Judgment of the Grave (14 page)

“I need to talk to Andy Lynch,” Quinn said. “Is he around?”

“Who are you?” The woman sitting behind the front desk at the station looked at him suspiciously.

“Detective Tim Quinn. Cambridge police. He’ll know who I am when you tell him.”

“Well, he’s busy right now.”

“I think we should let him decide that,” Quinn said. “If you would just tell him…”

The woman looked exasperated, but she picked up the phone and dialed. “There’s a Detective Tim Quinn here to see Detective Lynch. Yes. No, I…Okay.” She hung up the phone. “You can go in,” she told Quinn. “It’s the second door on the right.”

Quinn was just about to knock on the closed door when it opened and Andy came out with a huge grin on his face. “Quinny!”

“Hey, Andy.” He was just the same, with that spiky dark red hair and the off-center nose from some childhood fight or other. “It’s great to see you.”

“You too. You look just the same. Woulda known you anywhere.”

“Yeah, just a little older, right? I would have known you too. Never got that nose fixed, huh?”

Andy grinned. “No, turns out the ladies like it.”

“That’s what they tell you, anyway.”

They laughed and Quinn felt inordinately happy. Andy Lynch! He couldn’t believe how good it was to see him.

Andy gestured for him to sit down on a folding chair across from the desk. “Sorry about this,” he said, gesturing around at the room. “I’m setting up camp here for the investigation, but I don’t have any of my own stuff. So, I couldn’t believe it when they told me you were out here. What’s this thing you’re working on? Missing-persons case?”

Quinn updated him on Kenneth Churchill and told him about what he’d learned at the encampment about Cecily Whiting. “It seems like something must have happened at the reenactment. Something that disturbed Churchill, upset him. I just can’t figure out what it was. I asked around and nobody could remember anything strange happening that weekend, like a fight or anything. But as you know, the reenactment wasn’t far from where they found the body.”

“You know when your guy died yet?”

“Saturday or Sunday. He’d been gone about a week or so.”

“So that fits.”

Andy looked up. “You think he had something to do with our guy?”

Quinn shrugged. “It’s a question I gotta ask myself. I assume you still haven’t identified him?”

“Nope. He seems to have dropped in from the eighteenth century. Seriously. No wallet, no watch, no jewelry, no tattoos, no signs of surgery. Nothing. The guy doesn’t even have any unusual dental work. Nobody’s asking about him, nobody knows anything.”

“Any word on cause of death? I mentioned to Chief Tyler that Churchill had quite an arsenal in his house. And I found out today that he bought a new reproduction musket the weekend he disappeared, fitted with a bayonet. I got the specs on the bayonet for you.” He handed over the paper. “Might narrow it down.”

“That was you? Thanks. Yeah, it came back that he was stabbed nine or ten times with a blade about the same width and length as a bayonet. We didn’t get a weapon at the scene, but if Churchill had something to do with it, he could have taken it with him. So, what do you want to do?”

“I can’t get over the feeling that Churchill’s still alive. It just seems like he would have shown up somewhere, you know? Now that we know there’s a good chance he had an affair with Cecily Whiting, I think I want to talk to her. I’m out of my jurisdiction, though. I can interview her as part of my missing-persons thing, but it’s beginning to look more and more like this is all connected. And I thought I should get you in on it.”

“Well, I appreciate that. Any help I can get on this, I’m gonna take. Check this out.” Andy took a
Boston Globe
off the filing cabinet and handed it to Quinn.
MYSTERY BODY IN CONCORD BAFFLES POLICE,
the headline read.

“You wouldn’t believe the pressure I’m getting from the D.A.,” Andy went on. “And practically every day I’ve got these crazy guys dressed up in Revolutionary War costumes coming into my office to tell me about how they spend their weekends. Jeez! Anyway, why don’t you go ahead and talk to her. Don’t say anything about the guy in the woods. Just say that you’re looking into Churchill’s disappearance. Tell her you know about the affair, but don’t tell her how. See what she says. How did this guy know about it, anyway? Did Churchill tell him? I’m wondering how many people knew about it.”

