Scent of Evil (21 page)

He was wearing a raincoat, and he removed one hand from its pocket to scratch at his forehead, which was grimy and spotted with scabs. His fingernails were snaggled and black. “Like what?”

I had to be careful here. If I suggested a possibility he found acceptable, some defense lawyer down the line could accuse me of creating the very story I wanted to hear. “How did you sleep that night, Milo? Did you sleep through the night?”

“I woke up to piss.” He glanced at Sammie to check for a reaction, but she was busy scribbling on her note pad.

“Did you see or hear anything unusual during that time?”

“I pissed in the water. I like the sound it makes.”

“I meant something outside the area in which you were sleeping.”

“Like what?” Again the sly smile.

I looked at Milo for a moment, wondering about that smile. Then I circled my desk, pulled out the file Tyler had put together on the bridge site, and resumed my perch. “I don’t know; how about gunshots? Hear any of those?”

“Nope.”

I feigned surprise. “You’re kidding. No shots? Something like a backfire, maybe?”

His brow furrowed. “I never read nothin’ about gunshots.”

“I’m asking what you heard, Milo.”

His face closed down to an obstinate mask. “No. No shots.”

“What did you make your bed out of?”

“I was under the bridge. There wasn’t no bed.”

“But you slept on something. What was it?”

“You know what it was. You found it. Don’t you believe me or somethin’? I was under that bridge.”

“I believe you, Milo, but the bedding was missing. We need to know what it was you used as a bed.”

Sammie had stopped writing and was looking at me strangely.

Milo’s eyes shifted back and forth several times, his lips tight. “Cardboard. I slept on cardboard boxes.”

“Not newspapers? I thought you guys liked newspaper.”

“It tears.”

“So, no newspaper at all.”

“No.” His voice was defiant.

“Why’d you sleep so near the water? Weren’t you afraid of getting wet, or of rolling over into the stream in your sleep?”

“No.” More doubtful now.

“I would have tucked myself right up under the bridge, maybe dug a shelf so I’d be high and dry. Why didn’t you do that?”

“Too much work.” He didn’t believe it anymore than I did.

“You smoke, Milo?”

“Why?”

“We found some butts. They yours?”

“Yeah.”

“You smoke a lot, huh.”

“Yeah. A lot.” His confidence was returning.

“Bullshit.” I tossed the file onto the desk. It made a little slapping sound in the quiet room. Milo watched it as if it might fly off and attack him, but it already had.

“Why’re you telling us this, Milo? You were nowhere near that bridge.”

He bristled. “Was too.”

“Whoever was living there had been there for weeks, well over a month. The bed was made of newspaper. It was tucked up onto a shelf right under the angle of the bridge, six feet from the water, and there wasn’t a butt to be seen that was under two months old. Why are you here, Milo?”

He went back to staring at the floor, his hands jammed into his pockets. Sammie was looking embarrassed.

“You’re not in any trouble, you know. You haven’t broken any laws. The worst you’ve done is waste my time and make Detective Martens feel bad. You could fix that by telling us why you came to us. Did someone tell you to?”

He didn’t answer.

“You done talking to us, Milo?” Still no response.

I tried one last time. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill and extended it to him. He shifted his gaze to the bill. “Take it.”

He hesitated.

“No strings. I don’t know why you tried to jerk us around. I know word’s gotten out we’re looking for whoever was under that bridge, so maybe you thought it would be a lark to be him. Maybe someone threatened you or paid you off to do this. Beats me. But understand something, Milo. Whoever really was under that bridge had better watch his ass, because there’s someone looking for him, the same guy who’s killed two other people. So spread the word around. Tell whoever it is to come to us, or we’ll all be going to his funeral.”

Again, there was a long silence in the room.

“Is that all?” he muttered.

“Yeah. You can leave if you’d like. Call us if you want to talk more.”

Milo rose to his feet, pulling the five dollars from between my fingers as he did so. He shambled out the door silently, leaving it open behind him.

Sammie looked at me with a crestfallen expression. “I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be. Somebody tells you he’s somebody else, you believe it. It’s natural.”

“You didn’t.”

