Playing God (7 page)

Burgess rubbed the back of his neck and thought about sandwiches. Thick, oily subs dripping with onions and peppers, crammed with artery-clogging cheeses and slices of salami with crunchy, breathtaking bits of black peppercorn. Maybe he should forget dead docs and VIPs, become a food writer. Review cop restaurants. Decent coffee.

Without knocking, he walked into Cote's office, dropped his bulk into a chair and folded his arms, fully aware the posture was defensive. Just looking at the man gave him heartburn. Cote had been born ambitious, probably shaken hands with all the important people in the delivery room while his mother lay exhausted and ignored. His shirts were always starched, his brass and leather polished. He never needed a haircut or a shave, had breath fresh as daisies. His fatal flaw was that he had been a cop at many levels but he couldn't remember what a cop's life was like.

"How are you, Joe?" Cote forced a sickly smile as he aligned a stack of papers.

"Beat."

"This looks like a tough one."

"It is."

"Sensitive, too. I've had calls from the AG's office and the mayor's office."

Burgess wondered why the Governor hadn't called. Dr. Bailey and the Governor were great pals. They did some sports thing together—hunting, fishing, sailing, he couldn't recall. It had been in the paper.

Cote cleared his throat. "It looks like there are going to be some... sordid details... concerning the victim. We've been asked to keep that out of the press. To be as discreet as possible."

Cote loved giving orders, but if he was going to put up barriers to this investigation, he was going to have to define them. Burgess's job was to solve the crime; he didn't give a rat's patootie about the PR implications of his acts. That's why Cote, slicker, less experienced, and more political, was sitting on that side of the desk. Cote was a good test-taker. Superb ass-kisser. Lousy cop.

"Paul, this is a homicide. Guy patronized hookers, we've got to talk to hookers. Guy was a doctor. To get a handle on his schedule, his character, his habits—make sure this is what it seems and not work-related—we've got to talk to doctors. What is it you do, or don't, want me doing?"

His shoulder was itchy again. He shifted in his chair, twitching to see if he could ease the itch. A shower would help. He wasn't an aesthetically pleasing creature like Pleasant. He was a big, hairy bull of a man and his hide needed tending. At this point, that shower looked far off. He sighed and twitched more violently. Cote jumped, the pencil flying out of his hand. Proof that you didn't have to go ballistic often to get a reputation.

Burgess had only seriously lost it once. Only dragged one superior officer over his desk and slammed him up against the wall, but that had been Cote. Two years later, people shifted nervously if he made sudden moves. He still regretted the case that had driven him over the edge, regret he'd carry to his grave. Cote's mishandling of the essential details of the Kristin Marks case had resulted in the child's murderer getting away with a laughably light sentence. Cote continued to shrug it off. Burgess still seethed.

Searching for composure, Cote opened his drawer, got a new pencil, then tented his hands and leaned back in his chair. "Dr. Bailey was a bit... offended... by some of the questions you asked this morning. He found your manner accusatory and belligerent."

"And I was on my best behavior, too." He wasn't making this easy for Cote. In the wastebasket, he could see the remains of lunch. A brown paper bag, neatly folded, the paper that had held a sandwich carefully folded on top of it. His own stomach was empty. His breakfast sandwich many hours in the past.

"Use your common sense, Joe. Use some tact. You have to handle these people differently. Less aggressively... they're not used to—"

"You can't mean that, Paul. Bailey wanted to tell me they were one big, happy family. That Dr. Pleasant was a brilliant, hard-working practitioner and jovial, well-liked colleague who had a lovely wife and family in Cape Elizabeth. That being said, he wanted me to go home without learning a damned thing about the victim. How, exactly, was that supposed to help our investigation?"

"You stepped on his toes, Joe."

"I didn't put my weight down. And only after he'd rebuffed a couple of polite questions. I didn't go there to make nice. I went to learn about a murder victim."

"You know what I'm saying. You can't go in there and strong arm these people. You have to be tactful."

Cote paused for effect, but what effect Burgess didn't know. Waiting for the words to sink in? Did Cote think he was some impermeable soil, thick with clay and slow to percolate?

Finally, Cote sighed and said, "Report to me daily. I want to know everything that's happening. I'll handle the press."

"Have I ever leaked anything to the media?"

Cote shook his head.

"Ever let some reporter follow me around?"

Another shake. No one could say Burgess had a reputation as anything but tight-lipped and cautious.

"Are you saying I should let someone get away with murder to avoid hurting feelings? That preventing embarrassment has higher priority than solving crime?"

"You know I'm not saying that. Just use a little tact."

"How do I tactfully ask about his whoring habits or deficiencies in his medical practice?" Cote didn't answer. "You want to give the case to someone else?"

Cote shook his head. "We want this cleared up fast—people in that neighborhood and at the hospitals are already pretty antsy—and you're the best, Joe."

Cote, who hated his guts, really believed that? More likely, it was what the Chief believed and Cote was an excellent toady. Burgess was heading for the door when Cote said, "This is bigger than you think, Joe. You know who Jen Kelly is? Edward Bigelow Shaw's daughter."

Shaw was old name money. Burgess thought of the ratty old pick-up. Jen Kelly saying, 'call my father' and giving him Jack Kelly's phone number, which he'd carefully written in his book. "She said her father was named Jack Kelly."

Cote's gloating look said dumb shit Munjoy Hill Irish. Burgess dropped his gaze to veil the answering mill-town, sister-fucking, brown-nosed Canuck asshole.

