Page 52 of In the Bones
Blair shook her head. “Let’s just get out of here,” she said. “I don’t want to be late for work.”
FORTY-FIVE
Tim
For the life of him, Tim couldn’t square Woody Durham’s face with the man he’d seen at Nicole’s birthday party, where they’d shaken hands and clapped each other’s backs like old friends. The past forty-eight hours had gouged out his eyes and rubbed his skin ruddy. Woody looked years older where he sat in the interrogation room, less like a man than a half-gnawed crust of bread under a table. There was very little substance to him at all.
“I’m going to show you some pictures,” said Tim, opening the folder.
“My glasses,” said Woody. “Can I …”
“Go ahead.”
Woody reached into the pocket of his shorts. The glasses, small and dated, made him look even more feeble.
“Can you identify this woman?”
Tim’s question hung heavy in the close air of the room. Next to him, Valerie was wearing some kind of perfume that tickled the inside of his nose, and it was all he could do to contain a sneeze. He hoped it didn’t make him look too intense. Woody was having a hard enough time as it was.
“That’s Angelica,” Woody said at length.
“Angelica Patten?”
Shamefaced, he said, “I never knew her last name.”
“What about her?” Tim placed a new photograph in front of Woody. “Do you know her?”
“Yeah. That’s Molly.” This time, Woody looked confused. “She’s a friend of Angelica’s. Why are you showing me this?”
“Well, that’s the crazy thing,” said Tim. “You probably heard that Mikko Helle had an intruder. This is the woman Nicole found hiding in his house.”
Eyes bulging, Woody said, “What the fuck? How?”
“Molly Kranz is the one who alerted us to Angelica’s body,” Valerie put in, her arms folded on the table.
“But she lives in Syracuse. They were both just in town for the weekend. What’s she doing back here? Oh my god,” said Woody. “Does Molly have something to do with what happened to Angelica?”
“All good questions. Why don’t we start at the beginning?” said Tim. “Can you tell us how you met these two women?”
Woody sagged under the weight of his stress. Between the impending interview and the press the case was getting, Tim wondered if he’d gotten any sleep at all. On the morning news, Tim had seen an interview with Mikko in which he’d spoken of the victim, whom Shana had finally named to the media. “My heart is with Angelica Patten’s family and friends,” Mikko had told the reporter, keeping his face suitably somber. “What happened in my house, long before I moved to Cape Vincent, is a tragedy, but I have full confidence that the law enforcement officers investigating this case will find the responsible party.” It was legalese, and it didn’t sound like Mikko. Maybe the man had gotten himself an attorney after all.
There had been a news story about the crime published as well; to the Durhams, Tim suspected it resounded like a death knell.
Local man to be questioned in connection with murder of female tourist.
“There was a party.” Woody adjusted the glasses that had slipped down his nose. He was perspiring heavily, his face greased with sweat. “On Labor Day weekend. Saturday night at Mikko’s house. Angelica and Molly were there. It was pretty wild. Mikko had just closed on the place, so he was celebrating.”
“And Mikko invited them?”
“I think so. I remember I asked him how he knew so many people when he hadn’t even moved to town yet.”
“And what did Mikko say?”
“He laughed. He said he knew hardly anyone. Most of them were strangers he’d met at the hotel or around town. I don’t know where he met Angelica and Molly.”
With Valerie sitting stiffly by his side, Tim listened as Woody took them back to Mikko Helle’s home as it had looked in early September. It was just as Stacy had described: the previous owner’s son had salvaged a few boxes of documents and keepsakes, and left the rest behind.
“It was like going back in time to the seventies in there,” Woody told them. “Mikko was going to trash it all—the furniture, the stuff on the walls, everything—so he didn’t care if it got destroyed. There was so much alcohol in the kitchen that the place looked like a bar.”
