Jack of Spades Page 25

  Spader looked at the town he was passing through. Thirteen minutes since he’d left Mendenhall’s house and he was still making his winding way through Lynn, the highway still a few minutes away. Jesus.

  “Here’s the bad news,” Dunbar said. “The camp closed eleven years ago.”

  “Shit. Can we find the owner?”

  “I did some digging and came up empty. But the news isn’t all bad. I called Yasovich’s sister back and asked her to fax me the letters her son sent, just in case there was something useful in them.”

  “Good hunch. And was there?”

  “There was.” He paused.

  “Don’t try to make me guess, Gavin.”

  “I was just checking my notes.” Something in his tone made Spader think he was, in fact, going to ask Spader to guess. “Anyway, she didn’t have a fax machine, but she looked in the Yellow Pages and found a copy place where you can send or receive faxes. They charge by the page, I guess, rather than by the fax. I’m not really sure how it works, but you can—”

  “I’m really glad you’re sharing all this with me, you know, about the copy place and everything.”

  “Huh? Oh, right. Anyway, I read the kid’s letters—there were fourteen of them he sent over four summers he went to the camp—and five times he mentioned someone named Mrs. Easterbrook. Seems she was sort of like a mother hen to all the kids. Probably worked in camp administration or something. From what Yasovich’s kid wrote, it sounds like she was a legend among the campers. He said there were these great stories about her going back for years.”

  “Sounds like she was a fixture in the place. She’d probably know a lot of the kids who went there over the years, maybe could remember their names. She’d certainly remember if any of the kids got seriously hurt, maybe falling down a hill in the woods or something.”

  “My thoughts exactly. So I ran down her name, eliminated women in the wrong age range, and came up with one name. Marilyn Easterbrook.”

  “Tell me she’s alive and still in Massachusetts.”

  “You’re half right.”

  “Tell me it’s the first half,” Spader said.

  “Sorry. She died a few years ago. But I bet she’s buried in Massachusetts.”

  “That’s real helpful. Shit.”

  “I found her daughter, though. She’s living in the mother’s house in Concord. I’m heading there now.”

  “Okay, see what you come up with. And good work, Gavin.” Spader looked at the dashboard clock. Three twenty-two. “It’s getting late. I don’t know how much more we can do today. After you see her, head on back to the office. We’ll compare notes, brainstorm a while, then grab a bite before surveillance tonight.”

  Dunbar sighed dramatically. “Jesus, John. Tonight again? I’m exhausted. I put in a full day yesterday, got less than three hours’ sleep last night after watching nothing at all happen at Pendleton’s house, then put in a full day today. I need some rest.”

  Spader felt the same way, but was afraid that Pendleton would strike tonight. Still, how long could he keep this up? Working all day, watching Pendleton’s house at night, getting two or three hours of sleep before going to work again? It had only been one night and he was exhausted. He certainly couldn’t do it indefinitely.

  “Well,” he said, “meet me back at work when you finish with your interview. We’ll talk about tonight. Maybe we can take shifts or something. That way, we’ll each get another two or three hours of sleep.”

  “You’re all heart, John.”

  “You look like shit.”

  Spader, who thought he’d been doing some Internet research on Camp Wiki-Wah-Nee but was, in fact, staring blankly at his computer screen, looked up to see Detective Captain Struthers standing beside his desk, a World’s Greatest Dad coffee mug in his pudgy hand.

  Spader rubbed his eyes. “One of your sons give you that mug?”

  Struthers was silent for a brief moment, then said, “What are you, a fucking comedian?”

  Spader looked at the mug again. It read, “World’s Greatest Lover.”

  “My wife gave me this mug, you sick bastard, and I don’t find jokes like that funny.”

  “Sorry, Cap, I thought it said ‘World’s Greatest Dad.’ ” He paused. “Really.”

  Struthers looked at him hard. “Forget about it. You’re eyes aren’t working right because you’re so tired. You staked out the cripple’s house last night, didn’t you?”

