went back and checked Jemima, turned her onto her back, pressed his hand hard on her chest, felt nothing. Blood from a throat wound mixed rustily with her long red hair. Small pearls were scattered across the ground, remnants of the necklace she was wearing, part of which still lay across her white neck.
He went back to Bea. “Get up,” he told her, keeping his voice deliberately neutral. “Hands behind you.”
Bea did as she was told. Harry snapped the cuffs on. She stared at him, stunned. “You can’t do this,” she said. “Why are you doing this? What have I done? Why don’t you speak to me, let me tell you what happened…”
“So? Tell me.” Harry stood in front of her, his face unreadable. Behind him Rossetti was on the phone to Medical Emergency, explaining the situation.
Bea’s blue eyes widened in panic, words spilled out of her as though she couldn’t wait to tell. “I saw him.” She was talking quickly now. “I saw him do it. I did. I saw him … oh God I don’t know why he did it, there had to be a reason … the poor girl was just … here … maybe she was his girlfriend … or one of them anyway … maybe she was jealous … angry…” Those wide blue eyes met Harry’s pleadingly. “It was Wally.”
Rose had come quietly up to them and now Bea turned her gaze on her. A sob caught in her throat. She moved her cuffed wrists behind her. “Look,” she cried, showing Rose, “look what Wally has done to me. I saw him, Rose, I saw him with her.” She stopped and hung her head, as though in shame. “Oh, God, you were so good to me, you are an angel, you are the mother I should have had, you are everything I want to be. I am so sorry, Rose. I’m just so sorry, about Wally, but you knew what he was like with women. You must have known.”
Bea stopped talking and Rose stood for a long silent minute looking at her. Her blue and white silk caftan made a soft swishing noise as she turned and, without a word, walked away.
31
Harry looked at Wally Osborne standing silently under the birch trees, his hands cuffed behind his back, the dog at his feet. He said nothing when Rossetti reminded him of his rights, did not look at either detective, nor at the dead woman on the ground. Nor did he look at Bea Havnel, whose sobbing rent the night air, a low moaning that Harry had not heard previously, not even when he’d fished her out of the lake with her house exploding in flames behind her, not when he had confirmed her mother was dead, not when he had suggested social services would help her.
Harry had come to the conclusion then that Bea Havnel was a very independent young woman with a kind of inner strength gained through adversity. She had survived life with a drug-addicted “mother” who very probably was not her real mother, survived near-death by fire, seemingly with her innocence intact. Now, though, he was skeptical.
He was aware that Rose was standing next to him. The twins, Roman, and the nosey-parker kid were all standing silent and stunned, looking back at him, at their father, at Bea.
The wail of sirens broke the silence of the night, blue and red lights flickered through the blackness; squad cars; an ambulance, crunching over the sandy lane, squealing to a stop; medics hurrying toward them, dropping to their knees next to Jemima, rolling back her eyelids, a shot of epinephrine, for the heart, tubes, fast, into her arm, an oxygen mask. Harry knew it was too late.
The sheriff’s cars were there now, three of them. The officers stood silently, waiting while the medics did their work. When they had Jemima zipped in the body bag and placed on the stretcher and in the ambulance, they came forward, hands on their guns, looking at the wailing, handcuffed Bea, slumped on her knees, her blond head resting on the hard ground in front of her; at the handcuffed man they all recognized as the famous author; at his family standing in stunned silence.
“So, okay,” one of them said, “let’s get this show on the road.” He glanced at Harry, who nodded. The officer hauled Bea up. She was limp, unresisting. As he walked her to the squad car she turned to look at Harry.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” she called. “I told you what I saw, I told you the truth.” She turned her head and looked directly at Roman. “You’d better get me out of this,” she said, but Roman looked away.
The officer held on to her arm, getting her into the back of the car. “Save all that,” he said. “You can tell us the truth later.”
Watching Bea looking back at him out of the police car window as they drove away, Harry wondered about that.
He turned to Wally. Rose was standing in front of her husband as though to protect him. The twins held on to each other, terrified. Diz stood by himself, staring blankly at his father. Roman was expressionless behind his glasses.
After a moment Diz ran over to Rose. Harry heard him saying over and over, as he ran, “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean it, it wasn’t true what I said I saw … I’m so sorry, Mom…”
It seemed to Harry that suddenly everybody wanted to tell their version of the truth. He wondered what Diz’s was.
Wally was being put in the second squad car. Harry noticed that Roman did not make a move to help him. Harry went over to Rose. He didn’t know what you were supposed to say to a woman you had come to think of as a friend, and whose husband you had just arrested on suspicion of murder. Her head was bent, her gleaming hair pulled to one side. She gave him a long tired glance from eyes no longer golden brown, but dark with anguish.
