Chris Bohjalian - Secrets of Eden

DETECTIVE SERGEANT EMMET WALKER: So you left the church just after nine P.M. that Sunday night.

STEPHEN DREW: Yes.

WALKER: Where did you go?

DREW: I told you, I went home.

WALKER: Alone?

DREW: Absolutely. With whom would I have gone?

WALKER: Did you leave your house again that night?

DREW: No.

WALKER: You were in the house until Monday morning.

DREW: That’s right.

WALKER: Did you speak to anyone on the phone Sunday night? Did anyone come by?

DREW: Are you looking for proof that I was at the parsonage? Do I need an alibi?

WALKER: Sir, I am just filling in the details of the investigation.

DREW: Please, there is no need to call me sir.

WALKER: Okay.

DREW: If you want to be formal, then call me Reverend.

WALKER: Yes, Reverend. Did you speak to anybody on the phone on Sunday night? Did anybody come by? A neighbor? A parishioner?

DREW: You must have checked the phone records by now. You must know that I called nobody and nobody called me.

WALKER: And visitors?

DREW: None, again. It seems I have no alibi, doesn’t it?

WALKER: When was the last time you saw Alice Hayward?

DREW: I presume you mean alive.

WALKER: Yes, sir.

DREW: At the potluck following her baptism on Sunday morning.

WALKER: Did she say anything that suggested she thought she might be in danger?

DREW: Yes, but I didn’t understand at the time that it was a cry for help. Actually, it wasn’t a cry for help. It was…

WALKER: Go on.

DREW: She said “There.” I don’t know. Maybe it was nothing. She said it after she was baptized. After she came up from the water. When I was at the house and I saw that George had killed her, the word came back to me, and it seemed to me that she must have known he was going to do it and that’s why baptism was so important to her.

WALKER: And when was that?

DREW: When was I at the house?

WALKER: Yes.

DREW: It was Monday. Obviously.

WALKER: When she was estranged from her husband this past winter and spring, do you know who she was seeing? Or whether she was involved with anyone other than her husband at the time of her death?

DREW: Well, that’s quite the UFO of a question.

WALKER: Sir?

DREW: Reverend. Please. I asked you to call me Reverend-that is, if you won’t call me Stephen.

WALKER: My apologies. Who was Alice Hayward seeing when she and her husband were separated?

DREW: What makes you think she was seeing anybody at all?

WALKER: She wasn’t?

DREW: Why would I know?

WALKER: You told us you were offering her pastoral counseling. Perhaps she told you something.

DREW: I see.

WALKER: So was she seeing someone other than her husband-perhaps even sleeping with someone other than her husband?

DREW: Why is that relevant?

WALKER: This is a murder investigation.

DREW: I think it’s pretty obvious who killed Alice Hayward. You were there Monday morning. George Hayward killed his wife and then killed himself. Do you honestly doubt that’s what happened?

WALKER: Maybe. Hard to say right now. Did she ever mention another man to you in your… counseling?

DREW: Do I need a lawyer?

WALKER: That would be up to you, Reverend.

DREW: Okay, tell me. What do you want to know?

WALKER: Do you know if Alice Hayward had a relationship at any point this year with a person other than her husband?

DREW: No.

WALKER: No you don’t know, or no she had no relationship?

DREW: As far as I know, she wasn’t seeing anyone.

WALKER: No one.

DREW: No one. She was not having an extramarital affair. She was not sleeping with anyone other than her husband.

WALKER: When was the last time you spoke with George Hayward?

DREW: I can’t remember. It wouldn’t have been in the days before he killed himself.

WALKER: When would it have been?

DREW: I don’t know. Late May or early June, maybe. We may have run into each other at the general store.

WALKER: In Haverill.

DREW: Yes.

WALKER: What did you two discuss?

DREW: It was small talk, if it was anything. I was not likely to have a meaningful conversation with George Hayward. I know ministers aren’t supposed to think like this, but we’re human: He was a malevolent presence, and I never found that praying for him changed him very much.

WALKER: Were you aware that he was abusive toward his wife?

DREW: Of course.

WALKER: How angry did that make you?

DREW: That’s a ridiculous question. Obviously it left me sickened. It left me enraged.

WALKER: How enraged? Mad enough to do something about it?

DREW: What are you implying?

WALKER: Nothing. I am merely conducting an investigation.

DREW: Because if you think I killed George Hayward… well, that’s preposterous.

WALKER: I understand.

DREW: Really, is that what you think?

WALKER: No one is accusing you of anything, Reverend.

DREW: And would you please just call me Stephen? The way you say Reverend… it sounds almost sarcastic.

WALKER: I meant no offense.

DREW: This is all completely ridiculous. Do you want me to take a lie-detector test? I will, you know. Will that put this outrageous notion to rest

He never would take that polygraph test. His attorney would see to that.

But his lie that Alice wasn’t seeing anyone or having an extramarital affair would soon come back to haunt him.

THINGS BEGAN TO move quickly after that. We went back to the Haywards’ house and found that the fingerprints on the diet-soda bottle we had seen in the hands of the preacher man matched those on the headboard in the master bedroom. They matched prints in the bathroom off that bedroom and on a little blue bottle of massage oil in Alice’s nightstand. I now had all I needed for a judge to approve my affidavit to get an official set of Drew’s prints and a swab of DNA from his mouth. I could subpoena his laptop. I might have a while to go before I could connect him to George Hayward’s murder, but it wasn’t going to be hard to prove that he had been intimate with his parishioner.

Emmet put in another call to Drew, but this time the reverend didn’t call back. Instead it was his lawyer who rang, and he didn’t call my detective sergeant, he called me directly. His attorney was a guy named Aaron Lamb. I like Aaron, though he has represented some real scum. And, invariably, real rich scum. Aaron’s the guy who the head of the power company will call when he accidentally runs over a bicyclist on Route 7A while passing in a no-passing zone. Aaron’s the attorney you want if you were just snagged for embezzling a few hundred thousand dollars from the hospital or if you’re a psychiatrist who’s found it easier to sleep with your sexy young patients once you’ve drugged them. And, clearly, he was the lawyer you wanted if you were an aristocrat from Westchester who had chosen to go slumming as a country pastor in Vermont and then went ballistic one night and decided you would take vengeance into your own hands and shoot your now-dead lover’s husband.

“I hear you and Detective Emmet Walker are thinking of joining the Haverill United Church,” Aaron said, his voice its usual silky-smooth icing with just a dollop of boredom tossed in. He was a tall man who had thinning dark hair and rimless eyeglasses with titanium earpieces. He always moved in my mind like a diplomat: His posture was extraordinary, and the world seemed to part before him. He was one of the few men I knew in Vermont who could get away with a ventless Armani suit-no small accomplishment, since a lot of the guys here dress like farmers at a funeral. My sense is that when we beat him-and with the sorts of cases he handled, his clients were convicted as often as they were acquitted-his principal emotion was frustration: He knew that most of his clients were guilty as hell, and he really didn’t care that at least half the time they were going to wind up in prison. Mostly he wanted to win because winning was such a fundamental part of who he was.