The Cold Blue Blood

by David Handler

  “I wasn’t saying there was.”

  “You didn’t have to. Your eyes did it for you.” The resident trooper’s own eyes were glaring across the table at her. “Crowther did his job. It was all by the book. And in answer to what is no doubt your next question, the superintendent and I have no relationship whatsoever. He wouldn’t know me from a hole in the ground. There’s nothing there, Lieutenant. Nothing at all.” He abruptly got up and began clearing the table. “Now, is there anything else I can fill you in on?”

  “Yes, there is,” she replied, helping him stack the dishes. “We ran a check at the Dorset Pharmacy to see if anyone filled a prescription in recent weeks for Diprolene, the brand name for betamethasone dipropionate. Your name showed up. Doctor Knudsen of the Shoreline Family Practice wrote you out a prescription for it on April the nineteenth. You filled it that same day. Diprolene is prescribed for patients who’ve suffered a severe allergic reaction to poison ivy.”

  “That’s absolutely right.” Bliss headed back inside with the dishes. Des followed him. “I was hiking in the woods up by the Devil’s Hopyard with the Boy Scouts. Came in contact with it up there. I’m highly susceptible. When I get it, I get it but good—hands, face, everywhere.” He began piling things in the kitchen sink, glancing at her curiously. “Why are you interested in that?”

  Des was not liking this. Tal Bliss had invited her into his home. She had eaten his food. At this particular moment she would have given anything to be somewhere else—such as in her studio with a piece of charcoal in her hand … “You are leading somebody else’s life.” … “The reason I’m interested,” she said slowly, “is that your outbreak occurred the same day Torry Mordarski’s body was found in the woods by Laurel Brook Reservoir. There was some nasty poison ivy at that crime scene. Two tekkies got it bad.”

  “I see,” he said, clenching and unclenching his jaw muscles. “Mind if I ask you where you are going with this?”

  “Trooper, I am trying to get my mind around what’s going on.”

  “And what do you think is going on?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you questions.”

  The resident trooper stood there in brittle silence a moment. “Questions like—Does a fellow officer who has been in love with a victim’s widow since he was a child know more about that man’s murder than he’s telling me? Questions like—Is he shielding someone? Is he in over his head? Does that about cover it?”

  Des remained silent. She was waiting for his answers.

  “Lieutenant, may I be candid with you?”

  “Please, by all means.”

  “These are good people here. Good friends. Don’t step all over the ashes of their ruined lives just so you can make a name for yourself in Hartford. I won’t allow it, do you understand?”

  “Not entirely. But I’d very much like to.”

  A trace of uncertainty crept into the resident trooper’s eyes. Briefly, Des sensed him wavering. She thought he might give in to her and spill it—whatever it was. But he would not. Could not. And, in a flash, that flicker of doubt was gone. All she could read in his eyes now was unyielding resolve and righteous anger.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Lieutenant,” he said coldly, “I’ve got a couple of funerals to get ready for.” He strode heavily toward his front door and flung it open wide. He was throwing her out, politely but firmly.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” said Des. “I respect you and the work you do. Sometimes I have to do things I’d rather not do.”

  “I can appreciate that,” he said curtly, his back stiff, his eyes daggers.

  “Thanks for lunch.”

  He stayed there in his doorway, grimly watching her as she got in her slicktop. She wondered what it was that he was holding back from her. Wondered if it was he who had tidied the Laurel Reservoir murder scene. Someone had. Just as someone had driven Niles Seymour’s car to the long-term parking lot at Bradley Airport, making sure to leave no traces anywhere on the vehicle. He was a big man with big hands. She wondered what size shoe he wore. Might he wear a size eleven or twelve?

  As she eased her car slowly down the hill Des decided to pull over at the house where Tuck Weems had lived. She got out and tapped at the screen door.

  Darleen was watching a soap opera now, a can of Budweiser in her hand, her baby gurgling next to her on the sofa. The redheaded girl’s eyes were puffy from crying. Otherwise, the scene was exactly the same as before—dirty dishes and ashtrays piled on the coffee table, the smell of dirty diapers fouling the air.

