While Creasey was talking, I tried to watch as continuously as I could without crashing the car. I was ready to despise him after the scene at the police lot, but there was something about him that was straight and true. Like the roles Gregory Peck himself used to play.
"Mr. Creasey, I 'm sorry to drag you back to your daughter's death, but is there anyone who hated her or could have benefited in some way from her death?"
He didn't answer right away. "You really do your job, don't you, Mr. Cuddy."
"I'd be more comfortable with just 'John'. "
"And me with 'Sam,' " extending his hand.
We shook. "Is there anyone'?"
"Hard for me to say. Jennifer led her own life. A little too crazily, even for today's world. There was a fellow at college whom she jilted for the Daniels boy .... "
"Richard McCatty."
"Yes. I understand he hated both Jennifer and Daniels for it. So did George Bjorkman. Incidentally, that was why I was coming to the police station. To confront the chief for sending Bjorkman to my house. I just saw you and got diverted."
"Why did that upset you? Bjorkman, I mean."
"When Bjorkman was in college, he wanted Jennifer to go to his senior prom. She was only a high school freshman, for God sakes, so I wouldn't allow it. She wanted to go, too, not for Bjorkman but just to see what that kind of event would be like. She liked to . . . experiment, Jennifer. Well, Bjorkman kept hanging around our house, and I finally threw him out."
"Physically?"
"Yes. He's big, but . . . well, you've seen him."
"I know what you mean."
"Anyway, he resented it. Can't blame him for that, but he somehow got it into his head that I had poisoned Jennifer against him, ruined a romance that would otherwise have been perfect. Crazy, but I'm sure he's never forgotten it."
"Seems odd that he could get on the force. I mean, with you probably having enough reason and influence to keep him off."
"I don't think you understand how things work here."
"Can you explain them to me?"
"Well, I have a certain amount of influence because of Tyne's money and my position. But when you run a television station, you make a lot of enemies too. Not just the ones after the license, either. Even had a crackpot take a shot at me a few years ago. And our editorial policy hasn't always put Chief Wooten and the department here in the best light."
"Still. . ."
"You haven't met the chief yet?"
"No, just Clay, Bjorkman, and 0'Boy."
"That's part of what I mean. Paul O'Boy is a good detective, but wouldn't you think the chief himself would have warned you off, given your impression of my importance?"
"I guess I should have, but I didn't think of it at the time."
"Well, that's Wooten's way of telling me where I rank with him in an uncriticizable way. His department has to respond to me immediately, but he doesn't have to do it persona1ly."
"And that's why Bjorkman got on the force?"
"No, that's why I couldn't keep him off. Bjorkman got on the force because he's the nephew of the mayor's wife. The chief sent him to my house just to tweak me."
"Sam, did anybody beyond McCatty and Bjorkman have any reason to hurt Jennifer?"
Creasey passed his right hand over his face, massaging around his eyes. His voice sank below a conversational level. "I've just never thought about it. With all the evidence pointing to the Daniels boy killing her in some kind of rage, it never occurred to me that someone would have . . . could have set it all up."
He stopped, appearing exhausted. I said, "Will this next right take us back to the police lot?"
"Yes. Less than a mile."
We rode in silence till I pulled in next to his Mercedes. He opened my passenger door, then hesitated.
"John, I really loved my daughter, despite some of the things she did. Do you think there's any chance that the Daniels boy didn't kill her?"
"So far, all I have are some facts that don't look right in context. A couple of inconsistencies. Nothing that would persuade a jury."
"Who said anything about a jury'?"
He got out and closed the door.
SIXTEEN
-•-
I eased out of the police lot into a bottleneck of rush-hour traffic. Rather than battle it, I found a small Italian restaurant at the edge of the town center and parked in a slanted spot next to it. The decor was tacky, and there were plenty of empty tables. I decided to try it anyway. I should have chosen the traffic.
Forty-five minutes later I was back in my Fiat and heading toward Boston. I pulled into the space behind the condominium building that went along with my rented unit, and got out. A voice from a car parked in a metered space called my name softly. I looked over. It was Murphy, in an unmarked sedan.
"Waiting long, Lieutenant?" I said, walking toward him.
"Called you three times."
"I didn't get any messages?
"I didn't leave any."
I glanced toward my building. "Want to come up?"
Murphy seemed unsure of himself. Except for the time when he'd come to my office, I'd never seen him that way. I doubt anyone after his third grade teacher ever had.
"Might be better," he said.
"Beer?"
He said, "No . . . Yeah, if you're having one."
I crossed to the kitchen, motioning Murphy to my landlord's couch. He settled into the cushions, looking around.
"It's rented," I said. "Furnished."
"Didn't figure you had much left. From the fire and all."
I saved him a decision on whether to have his Molson's in a glass by taking out one of the frosted Danish mugs that my landlord had assured me were freezer and dishwasher safe. I poured the beers, the inside liner of ice floating to the top like sleet on a pond.
He thanked me for the beer and took a long draw. He set it on the glass-topped coffee table and coaxed a thick business-size envelope from his inside jacket pocket.
-
"I got the information on William's psychiatrist for you."
