RandomActNEWpub

by Random Act (retail) (epub)

  I looked at her.

  “You knew him?”

  “Not really knew him. Just knew him as this guy who’d come in. We called him Taxi Man, ’cause he’d buy something—some pine boards, a half-sheet of drywall, some screws or something. And then he’d call a cab and load the stuff in the trunk.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Downtown. They said he did work for people. I mean, he knew what he wanted. Never had any questions. Seemed to know what he was doing, unlike some of the customers come in here. People said they’d see him walking around town.”

  “Know his name?”

  Sheila had finished her cigarette, was digging for another. She held up her hands.

  “Look at me. I’m freakin’ shaking.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Pretty upsetting experience.”

  “I’m gonna have nightmares, sure as shit.”

  She got the cigarette lit, took a deep drag. Shook her head.

  “You know his name? Other than Taxi Man?”

  Sheila looked at me. “I don’t want to get involved, no more than I have to be. The cops took my statement.”

  “As well they should,” I said. “You’re the eyewitness.”

  “Christ, why me? I was about to go on break, too. I only stayed ’cause Robert was late covering, helping some lady in Hardware with drawer pulls. You wouldn’t believe how some of these people need their hand held.”

  I waited, then said, “You know his name then?”

  Sheila looked at me. “Robert?”

  “No, the Taxi Man.”

  “Oh, not really. One time, though, I was walking by him, I go, ‘Hey, Taxi Man. How you doin’?’ He goes, ‘That ain’t my name.’ I go, ‘Okay.’ ’Cause I can see he’s a little upset. Don’t want to upset customers. A couple of those get reported, you’re history. CIIs, they call them. Customer Interaction Incidents.”

  “So you said—”

  “I go, ‘What should I call you, then?’ I knew he was a little nuts. His eyes, the way they kind of darted all around.”

  “And he said—?”

  “He goes, ‘My name’s Teak. Like the wood.’ We don’t sell it. People come in once in a while. Usually they’re working on a boat or something. We send them to a place in Old Town. Mahogany and all that shit.”

  “Teak what?” I said. “Did he say?”

  “No, and I didn’t push him. I go, ‘Okay, Mr. Teak. Let me know if I can help you with anything.’ And I kept on truckin’.”

  She pushed at her bangs. Another suck on the cigarette.

  “Guess that was a good freakin’ call, huh?” she said, blowing smoke. “Get in an argument with the guy, he stoves your head in. Unfriggin’ believable.”

  I took a last note. Teak, like the wood. Slipped the notebook into the back pocket of my jeans.

  “Thanks, Sheila,” I said. “Sorry to meet you like this.”

  “I guess to hell.”

  “I’m Jack McMorrow. Could I ask your last name, Sheila?” I said. “In case I need to get in touch later?”

  She hesitated, looked at me, then away.

  “Bard,” she said.

  “You from Riverport?”

  “Orrington,” Sheila said. “But mostly you can find me on Facebook.”

  She looked over my shoulder, toward the scene. I turned, saw the detectives headed my way, Bates taking long strides, Tingley, hurrying to keep up.

  “Hey,” Bates said, coming up on me. “No press. We’ll be releasing a statement later,” she said.

  “Right,” I said.

  Beyond them I could see a TV crew waiting patiently, a blonde woman in black high-heeled boots, a camera guy in a watch cap, ready to be spoon-fed.

  “Besides, you’re a witness,” she said.

  “Like I said, more of a bystander,” I said.

  “But you talked to the victim,” she said.

  “She wasn’t a victim yet,” I said.

  7

  k

  I peeled off when the Broadcast’s reporter came up and Bates turned to herd him away. I walked to the truck, tossed my notebook on the passenger seat, and climbed in. Roxanne was going to be disappointed about the toilet.

  It was snowing again, dry fine flakes that speckled the parking lot like road salt. Customers were driving up, eyeing the flashing blue lights, the police cars blocking the main entrance. Some customers drove away. Most parked and watched. Nothing like somebody else’s tragedy to start the day.

  I sat back in the seat for a minute, took a deep breath. Closed my eyes and saw the woman on the ground, Teak standing over her. His arms were raised over his head, the black hatchet pointed toward the roof. Only the blood moving.

  And then I heard her voice. “Aren’t we the early birds?”

  “God almighty,” I said.

  It was 8:10, too early to call Vanessa at the Times, but I needed to pitch the story. I also needed to begin the process of making sense of it, to dig and dig until something emerged that could explain what had happened, and why, so we could file it away in the appropriate folder on our collective desktop. The world—more and more filled with craven greed and brazen liars—would be restored to its sad but ultimately righteous self.

  Lindy Hines dead and Teak in a cell? There had been times when that would have been enough for me. File the story and move on. But this time it wasn’t going to be that easy. After almost twenty years of covering murder and mayhem, crimes of passion and crimes of calculation, this one had sunk its barbs deep inside me, had torn at something that had been festering.

  I didn’t want to accept that this was normal. I didn’t want to accept that violent death was doled out randomly, like the number on a scratch ticket. I didn’t want to accept that this nice person had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Because if she had, I’d helped put her there.

