I had her attention now, and I knew when to shut up.
I folded my hands and watched Connie Kerr think it all through, how she could go from being a trespasser to being a murder suspect with a movie star willing to testify against her.
“I did see someone in the garden,” she blurted out.
“Don’t make anything up,” Conklin said.
“It’s true. I spied on the garden. It’s black as a damned soul in there at night, but every once in a silver moon, I’d see someone doing nighttime gardening — with a shovel. It looked more like a shadow than an actual person. The shadow would bury something, then put down a rock to mark the spot.”
Tears spurted, made tracks down her cheeks.
“I did suspect foul play, but I couldn’t tell anyone. I was afraid Harry would put me out on the street. Although I did want to know what was buried under those stones.
“That’s why I did what I did.”
“What did you do exactly?” Conklin asked.
“One night, when the lights were out in the house… Excuse me, I need to blow my nose.”
I had a packet of tissues in my jacket pocket; I gave them to Connie, waited for her to speak again.
“I took my hammer and went around to the front gate and I broke the lock,” she said. “Mercy. That’s breaking and entering.”
Conklin and I just kept up a steady gaze.
“I knew where the gardener kept his tools,” Connie said. “So I went around back to where the walls meet and there’s the toolshed. It wasn’t locked.”
“Okay.”
“I borrowed a shovel and gardening gloves and went to one of the stones — and I dug a hole. I didn’t have to go very deep.
“I found that old skull, and when I brushed it off, an idea came to me. That’s how it happens when you write, you know. Sometimes an idea just arrives fully dressed when you didn’t even know it was there.”
Connie Kerr seemed sane to me. Cracked, yes; loony enough to dig up skulls in a garden while thinking she was creating fiction. But I wasn’t picking up stark raving cuckoo. And I wasn’t feeling her as a murderer.
“What happened after you dug up that skull, Connie?”
“Well. I dug up another one.”
Chapter 95
Connie dabbed at her eyes with a wad of tissues and continued her story.
“The second head was bad,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it to be — to have — hell. I didn’t expect it to be so disgusting. I was coming up with my plan, though, and I just told myself to have courage. I thought of it as forensic archaeology.”
“Appropriate term,” I said.
“You think so?”
I said, “Yes,” not adding that in this situation, the correct term for her activity was evidence tampering.
Connie went on to say that she’d placed the “horrid remains” on the patio, returned to get the first skull, and then the idea took full form.
“I went back to my place and got a pair of index cards. I had a cool idea, very dramatic, but I was scared going back to the garden,” she said.
“I was thinking that I was now wandering into the area of premeditation. But I couldn’t stop. I was on a roll. The chrysanthemums were so white. So I plucked some and I made a wreath. I laid it around the heads,” Connie Kerr said, making a wide circle with her arms. “It looked very good. After I finished the wreath, I started to feel better. In fact, I felt elated.”
“You were excited.”
“Yes, that’s it. I was excited and my wheels were turning. I wanted to draw attention to the victims, you see. I wrote numbers on the index cards. I knew the numbers would make these heads into a big story. And I did a clever thing.”
“Those numbers are a code.”
“You’re warm.” Coy smile from Connie.
“Numerology,” I said. “The number six.”
“Aren’t you smart!” she said. She clapped her hands together, and for a moment the woman who had pirouetted around her small apartment was back.
“So you wanted the police to find you?”
“Yes! I wanted the police to find the killer and I wanted to be the heroine who helped solve the case. I wanted good realistic details for my book. I’m calling it Eleventh Hour, because the crime is solved at the last moment. But I never expected to be charged.”
“So that’s your story, Connie? You did forensic archaeology, left some false clues for the police that led to your door.”
“I’ve committed crimes, haven’t I?”
I nodded. I wanted her to be afraid, but truthfully she wasn’t guilty of much. Trespassing. Falsifying evidence. It wasn’t illegal not to call the police to report a crime.
“See, I am cooperating,” she said. “I didn’t even get a lawyer. Can’t you help me, please?”
“Who was the so-called night gardener?” Conklin asked.
“I don’t know. I was peeking through a curtain sixty feet above the ground. It was always dark. I would tell you if I could.”
“How do you get your food?” I asked.
“Nicole leaves it for me on the back steps. She’s that lovely girl who lives next door.”
“I’ll look into getting you released,” Conklin said. “But if we can do it, you can’t leave your house.”
“Don’t worry. I’m quite the homebody,” Constance Kerr said, “and, you know, I’ve got a lot of writing to do.”
Chapter 96
Will Randall sat on the side of his bed and sent a text message to Jimmy Lesko. He used a disposable phone and identified himself as Buck Barry, one of Lesko’s private customers, a cautious man with an impressive drug habit.
The confirmation from Lesko came rocketing back, and the meeting was set for eleven that night; a transfer of cash for coke on a dodgy street in the Lower Haight.
It wouldn’t be the transfer Jimmy Lesko was expecting.
Will closed the phone, leaned over, and kissed Becky. He whispered that he loved her, left an envelope on the night table describing Chaz Smith’s double-dealing drug operation and how Smith had profited from being a cop. Then Will turned off the light.
He went to Link’s room and stood over the bed watching his son’s jerking, restless sleep.
His sweet boy.
Link should have been at Notre Dame now, on a scholarship. Should have been going out with girls. Should have been a lot of things he wasn’t and would never be, in a world of things he would never do.
Will kissed Link’s forehead, then went downstairs to the main floor and opened the door to the girls’ room. There were handmade quilts on the beds and a mural of a pastoral countryside painted on the cream-colored walls.
He picked stuffed animals off the floor, tucked them into Mandy’s bed, kissed her, then kissed her twin, Sara. Sara stirred and opened her eyes.
