Cold Case

by Linda Barnes

  I left a message asking Mooney to call me; I don’t usually do that.

  I bought both the Globe and the Herald, sat on the stoop, and studied each account of Manley’s death. Dr. Andrew Edgar Manley had been found bludgeoned to death near a burning shack close to the ocean’s edge. Flames had attracted the neighbors’ notice. Mr. Hector Davies of 46 Ocean Avenue had promptly phoned the fire department.

  I swallowed. My throat felt tight and raspy. The murderer had returned. Had he tried to obliterate his crime through arson, or call attention to it with flame? Call attention to it. Otherwise he’d have moved the body into the shed. Or had the police department merely responded to my anonymous tip? You can’t believe everything you read.

  The murderer could have been there, watching Pix and me fighting in the sand, blotting his footprints with ours.

  Manley had last been seen at an eight-thirty dinner party. Guests and location were not named. The Marblehead police promised an early arrest. A tramp, a young man in his early twenties, seen loitering near the shed, was urged to contact the police immediately. The burned hulk of a motorbike would be inspected by forensic specialists at the police garage.

  Manley’s obituary consisted of a string of honors and degrees, publications heralded for their clarity and brilliance. One of the primary founders of the Weston Psychiatric Institute, he’d given up private practice to concentrate on a passion for travel and rare manuscripts. At the time of his death, he remained an active member of Weston Psych’s Board of Directors. He was survived by a sister, two nieces, one nephew.

  I wondered whether the police had discovered that Manley’d made a phone call an hour before his death. Whether they were searching for Pix and me, or just the man, Pix’s friend, Alonso. The “tramp.”

  Roz, sporting a lime T-shirt declaring “Born-again Pagan,” approached.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Grouchy,” she observed.

  “You’ll get your money.”

  “I thought you might like a few more tidbits on MacAvoy.”

  “Such as where he was last night?”

  “That, I don’t know. The man plays it close to the vest, but the man is loaded.”

  “More than the offshore accounts?”

  “He owns excellent real estate all over the Cape, Wellfleet, Yarmouth, Hyannis. A thirty-foot yacht. Part-interest in a Sanibel Island marina. That’s in Florida.”

  “I know.” No problem waving two twenties in a bar when you own a boat and a marina.

  “That’ll be an additional hundred bucks,” Roz said.

  “Add it to your tab.”

  She padded happily away. Lime green bike shorts matched the T-shirt. I think they had a slogan on the ass, but I couldn’t read it. Maybe “Following too Close.”

  I grabbed a tendril of hair, twisted. According to Albert Ellis Albion’s confession, Thea belonged in the sea, the sea. Near the same stretch of sand on which Manley had died so horribly last night? What was the link between the deaths, one so long ago, one so recent?

  Who could I ask?

  Tessa wouldn’t give me the doctor’s location when he was alive. I doubted she’d be more cooperative today. I’d already played my ace with Garnet. The threat of divulging Thea’s writings had been good enough to get me in to see Beryl.

  Beryl. Damn the toll disease and medication had taken. She must have been so different when Thea first disappeared. Or had she? Manley could have told me. He was dead.

  MacAvoy, however, confronted with his unexpected, unaccounted-for wealth, might be eager to talk about sister Beryl. About a lot of things … Might prefer it to a chat with the IRS.

  He was an old man. Surely, he’d rather spend the rest of his days in the Lucky Horseshoe, downing beers with his buddies, than delivering endless receipts to an IRS agent in a windowless Boston office.

  Confrontation time. It couldn’t wait.

  I couldn’t wait.

  42

  I’d lived with the prickle at the back of my neck so long, I was starting to ignore it. As I drove, I took simple evasive actions, but the “mob hit man” existed only in a remote recess of my mind.

  The number on Thea’s file, the carefully erased number, was at the forefront. Roz couldn’t relate it to any number that would open a computer file. Mooney, I couldn’t reach, but maybe MacAvoy might be persuaded to explain it. Patting my pockets, searching for a stick of gum, a mint, I touched Paolina’s postcard, murmured a silent “I’m sorry.”

  Paolina and I have a deal. I don’t do dangerous places without backup.

