“Oh yeah—Macy and Thayer, sure. And I know for a fact that Lattimer had a creepy geriatric crush on her.”
“That’s why you planted the rifle.”
“I seized the opportunity. I’m an opportunist. Fraker’s version makes sense on that level—Daisy driving everyone crazy. You ever meet her?”
“Just once.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“Because you’re a mammal, Chief. I’d say because you’re straight, but fags fall in love with her too. Dogs follow her around. Her mom bought a cat for herself when Daisy was a kid. It drove Mom crazy because it would only sleep on Daisy’s bed. They tried locking the cat out of Daisy’s room. Nice try. It dug a tunnel under the door. Shredded the floorboards. What can I say? She has animal magnetism. I mean that literally, Chief. Put the palm of your hand an inch from her bare shoulder and try not to touch her. Just try it. I’d like to see that one.”
“So let me guess,” I said, pulling him back from his swoon. “You used Daisy to get them involved with this dirty movie scheme—”
“They jumped in, Chief. That’s like you telling me I used the pastry cart from the Wauwinet to break up the Weight Watchers club. Nice work if you can get it. They’ve still got the jam and the crumbs all over their faces. Pigs.”
“You supplied the drugs, got the girls hooked, Chick Crosby handled the technical side.”
“And Daisy recruited from her office at school.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would she do that? Why would any woman do that? Those girls trusted her.”
He shrugged. “People are fucked up. What can I say?”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Then ask her.”
“Where is she?”
“You’re the detective. You figure it out.”
“Doug, if you know where she is and you withhold that information, it’s going to add obstruction of justice to the counts against you. That means another five years in jail.”
“That’s like saying, they’re going to drill another tooth while you’re at the dentist’s office. I’m in the chair anyway. My jaw’s numb and my calendar’s clear, so I say, bring it.”
This was getting me nowhere. And we had other things to talk about.
“We found Lattimer’s rifle in the guest cottage,” I said.
“We?”
“I found it.”
“You got your nose twitching after you found the knife.”
“Something like that.” I remembered what Mike Henderson had told me once: a visible mistake at eye-level, like paint on a doorknob or a big miss on a window casing, made the customer inspect the whole job more critically.
“You don’t want them to start looking,” he said. “Because once they start looking they’re going to find more. And when that critical eye starts squinting, they’ll never be happy. You don’t want to knock down that first domino.”
Blount had done that with his hunting knife and he knew it. And he knew what it meant. He sighed. “So now you want to know about Todd Macy and the old man.”
“I have a pretty good idea, Doug. Todd wanted to get out of your little movie studio, maybe rat you all out for immunity. You can only drink so much bad water before you get sick.”
Blunt grinned. “He was thirsty.”
“So he makes noises about getting away and then he has a hunting accident.”
“Tough luck.”
“You took the shell casings, but you left the actual bullet in the ground. That was your mistake. You switched your rifle for Lattimer’s. I was supposed to find it, and when the ballistics report came back I was supposed to figure out the old man was in love with Daisy and lost control when he found out about her little thing with Macy. He was a trained killer. Any doubts about that got burned off in Vietnam. Plus, he wrote a letter that basically makes your case for you. He threw it away but we found it in his trash. So it would have been the perfect plan, except you never managed to switch the rifles back. The ballistics are going to match up with the gun in your cottage.”
“It’s like Vince Lombardi liked to say—we didn’t lose the game, we just ran out of time.”
“But he did lose. And so did you.”
“And the police chief wonders why I’m confessing. Hey, I was screwed when you found the knife, anyway. They can’t put me away for two life sentences. I did what I did. Maybe I want to take the credit. That’s the problem with setting someone up. No one ever knows about it. Like putting a word into the language—like ‘nonogamy.’ That’s your dad’s word, right? From The Virgins of West Fourth Street. Great movie. The horny married dude who bangs his wife’s sister? He’s the one who came up with it, right? Your dad was funny as hell. And he was right. We needed a word for that. For…” He closed his eyes, setting the words in place, getting them right: “Being sexually faithful to a woman who’s not fucking you.” He laughed “Perfect. And yet—twenty years later, no one thinks of David Kennis! Or even the movie. They just use the word. Nonogamy. Your dad’s anonymous. See? That’s the price you pay.”
I found the analogy insulting. Bizarrely accurate but insulting. What the hell—my dad would have been amused. And the ability to construct meaningful analogies was a sign of high intelligence, just as much as the one he chose was a sign of severe social pathology. Smart and crazy. I preferred Blount as a dumb bully. But that was his mask. The cunning predator in front of me was the real foe I had to deal with.
“So, Macy wanted out. But I don’t believe Andy Thayer was involved with your little games.”
“He was involved with Daisy.”
“Like everyone else.”
