“Last I checked, it hadn’t come in,” Willoughby said, crunching on a chocolate chip. He started his laptop and when he was ready for it, I typed in the password for our wireless network then excused myself and took a break.
When I returned, he said, “Here’s the preliminary report.” He scrolled through the PDF and squinted at his screen. Scrolled up, scrolled down, took the last cookie and spewed crumbs on the keyboard and table. “Nothing here about a shed in the back. They found garden tools in the yard near a flower bed.”
I sat up. “I saw the tools and judging by the job they did, they were no gardeners, believe me. But I saw a shed. Barbara gave me a tour of her mother’s house while we were waiting for you.” I held my breath waiting for a reaction, but there was none. “It’s in a corner of the garden hidden by a small blue spruce or something. Padlocked. At the time I didn’t have the key, and I heard sirens approaching. But I have a key now—Barbara gave it to me before she left for the morgue. Bet you anything the coat’s from that shed. We might find other stuff there, too. It could be important.”
The Primary Crime Scene
“Damn!” Jane looked upset. I was glad I wasn’t the one who filed the report.
“It might show up on subsequent versions,” I said.
“It’s got a time stamp of eleven thirty five, just a few minutes ago. They probably wanted to get this out before midnight,” Willoughby said, looking at his watch. “Well, nothing we can do about it tonight.”
“You bet there’s something we can do about it.” Jane was halfway out of her chair. “Don’t just sit there, get a move on!” She stabbed her phone and in a second, spoke to someone on duty telling them to get their asses over to College Place. I felt their fear. It came through loud and clear over the wire.
Denny looked at me and winked. “Meet you there,” he called to Jane.
“C’mon, daft and serious,” he said to me. It was his way of trying to make up, but I knew we had to talk—I felt the elevator plunge to my lower depths.
As I climbed into Denny’s jeep, I apologized and kissed him on the neck. “I’m messed up, I know. I just didn’t expect to hear Heights Federal Bank tonight.”
“It’s Cookie you need to talk to. She’s the one who’s upset.”
“With me? Angry?”
“No. Hurt. I can’t blame her. She’s doing the neighborhoods for you, and what does she get? A mumbled thanks and a rant. Besides, she’s hurting herself.”
“She’s used to my rants.”
“Not this time.”
While Denny drove, I texted her a gushy one and asked if she wanted to go to New Jersey with us tomorrow. “Might be dangerous,” I added.
Two seconds later she replied in the affirm.
“See? She’s not hurt.”
“Dream on.”
Jane and Willoughby were standing by the fence, gloves on, when we pulled up. We opened the gate and I showed her the shed, reaching in my pockets for latex gloves and the key, trying to fit it into the lock. After a few vain attempts to open it, I let Jane try, and the tumblers fell and the lock turned. We stood peering inside trying to see into the cavernous space with the aid of one flashlight.
I smelled cut grass and cordite and something else. The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. I knew something bad had happened in there. Jane shone her light around.
“What’s that on the floor?” she asked.
“The victim’s purse,” I said.
The van arrived and the super shot out, nodding to Jane as she hurried past her, smart enough to keep her mouth shut.
“Take your time, but you know we’re late with this,” Jane called after her. “For one thing, I want that purse.”
The super turned. “You can’t have it, not yet. Go home and let us do our job. It’ll be faster that way. We made a mistake, overlooked this place, and I apologize, but right now you need to stay off my tail.”
There was silence. I watched while the videographer captured the scene, klieg lights or whatever you call them, attached to his camera and burning the air around them. The world lit up and I noticed more bits of grass on the floor and something dark, a creepy stain on the worn planks. One of the techs strung up the yellow tape.
“This is the primary crime scene. This is where she died,” I said. My blood stirred.
“You’re right,” Jane whispered.
I knew it in my bones. I could feel its sacredness, its violation. We never found Mom’s primary. Not yet at any rate. I looked up at the sky so the excess water would seep back into my eyeballs. A clear night, you could even see stars. A foghorn sounded and I could hear cars rattling over the bridge. Then the world went too quiet. For Brooklyn, I mean. I mumbled a prayer to the shade of Mary Ward Simon asking her to help us find Charlie.
