It would work. Mitch knew it would work.
He knew it because he had seen this movie before.
CHAPTER 18
MITCH BERGER’S HIGH RIDING, kidney-colored Studebaker pickup truck was not exactly hard to spot in the half-empty Stop & Shop parking lot. The man himself was seated there behind the steering wheel, drumming it nervously with his fingers when Des pulled into the empty space alongside of him.
He climbed out and got in next to her, looking rumpled and unshaven. His hair was uncombed, his sad puppy eyes red and puffy. “Morning, Lieutenant. How’s your cold?”
“It was never a cold. And I feel a whole lot better than you look, if you want to know the truth.”
“I didn’t sleep very well last night.”
“Why all of this secrecy?” she demanded as the two of them sat there in her cruiser, engine idling.
“It’s important that no one on the island see us together.”
“You told me that already. What you didn’t tell me was why.”
“I’ve never been in a police car before,” he spoke up, glancing around at the interior with keen, sudden interest. “You don’t have an on-board computer?”
Des shook her head. “Mobile data terminals cost major bucks. And we’re a big public agency. The bigger they are, the slower they are at keeping current. The IRS is still using equipment that’s twenty years out of date.”
“Well, that’s comforting.”
“The only agency using equipment that’s even older is the FAA.”
“Well, that’s not,” Mitch said, his fingers busily probing the dashboard. “What’s this thing?”
“My radio.”
“And what does this do?”
“Stop touching my damned stuff, will you?!”
“Sorry, I’m a little wired this morning,” he said. “Kind of grouchy yourself, aren’t you?”
“I have excellent reason to be,” Des huffed, easing her car out onto Route 1 in the direction of the I-95 on-ramp.
Mostly, she was anxious. When Mitch had said there might be more to the Tal Bliss suicide, she had had to find out what it was. She desperately wanted there to be more—something, anything that would make her feel less responsible for his death. She also knew, down deep inside, that she had agreed to let Mitch tag along because she wanted to see him again. Although now that the man was sitting there next to her she could not imagine why. He was pudgy. He was strange. He dressed like a high school chemistry teacher. Plus he was edgy and annoying and way, way white.
Damn, girl, what were you thinking?
She steered them onto the highway, heading north. Newport was about an hour and a half ride up the coast, much of it through dropdead gorgeous little shoreline towns like Mystic and Stonington and Watch Hill, Rhode Island, which had the distinction of being home to the oldest merry-go-round in America. She settled into the right lane at a comfortable 60, a lengthy procession of cars and trucks falling cautiously into line behind her, and said, “Okay, you’re on. Talk at me.”
“You first,” he insisted. “Why are we going to Newport?”
“We’re going because Superintendent Crowther is the lunchtime speaker today at the annual convention of the Northeastern Association of Forensic Scientists. I can buttonhole him afterward. Otherwise, the man’s totally not accessible. Not unless I snag him outside his house, which would not be appropriate. It would be like I’m stalking him.”
“And this isn’t?”
“I have to talk to him,” Des said firmly.
“Why, what does he know?”
“What actually happened to Roy and Louisa Weems. The real story behind their deaths. The real story behind Dolly Peck’s rape.”
“Wait, Dolly was raped?”
“By Roy,” Des affirmed, glancing sidelong at him. “Tal Bliss found their bodies. Crowther was the investigating officer. His report was full of holes. That’s why I have to see him. I have to find out what he knows.”
“We both do.” Mitch rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Hot damn, my article just got a whole lot better.”
“What article?” she demanded sharply. “You didn’t tell me about any article.”
“I’m writing a piece for my paper’s Sunday magazine.”
“I thought you weren’t that kind of journalist.”
“I’m usually not. But this sort of thing doesn’t usually happen to me. So when they asked me, I said yes. Why, do you have a problem with it?”
“Hell, yes. When I agreed to let you tag along I didn’t realize you were acting as a member of the news media.”
“You’re not going to kick me out of the car now, are you?”
“I’m thinking about it,” she fumed angrily. “I sure as hell am.”
