The Ragman's Memory (23 page)

He seemed to shrink into himself but remained silent.

I sat back down, ignoring my meal, and spoke in a quiet, measured tone. “For decades you busted your butt for that town, preaching to others to get involved. You made it a point that integrity and politics were not contradictory. I can’t believe that was all a crock. You stumbled, Ned—that’s all. I don’t know who put the obstacle in place, but I damn well know that commission meeting was the payoff.”

“It was a good project,” he muttered.

“If it’ll help, I’m not debating that. I need to know why you voted the way you did.”

He raised those sorrowful eyes. “If the project’s sound, what does it matter?”

I played the only cards I had, weak as they were. “Because I think people have been killed in connection to it. If your actions were due to any pressure, then the same person who stuck it to you may’ve killed them.”

Ned rubbed his face with his hands, pressing his eyes against his palms. He crossed to the easy chair and sank into its embrace. Hardy lifted his nose and touched the fingers of his hand. “It can’t be the same man,” he finally said in a near whisper.

“How can you know that?” I asked.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

I almost laughed with frustration. “When does murder make sense?”

He was staring into the flames and spoke directly at them, as if wishing his words to be cremated. “I did what I did to maintain the belief people had in me—my family, my friends, the whole community… Not my reputation—
that
a man has to earn, and if he loses it, it’s because he deserved to. But for something bigger—other people’s faith in a system they came to personify in me. Like it or not—whether I encouraged it or not—it was no longer my own reputation, which meant it was no longer mine to throw away.”

As self-serving as it sounded, this might have been partly true. Ned Fallows had been a guiding light to many, Gail among them. Had he come clean and admitted his corruption at the time, it would have shaken a lot of people and turned a few into cynics.

But for me, to whom most idealism is suspect at best, his logic only made a mockery of the integrity he’d inspired. Gail had been shocked and saddened by the thought that her idol may have fallen, but she hadn’t been corrupted herself. The ideals that Ned Fallows had helped nurture in her were her own now, regardless of what happened to him.

But he’d obviously chosen to turn moral cowardice into a virtue, and no argument from me was going to reverse that choice. I gave up any pretense of debate and flatly asked him, “Who was it, Ned?”

He turned to look at me. “You think the man who fingered me could also be a murderer. Assuming you’re talking about the two people mentioned in the paper, can you say for a fact they were murdered?”

I hesitated, my flimsy theory exposed for what it was. “An analysis of the girl’s hair showed she’d been sedated with phenobarbital during the last week of her life. She was being kept in a coma.”

“She couldn’t have died of a heart attack?”

I was outraged by his rationalizations. “She was eighteen years old, for Christ’s sake.”

“But you have no proof she was killed.” He pushed on the arms of his chair and rose. “When you have proof and a suspect, I’ll tell you who was responsible for my actions.” He ushered me toward the door, barely giving me time to put on the coat I’d removed upon entering.

“I thought a person was responsible for his own actions,” I said bitterly, my sense of betrayal approaching Gail’s.

“That’s not a discussion I choose to have—with you or anyone else,” he said and closed the door.

· · ·

It was almost three in the morning when I got back home. The moonlight slanting over the bed revealed Gail’s dormant shape, suspiciously still for someone who’d become a very light sleeper. Knowing she was awake, I nevertheless undressed quietly and slipped under the covers.

A few moments later, her hand folded over my wrist. “How did it go?”

I’d been debating how to answer her all the way back from Lunenburg and had finally settled on the honesty Ned Fallows had denied me. “Disappointing. He basically admitted he’d been compromised, although he’d thought the project was worthwhile, but he wouldn’t tell me why or by who. He said he cut and ran to protect the people who’d believed in him—that he didn’t care about his own reputation but was worried his downfall could damage the hope he’d spent his whole life nurturing in others.”

I’d tried to sound neutral, to allow Gail whatever leeway she might need to reach her own conclusions.

I needn’t have worried. After a long reflective pause, she curled one leg over mine and murmured into my shoulder with a sigh, “What bullshit.”

· · ·

I didn’t have long to enjoy the peace of mind Gail had brought me. I had barely nodded off before the phone next to me began ringing.

