The Last Thing I Saw - Stevenson Richard - Страница 12

She poured herself another quarter of a glass of wine. “I know it sounds…what? Exaggerated?”

“More than that, the way your mother expressed it.”

“I know. She picked that up from me. The dark side talk.”

“Uh huh.”

“But, you know, I think it’s true.”

“When you say dark side, I take it you’re not talking about the occult.”

“Hardly. The Wenskes are all laughably literal-minded. The spirit world is not for us, nor are we mentally wobbly or criminally inclined.”

“Then, what?”

“I don’t know. But Mom probably told you. Eddie used to disappear late at night and then lie to me about where he was. This was after I moved out of here for a while last year and stayed with Eddie. Bond and I had been driving each other up the wall—believe me, you don’t need to hear about that—and he couldn’t afford to move out, so I left until he found a job. He got into an Arby’s management training program, thinking it would be strictly a shift kind of thing, and the rest of the time he could work on his novel. The Arby’s thing didn’t last, of course, but we don’t need to go into that either. Anyway, I ended up at Eddie’s for three weeks. He insisted that I get his bed, and he slept on the couch. I was embarrassed and ashamed, but I was such a wreck at the time that I gratefully took him up on it. I’d drive here after work and fix the girls’ dinner, and then I’d drive back into Boston and sleep at Eddie’s.”

“It sounds dreadful.”

“It was. The first few nights he was so sweet and attentive to me, and he listened to all my woes, and it really helped. And he kept being nice and supportive, except often after I fell asleep, he’d go out and not come back until early in the morning, three or even four. I’d sometimes get up to take something for my headaches or go to the bathroom, and the light would be on in the living room and I’d look in and he wouldn’t be there. I asked him one time where he was and he said at the Globe. But he wasn’t even working there anymore, and I have friends there, and I asked if they had run into him, and they said no. I wasn’t spying on him, really, I was just puzzled. And when I asked him about it, he got really defensive. I joked about him maybe having a new boyfriend—this was when he and Bryan were on the outs—but he said, oh no, if he had one he’d tell me and introduce him. Which I believed. Anyway, this kept happening, and if I asked where he’d been, Eddie looked really uncomfortable and changed the subject. Once he actually snapped at me and told me to just drop it, and I could see he meant it, and I never asked him about it again. But it was all so out of character for Eddie that I worried, and then when he disappeared I was afraid that maybe he went out one night to wherever it was he needed to go after midnight, and that last time he just…he just never came back.”

Based on what I knew by then about Eddie Wenske’s personal and professional lives, this description of events was about as plausible as any I’d heard. But of course it explained nothing.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Back at the Westin, I phoned Timmy, and he was anxious for my report.

“I was going to call you if you hadn’t called. Good grief, I saw in The Times about Bryan Kim. What happened?”

“If you read the paper, you know about as much as I do. Kim was killed several hours before we were supposed to meet at the hotel and go to dinner. Apparently he was bringing along a third party, identity unknown, and I’m guessing it wasn’t just social. The point of the dinner was to talk about Wenske’s disappearance.”

“So then, does it sound like Kim being killed had something to do with Wenske, and somebody thought he had to shut Kim up?”

“It sounds like that, and it sounds like a lot of other things too. Such as Kim the man of many boyfriends may have once been involved with a psycho who turned up again, this time off his meds. Or Kim the investigative reporter may have been digging into something that made somebody feel threatened enough to want to shut him up and maybe serve as a warning to others. Or Kim had his own secret dark side, so-called, that led to his brutal murder. The list goes on, and I am going to hope that the Boston cops are competent enough to explore all the possibilities. The guy in charge seems capable, so we’ll see.”

“Sure,” Timmy said, “I suppose lots of scenarios are plausible. But don’t you think it’s more than coincidence that Kim was killed just before he was bringing somebody along to meet you to talk about Wenske’s disappearance?”

“Probably.”

“And you haven’t heard from the third diner?”

“No, but he may not have my cell number or email address. I take it there have been no odd messages at the house.”

“None, no.”

“Anyway, with Kim killed, the third diner may have been scared off. I might never know who he is.”

“Is or was. Maybe he was killed too.”

This had not occurred to me—maybe because my need to talk to this mystery man was so great that I had to believe that eventually I would identify him and track him down and learn why Bryan Kim was bringing him along to talk about the missing Eddie Wenske.

“Timothy, that’s an unsettling possibility you have introduced into the equation. Maybe I should be looking into who else in greater Boston was murdered yesterday afternoon.”

“That should be easy, right? Boston is not the murder capital of North America.”

“No, but it’s not Walden Pond in the 1840s either. There’s a lot of drug-related violence. Bad gang stuff, including innocent bystanders dying young and pointlessly. Of course, it’s unlikely Bryan Kim would be bringing any of those people along to dine out in Back Bay on a Saturday night.”

“Really? But there’s the drug connection coming up again. Maybe all that ugly Weed Wars stuff really will end up leading to an explanation for Eddie Wenske’s disappearance.”

Why was it that whenever I discussed anything important with Timothy Callahan, I nearly always ended up thinking, yes, on the one hand this, on the other hand that. Maybe because it was so often true that the way things eventually worked out was awfully complicated.

§ § §

I meant to get in touch with Marsden Davis first thing Monday morning, but I didn’t have to, because he called me.

“What were you doing in Bryan Kim’s apartment, Strachey? That location is a crime scene, as was clearly indicated. You entered the apartment illegally. Please tell me, if it wouldn’t put you out too much, what the fuck am I supposed to think of that?”

“I don’t know. What do you think of it?”

“I think the forensics team did a second sweep of the scene late yesterday afternoon looking for prints, and I already have a couple of hits. Yours was one of them. You didn’t mention to me that you were once in Army Intelligence.”

“I’m sworn to secrecy. I can’t talk about that.”

“Bullshit. I’ve seen your military records. You’ve been an intel analyst, and you are also a good marksman. And I’ll bet you anything that you also received training in hand to hand combat, including how to cut a man with a knife and leave him dead.”

“There was something in basic training on that, but I wasn’t paying attention. So, am I now a suspect in the murder of Bryan Kim? You’re informing me in a casual phone call that I might soon be arrested and charged in the case?”

“Of course not. Your story checks out on visiting the Globe offices, and before that your EZ Pass records have you on the Mass Pike from 11:42 am to 1:58 pm yesterday. So you couldn’t have done it. Bryan Kim was killed, we now know, between two and three o’clock, while you were at the Globe offices. But you were in Kim’s apartment at some point—specifically in the kitchen and the bathroom and touching the books on Kim’s book shelves—and I would like you to please tell me exactly when that was and also what the fuck you thought you were doing in there?”