RandomActNEWpub

by Random Act (retail) (epub)

  I said that’s what I believed had happened.

  “Jesus, that’s cold,” Tingley said.

  “Worse things are done for money,” I said.

  “Did Barrett say he was going to confront his stepdad with this information?”

  “He was very angry, as you know. It was like this was his secret weapon.”

  “To do what?”

  “Get even, maybe,” I said.

  Tingley took off his glasses again and reached over my leg to the glove box. He clicked it open and took out a napkin. From Subway. He wiped his glasses and balled the napkin up and stuffed it in a compartment in the console.

  “He threatens the stepdad, maybe tries to blackmail him?” Tingley said.

  “Rod has some big deal he’s trying to finalize. Investors to take his company to the next level, more regional than local. He didn’t like me coming around, I’ll tell you. Tried to bribe me to kill the story, or at least hold off for a month.”

  “And you said—”

  “No way.”

  “Good to know you’re an equal-opportunity pain in the ass,” Tingley said.

  He smiled. I smiled back.

  “I’ll bet you say that to all the reporters,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  We sat for a minute while he mulled what I’d said. Finally, he said, “Whole families don’t get taken out—not coincidentally.”

  “No.”

  “If it hadn’t been for the mom, it could have been a lovers’ spat. Maybe there was another guy, somebody got jilted when these two got married.”

  “Maybe the mom’s murder was cover,” I said.

  We both thought about it, then shook our heads in unison.

  “His husband found him?” I said.

  “Yeah. Barrett Hines doesn’t show up for school and doesn’t call in, which is something he never does—loves the kids, and they love him. Guy was dependable, responsible, never sick, et cetera, et cetera. The principal can’t reach him, she calls the husband—his name’s Travis Chenard—who’s at work. Some computer thing. Travis calls and gets no answer and hurries home. You know, thinking Barrett had slipped in the shower and broke his leg or something.”

  “And found this,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Tingley said.

  “A lot of blood.”

  “Again.”

  “Mother and son. Why we’re here at all. This one’s actually a State Police case.”

  “Murdered two days apart,” I said. “What are the chances?”

  Tingley looked at me. “Of lightning striking twice? Slim to none.”

  “Where’s Travis now?”

  “Upstairs. There’s like an office. Talking to Bates.”

  “How long had Barrett been dead?”

  “Off the record? Totally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not long. Blood was still sticky. I mean, an hour and a half, maybe. Travis said he left at 4:45 because he had some project deadline today. His whole team went in early.”

  “You think it could have been him?”

  Tingley looked at me.

  “This is all way off the record,” he said. “Anything official, you have to get from SP.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Guy’s totally devastated. Stuck in the chest, the neck. and all that. A wicked mess. He freaked. Still may need to go to the hospital, get sedated.”

  “So no.”

  “Nobody’s in or out this soon, but I’d say he’s a very strong no.”

  We sat. The snow melted on contact with the still-warm windshield.

  “Four forty-five,” I said. “Still dark.”

  “Very,” Tingley said.

  “They’ll be doing the door-to-door.”

  “Already started.”

  “Even if it was dark, maybe somebody saw something,” I said. “A car parked.”

  Tingley looked at me. “Do I tell you how to write a story?”

  “No,” I said. “I just want this person caught.”

  “You and me both.”

  “He seemed like a good guy,” I said. “Loved his mother.”

  “No doubt,” Tingley said. “Doesn’t keep horrible things from happening. Sometimes I think it increases the odds. The mom’s a case in point.”

  “Yup.”

  “Even if she did help the husband cook the books.”

  “Maybe he made her do it. Maybe she was trying to make amends, doing this volunteer thing.”

  I paused.

  “They gonna call him?” I said. “Rod, I mean. Is an estranged spouse considered next of kin?”

  He looked at me. His glasses were still fogged up. He swiped them with his forefinger, one lens, then the other.

  “Like I said before, McMorrow.”

  “Who’s the lead?”

  “Guy named Scalabrini.”

  “Ah.”

  “He’s the one told me he knows you,” Tingley said.

  “The Sanctuary arsons,” I said. “He wasn’t a bad guy.”

  Pudgy, reddish hair, smarter than he looked, more reasonable than I’d expected. And he knew Louis.

  “SP spokesman as usual?”

  “He’s on his way up. There’ll be a press conference.”

  Waste of time. Trevor and the TV guy asking obvious questions, pretending to be listening intently to the obvious answers.

  “You think Barrett could have been blowing smoke?” Tingley said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “But you can’t be sure.”

  “What?” I said. “You think you’re the only one who knows bullshit when they hear it?”

  29

  k

  A State Police crime-scene van rolled up as I walked to my truck. I shot a few photos with my phone: the van, the cops, the tape, the house. Then I got in the truck and watched as evidence techs got out, started unloading equipment. I got back out, took a few more pics, climbed back up and in. A TV car pulled in, a Subaru with the station logo on the doors.

  I got on the phone.

  Vanessa answered. She listened to my twenty-second version, said, “Five hundred words. When will I have it?”

  “Twenty minutes,” I said. “I’ll text you.”

