The Coal Black Asphalt Tomb: A Berger and Mitry Mystery (Berger and Mitry Mysteries) (14 page)

“We just finished up. Have you eaten, Daddy?”

“I’m good.”

“I didn’t ask if you were good. I asked if you’ve had dinner. There’s a gallon of lentil soup in the kitchen. Park it over here and I’ll heat it up for you.”

He unbuttoned the jacket of his charcoal gray suit—one of six identical gray suits that he owned—and hung it on the coatrack by the door, removing a small notepad from the inside pocket. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” she assured him, first darting into the mudroom for the sweatpants that were hanging in there. Because she was not, repeat not, going to have a conversation with her father wearing a flannel shirt and nothing else. She put the heat on under the soup and sliced some more bread. “How about a glass of wine?”

“None for me, thanks.”

She returned with a clean napkin and spoon to find the two men in her life seated there chatting away about the New York Mets’ bullpen, or total lack thereof. Mitch got along amazingly well with her rigid and intimidating father. The Deacon liked him, despite the pigment issue, because Mitch was genuine and he was good for her. With Mitch there was no artifice or agenda—unlike Des’s ex, Brandon, a lying, scheming slab of ebony out of Yale Law School whom the Deacon had never liked. The man had keen instincts that way.

“I apologize for barging in this way, Desiree,” he said as Kid Rock jumped into his lap and curled up there, purring contentedly. He and the big orange tabby were BFFs. “It’s about that skeleton you found under Dorset Street.”

Her gaze fell on the file folder next to his right elbow. “So it
was
you who Captain Rundle called.”

The Deacon nodded. “The man’s frightened.”

“Of what?”

“Guilt by association. Some cases are widow makers. This one’s a career killer.”

She narrowed her gaze at him. “Why is that?”

“Because it’s a great big steaming pile of dung and there’s a US congressman parked right on top of it. And until the Major Crime Squad is able to take it over it’s
your
great big steaming pile of dung.”

“Sounds like you two need to talk business,” Mitch said. “I’ll clear out.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” the Deacon said sternly. “Desiree and I understand each other much better when you’re around. Besides, I’m guessing you already know ten times more about this case than I do. So please stay put while we conversate.”

“Well, okay. Except that’s not a real word, sir.”

“What isn’t?”

“Conversate.”

The Deacon stared at him. “Yes, it is. I see it in e-mails all of the time.”

“We
converse
. We carry on a
conversation
.”

Des cleared her throat. “Mitch…”

“Sorry. I’ll shut up now.”

Des could hear the lentil soup bubbling in the kitchen. She went back in there and ladled out a big bowl of it. Placed the bowl and a full basket of bread before the Deacon and then sat back down.

He sampled the lentil soup and pronounced it excellent before he opened his notepad and said, “I have the ME’s preliminary findings. The skeletal remains
are
those of US Navy Lt. Lance Paffin. His mitochondrial DNA sample matches that of his biological brother Bob. The distinguishing injuries that Bob told you of—broken right collarbone and left wrist—were in evidence. And the academy class ring that was around his right ring finger was a class of ’62 ring with a ruby birthstone and Lance’s name engraved on the inside.”

“What sort of condition was his wallet in?” Des asked.

“There was no wallet on him. No ID other than the ring. They’re still conducting a search for his dental records, but that’s just their way of being thorough. There’s zero doubt that the remains are Lance Paffin’s.”

“Any chance they were able to determine a cause of death?”

“More than a chance.” The Deacon flipped through his notes. “The victim sustained a severe premortem skull trauma. His cranial bone was pierced and shattered by a spike-like object.”

“A spike-like object,” Mitch repeated, frowning at him. “Does that mean somebody drove a nail into the back of his skull?”

“Not exactly. When you’re dealing with shattered bone any sort of signature piercing is extremely difficult to come by. But they did find a clean rectangular edge at the entry point, approximately three-eighths of an inch wide. They believe the object was square in shape and tapered, which is to say narrower at its tip than its base. They’re estimating it was at least two inches in length. At present they have no idea what such an object might have been.”

“Sounds like a square-headed nail to me,” Mitch said.

The Deacon peered at him. “A square-headed nail?”

Mitch nodded. “They used to be square in the old days. And tapered. You’ve been in my cottage. You know those exposed posts and beams of mine? They have a bunch of square-headed nails sticking out of them. I’m guessing the family caretaker hung his tools from them way back when.”

“Why on earth would someone drive an antique nail into Lieutenant Paffin’s skull?” the Deacon asked him.