"Shaw's first wife, Clara Casey Shaw, left him when Jen was about six," Cote said. "There was a nasty divorce. She remarried a man named Jack Kelly. When she was a teenager, Jen started calling herself Kelly. But she's Ted's daughter. And you know what that means."

Of course he did. But genuflecting was hard with a bad knee, and what mattered was what people had done and why they'd done it, not who their rich fathers were. "What does that mean, Captain?"

Cote frowned. "I have to spell this out for you? It means we do our best not to embarrass her or her father. It means you treat that poor widow with kid gloves."

"So if it turns out that he was killed partying with a pair of hookers who rolled him and stabbed him, I should pretty it up so that he actually got those lipstick kisses all over his nipples and his crank at a Salvation Army benefit and then accidentally fell on his fork?"

"You know what to do."

"What if Jen Kelly did it? Got sick of his partying and put an end to it once and for all? Did it herself or hired someone to do it. Wouldn't be the first time a pissed-off wife took a swipe at her philandering husband."

Cote ostentatiously opened a notebook and began studying the contents. Burgess, thus dismissed, left the office, wondering at Cote's fascination with the City of Portland emergency evacuation plan. No matter how badly he handled this, or how many sensitive docs and hookers he offended, he wasn't likely to cause a mass exodus from the city. Both the hooker and rich folks populations were small.

Kyle looked up from his desk with a quick, spare grin. "You been reamed?"

"Dick-head doesn't know the first thing about reaming. He probably thinks it has something to do with stacks of paper." Burgess didn't like to take out his temper on the people around him, but boy, Cote pissed him off! Jerk ought to know better than to give an etiquette lesson to an exhausted cop. "I'm going to the can. Get everybody together and let's go over this thing. Sort out where we are and where we're going."

"Right." No questions. No delay. If he cloned Kyle, they'd have this done in a day.

He met Remy Aucoin coming out of the men's room. "Aucoin!" He thought the kid was going to faint. "Got a few more questions for you. Come by in half-an-hour. And if you want to put a smile on an old man's face, you'll bring a large Italian sub with everything and a Diet Dr. Pepper."

He could almost hear the sigh of relief. Kid probably thought he'd be rescued by a call and never have to face the music. Should know better. Not many got away from Joe Burgess. Correction. He brought them in. After that, it was up to the legal system. He'd seen justice twisted up so badly it was no wonder the lady with the scales wore a blindfold. More than once, he'd gone to the graveyard to apologize to his dead. One, in particular, he visited often, standing with his hand on the small, cold stone, feeling the black rage and helplessness coming over him again. Then he'd turn and walk away, before it swallowed him up.

Chapter 6

They looked like they were auditioning for a "Send this boy to camp" poster, except for Dani, who could be adopted for just pennies a day. There were seven of them in the room. Lt. Vince Melia, head of the criminal investigation division, Sgt. Berman from Patrol, who was coordinating the house-to-house, Burgess, Terry Kyle and Stan Perry from personal crimes, Devlin and Dani from forensics. Melia was the boss, but he let Burgess run the show. The others drooped wearily over their papers.

"Anything from the canvass?" Burgess asked.

"Got a woman a few blocks away who saw someone walking down her street a little after midnight. Not someone she recognized from the neighborhood. She thought it was strange for anyone to be out walking in weather like that, so it stuck with her," Berman said.

"Male or female?"

"Person's all she said. But maybe if we talk to her..."

"Stan, can you check it out?" Berman gave Perry the information. "Nothing else?" Burgess asked.

Berman shrugged. "Whole neighborhood claims to have been in bed by ten. Lotta places, no one was home. I've got officers going by later. Interrupt their dinners. Good way to get cooperation."

"You check with the city, see if there were any snowplows or sanding trucks or repair crews out?"

"Nada. You wanna kill someone, middle of the night in February's a hell of a good time to pick."

"Dani? Wink?"

"We've barely begun, Joe," she said. "Sorry. I thought we'd get back from Augusta and dive right in. I didn't expect—"

"See who you can get to help out. Pull people from other things if you need to."

Dani started another apology but Wink cut her off. "Looks like we've got hairs from at least six different women from the car, maybe more. There were some blonde ones wrapped around his fingers, long ones, and on the buttons of his shirt. A couple curly black ones on his overcoat. I told you, we got that pubic hair from his mouth. Haven't had time to go through the pubic combings, head combings, and, in this case, chest hair combings. We might find something. Dani and Boone have just started going over the clothes, looks like we may get some good fibers."

"What about prints?"

"Fumed the inside this morning, got enough prints to keep us busy for a month. Boone's started processing some of those." Wink passed a sheet of paper across the table. "Some of your favorite ladies of the night have been guests in that car."

Burgess scanned the list. "Leave Alana Black to me. She'd take offense if anyone else came to get her." He passed the list to Berman. "Have your guys start bringing them in. Purely voluntary, of course. Just asking them to do their civic duty."

Berman read it and grinned. "Gonna be like Old Home week. If you don't need me anymore, I'll get on this."

Melia sighed. "I give it an hour, and it's gonna be worse than a room full of cats around here. You got anything solid yet?"

"I don't even have something squishy, Vince. Looks like at some point in the evening he was tied up and double teamed, if the two shades of lipstick prove to be different ladies. Wallet's missing. I'm hoping one of these ladies was there, can tell us where it happened. But he was killed in the car."