Authors: Jon Talton
Powers of Arrest (14 page)
Will handled a call as PIO and talked on camera. The idea was to have him out there in public as much as possible, to try to lure the killer. After dark, he drove back to Hyde Park, his car in the fast flow of traffic gliding along above the river on Columbia Parkway, his mind forced into a trench of unthinking, if only for now. He didn’t look south, where the big river met its lethal tributary. He didn’t look up the bluff to the north, where Kristen Gruber’s condo perched.
In fifteen minutes, he was on the big-trees street in front of the sprawling Tudor, its blond bricks preening in the ornamental lighting. Every room inside was lit. It would have been a good account for Cincinnati Gas & Electric, if the company still existed, and hadn’t been lost in the endless takeovers that had shaken the city in recent years. Dodds was following him, but it would have to be. Will could make excuses later. He was still running an errand for his ex, more than she knew.
The phone inside rang six times before a man’s voice answered. Will watched him standing in the dining room, with a proprietary hand on his ex-wife’s shoulder.
“Brad, it’s your predecessor, Will Borders. Would you please put Cindy on the phone?”
“Will.” He hesitated. “We sat down to supper a moment ago and Cynthia has had a long day. Maybe I could ask her to call you later.”
“That won’t do. I’ll only take a minute.”
After some muffles and distant, indiscernible voices, she came on the line, her voice brittle with anger.
“You’re very rude.”
She said it after she walked out of the brightly lit dining room and disappeared into some other chamber of the huge manse.
“Is John there?”
“Yes, he’s going to join us for dinner.”
“I want to talk to him now.”
“You listen to…”
“Now, Cindy. I’m in the car right in front. This is police business. Send him out here.”
It took a long time. Then the big front door opened and John walked reluctantly to the curb and climbed in. He was neatly dressed and his hair was freshly cut, but he was everything that Zack Miller was not: a little pudgy, a dusting of acne, no athletic grace in his movements. Will felt sorry for the kid, and reminded himself that John wasn’t a kid anymore. But he also knew how much the surface, how much appearances mattered at John’s age.
He started the car and drove down the street lined with fine houses, turning left on Edwards, crossing Observatory and gliding into Hyde Park Square, where Erie Avenue split around a narrow park that held a statue, fountain, flower gardens, and trees. Each side was lined with expensive shops, galleries and cafés, although it looked slightly ragged from the recession. The night was pleasant and couples strolled under period lampposts. Will had thought about taking a longer drive, maybe all over the city. But he was too tired. And he needed to get back into “bait” mode. He was running out of time. He slid the car into one of the angled parking places a few doors down from the landmark two-story fire station.
“What’s up?”
Will stared straight ahead. He didn’t want to look at John, didn’t want to notice tells that he might be lying. He said, “Where were you on Saturday night?”
“I dunno. I’d have to think about it. Chillin’, I guess.”
He was lying already. Why was he lying? Will was afraid to speculate.
“I enjoyed having a beer with you the other night,” Will said, fighting to change the tone in his voice from accusation.
“Yeah, me, too.” John’s voice was wary.
“I got the sense you wanted to tell me something,” Will said. A young family went by on the sidewalk, two little children squealing in delight. What would they grow up to be? “John, if there’s something you want to tell me, it’s really important that you do it. Understand? It will really matter if you tell me on your own, if you make the decision to come to me and tell me what you wanted to say three nights ago.”
He wanted to say something like,
you can trust me, I won’t judge you
. And he wanted those things to be true, but he also had the badge and, had, as the young cop said to him, powers of arrest. The inside of the car was starting to warm up but he didn’t crack a window. A noiseless expanse of time did nothing to stop the spasms in his legs. The next sound he heard was John crying. It was an ugly suppressed sobbing. The more he tried to hold it in, the worse it burst out after a few seconds. Will held back the instinct to put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“She was…dead in there,” he finally managed. “There was blood everywhere. He’d cut her up between her legs and spread them wide open. And…she was staring at me with those dead eyes…”
“Dead in where?”
“The boat. I went over to check. She was dead…”
“Was anyone else aboard?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Try to remember!” Will knew he shouldn’t have shouted, but his ass was on the line now, too. “You said, ‘he’d cut her…’ Who cut her?”
“I don’t know. It was only a figure of expression.” John sniffled loudly. Neither of them had a Kleenex. Will usually kept a pack in the car for moments like this with the family or friends of a victim. “Nobody was on deck. I ran the flashlight into the cabin and I couldn’t see anything at first. Then I saw her, and got out. I was really scared.”
“How did you know she was dead?”
He hesitated, as if he hadn’t even considered it. “There was so much blood,” he said. “It was all over the walls, a big pool of it on the floor, and she was so white.”