They rode on in charged silence. They were nearing Stonington, the one-time Portuguese fishing village near the Rhode Island state line that was now a yachter’s paradise. Lush green pastures and wetlands surrounded it, the Sound glittering in the distance. There were certainly worse places to be ditched. But it was still a long way from home. And the gentle blue morning sky was streaked with red along the horizon. A storm was due to arrive before nightfall.
“Look, I’ll fill you in on as much as I can,” Des said finally. “But I have to see the man alone. And you are not quoting me as a source on this particular aspect of the case. I am already in enough trouble. Deal?”
“Deal. Only, what makes you think he’ll talk to you?”
“He’ll talk to me.”
“Why, because your father is deputy superintendent?”
“That’s got nothing to do with anything.” She could feel Mitch’s eyes on her.
“How come you didn’t tell me about him?”
“Did you tell me about your people?”
“No,” he conceded. “No, I didn’t.”
“So why should I be telling you about mine? Besides, never mind about me. You’re the one who’s up now. Talk at me.”
“Not a chance,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “If I tell you what I know before you talk to Crowther, then I’m handing you my only leverage. You’ll have zero reason to fill me in.”
“Um, okay, our relationship is deteriorating by the second here …”
“We haven’t got a relationship—not when it comes to business. First you talk to Crowther. Then I’ll talk. For now, let’s just enjoy the scenery. Beautiful part of the country, isn’t it?”
Des promptly pulled over onto the shoulder and came to a stop, seething.
“Hey, isn’t this illegal unless it’s an emergency?”
“Oh, it’s an emergency, all right,” she said as they idled there, cars whizzing past them. “I’m about to call nine-one-one to come save your sorry ass.”
He grinned at her maddeningly. “You probably hear this all the time, but you’re really quite lovely when you’re angry.”
“Stop jamming me, doughboy!”
Mitch’s eyes widened. “Doughboy? Am I detecting a slight racial subtext here again?”
“What you’re detecting is your face on the verge of coming into full frontal contact with my fist!”
“Lieutenant, I’m just trying to do my job,” he explained patiently. “It’s not a nice job. I know that. Reporters are not nice people. I know that, too. But this story is something I need to do in order to get this horrible nightmare out of my system. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Maybe I can,” Des allowed, studying him. “But I have to tell you—I liked you a whole lot better back when you were … what did you call yourself, mildew?”
“I think the word I used was fungus. And that makes us even.”
“Is that right? How so?”
“I prefer you as a starving artist. So let’s just call it a draw, okay?”
“You can call it whatever you damned please. To me, you’re nothing but a raw dog now—somebody’s who’s strictly out for himself. But I’m fine with it. These eyes are wide open.” She resumed
driving, her eyes on the road, back straight, both hands gripping the wheel.
Neither of them spoke for a long while.
It was Mitch who finally broke the quiet. They were in Rhode Island by then. “Okay, maybe I overplayed my hand a little,” he conceded.
“No maybe.”
“Then again, maybe you’re just trying to make me feel guilty so I’ll show you the cards I’m playing.”
She let that one slide on by. Just drove. And waited.
“Allright, I’m playing the Fibonacci Series,” he finally revealed.
Des furrowed her brow at him. “Wait, wait … That was the name of the picture hanging on your wall, wasn’t it? The one with all of those lines.”
He nodded. “My wife’s design plan. It’s a variation of the Golden Section—one of the basic systems of proportion dating back to antiquity.”
“Mitch, why are you talking at me about geometry?”
“I’m not talking at you about geometry, Lieutenant,” he said quietly. “I’m talking at you about people.”
And with that Mitch Berger shut down on her, same as he had the first time she interviewed him in his carriage house. She would get no more out of him. Not now, anyway.
Damn, what was he talking about?
At Hope Valley Des got off I-95 and onto Route 138, a two-lane rural road that snaked its way through low, fertile farm country before it hit Narragansett Bay. A bridge took them over its narrow West Passage to Jamestown, where the tollbooths for the Newport Bridge were. It took them out over the bay’s broad East Passage and into Newport, the scruffy colonial seaport that New York robber barons had turned into their summer playground at the end of the nineteenth century. These days, yachters were drawn to its marinas. Tourists came to gawk at the gargantuan Bellevue Avenue mansions and to stroll the historic waterfront, where the streets were narrow and the traffic impossible.
