The Busy Body, page 20
“I admit it sounds far-fetched. But people do love the idea of ‘locking up’ their enemies, don’t they?”
It had been mere weeks since the daily rallies in which such fantasies about the curtailing of Dorothy’s liberty were routinely aired.
“How would they even have gotten in, though? We know there were cameras all over the place.”
Dorothy shrugged again. “Even the best cameras can be avoided. And Walter told us he didn’t turn on the alarm till he went upstairs for the night. Maybe they got inside the house earlier that day, and hid in one of the empty offices on the second floor or something. It’s not as if the entire place was being used. It’s enormous.”
I tried imagining Bobby Hawley creeping about the Crystal Palace: nope. But when I pictured Minna Hawley flitting down empty hallways, slipping through doorways, a shiver ran down my spine. I imagined her creeping on all fours toward a clueless Vivian Davis lounging in her tub, feet propped up on the rim. . . . I could so easily see those calloused hands closing in on the silky-wet ankles . . . yanking with a savage ferocity.
“It’s too bad we can’t review the security footage,” I said aloud. “Do you think the police still have it?”
A spark lit up Dorothy’s eyes. She pitched her body forward, leaning into the front of the car again.
“Sarah, we do surveillance on the entrance to the property, don’t we? When you come in off the parkway?”
Officer Choi turned in her seat. I hadn’t seen her at close range before. She was older than I’d realized—not because I saw any of the typical signs of aging, but because there was a weariness to her expression, a bone-deep fatigue that no twentysomething could ever exhibit, no matter how sleep-deprived they might be. She was in her mid-to-late thirties, I guessed.
“We do, ma’am.”
“How long do we keep them?”
“I believe we cache the footage for three months.”
“Fantastic. Thanks.” Dorothy drew back, but then she leaned forward again. “Sleep training not going so well, eh?”
She grimaced. “Not so well, ma’am.”
“You’ll get there.” Dorothy patted her on the shoulder—a single pat, with just two fingers—a gesture so awkward, I had to turn my head and pretend to be fascinated by the doughnut and dry-cleaning shops outside the window.
“I’m assuming the security camera picks up any car coming in off the highway?” I asked. “Whether or not it’s headed for your place or the Crystal Palace?”
“Correct. Meaning we’d be able to see if the Hawleys made an impromptu visit last Wednesday.” She paused. “This way I don’t have to ask Special Investigator Locust a thing.”
* * *
It was just after one when we got back to Dorothy’s place, stopping in front of the little footpath I’d stumbled down the night before on the way to my humiliating encounter.
“You go on up to the house, Sarah,” said Dorothy. “Get a little rest if you can. Officer Peters is going to play back the footage for us inside the office; I’ve just been texting with him.”
Huh? Texting with the Bodyguard?
Dorothy got out, walking around the back of the car. She tapped on my window with a fingernail.
“Are you coming?”
“Of course I am!” I cried. I was going to have to face him sooner or later.
By the time I got out of the car, Dorothy had walked down the path and was already knocking on the door of the remote office.
CHAPTER 34
Today the Bodyguard was wearing an olive-green shirt with a waffle pattern and a Henley neck. Two of his three chest buttons were undone, and the third was straining to join its friends.
I’d been too cowardly to make eye contact with him when I came in, which didn’t stop me from getting a good whiff as he shut the door behind me: his usual sandalwood, but with a trace of sweat underneath that sweetened the deal—the same way a hint of gasoline livens up the leathery scent of a car. For me, anyway.
We sat around the conference table. You know, the one I’d wanted to drape my naked body across fifteen-or-so hours earlier. An oversize laptop stood open in a briefcase lined with foam. It looked like the kind of gadget Kiefer Sutherland might carry around in 24. (Remember when everyone used to watch 24? Weird.)
“I’ve got the footage all ready to go.”
“Splendid,” said Dorothy crisply. “One question before we start. I think I know the answer to this, but are there any other routes in or out of the Crystal Palace property, other than the road that leads to the parkway? A back path or something?”
