“Hi, Chief. I heard about the videotape.”
I expected half the town knew by now.
“And?” I pinched the skin between my thumb and finger, trying to stave off the headache I felt at the base of my skull, its tendrils squeezing my nerves.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked. “To help?”
No, unless…“You know where Cumberland Farms is. Where might Cecilia go from there? If she was meeting someone and wanted to keep it private?”
His face crinkled in thought. God, if I’d looked like him twenty years ago, I’d have brought the West Village to its knees.
He said, “There’s the railroad museum. And the woods by the golf course.”
“Anywhere else?” Come on, I thought. He had to know.
“The cabin by Hought’s Pond.”
“Hought’s Pond?” Did my voice sound anxious?
“Yeah. It’s between Cumberland’s and the golf course, but the woods are closer.”
“I thought they were going to tear the cabin down?”
Billy relaxed against the door. “They’ve been saying that for years. It belongs to the Sutters. Well, the son now that his parents passed. But he lives in California. The town’s been all over him to fix the cabin or demolish it, but he says he has fond memories of it. Doesn’t want to spend the money, more like. And he’s got the town over a barrel because they want him to leave the farm as is.”
“Really? Why?” Its lonely pastures and sinking barn gave me the creeps.
“They think it looks old-timey. And they don’t want shiny, new condos on the land. It would ruin the whole Idyll Days image.”
“I see. Why don’t you check the railroad museum? We know she bought a Coke and some Pop Rocks. See if you find any trace of ’em near the museum. You know how to bag evidence?” He got red, remembering his crime-scene massacre. He nodded. “I’ll take a look at the cabin.”
“Should I radio you if I find something?” he asked.
“No. Just bring it in.” It was a fool’s errand. He’d find nothing of value, but he felt included, valuable. We both got something we wanted.
The cabin looked worse in daylight. It leaned toward the pond, as if drunk. Ivy crept through its sunken steps and twined around a front window that looked like a jagged tooth, only its bottom third of glass intact. I used my foot to open the door. A leaf skittered across the floor. Bottles, wrappers, condoms, and matchbooks littered the place. A charred section of wall showed where someone had played firebug. I looked for evidence of my last visit. There were faint smudges in the dust that could be partial footprints. I could sweep, erase any traces of myself, tamper with the crime scene, as Rick had done once. My mind seesawed.
“Where’s the baggie?” I’d asked Rick. We’d gone through the crack house where Marshall Clements had died. Now it was time to submit our evidence. I couldn’t find the baggie with white powder. Rick had grabbed it, though it was on my side of the scene.
“What?” He stretched like a cat in a puddle of sunlight.
“The baggie. You had it last.”
His eyes were blank, like a shark’s. “Tommy, boy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He picked up his bags. Whistling as he walked away. The sunlight glinted off his copper hair. A golden boy.
I hadn’t thought he’d tamper with evidence. His grandfather was awarded a Medal of Valor. He was a third-generation cop. It was his birthright. And now he was corrupting, from the inside out. And still my partner.
I massaged my eyes. Brought myself back from the past. Set my case down. I’d have to move around the cabin, but I wouldn’t brush the floor. I couldn’t. Rick had fallen prey to addiction, had briefly loved other things more than being a cop. I didn’t.
There were two Coke cans. One under a window, the second by the door. I bagged both. I looked between squeaky, rotted floorboards and in filthy corners for the Pop Rocks or anything else that might indicate she’d been here. She hadn’t carved her initials inside a heart on the wall. Unlike “JL + BG.” But under those initials I found a button. Small. White. She’d been wearing a T-shirt, so it wasn’t hers. But her date had worn a dress shirt. Could he have lost a button?
I walked outside and breathed deeply. The air was wet. It felt like you could wring it out. Nearby, something splashed in the pond. I checked its edges again but found nothing but a fishing bobber riding shallow ripples. The sickly smell of the water, the cabin, knowing what I’d almost done there—I couldn’t get away fast enough.
