“Steve Anderson-the a.d.a. who questioned you-and Pickerings court-appointed attorney are probably horse-trading even as we speak.
Pickering’s guy will be saying he might be able to get his client-the thought of Charlie Pickering being an’Vone’s client, for anything, sort of blows my mind, by the way-to plead out to second-degree assault. Anderson will say the time has come to put Pickering away for good and he’s going for attempted murder.
Pickering’s lawyer will pretend to be shocked, and tomorrow your buddy is going to be charged with first-degree assault with a deadly weapon and bound over for trial. Then, possibly in December but more likely early next year, you’ll be called as the star witness.”
“Bail?”
“It’ll probably be set in the forty-thousand-dollar range. You can get out on ten percent if the rest can be secured in event of flight, but Charlie Pickering doesn’t have a house, a car, or even a Timer watch. In the end, he’s liable to go back to Juniper Hill, but that’s really not the object of the game. We’re going to be able to keep him off the street for quite awhile this time, and with people like Charlie, that’s the object of the game.”
“Any chance The Friends of Life might go his bail?”
“Nah. Ed Deepneau spent a lot of last week with him, the two of them drinking coffee in the Bagel Shop. I imagine Ed was giving Charlie the lowdown on the Centurions and the King of Diamonds-”
“Crimson King is what Ed-”
“Whatever,” Leydecker agreed, waving a hand. “But most of all I imagine he spent the time explaining how you were the devil’s right hand man and how only a smart, brave, and dedicated fellow like Charlie Pickering could take you out of the picture.”
“You make him sound like such a calculating shit,” Ralph said.
He was remembering the Ed Deepneau he’d played chess with before Carolyn had fallen ill. That Ed had been an intelligent, wellspoken, civilized man with a deep capacity for kindness. Ralph still found it all but impossible to reconcile that Ed with the one he’d first glimpsed in July of 1992. He had come to think of the more recent arrival as “rooster Ed.”
“Not just a calculating shit, a dangerous calculating shit,” Leydecker said. “For him Charlie was just a tool, like a paring knife you’d use to peel an apple with. If the blade snaps off a paring knife, you don’t run to the knife-grinder’s to get a new one put on; that’s too much trouble. You toss it in the wastebasket and get a new paring knife instead. That’s the way guys like Ed treat guys like Charlie, and since Ed is The Friends of Life-for the time being, at least-I don’t think you have to worry about Charlie making bail.
In the next few days, he’s going to be lonelier than a Maytag repairman. Okay?”
“Okay,” Ralph said. He was a little appalled to realize he felt sorry for Pickering. “I want to thank you for keeping my name out of the paper, too… if you were the one who did it, that is.”
There had been a brief mention of the incident in the Derry News’s Police Beat column, but it said only that Charles H. Pickering had been arrested on “a weapons charge” at the Derry Public Library.
“Sometimes we ask them for a favor, sometimes they ask us for “one,” Leydecker said, standing up. “It’s how things work in the real world. If the nuts in The Friends of Life and the prigs in The Friends of WomanCare ever discover that, my job is going to get a lot easier.”
Ralph plucked the rolled-up Dumbo poster from the wastebasket, then stood up on his side of Leydecker’s desk. “Could I have this?
I know a little girl who might really like it, in a year or so.”
Leydecker held out his hands expansively. “Be my guest-think of it as a little premium for being a good citizen. just don’t ask for my crotchless panties.”
Ralph laughed. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
“Seriously, I appreciate you coming in. Thanks, Ralph.”
“No problem.” He reached across the desk, shook Leydecker’s hand, then headed for the door. He felt absurdly like Lieutenant Columbo on TV-all he needed was the cigar and the ratty trench coat. He put his hand on the knob, then paused and turned back.
“Can I ask you about something totally unrelated to Charlie Pickering?”
“Fire away.”
“This morning in the Red Apple Store I heard that Mrs. Locher, my neighbor up the street, died in the night. Nothing so surprising about that; she had emphysema, But there are police-line tapes up between the sidewalk and her front yard, plus a sign on the door saying the site has been sealed by the Derry P,D. Do you know what it’s about?”
Leydecker looked at him so long and hard that Ralph would have felt acutely uncomfortable… if not for the man’s aura. There was nothing in it which communicated suspicion.
God, Ralph, you’re taking these things a little too seriously aren’t you?
Well, maybe yes and maybe no. Either way he was glad that the green flickers at the edges of Leydecker’s aura had not reappeared, “Why are you looking at me that way?” Ralph asked. “If I presumed or spoke out of turn, I’m sorry.”
