by James Hayman
No, she told herself, it wasn’t the booze. It really had happened, and the proof of it was right in her pocket. One hundred and seventy-one dollars in cold hard cash. All she had to do was stick her hand in, feel the money and know everything she’d seen was real. Just as real as the handle of the cart she was pushing. Just as real as the constant pain in her legs.
Every once in a while Lucy couldn’t resist putting her hand in her pocket again just because she liked the feel of it. One hundred and seventy-one dollars minus the four bucks and change she’d spent on the pint of vodka. It was more money than she’d had at any one time in the three years since she got fired from her job as a greeter at the Walmart store in Falmouth. She was fired for telling the asshole shift supervisor that he was an asshole. Hell, everybody who worked in the store knew he was an asshole, but she was the only one who had the guts to tell him so to his face, so she was the only one who got kicked out. When he said those words, “You’re outta here,” she took off her little blue vest and threw the stupid thing right in his face. One of the best moments of her life. Made her chuckle even now. Even though she hadn’t been able to find a job since then. She earned what money she could wandering the streets the night before trash pickup and taking as many cans and bottles out of the recycling bins as she could, then cashing them in for the deposit money. That was pretty much her only source of income these days, and the competition to get to the bins first was getting fierce. That’s what made the one hundred and seventy-one dollars in her pocket so special.
Lucy leaned forward into the cart as she pushed. Damned thing was always heavy, seeing as how it contained every single piece of crap Lucy owned. But right now the crap felt heavier than ever. Her whole body was aching from pushing, and she knew she had to rest or she’d just fall down in the street and the cops would come and haul her away and she didn’t want anything to do with the cops. Especially with all that money and the girl’s wallet still in her pocket. Hell, they’d just take it and maybe even accuse her of being the killer. Which was stupid, because if she ever did kill someone like the dentist killed that girl, she wouldn’t bother pulling off her clothes and fucking her victim before she did it. Lucy just couldn’t get the image out of her head of the guy pulling down his pants, pulling a rubber onto his big hard boner, kneeling down and sticking it into her. After he fucked her, he pulled his pants back up, then stabbed her and started dragging her body into the woods.
That’s when he noticed Lucy peering out from the nest of old clothes and blankets she slept in most nights. He pulled the girl’s body under some brambles and looked straight at Lucy, still holding the knife he’d killed the girl with. Lucy was sure he was going to kill her too. Though if he was gonna kill her, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t try to fuck her first. At least she didn’t think he would. Course you never knew with some guys. While he stood there looking at her, Lucy tried to figure out which way she could run. But there wasn’t anywhere. Not up the hill. Not down. Not anywhere. No way she could run on her fucked-up legs anyway. The guy started walking toward her. Real easy like. Like this was something he’d done plenty of times before. Lucy would sure as hell be dead now if that dog hadn’t come racing toward them barking its fool head off. And that guy down on the trail shouting at the top of his lungs, “Ruthie, come. Ruthie come. Goddamn it, Ruthie, you eat that squirrel and you’re dead meat.”
All the commotion made the dentist stop dead in his tracks. He saw the dog rushing up the hill and the guy with the light on his head coming this way and he just heaved the girl’s clothes into the woods and turned and ran like stink past the dog and down the hill toward the water. Lucy wouldn’t have bothered checking any of the girl’s stuff except for the fact that her shorts had landed plop on Lucy’s head, which momentarily cut off whatever view she had. When she took the shorts off her head, the dentist was gone and the dog was sniffing and licking the girl’s body. Lucy was about to toss the shorts into the pile with the other clothes when she felt something hard in one of the pockets. She stuck her hand in and, bingo, there it was. One cell phone. One thin leather wallet and one hundred and seventy-one dollars in cash. Plus about a dollar twenty-five in loose change. Sometimes God smiles, Lucy thought to herself. Sometimes he surely does. She tossed the cell phone, stuck the wallet and money in her pocket, and got the hell out of there, pushing her cart as fast as she could down the trail toward East End Beach. When she passed the guy with the light on his head, she just kept going.
