Idyll Hands

by Stephanie Gayle

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  “You think it’s him?”

  “I think we need to look into it,” Lewis said.

  Billy went off to do our bidding.

  I said, “I don’t know.” We’d had theories knocked down and one false trail to our names. I wasn’t ready to invest a lot of hope in Waverly Daniels. Not yet.

  “We’ll find him,” Lewis said. “Whether it’s this guy or the next or the next.”

  I admired his bravado and shared his hope, but there’s nothing like having a sibling go missing for nearly three decades to make you doubt that you’ll find the person you’re looking for, no matter how strong the need.

  “Let’s hope so,” I said, which was as much as I could commit to in this moment.

  CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH

  TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1999

  0910 HOURS

  Everybody wanted to talk to me at the station, ask me about my injury and how I was feeling. It was to be expected, given that the last time they’d seen me, I was being escorted into an ambulance. I said I was fine, no lingering effects. Dix suggested I pad my desk with rubber bumpers. “Why not pad the whole office?” I asked.

  Once we’d established that I hadn’t broken my skull, everybody and their sister wanted to tell me, again, about the bank robbery. Though, in point of fact, nothing had been stolen, and the robbers were armed with nothing more than plastic water pistols and bad breath. This from Billy, who said one of the robbers had “teeth rotting out of his head you could smell from two blocks away.” I thanked him for that sensory detail and escaped to my office, where I collapsed into my chair. Overhead lights weren’t doing me any favors, but my vision was clear today, and I’d had no ill effects after eating breakfast.

  Three raps on the door were followed by Mrs. Dunsmore entering, her serious frown in place. “You got hurt.”

  “I’m fine now.”

  “And I’m to believe you tripped and hit your head on your desk?”

  “Yes.”

  She stared, unspeaking. Two could play this game. She pursed her lips. I cleared my throat. She shifted her weight. I glanced to the window. She came to the desk and said, “Funny. I’d expect to see a dent here.” She pointed to the desk’s corners. “Given that your head is so hard.”

  “What’s that?” I asked. She had a folder in her hand. Folders meant work. Maybe I should pretend to be feeling not quite well.

  “Citizen complaints,” she said, setting the folder atop my desk.

  “You sure know how to make a guy feel better.”

  She harrumphed. In her hand was a plastic shopping bag. Odd. She usually used tote bags she’d gotten from the library fundraiser or public radio station.

  “We’ve got two units out on fireworks calls,” she said.

  “Already?” Fireworks, except sparklers and fountains, were illegal in our state. That didn’t prevent people from buying them and lighting them off at odd hours. Hell, it wasn’t even 10:00 a.m. and yahoos were already out exploding stuff.

  “It’s the twenty-ninth,” she said. “Seems to me, they waited longer than usual.”

  I rubbed my head. It hurt, so I stopped. “Just as long as no one loses fingers.” Last year, one of our town’s residents had taken Idyll’s Blast Off! motto to heart and had done just that to two of his fingers. Idiot.

  She saw me looking at the bag she held. Her lips curled, ever so slightly. “Station softball tournament is approaching.”

  As if I’d forgotten the one I’d been excluded from. “And?”

  “I got you something for it.” From the bag, she withdrew a t-shirt.

  “For me?” I took it from her and held it up. The color could double as a visual-alert system. “But I’m not playing.”

  She crossed her arms and said, “Says who? You’re the chief of police, Thomas. You think Dix is going to tell you that you can’t compete? Only person who can tell you that is you.” And with that, she left.

  The t-shirt hung from my hands, the brightest thing in the room. I looked at it, trying to decide what surprised me more: her calling me by my first name or her agitating for me to play in the game.

  I folded the t-shirt and put it inside my bottom desk drawer, to take out later. Maybe.

  DETECTIVE MICHAEL FINNEGAN

  TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1999

  2020 HOURS

  Lewis and I were working overtime, poring through the assault report on Cassidy Peterson. It was our boy all right. Daniel Waverly reborn as Waverly Daniels. He’d picked the wrong girlfriend to beat this time. Cassidy’s uncle was a retired policeman. She was his goddaughter. He did not take kindly to her boyfriend breaking her collarbone. Daniel sported a nice shiner in his mug shot.