I took the envelope from him and opened it. There were Xeroxes of a bunch of forms, typed in. They appeared to be Marek's completed application for licensure from the Board of Registration in Medicine.
"Be best if nobody else saw those," said Murphy, taking another drink.
I set the forms on the table. They made a crackling sound as they refolded themselves. "I'll go through them 1ater."
We stared at each other for a moment. Murphy fidgeted on the couch. "You got a question, ask it," he said.
"I'm wondering why you didn't leave a message, telling me to come by your office to pick these up."
"Not supposed to have the forms in the first place. Wouldn't look too good for your answering service to know about them."
"You could have left a blind message. Just to call you or stop by headquarters?
"Could have."
"Instead, you cool your heels in front of my place for, what, an hour?"
"Closer to two."
"Anything you want to tell me?"
"About what?"
"About why you're giving so much personal attention to a case you asked me to look into as a favor to an old girlfriend?"
Murphy just watched me.
"For her son, whom you saw, if I remember correctly, once about ten years ago in a store?"
Murphy picked up his beer, took a small sip, looked over the rim at me, and took a three-gulp slug.
"You were married once, right?" he said.
"That's right."
"You always stay straight with her?"
"Yes."
"You never fooled around?"
"No."
Murphy gave me a skeptical look.
"My wife and I were close. Always. She died before . . ."
"Before what?"
"I don't know. Before I thought about it, I guess. She was just the only one."
Murphy blinked. "The only one? Like ever, you mean?"
"That's right."
Murphy shook his head. "You really are one of a kind, Cuddy." He said it without sarcasm.
"You and Willa Daniels, huh?"
"Yeah. Gayle and me were married maybe three years. We wanted kids, but it wasn't happening, so we went for one of those tests. We went twice, actually. Doctor said it was Gayle. She just couldn't conceive. We tried all kinds of—"
He stopped. I began, "You don't have to—" but he cut me off.
"Look, you wanted to hear it, right?"
"Yes."
"You kept asking about it, right?"
"Right."
"Okay. So let me tell it. " He took a breath and continued. "We tried a lot of things. Taking temperatures, scheduling making love. All for a kid. But there was something about the scheduling, the arranging of it, that took away the enjoyment of it. The feeling of it, between her and me. Especially when it wasn't working, when she I still couldn't conceive. So . . ."
Murphy finished his beer.
"Want another one?"
He declined. "So I met Willa. She was working in an insurance agency. Somebody at the agent's home office thought maybe he was padding claims for one of his insureds, who seemed to have a lot of costly burglaries. I was still in uniform then, but they put me in plainclothes for a morning and lent me to Burglary to interview the guy's black secretary. That's how it was done in those days."
"She married then?"
"Yeah, but her husband was already a shit. Dog track, losing the rent money and spending what he won on booze and white hookers. Willa didn't believe in divorce."
"Divorce'? You were that serious about her?"
Murphy looked puzzled, then spoke quickly. "No, no. I didn't mean divorce so she could marry me. With Gayle and me, it was just . . . well, it was like a time when it wasn't working right after it had been great for three years. I just couldn't see past the period we were going through. It seemed like it was a time that was going to go on forever."
"You started seeing Willa then?"
"I suppose so." He shrugged. "At first, we just had lunch. I'd make up an excuse, that I had to see a guy about this case or that one. Willa would meet me at a restaurant. She was afraid her boss—who turned out to be straight on the claims, by the way; we didn't bust him—that her boss would suspect something if I came by to see her at work. Willa's husband was a little free with his hands, and one lunch she had a bruise under her eye. I had a talk with the shit after he got off what little work he did one day. He left her alone after that. Completely alone."
Murphy diddled with his mug. "I'll take that other beer, if it's still okay?"
I went to the fridge and popped another bottle for him. I'd barely touched mine. I came back in and handed him the beer.
"Thanks." He poured half of the beer, and drank half of what he'd poured.
"Anyway," he said, "Willa was a damned attractive woman then, and her husband was a bastard, and I was feeling, I dunno, like I wanted to fall in love again, I guess. And so we went at it."
"Long time?"
"Two, two and a half months. More like therapy than romance, actually. We had to schedule things, like Gayle and me, only . . . only it was different. We were really helping each other, I think. To grow up."
"What caused it to end?"
"Willa. Willa getting pregnant, I mean. She and I were always real careful. As careful as you could be back then. But one night her husband came home drunk, and some pross had shorted him, and, well, he . . . took it out on Willa, without any precautions. I don't know whether it was him or me. But Willa wouldn't have an abortion, I wouldn't hear of it. And her being pregnant changed the other thing we had." Murphy sipped some more beer.
"So we stopped seeing each other, pretty much stopped even talking with each other. Then William came along, and her husband got even shittier, and eventually left. I couldn't help her much; her parents pretty much took her in. Then, with everything else in life, I sort of lost track of her and William."
I drank some of my beer. It was getting warm, but I wanted something to do.
Murphy stopped, poured off the test of his second into the mug. "So now you know."
"Dr. Lopez, William's counselor at U Mass, and Willa talked about William's getting a free ride at Goreham. Were you helping out there?"