Lucy stopped pushing for a minute, looked up and saw she was just across the street from The Sahara Club. Sahara as in the desert. As in dry. The place had pictures of sand dunes and a big camel painted on the front wall and was a social club for local alkies who’d stopped drinking to get together and talk about not drinking. This time of the morning it was empty. Seemed as good a place as any for an alkie who had no intention of stopping drinking till she was dead and gone to plop down on her ass and take a rest. And maybe, just for the hell of it, she’d take a swig of her vodka and raise a toast to those that saved her life, one big barking dog and one guy with a light on his head.
She pushed the cart across the club’s parking lot and around toward the back, where she wouldn’t be so easily spotted. She dug around in one of her black garbage bags and pulled out the pint of Five O’Clock Vodka she’d bought at the mini-mart store with four bucks of the girl’s money. It was cheap shit that tasted like rubbing alcohol. With all that money in her pocket she’d been tempted to go for something better, like Smirnoff or Absolut, but she didn’t want Roger behind the counter to start wondering where Crazy Lucy, which she knew is what he called her, had gotten that kind of money.
Pressing her back against the side of the building, Lucy let herself slide slowly down until she was sitting. She stretched out her aching legs, rubbed them for a little while. Then she unscrewed the bottle, tipped it back in her mouth and took a long slug. Took a couple of deep breaths and then another long slug. Lucy closed her eyes and waited for the rotgut to kick in and ease her tension a little. She wished Kaz was here so he could rub the knots out of her neck and shoulders like he used to do when he wasn’t pissed off. But Kaz was dead, so there’d be no more back rubs. On the plus side, there’d be no more getting the shit kicked out of her either when Kaz was pissed off about something or other, which he usually was.
Lucy knew she ought to tell somebody about the dentist fucking and then stabbing the girl, but who the fuck was she gonna tell? She took another swallow and let the problem percolate around her mind for a couple of minutes. Maybe she could tell that female cop who lived over on Vesper Street. She seemed pretty nice. Even helped her out every now and then with a couple of bucks. But the more she thought about it, the more she figured, nice or not, the cops weren’t an option. First off, they wouldn’t believe somebody like her. Just a dirty old ex-hippie drunk living rough in the woods on the side of the hill. Second off, she didn’t get all that good a look at the guy’s face. Good enough so she thought maybe she’d remember him if she ever saw him again or maybe even pick him out of a police lineup, but maybe not good enough to give the cops an accurate description. Third off, there was the problem of the money. She probably shouldn’t have taken it, but how often do you have one hundred and seventy-one dollars literally land on your head?
She took another swig of the booze. She wished again Kaz was here. He would’ve known what to do. She couldn’t remember exactly how long Kaz had been dead, her memory wasn’t so good anymore, but it seemed like a long time now. Two years. Maybe three. It was a couple of months after she lost her job that Kaz died and then she was kicked out of the shithole apartment they shared and she’d ended up homeless. She’d probably be joining old Kaz soon if next winter turned out to be as bad as the last one. The cold would kill her if the booze didn’t do the job first. And, truth be told, she’d just as soon die as let the do-gooders push her back into the fucking women’s shelter, where they were always on her case about getting her life back togeth
er. She didn’t want to get her fucking life back together. She just wanted to be able to afford decent booze till she passed.
Lucy found herself wondering if God let the souls of homeless drunks into heaven. Ought to. She’d already had her share of hell right here on earth. If He was gonna be fair about it, wasn’t it time for her to have a little taste of heaven? Anyway, if He did let her in, it’d be good to see ol’ Kaz again, assuming he was there too. Been lonely without him. Hadn’t had his body lying next to her to help keep her warm since he died. She tried to figure out what he’d say if he was sitting next to her right now. She was pretty damned sure it’d be Hold on to the goddamned money, Luce, and don’t tell the cops or anyone else a goddamned thing about what you saw. You don’t need the trouble.
