“Okay.”
I patted Charlie’s arm. “It’s getting late. Let’s check out the bedroom.”
I shut the garage door and we went back upstairs. The bedroom was closed off with yellow crime scene tape. I ducked under it, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. Charlie followed me.
“Move anything?,” I asked. “Touch anything?”
“Chief.”
“I mean it, Charlie.”
“So do I. This ain’t Podunk.”
I smiled. “People who actually live in Podunk must spend their whole lives pissed off. The name just means hick town full of rubes and retards. There must be some bright people there thinking, ‘Hey, Des Moines ain’t exactly Paris, either.’”
Charlie laughed nervously. It seemed disrespectful, but I knew better. In these death chambers you worked quickly and you made bad jokes. One SID tech I had known in L.A. sang Puccini arias while he worked. Death may have won but you wanted life to make a showing. That was what dignity meant to me. No puke, no despair, just shrug it off and do your job. Measure the spatter patterns. Examine the ligature marks. Check the hands for defensive injuries. Pace the scene off for droppings, for the bits and pieces the perpetrators left behind. It was Locardo’s Exchange Principle, the fundamental axiom of police work. I had studied it at the Los Angeles Police Academy; Charlie had written a paper on it at John Jay College. Events leave traces, things rub off on each other, nothing moves without leaving a trail. So I always looked and then I looked again; and again. Sometimes I found nothing, or a weird little scrap of information that didn’t fit, like the extra screw left over after assembling my son’s Christmas bicycle. Other times I got lucky.
Like tonight.
I pulled a tweezers and a plastic evidence bag out of my coat jacket pocket, kneeled down and plucked the cigarette butt from where it was lying on the carpet, half-obscured by the dust ruffle of the king-sized bed. I stood, and extended it to Charlie. You could see the thin gold ring just above the filter.
“Look familiar?”
Charlie squinted at the cigarette. “I don’t smoke, Chief. You know that.”
“But you think. That’s what I pay you for.”
The edge in my voice seemed to wake him up a little.
“Lattimers’,” he said. “It’s like the cigarette we found at the Lattimers’.”
“Exactly. Camel Lights. If the DNA matches, we’re closing in on them.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
“Thanks?”
“For not riding me about that comment I made at the Lattimers’ house. ‘What are we supposed to do with that piece of information?’ or something. Like it was nothing.”
“—I said ‘Remember it.’ And you did.”
I looked around the room, noted the packed suitcases, three Louis Vuitton bags lined up in the corner of the room
Charlie followed my gaze. “Looks like this guy was getting ready for a trip,” he said. I nodded, walked to the closet and opened it. We both stared inside. It was empty.
“What the hell—?”
I smiled. “A little trip? I’d say he was making his getaway, Detective.”
I returned to the bed. “That’s a screwdriver in his chest. It looks like one of those four-way tools they sell at the Marine Home Center front counter. Two sizes of flat head and Phillips on either end of a shaft that fits into the handle.”
“So?”
“So…for one thing this was a big strong guy because he only had one shot. It’s in there deep and the screwdriver bit would have pulled loose coming out of the chest cavity. For another thing…Lomax owed a lot of people money, Charlie. Hundreds of people worked on this house. I’ve heard them talking: everyone’s waiting for their last payment. And he’s clearing out? Someone must have known he was splitting. Someone in the trades.” I thought about Mike Henderson, eavesdropping after the party. If he had told even one person what he’d heard, the news would have spread across the island like a case of strep throat through an elementary school. “Problem is, it could have been anyone. Everybody has a screwdriver in their toolbox. And that makes everybody a suspect. We need a list—everyone who worked on this house. Masons, plumbers, electricians, drywall hangers, plasterers, floor finishers, painters, the people who install the granite countertops and the custom cabinetry, landscapers, the people from Intercity alarm, the people who put in the sound system, the decorators, the wallpaper hangers…and am I forgetting anyone?”
“The house cleaners?”
We stared at each other for a second.
“Sorry, Chief.”
“No, you’re right, Charlie. Thanks.”
It was true. I was going to have to investigate Fiona Donovan. I was going to have to grill her about her whereabouts and her alibi and her motives. Either that or let the state police do it. But I wasn’t alone. This crime and the waves of suspicion and animosity it generated were going to touch everyone on the island: all the friends and families of all the suspects and the victims and the police. The contamination would linger after everyone had moved on, like the faint tang of smoke damage in a newly painted house.
I stared down at the body, pulling a small jar of Vick’s VapoRub out of my jacket pocket. It was an essential tool for this kind of crime scene work. I unscrewed the cap, got a dollop on my finger and smoothed it under my nose. The sharp smell of menthol didn’t do much to clear my sinuses, but it cut the smell from the corpse. Charlie was watching me. I gestured toward the young detective with the jar, and he grabbed it, slathered himself with the pungent goop. “Thanks, Chief.”
“No trick, no trade.” We studied the body for another few seconds. “Notice anything unusual about the money?” I said.
“You mean besides the fact that it’s stuffed in his mouth?”
I rubbed a palm over my forehead. “Besides that, yeah.”