“Because they could,” Mitch answered with a shrug.

“This is hardly a time for levity, son.”

“Who’s levitating? The guy left a trail of ruined lives in his wake. To know him was to hate him. And
you
said antique nail, I didn’t. They still make square-headed nails. High-end carpenters use them when they’re restoring old houses. Although the new ones are made of stainless steel, not iron.”

“Daddy, did they find any residue at the entry point? Rust, paint chips?…”

“Not a thing. Not after all of these years.”

Des puffed out her cheeks. “So Lance Paffin was murdered by a spike-like object. Then someone buried him, took his boat out and wrecked it. No way one person acting alone could do all of that. There had to be at least two of them. Somebody to take the
Monster
out and jump overboard. Somebody else to wait nearby in another boat and fish him out. He couldn’t
swim
way back to shore. Not during the month of May. The current at the mouth of the Connecticut River is too wicked.”

“It would have taken hours for one man to dig that grave in the middle of Dorset Street by himself,” Mitch concurred. “And Missy Lay did say she heard ‘men’ digging with shovels out there.”

The Deacon looked at him in surprise. “There was a witness?”

“Of a sort. Missy was considered to be quite buggy—even by Dorset standards.”

“How buggy is that?”

“She drank eight fluid ounces of her own urine every single day and there were suspicions regarding the contents of her Halloween brownies. None of which, to my mind, disqualifies her as a witness.”

“Desiree, I think I’ll have that glass of wine after all,” the Deacon said hoarsely.

She got a glass and filled it for him.

He took a small sip. “Here is the reality of our present situation: I am deputy superintendent of the Connecticut State Police. And you, Desiree, are the resident trooper of this place.
We
are this investigation. How we conduct it will reflect on the character of the institution that it has been our honor to serve.”

She studied him carefully. “Where are you going with this?”

The Deacon glanced down at the file folder on the table. “In my review of Lieutenant Paffin’s case file from 1967 I discovered an appalling lack of professionalism. The responding troopers spoke to two employees of the country club who informed them that not only were Lieutenant Paffin and a group of his friends drinking heavily that evening, but that a quarrel took place out in the parking lot. Yet not one of his friends was questioned about this quarrel after the lieutenant was reported missing. Not one of them was questioned
at all
. There was no follow-up. There are no witness statements. No re-interviews with the club’s staff. They didn’t canvass the neighbors of the Dorset Yacht Club to determine if anyone heard or saw anything that night. They didn’t examine the trunk or the seats of the lieutenant’s Mustang for blood or other trace evidence. This whole damned file reeks of winky-wink.”

Mitch shook his head. “What’s winky-wink?”

“Exactly what it sounds like, Mitch. A crowd of wealthy young blue bloods getting preferential treatment instead of the tough, hard, investigative scrutiny that was clearly warranted. I’ve even found indications of an outright cover-up.”

“What indications, Daddy?”

“After the wreckage of the lieutenant’s sailboat was found our crime-scene technicians were sent to the site to gather trace evidence. The boat’s tiller was dusted for fingerprints. It was made of laminated ash. Would have yielded good prints. Or should have. Yet, somehow, the fingerprints were misplaced. And our lead investigator, a Sgt. Dave Stank, quit the state police three years later to become chief of staff for a newly elected US congressman named Pennington Lucas Cahoon. Stank remained Cahoon’s chief of staff until he left in 1989 to take a higher-paying job as a lobbyist for a defense contractor.”

“Is Stank still alive?” Des asked.

“Passed away in 2007.” The Deacon sat there in heavy silence for a moment. “Obviously, this reflects poorly on how the Connecticut State Police went about its business in those days. And now, well, we have a situation. We’ve uncovered the murdered remains of a US Navy lieutenant who disappeared after a night of heavy drinking with friends. And one of those friends just happens to be a powerful US congressman. Once we go public with the ME’s findings this will get hot in a hurry. I am talking front-page news. We’ll have the FBI crawling all over it. Probably NCIS as well. We have a very narrow window of opportunity to get this right. I’m going to slow walk the ME’s findings over to the Major Crime Squad tomorrow. That’ll buy us a few precious hours of time,” he said, gazing across the table at her. “And give you a chance to have a friendly, informal chat with Congressman Cahoon. I’ve just conversated … I’m sorry,
conversed
with his chief of staff. The congressman will be making an appearance at the senior center in Fairburn in the morning. His schedule is in this folder along with the case file. You have permission to speak with him about the remains that you’ve found under Dorset Street. I made no mention of the ME’s findings. As far as the congressman knows we’re still completely in the dark. If he knew how much we know he’d lawyer up and we’d get nothing out of him.”

