A Dish Served Cold Read online

  The detective considered: Let's say that Desmond had read the passages, become suspicious, and circled them, then made a few phone calls to find out more about the case. He might've called Wallace, who, as the Tribune's crime reporter, would be a logical source for more information.

  Desmond had met with the reporter, who'd then killed him and hid the body here.

  Impossible…

  Why would he have brought the book to the police's attention, then? And why would he have killed the two women in the first place? What was his motive?

  But Altman refused to dismiss the notion of Wallace's involvement so quickly. He bent down into the shabby, impromptu crypt again to search it more carefully, trying to unearth answers to those difficult questions.

  Gordon Wallace caught a glimpse of Altman in the garage.

  The reporter had crept up to a spot only thirty feet away and was hiding behind a bush. The detective wasn't paying any attention to who might be outside, apparently relying on Josh Randall to alert him to intruders. The young detective was at the head of the driveway, a good two hundred feet away, his back to the garage.

  Breathing heavily in the heat, the reporter started through the grass in a crouch. He stopped beside the building and glanced quickly into the side window, noting that Altman was standing over a coal bin in the rear of the garage, squinting at something in his hand.

  Perfect, Wallace thought, and, reaching into his pocket, eased to the open doorway, where his aim would be completely unobstructed.

  The detective had found some papers in Desmond's pocket and was staring at one in particular, a business card, trying to figure it out, when he heard the snap of a twig behind him and, alarmed, turned.

  A silhouette of a figure was standing in the doorway. He seemed to be holding his hands at chest level.

  Blinded by the glare, Altman gasped, "Who're -?"

  A huge flash filled the room.

  The detective stumbled backward, groping for his pistol.

  "Damn," came a voice he recognized.

  Altman squinted against the backlighting. "Wallace! You goddamn son of a bitch. What the hell're you doing here?"

  The reporter scowled and held up the camera in his hand, looking just as unhappy as Altman. "I was trying to get a candid of you on the job, but you turned around. You ruined it."

  "I ruined it? You've got no business being here. I told you not to get in the way. You can't -"

  "I'm not in the way," the man snapped. "I'm nowhere near you. How can I be in the way?"

  "This's a crime scene."

  "Well, that's why I want the pictures," he said petulantly. Then he frowned. "What's that smell?" The camera sagged and the reporter started to breathe in shallow gasps. He looked queasy.

  "It's Desmond. Somebody murdered him. He's in the coal bin."

  "Murdered him? So he's not the killer?"

  Altman lifted his radio and barked to Randall, "We've got visitors back here."

  "What?"

  "We're in the garage."

  The young officer showed up a moment later, trotting fast. A disdainful look at Wallace. "Where the hell did you come from?"

  "How'd you let him get past?" Altman snapped.

  "Not his fault," the reporter said, shivering at the smell. "I parked up the road. How 'bout we get some fresh air?"

  Angry, Altman took perverse pleasure in the reporter's discomfort. "I oughta throw you in jail."

  Wallace held his breath and started for the coal bin, raising the camera.

  "Don't even think about it," Altman growled, and pulled the reporter away.

  "Who did it?" Randall asked, nodding at the body.

  Altman didn't share that for a moment he'd actually suspected Wallace himself. Just before the photo-op incident he'd found a stunning clue as to who Desmond's – and the two women's – killer actually was. He held up a business card. "I found this on the body."

  On the card was written, "Detective Sergeant Robert Fletcher, Greenville Police Department."

  "Bob?" Randall whispered in shock.

  "I don't want to believe it," Altman muttered slowly, "but back at the office he didn't let on he even knew about Desmond, let alone that they'd met at some point."

  "True, he didn't say a word."

  "And," he continued, nodding at the bayonet, "doesn't that look like one of his?"

  "Does, yeah," Randall said.

  Bob Fletcher collected World War II memorabilia and weapons. The wicked-looking blade was similar to several in his collection.

  Altman's heart pounded furiously at the betrayal. He now understood what had happened. Fletcher bobbled the case intentionally – because he was the killer – probably destroying any evidence that led to him. A loner, a history of short, difficult relationships, obsessed with the military and hunting… He'd lied to them about not reading Two Deaths and had used it as a model to kill those women. Then – after the killings – Desmond happened to read the book, too, underlined the passages, and, being a good citizen, contacted case officer Fletcher, who was none other than the killer himself. The sergeant murdered him, dumped the body here, and then destroyed the library's computer and never made any effort to pursue the vandalism investigation.

  Altman then had another thought. He turned suddenly to the reporter. "Where was Fletcher when you left the office? Did you see him at the station?" The detective's hand strayed to his pistol as he looked around the tall grass, wondering if the sergeant now intended to kill them as well.

  "He was in the conference room with Andy Carter."

  No! Altman realized that they weren't the only ones at risk; the author was a witness, too – and a potential victim of Fletcher's. Altman grabbed his cell phone and called the central dispatcher. He asked for Carter.

  "He's not here, sir," the woman said.

  "What?"

  "It was getting late so he decided to get a hotel room for the night."

  "Which one's he staying at?"

