A narrow dirt road snaked its way through the meadows and tidal marshes of the Peck’s Point Nature Preserve, a peninsula that jutted out into Long Island Sound at the mouth of the Connecticut River. The dirt road ended at a barricade. Beyond it was the narrow, wooden causeway out to Big Sister Island. Des inserted her coded plastic security card to raise the barricade and then eased her cruiser thumpety-thump-bumpety out to the forty acres of Yankee paradise that Mitch was lucky enough to call home. There were five precious old Peck family homes out on Big Sister, not counting his caretaker’s cottage. A decommissioned lighthouse that was the second tallest in New England. A private beach and dock. A tennis court. There was fresh, clean sea air. There was peace.
Quirt, Mitch’s lean, mean outdoor hunter, came darting over to bump her leg with his hard little head as she climbed out of the car. Quirt was one of the two rescued strays she’d convinced Mitch to adopt. Des bent down and stroked him, feeling herself relax for the first time since she’d driven away from the Captain Chadwick House.
She kept a yellow string bikini at Mitch’s that was positively indecent. She went inside the house, kicking off her shiny, black shoes. Peeled off her uni and ankle socks. Put the tiny thing on. She left her horn-rims on the bathroom shelf. Didn’t need them. Didn’t need to worry about her hair either, which she wore short and nubby. She grabbed a towel and started down the sandy path to the beach, feeling the sun-warmed sand between her toes.
Mitch was sitting on the float a hundred feet out, with his feet dangling in the water and a bottle of beer in his hand. The beer cooler sat beside him. He waved to her. Des waded in, then dove underwater and swam toward him, welcoming the water’s delicious coolness all over her body. She surfaced and pulled herself, wet and shiny, up onto the float, stretching her fine self out next to him.
“Sorry, miss, but this is a private float. You’ll have to pay a toll.”
She leaned forward on her elbows and kissed him softly on the mouth. “Will that do?”
“We’ll consider it a modest down payment.”
Mitch pulled a Corona from the cooler and opened it for her. She took it from him, her eyes eating him up. She still could not get over how hard and cut he was. He’d been a flesh prince when she first fell for him-man boobs and all. Not anymore. He was a hunk.
She took a long, grateful drink of her beer, sighing contently. “I have been missing you all day, Armando.” Which was her pet name for him now that doughboy no longer applied.
“Back at you, master sergeant. What took you so long anyhow?”
She told him about Augie, her voice rising with anger as she described the ugly little public scene he’d provoked.
Mitch studied her curiously. “You’ve dealt with drunks like Augie a million times. Why are you letting him get under your skin?”
“You mean aside from the fact he’s a racist, sexist boor?”
“Seriously, why are you?”
She took another drink of her beer. “Because he was on the job. I don’t like seeing what’s happened to him. But enough about that fool. How was your day?”
“Great. I ran into an old flame. She lives right here in Dorset now. We’re invited over for drinks tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry, you just said what?”
He leaned over and kissed her, this time long and lingering. “Beth lived across the hall from me when I was a kid. She was a single mom. I looked out for her boy Kenny. Used to drag him to see old movies with me. He’s a computer geek up in Cambridge now. Comes here every weekend because-get this-he’s engaged to my yoga teacher, Kimberly. She’s Beth’s neighbor at the Captain Chadwick House.”
“So this would be Beth Breslauer?”
“Her name was Lapidus when I was growing up,” he said wistfully. “To me, she’ll always be Beth Lapidus.”
“Mitch, I would swear you’re blushing right now.”
“Am not.”
“No, no, you totally are. Is something going on between you two that I should know about?”
“Why would you say that?”
“You just called her an old flame, remember?”
“Des, she was my very first big-time crush. I was thirteen and she was this incredibly sexy divorcee with knockers out to here.”
Des glanced down at what was inside of her bikini top. Or, more precisely, wasn’t. “Since when are you into knockers out to here?”
“All thirteen-year-old boys are into knockers out to here. Who was yours?”
“Who was my what?”
“First big-time crush.”
Des stretched out on her back, gazing dreamily up at the milky blue sky. “George Michael. I had posters of that man plastered all over my room.”
“Was this back when he was still with Wham or had he already embarked on his trailblazing solo career?”
“Hey, did I chump you about your first crush?”
