On the Street Where you Live (12 page)

A short, trim, fifty-year-old with a stern face and deepset eyes, Marty had made the trip across town from the precinct because he had to satisfy himself that Koehler was still where he belonged.

While there was no question that the man was potentially dangerous, there had always been something about the case that bothered Marty. No question Ned Koehler had taken that final step stalkers often take: he had cut the telephone wires to shut down the alarm system in Graham's apartment and tried to enter it.

Fortunately the security camera her friend Eric Bailey—the dot-com big-bucks guy—had installed not only went on high-tech backup, automatically, but summoned the police and also took a picture of Koehler, knife in hand, jimmying the lock on the bedroom window!

Koehler was screwy, no question of
that.
Probably always had been on the edge, then the mother's death pushed him all the way over. He was right. Joel Lake, the bum whom Graham got acquitted, was the mother's killer.

But Graham was a damn good defense lawyer, Browski told himself, and our side just didn't prove our case.

And now Graham was the victim of another stalking episode, this one in Spring Lake. I've always wondered about Graham's ex-husband, Browski thought, as he opened the main door of the hospital and went into the reception room.

There were a couple of people at the desk, waiting to be escorted into the locked-up areas. He dropped himself into a chair and looked around.

The walls were painted a soft yellow and had some fairly decent prints tastefully arranged on them. Imitation leather chairs in small conversational groupings looked comfortable enough. Several side tables were covered with magazines that appeared to be of recent vintage.

Still, no matter how hard you try to brighten them up, these places are grim, Browski thought.
Any
place that you can't leave of your own free will is grim.

While he waited, he found himself weighing the possibility that Gary Harding White might have been—and might still
be
—the stalker. The White family had been prominent in Albany for generations, but Gary Harding White wasn't cut from the same cloth as the rest of the clan, all of them high achievers. Despite the privileged background, good looks, and a
good education, Gary failed at everything and was getting a reputation as something of a con man. A womanizer too.

After Harvard Business School, White settled down in Albany and joined the family business. He hadn't lasted.

Then his father dropped a bundle staking him to his own company, but that went bust. Now he was into something else, and that too was limping along financially. The word around town was that his father was sick of bankrolling him.

It had obviously driven Gary White up the wall that his ex-wife had a financial windfall. The way he'd sued for half of it appalled everyone, and in the process he'd lied like a rug in court and looked like a fool.

Had he been bitter enough to try to destroy Emily Graham's peace of mind by stalking her? Browski wondered. Was he still doing it?

But, Koehler was potentially dangerous. After all, he'd tried to attack Emily Graham in the courtroom, and he had tried to break into her house.
But was
he
the stalker?

Seeing that the receptionist had taken care of the people waiting around her desk, he approached and pulled out his wallet. Holding up his ID, he said, “Marty Browski. I'm expected. Will you let Dr. Sherman know I'm here to question Ned Koehler. Is his lawyer here yet?”

“Mr. Davis went upstairs a short time ago,” she told him.

A few minutes later, Marty was sitting at a table
opposite Koehler and Hal Davis, his lawyer. The door was closed, but a guard was watching through the window.

Ned's the kind of guy you want to feel sorry for but can't, Browski thought. A singularly unattractive man, Koehler was in his early forties. He was rawboned with narrow eyes and a sharp chin. On someone else, his head of thinning salt-and-pepper hair might have been faintly attractive, but somehow it only contributed to his overall disheveled appearance.

“How's it been going, Ned?” Browski asked in a friendly voice.

Tears welled in Koehler's eyes. “I miss my mother.”

It was the reaction Browski expected. “I know you do.”

“It was that woman lawyer's fault.
She
got him off. He should be in prison.”

“Ned, Joel Lake was in your building that night. He admitted he burglarized your apartment. But your mother was in the bathroom. He could hear the water running in the tub. She never saw him. He never saw her. Your mother was on the phone talking to her sister after Joel was seen leaving the building.”

“My aunt has no sense of time.”

“The jury thought she did.”