“No, no, no. Lattimer had a crush on her, yeah. I used that. And Macy was in love, for sure. But he was nothing to her. Something bad she stepped in. She scraped him off the bottom of her shoe and moved on. I fucked her from time to time but that was it. Thayer was the real deal. He got her to quit—the movie racket, the drugs, everything. He was going to the cops. We burned his house to scare him off, but it didn’t work. So boom. Dead men tell no tales. Unless you go to one of those mediums—John Edward, guys like that. Then you find out why dead men tell no tales. They’re fucking boring. What’s new, dead guy? Nothing, you fucking moron. I’m dead.”
“You killed him and you joke about it.”
“Yeah, Chief. Nothing’s sacred.”
“Two men are dead. A third was looking at spending the last years of his life in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“You’re forgetting the kid.”
Of course. “Oscar Graham figured everything out. He knew what you did to Jill.”
“So I did the same thing to him. It kept those other kids in line.”
“And now you get to take the credit.”
“Along with everything else.”
I felt a quick rush of fear. We should have handcuffed Blount. What did he have to lose by killing me right here and now? This was sloppy police work. I couldn’t leave. I didn’t want to put my back to him. Maybe I was getting paranoid.
Best to keep him talking. “You must be a very persuasive guy, Doug. Toby Keller, right. You got him to fake the invoices for your truck. He’s in a lot of trouble now.”
“Well, that’s what you get for fixing cars while you’re high on oxycodone. He was one of my best customers, Chief. But I always told him—save it for after work.”
“He thought you were his pal.”
“Big mistake.”
“He’s not too bright. But you are. You’re a pretty smart guy, Doug.”
“Sure. Like with Macy—leaving that iPod mini at the scene, loaded with Lattimer’s music. That was a shrewd move.”
“But it wasn’t his music. African pop? Johnny Clegg and Savuka? M
ahotella Queens?”
“You found the records in his library.”
“Because you planted them there!”
He grinned. “Now it can be told.”
“That poor old guy. Just because he let some young girl flirt with him.”
“That’s the price of nonogamy, Chief.”
“At his age.”
“At any age. Just wait.”
Time to move on. I still had problems with his story. “You’re quite the tough guy.”
“So?”
“Does anything scare you, Doug?”
“I don’t think about it.”
“Anyone?”
“Like who?”
“Like Liam Phelan.”
He just stared at me.
“You called 911. Why bring the cops to that house at that moment unless you were afraid for your life?”
“I panicked.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why?”
“How did you even know he was coming? You can’t see the road from the cottage.”
“I heard his car.”
“Over the air conditioning?”
“I have excellent hearing. Doctors call it 20-20 audition.”
“There was a call on your phone from an anonymous number less than a minute before you called the cops. I think you were following orders. You were set up to go down for these killings, and you accepted that. You’ve been in jail before. From what I can tell, you carved out quite the little nice life for yourself there. But someone must have something big on you, Doug. Something huge. Something that ensures your loyalty and your gratitude and your fear. You’re like a serf or a samurai, ready to take the knife for your master. But who’s your master? That’s what I need to know.”
“You’re reaching, Chief. I flipped out when I heard Phelan’s car. That’s all. No one was going to check out the big house and the chances of anyone noticing a knife hilt behind a bush were just about zero. This was pretty much a domestic disturbance call. Two friends duking it out. I wasn’t sure I could take him and no one likes a beat down. Especially a bully, and I’m a bully, right? All us bullies are gutless assholes when the chips are down. Everyone knows that. So I panicked, like I said. Guess I’m just a big pussy, Chief.”
“That’s your story?”
“That’s the truth. Sad to say.”
“It’s also exactly what you’d say if I was right.”
He grinned. “So it is. For all the good it does you.”
“So when I get a warrant and confiscate Chick Crosby’s computer I’ll find all the films and e-mails I need to convict everyone.”
“Including a little Oscar-bait short subject we were using to blackmail Andy Thayer.”
“Or lure him out here so you could kill him.”
A shrug. “That, too. He said he was willing to negotiate but I didn’t believe him. That boy was on a mission from God. Or Cupid, if Roman gods count.”
I stood up and walked to the door. The moment of danger had passed. Blount had pulled into himself like a turtle.
I turned back to him. “I’m surprised you didn’t try to make a deal before you told me all this.”
“Right—you get me off on multiple homicides because I rat out drug dealers and amateur porn artists? They never even tried to sell those movies. They never posted them online. It was for their private fun. Nah—they’re the small fish, Chief. It’s just the opposite—you let one of them off the hook for turning State’s evidence against me. That’s how it really works.”
“And which one of them would do that? Who actually knew what you were up to?”
“You mean—who’s giving me my orders?”
“Exactly. Someone knew.”
“Nobody wanted to know. Would you?”
“Was it McAllister? Chick Crosby? Charlie Forrest?”
“Pick a card, any card. It’s your trick, Chief.”