“Yes, you did. And I’m very mad at you.” He ran his hand up her smooth, bare flank, caressing her. “Very, very mad.” Now he was licking the dried salt from her belly button. “Absolutely, positively furious.” His tongue sliding lower and…
“Mitch, they can see us!”
“Who can?”
“The eye in the sky. Google Earth, NASA, whoever.”
“Let ’em watch. Maybe they’ll learn something.”
She sat up, rearranging her teeny top. “I’ll race you inside.”
“What’s in it for me if I win?”
“Oh, I think you know.”
They were barely in the door before they were out of their suits. They jumped into the shower together and washed off the sand, hands all over each other. And then they were up in his sleeping loft taking it nice and slow and tender. It wasn’t about performing. It was about them. And, God, was them something good.
As dusk approached they lay there in each other’s arms, eyes glittering, unable to keep the silly grins off of their faces, not even trying. Mitch’s indoor cat, Clemmie, lay curled up between them, purring. A sea breeze had picked up, cooling the airy little cottage.
“Can I interest you in some dinner, master sergeant?”
“You can interest me in just about anything right now.”
Mitch put on a T-shirt and shorts and went outside to fire up the grill. She got into his No. 15 Earl the Pearl Knicks jersey and stretched out on a lawn chair, sipping a cold glass of Sancerre while he raided his garden for fingerling potatoes, tomatoes and basil. He put the potatoes on to boil, then flopped down in the lawn chair with a beer. They gazed out at the water, so comfortable with the island’s quiet and each other that they felt no need to talk.
Except she did need to talk-about the case she was working. She had no partner to spitball with. Mitch knew this.
Which was why he blurted out, “How do you know for a fact that it’s always the same guy?”
She frowned at him. He was never short of insights. Most of them whack. But, somehow, he did see things. “Um, okay, you’re going where with this?”
“What if you’re dealing with a gang of flashers? It’s not as if the ladies have given you anything more than a vague description, right? Average height and weight. Wears a ski mask. For all you know, each lady could have been visited by a different weenie waver.”
“You’re not wrong about that. But why are you thinking it?”
“Because this whole thing’s a goof.”
“Mitch, it’s no goof.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s just the kind of dorky stunt a bunch of bored teenaged boys would pull off. Like the Mod Squad, remember?”
“Who could forget them?” There had been five of those boys-high school garbage heads who’d taken to spray painting obscene graffiti all over Dorset. “And that was no goof, Mitch. They almost burned down Center School, as you may recall. But keep talking.”
“You’re not dealing with a sexual predator who’s out there preying on attractive young women. He, or I should say they, have strictly chosen rich old ladies. Plus you’ve got that petty nuisance stuff in the mix. The dead skunk. The funeral home’s sign. I’m telling you-it’s a bunch of pimply kids. That also explains why it always happens on the weekend. Because their parents go out to dinner or the movies on the weekend. They aren’t around to keep an eye on the little weasels. Tell me, have any of the ladies said the perp was… why are you smiling?”
“You said perp. You’re just so cute when you do that. Sorry, go on.”
“Have any of them described him as being, you know…?”
“Locked in the upright position? Not a one. And, believe me, it has really, really been fun talking tumescence with the old girls.”
“So he gives them a limp wave and then he runs. Which means he’s not doing this for a sexual thrill.” Mitch got up to check the grill. The fire was ready. He put the corn on to steam and sat back down next to her. “I’m telling you, girlfriend, this is no pervert. It’s a gang of pranksters.”
“Okay, I’ll admit that it plays your way-in the abstract.”
“What about in the real?”
“Not so much. We’ve got profiles of every kind of human depravity you can imagine-and then some-in our criminal data bank. Your flasher is typically someone who has no gang to run with. He’s lonely, sexually frustrated and often confused about his sexual orientation. But it’s funny that you brought up the Mod Squad. I talked to one of them today-Ronnie Welmers. He’s a junior at Middlebury College in Vermont now. Had a summer job on campus that ended two weeks ago. He’s been home visiting his dad since then.”
“Hmm, interesting. Are you liking him for this?”
“Not really. Ronnie’s cleaned up his act. Plans to go to business school.”
“Wait, I thought you just said he’s cleaned up his act.”