  “I’m Lieutenant Mitry, Darleen. I was here the other day with Trooper Bliss.”

  Darleen’s gaze was somewhat unfocused. Des would likely find the remains of a joint in one of those ashtrays if she cared to look. Which she did not.

  “I’m, like, I remember you,” the girl responded, still way more interested in her TV show than she was in Des. “What do you want now?”

  “To see how you’re doing.”

  “What for?” demanded Darleen, going from zero to ultra-defensive in nothing flat.

  “I’m concerned, that’s what for. Do you have any family who can be here for you?”

  “Tuck was my family.” Her eyes never leaving the TV.

  “That’s what I mean. How will you and your baby get by now?”

  “That ain’t none of your business, bitch!” Darleen snarled at her. “And don’t you dare try to take my baby away from me, y’hear? Or I’ll mess you up so bad nobody will ever want you!”

  The phone rang. Darleen got up off the sofa and went flouncing off to the kitchen to answer it.

  Des stood there a moment in that dingy living room looking down at the baby. More human wreckage that the killer had left behind. First Torry’s little boy, Stevie. Now here were two more children—helpless, clueless, lost. Des took two twenty-dollar bills out of her billfold and tucked them under the beer can Darleen had left on the table. Then she went back outside to her cruiser.

  She was just getting in the car when she heard the gunshot.

  It came from above the lake.

  It came from the direction Des had just come from—Tal Bliss’s house.

  She floored it madly back up the hill. She encountered no car on its way down. She saw no one on foot.

  His front door was wide open. She slammed on her brakes and jumped out, her eyes zeroing in on the shrubs that surrounded the house. Then flicking across the road at the neighboring houses. Not a leaf stirred. Not a curtain moved. She went in slowly with her Sig drawn and her back to the wall. Her mouth was dry, her heart racing. She called out his name. She got no response. Only silence. The stereo was off now. It was so quiet in there she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. And the house still smelled of the quiche he had baked for them. She called out his name again. No response.

  The resident trooper was a very tidy chef. He had put all of their dishes in the dishwasher, refrigerated the leftovers, wiped off the counters, swept up the crumbs. He had written a short, succinct note and left it on the counter under a paperweight of polished stone, his lettering neat and precise: “I did what I thought was right. Just as I am doing now.”

  And then Tal Bliss had blown his brains out.

  He was seated out on the deck at the redwood table where they had just eaten, weapon still clutched in his hand. It was not his service piece. It was a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. Des had no doubt that it was the same weapon that had killed Torry Mordarski, Niles Seymour and Tuck Weems. None.

  Dirty Harry rubbed up against her ankle now, a low yowl of protest coming from his throat. Des gathered him up in her arms and took him downstairs and closed him in one of the bedrooms. Then she went out to her cruiser to phone it in.

  Tal Bliss was tidy, all right. Except that he had left his mess behind for her to clean up. Des was so damned mad at him that she could spit.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE VILLAGE WENT INTO deep, heartfelt mourning over the death of its long-time resi
dent trooper.

  Flags were flown at half-staff at town hall and the fire house and the barber shop. Voices at the market were hushed. Tears were shed, hugs exchanged. Tal Bliss, Mitch discovered, had been one of those rare individuals who virtually everyone seemed to look up to. He was a big brother, a father figure, a friend. Above all, he was one of their own.

  And everyone had a story to tell about him.

  Dennis shared his when Mitch stopped by the hardware store to pick up two quarts of oil for the truck: Back when Dennis had been something of a wild child, Tal had pulled him over one night at three in the morning. Both Dennis and his high-school girlfriend were high on pot—and holding. Instead of busting them, Tal Bliss had escorted them home, confiscated the dope and never said a word about it to their parents. “He knew we were good kids,” Dennis recalled fondly. “He just wanted to make sure we didn’t screw up big-time.”

  This, according to Dennis, was Tal Bliss. Not the deranged killer who had taken three lives before he took his own.

