“I do,” Claire said. “I do. Of course. I just don’t know where else to turn. Why did they take him to the DA’s office?”
“They may just want to talk to him where things are a little less crazy,” Dani advised her friend. “What did Liam say when he called you?”
“He didn’t call me,” Claire said, and began to cry again. “He called his
coach
. His coach called me.”
“Who’s his coach?”
“His trainer or whatever. Tommy Gunderson.”
“He called Tommy Gunderson?”
“Tommy called me and said he was meeting Liam at the district attorney’s office. I’m going there as soon as . . . Why? Do you know him?”
Dani’s pulse quickened.
Probably just the caffeine kicking in.
“We went to high school together,” she said. “Let me see what I can find out.”
She heard a beep.
“I have another call,” she told her friend. “I have to take it. I’ll be in touch, Claire. Be strong.”
Dani turned off the television, donned her Tory Burch trench coat, pulled the kitchen door closed behind her, and return-dialed the number for the call she’d missed as she headed for her car.
Stuart Metz answered. He was the assistant prosecutor for Northern Westchester, and when Irene Scotto needed something, Stuart was usually the one who asked for it. He was lean and wiry and surprisingly awkward for someone who’d graduated from Harvard Law.
“Good morning, Stuart,” Dani said.
“
Good
isn’t the word I’d use,” Stuart said. “You heard about Bull’s Rock Hill?”
“Just what was on television,” Dani said. “What do we know?”
“More than we want to,” Stuart said. “Are you on your laptop?”
“I’m in the car,” she said, turning the key in the ignition of the black BMW 335i coupe she’d inherited from her father.
“So am I. Don’t log in on a full stomach,” he said. “This one’s hideous. Probably bled out between one and two o’clock this morning. Almost beheaded. Banerjee just got the body.”
Baldev Banerjee was the county medical examiner, a soft-spoken English expat whose quiet efficiency Dani always appreciated.
“They’re still going over the scene, but it looks like the killer cleaned up,” Stuart continued. “The body was discovered by a yoga instructor leading her class to greet the morning sun. Some greeting. We also got a new investigator on the case. Detective Phillip Casey. Just transferred in. Haven’t met him yet.”
“Transferred from where?” Dani asked.
“Providence,” Stuart said. “He got into some sort of hot water. They say he’s good. Old school.”
“What time did they find the body?”
“Just before six,” Stuart said. “It looks ritualistic.”
“In what way?”
Dani turned onto the blacktop and headed into town on Main Street. None of the roads in East Salem were flat or straight for more than a hundred yards, and over half the time they were lined by stone walls or split-rail fences, and the hills were heavily wooded, which meant you could never see for more than a quarter mile in any direction unless you were looking across a lake or reservoir. Some people found the topology closed in and suffocating. She found it cozy.
The sky was blue, the air clear and clean-smelling, a brilliant fall day. The night before had witnessed one of the brightest full moons she’d ever seen. She recalled the theory held by a criminology professor she knew, about why so many crimes happen during the full moon: it’s easier to see what you’re doing.
“How the body was displayed,” Stuart said. “Method. I don’t know what else.”
Dani swallowed hard. It was at times like these that she questioned the path she’d chosen—she wanted to do work that was important, that made a difference, and she was good at what she did, but she was still shocked and disheartened by the evil things people did to each other. When she’d interviewed for the job, she’d told Sam Ralston that if she could use her education and her gifts to stop a single crime from happening, she’d know she’d made the right choice. He’d smiled and said, “Well, I hope that happens for you.”
About 90 percent of the work the firm did was with the judicial system, determining whether defendants were sane enough to assist in their own defenses or evaluating defendants or witnesses who were usually involuntary and often hostile participants. The other 10 percent was corporate, when the firm was hired to help businesses that wanted to settle issues in-house. Dani had a fantasy of opening a part-time clinical practice on the weekends to help kids, but so far she was so busy with the rest of her job that the notion remained a dream.
“Why did they bring in Liam Dorsett?” she asked.
“I thought you hadn’t logged in.”
“His mother called me. She’s a friend.”
“Is there anybody in Westchester you don’t know?” Stuart said. “He’s the only lead we’ve got. Found his cell phone in the weeds. Get this—we’re standing there, and the thing
rings
. ID blocked. I got people doing the phone records. Irene is waiting for you before she talks to the boy.”
“Is John there yet?”
“Foley?” Stuart asked.
“I’m meeting him there.”
“He said that?”
“He called me,” Dani said. “He asked me to come in.”
“He said he’d meet you there?” Stuart asked again. “You haven’t heard?”
“Apparently not.”
“John got popped for DWI last night on the Cross-County Expressway,” Stuart said. “Blood alcohol one point eight.”
Double the legal limit. He didn’t have to spell out the implications.
Dani’s boss was frequently called upon as an expert witness for the state in prosecutions. With a Driving While Intoxicated arrest on his record, the DA couldn’t possibly put him on the stand, because anything he might say would be permanently impugned. That was what Foley had meant by
maybe
.
“That’s awful,” Dani said. Her boss was in the middle of a nasty divorce, with two teenage daughters caught in the crossfire. It was no excuse, but she felt sorry for him. “He’s been under a lot of stress lately.”
“Who hasn’t? Life goes on. I’m stopping at Starbucks,” Stuart said. “The usual?”
“Venti vanilla soy latte,” she said. “Full strength.”
“You got it.”
