The Blood Red Indian Summer bam-8

by David Handler

  He swam them away from the dredged dock area to shallower water where they could stand, water streaming from their clothes as they watched Rondell speed out into the middle of the choppy, mile-wide Connecticut River, the cigarette boat’s xenon running lights swiveling left-right, left-right as he steered frantically downriver toward Long Island Sound. There were no other boats out. Not in a storm like this.

  “Call the Coast Guard,” Yolie ordered Toni. “We’ll need launches out in the Sound. And chopper support if they can fly in this. He can outrun whatever they’ve got but he can’t go forever.” To Tyrone she called out, “How much fuel have you got in that thing?”

  “Maybe a quarter of a tank,” he called back, his eyes never leaving those swiveling lights. “Needed filling next time we took her out. He won’t get far.”

  “He won’t get far is right,” Clarence said. “I swear, he’s going to flip that damned thing. Don’t know how to leave the wheel alone.”

  Jamella joined them out there now. She wore some of her father’s blood on her yellow shift. And a strangely impassive expression on her face.

  “You okay?” Des asked her, concerned that she might be in shock.

  “I’m fine,” she answered quietly, shivering from the cold rain.

  Des took off her hooded rain jacket and put it around her.

  Tyrone rushed out of the water to her. “Girl, you got to go back inside in the house.”

  “I don’t want to go inside,” she said in that same quiet voice. “I don’t want to be there with him.”

  “But you’ll catch cold out here. That’s no good for you or the baby. Go back inside, okay? We’re okay.”

  “We’re not okay. I’m so sorry, Tyrone.”

  “What for? You got nothing to be sorry about.” He kissed her softly on the mouth, caressing her smooth cheek with the back of his battle-scarred hand. “We’ll get through this, I promise you. We just got to get that freaked-out little man back on dry land. He’ll be all right. He’s a respectable individual with a spotless record. Can plead temporary insanity or something. People will understand.”

  “Where in the hell is that little dude going?” Clarence cried out.

  Where indeed. Because Rondell was no longer streaking downriver toward the open water of the Sound. Instead, he was coming around in a wide arc that was sending him up the windswept river in the direction of the old stone railroad bridge and, beyond it, East Haddam and Hartford.

  Toni, who’d just put out her distress call to the Coast Guard, said, “I’ll call them back and tell them him he’s changed course. And notify our own marine responders up the line. But I don’t get it, Loo. What’s he doing? Now he can’t get away.”

  “Makes no sense,” Yolie agreed, watching him in bewilderment.

  “Sure it does,” Mitch said. “Because he’s not trying to get away.”

  The Deacon glanced sharply at Mitch before he turned to Yolie and said, “I agree. You can call off the pursuit, Lieutenant Snipes.”

  “Call it off?” Tyrone protested angrily. “Why?”

  “Because he’s not trying to get away,” Mitch said again.

  “Man, what in the hell are you?…” Tyrone’s eyes widened. “Oh, Lord.” He no longer had to ask Mitch what he meant. It was obvious to him.

  Obvious to all of them now that Rondell was headed straight upriver, letting Da Beast loose with a tremendous roar. The supercharged cigarette boat had to be going at least seventy-five miles per hour as he closed in on the railroad bridge, its running lights casting bright beams on the granite pilings that had been stoutly supporting the old bridge for more than a hundred years. The pilings were spaced wide enough apart to allow dredging barges and other big ships to pass on through. Each of the supports was marked with bright red warning lights that could be seen from miles away. There was no mistaking where the pilings were. Consequently, hardly anyone ever rammed a boat into one of them.

  Not unless they really wanted to.

  Rondell drove Da Beast directly into one of the bridge’s centermost granite support pilings. The boat exploded on impact. Its quarter-tank of fuel was plenty enough to set off a ball of fire that shot at least 500 feet into the rainy air. Witnesses later reported seeing it from as far as ten miles upriver. The explosion was felt by residents twice that far away.

