by Linda Barnes
“Sam, you know I’d love to, but let me see how I feel later. I may need a nap.”
“That would be good, too.” He gave me a long, meaningful glance from under hooded eyelids. “You going to finish that soup?”
“It’s yours.”
I opened the first slim folder. It contained two sheets of paper concerning a fellow named Domingo Gaston, arrested for felonious assault, with a side of drunk and disorderly on October 18 of the previous year. Juan Marie Franciosa, Gaston’s brother-in-law, was listed as his indemnitor, the man who’d come up with the $3,200 bail. There were addresses and phone numbers for both men, scribbled notes saying that Gaston had missed an appearance in court on January 3, and that Juan Marie had disavowed any knowledge of his whereabouts.
Wiseman had posed Domingo Gaston in front of the counter, taken a Polaroid shot for future identification purposes. My copy of the snapshot was paper-clipped to a sheet of lined paper that said “Height: five eight, weight: 145; brown, brown.” I took the last two to mean hair and eyes.
The waitress brought me another Pepsi. It was in a tall glass full of ice cubes and flat as pond water. I stuck Gaston’s file at the bottom of the pile, opened number two, studied a photo of Markham Rodney Yarrow, and read about his arrest for breaking into a 1999 Mercury Sable while toting a master key and a pry bar. His cousin, Marilyn Sue Yarrow, had cosigned for him, and he’d repaid her $2,900 worth of faith by skipping town. I was surprised at the minimal amount of information Wiseman collected. He didn’t list Social Security numbers, evidently didn’t ask for dates of birth, almost like he was daring his clients to run.
I opened file number three.
“Sam,” I said. “We have to go.”
“Let me get the check.”
He took one look at my face and slapped a twenty on the counter. I was already halfway to the door.
In Polaroid number three, Donna Barnette stood in front of Wiseman’s counter, eyes staring straight at the camera, expression defiant, her whole body sullen and resentful. She had ruffled short hair, wore jeans and a tank top. The notation on the attached sheet of paper said “Height: five two; weight: ninety-five; blond, blue.”
She was Denali Brinkman.
CHAPTER 34
No wonder the Harvard Admissions office didn’t want to talk about Denali Brinkman. I sat at my desk and shielded my eyes from the lamp. They felt bruised by the light, and I wondered if the curious overbrightness was due to the mild concussion. I wondered how much my insurance company would pay toward a new car, and what I’d buy. I wondered where I’d hidden the aspirin.
Sam was gone, as abruptly and completely as if he’d disappeared in a puff of smoke. The whole New Hampshire interlude was taking on the shape of a dreamlike fairy tale, “Sleeping Beauty” morphing into an offbeat version of “The Frog Prince,” in which the enchanted frog remained amphibious, but the beautiful princess turned into a beast.
Denali Brinkman was Donna Barnette, who’d been charged with forging driver’s licenses and running a confidence game in Epping, New Hampshire, a little over a year ago. Who’d posted $3,800 bail, indemnified by a nonexistent cousin, and evaporated, only to reappear as a Harvard student.
I flipped off the lamp and sat in the shadows. I wondered whether she’d taken the SATs and ACTs herself or found a way to borrow someone else’s scores, how she’d managed transcripts and essays. Had she stolen her essays off the Internet, or composed them herself? She’d have needed a confederate, someone to mail her application and respond to her acceptance, preferably from far away. Maybe from Switzerland. I wondered who old Albert Brinkman really was, a fellow con artist, a stooge?
I felt a grudging tug of admiration. What impressed me most was the planning, the long-term thinking. Most cons have a hard time planning from Monday night till Tuesday morning. Donna Barnette had to have been uncannily bright, driven, Harvard material in an unusual guise.
I leaned forward, head in hands, the heels of my palms massaging my temples. I admit it, I felt wretched. My head ached like hell. The small abrasions along my right side itched underneath the bandages and my shoulder throbbed. Sam Gianelli had dropped me at my doorstep and left.
