The Firepit was indeed open for brunch, so Ralph went there first. Two of the staff who had been working on the night of the murder were currently on duty: the hostess and a crewcut waiter who looked about old enough to buy a beer. The hostess was no help (“We were mobbed that night, Detective”), and while the waiter vaguely remembered serving a large group of teachers, he was equivocal when Ralph showed him Terry’s picture from the previous year’s FCHS yearbook. He said that, yes, he “sorta” remembered a guy who looked like that, but he couldn’t swear it was the guy in the picture. He said he wasn’t even sure the guy had been with that bunch of teachers. “Hey, man, I might have just served him a Hot Wing Platter at the bar.”
So that was that.
Ralph’s luck at the Sheraton was at first no better. He was able to confirm that Maitland and William Quade had stayed in room 644 on Tuesday night, and the hotel manager was able to show him the bill, but it was Quade’s signature. He had used his MasterCard. The manager also told him that room 644 had been occupied every night since Maitland and Quade checked out, and had been cleaned every morning.
“And we offer turn-down service,” said the manager, adding insult to injury. “That means on most days the room was cleaned twice.”
Yes, Detective Anderson was welcome to review the security footage, and Ralph did it without any complaints about how Alec Pelley had already been allowed to do so. (Ralph was not a Cap City police officer, which meant diplomacy was the better part of valor.) The footage was in full color, and sharp—no elderly Zoney’s Go-Mart cameras for the Cap City Sheraton. He saw a man who looked like Terry in the lobby, in the gift shop, doing a quick Wednesday morning workout in the hotel’s fitness room, and outside the hotel ballroom, waiting in the autograph line. The stuff from the lobby and gift shop was iffy, but there could be little doubt—at least in his mind—that the guy signing in to use the exercise equipment and the guy waiting in line for an autograph was his son’s old coach. The one who’d taught Derek to bunt, thus changing his nickname from Swiffer to Push It.
In his mind, Ralph could hear his wife telling him that forensic evidence from Cap City was the missing piece, the Golden Ticket. If Terry was here, she’d said—meaning in Flint City, committing murder—then the double must have been there. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
“None of it makes sense,” he muttered, looking at the monitor. On it was a frozen image of a man who certainly looked like Terry Maitland, caught laughing about something as he stood in the autograph line with his department head, Roundhill.
“Pardon?” asked the hotel dick who had shown him the footage.
“Nothing.”
“Can I show you anything else?”
“No, but thanks.” This had been a fool’s errand. The Channel 81 tape of the lecture had pretty much rendered the security footage moot, anyway, because it was Terry during the Q-and-A. No one could doubt it.
Except in one corner of his mind, Ralph still did. The way Terry had stood to ask his question, as if he’d known that a camera would be on him . . . it was just so goddam perfect. Was it possible that the whole thing was a set-up? An amazing but ultimately explicable act of legerdemain? Ralph didn’t see how it could be, but he didn’t know how David Copperfield had walked through the Great Wall of China, and Ralph had seen that on TV. If it was so, Terry Maitland wasn’t just a murderer, he was a murderer who was laughing at them.
“Detective, just a heads-up,” said the hotel dick. “I’ve got a note from Harley Bright—he’s the boss—saying all the stuff you just looked at is supposed to be saved for a lawyer named Howard Gold.”
“I don’t care what you do with it,” Ralph said. “Mail it off to Sarah Palin in Whistledick, Alaska, for all I care. I’m going home.” Yes. Good idea. Go home, sit in his backyard with Jeannie, split a six with her—four for him, two for her. And try not to go crazy thinking about this goddam paradox.
The dick walked him to the door of the security office. “News says you got the guy who killed that kid.”
“News says a lot of things. Thank you for your time, sir.”
“Always a pleasure to help the police.”
If only you had, Ralph thought.
He halted on the far side of the lobby, hand out to push the revolving door, struck by a thought. There was one other place he should check, as long as he was here. According to Terry, Debbie Grant had booked for the women’s room as soon as Coben’s lecture ended, and she had been gone a long time. I went down to the newsstand with Ev and Billy, Terry had said. She met us there.
