Harland, in the midst of measuring up another putt, freezes in place. This is his way of showing offense. He decides what, and when, to discuss topics. He returns his focus to the ball and taps it straight into the hole, which proceeds to spit it back out and off to the right. “There,” he says. “I’m not keeping my wrist straight.” He takes a break from the putting and looks at me for the first time, as if finally attending to an annoying child.
He is wearing a bright blue shirt, open at the collar, with immaculate slacks, and caramel loafers polished to a shine. His sport coat, matching his shoes, is hanging on the door.
“While you kept me waiting,” he says, “I had the chance to review some recent invoices. I see for the month of April, I paid your firm over 1.2 million dollars in fees.”
That sounds about right.
“I take it,” he says, “you enjoy being my lawyer.”
I don’t respond.
“I take it you’d like to continue being my lawyer.”
I open my hands. “Harland.”
“I just want to know who I’m speaking to, Counselor.” He places the putter in the small stand and puts on his sport coat. “Am I talking to someone working for the police or am I talking to my lawyer?”
I take a moment with that. A guy with his kind of money, it’s always an implied threat. But he’s never said it before.
“I didn’t realize I’d have to choose,” I say.
“And if you did?”
“I’m a lawyer, not a cop.” I’m too stubborn to entirely capitulate, but I gave him what he wanted.
The smug expression returns. Harland always gets his way.
“Good,” he says. “Then we can talk.” He moves past me. I follow him down the hall to his office.
A DOCTOR EMERGES FROM Brandon Mitchum’s room and tells McDermott and Stoletti that the patient is ready for a short interview. McDermott is on his cell phone, a call he just got from the CAT unit.
“Looks like we got some latents off the door, Mike,” the lab tells him.
McDermott’s heart does a leap. A break-maybe. Best thing they’ve had yet.
And just like Riley predicted.
“Okay, no one goes home until we’ve run them.” McDermott punches out his cell phone before he can hear the groan on the other end. He gives Stoletti the good news. “Finally, we catch some damn luck.”
Brandon Mitchum is in a hospital bed, awake but sedated. His face is heavily wrapped, but his cloudy eyes, peeking over the bandage, stare at the photograph of the man standing in the background behind Harland Bentley.
It only takes a beat, looking at the photo, before Mitchum inhales sharply. That’s as good as an identification.
“He said he was a cop,” Brandon says, handing back the photograph. “He had a badge. Said-said he wanted to talk about Evelyn…”
The sedatives are doing their work. Good, for his sake, but bad for McDermott. He reaches for Brandon and touches his shoulder. He needs this kid tonight, not tomorrow.
“I didn’t want to let him in,” Mitchum continues. “He sort of forced his way in.”
Right. Put his hand on the door. Thus, the fingerprints.
Brandon asks, “Evelyn’s dead? Was that part true?”
Stoletti answers. “She was murdered, yes.”
“Ohhh…” Mitchum’s eyes close. “And it was this guy?”
“We think so, yeah.”
His eyes still closed, Mitchum swallows hard, nods his head. “I was next. I could tell.”
“We need to know what happened, Brandon. Hard as that may be.”
“I know.” His eyes open, turn toward the window. “Guy was a freak.”
“Start at the beginning,” McDermott says. “He says he’s a cop. Comes up. You let him in-”
“Before I knew it, he put that blade against my throat and pushed himself in. He got me”-his voice halts-“on the floor. He-God, the guy was, like, crazy. He started talking, like, almost gibberish. He said my name over and over. ‘Brandon, Brandon, Brandon.’ Then it‘s, ‘Tell me what you told her, tell me what you told her.’ He knew I’d talked to Evelyn.”
Brandon shakes his head absently. McDermott is suddenly glad for the sedative. “You’re doing great,” he tries.
“He started with the blade.” His hand reaches to a spot on his hospital gown around the rib cage. “He stuck it in pretty good. Y‘know, it wasn’t gonna kill me. It just hurt.”
“Right. Sure.”
“I told the guy, Evelyn just wanted to know about Cassie and Ellie and Gwendolyn.”
Brandon doesn’t respond, lost in the nightmare. “So he goes, ‘Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn.’ He gets all excited. ‘What about Gwendolyn? What about Gwendolyn?’ Then he goes again with the blade.” Brandon slashes his fingers diagonally across his chest. “I yelled out but his hand was over my mouth. He’d do that. He had one hand on my throat, but before he’d cut me he’d cover my mouth.”
McDermott thinks about what Riley said when he struggled with the offender-the guy knew what he was doing. He’d done it before, too. He managed to torture both Fred Ciancio and Evelyn Pendry in what appears to have been relative quiet. That’s not easy to do.
“So, then I told him what I told Evelyn about Gwen. I told him about the fight.”
“The fight.”
“Yeah, back during finals that year-y‘know, late May, early June of that year-a couple of weeks before the murders. Gwendolyn came into town. Y’know, she’d do that. She’d pop in from Europe, or the Caribbean, or wherever, and she’d party with Cassie and Ellie. Anyway, Cassie and Gwen, they didn’t exactly get along. They were so different. Gwen was, like-aggressive, I guess. Kind of harsh, y‘know? But, okay, so Cassie and Gwen had some monster fight, like, a few days before exams started. It was one of those things, we were-well, we’d been-we weren’t necessarily sober, I guess-”
“I don’t care about that, Brandon. You guys were, what, stoned? Wired?”
He nods. “We’d been doing some blow. So, we’re at the house, and it’s me, Cassie, Ellie, and Gwen. It‘s, like, three in the morning, we’ve been out, and now we’re back at the house-”
“House. What house?”
“Oh. Gwendolyn’s house. Her mother’s house, which was now all hers. Y‘know, her mom died in a car crash a few years earlier. I think Mrs. Bentley moved in there, after the divorce. But
