Текст книги "Night passage"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter 42

Anthony DeAngelo had never seen a murdered person before. He’d seen a couple of people killed in car accidents, and he’d even done mouth-to-mouth on a guy who was having a heart attack and died while DeAngelo was working on him. But the naked woman in the junior high school parking lot was his first murder victim. There were bruises on her face, and her head was turned at an awkward angle. Someone had written slut in what looked like lipstick across her stomach. DeAngelo tried to look at her calmly as he called in on his radio. He didn’t want the kids being herded past the scene by teachers to think he was frightened by it. But he was. This wasn’t accidental death. This stiffening corpse lying naked in the dull mist, on the damp asphalt in the early morning, had died violently during the night at the hands of a terrible person. He didn’t know exactly what he should do, standing there talking into his radio. He wanted to cover the poor woman but he didn’t think he ought to disturb the crime scene. Rain wasn’t heavy. Probably didn’t bother her anyway. He wished Jesse would hurry up and get there. In the school the kids were crowded at the windows despite the best efforts of the teachers. The school bus driver who had spotted the body first was standing beside DeAngelo’s cruiser. She looked for people to talk to, to tell about what she had seen and how she was the first to see it, and oh God, the poor woman! But DeAngelo was still on the radio and the junior high school staff was fruitlessly busy trying to protect the kids from seeing the corpse. He felt better when Jesse pulled up in the unmarked black Ford with the buggy whip antenna on the back bumper swaying in decreasing arcs as the car stopped and Jesse got out.

“Anthony,” Jesse said.

He walked over and looked down at the body.

“ ‘Slut,’ ” he said.

“Yeah. Like the car. Like the cat,” DeAngelo said.

Jesse nodded, still looking at her.

“Clothes?” he said.

DeAngelo shook his head. “I haven’t seen any.”

The town ambulance pulled into the parking lot and behind it Peter Perkins in his own car, a Mazda pickup. Two young Paradise firemen who doubled as EMTs got out and walked almost gingerly toward the crime scene. Peter Perkins got out of his truck. He was in jeans and a tee shirt with his gun strapped on and his badge on his belt. A thirty-five-millimeter camera hung around his neck. He went to the bed of his pickup and got his evidence kit. One of the EMTs knelt beside the body and felt for a pulse.

After a moment he said, “She’s dead, Jesse.”

“Un huh.”

“What do you want us to do, Jesse?”

The EMT was not quite twenty-five. His name was Duke Vincent. Jesse played softball with him in the Paradise town league. Like DeAngelo, Vincent had seen death. But never murder. Vincent’s voice was calm but soft, and Jesse knew he was feeling shaky. Jesse remembered the first time he’d seen it. It was a lot worse than this, a shotgun, close up, he remembered.

“You think her neck’s broken, Dukie?” Jesse said.

Vincent looked at the corpse again. Jesse knew he didn’t like it.

“I guess so,” Vincent said.

“Yeah, me too,” Jesse said. “Probably what killed her. You and Steve stand by with the ambulance for a while. We’ll have the county M.E. look at her, and there’ll be some state investigators along.”

“Why did he write ‘slut’ on her, Jesse?” DeAngelo said.

“Maybe the word means something special to him,” Jesse said.

“So is it the same guy that did the car and Captain Cat?”

“Might be,” Jesse said.

“But wouldn’t he know that it would connect him to the other crimes?”

Jesse smiled to himself at the TV locution his own officer was speaking in the presence of a murdered person. There were so many cop shows. It was hard for real cops not to start talking like them.

“Might want us to see the connection,” Jesse said. “Or it might be someone else who wants us to think there’s a connection.”

Most of the rest of the force had showed up, some in uniform, some dressed for off duty. For all of them it was their first murder and they stood by a little uneasily watching Jesse, except for Peter Perkins, who had stretched his crime-scene tape around the murder scene, and was now taking pictures. The other cops looked as if they envied him having something to do.

“John,” Jesse said. “You and Arthur put up some horses and keep people behind them.”

