Chapter 28
Reid’s search of Martin Harris’s room at Osprey House four days earlier hadn’t turned up anything of interest, but that of the shared bathroom at the end of the hall had.
The walls were lined with blue tiles probably as old as the two-hundred-year-old hotel itself—some of them cracked, pieces missing, caulk chipped away.
The housekeeper obviously tried to keep it clean, but the mildew created by years of seaside fog and the steam of thousands of showers made it a losing battle.
The floor was covered with yellowed linoleum. Reid noticed how the corner under the sink was curled up, so he pulled on the edge and found a cache of porn. Whole magazines wouldn’t fit, so pages had been torn out and slid under the loose floor. Reid called for a team to process the scene.
The pages came from different kinds of publications, from soft- to hard-core porn, suggestive photos of celebrities and models ripped from mainstream magazines, and even photos of models in pajamas and bathing suits ripped from the J.
Jill and Sundance catalogs. Among the stash were images of naked women tied up, bound with their own underwear, gagged and blindfolded.
Because the bathroom was shared by all eight rooms on the fourth floor, and residents from the other three floors could use it as well, Reid couldn’t immediately link the pages to Harris.
The state police lab found twenty-two different sets of fingerprints—the Osprey House version of a dirty magazine being passed around a camp cabin—and one was Harris’s.
Harris had not been sent back to Ainsworth, the state’s highest-security prison, but he was being held at Avery, the local jail on the road between Silver Bay and Black Hall, used to hold prisoners waiting for trial, usually on lesser offenses.
Reid had checked his alibi for Beth’s last day; Harris claimed to have been drinking with some Osprey House buddies in the first-floor TV room.
Three of them confirmed it, but all three admitted to having passed out drunk, so how good were their stories?
“This isn’t looking good for you,” Reid said, sitting opposite Harris and Lisa Lewiston, his attorney.
“I didn’t do anything,” Harris said.
“Mr. Harris,” Lewiston said, her hand on his arm.
“I need to tell him,” Harris said. “So he understands. And I’m going to.
” He gave his lawyer a stern look. He hadn’t had a drink in the four days since he’d left Osprey House and been held at Avery, and his eyes looked clearer.
His voice had an echo of the authority it might have had when he was still a professor.
“I’m listening,” Reid said.
“Those were not my pictures,” Harris said.
“But your fingerprints were on them.”
“I know.” Harris took a deep breath. “I can’t help what other people do. There are plenty of guys not on parole at Osprey House, and they can buy whatever magazines they want and keep them in their rooms.”
“But not you.”
“Right. But not everyone can afford to buy magazines, so when people are finished with theirs, they share. Doris, the housekeeper, wouldn’t allow things like that lying around, so guys tear out the pages they like and hide them in the bathrooms.”
“Where you found them.”
“Yes,” Harris said. “I didn’t know what it was at first. I saw the corners of some papers sticking out from under the linoleum, and I pulled them out. Detective Reid, I was shocked.”
“I bet.”
“No, I mean, really. I haven’t looked at pornography in twenty years. Since I was arrested. With all the treatment I’ve been through, honestly, it makes me sick.”
Honestly. Reid kept a straight face.
“So that’s what happened. I saw the pictures, and I put them right back. It was only that one time. I should have reported it to Robin, or even Paul downstairs, but I just wanted nothing to do with it. Wanted to wipe the whole thing from my mind.”
“Mr. Harris, do you think you’re in jail because of those pictures?”
“Yes,” he said, looking confused.
“They’re just the reason we can put you in jail. But the real trouble is, you had that postcard of the art gallery in Black Hall. You know, the one Beth Lathrop’s family owns.”
“I told you I just like pretty towns.”
“Yes, you did tell me that,” Reid said. He opened his briefcase and took out the postcard in a cellophane wrapper.
He felt confident but on edge. What Harris had to tell him would make or break the theory that had been growing stronger.
“But I’m wondering why you wrote the names Beth, Judy, Alissa, Gennifer, Rose, and Faith on the back?
And at the top of the card, the names Pete and Martin? ”
Reid stared at Harris as the blood drained from his face. He pushed the postcard, picture side down, across the table.
“That is your handwriting, isn’t it?” Reid asked.
“Hmm,” Harris said.
“Is that a yes?” Reid asked.
“Uh, yes.” The professorial authority had gone from his voice.
“So why do you have Beth’s name at the top of that list?”
“No reason.”
“Those others are the names of the women you were convicted of sexually assaulting, right? Judith Lane, Alissa Fratelli, Gennifer Mornay . . .”
“It’s a coincidence,” he said.
“So, you sexually assaulted every woman on that list except Beth Lathrop?”
Harris nodded, looking miserable.
“We’ll come back to that in a minute,” Reid said. “I see that you’ve put these two men’s names at the top, and you’ve written them in bolder ink. Like you must have really pressed down, to make the names nice and strong. Read me the names, will you?”
Harris coughed. He looked away, then back at the postcard. “Martin and Pete,” he said finally.
“Martin and Pete,” Reid said. “Martin . . . that’s you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So what about Pete? Who’s he?”
“I guess it’s Pete Lathrop.”
“You guess? Or you know? Considering you wrote it.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s Pete Lathrop.”
“But I thought you said you don’t know him,” Reid said, watching for even a blink that might give him away.
“That’s true. I don’t.”
“Never met him?”
