“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, sir, but Ms. Hines died this morning.”
His mouth dropped open and I could see silver fillings in his teeth, like fish in a shallow pond.
“What do you mean, died?”
“She was murdered.”
“Oh my God.”
He dropped the bucket to the floor and sagged and stumbled inside, the door closing behind him. After stepping past me, he bent and put his hands on his knees, like he might be sick.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He turned toward me, still bent over, his face gray as the snow in the gutter.
“What happened?”
I told him.
“Oh, Jesus,” he moaned. He was stricken, still couldn’t gather himself. I waited, and after a half-minute he pulled himself upright.
“You were friends, then,” I said.
He took a breath, said, “Well, not really. I mean, I just worked here, and she was a tenant, but she was real nice. Always had a smile, you know. We’re both divorced, so, I mean it wasn’t anything. We just talked; she told me how she was doing.”
A crush. Maybe he thought they’d get together someday. And now she was gone.
“She hadn’t lived here long?” I said.
He took deep breaths, then spoke.
“Two and half months. I showed her the place.”
He seemed to be picturing it.
“The agent was late so I let her in. She had the end unit, nice view of the stream. Said she wanted some water ’cause she came from the coast. Was used to seeing the ocean.”
“I see. Her estranged husband still down there?”
“Yeah,” he said, disdain dripping through. “Guy was a contractor. Built those mega houses for the rich people around.”
“Money in that, I’ll bet,” I said. “You know his name?”
“No. Well, maybe. Rob, or Rod. But she said the company was something like Rock Spruce Construction. Black Spruce? Spruce Rock? Something like that, one of those towns around Bar Harbor. She built it with him, she said. Went to school for accounting. Had a head for numbers.”
“So what happened? Did she say?”
“He got full of himself, ran off with a younger woman. Happens. Guys don’t want to grow up. Don’t know it’s only their money has these young babes even looking at them.”
I thought of my reporting days in New York City, gray-haired Wall Street guys and their blonde third wives. Marta cruising the weddings.
“And sometimes they know and they don’t care,” I said.
“Right.”
The guy who hadn’t wanted to talk to me was back. He was holding a Starbucks coffee and his phone. The super went over and opened the door for him. He scurried to the stairwell, no eye contact, and my guy came back.
“Good person,” he said, running his hand through thinning, gray-streaked hair.
“Tragic,” I said.
“Well, you know where they say nice guys finish. I guess it’s the same for nice ladies.”
I nodded. He shook his head and said, “Couldn’t be some kinda mistake? Mistaken identity?”
I shook my head.
“Christ almighty.”
I waited.
“What was her life like here? What did she do?”
“Well,” he said, and then paused, pulling a tin of mints from the pocket of his jeans. He opened it, popped one into his mouth, then held the tin out to me. I took one, popped it into my mouth. Cardinal rule of street reporting. Take whatever’s offered, unless it might kill you.
“She had money. She was no dope. I think she was sticking it to old Rod—good for her. So she didn’t work. She told me she had to be useful, didn’t want to just sit around.”
“Really.”
“Oh, yeah. Lindy was wicked smart. I mean, you could just tell. My ex, only numbers she did was what she blew at the casino. Lindy, I mean, she said she could help these nonprofit outfits with their books. She said it would keep her out of the bars.”
He smiled, seemed to be losing himself in memories. Maybe they’d gotten together in more than the hallway.
I was about to get his name when he said, “She’d just started doing stuff for the homeless shelter.”
I looked up, smiled encouragingly.
“Really,” I said.
“Not the place where the people sleep and all that. The office part. You know, where they go around raising money.”
God, I thought. Killed by one of the very people she was trying to help. There was my hook.
“How did she like that?” I said.
“Okay, I guess,” he said. “Except they didn’t know what they were doing. Last week she said she’d spent the whole morning looking at papers stuffed in shoeboxes. She goes, ‘Haven’t these people ever heard of a computer?’ ”
I asked him if she said anything else about that and he said he couldn’t recall anything. He said his name was Leroy Larkin, but people called him Roy. I thanked him, said I was very sorry for his loss.
When I left the building, he was sitting on a bench in the foyer with his head in his hands. Lindy Hines had stolen his heart, and Teak Like the Wood had stolen Lindy Hines.
What were the chances?
8
k
I was climbing a snowbank to the street headed for my truck when the silver Malibu rolled past. Tingley’s head swiveled. I kept going, had the motor started and was putting the truck in gear when his car backed up and stopped beside me.
I shut off the motor. Tingley got out, came around the car wearing a cop’s tough-guy scowl. I buzzed the window down. He said, “Outta the truck, over here.”
He crossed in front of the truck, stepped up onto the snowbank. His leading leg went through and he swore and jumped onto the sidewalk and shook the snow off his trousers. Waited for me with his hands on his hips. I walked up to him and took out my notebook.
“Any more information on the perp?” I said.
