It seems far more likely that he was brought here for the purpose of being killed.
“He had to have been forced to come here,” I say.
Kevin nods. “That’s how I see it as well. Especially at night.”
“Why don’t you come back here tonight and check it out?” I ask.
Kevin smiles. “You don’t pay me enough, boss.”
On the way back to the office, I’m feeling somewhat rejuvenated. Going to the murder scene is primarily responsible for this; it has focused me on the case, and at the same time made me more optimistic about its outcome. Nothing like the bloodstained scene of a brutal killing to cheer up Andy Carpenter.
I can see a son like Steven, who perhaps felt wronged his whole life by a domineering father, flipping out and murdering that father in a momentary rage. But I can’t see him bringing Walter down to the area we just visited and committing the murder in cold-blooded fashion. It’s possible, I know, but I just can’t see it.
Laurie’s ongoing recovery has also enabled me to concentrate on the case in a way I couldn’t while I was in fear for her. It was beyond distracting to be worried about her twenty-four hours a day, and I know now that I could not have continued on the case were she not doing so well.
She is in capable hands, and well protected, and while I will think about her a lot, I won’t obsess about it.
My only distraction now is Marcus, and the fact that more than sixteen hours have passed since Willie and I left him with Childs, and I have not heard a word. It’s ludicrous to consider myself responsible for Marcus’s protection and physical well-being, but if last night somehow ended badly, I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive myself for leaving him there.
I decide to call Laurie and see how she’s doing, only to realize that I neglected to bring my cell phone with me. It was a stupid thing to do: With all that is going on I need to be reachable at all times.
I borrow Kevin’s cell and call home, and Willie Miller answers. “Where the hell you been?” he asks.
I’m worried, so I decide I prefer asking questions to answering them. “Is Laurie all right?”
“Yeah, she’s fine, but we’ve been trying to find you.” “Why?”
“Marcus is here.”
LAURIE IS DOING PHYSICAL THERAPY when Kevin and I get home.
Willie is in the den with Tara and Waggy, feet up on the coffee table, drinking a beer and watching ESPN. Tara is working methodically on a rawhide chewie, while Waggy’s front legs are going a mile a minute as he furiously tries to burrow a hole in the carpet.
Willie tells me that Marcus is in the kitchen getting something to eat. I have seen Marcus eat once before, and it is seared into my memory. While I have stocked the refrigerator because of all the people in the house, Marcus will clean it out by himself. Then, if memory serves, he will belch once and start hunting for more food.
“What happened after we left last night?” I ask Willie.
“Laurie said to wait for her to finish her therapy. She wants to be there when we tell you. She’s almost done.”
“I don’t want to wait,” I say.
Willie shrugs. “You can always ask Marcus.”
“I’ll wait.”
Laurie is finished in ten minutes. During that time I hear noises coming from the kitchen, but I am not about to go in there to see what is going on.
She calls us to the bedroom; she is back in bed and obviously exhausted from her efforts. I have seen her run five miles without breathing heavily, and now a few minutes of exercise wipes her out.
“We talked to Marcus and learned what happened after you left. It’s not good news.”
“What do you mean?”
She nods. “Marcus asked Childs the questions you and he had discussed. He is confident that Childs had an incentive to tell the truth.”
“Who hired him?”
“Childs didn’t know; nor did he know why. It was all done in secrecy, and he had no personal contact with the man. He was paid two hundred fifty thousand dollars, with the promise of another two fifty when the jobs were completed.”
“Five hundred thousand dollars?” I repeat. It’s an amazing figure. Then I realize that Laurie said “jobs.” “There was more than one job?”
“Yes. Andy, Childs killed Diana Timmerman. He planted the explosives in the house.”
“What?” I look at Kevin, and he is as bewildered as I am. None of this makes any sense; it’s connecting two different things that I thought had no connection at all.
“Why the hell would someone want to kill you and Diana Timmerman?”
“Andy, Childs wasn’t after me. He was told to shoot the dog. He was told to kill Waggy.”
“Waggy?” I point to him. “This Waggy?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Somebody paid a hit man five hundred grand to shoot a dog?”
“Marcus was positive about it,” Willie says.
I have no idea what to make of this. It simply does not compute. “Where is Childs now?”
“That’s the bad news,” Laurie says, and she turns to Willie.
“He went for a swim,” Willie says. “But I don’t think he got very far, because he has a broken neck.”
“Marcus killed him?”
Laurie nods. “He was going to turn him in to the police, but Childs took another run at him, and Marcus got a little carried away. He said he dropped him in the river.”
“Damn.” Hearing that Childs is dead doesn’t exactly bring me to tears, and I’m not likely to reflect that his untimely demise “really puts things into perspective.” The problem is that now I have a million more questions to ask him, with no ability to do so.
The truth is that I am defending someone against a charge of double homicide, and I had the real murderer in my hands and let him get away. And thanks to Marcus, he’s not coming back.
Had I realized that the shooting of Laurie and the Timmerman murders were connected, I would have gotten all the information out of him that I could, and then turned him in as the real murderer. And I should have realized that the shootings might be connected; as Willie had pointed out, both Diana Timmerman and Laurie were connected to Waggy when they were victimized.
I’m so frustrated by this turn of events that I go into the kitchen to question Marcus personally, to see if he knows more than has been drawn out of him. I have to wait what seems like twenty minutes while he finishes chewing the four or five pounds of food in his mouth.
I ultimately get nowhere; Marcus doesn’t even know for sure if Childs is responsible for killing Walter Timmerman. It’s not Marcus’s fault; he asked the questions I wanted him to ask. It’s my fault for not understanding that the events could all be connected, though I still don’t know how they possibly could be.