Nobody Lives Forever

by Edna Buchanan

  Rick was waiting at the city personnel office when it opened. He copied some information out of a file, went to headquarters and dialed the Jericho, Iowa, police department from his desk.

  A woman answered, apparently the dispatcher. She sounded young and bored. The chief, she said, was out of town, gone to Sioux City to pick up a prisoner.

  Rick identified himself and said he needed some information.

  “I’m afraid only the chief can help you.”

  “It’s about an officer who worked for your department a few years back.”

  “The chief will be back in a day or two.”

  “Her name is Mary Ellen Dustin.”

  There was a pause. “So that’s where she is, Miami.”

  “You know her.”

  “I never met the woman, but I know of her. I guess everybody here does.” The voice was now alive with interest and juicy malice.

  “Well, maybe you can help me out,” Rick said, turning on the charm. “I know it’s tough working for a small-town department. Sounds like you’re holding down the fort all by yourself there.”

  “You’ve got it,” she said. “Everybody’s out on the road.”

  “This is strictly a nonofficial inquiry at the moment,” his voice dropped confidentially. “You know, sometimes you just need to know who you’re dealing with.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “She must have been quite a policewoman out there if you recall the name so well without ever meeting her.”

  “Police work is not exactly what she was known for.” She sounded cute and gossipy.

  “So what is her claim to fame?”

  “Well, I wasn’t here when it all happened,” she said slowly, “so you really have to talk to the chief”—the official disclaimer out of the way, her voice eagerly picked up speed—“but she ran around with a married man, with a family, you know, a love triangle and all that. Then they all wound up dead, and she got run out of town. Hasn’t shown her face here since.”

  Rick closed his eyes, his fingers tightening around the telephone receiver. “What happened? Was it homicide? Did anybody go to jail?”

  “A lot of folks thought somebody you know should have. But like I say, I wasn’t here, and I’ve got to go now. Call back and talk to the chief.”

  He could hear a radio in the background, somebody repeating a request for her to send a tow truck. “When did you say he would be back?”

  “Day or two, he didn’t rightly say.”

  Dusty arrived from court a short time later. Smiling and confident, she wore a bright red blouse and a white wraparound skirt. The judge had ordered a psychiatric evaluation for Terrance McGee, who was being held without bond. When Rick saw her, he slipped the photos he had prepared into his top drawer.

  “Jimbo,” he whispered to the detective sitting across from him, “don’t mention our witness or anything about the case to Dusty. Nothing.”

  “Why the hell not?” he growled under his breath. He looked surprised. He had been admiring the way Dusty’s skirt showed off some leg as she swung by their desks.

  “Hi, guys. Hear you found a witness. What’s the scoop?”

  Rick’s head shot up from an FBI bulletin he was studying. “Who the hell told you that?”

  “The grapevine, guys. I’m a detective. I work here, remember?”

  “I hate it when other investigators mouth off about cases that don’t belong to them.” He glared accusingly around the huge room.

  “What’s the problem? Don’t tell me it’s gonna be one of those days. Woof! Somebody throw our sergeant some raw meat,” she said to Jim, who was grinning.

  She removed the fresh red hibiscus she wore in her lapel, put it stem down in a coffee cup, filled it at the water cooler and came back humming. “You look like hell,” she commented, passing by Rick’s desk. He did not answer.

  “Can’t say the same for you,” Jim said. “You look terrific.”

  “I feel terrific.” She glanced at Rick, who did not look up. “I cleared my case pretty fast, you must admit.”

  She sat down, crossed her legs and removed some legal papers from her briefcase.

  “I need to talk to you about that,” Rick said abruptly.

  “Yes, Sergeant.” Dusty smiled expectantly.

  “That must have been quite a shock, finding the woman’s head in the damn freezer.”

  “Well, I must admit, I will never look at my Kenmore in quite the same way again. Let’s just say it was one of those unforgettable moments that occur from time to time in this business.” She tilted her head and studied Rick’s face. “Didn’t you get any sleep?” Her eyes began to mirror his grave expression.

