IT WAS A THIRTY-MINUTE drive straight south on Route 9 from Meriden to Dorset. Des had worked a case down there once before. A sixteen-year-old named Ethan Salisbury had smacked his mother upside the head approximately one hundred times with an aluminum baseball bat, stuffed her body into the trunk of her BMW and dumped it into Uncas Lake. It had not been pretty. Des had the charcoal sketches to prove it. The Salisbury murder had garnered quite a bit of attention. They were bluebloods. They had lived in a $1.8 million home with a sauna and a pool. Things like that weren’t supposed to happen to people like that in places like that. But they did.
The same way dead bodies weren’t supposed to be unearthed in the vegetable patch on Big Sister Island. But one had been.
Des marveled at the historic village’s lushness and calm as she steered her unmarked Crown Victoria slicktop cruiser toward Peck Point. It was so quiet she could hear herself breathe. And so spotless it had the sanitized unreality of a theme park. There was no graffiti, no trash. There was no ugliness whatsoever.
At least none that showed.
As she eased on past the Dorset Academy of Fine Arts, her gaze lingered longingly. There was no postmodern fakery at DAFA. They still believed in the same rigorous, classical training that produced the Renaissance masters. Years and years of study on the human anatomy, on perspective, on materials. It was a private dream of hers to study there someday. Make that a fantasy.
There was a barricade at the end of Peck Point. Here she encountered a horde of cruisers and television news vans. The island itself, which was accessible by a wooden causeway, was shrouded in dense fog. It seemed distant and faintly ominous. It reminded her of the view of Alcatraz across San Francisco Bay.
Tal Bliss, Dorset’s seasoned resident trooper, had taken the initial 911 call. He had immediately called the barracks in Westbrook. They sent out several uniformed troopers to seal the area. They had also contacted Major Crimes.
The instant Des stepped out of her cruiser she was assaulted by news cameras from Connecticut’s four local television stations, 3, 8, 30 and 61. The reporters shoved microphones in her face, crowding her up against her car, demanding answers. They were in a constant ratings battle with each other. And nothing stirred up their blood like a violent crime in a town of wealthy white people.
“Lieutenant, do you have the victim’s identity?”
“Lieutenant, we go on live at noon!”
“We need an update, Lieutenant!”
“Lieutenant, what can you tell us?!”
Des’s heavy horn-rimmed glasses had come sliding down her nose a bit. She pushed them back up, pausing to compose herself before she responded. She had learned from previous experience that if she did not she came across as too hostile. Also her voice had a tendency to bottom out on her when she was nervous. Brandon used to say she sounded like Don Cornelius. “I can tell you very little at the present time,” she stated, blinking into the lights. “As you can see, I have only just arrived.”
“When can you give us a statement?”
“We go on live at noon!”
“Can you give us something between and twelve and twelve-ten?!”
“We need a statement!”
“Now will you please let me do my job?” Des asked them patiently. It was not easy to remain polite with them. They were just so damned insistent. And so positive that nothing, but nothing, was as important to anyone as their own on-air needs. It was perfectly natural that they felt this way. Virtually everyone on the planet conducted their public and private lives around television. And their demands did have to be met. Still, if you were not firm with them they would engulf and devour you whole. “Please step aside now!” she barked.
And they let her by. Nobody liked to be around an angry sister. Not one who had a gun.
Tal Bliss met her at the edge of the wooden bridge, as imposing a figure as ever in his wide-brimmed hat, tailored uniform and polished boots. Des had worked with him on the Salisbury case and respected him. He had handled himself like a professional. He had treated her with courtesy. He was a good resident trooper, comfortable with his size, his badge and his domain. He knew this place. He knew these people. The resident trooper program was a blessing for the smaller Connecticut towns that did not have their own police force. In exchange for his around-the-clock presence, the town paid half of his salary.
“Welcome to Big Sister, Lieutenant,” he said, tipping his hat to her.
She smiled at him and said, “Hey back at you, Trooper. And how is Busta Rhymes?”
“Renamed him Dirty Harry, if you don’t mind.”
“Not one bit.”
“And he’s fat and ungrateful, in response to your question.”
She let out a laugh. “Well, he is a cat. Bake anything good lately?”
Des had not been shocked to learn that Bliss had served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He carried himself like an ex-marine. But it had come as a surprise to find out that he’d studied for a year at the Cordon Bleu in Paris and was considered the finest chef in Dorset.
“I’ve rediscovered the quiche. I’ll have to make you one sometime.”
“And I’ll have to be there to eat it,” she said to him, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape and out onto the wooden bridge.
“I don’t seem to see you down around these parts unless it’s something grizzly, do I?”
“That what this is?”
“Gentleman smells none too sweet, I assure you. Victim was Niles Seymour, age fifty-two, estranged husband of Dolly Seymour. Everyone thought he left town a few weeks ago with a younger woman. It appears he never left at all. He’s been down there for quite some time, as you will see. Anything I can help you with before we head on out?”
“How’s the security here?” she asked, glancing at the mechanized barricade. It took an I.D. card to raise it.
“They’ve never had any trouble,” he replied. “If the system is tampered with in any way, the private security firm is out here in ten minutes.”
“Any tampering recently?”
“Negative. Sometimes the local kids stick chewing gum in the card slot for kicks. The Point’s one of their after-dark hangouts. They like to get high out here. I periodically chase them away. But it’s been quiet lately.”
“Anyone besides the residents have an I.D. card?”
