Nantucket Sawbuck (24 page)

“This is crazy.”

“We picked up Tanya Kriel an hour ago. She wasn't happy with you. It looks like you've burned that bridge. She might wind up being our key witness. As a first-time offender, an impressionable girl under the sway of a Svengali-like sociopath, she'll get off with a light sentence if she testifies against you. Maybe a year's probation.”

“I don't believe this! I didn't do anything! I not only didn't kill anyone, I saved someone! I talked Cindy out of the abortion! Then I come back here and go on trial for murder? It's a right-to-lifers nightmare. It's almost funny. And here's the best part. I get to be in the
Inky Mirror
police log, accused of killing one of my customers! That should do wonders for my business. Pay-or-Die Painters, that can be the new company name!”

“Listen, Mike—”

“Are you going to call a press conference and apologize publicly when you finally clear my name? Or should I just sue the town for defamation of character, loss of income, and hardship when the business I've spent twenty years building goes down the tubes?”

I walked to the door, but turned back with my hand on the knob. “Let's take it one step at a time, Mike.”

He gave a me a twisted little smile. “I guess I should have called my lawyer after all.”

I took a last look at him before I left the room. I knew everyone at the station and the state police headquarters would be celebrating. The reporters would be scrambling all over each other to file first and get the scoop on what they would inevitably refer to as the “crime of the century.” I'd be famous for a while. I could probably ride this master-stroke of police work all the way back to L.A., and reclaim my old position in the Robbery-Homicide division. Nantucket had proved it could take care of itself. Our humble police force could track down criminals and punish them without hesitation, even when they presented themselves as upstanding members of the community. The island had emerged from the publicity storm as a safe haven again—for tourists and wealthy homeowners alike. It was a win for everyone.

The only problem was, I didn't believe it.

Something was off-kilter in the case we'd built. And Mike Henderson didn't project the defiant chagrin of a bad man run to ground. I saw something very different: a good man fighting a run of bad luck. I felt sorry for him. There was nothing I could do to help, though.

At least not yet.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chain of Evidence

Mike Henderson didn't spend much time in jail.

Billy Delavane posted bail, which Judge Perlman had set at ten thousand dollars. “He's hardly a flight risk, Mr. Carmichael,” the judge remarked to the state's attorney at the bail hearing. “If these allegations hold up, Mr. Henderson's only trip off-island in the last year took place entirely in his imagination. A flight of fancy, at best. You can't have it both ways.”

Billy caught up to me in the street outside the town building. “Mike's innocent, Chief. You trust me. I trust Mike.”

I nodded. “I think I do, too. And he can do himself some good now that he's back on the street. Post a request in the forums at Yack On—maybe someone saw him on the boat. And he could get the mileage off the Levines' car. They might keep a log, especially when lots of different people are driving the vehicle. If the new mileage matches up with a trip to New York that would help. And get him a decent lawyer. Lester Rowlands is a good guy, but he's a lazy drunk. There's two kinds of people in the world—the ones who do the most they can and the ones who do the least they can. Lester is group two all the way.”

Billy nodded. “Anything else?”

“Have your guy check the traffic cams on I-95. If Mike was speeding they may have taken his picture. That would solve the whole problem right there. He told Haden Krakauer he waited for his wife in some coffee shop near the doctor's office. Those places have regulars. They might remember a stranger. The waiter might recall a guy who came in for breakfast and only ordered coffee.”

“That's a stretch, Chief.”

“Yeah, well Mike needs a stretch right now. Or a miracle.”

But as it turned out, all Mike really needed was for the NPD to arrest someone else for the murder.

And that happened before the court clerk finished processing the bail papers.

***

It began with a dirty ashtray in Fiona Donovan's living room.

I was late picking her up for lunch after a morning crowded with impatient reporters and squabbling cops. Lonnie Fraker was just as certain as Billy Delavane that my suspect was innocent. They had played Whalers football together. Haden called Lonnie's latest new theory the “Lomax Love Nest,” in honor of the various tabloid writers who were covering the story.

In this version of events, Kevin Sloane conspired with Diana Lomax and her daughter to kill the old man so they could live out the rest of their incestuous love triangle on the money he left behind. The only evidence they had for any of this was Diana's “hinky” demeanor. I told them with a rigorously straight face that city cops just said “suspicious” these days. “Hinky” was so twentieth century. Kevin Sloane's fingerprints on the headboard fed the in-house frenzy, along with a fervid belief that this was exactly the kind of stuff that rich people were doing all the time.

“These guys watch too much TV,” I told Haden Krakauer.

