Chapter XVIII

Paulie Fulci was sitting in the brothers' monster truck when I tapped on the window. He was listening to a Harry Potter audiobook on the stereo. The bass was so low that Jim Dale's voice sounded like that of God Himself.

"Anything out of the ordinary?" I asked, as he lowered the window and paused the book.

"A couple of thrill-seekers. I told them to take a hike, and they did."

This was hardly a surprise. Had Paulie told me to take a hike, I'd immediately have done so, conceivably to the Himalayas.

"Media?"

"A TV truck. I told them to take a hike too."

"Did they object?"

"Not for long."

When the mood struck him, Paulie could be kind of droll.

"And the police?"

"The patrol car left shortly after we got here. They drive by every couple of hours."

"I hope you wave."

"Not with more than one finger."

I left him to Harry and rang the new video doorbell. The brothers had worked fast. I saw one camera mounted on the front of the house, covering the yard, and assumed that its twin was monitoring the rear. Paulie's brother, Tony, opened the door and led me to the kitchen, where he and Evelyn Miller were working on a jigsaw puzzle of a Degas painting. Once I'd managed to get my mind around Tony Fulci and ballet dancers, I asked Evelyn how she was doing.

"Getting by," she said. "They allowed Colleen a phone call. She didn't sleep well last night, but otherwise, she's okay."

"Nobody sleeps well on their first night in jail."

"Let's make sure she doesn't have to experience a second. I have money ready to cover her bail. I disposed of some shares and consolidated accounts. I also have a line of credit open with my bank." She stared hard at me. "She will be granted bail, right?"

"There are no guarantees," I told her, "but Moxie is quietly confident. I only worry when he's loudly so."

I suggested that Tony get some air, or take the opportunity to go listen to Harry Potter with his brother. I wanted a few minutes alone with Evelyn Miller. Tony didn't mind. Among the Fulcis' many finer qualities was their ability to take a hint without taking offense as well.

"How are you finding the company?" I asked.

"Remarkably polite, and very attentive. Not excessively bright, perhaps, but I'll take kind over clever anytime."

"You do speak your mind, don't you?"

"I can keep my mouth shut, too, when the situation requires, but I don't see any merit in being diplomatic right now."

Or ever, I thought.

"And what have you been doing today?" she continued, in the tone of the schoolmistress she had once been. I had to resist the urge to check that my shirt wasn't untucked.

"Interviewing your daughter's neighbors and friends, or as many of them as I could get to. I also talked with her husband."

"I hope you showered after."

"I cleaned my hands. Like everyone else, I keep sanitizer in the car—but then, I always have."

"For dirty work?"

"It's the nature of the business."

"Yours more than most. I've been reading up on you, Mr. Parker. You have violent tendencies."

She didn't say it to wound. If anything, she sounded amused.

"It's more that trouble finds me."

"It will if you leave a welcome mat out for it."

"Are you having second thoughts about my involvement?"

"Not at all. I'd rather have you on our side than theirs." She allowed some of the tension to leech from her. "Sorry—not for the first time. That was blunt, even for me. I'm more fractious than usual. I didn't sleep well either."

Now that we were done with the preliminaries, I took a seat across from her. I found a piece of a dancer's ballet slipper on the table and added it to the emerging picture. "I have some questions for you, if you're up to trying to answer."

"I'd welcome the mental exercise."

"How much do you dislike your son-in-law?"

"Now, or how much did I dislike him before all this happened?"

"Let's accept ‘now' as a given."

"I never took to him. Once, after too many glasses of wine, I even advised my daughter against marrying him. I sometimes wonder if she went ahead and did it out of spite. Colleen may act like a shrinking violet, but given the choice between doing the right thing at someone else's instigation, and the wrong thing of her own volition, she has a habit of picking the second option. She was always a headstrong child, in her disassociated way."

"What about your late husband? Did he share your view of Stephen?"

"Tom was a poor judge of character," she said. "No, that's not fair: my husband was simply better with numbers than people. He was more comfortable working in the abstract, but he doted on Colleen. He was happy she'd found someone she wanted to be with, and who wanted to be with her, too, insofar as Tom understood the concept. He was never more at home with anyone than he was with himself.

"Also, he liked the fact that Stephen was ambitious and could talk stocks and bonds. Tom knew that Colleen would always be financially secure, thanks to his own efforts, but in Stephen he saw someone who would work hard to consolidate comfort into actual wealth. For Tom, love was secondary and overrated. ‘Like' was sufficient—he wasn't utterly devoid of emotion—but he'd grown up poor and had no illusions about it. Better, in his view, to be moderately happy and more than moderately wealthy, than to be very happy and moderately poor. He didn't link contentment with love, only with the absence of financial worry. He wasn't right, but neither was he completely wrong."

