Friends Like These(82)

“Really?” Dan asks, rubbing a hand over his chin. “Then who’s LG?”

I shake my head. “I’ve got no fucking clue. I really thought it was him.”

“Me too,” Dan says. “I mean, after Hoff’s missing statement especially.”

I look up at him then, standing there with a concerned frown. “Thank you, by the way, for going back through the files and confirming the alibis and all that. I should have thanked you earlier.”

Dan shrugs, then glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “What are friends for?”

“For the record, you’re not wrong about Jane, either,” I offer. And it really is an offering. I could say more. Except that I can’t— at least not yet.

Dan’s eyes flick back to mine again, but only for a second. He looks down and nods, quiet for a moment. “So, what’s next then on this situation here?” He gestures broadly to the living room.

“Well, I’m holding four people downtown who are apparently all murder suspects again. But if we try to get their prints, they’ll lawyer up for sure. At this point, it would be helpful to speed up that ID on the body. At least then, I’d know who it is I suspect they killed.”

“Actually, we do know that.” Dan takes a seat on the couch next to me. “That’s why I came by.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was Derrick Chism in the car.”

“You got the fingerprints?”

He shakes his head. “We just found Keith Lazard downtown. He had his ID on him.”

“Holy shit.” I sit up straight. “Are you holding him?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Dan says. “He was found with a gunshot wound to the back of the head on the front porch of one of the abandoned houses on Main. I’m guessing he was buying. Somebody walking by spotted him lying there.”

“Dammit,” I say. “There goes our best chance of finding out what the hell happened in that car.”

“Not necessarily,” Dan says. “By some freak miracle of bullet trajectory, Keith Lazard is still alive. I mean, barely. We’re not going to be interviewing him tomorrow . . .”

“Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure the four pissed-off suspects I’m holding downtown aren’t going to be willing to wait until he recovers.”

“You can at least let Hendrix go, I think,” Dan says. “Key card records confirm he was in his hotel room all night. There’s security footage, too. The room’s been rented for the week, and it’s a mess— art supplies, plaster, equipment. Some paintings and what looks like they could be sculptures— pretty weird, you ask me, but what do I know. It all fits with the story he gave— he was making something in there.”

“If this whole thing comes down to some drug deal gone wrong, I’m going to be pissed.”

“Seldon will be, too,” Dan says. “On the upside, maybe a couple dead weekenders will finally make him do his job and clean out the Farm.”

“Yeah, right after he fires me.”

Dan pops a piece of gum in his mouth. “Nah. I did a little more digging. Guess who was the last person to sign out your sister’s file, before you first started on the force. I’ll give you a hint: short white guy, big smile, wife that’s too good for him.”

“Seldon?”

“Yup. He probably buried the Hoff statement because it implicated Gaffney. Seems like there might also be a good reason Seldon doesn’t advertise his friendship with Gaffney. Apparently, there are girls up at Gaffney’s fishing cabin every weekend— young girls. Officer who checked his alibi was told that by multiple sources. Anyway, when this is all over, might be worth looking into a little more.” Dan motions to the pages in my hand. “What’s that?”

“Journal of a friend of theirs from college who killed herself,” I say. “She felt guilty about some kid who went off the roof at Vassar. Sounds like he was drunk and fell. An accident, but this group— well, I guess they left the scene, didn’t call anybody. Seems unlikely that he could have survived, neck broken probably. But you never know.”

“Wait, the roof of Vassar?” Dan asks, squinting at me. “When was this?”

“I don’t know, ten years ago?”

Something behind Dan catches my eye then. At the back of the living room, the cabinet doors are half open. I can see bottles lined up, glasses arranged on a silver tray, an ice bucket, tongs.

Dan snaps his fingers. “Wait, this is that kid? The one I was telling you about, from Hudson.”

“What kid?” I ask, getting up to take a closer look at the bar. There’s something etched in gold on the ice bucket that I can’t make out from across the room.

“That lady in the pink tracksuit. I’m pretty sure that was her kid. She was all over the news at the time, wailing about her poor beloved son. Until it came out that he’d actually hated her guts. She just liked being on TV. She lived right behind Bethany, actually. Evan Paretsky, that was his name. He was working some construction job in Poughkeepsie at the time.”

“Why didn’t I hear about that?” But then I would have been in California at the time.

“It was big news around here, but only for a few days,” he says. “Once the college said he’d been breaking into rooms before he fell, people lost interest.”