The Man From Primrose Lane Part 20

The parking lot of the yacht club was empty except for a couple cars near the restaurant and an SUV idling near the walkway to the piers. It was late summer, but the wind off Lake Erie cut briskly across the city. Most of the yachts and smaller boats were covered. The SUV flashed its high beams as he rolled into the lot. Definitely not Trimble. He couldn't afford a ride like that. David drove out to the vehicle, ready to gun the accelerator at the first sign of trouble.

The SUV's window rolled down. A bald black man in an expensive suit sat behind the wheel. He wore an ascot instead of a tie. He was old, his skin wrinkly as a pug's around his cheeks and chin. "Get in, David," he said, a voice full of gla.s.s shards and old smokes.

"Can we talk outside?"

"No."

This is a bad idea, he thought as he killed the Sundance's engine. No one knows I'm here.

He's going to slit your throat and f.u.c.k your mouth as you die, Brune whispered.

"Stop it," he said to the empty pa.s.senger's seat.

If Elizabeth really cared about you, she'd be home right now. You knew she didn't have the strength for this. You knew she was broken. That's why you picked her. You and Riley, you're not so different.

As if he were sleepwalking, David stepped out of his car and climbed into the SUV. The old man reeked of bad weed and Sucrets.

"Thank you," said the old man. "That shows good faith, David. And respect. I knew I could trust you."

"Trust me with what?"

"Trust you with my secret."

"What is your secret?"

"That I'm a practicing pedophile."

For a moment David said nothing. His heart beat against his chest like an angry landlord.

"Sucrets?" The man tilted an open tin toward him but David waved it away.

"Why did you tell me that?" he asked. His mouth was dry as sandpaper.

"Because I know how you can prove Trimble murdered Sarah Creston. But the only reason I came to know what I know is because we, for a while, were part of the same exclusive club. Not a formal club, but I think you know what I mean."

David stared back at him. He wanted to leave. But he still didn't have his answers. And he thought this would be the closest he might ever get to proof.

"You have to ask yourself, I guess, if you really want to hear what I have to say. I will have to tell you things no one wants to hear. Is knowing what really happened to Sarah worth taking a pedophile into your confidence? Hiding his secret so that a more dangerous man goes to jail? The only consolation I can offer you is that I never killed anyone."

On some level, David knew the old man was speaking in the same reserved tone he used when grooming his victims. "Tell me what happened," he said.

"There was a video-production warehouse hidden in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a bicycle shop in eastern Michigan in the seventies and early eighties. It was the second largest dubbing and distribution center for child p.o.r.nography in the United States. The Russian Mafia had a hand in the operation, enough that they fronted dividends to the local cops so that we didn't have them breathing down our backs.

"I was what we called a 'talent scout.' I cruised the inner ring of Cleveland. West side, mostly, between 117 and the Market. Our clientele preferred white kids, so the east side was out. I did some scouting in Parma, too. It comes so you recognize a kid no one's gonna care about. You find them playing out front in fenced-in yards gone to dirt from the sc.r.a.ping of mutt dogs. Kids playing on the tracks, in the empty lots, while their parents shoot heroin at home. These kids were our bread and b.u.t.ter. You could pick them up for the weekend, drive them to Detroit, and send them back with a fifty in their pocket for the trouble and you could guarantee no one would call the cops.

"There are 'talent scouts' and there are 'moonlighters.' A moonlighter is like a freelance talent scout. Maybe they don't bring you any props for a couple years and maybe then they bring you three. These guys liked to dip their wick but not live the dream, you know? Trimble was a moonlighter.

"This was my territory back then so he comes to me, right? I'm sitting at home on a Tuesday evening and it's not even dark yet and he pulls his van into my driveway. And he's got this girl inside. I thought I was done for. I mean, if a neighbor had peeked their head outside at that moment, it would have been all she wrote. That's the problem with moonlighters. They take stupid risks.

