by Linda Barnes
“Jesus, izzat you?” Thurlow’s bass rumble was lower than low.
“In the flesh.” They shook, Mooney’s big hand all but disappearing in Thurlow’s massive grip.
“How the hell are you?”
“Good. Fine.”
“On vacation? I heard you never took a day off.”
“I’m working, Bobby. I could use some help.” The walls were more than partitions, but less than soundproof, so Mooney kept his voice low. The young receptionist at the front desk was too close and all ears.
“Robert,” the man corrected. “Here, I’m Robert.”
“Robert,” Mooney said easily.
“Boston needs my help?”
“Me. I need your help.”
“How about we go for coffee? Tastes like crap from the machine I got here, swear to God, worse than that crap we chugged in the city.”
Mooney waited while Bobby—Robert, now— arranged to have an officer cover a DARE meeting on Sharp Street and reminded the receptionist to phone the school principal to reassure him that the grounds would be patrolled. The station, light and airy, painted white, seemed more like a real estate office than a police station. The lanky receptionist wasn’t even in uniform.
Mooney assumed that “coffee” meant anything from a long walk to drinks to dinner. He hoped it meant food, an early dinner, maybe a clam roll at one of those shacks near the ocean that he remembered so vividly from childhood. They probably wouldn’t be open yet, not before tourist season began.
Mooney offered his car, but Thurlow said he ought to take a cruiser, just in case something came up. The best place was within easy walking distance, always supposing an old cop like Mooney could manage to move his bones a few blocks in the cold, but Thurlow felt naked without the car. Conti’s had great atmosphere, good draft beer. You could get Sam Adams seasonals, a few smaller local brews on tap. Big fat burgers, too, although those oughta be avoided. Maybe once a week Thurlow slipped and gobbled one, but he worked it off at the gym.
Downtown Nausett was a single traffic light, church on one corner, police station on another, town hall across the way. Unmetered parking lined the quiet street. Conti’s had both a counter and booths. Bobby— Robert—Thurlow hailed the man behind the grill like a friend, ordered two tall Sam winter lagers.
They chose a booth at the back, sank onto cracked red leather.
Thurlow said, “So you want a job? I’m surprised sometimes the whole damn force doesn’t invade. It’s quiet here.”
“Pretty, too.”
“The ocean, man; I love living near the ocean.”
“You’re in charge, hiring and firing?”
“Hey, I’m the chief, but mostly I go by ‘Detective.’ Rosemary, that’s the reception girl, she hates that, likes to tell people she works for the chief, but it sounds wrong to me. I mean, it’s me and one other guy, most of the year. I hire help in the summer, deputies. And they keep telling me I’ll get to hire another fulltimer some day. We could use it. I had to hire myself a part-timer to patrol the schoolyard tonight.”
A skinny brunette waitress brought their beers in frosted glasses. She offered menus, big eyes, asked whether they’d like to hear the daily specials.
“Don’t you go tempting me now, Liza.”
The waitress smiled at Thurlow’s rumbled response and subsided with a raised eyebrow.
“Besides,” Thurlow went on, “down here, ‘chief’— well, to me—sounds like I’m trying to set myself up as a kind of counterweight or something to the Indians. So you looking to work on the Cape? Security?”
“I’m looking for help on a case.”
“I thought you said personal.”
“It is.” Mooney found himself reluctant to explain.
The Nausett detective chewed his lip. “This the Wilder thing?”
Mooney nodded, sipped his beer. Thurlow wasn’t the smartest detective Mooney had ever worked with, but he was up there.
“First killing we’ve had since I came, and that makes it one more than I thought I’d see.”
“What would you say if I told you I’d heard rumors it was a hate crime?” The tall glass felt slippery in Mooney’s hand.
Thurlow smiled. “I’d say you been gabbing with Mr. Mouth down the graveyard. I’d say you shoulda talked to me first.”
“Look, I don’t want to step on your toes.”
Thurlow’s grin broadened. “Hell, this case my toes are squished so damned flat already, it don’t make much never mind.”
