Perfectly Criminal

by Celeste Marsella

  “Are you wimping out on me, Shannon? Who'd have thunk it?”

  Truth was, she was right. I don't know why I could look at pictures of autopsy and murder scenes but the real thing always shook me.

  I slammed the car into drive and we drove in silence, Marianna backing off, instinctively knowing I was fuming at her accusation that I was a wimp. The problem with close friends and family members is they know your buttons—and push them regularly.

  I refocused my thoughts on Boardman and his sudden attitude change once we were out of my sheets and back on the streets. Obviously, the call to his lawyer had been made while he was locked in my bathroom. When and why did he decide to recant his admission? Was it my breath, or had he realized that his amnesia shtick wasn't passing the credibility test? Sure, as soon as he realized I was turning him in to the cops, that's when his memory returned—along with a solid not-guilty plea.

  I looked down at my watch. Nine thirty-five p.m. I turned into the 41° North parking lot and found a spot. The restaurant was literally on the docks. There was no inside. The buzz on Newport's newest hot spot was that it was a nondiscriminatory private club where anyone, for a fee, could receive a shiny plastic card in the mail that entitled the holder to eat at the restaurant to the exclusion of nonmembers. Being able to moor your boat off its dock and admire it as you dined was an included plus but not a membership requirement.

  We slipped through the entrance without notice (or membership cards) because of the bustle of police activity. Murder is a big-ticket item. On a hot August night, the posh new place was bustling with a drunk and dilatory dinner crowd, but the weather, changing fast from balmy to a nasty nor'easter, was compounding the chaos. Even the deck-length clear plastic panels were fighting to stay in place, slapping in protest against the high winds coming off the water.

  Diners were being rustled to other tables as a boat was being cordoned off. Because I wasn't as chummy with the Newport cops as I was with the Providence guys, it took a few of my special tricks to get us close to the action. We flashed our AG IDs at whoever cared to glance our way and I mumbled “Yo” a few times. As long as we didn't slow down to give the younger cops a chance to realize they didn't recognize us, I figured we'd zip right onto the actual finger dock where the Endurance was moored.

  “Follow me, Mari, and don't look up,” I said as I walked down the dock ramp to board the yacht. I was blocked by an outstretched arm as I lifted my leg to board.

  “Excuse me, ma'am. No one on this boat until forensics gets here—”

  I retrieved the big guns from my pocket—Chucky Sewell's old badge from when he was a street cop-flashed it in the rookie's face, and before he could read it, stuck it back in my belt, talking nonstop. “We came all the way down from Providence, so don't make me go back and tell the mayor you locals are making your Providence brethren waste gas at taxpayers' expense, huh? Lucky Dack's on his way from the ME's. He told us to stand guard for him onboard.”

  As I pushed my way through the feeble barricade of his twenty-year-old mug, I heard Mari behind me giving him a final zing. “And if you call us ‘ma'am’ one more time, I'll shove the pointy end of the apostrophe up your dick.”

  I turned around and raised my brows at her. Marianna had been thrown into overdrive by her last murder case: a serial killer at a swanky private college. She had gullibly let the student killer practically sit on her lap as together they tried to solve the murders. And the more he killed, the more she took him into her confidence. Since then she wasn't as trusting as she used to be, and she was belting out zingers whenever the opportunity presented itself. A barely-old-enough-to-shave Newport cop was an easy mark.

  As we stepped carefully onto the boat, I whispered, “Hey, Mar, you got to go a little easy on the authority here. We're not in Providence, so the cops aren't going to be as solicitous. I mean, I haven't slept with any of them.”

  “The night is young. I have faith in you.”

  “Yeah, but I can't seem to get my temperature down from my close encounter with Scott Boardman. Right now I only have eyes for him, if you know what I mean.”

  “Well, Boardman's a bit indisposed right now, and you know the old song—if you don't have the keys to his jail cell, love the one you're with.”

  I had moved to the bridge of the boat, behind the stainless steering wheel, looking for the blood to begin its eerie trail. That's how these damn scenes always opened: Curtain up, the wolf is gone. Follow the blood to Grandma's bed, where she'll be lying faceup, howling at a blood-drenched ceiling.

