Dreams in the Key of Blue

by John Philpin

  I knew exactly where to find him. He quit work at three, napped, and ate an early dinner. Then, each evening for the twenty-five years that he had worked in Homicide, he rode the subway back to his office. As the city watched sitcoms, Bolton studied murder and listened to classical music. He was a methodical investigator who refused to retire until he cleared all his unsolved cases. Last I knew, he had three remaining.

  He answered on the first ring and chided me for not keeping in touch.

  I mumbled my customary apology: “Guess I lost track of time.”

  “Your little town of Ragged Harbor made the national news this morning,” he said. “How did they get you to work this thing?”

  “The local police chief knew that I was teaching at the college.”

  “Lucas, when you closed your office and left Boston, you couldn’t get out of here fast enough. What changed your mind?”

  “I think I might have been premature in declaring myself retired.”

  Bolton’s long pause communicated his disapproval. “We’ll have to talk about that when we get together,” he said. “Have the local police run a ballistics comparison?”

  “They’ve run a VICAP check. They’ll probably do ballistics through one of the national databases, FBI or ATF. Chief Jaworski seems like a knowledgeable guy.”

  “We received a fax about Stanley Markham stealing a white Chevy pickup in Pennsylvania three days before your murders. We’re getting updates twice a day. Sounds to me like he’s headed home. Maybe our boy Stanley made a wrong turn and ended up on the Maine Turnpike.”

  I told him about the orange. Bolton and I had worked the Markham case.

  “Ray, it doesn’t feel right. This crime scene has as many elements of reactivity as it does of well-planned choreography. Markham operated from a strict script in his head, magical cues, a repeating tape loop.”

  “Are you dealing with a traveler or a local?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I told him.

  “You used to give me that much in the first five minutes.”

  “I think the killer wants us to interpret the murders as sexually motivated. I’m having trouble wading through the misdirection.”

  “A certain forensic psychiatrist once told me that when the obvious doesn’t work, dump it and make room, because something’s coming out of left field for a landing in your lap.”

  “Must be the rattlesnake,” I said.

  Bolton waited, then finally said, “Lucas, what rattlesnake?”

  I explained.

  “I want to get a handle on this now, Ray, before any more guests come calling.”

  “You know, I don’t run to the hot ones anymore. I let the young officers do that, and I catch up later. You and I aren’t young.”

  “I’m tired of hearing that.”

  Again he paused. “What about home intrusions in the area? Not burglaries necessarily, but the creepy stuff that usually doesn’t make it into the computers. Rearranged panties and half-eaten pork chops.”

  Checking break-ins that included confrontation or stank of strangeness was routine procedure. I felt certain that Jaworski had sent out inquiries.

  “This isn’t your killer’s first time out,” Bolton said.

  “Not by a long shot,” I agreed, “but I don’t think his priors include rummaging through the indigenous underwear. Check the databases and find out what you can about a management-consulting outfit, Martin International. I’d like to know how they make their millions. They’re heavily invested in Harbor College. I want to know why. A guy named Stuart Gilman calls himself MI’s liaison to the school. Who is he, and what does he do for the company? The founder and CEO is Melanie Martin. Might as well check her while you’re at it.”

  Bolton whispered to himself as he took notes.

  “When things settle down, I’ll visit for a weekend,” I promised.

  “What does this Martin outfit have to do with the murders?”

  Maybe nothing, I thought. They owned the house that the three students rented. Whoever killed them used a key and walked through the front door. Jaycie had been an intern at the company. Martin also owned my house, and I was convinced that my visitor used a key. I have always rejected coincidence as a convenient conceptual excuse for those who were unwilling to see the interconnectedness of all things.

  “Humor me, Ray,” I said.

  I gave him my number and hung up.

  Local or traveler, Bolton wanted to know. “Local,” I said now, thinking that I’d slipped from five-minute analyses for Bolton because I was sliding down the goose-shit-greased slope to senility.

  “Fuck it,” I grumbled. “You’ve been a little senile since you were twelve years old.”

