The Last Dead Girl

by Harry Dolan

  It was Frank Moretti’s theory: that Simon Lanik had been killed by someone trying to rob him. I wondered if Moretti really believed it. Maybe he wanted to believe it, because it would prevent him from having to question his assumptions about Jana’s murder.

  I switched off the TV and went back to my computer. Tried to focus on what I needed to do tomorrow. But the problem of Frank Moretti stayed on my mind. I got up and lit the tea-light candles on the mantel, four of them in a line. Cathy Pruett, Jana Fletcher, Jolene Halliwell, Simon Lanik. Luke Daw might have killed every one of them, or maybe I was chasing a phantom.

  Cathy Pruett was the first to die. Frank Moretti insisted that her husband killed her. I tried to put aside the question of whether it was true, and asked myself instead if Moretti genuinely believed it. Suppose he did.

  Suppose I’m Frank Moretti and I’m convinced that Gary Pruett killed his wife. The evidence in the case is weak, but maybe I can make it stronger. Pruett’s in jail awaiting trial. I find another inmate—Napoleon Washburn—and convince him to make up a story. I get him to say that Pruett confessed.

  Would Moretti do that? He had a reputation as an honest cop. Even Gary Pruett’s lawyer couldn’t find anything very bad to say about Frank Moretti. Just that he might get too close to certain crime victims.

  If a man gets killed and leaves a pretty widow behind, Emily Beal had told me, Moretti might take it on himself to comfort her.

  But in the Pruett case, the victim was a woman. There was no widow left behind. No pretty victim for Moretti to comfort.

  Or was there?

  Megan Pruett was left behind—Cathy’s sister-in-law and best friend. What if Moretti tried to comfort her?

  Megan Pruett never had any doubt about Gary Pruett’s guilt. She would’ve wanted to see him sent to prison for life. Could she have persuaded Moretti to frame him?

  I couldn’t make myself believe it. She wasn’t right for the role. Megan Pruett was a slightly snooty, late-thirties schoolteacher, not a temptress who could convince an honest cop to pin a false confession on a murder suspect.

  I watched the four flames glowing on the mantel. Turned away from them and walked across the room. And remembered that there was another woman involved in the Pruett case—a victim of sorts: Gary Pruett’s student, the eighteen-year-old girl he’d been seeing on the side.

  Angela Reese.

  Angela the artist. I had one of her paintings on the mantel. Everything on the mantel was a clue. She had given me a business card from the gallery that sold her work. The Woodmere Gallery. I found the card in my wallet.

  • • •

  The following afternoon, a few minutes after five, I parked my truck on the street behind the old courthouse downtown—the central station house for the Rome police, the place where Moretti had questioned me about Jana’s death. I thought he must be inside; I could see his car in the lot.

  I’d spent the morning on the phone talking to clients, mending fences. Setting up new appointments and rescheduling old ones. I had a home inspection scheduled for five-thirty, halfway across town. I should have been on my way already. Instead I was here.

  Earlier in the afternoon I’d made a visit to the Woodmere Gallery, which occupied half a converted warehouse not far from the university. It had high, tin-plated ceilings and a lot of old ductwork and exposed brick. The owner was a bone-thin woman in her fifties, dressed in black, who might have given Megan Pruett a run for her money in the snootiness department. Her assistant was a slacker in his twenties who wore the same black but not as well. He had a sketchy goatee and smelled of cigarettes.

  I talked to the owner first. She was happy to show me Angela Reese’s paintings—she had seven on display and more in storage—but when I started asking questions, she shut down fast. She seemed to think the answers were none of my concern.

  I left by the front entrance, drove around to the back, and waited. After thirty minutes or so, the slacker assistant came out for a cigarette break. I went over and told him what I wanted. He said he couldn’t help me. I handed him twenty dollars. He still couldn’t help me, but he said it with less conviction. I let him have another twenty and a ten, and he said he would give me his best effort but it was a delicate matter and he would need time. He promised to call me.

  The call came at four forty-five. It lasted less than a minute. And now I was parked at the old courthouse, trying to decide if I should go in, wondering what I should say to Frank Moretti.

  Before I could make up my mind, Moretti appeared at the back entrance of the courthouse. He walked to his car, the black Chevy sedan, moving at a fast clip, not his usual easy pace. I watched him get into the car and drive out of the lot.

  He turned a corner out of sight and I had to make a decision. I followed him. I could have waited to see him another time, but I was curious about where he was going in such a hurry. He drove north, along the edge of Bellamy University, past the football stadium and a row of frat houses. College kids playing Frisbee on a lawn. He got onto Turin Road and followed it through residential neighborhoods, past the Knights of Columbus Hall. He drove by a 7-Eleven and a veterinary hospital, out toward Lake Delta.

  We passed a bait shop and a canoe livery and suddenly I saw red and blue flashing lights in my rearview mirror. Heard the whoop of a patrol car’s siren. I slowed. Up ahead, Moretti did the same. I turned off the road and into the horseshoe driveway of a day care center. The patrol car drew in behind me. I cut the truck’s engine.