  While Marianna was already peering below to the berths, I stood with my hands deep in my pockets until Lucky Dack, our chief forensic tech, strode toward us from the dock. He caught sight of me and reared his head back in a nod. He boarded and then bowed graciously to Marianna and me. “Ladies, so nice to be here. Cuz heaven knows I wouldn't be in a fancy place like this unless someone died a highly unfortunate and violent death on the premises.”

  “Au contraire, Lucky,” Marianna said. “This isn't one of those kind of places. Hell, they'd even let me join and I'm an Italo from Federal Hill.”

  “Frankly, I was referrin' to the price of the drinks.” He gave her a wink.

  Of the four of us, Marianna had always been Lucky's favorite. She was sweet with just the right amount of savvy. But Lucky and I enjoyed a special relationship, more like blood brothers; we were similar in height, screwed-up family histories, and predilections for perverted sex: Lucky liked his women cold, but preferably before autopsy.

  I moseyed up close to Lucky's ear. Even at my height I still had to stand on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “These locals here think we're Providence cops,” I said. “So don't blow our cover. Mari wants to go below with you. Personal stake in this one, if you know what I mean.”

  Lucky looked up at the boat's mast, processing the info I'd just hoisted on him. He was the sly and slow turtle, rarely erring with quick responses. He also knew that he had to be especially cautious with us “ladies” because we were usually doing something slightly left of legal. Lucky always performed quick calculations of how much we were jeopardizing his job while we were busy screwing up our own.

  “Seems to me you two are doing something dangerously akin to impersonatin' police officers here. I'm no lawyer, but didn't you girls just about almost lose your jobs recently for some other questionably illegal activity—like hightailing it to a bar after witnessing those college murders?”

  At the words “college murders,” Marianna's ears perked up like a bloodhound at a fresh scent. She choked out, “How'd you find out about that? Only Vince and that miserable twit Jeff Kendall knew.”

  “Well, let me just say this. Far as I know, Mr. Piganno didn't breathe a word of it.”

  Marianna looked at me. “That's it, Shannon, Jeff Kendall just went on my hit list.”

  “He's been on your hit list since he practically raped you in his father's wine cellar. I'm sick of hearing it. We got new fish to fry here, so throw the dead ones back. Kendall will end up drowning in his own scum,” I said.

  As Marianna and I sparred over fish stories, Lucky had made his decision on how far he would go to help us out. He spoke to the two cops standing guard at the stairway to the lower deck. “I'm going down below. These two fine officers of the court can come with me. I've worked closely with them in the past and they're pros. Yes, sir, I kindly appreciate their help. So nice of Providence to send them down here for this.”

  Lucky saluted the cops and stepped carefully toward the stairs. One tech with a camera was allowed down with us, and the four of us descended the steps to the galley area, where I hung back while Lucky led the way to the forward berth with Marianna on his heels. Even though the ceilings were unusually high in this high-priced tug, six-foot-five Lucky crouched as he advanced carefully to the scene, presumably watching his steps for blood drops or evidence along the way. I crept slowly forward as Lucky used hand signals to keep Marianna and me just outside the entrance to the ma
in berth. He motioned the photographer through to begin his work while I explained to Lucky that Boardman had already confessed to the crime so there was no need to be as thorough as he normally would be.

  Lucky spoke as he visually examined the area, touching nothing until the photographer was finished. “Don't be too sure of that, Miz Lynch. Once the defense lawyers get hold of ‘em, a voluntary confession turns into a not-guilty plea faster than my granddaddy could get his head out of a noose.”

  “Jesus Christ, Lucky,” I said. “You actually had relatives who were hung?”

  “Nope, but it sure 'nuff gets your attention, doesn't it?”

  “Low. Really low,” Marianna muttered.

  “Sweet chariot,” Lucky retorted as he ducked his head to peer through the overhead beam of the bulkhead at the bodies of two women on the bed. He looked up at the bloody ceiling, then down again at them, as if tracing laser lines from wounds to blood spatter. One woman, a blonde, lay faceup; the other was dark-haired and lay facedown with her head hanging off the side of the bed like a broken doll. The bed was blood-drenched, so it was hard to tell at first glance how the deadly deeds had been done. So much red everywhere made me flash back to Boardman in the bathroom at Al Forno. Why, other than his dirty nails, was he so clean of any blood residue if he'd in fact just left this sanguineous carnage?