“That Graham woman twisted the jury around her little finger.”

Maybe she didn't twist the jury, Browski thought, but she
did
make them believe Joel's version. Not too many lawyers could get a suspect acquitted of a homicide when the guy admitted he was in the victim's
apartment and burglarized it around the time of the murder.

“I hate Emily Graham, but I didn't follow her around or take pictures of her.”

“You were trying to break into her home that night. You were carrying a knife.”

“I wanted to scare her. I wanted her to see how scared my mother must have been when she saw that intruder pick up that knife.”

“You were just planning to scare her?”

“You don't have to answer that, Ned,” Hal Davis warned.

Koehler ignored him and looked at Browski with unblinking eyes. “I was just going to scare her. I just wanted to make her understand what my mother felt when she looked up and . . .”

He started to cry again. “I miss my mother,” he repeated.

Davis patted his client on the shoulder and stood up. “Satisfied, Marty?” he asked Browski as he nodded to the guard to take Koehler back to his unit.

N
ICK
T
ODD
had picked up the phone to call Emily Graham a half dozen times and each time had replaced the receiver. When I ask her to come into the office sooner than agreed, I'll be stressing the volume
of work and the fact that we need her, he thought. Then, as soon as she's in place—I'm on my way out.

But no, he decided, it wasn't fair to do it that way, and it certainly wasn't fair to disclose his plans to her until he had talked to his father.

On Friday morning, Walter Todd called his son on the intercom. “Have you spoken to Emily Graham?”

“Not yet.”

“I thought we decided you'd go down and see her in the next day or two.”

“I intend to do that.” Nick hesitated. “I'd like to buy you lunch.”

There was a similiar hesitation at the other end of the phone. “It seems to me that we have an office account at a number of restaurants.”

“We have one at The Four Seasons. But this one is on me, Dad.”

T
HEY WALKED UP
Park Avenue together to Fifty-second Street. They agreed that the hint of mildness in the air after the cold, wet snap felt good. Spring was around the corner, they decided.

They discussed the stock market. No one could be sure if the dot-coms would recover.

They discussed the headlines about the Spring Lake case. “I'd like to throttle the people who turn a young woman's tragic death into a lurid, weirdo, media event,” Walter Todd said.

As usual The Four Seasons was filled with recognizable faces. A former president was in the Grill Room in deep discussion with a prominent publisher.
A former mayor was at his usual table. Nick recognized heads of studios and networks, well-known authors and business tycoons—the typical luncheon mixture of the well-known and well-heeled.

They stopped at several tables to greet friends. Nick winced hearing his father's proud introduction of him to a retired judge, “My son and partner . . .”

But when they were seated in the Pool Room and had ordered Perrier, he got right to the point. “All right, Nick, what's up?”

It was misery for Nick to see the tightening of muscles in his father's throat, the flash of anger in his eyes, the bleak pain that settled over his face, as he heard his son's plans.

Finally Walter Todd swallowed and said, “So that's it. A pretty big decision, Nick. Even if you get a job in the U.S. Attorney's office, it isn't going to pay you the kind of salary you make now, you know.”

“I know, and don't think I'm so altruistic that I won't miss the big bucks.” He broke off a piece of roll and crumbled it in his fingers.

“You do realize that being the arm of the law isn't all putting the bad guys away? You have to prosecute a lot of people you might wish you were defending.”

“That's something I'll have to face.”

Walter Todd shrugged. “Obviously I have to accept your decision. Am I happy about it? No. Am I disappointed? Yes. How soon does this Don Quixote scenario begin?”

You're also sore as hell about it, Nick thought, but that's to be expected.

The captain came by with menus and recited the specials of the day. A longtime fixture at the Four Seasons, he smiled benignly at them. “Always a pleasure to see the two Mr. Todds lunching together.”

They ordered, and when the waiter was out of earshot, Walter Todd smiled grimly. “The cafeteria in the courthouse isn't listed in Zagat's, Nick.”

