Dark Specter

5

Bonnie Kowalski drew up to the curb and yawned loudly. It was OK, she was on time, in spite of the traffic. The guy would most likely be late, anyway. He’d phoned in the day before to check the time of their appointment, even though she’d sent him a confirmation in writing. Your typical academic ditz, thought Bonnie. She’d had lots of dealings with them, the campus being so close, and she’d yet to meet one who didn’t seem to be a few dishes short of a combination platter.

She pried the plastic lid off a cup of coffee which read “The beverage you’re about to enjoy is extremely hot.” Bonnie remembered reading something where some woman had scalded herself and sued the company for half a million bucks. She sipped the coffee cautiously and stared out through the windshield at the big trees in the parking strip, gaunt and bare in the morning sunlight.

When she’d started up the car that morning, to take Nathan to the orthodontist and then on to school, the windshield wipers had started too. Their painful scraping across the dry glass had brought it all back to her: the evening which had started so promisingly and ended so brutally, the suddenness with which everything had gone wrong, their inability to turn it around again, Ed’s cold words and unyielding silences, the fit of anger and despair which had forced her out into the rain-sluiced streets, the fact that he hadn’t come after her. The fact that he hadn’t come after her.

And she hadn’t even gotten laid. That’s what it had all been about originally, and even now, after all these months, Ed had only to give her a certain look, and put one hand on her breast and another on her leg, and everything else fell away. That’s what had always held them together. She’d never known a lover so masterful, so greedy, so sure of what he wanted and how to get it. His occasional moods and sulks had seemed a small price to pay for such ecstasy, plus he’d always been at his best in that way after being at his worst in others.

If anyone had told her, six months before, that she’d fall for a man like that, Bonnie would have dismissed the idea with contempt. She’d always thought she liked being in charge in bed, setting the agenda, controlling the pace and the progress. Now she wondered what had made her waste so much time dating men who bought-into that kind of micromanagement. With Ed she’d known from the get-go that she was in safe hands. Sex with him wasn’t a matter of consultation and compromise. He took what he wanted, turning her body this way and that, having his way with her. And she loved it. For a couple of days she’d worried about betraying her principles, then she thought, fuck it. No one need ever know, anyway.

She glanced at her watch. Still five minutes to the appointment. She’d give him fifteen after that, just to be safe, then head back to the office. A wave of depression hit her like a blow, forcing a sigh from her. She suddenly felt that men were standing her up, ignoring her feelings and needs. Even Jerry had been cool and distant when she got back the night before. Maybe he’d guessed. Maybe her pain had showed in her face. It was easier to conceal a happy affair than an unhappy one.

As usual, her alibi had been that she’d had to show a home. Her work was useful that way. Many people could only view a property at night. Bonnie had gone into great detail about the listing, a young contemporary colonial on Indian Ridge, five beds, four and a half baths, boasting a gourmet kitchen, a butler’s pantry and a cathedral ceiling. She’d even described the clients, a gay couple from out of state. Maybe she’d said too much. She wouldn’t have bothered if the story had been true, or even if things had gone better with Ed. She would have felt confident and relaxed, and Jerry would never have suspected a thing. He never had before, she was sure of that.

She took a gulp of the coffee, which had cooled considerably by now. Sherman was late, God damn him. She’d tried to get him to meet at the office, but he’d claimed his time was too valuable. The same apparently didn’t apply to hers. At the office she could have buried herself in her work and joked around with the others instead of sitting moping all alone in her car. Plus, although she tried not to think about this too much, it was safer. There’d been a couple of horror stories involving female realtors recently, rapes, even a murder. But that was some place else. There were neighborhoods where she wouldn’t have shown up alone, but Evanston wasn’t one. Anyway, it was broad daylight, and the guy was a professor. He’d probably be so scared of ending up in a harassment case he wouldn’t make eye contact with her without a witness.

