Stolen In The Night Part 11

Tess sneezed.

"Dust," he said apologetically.

"It's okay," she said.

"There's a Xerox machine over there, if you want a copy of anything."

"Thanks, I'll be fine," said Tess. She followed the dates on the shelves and found the section where the papers she wanted to look at might be. She took the first sheaf over to a small table at the end of a stack and sat down.

"Mind if we get a photo of you looking through the archives?" Chan asked.

Tess felt frozen inside, but she nodded politely. It was the price she had to pay. "Go ahead," she said.

"I'll see if we've got a photographer in the house," he said and he sprinted back up the stairs, wanting to catch her before she got away.

Tess began to comb through the papers. It was an arduous task, both hard on her eyes and on her heart. She read the accounts of Lazarus's life closely, looking for any indication of a friend or an a.s.sociate. In the process, she was forced to look past countless pictures of her own family, dressed in forgotten clothes, looking stunned and grief-stricken.

She was forced to stop for a moment to turn and look gravely at the camera of the photographer Chan had found for the job. Then she returned to leafing through the papers. She found a few items of interest among the many articles. There was an interview with one of Lazarus's old schoolteachers that talked about his life as a disliked and below-average student. No mention of friends or a.s.sociates. On the contrary, the teacher was eager to label him, as so many killers were labeled in their youth, as a loner.

There was another interview with his aunt, Rusty Bosworth's mother, who insisted that their family was like a Norman Rockwell portrait of Americana, and there had to be some mistake. There was also one reporter's account of trying to interview Nelson Abbott, but being met with only his scorn and impatience.

It was fascinating to Tess and repulsive at the same time. She used the copier for a few articles she thought she might want to read again, but overall she was disappointed. No new names from Lazarus's life emerged or caught her attention. She was about to give up when she came across an interview with the Phalens, who had owned the Stone Hill Inn and had taken in the DeGraffs so kindly. Obviously the reporter was grasping at straws, trying to offer some new, human interest angle on a case that dominated the local headlines for weeks. The article was innocuous enough. Ken and Annette Phalen expressed sympathy for the DeGraffs and outrage at the crime. But it was the photo that accompanied the article that caught Tess's attention. Tess xeroxed the article and then sat back down at the table, staring at it. Ken stood awkwardly on the front step of the inn while Annette and their toddler, Lisa, sat on one of the benches that flanked the front door. Lisa was struggling to get free from her mother's grasp. Ken, unsmiling, was slouching, his hands in his pockets, his black hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. For a few minutes, Tess could not put a finger on why the photo seized her attention. And then, her eyes widened. She took out her black marker pen and began to draw on the xeroxed copy. She drew a pair of large, black-framed gla.s.ses on Ken Phalen's face and stared at the result, her heart racing.

Jake glanced over at his nephew, who had his forehead pressed against the window on the pa.s.senger side of the van. Leo was sitting straight up behind them, his furry head poking between them, panting.

"Hey, Erny, tell your friend here to stop drooling on me."

Jake was rewarded with a smile. Erny immediately began to pet Leo's furry ruff. "Good dog," he said mischieviously.

They were approaching an all-too-familiar landmark-a humble gray farmhouse sitting on a neatly kept acre of property. Jake wondered for a minute if he would feel any different today seeing that house, knowing what he now knew about the DNA results.

Jake could easily have changed his route to avoid pa.s.sing the Abbott place and thereby avoid being reminded of Lazarus Abbott and what had happened to Phoebe. Avoid remembering that it was his own fault that his sister had been unprotected when Lazarus Abbott tore open the tent and seized her. But there was no use in that. Fate, he thought, and no use crying about it.

A black truck was approaching from the direction in which they were headed. As the driver signaled to turn into the Abbott driveway, Jake recognized Nelson Abbott at the wheel, wearing his John Deere hat and his customary scowl.

Part of him wanted to point the truck out to Erny and say, "Your aunt Phoebe was killed by that man's son." It seemed as if the kid had a right to know that much about the family history. Jake could imagine the kid's silent wide-eyed stare. But he decided against it, and, he realized with a mild feeling of anxiety, the DNA results had something to do with his decision to remain silent.

Instead, he continued on the meandering back road until he came to the entrance to the Whitman farm. "This is it," he said. "This is where we're going." Erny looked around as they turned down the driveway, which had been cut through acres of trees. Jake drove up and down several hills, past forest and field, past rock gardens and apple trees and rosebushes that were in the process of being wrapped in burlap for the winter "Welcome to how the other half lives, my man," said Jake. "Quite a place, huh?"

"Yeah," said Erny. "Who lives here?"

"A guy named Chan Morris. He lived here with his grandmother."

"Is he a kid?" Erny asked.