It was a relief to see his father recover his cutting edge. “Well, maybe you'll invite me up here for a good meal every so often, Dad.”

“I'll take it under consideration. Have you discussed this with your mother yet?”

“No, I haven't.”

“She's been fretting that something is bothering you a great deal. She'll be relieved it isn't some mysterious illness. I confess I'm relieved too.”

The two men looked across the table at each other, mirror images distinguished only by thirty years of the inevitable toll of the aging process. Rangy shoulders; lean, disciplined bodies; sandy hair that was now totally gray in the older man. Crease marks on Nick's forehead, deep furrows on his father's. Firm jaws and hazel eyes. Walter Todd's eyes framed with rimless glasses, Nick's eyes more vivid in color, the expression quizzical rather than stern.

“You're a damn good trial lawyer, Nick, the best. After me, of course. When you pull out, it will leave a mighty big hole in the firm. Good lawyers are a dime a dozen. Good, make that
very, very
good trial lawyers, aren't easy to come by.”

“I know it, but Emily Graham is going to fill the bill for you. My heart's just not in it. I'd have started
to slip. I can feel it. She has your passion for the job, but when I go down to see her, I've got to tell her that the workload is going to be heavier than she expected, at least for a while.”

“How soon do you want to leave?”

“As soon as Emily Graham can take over my office. I'll move my stuff to one of the smaller ones in the transition phase.”

Walter Todd nodded. “If she balks about coming in before May lst?”

“Then, of course, I'll wait it out.”

She's not going to balk about coming in earlier, Nick thought.

No matter what it takes, I'll make sure of that.

T
HE WHINE AND CLATTER
of the backhoe began promptly at 8:00
A.M.
on Friday morning. When she looked out the kitchen window as she made coffee, Emily winced at the destruction of flower beds and decorative shrubs and lawn. The sprinkler system is being ripped up too, she thought, with a sigh.

It was clear that an expensive relandscaping project would have to be scheduled.

So be it, she thought, as she went back upstairs to shower and dress, carrying the coffee. Forty minutes later she was settled in the study, a second
coffee in her hand, her notebook on the ottoman.

The book
Reflections of a Girlhood
remained a treasure trove of background and information. The author, Phyllis Gates, continued to visit Spring Lake for three more summers after Madeline disappeared. In a diary excerpt in 1893, she referred to the fear that Letitia Gregg might have drowned:

Letitia loved to swim and was very daring. August 5th was a warm and sultry day. The beach was crowded with visitors, and the surf dreadfully rough. In the midafternoon, Letitia was alone in the house. Her mother was out visiting, and the maid was enjoying her weekly afternoon off. Letitia's bathing costume was missing, which is the reason behind the belief that she went by herself to cool off with a dip in the ocean.

Following the disappearance of Madeline Shapley two years ago, the sadness throughout the community is palpable, and a sense of fear is apparent. Since Letitia's body has not washed up, there is always the possibility that she met with foul play on her way to, or returning from, the beach.

Mother has become a fierce guardian, unwilling to have me even stroll down the street unless I am accompanied. I shall be quite glad to return to Philadelphia at the end of the season.

The author continued:

I remember how we young people would gather on each other's porches, endlessly discussing what
might have happened to Madeline and Letitia. The young men included Douglas Carter's cousin, Alan Carter, and Edgar Newman. I always sensed a bond of unspoken sorrow between these two young men, because Edgar had been very sweet on Letitia, and we all knew Alan had been smitten with Madeline, even though she was about to be engaged to Douglas when she disappeared. Another member of our group who is very low in spirits is Ellen Swain. She was Letitia's bosom friend and misses her dreadfully.

At that time, Henry Gates, a junior at Yale, was beginning to stop by more and more frequently. I had already set my heart on marrying him, but of course in those days a young lady was very proper and most circumspect in her behavior. It would never do to show affection to Henry until I was very sure that he was enamoured of me. Many times over the years we have joked together about this. Considering the unrestrained behavior of young people today, we agree that our courtship was far more appealing.