Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

It seemed to me that our world, at that moment, more or less ended.

Derek was arraigned the following morning. Ellen and I had been up all night, first just dealing with the shock of his arrest, then scrambling to find our son legal representation. Under other circumstances, of course, we would have gone straight to Albert Langley. We knew him, we trusted his reputation, we knew he knew his stuff.

Not exactly an option at the moment.

Nor did we feel we could call on anyone else in Langley’s firm. Who would want to defend the person charged with the murder of a colleague and his family? And besides, even if someone Langley had worked with agreed to represent Derek, we didn’t want to take any chances there might be underlying animosity. So Ellen put in a call to some people she knew from Thackeray, asking for recommendations, and came up with the name Natalie Bondurant. Eight years working as a criminal defense lawyer in Promise Falls, and according to at least one person Ellen talked to, a “smart cookie.” We put in a call to her service sometime around nine, and she called us back before ten.

I laid it out for her over the phone, my voice shaking at times. Then she had a number of questions for me, which I tried to answer as succinctly as possible. Her questions were clear and direct. She managed to cut through the emotions that were overwhelming us, got us to focus on the facts, to try as best we could to view the situation rationally, even if it was impossible for us to see it very objectively.

“So the police have no weapon,” she said. “That’s a problem for them. Unless they find it, in which case that could change things.”

“They won’t find it,” I said. “He didn’t do it.”

Natalie Bondurant chose not to argue. “It weakens their case. Your son had opportunity, he was there, that’s bad, but he has no record of violence-”

“He was in a bit of trouble once. He went joyriding with a friend, who’d taken his dad’s car without permission, and the car got smashed up. Another time, he was caught with some friends playing on the roof of the school and-”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about those things. They’re a far cry from killing three people in cold blood. But I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. The police are saying your son killed the Langleys because they discovered he’d hidden out in their house, but I don’t know. That doesn’t strike me as much of a motive. I’m worried they haven’t played all their cards yet. We’ll have to see. I’m going to want to talk to this Penny Tucker, find out exactly what Derek’s state of mind was when he talked to her on the phone from the house. I’ll have a chance to speak with him tomorrow morning before he goes before the judge, but I don’t think you should expect he’s going to get bail. He’s a suspect in a triple homicide. The state’s case may seem weak, but until we knock it down, I don’t think he’s going to be allowed out.”

Ellen, on the bedroom extension, said, “What’s going to happen to him? In jail? Is he going to be safe there?”

“I’ll talk to some people. Given the nature of the charges, I think it’s more likely he’ll be put in a separate cell, rather than with the general population.”

I knew Ellen was thinking what I was thinking. Our seventeen-year-old boy sharing a cell with grown men being held for God knows what. I didn’t want to think about it, but all I could do was think about it.

“There’s going to be a lot of media attention, too,” Natalie warned us.

“What do you mean?” Ellen asked.

“An arrest in a case this big, it’ll be a mini-circus outside the court. All the Albany media will be here. Probably a contingent from New York, as well. It’s going to be bad.”

“Oh God,” Ellen said.

“You have cell phones?” We gave her the numbers. “Because if I need to get in touch, I’ll call one of those. Your house phone, you’re going to reach a point where you’re not going to want to answer it. You may want to unplug it altogether. Media, crank calls, threats, the whole gamut. Don’t watch the news. The cops still have someone on the Langley house, it’s still a crime scene, they may keep the media from your door. I’ll talk to Barry and see if that’s possible.”

Barry. Like he was going to do us any favors.

As though reading my mind through the phone line, Natalie said, “He’s an okay guy. I’ll see what I can do. Also, there’s the matter of money. I don’t come cheap.” She outlined her fees. “It could go on for a while.”

Ellen, who looked after the finances in our house, said, “Okay. We’ve got some IRAs we could cash in, but not that much.” I could feel her desperation and hopelessness coming through the line from our upstairs bedroom. “I’ll start looking into that tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Natalie. “We’ll talk then.”

Natalie Bondurant was right. Derek didn’t get bail. She gave it her best shot, said Derek had no prior charges or convictions, came from a good home, was not a flight risk, but the judge would have none of it. He acceded to the prosecution’s request that Derek be held without bail. He was charged, said prosecutor Dwayne Hillman with much fanfare, in the most horrific murder case in the history of Promise Falls. Surely, if ever there was a case where bail should be denied, this was it.

In court, Ellen wept. I did my best to be stoic.

Derek, standing next to Natalie in the high-ceilinged prestigious courtroom, seemed smaller, almost childlike compared to the day before. In beltless jeans and a T-shirt, his hair an oily mess, he stared down at the floor, his shoulders hunched forward, as though he’d caved in on himself. If this was how he looked after only a few hours in jail, how would he look after a week or, God forbid, after-

I couldn’t let my mind go there.

He tried to give us a small wave, with his wrists cuffed together in front of him, as he was led to a door near the front of the courtroom.

“Derek. .” Ellen said. “Derek. .”

Neither Ellen nor I had slept, and we looked it. Ellen had aged ten years since Friday, before any of this madness had begun. And I was running on empty.

Natalie met us in the courthouse hallway. It was our first face-to-face meeting. She was black, mid to late thirties, tall, maybe six feet, short black hair, dressed in a conservative blue suit. Her solemn expression gave us no reason for optimism.

“Okay,” she said. “There was no way they were going to let him post bond, no matter what the amount was. No surprise there. They’ve got him in a cell of his own so he’s away from the other prisoners most of the time.”

I looked at Ellen. She was dying inside.

“We don’t have anything back yet on the blood on your son’s shoe, but we’re assuming it’s going to be Adam Langley’s. Your son admits he had to step over him to get out of the house, and must have stepped in some blood. He left a small trail of it, heading in the direction of your house. They’ve also taken a DNA sample from Derek, which isn’t exactly surprising.”

She gave us a more detailed account of Derek’s version of the events. How he’d hid out in the Langley home in the hopes that he and Penny could rendezvous there all week. How Derek was trapped inside the house when the Langleys returned unexpectedly, how he hid in the basement, how not long after that someone else came to the house and shot Albert and Donna Langley, and then Adam as he tried to escape by way of the back door.

Derek told his lawyer that someone came down to the basement while he hid behind a couch, holding his breath, fearing for his life. Derek slipped out once he was confident the killer or killers were gone.