  “Call Amtrak,” Yolie ordered Toni. “Alert them that their bridge just took a major hit. They’ll have to shut down all of their trains between New York and Boston. I’ll call Homeland Security. They’ll probably be getting a hundred calls in the next sixty seconds from neighbors who think we just got attacked by Al Qaeda. Des, could you?…”

  “On it.” Des got busy contacting the emergency marine responders who’d close off the river and deal with the burning wreckage.

  The Deacon stood by quietly and observed. He did not interfere.

  Tyrone, Jamella and Clarence could only huddle there together, hugging each other and sobbing.

  “I’ll see you a little later,” Mitch said to Des somberly when she’d finished making her calls. He was profoundly shaken by what had happened. “I’m going to walk Winston home. The girls will be worried about him. And I want to check on my parents. The power was out when I left. I want to make sure they’re okay.”

  “Tell them I’m sorry about dinner. We’ll try dinner some other night, okay?”

  “Sure, I’ll tell them,” he said, his gaze fastened on the dock at their feet.

  “You did good tonight.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes searching hers. “Did I?”

  “Hell, yes. You cracked the Plotka-Halperin killings wide open.”

  “Des, I didn’t crack anything open. And now two more people are dead.”

  “Calvin got what he deserved.”

  “But Rondell didn’t. He was a nice guy. He didn’t deserve this.”

  Des looked out at the flaming pieces of wreckage that were strewn across the oil-slicked water. Then she took his hand and squeezed it. “You’re absolutely right, he didn’t. Neither did Kinitra. Now you know why I sit up all night drawing portraits of victims until my fingers bleed.”

  “No offense, but I wish I didn’t know these things.”

  “So do I, boyfriend. Believe me, so do I.”

  EPILOGUE

  (TWO DAYS LATER)

  The four violent deaths that occurred that stormy evening went 24/7 on the cable TV news channels, sports channels and Internet gossip sites. The public just couldn’t seem to get enough of the story. Not that the public actually knew the real story. Only the people who were actually there in Tyrone Grantham’s living room knew the real reason why Rondell shot Calvin. But they weren’t talking. And Kinitra certainly wasn’t. In fact, the name Kinitra Jameson was never so much as mentioned. The public only knew the version of the events that was fed to the media by Yolie-which was that Calvin had confessed to several Connecticut State Police officers, as well as members of his own family, that it was he who had murdered Stewart Plotka and Andrea Halperin. An enraged Rondell had shot Calvin and then taken his own life despite everyone’s best efforts to stop him.

  The public wasn’t totally satisfied with this version. They wanted more. And got more. One authoritative cable TV talking head after another held forth in sonorous tones about what really happened. That Tyrone had really sent Calvin to White Sand Beach to scare Plotka and Halperin off and things got out of hand. Or that Calvin, who had a long criminal record, had really been taking money under the table from Andrea Halperin to feed her dirt on Tyrone and got found out. Or that straight-arrow Rondell, who really had a serious drug problem, had really brokered a settlement with Plotka without telling Tyrone. There was a ton of speculation, most of it outright fiction. Usually, the talking heads cited “friends close to the family,” which Des had learned from Mitch was reporter-speak for “ I’m totally making this shit up.” She already knew from her own personal experience that any time there was a violent family dispute involving black people, the m
edia automatically assumed that drugs were involved.

  No one had the real story. And that was as it should be, as far as Des was concerned. No one outside of the family needed to know that Kinitra’s own father had raped her and gotten her pregnant. It was no one else’s damned business. Kinitra’s privacy was being zealously protected by the family. And Yolie had made it very plain to anyone who’d come in contact with Kinitra at Middlesex Hospital or Shoreline Clinic that she’d land on them super-hard if they ever breathed a word about her. The Jewett sisters didn’t have to be told. They always kept their mouths shut.

  The murder-suicide rampage was one more giant blot on Tyrone Grantham’s troubled reputation. Even though Tyrone wasn’t personally responsible, the NFL commissioner wasn’t happy. The events of that night brought just the sort of “unsavory” attention to the league that he’d warned Tyrone about when he suspended him. Consequently, it was no longer a sure thing that Da Beast would be back on the field next season. A lifetime ban from the league was a distinct possibility.