“This sounds kind of devious,” Mitch said.

“Only because it is,” the Deacon responded, grimacing. “You’ve met him before, am I right?”

Des nodded. “He was grand marshal of our Memorial Day parade last year.”

“And you’re a small-town resident trooper who doesn’t realize what she’s stumbled her way into. Be polite. Be respectful. And be very, very careful. We have to assume that Congressman Cahoon knows what really happened that night. He may even have been an active participant. I won’t be able to keep this under wraps for long, Desiree. We have, at most, twenty-four hours before the curtains are thrown open and the sunlight starts shining on this … this…”

“Great big steaming pile of dung?” Mitch offered helpfully.

“Exactly.”

“Forgive me for saying this, sir, but I’d think you would be eager to expose that this sort of winky-wink rich people’s justice used to go on. Still does, for all I know.”

The Deacon glared at him. “Because I’m a person of color, you mean?”

“Well, yes.”

“I’m deputy superintendent of the entire state police, Mitch. That makes me color-blind. I cannot allow myself to have a racial agenda.”

Des studied her father guardedly. “Exactly what is it you want me to do?”

“Make this case go away before it gets kicked to the Major Crime Squad. You have until the end of tomorrow.”

“I won’t be part of any cover-up.”

“Don’t you think I know that? That’s why I’ve come to you. You’re the one person who I can trust. Put this to bed, Desiree. Do it by the book. But do it on the down low—if you can.”

“And if the down low isn’t an option?”

“Then scream your head off. Just be mindful of the reputations of the men and women who’ve come before us and who will serve after we’re gone. The credibility of our entire organization—past, present and future—is at stake here.”

“Oh, is that all?” On his stony silence she said, “Daddy, please tell me that you feel a tiny bit weird about this.”

His jaw muscles clenched. “If this job was simple and easy then—”

“We wouldn’t be getting paid good money to do it.
We’d
be the ones paying
them
.” She’d only heard him say those words about ten thousand times.

“Desiree, if you can figure out what in the hell happened that night you will make everybody happy.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me. Do we understand each other?”

She sat there in grim silence, her stomach in knots.

“I didn’t hear an answer, young lady.”

“We understand each other.”

C
HAPTER
8

M
ITCH TOTALLY LOVED THE
whole idea of Dorset Street being a dirt road again. It was as if the historic district, with its antique homes and quaint old commercial establishments, had been zapped a hundred years back in time, when horse-drawn carriages clip-clopped their way along the village’s main thoroughfare and life was a whole lot simpler and slower. He bounced his way gleefully past Town Hall in his Studey pickup, savoring that he couldn’t drive faster than fifteen mph without doing serious harm to his various and sundry spinal vertebrae. Apparently, he was the only one in town who felt this way. The other drivers who he encountered on this bright blue, frosty morning looked supremely annoyed by the appalling inconvenience. But they were
grown-ups
who were too preoccupied and hassled to notice how much fun they were having.

He felt sorry for them.

He’d driven past
The Gazette
a million times but had never gone inside. As he walked through the door now, Mitch immediately sensed the uptick in his pulse that he always felt whenever he entered a newsroom. For him, there was something magical about a place where the news was gathered, written and disseminated to the public. Didn’t matter whether it was a big city newsroom or a small town one. And
The Gazette
was definitely small town. It reminded him a lot of the boondocks newspaper that Kirk Douglas got himself banished to in
Ace in the Hole
, one of Billy Wilder’s best films. Certainly his nastiest. There were old oak desks. Rows of oak filing cabinets lining the walls. Glass-fronted bookcases filled with bound volumes of back issues. A painted tin sign hanging from the wall that read
NO WHISTLING ALLOWED
, which was an old newsroom superstition that harkened back to the days of Horace Greeley. Another painted tin sign—
CURSING PERMITTED
—was apparently Buzzy Shaver’s idea of humor. Buzzy’s immense rolltop desk anchored one corner of the newsroom. A black Underwood manual typewriter was parked atop it. So was a circa-1940 Graflex Speed Graphic camera with a flexible bellows and a flash attachment that was the size of a dinner plate. There was an actual paste pot on the desk with a brush embedded in its lid. A coffee mug filled with red grease pencils. Mitch was willing to bet that the old editor still kept a supply of yellow copy paper tucked in a drawer somewhere. Also carbon paper. Assuming somebody out there actually still made carbon paper. Next to the desk stood a hat rack with a couple of battered old fedoras hanging from it.