Vultures at Twilight

by Charles Atkins

  ‘A tooth?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I should know better than to eat caramel; it’s a cap.’ She put her hand to the side of her face, ‘and now I’ve got a little nub in there that in any second will start throbbing.’

  ‘We need to get you to a dentist.’

  ‘On a Sunday, good luck. I’ll take a couple aspirin and see someone tomorrow.’ She examined the porcelain cap in the palm of her hand. ‘At least it seems intact. Maybe they can just glue it back. Ow!’ She winced. ‘There it goes.’ And she pressed her ice-water glass to the side of her mouth.

  SIXTEEN

  It was clear that Ada was in terrible pain, so halfway to Pilgrim’s Progress I made a U-turn and headed back to town. I felt guilty knocking on Calvin Williams’ door without at least calling. That, and for the past few years I’d been going to the Happy Tooth Center which had an office in Pilgrim’s Progress.

  The graying dentist, who was six years my junior, came to the door dressed in jeans and a flannel work shirt, his hands covered with dark smudges. ‘Lillian Campbell, you’re a sight for sore eyes. You look great.’

  ‘Thanks Calvin,’ I said, not wanting to divulge that I’d changed dentists.

  He looked at Ada, who was holding her hand to her right cheek. ‘Not a social visit, I see,’ he said, and his smile faltered.

  ‘No, she pulled off a cap.’

  ‘Taffy?’ he asked, leading us down the walkway of his Main Street colonial, which had been in his family for many generations, toward the addition that held his dental offices.

  Ada lisped, ‘Caramel.’

  ‘Terrible stuff,’ he commented, and turned back. He gave me an odd look, and shook his head slightly. ‘It’s the strangest thing Lil, I look at you and I can still see the fourteen-year-old girl who used to take care of me. Let me grab my keys, and I’ll be right with you.’

  ‘Nice man,’ Ada commented.

  ‘Very,’ I agreed. ‘I used to babysit for him.’

  ‘I think he’s got a crush on you,’ she commented.

  ‘Unlikely,’ I said, wondering at her comment, and praying she didn’t know just how wrong that statement was. It wasn’t Calvin, who’d been like a little brother to me, who had the crush; it was me. And everything about that was wrong.

  He reappeared wiping his hands with a blue-checked dishtowel. ‘Let’s take a look.’

  We trailed behind as he unlocked and let us in. Things looked much the way I remembered, the orange and red chairs in the waiting room, the piles of magazines and the chest of toys for children. But something was different, and at first I couldn’t place it.

  ‘Times sure change,’ he commented wistfully as he led us to the treatment rooms.

  ‘How so?’ I asked.

  ‘I rarely come back here anymore.’

  And that’s when I remembered, and felt even guiltier about our surprise visit. ‘You closed your practice?’ I could have kicked myself; I’d forgotten the mailers that he’d sent following the death of his mother. ‘I must be getting Alzheimer’s. I totally blanked out that you closed the practice.’ The moment I said that, I could have shot myself, remembering that his mother had Alzheimer’s, and how he’d taken care of her for many years.

  ‘No harm, and it’s not like I’m retired; too young and too poor for that. I do a concierge business to a number of the local nursing homes and to Nillewaug Village. It’s just me and a hygienist making the rounds. The overhead is minimal and I don’t have to deal with the billing and the insurance; it’s so much easier.’ He turned on the gooseneck lamp and shone it inside Ada’s mouth. He flicked down his magnifying glasses. ‘Hmm, the stub looks OK. Are you in much pain?’ he asked, stuffing her cheek with cotton.

  ‘A little,’ she mumbled. ‘A lot if I touch it.’

  ‘Then don’t touch it,’ he joked. ‘That’s the nerve. We don’t have to drill, just epoxy it back.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  ‘So how’s life in Pilgrim’s Progress?’ he asked, while mixing adhesive.

  ‘Different,’ I said.

  ‘I sometimes think about going there myself in a few years, but the thought of moving completely overwhelms me.’

  ‘Your family’s been in this house a long time,’ I added.

  ‘Eleven generations, and I’m the last.’

  ‘No kids?’ Ada mumbled.