“There’s nobody around, Jesse.”

“There will be,” Jesse said. “Suitcase, you talk to the bus driver. Get everything she saw, thinks, hopes, dreams, whatever. Let her talk, pay attention. Ed, go in, talk to the principal. We’re going to have to talk with the kids, maybe we can do it class by class, find out if they saw anything. We also may have to search the school.”

“For what?” Burke said.

“Her clothes,” Jesse said. “I’d like to find her clothes.”

“Maybe he killed her someplace else and brought her body here nude,” Burke said.

“We find the clothes, it’ll help us decide that,” Jesse said. “The rest of you spread around and look for her clothes or anything else. Tire tracks, bloodstains. He whacked her around pretty good. But there’s no blood on the pavement.”

“Rain might have washed it,” DeAngelo said.

“Watch where you walk, go in wider and wider circles around the body. Maybe he hit her with something. See if you see anything. Anthony, start knocking on doors, see if anybody lives around here heard anything, or saw a car come into the school parking lot during the night.”

The cops did as they were told. They were happy to be given direction, happy to do something but stand and look at the battered body.

“Dukie,” Jesse said. “You can cover her. And pull the ambulance up so it screens her from the school. Doesn’t do the kids much good to look out at her all morning.”

Behind him in the parking lot, parents had begun to arrive. Already they had heard of a murder at the junior high school. Already they were there to see about their children. Jesse knew he’d have to talk with them. He knew a number of them would want to take their children home. He would like to have kept all the kids here until they had been questioned, but he knew he couldn’t and knew that trying to would accomplish nothing beyond his own aggravation. Other people were gathering too. Not parents. Just people from the town, who, as the word spread, began to gather silently as close to the scene as they could. He saw Hasty Hathaway moving importantly through the gathering crowd with a plastic rain guard over his snap-brimmed hat. Probably wearing rubbers too, Jesse thought. Jo Jo Genest was there, hatless, in a crinkle finish trench coat. Jesse’s glance paused on Jo Jo. Jo Jo returned it and smiled. Jesse’s glance lingered a thoughtful moment and then moved on. He looked for Abby, but didn’t see her. Past the silent crowd Jesse saw the medical examiner’s car arriving, and behind it an unmarked state car. That would be the homicide guy.

Hathaway cleared the crowd and spoke to John DeLong guarding the barriers, and came on past him toward Jesse. I was right, Jesse thought. He’s wearing rubbers.

Chapter 43

Jesse sat in his office at midnight with a state police captain named Healy, sipping single-malt scotch from a water glass. Healy had taken the bottle from his briefcase when he came in and set it on Jesse’s desk. The green-shaded desk lamp was the only light in the room. Outside the rain continued to mist down, too light for a drizzle, too heavy for a fog. The day’s dampness seemed to have incorporated the dampness of the shore and the scent of seawater was strong even though they were a half mile from the harbor. Except for the voices and the occasional creak of a chair when one of them shifted in it, the silence in the office and outside had the kind of weight that existed only in the middle of the night in a small town. Healy was about Jesse’s size but older, and a little thinner. His short hair was gray. He had on a gray suit, and a blue oxford shirt, and a red and blue striped tie. His black shoes were still polished this late in the day.

“You’re the homicide commander,” Jesse said.

“Yeah.”

Healy’s eyes had the flat look that Jesse had seen before. The eyes had seen everything and believed nothing. There was neither compassion nor anger in Healy’s eyes, just a kind of appraising patience that formed no prejudgments and came to conclusions slowly. Occasionally when Jesse had come unexpectedly upon his reflection in a mirror or a darkened window, he had seen that look in his own eyes.

“So how come we draw you?” Jesse said.

Healy shrugged, sipped a small taste of the scotch, held the glass up to the light for a moment, and looked at the color.

“I used to work up here, Essex County DA’s office. I live in Swampscott. So when the squeal came in I thought I’d swing by myself.”

“Chance to get out of the office for a while,” Jesse said.