True, he’d kissed me thoroughly. True, he’d promised to call. True, I’d chased him away, insisting I had work to do that couldn’t wait. There was an added strangeness to the interlude that I was only now starting to appreciate. What had Sam been doing in New Hampshire, alone, with no bodyguards, driving his own car? Not once had he been interrupted by the shrill ring of a cell phone. Since he’d taken over his terminally ill father’s mob job, Sam’s movements had been circumscribed, his time not his own. And yet, he’d been there.
I forced my mind away from Sam and back to the case. How did the knowledge that Denali Brinkman was not who she seemed to be help or hurt Wilson Chaney? I recalled his early raptures, how different she was from the ordinary student, how much more mature than the other girls, what a different life she’d led. The truth about Brinkman made Chaney seem more truthful, and one item he’d emphasized was that Denali had made a play for him, not the other way around. I’d discounted his claim at the time, but now I accepted it as fact: Denali had made a play for him. So what had she hoped to gain by seducing her teacher?
My head was pounding like a snare drum. The area under my eye felt tender and my shoulder was on fire. I swallowed aspirin dry from a bottle I finally located in my desk drawer.
Denali Brinkman had entered Harvard under false pretenses. She had seduced her professor, a man currently developing a new ADHD drug. A medium-sized Swiss pharmaceutical firm had wanted the company and presumably the drug, but Chaney had refused to sell. Denali Brinkman had a Swiss connection, possibly the same Uncle Albert who’d neglected to call me back. Denali Brinkman had partnered up with another ex-con, Benjy Dowling, who’d worked at Chaney’s lab. Why?
I slammed the flat of my hand on my desk in frustration, recoiled from the sharp smack. Denali Brinkman was dead. Possibly Benjy Dowling had tried to carry on with her plan, whatever it was. Now Dowling was dead, too. Had Denali/Donna been killed by someone from her former life, or had she been killed by Dowling? Had she killed herself after all, knowing that Helen Orza, New Hampshire bounty hunter, was on her trail, that Harvard would find out who she was, that she’d be kicked out and publicly disgraced?
I chewed another aspirin, shuddering at the grainy bitterness on my tongue. What the hell was public disgrace anymore? Chaney might be a target for blackmail, but he was a university professor. Wasn’t it more likely that Denali/Donna, con artist, once identified as a fraud, would have beaten the New Hampshire charges and gone on the Jerry Springer Show to tell the world how she’d made a fool of Harvard? Wind up an instant celebrity, the subject of some made-for-TV movie? Not kill herself.
I still thought she’d been murdered, but did it matter? I didn’t know. I just knew I had to keep moving. The more time passes, the less chance there is of solving any crime, especially murder. Like a shark, an investigation has to move or it dies. I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t slow it down, couldn’t take time to consider what it meant to have Sam come back into my life, Sam, sitting patiently at my bedside till I woke. Damn. This investigation felt more like a runaway train than a shark.
I tried Chaney’s lawyer, Todd Geary, got a recording, listened to tape spooling in my ear until it stopped and began to hum. I clicked the receiver down, closed my eyes, tried to catch the train of the investigation, to remember where I’d been headed before the damned truck rammed my car and temporarily derailed me. I’d been talking to Officer Burkett. I’d asked him about the missing TransAm, speculated about the benzos listed on the autopsy report.
I phoned Burkett at his home, his office. Nothing. I left messages, thanking him for his rescue efforts, asking him to call. I tugged my hair and bit the rough edge off a fingernail. Why didn’t he have a cell? Why didn’t Geary have a cell? I bet both of them did, but neither had given me the damned number. I drummed m
y fingers on my desk in time with the throb in my shoulder.
I needed to know who’d turned Chaney in this time, who’d told the cops that Dennison and Dowling were one and the same. Who could I call at the Brighton station? Who would talk to me? Who owed me? I recalled and discarded several names. Damn it, wasn’t there anyone? I remembered the Hispanic woman who ran the cleaning service. If the cops hadn’t received another anonymous tip, they’d most likely learned about Dowling’s dual identity from Fidelia Moros Santos. If she’d seen Dowling’s photo in the news, linked it with her Ben, she’d have run to the cops in full cry.
She answered the phone with a dispirited droop in her voice, but her tone changed as soon as I identified myself as the redheaded woman who’d visited after the breakin.
