Idyll Hands

by Stephanie Gayle

  “1979,” I said. “Surely you remember that?”

  “Right, 1979. You’ll have to forgive me. I get confused about when things happened, since the accident.” Bullshit. But we’d let it stand for now.

  “We discovered Elizabeth’s body,” Lewis said.

  “Really? Where?” he asked.

  “In Idyll, on our patch,” I said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “She was … killed?” Lord, hand the man an Oscar award for that delivery. The hesitation before “killed,” the wide eyes.

  “Yes,” I said. “Murdered. Know anything about it?”

  “Me? How would I? I’ve been living here since 1991.”

  “She’s been dead since 1979,” Lewis said.

  “All that time? How awful. Her parents must be devastated.” He put his hands on his chair and wheeled himself to a desk with an open space for a chair. He set the book atop the desk, next to an alarm clock.

  “When was the last time you spoke to Elizabeth?” I asked.

  He wasn’t facing us but was looking at her photo again. “I told the police, back then. It must’ve been a few weeks before she went missing.”

  “You never saw her after she broke up with you?”

  He stiffened. Hadn’t liked that dig. Good. “No. Never.”

  “What’s this?” Lewis asked. He’d crossed the room to examine a framed photograph on the wall. It was black-and-white and focused on a skeletal tree. The focus was on fallen leaves before the tree, so that the tree was a bit fuzzy, its sharp, bare limbs made softer by the contrast. It looked a lot like the photo Mr. Gardner had hanging on his wall. Elizabeth’s photo.

  Daniel had to spin his chair around to see what Lewis was examining. “That’s a picture I took,” he said. “It placed second in a national competition a few years back.”

  “You take photographs?” Lewis asked. “Must be difficult.” He eyed the wheelchair.

  “Not at all. Camera equipment has come a long way. And I can manage fine with my arms.”

  “Second place,” I said. “Who got first?”

  “I don’t know. It was a national contest.”

  “You win anything?” Lewis asked.

  “My picture was printed in a magazine, and I got two hundred dollars.”

  “Not bad. What did the winner get?” I asked. I’d wandered to the window and was adjusting the shade.

  “Would you mind not fiddling with that?” he asked. “If it’s too high, I can’t reach it.”

  “Oh, of course. How thoughtless of me. Why did you change your name?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Your name,” I said. “It’s Daniel Waverly, only you went by Donald when you dated Elizabeth, and now you’re here under Waverly Daniels.”

  “Made you hard to find, I don’t mind telling you,” Lewis said.

  “I … I was young, and I’d never liked the name Daniel. There were too many of them in the town where I grew up.”

  “Woodstock,” Lewis said.

  His eyes flicked to Lewis. He didn’t like this. Didn’t like us knowing much about him. “Yeah, so I went by Donald.”

  “Like Donald Duck,” I said. “Th-th-th-that’s all folks!”

  “Porky Pig says that, not Donald Duck, and no, not like Donald Duck.” He was irate.

  “Why’d you pick it, then? Easy to remember? Donald, Daniel.”

  “I liked it.” He spat the words out.

  “So why go by Waverly?” Lewis asked.

  “I got tired of it again. I was opening my own business, and Waverly was a more distinct name.”

  “Your own business?” I asked. “Doing what? Lawn care?”

  “Photo processing.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Hartford.”

  “When?”

  “1990. But then I had my accident.”

  “So, you had a business under a false name?” I asked.

  “It’s not a false name if it’s a business name. You think the guy who runs Papa Gino’s has the first name Papa?”

  I pretended to mull it over. “Why not?”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  Lewis said, “Don’t mind him. His momma dropped him on his head when he was a baby.” He pointed to me. “Several times.”

  “Look, what does any of this have to do with Elizabeth?” he asked.

  “Were you upset when she broke up with you?” Lewis asked.

  “More or less upset than when Cassidy Peterson pressed charges against you?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “You know. The woman who had you locked up because you didn’t know your own strength. Snapped her collarbone. Too bad about her uncle, the cop. They don’t let things like that go, am I right?”