A couple of joggers passing by glanced at the house with its immaculately tended lawn. A metal sign embedded in the turf displayed the logo of the firm along with Bonnie’s name and the hot line number in red. This one was hot, all right. $600,000 was the asking price, although Bonnie was pretty sure they’d go down to the low fives for a quick sale. The seller had been transferred back east and needed cash fast. As for Samuel Baines Sherman, recently appointed MacSomebody Distinguished Professor of Something at Northwestern, he’d already sold.

The joggers passed by again. Bonnie looked them over as they padded along the sidewalk. In their twenties, one a little taller than the other, clean-cut student types. That’s the kind of place Evanston was-college kids, professors, yuppies and rich businessmen, espressos and French bakeries and fresh pasta. Far enough from the city to be safe, near enough to be convenient.

Then there were the properties themselves. This one was a classy Victorian, maybe a little rambling-or “spacious,” as the ads said-but definitely tony. Ten rooms in all, five bedrooms, two fireplaces, hardwood floors, leaded glass, you name it, this baby was loaded. It didn’t have a lake view, but Maple was a very nice street tucked in between Ridge Boulevard and the CTA tracks, quiet and leafy but still only half an hour from the Loop and a five-minute commute to the Northwestern campus. Sherman could bike it, even walk there, or run if he was the type. It was a perfect home for him. Everything looked good, and Bonnie stood to clean up on the deal. These North Shore places sold themselves. It had been dumb to let herself get thrown by what had happened. It was only a lover’s tiff, every couple had them. As soon as she got back to the office she’d give Ed a call and fix up a time to see him again. Then they would talk everything over, get it all worked out.

A car came up the wide, tree-lined street and pulled in right in front of Bonnie. It was a bright red Impala, but the man who got out of it didn’t look like the Impala type. He was of average height and build, but gave the impression of occupying more space than he actually did, and being entitled to it. His hair was dark and curly, his beard grizzly gray and neatly trimmed. He wore a double-breasted astrakhan coat over what looked like a tweed suit, with well-polished oxfords and those Italian-framed glasses that don’t make you look like a nerd. The Impala had to be a rental. The family Volvo or Audi, or whatever distinguished import the Distinguished Professor drove, would be in storage with the rest of his stuff back in New Hampshire. Lifting her purse from the passenger seat, Bonnie Kowalski switched on a smile and got out to greet him.

Ten minutes later, she knew that it had all been a waste of time. Less than ten, in fact, but she’d tried to kid herself for a while there. However the sale went, Bonnie normally got along really well with her clients. That was one reason why she was such a successful realtor. Maybe that was also one reason why Jerry didn’t ask too many questions about her being out so much in the evening, seeing as she had been paying the bills ever since his job with a marine brokerage turned out not to be recession-proof. Real estate is a people business, and Bonnie liked to think of herself as a people person. Plus there was always a little buzz in the air when the client was a man. Men had always gravitated toward her, drawn by her looks and a sense that they could relax around her. She enjoyed this for its own sake, and knew how to turn it to her practical advantage. And if the guy happened to be gay, she could work that room too, with her sassy sister act.

So it kind of shocked her to discover there was no way she could relate to Professor Samuel Baines Sherman. Not only did Bonnie’s social firepower fail to make the slightest impression on the Sherman Tank, as she privately dubbed him, but it turned out that he had no intention whatever of buying. For a while she thought he might be trying to work some leverage on the price, but when she hinted that there could well be some flexibility in that area, he just carried right on enumerating all the defects of the property. After a while she gave up. It was like the guy was giving a lecture on whatever the heck he was Distinguished for. There was no way to stop him short of walking out, and she couldn’t afford to do that. Losing the sale was bad enough, but if the client complained to Jack Capoccioni she could be in deep shit. Marine brokerage wasn’t the only job description where there were more applicants than positions these days.

Sherman’s basic bitch was that the property had been willfully misrepresented in the description he had been sent, describing it as a “gracious and immaculate rehab in move-in condition combining sophisticated family living and oodles of charm.” OK, so it was a bunch of bull, but Bonnie didn’t write the copy. Plus everyone knew that was just a come-on, feel-good stuff. All that really counted was the location and the price. After that you had to go look. But Professor Sherman evidently felt he’d been deliberately conned out of an hour of his valuable time, and wasn’t going to leave until he’d made damn sure that Bonnie never tried to pull a fast one on him again. As a result he led her through every room in the goddamn house, pointing out at great length why it was totally and utterly inappropriate for a man of his status.