Healy nodded.

“Don’t like the office,” he said. “But I like the Captain’s pay. Somebody told me you used to work homicide.”

“L.A.,” Jesse said. “Downtown.”

“You know Cronjager out there?”

“Yep.”

“So how’d you end up here?”

“Cronjager fired me. I was drinking on the job. This was the only job I got offered.”

“How you doing now? Tonight excluded.”

“I’m not drinking on the job,” Jesse said.

“It’s a good start,” Healy said. “Heard you used to play ball.”

“People do talk. Yeah, I was a shortstop. Dodger organization. Tore up my shoulder playing at Pueblo.” Jesse shrugged. “Sayonara.”

“I was a pitcher,” Healy said. “Phillies signed me.”

“And?”

“And the war came and I went. When I came home there was the wife, the kids. I went on the cops.”

“Miss it?” Jesse said.

“Every day,” Healy said.

Jesse nodded. They were both silent for a moment. Healy took another small sip of scotch.

“So what have we got,” he said.

“Got her I.D.’d,” Jesse said. “Name’s Tammy Portugal. Twenty-eight years old, divorced, two kids. Lived on the pond, other end of town. Left the kids with her mother yesterday afternoon, her alimony check always arrived on this date and the mother always took the kids, give her daughter a break, let her spend some of the alimony. Tammy was supposed to pick the kids up at noon today.” Jesse glanced at his watch without really seeing it. “Yesterday. When she didn’t show, the mother called us.”

“Where’s the husband?” Healy said.

“Don’t know. Mother says he took off two years ago, right after the divorce. Says he always sends his alimony on time. But she doesn’t know where he is.”

“And the alimony check came today?”

“Yesterday.” Again Jesse did the automatic glance at his watch. “Day before, actually.”

“So she must have cashed it before she went out,” Healy said.

“Yeah, and we could trace it. We’ll check on that in the morning. We didn’t get all of this until the bank closed. Even if she cashed it someplace else,” Jesse said, “it will probably clear through the Paradise Bank, and the president is one of our selectmen.”

“So he’ll be cooperative.”

“Probably,” Jesse said.

Healy looked at him and waited. Jesse didn’t add to the “probably.” Healy let it slide. Jesse saw him let it slide, and also saw him file it away. Stone has some reservations about the bank president.

“You got her movements established, prior to death?” Healy said.

“Not yet. Thought the M.E. might help us on that.”

“He might,” Healy said. “She had drunk a fair amount of alcohol.”

“I figured. And, single kid, twenty-eight, night out, she probably went to a place where she could meet guys.”

“Narrows it down,” Healy said.

“Well, maybe it does,” Jesse said. “I’m guessing she didn’t go clubbing in Boston. Not many people from this town go into Boston.”

“Christ no,” Healy said. “Must be fifteen miles away.”

“This is an insular town,” Jesse said. “She went clubbing, I figure she went around here.”

“Including Route One?”

“Yeah.”

“So you only got about five hundred clubs to check.”

“We’re talking to people who knew her. She may have had some favorite places. Most women don’t like to go to a strange place alone. She probably went to the same places or a few of the same places every time.”

“I can give you some help along Route One,” Healy said.

“I’ll take it. What else the M.E. say.”

“Not too much that you couldn’t see looking at her. She’d been raped. She’d been beaten with a blunt instrument, possibly a human fist. Her neck was broken, which is almost certainly the cause of death. She wasn’t killed here. There’s no blood at all at the scene and there would have been. The word ‘slut’ was written on her with lipstick, probably hers, it matches traces found on her lips. You got any thoughts about ‘slut’?”

“You know it was spray-painted on one of our squad cars, and later the station-house cat was killed and a sign was attached to it that said ‘slut.’ ”

“Sometimes words have private meanings to the people who use them,” Healy said, “especially if they’re nuts.”

Jesse nodded.

“You figure it’s the same person?” Healy said.

“Be a logical guess, and if it is it may not be about the victims, it may be about us,” Jesse said.

