Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (25 page)

He typed in "Nicholas Goodall" and scanned the results. No obituary. No dramatic front page stories of the artist's tragic death. No mention of any sort of the man's death. He checked death records. Nothing there, either.

"Fuck!" He pounded his fist on the desk. Then he went to the DMV and looked for driver's license information. Nicholas Goodall had a current license giving a Portland post office box as his address. He owned a three-year-old black Chevy Avalanche, also registered to the PO box. And he owned a 2002 Wellcraft 3200 Martinique Express Cruiser. There was no listing for a phone.

Now he had to wonder. Reggie had been consoling Star Goodall because she'd "lost" her husband. Lost him how? To a life away from her because of her craziness? Perhaps to someone he'd met at the hospital after a cardiac event? If they were estranged, though, Benjy's ID of Goodall as one of the men who'd taken Reggie didn't make much sense. But what had they learned about this case so far that did?

In the morning, he'd call Clay and find out what the story was, then hunt down Nicholas Goodall. He'd put Kyle on the task of visiting marinas and finding the boat Joey might be living on. Was it possible that it was Goodall's boat? Put Perry on the job of finding the Mustang and a potential witness to Reggie's abduction. Much crime investigation was pretty straightforward, but sometimes it opened into a series of mazes. This was going to be one of those.

This time, he got out of the building without a second thought. Got in the Explorer and headed for home. And found himself heading back down toward the waterfront instead. He parked by the wharf and grabbed his camera, snapping pictures of the empty wharf, the docks bobbing below, and then went back to the street and snapped pictures of the water and the wharf from there. Like the wall of photos at home. Pictures of emptiness.

The night was bright and the tide was low, the shore looking black and greasy in the faint, cold light. Something white wedged in the rocks caught his eye. It could be anything—a plastic bag, discarded coffee cup, paper plate. Or it might be Reggie's missing shoe. As he looked around for a way down, his phone rang.

"I'm going to bed," Chris said. "I'll leave the lights on for you."

A Taurus cruised down the street and came to quiet stop beside him. Stan Perry rolled down his window. "I tell you I asked patrol to keep an eye out for that shoe?" Burgess nodded. "Well, a guy out in Deering just called in. He pulled over in one of those industrial lots to write a report. Saw something in the grass and actually got out to see what it was. Sounds like it might be Reggie's other shoe. I'm on my way to check it out. You wanna come?"

Burgess looked up and down the empty street. "This isn't exactly on your way."

"I couldn't sleep. Still feeling like a jerk about that girl, I guess. I knew the tide would be low, thought I'd take another look around for that shoe. I was just turning off Franklin when I got the call." Perry grinned. "What? You think I was following you?"

"Let's check it out." Burgess started toward his car, then turned back. "Of course, Captain Cote would say that it doesn't take two detectives to investigate one shoe."

"Especially when the victim is just a crazy old wino. We got funny standards in this city, Joe. We got small-time merchants all over this city getting robbed at knifepoint and gunpoint by our new African neighbors and nobody hits the alarm button. Just wait 'til all that hits the Mall."

"Mall is in South Portland," Burgess said.

"Right," Perry said. "Not our problem."

"I'm glad something isn't," Burgess said. "I'll follow you." He started the engine, mimicked Stan's tight U-turn, and headed off through the empty streets. No one around but cops and robbers.

* * *

The patrol car was parked at the edge of an unused lot, the crumbling asphalt growing up to weeds. Burgess grabbed his flashlight and he and Perry walked over. A middle-aged officer, face lined, body going soft in the middle, got out as they approached, holding a large flashlight.

"Evening, Steve," Burgess said. "Thanks for calling it in. What you got for us?"

The officer lifted his hat, pushed back sweaty hair, then resettled the hat. "Been one of those nights, Sarge. City looks quiet but the calls just keep coming. We've had a bunch of complaints from the businesses out this way about kids drinking in their lots, spray-painting the buildings, smashing windows and throwing trash around. I try to swing through here a couple times a shift."

He raised his light and pointed it into the dark lot, the yellow beam stabbing the night like Vader's light saber. "It's over here." The officer led them about twenty yards back into the lot, their feet kicking up the dusty herbal scents of fall vegetation, and illuminated the heel of a white running shoe. "Shoe's got those reflector strips on it that catch the light. That's how I spotted it."

Burgess clicked on his light and moved it slowly around, studying their surroundings. The lot was a big rectangle with patches of gray asphalt broken by knots of weeds and grass. It ran on for another ten or fifteen yards, ending in a row of scraggly trees. Where they were standing was close to one of the sides, delineated by bushes and trees and a sagging fence. Through gaps in the vegetation, he could see into the adjacent lot, where lights illuminated a brick building with closed doors opening off a small loading dock, and an empty parking lot.

He brought his focus back to the shoe, bending down to study it. He wouldn't know for sure until he could match it to the one the divers had found, but it looked like the mate. The one they had was a right shoe; this was left. This was the same brand and new. He couldn't read the size and didn't want to disturb it until it had been photographed in place. He straightened and looked around the dark lot, already running the possibilities. Why drop the shoe here when it would have been so much simpler, and safer, to wrap it up and throw it in the trash? Was it deliberate, part of some crazy cat-and-mouse game with a killer who would plant clues for them to find, or were they lucky enough to be dealing with stupid?

He didn't feel lucky.

There might be other things here, too, but this was no time to search, stumbling clumsily around this vast, dark lot, trying to do a thorough search with flashlights. This would now top his list for the morning, and until then, they needed to close off this lot and get someone to sit on it until it was light.