The newsstand, it turned out, was a kind of auxiliary gift shop. An overly made-up woman with graying hair was behind the counter, rearranging bits of inexpensive jewelry. Ralph showed her his ID and asked her if she had been working the previous Tuesday afternoon.
“Honey,” she said, “I work here every day, unless I’m sick. I don’t get anything extra from the books and magazines, but when it comes to this jewelry and the souvenir coffee cups, I’m on commission.”
“Would you remember this man? He was here last Tuesday with a bunch of English teachers, for a lecture.” He showed her Terry’s picture.
“Sure, I remember him. He asked about the Flint County book. First one to do that in Jesus knows how long. I didn’t stock it, the darn thing was here when I started running this place back in 2010. I should take it down, I guess, but replace it with what? Anything way above or way below eye-level doesn’t move, you find that out quick running a place like this. At least the stuff down low is cheap. That top shelf is your expensive stuff with photographs and glossy pages.”
“What book are we talking about, Ms.—” He looked at her name-tag. “Ms. Levelle?”
“That one,” she said, pointing. “A Pictorial History of Flint County, Douree County, and Canning Township. Jawbreaker title, huh?”
He turned and saw two racks of reading material next to a shelf of souvenir cups and plates. One rack held magazines; the other held a mixture of paperback and current hardcover fiction. On the top shelf of the latter were half a dozen larger volumes, what Jeannie would have called coffee table books. They were shrink-wrapped so that browsers couldn’t smudge the pages or dog-ear the corners. Ralph walked over and looked up at them. Terry, who had a good three inches on him, wouldn’t have had to look up, or stand on tiptoe to take one of them down.
He started to reach for the book she’d mentioned, then changed his mind. He turned back to Ms. Levelle. “Tell me what you remember.”
“What, about that guy? Nothing much to tell. The gift shop got way busy after the lecture broke, I remember that, but I only got a trickle of custom. You know why, don’t you?”
Ralph shook his head, trying to be patient. There was something here, all right, and he thought—hoped—he knew what it was.
“They didn’t want to lose their place in line, of course, and they all had the new book by Mr. Coben to read while they waited. But these three gentlemen did come in, and one of them—the fat one—bought that new Lisa Gardner hardback. The other two just browsed. Then a lady poked her head in and said she was all set, so they left. To get their autographs, I suppose.”
“But one of them—the tall one—expressed an interest in the Flint County book.”
“Yes, but I think it was the Canning Township part of the title that caught his eye. Did he say his family lived there for a long time?”
“I don’t know,” Ralph said. “You tell me.”
“Pretty sure he did. He took it down, but when he saw the pricetag—seventy-nine ninety-nine—he put it back on the shelf.”
And whoomp, there it was. “Has anyone looked at that book since? Taken it down and handled it?”
“That one? You’re kidding.”
Ralph went to the rack, stood on his toes, and took down the shrink-wrapped book. He held it by the sides, using his palms. On the front was a sepia-toned photograph of a long-ago funeral procession. Six cowboys, all wearing battered hats and holstered pistols, were carrying a plank coffin into a dusty cemetery. A preacher (also wearing a holstered gun) was waiting for them at the head of an open grave with a Bible in his hands.
Ms. Levelle brightened considerably. “You actually want to buy that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, hand it over so I can scan it.”
“I don’t think so.” He held the book up with the bar code stickered to the shrink-wrap facing her, and she beeped it.
“That’s eighty-four fourteen with the tax, but we’ll call it eighty-four even.”
Ralph set the book carefully on end to hand over his credit card. He tucked his receipt into his breast pocket, then once again picked the book up using just his palms, holding it out like a chalice.
“He handled it,” he said, less to make sure of her than to confirm his own absurd luck. “You’re sure the man in the picture I showed you handled this book.”
“Took it down and said that cover picture was taken in Canning Township. Then he looked at the price and put it back. Just like I told you. Is it evidence, or something?”
“I don’t know,” Ralph said, looking down at the antique mourners gracing the cover. “But I’m going to find out.”
Frank Peterson’s body had been released to the Donelli Brothers Funeral Home on Thursday afternoon. Arlene Peterson had arranged for this and everything else, including the obituary, the flowers, the Friday morning memorial service, the funeral itself, the graveside service, and the Saturday evening gathering of friends and family. It had to be her. Fred was useless at making any kind of social arrangements at the best of times.