“Or it’s a copycat who wants you to think that?”

“You believe that?” Jesse said.

“I don’t believe anything, but it’s possible.”

“Yeah, but is it likely. This has got every mark of an unpremeditated act of rage or sadism or insanity or all of the above. It doesn’t have any hint of some kind of calculating smart guy who pretends to be part of the other deal to confuse us.”

“Unless the guy is even smarter than that and knows you’ll think that way.”

“How long you been a cop?” Jesse said.

“Forty-one years,” Healy said.

“Got me by some, but in forty-one years how many criminal masterminds you run into on a murder case?”

Healy smiled.

“About the same number you have,” he said.

“Which is the same number of big-league at-bats we got between us,” Jesse said.

“Which is zip,” Healy said.

They both sipped whiskey in the dim office.

“You got a suspect?” Healy said.

“Not based on evidence.”

“But you got somebody in mind.”

Jesse shrugged.

“Got a guy in town with maybe a grudge against the department, or probably, more accurate, a grudge against me.”

“Not many towns don’t have somebody like that,” Healy said. “Sort of goes with police work.”

“I know,” Jesse said.

“And you don’t care to tell me his name, anyway,” Healy said.

Jesse shrugged.

“Doesn’t seem right,” he said. “Even to you. I got absolutely nothing to back it up.”

Healy nodded. “You know the former chief here?”

“No.”

“You know he was murdered out in Wyoming?”

“Boy, you don’t miss much,” Jesse said.

“I like to read the stuff that comes through,” Healy said.

“Got blown up,” Jesse said. “On the road to Gillette.”

“Town like this doesn’t have a murder a decade,” Healy said. “You get two in a month.”

“Hate coincidence,” Jesse said. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah. You see any connection?”

“Not yet,” Jesse said.

“But you’re looking.”

“I’m going to.”

Healy nodded again.

“’Course sometimes there are coincidences,” he said.

“We’re keeping it in mind,” Jesse said.

Healy nodded, finished his drink, refilled Jesse’s glass, and put the bottle in his briefcase.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

Chapter 44

Hasty Hathaway wandered into Jesse’s office and closed the door behind him and came and sat with one leg on the corner of Jesse’s desk.

“What did that state police captain want?” he said.

“And good morning to you too, Hasty.”

Hathaway shook his head as if he had water in his ear.

“What did he want?”

“His name’s Healy,” Jesse said. “He’s the state homicide commander. He wanted to talk about Tammy Portugal’s murder.”

Hathaway shook his head again, slowly this time.

“We don’t want that, Jesse,” he said. “We solve our own problems here.”

“I haven’t got the forensic resources for a full-fledged homicide investigation, Hasty. He does.”

Hathaway reached over and gave Jesse a clap on the shoulder.

“We have every confidence in you and your men, Jesse, we don’t need the state government sticking its nose under the edge of our tent, so to speak.”

Jesse hated to be touched and he especially hated to be clapped on the shoulder.

“I’m a good cop,” Jesse said. “But a good cop is mostly the product of a good support system. We’re not geared for a homicide investigation.”

“We don’t want that policeman nosing into our business,” Hathaway said. His geniality was dissipating.

“Well, I’m not sure there’s much to be done about that,” Jesse said. “Even if I didn’t want him, which I do, I got no way to keep him out.”

Hathaway was silent. One leg slung over the corner of Jesse’s desk, he drummed quietly with the fingers of his right hand on the desktop. His face seemed to have tightened in on itself. The lines had deepened and the pale blue eyes seemed smaller. He looked feral.

“Jesse, you need to be clear about things,” Hathaway said finally. “You are either with us, or you are not. We value loyalty above all things. It was ultimately Tom Carson’s failure.”

“Whatever happened to him,” Jesse said.

Hathaway glanced away from Jesse and stared out the window.

“We had to ask for Tom’s resignation,” Hathaway said.

“Because?”

“Because his loyalty was in question.”