"Anyway, I opened the garage and he pulled it in. I go out there, and there's Sarah Creston. He's got her cuffed to some metal ring set into the floor and I can tell right away that she's not one of these kids that go home and keep our business to themselves. This is a kid someone cared for, you know? 'f.u.c.k,' I tell him. 'You gotta drop this girl off. Get her away from here.'

"But then he says, 'I want it on film.' And he's willing to pay a thousand dollars for me to set up the equipment. I know I can copy it and get ten times that from the bike shop guys. And they'll make fifty-large selling ca.s.settes at flea markets-we had this system back then where all the kiddie stuff was sold out in the open, in fake cases that showed adults. The way you knew the difference was the kiddie stuff was always marked with a green X. It gave you deniability. The bolsheviks taught us that. I was a workingman and that sort of money didn't come around every day.

"So what I did was I drugged her. Sodium pentothal. Got it from a dentist client of mine. I gave her the drug so she wouldn't remember anything of the experience. There was even a good chance she wouldn't remember me. That stuff messes with memory, man. If you can believe it, I did care about her well-being.

"It only took me fifteen minutes to set up. Then a half hour for Trimble to do his thing. Got it on film, which was dubbed to ca.s.sette-better for duping that way, less generation loss. 'Take her back home,' I says.

"'I can't do that,' he tells me. And I know what that means. But I don't want to know any more so I pretended I didn't hear him. We got the girl back in the van. I dosed her again. One for the road. And they took off."

David opened the SUV's door and stepped out onto the parking lot with legs that threatened to fail him. He bent over and heaved twice before puking his dinner. He felt a hand on his back. It was the old man.

"Don't touch me," David said, recoiling.

The old man withdrew the Sucrets again and took one for himself, which he swished between his teeth loudly. "I know what I am," he said after a moment. "But I have morals, believe it or not. I would never kill a kid. Never."

"Do you have the tape?" David asked.

"No. All the tapes were destroyed after Sarah Creston's murder became front-page news."

"So what good is any of this to me?"

"The original film still exists," said the old man. "It's being kept in a boat at the end of that dock." He pointed to the farthest dock from the parking lot, where a ma.s.sive sailboat was moored.

"Who owns the boat?"

The old man shook his head. "Won't tell you that. I think I've said enough." He turned back toward the driver's door.

"Wait," said David. "What if I need to get in touch with you?"

The old man shrugged. "I done all I could," he said. "You could probably get my name from my license plate, David. But remember, I asked you to keep me anonymous, in your confidence. I would never kill a kid. No, sir. But you. If you came to my doorstep? Yeah. I could kill you."

David never ran the license plate. He didn't want to know the man's real name. For the book, he simply called him "Gary Gonze," after a villain in a pulp sci-fi novel he'd read as a teen.

David's body pulsated with adrenaline as he walked the length of the docks. He felt the vertigo of the undulating waves pus.h.i.+ng and pulling at the boards beneath his feet. He considered, briefly, calling the tip in to the police. But he knew the tip was not good enough for a warrant. Not without the old man sticking around to talk to the police himself. There were issues such as breaking-and-entering and chain of evidence to think about, but the need to know was too great to resist. It controlled him, his very being. He could not come this close and not at least look. The need to know, to really know that Trimble was the serial killer and not Brune, was more important than avoiding jail, more important than closure for the Creston family, even.

It was easily the biggest yacht in the entire club, a towering white schooner with presidential-blue trim. Three portholes were set into the port side, facing David. It was utterly dark beyond the gla.s.s. The sails were snugly wrapped. It had every appearance of a ghost s.h.i.+p. He looked to the aft and shuddered at the sight of the s.h.i.+p's name: The Beagle, it was called, after the boat that spirited Darwin to the Galapagos. But someone had spray-painted over the a and the g so that it now read BEEZLE.

David looked over his shoulder, back down the dock. No one was running after him. There were no lights on in any of the other boats' cabins. He turned back to the Beezle and jumped onto the ladder dangling from its side like some deep-sea creature's trap.

