“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion. For every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” One of Drayco’s favorite Bertrand Russell quotations. Quite apt, in the here and now. He was restless and drove around after parting ways with Sarg. No particular destination in mind, weaving through a steady rain past the monuments as the floodlights set them off, one by one.
They were modern stone temples with their statues of demigods posing for eternity. Statues of marble and bronze that hid feet of clay. Drayco shoved his own foot down on the accelerator to avoid side-swiping a car whose driver was glued to a cellphone.
The frenzied Power City was light years away from the laid-back lifestyle fifty miles across the Chesapeake, where the Eastern Shore only recently got broadband. He had a sudden craving to hear the voice of Nelia Tyler. Nelia was one of the few people other than Sarg who’d understand his reasons for not dropping this case.
Drayco hadn’t planned on it but realized he’d turned onto the road that led to Cailan’s apartment. He parked the Starfire in front. A beacon of light shining through her window beckoned him upstairs as rain bombed his windshield with loud “thwacks.”
The door to Cailan’s apartment was ajar, so he pushed on past into the living area. He startled two men, one sitting on the sofa, the other bent over several cardboard boxes piled in the room. It was an unlikely pairing.
The man dipping his hands into a box straightened up and faced Drayco. “What are you doing here?”
“Saw the light on. Wanted to make sure no one was in here who shouldn’t be. It appears I caught you packing Cailan’s things.”
Troy Jaffray picked up more books and papers and tossed them into the box. “I heard from Andrew Gilbow the FBI was off the case. Shannon Krugh killed Cailan and herself. End of story. Guess I should be relieved.”
“You’re not?”
From the couch, the other man piped up, “We can’t believe it’s over, that’s all. And I thought when they nailed the monster, I’d feel better.”
Drayco confronted Liam Futino. “I’m surprised to find the two of you together.”
Jaffray grabbed a tape gun and ripped off a long piece of tape to cover the box top, then sank onto the arm of the sofa. “I wanted to hate Liam. I really tried. After talking to him on the phone, it was clear he’s every bit as devastated as I am.”
Drayco examined the photo Liam held in his hand. “A memento?”
Liam stared down at the photo of himself and Cailan, both of them smiling, his arm around her shoulders. “I expected her to throw out all the photos of me. Of us. A friend took this one. I had him print out a copy for us. And she kept it.”
Drayco hadn’t spied any photos of Troy Jaffray when they first searched the apartment, and he didn’t see any around now to be packed up. Had she thrown those out?
Liam still had his coat on, a very dry coat. And the only indentations in the plush throw rug in front of the sofa were a set of shoe prints as if he’d been sitting there for sometime. Drayco asked Jaffray, “Did you arrange to meet Liam here or did you find him here?”
Jaffray cast a quick glance over at his companion. “I would have arranged it. If he’d asked.”
Liam reached into his pocket and took out a key he held out to Jaffray. “Cailan gave it to me when we started dating. After she broke up with me, she wanted it back. I just never got around to it. Wasn’t going to steal anything. I hoped … ” He slumped into the sofa.
Drayco asked, “You came here looking for something in particular?”
Liam cradled the photo in his hand. “When Cailan first told me she was pregnant, I could tell she wasn’t happy. I urged her to get a sonogram, hoping it would help her bond with the baby. Don’t know if she did, but I thought … maybe she kept a copy of the sonogram. Of our baby.”
None of the three men spoke for a few moments. Any notions Drayco entertained over Liam Futino pursuing Cailan as a potential money tree had long flown off his mental radar. Now, he was convinced. Both men were pictures of the kind of grief that cauterizes open wounds in memory and turns them into black scars.
Jaffray broke the silence. “You’re wondering if we collaborated. Wreaking vengeance by killing Shannon and framing it as a suicide.”
“It crossed my mind. The police might think so, too.”
“I got the impression the police were following the FBI’s lead, which begs the question—what are you doing here, Drayco?”
Drayco walked to a table holding a portable digital device, the same model other students carried at the music school. How many times had he listened to his own practice sessions, to catch the weak spots in his playing, head off slips in technique?
The device had a built-in external speaker, and he pressed the PLAY button. Cailan’s clear, rich voice even sounded good singing scales in compressed mono. He let it continue playing for a few moments, then switched it off.
As both Jaffray and Liam sat still with tears in their eyes, Drayco said, “Scales are mathematical marvels built on ratios and semitones. When the ear hears an interval as consonant, the brain relaxes. When the ear hears dissonance, the brain instinctively wants to resolve it. Everything about the murders of Cailan and Shannon is dissonant.”
Jaffray blinked away his tears and stared long and hard at Drayco, finally giving him a curt nod. “I hope you find more resolution than I have.”
Drayco picked his way through the boxes toward the door and looked back before heading out. Jaffray placed a hand on Futino’s shoulder, and they concentrated on Liam’s photo of Cailan, as if doing so would magically bring her back to life.