20

right off the bat, roger carpington did not strike me as a guy skilled in the art of negotiating. Caving is not one of the standard tactics. One look at the picture of himself with Stefanie Knight and he was ready to cut me a check.

“You think I'm here to blackmail you?” I asked.

Carpington, still sweating, said, “What other purpose could you have in mind when you come to me with a picture like this? You're out to ruin me, that's obvious. But I'm guessing that you can be dissuaded from that if we can agree upon a price.”

I leaned back in my chair. “I do think that the motive behind this picture, and the other ones I have in this envelope”—Carpington fixed his eyes upon it—“is definitely blackmail, Mr. Carpington, but I'm not your blackmailer. It's somebody else. Maybe it's Stefanie Knight. Has she been blackmailing you? Did she tell you she'd tell your wife about your affair if you didn't pay her off?”

Carpington was wide-eyed. “That's ridiculous. I'm not having an affair with Stefanie.”

I furrowed my brow, slid another one of the prints from the envelope out halfway, and peered at it. “You're right. This one here, where she's got your dick in her mouth, that doesn't look like an affair. Maybe she's just a consultant helping you interpret the town's official plan.”

“You're a disgusting man,” Carpington said. “Get out of my office.”

“Okay,” I said, and stood out of my chair. “Ta-ta.”

“Wait! Sit down. Sit down. Tell me what it is you want.”

“I want you to tell me about Stefanie. Everything.”

He shook his head slowly. “What do you care? And how do you happen to have these pictures? Do you know Stefanie? Are you working with her?”

“No, I don't know her,” I said, “although I have seen her this evening.” I watched for anything in Carpington's eyes, a glimmer. There was nothing. “How I happen to have these pictures is my business for now, but I can tell you that the negatives are safely stored away, and if something were to happen to me, there are people who'd know where to find them.” I was surprisingly good at this.

“I see,” Carpington said. He seemed to be abandoning any plans he might have had to leap across the desk and rip the envelope out of my hands.

“How did you meet Stefanie?” I asked.

He squirmed in his seat. “I met her through a business acquaintance.”

“Let me guess. Don Greenway.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I've met with Mr. Greenway on several occasions, and Stefanie works in his office. I believe she's his secretary.”

“You've been very supportive of Mr. Greenway's development proposals.”

Carpington shrugged. “I think people like Mr. Greenway bring economic prosperity to a place like Oakwood. They bring jobs, and families, a broadened tax base, hope for the future of our community.”

I needed some Maalox. “Not everyone agrees with you on that, though. Councilman Underwood, for example, and Sam Spender. Greenway's had to deal with formidable opposition to his subdivision, particularly the last phase near Willow Creek. He must really appreciate having someone like you, in a position of influence, on the council and all, on his side.”

“Are you insinuating something?”

“You tell me. You're boffing his secretary. That seems like a pretty good inducement to vote in favor of his development. My guess is, keeping you entertained is part of Stefanie's job description. But just in case you start getting an attack of the guilts, or ever decide to vote against Valley Forest Estates, Greenway has a little something in reserve, these pictures, to make sure you do exactly what he wants you to do.”

“Oh God,” Carpington said, cupping his hands over nose and mouth. “Oh God oh God oh God.”

“When's the last time you saw Stefanie?” I asked, ignoring his weeping.

“What? Uh, yesterday. At her house.”

“Over on Rambling Rose?”

“Yes. It's not actually her house, it's one owned by Greenway's company, they built a lot of the homes in that area a few years ago, but she lives there.”

“Is that where you'd have your . . . encounters?”

Carpington nodded.

“There's a mirror on the ceiling,” I said. “In the bedroom.”

Carpington looked as though he was getting jealous. “So you've been with her, too.”

“No, can't say that I have, but I'm guessing that's how they got these pictures of the two of you. The camera was mounted behind two-way glass, looking straight down. I guess Greenway or one of his people was up in the attic while you two went at it, fired off the shots he needed, waited until you were gone, and came back down. Left the film with Stefanie to get developed.”

Carpington fiddled vacantly with papers on his desk. “I'm finished. It's all over for me.”

“Could be. But for the moment, as long as these prints and the negatives don't land in the wrong hands, you're still okay. So I've got a few more questions. You saw Stefanie yesterday, at her house. What did you talk about? How was she?”

“We didn't talk about that much. We just, you know. But she did seem, I don't know, different.”

“How do you mean, different?”

