The Cold Blue Blood: A Berger and Mitry Mystery

by David Handler

  “Did you?”

  “Sure,” Bitsy said offhandedly. “Believe me, if you met her father you would think he drives a truck for a living. That’s why she married Bud.”

  “She seems to want kids,” Mitch said, puffing.

  “Desperately,” Bitsy confirmed. “Or so she says. I’m never quite sure whether I believe her. She’s one of those women who is always telling people what she thinks they want to hear. I also suspect she has a young hunk of a boyfriend in New York. Bud only keeps that apartment at her insistence.”

  “He watches her like a hawk.”

  “Why do you say that?” Bitsy asked eagerly. “Did she hit on you?”

  “Not really. I doubt I’m her type.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Mitch. You’re a very nice-looking young man.”

  “Are you hitting on me?”

  “Stop that!” she commanded, howling with laughter. “Now, as for Jamie and Evan, Jamie will play the village queen role just a teensy bit—to rile Bud, mostly. But he’s a good-hearted man. And he’s been so good for Evan, who was just the lostest little bunny before Jamie came along.”

  “Did Bud have a hard time accepting Evan’s gayness?”

  “As you can well imagine,” she affirmed. “Bud has a hard time accepting anything that isn’t what he knows. Actually, Bud has been something of a puzzle to me. He’s still so devoted to Dolly. And acts so crushed by what happened. Yet he let Niles steal her away from him.”

  Mitch’s shoulders were starting to ache from driving the spade into so many chunks of granite. “He did?”

  “Of course. A good woman like Dolly isn’t lured away from her husband. She has to be driven away. Bud didn’t want her anymore. When Niles came along, she was feeling unloved and unattractive. Believe me, it can also get a bit lonely out here. Look at my own situation. Red makes four flights a month to Tokyo. He’s four days on—two days to get there, two days to get back—then he’s three days off, asleep mostly, the poor lamb. And then he’s gone again. Poor Red was such a disappointment to his parents. They wanted him to carry on the Peck political legacy. But he doesn’t like giving speeches. Or mingling with strangers. He likes peace and quiet. His cockpit. His little island. We’re hoping our boy, Jeremy, will show a taste for public life. He is talking about law school after he … Oh, beans!” Her spade had collided with yet another solid object. It didn’t give off the sharp clank of metal upon stone. This was more of a dull thud. “I was afraid of this,” she said.

  Mitch leaned on his spade, catching his breath. “What is it?”

  “Tree root.” She gazed around them with a critical eye. “One of your garden’s worst enemies, Mitch. It will hog all of the soil’s moisture and nutrients.”

  “Is it from that oak?” There was a fine old one over next to the barn.

  “No, they have a tap root—straight down. It’s probably that mulberry over there. I’ll fetch my pruning saw. We’ll make short work of it.” She went waddling off toward her place, swiping at the mud on her overalls.

  Mitch started digging out the soil from around it so they could get a clear shot at it—when suddenly the smell hit him. It was powerful. It was putrid. It was so sickening he gagged and very nearly threw up.

  The solid object was not a tree root at all. It was somebody’s leg.

  CHAPTER 6

  IT WAS A THIRTY-MINUTE drive straight south on Route 9 from Meriden to Dorset. Des had worked a case down there once before. A sixteen-year-old named Ethan Salisbury had smacked his mother upside the head approximately one hundred times with an aluminum baseball bat, stuffed her body into the trunk of her BMW and dumped it into Uncas Lake. It had not been pretty. Des had the charcoal sketches to prove it. The Salisbury murder had garnered quite a bit of attention. They were bluebloods. They had lived in a $1.8 million home with a sauna and a pool. Things like that weren’t supposed to happen to people like that in places like that. But they did.

  The same way dead bodies weren’t supposed to be unearthed in the vegetable patch on Big Sister Island. But one had been.

