FORTY-FOUR
Driving
over to the Skillings’, imagining what they had to be going through with their son, I flashed back to when Scott was only six years old, years before our troubles began.
Around that time, he’d been having a lot of nightmares, and he was coming into our room in the middle of the night.
“I had a scary dream,” he’d say each time. Donna and I would allow him to crawl into the bed with us, but we worried we were establishing bad precedents, being too soft, that he’d be snuggling with us every night until he left for college.
But it was something we decided we would worry about later, and looking back now, I’m glad we let him slide in between us, pull the covers up to his neck, and drop his head into the chasm between our pillows.
One night, I was the one with the nightmare. It was a recurring one, one I still get every once in a while. In it, I’m slamming that drunk driver’s head into the hood of the car. I’ve got a fistful of his hair, a good strong grip, and I’m banging his head again and again and again until it becomes apparent that it is no longer attached to his body. I realize what I’ve done and turn his dismembered head around so that I’m looking him right in the eye.
“I’ve learned my lesson,” he says, and grins. “Have you learned yours?”
I always woke up in a cold sweat. This particular night, I did not wake Donna up tossing and turning or, as I sometimes did, screaming. I was afraid to try to go back to sleep for fear of seeing that head again, so I slipped out from under the covers and went down to the kitchen. I ran myself some water from the tap and sat there at the table, thinking about the mistakes I’d made, about how we’d ended up in Griffon.
I’d been sitting there maybe ten minutes when I realized I was being watched. Scott was standing in the doorway, and my heart did a flip. I tried not to show that he’d nearly scared me to death.
“What are you doing up?” I asked.
“I could see a light on,” he said.
“You shouldn’t be wandering around the house at night.”
“What are you doing?” Scott asked.
“Just sittin’ here.”
“Did you have a bad dream?”
I hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
“What was it about?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
He nodded. “Are you scared if you go back to bed it’ll start again?”
“A little.”
He gave that some thought for a few seconds. Finally, he proposed a solution. “You can come sleep with me.”
I had a sip of water, put the glass down. “Okay,” I said.
He waited while I put my glass in the sink and turned out the light. He reached for my hand and led me to his room as though I didn’t know how to get there.
His bed was a single. I lay on my side, my back up against the wall. Scott got in and tucked himself up against me.
“Don’t snore,” he said. “You snore a lot.”
“I’ll try not to.”
He was back asleep in seconds. I felt his body swell and shrink with each breath. Anticipating his rhythms calmed me. Before long I was asleep, too, and at least for the rest of that one night, the bad dreams were absent.
* * *
Once
again, I found myself sitting in the Skillings’ living room. Adam and Sheila were settled in chairs across from me. I was on the couch. On the table between us was coffee, which Sheila must have started making the moment she’d hung up the phone with me. Steam rose as she poured some into a china cup.
“Cream? Sugar?” she asked, hovering. It was right there in front of me. As were some cookies. Sometimes, in times of extreme stress, you had to do something to keep yourself occupied. Make coffee. Bake cookies. Clean out a closet.
“For God’s sake, he can spoon in his own sugar,” Adam Skilling snapped.
Sheila promptly sat down, put her hand over her mouth and pressed hard, as though trying to hold a scream inside.
“Mr. Weaver,” Adam said, “our son, he can be a bit of an idiot at times, like all kids his age, but he didn’t kill Hanna.”
“Tell me what’s happened,” I said.
Shortly after I had left him, Sean called his parents from the bridge where we’d found Hanna’s body, and they immediately drove over. Ramsey and Quinn—the Skillings had made a note of the names on their badges—were still attempting to question him, but it seems he’d taken my advice and was keeping his mouth shut.
About six hours later, as the Skillings were getting up for the day—not that anyone had gotten any sleep—Sheila noticed the police were outside, poking around Sean’s Ranger. They had the doors open, and were searching inside.
“Were these the same police who’d been interviewing Sean the night before?”
Sheila had managed to tamp down that scream hiding in her throat, removed her hand from her mouth, and said, “They were different. Two men, instead of a man and a woman.”
“Did you get their names?”