  “Until three a.m.”

  “Then worked a full shift today?”

  Spader nodded.

  “And I suppose Dunbar did the same?”

  He nodded again. Struthers shook his head and slid a moderately hefty butt cheek onto the corner of Spader’s desk.

  “Anything new in the case? Anything at all?”

  Spader nodded. “We may have found the connection between the victims,” he said. He told Struthers about Camp Wiki-Wah-Nee and how four of the five apparent victims had connections with the camp. Two of them, and the deceased son of a third, were likely campers there during the same few summers, while a fourth seemed to have been a counselor at the same time.

  “And the other victim?” Struthers asked. “There were five, right?”

  Spader thought hard for a moment how much to share with Struthers. The captain had made it clear that he considered the idea of Pendleton as a suspect to be ridiculous, and the thought of pursuing that angle on the clock to be impermissible. Yet after interviewing Pendleton yesterday, Spader felt more strongly that he was their guy.

  “Stanley Pendleton’s the other victim.”

  “The cripple.”

  “If you want to call him that.” Struthers’s expression grew cloudy. Spader plowed ahead anyway, right into the gathering storm. “Pendleton says he never went to camp as a kid, but I think he’s lying.”

  “Why?”

  “For one thing, if he really has no connection to the camp, then he’s the only one. There are dozens of camps in Massachusetts, so the odds that four out of five victims were at the same camp at the same time, and the fifth wasn’t, seem too long for me to bet on them. And look at the time frame. They all just happened to be there twenty-one years ago, the exact number of years Pendleton’s supposedly been in that wheelchair.”

  Struthers still looked dubious. “Supposedly. You really don’t think he’s a cripple?”

  Struthers kept using that word. Spader knew it wasn’t politically correct these days, but he didn’t consider correcting his captain. “That’s right, I don’t.” He explained how he’d tracked down Dr. Mendenhall, then relayed the substance of their conversation.

  Struthers frowned. He said nothing. Spader kept his mouth shut, too, letting Struthers play with it all in his mind. Finally, the captain spoke. “You’re saying this doctor said Pendleton might be able to walk now?”

  “I’m saying he said it was technically possible.” He didn’t mention that Mendenhall had been speaking purely hypothetically and seriously doubted that Stanley Pendleton would be able to walk today. “What would really help would be a search warrant. We could take a look around, maybe the guy thinks his wheelchair puts him so far above suspicion that he’s careless in what he keeps in the house. At worst, maybe we find some evidence that the guy can walk. Shoes worn a certain way or something.”

  Struthers had begun shaking his head before Spader had trudged halfway through his pitch. “No. We don’t have enough. We’re not even close.”

  “But, Cap, everything I just told you, on top of everything I told you yesterday—”

  “Forget it. It’s not enough. Jesus, he’s by far the most sympathetic of Galaxo’s victims. A cripple, for Chrissake. Had his fucking ear lopped off.”

  “Cap, I think—”

  “I told you, Rawlings is killing me on this. And the fucking governor is killing Rawlings. And it’s the goddamn press that’s got everybody all riled up. They just keep churning out story after story, even on days when there’s nothing new to report. And they
keep focusing on the goddamn comparisons to the Eddie Rivers case. God, how my life would be easier if they just let that angle go. But they don’t. They just keep writing about this fucking Galaxo case, and they stick the old Rivers case in whenever they get the chance.”

  Spader had stopped reading the papers over a week ago. His ego could only take so much of a pounding. But Struthers seemed to have read every article. “And let me tell you the sad truth, and the reason you have to walk very fucking lightly around this Pendleton—nobody gives a shit about the dead victims. I mean, sure, everyone thinks their deaths are a shame and all, but the surviving victims who are still struggling with their ordeal are the ones who get most of the ink. And with us keeping a lid on that guy who gave Galaxo the blowjob, Pendleton’s the only victim anyone really knows. And he’s a freaking cripple, which makes everyone’s heart turn to mush. The last fucking thing we’re gonna do is let it be known that we suspect that cripple of actually being Galaxo. Jesus, Spader, he’s a fucking cripple.”

