SUNDAY, AUGUST 27, PRESENT DAY
“What?” Clare said.
“How?” Jack asked at the same time.
“Who’s that?” Scheeler asked.
“It’s my wife. Just go on with it.”
“They died from an overdose of secobarbital sodium. It’s a short-acting barbiturate, the same stuff they use for veterinary euthanasia and in lethal injections. It kills very fast—within thirty minutes to an hour if it’s in pill form. It knocks you out and depresses the respiratory system. You die without a mark on you.”
“I thought you weren’t getting the tests back—”
“For another week, I know. This was driving me crazy. I took all my samples down to the lab in Albany. I’ve been here since yesterday afternoon.” That explained the slightly manic edge to the doctor’s voice. “Once I knew what I was looking for, I checked the blood and stomach contents from 1972.”
Jack frowned. “Why didn’t Dr. Roberts find this when she did her tests?”
Russ looked over Clare’s shoulder. She twisted around to see Margy heading toward them, chocolate cake in hand.
“Because there was no blood test for barbiturates back then. They didn’t develop a reliable marker until the late seventies. Back then, most overdoses were diagnosed because the remains of the actual pills were found in people’s stomachs. In this case, my theory is someone put the secobarbital sodium in the alcohol served to both women.”
Margy settled her cake on the table. She nodded as Russ held up a finger. “So, we’re looking for someone with access to veterinary medicine?”
“Or for someone with Seconal, although it’s rarely prescribed anymore.”
Clare felt a flush of cold through her body, surging with each heartbeat. Her hand closed, as if around a pill bottle. “Russ.” She looked at her husband. “Audrey Langevoort has Seconal. It’s what I gave her for her panic attack.”
Russ swore.
“Russell!” his mother said.
“Who’s that?”
“My mother. Are you sure about this?”
“Yes.”
Russ jammed his hand into his hair. “Okay. I need you to fax everything you’ve got to the department as soon as possible.”
“Will do.”
“Dr. Scheeler?” Jack’s voice shook. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, uh, Chief Liddle.”
There was a moment of silence after Scheeler hung up. Jack Liddle rubbed his lips. “There wasn’t a blood test for it. Jesus Christ. All these years…”
“What does this mean?” Margy remained standing.
“It means Kent Langevoort killed Gabrielle Yates and Natalie Epstein.” Russ’s voice was grim.
Jack shook his head. “We can’t place him here when the Epstein girl was killed.”
“I think you can,” Clare said. Both men looked at her. “I was going through the local papers from that summer. At the library. They have them on microfilm.” Russ spread his hands wide, his gesture saying Really, Clare? “I was curious! You didn’t want to talk about what happened.”
“What did you find?” Jack asked.
“There was an article about the new president of Barkley and Eaton being chosen at a weekend retreat. Right around the time the murder was in the news.”
“Kent Langevoort.”
Clare nodded.
Jack looked at Russ. “What about now? You’re going to need more than the fact his wife has a prescription for Seconal.”
Russ stood up. “We know Langevoort was at the county fair the same day as Gabrielle. He went with Saunderson.” He paced toward the tree trunk. “We’ve got Saunderson at Gabrielle’s restaurant a few days before. She was his waitress. Maybe Langevoort was with him.”
“Any evidence of that?”
Russ shook his head. “No. The tab was enough for two meals, but we don’t know the other diner. No one at the Water View could remember.”
Clare swallowed an acid piece of guilt. “Maybe Bors stole the pills. They were right there in the master bathroom. Anyone in the house could have accessed them.” Her voice faded away.
Jack squared his hands on the blue-and-white tablecloth. “Objectively, Saunderson looks better than Langevoort.”
Russ pivoted and paced toward the grill. “What about your case, then? Saunderson sure as hell didn’t put Seconal into Natalie Epstein’s drink in 1972.”
“Langevoort was around back then…” Jack looked at Clare, who nodded. “But we can’t connect him with Natalie—” His face went blank for a moment in a way that reminded her of Russ, looking inward, following his own thoughts through the dark and back out into the light again. “Sonuvabitch.” He jerked to his feet. “Leonard Epstein. The brother. There were a bunch of men he knew at the bus station. His law firm did work for their investment company.” He slapped his pockets as if looking for a car key. “We have to get to the station.”
“Why?” Margy looked doubtful.
“Because Russ can use the state license database to get his current address and number. If he can confirm those men were from Barkley and Eaton, we have a connection between the Epstein family and Langevoort’s business.”
“Do you think he’ll still remember? After all these years?”
Jack looked at her. “Do you still remember the day Walter died?”
Margy’s face stilled. “Every detail.”
Jack spread his hands. I rest my case.
“Langevoort could have picked Natalie up the afternoon she left the commune.” Russ paced back toward the tree. “A face she knew, an offer of dinner and drinks … maybe the Seconal was an attempt to roofie her that went wrong.” He stopped in his tracks. “What about the new dress?”