  “You got kind of a bad track record when it comes to ex-girlfriends,” Lew said. “I mean, one dead. One assaulted. How many girls you dated total. Three, four?”

  He sputtered. “I don’t know how many girls I’ve dated. Twenty?”

  “Twenty,” Lew said. “Well.”

  “You marry any of ’em?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Lew asked. “Not the marrying type?”

  “Guess not.”

  “When did you last see Cassidy Peterson?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember. That was years and years ago.”

  “But more recent than Elizabeth Gardner,” I said. “Did you maybe not like Cassidy as much as Elizabeth? How long did you and Cassidy date?”

  “Three months.”

  “Only three months? No wonder he’s had twenty girlfriends.” I winked at Lewis. “Can’t keep ’em for long.”

  “I can keep—” he began.

  “Don’t mind him,” Lewis interrupted. “He’s just jealous. Not much of one with the ladies. I mean, look at him.”

  “That tie,” Daniel said, smirking.

  “Right? I told him, dressing like that, you might as well hang a sign around your neck that says ‘Single and Desperate.’”

  Daniel laughed, a small hic-hic sound.

  “Hey now,” I said. “I like this tie.”

  “You’re proving my point,” Lew said. Turning back to Daniel, he said, “We spoke to your sister. She’s a character.”

  Daniel said, “Rose? When?” For the first time, he sounded scared.

  “She hasn’t seen you in a while. Glad to know where you are now. I mean, I guess you don’t get many visitors, and now that she’s divorced, she’ll have more time to spend with you.”

  “I don’t want her here.” He looked at the door, as if afraid she might appear behind it.

  “No? I must admit, she’s a bit colorful. But, hey, family is family, right?”

  “She locked me in our cellar for a day because I touched her headbands.”

  “Sisters, am I right?” I asked. “But that was a long time ago, yeah?”

  “People don’t change,” he said.

  “Hey, you can’t know that,” Lew said. “I’m sure when she sees the situation you’re in, she’ll behave very differently than when you were kids, and you took all the arms off her dolls, which, I gotta say, sounds like a crappy thing to do.”

  “She loved those stupid dolls. I changed the outfit on one, and she made me eat a dog biscuit.”

  “She what?” I asked. “A dog biscuit?” I laughed. “Kids.”

  “It’s not funny.” He slammed his right fist on his chair’s arm. “She cut my hair once, as punishment. For what? For not helping her clean up after dinner. It wasn’t even my turn. So, I hit her. Gave her a black eye. And my parents, you know what they said? ‘Don’t hit girls. It doesn’t matter what they do to you. You must never, ever hit girls.’” His voice shook. “How is that fair?”

  “Well, you showed them,” Lew said.

  “Sure did,” I agreed. “And yet, he didn’t win that national contest with his own work. Kind of sad.” I strolled to the picture.

  “What are you talking about?” Daniel was b
reathing hard.

  “This.” I tapped the glass of the tree photo. “It’s Elizabeth’s. I wonder if he got the film out of her camera that day.”

  “Oh, that day,” Lew said. “Makes sense. Or it could’ve been in her car.”

  “True. Keys would’ve been on her, so he could’ve used them to open it up. Search it. I mean, she didn’t need ’em anymore.”

  “Why the arm?” Lew asked. “You think it’s the Barbies, all over again?”

  “You two are crazy,” Daniel said. “Talking gibberish.” Were we? His hands trembled, and he was sweating.

  “We’ve heard that before,” I said. “I think maybe he didn’t want her to be able to use the arm. After all, she used it to take better photos than he could.”

  “She didn’t take better photos!” Spittle formed at the corner of his mouth.

  “Oh dear, we’ve upset him,” I said. “I think it’s all back to Rose. He just wanted to hurt her.”

  “He’s dumber than we thought,” Lew said, pointing to me. “He never even hurt Rose. Hell, those girls looked nothing like her.”

