Page 50 of The Instruments of Darkness

“Which is why you’re here, obviously, eating a hamburger on my dime.”

“A very good hamburger, too, though I remain troubled by that avocado business and may have to remonstrate with the management about it.”

He finished his beer before peering into the glass to trace the hole in the bottom. I ordered another round.

“Where were we?” he asked, once a server had been dispatched in the direction of the bar.

“We were talking about how you were inclined to go along to get along, splinters notwithstanding.”

“Which I am, but I do like neatness, and in a fundamentally uncertain world, I crave surety. Unlike you, I think Clark probably did harm her son. She may have been depressed, or driven crazy by not getting enough sleep, but sometimes the simplest answer is the right one. At the same time, I don’t want to be dragged from my retirement in a few years to explain how I fucked up a case through negligence, or because of pressure from suits in Augusta, thus helping to put the wrong woman behind bars—and worse, leaving whoever took her boy free to do the same to another child. So ask your questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them.”

“Straightforward ones first. Do you have any camera footage from the night Henry Clark disappeared?”

“We have a window of almost nine hours, so that’s a lot of traffic going through the area,” said Steady Freddy. “Also, the residents have an association, and together they decided to discourage the use of security cameras with a range beyond the edge of anyone’s yard. Even then, a few of the homes, including the Clarks’, lack any kind of camera at all. We appealed for dashcam footage early in the investigation, and checked on business premises with external cameras. What we got didn’t amount to much—or amounted to too much, depending on your point of view—and hasn’t resulted in any useful leads. Moxie can ask for what we have during discovery, but I think you’ll be wasting your time unless you already know what it is you’re looking for, which I’m guessing you don’t.

“Now, with Colleen Clark being charged, we’ll be searching closer to her home. The working assumption is that she killed the boy in the house and immediately got rid of the body by burying it nearby; that, or she held on to it to dispose of later. Either way, trawling through license plates from the night in question won’t help us. We have her phone, and that’s under forensic examination. She says she kept it with her at all times. If true, we’ll soon know everywhere she went, and how long she stayed there. But unless she’s dumb, she’d have left the phone elsewhere when she was interring her son’s remains.”

I let it go. We were back to assumptions of guilt and innocence. If Colleen was innocent, the police weren’t going to find anything on the phone to prove otherwise. I was operating on the basis that she wasn’t responsible for Henry’s disappearance. Nevertheless, he had been removed from the area somehow. Unless he was taken away on foot, which would be risky, a vehicle must have been used, as the neighbor, Mrs. Gammett, had noted: a quiet one, well-maintained, so it wouldn’t draw attention or break down at an inopportune moment.

“What about Stephen Clark’s brother and his wife?” I asked.

“What about them?”

“Do they have an alibi for the night Henry went missing?”

“Jesus, you are clutching at straws. I may have misjudged you, and Moxie ought to cut a plea deal.”

“Indulge me.”

“They were out of town: tickets to a music concert in Boston, and a hotel bed to go with them.”

“A gift, or their own purchase?”

“A birthday gift for the brother.”

“From?”

“Stephen Clark.”

“Huh.”

“Don’t go jumping to conclusions, though in your case that’s like telling a dog not to chase a rabbit.”

“It’s just curious, that’s all.”

“An alibi for when they needed one, you mean? Alternatively, it’s what’s known to regular people as living life. Take your pick, but they’re off the hook.”

“And Stephen Clark was in New York. Do we know if he was alone?”

“Hotel security footage has him entering his room unaccompanied shortly after ten p.m. Nobody joined him subsequently, so the answer is probably yes. No hookers, and no mistress.”

“No Mara Teller.”

“Not unless she climbed in through a tenth-story window.”

“When did Stephen Clark tell you about the affair?”

“He didn’t, not at first. His wife did. It was during the second interview on the day the boy went missing. We had trouble getting anything out of her during the first run-through because, understandably, she was distraught. A physician subsequently gave her something to take away the edge, but not so much that she wasn’t coherent or able to concentrate.”

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