Open Season (24 page)

“No sweat. By the way, do you keep your old note pads?”

Gone was the soft tone. “Why?”

“I was thinking maybe we could compare them to this”—I put my hand on the file—“help freshen your memory.”

He shook his head scornfully. “You must think I just fell off the truck. I’ll go over that lousy file with you—that’s part of my job. But there’s no way in hell you’re ever going to see that note pad. That’s private.”

“You can read from it. I won’t even touch it.”

“Give me a break. Maybe we’ll all be standing in the way when the fan gets turned on, but I’d sure as hell be a convenient scapegoat. Better me than the saintly departed Murphy, right?”

“What’s that mean?”

“What do you think it means? Christ, he was captain—nothing happened without him knowing about it. My name’s on that file because I was first on the scene, but the whole thing was his baby. You better believe it—including the bullshit.”

He walked away, leaving me nailed to my chair. It was like hearing the one clear note in a jumble of sound. Kunkle had to be right. The cause of Murphy’s hedging at the start of all this wasn’t simple pre-retirement jitters. I remembered the night he’d driven me home from the morgue. “I did everything I could to speed things up,” he’d said. I’d taken that as an apology for his having been such a jerk until then, but it had been more. He’d been edging toward an admission he’d never directly made.

I grabbed my coat and headed for the car. The implication cut beyond Murphy’s integrity. It also made a joke of my loyalty. I’d made assumptions and from them had drawn conclusions that were possibly criminally wrong. I had never entertained the remotest possibility that Frank’s behavior went beyond the fumbling of a boozy old cop counting his last days. The realization that he may have consciously allowed the wrong man to go to jail spread through my chest like ice water.

Martha Murphy was still in Massachusetts with her daughter, although she was due back that evening. I found the spare key wedged behind the mailbox.

I knew the house as I knew my own. They had lived here for over twenty years, and never had a week gone by that I hadn’t come to visit at least once, and usually more. I had helped move furniture, select drapes, repair the plumbing. When they’d gone on their rare vacations, I’d watered the plants and brought in the mail.

I walked straight to the roll-top desk Frank had referred to as his office, parked in a corner of the living room, and started going through the large lower drawers. I found a thick packet of small black note pads, bound by a rubber band, arranged in chronological order. It was my good fortune that for all his flaws as a human being, Frank had been a very neat cop.

For the next two hours, I dug through the pads like an archaeologist looking for bone fragments. It was not easy work. The purpose of these things was to merely stimulate what was already in the mind of the writer. Sometimes codes were used, or abbreviations bordering on shorthand. Cases were referred to indiscriminately, one on top of the other. An FBI file number, standing in total isolation, might hover over a reminder to pick up some pickles at the store.

But they did go page by page, each page representing a progression through time, so once I’d located the book whose dates bracketed the Harris case, at least I had some sense—however vague—of forward movement.

I didn’t find much in quantity. People don’t write notes to themselves on how to subvert their own integrity. But I did find what I’d hoped I wouldn’t. It was a reminder, presumably written too late in the day for immediate action: “Stop KH print code.”

That was as far as I went. I rebundled the pads and put them back in the drawer. I sat for a while by the large north window, the one with the view of the Connecticut River valley.

I can’t really say I was upset. Frank was dead, after all, and despite Kunkle’s nasty jab, I never had considered him a saint. His gradual winding down through the years had been visible to all. In fact, the best description of his life was probably found in my own mirror. We all get old and slow down. And most of us get fat, become complacent, maybe drink a little too much, and tend to let things go towards the end. Obstacles to this easy, introverted, downhill slide either get put off or are muffled in routine. Sometimes—as in this case—they are even physically removed. It’s not so much an act of corruption, it’s just something to make life more convenient.

When Kimberly Harris’s fingerprints had been taken, they were translated into a transmittable code. Routinely, such codes are sent to the FBI’s Identification Bureau for filing and an immediate comparison check. It’s not as accurate as comparing the actual prints—something which can be done later—but it’s a workable and fast beginning. The FBI has the prints of virtually every individual who’s ever been booked at a police station, along with those of a lot of other people as well. More often than not, when we send a print code to Washington in a felony case, we get some kind of readout. Murphy’s note implied that Kimberly’s code had never been sent.