“At first I did. You would’ve tumbled to him eventually; his story was pretty leaky. Anyway, maybe it’ll do some good. If he spreads the word around, we might get lucky.” I got up and stretched. “Well, I’m hitting the hay. Tell Dispatch I’ll be at home, will you?”

Twenty minutes later, as I walked around opening windows and turning on fans in my apartment, I mulled over what we had so far. Two dead bodies, one an up-and-coming successful businessman with an unconventional past history and a hyperactive interest in sex and drugs; the other a lowbrow hustler and petty thief found in possession of enough narcotics to make a big-time dealer proud. Was Jardine financing Milly Crawford? Did Milly kill Jardine and then get killed in turn? If so, then by whom? Did John Woll kill Jardine out of jealousy? It made sense, but it didn’t explain the connection between Milly and Woll, unless, of course, drugs were the motive, and not jealousy. There had been cases where cops had been used as protection by drug dealers, but that didn’t seem to fit here. John Woll was a low-ranking patrolman and had not, as far as I knew, had anything to do with drug investigations within the department.

Plus there was the assumption that John, if dirty, had transported Jardine’s body in his patrol car, while on duty, to bury it in full view of any potential passerby. If he’d been that stupid, then why should I believe he was now cunning enough to kill Milly and stalk whatever bum might have seen him from under the bridge? Why so paranoid now if he’d been so careless and nonchalant initially?

And what of Tucker Wentworth and Arthur Clyde? What had two older, successful, veteran financiers seen in a local high-school graduate with an undistinguished string of minimum-wage service jobs in his wake? Were they as successful as they appeared? Had the lure of drug money caught their interest and led them to employ both Jardine and Milly Crawford as part of their organization? If so, then what had gone wrong? From all appearances, Milly hadn’t really begun to tap into his chemical treasure trove—he’d been nipped in the bud and his product left for us to collect. His murder, I still felt, had been a risky, unplanned affair, committed to shut him up fast, not because he’d been guilty of any transgression. What had it been that he could have told us?

And then there was Blaire Wentworth, reputedly a devoted daughter, and apparently one of Jardine’s lovers. Where did she fit? And was Rose Woll as innocent and unrealistic as she seemed?

I lay on top of my bed, naked, the two fans I’d placed on either side of me moving just enough air to keep me from soaking the sheets with sweat. As much as I needed sleep, I knew my mind would not shut down easily. It would keep working, mulling over the angles, applying less and less logic as my thoughts became more like dreams.

Indeed, when I finally did fall asleep, it was to the image of Luman Jackson, laughing maniacally, dragging the entire police department into court for “willfully ignoring the wishes of a town father,” while a shadowy figure, his hands red with blood, faded gradually to the extreme limit of my vision and then vanished.

THE MORNING EDITION OF THE
Brattleboro Reformer
proved worse than I’d imagined. The body we had dug up the day before was identified as Charlie Jardine, Milly Crawford’s murder was described as having taken place under our noses, and the drug seizure came across less as a coup and more as dumb luck.

The editorial didn’t help. It bemoaned a world in which a small, almost rural town like Brattleboro could become the target of drug traffic and questioned the police department’s ability to stem the potential “coming tide.” The hand-wringing prose reflected the paper’s new scarlet banner and made me nostalgic for the tough-minded but clear-sighted
Reformer
of old.

Indeed, both the neighboring
Keene Sentinel
and
Greenfield Reporter
, which had also clarioned our troubles across their front pages, seemed downright muted in comparison.

On the other hand, despite Katz’s vague promise, more shocking revelations were conspicuously absent. Both ABC Investments and Morris, McGill were mentioned, but only as places of employment. Either Stanley had shied away, or he was biding his time. I wasn’t putting money on the first.

Predictably, the mood in the squad room was thunderous. Dennis DeFlorio was sputtering as he read one of the ten copies of the
Reformer
that were scattered around like oversized confetti: “‘Police were noncommittal about the timing of their arrival at the murder scene, but from their promptness and from overheard radio transmissions between mobile police units and their dispatcher, it was apparent one or more of them had been positioned near Horton Place before Mr. Crawford was killed, for reasons unexplained. Later, one police officer was overheard saying, “He really pulled the rug out from under us,” referring apparently to the murderer.’ Can you believe this shit? I bet that son of a bitch quoted himself.”

