by Noel Hynd
“Did you call the police?”
“The little punks were always gone by the time the police arrived.”
“You should have called me.” She sighed. “Maybe I should have. I know you would have sorted them out. Right?”
“Right, Rose.”
“Well, I bought Nixon, instead. The high-school boys came by one more time, and I sent Nixon out to rip their balls off.”
“Let me guess,” he said, “and the stone throwing stopped?”
“It stopped.”
O'Hara nodded and sipped the fruit coffee. His teeth ached from the sugar. In the hearth, flames danced like little yellow spirits around the logs. O'Hara's fire had become a thing of winter beauty.
“I have a roommate now, too,” Rose said. “So I'm not here alone.”
The roomie, Rose explained, was a woman named Donna. She worked nine till two for the electric company's collection department, badgering deadbeats who had taken too literally the state's “Live Free Or Die” motto. Donna was due home any time. So O'Hara now understood why Rose had gone to the window and why she had asked the time.
One of Rose's two brothers was a doctor, O'Hara remembered. The other brother became a judge in Maine. Her father had been a teacher at the prep school in Concord and had sent all three children to good schools. Rose had been the best student of the trio, probably the smartest. Hiring practices being what they had been for females, many opportunities were closed. So Rose had gone to work for the State of New Hampshire in the 1970s. Nothing better ever came along. Over the years, Rose had forgotten very little, especially the feeling that life had shortchanged her. She felt she had deserved something better than what she now had, and O'Hara would have been the first to agree.
“So what do you want from this old lady?” Rose eventually asked, her spirits up a bit in the glow of good company and a fine fire. “What could I possibly give you other than time, of which I have both too much and too little.”
“Your memory, Rose.”
“Which part of it?”
“Central Records. Your stint in the governor's office. Things you may have heard over the years.”
Her voice acquired an edge. “In reference to what?” she asked.
“The Gary Ledbetter case.”
She made a distasteful expression. “Hoo,” she said. “Nasty piece of work, that one.”
“I know. I arrested him.”
“I remember.” She sipped her tea. Her gaze found the fire, then returned to her guest. “Why are you rattling old skeletons? Aren't you about to retire?”
“I am.”
“Then why not let the dead rest?”
“Sometimes they won't allow it.”
“Who won't let it rest? The dead, or the people who sign your paycheck?”
“Both.”
“Don't speak in circles to me, young man,” she answered sharply, “or Auntie Rose will send you briskly packing.”
O'Hara grinned. This was Rose's way of working her way into a point.. The sharper her voice grew, the more O'Hara liked her.
“There's another case that's come up. There are parallels,” he said.
“Murder?”
“Murder.”
“Was it in the papers?” she asked. “I didn't see it.”
“You know the newspapers in this state: long on opinion and bad grammar, short on the facts. The death was recorded in the police logs and not one reporter has yet asked a question.”
“Of course,” she said. “But you're asking questions, aren't you, Franklin? Probably a lot of them.”
“I tried to check the official record of Gary Ledbetter,” he said. “I found material that was never shown to me the first time. Other parts of the file were missing.”
“Central Records is a snake pit. What do you expect? If you found a file complete, that's when you should be suspicious.”
O'Hara thought about it for a moment. “Tell me something, Rose,” he said. “There was one hell of a push to make sure Ledbetter looked guilty. And then he was quickly shipped out of state. Why? Did I miss something?”
Rose picked something small and white, a piece of fuzz, not a snowflake, off her formless green sweater and let it fall to the floor.
“I have no idea why there would have been any extra attention to the case,” she said. “I assumed that Gary Ledbetter was guilty.”
“I did, too,” O'Hara answered.
“Someone slaughtered those five girls.”
“Someone,” O'Hara agreed.
“Hoo!” she said. “The man's dead! And now you think there was someone else?”
“I don't know what I think,” O'Hara answered, “other than that the State was in an unhealthy rush to close the case.”
“Maybe Gary deserved it,” she said.
“What about the governor and the attorney general at the time?” O'Hara asked. “Ben Ashton. You worked in his office, didn't you?”
Rose's face took on a nasty frown. “That little runt!” she said. “Typical New Hampshire politician: small stature, physically and mentally. And if you'll excuse my French, Franklin, when the governor ate beans, Ben Ashton farted. Get my picture?”
“He was the governor's lackey,” O'Hara said.
“That's not news to you,” she said sternly. “Don't play games.”
“I'm not,” he said. “I'm here to have my memory refreshed. To let you confirm that I'm on the right track.”
Rose's eyes drifted to the front window again, and O'Hara feared for a moment that he might lose her attention. He pressed onward.
“I don't entirely understand the relationship,” O'Hara said. “Ashton was young for a political hack, even for this state. Where did the governor find him? Surely there must have been a number of overeager law-school graduates who would have. . . .”
“My God!” she said. “You've been looking at cadavers too long. Check out the living.”
“In what way?”
