AN ATTEMPT TO TRY to understand a certain situation?!
Jesus, how could she have said something so stiff, so impersonal, so outright lame? Des could not imagine as she piloted her slicktop up the Post Road toward Uncas Lake. Hell, compared to her the IRS sounded positively warm and fuzzy. What on earth had she been thinking? She’d wanted to tell him she was trying to sort out her feelings, that’s what. But she hadn’t wanted to spring that particular f-word out into the open air and so she got all bollixed up and wham, out came the Notification of Pending Audit.
I do not know how to talk to a man anymore. I am hopeless.
Des slowed her cruiser way down as she rolled past the seedy cottage where Tuck Weems had lived. He was scheduled for burial that day, same as Niles Seymour. Same minister. No doubt a lot of the same mourners. Dolly Seymour would be there, for one. That rusty pickup was still up on blocks in his driveway. No other vehicles were parked there. There was no actual sign that anyone was around.
Des kept on going past more shacks and bungalows, wondering if Mitch Berger were right. Had she wanted to hear that she was no good? She didn’t know. All she knew was that her life was starting to feel as if it were spinning out of control. It was a most unfamiliar feeling. It made her slightly dizzy.
The road began to climb steeply as it snaked its way around the lake. The resident trooper’s house was perched high on a hill overlooking the water. Tal Bliss had served two tours in the jungle in Vietnam. Sunlight and fresh air were a priority for him now. She deduced this from the way he’d added on a second storey with walls of glass and a wooden deck suspended all the way around. From the road, the place looked like a firefighter’s lookout station in the mountains.
His bedrooms were downstairs. The kitchen, dining room and living room were up on the second floor, the better to watch over his domain. He kept the house very neat and clean. Particularly his professional kitchen, which gleamed.
“My one and only indulgence,” he confessed, as he poured Des coffee.
There was a center island with a double sink and well-used copper pots hanging from a wrought-iron holder bolted into the ceiling. The countertops were granite, the cupboards pickled-pine. The range was a stainless-steel Jenn-Air with a down-draft vent, the refrigerator a top-of-the-line Sub-Zero. No walls enclosed Tal Bliss’s kitchen. It opened right out into the sun-drenched living and dining area.
On the stereo, Miles and Trane were putting the moves on “Kind of Blue,” filling the house with everything that was sweet and pure.
Dirty Harry, an immense orange-and-white male tabby, was out on the deck applying his death stare to a squirrel in a nearby cedar tree, his body poised, his tail swaying back and forth. The squirrel was chittering at him in derision. Down below, two men in a kayak were making their way slowly across the shimmering blue lake.
Lunch had been the resident trooper’s idea. When Des had mentioned that they needed to talk he had extended the invite. And she had accepted. When Tal Bliss offered to cook you something you did not say no. He wore a denim apron over a spotless white T-shirt while he was preparing it. Right now, he was finishing a fruit salad, his big tanned hands moving swiftly and expertly as he sectioned a pink grapefruit and halved strawberries. A quiche was baking in the oven, smelling marvelous.
“You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.”
“No trouble at all, Lieutenant,” he assured her. “I already had the pie shell on hand. I make a half-dozen of them at a time and freeze them. Just hope you like sage. I’ve fallen in love with it this year and am trying it in everything.” He tossed fresh blackberries and a cup of toasted walnuts into the salad, and began chopping up some mint. “We should really have ourselves a spicy Bloody Mary with this meal. Damned shame we’re on duty.”
“Damned shame.”
“Oh, I got a call from Bud Havenhurst,” he mentioned offhandedly. “Regarding what happened yesterday in New York.”
Somehow, this did not surprise Des.
“He felt a bit more at ease talking to a man about it, I guess,” he explained. “So I listened.”
“To what?” Des sipped her coffee.
“Apparently, Mandy gave Mitch Berger some form of playful shove on the subway platform as a train was pulling in. All in fun, was how Bud described it.”
“And just exactly what’s so damned fun about it?”
“Bud said that she considers danger to be a powerful aphrodisiac,” Bliss replied, coloring more than a little. He wasn’t so comfortable talking to a woman about this either. “She feels when someone has been mortally frightened that he or she is more susceptible to achieving a heightened level of sexual arousal. It seems she intended to seduce him later that evening. And this was simply her idea of…”
“… Foreplay?”
“According to Bud, she would have pulled Mitch back if there was even a remote chance he might fall.” Bliss had a pained expression on his face. He was hating this. He paused to check on his quiche in the oven. It was done. He removed it and placed it on a rack, fragrant and golden brown. “She was strictly playing a game.”
Des shook her head at him skeptically. “Are you trying to kid me, Trooper?”
“Why, no, Lieutenant.”