"Did he love you?" I asked.

"In his way, and I loved him. We were fortunate in our union; our daughter, less so in hers."

I found a piece of the dancer's leg, or thought I had, but it didn't fit.

"I never liked jigsaws," I said.

"Really? I'm surprised. I thought you were about to use it as a clumsy metaphor for your vocation."

I had to hand it to her: Evelyn Miller was a piece of work.

"My grandfather was a policeman," I said. "He read every day, all his life. He never went anywhere without a book and could discourse on literature like a professor. When he died, I laid the novel he'd left unfinished in the casket with him. He was a literate, literary man, but he couldn't play Scrabble worth a damn and didn't enjoy crossword puzzles."

She took the errant piece from me, substituting it with the correct one.

"I feel you're circling me," she said. "Why don't you ask me straight out what you want to know?"

"Because I'm not certain you can be objective and without objectivity what you have to say will be of less value."

"You might be surprised at my capacity for objectivity."

I had listened to her description of her late husband, so perhaps she was right.

"Your daughter admits that she struggled with depression, and feelings of anger toward her son, but she says that all was mostly behind her by the time Henry went missing," I said. "Even during it, she claims she never stopped loving him, which I don't dispute. Her husband told me he didn't believe she ever wanted to be a mother, and in the event of a divorce would have ceded custody of Henry to him. Today, one of Colleen's friends said it was Stephen who was both emotionally and physically distant from the child, to the extent of displaying minimal interest in him. Not all those statements can be correct."

"They aren't," said Evelyn. "Stephen's lying."

"Remember what I said about objectivity."

"This is me being objective. I didn't precede Stephen's name with the words ‘that cocksucker.'?"

I wasn't sure that would work as a dictionary definition of impartiality.

"Go on," I said.

"Stephen is like some kind of alien building a simulacrum of a human life," said Evelyn. "He has a wife, a family, and hobbies, but only because he read somewhere that they're the components of a regular existence. None of them engages him, not on any deep level."

That chimed with what Piper Hudson had observed about Mara Teller: a version of a life, as opposed to an actual one.

"Then what does?"

"Success, and how other people perceive him, which equate to the same thing for him. He wants to be envied and admired, but more the first than the second. He chose a wife who wouldn't embarrass him by drinking too much, talking out of turn, or getting fat. If he ever truly wished for a child, it was only to complete the picture. His image of married life came from cheap wedding catalogs and vintage reruns of Leave It to Beaver."

I waited for her to pause for breath.

"Are we still being objective?" I asked.

"Not so much."

"I didn't think so, but I wanted to be sure. I have a few more questions."

"I'm listening."

"Did Colleen ever speak to you about her physical relationship with her husband?"

"No, but I could read between the lines. She spoke about Stephen being tired a lot, working too hard, or traveling. I know those euphemisms. I used them myself over the years. I got the impression that it wasn't a make-or-break issue for either of them. Some couples are like that."

This brought us to the issue of why Stephen Clark had become involved, however briefly, with Mara Teller. Maybe she had ignited a dormant fire in him, but this particular flame bothered me.

"And the next question?"

"Do you think Stephen was capable of hurting Henry?"

"By ‘hurt,' do you mean physical abuse? Hitting?"

"No, I mean worse than that."

She stared at me for what felt like a very long time. I didn't look away, but allowed her to consider the question in silence.

"No," she said at last. "I may dislike him intensely, but I don't think he has murder in him."

"What about his brother and sister-in-law?"

She pursed her lips and thought long and hard before she answered.

"I liked them better than Stephen, and their longing for a child is real and profound," she said. "They fussed over Henry like he was their own, so I don't think they'd ever have done anything to harm him. If you're looking at them as possible abductors, I'd have to conclude you were on the wrong track. Which is not to say that I couldn't be mistaken, but I'd be very, very surprised."

"Thank you," I said. "That's all for now. If you'd like, I'll give you a ride to the courthouse. If not, one of the Fulcis can keep you company."

"I don't think either of them would fit in my car," she replied, "so I'd better go with you."

MEANWHILE, AS I LEARNEDlater, Moxie wasn't enjoying the company of Erin Becker at the courthouse, but at least the feeling was mutual. Becker was digging in on bail, which didn't surprise Moxie, even if the extent of her animosity toward Colleen Clark did. As anticipated, Becker rejected outright personal recognizance—release without bail—and neither would she countenance unsecured bail. Instead, she initially set the line at $250,000 secured and precluded Colleen from using her share in the family property as that security.