  Franklin Street was across from City Hall, just up from the post office. Lindy Hines’s building was a rehabbed three-story brick factory with parking on the ground floor. The units on the south end overlooked a little park that in turn overlooked a slow-moving stream.

  I parked on the bridge and walked back. The edges of the stream were frozen but the part that had current was open, and ducks were swimming in the black, rippling water. There was a bench, and in front of it some bread was frozen into the snow. I wondered if Lindy Hines had sat on that bench and fed the ducks. Not if she took her dog.

  The entrance to the condo building was a glass door under a green awning. I walked up and stood, put my hand out to shade the glass and peer in. There was a fake rubber tree to the left, mailboxes to the right. The door was locked.

  I turned away and waited. The street was busy, a steady stream of people tapping in a security code at a side door at the bank across the street. Back on this side, a garage door rumbled open and a car pulled out and drove away, the guy at the wheel giving me a wary glance as he passed.

  I waited five long minutes, watched three more cars pull away. Finally there was a rattle inside—a mailbox being opened—and I turned as a thirtyish guy approached the door. I smiled. He went to poker face, the expression people save for panhandlers on a dark street.

  He pushed the door open. Scruff of beard, very tight jeans, neat lace-up leather boots, black waffled parka.

  “Hi there,” I said, and gave him my pitch. Reporter. New York Times. Did he know Lindy Hines?

  “I don’t live here. My girlfriend does.”

  “Is she here?”

  He started to sidle by me. I moved with him.

  “She doesn’t know anybody here, either,” he said. “And I gotta say, I’m not big on mainstream media. One step above scumbag lawyers.”

  I was tired. I’d just seen an innocent woman killed in a gruesome way. I’d had to leave my toilet o
n the cart. The world was getting more insane by the minute, and I was supposed to smile and tell this dipshit to have a nice day?

  “Screw you,” I said.

  He stopped, turned to me. Our eyes locked.

  “What did you say?”

  He leaned close. I said it again.

  “I oughta—”

  “Make my day,” I said, smiling. He didn’t get it.

  “Clint Eastwood. Before your time, chump.”

  He tried to hold the pose but then his eyes backed down and the rest of him followed. He scowled, tucked his pasty dumpling of a fist into the crevice of his pocket, and hurried off.

  With a deep breath, I looked at my reflection in the glass of the door. I looked rattled and I knew why. Lindy Hines, executed in broad daylight. A strange woman with a weird, violent past moving in on Louis. The world turned on its head.

  I knew what I had to do.

  Write a story. Find some sort of order in the chaos, make sense of the nonsensical. Because if it made sense, the world wasn’t entirely lost. There was a way back to life as we had known it, where crimes were rooted in passion and greed, and good and evil was more than just an empty, meaningless phrase.

  Don’t give up, people. The world may be spinning out of control, but not here. There was a method to this madness, folks. All of us are not depraved animals. We just have to keep pushing back. Dig deep and feel the outrage. Don’t just look away, hope that the next ax that falls doesn’t hit you. Don’t lose what humanity we have left.

  I took another deep breath. Felt for my notebook. Saw a man and woman come into the lobby and walk toward the door.

  They were sixtyish and silver-haired, tanned and trim, wearing track suits and down vests, carrying matching water bottles—on the way to the gym. I backed up a couple of steps as they came out the door, the guy holding it for the woman. I smiled.

  “Good morning,” I said, and they looked at me suspiciously. But didn’t run.

  “I’m Jack McMorrow. I’m a reporter, and I’m writing a story for the New York Times.”

  They took a step back.

  “It’s about someone who lived in this building, and I’m wondering if you knew her.”

  They stopped. Thank goodness for nosiness.

  “Who’s that?” the woman said.

  “We’ve only lived here a year,” the guy put in.

  I smiled, ruefully this time.

  “Her name is Lindy Hines.”

  “Lindy?” the woman said, searching my face for a clue. “Why are you doing a story about Lindy?”

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” I said, the words forming. Why I got paid the big bucks. “Lindy’s dead. She was killed this morning.”

  The woman blanched. The guy frowned.

  “Oh my God,” the woman said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” the guy said. “Silver hair. Kind of medium height?”

  I took a breath, then told them the story. Home Department. Christmas wreaths. After a deeper breath, I added the hatchet.

  “Oh my God,” the woman said again, and she clutched at her husband’s arm. He put the other arm around her protectively.

  “They caught the bastard?” he said.

  “He didn’t run,” I said.

  “Oh, poor Lindy,” his wife said. “My God, I just saw her.”

  “And where was that?” I said, and when she hesitated, I added the yes-or-no part. “Was it here?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Right here.”

  I slipped my notebook out and the guy said, “You don’t write that political crap, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Oughta let the president do his job.”

  “I write Maine stuff. But not politics.”

  He looked at me like he might be able to sniff something out.

  “What’s your name again?”

  I told him, took a card out of my other pocket. He peered at it, then looked at me and said, “When did you say this happened?”

