Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
Tim
Tim woke to the sound of screaming. There was a time when that would have been cause for alarm and he would have gone for his sidearm. Today he just groaned, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and rolled his body out of bed.
In the nursery, Darcy grinned crookedly in her crib, knowing full well she’d won.
This was a new game of hers, one he found entertaining and torturous at the same time.
The kid had figured out a scream brought her father running, while quiet, inquisitive calls of “Dadda?” might go ignored, especially if issued before sunup.
Both Tim and Shana were off-duty on Sundays and often didn’t need to work even if they were on call, but homicides turned schedules on their heads.
Now, Tim checked the clock. Nearly six. Darcy was clearly done sleeping, babbling about “pack-cakes” and pawing at his stubble with her tender, chubby hands.
Tim scooped her up and took her to the master bedroom. Brought a finger to his lips—shh—and delivered a conspira-torial smile before tucking her between him and his wife. The child snuggled against them, doing her best to stay quiet in the face of this unexpected treat.
Shana’s eyes snapped open, a look of amusement playing across her face.
“Looks like we have a visitor.”
“She missed you,” said Tim. “I did too.”
“You were only gone two minutes.”
“It was two minutes too long.”
Shana’s eyes twinkled, her face pure joy.
There were more lines fanning out from those eyes now than when they had first met, but to Tim, that only deepened her beauty.
They were paths to the memories they’d shared, trails they’d followed together for better or worse.
Tim leaned over Darcy to kiss Shana, the soft warmth of her lips on his curling around him like an embrace.
“So what’s the game plan?” she asked against his mouth.
Always planning, always preparing for what was coming next.
It was Shana who’d be doling out the day’s assignments to the team, but Tim had noticed lately she’d been pushing him to take the lead.
That was about trust, but something else, too.
A career dream she knew Tim held like a prized gemstone in his hand.
“Well, there’s Stacy Peel,” he said as Shana stroked Darcy’s strawberry hair, which seemed to be trying to curl, “but I thought I’d start with Terry Martino, the contractor who worked on Mikko Helle’s house.
He’s one of the people who had easy access.
With any luck, he hasn’t heard we found the bones and I can catch him unawares.
He should be able to tell us who else was in the house over the last year, too. ”
“Good idea. I’ll get this one sorted and head to the barracks.” As she spoke, Shana nuzzled Darcy’s cheek, eliciting a laugh. “Baby girl gets to spend the day with Nana Dori and Grandma C again.”
“Lucky them,” said Tim with a heavy sigh.
“The party’s not until seven, so we’ve got time. I hope Nicole can unwind a bit tonight,” said Shana. “Mac, too.”
“I had the same thought last night,” Tim put in.
“Nicole looked pretty wrecked at The Brig. I keep thinking about how differently things could have gone. What if Jenny Smith had gotten violent with Nicole? Or with Eva? We really don’t know anything about her or what she’s capable of.
And,” he went on, “what if Helle had found her instead? A stranger hiding in his house, a house where there was already one dead girl in the basement?”
Shana’s eyes dimmed as she looked down at their daughter. “Let’s keep it to ‘Happy Birthday’ at the party and thank the North Country gods it wasn’t worse.”
“Yeah,” Tim said. Shana was right; no point wasting time on worst-case scenarios. The crime was bad enough as it was. “Coffee?”
“Heck yes,” she said, shielding a yawn with the back of her hand. “By the gallon.”
Terry Martino was not what Tim had been expecting.
When he and Shana were getting ready to restore the old Victorian, before they realized they couldn’t afford outside help and decided to tackle the work themselves, they’d interviewed a contractor about the job.
That experience, along with an inordinate amount of time spent in hardware stores, had led Tim to form a blanket impression.
When he heard the words “general contractor,” he pictured dusty Carhartt pants and a paint-splattered work shirt worn over arms hardened by manual labor and a middle softened by too much canned beer.
Nothing about Terry fit the image in Tim’s mind, from his height—six and a half feet, at least—to his fashion jeans and desert boots, which appeared to be spotless suede.
The fair hair that receded from his domed forehead was lush and meticulously styled.
The guy looked better suited to handing out samples of oaked chardonnay in a liquor store, but Tim knew well that looks could be deceiving.
Terry’s current project, which Tim had discovered by calling the contractor’s office and speaking with an affable secretary named Saige, was way out in Parishville at the edge of six-million-acre Adirondack Park.
The home he’d been hired to renovate was a gut job, by the look of the wall studs Tim could see through the open front door, and it was nestled in the north woods right on Blake Falls Reservoir.
Though the house was huge, its rough-and-ready appearance and proximity to the water reminded Tim of his old cottage on Goose Bay.
He loved his current home, but he missed that spot sometimes.
It had been a place of solitude and peace, until it became the site of a shoot-out that had left Tim with a spray of dimpled scars across his right thigh.
A reminder of the time he’d almost lost Shana for good.
