The Follower (39 page)

“Fire?” Himoto asked.

Katie reached into her pocketbook and took out the articles she’d printed from the Internet and dropped them on Himoto’s desk.

“There was a fire,” she said, “at his house near Albany, where he moved with his family. His parents were killed and he cashed in some huge insurance policy. The police up there investigated. They thought it might’ve been arson.”

“But they concluded that it wasn’t arson.”

“Don’t you fucking get it?” Katie said. “It all adds up. I mean, you wanna talk about coincidences? And now Will’s dead. You have to do something before he kills me, too.”

“Nobody’s gonna kill you,” Himoto said. “We’re gonna look into every aspect of this. No stone will be left unturned.”

Sick of Himoto and his goddamn cliché-speak, Katie said, “When exactly will these stones be turned? Barasco hasn’t gotten off his ass—he won’t even call me.”

“I talked to him briefly before you arrived. He’s currently talking to William’s roommates.”

“What about Peter?”

“I’m sure he’s going to explore that angle fully as well. He probably has another detective looking into it right now.”

“But you have to call him to make—”

“Will you let me finish?” He glared at her, then said, “I’m going to impress on Detective Barasco that he should talk to
you again as soon as possible. But right now he’s talking to Barnett and Bahner’s roommates, and if I was in his shoes I’d be focusing on the same thing. Two roommates are dead, four are alive, you talk to the living ones. Maybe there was some dispute we don’t know about. Maybe there was something going on with a girl.”

“Yeah, me,” Katie said.

“Look, I agree with you, that what you’re saying about this guy Peter should be a cause for alarm. He sounds like he could be a potentially dangerous guy. But there are other factors in this case you have to be aware of. We have a credible witness who saw Andrew talking with a dark-haired guy at a bar on Second Avenue before he was killed.”

“I know. Barasco told me about that yesterday.”

“This seems to be the best lead so far because it’s likely that Andrew and this guy left the bar together. By the way, is there a chance that Andrew was bisexual?”

“No. I really doubt that. He was really into girls. Too into them.”

“Because that’s a possibility we have to explore as well. That Andrew went to the park with his killer with the intention of having a sexual encounter. Strangulation is often associated with crimes of passion.”

“Was Will strangled?”

“No, he died from severe head injuries.”

Imagining the scene, how violent the killing must’ve been, Katie cringed.

“The other thing you have to remember is, I had my suspicions about William Bahner from the beginning,” Himoto continued. “Not that he necessarily had any direct involvement in Andrew Barnett’s murder, but that he was holding back, not being entirely truthful. Maybe something was going on we don’t know about yet. Maybe Bahner knew who killed Barnett, was going to blow the whistle, so this other guy killed Bahner. I could sit here all day making up theories, but we don’t know which have credence and which don’t until we start checking each one out.”

“Did Barasco say anything to you about Peter?” Katie
asked impatiently. “Did he even ask him about Andy? Does he know where Peter was the night Andy was killed?”

“I’m sure that was all covered.”

“He didn’t mention Peter, did he? You don’t even know if he talked to him.”

“I didn’t ask him about that. It’s not my case anymore and, frankly, it’s up to him who he talks to and who he doesn’t talk to.”

“So there’s a chance he didn’t talk to him at all.”

“I didn’t say—”

“Call him right now.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“You want Peter to go ahead and kill somebody else? Maybe even me?”

“I’m not gonna explain this again to you.”

“He’s gonna kill again. I’m telling you he will.”

“You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions,” Himoto said. “Should we talk to Peter Wells? Yes, absolutely. Will we talk to him? Yes, absolutely. But the fact remains that he doesn’t fit the description of the primary suspect. You said he has blond hair, right?”

“Dirty blond.”

“The suspect we’re looking for from the bar has dark hair and a goatee. So that’s where our focus is—”

“What did you just say?”

Katie was suddenly so tense she was actually shaking.

“I said Peter doesn’t fit the description of—”

“Peter had a goatee. He shaved it. Oh, my God, he shaved it last week, I think the day after Andy was killed! Yeah, he definitely did, because that was the night I called him to come over. I’d just talked to you and I was scared and he came over and he didn’t have his goatee.”