"No, he's not a kid now. He was a kid when he moved here. When his parents died. But that was a long time ago."

"Did they die from drugs?" Erny asked thoughtfully.

"Drugs? No," said Jake, frowning. "I don't know what they died of. I don't really remember."

Erny turned his head and looked out the window silently.

Jake glanced at him and suddenly realized that Erny was identifying with Chan, another child orphaned at an early age. That's why he'd asked about the drugs-because that was what happened to his birth mother. Jake grimaced, remembering the awkward silence last night when Erny mentioned his birth mother and how she'd gone to jail. He flailed around in his mind for a change of subject. Looking out on his left, he noticed the large, algae-covered pond rippling in the breeze under the branches of some overhanging trees.

"d.a.m.n," said Jake in an overly loud voice. "I wish I'd remembered to bring fis.h.i.+ng poles. We could've tried fis.h.i.+ng over there."

"That's okay," said Erny, but there was disappointment in his tone.

"No, you know what? I know a better place. Remember the lake near the mountain where we fished the last time? Well, maybe tomorrow I'll take you over there and we'll fish for a little while."

Erny looked at him. "Really?"

"Yeah really," said Jake.

Erny smiled. "Okay."

Coming up over a final rise, they spotted the Morris house nestled in a natural valley. It was a huge Colonial-style house surrounded by trees and gardens.

"Wow," said Erny.

"I painted that whole place," Jake boasted.

"Awesome," said Erny respectfully.

Jake pulled the van up in the driveway beside the house. He got out and opened the side door so that Leo could get out. Erny had clambered down on his side and come around the truck. "All right now, listen to me, you two," said Jake. "You can run around here. There are fields and stuff. Rock out. Just...no going in the pond. I've heard it's pretty deep. Have a good time. It's gonna take me an hour or so to finish this." Jake pulled a boom box from inside the van.

"We can go anywhere?" Erny asked.

"Don't go so far that you can't hear me when I call you. And when I holler for you I want you to come back. You got it? All right, scram."

Erny took off at a flat-out run with Leo chasing him, barking.

Jake smiled, watching them disappear over a hill, and then he set his boom box down and snapped it on to his favorite oldies station. Jake retrieved his brush and can of white semigloss from inside the van. Then he unhooked the ladder he would need. He knew it was dangerous to do a job like this without another guy to spot him on the ladder, but all his guys were working at a new job. And he had to get this finished. The season for outdoor painting was just about done for. This was likely the last nice week they would have. Besides, Jake was not afraid of heights.

He carried the ladder over to the side of the house where he needed to paint the third-floor trim and squinted up. It was so high up that it was hard to tell if the window trim had been sc.r.a.ped or not. He stuck a paint sc.r.a.per and sanding block into his tool belt with the paintbrush. All right, he thought, let's get this show on the road.

Humming absently to the eighties tunes on the boom box, Jake sc.r.a.ped and painted, working without stopping, other than to occasionally climb down to move the ladder. When, after an hour, he finished painting the last windowsill and stuck the lid back on the can of semigloss, he felt relieved to have the job finished. While he had been working, the mild day had vanished. The sky was turning dark and the wind had risen.

Jake descended the ladder slowly this time, holding on tightly because of the stiff breeze. As he carefully backed his way down and came eye level with the first-floor windows, he glanced inside. And then he stopped and looked again.

A slight blonde woman he recognized as Chan's wife, Sally, was sitting on the living room floor, propped against the sofa like a rag doll, her arms limp, her legs akimbo, her eyes glazed with pain. Jake hesitated. He didn't want to be taken for a Peeping Tom, but the woman looked dazed, as if she needed help. He tapped on the pane and her vacant gaze traveled to the window.

"Mrs. Morris," he shouted over the noise of the boom box. "Are you okay? Do you need a hand?"

She looked at him balefully, and for a moment Jake wished he had minded his own business. Then, slowly, she nodded.

"Okay. I'm coming right around." Realizing she probably couldn't hear him, he nodded and gestured toward the front of the house, to let her know his intentions. Jake quickly descended the ladder, went around the side of the house, and rushed up the porch steps. Just as he was opening the front door, he heard the sound of barking. He turned and saw Leo, barreling toward the house alone, barking a warning, like a canine Paul Revere.

CHAPTER 12.

Tess thanked Chan for his help and left before he could suggest another, longer interview. Clutching the articles she had copied, and keeping her gaze lowered, she hurried toward the door of the newspaper office and nearly collided with a man who had reached it at the same time. "Sorry," she murmured without looking up.

"We've got to stop meeting like this."

Tess looked up at the silver-haired man who had spoken and blushed furiously.

Ben Ramsey raised his hands in surrender. "I'm not tailing you. I swear."

