‘They’re not to everyone’s taste,’ he said.
‘They certainly make a statement,’ I replied, the statement being ‘I killed him, Officer, and spread his guts on a canvas.’
‘They’re the only things in and of this house that have increased in value over the last couple of years. Everything else has tanked.’
‘And you an accountant. I thought you’d be better prepared for the recession.’
‘I suppose it’s like doctors trying to diagnose their own ailments. It’s easier to find the flaws in others than to figure out what’s wrong with yourself. Can I offer you a drink, or coffee?’
‘Nothing, thanks.’
I took in the books on the shelf. They were mostly non fiction, with an emphasis on European history.
‘Are you a frustrated historian?’ I asked.
‘It’s an escape from what I do for a living. I’m curious about strategy and leadership. To be honest, I don’t see many effective examples of either in the business world. Please, sit.’
I headed for the couch that faced the TV, but he looked flustered and suggested that I take one of the armchairs instead, then waited until I was seated before lowering himself into his own chair. It was the only item of furniture that showed any real sign of use. I could see the indentations of cups and glasses on the right arm, and a slight darkening of the fabric where Haight’s head had rested over the years.
For a couple of moments, neither of us spoke. I had the uncomfortable sense of being in the presence of someone who had recently been bereaved. The house spoke of absence, but I couldn’t tell whether I was just picking up on its relative lack of character or something deeper. Because, of course, nobody really lived here; Randall Haight owned it and put bad art on its walls, but Randall Haight was an artificial creation. Perhaps, at times, William Lagenheimer moved through its rooms, but William Lagenheimer didn’t exist either. He had disappeared from the world, and was now just a memory.
And all the time I was aware of Haight’s nervousness, although he tried to conceal it. His hands shook, and when he clasped his fingers to stop their movement the tension merely passed on to his right foot, which began to tap on the rug. I supposed that if I had once killed a child, and now felt that I was being targeted in the aftermath of another child’s disappearance, I would be nervous too.
Haight passed me a typed list of names detailing those individuals for whom he had recently begun to act as an accountant, and any new arrivals to Pastor’s Bay. I glanced at it, then put it aside. The names meant nothing to me for now.
‘What is it that you’ve been sent, Mr. Haight?’ I asked.
He swallowed hard, and shifted a battered art volume from the coffee table between us. Beneath it lay another brown cushioned mailer with a printed address label.
‘There was a disc. I’ve left it in my laptop so that you can see it, although it’s not the worst of what I found.’
He pushed the envelope toward me with his fingertips. I pried it open with the point of my pen so as not to contaminate it any further should it be required as evidence at some point. Inside I could see pieces of paper of various sizes, most of them glossy. They looked like more photographic prints.
‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ I said.
I went to my car and removed a box of disposable plastic gloves from the trunk. Haight hadn’t moved while I was gone. The light in the room changed slightly as the clouds moved outside, and I realized how ashen he was. He also appeared to be on the verge of tears.
I reached into the envelope and removed the images. They were all of a similar nature, and all featured young girls, none of them older than fourteen or fifteen, and some much younger than that. They had been photographed naked on beds, and on carpets, and on bare floors. Some of them were trying to smile. Most of them weren’t. The photographic paper was standard Kodak. It was possible that a computer expert might be able to tell the type of printer from which the images came, but that would be useful only in the event of a prosecution, assuming the individual responsible for creating the photos was found with the printer in his possession.
‘I don’t like that kind of thing,’ said Haight. ‘I’m straight, but they’re just children. I don’t want to look at naked children.’
There it was once again: that primness, that need to reassure the listener that the killing of a young girl had been a temporary deviation. He had not carried teenage desires for young girls into adult life. He was a normal man, with normal sexual inclinations.
‘And the disc?’ I said.
‘It arrived in the same envelope, wrapped in tissue.’
His laptop was on the floor beside his chair, already powered up and on sleep. Seconds later, I was looking at an image of an old barn door, but not the same one as last time. This door was painted a bright red. As the camera drew nearer, a gloved hand reached out and pulled open the door. The interior was dark until the camera light clicked on. There was straw on the stone floor, and I caught glimpses of empty cattle pens on either side.
The camera stopped midway down the barn’s central aisle and turned to the operator’s right. On the floor of one of the pens a set of girl’s clothing was laid out: a white blouse, a red-and-black checked skirt, white stockings, and black shoes. Their positions roughly corresponded to the dimensions of a girl’s body, the way a parent might lay out a day’s outfit for a young child, but they also gave the uncomfortable impression that the wearer had somehow disappeared, vanishing in an instant, drawn into the void as she was lying in place in the barn, staring up at wood, and cobwebs, and pigeons or doves, for I could now hear the birds cooing softly in the background.
The screen went dark. That was all.
‘What was Selina Day wearing when she died, Mr. Haight?’
He took a moment to answer.
‘A white blouse, a red-and-black checked skirt, white stockings, black shoes.’
The details of her attire would probably have been included in the newspaper reports of the case. Even if they weren’t, they would have been known in the area, given that she had died in her uniform. Either way, it wouldn’t have been difficult for someone to put together a facsimile of what she had been wearing simply by doing a little research. Specialist local knowledge would not have been required.
‘You know, I think I will have a cup of coffee after all,’ I said.
He asked me how I took it, and I asked for milk, no sugar. While he was in the kitchen, I watched the video again, trying to find any clue to the location of the barn that I might have missed: a feed bag from a local supplier, a scrap of paper with an address that could be enlarged, anything at all, but there was nothing. The barn was a stage set with an absent player.
Haight returned with my coffee, and what smelled like a mint tea for himself.
‘Tell me about Lonny Midas, Mr. Haight,’ I said.
Haight sipped his tea. He did so carefully, even daintily. His movements were studiedly effeminate. In everything that I had seen him do so far, he seemed to be trying to communicate the impression that he was weak, inconsequential, and posed no threat. He was a man who was doing his best to fade into the background so as not to attract the attention of others, yet not so much that his desire to blend in would become overpowering, and thus mark him out. He was a youthful predator turned old prey.
Because in all that followed, in all that he told me that afternoon, the fact remained that he and Lonny Midas had acted together in stalking, and then killing, Selina Day. Midas might have been the instigator, but Haight had been beside him right until the end.
‘Lonny wasn’t a bad kid,’ said Haight. ‘People said that he was, but he wasn’t, not really. His mom and dad were old when they had him. Well, I say “old,” but I mean that his mom was in her late thirties and his father in his late forties. His brother, Jerry, was a decade older than him, but I don’t recall much about him. He’d left home by the time – well, by the time all the bad stuff happened. Lonny’s mom and dad weren’t just old, though; they were old-fashioned. His dad had wanted to be a preacher, but I don’t think he was smart enough. Not that you have to be smart to be a preacher, not really, but you need to be able to bring folk along with you, to convince them that you’re worth following and listening to, and Lonny’s father didn’t have that touch with ordinary people. Instead, he worked in a warehouse, and read his Bible in the evenings. Lonny’s mom was always in the background cooking or cleaning or sewing. She doted on Lonny, though. I guess with her older boy gone, and her husband lost in the Good Book, Lonny was all she had left, and she gave him the kind of love and affection that I think she craved for herself. In that way, she was a lot like my mother, though she took what we did a lot harder and was less forgiving. Had she