“Benjamin Ashton's father was a college classmate of Wilhelm Negri. Negri is the publisher of-”
“The New Hampshire American,” O'Hara said.
“And Negri-” Rose continued, only to be interrupted almost as quickly.
“-was the chief financial backer of the governor in his last campaign.”
“Right,” said Rose. “And, of course,” O'Hara continued, recalling the frozen January and February of 1987, “the American was running those incendiary editorials about life imprisonment being too good for the killer of Karen Stoner.”
Rose shrugged again. “So you've answered your own question,” Rose said. “Ashton was merely completing the dirty work for his father, his father's chum, and the governor. The incompetent little pipsqueak was anxious to get the job done. In any way possible.”
“Apparently he had a psychological profile done on Ledbetter by a Dr. Steinberg. Do you know her?”
“No.”
“The profile came out the wrong way. So Ashton went out and got two others. Does that surprise you?”
“Not a bit. Standard operating procedure. They used to keep going in that office until they got the result they wanted.”
“What about evidence?” O'Hara asked.
“What about it?”
“I never knew who Ashton used as investigators. Did he have any? I never saw them.”
Rose laughed. “Oh, sure,” she said. “He had investigators. Former roommates from the Green Indian college. Country club golf partners.”
A beat, as it sunk in. “More hacks, you mean.”
“Hoo! 'Hacks' is too kind a word! Two or three of Ashton's Yuppie buddies who fancied themselves sleuths. They barely knew how to trace licenses at Motor Vehicles. I don't think they could have found a lost cat if the cat scratched their ass.” More tea, lukewarm now, then, by way of benediction, “If they ever went out and found fresh evidence in a case, I never saw it for as long as I worked there.”
“Then where did they get what they needed?”
Another shrug.
A dyspeptic grin. “From you people. State police, if they were lucky. Local cops, if they were luckier. Newspapers sometimes, when some cub reporter did a little extra digging. That, or, well . . . use your imagination, Franklin.”
“They fabricated evidence?”
“All the time. When they needed it. And sometimes, because they were so stupid, even when they didn't need it.”
“They just made stuff up? Witnesses? Documents?”
“You're a big boy, Franklin. You can't be shocked.”
“I'm only shocked if they did it in a case like Ledbetter's,” he said. “Why bother? There was so much real evidence. If they had only-”
“Be shocked,” she said. “What is 'real' evidence? A scrap of paper? The word of a witness? Some girl who says she thinks she saw a man with her dead friend? A fingerprint from God-knows-where? Come on, Franklin. Not too hard to work a little magic in those departments, is it?”
“Not without the help of the police,” O'Hara said. “And I know that I never-”
“You know that you what?” Rose asked. “You were only at the gateway of the Ledbetter case. Had just scratched the surface when Mallinson removed you. Right? You weren't even to ask any more questions about the case, if memory serves me.”
“Right,” O'Hara said, recalling.
Rose held O'Hara in a tight gaze. “You know, right after the case broke, right after you made the arrest, Mallinson had a couple of deputy inspectors down in Peterborough flashing pictures of Gary. Did you know that?”
“It doesn't ring a bell,” O'Hara said. “But there was a lot of confusion. One team of investigators going over the path travelled by another.”
“I seem to remember seeing something in Central Records about it,” Rose said. “After all, deputy inspectors? Awfully high rank to be playing backwoods Humphrey Bogart.”
“If there was anything in Central Records about it, it's gone now,” said O'Hara.
“Wouldn't you know it?” Rose said, almost as a refrain. “That Billy Mallinson sure is a busy boy when he wants to be.”
O'Hara remembered Rose and the captain had locked their stubborn horns together more than once in the past. One of the great things about Rose was that she had scores to settle with almost everyone.
“So why don't you talk to Mallinson?” Rose asked.
“I already did.”
“So what did the great man say?”
“He said no case is perfect,” O'Hara said. “He said he had no impression that there was anything unusual about the case other than its high profile.”
“And you believe him?” Rose asked.
She didn't expect a response and didn't get one. And she suddenly looked very tired. Rose set aside her cup and leaned forward. She put two fingers to her eyes, pressing them, and then looked up again.
“Oh, that Bill Mallinson is such a damnable liar,” she said. “I suppose you'll tell me next that he became the head of homicide by merit. That he didn't whiz past some equally capable people because of his agility in state politics.”
Now it was O'Hara's turn to sigh.
“I never asked questions about how Bill Mallinson got where he is,” O'Hara said guardedly. “Sure, I've heard stories. But even if the path was dirty as sin, that still doesn't mean that evidence was fabricated in the Ledbetter case.”
“Franklin,” she said, “look at it from their point of view. You want this case to fly quickly. So you pull it away from this honest Irishman named O'Hara. And then, well, why wouldn't you put the fix in? You assume Ledbetter's guilty. You assume you got the right man. Why take chances? Why let the facts compromise a good case? You have methods that have worked for years, rainy days and sunny. So you damned well use them. Come on. It's just so much easier that way, Franklin. Cleaner. Faster.” She paused. “If you'll excuse the expression, they got away with murder in the Ashton years. They would have done whatever was expedient. And you know it.”