  MacAvoy’s an old man, I told myself.

  Still, I’d packed my gun. Once a cop, always a cop. That held for me as well as MacAvoy.

  I stopped for a burger and fries at a dive near the South Shore Plaza. I’d had a beer at the Lucky Horseshoe; I wasn’t about to trust its food, nor did I cherish the idea of dining with MacAvoy. I took my time, dunking each fry in ketchup, chewing slowly, brooding. I sipped my coffee slowly. I found a pay phone, collected appropriate change, and tried Mooney twice, once at the office, once at home. No luck.

  The last light left the blue-black sky as I parked near MacAvoy’s driveway.

  Nobody home.

  Mrs. Nosy Neighbor recognized me as soon as I showed up on her well-lit porch. Mac wasn’t at the bar tonight. Good thing I’d stopped by. He was drinking, yes, but down the beach. Sat like that a lot of nights, beer cooling in the tide. When he set off east with a six-pack in hand she knew where he’d be, perched on a chunk of old seawall.

  She gave excellent directions. I hoped my neighbors didn’t keep such good track of me.

  I walked back to the car. It was a coin flip, drive or walk. It was hot. I drove. After five minutes, the road narrowed into a path. I parked in the shelter of a wind-twisted tree.

  I carry a miniature tape recorder in my glove compartment, along with a Polaroid camera, two shades of lipstick, a few other odds and ends. I made sure the recorder’s batteries were working and tucked it into my cleavage, fixing the whole shebang into place with cloth tape stretched from cup to cup. It was less than comfortable, but whatever MacAvoy said, I wanted. The money, he could lie about. The Camerons wouldn’t have been foolish enough to wire it from one of their accounts straight to his.

  A man’s lies often tell more than the truth.

  My sandals slid in gravel as I inched downhill. I wondered how many beers the old sergeant had drunk. I hoped he hadn’t taken his pistol along to plink cans as he tossed them in the ocean. The local constabulary wouldn’t take kindly to that, not even in an old cop. Kill off too many tourists on the pale crescent of beach.

  The ocean, suddenly. Endless dark and a sky pierced by stars. He sat motionless on an algae-stained stone wall that appeared cool and damp from the last high tide. The breeze and the smell hit me like a tonic. I inhaled tangy salt marsh, felt my dry skin moisten, my shoulders relax. A retirement home near the ocean, even a tiny one … Way to go, MacAvoy.

  If he’d always wanted to live so simply, why bleed the Camerons? Since he’d blackmailed them so successfully, why had he chosen to subsist within the means of a retired cop? Maybe he had big plans for the future, maybe he got immense satisfaction just knowing his investments were out there, gathering interest, knowing he was different than the average fixed-income retiree.

  I cleared my throat. Either he hadn’t heard my scuffling approach, or he was pretending deafness. After a bit, he turned his head and grunted. The moon was full. I hoped the grunt meant recognition.

  “What brings you back, girlie?” Recognition, all right.

  “Don’t you mean, what took me so long?”

  “Nope,” he said curtly, turning his eyes from the shoreline, staring at me. “Got a cigarette?”

  “Nope.”

  He took out a pack and lit up, scraping the match head along the stone wall, expertly cupping the flame from the breeze. Dark wiggly lines flickered on the back of his left hand.

  “I don
’t use my own if I can bum,” he said. “Learned that as a cop.”

  I inhaled secondhand smoke, thought about how easy it would be to join him, to share secrets over a filter tip. Once a smoker, always.

  “You want one?”

  “Yeah, but don’t give it to me,” I said.

  “And why would you be interested in talking to me again?” I suspected the whole cigarette ritual was a ploy to stretch time, to search for the right opener. I wondered just how drunk the man was.

  “Tessa Cameron,” I said.

  “The old lady?”

  “I wouldn’t call her that. Not to her face.”

  “Better not to,” he agreed.

  Surely he wouldn’t have thought of her as the old lady twenty years ago. Had he seen her more recently?

  “She hired me,” I said.

  “Why?”