  Not that Tyrone was thinking about his career just now. He’d returned to his hometown of Los Angeles to lay Rondell to rest in the cemetery where their grandparents were buried. Lay his soul to rest, that is. There were no earthly remains-Rondell’s casket was empty. But Tyrone wanted to give him a proper burial. Chantal and Clarence went out there with him, as did Monique. And more than a dozen of Tyrone’s teammates flew to L.A. for the funeral, which Des thought was very nice of them.

  Jamella, who was entering her thirty-fourth week of pregnancy, stayed behind. Her blood pressure had gotten a bit high and her doctor didn’t want her to fly. Plus, she had Kinitra to take care of. And, after the Medical Examiner released the body, she had to arrange to have Calvin cremated. There was no funeral service. She and Kinitra simply stood together at the end of Tyrone’s dock and scattered their father’s ashes into the Connecticut River.

  Jamella told Des this when Des dropped by the estate on Turkey Neck at her request. Actually, Kinitra’s request. “My sister has something to say to you,” was how Jamella put it to her on the phone.

  It was a blustery, slate gray day, the temperature in the upper forties. Indian Summer was now officially over. And Des now had on her normal cold weather wool uniform and a Gore-Tex jacket. A skeleton crew of tabloid TV cameramen and paparazzi remained camped outside the estate.

  It was moving day. Giant vans lined the long driveway. Justy Bond had won out. He was getting his precious neighborhood back, although the proud owner of Connecticut’s highest volume G.M. dealership could hardly be called a happy fellow. June had sailed off for the Florida Keys on the Calliope just as he’d promised he would-and taken Bonita with him, much to the giddy delight of the village gossip hens. Justy was devastated. He also needed to find himself a new Bond Girl. Callie Kreutzer had informed him that she did not intend to utter the words “Just Ask Justy” aloud on TV, or anywhere else, ever again for as long as she lived.

  A dozen or more movers were busy loading the vans with furniture and boxes. The front door to the house was braced open. Des found Jamella standing in the living room gloomily watching a crew from the aquarium company perform the delicate task of transferring Tyrone’s precious sharks to temporary holding tanks and disassembling the giant tank, coral reefs and all.

  “Taking them with you?”

  “Moving them next door,” she answered softly. “Tyrone wants Mr. Lash to have them. A bunch of electricians are over there right now rewiring the whole downstairs. Tyrone told them to just put it on his tab.”

  “That was nice of him.”

  There were dark circles under Jamella’s eyes, which had a haunted look in them. “Things got so crazy that night that I forgot to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Trying to help my sister.”

  “I was just doing my job.”

  “And I wasn’t. I was supposed to be looking out for her. I let her down. Popsy was doing those horrible things to her all that time and I didn’t know. I should have known.” She looked at Des accusingly. “Did you know?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Is that for real?”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, Jamella. That’s not how I roll. How are you feeling?”

  “I don’t feel anything. I’m just about keeping busy. Tyrone’s lawyer rented us a big apartment near Lincoln Center. We’re going to try the City for a while. I want to hook Kinitra up with Julliard. If not enrolled there, then at least taking private piano lessons from somebody who’s on the faculty. She has to get back into her music. And she has an appointment tomorrow morning with a therapist who has an office on Central Park West. I’m meeting with my new obstetrician tomorrow, too. I’ll be having my baby in the City.”

  “Is Kinitra planning to have her baby?”

  “We’ll talk about her options when she’s ready to have the conversation. She… isn’t ready yet. She’s just so filled with guilt. Blames herself for every single thing that happened.” Jamella glanced at Des hesitantly. “I’m kind of beating myself up, too.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Tyrone swore to me that night-swore to all of us-that he didn’t do it. I-I didn’t believe him. And he knows that. He saw it in my eyes. I don’t know if we’ll survive this. I can’t hardly blame him if he doesn’t want me anymore. I don’t deserve his love. And I sure don’t like myself very much right now.”

