Natalie Bondurant was right. Derek didn’t get bail. She gave it her best shot, said Derek had no prior charges or convictions, came from a good home, was not a flight risk, but the judge would have none of it. He acceded to the prosecution’s request that Derek be held without bail. He was charged, said prosecutor Dwayne Hillman with much fanfare, in the most horrific murder case in the history of Promise Falls. Surely, if ever there was a case where bail should be denied, this was it.
In court, Ellen wept. I did my best to be stoic.
Derek, standing next to Natalie in the high-ceilinged prestigious courtroom, seemed smaller, almost childlike compared to the day before. In beltless jeans and a T-shirt, his hair an oily mess, he stared down at the floor, his shoulders hunched forward, as though he’d caved in on himself. If this was how he looked after only a few hours in jail, how would he look after a week or, God forbid, after-
I couldn’t let my mind go there.
He tried to give us a small wave, with his wrists cuffed together in front of him, as he was led to a door near the front of the courtroom.
“Derek. .” Ellen said. “Derek. .”
Neither Ellen nor I had slept, and we looked it. Ellen had aged ten years since Friday, before any of this madness had begun. And I was running on empty.
Natalie met us in the courthouse hallway. It was our first face-to-face meeting. She was black, mid to late thirties, tall, maybe six feet, short black hair, dressed in a conservative blue suit. Her solemn expression gave us no reason for optimism.
“Okay,” she said. “There was no way they were going to let him post bond, no matter what the amount was. No surprise there. They’ve got him in a cell of his own so he’s away from the other prisoners most of the time.”
I looked at Ellen. She was dying inside.
“We don’t have anything back yet on the blood on your son’s shoe, but we’re assuming it’s going to be Adam Langley’s. Your son admits he had to step over him to get out of the house, and must have stepped in some blood. He left a small trail of it, heading in the direction of your house. They’ve also taken a DNA sample from Derek, which isn’t exactly surprising.”
She gave us a more detailed account of Derek’s version of the events. How he’d hid out in the Langley home in the hopes that he and Penny could rendezvous there all week. How Derek was trapped inside the house when the Langleys returned unexpectedly, how he hid in the basement, how not long after that someone else came to the house and shot Albert and Donna Langley, and then Adam as he tried to escape by way of the back door.
Derek told his lawyer that someone came down to the basement while he hid behind a couch, holding his breath, fearing for his life. Derek slipped out once he was confident the killer or killers were gone.
“I can’t believe he kept all this to himself,” Ellen said.
“He’s a teenager,” Natalie said. “Scared of whoever murdered the Langleys, maybe even more scared of you two, and the trouble he’d get into by admitting he was in the house, how he came to be there. He said you’d told him”-she was looking at me now-“that after the incident at the school, when he was jumping from roof to roof, that the next time he did something dumb, you’d throw him out on his ass.”
I remembered that.
“Still,” said Ellen, “for something like this, he should have known he could come to us.”
Natalie paused, then said, “There’s something else that might be a problem.” Neither Ellen nor I said anything. We weren’t up for even more bad news. “The police are looking at links between the Langley killings and two others in the Promise Falls area in recent weeks.”
“How?” Ellen asked. “What do you mean?”
“The police say the gun used to kill the Langleys is the same one that was used to kill a man named Edgar Winsome out back of the Trenton bar, nearly a month ago, and another man, Peter Knight, about a week before that.”
“I don’t know either of those people,” I said. I did have a vague recollection, however, of Barry Duckworth mentioning these cases to me on Sunday.
“But you said the police don’t have the gun,” Ellen said. “How can they know the same gun was used?”
“You’re right, they don’t have the weapon,” Natalie Bondurant said. “But they have the bullets. And the ones taken from the Langleys match these other two cases. Do you know of any connection between your son and these two men?”
“Nothing,” I said, at almost the same moment Ellen did. “They want to blame those murders on Derek, too?”
“They’re not saying that. But the cases are linked by the ballistics reports. It’s a part of the investigation and you need to be aware of it. I want to keep you informed. That’s the way I do things.” She must have judged, by the looks on our faces, that we needed a pep talk. “Look,” she said. “The whole rah-rah thing is not my specialty. I’m not going to tell you there’s nothing to worry about. There is. But the case against your son is far from perfect. It has holes, and I think Barry knows it. The motive, as it’s been laid out so far, is weak. And as far as how you’re bearing up, you have to know that this is the worst time. You’re still in shock. Your world feels as though it’s falling apart. But hold it together. Your son needs you. And believe it or not, there’s actually some good news.”
Ellen and I both blinked. “What?” I asked.
“Well, if we accept Derek’s story as gospel, that he was in the house at the time of the murders, that he actually heard these executions take place, and that he slipped out of the house without being seen by the perpetrator or perpetrators, the good news is, your son is alive.”
Ellen and I exchanged looks and held each other. I’m sure neither of us had looked at it that way yet, that Derek was fortunate not to have ended up like the Langleys. I said, “And
Natalie Bondurant waited a moment, looked me in the eye, and said, “I was going to say it doesn’t matter. My clients don’t have to be innocent for me to defend them. But I think Derek’s giving it to me straight.”
“Shouldn’t Derek be telling all this to Barry?” I said. “What he heard? I mean, maybe Derek heard something, anything, that might help Barry find out who really did this. Because there’s still someone out there, someone who killed the Langleys.”
“Barry’s aware of all of this,” Natalie said. “But right now he figures he’s nailed this one.” She paused. “Derek did say he heard one thing.”
“What?” Ellen asked.
“ ‘Shame,’” Natalie said. “He heard a man say ‘shame.’”
Ellen and I looked at each other, not knowing what to make of that.
I reached into my pocket for something I’d brought along with me from home. I handed the disc, the one Derek had used to make a copy of
“What’s this?” she asked, Ellen watching as I placed the disc in her hand.
“Just hang on to it for me,” I said. “For safekeeping.”
TWENTY-TWO
I asked Natalie Bondurant whether she could join us for a coffee to talk about things, but she had another pressing court appearance. So I suggested to Ellen we hit a diner a block down from the courthouse for something to eat. We’d not had breakfast. It was nearly noon, and as bad as I felt, emotionally and physically, I was hungry.
“I can’t eat,” Ellen said.
“I feel the same,” I said. “But we need to keep our strength up if we’re going to help Derek.”
But I abandoned the plan when we came out of the building and found half a dozen photographers and three camera crews waiting for us. They shouted their questions all at once, so they became a jumble of “Did we believe our son was innocent why would he do this was a guilty plea forthcoming.” I held on to Ellen’s arm and kept us moving forward, looking straight ahead, not responding to anything anyone asked us.