"A little. William wanted to live in the dormitory, like a real college kid, not a day-hopper. Willa was a little short, so I . . . We can borrow some against our pension."
"Pretty good alternative investment."
"Oh, yeah," said Murphy, tossing off the last of his beer. "Thanks to me, William got to meet the girl they say he killed. Terrific investment."
"I'm not so sure he killed her."
"You got proof?"
I summarized for him the discrepancies I'd spotted so far. .
Murphy mulled them, then said, "If I weren't emotionally involved in all this, I'd say you haven't got squat."
"I'd like to keep looking."
"I spoke to Willa about William not helping you. She said she talked to him and he agreed to see you again."
"I'll go tomorrow."
Murphy got up, walked to the door.
"Lieutenant?"
"Yeah?"
"Am I the first person you've talked with about you and Willa?"
Murphy half turned, then threw back the dead bolt to leave. "You know your problem, Cuddy? You always ask one question too many."
It was as good an answer as any.
I called Willa Daniels and brought her up-to-date on the investigation, with the exception of the confessional with Murphy. She thanked me warmly for the small optimism I let her feel.
Next I dialed Information and got the number of the only Wald family in Marion. The operator even asked me if I didn't mean Wall or Walsh. I thanked her and tried the number. A woman answered on the second ring. "Hello'?"
"Mrs. Wald?"
"Yes."
"D0 you have a daughter named Deborah Wald?"
"Yes. Who is this, please'? Is Debbie all right?"
"My name is John Cuddy, Mrs. Wald. I'm a detective looking into the murder of Debbie's roommate, Jennifer Creasey."
Mrs. Wald's voice dropped. "I thought that was all over with."
"I'm afraid not."
"Well, Debbie isn't here right now. She's out with friends." A different tone crept into her voice. "I don't think she'll be of much help to the police anyway."
Sometimes you get further by not correcting a misimpression. "Even so, Mrs. Wald, I'd like to talk with her."
She paused. "Well, Debbie works breakfast and lunch at the country club restaurant. She'll be home tomorrow after two-thirty or so."
"That should be fine. Can you give me some directions?"
Mrs. Wald dictated a long series of turns, rotaries, and ill-marked roads. She said it was about an hour and a half from Boston.
"Given the distance, Mrs. Wald, are you pretty sure that Debbie will be home then?"
"Oh, yes. She has to be. They're . . ." Her voice cracked. "They're taking the piano away tomorrow." She started to cry and hung up.
SEVENTEEN
-•-
Having gone to bed unnaturally early, I woke up unnaturally early the next morning. By 6:00 A.M., I was ready to run. I crossed Beacon Street and over the footbridge, only two or three cars passing on the usually clogged Storrow Drive beneath me. I turned left and moved upriver.
The banks of the Charles are eerie at dawn. The ghost of a full moon, looking embarrassed to be still visible, stares down upon homeless men and women. They sleep on hard slatted benches, wrapped cocoon—like in stained blankets against the damp air. Four or five push shopping carts full of cans and bottles, rummaging through trash barrels and abandoned paper bags to collect enough returnables for the day's food or drink. Interspersed are the severely mentally disturbed, also without shelter following the wholesale release of the supposedly hamiless ones from the Commonwealth's institutions. They meander slowly and
mutter, or march like storm troopers and shout, their strings of obscenities provoked by inner, private devils. Toss in fifteen or twenty fitness-conscious, fast-lane urbanites who sweat and swerve along the macadam running paths, wearing designer jogging outfits and "Have a nice day" smiles for each other. Hieronymus Bosch was born five hundred years too soon.
I got back to my place and cleaned up. Making a ham sandwich for breakfast, I settled down with the papers on Marek that Murphy had given me the previous evening.
I riffled through the forms, then organized them into what appeared to be a rational order. The first was an Application for Endorsement Registration. It had been filed only two years and eight months before, which surprised me a little. Marek was a lot more recently admitted to practice in Massachusetts than I would have guessed. Maybe his furniture really was rented.
The application requested, and Marek had provided, premedical, medical, and postmedical schooling, together with hospital appointments. He had gone to school in California, with subsequent hospital positions in New York City, Philadelphia, and finally Chicago, before coming to Massachusetts. Marek apparently had never been certified by any specialty board. Next on the application was a list of fourteen questions, asking roughly the medical equivalent of "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?" They included whether his license had ever been revoked, whether he had ever failed a state exam, and whether he had ever been censured or dismissed by a hospital. Marek naturally had answered each of them "No."
The next page of the application contained a completed verification of medical instruction and graduation from the dean of Marek's medical school, along with a photograph of a younger, thinner-faced Marek. Apparently our climate was agreeing with him. There followed a certificate from a Dr. Jerome Gemelman, at the hospital in Chicago, that Marek was of good moral and professional character. Finally, there was an affidavit of the secretary of the Illinois medical association that Marek was duly licensed there, with attached Xeroxes of certificates from Pennsylvania and New York.
The second document was an application for a FLEX endorsement, which seemed to deal with some kind of standardized test. The form called for, and received, the same information in the same order as the initial application for registration.
So Like Sleep - Jeremiah Healy Page 9