The Instruments of Darkness: A Thriller

Chapter LXVII

Passing on to Moxie the details of the conversation with Nowak could wait until morning; Moxie wasn’t going to take the bait anyway. Had Colleen Clark been a no-hope client, he might have advocated accepting the plea deal, although even then he would have proceeded cautiously. Nowak might have been promising an EPRD, but Moxie wouldn’t receive a signed agreement to that effect, and no one on the state’s side would be under any obligation to keep their side of the bargain. In addition, it would involve Colleen pleading guilty to a crime that neither Moxie nor I believed she had committed, and promising to deliver a body she couldn’t produce, which meant Nowak’s offer was a nonstarter. Nonetheless, Moxie might feel obliged to share the substance of it with Colleen: cop a plea, claim traumatic loss of memory regarding the whereabouts of the body, engage with psychiatric support while in prison, and by the time she got out, someone else would be the focus of the mob’s ire.

And Colleen might have considered accepting. Apart from the occasional moment of spiritedness, like the one displayed earlier in my kitchen, she was resigned to the machinery of the system mincing her up. It wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t even surprising. Her child was missing, she was estranged from her husband, and mired in a grief from which she could not even begin to free herself, however marginally, until Henry’s fate was established. Because of all this, there was a real risk that, if presented with the prosecution’s deal, she could be tempted to take it. She might even view the sentence as punishment for her perceived failure to protect her son. I’d seen stranger things happen in the course of criminal cases, and logic didn’t enter into proceedings when someone was in Colleen’s kind of pain. But should she show signs of wavering, her son’s fate remained the best card we could play. If she accepted the deal, any ongoing police investigation into Henry’s whereabouts would end, and she might never discover what had befallen him.

I checked my messages. Macy was at the Bar of Chocolate, a dessert-and-wine place in the Old Port that had never, to my knowledge, been troubled by police custom. When I got there, she was seated at a table away from the small bar, an old fashioned already in front of her, along with a slice of chocolate torte big and rich enough to make Nowak’s Bête Noire look abstemious by contrast. I hadn’t finished my glass of wine at the Grill—though I made sure it was added to Nowak’s bill—so I didn’t feel bad about ordering another. I joined Macy at the table, kissed her gently, thought about kissing her harder, felt her think about it too, and then put some distance between us before someone told us to get a room.

“So,” she said, once we’d recovered ourselves, “what did Nowak want from you?”

“He wanted to talk about Colleen Clark.”

Macy drank some of her old fashioned. As I said, we were trying to be careful about how we mixed the personal and the professional, but sometimes, as now, it was unavoidable.

“Did you want to talk about her—and do you?”

“Nowak didn’t give me much choice, and I thought I should hear what he had to say. As for you: Yes, I want to talk about her. I may even need to.”

“Go on. Nowak first.”

“He was spreading chum on the water, but with no expectation of catching anything, because he’s still sharpening the hook. He asked me to test Moxie for a plea deal, see if he’s open to discussions.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Moxie produces a range of expert witnesses on postpartum depression, Colleen pleads guilty to manslaughter, and Nowak talks to the judge,” I said. “Colleen serves a year plus, as long as she promises to act contrite after release. Whatever she might have done with her son’s body gets kicked down the road as being too traumatic for her to face right now.”

“That’s not a bad package.”

“Only if she harmed her child. That’s what I tried to explain to Nowak, but he has one eye on a new color scheme for the governor’s office.”

“He’ll make a good governor,” said Macy.

“I’d dispute that, if he’s willing to sacrifice my client for it.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t ruthless.”

“Seriously?”

Macy took another sip of her old fashioned.

“Damn it, I don’t know,” she said. “We really are talking about this, aren’t we? And there I was, thinking we might have a proper romantic evening, like regular people.”

“Regular people don’t have to seek out dark corners in case the cops, or potential future governors, catch them canoodling.”

“No, they don’t. And is ‘canoodling’ even still a word?”

“I’m older than you,” I said, “so my vocabulary is richer.”

A young couple entered the Bar of Chocolate, bringing the clientele up to six. I didn’t recognize the newcomers, but they looked like tourists, God bless them.

“Colleen Clark is innocent,” I said. “She’s been set up.”

“By whom?” said Macy, proving that all hope was not lost for the young, grammatically speaking.

“I’m still digging, but I think a woman named Mara Teller is at the heart of it, or that’s the name she used to approach Stephen Clark. I’m getting closer to her. Portland PD had her first, but the investigators lost interest after that blanket showed up and Becker and Nowak began counting the column inches for a conviction.”

“All true,” said Macy. “A blanket covered in a child’s blood hidden in his mother’s car will do that; and once Erin Becker became involved, the case got fast-tracked. You know how it works: there’s only so much time, and no shortage of crime to fill it.”

“Plus, Furnish is a bum.”

“Furnish is a bum,” she agreed, “but in this instance, he isn’t completely to blame.”

“Is it okay if I blame him anyway?”

She patted my hand. “Sure, honey, if it makes you happy. Meanwhile, your theory about the disappearance of Henry Clark requires taking something simple and making it very complicated. We’re talking questions of access to the family home, a car, and a lot of planning.”

“I realize that.”

She watched me over the rim of her glass. I watched her back. It wasn’t a chore.

“You’re looking at the husband, aren’t you?”

“I might be.”

“Evidence?”

“He’s a louse.”

“We may need more than that before putting the cuffs on him.”

“All I have are broken threads,” I said, “but they’re starting to accumulate. By tomorrow, I hope to begin assembling them into a pattern.”

“You think Stephen Clark conspired with Mara Teller to abduct and kill his own child?”

She couldn’t hide her skepticism.

“Well, when you put it like that.”

“Is there another way you’d prefer me to put it?”

“I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but give me a minute.”

“I notice you’re not rushing to dismiss it,” said Macy.

“No.”

“But why would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe Henry’s death wasn’t part of the deal. Stephen agrees to surrender his son to Mara Teller, for reasons yet to be established, but an accident occurs and the child is injured or killed. Now Stephen and Teller are yoked together: Teller has Henry’s blood on her hands, and Stephen can’t go to the police because he’s complicit in the crime, one with which his wife has been charged. The best solution for all involved, Colleen apart, is that she should be tried and found guilty. Case closed.”

“When I hear it from you,” said Macy, “it sounds almost plausible. But then, you do have that effect on me.”

“Before you go all dewy-eyed, I have one more complication to add.”

“Which is?”

Before continuing, I permitted her another mouthful of liquor. I thought she might need it.

“Sabine Drew,” I said.