She looked around the shops: the Dog House, the ice cream stand, funnel cakes under the demon’s tail. This was where the teenagers came. This was where Tracy Yoland would have ended up if she was looking for kids her age. Or if she was looking for drugs? Tomorrow O’Shaughnessy would have McGuire take his detectives to meet Moe’s crew on the pier. Shake them up a little; let them know they were interested.
Two handsome, middle-aged men jogged by, shirtless and buff. One turned to whistle at her and O’Shaughnessy smiled thinly, shaking her head as if he was a naughty boy. She stood and walked to the rail that overlooked the beach. The lifeguards were tearing down their stations. She watched a dog playing with a Frisbee and thought about the dog that found Anne Carlino’s blood under the boardwalk. She pictured Barf’s Frisbee skidding into the place where Tracy Yoland had disappeared. Nothing ever seemed to be discovered by hard work, just by dogs and Frisbees. Such circumstances reminded her of how powerless she was, that the police were only observers unless they got a break.
She looked back across the boardwalk. Someone was standing here last night. Someone had seen Tracy Yoland.
And liked what he saw.
17
THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 26
WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY
Jeremy’s run hadn’t gone as well as he would have liked. He’d tripped while pretending to catch a ball and sprained his ankle.
He did find a box of tea bags in the alley behind the supermarket. No one was around to give it to, so he put the box in his coat pocket and thought he would make a cup with his dinner.
By ten that evening he was sitting cross-legged in his underwear on the filthy mattress in his room, eating the last of his rice and beans. Greasy flecks of red peppers stuck to the stubble on his chin. A pan of water was boiling next to him on a hot plate on the floor. His landlady told him he couldn’t have a microwave because it took too much electricity—where she thought he could have gotten money for a microwave, he didn’t know—but she never said anything about a hot plate and hot plates were easy enough to find. There were always hot plates in the trash.
He had his giant red cookie tin on the bed next to him. It contained a collection of stuff that he liked to take out and spread on the sheets. There were earrings and metal buttons, wristwatches and dozens of rings. There were two pocketknives, a tiny compass the size of his thumbnail, lots of unusual coins, a stained pair of white panties, keys and cigarette lighters, two bras, and a pack of condoms.
“Rrrrrubbberrrrrr,” he said. He knew where it was supposed to be worn, but he hadn’t gotten up the nerve to try it on yet.
Jeremy sat up straight and sniffed the air. He didn’t have the best of memories, but he had an excellent sense of smell. Mrs. Lester did not. Twice last year he had to remind her that she’d left her oven on and both times she’d been asleep when he knocked. Why she was so grumpy with him he didn’t know, but it made him think twice about waking her again. Even if he did smell something burning.
He took out the new ring and put it on his little finger. It wouldn’t fit over the knuckle, but he liked it there on the tip of his finger and extended his hand to admire the way the letters were drawn.
He had tried on the panties several times. Sometime he was going to do that while wearing the rubber, but that was a secret thought and he didn’t want to think about it further right now. The smell was getting stronger, like burned piecrust or blackened cookies on the sheet. He got up and put his pants on and walked out into the hall. It wasn’t as strong out there, but he walked down the stairs to Mrs. Lester’s door just the same and stood, wondering whether or not he should knock on her door.
It was awful late, and right or wrong he knew she would be mad. Mad like the time he pointed out the dripping faucet to the health inspector. The very next week she took his toilet seat and gave it to one of her tenants in the basement.
Then there was the time she accused him of taking her panty hose from the basement dryer. Jeremy promised he hadn’t done it; he wouldn’t take anything from anyone unless Mr. Johnson said it was okay, but Mrs. Lester didn’t believe him.
Suddenly the smell got stronger, surrounding the first-floor hallway. He raised his fist, looked down to make sure his pants were zipped up, and knocked. A minute passed. He knocked three more times, louder.
Finally she opened the door and looked up at him through sleepy eyes. “What is it?” she snapped.
“Yeeessssss, Miissesss Leesstter. I jusssst smmeellled sommeethiinnggg burninggggg.”