  The gun he had used on himself turned out to be the same one that had killed Torry Mordarski, Niles Seymour and Tuck Weems. And he had owned a pair of size-twelve Timberland hiking boots that were an exact match for a shoe print that had been found at the Torry Mordarski murder scene. These were proven facts. But beyond that, no one really understood why Bliss had done what he did. All that he’d left behind in the way of explanation was his two-line handwritten suicide note. Everything else died with him. No one knew anything—except that when Lieutenant Mitry had begun to close in on him, Tal Bliss had chosen to take his own life rather than face the music.

  A Lieutenant Gianfrido had been put in charge of wrapping up the investigation. Lieutenant Mitry had been placed on paid administrative leave, pending the results of an Internal Affairs investigation to determine whether she had violated correct procedure. The lieutenant took a lot of heat from her own people in the Hartford Courant. Unnamed sources high up in the state police questioned whether she’d been “too eager.” They so much as implied that Tal Bliss would still be alive if she’d waited to question him in official surroundings. Included other officers in the interrogation. Apparently, no one else knew she was meeting with Bliss.

  The Courant also dug into her background. This was how Mitch learned that Desiree Mitry was the daughter of Deputy Superintendent Buck Mitry, the highest ranking black officer in the history of the state of Connecticut. Mitch wondered why she hadn’t mentioned this to him. He wondered why she felt it was important not to.

  He wondered how she must be feeling.

  He wanted to call her up and ask her. But he didn’t. He felt quite certain that he was the last person in the world she’d feel like hearing from right now. He had pointed her in the direction of Bliss. Still, her plight troubled him deeply. The woman’s career was in serious jeopardy. Virtually everyone in Dorset felt she was a cold, heartless glory seeker. And Mitch felt more than a little responsible.

  He also found himself thinking about her morning, noon and night.

  The tabloid press invaded Big Sister in full battle dress again. The islanders were besieged. Couldn’t leave. Couldn’t answer their phones. Not that they had anything to say to the media. All they wanted them to do was go away. The whole village did. The minister of the Congregational Church spoke for the entire village when he said, “Dorset is a family, and we believe in keeping our troubles within the family.”

  As it happened, the only card-carrying member of the working press who had any genuine access to the story was Mitch himself. When he’d first discovered Niles Seymour’s body, Mitch had had zero interest in writing about it. He’d just wanted to forget. But the Tal Bliss suicide changed how he felt. Possibly it was the reaction of the villagers—their homegrown hero’s spectacular fall from grace had left them profoundly confused and shaken, their image of themselves and their serene little world utterly shattered. Mitch likened it to one of those cases when a couple of teenaged kids in a small, stable bible-belt community suddenly show up at school one day with AK-47s and begin wiping out their classmates. People want to know why. They take long looks at themselves in the mirror, wondering whether such shockingly monstrous behavior is inside of them, too.

  Mitch noticed it when he went to the grocery store. He could see the self-doubt in their eyes, hear the fear in their voices. He found this response disturbing and fascinating. So when the Sunday magazine editor phoned him, at Lacy’s suggestion, to see if he’d like to do a piece, Mitch reversed himself and said yes.

  Possibly, it was his own way of looking in the mirror.

  But first he wanted to make sure that Dolly was okay with it. He strolled down the gravel path to her house and found her having tea in the breakfast nook with Evan. In profile, their delicate features looked nearly identical. Both mother and son seemed defeated and downcast. Still, she greeted Mitch with a cheery smile and insisted that he join them for a cup. He did so, sliding into the nook next to Evan.

  “We were just talking about poor Tal,” she told Mitch, her voice quavering with emotion. “What I keep thinking is if only I had known what was going on inside that mind of his. Perhaps I could have influenced him somehow. In a positive direction, I mean. Surely I could have prevented all of this from …” Dolly shook her head, gazing down into her teacup. “If only I had known.”

  “But you didn’t know,” Mitch pointed out. “So you mustn’t beat yourself up. You’re not responsible for what he did.”

