“I think about forty-five minutes. After that he took questions. It was probably four thirty by the time he finished.”
Ralph’s thoughts were whirling around in his head like loose paper caught in a draft. He could not remember ever having been so completely blindsided. They should have checked Terry’s movements out in advance, but that was Monday morning quarterbacking. He, Samuels, and Yune Sablo of the State Police had all agreed that questions about Maitland ahead of his arrest would risk alerting a very dangerous man. And it had seemed unnecessary, given the weight of evidence. Now, however . . .
He glanced at Samuels, but saw no immediate help there; the man’s expression was a mixture of suspicion and perplexity.
“You’ve made a bad mistake here,” Gold said. “Surely you two gentlemen see that.”
“No mistake,” Ralph said. “We have his prints, we have eyewitnesses who know him, and pretty soon we’ll have the first DNA result. A match there will clinch it.”
“Ah, but we may also have something else pretty soon,” Gold said. “My investigator is on it as we speak, and confidence is high.”
“What?” Samuels snapped.
Gold smiled. “Why spoil the surprise before we see what Alec comes up with? If what my client told me is correct, I think it’s going to put another hole in your boat, Bill, and your boat is already leaking badly.”
The Alec in question was Alec Pelley, a retired State Police detective who now worked exclusively for lawyers defending criminal cases. He was expensive, and good at his job. Once, over drinks, Ralph had asked Pelley why he had gone over to the Dark Side. Pelley replied that he’d put away at least four men he later came to believe were innocent, and felt he had a lot to atone for. “Also,” he’d said, “retirement sucks if you don’t play golf.”
No use speculating about what Pelley was chasing this time . . . always supposing it wasn’t just some chimera, or a defense attorney bluff. Ralph stared at Terry, again looking for guilt and seeing only worry, anger, and bewilderment—the expression of a man who has been arrested for something he hasn’t done.
Except he had done it, all the evidence said so, and the DNA would put the final nail in his coffin. His alibi was an artfully constructed piece of misdirection, something straight out of an Agatha Christie novel (or one by Harlan Coben). Ralph would begin the job of dismantling the magic trick tomorrow morning, starting with interviews of Terry’s colleagues and moving on to a back-check of the conference, focusing on the start and end times of Coben’s appearance.
Even before beginning that work—his bread and butter—he saw one possible gap in Terry’s alibi. Arlene Stanhope had seen Frank Peterson getting into the white van with Terry at three. June Morris had seen Terry in Figgis Park, covered with blood, at around six thirty—the girl’s mother had said the weather was on the local news when June left, and that pegged it. That left a gap of three and a half hours, which was more than enough time to drive the seventy miles from Cap City to Flint City.
Suppose it hadn’t been Terry Maitland Mrs. Stanhope had seen in the parking lot of Gerald’s Fine Groceries? Suppose it had been an accomplice who looked like Terry? Or maybe just dressed like Terry, in a Golden Dragons cap and shirt? It seemed unlikely until you factored in Mrs. Stanhope’s age . . . and the thick glasses she’d been wearing . . .
“Are we done here, gentlemen?” Gold asked. “Because if you really intend to hold Mr. Maitland, I have a great deal to do. High on the list is speaking to the press. Not my favorite thing, but—”
“You lie,” Samuels said sourly.
“But it may draw them away from Terry’s house, and give his children a chance to get indoors without being hounded and photographed. Most of all, it will give that family a little bit of the peace you have so recklessly stolen from them.”
“Save it for the TV cameras,” Samuels said. He pointed to Terry, also playing for some judge and jury. “Your client tortured and murdered a child, and if his family is collateral damage, he himself is responsible.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Terry said. “You didn’t even question me before you arrested me. Not one single question.”
Ralph said, “What did you do after the speech, Terry?”
Terry shook his head, not in negation but as if to clear it. “After? I got in line with everyone else. But we were pretty far back, thanks to Debbie. She had to use the bathroom, and wanted us to wait for her so we’d all be together. She was gone for a long time. A lot of guys also broke for the johns as soon as the Q-and-A was over, but it always takes the women longer, because . . . well, you know, only so many stalls. I went down to the newsstand with Ev and Billy and we hung out there. By the time she met us, the line was all the way out into the lobby.”
“What line?” Samuels asked.
“Do you live under a rock, Mr. Samuels? The autograph line. Everyone had a copy of his new book, I Told You I Would. It came with the price of the conference ticket. I’ve got mine, signed and dated, and will be happy to show it to you. Assuming you haven’t already taken it out of the house with the rest of my stuff, that is. By the time we got to the autograph table, it was past five thirty.”
If so, Ralph thought, his imagined gap in Terry’s alibi had just closed to a pinhole. It was theoretically possible to drive from Cap to Flint in an hour, the turnpike speed limit was seventy and the cops wouldn’t give you a second look unless you were doing eighty-five or even ninety—but how would Terry have had time to commit the murder? Unless the look-alike accomplice had done it, and how did that work, with Terry’s fingerprints everywhere, including on the branch? Answer: it didn’t. Also, why would Terry want an accomplice who looked like him, dressed like him, or both? Answer: he wouldn’t.
“Were the other English teachers with you the whole time you were standing in line?” Samuels asked.
“Yes.”
“The signing was also in the big room?”
“Yes. I think they call it the ballroom.”
“And once you all had your autographs, what did you do then?”
“Went out to dinner together with some English teachers from Broken Arrow we met while we were standing in line.”
“Out to dinner where?” Ralph asked.
“Place called the Firepit. It’s a steakhouse about three blocks from the hotel. Got there around six, had a couple of drinks before, had dessert after. It was a good time.” He said this almost wistfully. “There were nine of us in all, I think. We walked back to the hotel together, and sat in on the evening panel, which had to do with how to handle challenges to books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Slaughterhouse-Five. Ev and Debbie left before it was over, but Billy and I stayed to the end.”
“Which was when?” Ralph asked.
“Nine thirty or so.”
“And then?”
“Billy and I had a beer in the bar, then we went up to the room and went to bed.”
Listening to a speech by a noted mystery writer when the Peterson boy was snatched, Ralph thought. At dinner with at least eight other people when the Peterson boy was killed. Attending a panel discussion on banned books when Willow Rainwater claimed to have taken him in her cab from Gentlemen, Please to the train station in Dubrow. He must know we’ll go to his colleagues, that we’ll track down the teachers from Broken Arrow, that we’ll talk to the bartender in the Sheraton lounge. He must know we’ll check the hotel’s security footage, and even the autograph in his copy of the latest Harlan Coben barnburner. He must know these things, he’s not a stupid man.
The conclusion—that his story would check out—was both unavoidable and unbelievable.