  He paused, then lowered his voice. “Look, I’m protecting you, too, John. Anybody who knows your name out there knows it because Eddie Rivers walked on a technicality. He served less than nine months on a measly resisting charge when he should be rotting away behind bars, rotting away until he dies. And after he walked, he killed at least two people. And, fair or not, the average joe on the street blames you. I’m sorry to say that, but you know it’s true. So just imagine what would happen if the same thing happens again, in the next big high-profile case to hit Massachusetts. Imagine us going to a judge with what you’ve told me so far, and imagine a judge getting lazy and issuing the warrant, and imagine us finding evidence that Pendleton’s been leaping up out of his wheelchair and hacking parts off of people, killing a few, maiming others. Finally, imagine Pendleton’s defense team ripping the warrant to shreds and the son of a bitch walking away from it all. All this, not long after Rivers literally got away with murder because we fucked up a warrant. Can you even begin to imagine what the press would do with that? What it would do to you?” Struthers shook his head with finality. “I won’t authorize it, John. Not until you have more. A lot more. Sorry.”

  Spader blew out a breath. He understood the captain’s point, but he was more willing to gamble than Struthers was. Then again, he believed that Pendleton could walk, while Struthers, like the rest of Massachusetts, thought the guy was a paraplegic.

  Struthers was shaking his head, still in thought. “The press would eat us alive,” he added. “And Rawlings would have me for breakfast.”

  “Unless I’m right.”

  “I don’t think you are, and if I authorize this and the papers get hold of it, we’re screwed. I’m too old to start looking for a new job at this point in my life.”

  He stopped. He shook his head once as if to clear it. Spader watched his face. At that moment he looked like another cop Spader knew, a guy who’d thought he was the least bigoted man alive, until, in a heated discussion, he referred to a prosecutor as a “nigger,” and this in the presence of his black partner. Spader had been there. The look on his face then mirrored the look on Struthers’s now.

  “Jesus Christ,” Struthers finally said.

  “It’s okay, Cap.”

  “Jesus Christ. I can’t believe I said that.”

  “Worrying about your livelihood, when you’ve got a family, kids in college, is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Struthers closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them, they looked tired.

  “Fuck it. You really think you’ve got enough, draft an application for a search warrant. Let’s see what happens.”

  “Thanks, Cap.”

  “Just make it good, John. Airtight. And don’t stretch. Be straightforward. I don’t mind giving all the facts and taking our shot, but I don’t want to push it, have the warrant issued, and see it trashed in court down the road.”

  “You got it.”

  Struthers nodded. He looked down into his coffee mug and chewed the inside of his cheek. Finally, he said, in a softer voice, “Rawlings is getting ready to call in the feds. The governor wants it and now Rawlings wants it and he’s about ready to tell me to make the call. I know he is.”

  Spader wasn’t one of those cops who hated the FBI on principle. But he didn’t want to turn the case over to anyone, whether it was the feds or someone else, because he didn’t think anyone else would seriously consider Pendleton as a suspect until it was too late and too many more people were hurt. If Spader continued to run the investigation, he could do his best to keep looking into Pendleton, while at the same time making enough inquiries on other lines of investigation to keep Struthers and the powers that be happy.

  “Don’t worry,” Struthers said, “I got Rawlings to back off on that for the moment. We’ve got a little more time. Not a lot, probably, but some. So do your job and catch this guy and we won’t have to worry about the FBI, okay?”

  Spader nodded.

  Struthers continued. “You look like hell. You’re run down. I can’t have you heading our biggest investigation when you can’t think clearly. And you’re not going to think clearly while you’re working all day on the clock and watching Pendleton’s house all night on your own time. So I’m gonna let you make that call to your buddy in the Beverly PD and ask them to have someone watch your guy’s house for a few days. Ask them to keep it as quiet as possible.” Struthers paused, then added, “They give you any grief, I’ll call ’em myself.”