  Turned out to be twenty-three. Damned tiny keyboard and my old stiff fingers. Lead was straight news:

  orrington, maine—The son of a woman murdered in a brutal daytime assault by an ax-wielding assailant was murdered himself two days later when an unknown assailant went to the man’s home here before dawn and stabbed him when he answered the door.

  Barrett Hines, 32, was found in a pool of blood in the entryway of his home by his husband, who had been alerted when the elementary school teacher didn’t show up for school.

  One investigator, asked what the chances were of two members of the same family being targeted in unrelated attacks, said, “Slim to none.”

  I followed with a recounting of Lindy’s killing, Teak’s arrest, a couple of grafs about Teak himself. Known to police. Longtime mainstay of the street community in Riverport, drifted to the city from a small fishing community in Down East Maine after beginning to suffer from mental illness in his teens. Fixated on comic books.

  Lindy Hines also moved to Bangor from the coast, leaving her home on Mount Desert Island in October partly to be near her son. “I just worked here and she was a tenant, but she was real nice,” said the manager of her condo building, Leroy Larkin. “Always had a smile.”

  I reread the story, corrected the typos. Couldn’t fix the underlying situation: lives ended, horrifically. The world going to hell.

  I drove north on the River Road, the Penobscot off through the woods to my left. I thought of watching the eagles through Barrett’s window,
his big frame, handsome and confident on the outside, inside, seething with anguish and resentment.

  And now he was dead, the life drained out of him as he stared at whoever it was who had attacked him. Not because he was an evil alien posing as a high school teacher. Not because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not because the guy in the parking lot walked on by.

  Who would have thought that it would be Lindy’s murder that would make the most sense?

  I left the countryside behind for what we take as civilization. Convenience stores. A chiropractor’s office. Fast food and fast coffee. I pulled in to a Dunkin’, ordered a tea at the drive-through, had it handed to me by a cheerful young woman with a ring in her eyebrow and another in her nose. For the rest of the world, life went on.

  I was driving so I could think, the truck’s white-noise rumble the backdrop as I ran through it all. Barrett and Lindy, Rod and Silk. Louis and Marta, Harriet and Teak. The little bastards who smashed up my truck.

  Was the world really going to hell, our civilization coming apart? Not entirely, not if I could make some small part of it make sense.

  Back in town I circled up by the library, turned, and drove past Lindy Hines’s condo building. It was quiet, no clue to the mayhem that had gone on inside. The love-torn super would have had the place cleaned up. With Barrett gone, who would sell it? And where would the money go?

  I snaked my way through the downtown, saw the little park on my right, Arthur and Dolph on the bench. They had umbrellas open. I swerved to the curb, shut off the truck, and got out.

  Their eyes flashed as they recognized me, then went quickly back to know-nothing mode.

  I strode up, said, “Morning, boys.”

  Dolph looked away. Arthur said, “Hey.”

  The umbrellas had the University of Maine logo—donations to Loaves & Fishes? The two of them looked like something out of a British sitcom.

  “Where’s Mutt today?”

  They hesitated, then shrugged, first Arthur, then Dolph following his lead.

  “How’s his hand?” I said.

  “Got a cast,” Arthur said.

  “Good for him. He’s lucky he didn’t get both hands broken. My friend, he doesn’t screw around.”

  They looked at me, nothing moving but the eyes. The snow ticked on the fabric of the umbrellas.

  “Miss H. around?” I said.

  “Closed until one,” Arthur said. “She’s sick.”

  “That’s too bad. Doesn’t she have a backup?”

  More shrugs.

  I started to walk off, then turned back. “Hey, I saw your friend Teak today. In court.”

  “Huh,” Arthur said, brightening. News he could spread on the street.

  “I was going to tell Miss H. about it. I know they were close.”

  “Best buds,” Dolph said.

  “Really. Miss H. look out for him? Like his mother or something?”

  “Miss H. looks out for everybody,” Arthur said.

  “But Teak needed a little extra?”

  “Miss H. kept him from going totally fucking bonkers,” Dolph said.

  “How’d she do that?”

  “Like, if he was giving somebody shit, starting a fight, she’d go, ‘Teak, dude. Calm down,’ ” Arthur said.

  “It’s like, ‘Teak—you take your freakin’ pills?’ ” Dolph said. “She kept some meds in the desk for him.”

  I looked at him.

  “Really. She did that for clients? Like an emergency stash?”

  “Just Teak,” Dolph said.

  “Miss H., she had Teak’s back, you know what I’m saying?” Arthur said.

  I looked at them, said, “I think she took her eye off the ball.”

  They shrugged in unison.

  “Shit happens,” Dolph said.

  Arthur nodded, and they got up from the bench and shuffled off, their umbrellas speckled with snow.

  The note taped to the inside of the window on the shelter’s side door said “Back by 1 p.m.” It was a little after eleven. I hesitated, looked around. There was mail sticking out of the box to the right of the door, the envelopes wet on top. I started to stuff them down and out of the weather, looked around, and pulled one out.

  It was from some nonprofit, addressed to Harriet. An address had been crossed out and c/o loaves & fishes shelter written over it. I looked at the address—49 Swing Street, Riverport—then stuffed it back in with the rest.