“Ai, it is finally you,” she said eagerly. “Who are you, really? What is your name, por favor? The polícia say they don’t know you. Please, you will come again? I must see you.” She spoke so quickly, I could barely understand.
“What is it?”
“I must see you now. Today. I must ask you— I have decided you are someone I can trust.”
I took the aspirin bottle out of the drawer again, tried to read the tiny print on the label. How many were too many? While I screwed up my eyes, I explained to Señorita Moros Santos that I had no transportation. She was adamant: I must come. I tried to ask her whether she’d spoken to the cops about Dennison/Dowling, but she shut me down cold. She would say nothing on the telephone. She knew about those things—bugs. She knew the telephone was not safe. I shrugged, blew out a deep breath, told her I’d be there, then called Gloria, who agreed to send Leroy with a cab.
“I thought I saw you pull up in a Porsche?” Roz came clattering downstairs, perched on platform shoes. “Whoa, what the hell happened?”
“A crazed New Hampshire motorist.”
“‘Live Free or Die,’” she said matter-of-factly. “Was that Gianelli’s car?”
“It was, and I don’t want to talk about it. I want you to get all the insurance crap together on my car. You’ll need a copy of the police report—Epping, New Hampshire—but first I need everything you can get on this woman.” I handed her Wiseman’s slim report on Donna Barnette, my copy of his Polaroid.
“But what about Dorothy Boyd?” she asked plaintively.
I rested my head in my hands. “I give up. Who the hell is Dorothy Boyd?” I was thinking I’d need to find sunglasses before venturing outdoors.
“Just a girl who won a trophy on Harsha Lake.”
The battered silver and gold cross-oared trophy. The first hint that Denali was not who she seemed to be.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Well, I started with FISA.com, which is the world rowing Web site, but I shoulda gone right to USRowing.com, because lake is, like, an American word, and sure enough, Harsha Lake is near Cincinnati, Ohio. The Cincinnati Junior Rowing Club is there, and they’ve been hosting the Junior Invitationals forever. They attract rowers from everywhere, nationally and internationally. They do eights, lightweight eights, fours with coxswain, coxless quads, singles, doubles—”
“Roz.”
“Yeah, well, I had to go through a lot to find this out. I want you to appreciate my research.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I had to go from person to person to get to somebody who remembered back to the 1987 race. Mrs. Belden sent me to a Mr. Harris, who sent me to—”
“Roz.”
“Finally, I got to this Felicia Giddings woman, who could talk the ear off an elephant. She thought I was doing a magazine article on the competitors in that race, what happened to them later on in life, that kinda shit. Isn’t it great what people believe? Like who’d care about some old race? And did she remember the singles, because her daughter was supposed to win.”
“But Dorothy Boyd won.”
“Yeah, and old Mrs. Giddings holds a grudge. The girl shouldn’t have been allowed to enter.” Roz stood tall, stuck her nose in the air, and imitated Mrs. Giddings’s snottily languid tone. “Really, she didn’t belong. She’d just turned up at the high school a few weeks earlier, registering at nearly the end of the year. A transfer student, but really, Mrs. G. didn’t know where she’d come from. She was with her father, and old Mrs. G. left no doubt that she didn’t think the man was Dorothy’s father at all, more like a funny uncle. She wouldn’t come right out and say it, but she thought the man was sleeping with the girl, no doubt about that.”
“And?”
“Girl won the race going away. She was a fabulous rower. Even Giddings wouldn’t take that away from her. Left town right afterward, and little Heather—that’s Giddings’s girl—came in second, totally upset about losing. Didn’t enter another race for like a year. I had to listen to it about ten times.”
“Did Mrs. Giddings remember the man’s name?”
“Mr. Boyd.”
“Great.”
“Hey, that’s all she could remember.”
“Sorry. Nice work. Now you need to do both of them, Donna Barnette and Dorothy Boyd. Same person. Run them through Merlindata.com and SearchAmerica.com, all those places, then get onto someone in the police department, like your pal Burkett, and sweet-talk him into running the names through NCIC. I have a hunch there’s a criminal record.” As I finished speaking, a horn started beeping outside.