"Good work, Steve." He didn't mention the lingering scent of fresh urine that suggested the officer's real reason for stopping here and making this find. "I need you to sit on it until I can get somebody out here."

The officer smiled. His shift was almost over, which meant overtime.

Burgess was tying up patrol right and left tonight, wasn't he? He led the way back to the cars, trying, as much as possible, to follow the same route they'd taken coming in, already on the phone making arrangements to secure the lot until they could search in the morning. So much for sleep, but that was okay. Sleeping hadn't felt right since Lee had dropped the word Reggie's death was no accident. It was irrational, but that made the routines of ordinary life seem obscene.

Stan hadn't said a word. Now he said, "I'll drive the road, check out the businesses around here. Then go back to 109, see if any of them are on our radar screen. Warren Street's a good place to dump things on a holiday weekend, that's for sure. And probably a bunch of places out here got cinder blocks. What time you wanna do this tomorrow?"

Burgess checked his watch. It
was
tomorrow. Chris had been working on civilizing him, but given choice, he defaulted to being nocturnal. He liked the peace and quiet of it. It was easier to be alone with his thoughts without all the daytime commotion. "Seven? Seven-thirty?"

Perry yawned. "I kinda like the sound of eight."

"All right. Go home and get some sleep. You can do the road tomorrow."

"Thanks, Dad. But I kind of want to drive around for a while, get a feel for the area at night. See what's dark. What stands out." Thinking like a detective. But there was something else in Perry's restlessness.

"Don't even think about it, Stan," he said.

"Think about what?"

But they both knew.

"That woman. Getting beat down by her husband. How that makes you feel. Makes you want to set it right. Get square. Let her know that she can't mess with you and get away with it. Don't do it. Stay away from her, from him, if he's out of jail. Box it up. Lock the box. Let it go."

"But she... but I..."

"But nothing, Stan. Stay away from it."

"Sure thing, Dad."

"That's an order, Detective." Burgess sighed and hoisted himself back into the truck, carrying the pleasant scent of crushed grasses in with him. He'd said it, whether Perry had heard it or not. That was the best he could do.

He pulled out onto the road and headed for home. He might not want sleep but he needed some. That, like so much else these days, made him cranky. He wanted to reach down inside himself, pull out a younger, more resilient Joe Burgess, and slip on that skin. Longed for the buoying excitement of the chase, the pleasing challenge of a case that was a puzzle and the satisfaction that came from solving it. Instead, he felt beleaguered. A grouchy old man who'd seen too much staring at a bunch of puzzle pieces that didn't make sense.

As Captain Cote was fond of reminding him, he had a bad attitude.

He humped himself home, hunched like an angry bear behind the wheel. Left his shoes by the door, took what another might have regarded as a relaxing shower, and climbed into bed.

Chris turned her back to him as he settled in, offering the curve of her body for him to settle against like a nesting spoon. As his heavy lids settled down over sore eyes, he caught the faint rose scent of her night cream. Just as he fell over the edge of sleep, he had a thought. Probably something important, but he was too far gone to pull himself back. He let the day go and tumbled down into dark.

Chapter 19

He woke before six, torn from sleep by what sounded like a seagull convention outside his window. His idiot neighbor, the poetically named Celestine Beliveau-Smythe, more prosaically and appropriately known as "Les," who'd moved in a month ago and already established himself as an undesirable with everyone on the block, had put out the trash from his Columbus Day picnic two days early. The gulls thought Les had done it just for them. Before Burgess had even finished dragging his lids up over his still sore eyes, a murder of crows had joined the party, which now reminded him of long-ago weekends on Munjoy Hill.

Predictably, Les was sleeping through it.

Chris, who usually got up around seven, stirred, muttered an expletive followed by the word "Les," and pulled her pillow over her head.

By the time Burgess dressed and went next door to make sure his neighbor was awake to enjoy the commotion, a light rain had started. Just what they needed to make the morning's search that much more miserable. He stepped over the matted masses of paper plates and soggy napkins, the skittering paper cups and food-crusted plastic silverware, kicked aside an eviscerated watermelon, and went up the front walk, circling birds squawking complaints as he disturbed their picnic.

Les answered the door in what looked like a 1940s woman's bathrobe, probably his late mother's, a tatty faded rose chenille with shoulder pads. When Burgess explained the problem, he blinked like a surprised owl, wrapped his long bare toes around the threshold, and expressed dismay, followed by a profusion of apologies. Behind Burgess, the street was alive with the agitated flap of squabbling birds. A glossy crow the size of a piper cub cawed at him from the branches of a large tree.

"Hell of a mess out there, Les," Burgess said. "You'd better clean up before it gets any worse."

Beliveau-Smyth shoved up his sleeve, revealing a hairy wrist and a watch dial resembling the cockpit of a jet. He stared at the time, blinked, and reread the numbers. "It's not even six a.m., Joe," he said. "Don't you think—"

Burgess wasn't feeling neighborly, but he choked down angry words and forced an even tone. "What I think is that you've made a hell of a mess out here and those birds are waking up everyone on the block. The decent thing to do would be to clean up the mess pronto and stop disturbing your neighbors."

The man tried unsuccessfully to tuck errant strands of hair back into his graying ponytail, then shook his head, peering through his gold-rimmed glasses like Burgess was a particularly slow student. "Sheesh. Take it easy, man. I'll get to it. I just don't see why it's such a big, fricking emergency. I'll do it when I'm dressed and I've had my coffee. You don't expect me to go out there dressed like this, do you?" Bony fingers plucked at the robe.