Jane Haddam - Gregor Demarkian 12 - Fountain of Death (36 page)

“It’s a dismal job to have,” Philip Brye had explained to Gregor, unnecessarily, on their way over to Roger Dornan’s office, “because you never do anything but lose.”

Roger Dornan didn’t look like the head of anything. His office was a cubbyhole in an administrative building otherwise filled with women who worked for social services departments. He had a desk and one chair and a lot of bookshelves crammed with papers. Gregor and Philip Brye had left Connie Hazelwood circling the block in her taxi searching for a parking space. Gregor thought the state of Roger Dornan’s office was indicative of what was wrong with the drug war. It was cramped. It was dark. It was overworked. And nobody else in the building wanted to go near it.

Roger Dornan had listened to Gregor and Philip Brye explain their problem and ask their favor, fiddling all the time with a five-by-five inch stand-up cardboard sign that said: “M
AKE IT TO THE NEW YEAR, DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE.”
Gregor had gotten so used to these signs, he had almost stopped seeing them. This was the way city and state officials celebrated New Year’s Eve. They got ready to deal with the carnage.

Roger Dornan said, “Forty-seven Stephenson,” and stood up. He took a big blue plastic spiral notebook off the shelf behind him and opened it on the desk.

“Forty-seven Stephenson,” he said again, paging through a stack of plastic-coated maps. “That’s Derby, I think. Just inside the Derby town line. We’ll have to ask the Derby police. It might be Oxford. That’s the next town over.”

“Would that be a problem?” Gregor asked. “If it was in Oxford instead of Derby?”

“No, no,” Roger Dornan said. “It’s just a question of who we ask the favor of, that’s all. I like Derby a little better than I like Oxford because I know Hank Balderak fairly well. I don’t have to be too polite about what I want from him. It helps that you’re looking for something in that particular neighborhood.”

“You’ve been having drug problems in that neighborhood?” Gregor asked.

Roger Dornan smiled wanly. “I don’t have any problems with that neighborhood. It’s not in my jurisdiction. The town police forces have a problem with it, though. All kinds of problems. Have you been out there, Mr. Demarkian?”

“Once.”

“Once might not have been enough to do it. To get the full flavor of it, you’d have to go out there on a Saturday night. Or on New Year’s Eve. Now, that would be an experience. You do understand, though, that this particular house, number forty-seven, hasn’t been involved in any drug investigations so far.”

“Can you be sure?” Gregor asked.

Roger Dornan turned the map book around so that Gregor could see it. The maps were in black and white, with little red crosses dotted over them. Roger Dornan pointed to a spot on the middle of the left-hand page. Looking closer, Gregor could see a snaking black line that was meant to represent the Housatonic River.

“No red,” Roger Dornan said. “Every time we go into any place in the area on a drugs call, we mark the location on these maps with a red
ex
. And we keep each other informed. Derby. Oxford. Stepney. Branford. We’re not exactly computer literate and technologically coordinated, but we do try.”

“Would you have any other information on that house?” Gregor asked curiously. “Do you keep records on fires and arrest calls and that sort of thing?”

“Not on a house that hasn’t had a drug connection, we don’t,” Roger Dornan said. “And we wouldn’t keep that kind of soft information on a place in Derby or Oxford anyway. You could ask the local police forces there, if you really wanted to know.”

“What is it you want to know?” Philip Brye asked Gregor. “I thought this thing you were looking for was singular.”

“It is,” Gregor said. “It is. I was just curious, that’s all. It might be interesting to see what the record is like. Domestic disputes. Disturbing the peace. Child abuse reports—although there might not be any of those, that far back. I don’t know how the law operated in Connecticut when Tim Bradbury was a child.”

“It operated the way the law operated everywhere in those days,” Philip Brye said. “Meaning it didn’t. You can have all this information for the asking if this plan of yours works, you know, Gregor. Once the police actually arrest somebody, you can get anything you want.”

“Maybe I will,” Gregor said softly.

Roger Dornan looked down at his book of maps and scowled. “I just want to get one thing straight. What you two want me to do here—what my friend Phil wants me to do here, which is why I’ve been listening to this request at all—is to ask for a warrant to search the house at forty-seven Stephenson in connection with an ongoing investigation. And then I’m supposed to take the two of you with me.”