“Yeah, I’m wondering the same thing,” Quinn said. “But I don’t think Churchill was going around telling people. At least not in so many words. This guy, his friend from the reenactment, said it was the way he talked about her. He said he kind of went on and on about how wonderful she was, how smart she was, et cetera, and finally one day he asked if there was anything going on between them and Churchill kind of raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t actually say yes.”

“Okay, well, good luck. Let me know what happens. Where are you living these days?”

“Somerville. Not far from the old neighborhood, though it’s a different place now. But I’m staying at the Minuteman Inn here in town for a bit. It was where Churchill stayed when he was out here. I interviewed the guy who owns the inn really briefly this morning. He didn’t have too much to say, showed me the guest records. Churchill stayed at the inn six times over the last year. I’ll have to sit down with him for longer. Oh, hey, I just realized I should tell you about kind of a weird coincidence. The woman who was with the kid when he found the body, well, I know her. She helped me out on a case once.”

“There’s something weird about that chick,” Andy said. “I’m still not sure she’s being totally honest with me. It just seems weird that she’d follow the kid into the woods, you know.”

“I think she was just worried about him,” Quinn said. “She’s a pretty trustworthy person, Andy. Seriously.”

“Yeah, well, she’s probably off the hook, anyway. The guy was long dead before she and the kid got there.”

As they were walking out, Andy grinned and said, “Hey, how’s Maura?”

Quinn turned and stared at him. “I guess you hadn’t heard,” he said. “She…she passed away back in the spring.”

Andy looked stricken. “Jeez, I’m sorry, Quinny. I didn’t know. I’m not really in touch with folks in the old neighborhood so much anymore. Shit, that’s awful.”

Quinn forced his voice into cheerfulness. “Well, I’m doing okay. I’ve got the baby, so that helps. She’s doing great, getting bigger.”

“What’s her name?”

“Megan.”

“Like Megan Reardon, huh?”

Quinn laughed. “Yeah, I never thought about that. If I had, we probably wouldn’t have named her Megan.” Megan Reardon had been the older sister of one of their junior-high friends and the source of much of their adolescent sexual speculation.

“Good. Well, I’ll see you.” Andy watched him walk to his car and when Quinn turned around to wave, he remembered something he hadn’t thought about in a long time, how he had been walking home from school once and a couple of older kids had started messing with him, pushing him and trying to make him lash out so they’d have an excuse to hit him. Quinn had been just on the verge of getting a beating when Andy had run by, screaming at the top of his lungs, “It’s the fuckin’ cops. Don’t tell them where I went.” The boys had stopped messing with Quinn and gone to see what Andy had done.

Quinn still remembered the way Andy had looked when he’d found him a few minutes later behind the corner deli. “They leave ya alone?” he’d asked, his crooked nose twisting with his smile. “I bet they did, didn’t they?”

The Minuteman Museum was nearly empty and Quinn found Cecily Whiting—looking exactly the way Sweeney had described her—washing the glass covers of a set of display boxes in one of the rear galleries. He had taken a quick look around as he’d come in, telling the elderly woman behind the ticket counter that he was there on business, and had actually found himself intrigued by the few displays he’d seen, biographical portraits of the various men who had made history at Lexington and Concord.

“Mrs. Whiting?” he asked, feeling awkward coming into the gallery where she was intent on her work.

“Yes?” She looked up and he thought he saw something wary in her eyes. He’d seen that look before in the eyes of people who were expecting bad news.

“I’m Detective Tim Quinn from the Cambridge Police Department. I was wondering if we could chat for a few minutes?”

“Of course,” she said, dropping the bottle of Windex and her rag onto the floor and standing up. She was a pretty woman, but there was something cold and inaccessible about her. She crossed her arms protectively over her chest and then led him through a door behind one of the exhibits and into a small conference room with a movie screen and projector at one end of a long table. She sat down at the head of the table, and he chose a chair halfway down so he could look directly at her while they talked.

“Mrs. Whiting, I’m here today to ask you—”

“Ms.,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s Ms. Whiting. I’m not married anymore.”

