Impasse (34 page)

Stu's first impulse was, surprisingly, jealousy; he wanted to be the only male who mated with her. He fought it down. “You mean I'm not your first?” he joked instead.

She laughed. “I have enough experience to know that you're a good guy.”

“It's funny, and I'm sure this sounds strange coming from me, but the karma just felt right.”

Audry cocked her head, curious. “Stuart Stark, that's not very analytical.”

“Don't you agree?” He was suddenly nervous.
What if she didn't?

Audry spoke with great sincerity and looked him directly in the eyes. “I think it felt so right that we're ready to take the next step.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Stu, I'd like to make waffles with you.”

*   *   *

Breakfast brought the return of reality and discussion of the disaster in which Stu found his life. It might have been a depressing shift, but he felt a primal drive to resolve his problems now, and Audry continued to dot the conversation with knowing grins and I-can't-believe-we-just-did-that looks coupled with random, fascinated commentary on their sex.

“And this morning it was pointing straight at me, like a divining rod.”

“Maybe I like you a lot.”

“And maybe it's just the six-month thing. But, Stu, I want you to know that if this was just for fun, or just to find a human connection after crossing a metaphorical rope bridge together, that's okay. You have a life to sort out, and I understand that.”

Practically speaking, Stu knew she was right. She was always right, although not in the annoying way most lawyers were. “Understood. First things first. Sort my life. Call you when this is all over.”

“Don't make promises. Let's just enjoy some waffles together.” She tossed one on his plate and poured a syrup smiley face on it. “Did you resolve any of your bigger issues after last night?”

“I think you shook some things loose, yes.”

“I meant, did you put anything together from our trip to the office, silly? Do you have a cohesive theory yet?”

“Even better,” Stu said. “I have a plan.”

*   *   *

Stu stood on the porch of a modest one-and-a-half-story beige home with a recently built and still unpainted dormer that didn't match the roofline and looked like it had been added by an amateur handyman.

Rusty Baker answered the door in a white T-shirt and work pants covered with wallboard dust. He was strong, and his bulging shirt could hardly contain him. The retired detective had lifted weights like a fiend when Stu knew him, and he was stronger at sixty-five than he had been at fifty-five. He was also the most trustworthy man Stu had ever met. It would be a delicate conversation. Rusty wouldn't do anything illegal, even for a friend. After the thirty-year struggle of enforcing the law while avoiding daily ethical pitfalls, doing the right thing was anchored deep in the man's bones.

“Hello, Rusty,” Stu said.

Rusty stared for a moment; then his eyebrows arched high above his bushy moustache.

“Holy God! You're supposed to be dead.”

“That's what the last guy said. And I need to keep it that way. Can I come in?”

*   *   *

Stu's next visit was to the Great Beyond, where he found his favorite clerk. The khaki-covered teenager looked up from the cash register, staring. He remembered Stu's face but, fortunately, not his name.

“Hey, bro! How was your trip to Alaska?”

“Well, I survived. And I wanted to thank you. The equipment you recommended was a real lifesaver.”

“No problem.”

“I'm in a bit of a hurry today, though. Can you find me these items?” Stu handed him a list.

The young clerk raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Totally, dude. We can start with hatchets. Right this way.…”

*   *   *

It was difficult to read Katherine's e-mails, but fascinating. Piecing together a person's life from snippets of messages was harder than he'd thought it might be, especially when she preferred the phone and texting, mediums to which he didn't have access. His wife had grown tight with Margery Hanstedt, it seemed; there were numerous banal messages between them about who in town was doing what and going to be where on which night. There were also many e-mails about the beach house. And Katherine had apparently sold an entire photo series, which seemed impressive. But there was one thing Stu had learned about e-mail in his time at the prosecutor's office: there was always one that mattered. In Katherine's case, it was written six months after he'd gone missing. To Margery.

