Stone Maidens (33 page)

He looked at her resignedly. “So if things don’t pan out the way you hope, what will you do?”

Prusik looked grim. “Assuming I’m not wearing an orange jumpsuit and asking permission from a prison guard to make a phone call to my lawyer?”

“Well, golly, Christine, did you think for even a moment about discussing this scheme with me?” McFaron rubbed his finger over his lip.

“Of course I did.” She closed her eyes. “And I knew what you’d say.”

“But, come on, Christine, we have the goods, the apartment evidence. Is it really worth potentially throwing away the case like this?”

“It’s really very simple, Joe,” she said matter-of-factly. “The killer is on the move. I made the call to catch him. And if I’m dead wrong, or get fired or worse, so be it.”

McFaron got out of the car. Prusik followed. A half-moon peeked above a row of tenements.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” she said, referring to the moon, hoping to save the tense moment from becoming any tenser.

“Yes, it is, Christine,” McFaron said with obvious resignation. “Look, under the circumstances...” He shrugged. He couldn’t let it go. “Christine, did you even stop and think that my job may be on the line, too? Did you ever consider that?”

“If you want to back out, I’ll entirely understand. I stepped out of the car before making the call, Joe, to keep you from being a witness so that your job
wouldn’t
be on the line. In fact, no one from my office even knows you’re here in Chicago. You can walk away into the night,” she said flatly, “and I won’t hold it against you one bit. You’ve done me a huge favor helping out in Delphos. I couldn’t have done that alone.”

McFaron studied her face. “No turning back with the directive, I suppose. It’s a done deal?”

“It’s probably in the prosecuting attorney’s hands as we speak, or it will be shortly.” Prusik had called her secretary and listened as Margaret keyed in word for word the directive to send to Prosecuting Attorney Gray, and then printed it out on the bureau’s embossed stationery. The older woman had shrugged off Christine’s promises to take the blame for any fallout, saying that if it came to it, she really wouldn’t mind taking an early retirement. After reading the copy back, she had faked Prusik’s signature and messengered the document over to Gray’s office.

“Look, I’ll admit it’s a risky move, and I understand your disapproval.” She looked Joe in the eye. “I’m prepared to take the heat if it backfires. If you need to be reminded, we’re talking about preventing the next murder, Joe. And evisceration.”

McFaron nodded somberly. “Under the circumstances, I think it’s best that I return tonight, see what’s what.” In a soft voice, he continued, “You and I both know that I’m not going to be of much help to you at this point. Convincing your people. If anything, they’ll misconstrue my presence, making things worse for you. And I certainly won’t be any help to my own office, the people of my county. You agree?”

The look of dejection on the sheriff’s face pained her. Dinner in a nice, cozy restaurant wasn’t to be. She had made her choice—made her bed as it were—although she believed in her heart that the decision had been made for her by circumstances at work that were beyond her control. She had no choice. She wished the sheriff would stay but knew that he couldn’t.

Christine took a deep lungful of breath. “OK then. Shall I drive you to the airport?”

The twenty minutes to O’Hare were passed in silence. As much as she wanted to, Christine restrained herself from explaining, again, her rationale for her actions; she realized that any hope of salvaging things with Joe would have to wait for another day. She glanced at him and was aware of his tight jaw, the muscles twitching by his eye. Whatever he wasn’t saying was costing him, too.

The car idled at the curb in front of the United Express entry doors. “I appreciate your flying up on such short notice, Joe,” she said. “I couldn’t have gone into that awful place without you. No way.”

McFaron pursed his lips in curt acknowledgment of her words. “OK then.” He opened the car door and placed one foot on the sidewalk. “I’ll call you later tonight. See how things are going.”

She couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact with him, fearing she’d lost more than just a good friend. A moment later Christine looked up as he was passing through the security kiosk near the entrance. He waved politely, his face restrained now, not like when he had first arrived and given her a beaming smile. Tears filled her eyes in the privacy of the car, and feelings of being at the end rather than the beginning of the relationship consumed her.