  “He’s right, Mother.” Evan reached across the table for her hand. “You know he’s right.”

  “I know that he’s not,” said Dolly, her porcelain-blue eyes puddling with tears. “I know that Tal Bliss killed three people because of me. I know that I shall have to carry this around for the rest of my life.” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and said it again. “If only I had known.”

  “My paper wants me to write about it, Dolly. Seeing as how I do have a rather unusual point of view. And I’d like to do it. But I’ll tell them no if you aren’t comfortable with the idea. This wasn’t part of the deal when I signed the lease,” he added, smiling at her.

  Dolly glanced across the table at Evan, her mouth tightening. “Why on earth would I object, Mitch? I think it’s a simply wonderful idea.”

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely. Because you’re not a tabloid gossip monger—you’re a clear-eyed and sympathetic individual. Someone we all trust. Please do it. It’s the only real chance we’ll have for a fair, honest portrait to come out.”

  Mitch had not been expecting this response from her. He’d been positive that she would be much more interested in seeing the whole matter buried and forgotten. But he should have known better, he now realized. Because if there was one constant about his life on Big Sister it was that he really, truly did not understand these people. “Do you feel the same way, Evan?”

  “I do,” Evan replied softly, running both of his hands through his wavy black hair. “And I must tell you that I’m feeling a bit responsible for what happened, too. I’m the one who saw Bliss parked out here that day. I’m the one who told you about it. I didn’t have to. I could have kept quiet.”

  “Instead of kicking yourself,” Mitch said, “just be thankful he didn’t decide to handle the situation differently.”

  Evan frowned at him curiously. “Like how?”

  “By killing you so you couldn’t tell anyone, that’s how. He could have gone after you, Evan. And me. He could have killed me instead of just trying to scare me. We should both consider ourselves lucky to be alive. And leave it at that.”

  And so Mitch Berger, the most influential film critic in America, found himself at work on a real-life story of sex, murder and suicide in a small New England town.

  Lacy e-mailed him that evening to say: “Welcome to the fun-filled world of participatory journalism. This may be the start of a whole new you.”

  To which Mitch replied: “It’s the same old me. The world’s getting weirder,
though.”

  Way weirder. When word got out about it, no less than seven A-list Hollywood producers, each of them anxious to curry Mitch’s critical favor, called his literary agent to find out if he was interested in signing a development deal.

  Mitch politely declined.

  A special memorial service was held for Tal Bliss at the white steepled congregational church. It was bright and airy inside the lovely church, with two stories of windows to let in the sunlight. It was crowded, too. The whole village seemed to be in attendance. The islanders certainly were. Red and Bitsy Peck were there. Bud and Mandy Havenhurst. Dolly, Evan and Jamie Devers. Mitch was there, too. The rest of the media were kept out by burly young state troopers.

  Bud delivered a stirring eulogy about how he had looked up to Tal Bliss since they were little boys, and how he would always remember just how fair and decent Tal was. “This is the way I choose to remember my friend,” he said in a strained voice. “This is my right.” The red-bearded minister spoke at great length on how within each human being there is strength and there is weakness and that these two forces are constantly at war with each other. Tal Bliss, he concluded sadly, just happened to lose his war.

  One elderly white-haired woman sat by herself on the aisle sobbing loudly throughout the ceremony. Mitch asked Bitsy who she was.

  “Why, that’s old Sheila Enman,” Bitsy replied, gazing over at her fondly. “Gracious, she must be pushing a hundred and thirty by now. She ran the volunteer ambulance corps for years and years. And before that, she taught English over at the high school. Tal was her pet. He’s been keeping an eye on her for the past few years, poor dear.”

  Later that afternoon, Mitch jumped into his truck and headed up Route 156 into the farm country, where the air smelled not of the sea but of moist, freshly turned earth and cow manure. The corn was getting up now, and the dogwoods and lilacs were in full bloom. Hawks circled slowly overhead, searching for prey. Sheila Enman lived on Dunn’s Cove in an old mill house that was built right out over the Eight Mile River at the base of a twenty-foot waterfall.