The Man From Primrose Lane Part 38

"What, suicide? f.u.c.k that. Erin is still out there and I want to see how it ends."

"He wanted me to die in prison."

"Then f.u.c.k Ira, too."

I wasn't the only one who thought that David would never see the inside of a prison cell. Larkey was waiting for us in the hospital parking garage, smoking a Pall Mall as we approached. His eyes grew wide as he got a good look at me without my disguise.

"Motherf.u.c.ker!" the man yelled. "I'd think he wasn't dead if I hadn't seen the corpse. You have to be his twin."

"This is exSpecial Agent Dan Larkey," David said. I played mum.

"Am I right?" he asked David. "I'm right, right? Twin brother?"

"He's related," said David.

"f.u.c.k me," shouted Larkey, stamping out his cigarette. "Who is he? I mean, who was the Man from Primrose Lane?"

"I don't think I have to say anything to you without my lawyer," said David.

"What if I said I came here when I heard of your uncle's suicide, that I came here at the urging of my wife to tell you I don't believe you killed anyone?"

"Is that true?"

Larkey nodded.

"Why the sudden change of heart?"

"I've worked homicides for thirty years. You get a feeling for the cold types. The wife-murderers. The serial killers. I had you pegged as a cold SOB, but you're not. You're as confused as we are. I saw that at the McNights'. As a detective, you look for the easiest possible solution. I asked myself, what's the simplest answer? That the Man from Primrose Lane was murdered by a famous author after he learned his wife was having an affair with him, that the author then staged an elaborate car crash but left the Man from Primrose Lane bleeding all over the house? Why cover up one and not the other? It's impossible to ignore the resemblance between Erin McNight and your wife. The Erin McNight crime occurs as soon as you're arrested for Elizabeth's murder? f.u.c.king weird, right? I believe the real killer was waiting to see what would happen with the murders out on Primrose Lane. For more than four years, he was waiting to see if he got away with it. When he saw you arrested, he knew he had, and he immediately went after his prey. Isn't it much more likely that one man is responsible for the murder of three women-Elaine, Elizabeth, Erin-who look so much alike? Yes. It's always the simplest answer. End of speech."

"And Sackett?"

"He's going to need some convincing," he said. "But his case is falling apart. Ballistics came back on your nine-millimeter. Doesn't match. By the way, it didn't take us long to figure out it's your prints on the gun and the toilet and not the prints of the Man from Primrose Lane, like he figured. That puts you at the scene, sure. But my guess is you have an explanation for that, too."

"So you're here to help us?" I asked. "To work with us to find this girl?"

"No," said Larkey, standing up. "I mean, you can work on that if you want. We've got a task force of a hundred and fifty agents sweeping through northeast Ohio looking for her. If you have some solid leads, I'll take them. But no more busting down suspects' doors."

"Then why are you here?" asked David.

"I'm here to protect you."

"From who?"

"When it rains it pours, man," said Larkey, rubbing his neck. "I'm protecting you from Riley Trimble. He killed two orderlies at the nuthouse and escaped earlier this morning."

EPISODE SEVENTEEN.

COMING HOME.

Back in 1996, I needed a doctor and a new ident.i.ty.

Albert arrived at the house early the morning after I met the Man from Primrose Lane. We climbed into the back of the Caddy. "To Bellefonte," he told Albert. As we headed for western Pennsylvania, the Man from Primrose Lane shut the privacy s.h.i.+eld between the front of the car and the back.

"What's in Bellefonte?" I asked.

"The man who makes our IDs."

"He knows who we are?"

"Of course not. Men like Frank Lucarelli attract attention. Better he never sees us."

It was going to take me a while to learn everything he had about obfuscation and misdirection.

"Are we going to have Albert make the deal, then?"

"No," said the Man from Primrose Lane. "I'd never send Albert into such a dangerous situation. I have someone else in mind."

I waited for him to continue.