  Des marveled at the historic village’s lushness and calm as she steered her unmarked Crown Victoria slicktop cruiser toward Peck Point. It was so quiet she could hear herself breathe. And so spotless it had the sanitized unreality of a theme park. There was no graffiti, no trash. There was no ugliness whatsoever.

  At least none that showed.

  As she eased on past the Dorset Academy of Fine Arts, her gaze lingered longingly. There was no postmodern fakery at DAFA. They still believed in the same rigorous, classical training that produced the Renaissance masters. Years and years of study on the human anatomy, on perspective, on materials. It was a private dream of hers to study there someday. Make that a fantasy.

  There was a barricade at the end of Peck Point. Here she encountered a horde of cruisers and television news vans. The island itself, which was accessible by a wooden causeway, was shrouded in dense fog. It seemed distant and faintly ominous. It reminded her of the view of Alcatraz across San Francisco Bay.

  Tal Bliss, Dorset’s seasoned resident trooper, had taken the initial 911 call. He had immediately called the barracks in Westbrook. They sent out several uniformed troopers to seal the area. They had also contacted Major Crimes.

  The instant Des stepped out of her cruiser she was assaulted by news cameras from Connecticut’s four local television stations, 3, 8, 30 and 61. The reporters shoved microphones in her face, crowding her up against her car, demanding answers. They were in a constant ratings battle with each other. And nothing stirred up their blood like a violent crime in a town of wealthy white people.

  “Lieutenant, do you have the victim’s identity?”

  “Lieutenant, we go on live at noon!”

  “We need an update, Lieutenant!”

  “Lieutenant, what can you tell us?!”

  Des’s heavy horn-rimmed glasses had come sliding down her nose a bit. She pushed them back up, pausing to compose herself before she responded. She had learned from previous experience that if she did not she came across as too hostile. Also her voice had a tendency to bottom out on her when she was nervous. Brandon used to say she sounded like Don Cornelius. “I can tell you very little at the present time,” she stated, blinking into the lights. “As you can see, I have only just arrived.”

  “When can you give us a statement?”

  “We go on live at noon!”

  “Can you give us something between and twelve and twelve-ten?!”

  “We need a statement!”

  “Now will you please let me do my job?” Des asked them patiently. It was not easy to remain polite with them. They were just so damned insistent. And so positive that nothing, but nothing, was as important to anyone as their own on-air needs. It was perfectly natural that they felt this way. Virtually everyone on the planet conducted their public and private lives around television. And their demands did have to be met. Still, if you were not firm with them they would engulf and devour you whole. “Please step aside now!” she barked.

  And they let her by. Nobody liked to be around an angry sister. Not one who had a gun.

  Tal Bliss met her at the edge of the wooden bridge, as imposing a figure as ever in his wide-brimmed hat, tailored uniform and polished boots. Des had worked with him on the Salisbury case and respected him. He had handled himself like a professional. He had treated her with courtesy. He was a good resident trooper, comfortable with his size, his badge and his domain. He knew this place. He knew these people. The resident trooper program was a blessing for the smaller Connecticut towns that did not have their own police force. In exchange for his around-the-clock presence, the town paid half of his salary.

  “Welcome to Big Sister, Lieutenant,” he said, tipping his hat to her.

  She smiled at him and said, “Hey back at you, Trooper. And how is Busta Rhymes?”

  “Renamed him Dirty Harry, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not one bit.”

  “An
d he’s fat and ungrateful, in response to your question.”

  She let out a laugh. “Well, he is a cat. Bake anything good lately?”

  Des had not been shocked to learn that Bliss had served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He carried himself like an ex-marine. But it had come as a surprise to find out that he’d studied for a year at the Cordon Bleu in Paris and was considered the finest chef in Dorset.

  “I’ve rediscovered the quiche. I’ll have to make you one sometime.”

  “And I’ll have to be there to eat it,” she said to him, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape and out onto the wooden bridge.

  “I don’t seem to see you down around these parts unless it’s something grizzly, do I?”

  “That what this is?”

