The Sleepless (9 page)

Sometimes, Megan teased him and called him Giraffe, too. Megan was his wife: Boston Irish, five-feet-four-and-a-half, little and dark and vivacious, despite her affliction. He never showed her that it worried him. But one day, somebody would say, ‘Get the Giraffe,’ and that would be the end of it. Squealing tyres on Haverhill and Causeway, or down by the Harbor; shots; and then nothing but cold concrete sidewalk; and encroaching darkness; and watching your life’s blood sliding away. 

Thomas took a last tight drag at his cigarette and said, ‘Any identification? Pocketbook, credit cards, anything like that?’ 

David shook his head. ‘Nothing at all. And I mean nothing at all. No clothing whatsoever, no jewellery, no cosmetics, no comb, no toothbrush, nothing. This girl was totally naked in every sense of the word.’ 

‘You’ve talked to the neighbours?’ 

‘Oh, for sure. The Dallens on this side and the Giffords on that.’ 

‘They never saw nothing. They never heard nothing.’ 

David nodded. Byron Street was one of those streets where people came and went and minded their own business, where nobody would admit to domestic violence or shouting matches or scandal. The only time the residents of Byron Street ever called the police was when they needed a burglary report for insurance purposes; or if a noisy party was going on too late. 

‘Do you want to take a look?’ asked David. 

‘Oh ... sure,’ said Thomas. ‘Who called it in?’ 

David flipped his notebook again. ‘Ms Anna Krasilovsky from the realty company. The tenants hadn’t paid rent for two successive months, so she came around to check. There was no response to the doorbell; and the phone was disconnected. So she used her passkey. She smelled a smell, and went upstairs, and there she was.’ 

‘You’ve talked to Ms – ?’ 

‘Krasilovsky, yes, for sure. She’s being treated for shock. But everything she says checks out.’ 

‘What do we know about the tenants?’ 

‘James T. Honeyman, DMD, MDS, dental surgeon; and Mrs Honeyman. Dr Honeyman apparently wanted the premises for an implant surgery practice.’ 

‘Where did they come from, originally?’ 

‘We’re still checking their background. But the realty company records show that their permanent home address is at the Hawk-Salt-Ash resort community in Plymouth, Vermont.’ 

‘Odd,’ said Thomas. ‘Who lives in Plymouth, Vermont, and sets up a practice in Boston?’ 

‘We should have a report back from Plymouth within the hour,’ David reassured him. ‘My guess is that it’s a bogus address. But, you know, we’re just making sure.’ 

‘Oh, you think that it’s a bogus address?’ Thomas asked, sarcastically. ‘Maybe you’ll make a detective yet.’ 

He knew, however, that the grisliest moment had arrived; and had to be faced. Why he had decided on a career in homicide when he couldn’t even stand to look at a run-over deer on a rural highway, he could never explain. Perhaps he had imagined that it would be no more disturbing than Cluedo or reading a Sherlock Holmes story. He really couldn’t remember. But there were days when he came home from police headquarters and stood under the shower with his eyes tight shut for twenty minutes on end, trying to wash away the smell of death, and trying to forget the blind bloody writhing of maggots. 

He followed David up the steps and in through the open front door. He could smell death the moment he stepped into the hallway. A young woman police officer shouldered her way past him, looking pale. He didn’t snap at her, or reprimand her, the way he would have done if she had pushed him back at headquarters. Instead, he watched her hurry down the steps with her hand pressed against her mouth, and thought,
Shit, this is going to be a bad one.
 

David said, ‘This way, sir,’ but Thomas said, ‘Wait.’ He was studying the framed pictures hanging in the hallway – partly because he wanted to put off the moment when he had to confront the deceased, and partly because he always found other people’s pictures to be most revealing. People had to think that a picture was very significant, before they decided to frame it and hang it on the wall. Sometimes they didn’t realize how much their choice of pictures gave them away. Particularly nudes. And these were all nudes – sepia and black-and-white photographs of Victorian and Edwardian and 1920s nudes, wide-hipped, pale-skinned, flirtatious and coy. Only one picture was different – a curious steel engraving of formally-dressed men and women standing around a table which was covered by a heavy damask cloth. In the centre of the table lay a small, dark curled-up thing which could have been a human foetus; but the picture-glass was very grimy and it was almost impossible to tell for certain. 