“Right,” Philip Brye said. “To be specific, you’re supposed to take him with you,” he jerked his head in the direction of Gregor Demarkian, “because he’s the one who knows what we’re interested in.”

“You won’t be lying, you know,” Gregor said. “This is a search in connection with an ongoing investigation.”

“If you talk to old Judge Varley, you won’t have to say much of anything at all,” Philip Brye said. “That’s what I was hoping you’d do, Roger, because it’s the only way I can think of to get around telling Tony Bandero.”

“I know.” Roger Dornan was still scowling. “You two are absolutely sure this is absolutely necessary?”

“Positive,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“There’s no other way to get this done.”

“I’ve been through this problem in my head a dozen times, Roger,” Philip Brye said. “I can’t think of one.”

“Let’s try this,” Roger Dornan said. “You’re both sure that there’s no other way to successfully complete the investigation you’re working on without getting this done, this way.”

“No,” Gregor Demarkian said. “But there’s no way to be absolutely sure that we can get this murderer arrested and tried unless we go about this this way. We can go about this in the ordinary manner, Mr. Dornan. We can inform Tony Bandero of what we want to do and let him turn it into a media circus. But if we do that, I don’t think we will see an arrest, and I’m sure we won’t see a conviction.”

Roger Dornan rubbed his face with his hands. “Shit,” he said. “All right, Mr. Demarkian. I’ll take your word for it. You’ll have to give me a couple of hours to make a few phone calls and fill in the paperwork. You both ought to be very grateful that I don’t like Tony Bandero any more than you do.”

“We are,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“It’s not like you’ve never done this before,” Philip Brye said. “I really didn’t invent this idea out of a fervid imagination. I heard about that case of Carol Dillerby’s—”

Roger Dornan shot Philip Brye an absolutely poisonous look. “I’m not saying I haven’t done it before,” he barked. “I’m not saying I’m the only one who’s ever done it, either. I’d just like to make sure it was worth it in case I get caught.”

N
OBODY GOT CAUGHT. NOT
then, anyway. The process seemed to take forever, but it was a process, and by four o’clock that afternoon, Gregor and Philip Brye and Roger Dornan were standing by the side of the road in front of the little collection of shacks that lined the Housatonic River on the Derby side. Connie Hazelwood was still in her taxi. A pair of police officers in the uniforms of the Derby Police Department had parked their cruiser half onto the slick cold grass. The cruiser was tilted slightly downward, like a car that had not quite gone off the side of a cliff.

Four o’clock in the afternoon in December is dark. The lights in the house on the hill behind them were lit. The shacks in front of them were showing light, too, although in some places that was only the light of a flickering television screen. There was a flickering light on in the house of the retarded woman who lived next door to number 47. It seemed to be a candle or a kerosene lamp. The two uniformed patrolmen were making a circuit of Alissa’s Bradbury’s shack. When they came back to the roadside, they climbed the hill again and joined Gregor Demarkian and Philip Brye and Roger Dornan.

“The place is completely boarded up,” one of them said. “The only way in is to break in.”

“You’ve got permission to break in if you have to,” Roger Dornan said.

“Let’s make sure we’ve all got flashlights,” Gregor said. “I don’t think there’s any electricity on in that house.”

They all had flashlights except Philip Brye, who said it never would have occurred to him. Connie Hazelwood gave him the one she kept in her glove compartment. It was small and inadequate, but it would keep him from tripping over himself in the dark.

“The only door’s over on this side,” one of the patrolmen said, leading the group to the river side of the house. Gregor had stood on the steps to it while he talked to the woman with Down’s syndrome next door. Now one of the patrolmen climbed the steps and tugged at the board nailed across the screen.

“Watch out,” the other patrolman said. “Those steps are rotted right through.”

The first patrolman got out a claw hammer he had hanging from his utility belt and tried that on one of the nails holding up the board. It didn’t work and he cursed softly and put the hammer back and took up the crowbar instead. The crowbar bit into the soft wood and came up with splinters and a soft substance like wood putty. The patrolman put the crowbar back in his belt and used his hands instead. He got a grip on the middle of the board and pulled. The board came away like paper.