“Yes it is. We’re done here. I’m asking for an expedited trial. I want you in jail by Labor Day. And don’t bother asking for a change of venue. You won’t get it.”
***
It went quickly after that. The State Police got a warrant and raided Chick Crosby’s house. It turned out he had cultivated a side business selling the videos. There were buyers in California and Utah, Alabama, and Texas. That made it an FBI matter with charges ranging, in order of severity, from interstate transportation, shipment, selling, or possession with intent to sell visual depictions of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct (first offense, five years) to possession of visual depictions of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct (first offense, five years), possession of visual depictions of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct (no mandatory minimum) to simple possession of the material (no mandatory minimum) to the best one of all: child exploitation enterprise. That once carries a twenty-year mandatory sentence, and the whole sleazy group was going down for it, whether they knew anything about the sales or not.
McAllister and Nolan were arrested together, playing tennis at the Yacht Club, Forrest was dragged out of a Land Bank executive conference and stuffed into a police car on Broad Street, in full view of all the tourists waiting for lunch at The Brotherhood of Thieves. And Toby Keller, the garage mechanic who had faked the invoices that gave Blount’s truck its alibi, was grabbed out from under a Range Rover in his own repair shop. We found Daisy hiding out in Andrew Thayer’s house on Union Street.
It was huge. The arrests turned into a national story. Lonnie was interviewed on all the cable outlets. There was even a segment on 48 Hours.
I got some calls from the media but I turned them down. I also got an angry call from Dan Taylor, speaking for the Selectmen, accusing me of wrecking the summer season.
My favorite line from him: “Couldn’t this wait until Labor Day?”
I thought of the British Petroleum CEO after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, pouting: “I want my life back.” Dan wasn’t in that league but he was playing the same ball game—a Little League brat, running the small-town bases.
Dave Carmichael called me, too, the day after his big press conference on the case, still pushing for me to take the chief investigator job with his office in Boston.
“The offer is still open,” he said.
“Dave—”
“And I’m saying that despite all your crazy crackpot liberal bullshit.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Lonnie’s taking the credit for this case, but I know who really broke it.”
“We got lucky.”
“Take a collar once in a while, Henry. I have a nickname for you around here—crew neck. Get it? Because you never take the collar.”
“Nice one.”
“What I’m saying—if you’re going to give the credit to someone else, it oughtta be me, not that ass hat Lonnie Fraker. No offense. He’s a nice guy, but come on.”
“I’d love to do it, Dave. But I can’t.”
“I’ll bump the pay twenty percent. That just about doubles what they’re paying you on the sandbar.”
“That’s very generous, but—”
“Plus—Boston.”
“You’re killing me here.”
“A staff of six.”
“Jesus.”
“Corner office on Ashford Street. Expense account. Never pay for lunch again.”
I took a breath. “You and Marsha never had kids.”
“Thank God.”
“Well, if you ever get married again—”
“Never gonna happen. They say gays are going to destroy marriage. I wish they would. Put the institution out of its misery.”
“I’m just saying…if you had kids, you’d understand.”
“No, that’s the difference between us. If I had kids they’d u
nderstand! They’d get it that their dad had a career and they’d be on the sidelines cheering.”
“Spoken like a bitter childless middle-aged divorced workaholic.”
“Which I am, and proud of it! Think about this job a little more, Henry, okay? I have a position to fill and I have to fill it soon.”
It was a tempting offer. My kids needed their father in their lives and half an hour later, I had the perfect case in point for the attorney general—but no time to present it.
Chapter Twenty-five
Special Effects
I was sitting with Alana Trikilis when Lonnie Fraker called. She had taken down Ms. DeHart’s license plate number and traced it. The car was owned by the LoGran corporation.
“Her real name is Daisy Pell!” Alana blurted. She’s Jonathan Pell’s daughter!”
“His stepdaughter, actually.”
She slumped down in her chair. “You knew this already.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m going to keep working this,”
“I know. But Alana…I have to ask—who ran the license plate for you?”
“I shouldn’t say.”
“Then just nod. Bob Coffin. Alana?”
She nodded.
“I have to punish him, you know.”
She nodded again. “He knew that. He knew you’d find out.”
“True love. You know my dad said something about true love I’ve always remembered. He said, ‘They say all the world loves a lover, but I dispute that. My son is in love, my daughter is in love, my cook is in love, my secretary is in love, two of my friends just fell in love, and they all stand under my window at night baying about it. So I can tell with great assurance that all the world does not love a lover. All the world is bored to tears by a lover.’ He was a cynical old prick but he knew what he was talking about.”
“Are you going to fire Bob?”
“No. I’ll put him on janitor duty for a few months. And revoke his computer privileges.”
That was when the phone rang.
“I have something you need to see.” Lonnie Fraker, with no preamble. “It’s the video of Andrew Thayer—the one they were using to blackmail him. There’s something hinky about it.”
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