“Oh my God,” she yelled, her eyes rolling toward the top of her head, and Jeremy thought she was going to faint until he saw that she was looking over his head. When he turned, there were billows of black smoke rolling down the staircase from his room.
Jeremy’s heart began to pound. “Mmmissssessss Llllleeeeessssssttttttterrrr!”
The firemen threw the last of Mrs. Lester’s furniture through the second-floor windows; someone had wrapped Jeremy in a blanket and given him oxygen, sat him in the back of the ambulance while they treated the burns on his feet. Jeremy had gone back up the stairs long enough to ensure that his neighbor wasn’t home. He would have liked to retrieve the cookie tin from his bed, but his room was engulfed in flames.
Fire trucks were scattered every which way, and police officers diverted traffic from as far away as Rio Grande Avenue. Wet hoses and metal couplings had ruined Mrs. Lester’s wood floors and carpets. Jeremy could see the firemen walking around in his second-floor room, spotlights from the trucks playing over their bright yellow coats and hats.
Earlier, as a precautionary measure, they’d evacuated the two houses on either side, but now they were allowing the owners to go back inside.
Mrs. Lester and her tenants were not going to be allowed to go back home, however, because Mrs. Lester’s boardinghouse had been destroyed by smoke and water.
Jeremy saw one of the firemen holding a twisted piece of metal that looked a lot like his hot plate in front of Mrs. Lester and talking to her. Jeremy winced when he saw the look on her face as she charged across the street with balled fists.
He had never seen her so angry. Not ever.
“You have no home! You will never have a home! You are out, Jeremy Smyles. Out!”
She could barely get the words out; her face was so badly contorted that the dentures slipped from her mouth and she had to shove them back in before she finished and stomped off again.
Then a police car rushed into the block and a uniformed man with stripes vaulted the front steps past the firemen pulling their hoses back out.
Ten minutes later the policeman returned and joined Mrs. Lester on the sidewalk. As they spoke she began pointing at Jeremy and stamping her feet. He got a very bad feeling inside.
An old metal table hit the ground, then a pane of shattering glass and a blackened lid from a cookie tin, which rolled into the street and spun like a top on its end before it fell down. The policeman with the stripes started toward him. He was short with a large belly; his hat was in his hands and his hairline receded behind his ears. He smiled, but only with one corner of his mouth.
“Jeremy Smyles?” he demanded.
Jeremy nodded.
“That your room?” The policeman pointed at the second floor.
Jeremy shook his head. “No.”
“I beg your pardon?” the man yelled.
“Mrs. Lester says I don’t live there anymore.”
The policeman drew a breath. “But you lived there before. You lived there alone in that room up until the fire tonight. Isn’t that right?”
Jeremy nodded.
“And everything in that room is yours and yours alone?”
Jeremy thought about that. He owned only his clothes and the hot plate and the cookie tin of trinkets. Everything else belonged to Mrs. Lester.
“I asked you a question.” The policeman’s voice went up an octave.
“I don’t own nothing but my clothes and stuff.” Jeremy smiled.
; “What stuff?” the policeman nearly screamed. “Did you own the goddamned jewelry in there?”
Jeremy nodded. “The watches and rings and key chains and things? They’re all mine. Can I have them back?”
The sergeant’s smile expanded another inch.
“You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney; if you cannot afford one, Uncle Sam will rob the taxpayers to ensure that you get one. Do you understand, you retarded little piece of shit?”
O’Shaughnessy cut the siren as she drove onto West Spicer.
A man sat handcuffed in the back of Sergeant Dillon’s cruiser. A black Lincoln Town Car was angled sharply against the curb. The driver’s door was open and chiming.
Sergeant Dillon met her at her door, leading her lazily toward a crowd that had gathered at the foot of the stairs of Mrs. Lester’s house.
“What possessed you to call Mr. Carlino?” she hissed.