I didn’t make any ominous connections here. I knew the man—obviously not as well as I’d thought—but well enough to know that all he’d done in his own mind was to keep things streamlined and simple. If you don’t ask the questions, you won’t hear the answers you dread. On the face of it, Frank had an open-and-shut case, and everyone else agreed with him. But he was a good, if tired cop. He knew it was all too pat, he knew “Kimberly Harris” didn’t have enough historical baggage. He knew that if he asked too many questions, the last yard he had to go until retirement would suddenly vanish into a big, black fog.

I drove back to the office and called Danvers at the FBI—the same man who had responded so quickly to our inquiry on Ski Mask’s electronic bug.

“So this time it’s a phone call, huh? Things must be heating up.”

“Maybe. Frank Murphy’s been killed. It’s listed as an accident for now, but I have my doubts.”

“Damn. I’m sorry.”

“I was wondering if you could do me a favor. It might tie in to that bug you’re so interested in.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a fingerprint code.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah. But it’s very high priority.”

“Sure.”

I pulled the code out of the case file and read it slowly over the phone. “By the way, you wouldn’t have something on that bug that might do us some good, would you? Something you might not have felt entirely free to share?”

There was a slight pause. “No. We’re as curious about it as you are.” I didn’t believe that for a second. I thanked him and hung up. I spent the next several hours writing the report of my life, bringing everything up to date from the last two weeks. I synopsized the Harris case as I’d found it in the file, revealed what I thought were its flaws and omissions, and crediting Ski Mask as the catalyst for the reinvestigation, detailed my progress so far. I left out any hypotheses on why Frank was killed and merely let it stand as an accident. I also didn’t entirely finish the report. I expected Danvers to get back to me before the day was out and hoped I could add something tangible from what he had to say.

Late in the afternoon, the windows dark and the day staff just departed, I knocked on the chief ’s open door. He was sitting at his desk, a cold pipe in his mouth, writing.

He leaned back in his chair, smiling, and gestured me to sit. “Been doing your homework?”

“Yup.”

“So what’s our course of action?”

“Kimberly Harris’s employer gave me her time sheets. Throughout her year with him, she took a series of three-day weekends off, I think to do some serious gold digging. I spent an hour today with a part-time hooker friend of hers who told me she wasn’t all that surprised Kimberly ended up the way she did. Also, her real name wasn’t Kimberly, and it may not have been Harris. I’m having Danvers check that out right now; I’m just hoping she had a record somewhere.”

Brandt removed the pipe and scowled. “Wasn’t that done a long time ago?”

“Apparently not. Frank never transmitted the print codes.”

He stared at me.

“I ought to warn you right off that even if we pull this thing out of the fire, even if we find that we have the right guy in the jug, we’re in for a lot of heat. The ball was dropped several times, and I doubt that fact will pass unnoticed.”

“What are we talking about exactly?”

“Exactly? Time will tell. But generally, I think we’re looking at a whole bunch of people moving too fast for their own good.”

“Like Murphy?”

“Like Murphy, like Kunkle, like Dunn, like me and you, for that matter. Frank wanted a clean getaway into retirement; I suspect Kunkle wanted a fast and quick promotion, or at least a little recognition; Dunn liked the tidiness of the initial evidence and made a pointed effort not to dig any deeper; and the rest of us played along, pleased as punch we weren’t hitting any snag. Only Ski Mask wasn’t satisfied.”

“Do we know why he wasn’t yet?”

“No, but I think either Kimberly or Davis will tell us, and my money’s on her. What I’d like to do is to isolate those long weekends and then compare them with local airline, car rental and travel agencies to see if we can come up with a match. I’m sure it’ll only give up phony names, if that, but I’m hoping for at least a pattern. I also want to get the DEA to run a list on all prednisone prescriptions issued in this area during the two-month period just prior to Kimberly’s death.”

“That’ll take forever.”