  “Cassidy did. That old photo we have of Rose and our boy here, remember? Cassidy looked like Rose did, back in the day.”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  “Cassidy looked nothing like Rose!” he yelled.

  Lew locked eyes with me for a nanosecond.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Her hair, her eyes. I see a distinct resemblance.”

  “She had brown eyes!” he said. “Cassidy’s eyes were brown. Rose’s eyes are green. How stupid are you?”

  “Not as dumb as some folks. I mean, leaving your DNA all over the crime scenes. That’s just stupid,” I said.

  “My DNA is not on any crime scene!”

  “Back in the late 1970s we didn’t have DNA testing,” Lew said. “Gosh, we’ve come a long way. But what’s truly extraordinary is that we can go back and test crime-scene evidence for DNA from old scenes. It’s just incredible.”

  “Not that we needed it,” I said. Daniel had gone silent. His hands gripped each other. “I mean, that film you left at Stan’s, well, who the hell needs your blood when we’ve got film of you murdering her?”

  “I guess he really didn’t like her being a better photographer,” Lew said. “I wonder if that affected his, ah, performance in other areas?”

  “Explains why she dumped him.”

  “She wasn’t a better photographer! She was just lucky and pretty, and people liked her little pictures because she was a girl! That’s it!”

  “Seems like she could’ve given you pointers,” I said.

  “No!” he wailed. “I didn’t need her damn advice! I didn’t need any of her advice. Thinking she knew better than me. Thinking she was smarter because she’d taken some college classes. Well, she wasn’t so smart after all, was she? And she’s got nothing now. Nothing.”

  “She has our sympathy,” Lewis said. “Which is more than you’ll ever have. Daniel Waverly, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Elizabeth Gardner.”

  “You’ll never prove it! Never. It took you twenty years to find me.” Twenty years. The time between Elizabeth’s death and now. How nice for him to mention.

  “Actually, it took us a few weeks,” I said. “And only cuz we’re kind of busy right now.”

  “Bank robbers,” Lewis said. “And that domestic terrorist.”

  “Yeah. Those.”

  Daniel would never know the robbers had water pistols or that the terrorist was a teen girl chucking clamshells. Lew looked over his head at me and smiled, a wide, sunny smile like he’d won the lottery. I felt it too.

  “Maybe we should give Rose a call,” I said. “See if she wants to visit her brother in jail.”

  “No!” Daniel shouted.

  Lewis said. “Nothing like a family reunion to warm the heart.” He looked my way and winced. Thinking about Susan no doubt.

  To make him feel better, I said, “There sure isn’t. Come on, Daniel. Time to get your photo taken. Maybe you can give the guy doing it some tips.”

  CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH

  SATURDAY, JULY 3, 1999

  1124 HOURS

  “I’m sorry,” Detective Williams said. “If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”

  “I’m sorry too.” I hung up the phone before I said something more, something about loyalty and doing your job and how fucked up was it that the department had “other” priorities.

  They weren’t going to interview Kevin McGee. They didn’t see any connection between him and Susan Finnegan. The lie about not being on duty? Probably was to cover an affair, but we had no proof that the affair was with Susan. Damn it. I’d been sure I’d finally found the guy, and BPD didn’t want to look into it. What could I do? He still lived in Boston, and the crime, if there was one, happened in Boston.

  The phone rang. Outside call. Maybe Detective Williams had changed his mind? Maybe his super had come through?

  “Hello?” I didn’t bother with my rank and name.

  “Tom.” Oh, Matthew. This was unexpected.

  “Matt. Hey.”

  “How are you?”

  “Fine. You?” This was excruciating.

  “Good. Fleeced Vic at poker last night. He couldn’t cover his bets, so now I have access to his boat.”

  “His boat?”

  “I don’t even care about the boat. He thought he had me beat with three of a kind. I had a full house. Ladies and tens. You should’ve seen his face.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Anyway, I called because I left my sweatshirt at your place, and I wanted it back.”