Dillon turned and sneered. “Whoa, lady. I thought he would appreciate knowing I broke his daughter’s case. We’re public servants, aren’t we, Lieu? We don’t have nothing to hide. Do we?”
“You ever release information on one of my cases again and I will have you in front of a trial board so fast it will make your head spin. Do you hear me, Sergeant Dillon?”
The sergeant held up a hand like he was stopping an errant motorist. “Look, lady, I don’t take shit from you or anyone else. As far as I’m concerned, it’s my case. I’m the one that closed it.” He pointed a finger at her. “All you detectives do is prance around town with your stupid little flyers.”
He pointed at the crowd. “Everyone’s over there, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m sure as a lieutenant you can find your way from here.”
Dillon turned his back on her and started for his cruiser.
O’Shaughnessy’s first reaction was to suspend him. Insubordination was a trial board offense, but Dillon had just made an arrest in the town’s most celebrated case. Tonight’s events would become the morning news.
Choose your battles, she told herself. Dillon could wait. There would always be another day with Dillon.
A towering figure, Jason Carlino was wearing a silk shirt, Italian loafers, and no socks. He was jabbing a finger in McGuire’s chest as she approached.
“Mr. Carlino,” she interrupted.
He spun around and glared at her. “I want that bastard locked up, Lieutenant, and I don’t want to hear any shit about him being crazy. You fuck up this arrest and I’ll have your job.” He turned and stormed to his Lincoln.
“That was pleasant,” she said to McGuire.
The sergeant nodded grimly.
“What happened here?” she asked.
McGuire pointed. “Dillon has his suspect standing outside the police car in handcuffs when Carlino comes barreling onto the block. He jumps out of his Lincoln and sucker punches the man in the face. Man’s name is Jeremy Smyles. He works for the Public Works department. I called for one of their supervisors.” He pointed to a man leaning on an orange truck. “Name’s Johnson. He’s the one who helped me wrestle Carlino away from Smyles. Just what in the fuck—sorry, Lieu—would possess Dillon to call Carlino in the first place? I mean, how would he even get his number?”
“Forget about Dillon,” she said. “This isn’t the time or the place. Tell me what you’ve got.”
McGuire looked at her pointedly, and O’Shaughnessy knew he was sizing her up. “Mac,” she said, “this is police work. Okay? Police work. We’ll deal with Dillon later, I promise.”
McGuire nodded and took a couple of deep breaths. “The firemen said they found a tin can full of jewelry and some ladies’ underwear spread over his bed. They thought the jewelry might have been stolen, so they asked for a police official. When Dillon came on the scene, he saw Anne Carlino’s signet ring and read him his rights.”
“Did you get to talk to him at all?”
“I asked him where he got all that stuff and he said he finds it under the boardwalk where he picks up trash. When I asked him about the ring with the initials on it, he said it was shoved up between the cracks in the boardwalk.”
O’Shaughnessy remembered the wristwatch that Anne had shoved under the sand. “He say where?”
McGuire shook his head. “I had a crowd around me; I didn’t want to go through it here.”
“What was Carlino talking about back there? About him being crazy?”
“That’s the problem, Lieu. He really is crazy. And wait till you get a whiff of him.”
She looked around at the crowd. Two massive gay men with goatees, sleeveless shirts, and shorts had their arm around each other’s waist; a stern woman with curlers in her hair stared at her with the expression of someone who’d just bitten into a lemon. A dozen teenagers talked to each other, chewed gum, and adjusted each other’s clothing all at the same time.
“Let’s follow him over to the hospital and get a statement. He can give us a statement, can’t he?”
McGuire shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out, Lieu. I’ll wrap this up with the fire marshal.”
O’Shaughnessy walked over to the sanitation truck.
“Mr. Johnson?” she asked.
“Ben,” he answered, offering her his hand.
“Kelly,” she said. “I hear he’s one of your guys?”
He nodded. “Are you charging him?”
“Right now he’s a material witness in an abduction case. We need to ask him some questions. What can you tell me about him?”
“I sure as hell wouldn’t figure him for a criminal, if that’s what you guys are thinking.”