“Just Tuck Weems, the caretaker. No one else, Lieutenant. Not even the postman-they pick up their mail at the post office. Although I should point out the tidal situation to you. Right now it’s in, and the water’s plenty deep and treacherous, as you can see…”
She glanced over the wooden railing at the water. It was swirling and foaming on the rocks. Treacherous was right.
“But at low tide,” he continued, “it’s possible to walk out to Big Sister. If someone’s on foot there’s no stopping him. Except there’s been no trouble with prowlers for quite a few years. For one thing, whatever they steal they have to lug all the way back to shore with them, on foot, over very slippery rocks. For another, those houses have an awful lot of big windows. You can’t exactly sneak up on the place.”
“You’re saying an outsider didn’t do this, correct?”
Bliss glanced at her uneasily. “In my opinion, it’s highly unlikely we are dealing with a career criminal here. I’d say he was killed by someone he knew. Either someone he buzzed in or a fellow islander-although I must tell you I find the latter possibility extremely hard to imagine. I’ve known these folks my whole life.”
They started their way across the causeway toward the island. It got damper and colder the farther out they got. Des was sorry she had not thought to bring a sweater. Power lines straddled the narrow wooden bridge, she observed. Connecticut Light and Power did not string lines out to private islands for just anyone.
“You’d better tell me about them,” she said, shivering.
“Dolly Seymour is a Peck,” he said with obvious pride. “As in Peck Point. We are talking about the bluest of the bluebloods, Lieutenant. A true lady. Although I suppose that’s considered something of a pejorative term nowadays.”
“Not by me it isn’t,” Des said, wondering how long it would be before she felt the hot breath of Captain Polito down the back of her neck. Not long at all.
“The word around town,” Bliss continued, “was that Niles left Dolly a Dear John letter, cleaned out their accounts and took off for the Virgin Islands-leaving a whole lot of bad feelings behind.”
“The other woman’s name?”
“No one seems to have any idea. She wasn’t a local girl.”
“Who found his body?”
“The tenant of Dolly’s carriage house, Mitch Berger. He and Dolly’s sister-in-law, Bitsy Peck. They were digging up the garden when they encountered it. She was able to recognize him.”
“I’ll be needing a complete list of who lives out here,” Des said to Bliss.
“I can give you that right now. Bitsy and Dolly’s brother, Redfield, live in the summer cottage. Dolly’s ex-husband, Bud Havenhurst, lives in the guest cottage with his new wife, Mandy. He got the house as a settlement after Dolly left him for Niles. And their son, Evan, lives in the lighthouse-keeper’s house with his companion, Jamie Devers. Jamie’s one of our local celebrities, but he keeps a pretty low profile.”
She frowned at him. “Jamie Devers?”
“He was a big television star back in the fifties-Just Blame Bucky.” On her blank stare he said, “Before your time, I guess… God, I’m getting old.”
“It doesn’t show one bit,” she assured him. “You are still a fine-looking gentleman.”
“Forget it,” he snapped, instantly on alert. “I won’t take another one.”
“But they’re so much happier when they have company.”
“Dirty Harry is plenty happy,” he insisted, smiling at her faintly. “In fact, given the choice, I’d trade places with him in a second.”
They had crossed the bridge and were out on the island now. It was perfectly, incredibly lovely-Des could imagine someone like Martha Stewart belonging here. She could not imagine herself or anyone she had ever known living in such a place.
A trio of blue and white Major Crime Squad cube vans were parked in the gravel driveway outside of the big yellow house. A dozen crime scene technicians in dark blue windbreakers and light blue latex gloves were already on the job. They were top-shelf people. And prepared for anything-each cube van came fully equipped with all fifty-two items of gear recommended in the guidelines drawn up by the National Medicolegal Review Panel in the wake of the O.J. case. Prior to that, unbelievably, no unified system of on-site death investigation had existed among the nation’s three thousand jurisdictions. Some of the items, like bodybags, were obvious. Others, like insect repellant, were less so.
The vegetable patch was behind an old barn. Soave was there, muscles bulging inside his shiny black suit. The technicians were there. And the body of Niles Seymour was there. It was not a pretty sight or smell. Saponification had begun, his fatty tissues reacting with the salts in the soil and turning to a soapy consistency. Bloating had caused the pressure points in the skin to split open, his eyes and tongue to bulge. His clothing was rotting away from his flesh.
Crime scene photos were being taken. Des would need extra copies of these. She would need to sketch this.
“He was shot twice, loot,” Soave informed her, carefully smoothing his see-through moustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Chest and neck.”
“The slugs still in him?” she asked, feeling her stomach muscles tighten involuntarily. She had a hot, bilious taste in the back of her throat.
“The one in his chest is.”
“This the primary scene?”
Soave shook his head. “There’s not enough blood under him. Man was already dead when he was buried here.”
“Do we have a line on the primary scene?”
“Not yet,” Soave grunted. “And this one’s a mess-the gardeners tromped all over it.”
Nonetheless, a forensic archaeologist was launching a dig. He and his assistants skimming off thin layers of moist dirt. Carefully sifting it for evidence. Depositing it on drop cloths. It was no different from a historic dig. Except that in this case the history was very recent. And living.
Meanwhile, a forensic entomologist was collecting samples of the insects and egg masses that had colonized Niles Seymour’s decaying corpse. The body could not be removed until he was done. The extent of insect development-along with the soil temperature, amount of moisture in the soil and the state of the victim’s decomposition-would tell them approximately how long Niles Seymour had been down there. The type of insects might also help them determine the location of the primary crime scene.
Des had seen enough. She motioned for Soave to join her. The two of them and Bliss moved back toward the driveway.