“What’s your gut tell you?”
“Hate crime?” Thurlow shook his head. “We got ourselves a situation here with the special election coming up. Had some busted windows, shit like that. That’s why we’re patrolling the school. But broken windows are one thing and killing is another. Hate crime? You go into any bar or café or church meeting around here, you’ll get yourself seventeen other theories.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, well, lemme see now. Wilder was pregnant by the police chief. I swear, that little gem was on this pissant local crime Web site—you know about crime Web sites, right? Print any piece of crap you want, sign it ‘anonymous.’ And what else? The vic was stealing from some old guy—I think his name was Bloomquist or Bloomberg—stealing from his trust, in it with her employer, old Hastings, except that’s a crock, too. There is no Bloomquist or Bloomberg, and Brad Hastings doesn’t need to steal any money, because he’s rolling in it already. And the vic was just a paralegal assistant, did library research, looked up deeds and crap.”
“What about casinos?”
“Mr. Mouth again? Casino gambling is still illegal in Massachusetts, whether the tribe owns the land or not. And from what I hear, it doesn’t matter what the crackpots or the gossips say, because the case is cleared, tied with a ribbon, just like the vic.”
“So how come they haven’t made an arrest?”
“I’d like to know that myself.”
“They keeping you in the loop?”
“I call the DA every now and again, ask him why the hell he doesn’t arrest the son of a bitch so I can stop having to listen to every single asshole on the Cape thinks he solved the crime. We got this woman calls the station all hours, trying to get us to pick up her ex-husband. Says she’s scared he’s the killer. I figure she calls whenever she bangs the guy and he walks out on her again.”
“Halprin was working it, right?” Mo Halprin was the state trooper who had copied Mooney the partial file.
“Yeah, Hal’s okay. The staties, you know, they let you in on the ground floor. They know what it’s like, smalltown politics. They know you got to be able to tell people what’s going on with a case. The feds don’t give a warm dish of spit.” Thurlow snorted and drank the foam off his beer. “Look, what’s your interest here? I mean it, rumor is the feds got their man, a Boston dude, a player, all mobbed up.”
“I heard the same rumor,” Mooney said. “I’m not sure I buy it.”
“There’s also a rumor that you hate the federales. You playing cowboy here?”
“The feds come in, they don’t know what the locals know. Am I right?”
“Yep. And they don’t bother to ask because us locals are too plumb dumb to polish their brass.”
“So I’m asking you,” Mooney said. “I want to know why they settled on this guy.”
“Gianelli.”
“You know him?”
“Never had the pleasure. I know about him, from when I worked Boston, but I never had much to do with OC. I wouldn’t recognize him, and I didn’t know Danielle Wilder was hooked up with him. We get all kinds of summer people. Nobody gives me a heads-up when a killer rides into town.”
The waitress came by to see if they wanted to freshen their drinks. Mooney nodded. Thurlow switched to tomato juice and Mooney, who wanted something to eat, wondered whether the cop had a one-drink limit.
“Buffalo wings any good?” Mooney didn’t want to take time to study the menu. The wings were advertised on a blackb
oard behind the bar.
“The mozzarella sticks kill,” Thurlow said.
“Some of those, then.”
The waitress made a note on her pad and left.
Mooney said, “You know what they got on Gianelli? Forensics? CW?” CW was bureau shorthand for a confidential witness.
“You trying to give the feds a black eye? Gunning for any agent in particular?”
“It’s just this thing you got here doesn’t sound like a mob hit.” It wasn’t an answer to the question, but Mooney hoped Thurlow would let it slide.
“I know what you’re saying. Mob hit is two in the head, body in the trunk. You working for somebody on this?”
“Is that a polite way of asking if I’m trying to help out the mob? You know I don’t work for them.”
“And you want me to trust you on that, right? I guess you figure I owe you?”
When Thurlow was a Boston cop who drank too much, he’d been accused of roughing up a suspect, administering street justice. Mooney had intervened and steered the officer into counseling. Back then, Mooney had worried that Thurlow was one beat-walk away from swallowing his gun.