  "I think it's the Sutton Inn."

  "You have the number?"

  "I do, sure. But he's not there right now."

  "Where is he?"

  "He went out to dinner. I don't know where, but if you need to get in touch with him you can call Bob Fletcher's phone. They were going together."

  Twenty minutes from town, driving at ninety.

  Altman tried again to call Fletcher but the sergeant wasn't answering. There wasn't much Altman could do except try to reason with the sergeant, have him give himself up, plead with him not to kill Carter, too. He prayed that the cop hadn't already done so.

  Another try. Still no answer.

  He skidded the squad car through the intersection at Route 202, nearly sideswiping one of the ubiquitous dairy tankers in these parts.

  "Okay, that was exciting," Randall whispered, removing his sweaty palm from the dashboard as the truck's horn brayed in angry protest behind them.

  Altman was about to call Fletcher's phone again when a voice clattered over the car's radio. "All units. Reports of shots fired on Route One-twenty-eight just west of Ralph's Grocery. Repeat, shots fired. All units respond."

  "You think that's them?"

  "We're three minutes away. We're about to find out." Altman pushed the accelerator to the floor and they broke into three-digit speed.

  After a brief, harrowing ride, the squad car crested a hill. Randall called breathlessly, "Look!"

  Altman could see Bob Fletcher's police interceptor half on, half off the road. He skidded to a stop nearby and the two officers jumped out. Wallace's car – which had been hitching an illegal ride on their light bar and siren – braked to a stop fifty feet behind them and the reporter, too, jumped out, ignoring the detective's shout to stay down.

  Altman felt Randall grip his arm. The young officer was pointing at the shoulder about fifty feet away. In the dim light, they could just make out the form of Andrew Carter lying facedown in the dust.

  Oh no! They weren't in time; the sergeant had added the aut
hor to the list of his victims.

  "Look out for Fletcher," he whispered to a spooked Josh Randall. "He's around here someplace and we know he's armed."

  Altman ran toward the author's body. As he did, he happened to glance to his left and gasped. There was Bob Fletcher on the ground, holding a shotgun.

  He shouted to Randall, "Look out!" and dropped flat. But as he swung the gun toward Fletcher he noted that the sergeant wasn't moving. The detective hit the man with his flashlight beam. Fletcher's eyes were glazed over and there were two bullet holes in his chest.

  Wallace was crouching over Carter. The reporter called, "He's alive!"

  The detective rose, pulled the scattergun out of Fletcher's lifeless hands, and trotted over to the author. The man's face was bloody and streaked with dirt, his clothes torn. Lying on the ground nearby was a black revolver, the sort that Fletcher had carried.

  "Are you shot?"

  Carter winced and blinked.

  "Andy? Are you shot?"

  In response, the author shook his head. "No. But I think I broke my arm. I can't feel anything in my fingers."

  "There's an ambulance on its way. Just stay where you are. Don't try to get up."

  "My leg… man, it hurts."

  "Just stay still, Andy. Don't move Tell me what happened."

  Gasping, Carter said, "Fletcher said let's go to dinner. We took his car. He said if I didn't mind he had to make a stop on the way to the restaurant and he turned down this road. Then he was talking and he said it was funny, this road reminded him of that scene in my book where the hunter's waiting for one of the victims."

  "Ah."

  "Right," Carter continued. "He said he hadn't read it. He lied to us. That meant he had to be the strangler. And he was taking me someplace to kill me." Carter coughed and laid his head back on the ground. A moment later he continued, "When he slowed down to turn into that side road I grabbed his pistol and jumped out of the car. I thought I could run into the forest and hide. But I hurt myself landing and couldn't get up. Fletcher stopped and got the shotgun out of the trunk. He came after me and I fired a couple of times and then passed out". He looked at the body up the road. He whispered, "I didn't want to kill him. I didn't have any choice."

  Over a crest in the road Altman could see flashing lights and hear sirens, growing steadily louder. As Randall ran toward them, gesturing wildly, Altman collected the weapons. He glanced at Bob Fletcher's body. Murdering Howard Desmond and trying to murder Andy Carter – well, those had been to cover up his original crimes. But what had been the sergeant's motive for killing the two women in Greenville last year? Maybe the anger at being left by his wife had boiled over. Maybe he'd had a secret affair with one of the victims, which had turned sour, and he'd decided to stage her death as a random act of violence.

  And maybe, Altman reflected, unlike in a mystery novel, they'd never know what had driven the man to step over the edge into the dark world of the killers he'd once hunted.

  The doctors kept Andrew Carter in the hospital overnight, though it seemed that the flying leap from the car – as dramatic and frightening as it probably seemed to him – hadn't caused any serious damage.

  The next morning he checked out of Greenville Memorial and stopped by the police department to say goodbye to Altman and Randall and to sign a formal statement about the events of the previous night.

  "Got the latest from Forensics," Altman said, and explained that Fletcher's prints were all over the bayonet and that a search of the sergeant's house revealed several items – stockings and lingerie – that had been taken from the homes of the victims, leaving no doubt that Fletcher was the Greenville Strangler. Most people in town, certainly everyone in the police department, were shocked at this news. But Quentin Altman had to admit that one of the things he'd learned in his twenty-plus years of being a cop was that you never really knew what was in anybody's heart but your own.

