“I’ve been through this problem in my head a dozen times, Roger,” Philip Brye said. “I can’t think of one.”
“Let’s try this,” Roger Dornan said. “You’re both sure that there’s no other way to successfully complete the investigation you’re working on without getting this done, this way.”
“No,” Gregor Demarkian said. “But there’s no way to be absolutely sure that we can get this murderer arrested and tried unless we go about this this way. We can go about this in the ordinary manner, Mr. Dornan. We can inform Tony Bandero of what we want to do and let him turn it into a media circus. But if we do that, I don’t think we will see an arrest, and I’m sure we won’t see a conviction.”
Roger Dornan rubbed his face with his hands. “Shit,” he said. “All right, Mr. Demarkian. I’ll take your word for it. You’ll have to give me a couple of hours to make a few phone calls and fill in the paperwork. You both ought to be very grateful that I don’t like Tony Bandero any more than you do.”
“We are,” Gregor Demarkian said.
“It’s not like you’ve never done this before,” Philip Brye said. “I really didn’t invent this idea out of a fervid imagination. I heard about that case of Carol Dillerby’s—”
Roger Dornan shot Philip Brye an absolutely poisonous look. “I’m not saying I haven’t done it before,” he barked. “I’m not saying I’m the only one who’s ever done it, either. I’d just like to make sure it was worth it in case I get caught.”
3
NOBODY GOT CAUGHT. NOT then, anyway. The process seemed to take forever, but it was a process, and by four o’clock that afternoon, Gregor and Philip Brye and Roger Dornan were standing by the side of the road in front of the little collection of shacks that lined the Housatonic River on the Derby side. Connie Hazelwood was still in her taxi. A pair of police officers in the uniforms of the Derby Police Department had parked their cruiser half onto the slick cold grass. The cruiser was tilted slightly downward, like a car that had not quite gone off the side of a cliff.
Four o’clock in the afternoon in December is dark. The lights in the house on the hill behind them were lit. The shacks in front of them were showing light, too, although in some places that was only the light of a flickering television screen. There was a flickering light on in the house of the retarded woman who lived next door to number 47. It seemed to be a candle or a kerosene lamp. The two uniformed patrolmen were making a circuit of Alissa’s Bradbury’s shack. When they came back to the roadside, they climbed the hill again and joined Gregor Demarkian and Philip Brye and Roger Dornan.
“The place is completely boarded up,” one of them said. “The only way in is to break in.”
“You’ve got permission to break in if you have to,” Roger Dornan said.
“Let’s make sure we’ve all got flashlights,” Gregor said. “I don’t think there’s any electricity on in that house.”
They all had flashlights except Philip Brye, who said it never would have occurred to him. Connie Hazelwood gave him the one she kept in her glove compartment. It was small and inadequate, but it would keep him from tripping over himself in the dark.
“The only door’s over on this side,” one of the patrolmen said, leading the group to the river side of the house. Gregor had stood on the steps to it while he talked to the woman with Down’s syndrome next door. Now one of the patrolmen climbed the steps and tugged at the board nailed across the screen.
“Watch out,” the other patrolman said. “Those steps are rotted right through.”
The first patrolman got out a claw hammer he had hanging from his utility belt and tried that on one of the nails holding up the board. It didn’t work and he cursed softly and put the hammer back and took up the crowbar instead. The crowbar bit into the soft wood and came up with splinters and a soft substance like wood putty. The patrolman put the crowbar back in his belt and used his hands instead. He got a grip on the middle of the board and pulled. The board came away like paper.
“Bad plywood and rotten on top of it,” he said, clearing away the remaining wood with his hands. He pulled at the screen door and it came open without complaint. He pushed at the door inside that and it came open, too. “No locks,” he said, stepping into the shack.
Gregor followed the patrolman inside and looked around. Coming in the door, you walked right into a tiny room meant to be a combination living room-dining room-kitchen. The kitchen consisted of a single wall of cabinets and small appliances. The dining room consisted of a small round table and two chairs. The living room consisted of a couch and an ancient television set. Even in the bad light given off by the flashlights, Gregor could see that there were thick layers of dust over everything. Some of the dust would have been disturbed, of course, but they could come back for that. They could pull the boards off the windows and do it in the daylight later.