Old School Bones (7 page)

“JESUS, let me guess. This isn’t a social call. You drove all the way out here on the Cape to ask me for a favor. Like a big fucking favor. Am I right, Rambo?”

Detective Lou Votolatto leans back in his swivel chair, pushes back from his desk. Stretches his long legs out, exposing mismatched socks. One blue, one gray. He cups his nose between the fingers of both hands, sighs. The little cubicle in the West Barnstable state police barracks seems the size of a squirrel cage.

“I’m on my knees, Lou.”

“I thought you quit the law … The fishing sucks right now, eh?”

“We’ve been stormed in … so I’m trying to help out a friend.”

“Oh Christ. I can’t even imagine what you got yourself into this time. Please don’t tell me your dragon lady client has reappeared in Provincetown, and we are going to be dancing a tango around her immigration status again.”

“I haven’t heard from Tuki.”

“Well consider it a minor blessing. That little petunia had you so tied in knots, most of the time you didn’t know your asshole from your ear.”

“I need to get this tested.” He hands the detective an open can of Red Bull.

“What’s this?”

“Maybe evidence a kid was murdered.”

“A little kid?”

“Seventeen-year-old girl. She died about two weeks ago at the Tolchester-Coates School.”

“That place on the edge of Boston? Where our illustrious politicians send their kids?”

“Some of them. The smart ones.”

“No shit? A girl died there? How come I didn’t hear about it?”

He says the M.E. ruled it a suicide. The school seems to have kept a pretty tight lid on publicity.

“Yeah, and news seems to travel by dogsled on the Cape at this time of year. Can you believe all these freaking blizzards?!”

He looks out the window at ten-foot piles of snow rimming the parking lot.

“How in hell does a nice Portagee fisherboy like you get involved in a prep school scandal?”

“I’m not involved. I’m just trying to help out a friend.”

“Ten to one there is at least one really pretty woman involved.”

“Come on, Lou.”

“You think someone offed this poor kid with a can of Red Bull? Are you pulling my chain, Rambo?”

“What do you know about rohypnol?”

“You mean roofies? R-2, rope? Someone date-raped this kid?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. The autopsy doesn’t say.”

“Then what? She died how?”

“Wrists slit. Razor blade. She bled to death in a bathtub. Girls dormitory.”

The detective winces. “I hate that one.”

He asks if Votolatto has ever heard of someone knocking out a victim with some kind of drug, then killing her.

“Yeah, sure it happens. But I’ve never seen anyone make a murder look like a wrist job. At least not well enough to fool an M.E.”

That’s what bothers him, he says. Could be this really is just a suicide. Rohypnol is undetectable in the body after less than twenty-four hours, but if this girl had been knocked out when someone cut her open, wouldn’t traces of the drug remain in the corpse? If she was dead, she couldn’t metabolize the drug.

“What put you onto roofies? I mean, who thinks someone wanted to harm this girl?”

He tells him about Gracie and the other girls that lived in the dorm. About Awasha. How they all swear Liberty Baker was too emotionally grounded to kill herself. And she was afraid of knives.

“But here’s the thing. She got a threatening message the day before she died.”

“So why aren’t the local cops and the CPAC guys up there all over this?”

“The M.E.’s report. No signs of violence, no alcohol, no drugs.”

“Sounds like a done deal.”

“Will you test the Red Bull for me? So some of these survivors can get on with their lives? Isn’t there a standard toxicology kit you guys use to test for this stuff?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t test for roofies. And quite a lot of other stuff.”

“Is this the same kit the M.E. would have used for the autopsy?”

“No doubt.”

“So he might not have tested for roofies at all?”

“Not if he had no reason to suspect them.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” The detective sets the can down on his desk. “Maybe I can get some tests run … You want to tell me about this dead girl?”

“A real superstar. Track, biology, singer. A disadvantaged kid on scholarship from Mattapan.”

“Race?”

He pauses. Takes a deep breath. Swallows some saliva. “Black. Well, biracial actually.”

“How come that was hard for you to say?”

A soft whisper in his ear. “You’re not lily white, are you?”

