Chapter Forty-Five
FORTY-FIVE
Tim
For the life of him, Tim couldn’t square Woody Durham’s face with the man he’d seen at Nicole’s birthday party, where they’d shaken hands and clapped each other’s backs like old friends.
The past forty-eight hours had gouged out his eyes and rubbed his skin ruddy.
Woody looked years older where he sat in the interrogation room, less like a man than a half-gnawed crust of bread under a table.
There was very little substance to him at all.
“I’m going to show you some pictures,” said Tim, opening the folder.
“My glasses,” said Woody. “Can I …”
“Go ahead.”
Woody reached into the pocket of his shorts. The glasses, small and dated, made him look even more feeble.
“Can you identify this woman?”
Tim’s question hung heavy in the close air of the room. Next to him, Valerie was wearing some kind of perfume that tickled the inside of his nose, and it was all he could do to contain a sneeze. He hoped it didn’t make him look too intense. Woody was having a hard enough time as it was.
“That’s Angelica,” Woody said at length.
“Angelica Patten?”
Shamefaced, he said, “I never knew her last name.”
“What about her?” Tim placed a new photograph in front of Woody. “Do you know her?”
“Yeah. That’s Molly.” This time, Woody looked confused. “She’s a friend of Angelica’s. Why are you showing me this?”
“Well, that’s the crazy thing,” said Tim. “You probably heard that Mikko Helle had an intruder. This is the woman Nicole found hiding in his house.”
Eyes bulging, Woody said, “What the fuck? How?”
“Molly Kranz is the one who alerted us to Angelica’s body,” Valerie put in, her arms folded on the table.
“But she lives in Syracuse. They were both just in town for the weekend. What’s she doing back here? Oh my god,” said Woody. “Does Molly have something to do with what happened to Angelica?”
“All good questions. Why don’t we start at the beginning?” said Tim. “Can you tell us how you met these two women?”
Woody sagged under the weight of his stress.
Between the impending interview and the press the case was getting, Tim wondered if he’d gotten any sleep at all.
On the morning news, Tim had seen an interview with Mikko in which he’d spoken of the victim, whom Shana had finally named to the media.
“My heart is with Angelica Patten’s family and friends,” Mikko had told the reporter, keeping his face suitably somber.
“What happened in my house, long before I moved to Cape Vincent, is a tragedy, but I have full confidence that the law enforcement officers investigating this case will find the responsible party.” It was legalese, and it didn’t sound like Mikko.
Maybe the man had gotten himself an attorney after all.
There had been a news story about the crime published as well; to the Durhams, Tim suspected it resounded like a death knell.
Local man to be questioned in connection with murder of female tourist.
“There was a party.” Woody adjusted the glasses that had slipped down his nose.
He was perspiring heavily, his face greased with sweat.
“On Labor Day weekend. Saturday night at Mikko’s house.
Angelica and Molly were there. It was pretty wild.
Mikko had just closed on the place, so he was celebrating. ”
“And Mikko invited them?”
“I think so. I remember I asked him how he knew so many people when he hadn’t even moved to town yet.”
“And what did Mikko say?”
“He laughed. He said he knew hardly anyone. Most of them were strangers he’d met at the hotel or around town. I don’t know where he met Angelica and Molly.”
With Valerie sitting stiffly by his side, Tim listened as Woody took them back to Mikko Helle’s home as it had looked in early September. It was just as Stacy had described: the previous owner’s son had salvaged a few boxes of documents and keepsakes, and left the rest behind.
“It was like going back in time to the seventies in there,” Woody told them. “Mikko was going to trash it all—the furniture, the stuff on the walls, everything—so he didn’t care if it got destroyed. There was so much alcohol in the kitchen that the place looked like a bar.”
“Were you drinking that night?” asked Tim.
“Yeah. Mikko wanted to celebrate. That wasn’t just about the house. I accepted his offer, earlier that day. We’re partners,” he said, and to Tim, the words seemed to lack heft. “I’m an investor in the old Rivermouth Arena.”
“So we’ve heard. How much money did you invest, Woody?”
The man swallowed. “Forty thousand dollars.”
“And Nicole knew that you’d done that?”
He winced. “Not yet. I told her the next day.”