“On edge, distracted. She had something on her mind.”

“Did she say anything?”

“I don't know. Why does it matter? Why don't you just ask her yourself?”

“I'm asking you. What did she say?”

“She wanted to know how much it would cost to fly somewhere. The Bahamas, or Barbados, San Francisco. She was throwing out all these names of places. I asked her if she was going on a trip, and she said maybe. She said she might be going away.”

“Alone, or with someone else?”

“She, she didn't say. It's almost like she was talking about running away. Like she was scared. But I may have read that wrong. Maybe she's just planning a vacation. Maybe she's going away with her boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend? She has a boyfriend?”

“Well, I don't know for sure that she does, but I have this sense that there's someone else. Someone she's seeing. Or has been seeing.”

“That must hurt,” I said, “the idea that she might be unfaithful to you and all.” I thought Carpington might shoot me a look, but he missed the irony and kept staring down at his desk.

“No, I know what we've got and what the limits are. I know she doesn't like me. I know why she's doing what she's doing. I'm not stupid. I mean, look at me. What are the chances a girl like Stefanie Knight would be interested in a guy like me?”

Well, he had me there, but I decided not to say anything. But what I was thinking was, Could this guy have any more motives for wanting Stefanie Knight dead? She was clearly part of some blackmail scheme against him. Maybe she'd been threatening to tell his wife about what they'd been up to. And there was the jealousy angle. Carpington figured she was seeing somebody else.

I was starting to feel better already. I was moving down from the number one spot on the list of possible suspects. “Sure, Detective,” I could hear myself saying in an interrogation room, “I stole her purse, but you want an even better suspect? Check out this guy.”

But all that aside, I didn't think he was the one who'd struck Stefanie in the head with a shovel. He just didn't seem to have it in him.

I said, “You think this boyfriend was Rick?”

“Rick?” Carpington, who I thought couldn't look any worse, moved toward bilious. “Don't even talk to me about him. He's a total psychopath. He's insane.”

“We've met. To be honest with you, I don't care much for him, either. We didn't hit it off very well.”

“Let me tell you what he did to me. He took me to this house they'd started building—this was back when he and Greenway and Mr. Benedetto first started talking to me about needing some help at the council level and at the planning committee—and all that was done was the basement, which they'd capped off with the beams and plywood for the first floor, and he took me down a ladder to show me—there were no stairs yet—how the first stages of construction are done. And I'm looking around, and I notice Rick's gone, and so's the ladder, and I'm trapped down there, in this wide-open basement with a layer of wood overtop, and then Rick drops this snake—and I'm not talking about some little snake or something—but this giant snake into the basement.”

“Quincy.”

“Yes! That was its name! And he starts slithering around, and I swear to God, I was never so scared in my life. I started screaming at Rick to let me up, to put the ladder back down, but he stood up there, looking down at me through this hole where the stairs would go, and he just laughed. I was running around the whole basement trying to stay ahead of this snake, and Rick's asking me whether they can count on my support at the council, and telling me that when I say yes, he'll put the ladder back and come down and deal with Quincy. He's the biggest snake I've ever seen.”

“Who, Rick? Or Quincy?”

Carpington almost smiled. “Mr. Greenway apologized for him later. Said he wanted our relationship to be more cordial than that.”

“The question was, do you think Stefanie is seeing Rick?”

“I suppose it's possible; they went out a long time ago. Rick still keeps in touch with her mother, that's who looks after the snake, I think. But I don't think Stef wants anything to do with him anymore. I think she's scared of him.”

“What about Greenway? I mean, she's working with him every day in the office.”

“Maybe.” Carpington thought. “Or maybe Mr. Benedetto. He usually gets what he wants.”

“Greenway's boss? Is that who you're talking about?”

“That's right. He's the one who bought the land for the development. But he turns things over to Greenway, to get the actual subdivision going.” Carpington took another look at the photo, pressed his lips together. “I can't believe she'd be in on something like that. I thought she was better than the others, than the rest of that bunch at Valley Forest.”

“Yeah, you must be very disappointed. You hang out with a woman whose coworkers resort to blackmail and drop you into basements with snakes, it must be a shock to learn she might be less than upstanding.”

“I have to talk to her,” Carpington said. “I have to find out why she'd do this to me.” He grabbed the one print, folded it in half, and shoved it inside his suit jacket.

“That's okay,” I said. “I have more. But I think you're wasting your time.”