  Oh. The navy-blue sweatshirt in my bureau’s bottom drawer. The one he’d brought over six months ago. That one.

  “Sure. Stop by anytime.” Or never. Never sounded good.

  “How’s tonight at 6:30?”

  “Fine. Good.”

  “Great. Thanks.” Click.

  That was that. He wanted his stuff back. I guess that’s how things ended. This was new to me. My prior relationships had never involved stowing clothes at other people’s apartments or homes. If anything got left behind, well, finders keepers, losers weepers.

  Finny walked into my office while I was considering what I had left at Matthew’s place. Sweatpants, boxers, a t-shirt, a toothbrush, and a comb. Anything else?

  “You okay?” he asked. “You look like you swallowed a June bug.”

  “Aren’t those the big black bugs you find on your screen doors?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Gross.”

  “Your appreciation for the natural world is a wonder to behold. Looks like the prosecutor’s going to try for Elizabeth Gardner,” he said.

  “That’s great. I mean you have video, so he’d be a Grade-A idiot not to, but …”

  “But Grade-A idiots always go on to be lawyers, right?”

  “Right. Where’s Lewis?”

  “Off today. He and his wife are going shopping for the baby.”

  We both sat with that news for a bit.

  “Any news?” he asked. “On the other thing?”

  The other thing meaning his sister’s case. Fuck it. “I think I found a lead.”

  He perked up. “Yeah? That’s great. What is it?”

  I shouldn’t tell him. There was no predicting what he’d do with the information. On the other hand, the Boston police refused to pursue it. Nothing would happen if I stayed silent. Nothing would ever happen unless God intervened with a miracle. God seemed mighty busy these days.

  “There was a park ranger who worked at Bunker Hill. I think maybe he dated Susan, but I have no real evidence he did. It’s a glorified hunch.”

  “Who?”

  “Not sure I can tell you that.”

  “You think I’m going to go rogue?” He laughed, but it was too hollow for my liking. “Have you notified the BPD?”

  “I did.”

  “And?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “And they dec
lined. That’s why you’re telling me. Because they decided it wasn’t strong enough, or they have other, more important cases than solving some old missing persons case, no matter that the girl was the sister of one of their cops. Nah.” He paced the length of my office, window to wall. “How hard could it be to look him up? Check his record. Stop by for a talk?” He stopped pacing.

  “Finny, I’m not sure I should tell you. If I do and you go chasing after him … I don’t want to see you fired.”

  “They can’t fire me. You can.”

  “I don’t want to see you arrested by them and then fired by me because you lost your temper with this guy.”

  “Chief, I understand, completely. I don’t want to beat this guy up. I just want answers. If he’s the one, I’d much rather he rots in jail. Let him spend the next twenty-seven years of his life suffering.”

  “Even if he dated her, that doesn’t mean he hurt her.”

  “Sure. I know that. I’m a detective, right?” He was too agreeable. Too sunny. He was turning on a dime. “What’s his name?”

  I shouldn’t tell him. But this was day one. He’d ask me every day. He was a bloodhound. I’d seen him working the Gardner case, placing call after call, coming up empty and pressing on. And then I thought of his mother. How much more time should she wait, wondering what had happened to her youngest child?

  “You promise you won’t hurt him? You won’t endanger yourself or your job? They’ll know I told you if this goes sideways.” Not that I thought he’d care much about protecting me.

  “I promise.”

  “Kevin McGee.”

  “Kevin?” Finny narrowed his eyes. “The Kevin who used to play Red Rover with us when we were kids?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t he marry into the Killeen family?”

  “Yes.”

  He mulled that over. “Most of ’em are behind bars now. Thanks for telling me, Chief.”

  “Don’t make me regret it,” I said.

  “Me?” He held a thumb to his chest. “Never.”

  I so wanted to believe him. But I didn’t. Even from here I could feel the heat coming off him.

  God, watch over this one, yeah?

  I didn’t trust God to listen to me either.

  DETECTIVE MICHAEL FINNEGAN

  MONDAY, JULY 5, 1999