And although Fred knew it was probably wrong to leave his seventeen-year-old son with this burden, he did just that. He promised himself he would carry his share of the weight in time, but right now he needed to take a nap. He was really very tired.
17
Alec Pelley wasn’t able to break free of his own family commitments that Sunday until three thirty. It was after five when he reached the Cap City Sheraton, but the afternoon sun was still burning a hole in the sky. He parked in the hotel turnaround, slipped the parking valet a ten, and told him to keep his car close. In the newsstand, Lorette Levelle was once more rearranging her bits of jewelry. Alec’s visit there was brief. He went back outside, leaned against his Explorer, and called Howie Gold.
“I beat Anderson to the security footage—plus the TV tape—but he beat me to the book. And bought it. I guess you’d have to call that a wash.”
“Fuck,” Howie said. “How did he even know about it?”
“I don’t think he did. I think it was a combination of luck and old-fashioned police work. The woman who works in the newsstand says a guy took it down on the day of Coben’s lecture, saw the pricetag—almost eighty bucks—and put it back. Didn’t seem to know the guy was Maitland, so I guess she doesn’t watch the news. She told Anderson, and Anderson bought the book. She says he walked out holding it by the sides, and with the palms of his hands.”
“Hoping to raise prints that don’t match Terry’s,” Howie said, “thus suggesting that whoever handled that book was not Terry. Won’t work. God knows how many people may have taken that book down and handled it.”
“The woman who runs the newsstand would beg to disagree. She says that one just sat up there, month in and month out.”
“Makes no difference.” Howie didn’t sound worried, which left Alec free to worry for both of them. It wasn’t much, but it was something. A small flaw in a case that had been shaping up as pretty as a painting in a museum. A possible flaw, he reminded himself, and Howie could easily work around it; juries didn’t care much about what wasn’t there.
“Just wanted you to know, boss. It’s what you pay me for.”
“Okay, now I know. You’ll be there for the arraignment tomorrow, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Alec said. “Did you talk to Samuels about bail?”
“I did. The conversation was brief. He said he would fight it with every fiber of his being. His very words.”
“Jesus, does the guy have an off button?”
“A good question.”
“Will you get it anyway?”
“I have a good chance. Nothing’s a sure thing, but I’m almost positive.”
“If you do, tell Maitland not to take any neighborhood strolls. Lots of people keep a home protection weapon handy, and right now he’s the least popular guy in Flint City.”
“He’ll be restricted to his home, and you can be sure the cops will be keeping the house under surveillance.” Howie sighed. “A shame about that book.”
Alec ended the call and jumped back in his car. He wanted to be home in plenty of time to make popcorn before Game of Thrones.
18
Ralph Anderson and State Police Detective Yunel Sablo met with the Flint County DA that evening in the den of Bill Samuels’s home on the city’s north side, an almost-posh neighborhood of large houses that aspired to McMansion status and didn’t quite make it. Outside, Samuels’s two girls were chasing each other through the backyard sprinkler as dusk slowly dissolved into dark. Samuels’s ex-wife had stayed around to cook dinner for them. Samuels had been in fine fettle all through the meal, often patting his ex’s hand and even holding it for brief periods, to which she did not seem to object. Pretty chummy for a couple living in splitsville, Ralph thought, and good for them. But now dinner was finished, the ex was packing up the girls’ things, and Ralph had an idea that DA Samuels’s good mood would soon be finished, too.
A Pictorial History of Flint County, Douree County, and Canning Township sat on the den’s coffee table. It was in a clear plastic Baggie, taken from one of Ralph’s kitchen drawers and slipped carefully over the book. The funeral cortege now looked blurry, because the shrink-wrap had been dusted with fingerprint powder. A single print—a thumb—stood out on the book’s front cover, near the spine. It was as clear as the date on a new penny.
“There are four more good ones on the back,” Ralph said. “It’s how you pick up a heavy book—thumb in front, fingers on the back, slightly splayed, to support. I would have printed it right there in Cap City, but I didn’t have Terry’s prints for comparison purposes. So I grabbed what I needed at the station and did it at home.”