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He walked across the parking lot and entered through the front door. As soon as he opened the door, Dale Richards stuck a cup of coffee toward him with a thick hand and a huge smile.
“Walt Jenkins, a man I thought I’d never see again.”
Walt offered a smile. “Dale, good to see you. It’s been a while.”
“Twenty years,” Dale said.
Those years had not been kind to Dale Richards. The man had gained what Walt conservatively estimated to be one hundred pounds. He wore a short-sleeve golf shirt that wrapped tightly around the man’s midsection, stretching the microfibers to maximum capacity. Dale’s neck sagged at his chin and tapered like a turkey’s wattle into the man’s chest. Twenty years earlier, Dale sported dark hair combed straight back and held in place with product, revealing then the man’s receding hairline. The retreat had never ended and now only a thin apron of hair remained, wrapping around the base of his skull.
“Damn,” Dale said. “You look like you haven’t aged a day since we worked together. Still got that baby face.”
“Thanks. You’re looking good.”
“I see you haven’t lost your politeness. Listen, I’m not turning any heads, but I feel good. Doctor keeps telling me to lose weight or I’ll die early. But I’d rather be fat and happy than skinny and miserable. And I can still kick the crap out of most of the young punks that come through this place thinking they’re going to be the next top cop.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“I was shocked to get your call, Walt. The Cameron Young case was a long time ago.”
“Were you able to find anything?”
“Not yet, but I’ve narrowed it down,” Dale said. “Follow me.”
Walt took a sip of the coffee, winced as he swallowed it, and followed Dale Richards to the basement of the small police department. It took an hour of rummaging before they found it—a single cardboard box on a shelf with a thousand others. It was marked Cameron Young, 2001. Dale pulled it off the shelf, blew away a thick layer of dust, and handed it to Walt.
“I knew it was down here.”
“Thanks, Dale. You’re a lifesaver.”
“What’s the interest?”
“You remember Victoria Ford?” Walt asked.
“Of course.”
“Her remains were just identified by the OCME in New York.”
“Get outta here.”
“For real. We got word that there might be renewed interest in the old case, so I thought I’d refresh myself with the details.”
“Everything should be in there. Everything we had, anyway.”
“Can I get this back to you in a week or so?”
Dale shrugged. “Case has been closed for twenty years. Keep it as long as you’d like.”
* * *
Three hours later, Walt was perched on the queen bed of his hotel room with pages of the Cameron Young file around him. On the way back to the city he had stopped at a liquor store and found a bottle of Richland single estate rum. It wasn’t his preference, but it would do. For the first time in a while, he wasn’t looking for the rum to carry his problems away. Today, as he read the old case file, he was interested only in getting reacquainted with the players involved in the Cameron Young investigation. If he was going to meet Avery Mason and discuss the case with her, he needed to remember every detail. But there was another reason for Walt’s anxiousness to revisit the Cameron Young case. Despite what Dale Richards had claimed, Walt knew better. The case had been abandoned, but it had never been formally closed.
THE CAMERON YOUNG INVESTIGATION
Planted on a five-acre clearing in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, the main house was a grand log-style design by Murray Arnott. Built from Alaskan timber, the exterior featured a colossal A-frame grand gallery reminiscent of a Vail skiing lodge with dual windows angling into the peak and providing views of the mountains. To each side of the steeply angled roof, the home carried on in rustic extensions of horizontal logs that made up the bedrooms on one side and the recreation area on the other. The interior featured formal dining and living rooms, a home theater, an ornate library, and five bedrooms—each with private bath. The open floor plan centered around an impressive stone fireplace that climbed up to the vaulted ceiling. Twenty-foot windows offered endless views of the Catskill Mountains. The kitchen was mahogany and stainless steel, with sturdy wooden beams shooting up the pitched ceiling. A sweeping wooden staircase off the back patio led down to a pool, which was still covered this early in spring. Twin creeks ran on either side of the property and offered the constant rhythm of babbling water that shut out the rest of the world. A bridge arched over one of the creaks and led to the small studio the owner used for quiet days writing his novels.
Unseen and private, other large homes populated the buttes of the Catskills. They belonged to the rich, and sometimes famous. Cameron and Tessa Young had purchased the log-style home three years earlier when Cameron’s third novel found the New York Times list and stayed there for a year, selling over a million copies. His first two novels had earned him a nice living, but the third set him apart. And the two that followed put him into an elite class of novelists. His books had taken off around the world and the Youngs were enjoying their financial success. Years before they had used Cameron’s second advance as a down payment on the Catskills home. His last royalty check wiped out the mortgage. By all measures, Tessa and Cameron Young were living large.
Tessa was a professor of English literature at Columbia University, where she taught comparative literature and dissected some of the greatest works bound between two covers. The irony that this distinguished professor’s husband struck gold writing lowbrow commercial fiction was not lost on either of them. She endured her husband’s writing because it supported their lifestyle, but regarded it for what it was—spectacularly successful garbage.