“Good, because there is no such thing as playful when it comes to pushing an unsuspecting individual in front of an oncoming train. They teach kindergarteners that. And when an adult in full command of her faculties does it, that’s called reckless endangerment. In Mandy Havenhurst’s case it might even qualify as assault with intent. She has a track record for inflicting bodily harm on men. I mean, come on, this is so not sane.”
“I know, I know,” Bliss agreed quickly. “Believe me, I’m not excusing it. Or condoning it. I’m merely reporting what Bud told me. And you’d better get ready, because there’s more.” He hesitated, clearing his throat. “Bud was there when she hit on Mitch at the apartment.”
“What do you mean he was there?”
“I mean he was listening in the bedroom the whole time. Watching, too, I imagine. Another little game they play. It… excites both of them.”
“They get off on making each other jealous-is that it?”
“Precisely.”
“And what does he…?”
“He tells her he’s still sleeping with Dolly.”
“Is he?”
“I’m quite confident he isn’t.” Bliss sighed, puffing out his cheeks. “What can I tell you-it’s not my idea of a healthy, normal relationship. But maybe there is no such thing as a healthy, normal relationship. What do you think, Lieutenant?”
“I think that I could be very happy never knowing this stuff about other people.”
“That makes two of us,” he agreed, smiling at her faintly. He removed his apron and wiped his hands on a towel. The stomach under his T-shirt was flat and hard. He was in excellent shape for a man over fifty. “Shall we eat?”
They ate out on the deck at a redwood table. The quiche was delicious-its crust flaky, the sage-scented filling of egg, bacon and gruyere rich and savory. And the fruit salad somehow managed to be sweet, tangy and nutty all at the same time. The man was truly gifted. Des told him so.
She did not tell him that she had almost no appetite.
Dirty Harry moseyed over and sniffed her ankles desultorily, offering no sign that he recalled it was she who had rescued him from out behind that bar in Ansonia, where drunks were throwing beer bottles at him. She who had nursed him and fed him. She who had given him a loving home for nearly three months until she had placed him with Bliss. Not so much as a hello. Not that Des expected any gratitude. He was, after all, a cat.
The kayakers were still making their way across the lake. The sound of their carefree laughter carried extraordinarily well off of the water. It seemed as if they were only a few feet away.
“What can I help you with?” Bliss asked her as he cleaned his own plate.
“Mitch Berger claims that somebody locked him in his crawl space a few days before he dug up Niles Seymour’s body. To scare him off, possibly.”
The resident trooper helped himself to some more fruit salad, his solemn face revealing nothing.
“One of the other islanders recalls seeing your cruiser out there on the afternoon in question. I wondered if you might have observed anything. Seen anyone near his carriage house. Anything like that.”
Bliss munched on his salad thoughtfully. “Not that I recall.”
“Mind if I ask what you were doing out there that day?”
“I’d swung by to look in on Dolly. She wasn’t home, as it turned out.”
“You often do that?”
“Drop in on her? Sure. She’s gone through some tough, tough times. And we’re old friends. And she’s…” He trailed off, grimacing slightly. “Oh, hell, there’s no sense in my being cute about it. The truth is that I’ve been carrying a torch for Dolly since we were eight years old.”
“Does she know that?”
He let out a dismal laugh. “I think it’s painfully obvious to everyone-including her. Sad to say, I’ve never been much more than good ol’ Tal to her. First, there was Bud. Her class of people, unlike me. Except that he was never worthy of her. Bud Havenhurst’s a weakling. Someone who needs a babysitter.”
“I’d hardly call Mandy a babysitter,” said Des.
“I would,” he countered. “To me, she’s a woman who exists solely to feast upon a man’s frailties. Bud’s little more than a blubbering child with her around.” Bliss gazed out at the lake for a moment, his face hardening. “And then Niles Seymour blew into town. A truly low-class individual, if ever I saw one. But a charmer when it came to women. You know how the story goes from there.” His eyes met hers across the table. “We’ve both got a lot of good years left. We could be happy. I could make her happy. But who knows-some things are meant to be, and most things aren’t.” He put down his fork and patted his mouth with his napkin. He was a very tidy eater. “What else can I help you with, Lieutenant?”
“You told me that Tuck Weems’s parents were killed when you two were serving in ’Nam…”
“Correct.” His eyes narrowed at her ever so slightly.
“Only you didn’t tell me that you were actually home on leave when it happened. It was you who found Dolly and the victims in the carriage house. You who phoned it in. I found your name in Crowther’s report.”
“I know I didn’t,” he conceded. “It’s not something I like to talk about. Or think about. Not if I can help it. I just… What is it you’d like to know?”
