Good Day to Die (21 page)

“Ms. Townsend,” I said when I’d had enough, “may I speak to Captain Bouton privately for a moment?”

“Should I leave?”

“No, please, we have a few more questions. It’ll only be a minute.”

I drew Bouton a few feet away and whispered my instructions. “I’m going to go find Kennedy’s doctor. I want you to pump this woman. Find out what Kennedy’s like. If he’s really got money. Who visits him. See if she knows the two sons. Were they ever in the room together? Give her your goddamn scarf if you have to.” I walked off before she could respond.

Dr. Ehrlich’s office was on the fourth floor, and, miracle of miracles, he was actually in it. Kennedy, he told me, had been unconscious for the better part of six months, and he wasn’t going to wake up. The administration wanted to transfer him to a nursing home, but the family insisted he be treated in the hospital. What Ehrlich didn’t say was that Medicare would pay for the hospital bed. Nursing homes weren’t covered beyond thirty days.

“Is the matter in the courts?” I asked.

He lifted his chin and looked down his nose at me. Telling me it was none of my business. I wondered, briefly, why he’d brought it up in the first place, then asked him who spoke for the Kennedy family.

“Robert, the son,” he replied.

“Are there any other relatives?”

He clammed up at that point, insisting that I go to Robert Kennedy for any further information. I didn’t know if it was a question of confidentiality or if Doc Ehrlich was simply the baron dismissing his peasant. Whichever, he was immune to any pressure I could apply, and if he didn’t feel like cooperating, there was nothing I could do about it. I thanked him for his time and left.

Bouton, still wearing the scarf (and still smiling), was waiting in the lobby.

“You were right, of course,” she announced before I could beg forgiveness. “Townsend was friendly, and I should have seen that as an opportunity.
Mea culpa.
”

“Nice speech,” I responded. “Did you get anything worthwhile?”

“Couple of things.” She pulled a little notebook from her purse and checked it as she spoke. “Robert, the eldest of the brothers, never comes to visit. John was here a few times before he was murdered, but the old man refused to see him. Called him ‘Girly’ whenever he showed up. It seems that Aloysius was a straight-out racist and referred to Shanara as ‘that colored bitch.’ Claimed to be a lifelong member of the Klan, a dedicated cross burner. Bragged about driving the niggers out of Herkimer County.”

“What about the money? Did he have any money?”

“Hold your water, Means. I’m getting to it.” We were in the car by then, pulling out of the lot. “Shanara didn’t know anything about the Kennedy finances. Why should she? The important thing is that the old man has a regular visitor, a drinking buddy named Seaver Shannon, who’s asked to be notified when Kennedy dies. I’ve got his phone number. By the way, I keep calling Kennedy an old man, but he’s only fifty-two.”

“What about a wife? There must be a wife somewhere.”

“His admitting form lists him as widowed.”

“Occupation?”

“Businessman.”

“What kind of business?”

“Shanara said she thought he once owned a liquor store. Maybe still does. She wasn’t sure. He isn’t the kind of patient who takes you into his confidence.”

“So what we have is exactly nothing?”

“I wouldn’t say that, Means.” She slouched in the seat, pushing her shoes up against the fire wall. “We’ve got this beautiful day and this beautiful car and we’re not working the streets of New York. Thank God for small favors.”

W
E TOOK ROUTE 14
northwest out of Lake George and immediately began to climb into the heart of the Adirondack Mountains. The landscape presented to us was a long way from the friendly, rolling Catskills. Two Indian tribes had hunted the Adirondacks, the Iroquois and the Algonquins, but neither chose to live there. They called the region
Couchsachraga,
the Habitation of Winter. The average temperature in the Adirondack Park is twenty degrees colder than, for instance, Kingston, less than two hundred miles to the south.

Which is not to say the Adirondacks aren’t beautiful. The high peaks, deep valleys, and granite outcroppings, the evergreen forests so dense they appear black, present a landscape as majestic as anything east of the Rockies. The entire region is dotted with lakes, some more than a mile across. At this time of year, streams and rivers, swollen with snow melting off the high peaks, flow through the valleys, while the ponds and bogs, home to beaver, otter, and every kind of fighting fish, are choked with lily pads.

I watched Bouton watch six mallards, their perfectly round heads flashing an intense, iridescent emerald, glide across the roadway and come to a splashing halt in a small lake. They continued to quack away for a moment as each member of the flock reported, then settled down to feed.