He smiled. "As you may have figured out already," he said, "I am not the first Dread Pirate Roberts. Not the first one of us to live on Primrose Lane, not the first Joe King, as it were."

"Another one of us gave you his fake ident.i.ty?"

He nodded. "If you take a good look at my papers, you'll find that I'm supposed to be eighty-five, though I'm not quite that old. I arrived here in 1986 and was picked up out in Loveland by a young man named Tyler Beachum, Albert's uncle. He brings me to the house on Primrose Lane, where I meet the man who lived there, just like you did. He'd come back to stop the murder of a young woman which had occurred in 1971. Point is, he'd made a solid deal with the Irish Mafia out in Philly, IDs in exchange for stock tips. He got me up and running, introduced me to his a.s.sociates, transferred Joe King's ident.i.ty to me, and then put me in charge of keeping one eye and ear on Loveland at all times."

"Where did he go?" I asked.

He shrugged. "But before he left, that man, the first Joe King, explained to me that we had someone we could go to in Bellefonte directly, if the Mafia contact ever became too dangerous."

"Who?"

"Seems he was left with a little guilt and concern about the original owner of his ident.i.ty. After a while sitting in that house, he started obsessing over the life of the real Joe King. The ident.i.ty he'd stolen. Who had he been?

"Sometime around 1972, he went looking for Joe King's story. Found his grave in Bellefonte. Learned of the car accident that claimed his life at such a young age. And learned, also, that Joe King had had a sister, Carol. Of course, he had to meet this woman. You can imagine what comes next."

"He had a relations.h.i.+p with Carol?"

"You got it."

"What name did he give her?"

"Who knows? He made something up. It's hot and wild, I guess, but their relations.h.i.+p, he told me, abruptly ended in 1973, wouldn't tell me why. But he said if we ever had reason to, we could go to Carol and she would help us because Carol knows the man in Bellefonte who actually makes the fake papers. She was his ... goomah, I think they call it. His mistress."

"Any other options?" I asked.

"Maybe if I had more time," said the Man from Primrose Lane. "But, your knee. Your G.o.dd.a.m.n knee."

"It's just ... I have a bad feeling."

"Get used to it."

Hours later, we pulled into the driveway of a duplex adjacent to the Schnitzel Tavern in Bellefonte. The smell of fresh spaetzle floated into the car and my stomach growled for some. But we didn't eat there and I stayed in the car with Albert while the Man from Primrose Lane walked up to the house.

I watched him through the tinted gla.s.s of the window. A woman, perhaps sixty-five years old, with bobbed blond hair and bifocals answered the door and let him inside. We waited. Somewhere inside that house, our secrets were being discussed. I was so nervous my right hand could not stop twitching. Of course, that could have been an effect of my muscles acclimating to agility again.

A knock at Albert's window shook me from my trance. A kid, some college man with a crew cut, was leaning down to get the driver's attention. Albert hit a b.u.t.ton and the privacy s.h.i.+eld shut again, but stopped before it closed completely, so that I could listen in on their conversation.

"Can I help you?" Albert asked. He was a cool dude. Really was. But there was apprehension in his voice.

"Yeah," said the young man. "What are you doing sitting in my driveway?"

"Your driveway?"

"My mother's."

"My client is a friend of hers. He had an appointment to talk to her."

"My mother doesn't need to be bothered. She's not well. Who did you say your client was?"

"I didn't."

The young man's face was getting red. I admired the son's protectiveness for Carol, but there was a hard edge to his concern and it seemed like maybe this one felt better when he was in complete control of his mother's social calls ... and perhaps her checkbook, too.

"Spencer!" his mother called from the front door. "Come inside."

The Man from Primrose Lane returned to the car as Spencer shook his head and walked toward the house. I heard the beginning of an argument before the young man disappeared inside.

"Well?" I asked, when the Man from Primrose Lane was back in the car.

"Good news and bad news."

"Okay."