“But the suspect has dark hair.”

“Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe it was just dark in the bar. Or maybe he dyed his hair or was wearing a wig or something. It’s him, don’t you get it now? It’s him. Every piece fits. It has to be him.”

“Are you sure he shaved his goatee last Friday?”

“I’m positive! Oh, my God, it really was him. You’re gonna do something now, right? You’re not gonna just sit here and let him get away with this.”

“We’re not gonna let anybody get away with anything,” Himoto said.

“You promise you’ll talk to him?”

“I guarantee it.”

Starting to relax a little, feeling like she’d finally gotten through to him, Katie said, “So what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“I’d advise you to try to stay calm, go about your regular routine. You going to work today?”

“I couldn’t deal with work.”

“So why don’t you stay home?”

“I’m too scared to be in that apartment. He knows where I live. I’m afraid he’s gonna come over, try to break in.”

“If he shows up at your apartment and is attempting forced entry, you keep your door locked and you call nine-one-one.”

Katie was shaking her head, starting to cry.

“I’m too scared…I’m just too scared…”

Himoto let out a heavy breath, looked at his watch. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll drive you back to your apartment, okay? Make sure you’re okay there. Is there a friend you can call to come over?”

Now that Will was dead, Katie realized she really didn’t have a rift with Amanda anymore.

“Maybe,” she said.

“Then maybe you should call her. It might be good for you to be with someone today. Meanwhile we’ll do our thing here, okay?”

Tears dripping down her cheeks, Katie nodded slowly.

Katie and Himoto left the precinct together and went to his car, which was parked right out in front. Before she got in, she had to wait as he picked up some garbage off the front passenger seat and the floor in front of it, and tossed it into the back of the car.

He was playing some oldies station, music from the sixties or something. He did his best to make small talk with her, asking her what she did for a living and how long she’d been living in the city, but she wasn’t exactly in a chatty mood. She was distracted, upset, and gave mostly one-word answers.

Then, staring out the window, she remembered something.

“He wasn’t surprised,” she suddenly said, turning toward Himoto, interrupting whatever he was talking about.

“Who wasn’t surprised?” he asked.

“Peter,” she said. “At this restaurant we were at, when I told him you didn’t have the right guy, that the murder case was still open. He wasn’t surprised at all. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but he was, like, totally calm about it. Almost
too
calm, you know?”

The ride only took several minutes. Himoto pulled in front of her building, saw she was hesitant to get out alone, and said, “I’ll walk you up.”

Katie felt safe with Himoto, but didn’t know how she’d handle being alone again.

“Maybe I should have my parents come pick me up later,” Katie said, “take me to Massachusetts.”

“That might not be a bad idea,” Himoto said. “It might be good to get away from the situation for a little while, clear your head, be with your family. But make sure you have your cell with you, just in case we need to be in touch.”

Katie opened the door to the apartment. She didn’t hear the maintenance people working downstairs anymore.

“This is gonna sound crazy,” Katie said. “But can you just come in with me, make sure he’s not in here…I know it’s ridiculous…”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Himoto said.

Katie remained in the living room, as Himoto went around checking every room.

“Coast is clear,” he said when he returned.

“Did you check the closets?” Katie asked.

“Checked the closets and looked inside the shower.”

“I guess I’ve seen too many horror movies,” Katie said, as if she were making a joke.

At the door, Himoto said, “I promise you, everything’s going to be okay.”

“I know it will,” Katie said, though she couldn’t have been telling a bigger lie.

Wearing his silk robe, Peter
relaxed on the couch, sipping a tall glass of San Pellegrino with a wedge of lime. He wasn’t surprised to see that the killing of Scrub Boy was a major story on the TV news. Murdered white people always got a lot of attention from the media, and the fact that the dead guy was a doctor, or training to be one, and that his roommate had been killed less than a week earlier, made the story even more newsworthy.

