Night Passage (17 page)

“You think her neck’s broken, Dukie?” Jesse said.

Vincent looked at the corpse again. Jesse knew he didn’t like it.

“I guess so,” Vincent said.

“Yeah, me too,” Jesse said. “Probably what killed her. You and Steve stand by with the ambulance for a while. We’ll have the county M.E. look at her, and there’ll be some state investigators along.”

“Why did he write ‘slut’ on her, Jesse?” DeAngelo said.

“Maybe the word means something special to him,” Jesse said.

“So is it the same guy that did the car and Captain Cat?”

“Might be,” Jesse said.

“But wouldn’t he know that it would connect him to the other crimes?”

Jesse smiled to himself at the TV locution his own officer was speaking in the presence of a murdered person. There were so many cop shows. It was hard for real cops not to start talking like them.

“Might want us to see the connection,” Jesse said. “Or it might be someone else who wants us to think there’s a connection.”

Most of the rest of the force had showed up, some in uniform, some dressed for off duty. For all of them it was their first murder and they stood by a little uneasily watching Jesse, except for Peter Perkins, who had stretched his crime-scene tape around the murder scene, and was now taking pictures. The other cops looked as if they envied him having something to do.

“John,” Jesse said. “You and Arthur put up some horses and keep people behind them.”

“There’s nobody around, Jesse.”

“There will be,” Jesse said. “Suitcase, you talk to the bus driver. Get everything she saw, thinks, hopes, dreams, whatever. Let her talk, pay attention. Ed, go in, talk to the principal. We’re going to have to talk with the kids, maybe we can do it class by class, find out if they saw anything. We also may have to search the school.”

“For what?” Burke said.

“Her clothes,” Jesse said. “I’d like to find her clothes.”

“Maybe he killed her someplace else and brought her body here nude,” Burke said.

“We find the clothes, it’ll help us decide that,” Jesse said. “The rest of you spread around and look for her clothes or anything else. Tire tracks, bloodstains. He whacked her around pretty good. But there’s no blood on the pavement.”

“Rain might have washed it,” DeAngelo said.

“Watch where you walk, go in wider and wider circles around the body. Maybe he hit her with something. See if you see anything. Anthony, start knocking on doors, see if anybody lives around here heard anything, or saw a car come into the school parking lot during the night.”

The cops did as they were told. They were happy to be given direction, happy to do something but stand and look at the battered body.

“Dukie,” Jesse said. “You can cover her. And pull the ambulance up so it screens her from the school. Doesn’t do the kids much good to look out at her all morning.”

Behind him in the parking lot, parents had begun to arrive. Already they had heard of a murder at the junior high school. Already they were there to see about their children. Jesse knew he’d have to talk with them. He knew a number of them would want to take their children home. He would like to have kept all the kids here until they had been questioned, but he knew he couldn’t and knew that trying to would accomplish nothing beyond his own aggravation. Other people were gathering too. Not parents. Just people from the town, who, as the word spread, began to gather silently as close to the scene as they could. He saw Hasty Hathaway moving importantly through the gathering crowd with a plastic rain guard over his snap-brimmed hat. Probably wearing rubbers too, Jesse thought. Jo Jo Genest was there, hatless, in a crinkle finish trench coat. Jesse’s glance paused on Jo Jo. Jo Jo returned it and smiled. Jesse’s glance lingered a thoughtful moment and then moved on. He looked for Abby, but didn’t see her. Past the silent crowd Jesse saw the medical examiner’s car arriving, and behind it an unmarked state car. That would be the homicide guy.

Hathaway cleared the crowd and spoke to John DeLong guarding the barriers, and came on past him toward Jesse. I was right, Jesse thought. He’s wearing rubbers.

Jesse sat in his office at midnight with a state police captain named Healy, sipping single-malt scotch from a water glass. Healy had taken the bottle from his briefcase when he came in and set it on Jesse’s desk. The green-shaded desk lamp was the only light in the room. Outside the rain continued to mist down, too light for a drizzle, too heavy for a fog. The day’s dampness seemed to have incorporated the dampness of the shore and the scent of seawater was strong even though they were a half mile from the harbor. Except for the voices and the occasional creak of a chair when one of them shifted in it, the silence in the office and outside had the kind of weight that existed only in the middle of the night in a small town. Healy was about Jesse’s size but older, and a little thinner. His short hair was gray. He had on a gray suit, and a blue oxford shirt, and a red and blue striped tie. His black shoes were still polished this late in the day.