  “He gets arrested and does time for two months,” Lewis said. “And then?”

  “And then he becomes a magician and ‘Presto! Change-o!’ He disappears from the face of the earth,” I said. My sore tooth was worse today. My tongue kept probing it, which only made it hurt more.

  Lewis sipped from his coffee mug and grimaced. Probably cold or bitter or both. He glanced at his watch. “Janice is gonna kill me.” He stated this as indisputable fact.

  “Head home. I can read myself blind and curse at these files same as you can.”

  He rubbed his face and shook his head. “Billy make any headway on those searches?”

  “He’s working on it. You want me to grab it from him?” Billy was no longer a rookie, but he wasn’t a seasoned detective either.

  “If he hasn’t got it by tomorrow,” Lew said. “Not like we’re going to nail him tonight.”

  I admired his optimism.

  “You think he’s dead?” he asked. This wasn’t the first time he’d posed that question.

  “We haven’t found any likely obituaries or death certificates with that name.”

  “Maybe he’s sunning himself on a beach in Hawaii.”

  “Also possible, though I hope not.” Scumbags like Daniel Waverly shouldn’t have an easy life when their legacy is pain and destruction. But then the world doesn’t operate on the “life is fair” principle.

  “Why was he reproducing black-and-white photos? You think they were pics of Elizabeth, after he killed her?”

  “Stan said they were nature photos, remember?”

  “Yeah, well, maybe that’s what he saw. Maybe only a piece of her was visible and he didn’t catch it.”

  Lewis would talk all night if I let him.

  “Maybe. I’m just glad we have that video.” Elizabeth’s diary, detailing his abuse, was great, but the videotape was gold. A jury would devour it.

  Billy came over, his uniform creased to hell. “I thought you went home,” Lew said, checking his watch. “You’re off.”

  “I wanted to finish looking through the reports. None of the men match his birthdate. There’s only one who looks possible.”

  “He was using fake names, so faking his date of birth would be par for the course,” I said.

  Billy said, “This guy was arrested on a domestic and on an assault, and he did time for both.”

  Lew sat up in his chair and leaned forward. He made a ‘gimme’ gesture, and Billy handed him the sheet. Lew scanned it. “Can’t be him,” he said. “He was in jail for Cassidy Peterson at the time of the assault.”

  “You sure?” Billy asked.

  “We’ve been reading this report since yesterday, Billy,” I said. “We’re sure.”

  “No others?” Lewis asked, his disappointment audible.

  “There’s this guy, but he’s in a nursing home.”

  “Nursing home?” Daniel Waverly would be forty-four years old today. There’s no way he’d be in a nursing home.

  Lew made the “gimme” gesture again.

  “He’s only forty-four,” I reminded him, sighing.

  “What’s this guy’s date of birth?” Lew asked.

  “1956,” Billy said.

  “And he’s in a nursing home?” Lewis asked. “Why was he in the s
ystem?”

  “DWI,” Billy said. “In April 1990.”

  “Did he drink himself into a home?” I asked.

  Billy shrugged. Lew and I shared a look that our young patrolman noticed. “What? Did I screw up? What is it?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Only we’d really like to know what landed him in the nursing home.”

  “And what he looks like,” Lewis asked. He read the sheet. “He’s at Meadowvale in Mansfield.”

  Mansfield was a twenty-five-minute drive from here. “It’s after eight o’clock,” I said.

  Lew swore under his breath. Because he’d be reamed out by his wife when he finally dragged himself home, or because he knew there was no way we were getting into Meadowvale today. “Can’t do anything tonight,” I said, as much as to myself as to him.

  He nodded. If, by some miracle, this man was Daniel Waverly, we had to do everything proper. Contact the Mansfield Police and share our suspicions. Get clearance to work on their patch. Plus, not piss off the folks running the nursing home. We’d be wrestling red tape. If this was our guy.

  “Guess we’d better call it a night,” Lew said. He sounded sorry about it, and I wondered how things were at home. He hadn’t said another word about his baby since I’d spilled the beans to the chief. That bothered me. I shouldn’t have done it.