But the best news of all was that the police were as clueless as ever. Because Frat Boy and Scrub Boy had been roommates, the cops were looking for some connection with the other roommates. That dead end would keep them busy for a while, Peter thought, smiling. Then he had a really good laugh when the police sketch of the prime suspect in the case was shown on the screen. The dark-haired guy with the goatee looked nothing like Peter, didn’t even have the same general facial features or bone structure. The picture made it seem like the killer was some big, fat, insane-looking Latino guy.

Peter’s only real concern had to do with Hillary Morgan, the detective. Would she realize that Scrub Boy was the same guy she’d photographed with Katie? Yeah, the murder was getting major coverage, but it wasn’t like everyone in New York was going to pay attention to the story. Maybe she wasn’t the type of person who even followed the local news. And even if she did hear about the murder, would she take a very close look at a photo of Scrub Boy in the paper or on
TV? Besides, she was a licensed PI, and Peter figured that PIs must have some kind of client privilege or something. Unless the cops came after them with court orders, they probably kept their mouths shut.

Peter was ninety-nine percent certain that he had nothing to worry about with Hillary, and he was even more confident that his other tracks had been covered. Last night, he had walked all the way home from the Upper East Side. The walk had taken him about an hour, but it was safer than risking the possibility of being seen with bloodstains, or possibly getting blood on the backseat of a cab. In his apartment, he carefully placed the jacket with blood on the sleeves in a plastic bag. Although he didn’t see blood on any other clothing, just in case, he added the shirt and jeans he’d worn. Then he walked downtown to the East Village and deposited the bag in a garbage can in front of a tenement. Since the garbage can was about a hundred blocks away from where he’d killed Scrub Boy, there was no way the cops would be searching for evidence there. Within a day or two, the bag would be on its way to becoming landfill, if it wasn’t already.

Killing people and getting away with it was so easy. You had to be a total moron to get caught.

Peter figured that Katie would be in touch with him at some point today. She’d hear that Scrub Boy had been killed, and she’d rush to Peter for support, the same way she’d come running to him after Frat Boy’s death. And this time when she came to him, she’d stay with him for good, because that was the way it worked with romances. The obstacles were all gone. Boy got girl, boy lost girl, and now it was time for girl to realize the huge mistake she’d made and rush back into boy’s arms.

But then Peter wondered why he was sitting around, waiting. Didn’t Richard Gere go back to Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman?
Didn’t Bill Pullman go back to Sandra Bullock in
While You Were Sleeping!

He decided, to hell with it. If he didn’t hear from her soon, he’d crawl back to her, swallow his pride. He’d tell her he was sorry for being so open about his emotions, and for proposing
to her so quickly. If admitting to a couple of things he wasn’t really guilty of was what it took to win Katie back forever, then so be it.

John Himoto left Katie Porter’s apartment and went downtown to Christina’s, an Italian restaurant on Second Avenue near Thirty-third Street, to meet his son for lunch.

When John arrived, Blake was seated at a table off to the right. Blake looked as flaming as ever, with goddamn streaks in his hair and the designer clothes and the way he was sitting with one leg crossed over the other. As hard as John tried to be open-minded, he couldn’t pull it off. Over the years he’d had many talks with Blake, telling him things like, “It’s your life, you can do whatever you want,” and “As long as you’re happy, I’m happy,” but neither of them ever really believed it.

They hugged hello—it was a loose, awkward hug—and then John asked, “Been waiting long?”

Blake said, “No,” and John said, “Good.”

From there, things went downhill. John felt like people in the restaurant were watching, and thought he saw the bartender look over in a smug way, as if thinking,
I’m sure glad my kid ain’t a flamethrower
. The waiter took their orders—ziti for John and a freaking salad for Blake—and then there was more awkward silence. When John’s cell rang he said, “I gotta take this,” without checking the caller ID. He was just glad to have an excuse to get away.

Heading outside, John checked the display and saw the call was from Nick Barasco. John had called him from his car on the way downtown.

In front of the restaurant, John flipped his phone open, said, “Hey, thanks for getting back to me.”