The Bodyguard shook his head. “Nothing. It’s all woods, impassable by vehicle. That’s the only way in or out.”
“All right.” She rubbed her hands together in anticipation, wobbling her head from side to side. “Let’s get down to business.”
* * *
I am omitting the few vehicles that went to and from Dorothy’s property, since they were immaterial to our investigation. We started with Wednesday morning, the last day of Vivian Davis’s life. I have to say, the camera angle was excellent. Every car that entered or exited the Crystal Palace property passed through its field of vision, meaning we could see not only the license plate, but in the case of those leaving, the driver’s face and anyone who might be sitting in the front passenger seat.
The first car that appeared was an SUV leaving the property at 8:04 a.m. Dr. Shah was driving, and his wife, Anne, was in the passenger seat. The way she was twisting toward the back, I had to assume their son was with them, though I couldn’t see him.
“That must have been when they went to breakfast,” I said. “For their long talk with Alex.”
“MMMM-hm.”
At 8:42 a.m. Vivian Davis appeared, the sight of her jolting me in my solar plexus. I’d spent so much time thinking about the woman, it was weird to see her—even just on a screen. She was driving a BMW convertible with the top down, and there was no mistaking that crest of salon-caliber hair, or that hoodie. When we’d met her at the liquor store, the hoodie had been down, but this time she’d put it over the back of her head, no doubt to preserve her perfect ’do in the wind.
“Didn’t Walter say that Vivian always slept late?” I asked.
“He did indeed,” said Dorothy.
So either she’d been lying to him, or he’d been lying to us.
Pretty interesting, either way.
It wasn’t till 11:17 that we saw another car. This one was also leaving the Crystal Palace: a beat-up Honda I would have guessed was Paul’s except I didn’t have to because his face—or more accurately, his hair—was easily spotted through the windshield.
Oddly, he drove back onto the property a mere five minutes later, at 11:22.
“Supermarket run?” I guessed.
“Nope,” said the Bodyguard, forcing me to look at him.
At least he was smiling at me.
His eyes were dancing, actually.
“What, then?” I demanded.
“Not telling,” he replied airily. “You’ll see.”
Dorothy paused, looking curiously from one to the other of us. I stared at the screen as though my livelihood depended on it, which perhaps it did. If it had been possible to make a deal with the devil himself not to blush in this moment, I would have signed whatever scroll he put in front of me.
At 11:31 a.m., the Shahs returned in their SUV.
At 11:46 a.m., Paul left again in his Honda, only to return at 11:51.
“All right, what on earth is he doing?” asked Dorothy.
“Dealing drugs,” replied the Bodyguard matter-of-factly. “Mainly weed. A little E.”
“What?”
“It’s low-level enough that we haven’t flagged it,” he explained. “If it doesn’t pose a security risk to you, our policy is to look the other way. Otherwise things get”—his eyes flickered in my direction—“complicated. Quickly.”
A new car appeared. This one was entering the property, and it was a Saab—an old one.
“Well, now this is interesting.”
We paused the tape while Dorothy took out her phone to compare the license plate on the screen to the one she’d captured on her phone.
Perfect match.
“Enter the Hawleys,” I said.
“Yep.”
It was 1:44 p.m. when they drove onto the property. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see who was driving, but when the car exited a mere four minutes later, there was only one person visible: the driver, Bobby Hawley.
Dorothy and I breathed in at the same time.
“Honestly,” I said, “I’m surprised he knows how to drive.”
She let out one of her juddering cackles.
“We’re going to have to tell the police about this.”
“Yes, we are.” She grinned. “I’m going to enjoy that.”
Just after 2:00 p.m., Vivian returned from whatever she’d been doing all day.
“We should ask Walter where she was,” I said.
“We should. I’d be interested to see what he says.”
Paul did two more of his drug runs in the 4:00 hour, and then at 5:37 p.m. Eve left in a tiny Volkswagen, returning a little after 8:30.
“Didn’t she say she’d been working in her office all night?”
Dorothy nodded. “That’s what Walter said too. He backed her up on that.”
