Shattered Shell

by Brendan DuBois

  "No" I said, zippering up my coat. "Best to surprise your interview subjects, Felix, before they have a chance to practice their stories."

  Felix granted me a small smile. "Sounds like your job gets to be more like mine, day after day."

  "Maybe so," I said, heading out the foyer. "Let's get to work."

  And so we did.

  Our pattern that night was simple and to the point. After each door was answered, I passed over my business card and identified Felix as a photographer who was working with me on the story. I said I was a friend of their neighbor, Kara Miles, and with her cooperation, I was doing a story for Shoreline magazine about violent crime in a tourist community, using her case (and a pseudonym) for the story's basis. I would quickly say that if it made them more comfortable, everything would be off the record, and Felix would keep his camera gear in the case. I asked general questions about the neighborhood, their lives, how long they had lived here, and among these questions I had a couple I considered vital: Did I they know Kara, and if so, did they know if anybody nearby had been asking questions about her? Did they see or hear anything unusual on the night of the rape? Did they notice any strangers in the vicinity during the past few weeks? Was there anything out of the ordinary that had stuck in their minds?

  And through it, Felix sat, arms crossed, and occasionally asked his own question.

  There were four houses in the direct area around 64 High Street, and the one directly across the street was the easiest, for it was a two-story Colonial with every window darkened and a tilting Century 21 for-sale sign on the snow-covered front lawn. Its neighbor was a smaller Colonial, and an older man answered the door, a Newburyport Daily News clasped in his hands. He wore half-rim glasses, was almost entirely bald, had on a white sweater and khaki slacks, and invited us into his living room. His name was Walter Doyle and his wife Melissa joined him on the couch.

  We spent a half-hour there, and then went across the street to a light yellow Cape that belonged to a Reuben Cortez, his wife Maria and their three children. Reuben wore jeans and a New England Patriots sweatshirt, while his wife was still in a dark blue uniform, having gotten off work at the Salisbury Fire Department.

  She made strong coffee for us while we talked around the kitchen table the two boys and girl underfoot, screaming and playing, and even Felix managed to smile.

  When we were done there, we went to another white Federal, this one divided into two apartments, one upstairs and the other downstairs. Paul Vachon talked to us at the downstairs door without inviting us in, half-apologizing because his wife Carol was in bed with the flu, and their infant son Henry was napping on the couch. He worked at a service station, and his large hands were still stained with grease and oil.

  Upstairs at the house were the building's owners, Art and Mary Allen. Both were retired from the Porter Naval Shipyard and felt lucky to have tenants like the Vachons. Felix and I went through another round of coffee, this time with cinnamon crumb cake that had been made that day, and at the end of about two hours, we were back in my four-wheeler, the engine rumbling, the heater quickly warming up the interior. Felix leaned against the door, arms folded, while I examined the notes under the dome light.

  "What do you think?" Felix asked. "These people part of a conspiracy or what?"

  "I know what you mean," I said, flipping through the pages.

  "All of them knew Kara as the pretty young woman with odd hair who lived down the street. Reasonably friendly, but they weren't neighborly to the point of exchanging Christmas cards. Everyone was surprised about the rape --- no one knew it had happened, which tells you about the level of newspaper reading in this neighborhood. And no one saw anything unusual that night, the night before, or even the month before."

  Felix rubbed at his hair and looked out into the-dark parking lot. My fingers were cold, holding the notepad. There were pages of notes, but there was one thing I hadn't written down yet I would always remember. It was the look in their faces, the widened eyes and slack jaws, when Felix and I told them about the terror that had slumped through their neighborhood last Friday. After the initial shocks and the standard first question --- "How is she doing?" --- I saw all of them look away for a moment, and I knew what they were thinking: It was no longer safe here. The territory had been invaded and their illusions of safety and peace on this part of High Street were now gone. One night, one man, and his influence was widening, like some awful plague.

  Felix sighed. "Came up with squat."

