ones. She’d observed him participating in them during his lunch hour. She suggested we find someone to engage him in a male cyber romance. All she had to do was catch him at it in his office one time and she’d testify against him. Faced with public humiliation and shame, she felt sure Colin would fold his tent the same way her friend’s boss had.” Babette took a deep breath, swiping at the perspiration on her face with her towel. “And that’s the whole dirty, rotten little plan-Melanie would keep her job, Colin would lose his, and Dorset would get its new school.”
“Honey, I don’t believe this!” Bruce protested, aghast.
Again Des found herself wondering whether his reaction was strictly for their benefit.
“This whole scheme was Melanie Zide’s idea?” Soave demanded, glaring at Babette Leanse accusingly. “You had nothing to do with it?”
Babette lowered her eyes. “I-I had the power to tell her no. And I didn’t.”
“It means that much to you?” Des said to her.
Babette looked at her blankly. “What does, trooper?”
“The school. It’s worth ruining a man’s life just for the sake of a new building?”
“Nothing is more important than our children’s well-being,” Babette replied with total conviction. “Colin was too bound up in local tradition to see that.”
“And so you flattened him,” Des said.
“Yes,” she admitted quietly.
“The new school’s also pretty important to the future of The Aerie, am I right?”
“One’s got nothing to do with the other,” Bruce argued hastily. “Not a thing.”
“Really? That’s not what I’m hearing,” Des said.
“Why, what are you hearing?” he demanded.
“That you’d like to build a New Age retirement village on three thousand acres of prime farmland and forest adjacent to the river,” she replied. “That in order to lock up zoning and wetlands approval you’ve paid to play by donating the land and the design plans for this new school that you insist the town needs, even though a lot of people don’t happen to agree with you. From where I sit, Mr. Leanse, you’re the one who needs the new school.”
“Our children need the new school,” Babette insisted. “Center School is unhealthy.”
“And there’s no quid pro quo,” Bruce said vehemently. “That’s a lie. A vicious, evil lie. People repeat it often enough, they think it becomes the truth. It doesn’t. It’s still a damned lie!”
God, they were cagey, Des reflected. From their lips it was impossible to tell truth from spin. Perhaps the two were one and the same to people such as these. Perhaps the whole cyber-romance scheme had been Babette’s idea, not Melanie’s. It wasn’t as if Melanie were around anymore to dispute her version of the facts.
“I-I didn’t want Bruce to know about Colin,” Babette spoke softly. “I wanted this to be my own contribution. To accomplish something on my own.”
“You accomplished something, all right,” Soave said to her coldly. “You placed yourself right in the middle of two murders.”
“And a suicide attempt,” Des added. “Let’s not forget that.”
“I shouldn’t have let it happen.” Babette’s eyes were beginning to shimmer, as if she might cry. “It was sneaky and wrong, just wrong. And I am deeply ashamed. But Colin did willingly engage in that pornographic online relationship. And he did leave smutty material on his screen for Melanie to see. That was his own doing. No one held a gun to his head. If he had behaved appropriately, then he would have had nothing to fear. He’d-” She broke off, her voice quavering. “Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself. But it was an awful thing to do to someone, and I know it. I could have stopped it from happening, and I didn’t. And now I will have to accept the consequences.”
Soave stared at her in disapproving silence. “Who shot Melanie Zide, Mrs. Leanse?”
“I have no idea who, Lieutenant,” she replied. “Or why. Possibly Melanie got greedy. It was certainly like her to get greedy.”
“Forgive me if I sound dense,” Bruce cut in, running a hand through his short, spiky hair. “But there’s one thing I’m still not getting…”
“Which is what, Mr. Leanse?” Soave asked him.
“This online lover of Colin’s,” he said slowly. “This Cutter fellow-just exactly who the hell is he?”
CHAPTER 13
There was so much sobbing coming from the other end of the phone that at first Mitch couldn’t even tell who the caller was. When he finally recognized the voice he laid down his fork and said, “Slow down, Takai. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Father!” she cried out. “I-I don’t know what to do or who to
… I’m so sorry to bother you, but I-”
“It’s okay, I’m not doing anything special.” In truth, he was busy wolfing down a third helping of Des’s remarkable Hoppin’ John. Des was still on the job. Bella had headed back to the Frederick House for the night and the Deacon had gone home. So had the helicopters that had been circling overhead for the past two hours, making him feel as if he were living in a war zone. “Just tell me what’s happened-is Hangtown all right?”
“No, he is not all right! He’s in one of his drunken rages. Totally out of control. And they’re not releasing Jim until the morning and I’m all by myself and-”
“Wait, isn’t there still a trooper stationed there?”
“He’s parked way down at the gate to keep the damned press out. There’s no one here besides me. And I just can’t handle him. H-he’s really scaring me, Mitch. I’ve never seen him this bad. Could you
…?”
“Don’t say another word. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He went right out the door into the darkness, jumped into his pickup and headed over the wooden causeway to Peck Point. It had gotten windy out, and a cold drizzle was beginning to fall. A couple of TV news reporters from Hartford were still huddled under bright lights at the gate, trying to hold on to their hairdos as they filed their stories on Melanie Zide’s murder for the eleven-o’clock news. He steamed right past them and got onto the Old Shore Road and floored it, heading north with his brights and wipers on.
By the time he turned off of Route 156 onto Old Ferry Road the drizzle had become a hard, steady rain. There was no press corps clustered at the foot of Hangtown’s private drive at this hour. Only the one state police cruiser that Takai had mentioned, which sat there blocking the entrance to the drive, its lights on, its engine running, a lone trooper behind the wheel. Mitch pulled up and waited but the trooper wouldn’t budge from his nice dry ride, so Mitch had to get out and slog through the rain with his head down to tell him that Takai was expecting him. The trooper didn’t seem the least bit interested. He didn’t even roll down his window when Mitch tapped on it. Asleep. The big oaf was asleep.
Annoyed, Mitch yanked open the guy’s door and-
Out he tumbled, his weight bowling Mitch over onto the wet ground underneath him, the trooper staring right down at him with half of his head blown off and a look of blind terror on what was left of his face.
Mitch let out a strangled cry and scrambled out from under him, shuddering with revulsion. Now he was seeing blood and more blood in the light of his truck’s beams. Some of it had gotten on him. And there was broken glass all over the dead man and the seat and the dashboard. Whoever shot him had fired right through the passenger-side window.
Mitch stood frozen there, overcome by the shock and the horror of it. Briefly, he thought he might pass out. Dazed, he stumbled blindly away… And then… And then he started running, slipping and sliding on the wet leaves, falling, getting back up. Up the long, twisting dirt drive he ran in the black of night, hearing himself panting, his footsteps chunking heavily. Mitch ran and he ran. Past the totem poles made of personal computers, alongside the meadow filled with car parts, around the big bend toward Wendell Frye’s hot pink house. The place was ablaze with lights. Every light in every window was on. Mitch ran and he ran, staggering to a halt only when he’d reached Moose’s old Land Rover, which was parked right out front.
He fell against it, gulping for breath, his chest aching, when suddenly Sam came lunging furiously at him from