This video footage was turning out to be quite the gold mine of information.
That was it for Wednesday, but we fast-forwarded through the entire night to be sure. At 7:57 a.m. on Thursday, a flower delivery van drove onto the estate, leaving at 8:08 a.m. This at least lined up with Walter’s account. And then, exactly three hours later at 11:08 a.m., a van labeled CUMBERLAND COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER rushed onto the property.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” said Dorothy. “Thank you, Officer Peters.”
“You know, you can call me Denny,” he said. “Just please don’t call me the Bodyguard.”
I could hear the smile in his voice, but once again I refused to look.
“Well, in that case you can call me Dorothy.” She smacked her palms on the table’s surface, lifting herself out of her chair. “Well! Let’s get going. We’ve got work to do.”
“Where are we going, exactly?” I asked.
“First, I say we pop on over to the Crystal Palace, have a conversation with”—she held up her index finger—“Paul, about his extracurricular activities, and what Vivian may have thought of them.”
“You’re thinking that’s what they could have been arguing about?”
Dorothy nodded. She raised her middle finger. “Then we speak to Eve about what she was up to that Wednesday night.” Her ring finger joined the party. “And I’d like to have another chat with Walter Vogel.” She widened her eyes comically. “About a lot of things.”
I nodded back at her—a little wearily, I must admit. I for one would have loved to take off my shoes for a few minutes. I also wouldn’t have been averse to grabbing a bite to eat. Maybe two bites. Now that my hangover was behind me, a few cornflakes and a slug of Minna Hawley’s tea wasn’t cutting it.
But I wasn’t about to be shown up by a sixty-nine-year-old and her apparently endless reserves of energy.
CHAPTER 35
When we walked up to the main house, Officer Donnelly was standing next to the car wolfing down a ham sandwich I could smell from several feet away. (It smelled delicious.) The Bodyguard offered to drive us to the Crystal Palace himself, so that “Joe” could finish his lunch and “Sarah” wouldn’t have to cut her break short. I took heart in the fact that he wasn’t avoiding me—so much so that while getting in the car, I made eye contact with him and smiled pleasantly, the way a functional adult human might do. #fakeittillyoumakeit
When we got to the fork in the road, I looked for the camera I knew had to be there, nestled in the trees. But even then I couldn’t see it, it was so well hidden.
The evergreens looked darker than before—nothing green about them. “Everblack” was more like it, their shadows thick and menacing. Looking back on this moment, I’m reminded of fairytales like Snow White and The Wizard of Oz, where the trees go sinister, their gnarled branches and knotted trunks turning into jagged claws and leering faces. The naïve heroine always seems to throw her arms up during these sequences in a laughable effort to protect herself. Fortunately, this story had no naïve heroine, so it was with our arms stuck firmly to our sides that we exited the woods and drew up to that silent, sinister cube, the Crystal Palace.
* * *
Our first hint that something was wrong had to do with the car parked out front. It was the humpbacked Saab we’d seen earlier in the day, and at this point I knew its license plate by heart, so there was no need to cross-check the number. What the hell were the Hawleys doing here? They must have left their house right after we did.
The second hint was the front door, which was wide open: a rectangular hole in the smooth glass façade. An unattended open door is an unsettling sight in any building, but it was particularly disturbing in this case—the imposing fortress rendered pregnable.
Dorothy drew in her breath. “What on earth?”
“Let me check it out”—Dorothy was already out of the car; the Bodyguard hadn’t even come to a full stop, but he did now, cranking up the parking brake—“first.”
I hurried after her. There was someone in the back of the Saab, and a few steps later I saw that it was Bobby Hawley. He had his head in his hands and he was rocking back and forth—the way a person might do while sobbing uncontrollably. Except he wasn’t making a sound.
Dorothy and I exchanged a look, agreeing wordlessly to sidestep whatever this disaster might be for now, and head into the house.
That’s when the screaming began.