The waitress came by with fresh drinks and a plate of mozzarella sticks, fried and greasy, smothered in marinara sauce.
“I just want you to talk to me,” Mooney said as she walked away.
“About?”
“The vic, what was she like?”
Thurlow looked at him for long seconds over the rim of his tilted glass, then set it down, grunted, and stared into space. Mooney thought he had hit a dead end, come up empty. He had already reached into his pocket for his wallet, so he could put down cash for the drinks and food, when Thurlow sighed and started talking.
“Prettiest girl in town, probably. High school sweetheart. Sort of girl guys make assumptions about. I mean, right, you’re not supposed to, but all those years watching TV, you see this blond dreamgirl and what are you gonna think about, IQ or cup size? Personality or swaying hips?”
“So you knew her?”
“Strictly business, Moon. You know the type: popular girl, trophy girl, the one you have to be man enough to win. Big-city looks, but never left town. Got as far as Cape Cod Community College. Had some kind of deal with the place she worked where they’d send her off to law school. An up-and-comer. Not your most likely candidate to wind up strangled in a graveyard.”
“A lot of men in her life?”
“More than a few, but some dude drinks a little too much on Saturday nights sorta pales in comparison with a mob capo. So, yeah, there are guys I would have questioned, but it was taken off my plate. Taken off the state plate, too.”
“If it’s not a hate crime, why the feds?”
“I wondered about that, too. How’s this? The Indian Country Crimes Act and the Major Crimes Act, both part of your very own Federal Criminal Code, give the FBI the responsibility and jurisdiction to investigate murders in Indian country.”
“You looked that up.”
“Damn straight, I did.”
“The graveyard counts as Indian country?”
“Yep. Body was found there, and it’s technically reservation land under the jurisdiction of the feds. But don’t ask me why they wanted it, because I don’t know why.”
“I want to know how they latched on to Gianelli,” Mooney said quietly. “Nothing will come back on you.”
“Like I never heard that before.”
“You never heard it from me. You want one of those burgers?”
“Yep, but I’m not gonna eat one.”
Thurlow helped himself to a mozzarella stick instead. Mooney took a second. They were awkward to handle, sauce and grease dripping onto the plate, but Mooney thought they were about the best bar food he’d ever tasted.
“Did they find where she was killed?” he asked.
“Not that I know of. Could be they’re just being tight-lipped about it.”
Tight-lipped about the scene of the crime and loose-lipped about the identity of the killer. Mooney thought the combination unlikely.
“I know they went through the vic’s apartment,” Thurlow said. “It’s still sealed off. Woman rents it out had another tenant lined up. I hear from her all the time.”
“Hard to rent a place after the tenant gets murdered?”
“It’s not that. Wilder was planning to move out, go off to law school somewhere in D.C. The new tenant was all lined up before the killing. And the place was neat as a pin, so Wilder wasn’t killed there. We did the usual, ran a check on all the hot-sheet motels, but nobody had themselves a murder site. Or else the help just cleared up the mess and called it a day.” As Thurlow spoke, his cell phone buzzed, and he yanked it out of his pants pocket.
“Yeah?” He reached for a paper napkin and wiped his mouth. “Jeez Louise, yeah, two minutes. Hang on, boy, I’m on the way.”
Mooney, anticipating a quick departure, slapped a twenty on the table.
“Wrap up those cheese sticks,” Thurlow said. “We’ll chomp ’em later.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“Town used to be so quiet,” Thurlow said. “You’re carrying, right?”
“Yeah.” Mooney quickly fastened his seat belt and stowed the mozzarella sticks, sauce already starting to soak through the napkins, in the dash compartment. The patrol car shot down the street like it had been launched from a cannon.
“Well, I don’t want you shooting any of these little pissants. This is penny-ante shit. Hazeltine, that’s my part-timer, thinks he’s got a couple of them cornered down at the schoolyard.”
“Broken windows?”
“Taggers.”