“Tenant also smeared his muddy prints all over the spade and fork he found in the barn,” Soave mentioned sourly. “That don’t look too promising neither.”
“Any of the islanders own guns?” she asked Resident Trooper Bliss.
“Red hunts a little,” he replied, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “Jamie keeps a pistol for protection, I believe.”
“Rico, I want uniformed troopers to search every house out here for weapons,” she said, knowing perfectly well that the odds of the murder weapon being around were slim to none. But she had to look. She couldn’t not look. “Make sure you get permission first. If you don’t get permission, then-”
“We have to get a warrant,” he broke in, a defensive edge to his voice. “I know that, loot.”
She knew that he knew it. She also knew that it was her responsibility to remind him anyway. She was the ranking officer on the scene. If she failed to remind him, and the chain of evidence was compromised because of it, it would be her fault. Be accountable. If there was one thing the Deacon had drummed into her, it was this. “Have them search every outbuilding and shed, under every rock. Then meet me back here. We got to take statements from the family.”
“Right.” Soave went heading off, his arms held stiffly out to his sides in the classic bodybuilder’s strut.
“Is that deluxe conference room at town hall still available?” Des asked Trooper Bliss. It had been her command center for three days and nights after the Salisbury killing. She could still remember the smell of the place-musty carpeting, moth balls and Ben-Gay.
“It is,” he affirmed. “I’ll see that they’re ready for you. How else may I be of assistance?”
“You can tell me who else besides his wife had it in for Niles Seymour.”
“Everyone,” Bliss replied bluntly. “Niles was not a popular fellow.”
“Any blue chip prospects?”
Bliss took off his wide-brimmed hat and examined it carefully for a long moment. “Tuck Weems,” he said, running a big brown hand over his bristly gray crew-cut. “He accused Niles of roughing Dolly up a couple of months back when he found some bruises on her arms. He, well, threatened to kill Niles. I got involved at that point. Cooled things down-at least I thought I had. She declined to file any charges against Niles. Assured me there was no need to worry, that the two of them were working things out. Dolly and Tuck, they were tight when they were kids. He grew up out here. Tuck’s not a bad fellow. Just has a slight problem with authority. And more than his share of personal demons. His father killed his mother and himself when Tuck was in ’Nam. Happened out here, in the carriage house. And it was Dolly who found them.” He glanced over at the big yellow house, his face a grim mask. “So, you see, this is not the first time there’s been a violent death out here.”
“When you say he and Mrs. Seymour were tight, do you mean they were lovers?”
“I wouldn’t hazard a guess on that,” he replied carefully.
The resident trooper was protecting his own now, Des observed. Clearly, he was very loyal to these people. How loyal?
He put his hat back on and squared his shoulders. “Tuck has a place up at Uncas Lake. I suppose you’ll be wanting to question him right away.”
“Is he likely to run?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“Then he’ll keep,” said Des, who liked to fully acquaint herself with the principals before she rushed to judgment. “There a new man in Mrs. Seymour’s life?”
“No man in her life, as far as I know.”
“Tell me about this tenant. What was his name, Berger?”
Bliss nodded. “He’s a New Yorker, I’m sorry to say.”
She glanced at him curiously. “Meaning what-he’s a total pain?”
“No,” Bliss said grudgingly. “He seems like a pleasant enough fellow…”
Des frowned, sensing that the resident trooper was trying to give her a small nudge in the tenant’s direction.
“I mean he’s a media person,” Bliss explained. “Writes for one of the big newspapers there.”
“Okay, I hear you now.” She had learned from the Salisbury case that people in Dorset were strongly averse to publicity. They were especially proud of the fact that the vast majority of New Yorkers could not even find Dorset on a map.
“Dolly just rented him the place two weeks ago,” he added.
“Could he figure in?”
“Figure in, Lieutenant?”
“Romantically. He and Mrs. Seymour.”
“He’s quite a bit younger than Dolly, not that that necessarily means no.” Bliss shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows what goes on between two people? I certainly don’t.”
“Was he acquainted with the victim?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Doubtful he has anything to do with it, then,” Des mused aloud. “Besides, why dig up the body himself? Why incriminate himself?”
The trooper nodded in solemn agreement. “And Dolly did give him explicit permission to dig there. I can’t imagine her doing so if she knew Niles was down there.”
“Agreed. Not unless she wanted him found.”
The trooper furrowed his brow at her, perplexed. “Why would she want that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I just got here. What do we know about this woman who Seymour was supposed to have run off with?”
“Very little. Bud Havenhurst and Red Peck spotted the two of them having brunch together at the Saybrook Point Inn.”
“This was when?”
“Six weeks ago-a Sunday. They described her as young and a bit cheap-looking. The following morning he cleared out and was never seen again. Until now, that is.”
Des made a note to check on this woman at the inn. “And what do we know about Seymour’s background?”
“He showed up here three years ago from Atlantic City, where he’d been selling time-share condos,” Bliss replied with arid disapproval. “I don’t know where he was before that. Or what he was doing.”
She would have to find out. The time-share business attracted some seriously low-life characters. No telling who Seymour may have crossed swords with. Or what else he had been into. Possibly, it was his past that had followed him out here. Because there was the matter of the money-he had, supposedly, cleaned out their bank accounts before he disappeared. Where was it? Possibly, she reflected, he had owed it to someone. Possibly they had induced him to withdraw it and then had killed him so as to cover their tracks. She would have to follow the money trail. Match up the date of the withdrawals with the date he had disappeared. And the means of withdrawal could prove to be critical. Had he done it in person? If so, there would be witnesses at the bank. If not-if he had done it electronically-there would not be. In fact, the withdrawals might have been done by anyone who knew the correct PINs. His widow, for example. She had the means. Possibly a jealousy motive. But could she have acted alone? Not likely. Seymour was killed somewhere else. No way she could have moved him to the garden and buried him by herself. An accomplice, then. But who?