  I avoided the direct answer. “Case sure moved fast once you came along, Mac. Before you took charge, it was all over the map, a file in Dover, a file in Cambridge, another in Marblehead …”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, nodding and puffing, one hand on the cigarette, the other massaging his arthritic knee. “And the FBI thinking it was a kidnapping. Once the feds and the staties get into the act, they hate to move out.”

  He’d wolfed his cigarette. Now he began the ritual again, the scrape of a match, flickering light teasing my eyes with a partial view of the crisscross lines on his hand. I made a quick diving grab. He was drunk enough to misunderstand my motive. In the best interest of my client, to further scientific research, I took a long drag of the newly lit coffin nail. In the reddish glow the tattoo stood out clearly.

  The five-oh starfish said Thea belonged in the sea-oh. I could almost hear Al-Al’s singsong voice on the breeze.

  Returning the cigarette, I dropped Mac’s gnarled hand, which he immediately maneuvered to fasten on my thigh. I slapped it off lightly.

  “Mrs. Cameron have a problem?” he asked encouragingly.

  “Someone seems to be writing a new novel,” I said. “Supposedly Thea. But she’s dead.”

  “People,” he said disgustedly, shaking his head so hard that his jowls vibrated. “Sometimes you wonder why God let ’em loose on the planet. Place woulda been better off with dinosaurs.”

  “So what do you think?” I asked.

  “First off, I wouldn’t believe Mrs. Tessa Cameron if she was swearing on a Bible.”

  “You think she made the story up?”

  “If she could use it to get her photo in the paper, sure. Hell, she’d make it up if she were having a dull day, nothing better to do.”

  “Mac.” I kept my voice low and soft, a whisper meant to blend with the rushing tide. No accusation. “You sure there’s no possibility that Thea Janis could be alive?”

  “Not a chance in heaven or hell,” he said. “Some things even the rich can’t buy. Not much, mind you.”

  “I visited Albert Albion at Walpole.”

  “Did you now?”

  “He talked about you, Sergeant.”

  He puffed on his cigarette. I helped him inhale.

  “So you saw Al-Al. That must have made his year.”

  “I’m not sure he’d remember, Sergeant.”

  “Are you trying to say something, girl?”

  He didn’t seem to like being reminded of his rank.

  “Aside from his confession, which sounded pretty bogus by the way, was there anything, any hard evidence, that made you fasten on him as Thea’s killer?” I asked.

  “You’re talking a long time ago,” he said.

  “But you’ve got a hell of a memory, Mac.”

  The ex-sergeant mashed his half-smoked cigarette out on the stone wall, hurled the stub angrily at the sand. “Tell me, what’s-yer-name, Carlotta, the ex-cop. Albert. Al-Al. Did he look all there to you? Hundred percent?”

  “Not even fifty,” I said. “Man wears tinfoil on his head.”

  His hand edged toward the cigarette pack, hesitated. “I don’t see how it can matter after all these years,” he muttered, staring intently upward, as if there might be a message emblazoned across the night sky, encrypted, ready to decode.

  “Confession’s good for the soul,” I said.

  “You don’t look any more like a priest than you do a cop,” he said.

  I held my tongue.

  “Albert Ellis Albion,” MacAvoy said with contempt, tossing the name into the air as though it were a coin that might come down heads or tails.

  I remained motionless, practically holding my breath. Heads or tails. Talk or keep silent.

  “Bastard didn’t do it,” MacAvoy said, throwing pebbles onto the sand. He wasn’t trying for distance but a few made it into the water with tiny rainlike splashes. “Oh, he did plenty, our little Al-Al, but he didn’t kill Thea.”

  I waited. He tossed more pebbles, harder, aiming at the water now, sidearm, trying to make the rocks skim the surface.

  “You coach him for his confession?” I asked after five long minutes had passed. “Did you write it out for him?”

  MacAvoy said nothing. He threw a pebble at a long-legged seabird. It squawked hoarsely and hopped away.

  “Must have been a lot of pressure coming down,” I said sympathetically.