Back at the station, Billy presented me with five bags. One contained a Coke can so sun-bleached it had to be at least two years old.
I said, “I found some too. They look a bit fresher.”
He rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t think it looked likely, but I figured that’s not for me to decide.” He hesitated. I waited him out. “Her family’s been asking me questions. About the case. I don’t know what to tell them.” His face got hangdog.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Look, I know it’s not easy. Most police go their whole careers without having to work an investigation so close to them. I’m happy to pull you off.” I stepped back. Gave him time to consider it.
He didn’t think long. “No. It’s okay. I’ll explain to the Norths that I can’t talk to them.” He looked at his shoes and said, “The funeral is set for the eighteenth. They’re waiting because Cecilia’s grandmother is still recovering from surgery.”
The eighteenth. Five days from now.
“You, uh, got something.” He pointed to my shirt. I started to explain that it was a bloodstain from the autopsy, but then I recalled I’d dropped the jacket at Suds.
“What?” I looked at my shirt.
“You’ve got, um, hairs. Long ones.” He pointed. Hairs clung to my shirt. Too light and long to be mine. “Maybe you got them at the cabin.” The thought didn’t cheer me. Nor did I buy it. I’d been careful at the cabin. Touching as little as possible.
“Or maybe it’s your girlfriend’s?” He smiled. Eager to hear all about her. He assumed I was straight. Small-town boy. Probably thought everyone he met was.
“Nope,” I said. I pulled the hairs from my shirt and dropped them above my waste bin. They floated slowly, as if reluctant to mingle with the trash. Long, blond hair. Maybe they came from Donna, courtesy of her dye bottle. She got awful close, when opportunity allowed.
Billy left. I shoved aside a folder of parking citations to make way for a report form and found the autopsy folder. My finger stabbed the intercom button. Mrs. Dunsmore was in for it. Hiding vital reports under busywork? Shit. It wasn’t her fault. My finger released the button. This morning, I’d pushed the folders around when Billy had come in. Trying to hide my false tip. I’d buried the report. I kicked my desk. Welcomed the pain in my toes.
I opened the report. Cecilia Elizabeth North. Age: twenty-two. Height: five feet, six inches. Weight: one hundred and eighteen pounds. Cause of death: exsanguination. She’d bled out. How long had she been conscious? A minute? More? Had she known her life was seeping away as she lay on the damp grass, panting her last breaths?
No sign of sexual assault or activity. Disappointing. Sex yielded DNA. We had nothing more. I flipped the sheet. Dr. Saunders had attached a note to the last page. “Looks like your bullet came from a Smith & Wesson .45.”
In the detectives’ pen, Wright and Revere sat, backs to each other, each sifting papers. “Good news,” I said. They looked up. Revere’s shoulder cracked. He winced. “The bullet taken from our vic came from a Smith & Wesson .45 handgun.” Revere stood and wrote this on the board. “And earlier, I spoke to Billy about rendezvous spots and he suggested the train museum—”
“We told you,” Wright said. He did his finger-pistol thing, and then blew imaginary smoke from his finger’s end.
“And the cabin by Hought’s Pond.”
“Oh, right. That dump.”
“I checked out ‘that dump’ and found two Coke cans. Maybe she was there Saturday n
ight.”
“Where’s the cabin?” Revere asked. Wright showed him on the map. “You think she walked?”
“Might’ve got a ride,” I said. “He could’ve had a car, her friend.”
“We’re assuming the friend is male,” Revere said. “What if she’s female?”
“She snuck out. Smart money has it her friend was male,” Wright said.
“What if she was romantically involved with a woman?” Revere asked.
“What? A lesbo?” Wright shook his head. “You seen our girl? Too pretty. Besides, she had a boyfriend, remember?”
Revere said, “Maybe college broadened her horizons.”
Wright laughed. “Right. Well, if you find the girlfriend, bring me to the interview. I want to hear all about it.” Of course he did. Straight men find the idea of two women erotic. But present him with two men? He’d be revolted. To be fair, I’d always found the idea of a man and woman together puzzling. I get it, intellectually. Survival of the species and all that. But otherwise? Nah.