“Joe? It’s Sammie. Patrol just called. I thought you’d want to know—Mary Wallis is missing. Her house is all lit up, the door’s wide open, but she’s disappeared.”

“You there yet?”

“No—I’m heading out now.”

“I’m on my way.”

Gail asked me what was up as I replaced the receiver. I repeated Sammie’s brief message. She slid out of bed, reaching for her clothes. “I’m coming, too.”

I didn’t argue. She wasn’t only Mary’s friend, she was—however marginally—one of the SA’s staffers. More to the point, I knew she needed to come. While the loss of Ned Fallows had been in spirit alone, it had been real all the same, and Gail had borne it stoically—perhaps overly so. The need for action now seemed healthy and reasonable, and I wasn’t about to interfere.

· · ·

Most of the houses on Allerton Avenue were dark, except for a couple of Mary’s neighbors. The patrol car stationed opposite her address, and Sammie’s just beyond it, were shrouded by night, only the plumes from their exhaust pipes betraying their running engines.

I pulled over and Gail and I got out, closing our doors quietly. Sammie’s familiar slim shadow appeared in the yellow cutout of Mary’s front door and gestured to us.

“What happened?” I asked as we drew near.

Sammie stepped back over the threshold. “How’re you doing, Gail? Sol was on patrol, saw the door wide open when he drove by. He kept going to the end of the block, but when he came back and saw nothing had changed, he decided to check it out. The place was empty.”

“Where’s Sol now?” I asked.

Sol Stennis, only two years on the job, but a thoughtful, perceptive man, spoke up from the living room. “Here.” He appeared in the doorway. “I haven’t had a chance to interview the neighbors yet.” He noticed Gail standing behind me. “Hi, Ms. Zigman. I’m sorry about this—hope she’s okay.”

I looked at both Sammie and Sol. “No signs of disturbance?”

“Nothing,” Sol admitted. “The furnace was going full guns when I arrived, and the place was pretty cold, so the door’d been open a while. When I first drove by, I thought maybe she’d gone out to take care of a pet or get something from the garage, but obviously not.”

“Her car still here?” Gail asked suddenly.

“Yeah,” Sammie answered. “The engine’s cold.”

Gail crossed over to the hall closet and opened its door, extracting a dark blue quilted coat. “I think we can rule out a walk around the block. This is the only winter coat I’ve seen her wear the last three years.”

“Damn,” I murmured, dread seeping into me. I shut the front door. “Sammie, you better call in a team.”

· · ·

In half an hour we’d divided into four teams—one checking the inside of the house, led by J.P. Tyler, the second covering the grounds, and the third conducting yet another neighborhood canvass of people who, especially at this hour, were probably ruing the day they’d chosen this street to live on. The fourth team, under Ron Klesczewski, was back at the office, phoning—and waking up—every person we could either think of or find in Mary’s address book and files, to ask when they’d last seen her. Additionally, all hotels, motels, rooming houses, hospitals, clinics, drop-in shelters, taxi and bus services were being checked. We also put a covert watch on Mary’s mother at the Retreat. If Mary was still operating under her own steam, I doubted her daily visits to her mother would be an easy habit to break.

I set up a command post in the kitchen, with a phone and a portable radio, and directed a wider search to cover both the town and its neighboring communities. Despite the total absence of any signs of foul play, not a single person questioned why an open door and an empty house should generate such a massive response. Such was the consensus that something was seriously wrong. And several fruitless hours later, with Gail looking increasingly haggard but refusing to go home, any concerns that we might have overreacted were quickly fading.

It was then that J.P. came into the kitchen, carrying one of his ubiquitous large white evidence envelopes. “I thought you better see this. Found it hidden in a closet.”

He poured the packet’s contents onto the tabletop and handed me a pair of latex gloves. It was a woman’s purse—inexpensive and gaudy—more a teenager’s fashion prop than a practical accessory.

Gail was watching me intently as I donned the gloves. “That’s not anything I’ve ever seen Mary use. She wouldn’t be caught dead with it.”

I gingerly opened the purse and peered inside, fishing out the two items I found—a wad of old bills held together with a rubber band and a cracked, beige, fake-leather wallet.