  I held my arms stiffly at my sides to keep from shivering.

  “Head wounds,” Lucky said in his short-clipped manner. “Lot of blood still red and wet. But it would dry slower in the salt air. Humidity and all.” He looked up and shouted at the guys hovering outside. “Get someone in here to do body temps ASAP!” Lucky continued to visually examine the scene from the doorway, mumbling to himself and taking mental notes. He poked his head up again and spoke to the camera cop. “Any of those guys out there questioning the guests before they all leave for the night? And the help too. Someone musta heard or seen somethin’ ‘round here about five or six hours ago. Like bloodcurdling screams and a guy running down the docks dripping blood all over someone's fifty-dollar veal chop?”

  “Which reminds me, Lucky,” I said, “I didn't see any blood on Boardman, and he told me he'd just come from here.”

  “He clean up anywhere before you saw him?”

  “Not that he mentioned, but then I didn't ask…”

  “Could it be,” Marianna said, “that you didn't ask Boardman any indecorous and embarrassing questions about the recent butchering of his wife and her lover because you didn't want to endanger your budding relationship with him?”

  My body loosened in self-defense. I snapped at her like I was getting ready to toss her body on the bed with the two dead ones. “Hey, buddy, watch it! Are you suggesting I was shirking my professional responsibility just because my suspect was a hot piece of ass? Do you know how many defendants I've sent to jail that, but for the grace of God, I would have dated if they hadn't just sliced up their last girlfriend? Give me a little fucking credit here.”

  Lucky ducked into the V-berth and inched closer to the bodies, red and gray, the heat of passion having been snuffed by a presumptive weapon-wielding Scott Boardman.

  The windows were shut tight and the enclosure was stuffy, smelling like the grease-encrusted toolbox in the trunk of my father's car—an amalgam of marine engine exhaust, seawater, decomposing blood, and the salty smell of stale body sweat.

  As if he could sense my reticence, Lucky told Marianna she could come into the room with him but motioned me to remain by the door (undoubtedly because he didn't want to add vomit to the evidentiary mix). Marianna immediately walked toward what I now discerned was a battered-looking ash blond head, half of which was stained dark brown and unrecognizable as human. I wondered why my dinner wasn't already rushing back up my gut, then I remembered I'd never eaten.

  Marianna was too busy visually examining the scene to notice my heavy breathing. That was the trouble with the four of us being so close: I couldn't hide things from them like I could the rest of the intimidated world. Beth was the only one who would retreat when I growled, and I expected that as soon as she went to law school and became a full-fledged JD, she too would soon realize that even if I could slice the wings off a monarch butterfly, there were still some things that rattled me. Like fresh blood from a kill.

  Marianna remained focused on the crime scene as she spoke to me. “This Boardman guy was some hot dude you hooked up with in a bathroom, after which you found out he killed the wife. Precoital Stardust was obscuring your vision when you should have been looking for blood. For all we know, he was using the Al Forno restroom to clean up and floss. In hindsight, we should have had the bathroom closed off to the public.”

  “Lest we fucking forget,” I snapped back, “the guy confessed after we left the restaurant.” Finally, I thought, I had come to my hard-ass senses and shut her up.

  “Lest we also fucking forget,” she rallied, “he imported a high-priced criminal defense lawyer shortly thereafter. Doesn't sound to me like a guy too committed to confessing.”

  I fucking hated it when she was right. “It's times like this, Marianna, I consider our friendship provisional.”

  Marianna pulled out her cell phone and began dialing the Providence police to have them cordon off the Al Forno restroom. She delivered the message directly to Chief Sewell and then flipped her phone closed. “Well, provided you don't make any more slipups with this guy, I'll keep my theories to myself. But I can't be screwing around with my career at the AG's. Don't forget, since my last slipup my job is provisional, so I can't afford to be swallowing your errors right now. Vince isn't going to let me off the hook twice in one lifetime.”