I’m not sure why such screams are said to “curdle” one’s blood. Isn’t curdling the province of dairy products? “Piercing” is another word often used, but this sound was so loud, so intrusive, it didn’t so much pierce the air as occupy every atom available to it: not just the space around me, but my body too—the inside of my nose, the cavity behind my eyes. I could feel it vibrating in my very bones. That scream felt like an assault, and I’m not ashamed to admit it terrified me.
We stood rooted to the ground, unable to move for as long as it lasted—which was probably only a few seconds, though it felt like an eternity. I remember noting in a dispassionate way how much of the whites of Dorothy’s eyes I could see, how I had a much better sense of eyeball-in-socket than I would have preferred.
And then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. No trailing off. As if someone had flicked a switch.
The Bodyguard had caught up to us by then. “Stay back!” he commanded. “We don’t know what’s in there.”
But Dorothy did not stay back; she made a break for the open door with a speed and agility I hadn’t been expecting. Neither had the Bodyguard, by the look of slack-jawed horror on his face. But he recovered more quickly than I did, hurling himself through the rectangular hole in swift pursuit. I hesitated, having no desire to put myself in physical danger. But I also have a strong aversion to being left alone and out of the loop, and in a second (maybe two) this aversion won handily.
When I crossed the threshold, I had to pull up short to keep from bumping into Denny’s upside-down triangle of a back. I peered around him, taking great gulps of air both from the impromptu aerobic activity, and the shocking nature of the scene playing out in front of me.
It felt exactly like that: a scene. Something from a play or a TV show. Have you ever witnessed a dramatic event in real life that you’re used to seeing acted out on a stage or screen? A fistfight, say, or the immediate aftermath of a car accident? The only way you can process these incidents is by comparison to their fictional counterparts—as “theatrical” events that diverge from your expectations in interesting ways. (Punches land with a dull, anticlimactic thud, as opposed to the “smack” inserted by sound engineers; air bags release a white powder so fine, it hangs in the air like fairy dust.)
In the very center of the Great Hall, where three days earlier I’d seen Laura Duval dressed in mourning attire, lay the body of Walter Vogel, its limbs (already an “it,” no longer a “he”) splayed crookedly, as though some giant-size child had dropped a doll from the glass roof three stories above.
I’d been in the presence of a deceased person only once before, and on that occasion I’d been in close proximity to the body—which was why I was happy to keep my distance now. But even from that distance I was struck by how inhuman it was: a skin bag, lying discarded on the floor. A pile of debris whose only significance now was that someone would have to go through the (considerable) effort of gathering it up and disposing of it properly. I don’t believe in the idea of a soul, or any of the various intangibles that religious- or spiritual-minded people like to spout. And yet it’s impossible to ignore the fact that there is something about being human that has nothing to do with one’s body—not a soul, per se, but life itself. This thing bore no resemblance to Walter Vogel. It was no longer a person, but a collection of physical matter.
Fluid was pooling with an alarming rapidity. I had a thought I’ve found hard to shake since—that our bodies hold any number of fluids, all of them poised to spill out any moment. That it’s amazing we don’t manifest our liquid state oftener than we do.
It was dark fluid—much darker than expected, practically black. But it wasn’t the color so much as the smell that surprised me. Imagine biting your tongue, and the meaty taste of iron filling the bottom of your mouth; or maybe try burying your nose in a geranium and breathing in its metallic scent. If you menstruate, chances are you know precisely what I mean. Now multiply that by a thousand and you’ll get some sense of what it was like to be in the presence of that much blood.
I’m lucky my stomach was empty, or I would have vomited, which happened to be what Anne Shah was doing—into one of the planters holding those giant ferns, though she managed to do so with dignity, kneeling in her pantyhose and yet another killer Chanel suit (a pink one this time). Above her, in the second-story gallery, Eve Turner was leaning against a column for support, one hand clamped over her mouth like the It Girl on a horror movie poster. I looked higher, to the third-story gallery, where Samir Shah was pulling his son by the hoodie in a vain attempt to drag him away. But Alex was enraptured by the bloody scene below. . . .