Jack shrugged. “The Jane Doe in ’52 had a new dress as well.”
Russ froze in place for a long moment. “You said this might not be a sex-related crime.”
Jack tilted his head.
“What if it’s something … weirder? Something more like a ritual?”
“That would explain the fancy dresses. And the missing accessories. The shoes and such. Trophies.”
“Wait a minute.” Margy put her hands on her hips. “I think you two are going down the White Rabbit’s hole here. Are you suggesting the folks in charge of an investment bank are making some sort of pagan human sacrifice?” She snorted. “I don’t much approve of greedy capitalism, but even I wouldn’t go that far.”
Clare thought of the discussion at her table, the night of the party. “It’s not pagan sacrifice,” she said tentatively. “It’s pagan adoption.”
Russ sat down across from her. “Go on.”
“At my table the other night, we were talking about the transfer of the business to Bors. Kent and one of the older women were comparing it to Roman adoption. A son is taken on, often as an adult, and has all the rights and responsibilities a son by birth would have.”
Jack sat down as well. “What’s that got to do with murder?”
“This is something I actually know about. We studied it in seminary, because Paul uses a lot of language about Christians being the adopted children of God—”
“Clare.”
“Right, sorry. So in the ritual of adoption, the birth parents symbolically sold their son to his new family. Money was exchanged. After that, the adoptive father was the pater familias to the new son. He had absolute power of life and death over him.” It made a fascinating analogy when you started to dig into Paul’s epistles, but she was pretty sure Russ and Jack weren’t interested in that part.
“So … killing a girl is like a payment?” Jack looked at Margy, who spread her hands.
“No,” Russ said slowly. “Killing a girl puts you under the absolute power of your new ‘father.’” He made quote marks around the word.
“Kent told me he was retiring on his investments. All financial ties to the company he had owned and run for however many years would be cut.”
Russ was nodding along to her words. “But what if you wanted an insurance policy? Something to guarantee the new owner would treat you right. Maybe keep doing things the way you thought they ought to be done.”
“Aaah.” Jack’s eyes lit. “Not trophies. Evidence. Held back just in case you needed leverage against your replacement.”
“Which means somewhere, some place, Gabrielle Yates’s shoes and phone and whatever else she had on her is tucked away. Secure.” Russ rapped his knuckles against the tabletop. “Where?”
“The murders took place here. You wouldn’t want to risk being caught transporting any items, so … close. Millers Kill or nearabouts.”
Russ nodded. “The camp?”
Jack shook his head. “With family and guests and a cleaning service in and out? No. Maybe a hole dug in the woods?”
“The camp goes to Bors, though.” Clare’s mouth flattened. “Or it would have. If it wasn’t your property, it’d be a lot harder to go tramping through the forest looking for a cache. Assuming you’d want to be able to get at it quickly just in case.” She looked toward Russ. “The Langevoorts are building a new retirement home, by Lake George.”
“Same issues Jack just listed for the camp. Except maybe even less secure, with builders and plumbers and electricians on site.”
“Maybe he has a safe-deposit box.” Margy sounded exasperated. Everyone looked at her. “I may not be trained in law enforcement, but I’ve got my common sense. Why on earth would anyone dig a hole in the ground when they could stash it away in a bank?”
Jack smiled. “Common sense indeed.”
“We need to lock this down as quickly as possible.” Russ set his hands on the picnic table and pushed into a standing position. “I’m afraid I may have put the wind up Kent yesterday. The ME and I went to the hospital to get a DNA sample for Saunderson and I had a few questions for Langevoort.”
“He started grilling the man,” Clare translated.
“If he’s smart—and there’s no reason to think he’s not—he’ll already be weighing getting rid of the evidence. It’s of no use if Saunderson dies, which seems likely.” He looked to Clare for confirmation. She nodded. “Clare. Can you find him and stick with him? Either at the hospital or the camp, you can be there for, you know, pastoral support. I don’t want him alone with Bors Saunderson and I especially don’t want him alone with his family. Guys backed into a corner sometimes decide to take everyone else with ’em.”
Jack frowned. “You want your wife involved in that?”
Russ grinned his most wolflike grin. “If you knew Clare, you wouldn’t ask that.”
She felt like a lamp lit from the inside. “If Margy will keep Ethan.”
“Good girl. If you can find out if he has a local bank…”
“I will.”
“Don’t take any risks. You’re just there to make sure he’s not out destroying evidence. If he leaves, call me. No legwork.”
Her mouth curved in a helpless smile. “No legwork.”
Russ turned to Jack. “Okay. Let’s get over to the shop and see if we can track down your Mr. Epstein. It’s hard enough getting a warrant from Judge Ryswick on a working day. I hate to think how pissed off he’s going to be when I show up at his house on a Sunday.”