"Good news is, we got you an ID. We have to hole up in Bellefonte for the night, but she'll have it for us in the morning. Express rate, fifteen thousand dollars."

"Ouch. Is that the bad news?"

"No. Bad news is, we'll never be able to use Carol again. She's in the early stages of dementia and it seems like it's progressing quickly."

"Oh."

"A blessing, I think. She's already forgotten who Spencer's father really was."

The next morning, there was a knock at the door to my room in the Bush House Hotel and when I opened it, there was a cardboard box from Lucarelli's Pizzeria lying on the floor. A note was attached: Don't try to get a license, it said. These are good, but not great. I needed more time.

I'm thinking about writing that last sentence on my tombstone.

Inside the pizza box was a manila envelope. Inside the envelope was everything I needed to open a bank account and to buy stock under the name of Jeremy Pagit. Certainly enough ID to fool a clinic. The real Pagit, I later learned by a diligent search of Centre County records, was born in 1937, and had died at the age of twelve when he climbed atop an oil derrick and attempted to ride it like a horse.

I rented an efficiency at the Statler Arms in Cleveland and, from there, played the market, using a nest egg provided by the Man from Primrose Lane. I invested in Yahoo. Starbucks. Apple. I put $10,000 on the 49ers for the Super Bowl in January.

I got bored waiting.

I had transcribed Katy Keenan's diary and notes from the investigation into several large binders, arranged in chronological order. It was her life, presented in minute detail. I knew where she was, where she would be. I wanted to see her, this girl whose murder had become the focus of my life.

That summer, when she was six, she and her mother took regular trips to the movie theater over in Rocky River. Katy had meticulously collected her ticket stubs in her diary and so I had the dates and show times at hand. I would buy a ticket and sit nearby, sometimes not even looking at them. It was calming just to know she was alive.

I paid particular attention to other men in the audience. I thought, perhaps, that I might catch her killer stalking her, long before the abduction. A familiar face in the crowds. But the only one stalking her, as far as I could tell, was me.

In May of 1997, I went to Kent State for the candlelight vigil dedicated to the slain students of 1970. I went because it was in her diary-Katy's father had taken her. I was so focused on protecting her that I didn't remember I, too, had been there the first time around. I came upon myself, that would be you, David, standing in place for William Schroeder in the parking lot of Prentice Hall.

I stood there, making eye contact with my younger self, for just a moment. And somewhere, deep in my brain, I remembered standing there, looking ... not at an older version of myself, but through the empty s.p.a.ce, at the sculpture on Bunker Hill that had been shot up by the National Guard.

Suddenly she was there, too. An eight-year-old with red hair hanging down almost to her knees.

"What's he doing, Dad?" Katy asked.

"He's paying tribute to Bill," the man said. "Standing in his place. My friend. The one I told you about."

"It's so sad," she said.

"It is. Come on, Katy, I want to find my old dorm."

Her father led her off toward Taylor Hall and before you could look at me again, I walked away.

I didn't check up on her much after that. That had felt like a close call. I didn't go looking for her again until a week or so before her abduction, in 1999.

"You think Riley Trimble knows who Erin's kidnapper is?" Larkey asked, fiddling with his mustache.

We sat around a large table in the back of a Chinese place in Akron called House Gourmet. The owner was one of Larkey's contacts and she opened the private room with no questions. We didn't order, but were served portions of the most exquisite Asian food I'd ever tasted.

"Just a feeling," said David. "He got an idea when we were sitting there and then he started to tell me that he could catch him if I let him out. I think he does have an idea of who it could be."

"And you think that's where he's going?"

"Yes."

Larkey leaned back and slid a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and took a long drag. It was, of course, illegal to smoke inside a restaurant in Ohio. He didn't offer David or me one, either. "Why isn't he coming after you?"

"I don't think he wants to hurt me," said David. "I've always thought he had a little respect or some mixed-up appreciation for me, for figuring out his secret."