“Why not, Ben?”
The lanky man folded his arms and leaned against his truck. He was wearing a drab khaki uniform and well-worn boots, his hands were knobby and calloused, and one of his thumbnails was black from an injury. Johnson looked like your typical public servant, a laborer or a foreman, except that his eyes and voice told you he wasn’t.
“You’re Jim’s daughter, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“When you were a little girl, Smyles was in a traffic accident. In a school bus run off the road by one of them hopheads from Paradise. He spent a lot of time underwater and it left him that way. He’s slow but honest as the day is long. Best damn worker I ever had.”
As the cruiser was leaving the block, Jeremy looked out at them and smiled.
“Why couldn’t he be responsible for a kidnapping?”
“He’s not that kind of person, Lieutenant. It isn’t in his nature. And he’s not that clever. Where do you think he could take a person that you guys wouldn’t be able to find?”
O’Shaughnessy stood silent. He certainly had her there. She stuck her hands in her pockets and looked around at the crowd. Then she looked at the house on the corner. It reminded her that it was late and the children were at home with Tim. She’d had to drop them there on the way to the scene, and she was hoping to get back in time to take them home so they could get some rest for school. Except that to do that she would have to wake them, which would rob them of even more sleep, but what else could she do? Was the separation really all her fault? she wondered. If Tim were home like he wanted to be—and like the girls obviously wanted him to be—then the kids would be home in bed. They’d wake in the morning; they’d have breakfast, get their lunches, grab their homework, and be off with the reassurance that the next evening or the next wouldn’t be interrupted by a frantic trip to their father’s or grandmother’s or some neighbor’s down the street.
“I’ve got men in my outfit I wouldn’t blink an eye over if you’d told me they done something like this. Smyles ain’t one of them. He’s too damned sensitive about people.”
“That could go two ways,” she said, dragging her thoughts away from her children. “Some psychotics have a distorted view of the world. They see things from both ends of the spectrum. Love and hate, it’s all the same.”
“He’s a pussycat, Lieutenant. He wouldn’t hurt anything or anyone.”
O’Shaughnessy looked at Johnson.
In truth she wanted Jeremy Smyles to be guilty. She wanted him to confess and to take her to the bodies so she could get this part of her life behind her.
But Smyles’s story about finding the ring made sense. She had been under that walk; she’d found the wristwatch. She came as close to feeling what Anne Carlino felt as anyone could possibly feel. The young girl could easily have removed her ring and stuck it up between the boards. She was preparing herself. She knew he was going to find her and she didn’t want him to have it all.
18
FRIDAY, MAY 27
WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY
The phones at the police station rang constantly now. Someone was doing the smash and grab on high-end cars around town, someone was breaking into condos on the bay, and a gang of well-dressed Latinos was shoplifting clothing up and down the coast.
The report was brief. Andrew Markey, male Caucasian, 78 years, pronounced at 2:13 P.M., Sunday, 12 Macy Lane, Elmwood Nursing Home.
Time of death was estimated to have been between four and ten on the morning of May 1, although no one could physically account for Andrew since the previous evening. That was the last time he was seen alive.
She looked at the photographs of Andrew lying faceup at the foot of a concrete stairwell, then the ones from the morgue.
The cause of death was listed as blunt-force trauma to the head. Other injuries included multiple rib, radius, and fibula fractures. All injuries were consistent with the scene. All injuries were consistent with a fall. She knew by now that the toxicological tests were negative.
The only remaining questions were: Who left the door unlocked? Was it intentional or unintentional? Did Andrew open the door, or did someone open it for him? Did Andrew fall or was he pushed? None of these questions would have been asked had Andrew’s daughter not been murdered a week later.
O’Shaughnessy leafed through the witness statements. The majority were from staff members having noticed nothing unusual, though one was from an elderly resident, a Mrs. Campbell, who claimed to have seen a man mopping floors outside her room early Sunday morning. Early, as O’Shaughnessy read, was described as being before the day shift arrived to administer medications.
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