Code 61 - Donald Harstad [139]
He got two blank looks.
“He used some pliers on Randy Baumhagen, after he was dead. He tore a hole in his neck. Sort of a signature, we think.”
“That's absurd,” said Jessica. “It's absolutely … ”
Harry used an old ploy. He looked at Hester. “You agree with me?” he asked.
“Yes I do,” she said.
“You, Carl?” he asked.
“You bet. All the evidence leads there.”
With that, Harry had established that three of the five people in the room were in agreement. It's surprising how well that can work.
“Why are you telling us this?” Jessica looked at each of us in turn.
“Because,” I said, “we think you can tell us where Dan Peale is.”
It got very quiet in that room. Neither Hester, nor Harry nor I were about to say anything at that point. We wanted Jessica to come across with some information herself, and we wanted to see what it was going to be.
“If you can't find him”—and she looked quizzically at us—“then what makes you think I can tell you?”
“To begin with, our information indicates,” I said, “that you know more about him than anybody connected with the Mansion. We've been told about your, uh, relationship with Dan Peale.”
“Long-term relationship,” said Hester. “You know we were on the third floor. Believe me, we didn't miss a thing.”
Jessica said, “All right.” Just like that. Tatiana let her cheeks puff out, and let out a long breath. She'd apparently been holding it in.
Jessica took a quick drink from her water bottle. “He and I have been lovers for years. I admit it freely, although not publicly. You do understand? He's involved in another relationship, and I would not want to embarrass him.”
“Sure.” I tried to sound encouraging.
“You must know he's into a bit of blood tasting. Not often, but we both consider it to be an intimacy enhancing act. I would like to keep that private. Many people don't understand that sort of thing.” With that, she graced us with a smile. “Especially my Aunt Bridgett.” She shrugged. “But all that aside, I have only contacted him at his office. I presume he is not there?”
“You presume right,” I said. Office?
“That doesn't surprise me,” she said.
“Why not?” asked Hester.
“Well, the night he escaped,” she said. “You knew who he was as soon as the shots were ffred. We could hear your officers calling him by name, on the loudspeakers.”
You know when, in cartoons, the little lightbulb comes on over the character's head? Epiphany city.
“They did his name over the PA systems in the cars, now that you mention it,” I said. “I heard it myself. We were calling him by name, all right. But at that time, we were spelling it P-E-E-L. Not P-E-A-L-E. We had no idea who he was, then, or where he lived.”
“Oh?”
“That's right,” said Hester. “But if he could hear, then he must have thought we had him dead to rights, and that he couldn't go home.”
“Certainly,” said Jessica. “How very silly of you.”
Shit, in a word. We'd prevented his running to the only place we were going to know where to look. His home. Silly wasn't the word for it.
“So,” said Hester, “you don't know where he is?”
“No,” said Jessica.
I got mixed signals on that one. Her head was turned more to Hester, so I didn't get a good look at her eyes. Her body was kind of levered up on one hip, and she had her hand on her ankle, pulling toward the center of her back, stretching her quad muscles. No signals or tells from the body language, that was for certain. But her voice was just a tiny bit too high. Strain from lying, or from stretching? I thought from lying.
Tatiana was just sitting with her legs straight out in front of her, pulling a perfect “L.” I looked at her squarely.
“What about you?”
“Me?” She sounded a bit surprised.
“Yes. Do you know where he is?”
“No. Why would I?” She answered as she bent forward, pressing her rib cage to the tops of her thighs. She stretched and extended her neck, so that we didn't break eye contact. A difficult read. But the nonchalant “question with a question” told me that she, too, was