  “Thanks.”

  Struthers started to walk away, then paused and turned back. “Be careful on this, John. Don’t move until you’re sure. But,” he added, “don’t let him kill anyone else, either.”

  Spader could only nod at that helpful bit of advice or warning or whatever the hell it was.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Spader rang Olivia’s doorbell, thinking how strange it felt to do so. It used to be his doorbell, too. He’d lived there for nine years and he didn’t think he’d rung it more than once or twice in all that time.

  While he waited, his thoughts drifted to the Galaxo case, as they did during all of Spader’s free moments of late. Spader’s warrant application had been denied. Captain Struthers had reluctantly allowed the watch on Pendleton’s house to continue, though, for now. This was the third night of surveillance—the first was by Spader and Dunbar, while last night and tonight were by the Beverly PD. Everything had been quiet. Thankfully, Galaxo had been quiet, too. However, since Spader had met with Dr. Mendenhall the day before, no real progress had been made in the case. Dunbar was still trying to find anyone who might know more about Camp Wiki-Wah-Nee—specifically, if its summer enrollment records still existed, particularly those from twenty-one years ago. So far he’d come up empty. The rest of the task force had been looped in about Spader’s suspicions concerning Stanley Pendleton. They were sworn to secrecy first, however, but Spader suspected this wasn’t really necessary after a slip of one of their lips had led to Estelle Lisbon killing Oscar Wagner. Of course, Spader didn’t think anyone on the task force shared his suspicion of Pendleton. The fact that the guy was in a wheelchair seemed to be giving everyone a problem. Struthers was getting anxious, and Spader knew he wanted the investigation to start focusing a little harder in some other direction. But Spader still believed that Pendleton was Galaxo and he didn’t want to waste his energy chasing phantoms when he thought he had the right guy dead in his sights.

  After a few more moments of waiting, Spader rang the doorbell again. It didn’t feel any less strange the second time. Footsteps sounded from inside, bare feet on hardwood, getting closer. The door opened and Olivia stood in the foyer, her hand on the doorknob. She looked a little tense.

  “John? I didn’t know you were coming by.”

  “Maybe I should have called. I found these and wanted to get them to you while I was thinking of it.” He held up the two photo albums she’d been asking about. “I tried to call you yesterday—”

  “I was out of town
for a couple of days. Just got back this afternoon. I didn’t have the chance to call you back yet.”

  “No problem. I was just going to leave them on the porch when I saw your light on.” He smiled. “I know you’re in a new relationship and I figured you wanted to share a little of your past with—what’s his name? Jason?” He concentrated on keeping even a trace of bitterness or resentment from lacing his words. He tried to sound like a mature man who knew his wife had moved on with her life. He thought he might have pulled it off—thanks, probably, to the dozen or so times he’d practiced on the drive over. Olivia responded without any attitude, so he must have succeeded.

  “Jason, yes,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ll be showing him these pictures any time soon.”

  Interesting. Spader kept his face neutral.

  “Besides,” she added. “I wasn’t asking for them for that reason. I’d simply gone through some things in the basement and came across some pictures, some from when I was a girl, some of us, and I remembered that there were two more albums of pictures. They sort of make a complete set, you know? Olivia Petrucci, from birth to present.”

  A year since they separated, half a year since the divorce became final, and he still couldn’t get used to hearing her use her maiden name.

  “What the heck am I doing?” she asked. “Come on inside. If you have a minute, that is.”

  He stepped in, shutting the door behind him, and looked around. Not much had changed, from what he could see. He almost felt like kicking off his shoes into the corner by the stairs, where he always used to. He followed her into the living room, where she put the photo albums down on the coffee table, the same table Spader used to put his feet up on despite her halfhearted protests. He checked out the room. He hadn’t been in it in a few months. Again, not much had changed. It still felt like home. His home. But he knew it wasn’t. Especially when he saw a pair of men’s sneakers in the corner, a couple of sizes too small for David.