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON I DROVE BACK THROUGH MEDIA central. More reporters had arrived, adding to the bottleneck.

  Perhaps they were interviewing each other.

  I parked at the administration building. Gilman’s Jaguar was gone, which I interpreted as an invitation. I would not risk the little fat man’s rage.

  I went directly to the records room, performed an instant replay of my earlier forced entry, and ensconced myself at the computer. I selected the index of current students and ran the names of the three victims. I wanted some sense of who the young women were.

  Susan Hamilton was a senior from Massachusetts, an A and B biology major who was considering a medical career. She was also a member of the student senate. The college sent its bills to her father, a freelance photographer. Her mother was an elementary school principal, and her younger brother was a freshman at the University of Massachusetts.

  The information was sterile, meaningless.

  Kelly Paquette was a junior from a small Maine town, a mediocre student in history who listed “None” under career interests. Her mother was a “Housewife.” Her father worked at a paper mill.

  Jaycie Waylon, a junior from Augusta, was a stellar performer in business and psychology who listed “Organizational development” as her career interest. She also served as president of her class and as a member of the Student Discipline Committee. As she had told me outside Downtown Grocery, her parents were deceased.

  Her status as a Martin International intern was also listed; Stuart Gilman was her supervisor.

  Strike three on Gilman, I thought.

  The paunchy bag of nerves had never mentioned Jaycie’s affiliation with MI, and certainly not his relationship with her.

  I secured the records room and walked down the hall to Gilman’s office. His door, too, was locked, but not for long. I quietly let myself in. Sometimes, consorting with a criminal element has its advantages.

  Glass-enclosed bookcases lined the walls. They were crammed with dusty volumes of educational law and grant directories from the 1970s. The room confirmed my first impression of a stark, unused space, appointed with the finest leather, mahogany, polished brass, maple. The desk drawers were unlocked and empty, except for a well-chewed pencil and a fingernail clipper.

  “If this guy’s an encyclopedia,” I muttered, thinking of Steve Weld’s remark, “he’s a walking one.”

  The only area that appeared vaguely used was the corner of the desk occupied by the telephone. There were notes to return calls from media representatives; none from parents, as Gilman had claimed. There was also a fax from the home office in Portland advising Gilman and the deans that, courtesy of MI, four mental health counselors would arrive in the morning to assist students and staff with their grieving.

  We had institutionalized every other aspect of our lives. Why not sorrow? These shrinks were slow. The mind mechanics usually arrive at disaster locations ahead of the media. It would not be long until they got there before the catastrophe happened. They had a lock on business. If I chose to mourn privately, I was “in denial” and obviously in need of intensive therapeutic work.

  I slipped out of the office thinking that I was no closer to answers than I was on day one, but I continued to formulate questions.

  WHEN I
GOT BACK TO THE HOUSE, THE PHONE WAS ringing.

  “I expected to get a machine,” Ray Bolton said. “When did you start answering the phone?”

  “Well, I managed to avoid most of the twentieth century,” I told him, “but nobody’s perfect.”

  When my daughter Lane was ten, she shared a concern with her godfather Ray: “I think Pop’s deaf. The phone rings, but he doesn’t answer it. He can’t hear it, Raymond.”

  Then Bolton educated her about phobias. The prick.

  “I just walked in. Hang on while I check the house for cold-blooded creatures.”

  The dried spatter of skin and blood on the study chair was the only evidence of snakes. The house was as I had left it.

  “What have you got?” I asked him.

  “A possible sighting of Stanley Markham in Connecticut, the day after he was in Pennsylvania.”

  “The little shit’s going home. Is his sister still in the area?”

  “Winthrop Beach. We have her place under surveillance.”

  “That’s where he’s headed,” I concluded.

  “The question remains, Lucas. Was he in Ragged Harbor?”

  As much as I wanted one, I had no answer. Maybe yes, maybe no.