But this time it has to be me, Fred told himself when he and Ollie got home from the hospital. It has to be, because there is no one else. And that guy from Donelli will help me. They’re experts at this. Only how was he supposed to pay for a second funeral, so soon after the first? Would insurance cover it? He didn’t know. Arlene had handled all that stuff, too. They had a deal: he made the money and she paid the bills. He would have to look through her desk for the insurance paperwork. The thought of it made him tired.
They sat in the living room. Ollie turned on the television. There was a soccer match on. They watched it awhile, although neither of them really cared for the game; they were pro football guys. At last Fred got up, trudged into the hall, and brought back Arlene’s old red address book. He turned to the Ds, and yes, there was Donelli Brothers, but her usual neat script was shaky, and why not? She wouldn’t have noted down the number of a funeral parlor before Frank died, now would she? The Petersons were supposed to have years before needing to worry about burial rites. Years.
Looking at the address book, its red leather faded and scuffed, Fred thought of all the times he had seen it in her hands, jotting down return addresses from envelopes in the old days, from the Internet more recently. He began to cry.
“I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t. Not so soon after Frankie.”
On TV, the announcer screamed “GOAL!” and the players in the red shirts started to jump all over each other. Ollie turned it off and held out his hand.
“I’ll do it.”
Fred looked at him, eyes red and streaming.
Ollie nodded. “It’s okay, Dad. Really. I’ll take care of it, the whole deal. Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down?”
And although Fred knew it was probably wrong to leave his seventeen-year-old son with this burden, he did just that. He promised himself he would carry his share of the weight in time, but right now he needed to take a nap. He was really very tired.
Alec Pelley wasn’t able to break free of his own family commitments that Sunday until three thirty. It was after five when he reached the Cap City Sheraton, but the afternoon sun was still burning a hole in the sky. He parked in the hotel turnaround, slipped the parking valet a ten, and told him to keep his car close. In the newsstand, Lorette Levelle was once more rearranging her bits of jewelry. Alec’s visit there was brief. He went back outside, leaned against his Explorer, and called Howie Gold.
“I beat Anderson to the security footage—plus the TV tape—but he beat me to the book. And bought it. I guess you’d have to call that a wash.”
“Fuck,” Howie said. “How did he even know about it?”
“I don’t think he did. I think it was a combination of luck and old-fashioned police work. The woman who works in the newsstand says a guy took it down on the day of Coben’s lecture, saw the pricetag—almost eighty bucks—and put it back. Didn’t seem to know the guy was Maitland, so I guess she doesn’t watch the news. She told Anderson, and Anderson bought the book. She says he walked out holding it by the sides, and with the palms of his hands.”
“Hoping to raise prints that don’t match Terry’s,” Howie said, “thus suggesting that whoever handled that book was not Terry. Won’t work. God knows how many people may have taken that book down and handled it.”
“The woman who runs the newsstand would beg to disagree. She says that one just sat up there, month in and month out.”
“Makes no difference.” Howie didn’t sound worried, which left Alec free to worry for both of them. It wasn’t much, but it was something. A small flaw in a case that had been shaping up as pretty as a painting in a museum. A possible flaw, he reminded himself, and Howie could easily work around it; juries didn’t care much about what wasn’t there.
“Just wanted you to know, boss. It’s what you pay me for.”
“Okay, now I know. You’ll be there for the arraignment tomorrow, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Alec said. “Did you talk to Samuels about bail?”
“I did. The conversation was brief. He said he would fight it with every fiber of his being. His very words.”
“Jesus, does the guy have an off button?”
“A good question.”
“Will you get it anyway?”
“I have a good chance. Nothing’s a sure thing, but I’m almost positive.”
“If you do, tell Maitland not to take any neighborhood strolls. Lots of people keep a home protection weapon handy, and right now he’s the least popular guy in Flint City.”
“He’ll be restricted to his home, and you can be sure the cops will be keeping the house under surveillance.” Howie sighed. “A shame about that book.”
Alec ended the call and jumped back in his car. He wanted to be home in plenty of time to make popcorn before Game of Thrones.