“Do you want me involved from here on in?” asked Bliss, cutting in on her thoughts. Ordinarily, the resident trooper yielded now to Major Crimes and resumed his regular duties.
“Damned right I do.” She had found him to be an exceedingly valuable liaison to the community. He knew the players. He was one of them. “If you don’t mind, that is.”
“I don’t mind at all.”
“Where’s Mrs. Seymour right now?”
“She’s upstairs resting. Her doctor’s been out to see her. You’ll discover that Dolly is, well, not a strong individual. I would suggest you tread lightly. Which is not to say you wouldn’t…”
“I hear you, Trooper.”
“As for the rest of them,” he said, “Bitsy Peck, Bud Havenhurst and young Evan were gathered in Dolly’s kitchen last time I looked. Red Peck is about halfway to Japan right now. Mandy Havenhurst’s in New York City and Jamie Devers is up at the Great White Whale, his antique shop. The tenant’s in the carriage house.”
“I do believe I’ll start with him,” Des said. “When Sergeant Tedone returns, why don’t you two set up shop in the kitchen? Give him any assistance he might need while he takes statements. I’ll be along soon enough.”
“Right.” He tipped his hat at her politely and went striding off toward the house.
The front door to the little carriage house was open. She tapped and when she heard a response stepped inside. It was a wonderful little house. But it wasn’t the exposed, hand-hewn beams or the huge fire crackling in the stone fireplace that caught her initial attention. It was the light-windows, windows everywhere. And nothing but unobstructed views of the Sound. Even on a raw gray day the place was drenched with the purest of natural light. What a studio this would make. Not even in her wildest dreams could Des imagine such a studio.
It was so magnificent that it took a moment for her to notice its occupant.
He was standing in front of the fire, sipping a mug of coffee and staring into the flames. He was a large-sized man, not fat but definitely soft around the edges. He wore a rumpled navy-blue wool shirt and baggy khakis. And when he turned to look at her, there was something unusual about his eyes that Des noticed immediately.
Mitch Berger had the saddest eyes Des had ever seen on any creature that was not living at the Humane Society, its wet nose and furry paws pressed to the door of its cage.
“Mr. Berger, I’m Lt. Desiree Mitry of the Major Crimes Squad, Central District. I have some questions.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said hoarsely, crossing the room toward her. He was taller than Des by an inch or two. And a good deal wider. “I’m sorry if I’m…” He ran a hand through his uncombed hair, clearly distraught. “I guess I’m still a little shook. It was the smell more than anything. I-I wasn’t prepared for that, you know? I mean, I’ve seen that kind of thing in a lot of movies. So I was somewhat conditioned. But the stench… I guess I understand now why Smell-o-vision never really caught on in a big way. It’s still there in my nostrils. I just can’t seem to get rid of it.”
“Have you got any oranges around?”
“I think so. Why?”
“What you do, you cut off a piece of the peel and rub it in between your fingers. Then sniff ’em. There’s an essence in the oil. Fix you right up.”
“Thanks, I’m going to try that.” He immediately started for the kitchen. “Can I cut you one, too?”
“I’m okay, thanks.”
“I guess people like you get used to it.”
“People like me never get used to it. I don’t like to see anything get dead. Not even a cockroach.”
“I guess you’ve never lived in New York.”
She let out a polite laugh while her eyes got busy flicking around the room, taking in the contents. He was a musician. There was an electric guitar and colossal stack of amps. There was a computer. Books and papers. Most everything else in the place looked like it came from a junk shop. All except for the two framed pieces of art that hung from the walls. Over the fireplace there was a framed photograph of Georgia O’Keeffe when she was an old, old woman. Her intricately lined face was as worn as an ancient streambed. It was the face of someone who had known triumph and defeat, love and loss, joy and pain. It was the face of someone who was still hanging on. A survivor’s face.
“Great portrait, isn’t it?” Mitch Berger said, returning with his orange peel. “I look at her every day and say to myself, ‘If Georgia can make it, I can make it.’” Now he rubbed the peel between his fingers and sniffed at them, rather like a large, inquisitive rabbit. “It belonged to my wife,” he added.
“You’re divorced?”
“No, she died.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, making a mental note to check the date and circumstances of his wife’s death.
The other piece of art, which hung on the wall to the kitchen, was a computer-generated drawing comprised of horizontal lines that seemed to grow incrementally in width the farther they moved from the center. “And that one?” she asked him.
“That’s the Fibonacci Series,” he replied. “Last thing my wife designed. She was a landscape architect.” He tossed the orange peel into the fire and turned and gazed at Des with his wounded puppy eyes. “So are you a homicide detective?”
“Something like that.”
“You must encounter a lot of horrible things.”
“We are not a kindly animal, Mr. Berger. We can be especially cruel to the ones we love the most.” This particular nugget of hardedged wisdom she had learned in the bedroom, not the streets. She smiled at him now, looking around. “I am loving this house.”
“Isn’t it great? There’s a sleeping loft upstairs, if you want to take a look.”
The bed was unmade, but she paid little notice to that. What she noticed were the skylights. Even more light. She could not imagine what it would be like to live here. Sketching every morning by the dawn’s pure light. Jogging on the private beach. Compared to this, her house was like being locked inside a cave.
“Yum, I could get used to this way fast,” she commented as she descended the narrow staircase.