Des turned right at the bottom of the exit ramp and followed the signs for downtown Newport, passing in between two vast cemeteries before she turned right onto America’s Cup Avenue. Her destination was the Doubletree Inn out on Goat Island, an old naval installation that was situated out in the harbor across from Market Square. The Goat Island connector road was just past Bridge Street. There was a small park at the mouth of the connector road. Benches overlooked the shipyard and the neighboring district of immaculately restored three-hundred-year-old houses that fronted on Washington Street.
Des glanced at her watch. It was just past twelve-thirty.
“I can find the Black Pearl from here on foot,” Mitch said. “I’ll be waiting for you there, spoon in hand.”
She pulled over at the park and rolled down her window. The breeze was cool and tangy with the scent of the bay. Soft gray clouds were beginning to form in the western sky beyond the Rose Island lighthouse.
“Look, I owe you one,” she said. “I’m sorry I called you doughboy.”
“Not to worry, I’m a pro. It won’t affect our negotiations.”
“That’s not why I’m sorry.”
He gazed at her curiously. “Just exactly how often do you get that angry?”
“Never. Well, almost never.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the next time it happens I just might have to kiss you. I really don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself.” He opened his door now, smiling at her brightly. “Good luck, Lieutenant. I hope the superintendent is in a talkative mood today. In fact, I hope he can’t keep his mouth shut.” Then Mitch Berger slammed the car door shut and went gallumphing off down Washington Street in the direction of the wharves.
Des watched him go, feeling as if she’d just been plunged headlong into one of her recurring bad dreams, the one where she suddenly found herself boarding an airplane without any luggage or even any idea where the plane was going or why she was getting on board.
But this was no dream. This was really happening. She and Mitch Berger. The two of them. Even though it made no sense. None.
He was more than three blocks away, nothing more than a distant blob on the sidewalk, before Des was able to stop shaking.
The Doubletree Inn was hunkered at the northernmost tip of Goat Island, the better to see Newport Harbor from. Apart from the awesome view, it was a standard issue convention hotel—fairly new, fairly big and about as charming as a military supply depot.
Des left her slicktop in a loading zone and went inside. The lobby was small and low-ceilinged. There was a piano bar. There was a gift shop. There were potted palms. A long corridor led to the ballrooms. She followed the arrows.
Registration tables were set up in the ballroom foyer, where a couple hundred lab rats from all over New England were milling around with soft drinks in their hands and name tags on their chests. Many of these forensic scientists were shes. The crime lab had long been considered law enforcement’s kitchen—it was okay for women to excel there. Once a year, they got together to network and to attend workshops on subjects like Capillary Electrophoresis Analysis and Headspace Gas Chromatography. Display booths had been set up in one of the ballrooms by the makers of lab microscopes and cameras.
Her timing was good. The annual awards luncheon had just let out.
The man himself was standing in the ballroom doorway in a navy-blue suit and gleaming black wingtips, shaking hands with the commonfolk and being charming. John Crowther was sixty, starched and straight-laced, a family man, a church-going man, a Brylcreem man. He was very good at being charming. He was also good at being open-minded, approachable and caring. In reality, he was none of these things. He was a mean, vindictive son of a bitch, a consummate political in-fighter, a man who was always on his toes, ready to deliver a punishing blow. He was also known to be someone with his eye on the governor’s mansion.
When he spotted Des standing there on the edge of the crowd, he welcomed her warmly. Introduced her around. Then steered her smoothly away from the others and murmured, “I’ve been expecting you, Lieutenant.”
“You have?” she said, surprised. “Why is that?”
“You’re Buck Mitry’s daughter, that’s why,” he replied, the politician’s public smile never leaving his narrow, rather pinched face. “You’ve been knocked off of your horse. You don’t like it. Not one bit. Neither would the Deacon. Although I’d be willing to wager my entire pension plan that he doesn’t know you’re here. And, believe me, I have one helluva pension plan.”