“You didn’t check her pulse?”
“I was afraid to step into the blood.”
Will didn’t understand the contradiction: how John could go aboard to see if anything was wrong, but then see a bloody woman and not check to see if she were still alive. He’d been in Boy Scouts awhile and knew some first aid. This was the kind of thing that a skilled interrogator could start to break down, take apart, and drive a truck through. Will realized that he was desensitized to seeing the dead and being up to his elbows in blood. But John’s story still didn’t fit, unless you believed he first really did want to impress Heather Bridges and then, after he was aboard, became frightened and fled. It was all what a jury would believe—Will was that far down the line in his reasoning.
“What else can you remember about the boat? Anything on deck or in the cabin that seemed odd to you?”
“It smelled funny in the cabin,” John said. “I couldn’t place it at first, but now I think it smelled like bleach.”
Will stared at the steering wheel, losing his last grain of hope that John’s presence on that boat was all a big misunderstanding. He had been there. “Did you know who the woman was?”
“Yes.” His voice was quiet. “Kristen.”
Will rolled down a window and the sweet Cincinnati spring breeze unseemly intruded.
“Why were you even on the river that night?” Will demanded.
“I was on a boat with some friends from school.”
He ran John through the same line of questions as he used on his supposed friends from school: What time did they leave the Serpentine Wall, who was aboard, when did they see Kristen’s boat, how far up the Licking River they went, how long they were partying, and when they saw the boat on the return trip. It all jibed. In fact, John had a more precise time for the second encounter with the death boat: a few minutes before four a.m.
“What were you doing upriver for so long?” Will asked.
“We had some drinks. Then Zack handed out E. Ecstasy.”
“I know what E means. What else?”
John rolled down his window and stuck an elbow out. “People started hooking up. I was with Heather.”
“Really?” Will didn’t say it in a scandalized parent’s voice, the way Cindy would, but with a sharp snap of skepticism. John looked at him with hate.
“I guess Zack fucked all three girls,” John said darkly. “Maybe the girls played with each other, too. I don’t know. I passed out.”
Will made him answer it again. He sounded credible.
“I watched Zack and Heather bumping nasties, if you really want to know the truth,” John said. “I didn’t want to see any of it, but they woke me up.”
“Why would you get on the boat with these kids, John?”
“I didn’t want to! Heather and I were going to have a picnic at Sawyer Point. Only us. I asked her out. Thought she liked me. Then that douche nozzle pulls up in his fancy boat and she wanted to go. She invited me. Zack would have been happy to leave me at the wall.”
Will took it in and said nothing.
“Are you carrying your knife?”
The boy stiffened in his seat and nodded.
“Let me see it, please.”
John reluctantly reached in his pants pocket and handed it to Will, who switched on the dome light and unfolded the knife, which locked in place. It was heavy and all black, with a web-textured steel handle and spear point. “Blackhawk!” was emblazoned on the surface of the blade. It was very sharp. Although the blade looked a legal length, the whole unfolded knife appeared almost eight inches long. He examined it for dried blood; found none. John could have cleaned it. The Gruber autopsy showed such brutal knife wounds that it was difficult to determine the shape or edge characteristics of the blade, but it probably wasn’t serrated. This blade wasn’t serrated.
Will asked John if he had bought the knife. He said he had ordered it online for eighty dollars.
“And tell me again why you would carry a knife?”
“So I’d feel safe.”
“Ever been in a knife fight?”
“No,” John said softly.
“Ever use this knife for anything?”
He shook his head.
The motion made Will’s own headache worse. He should have popped some Advils. It was probably only stress. Or a brain tumor.
“John, let me give you a scenario. While your friends were partying and high, or sleeping, or whatever, you unlashed the Zodiac from Zack Miller’s boat and went downriver. You climbed on Kristen’s boat. You threatened her with the knife and made her handcuff herself. Then you stabbed her over and over again…”
“No…No…” He was sobbing again.
“Then you got back to Zack’s boat, tied up, and you have an alibi for when you all discover her later.”
“It’s not true!” he shouted, the streetlights shining on his tears. Some mannerly East Siders walked by a little faster, but didn’t look at them.
Will let out a long breath. “I don’t want it to be true, John. But the police found a shoe-print on the boat, and some hairs. The odds are they’ll be yours.”
John was completely silent.
“Where were you on Sunday night?”
“What is it with you?” John exploded. “I have to account for every second like a ten-year-old?”
Will wanted to say, then stop acting like a ten-year-old. But, calmly, “Two nursing students were killed up at Oxford, John. They were killed with a knife, like Kristen Gruber was.”
A gasp came from the shadow in the other seat. It relieved Will.
“You don’t think…? It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything!”