  “It had to be a helluva shock,” he said, ignoring her question. “I want you to see Doc Feigleman to help you through it. Set up an appointment—and go on home now, take the rest of the day off, comp time. I already cleared it with the lieutenant.”

  “I don’t need it, Rick. I’ve got tons of paperwork. I also got the warrant and want to go through Terrance’s apartment with the lab. He sends you both his best, by the way, though he is beginning to regret not making use of the city’s landlord-tenant dispute hotline.”

  Rick shook his head. “I’m serious, Dusty. Go home, chill out. Hit the beach, work on your tan, whatever. And go see the shrink ASAP.”

  She looked from Rick to Jim, who shrugged, grimaced and rolled his eyes simultaneously. “I’m a professional,” she said quietly. “It is nice of you to be concerned, but I go to autopsies all the time. I’ve seen lots of dead bodies, admittedly never between the Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks and the turkey TV dinners, but I am fine. In fact I feel terrific because we wrapped this one so quickly.”

  “It’s an order.” His voice held the ring of finality. He looked impatient. “Taking some time off and seeing the doc is mandatory, SOP when a police officer is involved in a shooting or injury incident, and I think the shock you experienced yesterday is as traumatic in many ways.”

  “May I speak to you in private, Sergeant?”

  “I see no reason for it. Nobody else is in earshot. The three of us have no secrets. Do we?”

  Jim shuffled papers, suddenly pretending to be busy.

  “What’s wrong, Rick?” Her voice was low and personal.

  He shook his head, his face closed, his eyes focused somewhere behind her.

  “Is this some chauvinistic, paternalistic bullshit?” she demanded. Suspicion and anger were fast replacing bewilderment. “I am no sissy and no pantywaist. If I had to run to a shrink everytime I stepped in a little gore, I couldn’t hack this job. And I damn well can. We all know that. What is this? Whose idea is this?”

  “I’m doing you a favor. Take off. Now.”

  “Can I go too?” Jim said hopefully, trying to break the tension.

  “No,” Rick said. “You stay.”

  “You’re trying to get rid of me.”

  Rick did not answer.

  Quietly, without another word, she gathered up her belongings and slammed her briefcase shut.

  The minute she was gone, Jim parked himself on Rick’s desk. “Now she’s really on her high horse. What the hell are you doing?”

  Rick opened his mouth, but the telephone interrupted and he picked it up. It was the front desk. “Shit,” he muttered to Jim, “she’s downstairs already.”

  Ten minutes later a public service aide, a black youth in a blue uniform shirt, escorted Ms. Viola Sneath into the fifth-floor homicide office, she wore a paisley print dress, clutched a handbag the size of a satchel and carried a sweater. Miami natives carry sweaters or jackets on the summer’s hottest days because of the uncontrollably frigid air conditioning inside most public buildings.

  “Oohh,” Jim murmured to Rick in mock disappointment, “she didn’t bring Pookie.”

  Viola Sneath peered alertly from behind the smoke-tinted lenses of her eyeglasses and focused on Rick as he rose to greet her. “So th
is is where you work.”

  “This is it,” Rick smiled. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “I think so,” she said. “It’s so chilly in here.”

  Rick held her sweater as she struggled into it. “Cream and sugar?”

  “Both,” she said pleasantly. “Your young man came for me promptly at nine, but he was driving a patrol car. Pookie barked and barked.” She giggled girlishly. “I don’t know what the neighbors think.”

  In the interview room, Ms. Sneath fretted and plucked at the threads on her sweater. “I told you boys last night, I probably won’t be much help. It was very dark, with just the streetlight. My bifocals are new, I’m not quite used to them and there was all that excitement at the shopping center.”

  “All we ask is that you do the best you can,” Rick said. “Often people remember more than they think. Sometimes a face will jog their memory. You don’t see many strangers in your neighborhood, you’re an alert and perceptive person. You may remember this individual better than you realize. Just go slow and look at each one carefully.”