Moxie couldn't help but laugh. In Maine, $50,000 was a ballpark figure for bail on a murder charge, and usually required a body. For now, Henry Clark remained missing, if quietly presumed dead, and the most serious charge against Colleen was manslaughter, not murder.

"If you're actively seeking to alienate Pam Jedry," Moxie told Becker, "you could just try burning down her house or calling her kids ugly."

Because the charges against Colleen involved not only felonies, but also felonies alleged to have been committed against a family member, a bail commissioner was prohibited from setting bail, leaving the judge to make the determination. The initial hearing would therefore be held before Judge Pam Jedry, who was no soft touch but had worked closely with the Maine Women's Lobby before becoming one of Governor John Baldacci's first nominations to the bench back in the early part of the century. It was fair to say that she wouldn't have been Becker's first choice for any stage of the Clark proceedings. There was also rumored to be bad blood between her and Nowak, the animosity being as much personal as political.

"I don't think you've been paying attention, Mr. Castin," said Becker. "You need to look again at the list of charges."

"And you need to look at a calendar, Ms. Becker. This isn't the nineteenth century. Bail isn't prohibited on these charges and you can't try to conjure a version of such a prohibition by pulling figures from thin air. You know you'll just be asking for a bad-tempered sidebar with Pam Jedry."

"Or a Harnish," said Becker. "Would that be preferable?"

A Harnish bail proceeding determines whether a crime is a "formerly capital offense" as identified by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Those offenses are limited to murder, rape, arson of a dwelling at nighttime, armed robbery, armed burglary of a dwelling at nighttime, and treason. In such cases, the defendant's constitutional right to bail is extinguished.

"Again," said Moxie, "I refer you to the manslaughter charge."

"It's manslaughter for the present, but I'm becoming more optimistic about securing a murder conviction. Maine Revised Statute 17-A, Section 201: a person is guilty of murder if that person ‘engages in conduct that manifests a depraved indifference to the value of human life and that in fact causes the death of another human being.' I'm open to adding or revisiting charges should any new evidence justify it. I'm willing to bet on that evidence emerging before too long. The investigation into Henry Clark's disappearance is ongoing, and I'm confident that the police will ultimately establish the truth about what happened to him. With that in mind, I'd have no difficulty announcing at our preliminary hearing that we're contemplating raising the main charge to murder."

Moxie hid his unhappiness well, but Becker knew she'd scored a hit. If she went with a murder charge, a Harnish hearing was subsequently requested, and the judge sided with the prosecution, Colleen would be left behind bars while her case wound its way to trial. She'd also be transferred to a less amenable environment than Cumberland County Jail, where a woman accused of killing her child would be a prime target for putative avengers.

Becker sat placidly, like an alligator watching a fawn cautiously approaching water, and said nothing while Moxie ran through a range of potential outcomes in his head. It could, he knew, all be a bluff, because he wasn't convinced that Becker was prepared to go with a murder charge. She needed a win, and manslaughter offered a better prospect.

"You won't get the judge to sign off on a quarter of a million," he said finally, "and I very much doubt that Jedry will look favorably on your Harnish play, not after I've had my say."

Becker, having made Moxie squirm for a while, eased off.

"We always have the option of parking the request," she said, "and seeking revocation of bail at a later date based on a new charge. Who knows which judge might be required to make that decision?"

Moxie decided that he really, really didn't like Erin Becker. She possessed the vindictiveness of a despot, but also the conceit.

"You could go down that route," said Moxie, "but your friends in the media won't be able to get any good shots of my client if she's locked up. Out of sight, out of mind and all that, because there's always some new scandal to occupy the masses. It's a long journey to trial, even if you do manage to accelerate proceedings, and I'll do my best to stymie you every step of the way. I think you and your boss want Colleen Clark in the public eye, or else she's no use to you as an electoral tool."

He waited for Becker to blink. It took a while, but she did.

"You're preying on my magnanimity," she said.

"Is that what you call it?" said Moxie. "I never would have guessed."

"One hundred and fifty thousand, unsecured."

"A hundred thousand," countered Moxie, "with half secured on her share of the family property."

"Her husband won't permit any use of the family home. He'll fight it."

"Let him."

"Really? Then your client might want to consider how she wants to decorate her cell, because it'll be her domicile until the issue is resolved."

This time it was Moxie who backed down.

"A hundred thousand," he said, "half in cash, the remainder secured against her mother's property."

Becker made a show of appearing unhappy, but Moxie knew she and Nowak would be content with $100,000. It was a nice round figure that would look good in the headlines.

"Okay," she said, "let's put that to the judge."