“But you told me you partied up there. Did you see some pretty nursing students? Maybe they gave you the brush-off in a bar and you decided to get even.”
“I was home with mom. You can ask her. We rented a movie.”
Will finally let out a breath.
“You have to go to the police. I’m going to give you the name and number of a detective in Covington. I want you to call her in the morning. All you have to do is tell her what happened. Tell her the truth. You were scared. But you want to come forward and do the right thing. Now, did anyone see you with this knife that night?”
“No.”
“Think, John. Did they?”
He almost cringed in the seat. “No! Nobody saw it.”
“Then I’m going to borrow it. I’ve borrowed it for a month, okay? So you haven’t had it.”
“I thought you said tell the truth.”
“Yeah,” Will said, both temples throbbing. “Leave the knife out of it. If you’re telling me the truth, then the knife has no part of your story, right?”
He nodded. “Are you going to tell mom?”
“You can do that. You’re an adult now.”
Will slid the knife into his pocket. He hated knives. The Mount Adams Slasher had used a knife, including on Theresa. He started the car and backed out. As he cruised slowly around the park to return the way they came, he asked, “John, why didn’t you call the police when you found her body?”
“I wanted to. Zack wouldn’t let me. He drove out of there as fast as he could, telling me he didn’t want to get caught with drunk underage girls and E on his dad’s expensive boat.”
“Zack said you’re the one who wouldn’t let
him
call.”
“You talked to Zack? He’s lying!”
Of course he was, Will thought. Zack had control of the boat and could have chosen to stay. But there was a problem of corroboration, and it wouldn’t help John.
“Ask Heather,” he said. “She’ll tell you.”
“I did. Heather backed up Zack’s version.”
Will watched his stepson’s face in the mirror as they drove back in silence. It held a rage that stole all his youth.
Afterward, Will stopped at a United Dairy Farmers store, bought Advil and a bottle of water, and swallowed four of the dark red pills at once.
When all the lights had been turned off downstairs, Cheryl Beth walked through the darkness with a glass of Chardonnay. Upstairs, she ran a warm tub of water, lit some candles, turned off the lights, and undressed. The wine and the yellow-orange flickering light relaxed her as she stretched out in the tub. She dunked her head, pushed back her wet hair, and took stock.
She didn’t want to hate Hank Brooks for being obsessed with Noah when the real killer was still out there, or for releasing Noah to his fate. Brooks didn’t call her until late in the day. Then he didn’t sound the least bit contrite. Instead, he said how he had doubted that Noah was the murderer, even in the hours after he had been arrested in the Formal Gardens. It was all about Brooks covering his ass. She barely got through the conversation without saying many unladylike things.
She couldn’t imagine the horror Noah had felt there in the old graveyard. Was there something she could have done for him, when he found her in the bookstore? She couldn’t think what is would have been, but she felt guilty nonetheless. Three of her students now dead. She took a deep drink of wine and felt warm water trickle down her back.
She thought of Will and looked at her body illuminated in the candlelight. She no longer had the bloom of seventeen, when she had been a reluctant cheerleader in Corbin, a national merit scholar finalist, too. She had scholarship offers from very good universities, but her mother said they didn’t have the money to make up the difference. Nobody was on her side, the side of a young woman who dreamed of a world outside Corbin, who had the bus schedules out of town memorized.
So she went as far as she could, to the biggest city she knew, studying nursing at the University of Cincinnati. Her mother made her be practical in that choice. She had really wanted to study philosophy or theater. And she took her only boyfriend in tow, a nice but unambitious young man who really didn’t want to leave town. They married too young. Now, past forty, she looked at a body whose changes she was only too aware of, and they were all changes for the worse. It didn’t matter how many compliments she got or how many men hit on her. The years went by and they took and took and took.
What a silly, vain thought, when three of your students are dead.
Well, she still had nice legs.
As the candles painted shadows on the walls, she wished Will would call. But he was working. She had turned on the news before coming upstairs, and he was on camera twice as the police spokesman: a two-hundred-pound python found in a trash can in Sedamsville, below Mount Echo Park, and a shooting in Corryville, not far from the hospitals on Pill Hill, a few rough blocks from the now-closed hospital where she had almost lost her life. The television reporter said a man shot at a police officer but missed. Will made a statement, the man was now in custody, and then the chief of police talked. So much craziness and violence were a part of his life, and yet he seemed so steady and gentle. Could it be an act? She had been taken in before. Still, she liked the way he opened doors for her, old school, the way he was interested in her, how he kissed, and how he was tall. She liked the way her head tucked under his.
She wished she had brought the wine bottle upstairs.
When the phone rang, she was glad she had it by the tub. She dried off a hand and answered. It was Will, asking if he was calling too late.