  "That we did. I didn't think we'd have much success tonight, but I thought we'd at least come up with something we could work with, but we don't have a thing. Not one lead, not one trace, nothing."

  Felix shifted in his seat. "No, but we did what we had to do. We started the process of asking questions and poking around, and you can tell Diane that the next time you talk to her. We've had negative progress, but it's been progress just the same."

  "I'm sure that will thrill her."

  "Maybe not, but this might make it easier for you," he said.

  "A couple more nights like tonight, and we're going to end up with thin air. You might have to go back to her and tell her to leave it up to the regular cops, that her friendly hires just couldn't do it. That would take care of some of your concerns, wouldn't it?"

  I closed the notebook with disgust, thinking again about that that apartment with its memories and mementos, and the horror that had been visited there a few nights ago. "I might feel better, but that wouldn't make me happy, Felix. Damn it, I'm beginning to want this guy very badly, and I don't like coming up blank."

  "Who does?" he said. "You want to try the landlord again?"

  "You see a light on back there?"

  He swiveled in the seat. "Nope."

  "All right. Then let's get some dinner."

  "You buying?" I shifted into reverse.

  "After making you trudge through snow and play Jimmy Olsen, how could I refuse?"

  He laughed. "A deal, then."

  We had dinner at Michael's Harborside, a fine old seafood restaurant in the downtown and built right on the banks of the Merrimack River. Felix and I were in the main dining room. We were both fairly quiet during our meal, and when we were waiting for the check, Felix eyed my plate, which still was about a third full.

  "No appetite?" he asked.

  "Too much on the mind," I said. I looked over at his own empty plate. "I see nothing seems to be bothering you."

  "Why should it? And why does it bother you?"

  "Because it's something awful that we're looking into, something that happened to a friend of a close friend, and it's not very pleasant, and that always affects my appetite. Can't be helped. What's your excuse?"

  "I don't let it bother me. It's just a job, nothing involving anything personal, and I try to stay above it. That's the only way to do it."

  "Sounds pretty cold."

  Felix shrugged. "I'm sure brain surgeons and pathologists maintain a hearty appetite, and so do I, Lewis. You should get used to it."

  I pulled out some bills and left them on the check as we both got up to leave. "You're right, I should and probably will, but I'm still not looking forward to it."

  We had a few more hours to kill, so we went to a movie theater in the next town over, Salisbury, and saw the only film that hadn't yet begun playing. We spent the next one hundred and twelve minutes watching a horror film that must have been created with teenagers in mind, for Felix and I were easily the oldest viewers there by at least a decade.

  Felix fell asleep almost instantly and I mechanically ate my popcorn, growing dismayed at what I was seeing up on the screen and in the audience. I'm no prude by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something coarse about the movie, which was one of those slasher films that involved a group of young college sorority women stuck in a snowbound cabin on a back lot somewhere. There was hardly any suspense, the dialogue was as wooden as my house's rear deck, and the only imagination exhibited in the entire film see
med to be on choosing the implements of death that the young ladies --- most wearing nightclothes or tight spandex ski wear --- suffered through. The characters in the film exhibited about as much group intelligence as a herd of water buffalo, as each (except for the obligatory sole survivor) was bloodily dispatched. That was the action up on the screen, and the action in the audience was almost as bad, and it made me wonder if the intruder to Kara's apartment was a fan of such movies.

  There were some screams and giggles from the young girls in the audience, and there were mostly bellows of laughter and a few “all rights" from their male companions, and one imaginative fellow yelled out, "Give it to the bitch!" when one of the actresses was impaled by an ice auger. I'm also not a prude when it comes to cause and effect, and I believe evil and bad people exist because of choices made, not because of books read, TV programs or movies watched, or bathroom training missed. Yet my popcorn tasted like gravel as I looked around at the slack faces, the smiles, and the shiny eyes of the young men and women around me, and I couldn't help but believe that somehow these one hundred and twelve minutes were corroding that thin shell of civilization around their young souls, millimeter by millimeter. I wondered if that young boy I had seen on the beach that August, carelessly shattering a shell and hurting his sister, was now in the audience. If so, I feared for his date.