“But he still likes to hang with his ‘homeys,’ as they so quaintly put it here in Funky Town, USA. I kept that boy’s ass out of jail. Ronnie owes me big time. Told me he’s been to a couple of keggers, caught up with old friends. Some of whom still go to the high school. All of them were talking about the Dorset Flasher. And he swears that not one of them has the slightest idea who he is. It’s the best-kept secret around. They all think it’s pretty hilarious.”
“It does have its humorous side, you have to admit.”
“Mitch, there’s nothing funny about it. This guy is ruining my life. We patrolled the Historic District in force last weekend. And yet, somehow, he managed to hit four more old ladies without us getting so much as a glimpse of him. I’d swear he was getting around the village via the sewer system except-”
“Sure, sure. Just like Harry Lime in The Third Man. God, did Orson Welles slay in that film or-?”
“Except Dorset doesn’t have a sewer system. Meanwhile, I’ve busted my hump working my way through every single loser boy in Dorset. Anyone who’s been picked up for drugs, stealing, fighting in the past five years. Swamp Yankees and rich kids. And I’ve gotten absolutely nowhere. Whoever he is, he’s smart and he’s careful. He doesn’t wear a wristwatch or rings on his fingers. Nothing that could identify him. He leaves no traces behind. Not a single shoe print. He defaced the funeral home’s sign with a plain old Sharpie that you can buy anywhere. A friend of mine rushed that dead skunk through the lab up in Meriden for me. No fingerprints. He wore gloves when he handled it.” Des took a sip of her wine. “I’ve got a theory, too. And I would never admit this to Bob Paffin in a million years…”
“What is it, Des?”
“That we’re dealing with a bright, pissed-off sixteen-year-old boy who has been marinating in self-pity all summer. And when school starts he’ll crawl back into the woodwork and the incidents will stop.”
“If that’s the case then how are you going to catch him?”
“I’m not going to catch him, Mitch.”
“You mean he’s going to get away with it? That’s not a good ending.”
“We don’t always get happy endings. This is real life.”
“Doesn’t matter. Trust me, girlfriend, you still need a rewrite.”
Darkness was falling by now. He put the fish on to cook while she went inside and made a salad out of his ripe, juicy tomatoes, fragrant basil leaves and the buffalo mozzarella. She dressed it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then mashed up the fingerling potatoes with a drop more olive oil, plain yogurt and a whole lot of fresh dill. After that she set the table, lit the candles and opened another bottle of Sancerre. By then the grill chef was coming in the door with the smoky striped bass and steaming ears of corn.
“Actually, I did have one promising lead,” she told him as they dove in, starved. “I haven’t said anything because you happen to know the guy. I can talk about it now because I’ve crossed him off of my list. But you can’t breathe a word of this, deal?”
“Deal,” he promised. “Who are we…?”
“Hal Chapman, your skullet-head trainer.”
“Hal? No way!”
“Yes way. Hear my thing, okay? The principal at the high school poked around in some old files for me. Back when your boy Hal was fifteen, he got in trouble for behaving inappropriately toward a female classmate.”
“Behaving inappropriately how?”
“He exposed himself to her out by the bleachers at lunch. The girl’s parents declined to press charges so the law didn’t get into it. School handled it internally. Counseling and so forth. And Hal was a model citizen after that. Even got a full ride to play football at Boston College.”
Mitch nodded. “He blew out his knee freshman year and dropped out.”
“He bitter about it?”
“Doesn’t seem to be. He’s always cheerful. A good trainer, real enthusiastic. He lives in his parents’ old house on Griswold Avenue. They’ve retired to North Carolina. His dad worked for Electric Boat, I think. I don’t know a whole lot more about Hal-aside from the fact that he does pretty well with the ladies.”
“He does real well,” she said, munching on an ear of corn. “I shadowed him this week. Tuesday night he got busy with this hot little hostess, Celine Sullivan, who works at the Rustic Inn. She spent the night at his place. Wednesday night he was with Shaun English, that tall, good-looking young thing in the Town Assessor’s Office. He spent the night at her place. And last night your boy had himself a double-header. First he got sandy-rumped at Bluff Point with a young married lady named Lisa Neville. She’s a client of his at the club. Her husband travels a lot on business. After Lisa went home to the kids, Hal got busy down at Rocky Neck with Doreen Joslow, another of his clients. Also married. You’ve got to admire his stamina. Like I said, I’ve crossed him off of my list. He just doesn’t fit the profile. He’s not lonely. He’s not angry. And he’s for sure not sexually frustrated. That man’s out there living the dream.”