  He chatted with the author for a few moments but their conversation quickly became merely the superficial exchange between two men whose sole reason for contact no longer existed, and Carter finally looked at his watch, saying that he'd better be going. Altman walked him outside.

  They were leaving the police station when Gordon Wallace loped up to them. "Hot off the presses." He handed a copy of the Tribune to Carter. On the front page was Wallace's story about the solving of the Greenville Strangler case. "Keep that," Wallace said. "A souvenir."

  Thanking him, Carter folded the paper up, slipped it under his arm, and walked to his car.

  Altman observed that the author seemed in somewhat better spirits than when he'd arrived. The melancholy remained in his eyes, but the detective sensed that he'd found a bit of inner peace by coming to Greenville, to the site of the terrible killings that he felt responsible for. And perhaps making this difficult trip and risking his own life to help bring the killer to justice would ultimately prove to be a godsend; unlike many people touched by tragedy, Carter had had the rare chance to revisit the past and personally confront the demons of guilt that threatened to destroy his life.

  Just before the man climbed into his Toyota, Altman called out, "Oh, one thing, Andy – how's that book of yours end? Do the police ever find the hunter?"

  Carter caught himself as he was about to answer. He gave a grin. "You know, Detective, if you want to find that out, I'm afraid you're just going to have to buy yourself a copy." He dropped into the front seat, fired the car up, and pulled into the street, offering a brief wave goodbye.

  At two a.m. the next morning Andrew Carter slipped out of bed, where he'd lain wide-awake for the past three hours.

  He glanced at the quiescent form of his sleeping wife and went to his closet, where he found and pulled on an old pair of faded jeans, sneakers, and a Boston University sweatshirt – his good-luck writing clothes, which he hadn't donned in well over a year.

  He walked down the hall to his office and went inside, turning on the light. Sitting at his desk, he clicked on his computer and stared at the screen for a long moment.

  Then suddenly he began to write. His keyboarding was clumsy at first, his fingers jabbing two keys at once or missing the intended one altogether. Still, as the hours passed, his skill as a typist returned and soon the words were pouring from his mind onto the screen flawlessly and fast.

  By the time the sky began to glow with pink-gray light and a bird's cell-phone trill sounded from the crisp holly bush outside his window, he'd finished the story completely – thirty-nine double-spaced pages.

  He moved the cursor to the top of the document, thought about an appropriate title, and typed: Copycat.

  Then Andy Carter sat back in his comfortable chair and carefully read his work from start to finish.

  The story opened with a reporter finding a suspense novel that contained several underlined passages, which were strikingly similar to two real-life murders that had occurred a year earlier. The reporter takes the book to a detective, who concludes that the man who circled the paragraphs is the perpetrator, a copycat inspired by the novel to kill.

  Reviving the case, the detective enlists the aid of the novel's author, who reluctantly agrees to help and brings the police some fan letters, one of which leads to the suspected killer.

  But when the police track the suspect to his summer home, they find that he's been murdered. He wasn't the killer at all, and had presumably circled the passages only because he, too, like the reporter, was struck by the similarity between the novel and the real-life crimes.

  Then the detective gets a big shock: on the fan's body he finds clues that prove that a sergeant on the town police force is the real killer. The author, who happens to be with this very officer at that moment, manages to wrestle the sergeant's gun away and shoot him in self-defense.

  Case closed.

  Or so it seems…

  But Andy Carter hadn't ended the story there. He added yet another twist. Readers learn at the very end that the sergeant was innocent. The real Strangler had se
t him up as a fall guy.

  And who was the strangler?

  None other than the author himself.

  Racked by writer's block after his first novel was published, unable to follow it up with another, the man had descended into madness. Desperate and demented, he came to believe that he might jump-start his writing by actually reenacting scenes from his novel, so he stalked and strangled two women, just as his fictional villain had done.

  The murders hadn't revived his ability to write, however, and he slumped further into depression. And then, even more troubling, he heard from the fan who'd grown suspicious about the similarities between certain passages in the novel and the real crimes. The author had no choice: He met with the fan and killed him, too, hiding the body in the man's lakeside summer cottage. He covered up the disappearance by pretending to be the fan and phoning the man's boss and landlord to say that he was leaving town unexpectedly.

  The author now believed he was safe. But his contentment didn't last. Enter the reporter who'd found the underlined passages, and the investigation started anew. When he was asked to help the police, the author knew he had to give them a scapegoat. So he agreed to meet with the police, but in fact he'd arrived in town a day early. He broke into the police sergeant's house, planted some incriminating evidence from the first murders, and stole one of the cop's bayonets and his business card. These he planted on the body of the fan at the lake house. The next day he showed up at the police station with the fan letter that led ultimately to the cottage, where the detective found the leads to the sergeant. Meanwhile, the author, alone with the unsuspecting cop, grabbed his gun and shot him, later claiming self-defense.