The Man from Primrose Lane: A Novel Read online

  “I didn’t think so. I don’t know.”

  “Would it make you mad if she had?”

  “Of course. But I wouldn’t kill him. Or try to.”

  “I told Mike, when my sister called and told me you wanted to meet, I told Mike that what you really wanted was to ask me about Elaine’s murder. He said I was being paranoid. That you just wanted to reunite Tanner with this side of the family. I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “You were right.”

  “You think the man who murdered my Elaine is the same man who shot the Man from Primrose Lane.”

  “I think it’s possible. I’ve come across some evidence that shows someone was trying to track down the Man from Primrose Lane. A man who fits the description of Elaine’s abductor. I’m almost positive the Man from Primrose Lane was the man who saved Elizabeth’s life back then, the guy who interrupted the abduction too late in the game to save Elaine.”

  “Another mystery,” she said. “I was never any help to the police. Did Elizabeth ever tell you that?”

  “She never talked about it.”

  “I couldn’t give the police anything useful. That’s what they told me. It was my fault, I guess, since I was a casual drinker and couldn’t even remember what clothes Elaine was wearing that day.”

  “I don’t think it was a crime of opportunity,” said David. “The man was waiting for them to cross through the park. I think he knew they were coming. I bet they went there every day after school.”

  “They were at the park all the time.”

  “So he must have crossed paths with your daughters at some point before the abduction. I think this guy has a thing for redheads. I think he picked Elaine and Elizabeth out of a crowd somewhere, targeted them.”

  “FBI thought so, too.”

  “What was going on in the girls’ lives the week before Elaine was taken? Did … I don’t know, did you change up your routine in any way, go someplace you didn’t usually go with the girls—dry cleaner’s, pharmacy?”

  Abigail shook her head. “Nothing like that. They swam at the Y twice a week. They had gymnastics on Saturdays. We’d gone shopping that week to pick out clothes for school pictures. But they went with me to the store all the time. The night before the abduction, we went out for ice cream. I know the police questioned everyone who saw my girls in the weeks before he took Elaine.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Not officially.”

  “Unofficially?”

  “There was a man who did some work on our house a few months before it happened. He built this room we’re sitting in, actually, him and his crew. I guess he used to be some big-time consultant in Indonesia. He was the first guy I thought about.”

  “Why?”

  “He was creepy. Didn’t talk much. To adults. But when the girls were playing outside, he would always make an excuse to talk to them. He wasn’t married. Lives in an apartment near Rocky River. Harold Schulte. I know the cops have been out there to talk to him about it. More than once.”

  “Did the police tell you anything?”

  “Guess he got in trouble in high school for indecent exposure on the school bus. That was it.”

  “Did Elaine keep a diary?”

  Abigail shook her head, but as she did, she stood up and walked over to a bureau near the sliding glass doors. She opened the top drawer and rummaged under some papers before she withdrew two items and returned to her seat.

  “Elaine was my artist and poet,” she said, handing him a piece of wide-ruled notebook paper filled with a young girl’s loopy handwriting. It was titled “Dead Cat.” Dead cat on the road. Killed by Mother Nature. Or maybe a truck. “It’s a haiku.”

  “I see.”

  Abigail handed him the other item, which was already familiar to him; he’d seen it hanging on the wall in Sackett’s office. “Her last school picture,” she said.

  “They really do look so similar.” He traced his fingers over a black scratch on the top of the picture. He meant Elaine and Katy. “Any other hunches after all these years?” he asked. “Anyone else you feel could have done it?”

  Abigail shook her head again. “We don’t even have a body, you know? That complicates things. You want to hold out hope she’s still alive. But I knew in my heart she was murdered the day she was taken. I could feel it. Mike didn’t accept it until probably five years after she was gone. He cried with me one night and then he didn’t wait for her anymore. We both came to accept that our daughter was dead. And, believe it or not, you sort of move on after a while. You move on or you die. Elizabeth, I’m afraid, was lost in that struggle. By the time her father and I were sane again, we’d just been apart too long. I was too ashamed to reach out to her and she was too stubborn to come to me.” She fought back an eruption of emotion and then stuck another cigarette in her mouth. “C’est la vie.”

  David heard the front door close. Abigail looked at him with a start. “Expecting company?” he asked.

  “David, take another drink. You think that you couldn’t have made the same decision I did back then. That you couldn’t have sent Elizabeth away just because she looked like her dead sister, that maybe you could have learned to live with that.”

  “I don’t understand. Who’s here?” He heard footsteps in the dining room, approaching. High heels slapping against a hardwood floor. He turned to look.

  “Eventually, I did get used to it,” said Abigail.

  She walked into the room, unassumingly, bouncing on her feet. David’s breath caught in his chest.

  “Hello,” she said, smiling under her red bangs. “Hi, Mom. I didn’t know you had company.”

  “David, this is my daughter Eloise,” said Abigail. “She just turned twenty. She’s attending Ohio State, but comes home so much we shouldn’t really be paying for her dorm room.”

  “Shush,” said Eloise. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is David Neff, Lizzie’s husband.”