The deck was sealed off from the weather by a transparent tarp secured to the boat by grommets. He unsnapped one end and slipped inside. Too dark to see. He felt around the floor and eventually came across the Hobbit-sized door leading to the cabin. Beside the door was a switch. He clicked it on. A row of lights set into the floor illuminated the deck around the ornate steering wheel, a nondescript area carpeted blue, a place for sunbathing and steering. Attached to the wall was a heavy flashlight. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, clicked it on, and doused the floor lights.

The cabin door led into a kitchen and dining area. At the back of this room two doors were set into an oak-paneled wall stained the color of fresh mud. The kitchen reeked of mothb.a.l.l.s.

He shone the beam of light around the room, catching circles of countertop and cabinets and the outline of a large fridge. There were cubbyholes in the walls beside the dining table. He opened up the first one he came to. Inside were a flare gun and several maps. Inside another were two folders full of kiddie p.o.r.n. Momentary flashes of the pictures contained within burned into his mind like a virus, insisting that this is the way the world is, this is the way the world is.

I smell your decay, whispered Brune.

He set the envelopes down, keenly aware that his fingerprints were now all over them, and sickened by his unconcern. Quickly he scanned the rest of the boat. Nothing. He opened the portside door at the back. It was a large bathroom with a gla.s.s shower. He wished he had not seen the Hannah Montana scrunchie wrapped around the showerhead.

He opened the second door. The bedroom. The bed was a canopy, wrapped in sheer pink silk. A mirror on the ceiling. Beside the bed was a nightstand, its cupboards full of tubes of something called Love Gel and magnum-sized condoms. He combed the drawers of a dresser. Clothes in adult sizes. Sweaters that cost more than he made in a month. One drawer, however, contained a pile of little-girl panties.

Soon he had searched every nook and cranny in the room and had found nothing more incriminating than the photographs. Defeated, David sat on the silk bedsheets. He felt it under his a.s.s and knew immediately what it was-he had once worked at a movie theater and knew the general size and shape of a film reel.

This one was smaller than the sort David had once threaded into projectors, by about half. The film was thin and brittle. It smelled of vinegar, a sign this was old stock, p.r.o.ne to disintegration. It was labeled with black marker on white tape: S.C.

David held it in a tight grip and started for the ladder.

There was the shadow of a man on the threshold of the door to the kitchen. David was too stunned to feel fear. His first thought was that it was the old black man, come back to spring the mousetrap, but as David swung the light up, he saw white, manicured hands, wrinkled hands, sticking out of a flannel s.h.i.+rt.

"Keep it off my face," the man growled.

David froze. There was, of course, no way out.

I'm going to die tonight, he thought.

I'll be here for you on the other side, said Brune. And I can't wait ...

... to meet this mystery source of yours," said Cindy, as David came out of the men's room. "I find it really hard to believe an anonymous 'old black man' told you right where you could find a snuff film starring Sarah Creston. Too convenient. Of course, no one will ever get to see the film, since it was destroyed on that boat." He started walking toward the courtroom. "I don't suppose you'd like to at least tell me who owned the boat? I might be able to backtrack the connection and at least verify some of the things you've accused Trimble of doing."

"Not everyone is like you."

"At least I had the courage to admit when I fabricated a source."

"Only because Andy figured it out first."

"There was no Gary Gonze, was there? There was no snuff film. There was no boat, was there, David?"

Several people loitering in the hallway turned to see what all the commotion was about.

"The police have a piece of the film."

"Why didn't the prosecutor enter it into evidence?"

"Go ask him, Cindy."

"Because it wasn't Sarah, was it?"

"Believe what you want."

The time it took Cindy to ambush David in the hallway was just long enough for her to lose her seat in the packed courtroom. As David entered, she was directed back out, to wait with the other standbys.

"But I'm a reporter," she whined.

"Lady, I don't care if you're Angelina Jolie," said the bailiff, a chubby Irishman. "Wait outside."

Before returning to the witness stand, David leaned over the part.i.tion and kissed Elizabeth. As he did, she slipped something into his hand. It felt like a long spoon. He didn't look at it until he was back at his seat. There, he unfolded his hands. It was a pregnancy-test wand. It showed a pink plus sign. He looked over at her and smiled when she gave him the A-okay sign.