“What about Barbara’s ex. You talked to him?” I asked.
Jane shook her head. “Not yet. But if the prints on his mother-in-law’s neck were his, they’d be in AFIS. He’s some kind of techie bigwig for the city of New York. What do they call that department now?” She looked at her notes “Here it is, Global Enterprise Infrastructure and blah blah blah is what I have written down. Lives in Battery Park.”
“I left a message, but he hasn’t returned my call, and I’ll be busy in New Jersey most of tomorrow, I can feel it.”
“No worries. We’ll be knocking on his door tomorrow morning. I guess you can’t talk about conversations you’ve had with your client, say, if she mentioned the ex, or what’s your hunch about her or anything.”
I was silent but Jane looked at my face and read between the lines.
“What’s that they say about praise?” she asked.
“Damned by faint praise,” I said. I kept my mouth shut and stared into her eyes. “She’s a strong woman and I admire her …” I let my voice trail off.
“Right. We’ll keep on her. Pretty classy place her mom had.”
I said nothing, but I thought about that other saying, the one about following the money. I had to check for sure, but she stood to gain a lot by her mother’s death. “I’ve got a call into the ex. I so want to interview him. And don’t ask because I’m not going to tell you what Barbara said about him. I was silent a tick. “Are you planning on holding a news conference?”
“Got nothing to tell them, not yet. Not that the press hasn’t been clamoring. But just as soon as we hear what you find out tomorrow about Arrowsmith, I’ll know more. I’d love to have a person of interest in custody when Barbara pleads for the return of her son. Something for them to chew on. Are you starting out early in the morning?”
“Of course.”
I kept my mouth shut about Barbara. Barbara, as Cookie would say, was a mystery wrapped in an enigma. But don’t roll your eyes: Cookie’s a writer and loves to steal lines.
My phone rang. It was Barbara. This time she was on the edge and I shut my eyes hard for thinking bad thoughts about her. Someone from the FBI’s canine unit had phoned her and wanted some of Charlie’s clothes.
“This is a good thing,” I managed to say. “They’re teaching the dogs his scent so they can find him.”
Jane nodded when I told her. “Tell her to keep in touch.”
A Small Motel
Ralph was tired. He wanted time alone with Charlie. He earned it. The boss could wait, so he kept driving until he smelled the water, and he drove a ways more on the highway that runs close to the sea. Arrow had taken him there last year, so he knew a small motel and he could show Charlie the water, how the waves hurried to the shore. Ralph liked the sound they made. They never stopped. Arrow had showed him that. Charlie could sit in the sand and watch the boys surf. Ralph liked how they could paddle out to sea bucking the waves, how their wet bodies shone. He licked his lips and tasted salt and smelled pine cones. He was getting excited thinking about Charlie smiling and pointing to the waves, but he had to stop thinking about Charlie because the cars in back of him started honking their horns.
“Where’s
my gran?”
“You’ll see her soon. Hang on.”
It was hard to find the motel in the dark and the shoreline had been changed since last year, a storm, Arrow told him, but he found it and parked near the pink neon sign.
Ralph held Charlie’s hand and ducked as they walked into the front office. It was dark and he could smell someone barbecuing and asked Charlie if he was hungry. Charlie nodded. The walls were lined with wood, the kind with holes in it but no one was at the front desk. On one wall was a big TV. Ralph didn’t like TVs. The people on them talked too fast and it reminded him of school when he had to think too hard. Charlie pointed to the screen and said, “Boy,” and asked again for his gran.
“First I’m taking you to see the ocean. Too dark tonight, but tomorrow we’ll see it.”
“May I help you?” a man asked. He told Ralph the minimum stay was for three nights. When Ralph looked at him, the man said he had a room for three nights, but not for one. So Ralph took the room.