“I’m a night owl,” she said. “Too many years spent checking on patients around midnight when the pain got bad. I saw you on television. A two-hundred-pound snake?”
“He was the most pleasant creature I dealt with today. Anyway, lots of face time for Detective Will Borders. Now the question is whether the killer is watching.” He told her about the minimal press release they had put out regarding Noah. “This guy has delusions of grandeur. He addressed the note directly to me. So the hope is if he doesn’t get the publicity he’s seeking, he might come after me.” He sighed. “Or, he’ll stop and we’ll never find him, and in a few years he’ll start again somewhere else.”
“What kind of a person would do these things, Will?”
“There’s a type,” he said. “The scary thing is that sometimes they can fit right into society. They’re not out in the country living alone in a doublewide. Or, like a lot of white folks in this town think, a scary black man asking for change on the sidewalk.”
“Do you think you know who did it? Or shouldn’t I ask that?”
“I met a man who I think is very capable of it,” Will said. “He was one of Kristen’s lovers. But he’s very connected, and we’ll need major probable cause to take it further. I’m not even sure the other detectives would agree with me. This guy’s got an alibi, or he say he does. I’d love to poke a few holes in it and know where he was Saturday night.”
“I hope you’re being careful.”
“Door’s locked, and I’m upstairs with my Smith & Wesson and shotgun.”
“You’re getting me hot.” She smiled.
“And, I have detectives watching from a car out on the street. It could be worse. They wanted me to wear a wire 24/7, so they could even listen in on our conversation. Dodds would especially like that.”
“He’s such a character.” She looked at herself in the tub and thought,
Ask me what I’m wearing
…
“He is that.” Will paused. “I’m wondering if we should go to the symphony tomorrow night.”
“Are you kicking me to the curb, Borders?”
“No! I’m worried. I have skin in this game. You don’t. I already nearly got you killed when I was in the hospital. I’m afraid of putting you at risk, at even greater risk, because we can’t be sure the killer doesn’t already know about you.”
“As I recall, Detective, I nearly got
you
killed. The murderer was after me, and your buddies at CPD thought I was a murderer.”
“You know what I mean…”
“And I have skin in the game, too, as you put it. My students are dead.”
Another pause. “Fair enough. But I don’t have the best history this way.”
“Will, why does Dodds call you Mister President?”
He seemed grateful to laugh. “That bastard. Okay, if we’re going to bare our souls, it’s because my full name is William Howard Taft Borders. Named after Cincinnati’s only president, and a failed one at that. My mom was a local history buff. He calls me that it to get under my skin.”
Cheryl Beth smiled and finished the wine. “I like it. Look, Will, I know you feel guilty about what happened with Theresa Chambers. But that wasn’t your fault. It’s in the past and you can’t live your life in fear. Unless…” Her smile faded. “Unless you don’t like me, and if that’s the case, all you have to do is tell me, before I get skin in that game, too.”
“No, Cheryl Beth. I like you a lot. I have ever since I met you. No game.”
“You’re mighty forward.” She exaggerated her accent.
“I didn’t mean…”
“Relax, Will. I’m kidding you.”
“Right.” His voice relaxed.
“Maybe you don’t even like the symphony. You probably use that line to get girls because you know we usually have to drag men to concerts.”
“Yep, that’s me. Be ready tomorrow night and you’ll find out.” His cadence changed. “Tomorrow’s going to be hell day, I’m afraid. I don’t think I told you that my ex-wife has remarried and finally has her big house in Hyde Park. I went over there tonight to talk to my stepson. He’s in trouble. He was on the river Saturday night with some other kids and they found Kristen Gruber’s boat. He went aboard and saw her body. Lord, I wish he would have called the police then.”
“Oh, no.”
“I told him he’s got to go tomorrow and tell what he knows.” The phone line made a lonely buzz, then, “Even though he’s not my biological son and things the past few years have put more distance between us, I feel for him like he’s really my son.”
She managed, “I know you must.”
“Money’s not a problem in his life. Far from it. So different from when I was growing up. But somehow the money is making things worse for him. So I’m not so much worried about the blowback on me tomorrow, and there will be. I’m worried about him. He’s so isolated and…I don’t know. You try your best to raise a child, but you finally realize that you can’t live their life for them, that they aren’t you. They can’t be saved from all the mistakes you had to make. Inside, there’s this individual soul that’s going its own way, for better or worse. I’m rambling, sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Try to be good to you. I worry about you.”
“I’ll try. When do I get to learn some of your secrets, Cheryl Beth Wilson?”
She forced herself to speak. “Maybe I don’t have any. Maybe I’m only a simple, small-town girl from Corbin, Kentucky.”
“I doubt that.”
“Then stick around. Sleep tight.”
“You, too.”
After he hung up, she sank into the water and smiled and sobbed.