A miracle, in a way, considering the dangerous side effects of Rivertin. His virility thrilled him. And that was good. He needed a bit of grandiose confidence for what came next.

The house on Primrose Lane sat above a postage-stamp yard, unmowed since Jimmy Carter was president, a minuscule field of bluegra.s.s swaying in the chill autumn breeze weaving around Merriman Valley, along the Crooked River that flowed all the way to Lake Erie, thirty miles north. David and Katy stood beyond the lawn for a moment, holding hands, looking up at the curtained windows, imagining what lay inside. Today Katy wore a Chippewa princess headband, a thin strap of rope wrapped around her head that held three blue feathers in place behind her right ear.

"What are you going to do with it?" she asked.

"Dunno," he said. "Make a cool B&B. Aren't all those places supposed to have ghosts for the tourists anyway?"

"I don't think many people summer in West Akron."

"Yeah, well. Maybe I'll rent it to college kids." He tugged her arm. "C'mon. Let's check out the things he left behind."

A lockbox hung on the front door. David's lawyer had given him the code this morning, after the sale was finalized for an even quarter-mil. He entered the code, withdrew the key, an old steel key heavy like a secret. It tumbled the locks and the door clicked open with an audible ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

To the right was a light switch, which David tried. It didn't work, but it was high noon, and Akron was enjoying a rare cloudless day. The light through the curtains illuminated the rooms a bit. David led the way. Katy held his hand tightly and followed, keeping the door open behind them.

They looked in the closet, at the boxes of mittens. David took out a reporter's notepad and jotted down the name of the company written on the sides of the boxes-Nostos, Inc., Dublin, Ireland. He also took a pair of mittens and tried them on. They fit. Wearing the dead man's mittens made him feel queasy, though, so he stuffed them into his pockets.

He turned toward the foyer. On the hardwood was the dried blood of the Man from Primrose Lane, long streaks trailing into the living room, ending in a crimson stain the shape and color of a wax seal.

The room had remained relatively untouched since the coroner's team had removed the body in 2008; Akron homicide detectives had taken the notebooks about Katy along with a few other items in 2009. Stacks of paperbacks still lined the walls. Mystery novels, mostly. Everything from Conan Doyle to James Patterson. Some horror novels. Some do-it-yourselfs-Wordworking for Dummies, Guitar for Dummies, even something called Surviving the Apocalypse for Dummies. A copy of Ulysses, spiral-bound, open to Episode 10, rested on the mantel below a dark square that suggested a mirror once hung there.

"It smells like the library at Roxboro Elementary," said Katy. "Do you think he read all these books?"

"I'd bet on it," he said.

A single painting hung on the western wall, a reproduction-likely illegal-of The Persistence of Memory, the one with the melting clocks and the weird dead fish monster that was supposedly Dali's self-portrait.

They traced the trail of blood back to its place of origin: the kitchen. The blender was gone, but David recognized the outline of the machine in a pool of petrified blood on the counter by the window. Katy investigated the cabinets. The Man from Primrose Lane had labeled everything. There was a specific place for rice (brown and white) and peanut b.u.t.ter (crunchy and not) and spaghetti and soup. The fridge had a shelf labeled MILK and ICED TEA but had been overcome with some form of bacteria or moss that smelled of living death. They didn't open the fridge again. Katy pointed to something on the fridge, a magnet in the shape of a cat. It held a letter to the door. David recognized the handwriting at once.

Baby's coming. I'll be by to see you asap. Get your walks in. Keep a smile on your face. Loving you. E.

Had the police missed it or had they taken a picture of it for the file and moved on? David didn't know for sure, but he thought it had probably been overlooked. He'd almost not seen it. There was something to be said about hiding in plain sight.

Inside, David felt the unfamiliar grip of doubt tickling his heart. Welcome, my old friend. He pushed it away. No time for that. "I can't explain it," he said to Katy. "But there is some explanation. I don't believe she was cheating on me. You'd have to know her. She just didn't have it in her."

"Not like me, you mean?"

"I didn't mean that."

"It's okay."