The man said, “Whoa, you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Richard said.
“I know you’re working right now, but is there any chance we can have a quick conversation? I have a couple of questions for you. Won’t take long.”
“Okay, sure,” Richard said, regretting the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. He was working, after all, and he could have told the guy he’d talk with him later.
But they wound up stepping outside, and walking to the picnic table on the strip of grass across the parking lot, Richard telling Mr. Koestler he was taking his break.
Once they were seated, the man slid a card over to Richard and introduced himself. Richard looked at the card even though he’d already realized that the man was Henry Kimball, the old teacher that Joan had hired to follow her husband. Richard’s mind was anticipating questions, desperately trying to decide how he would answer. He was obviously going to be asked something about the murder of Richie Whalen and that woman he was with, or maybe even be asked about Joan Grieve. Should he at least say he’d heard about it? Should he acknowledge that he went to school with both Joan and Richie?
But the first thing the detective said was far more disturbing than he could have imagined. “Richard, I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about what happened with your cousin Duane Wozniak?”
“Oh,” Richard said, and he could actually feel his eyes rapidly blinking. “He was my cousin who drowned. Why are you asking about him?”
The detective smiled. “Sorry. I feel like I just dragged you out of your job, and now I’m throwing crazy questions at you. Let’s back up. All I can tell you is that someone was interested in taking another look at Duane’s drowning death. It’s sort of like a cold case situation. I can’t tell you who my client is, but I need to basically interview people who were there when it happened and just corroborate that what the official police file from the time said is correct.”
“I’m sure it’s correct.”
The detective ran his fingers through his disheveled hair, and said, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s correct too. But just so that I can cross this interview off my list, can you tell me what you remember from that time?”
“Um, it was a while ago. I was with my aunt and uncle and my cousin Duane, and I was sharing a room with Duane. We kind of did our own thing, though, since Duane and I weren’t all that close.”
“Oh, no?”
“He was older than me, and he’d made some friends at the resort so basically he was off doing his own thing.”
“And one of those friends was Joan Grieve, right?” the detective said.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Richard said.
“She was with him the night he drowned, right? That’s what the police report said at the time. And I figured that you knew Joan because you went to school with her at Dartford-Middleham, right?”
“I don’t know her, actually. Didn’t know her. I knew her name, but I’ve never talked with her or anything.”
“You didn’t talk with her at the Windward Resort when you realized that you knew each other from your hometown?”
Richard felt a sudden panic that this detective had already questioned Joan and that maybe she’d said they had recognized each other at the resort. He said, “I can’t really remember. I mean, I remember knowing that she was there because she’d been with Duane that night, but I can’t remember if we ever talked or anything. I mean, we weren’t friends.”
“Right, that makes sense. So at the time you don’t remember thinking there was anything strange about the way in which your cousin died?”
Richard shook his head no, then quickly added, “Well, it was a strange way to die, drowning at night. It was a shock. The thing about Duane, though, was that he was kind of reckless. I remember thinking at the time that it was the type of stupid thing he would do to impress a girl.”
“So you didn’t think it was out of character for him to be going out onto the jetty late at night and during a rainstorm?”
Richard shook his head. “No, not really.”
“Okay,” the detective said, and rolled his head on his neck like he was trying to get a kink out. Richard now remembered this guy from high school and he looked pretty much the same, one of those English-teacher types who thought they looked cool because they wore a fancy jacket but with crummy jeans. And even though he had messy hair and hadn’t shaved, you could tell the guy thought he was good-looking.
“Anything else?” Richard said.
“Not unless you can think of something, honestly,” he said. “Thanks for talking with me during your work hours. I appreciate it.”
Richard stood up from the picnic table, holding on to it while swinging a leg over the bench. “Oh, one last question,” the schoolteacher said, “and then I’ll let you go. Do you keep up with Joan Grieve since high school? I know she doesn’t live too far from here.”
Richard shook his head, and said, “How could I keep up with her if I never knew her?”
When he ended his shift, Richard almost decided to drive out to Dartford and go past Joan’s house. He knew where she lived, of course, because he’d looked it up. It was the house Richie Whalen had grown up in. About a year ago he’d even driven past a couple of times just to get a look at it. The only reason he wanted to swing by this evening was on the off chance she’d be out in her yard raking leaves or something and he could catch her eye from the car. But that was ridiculous, the chances being about one in a thousand. If she had an actual workplace then he could swing by and make sure she saw him, but she worked out of her home. Maybe he could call her work line that she listed on her website, and then after she answered he could say he’d dialed the wrong number. Would that be enough for Joan to realize they needed to meet as soon as possible at the library? He didn’t really know, and besides, calling her could be a huge mistake, proving that they’d had contact, breaking their one unbreakable rule.
Although he’d never given it too much thought, Richard was realizing now that it had always been Joan coming to him, and never the other way around.
And now that he badly needed to see Joan, and tell her about the private detective, that old schoolteacher Henry Kimball, and how he’d figured something out about their connection, he wasn’t sure how to initiate contact.
He drove back to his house, wondering if he was being watched. He unlocked the back door, stepping into the kitchen that had belonged to his mother and stepfather. Most nights he didn’t notice the smell of the house as he passed through it to the door that led to the finished basement where he lived since moving down there his sophomore year of high school, but tonight it was worse than usual, both a lingering smell from some member of the raccoon family dying in one of its walls, and something else, animal feces probably, mixed with the persistent smell of mold and mildew. But with the basement door shut behind him he entered his own domain, his heavily fortified basement that contained everything he owned in the world, all the contents of his childhood room, plus his computers, a flat-screen television, and, most importantly, his workstation, where he’d created the small, portable bombs that one day would become his signature achievements.