“Do you have any contacts with them? Mine are all regional men. It would take them just as long.”

He shook his head. “There’s too much coming and going over there. The FBI’s like IBM. DEA’s more like a game show—lots of turnover. I can circulate it around, though. One of the other guys might have a contact.”

“Okay. If we come up empty by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll just put it through normal channels. We’ll also need a pile of evidentiary warrants. If I get you a list of all the agencies I want canvassed and the specific dates of those long weekends, could you do that tonight?”

He checked his watch. “I don’t see why not. It’ll be easier getting a judge at night than during the day, and as far as I know, everyone’s in town. How soon can you get it to me?”

“An hour, maybe an hour and a half?”

He nodded. “What about the Davis angle?”

“I think it’s a long shot, but it’s still possible Ski Mask’s motivation is merely to get Davis off the hook. Now that the Harris case can see the light of day again, I want to assign someone full-time to look into Davis’s past. He was in the Army; that bug I found in my place was military ordnance. There may be a connection.”

“Sounds better than a long shot.”

“I don’t think so. This is more complicated than that. Ski Mask has got something bigger on his mind and so have the people who killed Frank. My nose tells me Davis was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that was near Kimberly Harris—or whatever her name was.”

“Okay . You get me the list; I’ll get the warrants.”

I noticed a light on in Kunkle’s office. I knocked and stuck my head in. He was sitting at his desk with his hands flat on the tabletop, as if in a trance. He looked up at me, startled. “What?”

“Just wondered if you came back.”

“Bed check?”

“No. We were supposed to meet.”

“I forgot.”

“It doesn’t matter. Are you all right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Pure and simple concern. Not that you’d consider me a candidate, but there are people you can talk to if you’re feeling all boxed up inside.”

He gave me a sour smile. “Write me off as a wacko.”

I shook my head. “Willy, I already think you’re a wacko. I’m just worried you’re going to end up killing yourself—or someone else.”

“Thanks. Same to you.” I closed the door and went back to my office. I had almost finished my list for Brandt when the phone rang. It was Danvers.

“Her real name—or at least the one we’ve got for her—is Pamela Stark. She was arrested in Boston for soliciting.” He gave me the file reference number. “Does that do anything for you?”

“It opens a whole new can of worms.”

“Sorry.”

“No, I’m grateful. Right now, a can of worms is exactly what I need. By the way, do you know anybody over at DEA—preferably in records?”

“Why?”

“I think the guy who killed Pamela Stark sported a drug-induced hunchback.”

There was a stunned silence at the other end. I heard him chuckle. “I thought Murphy was bad. You’ll do anything for a favor, won’t you?”

“It’s true.”

“I’m sure it is. You couldn’t pull that one out of your hat. As it turns out, I’m pretty good friends with one of the old-timers in that department. But I want something in return.”

“What?”

“When this whole thing is over, send me a copy of the final report, will you? It’s got all the makings of a classic.”

I said I would and gave him the information I wanted checked by the DEA. I had just hung up the phone when it rang.

“Hi, Joe.” Gail’s voice sounded cautiously neutral.

“Hi.”

“Long time no see.”

“Yeah, it feels that way.”

“You want to come over?”

“It’ll probably be late, if at all.”

“What’s up?”

“Martha’s back in town. I thought I might go over for a visit.”

“That’s nice. I think she’d like that. She really missed you at the ceremony. The offer still stands, though—it doesn’t matter what time. The door’ll be unlocked.”

“Sounds good.”

“I was wondering,” she added after a pause. “Well, I guess it’s kind of stupid…”

“Go ahead.”

“How were things at your mother’s?”

“All right. Cleared my head a little.”

“About us?”

I looked at the phone in surprise. “Us? No. I guess I mostly sorted out losing Frank. That kind of stuff.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“What about us?”

“Nothing. Things have been a little weird lately, you have to admit.”

Her laugh was like a misplaced punctuation mark. “You almost died twice that I know of. Did anyone shoot at you today?”

“Not so far.”

She sighed. “I missed not seeing you when you got back.”