“These rooms have been insensitively remodeled at some stage, probably the late forties or early fifties to judge from the moldings. The whole rationale of the original ground plan has been destroyed thereby, creating an architecturally psychotic ambience. Just look at the shape and dimensions relative to the height of the ceilings! It’s like a rat maze designed by Piranesi. No claptrap about graciousness and sophistication can change that.”

They had reached the bedrooms by now. Bonnie Kowalski figured she had to eat shit for about another ten minutes, then he’d be through. Give him satisfaction, she told herself. Keep him sweet for the future. Nevertheless, she felt a huge surge of relief when she heard footsteps on the stairs. Jack Capoccioni had told her he would drop by if he got through with the Schlumberger deal in time, see how she was doing, maybe work a squeeze play if the client was hard to close. This way he’d get to see for himself what an asshole the guy was, and she’d be off the hook.

“I must confess myself stupefied by your inability to grasp the nature of my requirements, Ms. Kowalski,” Sherman was saying. “I think it would be fair to say that I boast a certain renown as an effective communicator in academic, civic and political circles throughout the country. I am therefore mortified and dismayed to discover that in this instance I have evidently been unsuccessful in enabling you to grasp something as straightforward as the type of house I am looking for. Whether the responsibility for this failure is mine or yours is unclear, but at all events it is something we must rectify momentarily if we are to continue to do business.”

Behind them, the door creaked on its hinges.

“Hi, Jack!” said Bonnie, turning.

But the man who stood there wasn’t Jack. He was younger and fitter, wearing some kind of sports outfit and holding something in one hand, a personal stereo maybe. There was another guy behind him, standing in the shadows. Then they came into the room, and she recognized the two joggers who’d passed by while she was sitting outside waiting for Sherman.

“Don’t do anything stupid, you won’t get hurt,” the first man said.

It was an uneducated voice, sullen and constrained. He was about twenty, twenty-five, with a face that tapered to a protuberant jaw. He had meaty lips, slightly buck teeth and evasive, widely spaced blue eyes. He raised his hand, and Bonnie realized that the thing he was holding wasn’t a Walkman.

“Yeah,” said the other man, moving forward into the room. “That’s right.”

This was the shorter one. He had bleached blond hair and a little slit of a mouth, and he was also carrying a pistol. He reminded Bonnie of one of the other realtors called Randy who’d been pink-slipped a couple of months back, and for a moment she thought of those news stories you see where some guy who’s been fired comes back to work and starts shooting at random. But she knew it wasn’t Randy.

“Kneel down on the floor,” the tall one said.

Both men were wearing transparent plastic gloves, Bonnie noticed, the kind her gynecologist used for pelvics.

“I’ve got two hundred dollars in my wallet, and a gold Rolex,” Samuel Baines Sherman announced calmly. “You’re welcome to both.”

“Kneel the fuck down!” the squat guy shouted tensely.

Sherman gave out a long sigh, as though this were just one more of the tedious and unnecessary inconveniences he had to face every day of his life, due to the incompetence of others.

“Kneel?” he repeated with a peeved frown. “What on earth for?”

“Do what they say!” Bonnie Kowalski told him, all the fury and frustration she’d suppressed now gushing out. “I don’t want to get shot just because you’re an asshole!”

Sherman looked more shocked by this than by the gunmen’s appearance. Well, screw him. She didn’t care about losing the sale any more. She didn’t even care about Jack Capoccioni getting mad. Setting her purse down carefully, she knelt beside it, facing the two gunmen. After a moment’s hesitation, Sherman gave a little weary shrug and got to his knees. The tall guy unzipped the pocket of his backpack, watching them all the while.

“Hands behind your back,” he said.