They were all there, including Sammie Martens, who looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep at all. I walked to the door of the meeting room and gestured to everyone to follow me. Harriet brought up the rear, yellow legal pad in hand.

I sat at the head of the table and waited for them to settle down. “We’re going to have to ignore the press reports as much as possible. With the change of management at the
Reformer
I think we’ll all be seeing some pretty sensational stuff, a lot of which is going to get under our skin. This is the first time something this big has come their way, and the local editor is trying to satisfy his Midwestern bosses. So, either get used to it or change subscriptions.” I didn’t add that if the politicians got warmed up, the press would be the least of our problems.

“At least Ted’s playing it straight,” someone muttered.

That much was true. On my short drive in, I’d tuned in to several radio reports. McDonald, the only local newscaster, had been his usual brief, straight, and to-the-point self. I guessed it helped when you had no time to editorialize. Ted, unlike Stan Katz, didn’t have the luxury of a single story and thirty column inches to fill. To McDonald, we were merely the lead item in a four-minute summary, including the weather. Indeed, I often thought that my colleagues’ preference for McDonald over Katz was based solely on Ted’s inability to take up as much of their time with his reporting. Personally, while I found him by far the more unpleasant of the two, Katz got my nod as the better journalist. It was an opinion, however, that wild horses couldn’t drag out of me in public.

I pointed the end of my pencil at Dennis. “What’s the bottom line on the Milly canvass?”

Dennis gave a sour expression. “Whoever killed him really did pull the rug out from under us. We’ve interviewed everyone who lives on that street, and nobody saw a thing. A few people heard things, like Dummy shouting and you coming upstairs. A woman right below Milly’s place said she heard footsteps just before the shouting, but she didn’t pay any attention to it until later, after all hell had broken loose.”

“No one heard the door to number 21 being broken?” I asked.

“Not specifically. Like I said, people heard things, but they can’t, or won’t, peg them down.”

“J.P.?”

Tyler cleared his throat. “From the evidence, it appears the shooter nailed Milly with a silenced 9-millimeter as he opened the door. He then hid in the apartment until Dummy went to the balcony, raced downstairs, broke into number 21 until you passed him on the way up, and escaped. It was a highly risky operation, successful only out of dumb luck.”

“And a pair of brass balls,” DeFlorio muttered.

“That’s a good point,” I interjected. “It did take balls, which brings up the major question here: Why did he kill Milly when he did?”

There was silence around the table, as when a teacher asks a question so apparently moronic that no one dares answer for fear it’s a trap. “So we couldn’t get to him first,” Ron finally said in a soft voice.

“That’s what I think, which might mean Milly could have fingered Jardine’s killer. Remember: That’s why we were there, to ask Milly about his involvement with Jardine. Does anybody here have a problem linking these two cases together?”

“I don’t have a problem with it, but I don’t think we should ignore the possibility that it was sheer coincidence.”

That was Tyler, of course, applying the scientific leveler.

I pointed my pencil at him. “What have you got on the dope?”

“It’s a little early to tell. The total amount of cocaine was two pounds, just under a kilo; there were nine and a half pounds of marijuana, about four point five kilos; and there were two plastic bags of Bennies, Nebbies, and Blue Birds, all mixed together.”

“What are Blue Birds?” Harriet asked, taking notes.

“Amytal—it’s a barbiturate. I sent the coke north for analysis, but from what I tested, I’d say Milly’s import was about eighty percent pure, and if the sample we found at Jardine’s came from Milly, then he was stepping on it hard, like down to twenty-five or thirty percent. Of course, in this market he could do that and get away with it. They’re used to shitty stuff.”

“How many one-ounce packets could he make that way?” I asked.

“One hundred, maybe more, but he wouldn’t sell it that way, not at two thousand dollars per ounce. He’d sell it by the gram, for maybe fifty to a hundred bucks. In those quantities, he could supply twenty-eight hundred customers.”

“And make two hundred and eighty thousand dollars?” Dennis whistled.