Son of the Endless Night, page 19
"Did he? Polly definitely was not in room 331 of the burned-out wing, nor any other room, contrary to Rich's claim. The room was empty; not a stick of furniture. Melka was mad as hell. He was ready to lock Rich up. The only thing that stopped him— Rich seemed so convinced. So appalled not to find her there. If he was acting, Melka told me, then it was a great job of acting. And Rich stuck to his story, even though there was no point."
"There must be a point. The girl called Rich. She was afraid of being hurt. It all ties in with what Rich told the chief of police."
"But we can't be certain that's the voice of Polly Windross on the tape," Moorman pointed out.
"Her own father ought to know! Can't you get him over here?"
"I will," Moorman said, his expression a little cold.
"I don't think that girl's in Canada."
"Jim is following up on that, but he hasn't heard anything from the local authorities up there."
Conor tugged at his beard in frustration. "Getting back to Rich's story— "
"It was plausible," Moorman allowed. "He convinced two experienced police officers that an emergency existed. There was nothing abnormal about his behavior. But I'm sure there are mental disorders that even trained psychologists find difficult to diagnose at first sight. Some psychopathic personalities are the most sincere and convincing people you'd ever want to meet. That Bundy fellow, convicted of killing those sorority girls in Florida. I'm not saying Rich is a psychopath, you understand."
"I know he isn't. In spite of what he— of what happened to Karyn." Conor gazed at Moorman, wondering how much he should confide in him. "But Rich said two things to me yesterday that may be significant. Before he told me to listen to the Record A Call tape, he said, 'I think Polly must be dead too.' "
"Was he implying that he killed her?"
"No. No, I didn't have that impression. He was trying to tell me something really awful took place in that house in Ripington Four Corners."
"The Courdewaye house?"
"You found it?"
"Yes. Hasn't belonged to the Courdewaye family for years. And nobody's been there since the Christmas holidays, according to the caretaker."
Conor winced. "Rich was there, I'm sure of it. This is like a— a pattern, very disturbing, because— "
"What else did he say about the girl?" Moorman tapped his front teeth with the pipe stem. "Maybe we should get a warrant and really look that house over."
"Yes, I think you should."
"You were going to tell me something else that could be significant— ?"
"You may as well know. Rich told me he was possessed."
Moorman took in some smoke the wrong way and coughed. "What does that mean, possessed?"
"Rich is Catholic. In the Church it means only one thing. Preternatural manifestation: diabolical possession of a human being by the devil, or demons from hell."
"That's a fairly common mental aberration, isn't it? If you're brought up believing in such things."
"I'm talking about an inhuman spirit of unspeakable evil exercising the power to invade a physical body and manipulate the captive individual according to the demon's will. It's rare. Damned rare. But the Church acknowledges the reality of demonic possession. There is an office in the Vatican devoted to investigating major cases of possession."
"Do you believe in it yourself?"
"I was a priest," Conor told him, and the policeman's eyebrows went up a little. "Demonology is an academic subject in seminaries and the pontifical universities in Rome. What I believe is what I was taught. And I was taught that the devil is real, that none of us, even the most holy of men, are ever safe from trespass by the Evil One and his legions. Let me tell you this. Rich was clearly trying to help that girl. He thinks she may be dead now. It doesn't take a great leap of logic to hypothesize that Polly and her father were mixed up with a demonic cult; they abound. And the girl became an unwilling victim. These people must be very skillful at covering their tracks; nevertheless they are out there, they do exist. I'd have a long talk with Henry Windross, because something is very wrong at that inn he owns, and also at the Courdewaye house, no matter what the caretaker says. He could be lying."
It became clear to Conor that Moorman wasn't listening very hard anymore. There was a patient smile on his face, showing signs of wear.
"Everyone is lying but Rich," the policeman murmured. "Rich is the innocent one. Is that how you see it?"
"I see you're not going to take any of this very seriously."