“One was . . .” She paused. “One was named Haines and—”
Adam interjected. “Brindle, that was the other one.”
“How’d they get into the truck?” I asked.
“Sean must have left it unlocked,” Adam said. “When you were here, and we ordered him home, he ran into the house so fast he probably didn’t think to lock it.”
“So it had been sitting unlocked all night?” I asked.
The two of them glanced at each other, then looked at me and nodded. “Probably,” Adam said.
“So you saw them out there. Then what happened?”
Sheila said, “I ran into Sean’s room to tell him. He was in bed, but he wasn’t sleeping. He ran out—he was only in his boxers—and I ran after him, in my housecoat. Adam was already outside—he’s dressed and ready for the day before the rest of us.”
He said, “I asked them what the hell they were doing, that they needed a warrant to search a car, and the older one, Brindle, he looked at me and laughed. Then Sean ran out and started yelling at them, too, that they had no right to look in his truck. Brindle, he got in front of Sean so he couldn’t stop Haines from looking in the glove box and under the seats.”
Adam swore under his breath before continuing. “That son of a bitch Brindle actually pushed Sean away. He laid his hands on him. I think we should be able to get him charged with assault. I’ve talked to my lawyer about it, that we should go after this guy. I can’t believe this kind of treatment. I’ve always had a good working relationship with the Griffon police. They get all their cars from me. We’ve got service people over there all the time helping them out whenever they have a problem. How dare one of their people treat Sean like that.”
I shook my head. “You have bigger things to worry about.”
Sheila said, “We just stood there, while they took the car apart, feeling so helpless. We didn’t know what to do.”
“I called my regular lawyer first,” Adam Skilling said. “Right then and there. Got him out of bed. But he doesn’t handle criminal stuff, so he gave me the name—”
“Our son is not a
criminal
,” Sheila said.
“Christ, I know that,” he said. “But you don’t want a lawyer who normally handles real estate representing your kid on a murder charge.”
At the word “murder,” Sheila put her hand over her mouth again.
“Tell me about what they found,” I said.
Adam said, “The younger one, Haines, he says something like, ‘What have we got here?’ He’s digging around under the passenger seat, and he pulls out this bundle of stuff, which turns out to be a pair of jeans and a pair of . . . you know . . . panties.”
Sheila winced.
Adam continued. “I thought I was going to throw up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We’d found out, when we were waiting for the police to be finished with Sean, that the girl, Hanna, that she wasn’t wearing anything from, you know, from here down.” He touched his own belt.
“What’d Sean do?”
“He was stunned. When he realized what Haines was holding up, he started screaming at him, that there was no ‘effing’ way he put those clothes there, that it was impossible. He accused the police of putting it there.”
If Sean Skilling was Hanna’s killer, we had to accept that he was stupid enough to keep the girl’s clothing under the front seat of his truck for an entire day. If he were a murderer, and wanted to keep a souvenir of his crime, wouldn’t he have found a better place to hide it than his truck? Wouldn’t he at least have locked it? And did it make sense, if Sean had already been having sex with Hanna for some time, that he’d feel the need to keep a small trophy from the event?
I asked, “Is Sean the only one who drives the Ranger?”
Sheila said, “I use it occasionally. So does Adam. But mostly, it’s Sean’s car.”
“What I’m thinking is, if your son had done this, and had hidden those clothes in the truck, he’d have been running the risk that either of you might find them. I don’t think Sean’s that dumb.”
Adam nodded. “He isn’t. Kids are pretty good at covering their tracks when they’re up to something they don’t want their parents to find out about.” He grimaced. “And Sean’s as good as any of them.”
“So what happened then?”
Adam said. “Brindle put the clothes into some kind of evidence bag.” A long pause, like he was afraid he might break down before he continued. “And then they arrested our boy.”
“They put
handcuffs
on him,” Sheila said. “They didn’t have to do that. What did they think he was going to do? Attack them or something?”
Adam sighed. “Like Sheila said, they cuffed him and put him in their car and they took him away. We got to see him later. He’s a complete wreck.”
“You have to get him out of jail,” his wife said. “Anything could happen to him in jail.”