‘What do you think
that
is?’ asked Thomas. 

David obviously hadn’t looked at it before. He leaned forward and peered at it closely. ‘I don’t know ... some kind of dried-up root vegetable?’ 

‘Then why are all these people staring it so intently? I mean, what do we have here, the Swede Fanciers of America, or what?’ 

David looked up at him unhappily. ‘I really don’t know, sir. I’m sorry.’ 

‘Goddamned root vegetable my ass,’ Thomas sneered. 

Embarrassed, David glanced at the picture again. ‘It could be a dead bird.’ 

‘Oh, sure. And it could be a shrivelled-up pancake or it could be somebody’s toupee, for Christ’s sake. Or a quarter of a pound of Limburger cheese that’s grown fur.’ 

‘I don’t know, lieutenant,’ said David, trying to sound level and reasonable. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ 

Thomas looked around at all the other pictures. ‘I don’t want guesses, David, and I sure don’t want guesses that are only as good as mine. I want constructive detective work. I want
analysis.’
 

David examined the pictures again, but he continued to look unhappy. 

‘What do these pictures tell you?’ Thomas demanded. ‘Look at them, David. What do they say? They’re saying something! They’re saying ... ? Come on, David, they’re saying – ‘ 

Thomas circled his hand in the air as if he could coax the words out of David’s larynx. ‘Come on, they’re telling you something clear as a bell and country simple.’ 

David cleared his throat. ‘They’re telling me that whoever put them up was probably heterosexual.’ 

Thomas clapped his hands. ‘Wrong! You’re assuming that whoever put them up was male! Maybe a woman put them up!’ 

‘Then what do they tell me?’ asked David, in considerable discomfort. 

Thomas lifted one down from the wall, turned it over, and read the framer’s label on the back. He hung it back up, and then he checked all of the others. ‘I’ll tell you what they tell you. They tell you that they were all framed locally, here on Chestnut Hill. They tell you that they were all framed at the same time, which may mean that they were simply hung in this house by an interior designer, and that they belong to the property itself rather than to Dr and Mrs Honeyman personally. They’re also telling you that whoever put them up sure liked their meat and potatoes. Look here: we’re talking substantial women here. So did you ask Ms Krovilavsky whether these pictures belonged to the previous tenants, or whether they belonged to her realty company?’ 

‘Ms Krasilovsky, sir. Not Krovilavsky.’ 

‘Same difference. And, no, you didn’t ask her, did you?’ 

‘No, sir. It didn’t occur to me.’ 

Thomas raised a single finger. ‘Whenever anything sexual comes into an investigation, ask. Sex is a motive in itself.’ He peered at the pictures again. ‘Especially when somebody has sexual taste as wacky as this.’ 

He was still examining the photograph of the group standing around the table when Detective Jaworski came down the stairs from the bedroom. Detective Jaworski was short and beefy with a furry blond crewcut and eyes as tiny as two steel nails knocked into a turnip. He had been transferred to homicide only five weeks ago. He was looking grey and sweaty, and he kept swallowing. 

‘What do you think that is?’ Thomas asked him, pointing to the hairy object on the table in the engraving. 

Detective Jaworski unenthusiastically examined it. 

‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ he said, shaking his head. 

‘Animal, vegetable or mineral?’ 

‘I really don’t know, sir. I never saw anything that looked like that before.’ 

‘No ... ‘ said Thomas. ‘Me neither. It looks kind of unhealthy, don’t you think?’ 

Without a word, Detective Jaworski suddenly turned around, walked three stiff steps along the hallway, pushed open the toilet door and slammed it behind him. Thomas and David waited with impassive faces while he was noisily sick. 

He came out wiping his mouth with toilet tissue. He said, ‘Orange juice,’ as if that explained everything. 

Thomas said, ‘That’s one reason I never eat breakfast.’ 

‘Don’t you get used to it?’ asked Detective Jaworski. 