“But now, Rose,” he told her, “I know it better than I ever did before.”
“Does it make you feel better?”
“No.”
“Then I don't know why you bother. Take your retirement, move to someplace sunny, and find yourself a girl. You start messing with past histories of old murder cases, Franklin, and you'll find yourself in a bottomless cesspool. Don't just take Rose's memory, dearie. Take her advice, too. Please?”
“Ever know of anyone named Clay?”
“Only Cassius.”
“I need someone with the first initial 'S.’”
She pondered it for a moment. There was a loud crackle in the fire, so loud that they both were startled. An ember shot from a log and died on the bricks before the hearth. “I'm drawing a blank on the name,” Rose said. “Sorry. What's it mean? Who's 'S. Clay'?”
“I wish I knew, Rose,” he answered. “And if I find out, I'll tell you.”
There were other points of business which O'Hara wished to address. Specifically what had Rose known about William Mallinson's ascent to authority. Exactly what other cases in which there had been a certain creativity with respect to evidence. And then there had been that collection of books on the paranormal. Certainly after his own experiences, a few questions might be permitted to a man.
But time ran out. There was first the rumble of an automobile outside, then voices. Female voices, one bidding adieu to the other. Then there were the sounds of someone banging snow off a pair of boots on the kitchen doorstep, followed seconds later by the sound of a door opening.
Rose looked toward the kitchen. Her entire face illuminated with a smile. Suddenly, she looked five years younger.
“Donna?” she called.
“Hello, honey,” a female voice returned.
Rose looked to O'Hara and shared a smile. “My room-mate,” Rose said. As if O'Hara couldn't have guessed. “We got company, doll! “ Rose called back.
Donna appeared a few moments later, a lean woman in a short black skirt, black tights, and a mean red sweater. Red hair, close-cropped. She was about thirty years old, freckle-faced and pretty, but in a way that wasn't quite out of Family Circle.
“Shit. What a day,” Donna said. She smiled to O'Hara and gave him a tepid hello. Then she came to the older woman, leaned over, and, as the two women exchanged a squeeze of the hands, Donna kissed Rose full on the lips.
Then Rose handled a formal introduction. “This here is my friend Donna Salinger,” Rose said. “Donna, this is Frank O'Hara from Nashua. Old friend from when I worked for the State.”
Donna offered a limp handshake. O'Hara accepted it and said the right words of greeting.
Donna had little else to say. She fumbled into her pocket. She produced a hash pipe and prepared to get it fired up.
“Donna, Mr. O'Hara is a detective with the state police,” Rose continued.
“Shit,” Donna said again, now fumbling to get rid of the pipe as quickly as she had found it.
“Fortunately,” Rose said, “my friend Frank has very poor eyesight today.”
“Very poor,” O'Hara confirmed.
“I'm going up to the girls' room,” Donna said. “I'll see you all later.” O'Hara told her it was nice to have met her, however brief it had been.
“Yeah,” Donna answered. “Me, too. Real good.”
Rose looked at him in mild befuddlement. “What in God's name were we just talking about?” she asked. “Where were we?”
O'Hara shook his head. He knew he had lost Rose. Or at least he had lost her attention. And she had attested to quite enough as it was.
Several minutes later, O'Hara was out the door. But not before passing by a bookcase in Rose's den. The books on the end table about those on the paranormal were just the tip of Rose's iceberg on the subject. Mixed in with volumes on the movies and on women's studies, must have been a hundred more volumes on the occult.
If there were people in the state with a larger collection on the subject, O'Hara mused as he walked to his car, he didn't really want to meet them. Fact
was, Rose was falling into focus as an expert on many useful subjects. Some obvious; others not so obvious.
As O'Hara walked back to his car, the wind whipped little ice crystals off the surface of the snow, up against his coat, hat, and bare face. He struggled against it.
One of winter's wonderful little pleasures: The lock on his car door had already frozen shut. He worked it with his key for several seconds, but it wouldn't budge. Then he pulled from his pocket a butane lighter. He coaxed up a flame and held the fire against the lock of the car door, thawing the metal. As he repeated the process, he singed his finger-fire and ice at the same time. But with another jiggle of the key, the car door opened.
Then he stopped. As the wind pounded him, as the arctic freeze gripped him, O'Hara sensed, or thought he sensed, a presence close by. Another moment and he was sure it was Gary.
He whirled, his heart starting to kick as violently as it had the previous August when he thought he had felt a hand on his shoulder in a dark bedroom.
His eyes swept the snowscape. He was certain of the presence, but saw nothing. And he felt nothing, other than the notion that Gary's presence was as large and imposing as the winter snowscape, itself.
“You're not going to go away, are you?” O'Hara said aloud. “You're going to pursue me until this is settled. Aren't you?”