They are in a crowd of spring breakers at the swim-up bar, a saltwater pool at a hotel on Paradise Island, Nassau. The Republic of the Bahamas. More than a hundred teenagers are dancing in the pool, flirting, getting trashed. Mostly college kids from the South. But some preppies from New England, too. Like him and his three pals from St. John’s of the Harbor, Newport, RI. This is a yearly ritual for his friends, real preppies, born and bred. But totally new for him, a one-year post-grad student on scholarship to St. J’s to play football.

Ziggy Marley’s jamming over the PA system. “Tomorrow People.” People are singing along, the song their anthem.

He feels his arms slide around her smooth, dark back. Holds her against him. Sways a little to the music. He smells the mix of salt, gin, lime on her face. Long African hair pulled back tight against her head, ponytail hanging from a bright orange band. This island girl. This Bahamian.

She’s from Nassau, a district called Over-the-Hill. Here with a few friends for the Break. For the Americans. A high schooler like him. Crashing the party.

“Are you black?”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe.” Her breath on his neck. Her hips easing against his. His head buzzes from the beer.

“It’s kind of a long story … Want to walk down to the beach?”

She looks anxiously at her three friends. They are mounted on the shoulders of his buddies, having a water fight in the middle of the pool.

Her eyes black, wet. Begging a question he can’t hear, can’t even imagine.

“It’s getting dark. The beach can be a dangerous place.”

“God’s own truth, Cassie. You’ll be safe with me.”

“Promise?”

WHEN she finds Gracie and Tory, they are in the girls’ locker room after swimming practice, wrapped in towels, fluffing their hair with blow dryers.

“We need to talk!”

“Now?”

“Just keep your towels on and follow me.”

She’s wearing a flannel maroon robe, so long its hem drags on the floor as she leads the girls into the faculty women’s locker complex. The place seems empty. Beyond the rows of lockers, she opens a door that leads into a conference room with a TV, dining table, sofa, stereo, phone, kitchenette, sports magazines.

As soon as the girls are in this room, she locks the door behind them and grabs three plastic bottles of water from the fridge.

“What’s going on, Doc P?”

“I’ll tell you in the steam room, Gracie.” She hands each girl a water bottle.

“What?”

She nods to an opaque glass door. Steam hisses from vents on the other side.

“There’s a steam bath in here? The faculty gets a steam bath?” Tory’s eyes are big, black agates.

“Let’s go. In girls! Private times and places to talk around this school seem in short supply these days.”

The steam room is a hot fog, the vapor so thick she can barely see the silvery silhouettes of the girls sitting on the white-tiled bench seat to her left, backs against the wall.

“Come on, girls. Help me out here. Are you hiding something from me?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Gracie says. “Really, Doc P, whose side are you on?”

“That’s not fair, Tory. And you know it. I’m putting my job on the line for you girls and Liberty.”

“But all of a sudden you’ve gotten so suspicious … and, well, paranoid.”

She wipes the sweat from her eyes. Takes a long drink of water, tries to feel its smooth chill sliding down her throat, cooling her heart.

“Just tell me about Kevin, OK?”

“I don’t see why you’re suddenly so interested in everything about Kevin. And why we can’t talk about all this at Beedle House, your office, or the Tuck Shop?” Gracie’s voice echoes off the walls, pained, annoyed really.

“I don’t trust those places anymore. I swear this school has ears. You know, Kevin’s father is an old friend of the headmaster. The last thing I want to do is start a rumor, OK? Please just bear with me … and trust me. Be honest.”

“So you think Kevin hurt Lib?”

“Didn’t you tell me he was the one who started Liberty on her Red Bull kick, Tory?”

“Yeah …”

“Well Michael gave it to a detective friend of his to check out.”

“They found something nasty in that can didn’t they, Doc? That’s why you’re acting so freaked.”

She says she doesn’t know. But the Red Bull suddenly appeared in her apartment. Out of the blue. Liberty couldn’t have put it there, because she was out of Red Bull. But what if she saw Kevin that night and he gave her a can? Or maybe he left the can himself?

“I don’t think he gave her the Red Bull,” Gracie says.

“Why?”