  “Your Martin International is a major player in global trading,” Bolton said. “They forge deals between unlikely partners, and they broker currency exchanges. I couldn’t get into the national database that we use for this kind of inquiry. It’s classified. I don’t know what that’s about, but I left my agency code and my personal code, so I’ll hear from someone federal.”

  “The feds have their own investigation going?”

  “I don’t know,” Bolton said. “Could be. I’ve never run into that kind of roadblock before.”

  Two years ago, federal agents had handled MI’s dead guest. Interesting.

  “What about Gilman?”

  “Stuart Gilman is a creep.”

  “I didn’t need you to tell me that.”

  “He lives in Portland. Thirty-eight years old, married, two kids. He’s been with Martin for three years. Before that, he worked in human resources for an insurance company here in Boston. He has two priors, both misdemeanor trespassing. Care to guess?”

  An uncommon charge, I thought, usually the result of a plea bargain. “Slithering through backyards and peeping in bedroom windows.”

  “He wasn’t fussy. Bathroom windows, too. His only felony is that he worked for an insurance company.”

  I laughed. Bolton and I shared a belief in the immorality of insurance.

  “Targets?”

  “Young women.”

  “Hmmm… a liar with relevant priors,” I said.

  “His name surfaced during the Markham investigation. We pulled the sheets on anyone who came close to a sex offense. You have to look at him. Gilman’s boss, on the other hand, is a mystery.”

  “Melanie Martin?”

  “She got her MBA at Harvard, top ten percent of her class, and immediately established the Martin Corporation, which became Martin International a year later. They’re based in Portland. I couldn’t find a home address for Martin. Before grad school, it’s as if she didn’t exist. No records of any kind. I can’t even find a date of birth.”

  “What about a driver’s license?”

  “I’m telling you, Lucas. Nothing. I don’t know how people manage to erase their tracks in the world, but they do. I suppose if you have the money, you can buy whatever privacy you want.”

  “What about the company’s interest in the college?”

  “I can’t give you figures, but I can tell you that it’s substantial, and that it started the second year Martin was in business. They donate money elsewhere, but Harbor College is the top recipient.”

  “Fat lot of help you are,” I chided.

  Bolton laughed and said that he would keep digging, wait to hear from whatever feds might have an interest in MI, and keep me posted on Markham.

  “So, Sherlock, who killed the three kids?” he asked.

  “Call me in an hour and I’ll tell you,” I said, and hung up.

  I CURLED UP ON THE SOFA, YANKED A BLANKET OVER me, and allowed my eyes to close. Self-hypnosis was integral to my work, and to maintaining my sanity. If I was getting in my own way or flirting with emotional disaster, my unconscious informed me. When I missed something obvious, it usually bubbled from the deep.

  With a suddenness that startled me, a killer transformed the blackness of my mind into cinematic splashes of color.

  The killer, Stanley Markham, drove his red Ford Econoline van. There was no traffic in front, none behind.

  “The color is yellow,” Markham said.

  The young woman, Darcy Smith, walked beside the rural road west of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, shrouded in overhanging maples. Reds. Split-leafs. Sugars.

  No one knew how many victims Markham claimed. Darcy was number eleven of the twentythree that Bolton and I identified. She was also Markham’s transition kill: he changed M.O., moved indoors after Darcy Smith.

  She turned her head, glanced over her shoulder at the sound of the approaching vehicle, and stuck out her thumb.

  They were alone, isolated in early summer.

  Clumps of orange day lilies bloomed at the edge of the field. Darcy wore white shorts and a yellow T-shirt, and held strings that restrained a bouquet of balloons in shades of blue.

  The colors crashed, mutated into a cacophony of cymbals, horns, and dissonant plucked strings. The phenomenon is called synesthesia, or cross-sensing. The stimulus received by one sensory channel triggers a perceptual response in another. A fragrance can stimulate a feeling of warmth and comfort. A tune from the sixties might evoke the image of a woman’s face. Or, music becomes a multihued assault, and color an explosion of sound.

  Markham slowed the van, pulled to the side of the road, and watched the door open.

