We are going to need time to build the case properly because a man like Howard Henley with his resources will be very difficult to convict unless we have him cleanly. Do you understand?" "Yes. Was there anything on your calendar this evening that involved him?" "No. I was driving myself to the chairman of the hospital board's home for dinner. Howard knew about the dinner.
He recommended I make the donation, in fact. He said it would be good for the family name. Did he know you would be driving yourself?" Richard paused. He had to think. He found to his surprise that he could not quite remember."
He had told Marcus that morning to take the evening off because he had wanted, simply and without articulating it to himself, to be alone in a car for an hour. He had not told Howard. Howard had not asked. And yet, "He may have assumed," Richard said slowly, "He knows I sometimes drive myself when I want to think. The curve on River Road is on the route to the chairman's house."
There is no other route that doesn't add 40 minutes." Detective Marsh nodded. "All right, Mr. Caldwell, we are going to take this car as evidence. We are going to need to walk through your house and your security system. We are going to need to interview your driver, your housekeeper, your gardener, and anyone else who has had access to the property in the last two weeks. None of them are suspects at this moment.
We are simply collecting context. You are going to need a different vehicle and a different driver tonight, and you are going to need to be somewhere that Howard Henley does not know about and cannot easily find out about. Do you have such a place?" "I have a fishing cabin on the lake. It is in a trust under my late wife's maiden name. Howard does not know it exists." "Good.
We will arrange transportation." Detective Marsh turned then slowly to the boy beside her on the fountain. "Elijah," she said, "I need to ask you a question now, and I want you to know that there is no wrong answer. Do you have anyone, anyone at all, who is going to be worried that you didn't come back to where you usually stay tonight?" Elijah thought about this seriously. He pulled at the cuff of his hooded jacket with his fingers."
"Mr. Patel," he said finally, "If I don't come back to the gas station by midnight, he will start to worry. He will probably walk around the block to look for me. He has done that one time before when I was sick and I fell asleep in the church doorway instead of going back." Detective Marsh wrote down Mr. Patel's name. She wrote down the address of the gas station on Pier Street. She underlined it twice.