  My phone showed Swing Street off Hammond, maybe a mile away. I rumbled my way there, past numbered cross streets. Third, Fifth. Swing was two blocks off Seventh. Harriet’s house was two blocks up Swing.

  It was a small bungalow set on a narrow lot between bigger houses, like it had been slid into place off a truck. There was a tiny deck out front, an American flag beside the front door. There was no garage but there was a driveway. The driveway was full, with three vehicles parked end to end. The van I’d seen at the shelter, closest to the house, then a newish orange Jeep, the kind with the removable top, and a red Mitsubishi sports car. The Mitsubishi had blacked-out windows and an oversize exhaust.

  I parked in the street and walked up the drive. As I climbed the front steps, the door banged open and a kid backed out. He was saying, “See ya, Auntie. Thanks.”

  As he turned I could see him stuffing cash in the front of his jeans. He looked at me and said, “Hey.”

  I said, “Hi there. Harriet home?”

  He was seventeen, eighteen, boy-band cute, his blond-streaked hair flipped up in the front. His jeans were tucked into unlaced boots, and he was wearing a Boston Bruins game jersey with bergeron on the back.

  “Yeah, she’s in there with my sister.”

  I came up the steps and he moved aside, said, “Have a good one,” and bounded off the porch and trotted to the Mitsubishi. He climbed in, revved it once, and wheeled backwards into the street and sped off.

  As I started for the door a girl appeared. Her back was to me, too, and she was saying, “Auntie, I’ll call you. Love you.”

  When she turned she gave a start, put her hand over her chest, and said, “Oh, you scared me.”

  She wasn’t scared. She was very pretty, though, with long blonde hair and a carefully made-up face, like she was pretending to be a grown-up. Her jacket said riverport field hockey and nikki. Her jeans were strategically shredded up to her thighs.

  “Sorry. Looking for Harriet.”

  “She’s here. You work with my aunt?”

  “I’m a reporter. She’s in a story I’m doing.”

  “Awesome,” she said. “Your story should say Auntie H. is awesome. I mean, she’s, like, the greatest person. Do you want to interview me?”

  She smiled like it was something she bestowed on boys and men alike, knowing it would make their day.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Let me get back to you.”

  Nikki turned back to the open door. “Auntie,” she called. “Someone here to see you.” Then she turned and gave me another smile and said, “See ya.”

  She moved by me and I turned to the door, which was still open. There was a shuffle and Harriet appeared. She was holding a paper plate of brownies and she called, “Nikki! You forgot.”

  Nikki slid out of the Jeep and ran over and up, grabbed the plate, and ran back. Harriet smiled at her, then turned to me.

  “Kids,” she said, and then, “Mr. McMorrow, what can I do for you?”

  She stepped back into the room and I scuffed my boots on the mat and followed.

  Harriet was wearing gray warm-up pants, a bulky green sweater, and slippers. She stood in the middle of the room and I said, “Sorry to bother you at home. I saw the note at the shelter. I have to leave town pretty soon, so I thought I’d catch you.”

  “Oh, that’s fine. I’m a little under the weather. Some respiratory thi
ng. You get this stuff in my business. The kids stopped by to check on me.”

  She sniffled.

  “I won’t bother you. Just a quick question.”

  Harriet turned and started scooping stuff off the couch. A bundle of paper towels. A plastic bag overflowing with socks. A pile of men’s parkas.

  “People drop stuff here all the time, too,” she said. “Sit.”

  I did, taking the place in.

  A very small room, very full of stuff. Framed photos of her niece and nephew on the end tables, more on the wall by the door. One was a collage, snapshots overlapping, their tilted faces frozen in mid-smile.

  Harriet shoved a pile of sheets and towels off of an easy chair and sat. She looked at me and smiled.

  “Your niece and nephew?” I said.

  “Yes, Nikki and Shane. He’s a senior, Nikki, she’s a year younger. They just stopped because they’re going on a school trip. Washington, DC. See the museums and the White House and all that.”

  “Good for them.”

  “Oh, yeah. They’re great kids. I don’t have children of my own.”

  “They seemed very nice. Good-looking, too.”

  “Oh, yes. My little sister, their mom, was the pretty one. Still is.”

  “And what were you?”

  She wasn’t flustered by the question.

  “Me? Oh, I guess I was the do-gooder. You know, food baskets at Thanksgiving. Looking in on the old people on the block, see if they needed anything. Did I tell you that we stayed in shelters ourselves when I was young?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Yeah, well, when we got on our feet, I felt like I had to pay everything back.”

  “Good of you,” I said. “Most kids wouldn’t think of it.”

  There was an awkward pause, and then I said, “Your niece and nephew—do they live nearby?”

  “My sister lives on Fifth. It’s, like, two minutes away.”

  “Nice.”

  Fifth Street, I thought. What I’d seen was pretty modest. Small houses on postage-stamp lots. Those two, with the cars and looks, must be the cool kids on the block.

  “Nancy’s divorced. She’s a secretary for the DMV. Her second husband, he found another woman, younger by the way, dumped Nancy and the kids and ran off to Florida.”