In the end, it was Paula who found Duffy a criminal defense attorney. That’s because it turned out Ben’s cousin the cop didn’t trust any attorneys and made some joke about sharks that wasn’t funny, and also because Duffy was not charged but was being held overnight for questioning, so he needed a lawyer fast. I called Paula because that’s what I always do when something needs to happen fast. And as she always does, she made no drama out of the situation and just solved the problem. I want to be like Paula when I grow up. Make that if I grow up.
I was having trouble with the thought of Duffy spending the night in a holding cell, but Ben said there was nothing that could be done about it. He wasn’t charged, he hadn’t been arraigned, and therefore there was no bail posted. The lawyer, a guy named Nelson Sanders who operated out of Poughkeepsie, said the accommodations wouldn’t be as bad as we thought, and he would report back as soon as he’d met with Duffy and heard what the cops thought they had to tie him to Michelle Testaverde’s killing.
Ben and I decided not to get in the car and drive immediately to Poughkeepsie. This was largely because the cops certainly weren’t going to let us listen in on his questioning, and Sanders, who believed we were paying Duffy’s legal bills (we’d have to talk to Duffy about that), was sure to give us a detailed report.
Instead, we planned on going up there the next day. I called my father first to let him know I’d be an hour away instead of the usual four hours. It seemed like the thing to do, and Dad offered his house as a place for Ben and me to stay while we were in the area. I would have loved to see my father, but an hour commute back and forth was unreasonable when there were perfectly good hotels nearby. If Duffy had actually been investigating and hadn’t been playing mind games, he’d have opted for a hotel nearer the site of Damien Mosley’s disappearance, too.
Ben booked us a room with two double beds in a hotel in the center of town. I’d thought about calling Walt Kendig for recommendations on both the hotel and the lawyer, but Ben said not to let anyone involved know where we were staying.
I waited for the phone to ring all that evening to hear from Nelson Sanders and didn’t get the call until eight. I conferenced in Ben from his cell phone, and once we were assembled, Sanders gave us the news as he saw it.
“That guy is a pip,” he said as soon as Duffy’s name was mentioned. “He’s already shown the cops two different ways to better secure him in his cell. Said he could have escaped if he’d wanted to but that it would just set off a manhunt and would be inconvenient to his investigation.” He chuckled. “Inconvenient.”
“What’s his legal situation?” Ben asked. He sounded tired and maybe like he’d had a scotch. Or three.
“At the moment, he doesn’t have one,” Sanders said. “He’s not charged, like I told you. They want to hold him for questioning, but they’ve already questioned him, so I’m wondering what else they have up their sleeve. Duffy’s been anything but quiet. They can barely get their questions in before he’s rattling off answers that can take twenty minutes to finish. A pip, that guy.” I was getting the message that Duffy was a pip. It wasn’t the word I’d have chosen at that moment, but I did have to remind myself I owed my life (and, if you believed him, my livelihood) to the guy.
“Are they going to question him more tonight?” Ben was being professional even if he was just a touch impaired. I’m sure Sanders didn’t notice it, and if I hadn’t known Ben for a little while, I probably wouldn’t have, either.
“No,” said the attorney. “They know better than to ask him anything without me there, and I’m not there.”
“Where are you?” Ben asked. It wasn’t the first question I would have asked, but he was an investigator, and I write for a living. The thousand words for today were looming in my office as soon as I cleaned up the mac and cheese I’d made myself. They don’t call it comfort food for nothing.
“I’m at home having dinner with my wife.” Sanders sounded a trifle put off by the question, as if it was odd that Ben would ask and was criticizing him for not being with his client. I’d had roughly the same thought, since it was plausible that Duffy wouldn’t have to spend the night in jail if the questioning ended sooner. “It’s a courtesy that I’m calling you tonight. I could have waited until tomorrow morning and given you a more complete report.”
“What’s going to happen in the morning?” I said. There was no point in getting these two guys to butt heads over the phone tonight. Women were not put on this planet to be buffers between men. It’s a side service we sometimes offer while we plot our takeover of the world. Go ahead. Assume I’m kidding.