Haden shook his head. “Not me, but I just read
The Wings of the Dove,
Chief. And let me tell you—these sleazy shenanigans have Henry James written all over them.”

I wasn't happy with my own theory either, so I kept quiet. I shrugged at the other cops and said “No comment” to the reporters. The only refuge in my day was lunch with Fiona. We usually ate at the airport. I actually liked Crosswinds,
and no one ever thought of looking for me there. The tang of jet fuel, the view of the runways, the sound of planes taking off and the periodic flight announcements all gave me the illusion that I was in transit myself, killing time before a trip to Boston and points east—London, Belgrade, Beijing. I was thinking about the pleasant anonymity of travel, wondering if there was a poem in it, when I walked into Fiona's house, and everything changed.

I didn't notice anything at first. I stood waiting for Fiona in the living room—more of a common room really, since the house served as a dormitory for the girls who worked for her—studying the books on the shelves. I had the bad habit of judging people by their books, but I knew that none of these belonged to Fiona. She never read novels. She preferred popular history and science. She had inhaled Nathaniel Philbrick's complete works, and was currently reading Richard Dawkins, so that she could marshal the necessary arguments to crush and humiliate anyone who argued in favor of “intelligent design”—primarily the members of her own family, good Catholics all. In any case, she never purchased a book. They were nothing but an extravagant source of clutter to her, and a pointless one if there was a decent library available. Ebooks? She liked reading in the bathtub too much. These volumes had to belong to the girls on her cleaning crew. They were all paperback romances and they had the creased and grimy look of the “take it or leave it” shack at the dump.

I pulled one off the shelf, opened it at random. “Marcella swooned at his touch. Edward pulled her to him roughly, and kissed her as the storm raged on outside and the ocean dashed itself against the cliffs.”

I shook my head, turned the book over and read the blurb on the back. No woman had ever swooned at my touch. But then again, I wasn't “mysterious” or “sinister” like this Edward guy, and I definitely didn't own a castle on the Scottish coast. Maybe I should look into that—buy a chunk of craggy real estate, hire a cute governess with father issues, make a few cryptic comments, and let the fur fly. Of course, I'd need a dark secret to be “tormented” by, if the back cover could be trusted. That was a problem. I am strictly a what-you-see-is-what-you-get. My past was as dull as my present, at least from a romance novel point of view. I set the book back on the shelf.

“Broadening your horizons?”

I turned around. Fiona had just walked into the room.

“I'm not sure. How come you never swoon when I kiss you?”

“Low altitude and sobriety. Get me drunk at the Mount Everest base camp and I'll swoon like a Bronte character.”

“Very romantic.”

“Oh, so it's romance you're looking for?”

“You know it is.”

She grabbed my belt and tugged me closer. “Glad to hear it, Chief Kennis. I could use a little myself.”

I kissed her—a long, deep kiss, and when we pulled our mouths apart, I said “Swooning yet?”

“Just the opposite: wide awake like a badger in heat.”

I grinned. “Even better.”

I kissed her again and we wound up wrestling each other's clothes off and making love on the couch. It was a narrow couch. At some point we fell off and finished on the floor. When we were done, she rolled over and showed me her chafed elbow.

“Rug burns,” she said. “Now that's romantic.”

“It's a badge of honor—like a hickey on your neck. We used to flaunt them when I was a kid. Girls would wear open shirts even if it was freezing out.”

“And when I was a girl, we were embarrassed. We'd wear turtlenecks, even if it was the middle of summer.”

“Yeah, I knew some girls like that. Others wore turtlenecks so people would think something had happened. That way they could show off and pretend to be modest at the same time. Which is kind of like my friend Doug in L.A. He drives around in his car with the windows closed so people will think he has air-conditioning.”

Fiona was distracted. She was looking up, over my shoulder across the room.

“What?”

“Damn it. How many times do I have to tell them?”

“Tell them what?”

“I don't know whether they can't actually think at all, or they just can't be bothered.”

I propped myself up on one elbow. “They?”

“The girls. They've broken two Baccarat crystal glasses which they were forbidden to use in the first place, and now they're using my silver bowls as ashtrays. I've told them over and over, but it makes no difference. I don't even like them smoking in here. They're incorrigible.”

Fiona stood and walked over to the end table next to the corduroy-covered armchair that faced the hearth. I stood and joined her. There was indeed a scattering of ashes and a cigarette butt in the silver bowl next to the lamp.

Fiona was about to pick it up to clean it.

My voice stopped her. “Don't touch that.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean it, Fi. Just step aside for a second.”