A little farther away, a flock of ring-necked ducks, their black and white bills making them instantly recognizable, dove under the water in search of any creature slow enough to catch and small enough to eat. They disappeared without a ripple, only to pop to the surface fifteen yards away, drops of water glistening on oily feathers.

“This is amazing,” Bouton said. “Just amazing. It’s summer in New York. The roses are blooming. Up here, it’s barely spring.”

We passed a dairy farm and the bucolic images—barns, fields, a dozen Guernseys around a bale of hay—seemed to intrigue her.

“So, humans actually live here,” she observed. “I was beginning to wonder.”

“A hundred and twenty thousand humans, Captain. On six million acres. Home sweet home.”

“A hundred and twenty thousand? We had that many in the project where I grew up.” She laughed happily, then shook her head. “But in some ways, I was as isolated as if I lived in the middle of all this. I was a homegirl in the old sense. Back when ‘homegirl’ was an insult. My mama didn’t let me play in the streets. Wouldn’t even let me go to the store by myself.”

“Probably checked your homework, too.”

“Every night. You?”

“Me?”

“Did your mama check your homework?”

“She didn’t have to. I always did well in school.” It was the truth, though there was no good reason for it. I missed so many days that if I hadn’t aced my ninth-grade exams, I wouldn’t have been allowed to go to high school. By that time, dear old mom (chastened, perhaps, by the bandages covering Big Mike’s broken face) was past raising her hands to me. Still, I continued to spend most of my time in a forest that, for all its frigid temperatures, its swarms of biting flies and ravenous mosquitoes, was at least ordered and predictable.

We were just east of Indian Lake, still plowing along on Route 14, when the north country put a damper on Bouton’s wistful mood. A town cop in a white cruiser passed going the other way, made a quick U-turn, then powered up to us, lights flashing. Bouton frowned, shaking her head, and muttered, “Snake in paradise.”

“Correction, Captain,
redneck
in paradise.”

I pulled the car off the road, buoyed by the prospect of venting my ugly mood on someone besides my superior officer. The town cop, a small, skinny asshole in an ill-fitting uniform, got out of his car and sauntered over, a shit-eating grin spread across his pimply face. The name tag on his chest read “Beauchamp.”

“Well, well, well. Would you look at this? Lemme see some ID.” His glance took in my narrow eyes, Bouton’s chocolate skin, the vintage Buick.

“Sure.” I pushed my gold shield into his face.
Right
into his face. He jumped back, his eyes focusing on my badge as his hand dropped to his .357.

“What?” he managed to say.

“Detective Means. Roland Means, NYPD. This is
Captain
Vanessa Bouton.”

“You don’t have to say it like that.” Deprived of the possibility of using his weapon, he looked merely confused.

“I’ll say it any fucking way I like.”

“What?”

“Listen, you redneck prick, you got business with me, tell me what it is. Otherwise, you can crawl back to that cruiser like the piece of shit you are.”

“Means!” Bouton’s voice was halfway between amused and amazed.

“Now, now, now, now,” Beauchamp stuttered, “listen here, you don’t have no jurisdiction. This is damn far outside your territory.”

“Really? How ’bout I come out there and pound my fucking jurisdiction into your face?” I refused to give him any slack, any chance to save face. Leaving him with a very simple choice: total humiliation or a serious battle. Most street-hard city cops would have taken the second option, no matter what the consequences. Beauchamp, on the other hand, with no excuse to use his .357 (and no buddies around to spread the tale), accepted his defeat like a good bully. He got back into his cruiser and drove away.

“You’re crazy, Means.”

“Well, you know how it is, Captain. Some days you wake up and you just
can’t
eat shit.” I tossed it off, but if Beauchamp had called me out, I would have busted him up without a second thought. It didn’t make sense and I knew it. But who says it’s supposed to make sense? The first thing you have to do is live with yourself, and that’s what I was doing. In my own silly way

We pulled into the headquarters of the Algonquin County Sheriff’s Office an hour later. Kennedy wasn’t there, but the deputy handling the telephones told us that Sheriff Pousson was expecting us. His office was in the back, last door on the left. As we walked down the narrow hallway, I reminded Bouton that protocol required that she do the talking for both of us.