  “I’m not real proud of myself either. I was standing right there when Rondell drew his Glock on your father and I didn’t react in time to stop him. None of us did. We’re all pretty down on ourselves.”

  Especially Yolie. It was her case. And the Internal Affairs fallout for Calvin’s murder, if there was to be any, would land on her. But the sad truth was that not one of them, not even the Deacon himself, had considered the possibility that little Rondell might be armed and dangerous. Yolie had attempted to determine if there were any weapons in the home. Clarence had coughed one up. True, she hadn’t asked Rondell if he owned one. But if she had, he would have lied and said no. True, in an ideal, perfect world, he should have been patted down. But it wasn’t an ideal, perfect world. Real world? Not one law enforcement person in the entire state would have patted Rondell down for a weapon that night. You could replay it a million times and it would always turn out the same way.

  It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.

  Des had been drawing like crazy ever since it happened, working off of the grisly crime scene photos. Stewart Plotka and Andrea Halperin dead in the front seat of her Mercedes. Calvin Jameson lying on Tyrone’s living room floor with his head blown open. If there’d been any photographic evidence of Rondell’s remains, she’d have been all over that, too. It was the only way she knew how to cope with her overwhelming sense of powerlessness with a chain of events that had outpaced her ability to grasp them and act upon them. In that ideal, perfect world, Rondell wouldn’t be in smithereens at the bottom of the Connecticut River right now. He’d be holding Kinitra’s hand and telling her in a soft, reassuring voice what a terrific person she was. Instead, he was gone.

  It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.

  And so Des drew, deconstructing the horror one stroke at a time, knowing that this one would stay inside of her for keeps.

  “My sister’s anxious to talk to you,” Jamella said. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  Kinitra was stretched out in a lounge chair on the patio by the pool. She wore a chunky wool turtleneck, fleece pants and UGG boots. She was staring out at the river. Upriver, actually, at the blackened but structurally sound railroad bridge. Amtrak service between New York and Boston had been restored that morning.

  Des showed her a smile and said, “Hey.”

  Kinitra turned and looked at her, but her mind was somewhere else. A place far away. She seemed to have aged five years in the past seventy-two hours. She’d lost that doe-eyed, childlike quality of hers. She was a young woman now. “
Thanks for coming, Trooper Des.” Her voice wasn’t sing-songy anymore either. It sounded flat and tired. “I wanted to apologize for lying to you and being such a total brat.”

  “Not a problem. I understand where you were coming from.”

  “I also wanted to thank Mitch and his parents for saving my life. I don’t think I ever did.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass that along. And, for what it’s worth, I’ve got my dress all picked out.”

  Kinitra frowned at her. “What dress?”

  “The one I’m going to wear when you play Carnegie Hall. I’ll be there.”

  “I’ll write you a song. Would a love song be okay?”

  “A love song would do just fine.”

  She smiled at Des faintly, then gazed back at the railway bridge and was someplace else again. Someplace where no one should ever, ever have to go.

  ***

  They tried doing brunch this time. Scrambled eggs, bacon and biscuits for those who could eat such things. Irish oatmeal for those who couldn’t. There was fresh-squeezed orange juice. There was piping hot coffee. It was a brisk, beautiful autumn morning. Mitch had a big fire going in his fireplace.

  “I’ve got some news to impart,” the Deacon announced between spoonfuls of oatmeal. “I’m returning to work next week on a part-time basis. And I’m moving back into my own place. Giving my girl her life back. I’ve imposed on her long enough. I’ve got you to thank for this, Chet. You inspired me.”

  Mitch’s dad looked at him surprise. “I did?”

  “You did. You made me realize that I’m not ready to be put out to pasture yet. I’m just like you-if I’m not helping someone, or at least trying, then they may as well dig a hole and cover me over.”

  “Here’s to you, Buck,” Chet said, raising his coffee cup to him.

  “I’m going to miss you, Daddy,” Des confessed.