"I didn't think you were," Tess said, feigning coolness as she opened the door to the vestibule and slipping outside. Ramsey caught the door and followed her through. She did not look at him, but started quickly down the sidewalk to the parking lot. Unfazed, he fell into step beside her. "I met a reporter here to do an interview about the case, actually," he said.

"Love that press coverage," she said grimly. "Good for business."

He ignored the implied criticism. "I thought you would be avoiding the press."

"I was looking something up in the archives," she said.

"What were you looking for?" he asked.

Tess sighed. Why should his persistence surprise her? He was a lawyer, after all. Persistence came with the territory. "It wouldn't interest you," she said.

"Actually, if it's about this case and Lazarus Abbott, it would interest me very much," he said seriously. "I thought a lot about what you said when I met you at the campsite the other day. The fact that you still believe you were right in your indentification. I mean, you seem to be a very intelligent, observant person. Maybe it's not as simple as a case of mistaken ident.i.ty."

Tess did not want him to know how much she had thought about what he'd said during that conversation. She thought about the photo in her pocket of Ken Phalen, transformed by a pair of drawn-on gla.s.ses. "Or maybe it is," she murmured.

Ben Ramsey squinted at her. "What are you thinking about?" he asked.

Standing there on the sidewalk, Tess could feel the warmth of the springlike day seeping into her. Ramsey's concerned expression, and his broad chest and shoulders were magnetic. She was tempted to lean against him. Tess shook her head. "Look, I can't talk to you about this. You're the Abbotts' attorney. You just won the victory of a lifetime for them."

"For Mrs. Abbott," he said. "Only for Mrs. Abbott. Mr. Abbott was not equally fond of me. In fact, he told me, on one memorable occasion, that I could 'stuff my bill where the sun don't s.h.i.+ne.'"

Tess smiled in spite of herself. "Well, it seems now that Mr. Abbott is one of Lazarus's biggest supporters. And among the latecomers rallying to the cause is his nephew, the police chief, who thinks I lied to protect my deviant father," Tess said in disgust.

Ben Ramsey shook his head. "Well, that's just insulting."

Tess felt grateful to him for saying that. "Yes, it is."

"So what was it that brought you here today?"

"I shouldn't be talking to you," she said. "We're adversaries."

"No, we're not," he said seriously. "We both want to know the truth."

Tess met his gaze and thought that if he was lying to her, he was the best liar she'd ever seen. She felt as if his eyes were drawing her to him, speaking silently to her in a secret language known only to the eyes. "I don't know," she demurred.

"I know how much fun it is to search through that pile of old papers," he said wryly. "I spent some time doing that myself, trying to get a clue as to what happened. I had a sneezing fit. Several of them, in fact. What about you? Did you find anything?"

Tess hesitated. "I'm very mixed up at this point," she admitted. "When I came here this morning, I had a theory. Something my son said to me got me thinking."

Ramsey did not even smile. "What? What did he say?"

His open, interested gaze made her feel safe, as if he were an ally. And part of her really wanted to tell him, but she knew better. It was time to terminate this conversation, she thought. Don't start romanticizing this guy, she thought. That is dangerous. He is not your friend. "Nothing important," she said dismissively.

Ben noticed her change of att.i.tude. "You know, I understand why you wouldn't trust me, but I probably know this case better than anyone in this town right now," he said. "And I can tell you that it became more than just a job to me. I've studied that trial transcript a thousand times looking for that missing piece of information that would explain what really happened. I'd be very interested to hear your theory."

Just as she was about to shake her head and hurry away, Tess suddenly realized that this might be an opportunity, and that Ramsey might be just the person to talk to after all. She looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Do you still have a transcript of Lazarus Abbott's trial?"

"Sure," he said.

"Do you think I could take a look at it?"

"Well, if it would be of use to you, sure."

"Great. Could I get it now?" she asked.

"If you don't mind coming with me," he said.

"To your office?" she said.

Ramsey grimaced. "Tess. Can I call you Tess?"

Tess nodded.

"I'm Ben," he said. "Call me Ben. Look, I know this doesn't sound too professional, but...I have to be honest with you. I just...um...got a pup, and I have to go home and deal with him."

"A pup?" she said, surprised.

"A puppy. He's only ten weeks and he's at that stage where he's kind of...high maintenance. Well, you know. You have a dog."

Tess realized after a moment's confusion that he was referring to Leo. "It's not my dog," she said.

"Oh. I thought..."

"Leo belongs to my mother."

"Well, in any case, I have to run home for a few minutes. It's only about ten minutes from here. And I'm coming right back..."

"I can't wait," said Tess stiffly. "I have to get back."

"No," said Ramsey. "You don't understand. The trial transcript is at my house. I meant, do you want to ride out there with me?"