M, I so love your life, and I think I could have my own version of it now. I don't think the thirteen-year mistake was my fault. When I chose, it was a good decision. He had it at first. But despite all my work, somehow he lost it.

Stu read it again, parsing the grammar and syntax until he was certain. There was no alternative interpretation—
I'm the thirteen-year mistake
. It was jarring—painful, even; his wife had loved a life she thought he'd give her, but not him. He had to admit that she was right, though. Whatever that life was supposed to have been, somewhere along the line he'd lost it.

Most recently, Katherine's e-mails concerned taking a few days' vacation, though it was unclear what she was taking a vacation from, because she didn't work. Stu stiffened. According to Audry, Clay was gone too.

They're together.

He waited for this to hurt as well, but strangely it didn't. He'd already seen his wife frolicking naked with a man who was the opposite of everything he'd ever stood for. It had been dramatically framed for him in the picture window of the beach house.
Like a photograph.
This time, instead of injured, he felt provoked. The Stu who absorbed insults was dead, and having another male marking in his territory wasn't a new emotional wrecking ball; it was simply motivation.

*   *   *

Days later Stu sent Audry to Brad Bear's studio to sniff around. She insisted that she help, and it seemed a safe chore. Besides, Brad would recognize him.

Afterward she showed Stu how to create a reasonable facsimile of University of Oregon letterhead on her home printer. It didn't need to be perfect. If its lack of authenticity survived more than a casual read, it would serve its purpose.

There were two important phone calls to make, and Stu made the first from a courtesy phone at a bowling alley. For the second, he waited another day and delivered it from a prepaid cell phone Audry had purchased for him with cash. The first call was to the law offices of Buchanan, Stark, where he left a message with Kaylee, the young-sounding receptionist. The second was to an investigative reporter with
America's Unsolved
.

*   *   *

Sylvia Molson's home was located in the north end of New Bedford. Stu's wheelchair-bound client lived in a nine-hundred-square-foot single-level ranch-style house she rented near Brooklawn Park. Its happy yellow paint was peeling, and the ramp up to the front door was a makeshift plywood affair.
She hasn't gotten the bulk of her money yet.

Sylvia answered the door herself.
No caregiver.
She recognized Stu immediately, wheeled out, and hugged him until he couldn't lean over her chair any longer. He tried to immediately focus on the settlement, but she was less interested in her money than his well-being.
That's just how she rolls,
Stu thought, and he couldn't help but love her for it.

Stu hustled her inside before anyone could see them together.

“They found you!” she said, wheeling into her kitchen to boil water for tea.

“I sort of found myself.”

She nodded. “That happened to me after my accident. I didn't really understand my life until it was changed so dramatically that I was forced to reexamine it. Chamomile?”

“Thank you, but I'm in too much of a hurry.”

“You always were. You should try yoga. I'm practicing it again, you know.”

“I didn't know that.”

“I don't do as many poses, obviously, but I'm much better at the ones I still do. It's about focus. Clarity.”

“Speaking of clarity, I need to explain something to you.”

They spoke. There was lying involved, but it was for a good cause. Sylvia nodded, neither excited nor outraged, but simply processing. And by the end, she was the one reassuring him.

“Don't tell anyone you saw me. Not ever,” Stu reminded her for the third time as he walked outside and back down her ramp. “And call Roger Rodan today. He'll know what to do.”

“Be safe,” Sylvia said.

Stu gave her a wry smile. “Oh, I'm done being safe.”

 

CHAPTER 42

Stu took one last look up and down the Pope's Island dock and then threw a leg over the port gunwale of the
Iron Maiden
.

