Fury

by G. M. Ford

  Corso slipped her glass between her fingers. “So?” he said.

  She took a swallow. “So…then…what you’re saying is that maybe one of the women wasn’t killed by Defeo after all. She was killed by somebody connected to the original investigation, who then arranged it to look like she was just another victim of the Trashman.”

  “You’re a quick one, you are,” Corso said.

  “And you think the odd victim was Kate Mitchell.”

  He shook his head. “It can’t be her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Defeo had her clothes.”

  “They know that for sure?”

  “It’s the outfit she was reported missing in. The dry cleaners by Defeo’s house has records for cleaning all ten sets of women’s clothes found by the cops. They’ve identified five sets of the clothes. Mitchell’s was one of them.”

  “Can’t be one of the new victims,” she said out loud to herself. “That wouldn’t make any sense at all.”

  “If there’s something haywire with any of the original victims, it’s gotta be the Doyle girl,” Corso said quickly.

  “The one they found after Himes was already in jail?”

  “Gotta be.”

  “Mother carries the picture with her all the time.”

  “Yep.”

  “Why her?”

  “She’s the only fly in the ointment. Found two full days after Himes was arrested. Frozen solid, so time of death couldn’t be pinned down. The only victim where whoever called the cops about the body didn’t stick around until they got there.”

  “If you ask me, that’s pretty damn weak.”

  His expression said he wasn’t prepared to argue the point.

  “I suppose you think you know who did it.”

  “Not a clue,” he said with a flicker in his eye that said maybe he did.

  Dougherty made a rude noise with her lips. “You’re a regular engine of conflict, you know that, Corso? Where others find answers, you find only questions.”

  “It’s possible that—” he began.

  She waved him off. “I’m not onboard here, Corso. I’ve gone along with the program. Haven’t I gone along with the program?” He nodded but didn’t speak. “I’ve been shot at, shit on, thrown into jail.” She looked at the floor. “I saw a man get killed last night,” she said in a low voice. “All in the name of getting to the bottom of this thing. But”—she hesitated—“this is way too out there.” She waved a hand. “Let well enough alone, for criminey sakes. Win some friends. Influence some people.”

  Her hand dropped to her side with a slap. “It’s like you’re always striving…looking for some sort of moral high ground or something. Like you don’t think anybody but you can possibly get things right.”

  He stood silently, his eyes turned inward, looking tired and lonely.

  She turned her back on Corso, ran her eyes over the pictures again, shivered, and looked away. She felt Corso’s eyes moving over her back like long fingers. Without turning, she said, “Get rid of those pictures, will you, Frank? They’re giving me the damn willies.”

  He said, “Sure.” As Corso busied himself with the photos, she pulled the right half of the aft door aside and stepped out onto the stern. Unbelievable that a glorious day like today could end like this. Like being closed in a box of cotton. The air was stark white, floating seamlessly around the boat like chowder. She looked up. Not even the tops of the masts were visible. Then down. The water beneath the swim step was flat and still, like black ice.

  From somewhere within the fog…the sharp sound of shoes and then the voice. A woman’s voice. “Frank?” And the hesitant clicking of high heels.

  She watched as Corso reached above the navigation station with his left hand. With a single twiddle of his fingers, he simultaneously activated the boat’s exterior spotlights and doused the cabin lights. “Frank.” The voice again.

  Corso turned Dougherty’s way. Put a finger to his lips. She nodded in the darkness. And then peeked around the corner, toward the bow. The spotlights made it possible to make out the iceberg outline of the cruiser in the next slip. Nothing else. Corso’s head poked out into the fog just as a figure appeared at the end of the slip. Cynthia Stone. Same red plastic raincoat she’d been wearing the other day.

  “How’d you find your way down here?” he asked.

  “I told you, Frank. I have my sources.”

  She had this way of squirming around while standing still. Like she had ants in her dress or something. “Aren’t you going to invite me onboard?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. Stepped up onto the dock box, threw a leg over the rail, then the other, until she had Corso pinned against the doorway with her crotch.