As she spoke, she drove past her office at Ralston-Foley Behavioral Consulting, a large old Victorian house on East Salem’s Main Street, on the square opposite a row of boutiques and antique stores. The town always felt more like New England than New York to her, with its broad green commons with a gazebo in the middle, a white steepled church on one side of the square, a row of shops and stores including a hardware store where the wooden floor still squeaked, and a quaint old brick library opposite the church. From her desk she could look out the window and see children playing on the green, young moms with babies in strollers, and sometimes nannies from Germany or France chatting on park benches by the swing sets while their charges played.
Sam was too arthritic to sit in court but maintained his practice from the Main Street offices—he’d be available to give Dani advice, but to a great extent, she was on her own, sink or swim. So far she had assisted John with evaluations and competencies, but he was still grooming her to testify. An experienced defense attorney could make mincemeat out of an inexperienced forensic psychiatrist if she didn’t know what she was doing. She hoped she wasn’t in over her head.
She flashed to the image from her dream, her father in his cheesy multi-pocketed safari vest, holding a stone. Why a stone? She wished she could call him up and tell him about her self-doubts and hear him say, “You’re gonna knock it out of the park, kiddo.”
Dani drove south on the Sawmill Parkway, a road built in the thirties to handle a third of the traffic it handled today. When she hit a traffic jam, she threw up her hands in dismay. Today of all days to be late. She was a mile north of the Chappaqua exit and knew all the back roads, but first she had to get to the exit, and the cars weren’t moving.
While she waited, she used her phone to log onto the Internet. She went to Google and typed in “Tommy Gunderson.”
There were hundreds of thousands of references to the famous ex-football player. He’d been homecoming king their senior year of high school, and she, much to her own surprise, had been voted queen. She clicked on a link to a YouTube video, tagged as “FATAL HIT.” While she waited for the video to download, she remembered what she could of his career, a path that had taken him from East Salem High School to All-American at Stanford to the heights of stardom, a Super Bowl ring with MVP honors and a contract that was the highest ever paid to a linebacker.
She clicked Play and saw Tommy, positioned twenty yards behind the line of scrimmage, deep for a linebacker, protecting against the long pass just before the two-minute warning in the conference championship game. Tommy pointing, calling out defensive signals, reading the offensive formation. A long count, hoping to draw the defense off side, then the snap. A gifted young receiver named Dwight Sykes slicing across the field at full speed, looking to his quarterback for the ball. Tommy reading the quarterback’s eyes. Tommy launching himself over a blocker to hit Sykes a split second after the ball reaches his fingertips, one of the most spectacular collisions in NFL history, the announcer says. Tommy getting to his feet after the play. His chest-thumping warrior strut.
But Dwight Sykes doesn’t get up. Trainers and team doctors rush onto the field. The collision in slow motion shows Tommy turning his head to avoid helmet-to-helmet contact, but simultaneously, Sykes turns his head in the same direction. Sykes’s neck snapping back. Medical personnel working on Sykes where he’s fallen. Tommy on the sidelines, helmet off, waiting, concerned, then praying on one knee, head bowed. Tommy praying with his teammates circled around him, holding hands. Sykes loaded onto a stretcher, then onto a golf cart, moving slowly off the field, the crowd silent. Faces in the stands. Girls crying. Everyone waiting to see Dwight Sykes give a short wave or a thumbs-up to tell the fans he’s going to be okay.
But Dwight Sykes doesn’t move.
The video clip ended with a caption: “Dwight Sykes died half an hour later in an ambulance on the way to a hospital.”
Dani was startled when a horn honked behind her. The cars ahead of her had moved thirty feet. Whoever was behind her apparently wanted to move thirty feet too.
She logged off, put the car in first gear, and inched forward.
She wondered what it would be like to see Tommy again. The last time she’d seen him, she’d freaked out, panicked, been overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance—a doctorate in psychiatry and she still couldn’t figure out what to call it. It wasn’t anything he’d done.
It was who he was.
Which had seemed, at the time, too good to be true.
Which meant she was fooling herself.
Hence the panic.
3
.
The morning following Abbie Gardener’s strange visit, Tommy had gone to the fitness center at his usual time. He’d built All-Fit (the full name was All-Fit Sports, Health, and Fitness Center of Northern Westchester) when he’d retired from football, five buildings and 90,000 square feet of the latest in indoor tennis courts, turf fields, running tracks, batting cages, weight rooms, aerobic rooms, and all the newest training equipment.
He was reading through Nordic Track catalogs, evaluating the latest gear, when the front desk told him he had an urgent call from Liam Dorsett.
Liam was in tears. He’d been arrested, he said, or he was going to be arrested if he wasn’t already. The police had taken him out of school and were bringing him in for questioning. His dad was in South America fishing and Liam was too embarrassed to call his mother and would Tommy call her for him?
“Slow down,” Tommy said. “Take a knee. What do they want to talk to you about?”
The kid was six foot two and gangly, not yet grown into his body, with close-cropped hair and freckles across his face that made him look several years younger than he really was. Tommy had a hard time imagining him in police custody.
“I don’t know,” Liam said. “It’s on the news.”
Tommy turned on the TV in his office and saw a report on a murder at Bull’s Rock Hill.
Liam was a nice kid, a decent athlete, but not somebody who was likely to participate in varsity sports beyond high school. He was lanky and wanted to bulk up, and Tommy had put him on a weight program and a high protein diet. In the five months that they’d been working together, Tommy had gotten to know Liam well enough to know one thing—the boy didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body.