Mitch’s phone rang. He took the call on the wall phone in his kitchen. Des glanced at her watch. It was 9:45. Late for someone in Dorset to be calling.
“Oh, hi, Bella,” she heard him say into the phone. “Yeah, she’s right here… No, no, it’s okay… Uh-huh… Okay, I’ll tell her… I don’t know, ten minutes tops.” He hung up and returned to the table with a troubled look on his face. “Bad news, girlfriend. He just struck again-at your place.”
Her place was a snug two-bedroom Cape on a hilltop with a great view of Uncas Lake, which was two miles up the Boston Post Road from the Historic District. The front-porch light was on and the garage door was open, throwing all kinds of light out onto the short driveway. Also meowing. The eight feral strays she and Bella had rescued over the past two months were presently residing in cages in there while not-so-patiently awaiting good homes. Bella’s jeep and Des’s four-year-old Saab were parked out on the street. Des pulled her cruiser into the driveway with a screech and jumped out. Mitch was right on her tail in his pickup. He’d insisted upon joining her.
Bella, a short, feisty widow from Brooklyn in her late 70s, stood there in the garage doorway, hands on round hips, looking like an angry Jewish avocado in her dark green tank top and shorts. Also lopsided. She was wearing only one sneaker. The other foot was bare. Bella had been Des’s neighbor back in Woodbridge when Des and Brandon were still married. It was Bella who’d saved her when Brandon took off. Bella who’d become her unlikely best friend and housemate-although she was always searching for a little place of her own.
“Believe me, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was ruin your romantic evening,” she apologized as Des rushed toward her. “You’ve had no time for each other since this yutz started waving his pizzle all over town. I hope you weren’t making wild love on the kitchen floor, all slathered in lavender oil.”
“Bella, have you been watching The Young and the Restless again?”
“I happen to find daytime drama very stimulating.”
“Yeah, I can tell that.”
“It’s cool, Aunt Bella,” Mitch assured her. “We were just getting ready to wash the dishes.”
“Wash the dishes?” Bella was incredulous. Also way disappointed. “Do I need to draw you two a map?”
“Talk to me, girl. What happened?”
Bella gestured to the front porch, where her missing sneaker lay discarded on the pavement. “The welcome mat is what happened,” she answered, hobbling over there. “I was sitting at the dining table, e-mailing my grandson Errol. He’s Ezra and Babette’s boy. Very nice boy. A first-year dental student at UCLA. He’s dating a girl from Thailand. I don’t know how serious it is but-”
“You were at the dining table,” Des prompted her. “And…?”
“The doorbell rang.”
“What time was this?”
“Nine thirty-seven, according to that little clock on my computer screen. I went to the door and I asked who it was. Believe me, there was no way I was opening it. Not with that nut on the loose. No one answered me. So I turned on the porch light and looked out through the peephole. I didn’t see anyone. I waited a minute, then finally I opened the door, walked outside and…” She made a face. “That’s when I stepped in it.”
It was a turd. A very large, very fresh turd that had been deposited on Des’s sisal welcome mat. She bent over for a closer look, her nostrils crinkling.
“I’m sorry if I compromised the evidence by squishing it.”
“Bella, don’t even go there. I’m just sorry your sneaker’s ruined.”
“Oh, no. It’s not ruined. I’ll bleach it. I’ll boil it. Whatever it takes. That little pisher’s not going to cost me a perfectly good pair of New Balances. And when you catch him I’ll have a little present of my own for him. Let me tell you-if a rotten punk ever tried pulling this on Gates Avenue in the old days, we’d have made him eat that whole thing for lunch between two slices of marbled rye.”
Des popped the trunk of her cruiser and donned a pair of disposable latex gloves, then grabbed a plastic evidence bag and a tongue depressor. A cruiser pulled up behind her Saab. It was Trooper Olsen, who’d been part of her four-person team that tried to nail the Dorset Flasher last weekend. And would be out there again tomorrow night. Oly was big, blond and competent. She filled him in and asked him to start canvassing the neighbors. Maybe one of them had seen something, or someone, between the hours of 9:30 and 9:45. He got right on it.
“Well, this was a first,” Mitch said when she returned to the porch. “The Flasher has never struck on a Friday before.”