Charlie squinted down at Lomax. “Well, there’s a lot of it.”
“True. How about the denominations?”
“Nantucket sawbucks.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s what the rich stingy Yankees around here call hundred dollar bills, Chief. I moved some furniture for one of these old ladies once. She pays me in cash. ‘Take a Nantucket sawbuck,’ she says. Like I was overcharging her, like the job was worth ten bucks anywhere else. Everyone’s out to rip you off on Nantucket. That’s the basic idea.”
I studied the bulge of currency. “Nice way to get back at a cheapskate. There’s probably close to a grand in there. Whoever did this wanted to make a statement. Twenties would have choked him just as well. No, they hated this guy.”
“So you’re saying—we should print the bills?”
“It’s worth a try. Maybe they got careless.”
We heard the front door open.
“That’ll be Lonnie. Stay up here while I talk to him.”
I left the room and trotted downstairs. Lonnie Fraker was standing in the foyer with two burly sergeants. The crew cuts and gun belts made them look like storm troopers. Lonnie himself was bulky and imposing, with a full head of black hair. It was too black; he probably colored it, not realizing that a little gray at the temples would add a note of wisdom and experience to his persona. He moved like had once been in good shape, but not recently, and he needed a new uniform. He bulged out of this one in all the wrong places. I thought irrationally of those chubby teenage girls wearing belly shirts and showing off their flab. Lonnie’s face was wide and pointed. He didn’t look quite real; more like a cartoon, some dark authority figure inked with a few clean lines in a Frank Miller graphic novel. He nodded at me.
“Chief Kennis. Glad you could be here.”
The voice was startling. You expected a baritone rumble, but it was pitched much higher, with a Boston accent that flattened the vowels.
I nodded. “Captain.”
He gave
me a brisk salute.” I see you’ve secured the scene. May I ask what you’re doing with those red trash cans?”
“They’re for police litter.”
“The state police don’t litter.”
I met the steady gaze. “It’s just a convenience.”
“You can take them with you when you go.”
“Fine. If the scene is compromised you’ll know it wasn’t us.”
“Assuming your people actually used them.”
“If that’s an accusation, you should make it in writing.”
“If I have to, I will.”
Neither of us said a word for twenty seconds or so. It seemed like longer.
“All right,” he said, finally. “The primary crime scene units will be getting here on the first plane. I’ll need you to coordinate local police work so we don’t step on each other’s toes. For now, tape off the driveway and the front lawn. My men are taking casts of the foot prints and tire tracks down there.”
I started to tell him I’d sent an officer back to the station for our own equipment, but just let the words out as a sigh. There was no way to get ahead of Lonnie on this one. I should have had the kit with me; he did. As he would have been delighted to point out. Anyway, he was still talking. “And you’ll be doing the liaison work with the press. They’ll be all over this story like black on beans. The networks, the cable channels, all the newspapers, NPR, you name it. Make ’em happy and keep ’em out of my hair.”
“That’s not my job. I have men canvassing the area right now, talking to the neighbors, running down names and checking the—”
“We’ll handle all that.”
“Not on my case.”
“This isn’t your case, Chief. Not anymore.”
“It’s my jurisdiction.”
“Not for capital crimes. Listen, we appreciate your cooperation. You take care of the reporters and the lookie-loos, and work on the big bakeshop cookie heist. Leave murder to the professionals. That makes everybody look good.” Lonnie’s troops chuckled. The local cops were always good for a laugh.
I let out a long breath. “Lonnie, could we talk alone for a second?”
I walked to the big French doors at the other side of the room. They opened out onto the deck but there was almost a foot of untouched snow out there, luminous dark blue in the moonlight. The wind made the house shake. The storm door jittered in its frame.
“Hell of a winter,” I said.
“I’ve seen worse. When I was a kid the harbor would freeze up for weeks at a time. That was wild.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve still got that thin California blood. This is cold enough for me.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
I turned to face him. “Let me tell you something the divorce lawyer told me when my marriage broke up. Miranda and I were arguing about custody. He said, two years from now you’ll be fighting about who doesn’t want the kids. ‘I had them last weekend, you said you could take them for an extra week.’ We were both offended. He said, ‘This is your first divorce, right? Well, it’s my four hundred and tenth.’ Turned out he was right on the money.”
“So what’s the point?”
“Come on. It’s the same thing here, Lonnie. I saw it in L.A. all the time when the FBI started big-footing an investigation. We can fence and mark our territory all we want, but this is a huge case. A week from now, you’ll be wishing we had twice as many guys on the job and I’ll be begging for more help, waiting for the forensics on the evidence I turned up—”
Lonnie raised his chin a little, glanced sideways at me with his thumbs tucked into his belt. “You found some evidence?
I had to give him credit—he had picked the one significant piece of information out of all that amiable chatter, as he might pluck a shell casing from a gravel driveway.
“Just this.” I pulled the plastic evidence bag out of my pocket and handed it over. “We found a butt just like it at a robbery in ’Sconset last week. Camel Light, smoked down to the same point. I’ve been waiting for the DNA results. You guys could speed things up.”
“Oh yeah, we could. Middle of the week at the latest. Anything stolen here?”
