Secrets Of Eden by Bohjalian Chris

Author:Bohjalian, Chris [Bohjalian, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Chick-Lit, Adult, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780307394972
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2010-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Secrets of Eden, A Novel

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There were a couple of reporters who expected an indictment any day now as the last of the leaves fell from the trees, and they were confident that when the time came, we would be arresting Stephen Drew. They called my office often that autumn and were constantly nosing through court papers. They were convinced that what had occurred that night in July was really pretty simple. Somehow Alice Hayward had gotten word to the parsonage that her husband was going ballistic, but by the time her ex-lover arrived, she was dead and her husband was passed out drunk. So Drew killed him.

Other reporters wouldn’t guess at a timetable for an indictment but groused that it was taking so long. And the longer it took, the more bizarre were the theories their readers started posting on their newspaper or television websites. The Haywards had been murdered by a Charlie Manson–like group of teens, a small cult whose leader was so brilliant that he had been able to cover up all traces of their presence. The Haywards had been manufacturing crystal meth at a sugarhouse in the woods and were killed by a customer. George Hayward’s retail ventures were fronts to launder money, and George and his wife had been murdered by some connection from Albany or the Bronx. Alice had shot George, and then later someone had—for reasons no one could conjure—strangled her.

I, of course, kept coming back to the simpler realities. There was Stephen Drew, and there was Heather Laurent. Though I thought it unlikely that Heather was involved, as a result of her admitted visit to the house the Tuesday after the Haywards’ deaths her prints and tracks were everywhere when we returned to gather more evidence. She had also been in Vermont the Sunday night the pair was killed and had some sort of connection to the venerable Pastor Drew. And oh, by the way, she was a total nut job. So I couldn’t write her off completely.

Still, I read the stories in the papers and on the Web, and I watched the drama unfold on the local news. And when reporters called, I told them—as I did all the time with all sorts of cases—that I really had nothing to say.

EMMET WALKER AND Andy Sullivan with the Vermont State Police were joined by a detective from their New York State comrades when they ventured to Statler and by a detective from the NYPD when they descended upon SoHo. They returned to Vermont late on a Wednesday night and came to my office in Bennington first thing Thursday morning to tell me what they’d learned. I had something that resembled a small feast waiting for them to thank them for their very long days—and nearly fourteen hours in the car—earlier that week. Not too far from our office is the sort of mom-and-pop bakery that specializes in angioplasty-inducing cinnamon buns and cake doughnuts. It always has the heavenly aroma of a confectionery sugar explosion.

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