"I'm not licensed to practice psychiatry or interpret the effects of theology on a disordered mind. I'll continue to follow up on any facts pertinent to the investigation of the murder of Karyn Vale, which is what I'm paid to do." He reached behind Conor and picked up the receiver of the telephone. "See if you can get Henry Windross for me. He's the owner of the Post Road Inn."
Conor stood by the windows cracking his knuckles, loud angry popping sounds. Then he walked slowly to the door.
Moorman watched him. "I hope for everyone's sake another body isn't going to turn up before this is over. By the way, have you talked to any trial lawyers?"
"Adam Kurland. We're both seeing Rich again this morning."
"Uh-huh," Moorman said, nodding. Not exactly a recommendation of the young lawyer, but he didn't seem to disapprove. He smiled at Conor, bemused. "How long were you a priest?"
"Three years."
"Why did you quit?"
He'd been asked the question often, ingenuously, as if there could be a single answer for him to dispense like the packaged philosophy in a fortune cookie, to satisfy someone's transient interest. The more involved the explanations were, the hazier his motives seemed. But this time the perfect answer occurred to Conor.
"When I went from theory to practice I found I just couldn't do it. For the same reason I could never be a cop."
37
In the late afternoon of the twenty-fourth of January, three days after Karyn's death, Thomas Horatio Harkrider made himself comfortable on a Regency sofa in the living room of the Vale home in Rye, New York, and looked closely at the faces of the girl's parents: faces still warmly radiant from the tropical sun, festive, at odds with the grief that had distorted each like the weight and pull of an invisible noose around the throat. He was Martin and she was Louise. Her tan was spoiled by the crinkly white of old scar tissue at the base of her throat, on the backs of her hands and arms. Bum scars. She took her suffering straight, without, Harkrider presumed, pills or booze to stifle the rockets of pain firing several times a minute into the heart: the glass of sherry in her left hand had been untouched since a maid had poured it for her. She looked steadily at Harkrider, a little too keenly, as if she found him lacking in substance, a glamorous phantom who was bound to disappoint her.
Martin Vale paced in short erratic bursts of energy, eyes and hands never still. He'd been in his youth a floor trader on Wall Street, and the habits, accentuated in times of stress, were ineradicable. He was of average height and had wide shoulders and a sumptuously full head of hair, dark except for two white waves from each temple spilling back over the ears. His jaw was firm, his eyes small as a sparrow's, giving off gleams of rage with each darting turn of his head.
"It was premeditated murder," he declared to Harkrider.
"How do you know that?"
"They'd been arguing— fighting in public. Karyn wanted to break up with Rich and everyone knew it."
Louise Vale said, with a small confirming nod, "Only a week ago she told me on the phone that she wasn't as happy as she ought to be. Wanted to be. She had a lot of doubts about that boy."
"Were they engaged?"
"No, not officially," Vale said. He needed a cigarette; he slapped at his pockets and then went charging off to a lacquered table and a silver case, scooping it up without breaking stride.
"Was Karyn your only child?"
Louise answered him. "There's Norma. My oldest. She's flying in from Kansas City tonight with Frank. That's her husband." She pressed a wadded linen handkerchief to her mouth, anticipating the hardship of a reunion under such terrible circumstances. The first joints of two of her fingers on the right hand were missing, possibly a consequence of the same fire that had left so many visible scars.
Tommie Harkrider lifted the crystal tumbler of bourbon and spring water from his stomach and sipped. He was an inelegant figure against the muted lemony stripes of the antique sofa. He had the lines of a beached whale. His shoes lacked gloss, his shiny suit he might have purchased second-hand from a subway conductor. His wife trimmed his snowy mane, when she could get him to stay in one place long enough. He had a nose like a baked potato wrapped in crinkly red foil, white eyebrows like limp parachutes, the generous mouth and self-infatuated, introspective eyes of a parkbench philosopher. He was one of the three best criminal lawyers in America, and opulent surroundings, great fortunes, and social prominence didn't impress him. His own income was close to two million a year.