  She solemnly placed both hands on the table, as if for a seance.

  Rick spread out a set of six pictures.

  Ms. Sneath scrutinized each one, carefully examining both the full-front mug shot and the profile. “No,” she said slowly, “that one’s too heavy, and the hair on this one is all wrong.”

  “Keep in mind,” Jim said, “people, especially women, can change their hairstyle, change the color, even alter their looks with makeup. Try, if you can, to zero in more on their features.”

  She nodded, pursing her lips in concentration. “This one is … oh my, is that a tattoo?” she said, peering closely at another. “Does that really say—”

  “Yeah,” Jim said bleakly.

  She finally leaned back in her chair and shook her head. “She’s not here.”

  “Okay,” Rick said patiently. “How about these?” He dealt out a second set of pictures, one by one, like playing cards. The muscles in his jaw worked.

  The first batch had included a few female robbers and the wives and girlfriends of known holdup men. The second was a mixed bag. One was long dead, a firebug who had loved to call and taunt firefighters after torching hotels. Another would soon be dead, a much-arrested prostitute suffering from AIDS. Then there was a woman who had thrown her children off the roof of a Miami apartment house, another who had murdered her brutal husband in his sleep, a fifth who robbed banks, and Miami homicide detective Mary Ellen Dustin.

  Jim’s eyes widened when he recognized Dusty’s picture, shot a few years earlier for her detective ID card, but he said nothing. Viola Sneath hesitated, then picked it up for closer study.

  “This one looks familiar,” she said.

  “Is that the woman?” Rick asked softly.

  “I told you I can’t be sure. But she certainly looks familiar. The hair was similar, quite blonde. It could be someone like this.”

  Jim and Rick stared at each other across the table.

  “I couldn’t say for sure. I told you, it was dark, there were sirens, my glasses … But she sort of looked like that, on that order. I think I’ve seen that face.”

  “You think if you saw a live lineup, with real people, that you might be more positive?” Rick asked.

  Viola Sneath sighed, pulling her sweater more tightly around her. “I really don’t know,” she said quite honestly.

  Rick took her hand. “Thanks for all you’ve done. You’ll hear from us.”

  “Whaddayou, crazy?” Jim raged once she was gone. “What the fuck is going on, and why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t have time and I wasn’t sure myself.”

  “She’s a pro, she’s a cop! You’re saying…” Jim could not bring himself to say the words. He looked around the office as if the whole world had gone mad.

  “I feel the same way you do, but it all fits. There is something wrong, she’s always been secretive. She goes off to the shopping center and never arrives, but the robber does.”

  “But that means—whoever was at the shopping center killed the Thorne kid and the convenience-store clerk.”

  “Yeah. She just happened to be the first at the scene when Rob Thorne was shot. She was off when the clerk bought it. The opportunity was there every time. And whoever did it used a .38 detective special.”

  “That don’t prove nothing. Half of Miami owns .38s. Why? What motive? Why would she—?”

  “Maybe she was after somebody else the night Rob Thorne got killed.”

  “Who, for Christ’s sake?” They stared at each other. “No.” Jim was shaking his head. “No way.”

  “Laurel could have been the target. I started thinking last night about how secretive Dusty has always been about her past. Every time the subject of her life in Iowa comes up, she gets hinky and snaps shut like a clam. I called out there this morning. It looks like she is hiding something, something serious. She might be really screwed up, Jim. Remember that note, that obscene note that Laurel got? I think Dusty wrote it. I think she’s got problems.”

  “Not the least of which is you. You’re saying the motive is jealousy, that all this might have happened because you dropped her for another woman? What makes you think you’re such a…”

  “Back in Jericho, Iowa she got into a love triangle and some people supposedly got killed. Evidently that’s why she left town and came here.”

  “What exactly happened?”

  “I won’t know until I talk to the chief, and he’s out of town.”

