Downstairs, he went straight to the telephone and dialed the home number of Leona Krill, the mayor of East End Harbor. A woman's voice answered on the fourth ring, and when Justin went, "Leona?" the half-asleep voice said, "No." Justin could hear the rustling of sheets, some mumbled words, and then Leona was speaking into the receiver.
"Whoever it is," she said, "do you know what time it is?"
"Maybe if you didn't stay up all night sleeping with strange women, you wouldn't need so much rest."
"Jay?"
"Yeah."
"Melissa is my wife, in case you don't remember. You were invited to the wedding but didn't show up."
"I've met Melissa. She qualifies as strange."
"Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?"
"Because there's been a murder and I thought you'd want to know about it right away."
"Good Christ. Who is it?"
"Evan Harmon." There was a long silence from the mayor's end. "Leona? You still with me?"
"Yes. And I'm wide awake now, thank you. I have so many questions, I don't know where to begin."
"That's probably good because I don't have too many answers."
"Are you sure it was murder?"
"As compared to what?"
"Natural causes, suicide-I don't know, how else does someone drop dead in the middle of the night?"
"He didn't exactly drop dead," Justin said.
"How was he killed?"
"Beaten to death. And from the looks of it, tortured, too."
"Was it his wife?"
"Who killed him?"
"Yes."
"No," Justin said.
"Are you sure?"
"Reasonably sure. Why do you ask?"
"'Cause she's capable of torturing just about anybody. And isn't it almost always the spouse?"
"Well, this one's got an alibi."
"A good one?"
"Pretty good," Justin said.
"Any other suspects?"
"Not yet. I'll have more info in the morning, I hope."
"I hope so, too." Another silence. Then Leona said, "Jay, you understand-"
"I understand."
"Christ, the papers. And TV reporters."
"They'll be sliming all over the place."
"Who else knows?"
"From me? Gary Jenkins. He called Mike Haversham. The CSU guys know, assuming they're there by now, the ambulance driver and EM workers…"
"Have you called Larry Silverbush?"
Silverbush was the DA for the East End of Long Island. He was based in Riverhead, about forty minutes or so from East End Harbor, and had been involved in several high-profile trials over the past five or six years, winning them all. Three years earlier he'd put a British nanny away for poisoning the baby daughter of a well-known record producer-that's what had made his reputation. It was a tough case to make, but Silverbush had made it brilliantly, slowly reconstructing for the jury a history of the woman's carelessness, thoughtlessness, arrogance, and lack of warmth. There were no witnesses and no real forensic proof, but Silverbush showed the jurors-and the media-that she was capable of murder. That was enough to swing them over to the fact that she'd committed this particular murder. The nanny was still proclaiming her innocence and still trying to build a valid appeal, but she was serving twelve and a half to twenty-five years in prison.
Silverbush's other attention-getting case was a year ago. A famous-and famously obnoxious-public relations diva had gotten drunk and driven her SUV into a Hamptons club. No one was killed, but several patrons and two doormen were injured. The case had turned into a class war-blue collar versus rich summer interlopers. The PR queen was an interloper-and not a Mid-Island voter-so Silverbush was able to put her away for eighteen months. Justin had met him once, just a handshake really, not enough to get a sense of the man. His reputation was as a no-nonsense, no-bullshit guy. Instinctively, Justin didn't buy it. Word was that Silverbush wanted to run for state attorney general and already had some major financial backers. And AG was not a bad stepping stone to governor. So he was a politician at heart, which Justin thought pretty much eliminated the no-bullshit possibility. "No," he told Leona. "I haven't called him. I thought it might be better coming from you."
"Thanks," she said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm. Then: "Hold on a second." There was the slight rustling of bedcovers. Justin was fairly sure that Leona put her hand over the phone because he heard a very muffled, "No, it's all right, sweetie, I'll be off in a minute." The hand was then removed because Justin next heard very clearly, "What about Harmon's father?"