  “Shut up,” she said. Then she grabbed him in an embrace. She looked remarkably like her dead sisters. Her cheeks were higher. And her eyebrows a shade darker. Her lips were a bit fuller. But the resemblance to the woman he had fallen in love with at Kent State was unwelcome and disturbing. “I’m so glad to meet you. I always wanted to meet Lizzie.”

  “Her son is downstairs with your dad,” said Abigail.

  “No way,” she said. She kissed her mother and then ran out the way she had come, shouting back, “Stay there, David! I’ll be right back.”

  When they were alone again, David looked over to Abigail, who stared back, trying to read his emotions.

  “Peggy never said anything.”

  “I told her not to.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want Lizzie to know until I got a chance to tell her myself. I wanted a boy. Instead, I got another spitting image of the girls I lost. God has a sick sense of humor.”

  “I think I should go,” he said.

  Abigail nodded.

  * * *

  They pulled him over as soon as he crossed the Summit County line on 77 South. Two cruisers, a black sedan, three news vans, and two civilian cars he assumed were print reporters. For just a second he considered gunning it. But then he remembered Tanner in the back seat and that kept his mind thinking logically. He pulled over.

  “Tanner, listen to me.”

  “Whoa, are those cop cars? Dad, were you speeding?”

  “No, I wasn’t speeding.”

  He could already see Sackett and Larkey climbing out of the unmarked sedan. Even from this distance he could see that giant gun under Larkey’s armpit, the one with the bone-colored grip.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t have time to explain it right now, kiddo. I’m very sorry, but whatever happens next, you have to just believe me that everything is going to work out.”

  “What’s gonna happen?”

  “In a second those guys are going to take me with them. And, I think, someone else is going to �
� let you ride with them.”

  David snatched a piece of paper from his glove compartment and furiously wrote a name and number on it. He handed the note to his son, whose eyes were wide with fear and filling up with tears.

  “Look, buddy, it’s going to be okay. You give this to whoever you go with. It’s Grandpa’s cell phone number. He’ll come and get you.”

  “Dad?”

  “Get out of your seat, Tanner. Come here.”

  The boy unbuckled his belt just as the detective and the FBI agent reached the car. He leapt into the front and onto David’s lap.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  A tap on the window. It was Sackett. David rolled it down.

  “Mr. Neff, we’ve got someone here who can take your son. This is Pamela Swanson, she’s from the Department of Job and Family Services.” He motioned to a young woman with a pleasant face. She smiled at Tanner warmly.

  “Tanner? My name’s Pam. We’re going to take a little ride and let your father talk with these men.”

  “No, Dad,” he whispered.

  “It’s okay.”

  Tanner gripped him tightly around the neck. He kissed his son and somehow managed to pull him off his body and hand him to the social worker through the window. He knew there wasn’t much time in situations like this before the police grew impatient. Tanner just hung his head and cried. The woman jogged back with him to one of the civilian cars and placed Tanner in the back seat with her.

  No one said anything for several long seconds.

  Finally, David said, “I am a man who doesn’t care about money. I am also a man who has a lot of it. And now I am a very angry man with a lot of money who doesn’t care about spending it. I will use every penny making your lives miserable for as long as I can.”

  Larkey smiled. “There he is,” he said. “There’s my killer.”

  “Mr. Neff, step out of the car,” said Sackett, his voice cool as an Arctic breeze.

  David got out.

  “Turn around.”

  As he did, there were flashes of light. Two photographers crouched at the back of his car, snapping pictures for tomorrow’s papers.

  “Why?” David asked.

  “That other print?” said Larkey. “The one from the dead guy’s toilet? We figured it could only have been left by a plumber or the Man from Primrose Lane himself. When we found a match on the barrel of your gun, we knew it wasn’t left by the plumber.”

  “Mr. Neff,” continued Sackett, “you are under arrest for the murder—”

  “Murder?”

  Handcuffs slapped around his wrists. More flashes went off.

  “I didn’t kill the Man from Primrose Lane,” he said.

  “You tried,” said Sackett. “So we’re charging you with attempted murder, too.”

  “What are you talking about? Is this a joke? You can’t charge me for murdering and trying to murder the same man!”

  “You fucker,” said Larkey. “Stop playing mind games. We’re charging you for the attempted murder of the John Doe. You’re being charged with murder because you strangled your wife and staged her suicide. Or did you forget about that, too?”

  EPISODE TWELVE

  CONFESSIONS

  “Why do you love me?”

  They were in Tanner’s room, pasting big foam letters on the wall above his crib. A mobile of brightly colored hot-air balloons spun slowly above them. They’d purchased it at FAO Schwarz on a trip into New York to meet with a foreign rights agent who was selling David’s book overseas (twelve countries, and counting). The toy had cost more than David had made in a week working at the movie theater in college. The big house still smelled of fresh paint and Elizabeth’s belly was enormous under her sweats.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why do you love me? Have you thought about it in a while?”

  David laughed. “I love the way you whistle when you’re nervous. I love the way your toes play with your sandals when you’re sitting in a restaurant. I love the way you sit on couches. I love your big fat belly.”

  She smiled. “Those are things you notice about me. Writer things. Incidental.”