  “See you in the morning, fellas,” I said, with plenty of false cheer. Billy lost a little of the anxiety pinching his face. I wasn’t sure if I was acting for him or for me. Being the station jokester for so long had taken its toll. You do a thing for so long and you forget you’re doing it.

  CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH

  TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1999

  2100 HOURS

  “Lewis, you got a sec?” I asked. He stopped, jacket over his arm. He’d been headed home. The Elizabeth Gardner case was running him into overtime. I was preparing justifications to the selectmen about why we’d gone over budget on overtime, again. He came to my office, worry lines etched in his brow that I suspected had nothing to do with the case.

  “Any progress on Susan’s baby daddy?” I’d given him my update from Jack McGee earlier.

  “No. The Gardner case is taking all my time. That and …”

  “Your baby.”

  His hand tightened into a fist. But then his rigid body went soft and he said, “Yeah. Between the two, I haven’t had any time to look into it. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. Understood. You’re working your priorities. I can manage on my own.”

  “Thanks. I’ve got to go. Janice will have my head.”

  He left, and I wondered whether the Gardner case was good for him or bad for him. Some detectives, in the midst of a personal crisis, pour their hearts into a case. Distraction. Others miss things, important things, when preoccupied by problems at home. I was the first type, and I suspected Lewis was, too. Finny once told me we were two peas in a pod. I hadn’t believed him. Still not sure I did.

  Thoughts of Finny brought me back to his sister, Susan. She’d been alive as of April 11, 1973. Her “brother” had checked her out of the hospital. What were the chances anyone who worked at the hospital back then would recall this brother? Employees would be long gone, and “the brother” would be just one of a sea of men coming to collect a recent mother to bring her home. No, it would be impossible. There had to be something from the investigation, some clue I’d overlooked, some connection I wasn’t making.

  I bid the men good night and told them to be safe. Then I drove to Pino’s Pizza, where I failed to order a salad with my pizza. Screw it. Not like I needed to keep trim. No one was looking at my body these days.

  At home, I ate slice after slice and rummaged through the remaining boxes of interviews. I pushed it aside and flipped through other mementos and objects. The rabbit’s foot and a worn postcard depicting Bunker Hill that said “Wish You Were Here!” penned on its back in faded blue ink. Silly, given that she’d lived a few blocks from the place. I glanced at where the postage stamp should be, but there wasn’t one. She’d bought it and wrote on it. A joke? Because she had wished herself elsewhere for years? She’d run away, after all.

  She’d been a Girl Scout. In the box were badges in childcare, folk dancing, ceramics and pottery, animal kingdom (bird), and good grooming. The badges were circles with embroidered images inside. Good grooming had a pumpkin with a high heel in front of it. Cinderella? Girls got badges with a Cinderella symbol, for what? Bathing regularly and styling their hair? Or makeup application? I doubted today’s Girl Scouts had such a badge.

  There was no diary. Too bad. Diaries were insights into a person’s life no longer available once the person died. People thought they knew everything about their daughter or sister or lover, but a look into her diary might reveal secrets never shared. That’s why I’d never been tempted to write in one. To me, diaries were evidence to be used against you.

  How many times had I read these interviews? I returned to Jack McGee’s. He’d said he was working on his car in the driveway the day Susan went missing. Hadn’t seen her. He had seen her the day prior. I bit my lip. Who cared? No one was asking about that day. Maybe he’d said that because they asked when he’d last seen her? No, he’d volunteered it. Then again, other neighbors had done the same. But I knew Jack had lied. What if he’d lied about seeing her Thursday? But why lie about that date?

  I grabbed the other neighbors’ interviews. Seen Thursday? No. Set it aside. Seen Thursday? Okay. At the end, I had two piles. Seven neighbors saw Susan on Thursday, including Jack McGee. Where and when? Coming home from school, around 2:30 p.m. Walking with her book bag, around 2:25 p.m. Outside the monument, around 4:30 p.m. Walking on Wood Street, around 6:00 p.m. Leaving her house at 4:10 p.m. Outside the Bunker Hill lodge at 5:30 p.m.

