CHAPTER 45
WEDNESDAY MORNING SIDNEY PULLED INTO THE LOT OF ALCOVE Manor, a rehabilitation center. Her grandmother died in a place like this, and Sidney had been leery of them ever since. Today she had no choice but to make a visit. Her cell phone rang just as she parked her car.
“Hello?”
“Sid, where the hell are you?” Leslie asked.
“I meant to call you. Something’s come up. I won’t be in until later.”
“When? The draft of episode eight is due today and we’re not even close on the edits. Graham has already been down this morning asking about it. He said you promised he’d have it by noon. Production is having a fit.”
“How close are we?”
“On the edits? Not close. I need your input.”
“You’ll have to stall. I can’t get there until later today.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m in the city, but I’ve got to take care of something. I’ll call you later.”
“We’re going to miss the deadline.”
“It’ll be the first one we missed. They’ll forgive us. We’ve got the biggest audience on television and we should start acting like it. Call you in a bit.”
Sidney ended the call. It was just past 9:00 a.m. when she walked through the front entrance of Alcove Manor. She headed for the reception desk, where a young woman sat paging through a magazine.
“Hi,” Sidney said as she approached. “I’m visiting.”
“Sign in, please,” the girl said. She pointed to a log for Sidney to print her name, and removed a visitor badge from a sheet of labels.
“I’m not sure of the room number,” Sidney said. “This is my first visit.”
The girl handed Sidney the badge. “What’s the name?”
“Gustavo Morelli.”
The girl typed the name into the computer. “Two thirty-two,” she said. “Take the elevator to the second level. It’ll be to your left.”
Sidney attached the visitors badge to her lapel and rode the elevator to the second floor.
When the doors opened a few minutes later, she walked onto the floor of the rehab facility, which shone with unnatural fluorescence and smelled from ammonia.
Nurses in rose-red scrubs pushed carts down hallways and sat around computers at the station that occupied the middle of the unit.
Two physicians in long white coats scribbled orders while they stood at the counter of the nurses’ station.
Sidney walked to room 232 and peered inside.
She saw a hospital bed lumpy with an occupant’s feet under the covers.
She entered to find the man propped up in bed eating breakfast and reading the newspaper.
“Detective Morelli?” she asked.
The man looked up, folded his paper, and placed it on the table in front of him, covering his half-eaten breakfast. “That was fast,” he said.
“You know how to get someone’s attention.”
“Sorry I sent the kid the way I did. My goal was to track you down myself, but I couldn’t make that happen fast enough.”
He pointed to the crumpled mess of blankets that covered his lower body.
“Sit down,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to discuss.”
* * *
“The brass were convinced it was an accident,” Gus said. “The kid fell off a mountain ridge while he was hiking, end of story. When the pathologist finished his report and determined the cause of death to be internal bleeding from the trauma of the fall, that was the end of it.”
“But not for you.”
“I had my doubts back then. I saw a group of high-school kids that were covering for each other. Something sinister happened to Henry Anderson, and at least a few of those kids knew what it was.”
“What stirred your suspicion?” Sidney asked.
“You conduct enough interviews during your tenure and you learn to pick up a vibe. During the Henry Anderson case, I picked up a bad one. But it was me against the world on that case. I was at the start of my detective career, I didn’t have a ton of clout, and I had to choose my battles.
I was stuck out in the sticks, and I wanted into the city.
Bottom line—I was in no position to make waves.
But those doubts about the Henry Anderson case never left me.
Then the Sebold girl was brought to trial eight years later for the death of another boyfriend.
I fought with my superiors to convince them that she was involved with Henry’s death, even went over their heads when they told me to forget about Henry Anderson.
Nearly lost my job for insubordination. When Grace Sebold was convicted, I was supposed to be satisfied with the fact that she’d spend her life in jail. ”
Gus shifted in bed.
“I never was satisfied, though. And my suspicions never died. Since I started watching your documentary, they’ve been rekindled.”
Sidney nodded her head. “For what it’s worth, you’ve got me thinking as well.”
“Listen, I’m a detective. I used to be, anyway.
We do a lot of our work on instinct and hunch.
But we also do a lot on straightforward common sense, and here’s some for you.
If a girl’s boyfriend dies by falling off a mountain bluff once, it’s a sad case of bad luck.
If that same girl has two boyfriends fall off a mountain in the same lifetime”—Gus looked at her—“that ain’t luck—bad or otherwise. That’s suspicious.”
Sidney took a deep breath. In one, articulate sentence from Gus Morelli, she felt her blockbuster documentary falling to pieces.
“You remember the Henry Anderson case well?” Sidney asked.
“No. It was almost twenty years ago.” Gus pointed to the closet. “But I pulled my old files from that case and read through them. Your girl was hiding something when I interviewed her. I’m certain about that, and I noted it way back when.”
“Grace?”
Gus nodded. “I brought my suspicions to my superior when the case was getting shuffled off as an accident. The problem was that I could never figure out what, exactly, she was hiding. The autopsy report came back indicating the manner of death was accidental, and that put an end to my official investigation.”
“But not your suspicion.”
“No, that never went away. I had other cases throughout my career that did the same thing to me—where the facts didn’t add up, but I couldn’t get to the bottom of it.
Each one bothered me and nagged me, caused me to lose sleep and maybe lean on the whiskey a bit too much.
But then another case came along and stole my time and attention and I had no choice but to move on.
There were a few cases over the years I couldn’t let go of.
To make myself feel better, I took the ones that bothered me most and copied everything—every evidence report, every autopsy report, every interview.
Boxed them up and shoved them in a storage unit in the Bronx. ”
“Why?”
“Because it helped me let go. I convinced myself that if I stashed everything about those cases away, then someday I’d come back to them and figure out what I missed. I’ve got a few from Wilmington, a bunch more from NYPD.”
“How are you doing so far?”
“The Henry Anderson case is the first one I’ve come back to,” Gus said.
“I’ve seen that kid so many times in my dreams and in my thoughts.
I never forgot about him. About the case and about the details?
Yeah. But never about him. Then I found myself laid up in this godforsaken place and I came across your documentary about Grace Sebold.
Two boyfriends fall off a cliff? I wasn’t buying it during her trial in 2007, and I’m not buying it now.
And when I saw the episode where the forensic expert showed how his skull fracture could not have come from a boat oar?
That episode reminded me a lot of Henry Anderson.
Henry’s skull fracture was unique. I remember sitting in on the autopsy.
The pathologist noted it and showed it to me during the exam.
It was ruled, ultimately, to be the result of his fall down the mountain.
But when I watched your documentary”—Gus stared at Sidney—“that’s your link. ”
“What link?” Sidney asked.
“The one between Henry Anderson and Julian Crist.”
Gus leaned forward and patted the bed where his leg should be.
“I’m a sixty-eight year old man who just lost his leg to cancer.”
Sidney saw the blankets flat and empty on his right side. The hollowness of the space sent a flutter through her.
“I know people will think I’m making these claims to stay relevant, or to find some piece of myself that I’m not sure exists anymore.
And trust me when I tell you that folks will call me crazy for what I’m about to say, but I’ve been called worse.
It’s only logical to conclude that both of these young men’s deaths are connected.
And I’ve got a hunch that the same tool used to strike Julian Crist was also used to strike Henry Anderson.
And I’d wager a shot of Johnnie Walker that Grace Sebold was holding it. ”