  Marianna was wrong about Vince letting her off the hook. Nay, Vince treated Marianna like the daughter he never had. Not only would Vince let her off the hook, he'd actually fish her out of trouble and put her in a holding tank until her wounds healed. I, on the other hand, was a piranha of another story: Vince Piganno and I couldn't be in the same room together without creating a subduction zone for an undersea earthquake. Just as neophyte Brooke Stanford had stated: Vince liked his girls passive and girlie, and I'm about as passive as an oncoming tsunami.

  Marianna's cell phone rang. “She's standing right next to me,” she said into it, then handed it to me. “It's Vince.”

  “Speak of the devil,” I said into the phone. “Why didn't you call me on my phone?”

  “I can't waste my brain cells remembering all your numbers. And shit, how far away can you be from the rest of your conjoined group?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah… there's two women here, both in Davy Jones's locker.”

  “Stay out of the cops' way, because you girls will screw up an open can and let the friggin' worms out.”

  I ignored his tangled metaphor. “Scott Boardman is innocent.” I said.

  “Lynch, don't start acting like the dumb Irish broad you are. The bum's conferring with his lawyer even as we speak. Now both of you get out of there and get your asses back here to start working the case.”

  “I am telling you, he's innocent. He may have had a blackout, or maybe he's covering for someone else, but I can feel it in my bones. He didn't kill anybody.”

  “Well, feel this in your bony body. You're on unpaid leave unless you get back here quick.”

  I snapped Marianna's phone closed and dropped it in her bag hanging by her side. “He wants us out of here.”

  The photographer was flashing away as another forensic cop walked to the threshold of the berth. While I was on the phone with Vince, Lucky was slapping gloves on. “Anything else amiss in the other rooms?” Lucky asked the arriving cop.

  “Drawers pulled out. Bunks pulled apart. Maybe someone looking for something special, or maybe just someone looking for anything worth stealing. We'll get prints.”

  Lucky nodded and went back to his work. “Or maybe someone just trying to make it look like a robbery. I mean, how many people keep valuables on their boats?” He walked closer to the bodies. “Wel
l, looks here like we got two naked bodies on a bed, real close to each other, if you know what I mean. Looks like someone just interrupted some lovemaking between the two.”

  The brunette's body was on its stomach, the head partially off the bloody mattress. Lucky lifted her and turned her over. “Here it is. Head's been bashed by some blunt object.” He moved in closer and then stepped back. “What's this?” He crouched down and lifted the edge of the blanket. Mari went first and knelt next to him, both of them peering under the bed.

  “What the fuck is it?” I said. “A gun? A knife? What?”

  “A really pretty vase,” Marianna said, “with some really pretty blood on it.”

  She stood and walked past me, then called for another forensic tech to bring a large evidence bag.

  Lucky began walking to the other side of the bed. “Okey-dokey,” he said. “So that's one murder weapon down. The rest is going to be a Cakewalk if this gal was beaten with it too.”

  The blonde's body was lying on its back with her cheek resting on the mattress and her eyes still open as if she was gazing at the other woman. My already dizzy head swooned as Lucky began examining the blood-soaked back of her head. “Well, what do you know?” he said. “Different MO. This one's been shot in the back of the head. Execution-style.”

  GOOFY AND CICERO

  IF I HADN'T BEEN SO EAGER TO GET BACK UP ON deck for air, I would have kibitzed with Lucky about the different MOs. Maybe the same badass bashed in one woman's head and then shot the other in the heat of passion. Armed properly and committed to the cause of extinguishing a couple of lives, I could damn well do both. The vase I could understand. Did Scott Boardman see the two women in bed, get pissed, and throw the first thing at hand? The shooting was the stickier problem. If the shooter was Scott Boardman in a jealous rage, why did he just happen to have a gun in his pocket that night—unless he suspected he would find his wife cheating on him? I mean, toting a gun with you to meet your spouse smacked a bit too much of premeditation. And of course, premeditated murder entitled one to a longer stay at the state pen than a heat-of-passion, whoops-sorry-I'll-never-do-it-again whack in the skull. But I wasn't ready to reserve Scott his room at the Adult Correctional Institution just yet.