“So bring your sketchpad with you next time. Stay a while.”
She stiffened, narrowing her eyes at him. “You just said what?”
“You do sketch, don’t you?”
Des cocked her head at him, hands on her hips. A pose she did not like. It was strictly Aunt Esther on Sanford and Son. She crossed her arms instead and said, “Now how did you know that?”
“The charcoal under your middle fingernail. You dig your nail into the stick. My wife did that, too. Same nail.”
She glanced down at it. It was barely noticeable. This was one very observant white man. Scarily so.
“I’d like to see your work sometime,” he said with genuine interest.
“It’s just something I do for myself,” she responded guardedly.
“That’s generally the best stuff, don’t you think?”
She let his comment go by, at a loss for how he had suddenly made her feel so off balance and exposed. She did not like this feeling. She did not like it at all. She edged over nearer to the fire.
“Can I get you a sweater?” he asked, following her. “Nice warm sweater?”
“Naw, I’m fine.”
“You are not. You’re shivering. It can get really damp out here. Gets right into your bones. How about a cup of coffee?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Berger.” Now he was making her feel girlish and helpless. Something else she really did not like.
“Suit yourself. But if you catch cold, don’t blame me.”
“I never get colds,” she said sharply, seizing back control of the interview. “I understand you work for a newspaper.”
“That’s correct,” he said, flopping down in a worn armchair.
“You planning to write about the discovery of Niles Seymour’s body?”
He shook his head. “I’m not that kind of writer-I’m a film critic.”
“Is that right? I don’t believe I’ve ever met a film critic before.” She showed him her dimples, anxious to get him talking. “How does someone end up in that line of work?”
“I get asked that fairly regularly,” he replied. “I don’t know how. Or why. I only know that something very unusual happened to me the very first time I walked into a movie theater.”
“That was what, Mr. Berger?”
“I discovered that I come alive in the dark,” he said. “Not so much like a vampire but more like an exotic form of fungus. A darkened movie theater is my natural habitat. I spent my entire childhood there. Everything I know in life I found out in movie theaters. James Cagney showed me what nerve was, Cary Grant charm, Audrey Hepburn grace. Marlene Dietrich taught me how to bend the rules. Robert Mitchum taught me how to break them.” He paused now, glancing around at his little house of light. “This place here, this is not me. My being on this island is what screenwriters call Imposed Behavior.”
“Imposed Behavior?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”
He stared at her blankly. “You never heard of Imposed Behavior?”
“What I’m saying.”
“That’s when a character purposely makes himself do something that goes against his nature because, for some vital personal reason, he thinks he needs to. Like when Joel McCrea became a hobo in Sullivan’s Travels.”
“Never saw it.”
“You never saw it?” he exclaimed excitedly. “God, are you in for a treat! It’s one of the great screwball comedies of all time. And then it becomes unbelievably sad. And then it becomes unbelievably funny again. Preston Sturges directed it. That scene in the black church near the end, when they roll the cartoon, I sob uncontrollably every time.”
Des raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m standing here thinking I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
He smiled at her. “Already we have something in common-I’ve never met a woman who’s a lieutenant in the Major Crimes Squad before. I really like your locks. You probably hear that all the time.”
“All the time,” she said brusquely. He was trying to do it again-turn the conversation back on her. “Were you acquainted with Niles Seymour?”
“Never met him. Heard a lot about him, though.”
“Such as?”
“Such as he was a virtual prick. Everyone on Big Sister hated him.”
“Including Mrs. Seymour?”
“He ran off on her, didn’t he? Or at least she thought he had.”
“Were you acquainted with Mrs. Seymour before you moved in here?”
“Yes, I was.”
Des raised her chin at him. “For how long?”
“I met her several days before-when she showed me the place.”
She stared at him stonily. Now he was jamming her. “Are you two involved?”
“I’m not involved with anyone,” he stated quietly.
“Uh-hunh. In the short time that you’ve been here, has anything struck you as curious or out of the ordinary? Anything at all?”
“Well, yeah,” he replied, leaning forward in his chair. “A couple of things.”
“Such as…?”
Mitch Berger told her that someone had purposely locked him in the crawl space under the house. He opened the trap door for her and flashed a light down there. It was a dark, shallow earthen pit. A horrible place to be confined in.
“Maybe Seymour’s killer was trying to get me to leave,” he suggested. “Scare me off because he was scared I’d dig up the garden and find the body. I did ask Dolly if I could have a garden when I first looked at the place. There’s no telling who she…” He trailed off a moment, scratching his head. “Bud Havenhurst… Of course!”
“What about him?”
“He was dead set against me moving in here. He even told me that he’d tried to talk Dolly out of renting me the place.”
“Interesting,” she said, nodding her head. “And what about Tuck Weems? Would he have known that you intended to dig up the garden?”
“Most likely. This is the kind of place where if one person knows something everybody knows it.”
You said there were a couple of things, Mr. Berger.”
“Seymour’s prescriptions. He left them behind. I noticed them there in Dolly’s bathroom. I thought it was a little strange. If you had left town for good, wouldn’t you have taken your pills with you?”
“Which bathroom was this?”
“Top of the stairs.” After a moment’s hesitation he added, “Dolly is on some serious medication.”
“Such as?”
“Such as lithium…”
Des waited, watching him carefully now. He had more to tell her. She sensed it. She knew it. “Something else, Mr. Berger?”
He started to respond but instead shook his head at her, unwilling to spill it.
She wondered what it was. And why he’d clammed up. But she did not press him, convinced that she would get no more out of Mitch Berger, New York film critic, at the present time. She merely thanked him for his time and started for the door.