“And that was when they left?” I asked. “They searched the truck, arrested Sean, and left?”
They both nodded. Sheila sniffed.
“The police didn’t search anything else?”
“Like what?” Adam asked.
“Did they search Sean’s room? Look in his closet? Seize his computer? Did they search the garage? Anything else?”
Adam shook his head. “No, just the truck.”
Haines and Brindle had found what they’d wanted to find, and they’d found it remarkably fast. Was the search of the truck part of their overall investigation, and they got lucky? Had they been tipped off that the evidence was there? Was Sean’s accusation, that the evidence had been planted, plausible? And if so, who’d done it? The police themselves?
I was finding it hard to keep all the various aspects of this case straight.
“I want to ask you a few questions, which may or may not be related to all of this,” I said.
Sean’s parents looked like they were waiting for X-ray results.
“Did you know that Sean and Hanna were making money delivering beer and liquor to underage kids?”
“What?” Sheila said. “That’s not true—that’s positively ridiculous.”
“It’s true. Roman Ravelson was able to buy the stuff legally, and then he’d have Sean drive all over the place doing deliveries. There was a markup on the booze, and Sean and Hanna would keep a cut.”
Sheila shook her head violently. “No, I don’t believe that.”
Adam Skilling hadn’t said a word.
“Even if this were true, why’s it important?” Sean’s mother asked.
“Everything’s important right now,” I said. “Driving all over the place, making cash deals with people, there’s plenty of opportunities for trouble. People feel they’re getting ripped off, shortchanged. Cash transactions. Maybe someone Sean and Hanna dealt with had some sort of grudge against them. I don’t know. I just need to know everything I can.”
“So you can help Sean,” Adam Skilling said. “So you can prove he’s innocent.”
I hesitated. “I want to see that Sean gets all the help he can, but I’m not working on his behalf, or yours, at this time. I’m working to find Claire Sanders. And when I do, that may end up helping Sean, because Claire may be able to fill in the gaps. What you need is a good lawyer.”
“We have one,” Adam said. “We’ve hired Theodore Belton.”
I knew Teddy Belton. “He’s a good man. You’re in good hands with him.” I stood. “I’ll be in touch. If you hear anything, about Claire, or anything else, please let me know. And if I hear something that could help Sean, I’ll call you right away.”
Then I spoke to Adam. “Can I see you outside?”
I squeezed Sheila Skilling’s hand as I moved toward the door, Adam following. Once we were both out of the house, standing in the driveway, I said, “I noticed you had nothing to say when I mentioned what Sean’s been up to.”
“I admit, I had an inkling,” he said. “I found a couple cases of beer in the bed of his pickup one day, under the cover, and confronted him about it. He said he was just holding it for that Ravelson kid, that he’d bought some beer but had no way, at the time, to get it home, so Sean said he’d take it over later.”
“You didn’t believe him.”
He pressed his lips together. “No. I don’t mean to say anything bad about that poor girl—God rest her soul—but I blame Hanna. That girl was a bad influence. She liked money and didn’t mind bending the rules to get it.”
“Sean could have said no.”
He gave me a withering look. “Can you remember being that age? What would you have done to keep a cute girl like that happy?”
The garage door was halfway open, and I could make out a vehicle in there, a pickup truck. I was surprised the police hadn’t seized it, just as they’d seized my car. There seemed to be plenty more reasons to have taken Sean’s Ranger in, given that they’d found Hanna’s clothes in it.
I said, “They didn’t take Sean’s truck?”
“Huh?” Adam said, and saw where I was looking. “That’s not Sean’s. That’s my vehicle.”
I squinted. Upon closer examination, I could see it was dark gray, not black like Sean’s. And it was a bigger truck than the Ranger. An F-150.
“It’s not exactly mine,” Adam clarified. “Just one I borrowed from the lot for a couple of days. I have a different car every week.”
“Two nights ago,” I said slowly, drawing out the words, “what were you doing?”
“I don’t recall,” he said. “Probably home, with Sheila.”
“You weren’t out driving around anywhere?”
He appeared to be thinking. “I might have been, actually.”