“Cameras everywhere these days. Restaurants. Overlooking parking lots up the streets. Can tell on what day, what people, drove what car. Or didn’t. Like on the iron bridge—a Lexus went over the bridge just before Gracie was taken and back again just after.” Holgersen stuck his mug right in Norton-Wells’s face. “YourLexus, Law-Boy. That was never taken from that lot.”
Norton-Wells bumped up against the wall, legs giving out slightly, his face going white, his breaths becoming short and shallow. “Is ... is that what you meant by ... it was used in thecommission of a crime?”
“Bingo,” he whispered, wagging the card in Leo’s face. “I think we might have found us the dentist who fixed up Hocking’s nice new pearly whites.” He grinned. “Follow the money, I always says. Bet she didn’t pay him in cash.”
Holgersen snorted. “Someone bundled Gracie’s body into that Lexus. We got you, Law-Boy.” He lifted the medallion around Norton-Wells’s neck. “Ah. Nice. Saint Chris. Just like Gracie’s, right, Maddocks?”
“Just like it.”
Holgersen flipped over the gold medallion in his hand. “’Cept on the back of Gracie’s it says,With love from J.R.” He tutted his tongue. “He gave her a saint to watch over her, Maddocks. Now why would he do that? And then go grab her, and tie her up, and stick her head under water, and rape and sodomize and cut out all those pieces of her sweet pussy that make her want men over and over and over again ... her clit, her—”
“Stop! Oh God, please ... please ... just stop.” Tears filled Norton-Wells’s eyes, and he leaned his head back against the wall.
Maddocks was watching closely, allowing Holgersen to go just so far, and they were getting there faster than he’d anticipated, because clearly it was a raw shock to Norton-Wells that his Lexus might have been used to help kill a woman he cared about.
“I tell you whys you did it,” Holgersen said quietly. “Rage. Blinding rage. Because maybe you gots wind that your Gracie Girl likes to sleep around, eh? Like a lots. And you catched her with Mr.Blond and his Bimmer, or maybe City-Mayor-Boy Zach Raddison, eh? And you gets as mad as all hell, and you—”
“No!” He panted lightly. “No,” he said again, so softly they barely heard. “It wasn’t like that—I didn’t do that.” He gagged, shook his head. “I would never hurt Gracie.I loved Gracie.”
Bingo!
Maddocks and Holgersen exchanged a fast glance.
“Right, right,” said Holgersen. “We knows you knew her. And cared for her. So you didn’t do it? Kill Gracie, slice and dice her up?”
He shook his head.
“So here’s the thing. We make your life real tough ... arrest you, say, for obstruction of justice in a double homicide because you lied about the Auberge and the parking lot and the stolen Lexus, and it gets all in the papers ... your moms and pops get all twisty up, lawyers ... or we can eliminate you. And here’s how—you come with us to the station now, and you voluntarily give a DNA sample to a qualified peace officer. Easy peasy. Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay ... okay ... I’ll do it.” He heaved out a chestful of air. He was crying copiously.
“Do what?”
“I’ll give a voluntary DNA sample.”
The detectives exchanged another glance.
“Now, there’s a boy.” Holgersen put his arm comfortingly around Norton-Wells. “It’s the right thing to do.”
CHAPTER 59
Angie rummaged hurriedly through her dad’s drawers, looking for the keys to his fire safe, in which he kept all his important documents. Wind was picking up outside, clouds boiling black across the water toward the house, trees bending along the shore, the sky darkening. Her phone beeped—yet another call, another message, and yet again she didn’t care.
Her dad was not home, so she’d let herself into the house and come into his office. She was looking for papers, information, anything about her childhood. Italy. The accident. His sabbatical. Something ... that might confirm dates.
I am not mad. I am not hallucinating. Memory. It’s memory...
She clicked on the desk lamp as the light inside the office grew dim. Finally, she found the keys under a tray that held pencils in the bottom drawer of his desk. Angie grabbed them and moved to the closet below the bookshelves where her dad had always kept the small fire safe. She unlocked it. Putting on another lamp, she sat on the floor and began to empty the papers out over the carpet. She sifted through passports, insurance documents, copies and revisions of her parents’ will, their antenuptial marriage contract, house purchase papers, medical bills ... She stilled suddenly—a newspaper clipping. In Italian. Tucked into a plastic sleeve.
Across the top of the text was a black-and-white photo of a mangled white sedan that had rolled down an embankment. And up on the road above the wreck, an ambulance and a fire truck were parked. Emergency personnel stood beside the vehicles. They were looking down at the smashed car. Angie read the cutline beneath the photo.
La bambina di due cittadini Canadesi Miriam e Joseph Pallorino è morta Mercoledì in un incidente stradale nella Toscana. La bambina, Angela Pallorino, aveva quattro anni ...
She frowned at the wordmorta.
Embedded into the text, lower down in the story, was a picture of a toddler. The caption beneath this image read:Angela Pallorino (4).
The article was dated March 1984.