“Loyalty to who?” Jesse said. His voice was gentle and there was nothing in it other than interest.

“To us,” Hathaway said. “To the people of this town who matter.”

“Like you,” Jesse said.

“Yes. And Lou Burke, and everyone in this town who cares about preserving democracy at the grass roots.” Hathaway’s voice seemed to scrape out of his throat.

“So where is Carson now?”

“I have no idea,” Hathaway said.

“Me either.”

Hathaway looked hard at Jesse, but there was nothing on his face, nothing in his voice, except the hint of something seething behind the bow tie and glasses.

“I don’t want to hear that you are opening up to this state policeman in any way,” Hathaway said finally.

“The surest way to bring them down here in droves,” Jesse said, “is to try and keep them out.”

“You don’t have to keep them out. But you can stonewall them.”

“You haven’t had much dealing with people like Healy,” Jesse said. “I have. He’s been in this business forty years. He’s taken guns away from hopheads and children away from molesters. He’s seen every mess, heard every lie. He’s been there and seen it done. You can’t stonewall him any more than you can scare him.”

“So we throw the town secrets open to him?”

“No, but we let him help us catch the guy who killed that girl,” Jesse said.

Hathaway sat silent as a stone on the corner of the desk, shaking his head slowly.

“A damned divorcee,” he said finally, “out to get laid.”

“Or the mother of two kids,” Jesse said, “out for the evening. All depends on which truths you tell, I guess.”

Hathaway continued to sit and shake his head. Then he rose abruptly and walked stiffly out of Jesse’s office. Jesse watched the empty doorway that Hathaway had gone through for a while, his lips pursed slightly. He realized his jaw was clamped very tight and he opened it and worked it back and forth a little to relax it. He breathed in deeply and let it out slowly, listening to his own exhale, easing the tightness along his shoulders, relaxing his back.

“And Lou Burke,” Jesse said aloud.

He got up and went to the file cabinet and got out Burke’s personnel file and took it back to his desk and began to thumb through it.

Chapter 45

Finding Tammy Portugal’s husband was easy. The alimony check had been cashed at the Paradise Bank and the address was printed on it. Jesse drove out to Springfield and talked with him at 10:30 a.m. in a coffee shop on Sumner Avenue at an intersection called the X. The restaurant was out of the 1930s. Glass brick, and a jukebox near the kitchen.

“I’m a loser,” Bobby Portugal said to Jesse. “Tammy thought she was marrying a winner, but that was just my bullshit. I been a loser since I graduated high school.”

Portugal was medium height and husky. His dark hair was longish and he had a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a Patriots warm-up jacket over a gray tee shirt and jeans.

“We went together in high school. I was a big jock in high school. Running back, point guard. She thought I was a big deal.”

The waitress brought an order of English muffins for Jesse and a fried-egg sandwich for Portugal.

“Made All–North Shore League, junior and senior year, football and basketball. Got a partial scholarship to B.C.”

Portugal paused while he peeled off the top layer of toast and poured ketchup on the fried egg.

“And when you got there,” Jesse said, “everybody had made all-league and a lot of the leagues were faster than yours.”

“You better believe it,” Portugal said.

He took a bite of his sandwich and put it down while he pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table and wiped ketchup from the corner of his mouth.

“I lasted six weeks,” he said. “And quit. Went to work for the highway department in town. Thought I was making a ton. Tammy and I were still going out, and she got pregnant, and . . .” Portugal shrugged and shook his head. He picked up his sandwich and held it for a moment and put it down. His eyes filled and he turned his head away from Jesse.

“Take your time,” Jesse said.

Portugal continued to sit with his head turned. Without looking he pushed his plate away from him. Jesse waited. Portugal took in a deep breath and let it out. He did it again. Then he straightened his head and looked at Jesse. His eyes were wet.

“We got married,” he said. “She still thought I was a big deal. Nineteen, money in my pocket, a star in the Paradise softball league. She was thrilled to be marrying Bobby Portugal.”