"No," Justin said. "I haven't notified anyone yet. Other than Mrs. Harmon."
"Thinking it's her responsibility to tell the old man?"
"My brain doesn't work on that many levels, Leona. My thinking was that my only responsibility was to tell her. She's the next of kin."
"Well, sometimes there are things other than legal responsibilities to consider."
"You're worried about the moral thing to do now?"
"Don't be an asshole, please. I'm being practical. I don't want him hearing about this from the outside."
"It's too late to make the morning papers-the deadline's past even if they get the story now. And I don't think the Internet or TV'll get it until the morning."
"So that's your plan? To keep things quiet and hope no one hears about it until they're having their egg-white omelets for breakfast?"
"My plan is to keep things quiet until morning. That'll give me enough time to try to figure out what to do. I don't think it'll help anything if we wake people up in the middle of the night to spread the news."
"Except me, you mean."
"The only advantage we have right now is that we're the only ones who know about it-except for the killer. I don't know how to use that advantage yet, but I don't see the value in having H. R. Harmon trying to tell me how to run this investigation at three a.m. And if it'll make you feel better, I don't think I'll be getting much sleep either."
He could practically hear Leona's brain working as she tried to figure out the political and PR ramifications of the crime she'd just been alerted to. He figured she didn't come to any satisfactory conclusions because all she said was, "I have to let Silverbush know. I can't keep him out of the loop for something like this."
"All right."
"I know you don't like it, but this isn't something you can run as a one-man show."
"I understand."
"I'll sell you to Silverbush, Jay, don't worry about that. You won't be left out of this thing, if that's what you're worried about."
"That's not what I'm worried about, Leona. I'm worried about solving a murder."
Again, he could almost hear her thinking, figuring out what she was going to say to the attorney general, deciding how hard she was going to push her own chief of police. "Jay, we're going to have to trust Silverbush now, and I think we can. But I can trust you on this one, right? You know what you're doing?"
Justin couldn't help himself, his eyes shifted to glance toward the stairs. The whiff of Abby's shampoo still lingered. He shrugged, said, "Sure, I know what I'm doing," and hung up the phone.
For the next four hours, he did his best to prove that he did indeed know what he was doing. He programmed his iTunes library on his computer to play two Tom Petty albums, Wildflowers and Greatest Hits, Patti Smith's version of "When Doves Cry" four times in a row, and then Mingus Plays Piano. He turned the volume on low so he wouldn't disturb Abigail, but he needed music right now. He worked better with the right music, thought better with the right music. Music helped him focus at the same time it could keep his mood constant. Right now he wanted to keep his mood unwaveringly somber, and he had to stay as focused as he'd ever been. Definitely Petty, Smith, and Mingus.
Sitting at the computer set up in his living room, he signed onto PublicInfoSearch.com, a pay site he'd authorized all EEHPD cops to use. There were nine categories of available searches: Background, People, Criminal, Bankruptcies amp; Liens, Sex Offenders, Property, Marriage, Death, and Divorce. He went to "People," typed in "Evan Harmon," and printed up anything he thought might be relevant about the man's background and activities over the past few years, professional as well as social. There was material quoted from a biography of Evan's father that talked briefly about Evan's school years. He'd grown up in New Hampshire and gone to two New England prep schools. The first was one of the elite academies in the country, Melman Prep. Evan had transferred out of Melman when he was a junior in high school. Curious. Justin was not unfamiliar with that world and he knew that "transfer" was another word for expulsion. Or failure. People like Evan Harmon did not transfer from a top school to a lesser one unless they were forced to. The writer of the book also had the same suspicion-but Evan's records were sealed and the biographer could not get them. There was speculation about getting some girl pregnant, something about a violent episode with another student, but neither could be validated. Justin dismissed both things as rumors, stuck in to sell a not very commercial book, but he made note of the school change. And he made a note to check it out. Patterns. Even those from twenty years ago counted.