  A young cop in uniform climbed out of the car, leaving the lights flashing. He took his sunglasses off as he walked up to my truck. I rolled down the window.

  “License and registration,” he said.

  I had them ready.

  “Do you know why I stopped you, sir?”

  He didn’t really expect an answer. I didn’t say anything.

  “You failed to signal your turn,” he said.

  “I’ve been on this road for miles,” I said. “I haven’t made any turns.”

  “You turned off just now.”

  “That was after I heard your siren.”

  “You should have signaled that turn, sir. Please step out of the vehicle.”

  Moretti’s car pulled into the day care driveway.

  “It doesn’t have to go this way,” I said. “If he wants to talk to me, I’m happy to talk.”

  “Step out of the vehicle. Now.”

  I stepped out of the vehicle. The young cop told me to place my hands on the hood of the truck. I did. He patted me down, cuffed my hands behind my back, walked me to the patrol car, put me in the backseat. Moretti watched it all from his black sedan.

  The young cop went to talk to Moretti. I don’t know what they had to talk about; I think they just wanted to let me stew. After a few minutes, Moretti came over and climbed into the patrol car beside me.

  “It’s insulting,” he said.

  He sat at ease in yet another gray suit, not looking at me, looking straight ahead, his palms resting on his thighs.

  “It’s bad enough you think you can follow me,” he said. “But to do it in a red truck with your name plastered all over it—I find that insulting. It’s as if you don’t respect me.”

  “I respect you,” I said. “I came to see you at the courthouse because I found something out today and I wanted to make sense of it. But I shouldn’t have followed you.”

  “This thing you found out, does it have to do with Jana Fletcher?”

  “Not directly.”

  “Am I going to like hearing about it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” he said. “Let’s have it.”

  “It’s about the Pruett case.”

  “The Pruett case is over and done.”

  “It’s about Angela Reese.”

  Moretti turned to me for the first time. Gave m
e a dead-eyed look.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s an artist now,” I said. “She does paintings. Some people might say they’re not much to look at, but she sells them—through a gallery. She makes a little money, enough to get by. The first time I saw her work, I wondered who would want to buy it. But she gave me one of her canvases and it sort of grew on me. I can see the appeal.”

  “Make your point.”

  “Sorry. The point is, I got curious about who was buying Angela Reese’s paintings. I found out the market’s not very broad. Almost every painting she’s sold has been bought by one person. An anonymous buyer. Who turns out to be you.”

  Moretti faced forward again, gazing into the distance. “That’s why you wanted to see me?”

  “Yes.”

  “To tell me I’ve been buying paintings?”

  “To understand why.”

  “You think it has to mean something.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course you do. So what do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know. But I have a theory.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “Even when you have nothing else, you have theories. Why don’t you lay it out for me.”

  I tried to relax. Hard to do, with the handcuffs. “All right,” I said. “You met Angela Reese when you were investigating Cathy Pruett’s murder.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Angela Reese has a certain quality. She’s pretty, but it’s more than that. She has a kind of wholesome beauty.”

  “That’s a good word,” Moretti said. “‘Wholesome.’”

  “And she’s attracted to older men. She was having an affair with Gary Pruett.”

  “I think I see where this is leading.”

  “So you got involved with her,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with it; she was eighteen. And she wanted to paint, so you decided to help her out.”

  “Like a sugar daddy.”

  “Like a patron of the arts.”

  “That sounds much better,” Moretti said. “But let’s hear the rest. You didn’t follow me just to accuse me of having an affair with Angela Reese. There must be more.”

  “There is. But I’m not as sure of it.”

  “Don’t let that stop you.”

  “All right. Napoleon Washburn—”

  “Oh god,” Moretti said in a defeated voice. “Please don’t start with me about Napoleon Washburn.”

  “He lied about Gary Pruett’s confession.”

  “So you claim.”

  “And I wondered if he lied on his own, or if someone put him up to it.”

  Moretti closed his eyes. I could see his shoulders tense. “You want to be very careful right now,” he said.

  “I am being careful. I didn’t believe you would do something like that. But if you felt certain that Pruett killed his wife, you might be tempted to take a shortcut. And if you were sleeping with Angela Reese, you’d have a whole other motive. By sending Gary Pruett to prison, you’d be getting rid of a rival.”

  Silence in the car. Outside, the uniformed cop was strolling along the curve of the driveway with his hands on his hips. Frank Moretti tipped his head back and sighed.

  “What do I have to do?”

  He said it to himself first, in the voice of a man who had come to the end of his rope. Then he opened his eyes and sat straight in his seat and directed the question to me. “What do I have to do to get you to stop playing detective?”

  “You could tell me the truth,” I said.

  “I’ve tried that. I’ve tried patience. I’ve given you more of my time than you deserve. So what will it take? Violence? Do I have to break something to get your attention?”

  His tone was calm and his eyes had their usual tired look, but I caught a hint of something harder underneath, something he had to work to keep under control.

  “You have my attention,” I said.

  “I wonder if I really do. If I’d run into you when I was younger, I might’ve punched you in the kidney. Have you ever been punched in the kidney?”

  “Not yet.”

