Chapter 26

26

Audrey stands looking out at the Hudson River. A cool breeze is ruffling its dark surface. There’s a police boat out on the water, bobbing gently, where divers in wet suits are at work. Uniformed officers are searching the edge of the river. Audrey can see the two bridges of Aylesford, one to the south of her, one to the north, spanning the river to the Catskill Mountains on the other side. It would be a pretty, peaceful scene, but it’s marred by what’s going on here.

Audrey is part of a small crowd watching the police activity in the pleasant spring weather. The media is here too. She observes silently for a while, standing near a woman in her thirties who has the demeanor of a professional. Audrey wonders if she might be a journalist. Then she notices the logo of the Aylesford Record on her windbreaker, confirming it. “What are they doing?” she asks the woman.

“It’s the Merton murder case,” the woman replies, glancing at her briefly, then turning her attention back to the river. “They’re not saying much, but they’re obviously looking for evidence. The murder weapon, probably. The knife.” She’s quiet for a moment, then adds, “And the bloody clothes. A murder that violent, the killer must have had to get rid of his clothes. They must be looking for those too.”

Good point, Audrey thinks to herself. It annoys her that she doesn’t know any more about the actual crime than the reporter, and she’s family. Fred was her brother, and yet she hasn’t been let in on anything. The police are saying nothing, and the family isn’t talking to the press. She tries to tamp down the malignant fury she’s feeling toward them all.

“Is there anything new?” Audrey asks, hoping the reporter might share some tidbit.

The woman beside her shakes her head and then shrugs. “I bet they know more than they’re letting on. Wealthy family, you know. They always get preferential treatment, more privacy. More respect.”

Without planning to, Audrey says suddenly, “I know the family.”

The woman turns to her and for the first time looks at her with interest. “You do? How?”

“Fred Merton was my brother.”

The woman appraises her, as if trying to discern whether she’s some kind of crackpot. Maybe she makes a quick judgment about Audrey’s age and her appearance and realizes she might be telling the truth. “Really? Do you want to talk about it?”

Audrey hesitates, casting her eyes to the police boat out on the river.

She shakes her head and turns to go.

“Wait,” the other woman says. “Let me give you my card.” She hands Audrey a business card. “If you want to talk, call me. Anytime. I’d really like to talk to you, if you are who you say you are.”

Audrey takes the card and looks at it. Robin Fontaine. She looks up and offers the woman her hand to shake. “Audrey Stancik. But my maiden name was Merton.” Then she turns and heads back to her car.

---

•   •   •reyes studies the younger man across from him. Jake Brenner has the starving-artist look down—ripped jeans, wrinkled T-shirt, battered leather jacket, two-day-old stubble. He’s trying hard to be cool, to look as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, but Reyes can tell he’s not as comfortable as he would like to seem. He smiles too much, for one thing. And his thumb drums the surface of the table in an irregular, annoying way.

Reyes says, “Thank you for coming all the way up from the city to talk to us. How did you get here, by the way?” he asks casually.

“The train.”

Reyes nods. “We just want to ask you a few questions about the night of April twenty-first, Easter Sunday.” Jake nods. “You were with Jenna Merton that day, at her parents’ house for dinner, is that right?”

Jake looks at them steadily. “Yes.”

“What was it like, that dinner?”

Jake takes a deep breath in, lets it out. “Well, it was a bit fancy. I was worried about using the right fork.” He smiles again. “They have a lot of money, you know. They seemed nice enough.”

“Everybody get along all right?”

He nods. “I think so.”

“Okay.” Reyes says, “I understand you and Jenna were the last to leave the house that night.” Jake seems to freeze briefly, then relaxes. Reyes adds, “We know you and Jenna left about an hour later than the others. Why is that?”

No smiles now.

“What did you and Jenna do in that extra hour inside the Merton house?” Reyes asks conversationally.

“Nothing,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “We just talked. They wanted to get to know me better.”

“Really?” Reyes says. He leans forward. “What did you talk about, exactly?”

Jake swallows nervously. “Art, mostly. I’m an artist.”

“Was there an argument that night, Jake? Did something happen during dinner? Or maybe after dinner?”

He shakes his head firmly. “No. There was no argument. We just stayed to talk for a while and then we left. They were fine when we left them, I swear.”

“Let’s move on,” Reyes says. “What did you do after you and Jenna left the Mertons’ place?”

“We drove back to her place. I spent the night.”

“Neither of you went out again?”

“No.”

Reyes gives him a long look and says, “Okay. We’ll be in touch.” He sends him off with Barr to be fingerprinted.

When Barr returns, he says to her, “All three of them have very convenient alibis, don’t you think?” She gives him a cynical nod. “Well I’m not buying it. We need to check them out. See if you can get any video from the Aylesford train station. See if he took a train back to the city that night.” He adds, “And if not, check the morning video too. I want to be sure.” She nods. “In the meantime, I’ll check in with the ME’s office on that second autopsy.”

He glances at his watch—it’s almost 5:00 p.m.—and makes the short drive there.

Sandy Fisher, the forensic pathologist, greets him saying, “I was just about to give you a call.”

She leads him over to Fred Merton’s body, which is lying uncovered on a steel gurney. They look down at him.

“Fourteen stab wounds, some of which show real ferocity. But it was the slitting of the throat first that killed him. Grabbed from behind, throat slit left to right—the killer is right-handed—then he dropped or was thrown to the floor onto his stomach and stabbed fourteen times in the back, with decreasing depth, probably because the killer was tiring.” She pauses for a moment and adds, “A lot of anger there.”

“Yes,” Reyes agrees.

“One more interesting thing,” she says. “Fred Merton had advanced pancreatic cancer. He was dying anyway. He probably only had three or four months.”

“Would he have known?” Reyes asks, surprised.

“Oh, I would think so, most definitely.”

Reyes makes his way back to his car, thoughtful. That certainly might lend weight to Audrey Stancik’s claim that Fred was going to change his will. He wonders who knew that Fred was dying, and what he was planning to do.