“They were having a fight. She was mad at him.”

She suddenly feels dizzy. “When did you plan on telling me this?”

“I’m sorry, Doc. It seemed like no biggie. Just the usual guy trouble. You know how that goes?”

She needs to gasp for air. But when she opens her mouth and inhales, the steam sears her lungs. “Christ!”

“We’re sorry, Doc … You think someone else left that can at your place? Like went in there on his own or something?”

“I don’t know. But it sure as hell is not going to look good for me if that Red Bull turns up poisoned.”

“You really think Kevin was snooping around in your apartment? It was like his can?”

“Tell me. Is he into drugs?”

Nobody says anything. The heat kicks on again. Awasha is listening to the bubbling and crackling of the steam when she hears the faint clunk of a door closing outside in the conference room. She stiffens, is rising to her feet to see who’s outside, who could have a key to unlock the door, when Tory speaks. She says she smoked pot a few times with Kevin. Just a little bud. Down by Hourglass Lake. Well they did some X together once before a dance. Actually, twice.

“Liberty, too?”

“No. She really wasn’t into that stuff, Doc.”

“Kevin just shared these drugs?”

“Well … we gave him money to get the stuff.”

“So he’s the go-to guy for drugs around T-C?”

“He has his connections. Like it’s high school, Doc.” A viper’s uncoiling in her core.

“Does he write racist notes, too?” Her words sound halfway between a scream and a prayer.

HE’S draining the oil in the
Rosa Lee’s
big Caterpillar when he gets the detective’s call. The engine room smells of hot sulfur, baking paint, batteries gassing off a little. He doesn’t know why he isn’t wearing rubber gloves to do this job. Maybe he still gets a thrill from getting covered in hot, black oil up to his elbows. Whatever. It takes him so long to wipe off his hands and fish the phone out of his jeans pocket, that he misses the call.

All he’s left with is the message:

“Where the hell are you, Rambo? I got some news on your Red Bull. You want to meet me about four-thirty to talk about this? We’re not dealing with roofies here. But you sure as hell hit pay dirt.”

Votolatto’s message says the lab rats found of GHB. Gamma hydroxy butyrate. Another date rape drug. Called
liquid-X
and
scoop
on the street. The Red Bull had something like ten times the normal dose or GHB to knock out somebody. Enough to put a person into a coma—or stop a heart if she had finished the whole can.

He feels the blood draining from his eyes. Drops the phone away from his ear, Lou Votolatto’s message still playing. A scratchy voice, saying something about meeting for chowder at a bar in Woods Hole, then fading to nothing. He hears only the whir of the nor’west wind topside, the groan of the Rosa Lee tugging at her lines, the squeal of the steel hull against the heavy rubber fenders of the fish boat rafted inboard. Waves slapping the boat windward.

His back sags against the metal wall, knees buckling as he slides slowly down the bulkhead. He is sitting on the diamondplate catwalk around the engine, staring blankly at the knees of his jeans. Already the sharp scent of salt, gin, a whole lot of limes, rising in his mind.

On the beach in the dark. The sky raining stars. They sit facing each other in their bathing suits on the sand, warm surf swirling in tiny waves around them. His bare legs, bare feet, stretching out before him, pressing the soles of her feet.

They both lean back, braced by their arms. Cassie wants to try this odd form of intimacy she read about in a Kurt Vonnegut novel,
Cat’s Cradle.
Boko-maru.

“Close your eyes,” she says.
“
When two people are like this, you know, sole-to-sole, they cannot lie.”

He feels a little surge of pressure, the tips of her toes rolling gently against his. Knows he may soon admit to things that he never talks about with anyone.

“So where did you get your dark blood?”

The question is a wasp in his head. His mind filling with pictures of the long-dead woman he called Vóvó Chocolate.

“It came from an island a long way from here. But maybe not so different.”

“In Africa?”

“Near. São Vicente. The Cape Verdes.”

“The green capes.” Her voice is lazy from an afternoon of gin and tonics.

“My mother’s mother. She died when I was little. Spoke the old language.”

“You mean she sang her words Bahamian style, mon?”

“Only in
Crioulo.”