"I made a call to the state's attorney's office in Haden County before I came out here today. Of course they won't have much to say until an indictment is handed down, but that indictment, based on my limited knowledge of the crime and the alleged state of the relationship of Karyn and Richard Devon, is almost certain to be murder in the first degree. The victim's death was the result of a clear-cut intention on the part of the accused to cause that death." His voice seemed loud in the spacious living room, oratorial, although he made no effort to project beyond a normal conversational tone. But it was a very quiet house today.
"Can they go for the death penalty?" Martin Vale asked. He juggled cigarette, lighter, and silver case as he circled in front of the bow window that overlooked a wintry wooded point of land and the white-capped gray surface of Long Island Sound.
"Not in Vermont. Evidence of premeditation, of coldblooded planning on the part of Richard Devon, could enhance the possibility of a life sentence without parole, although traditionally Vermont judges haven't come down that hard on convicted murderers. A more realistic projection would be forty-to-life, with the possibility of parole after about fifteen years. I think a plea bargain, reducing the crime to second-degree murder in exchange for a plea of guilty, is probably out of the question. But it's premature to think about sentencing. The prosecutor will have his hands full merely winning a conviction."
"What?" Vale said. He was suddenly, forbiddingly still; even the smoke from his first hungry puff on the cigarette was motionless in the air. The telephone rang, a faint, musical chiming; neither of the Vales looked at it. All calls were being taken by a relative in another part of the house.
"Devon's attorney will go for and, if he's any good, ought to win acquittal on the grounds that Devon was insane at the time he committed the murder. NGRI, not guilty by reason of insanity."
Louise Vale sat up a little straighter opposite Harkrider. Her shining face was still composed, but there was something unsettling, even ghastly, in the way her right hand clenched the handkerchief, that crippled squeezing to hold back a storm of sorrow and outrage.
"And then what will happen to him?" she asked.
"He'll be remanded to a state institution for the criminally insane and treated; eventually, in all probability, he will be released. According to a report issued a few years ago by the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, which criticized the uses of the insanity plea, persons found not guilty by reason of insanity were confined, on the average, for 238 days post-trial." Harkrider awaited the inevitable reaction, preferring to say nothing about those individuals who are never deemed releasable.
"Eight months!" Martin Vale crossed the room and leaned on the back of his wife's chair; she, not taking her eyes from Harkrider, rolled her head slowly and despairingly between the knuckles of his gripping hands.
"It isn't fair— it isn't fair."
The lawyer grimaced in sympathy. "Nevertheless, the insanity plea is a legitimate tool for the defense, and they will use it; and its use does not always represent a miscarriage of justice. Proving insanity is not a simple task in a court of law. No two psychiatrists have ever agreed upon a precise definition of mental illness." He nipped again at his bourbon. "We can't dismiss the possibility that in fact Devon is mentally ill."
"Or faking it; you have to know Richard to know what I mean." Harkrider raised an eyebrow but didn't comment further. Vale continued, "You'll never convince me he's crazy, but what sort of cynical self-serving bastard would represent him in the first place? There is no doubt that Richard murdered my daughter; for God's sake, Karyn's blood was on his hands, and a half-dozen witnesses saw it!"
Louise gasped, almost inaudibly; her husband looked down at her. Tormented, he backed away, taking the cigarette from his mouth and staring at it as if he were tempted to grind it out in his palm as an act of contrition.
"The boy is factually guilty of the crime, and will be so charged. As for us self-serving bastards, all criminal lawyers defend guilty clients, or it would be a mighty long time between clients; the sad truth is there are few innocent defendants in our courtrooms. The strength of the Anglo-American legal system is founded on the bedrock of inalienable rights: the right to a trial by jury, and the right of anyone accused of a crime to have an adequate defense."
"Would you defend him?" Louise said softly, with only a hint of accusation in her voice.
"I haven't been asked to defend Richard Devon; I haven't been asked anything yet, except my opinions, which I freely give to you."