  Corso took his time escaping. The raincoat cracked and crinkled as he backed slowly out of the doorway. “What do you want, Cynth?”

  She slid the door closed behind her. “Do I have to want something to see my ex-fiancé?”

  “Pretty much. That’s the way it works. Yeah,” Corso said.

  “You’re getting to be such a cynic, Frank,” she teased.

  Corso shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Cynics think they know all the answers. I’m not even clear on the questions.”

  “That’s remarkably humble,” she cooed. “Especially for you, Frank.”

  “I was just buttoning things up for the night, Cynth.”

  She stepped up close to him again. “I’m leaving in the morning.”

  “Where to?”

  “D.C.,” she said. “The Hartman hearings.”

  “Lot of good dirt there.”

  She leaned against him now. “Speaking of which, Frank.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what my downtown source told me tonight?”

  “It’s late, Cynth.”

  “The story is that you and Officers Donald and Wald had quite the spat earlier today. Right here on this very dock. In front of God and everybody. The way I hear it, if Detective Wald hadn’t intervened, you and Donald might have actually come to blows.”

  “And your point is?”

  “My point is that you’ve been one step ahead of the rest of us for the past week and a half and, when I heard that story…I don’t know…suddenly I had this niggling feeling that you still know something the rest of us don’t.” She put her arms around his waist and searched his eyes. “Come on, Frank. Talk to Mama.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cynth. You know me. I’ve never been good with authority figures. Especially cops.”

  She smiled and began to pick at the belt of the raincoat. “A trade,” she wheedled.

  “One good turn deserves another.” She gave him a piranha-like smile and pulled the coat back to reveal scanty red silk underthings. “You used to like it when I surprised you like this.” She swayed from side to side, as if dancing to silent music. “Remember?”

  From the darkness of the stern, Dougherty’s hands clenched as she watched Corso’s Adam’s apple bob a couple of times before he spoke. “I remember,” he said.

  Her dancing had turned her back to Dougherty. Corso looked out over Cynthia Stone’s head. Found Dougherty’s eyes. Covered his mouth with his hand.

  “You haven’t been sleeping with that cow, have you? She’s had her shots, I hope. You haven’t caught anything dreadful?”

  “Maybe you should ask her.”

  Corso pointed toward Dougherty in the stern. Stone turned her head.

  “Mooooo,” Dougherty said from the darkness.

  Cynthia Stone’s mouth dropped so far open her fillings gleamed in the dull light. She spun back toward Corso. Pulled back her right fist and let it fly. Corso caught it in midair. She brought up a left, but Corso caught that one too. When she tried to knee him in the balls, he deflected the blow with his thigh and pinned her against the sink.

  “Don’t,” he said evenly. “Way I see it, Cynth, you don’t have a free one coming from me. You hit me and I’m going to knock you on
your ass.” He let go of her hands and stepped back.

  “You son of a bitch,” she spat out. “You’re a loser…you know that, Frank? A small-time loser. You and your freak there…you two…you deserve each other.”

  Cynthia Stone crossed the galley, jerked open the door, and stepped out on deck.

  Dougherty walked back into the salon, closing the door behind her.

  “That we deserve each other is the best she can do?” she asked.

  “She works best from a script,” Corso said.

  Cynthia Stone’s high heels pounded a frantic staccato beat on the slip. Then came a sound, like the dull ring of a cracked bell…followed by the rustling of plastic and a sudden sob. Dougherty raised her eyebrows, looked to Corso. His thin lips curled into a smile.

  “The anchor,” he said.

  Dougherty loped across the boat, pulled open the door on the opposite side of the galley just in time to see Cynthia Stone’s murky silhouette struggle back to its feet. The apparition swayed for a moment and then began crabbing down the dock. Slowly, placing one foot at a time on the concrete, holding her forehead with one hand while using the other to probe the fog for other unseen impediments. A moment before disappearing into the fog, she stopped and wobbled, as if she might lose it and fall in the lake. Dougherty felt Corso tighten against her back. “Shouldn’t we…,” she began.