“You tell me,” Tingley said.
“What do you mean, Detective?”
“First employee on the scene, lady works the register. She says she told you she knew the guy.”
“Goes by Teak,” I said. “Employees call him Taxi Man.”
“I know, I know. She told us, too. But after she spilled her guts to you.”
“Some people get chatty. It’s a nervous reaction.”
“And some people get stuff wheedled out of them. But that’s not the bone I’m picking,” Tingley said, poking the air in front of my chest.
“Oh, yeah? Then which bone is it?”
“The one that has you here.”
I waited.
“We haven’t released the name of the deceased.”
“Gotta do next of kin, right?”
“We’re looking into that.”
“I can help you. People here told me there’s only one, a son. His name is Barrett and he lives with his husband in Orrington, teaches high school math. Barrett, not the husband. Lindy Hines was separated from her husband, in the process of getting a divorce. He’s a contractor somewhere around Bar Harbor. Successful. Builds big houses for wealthy summer people. I was told the son blamed the stepdad for breaking up the family.”
“Been busy,” Tingley said.
“Yup.”
“Holding out information.”
“Just told you what I know,” I said.
“Didn’t say anything this morning about knowing the victim’s name.”
I shook my head.
“Nope. I’ve got a job to do too. You get over here, spook everybody, I’ve got nothing.”
“I don’t want you trampling on our investigation,” Tingley said.
“I didn’t trample,” I said. Well, maybe the hipster guy. “I pick
ed my way very carefully.”
“Don’t go near the son,” Tingley said.
“When are you going out there?”
“None of your fucking business. This is a homicide investigation. When we do have something to say, I guess I know who we’ll be talking to.”
“Local press? TV? I’m not worried.”
Tingley turned and watched the traffic roll by. Reached down and shook more snow off his trouser leg.
“What else?” he said.
“What else what?” I said.
“What else did the people in the building tell you?”
“Not much. The divorce. Lindy Hines was in a book club and they were reading Oprah. Super was carrying a torch for her.”
“What?”
“Had a thing for her. He’s divorced, too. She expected to do well financially in her divorce settlement and didn’t have to work. That’s about it, except for some young guy who told me he doesn’t like reporters.”
“Good for him.”
I shrugged. He looked over at his idling car, traffic edging around it. A guy in a pickup buzzed his window down and shouted, “Get that thing out of the road.” Tingley pulled his jacket to the side to flash the badge on his belt.
“Going to a lot of work for a slam dunk,” I said.
He looked at me.
“Off the record,” Tingley said, “real sympathetic victim will help keep this wingnut in a real jail.”
“Insanity defense?”
“If he has any sort of lawyer.”
“He seemed pretty nuts to me,” I said.
“Well, let him be nuts for the next fifty years in maximum security. Off the record.”
“Or they could adjust his medication.”
Tingley turned to the street, said, “Is it that lady’s fault this fucking asshole decided to stop taking his meds?” and walked back to his car and pulled away.
I got back in the truck, called Roxanne’s cell. She was at the school, and ed techs didn’t have their phones on. It went to voice mail. I left a message, said I was sorry I couldn’t get the toilet, but there was a murder at the store. It would be on the news. No need to worry; I’d be home to for dinner.
Put the phone down, Took a deep breath. Kept going while I still could, before it all hit me.
The homeless shelter was on the shabby end of the main drag out of town, in an old two-story brick building across from a small, scuffed-up park. Both the park and the shelter were flanked by rows of tenements that rose up a steep hill like tombstones. The shelter looked like it might have been a small manufacturing shop at one time, but now there were bedraggled curtains in the second-floor windows and a hand-painted sign that said loaves & fishes. The sign had a couple of each, the fish looking like largemouth bass and not something you’d drag out of the sea in Galilee. I parked out front, shut off the motor, and sat.
There were no cops showing, a couple of beat-up minivans parked beside the place, one black, one red. Two guys came out of a side door and walked toward the black one. The older guy was wearing a bandanna, pirate style, and walked with a limp. The other had on a blaze-orange knit hat and a hooded sweatshirt, like he’d rather be hunting, except this was downtown Riverport. Both were aged by the street, faces drawn and pocked by booze or drugs or both.
Drugs and hopelessness, not always in that order.
The two guys lifted boxes out of the van, then Orange Hat reached back and slid the door shut. They crossed the lot and went back into the building. I got out of the truck, pocketed my notebook, and followed.
It was a big open room, a counter in front of the door like the place used to sell hardware or auto parts. The counter was stacked with cartons and plastic grocery bags, a sneaker sticking out of one, a bunch of bananas from another. The two guys had disappeared, but I heard a thump to the right. The boxes being dumped on the floor.
“Come on,” a woman’s voice barked. “Go easy with that.”
There was a door to the right, and the two guys came back out. They looked at me and I returned their gaze, said, “Hey. How you doing?” They looked away, moved past me and back outside. I walked to the inner door, stepped through. A woman was bending over one of the cartons, pulling stuff out and setting it on the floor.