  Finny said she liked the monument, that the giant stone structure had fascinated her as a child. But she was sixteen years old. Did she still care so much? My mother had thought it fishy, but I’d dismissed her insight, because she was a mother, not a detective. I returned to the interview with the park ranger, Gus Saunders. He hadn’t seen her the day she went missing. Busy with visits from schoolkids. Okay. There was a mention of a Kevin McGee too. Finny had known him, from the old days. They’d played as kids, and Kevin had worked at the monument for a year.

  Finny had talked to him two days after he knew his sister was gone. Kevin said he hadn’t seen Susan in “ages.” He was sorry he couldn’t be of more help. But, according to the reports, she’d been at the Bunker Hill lodge the day before she went missing, and the day she went missing. Kevin’s co-worker, Gus Saunders, said Kevin was on shift Thursday. If Susan went to Bunker Hill, Kevin should’ve seen her. Unless he was working inside the monument. Or he lied. I looked at the postcard. “Wish You Were Here!”

  No. There was something wrong. I called the number listed on the report. Gus Saunders no longer lived there. But his second cousin, Kathy, did. God bless large families. She gave me his number in Kansas City. It was only at the end of the call that she thought to ask, “Why do you need his number?”

  I told her I was on his high-school reunion committee and hung up.

  What time was it in Kansas City? 9:45 p.m. Late to call a stranger on the phone. He might be asleep. Then again, my old super used to say, “Nothing ventured, nothing solved, you thick shit-for-brains.”

  Five rings and no answer. Ah well. I’d try tomorrow. “Hello?” The voice was creaky.

  “Gus Saunders?” I asked.

  “Who’s this?”

  “My name is Thomas Lynch. I’m the Chief of Police in Idyll, Connecticut.”

  “Connecticut?” He made it sound like Mars, like a place he’d heard of but hardly believed was real.

  “Yes, sir. I wanted to ask you a question.”

  “You calling me at ten o’clock at night to ask me a question? About what?”

  “Back in 1972 you worked at the Bunker Hill Monument.”

  “Yeah,” he said. His “yeah” matched Finny’s for soun
d.

  “A girl went missing in the neighborhood.”

  “Susan Finnegan. I remember.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. Not a lot of girls went missing back then, not girls like her. Plus, my buddy at work was acting up.”

  “Acting up?”

  “Kevin asked me to lie about his shifts for him.”

  “Kevin?”

  “McGee. He was a piece of work. Young guy. Married with a kid on the way. He must’ve been chasing some skirt again, cuz he asked me to say he wasn’t there.”

  “What date did he ask you to lie about?”

  “The weekend.”

  “Friday?”

  “Must’ve been. Back then, the old timers worked the Saturday and Sunday shifts. Kev and I were the low men on the totem pole.”

  The day Susan went missing, Kevin was at the monument she’d visited, and he’d asked his co-worker to lie about his whereabouts. My palms tingled. “Why do you think he wanted you to lie?”

  “There was a room in the lodge for employees. Kevin used to take some of his girls there. Used to put an Out of Order sign on the door when he was, um, occupied. Anyway, he got freaked when he heard the police were poking around. Was afraid word would get back to his wife. Asked me to tell the cops he’d been off on Friday, if they asked.”

  “And that didn’t concern you?”

  “No. Why? He told me he’d been shut up with some Bunker Hill co-ed when he should’ve been at his post. He said he was gone ten minutes, max.” He laughed. “Wasn’t even embarrassed by it.”

  “You still in touch with Kevin?”

  “Nah. I moved out here and don’t really keep in touch with the old crowd. My parents left Charlestown for Florida. Don’t have much family back there now. A few cousins.”

  “Why was Kevin so worried about his wife finding out?” I asked.

  He laughed. “You kidding? Kev’s wife was Diana Killeen. Her uncle was Mack Killeen, a player in the Mob. You didn’t cross those guys’ family members, yeah?”

  “And Kevin was related to Jack McGee?”

  “Jack? Yeah. He and Kev were cousins. Practically grew up in each other’s pockets.”