  Then Stone was moving again, moaning slightly with each measured step.

  Mewing under her breath as she disappeared from view.

  “Nah,” they said in unison and laughed out loud.

  They stood close in the doorway, listening to the scrape of her shoes.

  “If she’d hit you, you were going to pop her one, weren’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” he said without a hint of reservation.

  “Some folks wouldn’t think much of that.”

  “Some folks don’t know Cynthia Stone.”

  “She was really something in those red undies.”

  “If you don’t think so, just ask her.”

  “You think you’d have been so holy if I wasn’t here?” she asked.

  He chuckled. “I’m a slow learner,” he said. “But not that slow.”

  “Hmmm.”

  They stood in the narrow doorway until they heard the metallic clank of the gate. Dougherty slid the door closed. Corso’s breath tickled the back of her ear. She turned and put her palm on his chest. She watched his eyes fall down the slope of her neck and stop at the top of her breasts. He brought his eyes up. Put his hand on top of hers. She took a breath. Sharp, quick. Tried to pull her hand away, but he held on. She felt the movement of her flesh beneath the dress. How long had it been?

  “Don’t screw with me, Corso.”

  A slow smile inched its way across his face, sad and lonely. He reached up and touched her hair. “I don’t screw with anybody,” he said.

  She searched her mind for a sentence. Something with thorns. About how just because Stone had gotten his dander up didn’t mean she was going to step into the breach. She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t get past Corso’s eyes or the way his hand felt against her hair. She wanted to move away but instead moved closer. Wanted to hide, without relinquishing his gaze.

  “Corso…it’s been…” She felt her lips moving closer to his. His hands moved around the back of her neck and pulled. “Corso…” Her voice was lost in his mouth. In the crush of lips and teeth, she nearly forgot herself. Pulled away. “If you want me to stop the amateur psychoanalysis, all you have to do is ask,” she said. Then his mouth was on hers again. She felt his hands run down the curve of her breasts, felt his fingers at her waist. She tried to call out. To tell him to wait. But her voice faded to a whisper. He looked into her eyes and wrapped his fingers around the top button of her dress. One button. Two buttons.

  She gulped a bucket of air. “The lights,” she said. Corso released her. Reached up. Snapped them into total darkness. In the black, she searched for his lips and pressed herself against him. Their hips met, folded into one another. She felt her body move in the slow give and take of passion. Corso grabbed her hips and backed her against the wall.

  Without warning, her knees buckled and she began to slide down the wall. He seemed to have too many hands. He moved with her, rolling the dress from her shoulders as they slid to the floor. She felt her arms pulling free of the fabric, felt his hands reading the tattoos like Braille. Felt the pads of his fingers pause over the occasional welts, trying to follow the design. She groaned.

  She raised her hips; the dress disappeared and suddenly they were on the floor, with his lips tracing the etchings on her flesh, moving across the arch of her right breast. Somewhere in the gloom a car alarm began to bray. She felt his breath on her belly and his hand along the inside of her thigh. Her pelvis reached up to meet his touch, pressing her warmth against the soft pad of his hand.

  She pushed her hand into Corso’s crotch, worked her fingers through the button fly of his jeans. His breath came faster. Louder. He moved against her hand.

  She thought she might have called his name. She couldn’t be sure. Next thing she knew she was unbuckling his belt, raising her mouth again to his, aware of nothing but the tangy burn between her legs and the continuous shiver shooting past her navel.

  Stronger, faster, louder than the shock of memory. She squeezed her eyes shut, almost pushed him off. And then, he slipped between her thoughts. Inside her, and suddenly she thought of nothing but the slow swing of his rhythm. Felt nothing but the moment’s pulse and the skin of a man dancing close to hers.