“My son,” Ralph told the man. “Just the two of us. We’ll be gone tomorrow afternoon.” Ralph paid for the room for three nights. A woman showed them the way. It was on the second floor with an ocean view and Ralph could hear the waves and smell the water. It smelled like fish. The woman gave him the card and showed him how to use it. Ralph had trouble at first, but the woman showed him again.
The woman stared at Charlie. “The boy looks like the one they’re trying to find,” she said.
“He’s my son,” Ralph said.
But the woman kept staring at Charlie and made no move to go.
“My son,” Ralph said again.
Still she made no move to go so Ralph closed the door.
Ralph didn’t think he could stand any more delays and his hand shook when he fumbled with the lock.
“Where’s my gran?” Charlie asked. “You said she’d be here,” he said louder.
But Ralph couldn’t contain himself, just couldn’t do it. He felt Charlie’s ears and hair, the back of his neck, his skin so soft.
It shouldn’t have been this way. He should have remembered to lock the door with the chain. She didn’t have to die if she’d just left them alone, but the door opened and the woman walked in, her eyes black and her face angry like his sister that one time.
“I thought so.” She stepped toward Charlie.
“This way, son.” She held her hand out. “I’ll find your folks.”
But Ralph was ready for her and when she bent to take Charlie’s hand, Ralph slammed her. He picked up her body and he squeezed until he heard the crack. Then he stuffed the woman in the closet.
He knew he had to leave so he took Charlie and they walked to the exit sign and took the back stairs.
Ralph and the Lamp
Ralph drove down the road out of town and back onto 195, staying in the right lane and looking for the exit. When he found it, he turned off into the road, a two lane highway with cracks and bumps. But the boss’s place was close by, a few miles down the road, he remembered. “Just a little ways,” he heard Arrow say. The boss had acres and acres of horse farm, Arrow told him. With prize studs and brick buildings and tracks. Worth millions, Arrow said.
Ralph should have counted the miles from the highway the last time he came. The sky was black and there weren’t any streetlights and a driver was honking in back of him, riding his tail. Ralph didn’t like it, but then he remembered to put his lights on and the driver stopped honking. There, that was better, and Ralph rolled down the window, just like Arrow would do, because it was getting warm and he wanted to smell the horses and hear the birds and the crickets in the grass.
Another couple of miles and Ralph felt himself getting warm and wishing the ride was over. He thought he might have missed the turn. He slowed after the rise in the hill, and ran into a man on a tractor pulling a load of hay. He watched the Plymouth’s speedometer sinking down to twenty-five, then fifteen and the man on the tractor bounced on his seat and gray smoke spewed from the exhaust. If only his sister could see him now, on a road in the country, in back of a tractor. He opened the window and smelled hay, but that was ok because Ralph didn’t know what he was going to say about Arrow and Charlie until the tractor gave him an idea.
Charlie asked about his gran again and said she didn’t live near tractors. Ralph said they’d see her soon, they just had to make a stop and see someone.
Soon Ralph saw the clump of trees and the boss’s fence on both sides of the road as far as you could see even in the day and up a little ways was the entrance. It was a long drive to the boss’s house, but he knew better than to go to the front door. He parked in back near a barn painted white with green trim and a green roof, Ralph forgot what they called it. He saw horses in the distance.
He got Charlie out and took his hand. The softness of it against his palm felt good, like the time the horse ate the apple from his hand. Ralph wanted to stay in the barn with Charlie forever. He listened to the crunch of his boots on the gravel path and knocked on the door. Harry opened it.
“Ralph, to see the boss.”
“Yeah. Why you here?”
“The boss wants to see me, is all. The job’s done.”
Ralph waited in the hall a long time but no one came. Charlie squirmed on the chair and asked if his gran was here and when was he going to see her. He kept it up. It drove Ralph crazy. The seat was hard. The maid went by and winked at Ralph and ruffled Charlie’s hair. Still the boss didn’t call him. He was about to leave when Harry came back and said to go in, “He’ll see you now.”