“It’s not even our house,” Bonnie replied. “The owners have moved out. There’s nothing here to steal.”

“Shut up! Shut up!” screamed the squat one agitatedly.

“Hey, lighten up,” his partner murmured.

He crouched down behind Sherman. There was a sharp click. Sherman gave a grunt of surprise, or pain. The man straightened up and moved in front of Sherman, blocking Bonnie’s view.

“This is completely un-” Sherman began.

The gunman bent down, and Sherman’s voice ceased abruptly. The shorter man gave a jagged laugh which broke off as his partner swung around to face him.

“Well, don’t just stand there!” he snapped.

The other gunman started rooting around in the backpack. All his movements were jerky and urgent. He ran around behind Bonnie, who flinched.

“Please!” she pleaded. “I have a family!”

She could feel his breath on her hair and at the nape of her neck. Something hard and sharp gripped her left wrist, then the right, locking them together. The man seized her jaw from behind and pressed something over her mouth in a sticky kiss. Smelling the heady reek of raw plastic, she realized it was a patch of adhesive tape. There was one on Sherman’s mouth too.

The taller man surveyed the scene for a moment.

“OK,” he said.

His companion looked at Bonnie, then at Sherman. His expression was one of panic. The other man had set down his pistol and was taking something else out of the backpack. Bonnie noted dully that it was a video camera, a Sony, the new lightweight model she had been meaning to get Jerry for Christmas, but the store had had a JVC on sale for a hundred bucks less so she’d gone for that instead. The salesman had assured her it was just as good, maybe a tad heavier was all.

The squat man stood looking at the two trussed and gagged figures kneeling on the floor. He took a step toward Bonnie, then paused and stepped quickly over to stand behind Sherman. The other man raised the viewfinder of the video camera to his face, targeting his partner, whose pistol was pointing at the back of Sherman’s neck. Bonnie fought to control her bladder. If she peed now it would form a puddle on the floor, everyone would see. She would just die of shame.

“I can’t!” the short man said in a tone or desperation.

“C’mon, Dale!” said the tall man, switching on the camera. “Hit the mitt! Straight down the pipe, baby! You can do it.”

The gunman took an audible intake of breath and pressed the muzzle of his revolver to Sherman’s neck. At the contact Sherman’s head jerked back instinctively, knocking the barrel aside. There was a dull crack and the gunman jumped back with a horrified expression.

“Christ!” he gasped.

Sherman was thrashing around on the floor. His muffled roars reverberated in the empty room.

“Jesus Christ!” the gunman cried in obvious distress. “Jesus Christ!”

The victim’s overcoat had ridden up, revealing a patch of dense red blood spreading across the seat of his tweed pants.

“Fire it in there!” the tall man shouted.

“I can’t! I can’t do it!”

“Hustle up, Dale! Finish the job!”

Bonnie could feel the waffle and bacon she’d eaten for breakfast rising in her throat, and the thought of choking on the vomit, unable to get rid of it because of the gag, made her panic.

The gunman bent over Sherman, who was twisting around and around on the bare floorboards, his feet kicking convulsively. There was another shot. Splinters of the oak planking went flying. Then a sudden spasm of Sherman’s leg knocked the gunman off balance. The revolver went off again as he fell heavily on his side. The window broke, and for a moment Bonnie thought that someone outside had thrown a rock or a ball at the glass, like the time Nathan was pitching to a friend in the backyard and a fly ball went through the kitchen window.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” the gunman howled desperately.

He had scrambled to his knees, his clothes and hands streaked with blood.

“Help me, Andy! I can’t handle it! You’ve got to help me!”

A series of warbling sounds filled the room. Bonnie glanced down at the purse where she kept her cellular phone. It must be Jack, calling her to see how it was going. The phone rang eight times, breaking off with a truncated beep.

The gunman called Andy switched off the video camera and set it down on the floor. He looked at Sherman, then at the kneeling gunman.

“Lemme have it,” he said.