  “This morning.”

  “New York Times. Johnny on the spot, aren’t you?”

  “I’m based in Maine. I just happened to hear about it.”

  “What? A police scanner in your car?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  He looked at my card again and said, “This piece of crap in custody?”

  “Very much so. I watched them take him away.”

  “Ought to have a goddamn death penalty in this state,” he said. “Law-abiding people, minding their own business, some lowlife—”

  “She was lovely,” the woman said. “Just the sweetest person.”

  “She just moved here in—what was it?—end of October?”

  The guy nodded.

  “She was in our book club,” the woman said in disbelief, as if that should have protected Lindy Hines somehow. “There’s a group of us gals, we were reading Oprah’s book. The new one. It’s about taking time for you. Lindy was in the midst of a divorce, and there’s this part about how Oprah, she forced herself to make new friends, even when she was fifty. Oprah is really an introvert, and Lindy was sort of shy deep down, so she had to really try to meet people.”

  I nodded. Thought of the parking lot.

  The woman said, “Lindy told us, ‘If it’s hard for Oprah, then it’s okay for it to be hard for me.’ And everybody liked her once they got to know her.”

  “Real nice lady,” her husband confirmed.

  “Where did she live before?” I said.

  “Mount Desert,” the husband said. “Her ex was some big building contractor.”

  “Don’t put this in the paper,” his wife said, “but her husband had an affair. Ran off with a younger woman, a fitness trainer person. I told Hal, ‘I’m gonna keep an eye on you when we’re at the gym.’ ”

  I looked to the husband. The guy seemed to swell at that, the idea that a younger woman might find him attractive in his gym shorts.

  “So you’re Hal?” I said.

  “And I’m Fran. We’re the Lofgrens.”

  I nodded and wrote that down.

  “Oh, this is so horrible,” Fran said. “I mean, it’s crazy. She was just getting her new life together.”

  “Family? Kids?”

  “A son.”

  “He’s gay,” Hal said, like that was a significant detail.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Lives with his husband in Orrington, I think it is,” Fran said. “I’ve met him. Very nice young man. Handsome. But you know, Lindy was a very attractive woman.”

  “And his name?”

  “Barrett. He’s a high school teacher. Math, I think.”

  “Right. Last name? Same as hers?”

  “Well, it is now. Used to be same as his stepdad’s, but he changed it after the marriage fell apart. I mean, he was really angry at his stepdad. Lindy said it was the last straw for Barrett. He never felt that his father approved of his—”

  “Sexual preference,” Hal said. “Her ex was a jerk.”

  “I see,” I said. “And her ex’s name?”

  “Rod,” Fran said. “Except they weren’t divorced yet. Still hashing out the details.”

  “The money,” Hal said. “She had him by the—”

  He paused.

  “Last name for Rod?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she ever said.”

  “That’s fine. Seems like you knew Lindy pretty well.”

  “Lindy just needed someone to talk to,” Fran said. “She said this was such a friendly city. And it is. Riverport, I mean. How could something like this happen here?”

  As opposed to a place filled with hatchet-swinging crazy people? They walked off, Fran clinging to her husband as she processed this
new reality.

  I moved through the open door after they left. The mailboxes had names, and I found l. hines, top row, all the way to right. It was empty—the mail was on the seat of Lindy Hines’s Honda. I pressed the button and waited. Nobody came on the intercom, nobody buzzed me in. The empty apartment of a murder victim, filled with the stuff of her abruptly ended life.

  There was a bench along the far wall of the foyer, and I sat down, went through my notes, underlining the quotes. The story was becoming sadder still: A woman’s marriage falls apart, she musters the strength to start over, and then she’s picked out at random and killed.

  Try explaining that one as God’s plan.

  I was flipping through the pages when I heard elevator doors open somewhere behind an inner door. I waited and the door started to push open. I stood. A guy came through carrying a plastic bucket full of tools, looked at me, said, “Can I help you?”

  He was in his sixties, stocky and wide, salt-and-pepper hair and matching beard. His baseball cap said patriots. I told him who I was and what I did.

  “Sorry, but you can’t just walk in here. This is a secure building, right? And this foyer is for the condo owners only. You know what would happen if we let people loiter in here? Homeless and druggies and every other thing. So I’m going to have to ask you to—”

  “I was talking with the Lofgrens,” I said.

  “I don’t care who you were talking with. This is my building, and you can’t be in here.”

  He walked across the foyer, pushed the door open, and held it.

  “Don’t you want to know what the New York Times was talking with the Lofgrens about?”

  “That’s their business, what they talk about. I’m just telling you, sir—you can’t be here. I don’t care who you are. I answer to the residents, not the New York Times. If you’ll just—”

  I crossed the room, stopped in front of him.

  “You had a condo owner named Lindy Hines.”

  He looked at me, his eyes narrowing.

  “What do you mean, had?” he said.

  He was officious but he wasn’t dumb. And there was something else, a new hint of concern in his tone, like he cared about Lindy Hines in some way. I decided to temper it.