“Do you think one of the islanders killed him, Lieutenant?” he asked her.
“I don’t do that.”
“You don’t do what?”
“Spitball.”
“But you must have a gut feeling.”
“I must. I do. Only I don’t share my gut feelings with members of the working press.”
“But I told you-I’m not a reporter. I’m just curious.”
Des paused at the door, gazing at him intently. “Mr. Berger, what we have here is a situation where someone has lost control, okay? It has been my experience that when an individual loses control once he or she may very likely lose control again. Consequently, my advice to you is this…”
“Yes, Lieutenant…?”
“Don’t be curious.”
He didn’t react. Just stared gloomily into the fire. God, he was a mournful specimen. She couldn’t be positive, having only known him for twenty minutes, but there was a distinct possibility that Des had just met the loneliest man on earth.
“Mind if I ask you something personal?” she asked, treating him to her maximum-wattage smile.
“No, not at all,” he replied, glancing at her curiously.
“Have you ever thought about sharing your home and your heart with a nice warm cuddly individual of the feline persuasion?”
“What can you tell me about your husband’s departure last month, Mrs. Seymour?”
“I can… tell you next to nothing, Lieutenant,” Dolly Seymour replied in a soft, halting voice. “I-I found his letter on the kitchen table when I came downstairs that morning. And… And…”
“And…?” Des pressed her gently.
“And he was gone.”
Niles Seymour’s widow lay limply on her bed under an Afghan throw, a moist tissue clenched in her small fist, her blue eyes red and swollen from crying. She had been given a strong sedative to help her cope with the shock. It had made her a bit dreamy and slow on the uptake. But she was able to respond to questions. She was a slender, frail-looking woman with a child’s delicate face and translucent skin.
Her bedroom was not especially elegant. It was small and the ceiling was quite low. The furniture was of the ordinary department store variety. Bud Havenhurst, her patrician lawyer and ex-husband, hovered attentively in a chair next to the bed. Tal Bliss loomed just inside the doorway, hat in hands. Des sat at the foot of the bed.
Downstairs, Soave was parked at the breakfast nook taking statements from the son and the sister-in-law.
“What did this letter say, Mrs. Seymour?”
“That he was… not worthy of me. That he was leaving.”
“You still have the letter?”
“Possibly. I can’t remember.” After a long moment, she added, “No one knew.”
“No one knew what, Mrs. Seymour?”
“How kind and gentle he could be. How he could make me laugh.”
Des instinctively disliked this woman. Dolly Seymour was rich, white, privileged and weak-a mewling little porcelain figurine. Des resented such women. But she was also aware that there might be more to her than met the eye. Could be Dolly Seymour was not as helpless as she seemed. Maybe she was a cold, calculating schemer who got what she wanted by acting that way. Maybe she was a manipulator, a user. Maybe she was even a murderer. “Did your husband ever attack you, Mrs. Seymour?”
Bud Havenhurst stirred slightly in his chair at the mention of this.
“Attack me?” Dolly repeated.
“Strike you. Physically abuse you.”
“Why, no. Never.”
“You sure about that?”
“She’s quite sure,” Havenhurst answered for her, his voice icy.
“He arrived here from Atlantic City?”
“Yes,” she replied. “We met at the country club.”
“And before that? Where was he born and raised?”
“He was a Southie,” Dolly replied fondly. “He came from South Boston. His father was a construction worker, his mother a beautician. He developed his love of fine things from her. And his grooming. He always took such wonderful care of his hands. He came from nothing, you see. Never even went to college. But he understood people. He understood style. Style meant the world to him.” She glanced around at her bedroom. “He always wanted to redecorate this room. He loathed it.”
“I’ll need to see your credit card records, Mrs. Seymour,” Des said. “Bank statements. Any and all account information, please.”
She didn’t respond. Did not, in fact, seem to hear her. She was still gazing around at the bedroom decor. Her lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.
“I think I can help you with that, Lieutenant,” Bud Havenhurst cut in discreetly. “Perhaps if we moved downstairs? Dolly’s really got to get some rest.”
“Very well,” Des allowed.
He closed the curtains and turned off the bedside lamp, pausing to stroke his ex-wife’s forehead gently. Then they left the room and went down to the study. Havenhurst seated himself at the desk. Des took a chair, watching him skeptically. He was a lawyer. Therefore, she assumed that every word out of his mouth was a lie. Bliss parked himself in the doorway once again, stolid and silent.
The Dear John letter that Niles Seymour had left Dolly was in the top drawer of the desk. It was on a sheet of common copier paper, folded neatly in half. Des cautioned Havenhurst not to touch it-it might contain latent fingerprints. She sent Bliss out for tweezers. She used these to lift it from the drawer. It was a short letter. It read:
Dearest Dolly-I should never have come into your life. You are too fine. And I am too greedy. I must leave you for another now, my darling. Try to remember me fondly. All my love, Niles.
The letter was not handwritten. It had been computer-generated and printed out.
“He didn’t sign it,” Des observed.
“Why, no. Is that so important?” Havenhurst’s eyes widened. “My God, what am I saying? Of course, it is. That never occurred to me before-when I thought he had run off on her, I mean. I just chalked it up to his utter rudeness. But now that we know he never… Niles didn’t write this at all, did he?”
“Whoever killed him did it, most likely. Chances are, Seymour was already dead.”
“Anyone could have written it. Anyone with access to their computer.” Havenhurst glanced at it there on the desk, his shoulders slumping. “Assuming it was done here.”