“Bad plywood and rotten on top of it,” he said, clearing away the remaining wood with his hands. He pulled at the screen door and it came open without complaint. He pushed at the door inside that and it came open, too. “No locks,” he said, stepping into the shack.

Gregor followed the patrolman inside and looked around. Coming in the door, you walked right into a tiny room meant to be a combination living room-dining room-kitchen. The kitchen consisted of a single wall of cabinets and small appliances. The dining room consisted of a small round table and two chairs. The living room consisted of a couch and an ancient television set. Even in the bad light given off by the flashlights, Gregor could see that there were thick layers of dust over everything. Some of the dust would have been disturbed, of course, but they could come back for that. They could pull the boards off the windows and do it in the daylight later.

“Find the bathroom,” Gregor said.

One of the patrolmen made a comment about how a place like this ought to have an outhouse. Gregor ignored him and went through the only other door beside the outside one that he could see. He found himself in a small square space with two other doors opening onto it. Gregor shone his flashlight into the closest of these doorways and found the bedroom. He shone his flashlight into the other and found the bathroom. It wasn’t much of a bathroom. Half the floor appeared to be rotted out.

“It’s cold as hell in here and it still smells bad,” Philip Brye said.

Gregor shone his flashlight in the direction of the toilet, and then into the toilet and then onto the walls next to the toilet.

“There,” he said finally. “In that corner.”

“What’s in that corner?”

“Vomit,” Gregor said. “Considerably dried, of course. There should be more on his clothes.”

“On what clothes?” Roger Dornan sounded confused.

“Tim Bradbury’s,” Gregor said. He backed out of the bathroom. “They’ll be in here, I expect,” he said, meaning in the bedroom. “Left in a heap, probably, unless our murderer was smart enough to get rid of them right away. I don’t see that there would have been any need to bother, though. It wasn’t like there was any danger of anyone coming out here any time soon.”

“I would think there would be,” Philip Brye said. “If I were a cop, I’d come here practically right away. After all, it was his mother’s house.”

Gregor played his flashlight from one corner of the room to another. The room was small, but it was crammed with stuff. There were discarded clothes everywhere. Gregor turned his attention to the floor. The floors in the living room and the hall were carpeted. The floor in the bathroom was covered with linoleum. This floor wasn’t covered at all. It was made of wood, but not wood planks. It was composed of cheap sheets of plywood. The whole house was made of plywood, Gregor thought. If somebody put up a shack just like it today, it would be made of pressboard.

The plywood floor was dirty and warped, but otherwise untouched,

“Do you think the two of you could move the bed?” Gregor asked the patrolman nearest him. “I want to see what’s underneath it.”

“Probably rat droppings,” the patrolman said, but he got to work.

The bed wasn’t hard to move, in spite of all the clothes and bottles piled on top of it. When it was out of the way, Gregor got down on his knees and shone the flashlight on what had been uncovered. The plywood was dirty and warped here, too.

“We’re going to have to go through all the clothes in this room until we find Tim Bradbury’s,” he said absently, looking at the seams between the boards. “We aren’t going to absolutely need them, but they wouldn’t be bad to have. Wait a minute. There it is.”

“There what is?” Philip Brye asked.

“The difference,” Gregor said. He stood up and pointed his flashlight at the floor. “Right there,” he said. “If these two officers would be kind enough to pull up the floor starting right there—”

By now the two Derby patrolmen were no longer interested in asking questions. They got right down on their knees and went at the relevant place on the floor with hammers and crowbars. This wood didn’t splinter as easily as the wood that had covered the door had. It was newer. One of the patrolmen got up a corner of the board and tugged at it. It bent in his hand, but it didn’t break.

“It’s the river,” he said apologetically. “Everything this close to the water gets wet.”

“I’ve got it,” the other patrolman said.

The board was made of very good plywood indeed. It came off in a piece, barely splintered where the nails had been driven into it. Gregor was willing to bet that the nails were of a better quality than the ones used in the rest of the shack, too.

“What the hell is that?” the patrolman asked, peering into the hole left by the discarded plywood board. Then he blanched. “Oh, Christ,” he said.