  “I ain’t buying it,” Jim said flatly. “Did you happen to compare Laurel’s handwriting to that note?”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Come on, I never mentioned it ’cause I thought you’d figure it out all by yourself. She’s pissed ’cause you’re working midnights, especially with Dusty. She’s lonesome. Little girls crave attention. They get lonely. We see fake rape reports all the time. Lonely little girls who want attention. Sometimes lonely little girls even report phony threats.”

  “Bullshit! Not Laurel.”

  “She wants you to rush home and hold her hand.”

  “Give me a break, Jim. I know what her handwriting looks like. It wasn’t hers.”

  “You sure? You know how cops all have a blind spot when it comes to people we’re close to.”

  “Son of a bitch. You’re the one who’s blind. She was scared as hell. Laurel may be young and somewhat spacy. Sometimes I don’t even know who she is. I don’t think she knows herself. But that kind of crap, it’s beyond her. She wouldn’t do a thing like that in a million years.”

  “Sure. She’s such a perfect angel that you decided to camp out at Pigeon Plum the other night.”

  “Now, that’s really your problem, isn’t it, Jim?” He jabbed his index finger fiercely. “You’re jealous. You’ve always wanted to ball Dusty yourself, haven’t you? I admit I got carried away the other night…” He gestured helplessly. “Because of it, I could be in deep shit right now.”

  Jim glared straight into his eyes. “Exactly where you belong in my book, pal.”

  “It’s time we hand it off to internal affairs.”

  “What? Without even talking to her, giving her a chance?” Jim was incredulous.

  “We can’t compromise the cases. Christ, two people are dead, Laurel could be in danger, and the suspect is our partner.”

  “Damn straight she’s our partner!”

  “Jim, I care about her too. Too damn much, in fact. But something’s not right. It could be real wrong. We have to report it to IA so if she is in trouble she can get help, so nobody else gets hurt and so we all don’t go down with her. I’m going to catch heat anyway, once they find out about the other night. Jesus, what a mistake.”

  “So you’re gonna blow the whistle? Listen to me. Whad I tell ya about cops and sex? Think about it.” Furious, he lowered his voice as Mack Thomas and another detective passed
by, looking curious about their heated discussion. “You’re so ready to run to IA, but what have you got? You’ll make us look like damn assholes. We’ve got nothing but your own guilty conscience which brought on this stroke of genius. You know the first thing they’ll do when they start investigating her is find out if she’s been screwing around with any other cops who might be involved. You’ll blow the whistle on yourself. This thing could backfire.”

  He stared grimly at Rick, letting the words sink in. “If I thought for a minute that Dusty was guilty of murder and robbery, I’d put her ass in jail myself, in a heartbeat.” He glowered at Mack Thomas, now talking into a telephone across the room. “You know anybody who hates bad cops more than me? Let’s talk about this rationally and see what we got.”

  “The witness, Mrs. Sneath…”

  “Who says ‘looks familiar, can’t be sure, new glasses, it was dark, the fire…’ Christ, the woman’s bifocals are as thick as the lenses in Mount Palomar.”

  “Jim, I tell you again, you’re the one who’s blind. You want to protect Dusty, you care about her. You’d sell your soul for a night in the sack with her. But she’s hiding something, always has been, about her past. You know yourself that some people who become cops shouldn’t, that there are behavior patterns, skeletons—”

  “No problem,” Jim said. “I’ll find out the particulars, like you should do before making accusations. If you’re right, I’ll be the first to admit it, but I think there is some explanation for all this, and I think your imagination has run off half-cocked because of your screwed-up sex life.”

  Rick opened his mouth to protest, but Jim stopped him. “I know all about your gut feelings, but this one ain’t right, Rick. It ain’t right.”

  “Nonetheless, while she’s not here, we’ve got to start drafting a memo to IA, just in case we have to move fast and send it upstairs to cover our own asses.”

  “It’s your decision, but don’t be too quick to put your foot in it. She ain’t going anywhere. She loves this job, she loves Miami. And she’s nuts about you.”

  “Thanks a lot, partner,” Rick winced. “I really needed to be reminded of that.”