“You know what I feel like?” DiMaggio said to Hyland. “I feel like I’m swimming in the dark.”
Hyland sipped a beer. “This is why I had to stop on the way home from work, so I could listen to your problems?”
They were sitting in Mulligan’s, the bar from which Hannah Carey had left with Ellis Adair and Richie Collins. At least that is what Marty Perez had written and the other newspapers were printing as fact now. The bare bones of the story, at least the story the public knew, hadn’t changed: Hannah Carey was on her way up to her mother’s home in Litchfield that night; her mother was out of town and she was going to spend the weekend up there. They closed off the Merritt Parkway because of an accident right before Exit 38. Hannah used to know a bartender at Gates, a restaurant in New Canaan. She stopped in there, met Adair and Collins, went with them to Mulligan’s, where the Knicks players had congregated after a welcome-back dinner.
Collins asked her for a ride home. She went into the house he had rented with Ellis Adair to use the bathroom before driving to Litchfield. Adair was inside waiting for them.
“I know we’ve gone over this before,” DiMaggio said. “But why do you feel like I’m the enemy here?”
Hyland said, “You’re not the enemy. You’re just in the way. I go to the city, I try to talk to somebody, some waitress Hannah Carey worked with, and they go, ‘I told this to some guy named DiMaggio the other day.’ And you know what? They all seem to think you’re official.”
DiMaggio said, “I never tell them I’m a cop. I tell them I work for the Knicks.”
“I have a feeling you don’t spend a hell of a lot of time making the distinction.”
“So I’m wasting my time here. Or your time.”
Hyland said, “Maybe the Knicks’ll give you a bonus for trying so hard.”
DiMaggio said, “I’m not going to lie to you, Connecticut is starting to wear my ass out.”
Hyland smiled. “Your ass probably wore out long before you got here.”
“I have no authority,” DiMaggio complained. “I’ve gotten to talk to the accused and the accuser. But they don’t have to answer any of my questions. So I end up talking to people who know her or know them. Then I end up talking to you again. Only you don’t answer my questions, either.”
Hyland said, “Put yourself in my shoes for a minute, if you can stop whining long enough. She came in on her own, said these two guys raped her. But these two guys, they don’t have to talk to me. They didn’t even have to give me blood and hair samples. But their lawyer convinced them it was bad for their image, not cooperating at all. So they throw me a bone and give me the samples, which are worthless because she kept the goddamn dress in a zipped-up bag for a year, and so I’ve got nothing to match them up with.”
Hyland waved over the bartender. DiMaggio saw that the bartender, whom Hyland had introduced as Jack, was wearing a white shirt, striped tie, and Bermuda shorts. Hyland said, “You want another Scotch?” DiMaggio said he was fine. Hyland said to Jack, “One more and I’m out of here.”
Hyland put an elbow on the bar, turned to face DiMaggio.
“How many nights in a row for you here?”
“Three.”
“You find out anything interesting?”
“You don’t give me shit, but I’m supposed to help you? Is that how it works?”
“Think of it as being a good citizen.”
“I know what you probably know,” DiMaggio said, “because you’ve talked to everybody I’ve talked to. Some people remember Hannah Carey being here. One of the bartenders working that night, who I tracked down in Australia, said she was drunk, and even got up at one point and sang with the band they had here that night.”
“ ‘Runaround Sue,’ ” Hyland said. “You see her as the type to get up in a bar and sing oldies?”
“I don’t see her as the type to get up and sing at all. She must have been drunk.” He sipped some Scotch. “But if she was that drunk, let me ask you this: Why would Richie Collins ask her for a ride home?”
Hyland smiled. “Is that a hypothetical question?”
“Will you give me a fucking break?” DiMaggio said.
“You want me to speak hypothetically. Let’s just say that hypothetically, her recollections of that evening, the before part and the after part, might not be so sparkling.” Jack brought him his beer and Hyland waited until he placed it on top of the napkin.
“Just suppose,” Hyland continued, “for the sake of conversation, that when a very good cop might ask her about an inconsistency that might crop up—when I am very definitely looking for the opposite—the woman might have a habit of saying something like, ‘Brian, I’m sorry, I just don’t remember.’ ”
DiMaggio said, “I’ve talked to bartenders, the owner, waitresses, customers, enough people who were there. Whenever the Knicks go out of town to play some exhibition game, I’m here. Everyone agrees that they’ve never seen Mulligan’s more crowded. Everyone agrees that there were always women around Richie Collins. And nobody I’ve talked to yet can remember seeing them leave together. Either her with Collins or her with both of them.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Brian Hyland said. “Why don’t you give up and go home?” He blew on the head of his beer, leaned over, and sipped some without taking it off the bar. It was five-thirty, and people were starting to come in for a drink after work. Jack hit a switch on the wall and DiMaggio heard Sinatra and Anita Baker singing “Witchcraft” from his Duets album. He looked around at the framed Sports Illustrated covers lining the walls, all of them with golfers on the front, the covers going all the way back to Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. DiMaggio had been at Mulligan’s enough lately, he was starting to have dreams about golfers and Hannah Carey, not basketball players.