A clap of thunder startled her, and heavy raindrops started to splash against the windshield. Christine pulled away from the passenger unloading area and flipped on the wipers. Then she slammed the brakes and jerked the car back to the curb, staring at the wiper blade now stopped in its upright position. A thin line of red trickled down the windshield, then was gone under a hard rain that couldn’t wash away the fact it was real, as real as the evidence they’d uncovered this afternoon. She grabbed her purse on the passenger seat and fished out her pills, then removed a new evidence bag from her forensic case in the backseat and stepped out of the car, oblivious to the torrent. Warily, she scanned both directions of the access way leading to the airport, blinking away raindrops. Then she carefully lifted the wiper blade and with her other rubber-gloved hand gently removed the small blue-green feather caught underneath it and slipped it into a protective sleeve.

The next morning, two hundred and eighty-five miles away in Weaversville, Claremont’s parents posted a $500,000 property bond after a bail hearing, literally betting the farm on their son’s innocence. Afterward, Hilda stood beside her living room window, staring out into a late-morning haze, waiting for Dr. Walstein to arrive. Her husband hadn’t wanted any breakfast and was troubled by a new rattle that had developed in his Chevy truck right after the FBI had removed the seats, looking for evidence they didn’t find.

The Claremonts’ son remained the only suspect in the sensational case. Under the court order, he wasn’t allowed off the farm. Two deputies were to be posted there around the clock, and Deputy Richard Owens and his partner, Jim Boles, of the Weaversville Police Station were standing the first watch at the end of the Claremont driveway after accompanying the suspect and his parents home. Hearing air brakes, the police officers looked up. A local bus came to a stop at an intersection near the Claremonts’ cornfield. Alerted, the deputies watched for anyone getting off—a clever news reporter or photographer hankering for a camera shot of the suspect, but neither deputy could see as the doors opened on the other side. A moment later the bus started up, passing Owens and Boles in a flourish of diesel exhaust. Owens studied the spot in front of the cornfield from which the bus pulled away. No one was there. Maybe some kid on board had
gotten woozy and had to puke and then gotten back on board, he thought, and put it out of his mind.

A few minutes later, a jet-black Chrysler Concorde LXi pulled up to the deputies. Dr. Walstein tipped his Irish tweed rain hat and handed Owens his driver’s license. Owens checked his clipboard and then motioned Walstein to proceed down the drive.

The bail release terms required Claremont to submit to a psychological evaluation twice weekly. It also required the Claremonts to pay the doctor’s fees for each visit. Hilda hurried down the front porch steps as Walstein’s car crept down the drive. She handed him a check through the window so he wouldn’t have to get out.

“David’s down at the barn doing his chores, Doctor.”

Walstein followed the well-worn tractor traces around to the back of the barn. A muffled police broadcast sounded off in the cabin of the car. Walstein flipped open the glove box. The scanner’s diodes were flashing. “Jenkins reported that it’s for real—not a ten-fifteen. Claremont’s out on bail.” Walstein knew what the police code meant, confirming that David was no longer in police custody. He slammed the glove box shut, feeling nervous. David had been set free on a technicality, something about a lack of corroborative evidence. Was it more than just troubling visions? Had he missed something in the diagnosis? He drew his coat sleeve across his forehead to blot up the building perspiration.

A wooden ramp led up to a large set of doors that hung wide open. Walstein cut the motor, letting the car glide in neutral the rest of the way. He tapped the brakes, straining to see inside the cavernous barn before slipping out the driver’s side. He checked his jacket pockets. The syringe was in its baggie. He inserted his other hand cautiously in his other jacket pocket, careful not to touch the switch as he ran his fingers over the high-voltage Taser. He had no intention of using the sedative or the stun gun, but he’d promised his wife that he would bring them in order to allay her fears.