In spite of himself, Tim flinched. If he had the timeline right, Nicole had learned the investment was a done deal the same day she found out Woody slept with a stranger.
Woody had tried to convey to Nicole how amazing it was all going to be.
Mikko planned to model the arena after some nightclub he loved in Helsinki, modern and minimalist but with mass appeal.
It was going to have an ice rink, but also a classic arcade, virtual reality room, laser tag, a restaurant, and even indoor mini putt.
Anyone coming north would want to visit.
It would become a main attraction. Woody would run it, and Mikko would bring in the customers.
It was a way to finally level up after years of scraping by with Island Adventure.
But the money Mikko wanted amounted to Woody and Nicole’s savings, and Nicole had pushed back.
“She kept saying, ‘I just don’t know,’ even though I knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime.
She couldn’t see it. She just kept worrying about the money.
That Saturday, before the party, Mikko came to the course.
He was all fired up about the house and his idea for a business, and how the timing felt just right.
The auction, where the town was going to sell the Rivermouth, was a week away, and he said he couldn’t wait any longer.
He told me I had to make a decision.” Woody lowered his gaze to the table. “So I did.”
Tim was scribbling in his notebook so fast his hand was cramping up. Habit, even though the interview was being recorded. “So you told him you were in, you went to the party, and you started drinking.”
“Yes.”
“At what point did you meet Angelica and Molly?”
“Not that long after I got there. Mikko introduced us. They both looked so young that I thought they might be underage, which scared the shit out of me, but then we got to talking. We did some shots.” He paused to grimace. “A lot of shots.”
“Was Mikko with you through all of this?”
“No. Only at the beginning. I remember Molly seemed into him. She kept asking about his tattoos. Have you seen them? It’s all this hockey stuff.
Angelica wanted to talk to him about his career, but his attention was all over the place.
He was only with us for maybe twenty minutes before he went to make the rounds. ”
“And you?” Tim asked. “How long were you with Angelica and Molly?”
“A lot longer than that. I know I talked to both of them about the Rivermouth. I was excited about it—especially when Angelica told me she’d been there before.
Her parents had brought her when she was little, and she remembered it.
The spinning lights they used to have above the rink.
Going skating with her dad. She was giddy about our plan.
I told her she should come for the grand reopening.
“We talked about college, too,” Woody went on.
“I told them about Blair and how proud I was of her.” He paused to drag a hand across his shiny nose.
“Angelica said she was about to interview for a big job. I wished her luck. They were nice girls, good kids. After a while, though, Molly wanted to meet some other people. Angelica stayed with me. She said”— Woody paused again and coughed wetly into his hand—“she said that I reminded her of her dad.”
As he spoke, the previous night’s conversation with Shana replayed itself in Tim’s head. Maybe Woody really was innocent. Angelica had just lost her father and, according to Claudia Patten, that had been weighing on her. Angelica might have seen Woody as a stand-in, and found some comfort there.
The problem with that theory, the part that left Tim nonplussed, was that Woody had confessed to Nicole that he’d cheated. I’m married. I would never cheat. I didn’t do it. So far, not one of those expressions of innocence had crossed Woody Durham’s lips.
“What happened next?” Tim asked.
The room felt charged, Woody’s nervous energy electrifying the metal table between them.
Tim traded a look with Valerie. This was the moment when suspects often shut down to avoid self-incrimination, suddenly aware they were presenting their hands to be shackled.
Woody did the opposite, and unfurled like a fern.
He seemed to have no sense of self-preservation at all. No filter, either.
“I’ve asked myself that so many times,” said Woody.
“What happened? We were both pretty drunk by then, and it was late, after midnight. Angelica wanted to find Molly and go back to their motel. I said I’d help her look.
I remember her stumbling,” he said, squinting, “and me holding her up, even though I couldn’t walk a straight line either.
We couldn’t find Molly anywhere. I think maybe Angelica said she didn’t feel well, because I remember taking her upstairs. ”
Under the table, Tim felt Valerie’s leg tense.
“Angelica could barely stand. Some of the doors up there were closed, but I found an empty bedroom. I think … I think I was planning to put her to bed.”
Tim could see it: Woody, whose daughters weren’t much younger than Angelica, taking care of her. But that wasn’t the story Stacy had told at all.