Triangle was the story of a couple in Colorado Springs. The wife was married to a man named Roy. But she was also seeing another man — Hank — a local carpenter. Roy found out and waited until Hank was out hiking on a mountain path, then he snuck up beside him and pushed him over the cliff. Hank grabbed onto a tree root but he lost his grip — or Roy smashed his hands; it wasn’t clear — and Hank fell a hundred feet to his death on the rocks in the valley. Roy went back home and had a drink with his wife just to watch her reaction when the call came that Hank was dead.
Pete didn’t know squat about crimes. All he knew was what he’d seen on TV and in the movies. None of the criminals in those shows seemed very smart and they were always getting caught by the good guys, even though they didn’t really seem much smarter than the bad guys. But that crime in Colorado was a smart crime. Because there were no murder weapons and very few clues. The only reason Roy got caught was that he’d forgotten to look for witnesses.
If the killer had only taken the time to look around him, he would have seen the witnesses: A couple of campers had a perfect view of Hank Gibson plummeting to his bloody death, screaming as he fell, and of Roy standing on the cliff watching him...
Triangle became Pete’s bible. He read it cover to cover — to see how Roy had planned the crime and to find out how the police had investigated it.
Tonight, with Mo asleep and his electronic airline ticket to Baltimore bought and paid for, Pete read Triangle once again, paying particular attention to the parts he’d underlined. Then he walked back upstairs, packed the book in the bottom of his suitcase, and lay on the couch in the office, looking out the window at the hazy summer stars and thinking about his trip from every angle.
Because he wanted to make sure he got away with the crime. He didn’t want to go to jail for life — like Roy.
Oh, sure there were risks. Pete knew that. But nothing was going to stop him.
Doug had to die.
Pete realized he’d been thinking about the idea, in the back of his mind, for months, not long after Mo met Doug.
She worked part-time for a drug company in Westchester — the same company Doug was a salesman for, assigned to the Baltimore office. They met when he came to the headquarters for a sales conference. Mo had told Pete that she was having dinner with “somebody” from the company, but she didn’t say who. Pete didn’t think anything of it until he overheard her tell one of her girlfriends on the phone about this interesting guy she’d met. But then she realized Pete was standing near enough to hear and she changed the subject.
Over the next few months, Pete realized that Mo was getting more and more distracted, paying less and less attention to him. And he heard her mention Doug more and more.
One night Pete asked her about him.
“Oh, Doug?” she said, sounding irritated. “Why, he’s just a friend, that’s all. Can’t I have friends? Aren’t I allowed?”
Pete noticed that Mo was starting to spend a lot of time on the phone and on-line. He tried to check the phone bills to see if she was calling Baltimore but she hid them or threw them out. He also tried to read her e-mails but found she’d changed her password. Pete was an expert with computers and easily broke into her account. But when he went to read her e-mails he found she’d deleted them all.
He was so furious he nearly smashed the computer.
Then, to Pete’s dismay, Mo started inviting Doug to dinner at their house when he was in Westchester on company business. He was older than Mo and sort of heavy. But Pete admitted he was handsome and real slick. Those dinners were the worst... They’d all three sit at the dinner table and Doug would try to charm Pete and ask him about computers and sports and the things that Mo obviously had told Doug that Pete liked. But it was real awkward and you could tell he didn’t give a damn about Pete. He just wanted to be there with Mo, alone.
By then Pete was checking up on Mo all the time. Sometimes he’d pretend to go to a game with Sammy Biltmore or Tony Hale but he’d come home early and find that she was gone too. Then she’d come home at eight or nine and look all flustered, not expecting to find him, and she’d say she’d been working late, even though she was just an office manager and hardly ever worked later than five before she met Doug. Once, when she claimed she was at the office, Pete got Doug’s number in Baltimore and the message said he’d be out of town for a couple of days.
Everything was changing. Mo and Pete would have dinner together but it wasn’t the same. They didn’t have picnics and they didn’t take walks in the evenings. And they hardly ever sat together on the porch anymore and looked out at the fireflies and made plans for trips they wanted to take.
“I don’t like him,” Pete said. “Doug, I mean.”
“Oh, quit being so jealous. He’s a good friend, that’s all. He likes both of us.”
“No, he doesn’t like me.”
“Of course he does. You don’t have to worry.”
But Pete did worry, and he worried even more when he found a piece of paper in her purse last month. It said: D.G. — Sunday, motel 2 p.m.
Doug’s last name was Grant.
That Sunday morning Pete tried not to react when Mo said, “I’m going out for a while, honey.”
“Where you going?”
“Shopping. I’ll be back by five.”
He thought about asking her exactly where she was going but he didn’t think that was a good idea. It might make her suspicious. So he said cheerfully, “Okay, see you later.”
As soon as her car had pulled out of the driveway he’d started calling motels in the area and asking for Douglas Grant.
The clerk at the Westchester Motor Inn said, “One minute, please, I’ll connect you.”
Pete hung up fast.
He was at the motel in fifteen minutes and, yep, there was Mo’s car parked in front of one of the doors. Pete snuck up close to the room. The shade was drawn and the lights were out, but the window was partly open. Pete could hear bits of the conversation.
“I don’t like that.”
“That...?” she asked.
“That color. I want you to paint your nails red. It’s sexy. I don’t like that color you’re wearing. What is it?”
“Peach.”
“I like bright red,” Doug said.
“Well, okay.”
There was some laughing. Then a long silence. Pete tried to look inside but he couldn’t see anything. Finally, Mo said, “We have to talk. About Pete.”
“He knows something,” Doug was saying. “I know he does.”
“He’s been like a damn spy lately,” she said, with that edge to her voice that Pete hated. “Sometimes I’d like to strangle him.”
Pete closed his eyes when he heard Mo say this. Pressed the lids closed so hard he thought he might never open them again.
He heard the sound of a beer can opening.
Doug said, “So what if he finds out?”
“So what? I told you what having an affair does to alimony in this state. It eliminates it. We have to be careful. I’ve got a lifestyle I’m accustomed to.”
“Then what should we do?” Doug asked.
“I’ve been thinking about it. I think you should do something with him.”
“Do something with him?” Doug had an edge to his voice too. “Get him a one-way ticket...”
“Come on.”
“Okay, sorry. But what do you mean by ‘do something’?”
“Get to know him.”
“You’re kidding.”