  ‘Nope, never went that route. When I go, the historical society can have the house; if they want it. Bite down,’ he instructed, ‘and hold for sixty seconds.’

  I had such déjà vu, sitting next to him. Like all those times I’d fill in for Bradley’s nurse and assisted with patients. Even the mention of billing and insurance, the paperwork nightmare that drove Bradley to close his practice. How many times did I have to fight with some faceless reviewer to get approval for a needed procedure or medication for one of his patients? Often spending whole afternoons faxing and phoning to finally be told, ‘No, we don’t cover that.’ Or else them insisting Bradley talk to their physician reviewer to plead his patient’s case for a critical, but expensive, medication. Each time they’d said ‘no’ I could see his rage, his frustration.

  ‘Open.’ He placed a small piece of gauze between her upper and lower teeth. ‘Now rub gently back and forth. How does that feel?’

  ‘Like it’s in place.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough Doctor Williams,’ Ada gushed.

  ‘Don’t mention it, and the name is Calvin.’

  ‘I thought I was going to be stuck with a throbbing tooth and I can’t stand painkillers,’ she added, reaching for her purse.

  He held out his hand and shook his head. ‘This one’s on the house.’

  ‘I have to pay you,’ Ada argued.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Lil and I go way back.’ He would have said more, but a phone rang in the outer office. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  Ada looked at me. ‘What a lovely man. And didn’t they stop making that particular model? We should invite him to dinner.’

  I started tearing up, and couldn’t quite figure out why.

  ‘What is it, Lil?’ Ada asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. No, that’s not true.’ I looked around at Calvin’s treatment room. It was clear that it had fallen behind the times, but something about it was familiar and wonderful, like Bradley’s examination room. ‘It’s all going, everything that I took for granted is all slipping away.’ But there was more, and I was too frightened to give voice. Like yes, I should invite Calvin to dinner, but why would she suggest that, and why would she think he’s interested in me? That was not the relationship I wanted.

  ‘Things change,’ she remarked. ‘They have to.’

  Calvin reappeared in the doorway. ‘The old town just ain’t what it used to be,’ he commented wryly.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘That Simpson boy has gotten to be a real pain.’

  ‘Kevin?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s after me to dig out some ancient dental records.’

  ‘On whom?’ Ada asked.

  ‘Philip Conroy.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I thought they only did that if they didn’t know the identity.’

  ‘I guess the body was in pretty bad shape and they want something additional,’ he replied. ‘All I know is that it’s going to take forever. My last assistant was alphabetically handicapped. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover it until after the damage was done.’

  ‘Maybe Lil could help you straighten them out; she certainly knows her way around a doctor’s office,’ Ada offered.

  ‘Could you?’ he asked, meeting my gaze.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, not knowing what else to say, and wishing that Ada hadn’t made the offer.

  ‘You know, I might take you up on that.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Mattie Perez, wearing purple nitrile gloves stared at the neatly bagged and tagged evidence spread across Hank Morgan’s desk. Kevin Simpson looked on from the door, being told by Mattie – not
for the first time – to touch nothing. Even so, she’d made him put on gloves.

  She softened her gaze and let her mind roam. Her conversation yesterday with the two local women, Lil and Ada, had sparked new possibilities and new concerns.

  ‘It’s a real mystery,’ Kevin offered. ‘Hank says that’s rare, that most of the time it’s pretty obvious who killed who.’

  Please shut up, she thought, wishing she were alone. But she had enough bad cases under her belt to know that it’s always best to examine evidence with at least two people in the room. That way if anyone alleges that it’s been tampered with you can verify the chain of custody was never compromised. And this was one case where nothing could go wrong. She pictured her boss, Sergeant Ted MacDonald, pot bellied, arrogant and clear on his views about women detectives; he didn’t like them. And he would love an excuse – like a high-profile case gone south – to put her in her place.

  ‘What am I missing?’ she muttered. ‘These murders are deliberate, planned, careful.’ But just when she thought the road was clear, some new twist emerged. The jewelry was a case in point; where was the rest of it?

  ‘Hank said Carl had been “gutted like a fish”,’ Kevin said enthusiastically.