“You’re the homicide commander,” Jesse said.

“Yeah.”

Healy’s eyes had the flat look that Jesse had seen before. The eyes had seen everything and believed nothing. There was neither compassion nor anger in Healy’s eyes, just a kind of appraising patience that formed no prejudgments and came to conclusions slowly. Occasionally when Jesse had come unexpectedly upon his reflection in a mirror or a darkened window, he had seen that look in his own eyes.

“So how come we draw you?” Jesse said.

Healy shrugged, sipped a small taste of the scotch, held the glass up to the light for a moment, and looked at the color.

“I used to work up here, Essex County DA’s office. I live in Swampscott. So when the squeal came in I thought I’d swing by myself.”

“Chance to get out of the office for a while,” Jesse said.

Healy nodded.

“Don’t like the office,” he said. “But I like the Captain’s pay. Somebody told me you used to work homicide.”

“L.A.,” Jesse said. “Downtown.”

“You know Cronjager out there?”

“Yep.”

“So how’d you end up here?”

“Cronjager fired me. I was drinking on the job. This was the only job I got offered.”

“How you doing now? Tonight excluded.”

“I’m not drinking on the job,” Jesse said.

“It’s a good start,” Healy said. “Heard you used to play ball.”

“People do talk. Yeah, I was a shortstop. Dodger organization. Tore up my shoulder playing at Pueblo.” Jesse shrugged. “Sayonara.”

“I was a pitcher,” Healy said. “Phillies signed me.”

“And?”

“And the war came and I went. When I came home there was the wife, the kids. I went on the cops.”

“Miss it?” Jesse said.

“Every day,” Healy said.

Jesse nodded. They were both silent for a moment. Healy took another small sip of scotch.

“So what have we got,” he said.

“Got her I.D.’d,” Jesse said. “Name’s Tammy Portugal. Twenty-eight years old, divorced, two kids. Lived on the pond, other end of town. Left the kids with her mother yesterday afternoon, her alimony check always arrived on this date and the mother always took the kids, give her daughter a break, let her spend some of the alimony. Tammy was supposed to pick the kids up at noon today.” Jesse glanced at his watch without really seeing it. “Yesterday. When she didn’t show, the mother called us.”

“Where’s the husband?” Healy said.

“Don’t know. Mother says he took off two years ago, right after the divorce. Says he always sends his alimony on time. But she doesn’t know where he is.”

“And the alimony check came today?”

“Yesterday.” Again Jesse did the automatic glance at his watch. “Day before, actually.”

“So she must have cashed it before she went out,” Healy said.

“Yeah, and we could trace it. We’ll check on that in the morning. We didn’t get all of this until the bank closed. Even if she cashed it someplace else,” Jesse said, “it will probably clear through the Paradise Bank, and the president is one of our selectmen.”

“So he’ll be cooperative.”

“Probably,” Jesse said.

Healy looked at him and waited. Jesse didn’t add to the “probably.” Healy let it slide. Jesse saw him let it slide, and also saw him file it away. Stone has some reservations about the bank president.

“You got her movements established, prior to death?” Healy said.

“Not yet. Thought the M.E. might help us on that.”

“He might,” Healy said. “She had drunk a fair amount of alcohol.”

“I figured. And, single kid, twenty-eight, night out, she probably went to a place where she could meet guys.”

“Narrows it down,” Healy said.

“Well, maybe it does,” Jesse said. “I’m guessing she didn’t go clubbing in Boston. Not many people from this town go into Boston.”

“Christ no,” Healy said. “Must be fifteen miles away.”

“This is an insular town,” Jesse said. “She went clubbing, I figure she went around here.”

“Including Route One?”

“Yeah.”

“So you only got about five hundred clubs to check.”

“We’re talking to people who knew her. She may have had some favorite places. Most women don’t like to go to a strange place alone. She probably went to the same places or a few of the same places every time.”

“I can give you some help along Route One,” Healy said.

“I’ll take it. What else did the M.E. say?”