Still, it didn’t seem right. The dentist guy was a murderer. A real nasty-looking murderer. First time she saw him, he was coming up the hill from the water, pushing the girl in front of him. Then the girl broke away and tried to make a run for it. Didn’t get far though. The dentist grabbed her and pulled her down. She musta hit her head on a rock or something, cause she started bleeding like crazy. He dragged her along the trail, blood dripping from her head, and set her down on the path. Then he pulled her clothes off, pulled on the rubber and fucked her. Then he stabbed her. Lucy watched the whole thing from where she lay all wrapped up in her nest of ratty old clothes and blankets. Afterwards she could hear him dragging the girl into the woods. That’s when he heard Lucy scuttling around.
Lucy pulled the girl’s wallet out of her pocket. She hadn’t taken a real good look at it yet. She opened it. Stared at the photo on a driver’s license. Veronica Aimée Whitby. She also found an American Express Platinum Card and a TD Bank debit card with the same name.
Lucy took another slug of the vodka. She was feeling much better now, but she still didn’t feel like moving. She could hear Kaz’s raspy old voice saying, That money was manna from heaven, Lucy. Manna from heaven. Reason it landed on your head was cause God wanted you to have it. If you tell the cops, they’ll just take the damned money and spend it on themselves. Toss you in jail for killing the girl.
“But Kaz,” she said, as if he was sitting right next to her like he used to, “it doesn’t feel right taking money from a murdered girl.”
“Shit, lady,” said Kaz. “Use your damned head. A, she’s dead and that ain’t gonna change, and B, that kind of money’ll buy you more hooch’n you had in years. Decent meal or two as well.”
Kaz was right of course. Without thinking, Lucy passed the bottle over to where she supposed Kaz’s ghost must be sitting. But he didn’t take it. Never knew Kaz to turn down a drink before. Maybe it was because they didn’t let you drink when you were dead. You were nothing but . . . what’d they call it? Ectoplasm? Booze flowed right through your non-body and just went to waste. Since she herself wasn’t dead yet, she raised the bottle and drank to Kaz’s health, such as it was.
“What about the credit cards?” she asked him, but this time he didn’t answer.
Lucy supposed she should just toss the wallet in the next Dumpster she saw and be done with it. But those credit cards kept nagging at her. She was trying to think if there was any way she could use them. She pictured herself handing some bozo behind a counter an American Express Platinum Card and saying in her most refined voice, You do take American Express, don’t you? The idea actually made her cough out a throaty laugh or two. First time she’d laughed all morning. No, trying to use the credit card was way beyond stupid. If Kaz was around, he’d beat the shit out of her just for thinking anything that stupid. God knows he beat her up often enough when he was alive for stuff that was a whole lot less stupid.
On the other hand, Lucy thought to herself, there was that debit card. Now, that was another story. If she could figure out the password, maybe she could get even more money. She opened the wallet and looked again at the girl’s license. Veronica Aimée Whitby. Born 4/23/94. Poor kid was only eighteen years old. Lucy wondered if she was any relation to those Whitbys. If she was, it’d sure as hell be worth a try. Kaz said lots of people use their birthdays backwards as passwords. In Veronica’s case that’d be 4932 or maybe 9324. She looked through the rest of the stuff in the wallet but couldn’t find anything that looked like it might be a clue to the password. Lucy decided that if one of those two worked, great. If not, fuck it. She’d toss the thing. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. She got up, tucked the now mostly empty bottle back into the black bag and started trudging down Washington toward the mini-mart store where she’d bought the vodka. They had an ATM there. Way in the back where nobody would see what she was doing.
Chapter 35
MAGGIE AND MCCABE were sitting in Bill Fortier’s office debriefing him on their next-of-kin notifications and their interview with Gina Knowles when Detective Brian Cleary stuck his head in. “Phone records just came in.”
“And?” asked McCabe.
“No question something hot and heavy was going on between them. Something illegal as well. Tom’s got the records for both phones laid out in the conference room.”
They went down the hall and joined Cleary’s partner, Tom Tasco. Once there, they all leaned over the long table and pored over the documents.
“Finding her phone was a gift,” said Tasco. “Seems she deleted practically nothing. The phone tells us as much about what was going on between them as we need to know.”