Tim had found Terry lingering near his black BMW in the front yard, which was littered with equipment and sawdust. He’d had to wait until the man, who was pacing back and forth across the patchy grass, finished a call before introducing himself.
“I’d like a minute of your time, if you can spare it,” he said when Terry was done. “It’s about a recent project of yours. The renovation work you did for Mikko Helle?”
“Sure, sure. That house is a beauty.” There was reverence in the timbre of his voice, Tim thought. “Would you like to sit?”
They crossed the grass to a gazebo at the periphery of the woods.
With its decorative braces and bright white paint, the structure would have been more at home on a turn-of-the-century fairground, but as the house was bustling with workers, Tim was grateful for a relatively quiet place to talk.
In interviews with both witnesses and persons of interest, he paid close attention to tone and body language, especially when sharing news about a death.
Terry Martino was appropriately shocked when he learned that human remains had been discovered in the basement of Mikko’s home.
“Well shit,” he said, his back flush against the gazebo’s railing. “I know a drywall repair guy who found a stash of creepy old dolls in a wall, but bones in a secret room? That’s a first for me.”
Same, thought Tim. “As you can imagine, we’re keen to find out who might have had access to that basement.”
Terry was nodding. “Sure, of course. The work we did was all on the first and second floors. I’m sure the electrician and plumber went down there at some point, and I’m happy to put you in touch with them.”
“And you started in March?” Tim confirmed.
“That’s right.”
“Were you in the home at all around the time that Mr. Helle bought it?”
“Sure,” he said again. “We met there a couple of times in the fall to talk about the plan, and so I could put together an estimate.”
“Mr. Helle didn’t mind that you wouldn’t be able to start work till March?”
“I did warn him I was booked solid until the spring, but it wasn’t an issue. He lives in D.C.,” Terry pointed out. “Didn’t need the place until the summer anyway.”
“And in the fall and winter,” Tim went on, “did you or any of your crew visit the house?”
Terry raised his eyes to the gazebo’s ceiling. “Not that I can think of. I don’t see why we would. I live in Hammond, but I take projects all over the place. This past winter, I split my time between Gouverneur and Watertown.”
“What about Mr. Helle?” Tim said, taking down some notes. “How many visits did he make after meeting with you?”
Terry’s eyebrows shot up. “No idea. The property was his, he could come and go as he wanted, but it’s a long way from D.C.”
“Surely you must have met with him recently? To show him your progress on the house?”
“I sent him photos all the time.” Terry paused to scratch his clean-shaven jaw, releasing a wisp of cologne from his shirt. It was strong and floral and reminded Tim of a garden at nighttime. A beat, and then Terry added, “But he did come once in person.”
“Can you recall the date of that meeting?”
The man hesitated before taking out his iPhone and pulling up a calendar app. He searched for “Mikko,” then turned the phone around to show Tim a date. Saturday, April sixteenth. Terry told Tim that Mikko had come for the weekend.
“I mostly gave him updates by phone,” Terry explained as Tim jotted more notes.
“Or on FaceTime so he could see the progress. But like I said, there could have been other times when Mikko was in town. I wouldn’t know about those.
Look,” he added, “you should know that place was a revolving door for months. I try to keep the homes I’m working on locked up, but with my crew and subcontractors coming and going all day, that doesn’t always happen.
It’s not like I’m sitting around keeping watch.
I’ve got half a dozen jobs on the go at all times, so I’m mostly in my car, hopping from site to site. ”
Hopping. The use of the word reminded Tim of Jenny Smith. The phrogger. “OK,” he said. “When you were at the house, did you ever see a stranger on the property? Maybe a redheaded woman in her mid-twenties?”
“A redhead? I don’t think so. The only woman I ever saw was the girlfriend. Her hair’s not red, though. She’s Chinese, I think, or maybe Korean. Gorgeous girl. Eve?”
Tim said, “Do you mean Mr. Helle’s girlfriend, Eva Ki?”
“That’s her. She came with Mikko in April. He was trying to impress her, kept asking me to explain what it was all going to look like. We had only done the outdoor stuff at that point, so there wasn’t all that much to see. Mikko seemed happy, though. Can I ask something?”
“I can’t promise I’ll be able to answer,” said Tim.
Terry said, “I get that. I was just wondering if this is going to be in the news. The fact that a skeleton was found in Mikko’s house, I mean.”
“That’s likely to come out, yes. Does that concern you?”
Terry Martino shrugged. “I mean, it’s not great for the brand.”
“Your brand?”
Terry’s eyes widened slightly as he gave Tim a fleeting smile. “Right. Exactly.”
“I think it’s unlikely that you’ll be mentioned. No promises, though,” Tim said.
Thanking Terry Martino for his time and encouraging him to call if he had anything else to share, he made his way back to the car.
When Tim took one last look at the property and the river flowing dark behind the house, he saw that Terry was already back on his phone, his lips moving quickly as he traversed the cluttered front yard.