"Tommie," Martin Vale said, "I want you to represent my daughter. I want the dead to have all the rights of the living. I don't want her forgotten, like that poor girl over in Scarsdale was forgotten while her killer was getting off with a tap on the wrist."
Harkrider nodded; he knew the case referred to, which also had involved two students at Yale. "The People v. Richard Devon will be in the hands of the state's attorney for Haden County, Vermont. Unless I'm specifically invited to assist the prosecution in building its case, an unlikely occurrence, there is nothing I can do."
"Then represent us. Help us. You're the best, Tommie. And I want him punished. I want Richard to get everything he has coming to him under the law. If it's a question of money— "
"It's always a question of money. I'm not thinking of my fee. I doubt that many people outside of the legal profession have any idea of how expensive it is to prepare for a trial in a capital case, particularly when an insanity plea is contemplated. The trial can last for months. Exhaustive investigations are essential, expert testimony must be paid for. The cost to Haden County alone will surely be more than the entire budget for the prosecutor's office for the next five years. But if adequate funds are not made available, the prosecution is likely to lose the case."
"Then how can we help?"
"I can talk to the state's attorney. A young man named Cleves. I know nothing about him personally, but I assume he has ambition and not nearly enough experience to cope with the demands about to be made on him. I shall point out to him how well his career will be served by a conviction, and how ignominious it would be to lose yet another murderer to the insanity plea. I believe he can be persuaded that the work my staff is prepared to do will only enhance the quality of his pretrial preparations, and I will convey my earnest desire not to usurp his limelight. By the time we have finished our talk I'm confident the two of us will have achieved a high comfort level." Harkrider chuckled quietly and drained the rest of the drink in his glass, a signal that their time was up.
"When can you start?" Martin Vale asked him.
"I'll just have a look at my calendar, make some adjustments. And I'll be in Haden County the first of next week."
They accompanied him to the front door. Harkrider's limousine was waiting in the drive. It was a long silver and midnight blue Cadillac with a boomerang antenna mounted on the trunk lid, windows like the spectacles of the blind. Tommie Harkrider had been nineteen and a half minutes with the Vales. They had reacted just as he had intended, providing him with a legitimate means of entree. He had no great interest in the outcome of the Devon murder case, but it was a case he had been seeking for many years. All of the elements, including the small-town setting of the upcoming trial, were ideal. Justice, with his invaluable assistance, not only would be done but would be exalted if his modest proposals were accepted. And he was confident they would be. He was, in addition to being a master of the big game, the hotly publicized trial, expert at directing the media to achieve his purposes.
"God bless you," Louise Vale murmured, already totally won over.
Thomas Horatio Harkrider vigorously embraced both of the grieving parents, taller by a head than either of them, his white hair flowing with the wind, a serene smile on his face as they sobbed helplessly in his arms.
38
After twice driving past the house in which generations of Courdewayes had lived, and seeing very little of it from the road, Conor decided against looking up Avery Myatt, the caretaker, and trying to persuade Myatt to open the house for him. He had no official status, for one thing, and no rational reason for wanting to get inside. Rich's half-delirious assertions that something terrifying had happened to him there did not justify an intrusion into the house, even if it was presently unoccupied. But Conor was determined to gain entry, by force if necessary, although he knew that would leave him open to charges of housebreaking.
The elderly postal clerk in Ripington Four Corners had helped Conor to make up his mind, after the clerk had taken a long look at the photo of Rich that Conor carried in his wallet.
I remember him. Come in just before the storm hit, it was Thursday last. Had a lot of questions about the Courdewayes— Leslie in particular. Long gone from here, I told him. Say he's your brother? You don't look much alike.
We're half brothers, actually.
That a fact? How is it you're lookin' for him? Is he miss in'?
No. I know where he is.
Conor found a parking place for his Lincoln in front of a combination gas station and grocery about half a mile from the house. He bought a Diet Pepsi to slake his thirst and walked back along the side of the road, where the snow had receded from saltings and was frozen in sharp sculpted tiers; he found the footing treacherous. The sun on his brow dazzled him to the point of headache.
