Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

“What about the garage?”

“We’ve got furniture in there,” she said. “Our place in Cleveland was bigger, so we had stuff we couldn’t place, so we just leave it in there. We haven’t been able to get the car in the garage since we got here. Is this important?”

“I’m sorry,” Delgado said, offering an apologetic smile. “Sometimes we tend to wander. Tell us about when you last saw Otto.”

“Two nights ago,” she said. “Sunday night.”

“What time would this have been?”

She thought a moment. “Around eight? I know it was after 60 Minutes . The show had just ended when Otto said he was going out. He didn’t show up for work yesterday, and he didn’t show up today.”

“Did he say where he was going on Sunday night?”

Eileen Petrenko shook her head. “I just thought, maybe out for a drink.”

“I noticed the Icon when we were driving around,” Bourque said.

Another head shake, but this one was more violent. “He wouldn’t go to that kind of bar.”

Bourque glanced at Delgado. She said, “I think it’s a gay bar.”

“Oh,” he said. “Anywhere else he might have gone?”

“There’s the Break, the billiards place,” she said. “Sometimes he goes there. Mostly he watches the others play because he’s not very good. But when he hadn’t come home by eleven, I went down there looking for him, and he wasn’t there. They hadn’t seen him. Then I wondered if maybe he’d gone to a movie. I don’t like movies, so sometimes he goes alone.”

“He likes movies?” Bourque asked.

Eileen nodded her head toward the boxes along the wall. “Half of them are filled with DVDs. He likes to collect. There’s even some of them on VHS. On cassette, you know? And we don’t even have a VCR anymore. Threw it out years ago.”

“What’s his favorite movie?” Bourque asked.

She had to think. “He likes adventure ones. Like with Indiana Jones or that John Wick person, that kind of movie. Action ones. He likes the fighting ones, where they’re doing the kung fu or whatever it’s called. I don’t watch those.”

“One of my favorites,” Bourque mused, “is that one, with the shark? Where they had to close the beaches?”

She brightened. “Oh, right, Jaws . That’s one of Otto’s favorites.” She looked curious. “I bought him some socks online with a shark on them. For his birthday.”

Bourque exchanged a brief glance with Delgado. “Yeah, great movie.”

Eileen said, “If he had gone to a movie, he’d have been home before midnight.” She took a tissue from a box on the table next to her and dabbed the corner of her right eye.

“Do you think he was meeting with someone?” Delgado asked.

“He didn’t say.”

Delgado leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “This is a difficult question to ask, Mrs. Petrenko, but is it possible your husband is seeing someone?”

“You mean, a woman?” She looked aghast. “An affair?”

Delgado nodded.

“Oh, no, that’s... I don’t think so.” She seemed to close in on herself, squeezing her arms closer to her body. “That wouldn’t be like him, I don’t think.”

The room went quiet for a moment while the detectives let Eileen think about that one a little longer. Finally, Delgado asked, “Why did you say you thought he might have gone to Cleveland?”

She shrugged. “He doesn’t like it here. He doesn’t like New York. He doesn’t like the big cities very much. At least, not the ones on the ocean.” She sniffed, touched the tissue to her nose.

“The ocean?” Bourque said. “He doesn’t like to swim? He hates boats?”

“No, no, it’s not like that. There’s the cities on the coast and then there’s the rest of the country.”

“I don’t follow,” Delgado said.

“Otto says one day there’s going to be another civil war, but it won’t be between the north and the south. It’ll be between all the snooty people, you know, the elites, and all the other people, the real Americans.”

“So people who live in, like, New York and Los Angeles and places like that aren’t real Americans?” Delgado asked.

“They don’t hold true American values,” Eileen Petrenko said. “Otto would say they all want everyone to have abortions, to turn children into homosexuals, that kind of thing. But mostly, they look down their noses at everyone else.” She shrugged, then tried to smile through the tears she was holding back. “But that’s not me. I like people. I try to get along. I like people here. I like my neighbors. They’re nice.”

“Your husband’s views,” Bourque said slowly, “sound similar to those espoused by the Flyovers.”

Eileen nodded. “That sounds like something Otto might have mentioned, but when he started in on this, I didn’t listen to much. What are Flyovers?”

Bourque said, “It’s an alt-right group that says the real Americans are the ones the elites fly over when they go from coast to coast.”

Eileen looked confused. “It can’t be the same group. I was watching the news yesterday, wondering if there might have been a car accident or something that might have involved Otto, and there was something about a bombing in Boston, and they mentioned that group. But Otto wouldn’t want anything to do with people like that.”

“Does Otto spend a lot of time on the net?”

Eileen’s face darkened. “Maybe. But he’s not some pervert if that’s what you’re asking. He’s not on any of those porno sites. And he’s not in some chat room talking to women, either. Not Otto.”

Bourque glanced at Delgado, who was no doubt thinking what he was thinking. If Otto was their guy, and it was looking as though he might be, when they left this house they’d be taking his computer with them.

“Mrs. Petrenko,” Bourque said, “do you know whether your husband was having any disagreements with anyone? Personally or professionally? Maybe there was someone who had a grudge against him?”

“No. Otto is a good man.”

“Has he ever been in any kind of trouble?”

“Trouble?”

“With the police? Has he ever been arrested?”

She bit her lip. “It was a long time ago.”

Delgado asked, “When was this?”

“Ten, eleven years, I think? It was a misunderstanding. Otto and a friend, they were on an out-of-town job, had too much to drink, and broke some furniture in a motel. The police were called. But Otto and the other man, they agreed to pay for the damages, and the charges were dropped.”

Bourque slowly nodded his head. “So if he was arrested, they probably took his fingerprints.”

Eileen shook her head. “It was long ago. He did the right thing. He paid them.”

Delgado smiled. “I’m sure he did. Let’s move on. Can you describe his behavior the last few weeks? Did he seem any different to you? Did he seem worried about something?”

Eileen thought about that. “Maybe a little.” They waited. She put a hand to her forehead, then took it away, as if taking her own temperature. “He’s been in touch with his family.”

“Is that odd?” Bourque asked.

She shrugged. “Usually, at Christmas maybe, he calls his brother, asks how his kids are, or he’ll check in with his sister if it’s her birthday. But these last few weeks, he’d just call to say hi, or he’d send them an email. I mean, he likes them, they’re family, but he’s never shown all that much interest before.”

“Did he say why he was doing that?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly. “It was like... it was like he was worried about them. I heard him say to his sister that they should have an alarm system. And I heard him ask his brother if he’d noticed anyone watching the house. I asked Otto about that, when he got off the phone, and he said we live in an age when we need to be careful, that was all.”