The boat was an older Hatteras, thirty-some feet in length. Stu didn't know much about boats, but he'd learned a bit during the case. The vessel had been expensive in its time, one of Bolt Construction's assets and a write-off. Aging now, it was probably still worth nearly a hundred grand. Stu had seen photos many years ago, and they were still seared into his memory, but they'd shown him nothing. And the boat had been admittedly “clean,” according to Marsha Blynn, Stu's own expert witness at trial, which hadn't helped him establish corpus delicti. She allowed that it was still possible that Butz's confession was true. There'd been no blood at the house, and so the idea that he'd dismembered the body on board the vessel was somewhat believable. But Rusty Baker had privately sworn the forensics guys would have found something if Butz had cut Marti with a reciprocating saw in the boat; it was too messy not to leave spatter that an amateur cleaning would miss.

Butz had probably struggled carrying and cutting up the corpse, which was no easy thing. Dead carcasses were limp and heavy. Stu had hauled a fully dressed-out deer only a few miles and had been sore the next day. Afterward Blake had laughed and suggested he build a litter next time. And Marti Butz had been a good-size woman. Stu had memorized her vital statistics for trial. Indeed, he'd been over the details a thousand times.

But never while standing here.

Stu leaned against the
Iron Maiden
's transom, imagining how Butz might manage a five-foot-six, one-hundred-and-seventy-eight-pound woman. Stu had always said it was difficult to think like a killer when one wasn't a killer.
But now that I am a killer, how would I manage it?
When he and Blake had dressed out their deer, they'd done it away from the cabin, just as Marti would have been taken out of Buzzards Bay. Butz would have stored her body in the cabin for the trip, of course. The cutting was then done at sea. The only place to work on a heavy corpse without the risk of getting blood on carpet, upholstery, or wood was in the open stern. Stu turned in a circle.

Unless …

When he'd gutted his first rabbit, Stu had stood beside a gurgling stream and held the carcass in the water. The blood had washed away even while he was cutting. It was cold as hell on the hands, but everything came out clean, and the entrails washed away to be recycled into the natural environment.

Stu peeked over the stern of the
Iron Maiden
. There was a platform that ran the entire width of the boat and sat only inches above the water. It was just wide enough to lay a body across.
Like a litter.
There was even a little door that swung open for access.
Swim platform? Do they call it that on a fishing boat?
Stu's heart raced as he pictured it: Butz crouching there with Marti's body lying essentially on the water, her blood washing away in the waves as he worked. It seemed obvious now.
Why not then?
Stu puzzled over it for a moment before it hit him.
The platform wasn't in the photos.
He was certain. The years hadn't dimmed the images in his head; the boat had been flat-backed, its name uninterrupted across the stern. Stu took a closer look at the platform. It partially covered the letter
I
. It was also brighter white than the boat, newer. The difference in shade was subtle, but it didn't quite match.
This platform is a replacement!
Stu realized. The platform that Butz had used to cut up his wife had been missing when the police searched and photographed the boat.
He'd removed it.…

“Hello?”

The voice startled Stu, but he forced himself not to spin around too quickly. He didn't want to seem as nervous as he was. He looked up through his dangling hair and smiled. The young man wore a polo shirt with a logo.
A marina staffer.
Stu breathed a sigh of relief. It could have been worse, much worse. The man was young, maybe twenty. Stu had known that visiting the boat was a risk.
This guy could remember me.
But, with the goatee and his long hair, Stu looked very different from the clean-cut attorney he used to be.
Besides, it's been worth the risk.

“Hello,” Stu replied as pleasantly as possible. Then he tucked his face into his chest again and pretended to fuss with the platform.

“Need anything, sir?” It was a test. One of the staffer's duties was to watch the docks for thieves, and he didn't know Stu.

“This darn platform is loose,” Stu said. “Almost killed myself stepping in. You'd think, being a construction company, we'd keep our equipment in better repair, but we've got lazy asses at Bolt just like anyone. Last employee to take her out obviously didn't stop to fix this when he brought her back in.”

“Need any tools?”

“Naw. I've tightened it best I can. I'm just gonna tell Reggie Dugan. He can get it fixed if it needs anything more.”

“Okay, then. Have a good day, sir.”