The other guy didn’t react until the command was repeated. Then he raised the plastic-sheathed hand which held the pistol. Andy took the weapon by the barrel, turned it around and shot his partner between the eyes. The man’s mouth popped open as though in a yawn. He toppled forward slowly, crashing to the floor without uttering a sound.

Sherman was moving more slowly now, feebly pedaling his legs and jerking his spine. Carefully avoiding the patch of bloodstained flooring, the gunman crouched down and aimed his pistol at the side of the wounded man’s head, just above the ear. He fired once. Sherman stiffened, then relaxed and was still.

The killer observed him for a moment. Then he straightened up and turned toward Bonnie Kowalski.

COVERAGE WAS BIG in Metropolitan Chicago, fair in Illinois and surrounding states, patchy to nonexistent elsewhere. NU PROF, REALTOR SLAIN IN SHOWHOME SHOOTING was the Chicago Sun-Times headline. The article began:

Urban-style random violence struck at the quiet, leafy college town of Evanston Thursday when three bodies were found in a house in the exclusive Gray Park area of the Lakeside suburb. Two of the victims were named as Samuel Baines Sherman, fifty-one, and Bonnie Kowalski, thirty-seven. The other, a man who police suspect may have been the killer, has not yet been identified.

The crime was discovered by John Capoccioni, president of the Evanston real estate agency where Mrs. Kowalski worked. He had grown concerned when she failed to return to the office or to answer her cellular phone, and drove to the property on Maple Street. He found Kowalski’s car parked outside, and on searching the Victorian mansion discovered the bodies in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Samuel Sherman had recently been appointed as MacDowell Distinguished Professor of Corporate Law at Northwestern University. He had made an appointment to view the Maple Street house with Mrs. Kowalski at 9:30 that morning.

According to Detective Eileen McCann of Evanston City Police, all three victims were shot at close range with a.22-caliber Smith amp; Wesson Model 34 revolver which was recovered at the scene. Marks on the bodies suggest that Sherman and Kowalski were bound and gagged before being shot. Police are working on the theory that the gunman then turned the weapon on himself.

The motive for the crimes remains a mystery. Neither of the victims had been robbed, and there is no evidence that either was known to the presumed killer. The property itself, which had been on the market for several weeks, contained nothing of value. A sexual attack has also been ruled out.

The article continued with an appeal by Evanston Police to any members of the public with information about the shootings. They were particularly concerned to identify the gunman, who was described as a white juvenile aged twenty to twenty-five, of medium height, heavy build, with light brown hair and brown eyes. Efforts were also being made to trace the murder weapon. Home security specialists, hardware stores and gun shops in the Evanston area were reported to be doing record business.

It was a slow news day in the Northwest, and the early edition of the Seattle Times featured a heavily condensed version of the story in its Across the Nation column, squeezed up against an advertisement for a shoe sale at Nordstrom’s department store. In the night final which Kristine Kjarstad read that evening at home, this had been dropped in favor of a piece about the drugs charge which had been brought against one of the pitchers for a leading American League team. Kjarstad skimmed the column briefly before turning to the Arts section to read about a movie she was thinking of seeing.

Almost two months had gone by since the shootings at Renfrew Avenue. The news that Wayne Sullivan had confessed had created a sense of euphoria and relief that was as intense as it was short-lived. Seattleites liked to think of their city as a civilized haven, as temperate as its mild, cloudy climate, immune by its very nature to the epidemic of crime which had turned so many other urban centers into virtual war zones. At the same time, everyone knew that out-of-staters were moving there, partly because of the area’s reputation as peaceful and livable, and there was growing concern that they would bring their problems with them.

So when something like the Renton killing occurred, a houseful of people shot dead in broad daylight without any evident motive, everyone’s worst fears appeared to have been realized. Any outcome would have been a relief from the swirling, formless terrors of the community’s collective imagination, but Wayne Sullivan’s confession was the very best news anyone could have hoped for. People might be shocked by what Sullivan had done, but at least they could understand it. Hell, we’ve all been there at some moment or other, if we’re honest.