She tilted her head questioningly in that almost canine way she had sometimes, but she took a step toward the fireplace.

I was staring down at the cigarette, the single gold circle above the filter. I was so absorbed by the sight that I started reaching into my pocket for tweezers and an evidence bag before I remembered that I was naked.

Fiona watched quietly while I got dressed. I walked back to the table, picked the butt up delicately with the tweezers and held it out to her.

“Who smokes these?”

“I—”

“Think, Fiona. It's important. Who was here last night?”

“How should I know? I was with you. You got here before I did today.”

“Sorry. You're right.”

“What's going on, Henry?”

“Do any of these kids smoke Camel Lights?”

“Molly's boyfriend, Jesse. I bought him a pack last week. I was going to Cumberland Farms and he—”

“Jesse Coleman?”

“That's right.”

“He's a cop, Fiona.”

“I know that. Are they not allowed to smoke? I had no idea that there was any—”

“This cigarette may be evidence in a capital murder investigation, as well as a number of grand larceny felony cases. I don't know how many, yet. But I'm going to find out.”

“I—”

“They told me cops were involved in this. But I didn't believe them. I didn't want to deal with it. I thought things were different here.”

“Who told you this?”

“Different people. Haden Krakauer. David Trezize over at
The
Shoals.
Even a kid who writes for the goddamn high school newspaper told me. A high school kid. What an idiot I am.”

She put an arm on my shoulder. “You're not an idiot. You just trust other cops. You want to believe the best about them.”

“Really? Do you really think that? Because as far as I can tell, that completely disqualifies me from doing my job. That's a firing offense. People want a naive police chief about as much as they want a wise-cracking airline pilot. And they're right.”

I started for the door. I felt a quick twinge of relief—this was one piece of evidence that didn't tie in to Mike Henderson. He was an aggressive non-smoker. He'd gone to town meeting to get cigarettes banned on the outside decks of the Steamship Authority ferries.

“Henry, wait a minute.”

I turned back. She was standing in front of me, still naked, pale and beautiful, her body gleaming like a pearl in the early afternoon light, one curling strand of red hair touching her neck. In another world, or some better version of this one, I could take her hand, walk her upstairs to the proper bed in her room, make love all afternoon, and then buy her the steak she'd be craving at Kitty Murtagh's.

In this world I had to leave. “I'll call you later,” I said.

But by the time I got around to calling her, I was flat on my back, staring up at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling of Nantucket Cottage Hospital.

I took a long, circuitous route to the emergency room that afternoon. Jesse Coleman was the first step. The kid was furious at being interrogated. “I'm a police officer,” he said. “I deserve some trust. And some respect.”

“Get some perspective, Jesse,” I told him. “You were a rent-a-cop summer special six months ago. Seniority isn't your strong suit. Punctuality, maybe. I'll give you that. But getting up on your high horse and saying ‘You can't do this to me! I've shown up mostly on time since September!' doesn't really sound that impressive.”

We were sitting in the interrogation room, a stigmatized venue most of the cops called “the hole.” My cell phone rang. I turned it off without checking the number. “My Lieutenant in Los Angeles, a classic tough guy named Chuck Obremski, said something to me at my going away party. He said I was going to have it easy here, because small town crooks were stupid. ‘The smart ones go to the city'. That's what he told me. Then he winked and added, ‘but so do the smart cops.' So he'd say we were evenly matched.”

Jesse sat forward, looking even more aggrieved. “Wait a minute, Chief, what exactly are you trying to—”

“It's just too easy out here, for everyone. Mainland standards don't apply.”

“What's this about? The fuck are you saying?”

“Hey! Station house rules, remember? No swearing.” I let Mike Henderson get away with it, but I had different rules for civilians—and friends. “The town doesn't permit smoking, either.”

“I never smoked in the station.”

I watched him steadily. “No, that's true. But you do smoke everywhere else. Including the alley outside. And every house you've robbed for the last two years.”

“I never robbed anybody.”

I sighed. “At this point I have to Mirandize you, Jesse.”

“What?”

“You know the drill. You have the right to remain silent. If you chose to talk, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to a lawyer. If you can't afford a lawyer, one will be appointed by the court.”

“Chief, this is crazy. I have no idea—”

“Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”

“Come on.”

“Do you understand your rights?”

We stared at each other. “Okay, yeah fine. Of course I do. Now what the hell are you—”

“Jesse, please. Don't say anything for a minute. Just listen. Okay? Before you call a lawyer, before I have to book you, before we file on this. Hear me out.”

Jesse nodded.