“Sir, the reason I am is that we have to—”
“Not here!” he cautioned her, waving at the conventioneers as he led Des across the foyer and away from them.
The superintendent found the two of them an empty banquet room and shut the door behind him, immediately dropping the smile and the charm. “I know perfectly well why you’re here, Lieutenant,” he said to her brusquely. “And I have nothing to tell you. Not one thing.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything, sir,” Des said. “Tal Bliss did—before he shot himself.”
Superintendent Crowther stared into her eyes, long and hard. “You wouldn’t be wearing a wire, would you?”
“Of course not.”
He raised his chin at her imperiously, looking her up and down. “I shouldn’t think you’d be transmitting. You’d need backup, and if there’s a soul who’s more alone at this moment I can’t imagine it. But if I were you I’d certainly have considered a tape recorder.” She had. “Not that I’d be that stupid.” She wasn’t. “Still, I’m going to have to pat you down, young lady,” he concluded with steely resolve.
“That’s fine, sir.” She removed the lightweight navy blazer she was wearing and held her arms out to her side. “You go right ahead and pat.”
He checked over her blazer first, expertly inspecting the lapels, the pockets and the lining. Then he started in on her, carefully turning back the collar and placket of her blouse, his fingers probing her stomach, her sides, the small of her back, the waistband of her slacks, her
thighs, calves, ankles. He searched her scalp and dreadlocks as if he were checking her for head lice—all the while staring deeply and coldly into her eyes. Des stared straight ahead, her gaze neutral. West Point had trained her well for this particular head game. She could tolerate this, although she could barely breathe and her heart was pounding so hard she was positive he could hear it in the sound-proofed silence of the banquet room.
His own eyes were eerily opaque and dead. The superintendent never so much as blinked.
Finding nothing, he handed her back her blazer and said, “You’re running a bluff, Lieutenant. Bliss told you nothing about what happened on Big Sister Island thirty years ago.”
“I wish that were the case, sir. But it’s not.”
He turned a dining chair around and sat down at one of the bare banquet tables, swatting at a scrap of harvest-gold carpet lint on his knee. He took out a pack of Parliaments and lit one with a disposable lighter, inhaling it deeply.
“There’s no smoking in here.” Des motioned to the sign over the door.
“Arrest me, why don’t you.” He glanced around for an ashtray. Finding none, he flicked his ash on the carpet. “Go ahead, then,” he said impatiently. “Say what you came to say.”
Des took a seat. She was not the world’s most gifted natural-born con artist, so she had prepared her pitch carefully. “What Tal Bliss told me,” she began in a low, steady voice, “is that when he arrived at the murder scene, young Dolly Peck was seated on the stairs. She was sobbing uncontrollably. She was incoherent. And she was clutching that shotgun in her own two hands.”
Superintendent Crowther said nothing to this. Merely sat there puffing on his cigarette and watching her, the light from the ballroom’s chandeliers gleaming off his shiny, stay-put hair. His eyes remained utterly expressionless.
Des plunged ahead: “Bliss told me he took the shotgun away from her and positioned it in Roy Weems’s dead hands so it would look like Roy shot himself. Which was exactly how it went down—even though that wasn’t what happened. It was really Dolly who killed Roy. The bastard raped her and she shot him for it, right there in his soiled bed. His wife, Louisa, was working in the main house. She came running when she heard the gunshot. And when she came up those stairs Dolly shot her, too.” Des halted for a reaction out of the superintendent. Still nothing. But he didn’t deny it. Not any of it. “You walked into a real, first-class mess, sir. Dolly should have gone down for their murders. Well, maybe not Roy’s. Maybe that was self-defense. But Louisa? Not a chance. The reality, however, was that Roy and Louisa Weems had no chance. They were yankees. Dolly was an ambassador’s daughter. A rich, troubled girl who was clearly headed for a good long stay at a mental hospital no matter what you did. So you tidied up their mess for them. There was no mention about finding her prints on the gun. No mention of conducting any kind of a test to determine whether she had fired that gun. Even the matter of her rape was kept sealed. You simply let her go, even though you knew she did it. Everyone knew.”
The Cold Blue Blood Page 27