Harris shook his head.
“So what is Pete Lathrop’s name doing on this list you made of the women you assaulted?”
“Except Beth,” Harris interjected. “I did not assault her. We need to be clear on that.”
“Well, let’s say we are. Still, what is Pete’s name doing here?”
Martin Harris glanced at his lawyer. A little color had returned to his face, two pink patches on his round cheeks. His eyes were full of anxiety.
“I advise you not to answer,” Lewiston said.
“But otherwise he’ll think . . . ,” Harris whispered. “And it will be worse.”
Lewiston shrugged. “I’ve given you my advice.”
Harris seemed to make up his mind. He sat taller, folded his hands on the table in front of him.
“I wanted to help you solve the crime,” he said, staring into Reid’s eyes.
Reid tried not to show his disbelief.
“And how would you help me?” Reid asked.
“Unfortunately, from my past behavior, I know too much about people who do . . . things to women. Such as those that were done to Beth.”
Beth. Reid controlled his breathing. He had been careful about what was reported in the case. The department had held back certain details of the crime scene, including the fact that lace impressions had been left by the force of strangulation.
“What things were done to her?” Reid asked.
The pink patches on Harris’s cheeks were turning red. Temperature rising: he’s getting excited, Reid thought.
“Horrible things. Rape things,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Being stripped. The strangling with hands. Hands all over her body, then around her neck.”
Reid watched Harris’s hands unconsciously flexing and unflexing, making an oval as if wrapping around a throat.
“Did you do these ‘rape things’?” Reid asked, chilled as he watched Harris’s hands tighten and release.
“Not to Beth.”
“Did you see someone else do them to Beth?”
He hesitated, started to say something, then changed his mind and shook his head.
“It seems to me like you did,” Reid said.
“Not really.”
“Not really? But sort of?”
He sighed. “I dreamed about it,” he said. “My treatment is working; it is, truly. But I can’t help what I dream.”
Truly. “Of course you can’t,” Reid said. “So, what did you dream?”
“I saw Pete doing it to her,” Harris said. “She was on the bed. So beautiful and dainty, wearing her nightie. Pregnant. And how lovely a woman is at that time. There is a glow—I’ve seen it many times. My own wife . . .”
Did you want to strangle your own wife too? Reid wondered, watching sweat break out on his forehead.
“Right. So you dreamed of Beth on her bed.”
“And Pete, her strong husband, standing over her, very serious.”
Wives are dainty and lovely; husbands are strong and serious, Reid thought.
“What did Pete do?”
“Well, he hit her, of course. That’s what the bruises are from.
And he did this,” Harris said, mimicking strangulation with his hands, consciously this time.
“Then he would have taken her panties, which he would have removed after he hit her—I left that out—and then he would have wrapped it around her throat, and, well, you can imagine.”
Reid watched him in silence. During the course of most of Martin Harris’s sexual assaults, he did use ligatures. He would start to choke his victim, then stop just as she was about to pass out. He always wore a mask. He’d never strangled a woman to death; he had always stopped short.
“I really can’t imagine, Martin,” Reid said. “You need to tell me exactly what you’re talking about.”
“Well, after he wrapped her panties around her throat, he would pull them tight. And then, eventually, she would die.”
“That’s what you saw Pete do?”
“In my dream, not real life! Wasn’t I being clear?” Harris asked.
“Not entirely,” Reid said. “What did her panties look like?”
“Black. Lacy edge.” As he said the words, Harris tickled his own neck, then made a finger slash, as if cutting his throat. He shivered and tried to hold back a smile. “They matched her bra.”
Reid pictured the crime scene as if he were there right now. Beth on her side; that bruised lace-imprinted line around her neck; her black panties and bra, the French lace torn to shreds, lying on the floor.
No one who had not been in that room, or read the police reports, knew those details. Reid’s heart was slamming in his chest, and his mouth was dry.
“You were there,” Reid said.
“No! I told you. I just dreamed about it!”
Reid picked up the postcard and looked at the way Harris had written Pete’s name next to his own, almost like doodling the name of a crush. Reid knew that criminals, especially those with paraphilic disorders, loved to communicate with each other, relive their crimes and share fantasies.
“I’m really curious about why you wrote Pete’s name right next to yours. I know you say you dreamed about him, but to me it seems like more than that, Martin. To me it seems as if you and Pete did something together. Or maybe he told you about what he did.”
“Yes!” Harris said, looking almost triumphant, as if Reid finally got it. “That’s exactly it! In the dream he told me. He showed me! I saw it all! That’s what I mean by wanting to help you solve the crime. That’s why I put his name and Beth’s with the list of, you know.”
“The women you assaulted,” Reid said in a calm voice.
“Well, yes. Because even though I don’t do that anymore, have no desire whatsoever to do that again, I understand people who do.
That’s why I dreamed of Pete. I don’t want to sound like I admire him—honestly, I don’t.
But I can get right into his skin and feel how he hurt his wife and then killed her. ”
Honestly.
“Let’s get a written statement on that,” Reid said.
“So you believe me?” Harris said.
Reid stared at him. He believed that Martin Harris had either killed Beth or spoken to the killer, who had given him very specific details. He saw the hopefulness in Harris’s eyes. Reid was happy to dash it.
“The problem, Martin, is that I don’t believe in dreams,” Reid said. And he left the interview room, the Black Hall postcard in his hand.