“Not at all,” Leydecker said. “It’s a little weird, that’s all.
If I tell you about it, can you keep it quiet?”
“Yes.”
“It’s your downstairs tenant I’m chiefly worried about.
When the word discretion is mentioned, it’s not the Prof I think of.”
Ralph laughed heartily. “I won’t say a word to him-SCOut’s Honor-but it’s interesting you’d mention him; Bill vent to school with Mrs. Locher, way back when. Grammar school.”
“Man, I can’t imagine the Prof in grammar school,” Leydecker said.
“Can you?”
“Sort of,” Ralph said, but the picture which rose in his mind was an exceedingly peculiar one: Bill McGovern looking like a cross between Little Lord Fauntleroy and Tom Sawyer in a pair of knickers, long white socks… and a Panama hat.
“We’re not sure what happened to Mrs. Locher,” Leydecker said.
“What we do know is that shortly after three a.m 911 logged an anonymous call from someone-a male-who claimed to have just seen two men, one carrying a pair of scissors, come out of Mrs. Locher’s house.”
“She was killed?” Ralph exclaimed, realizing two things simultaneously: that he sounded more believable than he ever would have expected, and that he had just crossed a bridge. He hadn’t burned it behind him-not yet, anyway-but he would not be able to go back to the other side without a lot of explanations.
Leydecker turned his hands palms-up and shrugged. “If she was, it wasn’t with a pair of scissors or any other sharp object. There wasn’t a mark on her.”
That, at least, was something of a relief.
“On the other hand, it’s possible to scare someone to deathespecially someone who’s old and sick-during the commission of a crime,” Leydecker said. “Anyway, this’ll be easier to explain if you let me just tell you what I know. It won’t take long, believe me.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
“Want to hear something funny? The first person I thought of when I looked over the 911 call-sheet was you.”
“Because of the insomnia, right?” Ralph asked. His voice was steady.
“That and the fact that the caller claimed to have seen these men from his living room. Your living room looks out on the Avenue, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Uh-huh. I even thought of listening to the tape, then I remembered that you were coming in today… and that you’re sleeping through again. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Without an instant of pause or consideration, Ralph set fire to the bridge he had just crossed. “Well, I’m not sleeping like I did when I was sixteen and working two after-school jobs, I won’t kid ’OLI about that, but if I was the guy who called 911 last night, I did it in my sleep.”
“Exactly what I figured. Besides, if you saw something a little offkilter on the street, why would you make the call anonymously?”
“I don’t know,” Ralph said, and thought, But suppose it tta.v a little more than off-kilter, John? Suppose it was completely unbelievable?
“Me, neither,” Leydecker said. “Your place has a view of Harris Avenue, yes, but so do about three dozen others… and just because the guy who made the call said he was inside, that doesn’t mean he really was, does it?”
“I guess not. There’s a pay-phone outside the Red Apple he could have called from, plus one outside the liquor store. A couple in Strawford Park, too, if they work.”
“Actually there are four in the park, and they all work. We checked.”
“Why would he lie about where he was calling from?”
“The most likely reason is because he was lying about the rest of what he had to say, too, Anyway, Donna Hagen said the guy sounded very young and sure of himself.” The words were barely out of his mouth before Leydecker winced and put a hand on top of his head. “That didn’t come out just the way I meant it, Ralph.
Sorry.”
“It’s okay-the idea that I sound like an old fart on a pension is not exactly a new concept to me. I am an old fart on a pension.
Go on.”
“Chris Nell was the responding officer-first on the scene, Do you remember him from the day we arrested Ed?”
“I remember the name.”
“Uh-huh. Steve Utterback was the responding detective and the O.I.C-officer in charge. He’s a good man.”
The guy ’ the watchcap, Ralph thought.
“The lady was dead in bed, but there was no sign of violence.
Nothing obvious taken, either, although old ladies like May Locher aren’t usually into a lot of real hockable stuff-no VCR, no big fancy stereo, nothing like that. She did have one of those Bose Waves, though, and two or three pretty nice pieces of jewelry. This is not to say that there wasn’t other jewelry as nice or nicer, but-”
“But why would a burglar take some and not all?”
“Exactly. What’s more interesting in this case is that the front door-the one the 911 caller said he saw the two men coming out of-was locked from the inside. Not just a spring-lock, either; there was a thumb-bolt and a chain. Same with the back door, by the way.
So if the 911 caller was on the up-and-up, and if May Locher was dead when the two guys left, who locked the doors?”