  “I don’t think they’re incidental.”

  “I was thinking about the way we met,” she said, pretending to straighten the letter T on the wall, without looking at him. “You didn’t know anything about me. Other than what you observed about me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think you fell in love with what you didn’t know about me. I think you made up a story in your mind about me. You wanted to know why I was odd. Why I was so mean.”

  David turned her around gently, tugging at her shoulders. “What does it matter? I love you, stupid. I love you.”

  Elizabeth kissed him lightly on his lips. “I was in Atlantic City once, before I met you. I was at this roulette table. Counting the reds and blacks. I saw a run of reds. Fifteen in a row. A couple other people saw it happen. They got real excited. Thought it was some sign. Some streak of luck. But it’s just probability. Eventually it had to balance out. I started betting on black. Let my money ride. It took a while. But I was patient. I went home with three grand.”

  “You know I get lost with all this math mumbo jumbo,” he said.

  “Sometimes I think this terrible thing that happened to me—to Elaine—I think maybe you were the thing that came into my life to balance that out. That you were the good the universe sent to me to get me back to equilibrium.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  She nodded. She smiled again, but her eyes remained sad. “And I think about Brune. And how it all ended in court with Trimble. And it was so good what you did, David. It was so oddly good, what some would call lucky, that I wonder what the universe might do to balance that out.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” he said.

  “Doesn’t it? Sometimes I think of the odds of anyone making it all the way through life and it seems so impossible.”

  “Whatever happens,” he began …

  * * *

  … “I’ll be here with you,” said Elizabeth. Judge Siegel entered the courtroom. Everyone stood.

  Following David’s testimony, which had ended shortly after identifying the frames of film to the jury, Russo had rested the state’s case against Riley Trimble for the murders of Sarah Creston, Jennifer Poole, and Donna Doyle. They had made a strong argument, a compelling argument, but their case remained entirely circumstantial. Nothing linked Trimble to the murders directly. But when you looked at everything that implicated him, you came to see that it was mathematically impossible for him not to have done it—there was just too much circumstantial evidence to explain away. Brune himself had been convicted and sent to the death house for less. Still, the prosecutor had his doubts. “Sometimes justice is just getting the guy in the courtroom,” Russo had told him.

  “Be seated,” barked Siegel, taking his place behind the bench. “Has the jury reached a unanimous verdict?”

  The jury foreperson, the teacher from Parma, stood. “We have, Your Honor,” she said.

  Elizabeth leaned to David’s ear. “Whatever happens, everything is going to work out,” she whispered.

  He squeezed her hand.

  “What is your verdict?”

  “On the charge of murder in the first degree, in the death of Sarah Creston, we, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”

  David’s ears rang loudly. He felt the tension of the trial collapsing around him, threatening to bury him. Hopefully, he thought, the Rivertin would do its job. I don’t want to feel this.

  “On the charge of murder in the first degree in the death of Jennifer Poole, we the jury find the defendant not guilty.”

  Wordlessly, Russo stood up and left the courtroom.

  The jury foreperson read through the remainder of the forty-seven charges. Trimble was acquitted on each count.

  * * *

  Russo stood before a pool of reporters camped o
ut in the hallway. He denounced the verdict and insinuated that the jury’s instructions had been too complicated for them to understand.

  When the reporters saw David, several of them broke from the pack and reached toward him with large microphones.

  “Mr. Neff, Tim Pohlman, Channel Five. Can you tell us how you feel about today’s verdict?”

  “I think the jury is a bunch of idiots,” he said. Elizabeth tugged at his arm, urging him toward the elevators.

  “Mr. Neff, are you afraid Riley Trimble will use today’s verdict to support civil charges against you?”

  “I’m not afraid of Riley Trimble,” he said. “He’s a serial killer. He’s a coward. Let him come after me.”

  “We can’t air that!” said a reporter from Channel Three.

  David shrugged.

  Pohlman pulled him aside a few steps from the elevator. Elizabeth and his father waited a few feet away. The other reporters, catching a glimpse of Trimble walking out of the courtroom still in his orange jumpsuit, but free, left them. “Hey, I believe you, kiddo,” said Pohlman, a fortyish investigator who reminded David of a childhood friend. “Just give me a little sound bite. Everyone else is going to paint it black. We’ll make you look good. No worries. I thought the evidence was overwhelming.”

  David looked back at Elizabeth and gave her a one-minute sign.

  “Put this on,” said Pohlman, twisting a wireless microphone around David’s lapel. His cameraman was setting up the tripod. “I’m just going to ask you a few basic questions. Let you tell your side. But watch out for the defamatory stuff. Blog that or something. We can’t air it. Stick to the facts. I’ll make it look good.”

  David nodded. “Is the mic working?” he asked.

  The cameraman gave a thumbs-up. He saw the red record light click on.

  David was suddenly struck by a dangerous idea.

  “I have to use the men’s room,” he said, and before Pohlman had time to protest he walked into the lavatory behind them. No one else was inside. He stepped to the sink and waited.

  “Hello, Dave,” said Trimble.

  “Hello, Riley,” said David.

  They stared at each other.

  “I thought you might want to apologize,” said Trimble.