Portugal’s voice was perfectly calm. Remote, Jesse thought, as if he were talking about people he knew casually, and found mildly interesting. Except that he was teary.

“And then we had the babies and two hundred and fifty bucks a week didn’t look like so much. I tried selling Amway for a while. That was a joke. I tried insurance, got through the training program and got fired. I didn’t earn much money, but I played a lotta ball with the guys and drank a lotta beer. Finally she dumped me. You blame her?”

“What are you doing out here?” Jesse said.

“Security guard. Downtown at the big mall. When I get off work, I got a room with a sink in the corner and bathroom down the hall. You ever play ball?”

“Some,” Jesse said. “Why Springfield?”

“I had to get away from Paradise,” Portugal said. “This seemed far enough. Nobody ever heard of me here.”

“Tell me where you were Tuesday night.”

“Did my shift at the mall till ten. Had a date. Girl works at the mall. Got home around three-thirty, she spent the night. That when she was killed? Tammy? Tuesday night?”

“Can I talk with the woman you dated?”

“You gotta?”

“Be good to know what you were doing that period of time.”

“Yeah, if you gotta. But can you be sort of cool about it? Her old man is a long-distance trucker. When he’s out of town we . . . we got a little arrangement.”

“I can talk to her at work,” Jesse said.

“Okay. Her name’s Rosa Rodriguez, she works in the little candy kiosk in the mall.”

“Can you give me the address of the mall?” Jesse said.

Portugal told him and Jesse wrote it down.

“You own a car?”

“No. With my alimony? Mostly I ride the bus. Buses are pretty good here. I guess there’s no more alimony, is there?”

“Child support,” Jesse said.

He nodded.

“They okay?” he said.

“Your children?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re with your mother-in-law.”

Portugal nodded.

“You wanna give me the name of your supervisor, please,” Jesse said.

Portugal told him.

“What time you get to work on Wednesday?”

“Ten a.m. About five hours’ sleep. Man!” Portugal shook his head. “You think I done it?”

“Not if your story checks,” Jesse said. “She was out clubbing, probably, Tuesday night, there was alcohol present. You know any of her favorite places?”

Portugal shook his head.

“No favorites,” he said. “I know she used to go out once a week, but she’d never go the same place. Didn’t want to get a reputation, you know. Bad for the kids, she said. So she wouldn’t go to any place regular. She’d always go where nobody knew her. She was a good mother, man.”

“Sorry to have to ask, but did she go to meet men, you think?”

“Yeah, sure, why wouldn’t she? We was divorced. She was free. She liked sex, I know that. I mean that’s pretty much what we had was sex, and after a while, when I wasn’t working and didn’t do much but play ball and drink with the guys, we didn’t even have that.”

“Because she didn’t want to?”

“Because I wasn’t much good,” Portugal said.

“Too much defeat,” Jesse said.

“And beer,” Portugal said. “Way too much beer.”

“You got an arrangement with the trucker’s wife, though,” Jesse said, and smiled. “Looks like you’re making a comeback.”

Portugal shrugged.

“Arrangement is just that, we both like to get laid, it don’t mean much.”

“You have any thoughts on who might have killed your ex-wife?”

Portugal’s eyes teared again. He lowered his head.

“No,” he said.

They talked in the anachronistic restaurant for nearly an hour. Jesse asked about male friends of the deceased, about female friends. Had she ever worked anyplace? Had she any enemies? Had he any enemies? Did she have debts? Did he? How often did he see her? When had he last seen her? When it was through, Jesse paid the small bill and they left the restaurant. The fried-egg sandwich remained uneaten on Portugal’s plate.

“I wasn’t such a loser,” Portugal said, “she’d be all right. She figured she was marrying Mr. Big, guy that was going somewhere. And look where I took her.”

“Maybe you’re taking on more than you need to,” Jesse said.

“And maybe I ain’t,” Portugal said.

Jesse had nothing else to say about that and he got in his car and drove away while Portugal stood on the corner looking down Sumner Avenue at Jesse’s receding car.