Walstein checked behind him one last time. He could see the police car at the top of the drive, just where it was supposed to be. The doctor let out a breath.

A shadow flickered past the ramp through the double doors, catching the doctor’s attention. Adrenaline pumped the doctor up the ramp. He hesitated by the open doorway, sniffing the fusty odors within. Bits of straw that had fallen from the high loft lay strewn about the heavily grooved floorboards.

“David?”

There was no answer.

Walstein ventured into the shadows, his shoes making hollow thuds, though he tried to keep his steps light. At the end of a long row of metal stanchions where cows had once stood to be milked, he saw light coming from behind a door cracked slightly open. An old rock tune was playing on a radio somewhere in the back.

“David?” Instinctively Walstein’s fingers entered the flaps of his jacket pockets. He walked past the stanchions, called out David’s name again.

Still there was no answer.

Something behind him bumped. Walstein spun on his heels, his hands in the ready position. He strained, blinking at the dark recesses, but saw no one there. A breeze caught one of the outer doors, slapped it back and forth. Overhead, there was a hay chute. A few wads of straw hung from its edges. A draft of cooler air found Walstein’s brow. He relaxed his grip a little in his pockets.

“David, this is Dr. Walstein. I’ve come for the required check-in, remember?” The doctor walked slowly forward. The doorway to the lit room was not twenty feet away. “If you’re busy, I can wait outside the barn in the car.”

Both barn doors crashed shut at once, consuming the doctor in sudden darkness. He aimed the Taser gun in the direction of the closed doors. The distinct tip-tap of rapid footsteps whirled him to his left. He thumbed the power button on. Six green lights glowed, registering full-strength voltage.

“Why, David.” Walstein sucked in a breath. “I...I didn’t hear you coming.”

The doctor took a step backward and tripped over a roll of baling wire, landing hard on the floor. Gasping, he struggled to pull his left hand out of his pocket. Rolling onto his side, he managed to free it. The hypodermic syringe hung from the doctor’s palm. Holding it closer, he focused on the measuring lines along the cylinder. The stopper was flush with the end of the cylinder, but somehow it didn’t disturb him that he’d injected himself with what was for him an overdose of sedative, given his slighter build than David’s.

A spear of sunlight cut through a loose barn board, highlighting the endless passage of dust particles. It wasn’t at all bad lying in the dark, only a little harder to breathe. Lethargically, Walstein blinked a few times, fumbled at the needle with fingers growing too numb to extract it from deep in his left palm. His arms went limp as a marionette’s, and he stared unfocused into space. The dimness above him shifted. Two eyes were gleaming down from the dusty vacuum of the barn—David Claremont’s face.

Or not.

Walstein couldn’t process the thought. A minute later he couldn’t even recall he’d had a thought. Suddenly he was rising with the dust onto his feet. How nice it was to be carried.

“David...you...shouldn’t...”

Walstein’s words came out not sounding like his, but that was because his mouth was squashed against the man’s shoulder. The doctor relaxed his chin into the well-worn cloth of the man’s jacket, like a baby does as it falls asleep. The lights went out.

Thirty minutes after Dr. Walstein had been cleared to enter the Claremonts’ residence Deputy Owens waved the sedan back out the driveway, recognizing the doctor’s Irish tweed hat, which was
pulled down low over the driver’s brow. The other deputy, Boles, glanced inside the car as it passed by him and turned onto the blacktop: no passengers. Owens checked off the doctor’s name on his clipboard and watched as the automobile slowly accelerated down the county road.

Neither deputy noticed the small swatch of fabric from Dr. Walstein’s jacket that had been caught in the trunk lid as it had slammed closed. And although the window glass was tinted, the appearance of a rumpled blanket across the backseat registered something in Deputy Boles’s mind. Whatever it was that registered, though, was lost when his cell phone chirped. He saw his new girlfriend’s number flash on the display, flipped open the phone, and gave her his full attention.