  ‘True,’ Mattie said, never taking her eyes off the table of evidence, and saying a silent prayer that the swarms of journalists and news crews now flocking to Grenville would not get wind of the gruesome details of McElroy’s murder. Like pieces in a puzzle, bullets removed from victims, McElroy’s ledgers and customer databases, photos of the bodies and Conroy’s finger, autopsy reports, dental reports, recovered jewelry. ‘What am I missing?’ Her gaze fell on the blood-smeared auction paddles that had been embedded in McElroy’s gut.

  ‘Whoever killed McElroy,’ she said, ‘wanted us to see his scams. The killer – or killers – wasn’t subtle; the falsified ledgers, Carl’s files filled with the names of local dealers and attorneys . . . There are connections here, Kevin.’ She imagined Lil and Ada might know, or at least help her make connections. ‘He was in no hurry.’

  ‘Why couldn’t it be a woman?’ Kevin asked.

  ‘Sure.’ His well-intentioned comments were making it hard to focus. Mattie, you need him, hold your tongue. ‘But over ninety percent of murders are committed by men. It’s “he”, until proven otherwise. According to Arvin’s autopsy, cause of death was the gunshot wound, all of this other stuff . . . Somebody is making a point.’ Listen Mattie, the killer is trying to talk to you, what’s he saying? She examined the three gruesome wooden auction paddles that had been tipped with razor blades; the killer had used them like box cutters to flay the auctioneer. It was creative, and horrifying, and told her a number of important things. People in general have an aversion to cutting human flesh, clearly the killer did not, and beyond that had some understanding of human anatomy. The last a bit of insight from the ME who’d commented on how some of the cuts had separated layers of muscle from connective tissue; this was no random hack job.

  When she’d compared the numbers on the paddles with last night’s bidder list, they had belonged to Pete Jeffries and Salvatore Rinaldo. ‘Murder by number,’ she muttered, uneasy with the killer’s flourishes; too big, too careless. It made her think of past cases, like Malcolm Blade, a serial sex killer who took out crack addicts in the Frog’s Hollow section of Hartford. He, too, had left his calling card, in his case elaborate burn marks on the bodies. But what made her uneasy about the connection was Malcolm’s desire to be caught, and to be mowed down in a shooting match with the cops. Perps who didn’t want to get caught didn’t leave these many clues. While she never associated good mental health with murderers, there was something frightfully unbalanced and reckless in these killings.

  ‘Crap,’ she exclaimed, her frustration mounting, and with it a sick feeling of being led by the nose. ‘The third paddle – number one hundred and eighteen – hadn’t been issued last night.’ She looked at Kevin. ‘I went back through the records; that one always goes to Rudy Caputo.’ He was the dealer who hadn’t returned Ada’s calls. ‘How come he gets the same number every week, no one else does?’

  ‘No clue,’ Kevin said, edging closer to the table.

  ‘Three dead dealers, all high-end, high-volume traders. Is someone bumping off the competition? There seem to be enough replacements around. So unless someone is planning a bloodbath through Grenville’s hundreds of dealers, it’s got to be something else.’

  ‘Like what?’ Kevin asked.

  ‘The thing I can’t ignore,’ she said, thinking of the conversation with Lil and Ada, ‘is that the three of them, McElroy, Potts and Conroy, were guilty of a variety of scams, or at the very least could be accused of having taken advantage of people who didn’t know what their things were worth. What if they’d cheated the wrong person?’

  ‘So payback.’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s something more. I can’t figure it out and it’s driving me up a fucking wall. Like these connections between Pilgrim’s Progress, Nillewaug Village and the antique shops. I keep picturing all of these old people being sucked dry of their possessions and their nest eggs by the dealers, lawyers and real estate agents.’ She thought of the mostly silver-haired patrons, mostly women, who had filled the dining room of The Greenery. They were, she knew, the lucky ones. Not like her diabetic mother in a Bridgeport nursing home that smelled of piss. She was dying in stages, losing toes, her eyesight, and finally her mind. It was a modern nightmare, the decision to place her mom was the hardest she’d ever made. But even with a visiting nurse coming twice a day she couldn’t manage the constant care, the gaping bedsores that never healed, her mother at the point where she could no longer remember how to handle a fork, or go to the bathroom.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How could I have missed this?’ A moment’s clarity.