  Right after the killer was identified and dispatched by the brave young survivor (the killer was the kindly old caretaker introduced in the first five minutes of the film, who obviously had a grudge against college girls from his days at old State U) the credits started rolling up and the rock music score boomed out. Felix stirred himself awake, yawned, and looked over at me.

  "Whodunit?" he asked.

  "We all did," I said, getting up and taking his empty popcorn container. Let's get rolling."

  The drive back was cold, with our breath visible inside the Rover, and Felix quietly said, hands deep in his coat pockets, "It's nights like these that make you believe that winter does, in fact, suck."

  Back at Kara's place there was an old blue Ford Escort parked in the lot, and a light was on in the downstairs apartment. The clock on the dashboard said it was almost midnight, and it didn't seem like we should wake up Mr. Jason Henry at such a late hour, so we didn’t. We walked carefully and quietly up the main set of stairs, and I was carrying a tiny black flashlight that helped light the way, and even though it was probably fifty degrees or so inside the foyer, it was practically tropical compared to what we had just come in from.

  As we went to the door I pulled out the key and Felix gently held on to my arm and said, "Let's take a look at something, shall we?" And then he knelt down on the floor and held the flashlight close to the door. He ran his fingers along the doorjamb and near the lock, shining the light close, and then he looked up at me with a troubled glance and said, "See what I see?"

  Something went ka-chunk inside my chest as I knelt down next to him and looked at the wood frame of the door, the lock, and the door jamb. I took my hands out of my gloves and repeated the same moves that Felix had just performed. The wood was smooth. No roughness. No splinters.

  "I certainly do," I said. "Which is nothing."

  Felix shook his head, got back up, and I joined him. "No scrape marks, no pry marks, nothing."

  "Either the door was unlocked or he had a key."

  “Does young Kara have a habit of leaving the door unlocked?" I thought back and said, "Not that I know of. And the police report did say that she indicated the guy broke in."

  Felix said, "Maybe it's nothing. Maybe she just forgot to lock the door that night. Happens."

  "Sure," I said, not believing a word that either of us was saying.

  Inside the apartment something heavier was now rummaging around in my chest, and I had a quick wish that we had left the movie theater and had gone back to New Hampshire, for I didn't want to be here. Felix muttered something and I followed him through the bathroom and to the bedroom, and turned around, moving easily enough in the dark. Felix looked over at me and said, "Get on the bed, will you?"

  And as queasy as it sounds, that's exactly what I did. I lay back on the bare mattress and looked up at the ceiling, noting the cracks and fissures in the plaster, trying not to smell the scent of blood or sweat, and then Felix came into the bedroom. I sat up and looked at him. His features were crisp and he still needed a shave, and his coat was open, and it was easy enough to count the five buttons on his coat.

  "This is awful," I said.

  "It sure is."

  I followed him out of the bedroom and we stood back near the door to the apartment. Just outside the living room window was a utility pole, and hanging from the pole was a bright streetlight, and the steady beam from that light illuminated the entire living room, short hallway, bathroom, and bedroom. No curtains blocked the light.

  “Nothing in the report about the guy closing the bedroom door behind him when he came in?" Felix asked, the tone of his voice resigned.

  "No, nothing," I said, crossing my arms, just staring at the street lamp, thinking, well, maybe it was burned out that night, and knowing that I would check it out tomorrow with the utility company and knowing my wish wouldn't come true.

  How I hated what I saw.

  "This doesn't look good at all, not at all," I finally said, not looking at Felix, just staring out at the living room. "Valuables still here, place untouched, no signs of a forced entry, and there's practically enough light here to read a newspaper."

  “Maybe that's why your police inspector friend thinks this case is screwball," Felix said, the tone of his voice gentle. "Everything here is wrong. You just said it yourself. Kara's story doesn't make sense. Something else happened here that night, and she doesn’t want to tell the cops, her friend Diane, or you."