“What you saw.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Bliss gazed at her curiously before he shrugged his broad shoulders and looked down at his hands. “We were supposed to play tennis on their court out there on the island that day,” he began. “Mixed doubles. She and Bud versus me and some girl Dolly was trying to pair me up with. She was constantly fixing me up with her friends. They were always big girls, horsy girls…” He broke off, sighing. “Bud hadn’t gotten there yet. He was late. Or maybe I was just early. I often was. It gave me a chance to be with her. No one else was around. Her parents were in Bermuda.”
“What about her brother, Redfield?”
“Red was at the Naval Academy,” he replied. “I’d just gotten out of my car when… It was her screams I heard first. I’d never heard anyone scream like that before. I ran toward the sound. And I found her out there in the carriage house on her hands and knees at the bottom of the stairs, her clothing ripped to shreds, blood all over her-their blood, her own blood. She was scratched up pretty bad. Her nose was broken, shoulder dislocated. And she was in shock. Kept mumbling the same thing over and over again: ‘The mother is hurt. The mother is hurt.’ And I can…” Bliss ran a hand over his face, his chest heaving. “I can remember the sound of the dripping.”
“What dripping?”
“The blood from upstairs. It had soaked through the floorboards of the loft and it was dripping right down onto the living room rug. I went up there. Up to the sleeping loft. And I found them up there together. Tuck’s mom was facedown on the bed with one side of her head blown off. Roy was propped up against the headboard next to her, still clutching his shotgun. After he’d shot Louisa he’d fired up through the roof of his own mouth. The wall behind him was covered with his brains and his blood. There was so much blood… I phoned the police from the kitchen. Then I tried to make Dolly comfortable until they arrived. But it was a long, long time before she got over it. In fact
…” He reached for his coffee mug with an unsteady hand. “I don’t believe she ever has. Not really.”
“Anything more to it than that?” Des asked.
The resident trooper was far away for a moment. Lost in the horror. Then he shook himself and said, “Such as what, Lieutenant?”
“Is it possible that it didn’t go down as you described?”
“I can’t imagine what you mean.”
“I mean is there anything that happened that day thirty years ago, anything at all, that could possibly shine a light on what’s happening now?”
“Louisa Weems walked in on her husband raping Dolly Peck,” Bliss said, a harder edge creeping into his voice. “They fought. He shot her. And then he shot himself.”
“Okay, but how do you know this? What I mean is, if Mrs. Seymour remembers nothing of that day, if the victims were already dead when you got there-how do you know it went down that way?”
“Because there’s no other way it could have happened. Everyone said so-Crowther, the coroner, the district prosecutor. There was no doubt in anyone’s minds. And no attempt to cover anything up.”
“I wasn’t saying there was.”
“You didn’t have to. Your eyes did it for you.” The resident trooper’s own eyes were glaring across the table at her. “Crowther did his job. It was all by the book. And in answer to what is no doubt your next question, the superintendent and I have no relationship whatsoever. He wouldn’t know me from a hole in the ground. There’s nothing there, Lieutenant. Nothing at all.” He abruptly got up and began clearing the table. “Now, is there anything else I can fill you in on?”
“Yes, there is,” she replied, helping him stack the dishes. “We ran a check at the Dorset Pharmacy to see if anyone filled a prescription in recent weeks for Diprolene, the brand name for betamethasone dipropionate. Your name showed up. Doctor Knudsen of the Shoreline Family Practice wrote you out a prescription for it on April the nineteenth. You filled it that same day. Diprolene is prescribed for patients who’ve suffered a severe allergic reaction to poison ivy.”
“That’s absolutely right.” Bliss headed back inside with the dishes. Des followed him. “I was hiking in the woods up by the Devil’s Hopyard with the Boy Scouts. Came in contact with it up there. I’m highly susceptible. When I get it, I get it but good-hands, face, everywhere.” He began piling things in the kitchen sink, glancing at her curiously. “Why are you interested in that?”
Des was not liking this. Tal Bliss had invited her into his home. She had eaten his food. At this particular moment she would have given anything to be somewhere else-such as in her studio with a piece of charcoal in her hand… “You are leading somebody else’s life.”… “The reason I’m interested,” she said slowly, “is that your outbreak occurred the same day Torry Mordarski’s body was found in the woods by Laurel Brook Reservoir. There was some nasty poison ivy at that crime scene. Two tekkies got it bad.”
“I see,” he said, clenching and unclenching his jaw muscles. “Mind if I ask you where you are going with this?”
“Trooper, I am trying to get my mind around what’s going on.”
“And what do you think is going on?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you questions.”
The resident trooper stood there in brittle silence a moment. “Questions like-Does a fellow officer who has been in love with a victim’s widow since he was a child know more about that man’s murder than he’s telling me? Questions like-Is he shielding someone? Is he in over his head? Does that about cover it?”