“He’s also never gone after sworn personnel.”
“Maybe Bella was his intended target, not you.”
“Trust me, she wasn’t. Bella, I need for you to think hard. This isn’t just us talking now. You’re a witness in an ongoing criminal investigation. Exactly what did you see?”
“I told you-not a thing. When I opened the door nobody was there.”
“Did you hear a car door slam? Someone driving away?”
Bella shook her head. “Nothing like that.”
“How about footsteps? Maybe someone running?”
“I didn’t see or hear anything,” Bella stated flatly.
“Maybe he parked his car down the road,” Mitch said.
“Maybe.”
“Do you need my sneaker as evidence?” Bella asked. “Because I’d like to start soaking it if you don’t mind.”
“Go right ahead and soak.”
Bella picked her shoe up by the laces and headed into the garage with it. Des crouched next to the mat and used the tongue depressor to scoop a sample of the turd into the plastic bag.
“This is a positive development, right?” Mitch said. “You’ve got actual physical evidence now. Your lab can figure out how big the dog was and that’ll point you to its owner. All dogs in Dorset have to be licensed, right?”
“They do, Mitch. Except there are a couple of holes in your theory. For one, he could have plucked this off of anybody’s front lawn. And for another, this isn’t just any old dog poop.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because when I was with Major Crimes we shared the same facility up in Meriden with the state’s K-9 Training Center. I’ve seen what your average mature German shepherd leaves behind. This here was produced by a bigger animal.”
“There are plenty of breeds bigger than German shepherds. You’ve got your Great Danes, Irish wolfhounds. And then there are the really big boys like Saint Bernards and English mastiffs. There can’t be too many of those in-”
“Mitch, I’m fairly certain that this didn’t come from any dog.”
“Oh, okay, then that’s a whole different plot.” He bent over, squinting at it. “It’s not a cow pie. And I know horse droppings when I see them.” His face dropped. “God, please don’t tell me it’s a bear.”
“No, nothing as tabloid fantastic as that. I’m sorry to say that unless I’m totally wrong-and I’m not-the origin of this fecal specimen is human.”
For a second, Des thought her he-guy was going to lose his striped bass. But he gathered himself, gulping, and said, “Well… that’s good, too.”
“Really? How so?”
“We’ve got a fresh human fecal specimen here.”
“Still waiting for the good part, Mitch.”
“The state forensic lab can extract the guy’s DNA from it, can’t they?”
“Actually, that’s a big no. The DNA in human fecal matter is too degraded for them to get a profile. Has something to do with the microbes in the gastrointestinal tract. If I want a sample of this bastard’s DNA, I need his blood or saliva, nasal secretions, hair
…” She carried the bagged specimen back to her car anyway. Because that’s what you did. You collected evidence. Never knew when it might prove to be valuable. She slammed the trunk shut, mustering a tight smile. “You may as well head on home. I have to help Oly knock on doors.”
“Are you going to join me later?”
“Don’t think so. I’d better hang with Bella. She’s more freaked than she’s letting on.” Des softened her gaze at him. “I’m afraid our big evening’s over. I’m real sorry.”
“Don’t be-shit happens.” He flashed a boyish grin at her. “That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I had to go there.”
“I knew that.”
“I knew you knew.” Just as he knew that he couldn’t kiss her good-night. She was in uniform. The neighbors were watching. Public Displays of Affection were a no-no. “We’re good,” he assured her as he climbed back into his truck. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”
“I’m not worried,” she said quietly.
Because she wasn’t. She was furious. The Dorset Flasher had made this personal now. And she wasn’t just thinking of him as some abstract loser boy any longer. She had someone very specific in mind now. Someone who was openly hostile toward Dorset’s blue-blooded dowagers… “You say hello to them and they act like you just took a leak on their shoes…” Someone she’d clashed with that very afternoon. A public altercation that had left him flat on his butt and humiliated. He’d warned her that she’d be sorry. And now there was a turd on her welcome mat. Coincidence? Des Mitry didn’t believe in the tooth fairy, clean coal technology or coincidences. What she did believe was that she had her man. He was a bitter, angry widower. He had a drinking problem. And he lived by himself smack-dab in the middle of the Historic District.
Oh, yeah, she had her man, all right. Augie Donatelli was the Dorset Flasher. Des had zero doubt. None.
The only tricky part was going to be proving it.