“There were hundreds of calls, texts and voice mails between the two. Sometimes as many as twenty round-trip texts in one day,” Cleary added.
“Starting when?” asked Maggie.
“The first ones date from November just before the Thanksgiving holidays. Initially nothing more than flirty. Stuff like her asking, ‘Did you like the poem I sent you? Wrote it specially for you.’ And him responding, ‘Stop by my office and we can talk about it.’ Course we don’t know what went on in the office. Bill Bacon checked with the Penfield headmaster. As department head, Knowles rated a private office with a door.”
“Lockable?” asked McCabe.
“Yes,” said Tasco. “But teachers aren’t supposed to even close their doors, let alone lock them, when they have a student in the office. Closed doors leave the teacher vulnerable to charges of sexual harassment.”
“Man,” said McCabe, “times sure have changed since my days at St. Barnabas.”
“The texting back and forth picked up steam in December. She apparently bought him a Christmas present. First edition of something called Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by a poet named Lord Byron. Must have been expensive, cause he wrote her a big thank-you note. Asked . . .” Tasco checked his notes. “ . . . ‘Where on earth did you find this? It must have cost you a fortune.’ By the middle of January they were texting back and forth pretty much every day, and it was obvious they were doing more than just texting. Voice mail content, specially the ones from her to him, was getting pretty steamy. Not quite Fifty Shades of Grey but some pretty damned close. She also sent him a couple of nude selfies. I don’t know about Knowles, but if a hot-looking kid like Aimée Whitby sent me some of the stuff she sent him, I think I’d turn fifty shades of scarlet.”
Maggie smiled. Tom was no prude, so Aimée’s messages must have been pretty hot. Not to mention the photos. “How about his replies? Equally explicit?”
“No. His were more discreet. Even so, he was saying stuff like ‘I’ve never loved another human being as much as I love you.’ Love notwithstanding, he made it pretty clear he was as eager for sex as she was.”
“Where’d they do their dirty dancing?” asked Maggie.
“In the beginning at Tracy Carlin’s house. I’m assuming Tracy wasn’t home while they went at it. Then in February he rented a studio apartment in a building on Hampshire Street a couple of doors up from Angelo’s.”
Angelo’s was a down-at-the-heels tavern popular with a lot of the local drinkers and brawlers. Cops were constantly being called to the place to break up fights. Just two months ago a
melee in the parking lot ended with somebody getting stabbed to death and the stabber being sentenced to a long stay at the state prison in Warren. The city council was thinking about lifting the tavern’s liquor license.
“Reading between the lines,” Tasco said, “it seems Knowles told the landlord he planned to use the apartment as an office for writing his book. Don’t know if he ever told his wife anything about it.”
“I doubt it,” said Maggie. “Knowles’s wife implied they were pretty much broke. Said he worked at the USM library.”
“Anyway, the apartment wasn’t his idea, it was Aimée’s. When she suggested it, he told her he couldn’t afford it. She texted back, ‘My treat.’ He signed the lease, since she was only seventeen, and I guess probably because the name Whitby would have made more than a few waves. But she paid the rent. Six fifty a month.”
“A kept man,” said McCabe. “Usually it’s the other way around. Especially when the woman’s young and beautiful. Mag, when you get a chance, take a look at the place, talk to the landlord. Find out what you can about who went in and out.”
“Aside from the two of them?” asked Maggie.
“Yeah, I’m just wondering if anybody else ever dropped by.”
“Like who?”
“Like maybe the murderer. We’re all assuming Knowles killed her and then himself. I’d rather not be that hasty in our assumptions. Anyway, take a look yourself and then have the techs go over it and see what they can find. Also ask the landlord to give you a copy of the lease. I’ll write up a subpoena for her bank records and get copies of her canceled checks. I’m curious how much money of her own this kid had.”
Maggie turned to Cleary. “After February, did they always use the apartment for their get-togethers?”
“Yeah. They e-mailed a few times about going out to Whitby Island. Some place called the studio. But Aimée said they couldn’t because somebody named Mr. Jolley might be nosing around.”