Des remained silent. She was waiting for his answers.
“Lieutenant, may I be candid with you?”
“Please, by all means.”
“These are good people here. Good friends. Don’t step all over the ashes of their ruined lives just so you can make a name for yourself in Hartford. I won’t allow it, do you understand?”
“Not entirely. But I’d very much like to.”
A trace of uncertainty crept into the resident trooper’s eyes. Briefly, Des sensed him wavering. She thought he might give in to her and spill it-whatever it was. But he would not. Could not. And, in a flash, that flicker of doubt was gone. All she could read in his eyes now was unyielding resolve and righteous anger.
“If you’ll excuse me, Lieutenant,” he said coldly, “I’ve got a couple of funerals to get ready for.” He strode heavily toward his front door and flung it open wide. He was throwing her out, politely but firmly.
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” said Des. “I respect you and the work you do. Sometimes I have to do things I’d rather not do.”
“I can appreciate that,” he said curtly, his back stiff, his eyes daggers.
“Thanks for lunch.”
He stayed there in his doorway, grimly watching her as she got in her slicktop. She wondered what it was that he was holding back from her. Wondered if it was he who had tidied the Laurel Reservoir murder scene. Someone had. Just as someone had driven Niles Seymour’s car to the long-term parking lot at Bradley Airport, making sure to leave no traces anywhere on the vehicle. He was a big man with big hands. She wondered what size shoe he wore. Might he wear a size eleven or twelve?
As she eased her car slowly down the hill Des decided to pull over at the house where Tuck Weems had lived. She got out and tapped at the screen door.
Darleen was watching a soap opera now, a can of Budweiser in her hand, her baby gurgling next to her on the sofa. The redheaded girl’s eyes were puffy from crying. Otherwise, the scene was exactly the same as before-dirty dishes and ashtrays piled on the coffee table, the smell of dirty diapers fouling the air.
“I’m Lieutenant Mitry, Darleen. I was here the other day with Trooper Bliss.”
Darleen’s gaze was somewhat unfocused. Des would likely find the remains of a joint in one of those ashtrays if she cared to look. Which she did not.
“I’m, like, I remember you,” the girl responded, still way more interested in her TV show than she was in Des. “What do you want now?”
“To see how you’re doing.”
“What for?” demanded Darleen, going from zero to ultra-defensive in nothing flat.
“I’m concerned, that’s what for. Do you have any family who can be here for you?”
“Tuck was my family.” Her eyes never leaving the TV.
“That’s what I mean. How will you and your baby get by now?”
“That ain’t none of your business, bitch!” Darleen snarled at her. “And don’t you dare try to take my baby away from me, y’hear? Or I’ll mess you up so bad nobody will ever want you!”
The phone rang. Darleen got up off the sofa and went flouncing off to the kitchen to answer it.
Des stood there a moment in that dingy living room looking down at the baby. More human wreckage that the killer had left behind. First Torry’s little boy, Stevie. Now here were two more children-helpless, clueless, lost. Des took two twenty-dollar bills out of her billfold and tucked them under the beer can Darleen had left on the table. Then she went back outside to her cruiser.
She was just getting in the car when she heard the gunshot.
It came from above the lake.
It came from the direction Des had just come from-Tal Bliss’s house.
She floored it madly back up the hill. She encountered no car on its way down. She saw no one on foot.
His front door was wide open. She slammed on her brakes and jumped out, her eyes zeroing in on the shrubs that surrounded the house. Then flicking across the road at the neighboring houses. Not a leaf stirred. Not a curtain moved. She went in slowly with her Sig drawn and her back to the wall. Her mouth was dry, her heart racing. She called out his name. She got no response. Only silence. The stereo was off now. It was so quiet in there she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. And the house still smelled of the quiche he had baked for them. She called out his name again. No response.
The resident trooper was a very tidy chef. He had put all of their dishes in the dishwasher, refrigerated the leftovers, wiped off the counters, swept up the crumbs. He had written a short, succinct note and left it on the counter under a paperweight of polished stone, his lettering neat and precise: “I did what I thought was right. Just as I am doing now.”
And then Tal Bliss had blown his brains out.
He was seated out on the deck at the redwood table where they had just eaten, weapon still clutched in his hand. It was not his service piece. It was a. 38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. Des had no doubt that it was the same weapon that had killed Torry Mordarski, Niles Seymour and Tuck Weems. None.
Dirty Harry rubbed up against her ankle now, a low yowl of protest coming from his throat. Des gathered him up in her arms and took him downstairs and closed him in one of the bedrooms. Then she went out to her cruiser to phone it in.
Tal Bliss was tidy, all right. Except that he had left his mess behind for her to clean up. Des was so damned mad at him that she could spit.