“A desk by the front door. Maybe some other stuff, too. The daughter can help with that.”
Lonnie slipped the bag into his pocket. “Nice work. Thanks, Henry.”
“Any time. Let’s just catch these guys.”
Lonnie shook his head, gazing out at the snow. “It doesn’t seem like Nantucket, you know? Not the Nantucket where I grew up.”
I shrugged. “Welcome to the real world.”
“Easy for you to say, city boy. But if your real world keeps on coming, the big shots are gonna take off like rats in a DPW dump burn. And when that happens this place turns into a ghost town. That’s why I want to turn these fuckers into a cautionary tale. Like an episode of Cops. ‘These drunken joy-riders have learned a lesson tonight: they can run but they can’t hide.’ I like that guy on Cops. I like his attitude.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“No one gets away on Cops.”
“Yeah.”
We stood quietly contemplating a world of hapless scofflaws and relentless infallible peace officers. I broke the spell. “See you tomorrow, Lonnie. Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”
We shook hands. I told my guys to stick around and be friendly and help. Then I walked out of the warm house into the night. The cold was dense and penetrating. It soaked through your clothes like ice water. Barnaby Toll was just pulling in to the driveway, stopped short at the yellow crime scene tape. I walked over, and he rolled down his window. “Oops,” he said.
“The job’s getting done. That’s what matters.”
I opened the door, pulled the corrugated plastic equipment case from the seat and told Barnaby head back to the station. I stowed the equipment in the trunk of my Crown Vic: I was never going to get caught without it again. I climbed in behind the wheel chilled to the bone, but the heat came on fast and by the time I got back to Cliff Road the car was nice and toasty. That’s part of the trifecta that make the big Fords perfect for police work: heat, A/C and acceleration. Our turbo charged models can go from zero to sixty in eight point seven seconds—I know because I tested them myself, drag-racing Haden Krakauer at midnight on Milestone Road. Hey, there has to be some fun in this job
I drove along now, just under the speed limit, thinking about Lonnie Fraker and Cops. Maybe this case would be like one of the TV chases he liked so much, the criminals overpowered and rounded up quickly. But I felt a superstitious dread in the pit of my stomach, where ulcers start. The longer this took, the worse it was going to get. And if it dragged on long enough, there wouldn’t be anything left when it was over.
Chapter Three
Nantucket Nocturne
It all began two weeks before, on the night of December 2nd.
One more ordinary winter night on Nantucket, or so it seemed. Much later it would feel like the overture to a musical—a medley of tunes you scarcely noticed until you bought the cast album. Then you heard every theme and motif, every song played in advance. All the secrets and revelations, all the players and their plans were in the air that night, if I had known enough to listen. But of course I didn’t. Only weeks later, after the last chord was played, would I realize how eerily prophetic the events of that night had been.
It started with a fight at a bar called the Chicken Box.
Normally the chief of police wouldn’t get involved with some bar-fly altercation, but I was on the prowl, cruising the island, waiting for trouble. The town was empty at eleven o’clock. The wharf houses, standing on their pilings, marched out into the still, black water. There were only a handful of boats moored at this time of year. The tide was high. I slowed down to look at the little dory floating just beyond the sea wall. The Killen family put a Christmas tree
in it every year. The lights strung in the branches seemed brave and sad to me. Bruce Killen had started the tradition, but his family had kept it up since his death.
Fiona had been obsessing about mortality lately, thinking about Bruce and all the others who had died young, mapping every new wrinkle on her own face. She was thirty-five. “That’s middle-aged, Henry,” she had told me sternly when I had foolishly insisted that she was still young. “There aren’t many people that live past seventy.”
I had just shrugged it off, but coming back to the island on the fast boat two days ago I had spent the whole trip staring at the ship’s wake. The moving water had held a message. I realized what it was now and pulled the cruiser over in front of the Whaling Museum.
The poem came quickly:
Watching the foam
Churning white off the hull of the ferry,
Against the green dimpled water of the bay
Leaping wild, falling behind
Gone and replaced by the next.
A simple text
On the cycle of life:
You are going to die.
But on this day
For this moment, for now
You are glittering spray, flying upward
From the bow.
I’d give it to Fiona tomorrow.
I pulled back into the empty street. The radio crackled to life. Someone was starting a fight at the Chicken Box.
I hit the flashers but not the siren. It was late and I had always hated cops who abused their power that way, uselessly waking up half the town to demonstrate the importance and urgency of their mission, which was more often than not the need to buy a sandwich or go to the bathroom. The two cars I saw pulled over for me. I got to the Box in less than three minutes.
I stepped inside and absorbed the whole situation in a single flashbulb blink of perception: the two men struggling in front of the bar, the beautiful blond young woman with her shirt un-tucked, jacket half off her shoulders and an angry red welt on her neck. A crowd had formed around this tableau, isolating the players in a tight ring on the splintery wood floor. The bartender looked on, happy for a break in the monotony. Beyond the crowd, Ed Delavane was shooting pool, a schooner of beer on the polished wood lip of the table. He made a shot, ignoring the ruckus.
Nantucket Sawbuck Page 3