“We’ll try to match it up,” she said. “Dust it for prints. Maybe we’ll even find it on the hard drive. Although I’m doubting that whoever did this was stupid enough not to delete it.”
Bliss went back out to notify a crime scene technician.
Havenhurst remained seated at the desk. “She never locks her doors. It could have been anyone on the island.”
“Um, okay, about those credit card and bank statements…?”
Dolly Seymour’s ex-husband seemed very far away for a moment. Des found herself wondering where he was. Then he shook himself and opened another drawer. “You’ll find their receipts and records here. Seymour’s own things are out in the barn-old papers, letters. There isn’t much, but…”
“Thank you. We’ll look at those, too.” She sat back in her chair, crossing her long legs. “Why did you try to talk Mitch Berger out of moving in, Mr. Havenhurst?”
“He was a stranger,” the lawyer responded mildly. “I knew nothing about him. Still don’t, for that matter.”
“You sure it wasn’t something else?”
He raised his chin at her. “Such as?”
“Such as that you knew what was buried in that garden.”
“Absolutely not,” he said, bristling at her. “And I would advise you not to throw around such reckless and slanderous accusations, Lieutenant. You are not handling a drive-by shooting in Hartford’s North End. You are not dealing with the disenfranchised, the disempowered or the destitute. You are dealing here with individuals of great influence. The cream of our society. And you will behave accordingly, or suffer the consequences. Is that understood?”
No two ways about it, Des reflected unhappily. She would be feeling Captain Polito’s hot breath very soon indeed. “I am well aware of where I am, Mr. Havenhurst,” she evenly. “I am also aware that a murder has taken place here among your fine, rich cream. I have a job to do. I intend to do it. And I expect you to cooperate. Is that understood?”
“Proceed,” he snapped.
“Mr. Berger alluded to certain events that have taken place since his arrival. He seems to feel someone was trying to scare him away.”
Havenhurst sighed glumly. “He told you about Dolly’s episode, I take it.”
Des kept her face a blank. “As a matter of fact, he didn’t.”
Havenhurst got up and went over to the window. He was obviously annoyed with himself for volunteering this.
“Perhaps you would like to,” she suggested.
“Very well,” he said heatedly. “Dolly occasionally… She wanders in the night. She’s not a well woman, Lieutenant. It’s important for you to understand that. It goes back to an incident that happened here quite a number of years ago.”
“The Weems shootings?”
He glanced at her sharply. “I suppose Tal Bliss told you.”
“He said Mrs. Seymour found them.”
“Hell of a thing for her to experience,” Havenhurst recalled. “She went into a serious clinical depression directly after that. There were suicide attempts, several of them. She had to be hospitalized. We almost lost her, Lieutenant. She remains, to this day, an extremely vulnerable creature. If I seem perhaps a bit overly protective toward her, that is why.”
“I understand, Mr. Havenhurst.”
“No, you don’t understand,” he insisted vehemently. “Because there’s more to it than the simple fact that she found the bodies. Certain details were not included in the newspaper accounts. It was possible to keep such things from the public in those days. But as I’ve no doubt you will soon dig up the official report for yourself, I’ll tell you right now what you will find in it.”
“And what is that, Mr. Havenhurst?”
“She was raped, Lieutenant,” the lawyer answered bitterly. “Roy Weems, the Peck family’s own caretaker, forcibly and savagely raped my Dolly. She was a virgin. A carefree, sunny, lovely seventeen-year-old virgin. And that bastard took that away from her forever. He-” Havenhurst broke off, pausing a moment to compose himself. “We believe that his wife walked in on it… happening. And that she threatened to have him arrested. So he shot her. And then turned the gun on himself. And that poor Dolly witnessed the entire thing.”
Des frowned. “You say that you believe she witnessed it…”
“That’s correct,” Havenhurst affirmed, nodding. “We have never known for sure. Not really. You see, Lieutenant, Dolly retains no memory of the incident. To this day, she remembers nothing about it whatsoever.”
It was a small convoy of cruisers that headed up the Old Boston Post Road toward Uncas Lake. Resident Trooper Bliss, who knew where they were going, took the lead. Des followed in her car. A third state trooper brought up the rear as precautionary backup.
Soave remained behind on Big Sister to attend to the Seymours’ computer and business records. He had, he informed Des, learned very little from the victim’s stepson, Evan Havenhurst. As for the sister-in-law, Bitsy Peck, Soave reported, “Loot, I never heard someone talk so much and say so little in my whole life.” He still had to take a statement from Jamie Devers. And the island was still being searched for weapons. Two of the islanders remained at large. Redfield Peck, who was still en route to Tokyo, and Mandy Havenhurst, who had not yet returned any of the calls placed to the Havenhursts’ New York apartment. According to her husband, she had intended to spend the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In reality, there were two Dorsets, Des reflected as she drove. One was the Dorset of the Pecks and the Havenhursts, the old money WASP gentry who’d long ago claimed the lush meadows and pastures, the precious Long Island Sound frontage, the village’s power structure and its upper social rung. The other Dorset was made up of the people who plowed that gentry’s driveways and mowed their lawns and pumped out their septic tanks. Some of them held low-end factory jobs at the Electric Boat submarine plant in Groton. Or toiled as chambermaids at the mammoth Indian reservation casinos in Uncas. Most of these lower-rung people were crowded into the mildewed cabins and cinder-block ranchettes that were squeezed, shoulder to shoulder, around Uncas Lake. The fetid, sulphurous lake was situated five miles inland from the shore. The soil was rocky here, the roads narrow and dark. Kids in dirty diapers rolled around unattended on scraggly front lawns. Dogs roamed loose, sometimes in packs. Idle men sat on their front porches drinking beer in the middle of the day.