“Okay,” Roz said.
“And tell Leroy to cool it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
First, I found my sunglasses. Then I looked up Helen Orza’s phone number, the one Wiseman had given me, in the cross-referenced directory. A Somerville address, not much of a detour as the crow flies. We could hit it on the way back from Medford. Last, I unlocked the bottom drawer of the file cabinet that supports the left side of my desk and inhaled the sharp scent of oil. The black case that contained my S&W .40 still looked new. I opened it, swallowing a bitterness beyond aspirin residue. I remembered going shooting at the police range with my dad; cherished the memory of his pride at my skill. I recalled the man I killed when I was a cop, a bad day in a lousy part of town. I remembered being on the wrong end of a bullet, lying helplessly prone, the sound, the flash, the pain and shock, the welling blood. I ran my finger over the raised scar on my thigh and fitted the weapon carefully into the waistband of my jeans.
CHAPTER 35
Boston cabbies are required by law to wear shirts with collars. Leroy wore a Hawaiian number, open like a jacket, over a vivid gold basketball jersey. Heavy silver chains circled his massive neck. He wore sunglasses, too, huge wraparounds you’d have to call shades. I wondered what Gloria had told him about my New Hampshire off-road driving adventure. I wouldn’t have put it past her to know every juicy detail of Gianelli’s rescue mission.
We made good time into Medford. I couldn’t imagine Señorita Moros Santos choosing to unburden herself in front of Leroy, so when we turned onto her street, I asked him to stay in the car. He grunted and I considered how many of Graylie Janitorial’s crime-conscious neighbors might spot him idling in the cab and instinctively call the cops. I advised him to visit the nearby doughnut shop and keep a low profile.
Fidelia Moros Santos opened her front door before I had a chance to knock, her porcelain complexion blotchy, her single long braid twisted into a lumpy knot on top of her head. She’d aged since the last time I’d seen her. She wasn’t wearing mourning black, but her gray suit was shapeless and wrinkled, as though she’d put it on without glancing in a mirror, as though she no longer cared how she looked.
“So,” she said, taking my hand and clasping it briefly, “you are no cop.”
“I am a cop, a private cop.” Investigadora privada.
“Madre de Dios, but you are hurt.”
I’d shoved my sunglasses up over my forehead, forgetting the shiner. Well, what else could I do? I couldn’t wear sunglasses indoors without blundering into chairs, not to mention looking like an addict. “I’m okay,” I told her. “It’s nothing. What’s so urgent?
”
“If you are like you say, privada, why you come here before?”
“The English-speaking man who worked here, your boyfriend, was involved in something I was working on.”
“Ai, my Ben.” She sank into the chair behind her desk with a heavy sigh, nodded me into a guest chair. The office had been cleaned since the breakin. The plants were back in the pots, but no new posters hung on the wall. She hadn’t bothered to open the blinds. The photo of Benjy Dowling, the one I’d snapped near the old powder magazine, was taped to the side of her computer screen. Stacks of paper and file folders piled near the monitor made it look as though she’d fallen behind in data entry. “He is dead, no?”
“You told the police that he’s dead?”
“Ai, no, I don’t say that. I tell them nothing about Ben.” She looked so astonished by my assumption that I decided she was telling the truth. Someone else had told the police that Dowling and Dennison were one and the same. Who? An anonymous adviser?
“I do not know what to do,” she said. “Almost, it is funny. In my family, I am the clever one, you see? The one who knows. Also the old maid, no? The one who will never marry but who will take care of everything, of the old people, of the money worries. I think it will always be like that, getting dressed up for my sisters’ and my cousins’ weddings, and then I meet a man and I give my heart. He is not one of ours, and I should know better, but what can you do?”
I said nothing, but I thought about Sam. He is not one of ours.
“Now I think he must be dead.” She shrugged and tried to force her lips into a smile. “He does not come back, and I have not heard from him. My family has not heard. Maybe he is just gone away, I think first, but I know in my heart he is dead. I found something at my apartment that makes me even more sure he is gone, but I don’t know what to do with it. I—I don’t know, la polícia, they have been good to me, but I worry that if I give them this thing—”
“What worries you?”