  Chapter 33

  Tuesday, September 25

  10:32 A.M. Day 6 + 3

  She put on the big-time pissy face when he say he doan wanna go to no damn whistle-blower ceremony. “What you mean, you doan wanna go?” Like she got a earwax problem or something. Start puttin’ the voice and the brow on him at the same time. “You goin’, Robert. You just get that in your mind right now. You goin’. And you getting up there and acceptin’ that award all nice and polite like. You hear me, boy?”

  He doan say nothin’. Doan help. She keeps on wid the voice.

  “For once in your life you do the right thing. Do somethin’ make somebody proud of you and you think you ain’t going.” She wave a finger all up in his face. He feel like breaking the goddamn thing off, chewing it up, and swallowing it.

  “You goin’,” she say. Like he didn’t hear it the first fifteen times she say it.

  She told every damn neighbor on the block. “My Bobby getting an award from the mayor himself. Gonna be on TV and all. Two thousand dollars. In the papers. Hepped ’em catch that Trashman guy. Gonna get him a whistle-blower award. Right down at the courthouse. Wednesday morning at ten. Havin’ them a big ceremony just for him.”

  Called Grandma down in Riverside too. Told her the same damn shit. Tell her how that fat Korean, King, Kin, Kim, whatever the hell it is, gonna give her the morning off so’s she can go. Said he gonna pay her for the time too, ’cause of having a hero in the family. She promised she’d take pictures and send them on down south to Grandma soon as she got ’em developed.

  Shoulda never told Goth Girl and the tall dude nothin’. Assholes sent all them damn cops over here wantin’ to know every motherfuckin’ thing he saw that night. Askin’ the same shit over and over like a bunch of fuckin’ retards can’t remember what he told ’em five minutes ago. Makin’ him sign a paper full of his own words. Shit.

  And now she out shoppin’ for clothes. So’s he’ll look like a gentleman, she say. He say he ain’t going. She say, “Fine, I’ll buy ’em widout your ass.” Shit. Shoulda gone with her. Might maybe could have talked her into some of that Tommy Hilfiger stuff like the downtown brothers always sporting. Shit may be lame, but it at least got some ghetto to it.

  Screw that whistle-blowing, stoolie-of-the-year, rat-out-your-damn-friends award. Who needs that goddamn thing anyway. Whistle-blower my ass.

  Chapter 34

  Tuesda
y, September 25

  11:11 A.M. Day 6 + 3

  A husband and a daughter…both dead and gone. Alice Doyle wasn’t planning on losing anything else. Herds of furniture crammed the rooms. Leaving only narrow, plastic-covered trails to navigate as one moved from place to place. In the living room, the furniture and lampshades had likewise been sealed in plastic like leftover stew.

  While she’d busied herself in the kitchen, Corso had toured the room. A million knickknacks and trinkets. Half a dozen photos of Kelly. None of which Corso had seen before. Several of which showed her in a different light than the “Little Miss Vivacious” shot the papers had all been using…unsure of herself. Maybe even a bit melancholy.

  Two pictures of her late husband, Rodney. One as a young police officer in his dress blues. Another as a middle-aged man in a cardigan, holding a pitchfork, scowling into the lens. The man had changed but the chin remained the same. “Disappointed” was the word that came to mind, as if here was a person who felt slighted because time and circumstance had, for reasons unknown, conspired to grant him less than his allotted share.

  His badge lay on the shelf next to the pictures on the wall. Corso had reached to pick it up, but it was stuck to the surface. He’d reached for the glass cat on the shelf above. Same deal. He’d crossed the room and tried elsewhere. Everything was glued to the shelves. Yeah. Alice Doyle was keeping what she had left.

  Corso sat back on the couch. He brought the cup to his lips and sipped. Tea. Didn’t taste like much of anything. Like the pipes were rusty, maybe.

  “Roddy wasn’t happy,” she was saying. “Not for a long, long time.”

  They were on their second pot of tea. He hadn’t had to ask a question in half an hour. Apparently, Alice Doyle didn’t get many visitors.

  Corso inhaled just enough tea to wet his teeth. “Not since the war,” she went on. “Never had a happy day in his life since he came back from that godforsaken place.”