Above all, they were relieved to find that it posed no threat to them. Far from being the random slaughter it had at first appeared, this was a situation-specific killing. What had taken place was a private affair between Wayne Sullivan and his family. As for that poor Chinese kid, he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could’ve happened to anyone.

There was thus intense pressure on the police in general, and on Kristine Kjarstad in particular, to come up with evidence to corroborate Sullivan’s statement so that charges could be brought. This they had failed to do.

Kristine had known the attempt was doomed from the moment she and Steve Warren had interviewed Sullivan at the courthouse following his unexpected admission of guilt. Things had begun promisingly enough, with Wayne giving vent to obviously genuine feelings of hostility regarding his ex-wife.

“She tried to take the little ones away from me,” he explained in a voice filled with hurt. “She shouldn’t ought to’ve done that. I don’t care about her, but those were my children, the only thing I have in this world. She tried to take them away and form them in her image. No one has the right to do that. I told her. ‘My boys’d be better off dead than brung up by a slut like you,’ I said.”

Kristine waited for him to go on, but he seemed to have lost the thread.

“What happened then?” she prompted.

Sullivan’s eyes darted around the room, as if searching for inspiration.

“She started in at me, calling me a no-good, worthless loser who wasn’t fit to father a dog. I just lost it. I took out this pistol I’d brought with me and I blew her away. Then I got to thinking ’bout the kids, all alone in the world with no one to look after them. And them knowing their dad killed their mom and all. So I knew I had to kill them too. It was for the best. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Kristine Kjarstad nodded sympathetically. So far, so good, she thought. Everything Sullivan had said rang true. Now they just had to sort out the details and type up a statement for him to sign.

“Where did you get the gun?” she asked.

Wayne Sullivan hesitated.

“Guy in Seattle sold it to me. You can get anything you want there, you got the cash.”

“And where did you get the cash?”

Another hesitation.

“I’d saved it up. I was going to take the kids to Disneyland, but she wouldn’t let them go, the bitch. Said I was a bad influence.”

Kristine frowned slightly. She had the feeling she was listening to something which almost made sense, but didn’t quite. It was easy to imagine Wayne making extravagant promises to his children, particularly after a few drinks, and equally easy to imagine Dawn putting him down contemptuously. What wasn’t so easy to believe was the idea of him actually getting the money together. She’d seen how Sullivan had been living. He didn’t strike her as someone who was into delayed gratification for himself, never mind others.

“What kind of gun was it?” she asked.

Sullivan glanced at the uniformed man who had brought him over from the jail, and who was now chewing his nails at an adjoining desk. He shrugged.

“I don’t know. I just know it worked. Guy I bought it from took me down the alley, loosed off a few rounds. I knew it would do the job.”

“But it was an automatic?” Steve Warren put in.

Kristine glanced at her partner in surprise. Luckily Sullivan didn’t catch her expression. He nodded.

“Sure.”

“So how come there weren’t any ejected cartridges at the scene?” Warren demanded.

Sullivan looked around nervously.

“The, uh …? Oh, I guess I picked them up.”

“Why did you do that?”

There was no reply.

“And where is the weapon now?” asked Kristine Kjarstad.

This time, Wayne Sullivan had his answer ready.

“Bottom of Puget Sound. I rode the ferry over to Bremerton, dropped it over the side halfway across.”

“Let’s go back to the killing,” said Warren. “You said your old lady started badmouthing you so you shot her.”

Sullivan nodded.

“So you two were just sitting there …”

He broke off.

“Sitting? Standing?”

Sullivan shook his head.

“I don’t know. Standing, I guess.”

“You were standing there chatting, and she said something you didn’t like. It was an impulse thing, right?”

“Right.”

“You didn’t tie her up first, anything like that?”

“Why would I do that?” said Sullivan with a puzzled look.

“And the kids?” demanded Kristine, keeping up the pressure. “How did you kill them?”

Wayne Sullivan flinched visibly. He didn’t mind discussing his wife’s death, but his children were another matter.

“Same way,” he replied shortly.