  “Gentleman smells none too sweet, I assure you. Victim was Niles Seymour, age fifty-two, estranged husband of Dolly Seymour. Everyone thought he left town a few weeks ago with a younger woman. It appears he never left at all. He’s been down there for quite some time, as you will see. Anything I can help you with before we head on out?”

  “How’s the security here?” she asked, glancing at the mechanized barricade. It took an I.D. card to raise it.

  “They’ve never had any trouble,” he replied. “If the system is tampered with in any way, the private security firm is out here in ten minutes.”

  “Any tampering recently?”

  “Negative. Sometimes the local kids stick chewing gum in the card slot for kicks. The Point’s one of their after-dark hangouts. They like to get high out here. I periodically chase them away. But it’s been quiet lately.”

  “Anyone besides the residents have an I.D. card?”

  “Just Tuck Weems, the caretaker. No one else, Lieutenant. Not even the postman—they pick up their mail at the post office. Although I should point out the tidal situation to you. Right now it’s in, and the water’s plenty deep and treacherous, as you can see …”

  She glanced over the wooden railing at the water. It was swirling and foaming on the rocks. Treacherous was right.

  “But at low tide,” he continued, “it’s possible to walk out to Big Sister. If someone’s on foot there’s no stopping him. Except there’s been no trouble with prowlers for quite a few years. For one thing, whatever they steal they have to lug all the way back to shore with them, on foot, over very slippery rocks. For another, those houses have an awful lot of big windows. You can’t exactly sneak up on the place.”

  “You’re saying an outsider didn’t do this, correct?”

  Bliss glanced at her uneasily. “In my opinion, it’s highly unlikely we are dealing with a career criminal here. I’d say he was killed by someone he knew. Either someone he buzzed in or a fellow islander—although I must tell you I find the latter possibility extremely hard to imagine. I’ve known these folks my whole life.”

  They started their way across the causeway toward the island. It got damper and colder the farther out they got. Des was sorry she had not thought to bring a sweater. Power lines straddled the narrow wooden bridge, she observed. Connecticut Light and Power did not string lines out to private islands for just anyone.

  “You’d better tell me about them,” she said, shivering.

  “Dolly Seymour is a Peck,” he said with obvious pride. “As in Peck Point. We are talking about the bluest of the bluebloods, Lieutenant. A true lady. Although I suppose that’s considered something of a pejorative term nowadays.”

  “Not by me it isn’t,” Des said, wondering how long it would be before she felt the hot breath of Captain Polito down the back of her neck. Not long at all.

  “The word around town,” Bliss continued, “was that Niles left Dolly a Dear John letter, cleaned out their accounts and took off for the Virgin Islands—leaving a whole lot of bad feelings behind.”

  “The other woman’s name?”

  “No one seems to have any idea. She wasn’t a local girl.”

  “Who found his body?”

  “The tenant of Dolly’s carriage house, Mitch Berger. He and Dolly’s sister-in-law, Bitsy Peck. They were digging up the garden when they encountered it. She was able to recognize him.”

  “I’ll be needing a complete list of who lives out here,” Des said to Bliss.

  “I can give you that right now. Bitsy and Dolly’s brother, Redfield, live in the summer cottage. Dolly’s ex-husband, Bud Havenhurst, lives in the guest cottage with his new wife, Mandy. He got the house as a settlement after Dolly left him for Niles. And their son, Evan, lives in the lighthouse-keeper’s house with his companion, Jamie Devers. Jamie’s one of our local celebrities, but he keeps a pretty low profile.”

  She frowned at him. “Jamie Devers?”

  “He was a big television star back in the fifties—Just Blame Bucky.” On her blank stare he said, “Before your time, I guess … God, I’m getting old.”

  “It doesn’t show one bit,” she assured him. “You are still a fine-looking gentleman.”

  “Forget it,” he snapped, instantly on alert. “I won’t take another one.”

  “But they’re so much happier when they have company.”