“You count the money?” I asked him, loath to disturb the evidence more than necessary.

“Thousand bucks even.”

I opened the wallet with two fingers. A driver’s license stared back at me from behind a cloudy plastic window.

“Oh, my God,” Gail murmured.

The license belonged to Shawna Susan Davis.

BY MID-MORNING MARY WALLIS
had still not been found. The last sighting of her had been around suppertime the previous evening, when she’d dropped off some papers at a friend’s house, saying she was heading home. Her neighbors hadn’t noticed the open door, since it was screened by a trellis from all but a straight-on view from the curb. And Mary was known as a night owl, so nobody had thought twice about seeing her lights on when the last of them went to bed. No unusual traffic had been noticed on the street until we’d arrived.

Aside from Shawna Davis’s purse, nothing of note was discovered either in or outside the house—no footprints, no scratches on windowsills or door locks, so signs of blood or violence, no significant notes or letters. There was nothing to tell us that this wasn’t merely the empty domicile of a woman living alone.

J.P. collected his usual array of samples to send off to the state police lab in Waterbury, with no great hopes for any of it, but he used an iodine fuming gun to momentarily reveal and photograph the prints on the smooth pale exterior of Shawna’s wallet. The process didn’t alter the evidence any—the prints briefly appeared as clear purple wheels, revealed as if by magic by the iodine fumes blown across their surface, and then slowly faded back to obscurity. It was a shortcut allowing an instant sneak preview of what the lab would report in a week or so. In this case, it merely confirmed what the discovery had suggested—Mary Wallis’s fingerprints were among those on the wallet. An officer was dispatched to North Adams immediately to collect any items of Shawna’s guaranteed to have her prints on them so we could compare them to the others on the wallet. But we weren’t holding our breath for any surprises.

I, however, had more than just this scanty evidence to ponder. I hadn’t forgotten how frightened Mary had seemed when she’d last opened her door to me, nor could I dismiss the impression I’d been left with of a woman in real need of help, and yet incapable of asking for it. I was all but convinced that some terrible pressure had been put on her recently, above and beyond her grief over Shawna’s death, and that we were now facing its end result.

Willy Kunkle, never much for similar reflection, gave voice only to the obvious implications. “She stole the money, whacked the kid, and then took off when she thought we were on to her.”

Sammie shook her head disgustedly. “Jesus. She’s going to kill a girl for a thousand bucks and then never spend it? And when she makes her big escape, she doesn’t take her coat or her car and leaves the door wide open? Give me a break.”

All the team members, along with Tony and Harriet Fritter, were in the squad room by now, sitting in scattered chairs or parked on the edges of tables.

“You saying Wallis had all her screws down tight?” Willy shot back. “I don’t think so. The girl spends a few days with her, maybe Wallis gets the hots, makes a pass, gets rejected, and bam. She doesn’t
steal
the dough—she just stashes it, like she did the body.”

“What about the phenobarbital?” Tony asked quietly.

Willy shrugged and looked at Tyler, who admitted, “I checked every pharmacist we know she did business with. She never had a prescription for the stuff. And the three doctors I found who ever treated her said they never gave her any. It’s not the most difficult med in the world to get hold of, though.”

“But why use it at all?” Sammie persisted. “Why keep Shawna sedated for a week before killing her?”

Willy waved his hand dismissively at her. “Maybe she wanted to pick her moment and had to keep the body alive so it wouldn’t rot. Pretty slick plan, when you think about it. And the Satanist blind alley was a nice extra touch—pointed the finger at somebody else and meant she didn’t have to bury the body deep, which a small woman like Wallis would’ve had trouble doing anyhow.”

Sammie turned to me. “You interviewed her last. You didn’t think she’d killed Shawna then.”

“I also didn’t think she knew anything about the money,” I said. “But I was going on impressions. It’s hard to argue with what we’ve got now. And she did drop out of the political scene at the exact time Shawna died.”

“Because she was heartbroken.”

Willy laughed. “Oh, come on. She’s fighting one of the biggest political battles of her career, and she dumps it because some teenybopper jilts her? Get real, Sam—it makes more sense she knocked her off and then lost her grip. Look at the woman’s background—she’s a prime candidate for a nuthouse.”