There was a name for white people such as these. They were called swamp yankees.
Bliss slowed his cruiser way down when he turned off of the Post Road and started his way through their squalid enclave. The resident trooper knew the territory well. He knew it because he lived here himself.
He pulled up in front of a seedy cottage where a rusty pickup with no tires rested up on blocks in the driveway. An ancient sofa was set out in the weeds out front, surrounded by empty beer cans. He parked and got out. Des did the same. She heard music blaring from somewhere, a dog barking, a baby crying. She could smell spaghetti sauce. And feel a million eyes watching them through windows up and down the street. As always she felt the same mix of anger and intolerance that smoldered within her whenever she was in such a neighborhood, whatever its racial or ethnic make-up. She simply could not understand how people could sit around all day doing nothing with their lives.
The third trooper remained back at the corner of the Post Road, a shotgun mounted to his dashboard.
She and Bliss strode up to the front porch together. The sound of a television blared through the screen door. Bliss knocked on it. A girl’s voice called, “It’s open-come on in!”
The room was stuffy and reeked of cigarette smoke and soiled diapers. A slovenly, rather bovine-looking girl of no more than eighteen lay sprawled lazily on the sofa, drinking a diet soda and watching one of those trashy daytime talk shows. A naked baby, a boy, dozed peacefully next to her on a blanket. The girl wore a tank top and cut-offs. She had red hair and fair skin and a small, mean face. Her bare arms and legs were soft and sprinkled with freckles. Her feet were pudgy and dirty. She painted her toenails black and wore rings around two of her toes. Also one in her right nostril. She exuded a certain ripe concupiscence in spite of her chubbiness. By age thirty, Des reflected, she would be jowly and jiggly, a pig. By forty she would be an old woman, her tits hanging down like a pair of accordians. Right now, she was just about the same age Dolly Seymour had been when Tuck Weems’s father had raped her.
The girl eyed them warily as they stood there in the room with her. But she did not stir from the sofa. Or turn down the volume on the TV “Whoa, it’s the resident trooper man,” she said in a mocking voice.
On the sofa next to her, the baby continued to sleep peacefully.
“Darleen, isn’t it?” Bliss said pleasantly.
“Yeah, so what?” she shot back defiantly. “Who’s she?”
Des told her.
“You can think of her as my boss,” Bliss added, by way of explanation.
“No way,” Darleen exclaimed. “That is so weird. No offense or nothing. I mean, it just is, isn’t it?”
“We’re looking for your father, girl,” Des said.
The girl’s eyes went back to the TV “My father’s been dead for fifteen years, ma’am,” she said sullenly. “If you’re looking for Tuck he’s not around. And I haven’t seen him since…” She trailed off into silence for a moment. “Why, what did he do?”
“Where is he, Darleen?” Bliss asked.
“How should I know? God, can you believe these people?” She meant the ones on the TV-two women who had wrestled each other to the floor and were throwing punches. The show’s host was egging them on. “Can you believe somebody would go on TV and actually do that over some man? I mean, why would they do that?”
Because cows like you actually sit here all day and watch it, Des said to herself. This was the truly remarkable part. “Darleen, Tuck may be in a lot of trouble. I’m not saying he is. I’m saying he may be. He’s wanted for questioning in connection with a murder, okay?”
Darleen’s eyes widened. “Murder? No way…”
“If we don’t find him, and talk to him, then I’ll have to alert every trooper in the state to be on the lookout for him,” Des told her. “Believe me, that will not be a good thing. He will be considered a dangerous person. And I cannot promise that he will not be hurt. All we want to do is ask him some questions. If you care about him, you’ll help us.”
Darleen took a long drink of her soda, considering this. “What makes you think I care?”
“You had his baby, didn’t you?” Des asked.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” She reached for a cigarette and lit it.
Des stared at her intently. At the way her soft, childlike hands shook. And her knee jiggled. She was talking plenty hard and tough, but was clearly frightened. She had a baby to take care of. She had no job, no education, and no skills-other than the obvious one. Tuck was her meal ticket, her comfort zone, her home. And now she could see that disappearing right before her eyes.
“Look, I don’t know where he is, okay?” Darleen said finally. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“He didn’t come home last night?” Bliss asked.
Darleen shrugged.
“Does he stay out on you regularly?” Des pressed her.
The girl shrugged again, although this time her nostrils flared slightly. Evidently, Tuck Weems was not a one-teenager man.
“Where’s he been working lately?” Bliss asked.
“Nowhere.”
“Big Sister?”
“I guess.”
“Lock ’n Load still his regular hangout?”
Darleen didn’t answer. She’d gone mute.
Des and Bliss exchanged eye contact. They were not going to get anything more out of this girl.
“Thank you for your help, Darleen,” said Des, who felt it was her duty to add, “Girl, exposing your baby to secondhand smoke is a serious health risk. It can lead to ear infections, respiratory disease, even heart disease. You do know that, don’t you?”
“I am a really good mother, ma’am,” Darleen snarled in response. “Why don’t you take care of your own business, hunh?! Why don’t you leave?!”
They did just that. Went out the door and down the steps toward their cars.
That was when Des got the call. It came from Soave, who got it by way of the Westbrook Barracks.
The rain-soaked body of a fully clothed adult white male had just been found behind the dunes on a remote stretch of Dorset town beach called Rocky Neck. He had been shot twice. He had been dead at least twelve hours. And he had been positively identified as Tuck Weems.