“Aftershave? Are you freakin’ kidding me?” she said.
She started scooping the bottles up, dumping them back into the box, and shouted, “What the hell is the matter with you guys? Didn’t I tell you to screen this crap first? Now we have to haul it all the way—”
She turned and saw me, said, “Oh.”
“Can’t get good help?”
“No, it’s just that now we’re stuck with stuff we can’t use and it takes up space and we have to dispose of it and—”
She mustered a half-smile and moved to the next carton. I moved with her, stood as she yanked things out. Toothpaste, bar soap, shampoo. “More like it,” she said.
I bent and crouched beside her.
“Donations?”
“Church did a drive, everybody bringing something in. Some get it more than others. Most of our guys don’t care about smelling pretty.”
I nodded, glanced over. She was in her forties, five foot six, chunky and solid. Short hair dyed pale blue, work-weathered hands. Her sweatshirt said maine and had a red lobster on the front. She was wearing pink Converse high tops.
“I’m Jack McMorrow,” I said.
She handed me a tube of hand lotion. “Now that’s useful. People outside in the weather, their hands get wicked dry.”
She took the hand lotion back.
“I’m from the New York Times,” I said.
She looked at me sideways. I had her attention.
“Yeah?”
“And you are?”
She considered it.
“Harriet Strand,” she said. “I’m the director. And most of the staff. And the chief cook and bottle washer.”
Still crouching, she held out her hand and we shook. Her grip was strong and her skin was rough. When she looked at me straight on she showed a missing front tooth. I must have reacted.
“I know. Just happened. Sometimes there are misunderstandings, you get caught in the crossfire. You know they want three thousand for an implant? I said, ‘You shitting me? That’s a lotta pasta.’ ”
I smiled.
“So what? New York Times is doing a story on Riverport?” Harriet said.
I was about to reply when the two men from the van came back in, Pirate Guy saying, “Last ones, Miss H.”
He dropped a carton beside me with a booming thud.
“Freakin’ books,” he said.
“You get everything from the back?” Harriet said to him.
“Yup,” he said.
“You’re sure. Because if I go out there and there’s stuff left in that van, there’ll be hell to pay.”
They let it roll off, stood there smelling like cigarettes and alcohol. Pirate Guy dug in his ear. His buddy took his orange hat off and scratched his head, put the hat back on. They all looked at me and waited.
“I’m writing a story,” I said.
They waited more.
“About a guy you might know. I’m told he’s here a lot.”
“Who’s that?” Harriet said, wary now, like this wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
“His name is Teak,” I said.
“Oh, we know Teak,” she said, relaxing. “Full name is T. K. Barney.”
“Shit, yeah,” Pirate Guy said.
“We put him to work,” Harriet said. “Carpentry and plumbing—”
“And electrical,” Orange Hat said. “But he ain’t got no license.”
“Where did you run into Teak?” Harriet said. “Did he talk your ear off?”
“About comics?” Pirate Guy said.
&nb
sp; “Oh, jeez,” Orange Hat said.
Harriet said, “He can go on for hours. Sometimes I have to—”
“I’m doing a story because Teak’s in jail,” I said. “He killed someone at Home Department.”
Her mouth froze open in mid-sentence. The two guys were looking at me with no expression at all. Tough nuts.
“Are you sure?” Harriet said. “I just talked to him—what was it? Last week. Wednesday. I mean, he seemed okay.”
“This was a couple of hours ago. He killed a woman with a hatchet.”
“Oh, no,” she said.
“Off his meds,” Pirate Guy said, shaking his head.
I looked to him and said, “Does he go off his meds?”
“I guess,” he said.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Dolph. Like Randolph, without the first part. Is this gonna be in the paper? ’Cause I don’t want to be in the paper.”
“Me neither,” said Orange Hat.
“Who are you?”
“Arthur. But I don’t want to be in the paper either.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll leave your last names totally out.”
They didn’t protest. Harriet didn’t either.
“How well do you guys know Teak?”
“See him around,” Arthur said. “Good shit, mostly.”
“And when he’s not?”
“Thinks everybody’s from one of his comic books,” Dolph said. “Like we’re all flying around and being superheroes and whatnot.”
“Does Teak think he’s from the comic book? When he’s off his meds?”
“I guess,” Arthur said. “Puffs out his chest and walks like this.”
He put his arms out to the side like he was a weightlifter. Dolph did it, too, both of them holding the pose like they were in a bodybuilding contest.
“Teak was talking about something called Hakata. So what’s that about?”
“He invented him,” Harriet said. “It’s his superhero.”
“The ax man,” Dolph said.
“Teak is Hakata?”
“No,” Harriet said. “He answers to him. When Teak’s in a bad way, he thinks he works for Hakata. Does his bidding, or however they say it.”
“Kills people?” I said.
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