  ‘What are you thinking? What do you see?’ Kevin asked excitedly.

  She stared at the paddles and then at McElroy’s ledgers. ‘Each of these retirees has a cash value; each of them worth hundreds of thousands maybe millions. Way too much money to go unnoticed. What if . . .’ She thought back to the conversation with Ada and Lil. There’s a rhythm to all this, like water circling the drain . . . A house in Grenville, then the move to Pilgrim’s Progress and finally . . .

  Her gloved fingers flipped through the printout of Carl’s consigner database, looking at the addresses and circling names.

  ‘What you doing?’ Kevin asked.

  And for some reason, she didn’t want to say. Maybe it was because Kevin was so comfortable in his community where she felt so outside; he’d given her no cause to distrust him. Still . . . ‘Kevin let’s get this signed back into the evidence room. I have something I need to do.’

  ‘You want company?’

  ‘Thanks, but no. It’s something personal. Keep trying to track down Sal, Pete and Rudy. If you make any contact call me immediately.’

  ‘No prob.’

  ‘Thanks.’ As soon as she was alone, she pulled out her cell and made a call to her boss, Sergeant MacDonald. While there was no love lost between the two, Mattie knew that this case was blowing up fast. Keeping her tone neutral and just stating the facts, she laid out her investigation thus far. And then added, ‘The three dealers who’ve not been located, Caputo, Jeffries and Renaldo. The locals are on it, but I’ve a bad feeling.’

  MacDonald’s response: ‘If you’re talking search teams and dogs, I’ll need more than a “feeling”.’

  Not rising to the bait, Mattie briefed her boss on efforts thus far to locate the men, all three of whom lived alone.

  ‘Sketchy. Sounds like they’re just on the road, or off on a bender.’

  ‘Then why don’t they answer their cells?’ she asked, feeling the familiar frustration of trying to reason with Sergeant MacDonald.

  ‘It’s too soon.’ He was clearly annoyed, but a hint of uncertainty in his tone. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you Foster and
Daniels. If those three are still missing in twenty-four hours we’ll talk again.’ And he hung up.

  Mattie felt the familiar frustration she got when talking with MacDonald. It wasn’t just his dismissiveness and obvious dislike for her, it ran deeper; the man was out to get her. With three murders and three potential victims unaccounted for she had a very bad feeling. And while she hated to think this way, it was impossible not to. If in fact anything had happened to any of those three men, the blame would land fully on her. Realizing this, and hating the necessity for her next passive-aggressive cover-your-ass move, she rapidly typed an email back to Sergeant MacDonald, respectfully disagreeing with his decision not to proceed with a more aggressive search for the missing men. Picturing how pissed off receiving it would make him, she paused, tried to think of a good reason not to send it, and then pressed send.

  EIGHTEEN

  Less than half an hour later Mattie found herself staring into a lit display of handicrafts; knitted boas with pulled stitches, painted green-ware mugs, and a few blotchy still lifes, made by Nillewaug residents. She turned at the clicking of heels on slate. ‘Ms Preston?’ she asked, making dozens of rapid observations as the perfectly coiffed green-suited administrator approached.

  ‘How do you do?’ Delia said, hand extended, nails manicured almond-shaped and lacquered in burnt orange. ‘But please, call me Delia.’

  ‘I’m Detective Perez with the state’s Major Crime Squad.’

  ‘Yes, you mentioned you had some questions; we should go to my office.’

  ‘Good,’ Mattie said stiffly as she took in Preston’s coiffed blonde up-do, and full make up. The detective’s silence was deliberate as she contrasted her own navy suit and turtleneck – no make-up – to this administrator’s foundation-to-blush war paint. It was like a mask concealing Preston’s age, which she guessed at being anywhere between late thirties to mid forties.

  Delia Preston prattled to fill the void. ‘Most of our residents are in classes right now. We offer a broad array.’ She paused for the detective to say something. When she didn’t, she resumed the sales-pitch patter. ‘We have two full-time activities therapists, an occupational therapist and a staff of social workers. And of course –’ she turned to face the detective outside the door of her office – ‘we offer a full spectrum of nursing services.’