Jackie asked me to toss her the cell phone.
“Can I call him now?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Who’s ‘him’?” Milhouser demanded.
“Joe Sullivan. Southampton Town detective,” said Jackie, punching in the number. “He’ll want to get these statements while they’re nice and fresh.”
“Aw, Christ,” said Milhouser, like he’d just spilled a cup of coffee in his lap.
We all listened to Jackie talk to Sullivan. Milhouser made a few attempts to stride out of there, but Jackie just snapped her fingers at him without looking up from the phone and he went back to sitting on the sawhorses.
In the subsequent silence, I remembered one more thing to ask Zack.
“How’d you get the drawing to the DEC?”
He smiled a tired smile.
“While the two of them were yelling at each other over Robbie’s body. I ran like hell. Getty even chased after me, but I have a sports car and he has a big pickup truck. Milhouser had a threatening message at my office waiting for me. But that was unnecessary. We were back where we were at East End Savings. Everybody had hooks in everybody else. Mutually assured destruction.”
Of course I knew about the BMW. Zack had roared by me on Bay Edge Drive that night while I was jogging. He was on his way to Robbie’s house. When I got there his car was in the driveway parked next to a pair of pickups. I’d gone that way on a hunch that somebody’d be there. Maybe I could prove they’d torched Amanda’s house while the act was still fresh. But seeing all the cars, I didn’t like the odds. I was afraid to get into it. Afraid for my head. So I ran on by, and headed south up to Noyac Road.
If I’d stopped maybe I’d be the one dead and Robbie would have had the murder charge. Or maybe I could have saved him and myself in the bargain. I’m not big on that kind of speculation, but it was something I thought I’d have to live with for a while before I’d know how I felt about it.
I felt a little bad about lying to everybody about being there, and worse about the old lady who ID’d me, but I hadn’t seen any good in admitting the truth, and probably never would.
“So as soon as I could, I drove the drawing up to Albany,” said Zack, “and after extracting a promise of anonymity, ostensibly to protect my ‘source,’ I handed it over to the State’s Attorney. At least I got one thing off my conscience. I’m glad they didn’t find anything. It makes it that much better.”
I wanted to say his conscience seemed okay with letting me hang for something I didn’t do, but I had to keep him on my side. There was still a long legal road ahead.
——
While we waited for Sullivan, Jackie advised them all on what she’d do if she were them, free of charge. By the time the big cop walked into the sunroom with Will Ervin and another uniform, Patrick was on his feet and the incriminating two-by-four back outside.
Milhouser still looked indignant, even bewildered. I wondered if he’d convinced himself of his own innocence, the same brain that had reacted with murderous rage now settling into a soothing state of denial.
I’d have to ask Rosaline.
Sullivan decided the best thing was to bring everybody to the hospital so they could check out Patrick’s arm, then take statements there or head over to the HQ in Hampton Bays. He called ahead to Ross while Ervin and the other cops led Zack, Patrick and Milhouser out to their cruisers.
Jackie said we’d be right behind. But when I got outside I plopped down on the muddy ground, then lay back, spread my arms and legs, and looked up at the starry sky through the spring leaves. Jackie squatted next to me.
“You all right?”
“I think so,” I said. I took a deep gulp of air into my lungs and closed my eyes.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” said Jackie.
“What?”
“Put me in a state of abject terror for weeks, thinking I’m going to make a mistake that puts my friend in jail for the rest of his life, then hide information from me, which I explicitly asked you not to do, goddammit.”
“I wasn’t sure. Honestly. There was another thread I had to tie off.”
“How long have you known it was Milhouser?”
“About fifteen minutes,” I said.
“Get out of here.”
I sat up and looked at her.
“It was obvious one of them had burned down Amanda’s project. But I never believed it was Robbie. Not given the way he was looking at Amanda that night at the restaurant. Despite all the bluster, there was something different in his eyes. The hope of forgiveness.”
“For what?”
“Robbie had a lot of natural bully in him, but his stepfather’s ridicule and brutality fueled the flames. The only parent he had and all he ever got was contempt. I knew that old bastard was the pivot point the day we went to see him. He said all the right things about his boy, but his eyes, like Robbie’s, said something different. It wasn’t grief, it was triumph. That and the booties.”
“Huh?”
“He has a floor-finishing business. Between coats of urethane floor guys’ll wear booties so they don’t mar the fresh finish. Same thing the arsonists wore when they torched Amanda’s house. A job in every way intended to send a signal. That takes the mind of a planner, a schemer, and someone unburdened by conscience. People have written Jeff Milhouser off as a basic screw-up, but he’s worse than that. He’s a basic sociopath. I thought his history might give up something I could use to trace back to Robbie’s death. And it did, in the form of Zack Horowitz.”
“How the hell did Roy get in the act?”
“I never understood why he put the brakes on developing Amanda’s property after the Town ordered an extensive environmental study. He said it was because of the notification requirements, which was legitimate enough, since all that attention could have blown the scam. But those cellars made the study itself the real worry. He didn’t even share the information with his partner Bob Sobol, who was an engineer. He’d have known they could be filled with hazardous waste. Roy’s another all-star schemer. He had the presence of mind to keep that drawing to himself, and then put it someplace safe—with Zack Horowitz—where it could be deployed at some future date.”
“I still don’t get it.”
I leaned up on my elbow.
“That’s because you’re a good person. You don’t think like they do. Roy has had plenty of time to nurse his bitterness. Jeff Milhouser was the perfect outside partner. Roy’s natural ally. And Patrick the ideal go-between. Roy thought he could manipulate his way back into Amanda’s project, sort of a silent partner, pick up a piece of the action. Wouldn’t that be a kick. But if all he managed was to wreak a little havoc and revenge on me and Amanda, that’d be fine.”
Jackie was quiet for a moment.
“Don’t get mad at me,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“When I ask you something.”
“Okay,” I said, lying flat on the ground again.
“You don’t ever wonder about Amanda?”
“All the time.”
“And?”
“A priest once told me faith was believing in something even when—especially when—all the evidence pointed in the opposite direction.”
“You know what that makes you?”
“A recovering empiricist?”
“I could list a few more things,” she said, standing and holding out her hand so she could pull me to my feet. Then we put Robbie’s monument at our backs and followed Sullivan over to the hospital, where Markham determined Patrick’s arm was just badly bruised. But he wanted to keep him there overnight for observation.