“He didn’t do that,” she said quietly. “He didn’t kill that girl. Wally writes those things. He would never, never hurt anyone. He doesn’t even really know her, he was here with us, we had a dinner party … everything was normal…”
“Rose.” Harry was about to say the hardest thing he had ever had to say in his life, because he cared about this woman. “Your husband has been taken in for questioning in the death of Lacey Havnel.” He remembered Jemima’s face as she lay on the ground, alabaster pale, her brave ruby lipstick, her fiery hair and feisty personality. “And also on suspicion of the murder of Jemima Forester.”
32
Bea Havnel slumped in her chair, pushed back from the table in the small interrogation room. Her clothing was disheveled, her hair straggled over her downturned face, and she held her wrists out in front of her, rubbing the red marks where the cuffs had been. Harry almost did not recognize her as the fresh, young blonde he knew. Bea was a hot mess and her eyes were filled with anger at him.
“Why am I here?” she asked, in a very small voice, like she was a pitiful creature being held against her will.
“You know why you are here, Bea. Because you were caught at the scene of a murder. In fact two murders. You have to admit that’s not something that occurs often.”
Harry kept his tone reasonable, though the truth was he was bewildered as to how Bea had gotten to this point. He could swear she was an innocent who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only argument against that was that it had happened twice and one of the victims was her mother.
“What do you know about knives?” he asked. Bea said nothing. Behind him Harry heard the door open and Rossetti enter with the almost obligatory cups of coffee.
Harry watched Rossetti set a mug in front of Bea. She did not acknowledge him.
“Coffee, hon,” Rossetti said loudly. Harry knew he did not like the girl, and thought maybe now he had reason.
He said, “I have to inform you, if you do not already know this, that your mother was stabbed in the eye with a kitchen knife, the ordinary kind you’d find in almost anybody’s home.”
Bea did not raise her head.
“You told us earlier,” Harry rustled the papers detailing her version of what happened in the fire, “that—and I am quoting here, ‘her hair went up in flames and then she was running and then the whole place exploded and my own hair was on fire.’”
Bea looked up at him. “That is what I saw happen.”
Harry glanced at Rossetti, who was leaning in his usual nonchalant stance, against the wall, arms folded over his chest, eyes boring into the girl, who, Harry knew, he did not trust. Not one inch. So? Why did
he
trust her? Instinct, he guessed. Pure instinct told him Bea could not have killed.
“The fact is,” Harry said, gently now, because he did not want simply to trust his instinct where this young woman was concerned, because all the facts were against what she was saying. “The fact is, the autopsy confirmed your mother was stabbed before she was burned.”
Bea remained silent.
“Can you offer any explanation for that? Anything that differs from what you already told us?”
Again, Bea remained silent, seeming, Harry thought, to be thinking about what he had just said. Finally she looked up at him.
“My mother was on fire, the whole place exploded. I was on fire. I ran for my life as she was running for hers. Whoever stuck that knife into her eye did it after I ran from her. Not before. I am not capable of stabbing anyone, especially my mother, even though things between us were not what I wanted. She did things I did not believe in. She led her own life. I was just—” She stopped, then lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I was just along for the ride. She never wanted me. I knew it but I had no choice. She had all the money, she paid for me. And I did that. I looked after her all these years, because even though I despised her, despised who and what she was, I had an obligation to her. I did my duty,” she said, her tone serene now, looking at the two detectives as though to say “those are the facts now do with me what you will,” but with an undertone of confidence that Harry knew meant she’d bet there was nothing they could do. They had no evidence.
“And what explanation do you have for being at the scene of the murder of Jemima Forester?” Harry’s tone was cold now. The image of Jemima was engraved in his memory.
“I told you, the dinner party was over, I needed some air, I went out there—just to take a walk—a normal thing like that. And there she was. I practically fell over her. I had no idea who she was. I still don’t know who she is and why you think I have any connection, any reason even, to kill the poor young woman. My God, she can’t have been much older than me. Why, why, why would someone do this?” Bea put her head down and began to weep.
Harry and Rossetti looked at each other. Bea was right; they had no direct connection between her and Jemima, no reason to think she might have wanted her dead, no reason to believe she might be a killer. Except the coincidence of that knife in her mother’s eye. And the knife that had slit Jemima’s throat.
“I think I should get a lawyer now,” Bea said.
For a second Harry thought she was going to add, “Before I verbally hang myself,” but she merely looked at him, awaiting an answer.
“Of course,” Rossetti agreed. “And you are aware that this entire interview was videoed and can be replayed for your attorney.” He wanted it clear that they had not overstepped the bounds or broken my regulations.
“I understand,” Bea said. Despite everything, Harry felt sorry for her. He had no doubt when her attorney arrived she would be out of there fast. This time, though, he did not ask where she would go, where she would stay. It was none of his business.
33
Interrogating Wally Osborne was quite another matter. First, he came complete with family, Rose Osborne leading the way, determined, it seemed, not to allow him out of her sight.
“You can’t just take my husband and lock him up,” she told Harry. “He did nothing wrong.”