“What about the Chinese boy? You said your own children would have had no one to look after them, but Ronnie Ho had a family. Why did he have to die too?”

Sullivan shrugged.

“I guess I kind of got carried away.”

“What time did all this happen?”

“Sometime in the afternoon.”

“When we first questioned you, you said you’d been painting an apartment in Bellevue all day.”

“That’s right!” Sullivan exclaimed indignantly.

Kristine Kjarstad nodded.

“We checked into that, and we found a witness who saw you at the apartment block shortly after two that afternoon, just after the bodies were discovered. That’s a twenty-minute drive from Renton. There’s no way you could have got back in time.”

She glanced quickly at Steve Warren, who seemed to be about to protest. Leading questions about the type of gun used were one thing, inventing nonexistent witnesses another. She gave her partner a hard look.

“I did it earlier,” Sullivan said at last.

Kristine Kjarstad nodded helpfully.

“How much earlier?”

“On my lunch break. I didn’t want the boss coming by and finding I wasn’t at work. It’s tough to get jobs these days.”

He looked up at Kristine, as though to confirm the clinching effect of this down-to-earth detail.

“So what time would that have been?” she asked.

Sullivan considered.

“Between twelve and one, maybe.”

“And you were back at work by one?”

Sullivan nodded.

“How do you know?”

“I was listening to the radio while I got the paint ready. Thought there might be something about it on the news.”

Kristine Kjarstad was silent.

“What’s the deal here, anyway?” Sullivan demanded with a touch of anger. “I told you I did it! That’s all that matters.”

He was clearly aggrieved at the way he was being treated. He had voluntarily confessed to the murders, thereby saving the police a whole lot of trouble, and what happened? They started fussing over details and looking for discrepancies, just as though it was his innocence he was trying to establish, not his guilt! Why didn’t they just book him and be done with it?

Kristine Kjarstad would have been only too happy to oblige, if she’d thought she could take the case to the DA’s office with the slightest chance of success. Unfortunately that was out of the question. Wayne Sullivan’s spirit might be willing, but his story was weak. The chronology he’d come up with to accommodate the imaginary witness who’d seen him at Bellevue shortly after two o’clock was the final blow. Before she was shot, Mrs. Sullivan had left a message on her friend Kelly Shelden’s voice mail. Like all such messages, it had been dated and timed, proving beyond doubt that Dawn Sullivan had been alive at seventeen minutes past one that afternoon. If Wayne was at work by one o’clock, there was no way he could have killed her.

Over the next two days, Kjarstad and Warren, working in relays with Harrison and Borg, took Wayne Sullivan’s story to pieces like kids disassembling a junked appliance. It was hard work. Sullivan had clearly hated his wife’s guts and resented her influence over the children, particularly the two boys. He was also grieving in a mute, inarticulate way for their deaths, and feeling guilty for having left them alone and defenseless. The scenario he had invented satisfied and explained all these emotions, as well as casting him as a star player instead of a weak, ineffectual onlooker in his own tragedy. It took a long time-much longer than it would have done if he had been guilty-to break him down and force him to admit that his confession was false.

With Wayne Sullivan’s release, the investigation had to start all over again from scratch. But in the absence of any other leads, the case was in practice relegated to inactive status. In most homicides the perpetrator is arrested within hours of the crime, often at the scene. At the very least his identity is established, and it is just a matter of waiting until he is picked up. Intensive, time-consuming investigations of cases where there is no known suspect are simply not cost-effective.

Kristine Kjarstad had gleaned only one additional piece of information since then. A month after the shootings, Jamie Sullivan and his sister Megan moved to Nebraska to live with their maternal aunt. Before they left, Kristine spoke with the boy. By now he had recovered, as much as he ever would, from the shock of what had happened. It had become a story, and Jamie no longer had any problems talking about it. He confirmed to Kristine Kjarstad the account which had been passed on earlier by the social worker, and added one further detail: the man who had come down to the basement of the house that day had been wearing a pair of expensive athletic shoes. He had even been able to identify the model, the Nike Air Jordan.