“What do you mean? Has she left? Did she actually go away? It was only yesterday that she was talking about this.”

“No,” I said. “Stefanie's dead.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but there were no words. He got up suddenly, shoved his way past me to get to the hallway. By the time I was out of my chair and had my head out the door, I could see him running down the hall for the doors to the parking lot.

 

when i got to the door, I spotted Carpington getting into a dark blue or black Cadillac. I ran to my Civic, got in, and debated my next move. I'd rattled Carpington's cage, to be sure, and it seemed worth knowing what he'd do next. I'd set something in motion by letting him know I knew about his affair with Stefanie, and by telling him she was dead, and I wanted to see where it went.

He didn't immediately race out of the parking lot, as I'd expected. I could see him in the car, punching numbers into a cell phone, waiting for someone to answer, then talking rapidly, waving his one free arm around inside the car. He talked for two, maybe three minutes, then threw the phone down. The brake lights came on, the Cadillac was put into drive and squealed out of the lot.

The Caddy had a lot more pickup than the Civic, which wheezed in pursuit. There weren't many cars on the road this late at night, and I didn't want to follow so closely that he'd notice me, and that was exactly how it was working out. The Caddy's taillights receded into the distance as Carpington floored it.

He was heading in the direction of Valley Forest Estates. He approached the subdivision from the south side, down by the creek, and I watched as the red lights sped into an area where the homes were in the earlier stages of construction.

When I saw the red lights come to a stop, I hung back, pulled over to the side of the road and killed my lights. The Caddy sat there, idling, Carpington staying behind the wheel, evidently waiting for a meeting. I backed the Civic between a stack of lumber and an idle forklift, figured it was far enough off the street not to be noticed, and got out. I was a couple of hundred yards away from Carpington's car, and crept along carefully, behind the houses, making my way between wheelbarrows and stacks of bricks and two-by-fours. The sky was clear, the stars were out and the moon was nearly full, so I could see fairly well once my eyes adjusted. Still, at one point, my right leg dropped down into a shallow ditch and I went down, but I was still far enough away from the Caddy not to have attracted any attention. I got up, worried that I might have twisted my ankle, but everything seemed to be working properly. My jeans and shirt were scuffed with dirt.

I wanted to get as close to the Caddy as possible without being detected. It was parked, the motor still idling, directly in front of a two-story house still in the skeletal stage. Boards that would later be covered with insulation and drywall marked out the exterior and interior walls. I bypassed the door frames and slipped between two studs into the house, making my way to the front, where I got down on the floor, made myself as flat as possible, and settled in to watch the show.

Carpington constantly checked his mirror, made another call on his cell, fiddled with the radio, blotted his brow. The two of us waited nearly ten minutes before a set of headlights appeared at the far end of the street, followed closely by a second. The two cars approached slowly. The first, a four-door imported sedan, drove past the Caddy and angled in front of it, while the second car, a small Lincoln, pulled up tight behind it. Carpington was effectively boxed in.

The driver of the Lincoln killed the lights and engine and got out. In the moonlight, I could see that it was Don Greenway, still in his suit. Carpington got out of the Cadillac, turning off the engine but leaving the headlights on. Rick, who got out of the import, shielded his eyes from the glare as he joined Greenway, who was standing in front of an already raving Carpington.

“She's dead!” he shouted. “This guy comes and sees me and tells me she's dead!”

“Roger, calm down,” Greenway said, trying to maintain a normal tone of voice.

“How do you expect me to calm down? Stefanie's dead!”

“I only just heard about it myself,” Greenway said. “The police were by the office.”

“Look, I never signed on for anything like this! Spender was one thing, and I never wanted to go along with that, but this is too much!”

Rick said, “I think you should lower your voice, asshole. There's houses over that ridge people are living in, dickwad, and they might hear you.”

“Maybe I don't care about that. Maybe it's too late to care about anything.”

Greenway looked at Rick and nodded. Suddenly, Rick slapped Carpington across the face savagely, sending the councilman sprawling up against the side of his Caddy. Before he even had time to touch his cheek, Rick had him by the shirt and was dragging him across the mud-caked street in the direction of his car. Rick reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of remote keys, and popped the trunk on the sedan, which opened about an inch.

As Rick swung the trunk open a tiny light came on long enough for Carpington to see what was inside. There was barely time for him to scream “No!” before Rick had shoved him inside and slammed the trunk shut.