“African.”

He says
Criuolo
is a blend of African languages and Portuguese.
“
A callaloo stew, we call that. Kind of like you … and me.”

“Oh …”

“Except you got more from your father, the European side, right? I got most of the African.”

He opens his eyes. Looks at her, lids still closed, the face of the moon’s daughter tilting toward Venus. Her body a mermaid’s at rest.
Cristo.

“And you don’t pay no never-mind, to your African blood.”

“Until I come to a place like this …” The words gush out.

His heart quivers.

“Is that a confession?”

The surf thunders offshore on a reef. He says nothing. Just wonders who this new self is. This
Crioulo.

“So maybe we could be long lost cousins.” She reaches out for his hand.
“
Kissing cousins.”

“What are you going to do now, Rambo?”

He eyes the detective over his nearly-empty mug of draft. Watches from his barstool as the fire in the wood stove at the center of the room sputters and flares. Outside the bay windows of this Woods Hole pub called Captain Kidd’s, Eel Pond is a wind-whipped snowfield dotted with a few lobster boats and a small sloop frozen at their moorings.

“That’s why I’m here, Lou. I need some serious advice.”

“You are totally fucked when it comes to the chain of evidence.”

“What about prints?”

“A lot of people have touched that can of Red Bull, including you and me. Didn’t you say you found it like two weeks after that poor girl’s death?”

“It was in her dorm counselor’s apartment, by the stereo in the living room.”

“Which is not where she died.”

“Not even close.”

“And no one saw your dead girl with the Red Bull?”

He says no. If you believe her friends, she was addicted to the stuff. Usually kept a stash of it. But the night before she died, one of Liberty’s pals drank the last one.

“What you’re saying is the very existence of this can is a mystery. That the house counselor doesn’t drink the stuff. Never saw our can before the morning you found it.”

“She found it.”

“How do you know she didn’t plant this thing?”

“Why?”

“As a distraction? As manufactured evidence to make it look like there’s been a crime here? As bait to keep you around? Maybe she wants your bod. I don’t know. I can think of a million reasons.”

“She’s not like that. Her mother used to be my landlady. A total sweetheart.”

The detective shakes his head. Disbelief. “So that excuses everything.”

He says she seemed totally surprised to see that can. It was not in some obvious place. Next to a stereo on a shelf. Nobody would have been looking in that corner of the room if he hadn’t gotten interested in her album collection. She didn’t even want him or the girls in her apartment.

“So maybe she does have something to hide.”

“We all have our secrets. But I don’t—”

“Someone died, pal. We’re talking about more than Miss Lonelyheart’s private collection of peekaboo undies here.”

“Hey. Come on, Lou. That’s not fair to—”

“You want another beer?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Look, my young fisher friend, you got a serious problem. You just found a smoking gun and somebody nearby turned up dead.”

“You think I should tell the local officers? The M.E. and the state CPAC guys in Middlesex county?”

The detective leans back on his bar stool, locks his hands behind his head and stares at the ceiling. “Why the hell did I ever get mixed up in this?”

“I don’t know. Because you’re a good guy? Because you don’t go for people killing the children of the world?”

“Naw. That’s you, Rambo … I just fucking felt sorry for you. Now, Christ, I could be up to my ears in another one of your vigilante justice schemes.”

“What?”

“If you tell the cops about the Red Bull now, they’ll be all over you, your buddy the Indian chick, and those high school girls. There are laws, you know, against withholding or tampering with evidence.”

“But isn’t that what you are telling me to do?”

“Whoa, pal. Hold on here. I, Lou Votolatto, am not telling you to do anything. I’m just saying the system will make a lot of people’s lives miserable if you hand over that Red Bull now.”

“So now what?”

The detective signals the bartender. Suddenly he wants two shots of rye with his bowl of chowder. “This is your gig, buddy boy.”

He sighs, squeezes his eyes shut. Thinks. “I’ve got to ask you again. You think you could get the can dusted for prints? Maybe we will find something interesting. Maybe we can at least learn if Liberty Baker ever held this can. And maybe there’s some DNA.”

“Do you know how many laws you are asking me to break?”