  “Dirty Harry is plenty happy,” he insisted, smiling at her faintly. “In fact, given the choice, I’d trade places with him in a second.”

  They had crossed the bridge and were out on the island now. It was perfectly, incredibly lovely—Des could imagine someone like Martha Stewart belonging here. She could not imagine herself or anyone she had ever known living in such a place.

  A trio of blue and white Major Crime Squad cube vans were parked in the gravel driveway outside of the big yellow house. A dozen crime scene technicians in dark blue windbreakers and light blue latex gloves were already on the job. They were top-shelf people. And prepared for anything—each cube van came fully equipped with all fifty-two items of gear recommended in the guidelines drawn up by the National Medicolegal Review Panel in the wake of the O.J. case. Prior to that, unbelievably, no unified system of on-site death investigation had existed among the nation’s three thousand jurisdictions. Some of the items, like bodybags, were obvious. Others, like insect repellant, were less so.

  The vegetable patch was behind an old barn. Soave was there, muscles bulging inside his shiny black suit. The technicians were there. And the body of Niles Seymour was there. It was not a pretty sight or smell. Saponification had begun, his fatty tissues reacting with the salts in the soil and turning to a soapy consistency. Bloating had caused the pressure points in the skin to split open, his eyes and tongue to bulge. His clothing was rotting away from his flesh.

  Crime scene photos were being taken. Des would need extra copies of these. She would need to sketch this.

  “He was shot twice, loot,” Soave informed her, carefully smoothing his see-through moustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Chest and neck.”

  “The slugs still in him?” she asked, feeling her stomach muscles tighten involuntarily. She had a hot, bilious taste in the back of her throat.

  “The one in his chest is.”

  “This the primary scene?”

  Soave shook his head. “There’s not enough blood under him. Man was already dead when he was buried here.”

  “Do we have a line on the primary scene?”

  “Not yet,” Soave grunted. “And this one’s a mess—the gardeners tromped all over it.”

  Nonetheless, a forensic archaeologist was launching a dig. He and his assistants skimming off thin layers of moist dirt. Carefully sifting it for evidence. Depositing it on drop cloths. It was no different from a historic dig. Except that in this case the history was very recent. And living.

  Meanwhile, a forensic entomologist was collecting samples of the insects and egg masses that had colonized Niles Seymour’s decaying corpse. The body could not be removed until he was done. The extent of insect development—along with the soil temperature, amount of moisture in the soil and the state of the victim’s decomposition—would tell them approximately how long Niles Seymour had b
een down there. The type of insects might also help them determine the location of the primary crime scene.

  Des had seen enough. She motioned for Soave to join her. The two of them and Bliss moved back toward the driveway.

  “Tenant also smeared his muddy prints all over the spade and fork he found in the barn,” Soave mentioned sourly. “That don’t look too promising neither.”

  “Any of the islanders own guns?” she asked Resident Trooper Bliss.

  “Red hunts a little,” he replied, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “Jamie keeps a pistol for protection, I believe.”

  “Rico, I want uniformed troopers to search every house out here for weapons,” she said, knowing perfectly well that the odds of the murder weapon being around were slim to none. But she had to look. She couldn’t not look. “Make sure you get permission first. If you don’t get permission, then—”

  “We have to get a warrant,” he broke in, a defensive edge to his voice. “I know that, loot.”

  She knew that he knew it. She also knew that it was her responsibility to remind him anyway. She was the ranking officer on the scene. If she failed to remind him, and the chain of evidence was compromised because of it, it would be her fault. Be accountable. If there was one thing the Deacon had drummed into her, it was this. “Have them search every outbuilding and shed, under every rock. Then meet me back here. We got to take statements from the family.”

  “Right.” Soave went heading off, his arms held stiffly out to his sides in the classic bodybuilder’s strut.

  “Is that deluxe conference room at town hall still available?” Des asked Trooper Bliss. It had been her command center for three days and nights after the Salisbury killing. She could still remember the smell of the place—musty carpeting, moth balls and Ben-Gay.