Act of God

Houle?”
    Bonnie Cross was sitting in one of the redwood lounge chairs, using the wide drink arm on it to hold her pad as she took notes. A detective from the Meade town force and a state trooper in plainclothes attached to the county district attorney sat on lawn chairs flanking the lounge, both men deferring to her. Roger Houle had already been pronounced by a pathologist from the Medical Examiner’s officer, his body gurneyed out toward the driveway. A couple of EMTs from the ambulance had looked over my bruises and said they didn’t think I needed X-rays, but they weren’t doctors themselves, “So who knows?” At the shed, lab techs were still tutoring a crew of hardhats with picks and mallets on the finer points of excavating an area where a body might be found.
    “Cuddy?”
    “Sorry. Still a little in shock.”
    “Right,” said the town detective, no sarcasm in his voice. Yet.
    Cross didn’t look at him. “So what made you think this Houle was the one?”
    “I don’t know. Little things bothered me. Darbra supposedly came back from New Jersey after a week away, but she didn’t bother to change her cat’s litter or let the person feeding it know she was back. Teagle claimed he’d gotten a note, but I found out in Jersey that while he’d been with her there, she wasn’t seen leaving with him.”
    Cross said, “Making Teagle look good for killing her there.”
    “Or at least losing her there. But it seemed hard to believe that Proft’s disappearance and Rivkind’s death weren’t connected, and that’s what kept things clouded.”
    “Clouded,” said the statie.
    “Yes,” I said.
    Cross flipped through the pages in her pad. “So Houle and Proft decide to ice his wife and fake the wife’s disappearance, but the plane crash screws that up. Teagle tries to blackmail Houle, and the kid gets killed for his trouble.”
    “Right.”
    “And you figure we’re going to find Mrs. Houle under the shed?”
    “Based on the way Houle was raving at me toward the
    end.”
    The townie took out a pack of Marlboros. “About that. You say he came at you with the shovel.”
    “Right.”
    “And you didn’t have time to show your gun before you had to use it?”
    “He’d knocked me down and was standing over me, about to split my head open.”
    The townie lit a cigarette. “Doesn’t say much for your agility, you can’t clear your holster before a guy with a shovel gets close enough to whack you.”
    “I’ve been having some troubles with my knee and shoulder.” I pulled up my left pantleg so he could see the bottom of the brace. “My doctor can give you the medical backup, you need it for the reports.”
    The statie said, “You’re a little hurt, it was kind of stupid coming out here alone, what you suspected and all.”
    “That’s just it, though. I only suspected. There wasn’t any solid evidence of Houle being the killer except for suspicion and what I hope you find under that shed.”
    “You mentioned shock before. Seems to me you aren’t exactly broken up over shooting this guy.”
    “I’m not. He killed two people in cold blood, his wife and Teagle.”
    Cross said, “So you came out, figured to trap him in some kind of statement.”
    I turned back to her. “That’s what I was hoping for. And he gave me some of it, like I’ve already told you. The rest I’m just filling in, but I think I’m right about most of it.” The townie drew on the Marlboro. “Of course, with our citizen dead here, we’ll never really know for sure.”
    I said, “Even if he’d given himself up peacefully, a lawyer would have told him to take the Fifth when you questioned him and to stay off the stand come trial.”
    The statie said, “Meaning we’d never really know, period.”
    “That’s right.”
    The townie coughed, stubbing out his smoke on the lawn. “Par for the course.”
    Cross folded her pad. “So what about Rivkind?”
    I looked at her. “What about him?”
    “From what you’re saying, this Houle did a copycat on Teagle to throw us off because Houle was two thousand miles away when Rivkind got killed.”
    “That’s what Houle told me, anyway.”
    “He had his real estate company send us stuff that bears that out.”
    I nodded.
    Cross didn’t. “So, who killed Rivkind?”
    “Can’t tell by me.”
    Cross looked at the town detective and the state trooper. All three shook their heads.
    From over by the shed, one of the lab techs said, “Hey, Sergeant?”
    Cross twisted