“Oh, okay. Ms. Whiting, as I said, I’m from the Cambridge Police Department. We got a call on Monday from a woman named Beverly Churchill. Her husband, Kenneth Churchill, is a historian. He was doing research in Concord for a book he was working on. I guess he spent a lot of time at the museum. Anyway, he never came home after a reenactment and research trip the weekend of October second. There was a little piece in the local paper this morning and I don’t know if you saw it, but I was hoping to find out when the last time you saw him was.”

Her reaction was not what he’d expected. She had been so self-contained, her crossed arms and precise posture holding her entire body in check, and it was as though the invisible web that had been holding her together just collapsed. “Oh,” she said very loudly. “What…what do you mean?” Her arms flopped at her sides and her posture sagged.

“He seems to be missing. He hasn’t contacted his wife or family. I’m trying to talk to anyone who may have seen him in the last couple of weeks. When was the last time you saw him?” He had decided not to reveal that he had any suspicions about an affair. He had, after all, a legitimate reason for questioning her. She had helped Churchill with his research and he had spent a lot of time at the museum. In Quinn’s experience, it was much easier to get things out of people when they didn’t know how much you knew.

“Has something happened to him? Is he dead?” She looked up at him with eyes full of tears, but he had a strange sense of déjà vu and it struck him suddenly that she had the same expression on her face that Beverly Churchill had had on hers—sweet relief.

“We don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.” She was so open, so vulnerable, that he decided to go for the gold. “What was your relationship with Mr. Churchill?”

But she didn’t answer him. Instead, she leaned back in her chair and seemed to go off into her own world, talking almost to herself. “I’m such a horrible person,” she said. “All this time I’ve been so angry at him for not calling me back. And he may be hurt or dead. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Quinn waited. Sooner or later, he knew, it was all going to come out.

She had begun to cry and again he had the feeling that she was relieved. Finally she looked up at him. “We were seeing each other,” she said, tears still hovering in her eyes. “It started in February. He was coming down to do research for his book and he spent a lot of time here. We just kind of…fell into it. I don’t know how to explain it.” She looked up, embarrassed.

“So you had a romantic relationship?”

Her eyes narrowed a bit. “Of course, what did you think I meant?”

He took a deep breath. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

She seemed to calm down a bit. “I knew he was married, but he said that it had been over for a while, they were just staying together for their son. It’s such a cliché. My ex-husband had an affair before we divorced and I’m sure it’s what he told his…his new wife. But I didn’t care. I didn’t feel guilty at all. My son…my son had just gotten sick and it just was…it was escape.” She looked up at him as though she wanted him to agree with her that it was okay, that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but then she seemed to remember who he was and she crossed her arms again and she tried to regain her composure.

Quinn waited a moment and said, “So, you’d been seeing each other since February? Did he ever say anything about going away, about leaving his wife?”

“Sometimes we would talk about what it would be like, but then we’d come to our senses. It wasn’t just him. It was…well, with Pres sick, I…I felt like I was betraying him. Pres—that’s my son—he needed me. So, we would talk about it sometimes, about being together, but it was, you know, just talk. I think we both knew what the limits were.” But she didn’t sound too convinced as she said it.

“So, he never talked about going away on his own?”

“No, never. I mean, he had responsibilities. His teaching and his family. And his book. I know he loved me, but he was never going to love me the way he loved his book. I used to think that one of the reasons he was attracted to me was that I have this connection by marriage to Josiah Whiting. He wouldn’t have gone anywhere until the book was finished. No.” Her eyes widened. “That means something must have happened to him.”

“We don’t know that. You’d be surprised at how many people just go off. Stay away for a few weeks to figure out whatever it is they need to figure out, then go home. They’re usually amazed at how worried everyone was.” He waited to see if she was going to say anything else, then said, “You said he didn’t call you. When were you expecting him to get in touch?”

“He was down for an encampment that weekend. Usually we would meet after the encampments, but the Friday before I had called to tell him that I didn’t think we should see each other anymore. I was feeling guilty about his wife, about Pres. I decided we had to end things. So I told him I wouldn’t meet him. I told him not to call.” She was silent, staring down at the table.

“But you thought he would?” Quinn finally prompted.

“It was how it always went!” she almost screamed at him. Her thin face looked suddenly haggard, older. “I’d tell him not to call, and he always did. When he didn’t, I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe he’d finally decided to end things once and for all.”