“Doin’ here? Where’s Arrow?” That was the boss, his forehead sweating and his hair grey and spiked. Ralph saw the holster against the side of his shirt as the boss rocked back, way back, in the leather chair behind his desk.
Ralph couldn’t lie, not to the boss, but his tongue wouldn’t work quick enough.
“Don’t fuck with me. Where is he?”
He thought of the tractor. Take it slow, he said to himself. “Ar-rrow’s dead.” It just spilled from his mouth.
“Cops?”
Ralph thought maybe if he said yes, that would be it. He tried it out in his head, Yes the cops. But the boss was too smart for that. He’d ask what kind of cops and he’d be all over it, where did it happen, why wasn’t it in the news, like that. He’d find the lie.
“Arrow’s dead. Making t-trouble. C-calling you names.”
“Blood?”
“No blood, no b-b-blood.”
The boss stared up at Ralph and slammed a fist on the desk. “Liar. Where’s the body. Got to be blood.”
Ralph couldn’t breath. He felt his head go light. But he said no, no blood, boss. He told him about Arrow in the Meadowlands. “Squeezed him. Like this.” Ralph grabbed the metal lamp on the boss’s desk, yanked the cord from the plug and held it up so the boss could see. He squeezed like it was Arrow’s neck, pressed until the lamp folded in two. It was harder than Butternut, but only took a few seconds longer.
The boss stared at Ralph. “And the old lady?”
“Gone, too. Dumped her where you said. No blood.”
“Good,” the boss said. “I want her spooked, you hear me, the girl’s got to be spooked.”
“And we torched—”
But the boss said Arrow told him about the old lady and the body and the van. “What about the girl, I didn’t hear about her.”
“What girl?” Ralph asked. “Not supposed to do a girl.”
But the boss asked him more questions about the girl, the one with red curly hair and Ralph kept telling him there wasn’t a girl with red curls until he remembered something about a drive down Henry Street yesterday afternoon and how Arrow got out at Montague acting all squirrelly so Ralph had to wait for him until Arrow gave him the sign, then waited for him near Remsen Street. And when Arrow came, he was all huffed from running and acting strange and saying as how he didn’t get the girl. So he told the boss about it and what Arrow said about the girl and asked him if that was the girl
he meant and hoped that the boss would stop asking him questions.
The boss got up from his chair and paced back and forth for a while, looking like a brick shithouse on the move. That’s what his brother would have called the boss, a brick shithouse. Ralph liked the boss.
When he was done with his pacing, the boss sat back down and reached into his desk and took out a picture. It was a picture of the girl with red curls.
Ralph nodded. “That’s the one. Seen her today leaning against the wall. Seen Arrow hit in the eye.”
The boss told Ralph where the girl lived and that she made too much trouble for him, like the old lady did. He wanted Ralph to get rid of her.
“After that, no more squeezing. I’ll be home free. But no blood. Think you can do it?”
“Sure, boss.” Ralph would do anything for the boss. He wanted him to be home free.
“Harry!”
Harry rushed in. He looked at the boss and stared at the lamp.
“Give Ralphie here the key to the place in Dumbo. Give him five thousand, a new set of clothes, suitcase, cell phone, whatever he needs.”
Ralph told him no phone, he didn’t use phones.
“All right, Ralphie. You get rid of her the same as you did to Arrow and tell me when it’s done.”
Then the boss smiled at Harry. “Fix this lamp.”
Harry shook his head. “How the hell?”
The boss grinned and jerked his thumb at Ralph. “He squeezed it. Order me another.”
Harry looked at Ralph and then at the boss. “What the …? He bent a shell casing?”
“And take the kid for a ride.”
A shadow moved in the hall, a shadow wearing yellow. Marie. She stopped near the door. She was bent like she was listening at that last one about take the kid for a ride.
“No,” Ralph yelled that last one. He yelled, even though it was the boss and he liked the boss. He said no one touched Charlie and Ralph grabbed Harry by the neck and said as how he was going to squeeze him good and the boss told him, “No. Ok. No. A mistake. Let him go.”
Too Quiet In Brooklyn (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 1) Page 12