“According to the cop I spoke to, they have some additional concerns that will take overnight to confirm. Right now, I’ve gotta tell you, they don’t have much of anything on Duffy.” He was already calling the guy Duffy. It had taken me three days to come up with that name, and now people were using it within five minutes of meeting him. I wasn’t clear on whether to be flattered or annoyed.
“What do they have?” Ben sort of demanded. “Why did they bring him in to begin with? They think he killed this woman Michelle Terranova?”
“Testaverde,” Sanders corrected him. Maybe he was beginning to notice that Ben had visited the bar in his home tonight. “And I don’t know whether they actually think Duffy shot her. What they have is circumstantial. They were supposedly in the high school here at the same time, although nobody can find Duffy’s records. He was here asking questions about her husband who disappeared right about the same time Michelle got shot. It was a five-year-old cold case, and he was poking around in it.”
“That makes him suspicious?” I said. “On what planet does asking about a disappearance make you a suspect in a murder?”
“It’s the fact that it was such an old case.” It was Ben, not Sanders, who answered me. “Some guys want to be the genius, you know, solve the case the cops couldn’t solve so they’re seen as a hero. They commit the crime and then wait for it to be solved. Sometimes it doesn’t get solved, and they get tired of waiting.”
“That’s the theory this Dougherty guy was using,” Sanders said. “But I think they’re grasping at straws. They want to look like they finally solved something, and that’s the way—”
“Wait,” I said. “Sgt. Dougherty is the cop who brought in Duffy? Sgt. Phillip Dougherty?”
“Yeah,” Sanders answered. “How’d you know that?”
“He was the cop Duffy and I were talking to when we first got to Poughkeepsie,” I told him. “It’s a wonder they didn’t come and arrest me, too.”
“Well, they have one more thing on Duffy,” Sanders said. “Apparently, he knew where the gun was hidden.”
I heard Ben draw breath sharply. “The murder weapon?” he asked.
“Yeah. The pistol that killed Michelle Testaverde. He said he knew where it was, and after five years of looking, his guess was right on the money.”
“Where was it?” Ben asked.
But I already knew. “It was in a small compartment in the ceiling of the apartment where Damien Mosley used to live,” I said. “All you would have to do is open a little box in the ceiling, and you’d find the gun.”
There was silence on both their phones. “You’d better not tell that to the cops up here,” Sanders advised. “Then they actually might come down there and arrest you, too.”
“How did you know that?” Ben asked me.
“I’ll tell you later.” Then I said to Sanders, “It’s not because I shot Michelle. Because I didn’t.”
“Imagine my relief.” He went on to say something about his wife holding dinner, promised to call us in the morning, and hung up, leaving Ben and me on the phone by ourselves.
We both let out a sigh at the same time. “Your friend Duffy has us both in knots,” Ben said. His s wasn’t slurred, but he wasn’t fooling anybody.
“My friend? The guy showed up at my door and practically said I was his mommy.” There was a silence. Neither of us wanted to hang up and be alone with our thoughts, I guessed.
“So what about that gun?” Ben asked. “How did you know it was up in some ceiling?”
“Duffy wanted to look in that little notch when we were looking at Damien Mosley’s old apartment,” I told him. “I said the woman who was living there now had been gracious enough in letting us into the place and we should leave her alone. She agreed with me, and eventually I got Duffy to leave.”
Another long pause. “I’m going to go ahead and say it,” Ben said.
But I knew what “it” was. “Honestly, I have no idea,” I said.
“No idea of what?”
“Whether or not Duffy actually killed Michelle Testaverde,” I told him. “Was that the trauma, the event that made him become Duffy Madison? Is the guy at the bottom of the ditch somebody else, and the man we know as Duffy used to be Damien Mosley? Did he kill Duffy Madison, the one that was in the Poughkeepsie High School yearbook? I really don’t know.”
There was another long, pregnant pause. “Do you want to go up there right now?” Ben asked.
“I’ll pack a bag and come pick you up,” I told him. There was no way I was letting him drive.