  "You don't think she was raped?"

  "No, 1 didn't say that. 1 thinks something awful happened to her, no doubt about it. But it's not what's in the report. As a former a spook, even you should see that."

  My chest felt constricted, thinking of what was ahead, and I said quietly, "We were always taught, back then, not to let your emotions cloud your analysis, your work. No matter what you saw, no matter how bloody or awful. The work was your god and you didn't let anything else get in the way."

  Felix said, "I think that's the most you've ever said about your time at the Pentagon."

  In the light 1 tried to smile. "Then I've made a mistake."

  "Perhaps you have." A pause, then, "I feel sorry for you, Lewis."

  "And why's that?"

  He reached over and gently slapped me on my shoulder. "Because you're going to have to tell Diane Woods that her Kara hasn't been telling the truth, and that's going to be painful for everybody involved."

  1 was trying to ease the tension in my gut by saying something bright in return, but I heard something odd, something loud, and Felix looked at me and we went across the living room, hearing the noise again, sounding almost like a radio. We both looked out and down at the street below, and parked right on the street, blue lights flashing, was a Newburyport police cruiser. Another one came roaring up the street, pulling behind, and as the doors flew open 1 looked over at Felix and said, "Right now, I'm feeling sorry for the both of us."

  "I guess so," Felix said, and he opened his jacket and pulled out his 9mm, and 1 said, "Felix!" and he said, "Relax, I'm just ensuring there are no misunderstandings." He put the pistol down on a coffee table, on top of a Boston Phoenix newspaper, and I said, "We've got a few seconds, let's go sit at the kitchen table and act real polite."

  ''I'm there."

  Which is where we were when the Newburyport cops came pounding up the stairs and into the apartment and arrested us both.

  Chapter Eight

  Well, it certainly seemed that the patrol unit of the Newburyport Police Department had gotten all of the charm and hospitality handouts that Inspector Dunbar had missed, for after we were arrested and taken to the police station, we were treated p
olitely and professionally, and when a couple of phone calls established that we had permission to be in Kara Miles's apartment, we were set free with a cup of coffee and an offer of a ride back to the parking lot where my Rover was parked.

  But before Felix and 1 left we spent a few irritable minutes with the good inspector, who was not pleased to have been called out of bed to come down to the station on this chilly January night. He was wearing a down coat and University of Lowell sweatshirt and gray sweatpants, and his face was carpeted with gray-black stubble. We were in an interrogation room, Felix and 1 sitting in orange plastic chairs, Dunbar sitting perched on a table, looking like a sleep deprived football coach, confronting two of his charges who had been out drinking. The room smelled of stale tobacco.

  "I've talked to the arresting officer and I must say I'm impressed," Dunbar said.

  "Why's that?" 1 asked. Felix sat next to me, a quiet smile on his face, one I'm sure he reserved only for officers of the law.

  "Because that story was one sorry piece of bullshit, from start to finish," he said, arms folded. "Doing research for a magazine article. Bah. Do you expect me to believe that, that the two of you were crawling around that apartment at midnight for some friggin' magazine article?"

  Felix spoke up. "Why not? It worked for the sergeant."

  Dunbar shifted his ice-gaze to Felix. "And for you, who's supposed to be taking pictures for this article, mind telling me why you were there without your photo gear?"

  Felix shrugged, still looking amused. "I guess the cold made me forgetful."

  "Really? Well, don't forget this. I think you're up to something about this woman and her friend," and his voice dripped sarcasm at the word, "over in Tyler. I think you're sneaking around, maybe up to a little vigilante shit, trying to find out what happened. Well, get your asses back home and forget it. You talk to that Tyler detective and tell her to mind her own business, and if you clowns ever come back here and so much as race through a yellow light, your asses will be in jail for the weekend, with the phones out so you can't make any calls for bail money or a lawyer. Got it?"