“Not too much that you couldn’t see looking at her. She’d been raped. She’d been beaten with a blunt instrument, possibly a human fist. Her neck was broken, which is almost certainly the cause of death. She wasn’t killed here. There’s no blood at all at the scene and there would have been. The word ‘slut’ was written on her with lipstick, probably hers, it matches traces found on her lips. You got any thoughts about ‘slut’?”

“You know it was spray-painted on one of our squad cars, and later the station-house cat was killed and a sign was attached to it that said ‘slut.’ ”

“Sometimes words have private meanings to the people who use them,” Healy said, “especially if they’re nuts.”

Jesse nodded.

“You figure it’s the same person?” Healy said.

“Be a logical guess, and if it is it may not be about the victims, it may be about us,” Jesse said.

“Or it’s a copycat who wants you to think that?”

“You believe that?” Jesse said.

“I don’t believe anything, but it’s possible.”

“Yeah, but is it likely? This has got every mark of an unpremeditated act of rage or sadism or insanity or all of the above. It doesn’t have any hint of some kind of calculating smart guy who pretends to be part of the other deal to confuse us.”

“Unless the guy is even smarter than that and knows you’ll think that way.”

“How long you been a cop?” Jesse said.

“Forty-one years,” Healy said.

“Got me by some, but in forty-one years how many criminal masterminds you run into on a murder case?”

Healy smiled.

“About the same number you have,” he said.

“Which is the same number of big-league at-bats we got between us,” Jesse said.

“Which is zip,” Healy said.

They both sipped whiskey in the dim office.

“You got a suspect?” Healy said.

“Not based on evidence.”

“But you got somebody in mind.”

Jesse shrugged.

“Got a guy in town with maybe a grudge against the department, or probably, more accurate, a grudge against me.”

“Not many towns don’t have somebody like that,” Healy said. “Sort of goes with police work.”

“I know,” Jesse said.

“And you don’t care to tell me his name, anyway,” Healy said.

Jesse shrugged.

“Doesn’t seem right,” he said. “Even to you. I got absolutely nothing to back it up.”

Healy nodded. “You know the former chief here?”

“No.”

“You know he was murdered out in Wyoming?”

“Boy, you don’t miss much,” Jesse said.

“I like to read the stuff that comes through,” Healy said.

“Got blown up,” Jesse said. “On the road to Gillette.”

“Town like this doesn’t have a murder a decade,” Healy said. “You get two in a month.”

“Hate coincidence,” Jesse said. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah. You see any connection?”

“Not yet,” Jesse said.

“But you’re looking.”

“I’m going to.”

Healy nodded again.

“Course sometimes there are coincidences,” he said.

“We’re keeping it in mind,” Jesse said.

Healy nodded, finished his drink, refilled Jesse’s glass, and put the bottle in his briefcase.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

Hasty Hathaway wandered into Jesse’s office and closed the door behind him and came and sat with one leg on the corner of Jesse’s desk.

“What did that state police captain want?” he said.

“And good morning to you too, Hasty.”

Hathaway shook his head as if he had water in his ear.

“What did he want?”

“His name’s Healy,” Jesse said. “He’s the state homicide commander. He wanted to talk about Tammy Portugal’s murder.”

Hathaway shook his head again, slowly this time.

“We don’t want that, Jesse,” he said. “We solve our own problems here.”

“I haven’t got the forensic resources for a full-fledged homicide investigation, Hasty. He does.”

Hathaway reached over and gave Jesse a clap on the shoulder.

“We have every confidence in you and your men, Jesse, we don’t need the state government sticking its nose under the edge of our tent, so to speak.”

Jesse hated to be touched and he especially hated to be clapped on the shoulder.

“I’m a good cop,” Jesse said. “But a good cop is mostly the product of a good support system. We’re not geared for a homicide investigation.”

“We don’t want that policeman nosing into our business,” Hathaway said. His geniality was dissipating.

“Well, I’m not sure there’s much to be done about that,” Jesse said. “Even if I didn’t want him, which I do, I got no way to keep him out.”

Hathaway was silent. One leg slung over the corner of Jesse’s desk, he drummed quietly with the fingers of his right hand on the desktop. His face seemed to have tightened in on itself. The lines had deepened and the pale blue eyes seemed smaller. He looked feral.