  Darcy’s face was scrubbed innocence. Creamy skin. Blue eyes. Blond ponytail. Lips painted a frenzied red.

  She was a young woman who engaged in a transaction with the mighty.

  Darcy glanced at the slender man, at his stringy brown hair and bad teeth.

  He didn’t ask her where she was going, and she didn’t tell him. The van pointed in the right direction for both of them. It drove itself to the crest of the hill, then onto an unmarked dirt road.

  There was no tone of urgency when she finally asked about their destination. It was matter-of-fact. Curiosity.

  “To the end of all roads,” he said, and that seemed to make sense to both of them.

  Years ago when Markham told me his story, I imagined that I heard piano notes—a tinkle at first, a soft and simple melody, then a crash, as if someone sat on the keys. Once associated only with LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs, synesthesia is a common occurrence in any altered state of consciousness. Colors often became dissonant sounds when I slipped into a hypnoid state.

  Darcy Smith was seventeen years old. She accepted a ride with a stranger. There was a dynamic at work, face validity, the appearance of legitimacy. As this transaction began, a service was offered and accepted. She wanted a ride; he provided it.

  She believed. She trusted.

  Markham said there was conversation. I have imagined the two of them talking, neither of them eager to string together long chains of words. He was excited. She struggled to avoid the notion that things were not as they seemed.

  I know that Markham had removed the inside handle on the van’s passenger door. When she climbed into the van, Darcy was trapped.

  She stood in the clearing, looked at a wall of beech and birch and thick undergrowth. She wore a placid expression, but her balloons were gone. Idly, she scratched a mosquito bite high on her thigh, pulling the hem of her shorts up unselfconsciously.

  Darcy never felt intimidated by the world.

  The afternoon sun was hot in the clearing. Sweat slithered in beads from the back of Markham’s neck, across his shoulder blades. The scent of wild roses drifted on t
he languid summer air.

  Darcy’s arms remained at her sides. She made no attempt to flee. Her face registered the presence of the knife in Markham’s hand. Her nose wrinkled. Her eyes widened as he walked toward her and raised the knife.

  I knew what came next. I knew all of it. Short of rewriting history, there was nothing that I or anyone else could do to stop it.

  I remember that I looked around at the cramped hallway where we sat outside Markham’s holding cell.

  Rolled mattresses; a thirteen-inch black-and-white TV that his sister had brought him; a lunch tray with leftover beans, a partially eaten hot dog, hardening in the stale, dry air; the smell of three hundred inmates’ shit and dirty laundry.

  Steel doors crashed shut.

  Markham said, “I could see the hand move. It held a knife. I knew what would happen, but I couldn’t change that. It wasn’t my hand. It was there in the space between us.”

  I fragmented, split into more pieces than I could keep track of, accompanied by the chattering of English sparrows beyond the barred and screened window.

  “What happened to the balloons?” I asked.

  He shrugged, his forehead creased.

  I knew the answer. Markham took them home to his kid. A surprise gift from a dead girl.

  “What balloons?”

  Then I saw the hand plunge the knife into Darcy Smith’s chest.

  Markham sat cross-legged on the ground and, with his bloody knife, peeled and ate an orange.

  I opened my eyes and listened to the sea throb in swells. Rage surged through me like currents churning from the ocean’s floor.

  The mind-set for murder was mine.

  “Stanley Markham never did any postmortem cutting,” I said. “When his victim was dead, and he had snacked, he was done.”

  I sat up on the couch and pushed aside the blanket.

  Even at the end, when Markham tipped totally out of control, he stabbed, throttled, or bludgeoned, sated his desire for a piece of fruit, and then he fled. Period.

  “You know,” Markham told me, “fear never came into it while they were alive. A few girls freaked out and I had to calm them down, or kill them sooner than I planned. After they were dead, though… God. Dead people scare me. I watched them while I ate. I expected them to sit bolt upright, undead, and lurch after me. I didn’t get close to them after they went down.”