I was due to stand before a swarm of press, concerned citizens, and selectmen in a couple of hours. So my two-day shadow had to go. I scraped a razor along my cheek. Stubble collected along the blade like metal filings to a magnet. Day five and nothing to show but the videotape, autopsy report, and ballistics findings. No suspects and no witnesses. The phone rang. My hand was specked with shaving foam. It rang again. I cursed and wiped my hand on a towel. The answering machine picked up.
The machine announced it had a message. It insisted on telling me the date and time. Then a beep, click, and my mother’s voice. “Hi, Tom. I called Benson’s. They’ll send a wreath to St. Anthony’s for Rick’s service. Give us a call. Or stop by for dinner soon. Dad sends his love. Bye.” I’d called and asked my mother where to order flowers for Rick’s memorial. She’d taken this as a charge to do it herself. I’d call later to explain I couldn’t make it home. I wouldn’t mention what had happened the last time I showed up for a last-minute dinner invitation.
The table setting should’ve tipped me off. My family didn’t use the china except for holidays and dinners with deans. My brother, John, and his wife, Marie, exchanged furtive looks over their glasses. Were they having another child? Bit late, for both of them. And should Marie be drinking wine? The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it!” my mother said. A minute later, she brought in a man wearing a velvet jacket with a paisley pocket square. Slender and smiling. Chris Danforth. My mother knew him through her charity work with the New York Foundation for the Arts.
“Chris was in a revival of The King and I on Broadway.” My mother squeezed my forearm. My muscles contracted under the pressure.
He was seated across from me at dinner, half visible through the spring bouquet set there for his benefit. We weren’t flower people. He asked about my work while he sawed at his chop. I was polite but brief. Homicides don’t make nice dinner conversation. Not the sort I’d seen recently: a wife bludgeoned with a hot iron, a man hog-tied and carved up.
“Your mother tells me you like boats,” he said to me.
“Did she?” I had, as a child. John smiled brightly at me. I kicked his leg under the table.
“Ow!” he shouted.
Marie sussed the situation and asked Chris if he was preparing for future roles. He ducked his head, as if embarrassed by the attention. Bullshit. No actor I’d met hated attention. “I’m auditioning next week for the chorus of Rent.”
“How exciting!” my mother said. This from the woman who fell asleep when she attended a Broadway show. She claimed all that singing and dancing tired her out.
“You know it’s a musical?” John asked Mom. I didn’t respond to his wink. He was on my shit list. He’d known what they’d planned and hadn’t warned me. Some brother.
Chris asked about my parents’ work. Mom talked about her Brontë research. “I’ve always preferred Anne to her sisters. More common sense and a better writer.”
Chris said he’d loved Wuthering Heights in high school. She wrinkled her nose.
“Emily wrote that,” I said.
Dad talked about his study of philosophy, and his latest subject, Albertus Magnus.
“And what do you study?” Chris asked my brother.
John stopped petting his wife’s hand and launched into a lecture about how climate change is real and we’re going to be the means of the planet’s destruction. Cheerful stuff.
“What a remarkable family.” Chris showed off his veneers. “You weren’t tempted by academia?” he asked me.
“No.” All that reading? Just a one-way ticket to Sleepy Town.
“Tom always wanted to be a cop,” John said. “And unlike most boys, he didn’t outgrow it.”
“I always wanted to perform,” Chris said to me, as if we shared a secret. Then he grabbed a flower from the bouquet, tucked it in his napkin and waved it above the table. He opened the napkin and nothing fell. Everyone applauded except me. I knew where the flower was.
At my mother’s insistence, I escorted our guest to the door after dinner. Chris adjusted his pocket square. I wondered if it meant something. There’d been a whole gay subculture of kerchiefs. Colors and styles indicated preferences and persuasions. I’d never learned them. He patted my arm. “If you ever need help—”
“Help?”