‘I’ll tell you when I do,’ Thomas replied. ‘Now ... we’d better take a look.’ 

They climbed a steep flight of brown-carpeted stairs to the first landing. In front of them was a large window of yellow and sepia-stained glass, in the pattern of orchids and wild arum. It gave the landing the same faded, brownish light as the photographs in the hallway. 

On the right was a closed mahogany door. Thomas asked Detective Jaworski, ‘What’s in there?’ 

‘Bathroom, sir.’ 

Thomas opened the door and looked inside. The bathroom was chilly and smelled of damp. The walls were half-tiled with brown majolica tiles, and the walls were painted with yellow-ochre enamel and spotted with black pinpricks of mould. A huge old-fashioned bathtub stood in the centre of the opposite wall. Inside, it was thickly ringed with greyish grease, and stained with dark brown marks. The plughole was blocked with grey human hairs. 

‘Forensics checked in here yet?’ asked Thomas. 

‘Not yet, lieutenant. They got their hands full in the bedroom.’ 

‘Make sure they take samples of that hair.’ He went to the brown-measled mirror over the basin and ran his fingertip along the shelf beneath it. It was encrusted with old shaving soap and tiny black speckles. He held his finger under Detective Jaworski’s nose. ‘Human stubble. Tell ‘em to take a sample of that, too.’ 

Detective Jaworski examined it with undisguised distaste. ‘Whatever you say, sir.’ 

Thomas looked around the bathroom – walls, floor, ceiling, light fittings – then he stared at himself in the mirror for a long, thoughtful moment. At last he said, ‘Okay,’ and walked out, with David and Detective Jaworski closely following him. 

The bedroom was the second door along the landing. Outside it stood a stocky, ginger-haired cop with his arms folded above his belly. From inside the room, electronic flash flickered like summer lightning, and Thomas heard somebody saying, ‘Give me two more shots of the feet. The
feet,
for Christ’s sake.’ 

Thomas clapped the cop on the shoulder. ‘How’s it going, Jimmy? Are you a grandpappy yet?’ 

‘Not yet, lieutenant, tenth of August,’ the cop replied. ‘And it’s a girl.’ 

‘Well, give my love to Eileen,’ said Thomas. ‘And don’t forget the cigars.’ 

Before Thomas could go any further, the cop held out his hand to stop him, and nodded toward the bedroom door. ‘Take a deep breath, lieutenant. This is a bad one.’ 

Thomas looked at him. If Jimmy O’Sullivan said it was a bad one, then it was a bad one. ‘Thanks, Jimmy,’ and sharply inhaled, and stepped into the room. 

Four photo-floods had turned the bedroom into a dazzling surrealistic stage set. Two forensic officers were crawling around in the far corner, on their hands and knees, carefully brushing the white shaggy rug for hairs and fibres and any other interesting minutiae. A young police photographer with a greasy quiff was adjusting his tripod to take close-up pictures at the end of the bed. And a thin, bespectacled man in a pale blue lab-coat was standing next to the bed, a clipboard tucked under his arm, a pencil tucked behind his elfish ear, looking thoughtful. 

It was the bed itself that shocked Thomas more than anything else. At first sight, he thought that it had been draped with a dark brown sheet. It was only when he saw the blowflies crawling all over it that he realized it wasn’t a dark brown sheet at all, but a white sheet that had been totally drenched with blood – blood which must have been vivid scarlet when it was first spilled, but which had now oxidized to the colour of a vast blotchy scab. 

In the middle of the bed, face down, lay the naked body of a young girl. She had been hogtied with three loops of tarnished razor wire, her hands behind her back, her knees lifted. Her long hair was so thickly clotted with dried blood that Thomas was unable to determine what her natural colour might have been. Putrescence was well advanced, so that her skin had taken on a grey-green pallor, almost luminous, but she was also bruised and scarred and burned beyond belief. 

Out of one pocket, Thomas took out his handkerchief, unfolded it, and laid it flat on the palm of his hand. From another pocket, he took out a small bottle of essence of cloves, which Megan regularly bought for him from a small delicatessen near Faneuil Hall. He shook the essence into the handkerchief, refolded it, and then covered his nose and mouth.