  “Damn Camerons.” He gave up on the pebbles, sat perfectly still. “Girl fuckin’ killed herself. Walked into the ocean, further north, some ritzy private beach. Walked in, didn’t walk out. People she was with, hell, they’re probably too classy to report it. But no, the Camerons can’t leave it like that, can they? Tarnish the family’s sterling reputation, now, wouldn’t it? Must be something wrong with a family, one of the dear girls headed for the looney bin, another one kills herself, don’t you think? Bad for the political branch of the family, so we have to rustle up some poor turkey who’s gonna earn himself a Murder One anyway. Not just any ordinary junkie killer. A confessor, you know?”

  “You did what the Camerons wanted?”

  “Not just me, missy,” he said indignantly. “Write it down. Quote me on it. Everybody did what the Camerons wanted. Mayor to police chief on down the ranks, couldn’t kiss-ass fast enough. What did it matter if some pervert—and he was a killer, mind you, caught red-handed—got an extra life sentence tacked on, long as they could have their little girl’s body buried in consecrated ground, prayed over by a bishop?”

  “Was there a body?”

  “Sure there was,” he blustered. “In the ocean. Off Marblehead.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “And then there was that girl who got drunk and fell off the boat. Too bad.”

  “Yeah. Too bad.”

  “Heather Foley’s body has never been recovered, Mac.”

  “Happens.”

  “Two-day delay between the time the coroner gets a female body and the time he declares it Thea Janis’s corpse.”

  “That happens, too. The man must have been busy. He’s dead, now, so I guess you’ll have to take the matter up with someone else.”

  “I’m taking it up with you, Mac. Must have been a regular free-for-all, a circus. Both families identifying the same body.”

  “Don’t know a thing about it,” he said.

  “I hear the Foleys were in pretty regular touch with the Swampscott police.”

  “Did you? Some families are like that. No luck. Sons always in trouble. Then the daughter drowns.” He yawned enormously. “I’m getting tired of all this yapping.”

  So. He knew the Foley boys had been in trouble with the cops. He was exaggerating his own ignorance.

  I said, “Did Al-Al lead the police to his victims?”

  “Well, they found him standing over the Evans girl. He showed ’em where he’d left another. God knows how many women that lunatic cut up.”

  “But not Thea?”

  He stared out at the deep blackness of the ocean, an ocassional whitecap catching starlight. “I told him to say he threw her body into the sea. There, that’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? She was dead, after
all.”

  “What makes you so damned sure she killed herself? She could have walked away. People do it all the time.”

  “Fifteen-year-old girls? Stark-naked? Those clothes in Marblehead, they were hers, all right.”

  It was in the Marblehead file that the erased notation on the margin had first caught my eye.

  “I thought the clothes were never physically linked to Thea.”

  “Well, you know, they couldn’t do then what they do now. Take a strand of hair and DNA-type the root. Who’d even heard of that?”

  He was staring hard at the outgoing tide.

  “What?” I said.

  “There was a ring, a silver band, engraved with her initials. It was there when Franklin Cameron, her dad, came to see the clothing the first time. Gone when he left. And we were told to scrub it off the records.”

  That would account for more erasures.

  “Now why do you suppose we were told to make that ring disappear, girl?”

  I knew the right answer—because the ring confirmed identity, confirmed suicide—but it bothered me all the same. Everything about MacAvoy’s confession bothered me. It seemed canned, prepared. I wondered if he’d spoken to any of the Camerons since my first visit.

  “Are you Catholic?” he asked suddenly.

  “Half,” I said.

  “Practicing?”

  “No.”

  “Me, I was born and bred Catholic. Fed Catholic. You know, the Camerons sent a priest to see me, their family priest, old geezer, must have passed long ago. Father Martin. Yes, Father Martin. He talked to me about sin, venial sin and mortal sin, and what’s the age when you’re truly responsible for your actions, and he got me so confused that it seemed they were right and I was wrong. I just wanted to do my job, close the case.”

  I nodded. “You figure the priest visited the medical examiner, too? He a religious man?”

  “All I know is I did the damned Camerons a favor. I encouraged a man to confess to a crime, turn a suicide into murder. And do you think they were grateful to me for it? Treated me like dirt. Sergeant I was then and sergeant I stayed. I never got another promotion after that case. I didn’t think it would be like that, sitting in the squad room with the other cops thinking I was bent, when all I’d done was a favor, something a priest practically ordered me to do.”