“Tell you what,” Hyland said. He clapped DiMaggio on the back. “You find Ellis and deliver him to me, I’ll be your friend.”
“A reason to live,” DiMaggio said.
Hyland finished his beer and left. Mulligan’s got louder, busier. Jack turned up the sound system. DiMaggio liked Hyland. He had turned out to be a hard case, but he was a pro. DiMaggio knew that if they switched roles, he’d play it the same way Hyland was playing it. He’d tease DiMaggio once in a while, with the dress, with the gaps in Hannah Carey’s story, but wouldn’t give away anything. Because he wasn’t interested in impressing DiMaggio. Because he was a good cop, and he was doing the best he could with Hannah Carey.
Where the hell was Ellis Adair? What had made him snap? Adair wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, you didn’t have to be around him five minutes to figure that out. But what had made him do something this dumb?
If he didn’t leave when Hannah Carey first came forward, why leave now?
Find Ellis, DiMaggio thought. Maybe he’ll tell you.
He slid some money across the bar and walked outside. He wasn’t ready to go back to New York yet. He was up here again, do something with the time. He decided to drive over to Fulton. He had never been inside the house Adair and Collins rented, the one where Hannah Carey said they’d raped her. They’d been living there during training camp, so there was no way for DiMaggio to get a look at the crime scene, or alleged crime scene, even from the outside.
Maybe he’d be inspired.
Maybe he’d drive up, see a light in the window. Go knock on the door and have Ellis answer it. DiMaggio could give him a big smile and say, “Hi, honey, I’m home.”
He took Route 106 into Fulton, took a left before he got to Route 7, then a right into the main driveway of the development called Fulton Crest: chalet-type condominiums set up above the Norwalk River, the main road going over a little bridge and then winding up into the woods, branching off into smaller roads as you went along. The bigger structures, real houses with more privacy, were all the way in the back of the Fulton Crest property. Without having been there, just reading about the layout, DiMaggio knew Adair and Collins had taken the last house, all the way in the back. They had their own garage, he remembered that, too. When DiMaggio got there, he saw the garage next to the house and a sidewalk that took you from the front door, across a narrow driveway, then down some stairs to what looked to be a guest parking lot.
It was far enough from everything else that no one would have heard any screams.
He drove past the house and came back around, then parked in the guest lot. He walked up the stairs. He had only been back in New York for a few weeks, but already the noise was getting to him again; the old shout. Fulton in the night was Jupiter in the night, without the muted crash of the ocean out the window. He stood there in the street, in front of the place where it all had started. It was a red brick house, made to look older than it probably was. There was a small terrace outside one of the bedrooms on the second floor.
He thought: What really happened that night after Mulligan’s, when they were all inside and the door was closed?
DiMaggio walked around to the left side, saw that there was no backyard to speak of, just a small area out the back door and then the woods. From somewhere in the woods, he heard the rustling of some small animal. Or maybe it was just the wind. Now DiMaggio walked around to the other side. Still waiting for inspiration. He thought about looking in, but the shades were drawn over here, the same as they were on the other side.
Except that they hadn’t been pulled all the way, and so some light escaped from inside.
DiMaggio went over, crouched down, tried to look inside. There wasn’t enough room under the shade. He could make out the bottom of a bed, the bottom of the nightstand next to it, a thick rug of some ornate design. But there was a light on.
DiMaggio walked around to the front door. What did he have to lose? There was an old-fashioned knocker on the door. DiMaggio used it. Nothing. He rapped it harder against the elaborate design carved into the heavy front door of 75 Fulton Crest. He tried the handle now, just to see.
The door was unlocked.
DiMaggio walked in. There was a wide foyer in front of him, a living room area to his left. He found the light switch to his left, turned the lights on in the foyer.
“Hello,” he said, his own voice startling him.
“Hey,” he said. “Anybody here?”
He walked slowly down the hall, past the kitchen, also on his left, toward the first-floor bedroom where he figured the light must have been coming from.
“Honey,” DiMaggio said. “I’m home.”
He heard music coming from the end of the hall. A song ending, then the disc jockey giving call letters, saying, “Cool oldies.”
The music was coming from the bedroom. The door was slightly ajar. DiMaggio could feel his heart and did not know why. He was probably crazy to come here in the first place. Maybe it was all crazy from the start. From Salter’s first phone call.
DiMaggio pushed the door open and there was Richie Collins on the bed, naked and dead and on his back, the handle of the knife or icepick or whatever it was sticking straight out of his chest.