The cruiser’s blue lights flashed, but the chief kept the siren silent on the dark and deserted roads. In a couple of minutes they were pulling into a driveway, screeching to a halt.
“Flashlights in the trunk,” Thurlow said. “Grab the bullhorn, okay?”
The cruiser’s headlights blazed a pathway.
“Hazeltine’s got ’em in the courtyard.” As he moved down the driveway, Thurlow snapped on his Maglite. He moved the beam left, then right, until it illuminated a man in uniform crouching beside a hedge.
The man hurried over. “One got away. Shinned over the wall. But somebody’s still there.” He pointed vaguely north.
“Mooney, Hazeltine.”
“Hey, with three of us, we can nail ’em.” Hazeltine’s narrow face was young and eager, his nose red with cold.
“Don’t point your light at me,” Thurlow said.
“Sorry.”
“Where you figure they are?”
“That big platform thing with the ropes and ladders? Jungle gym? There’s a slide down the left side. I think they’re on top, drunk, or one of ’em is. Somebody puked out front.”
“Drinkers and taggers the same group?”
“Let’s go get ’em!” Hazeltine was almost dancing in his excitement.
The sound of shattering glass broke the night.
“Dammit! School committee’s gonna chew my ass!” Thurlow grabbed the bullhorn out of Mooney’s hand and yelled, “Come on outa there with your hands up!” His amplified voice distorted, but the words were clear enough.
“Shee-it,” said a low voice. A second person laughed and Mooney thought the laughter sounded feminine.
“I’m giving you till three. You come out, we talk things over, and see what we’ve got. You make us come in there, you’re headin’ to jail in cuffs, understand what I’m saying? Okay? I’m gonna start counting. One. Two—”
“Gimme a minute.” A girl wearing tight jeans and a hooded top walked blinking into the pool of light. Mooney thought of the word sashayed.
“Get around the other side,” Thurlow yelled. “Somebody’s on the roof.”
Mooney easily outpaced Hazeltine, racing counterclockwise around the long low building, flashbeam bouncing over grass and dirt. Ahead he heard a scrambling and a curse. Mooney knew he was running after a schoolkid, a dumb tagger, but he was still wary, becaus
e he was on unfamiliar turf, because he might take a tumble, because in the pitch dark, the unknown kid might turn out to have a knife or a gun. Mostly he felt exhilarated, the fresh air and the action conspiring to make him feel young. Or maybe it was just the beer.
Hazeltine, who’d taken some sort of shortcut, popped up ten yards ahead. “Stop it right there!”
“Don’t shoot me. Sweet Jesus, don’t shoot.” The tagger was down on the ground retching.
“Put the gun down.” Mooney was more worried that Hazeltine might shoot himself accidentally in the foot than fire deliberately at the scrawny, defeated figure in the grass.
“Don’t you barf on my shoes,” Hazeltine yelled.
“You got him? Good.” Thurlow came around the corner, leading the bold young lady by the arm. “Let’s see who we got. Miss Eberlee didn’t want to snitch.”
“Oh, Luke,” the girl said mournfully, “you coulda got clean away.”
“Izzat Luke Fellman? Tell me that’s not Luke Fellman. What the hell you think you’re doing, Luke? Your momma is gonna tan your ass.”
“Shit,” Luke said.
“Okay, let’s see what you’re in for, you two.”
“Oh, come on, I don’t feel so good.”
“You’re gonna feel worse, Luke. Plenty worse. Who was the third genius?”
“Huh?”
“One of ’em got away,” Hazeltine said.
“Bullshit,” said the girl.
“Donna, you oughta wash that mouth out with soap.”
“Fuck that,” Donna Eberlee said with grim satisfaction. She looked about thirteen years old.
“Okay, why don’t you two show me what you been up to?”
Hazeltine said, “They were working on the front windows.”
“You putting bad words where the little kids gonna read ’em? Shame on you.”
In the eerie glow of the flashlights, the school was revealed as an old clapboard house, with a long low wing added on each side. While Thurlow scolded, the group moved around one wing to the front.