“See if he knows where Seaver Shannon lives,” I added. “It’ll save us some time.”

“Why don’t we try to look him up in the phone book?”

“Because the address will probably be a post office box. Or something like Star Route 4. Except for Main Street, the roads around here don’t have names. I’d like to talk to this guy without calling him first.”

Sheriff Pousson managed to greet us without doing a double-take. He was a tall, serious-looking man, with high cheekbones, a narrow face, and a sharp, hooked nose. As predicted, he spoke directly to Vanessa Bouton.

“Deputy Kennedy was up all night handling a bus accident on Route 11. I’ll give you directions to his house. Hope it’s not inconvenient.”

“Not at all, Sheriff.” Bouton’s voice was relaxed. She sat down uninvited, smiling away. “As long as the directions are easy. I’m not used to streets that don’t have names.”

Pousson nodded, his thin white lips splitting into what I took to be a smile. “Know how you feel, Captain. I was in Manhattan last year. For a conference. Got lost five times and the hotel was only six blocks from the convention center. Never felt so out of place in my life.”

He drew a simple map for us, ticking off the various landmarks—a creek, a lake, a battered barn—as he went along. Finished, he handed the map over to Bouton and cleared his throat.

“Uh, Captain, when I spoke to you on the phone, you said you were still investigating the death of Bob Kennedy’s brother, John. I know it’s none of my business, but are you getting any closer to an arrest?”

Bouton, much to my delight, threw him an appropriate line of bullshit. No, we weren’t getting anywhere, but the NYPD, with its proverbial tit caught in the proverbial wringer, couldn’t let it drop. With no recent killings, the powers that be had decided to review every facet of the case, to do it all over again. It was a waste of time, but what could a mere captain do? Orders being orders.

“By the way, Sheriff,” she concluded, “we’d like to speak to a man named Seaver Shannon, a friend of the father. Do you have his address? And some directions?”

“Seaver? Sure, I know Seaver.” He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped them carefully. “Is Seaver somehow connected to John’s murder?”

“Not at all.” Bouton laughed softly. “We know that John occasionally visited his father in the hospital and that Seaver Shannon was a constant visitor. It’s just barely possible the two of them were there at the same time and that John said something about his life in New York. You see, Sheriff, we don’t know how this killer targeted his victims. The forensic evidence indicates that he had their complete confidence. Maybe there was contact prior to the actual murders. If we don’t ask, we’ll never put this chapter behind us. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. To close these doors once and for all.”

Five minutes later, still on Route 14, two sets of directions in hand, looking for a Texaco gas station and the dirt road a hundred yards beyond it. On the way, we passed a wide, swiftly flowing stream. Several fishermen, their hip boots held up by wide suspenders, were casting brightly colored lures into the water. Their graphite rods and expensive reels pegged them as tourists.

“Did you fish, Means?” Bouton asked out of nowhere. “When you were young?”

“Not like that.”

“Not like that?” She turned in the seat to look at me. “And how did
you
fish.”

“The first thing I did was take thirty feet of line and attach hooks every two feet or so. Then I went out in the woods and shot a squirrel. Then I took the squirrel and the line to a lake or a pond, baited the hooks with squirrel guts and threw the line into the water. Then I roasted the rest of the squirrel over an open fire and ate it. Then I retrieved the line, pulled off whatever fish I’d caught, rebaited the empty hooks, and tossed the line back in. When I was out of squirrel guts it was time to go home.”

“Doesn’t sound very sporting.”

“It wasn’t about sport, Captain. It was about dinner.”

Seaver Shannon’s house was a notch or two above ramshackle. Small, no more than four or five rooms, its roof was intact and all the windows were glazed. The small front porch, on the other hand, sagged badly, and the step leading up to it was no more than a one-by-six supported by a pair of cinder blocks.

I knocked on the door, knocked again. No response. I pounded it with my fist and heard a faint, “Hold your horses. I’m a’comin’,” followed by the sound of shuffling feet.

Seaver Shannon was very small and very old. Wizened is the word that comes to mind. Shrunken. Thick tufts of gray hair sprouted from his ears and nostrils. His eyebrows poked out and up, twin fans over horn-rimmed glasses held together with black electrician’s tape. He peered at us through those glasses, scrutinized us with the frank, puzzled look of a toddler. Or of an old man past disguising his feelings.