  “It hurts. Sometimes you piss blood. I haven’t punched anyone in the kidney in years.” He looked through the window at the uniformed cop. “These young guys—they’d probably faint away at the thought of it. This one, Officer Tyler, is one of the best of the lot, but if you put him in a situation he hasn’t read about in a book, he gets nervous. I asked him to pull you over for a broken taillight.”

  “My taillights aren’t broken.”

  “I meant that he should break one. But of course he didn’t. What did he tell you?”

  “He said I failed to signal a turn.”

  “Heaven help us all,” Moretti said. “I’m going to tell him to keep you here for another five minutes and then cut you loose. I don’t care where you go, but if I see you following me again I’ll get angry. And if I’m as corrupt as you seem to think I am, then you don’t want to cross me. If I framed Gary Pruett, I can frame you. I can make a case that you killed Jana Fletcher, and Simon Lanik too. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  He reached for the door handle but he didn’t leave. He had one last message to deliver.

  “You asked for the truth,” he said. “The truth is that Angela Reese is a sweet girl who got used by a creep who wound up murdering his wife. If Angela wants to be an artist, then I want her to be an artist. I plan to keep buying her paintings, and that’s no one’s business but my own. She doesn’t need to know. You can spread any lies you want about me, to anyone you think will listen, but if you tell Angela what I’ve been doing, we really will have a problem. Things will get broken and things will bleed. You’ll end up in a worse place than the back of a squad car.”

  31

  Wednesday was a restless night.

  Roger Tolliver called my cell phone around eight. I didn’t answer. He left a voice mail message: I heard from Frank Moretti. He urged me to get my client under control. I think you and I need to talk.

  At nine it occurred to me I’d had nothing to eat since lunch. I found a box of spaghetti in a cupboard, and a jar of sauce—things Jana had left behind. I heated the sauce on the stove, got some water boiling, dropped the pasta in. I timed it for ten minutes. Strained it in a colander, fixed a plate, ladled on some sauce. It looked fine; it smelled good. And it was nothing I wanted to eat.

  At ten I decided it couldn’t hurt to go to bed early. At eleven I was still awake. I got up and took a shower, the water as hot as I could bear it. I walked into the living room, barefoot on the hardwood floor, toweling off.

  I stepped on dried wax and it reminded me of the night Jana died. She had tried to use the two-by-four as a weapon against her killer. The candleholder. Four tea-light candles had gone flying. One of them landed right side up; the others spilled their wax across the floor.

  Another Wednesday night, two weeks ago.

  I got on my knees and traced my fingers over the lines of wax. Someday someone would scrape them away, but it wouldn’t be me.

  I finished toweling off, got dressed, and went out onto the patio. The air was cool. I walked into the grass, looked back at Agnes Lanik’s half of the duplex. She had the lights on in her kitchen. I could see the pots of flowers I’d left for her, still on her patio.

  I walked toward the woods and saw a spark of pale red light in the distance. It hung glowing in the air for a second and flared out. Then another spark. Then two more, rising up like silent fireworks. I stood and watched the show, points of light appearing and disappearing. I heard a sound behind me: the clap of Agnes Lanik’s screen door. She came out bundled in a shawl and picked her way through the grass like she was walking over a field of stones. She stopped a few feet from me and we watched the lights together.

  “Svetlušky,” she said.

  Firef
lies.

  “I used to catch them in a jar when I was a boy,” I told her.

  “Simon too. Did you remember to punch holes in the lid?”

  Her accent was especially thick. “Lid” sounded like “leed.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Sometimes Simon had to be reminded.” She held the shawl close around her and shrugged her shoulders. A very European shrug.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to him,” I said.

  Another shrug. This one meant that the world was a hard place. Agnes glanced back at her patio and added, as an afterthought, “The flowers are nice.”

  The lights slowed down and seemed to recede toward the woods. The day caught up to me and I felt tired. I yawned.

  “Maybe you are thirsty,” Agnes said, and I thought we had our signals crossed, as if a yawn meant something different where she came from.

  She turned abruptly and began to walk back to the house.

  “Come in if you want,” she said. “Want” sounded like “vant.”

  Her kitchen was a mirror image of Jana’s, with the same appliances and even the same table and chairs. The drink she offered me was a bitter liqueur called Becherovka. It tasted a little like cinnamon and a lot like mouthwash. She drank hers with ice and cut mine with a healthy dose of seltzer water.

  She lit the oven as soon as we came in, and while I made peace with the Becherovka she filled a plate with some of the food her visitors had brought: roasted potatoes, pork goulash, sauerkraut, pierogi.

  She warmed the plate in the oven and put it down in front of me. I picked at the food at first, then laid into it like a starving man, then made myself slow down again. Agnes tended to her kitchen, washing dishes, drying them, wiping off the counter. We didn’t talk. I might have been playing a part: the traveler in a foreign land, lost on the road at night. She was the cottager who took me in and gave me a meal and sent me on my way.

  I don’t know what she wanted; maybe just companionship, something to ease the loss she was feeling. I think she would have been content to carry on in silence, but there were things I needed to say.