“Navigating your way out of the closet—”
Had he prepped that exit line, just in case I didn’t respond to his smiles?
I pointed behind me. “They know I’m gay.”
“But not at work, right?”
What did he know about being gay on the force? Did he know about Jackson’s memo to our lieutenant? The one that complained of his partner’s “multiple unwarranted and unnatural physical advances?” The one pinned to our memo board. The one we’d laughed at for weeks. Typical cop humor. Did he know how the only “out” detective in our precinct had transferred after only two months? Did he think being gay at work made you a hero? It made you a target. Unless you worked in a field like acting.
I opened the door and waited. He left. I slammed the door. Nothing angered me more than other homos telling me how to be gay. This asshole was upset because I didn’t represent “gay” with a big grin while standing on a rainbow-colored parade float? Fuck him.
“Is Chris gone?” My mother entered the foyer prepared to back out, hopeful of interrupting something.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I said.
She got close. Combat position. “I thought you two might hit it off.” The lines about her mouth deepened. “I see I was wrong.” She gave me a disappointed look. I knew that look well.
In the living room, John and Marie laughed, their hilarity escalating into hiccups. “Oh, you didn’t!” Marie said.
My mother got on her tiptoes and smoothed my hair. “I just want to see you happy.” Angry as I was, I knew she’d meant well. They all did.
Now, back at my house, I pushed a button and erased my mother’s message. I’d call later to decline the dinner invite. Who knew where her good intentions would lead this time? Better not to find out.
Something crashed on a hard surface. Tiles. The bathroom. I hurried to find my toothbrush cup smashed into shards. The toothbrush’s bristles rested on the dirty tiles. I’d need to buy another. I picked up glass pieces.
The glass. What was it? I looked at the uneven shards, opaque in my shadow. There’d been glass in the gutter, when Rick died. Some homeboy’s broken forty a foot away from Rick’s body. My eyes had stared at those shards after the EMTs shooed me away and bent over him, working his chest like a bellows.
My hands clenched. I felt a sharp pain. “Shit!” A piece of glass was stuck in my index finger. I pulled it from my finger pad and dropped the glass in the trash. Ran water over the wound. Pink water swirled down the drain. I looked for a bandage and found one behind an expired bottle of aspirin. My hands botched the job: the bandage puckered. But I hadn’t time to do it over. I was running late and still
had to finish my shave.
When I reached Town Hall, cars filled every parking spot. I cruised past, once more. Nope. Not one free, except for a handicapped spot in front of the arched brick doorway. I thought for a second. No, I couldn’t. I bumped my car over the curb and parked on the grass between the lot and Main Street.
The press conference was in the Porter Room, named after the town’s founder, Isaiah Porter. His portrait hung outside the room. A cheerless man in a weathered hat, holding a Bible. The room’s heavy wooden door opened to reveal seven rows of occupied folding chairs. News crews were present. At the podium, Mayor Mike repeated the tip-line number. He spotted me and waved his arms as if landing a plane. “And here, ladies and gentlemen, as promised, is Chief of Police Thomas Lynch.”
When I reached the podium he said, “Where have you been?” The mic picked up his question. There were titters from the audience.
“I’ll take your questions now,” I said.
A black woman wearing a pretty scarf said, “Shirley Winston, New Haven Register. Chief Lynch, do you have any suspects?”
Yes, but I’m not sure who he is. “We’re pursuing several leads.” She pursed her lips and gave me a look that said she’d heard that line before.
John Dixon, from the Idyll Register, asked if the murder could be the work of a serial rapist/killer. He was underfed and wore a suit two sizes too big.
“No. It’s an isolated incident. There were no signs of sexual assault.”
He scratched his nose with the pink eraser of his pencil. “Perhaps this is the killer’s first victim? A trial? Maybe he’ll advance as he goes?” He sounded hopeful.
My breath emerged as a huff into the microphone. “I’m not sure what sort of TV shows you’ve been watching, but this isn’t a serial killing. And it’s not entertainment.”
Idyll Threats Page 7