Idyll Threats

by Stephanie Gayle

  John Dixon sat down and shut up.

  I fielded questions about motive (I wouldn’t speculate) and one about a town curfew (unnecessary). There wasn’t much else to say. The reporters would have to pad their pieces with thoughts on what a shock murder was in this sleepy community. The mayor took me aside when the news crews shut off their lights and wound their cables. “I assume you’ve an excellent excuse for being late.” The stains under his armpits were two shades darker than his shirt.

  “New information came in. I’m sorry. It took precedence.” The lie came easy.

  “We couldn’t reach you at the station.”

  “I was talking to the techs, from home.”

  The mayor walked with me out of the building. “Next time, call ahead to say you’ll be late.” He squinted and said, “Is that your car?” He didn’t need to ask. Its side read “Police Chief.”

  You mean the one you threatened to take away? “There weren’t any spaces.”

  “Not even the handicapped one?”

  “I didn’t think it would be right to park there.”

  “You need to treat your vehicle like you would a lady, Chief.” He withdrew a pair of aviator sunglasses and put them on. “With respect.”

  1130 HOURS

  I poured flat soda on my plant and looked down at the parking lot. My car glinted in its reserved spot, safe for now. The mayor had bought my lie, but he’d been unhappy. Maybe he and the selectman had hedged their bets, not changing the nameplate on my door.

  The phone rang. “Chief Lynch,” I said.

  “Hello Chief, this is Mr. McKinley, owner of the Nipmuc Golf Course. I’m just following up about last night.”

  “Last night.” What was he talking about?

  “The trouble?” He waited for a response. I said nothing. “Charlie saw some teens by the ninth hole last night.”

  “Oh.” First I’d heard of it. “I could send an officer to keep an eye out after Charlie’s left.” I didn’t need ghoul-hunting teens on the crime scene.

  He said, “The murder…well, I don’t want people to associate the course with it.”

  Good luck with that. “I’ll assign someone for a week.” It would be a dozer. Maybe I’d send Yankowitz, or Hopkins. He was still acting pissy for my scolding him at the clubhouse. “Did Charlie give a description of the kids?”

  “Yes, when he called the station last night.” So that’s why he thought I knew. Because Charlie had called it in. The desk sergeant and I were due for a chat.

  “I’ll send someone tonight, after Charlie finishes his rounds. How’s that?”

  “Fine. Thanks, Chief.”

  I hung up the phone. A tentative knock lifted my gaze. I had a visitor. “Come in.” Yankowitz opened my door, his face the definition of confused.

  “Help you?” I asked, my tone less than pleased. He usually stayed away from my office. Had never been inside as far as I knew.

  “There’s a man here. He says he knows you.”

  “And?” His posture implied there was more to this story. He looked over his shoulder. Then back at me.

  “I pulled him over on Sparrow Street. He was doing 45 miles per hour. It’s a school district. No school now, but there are day programs for kids.”

  Stop the presses, I opened my mouth to say.

  “His name’s Leo Wilton.” My open mouth snapped shut. The man I’d picked up. The man at the cabin.

  “He insisted on seeing you. Says you’ll straighten it all out.”

  “He’s here?” I tried to look around Yankowitz.

  “Yeah.”

  “Send him in.”

  “Okay.”

  Twenty seconds later, Leo Wilton stood in my office. “Close the door,” I told Yankowitz. He did, his face no less confused as he left.

  “Hello, Chief.” Leo looked older under the fluorescent lights. His grey hair looked slightly green. “Had a feeling we’d meet again. Had no idea it would be so soon.”

  “You seem to have a lead foot,” I said.

  “Your officer there is very by-the-book.” He sat and crossed his leg. “Tried to give me a fifty-dollar ticket.”

  “He takes speeding seriously.”

  Leo pulled a paper from his pocket and held it out. The ticket.

  “And you came here because?” I asked.

  He sniffed. “Come on. Don’t play dumb. Make this,” he wiggled the paper, “go away.”

  I waited, saying nothing.

  “Get rid of this and I won’t have to tell your ticket buddy how well we know each other.”

  Blackmail. He wouldn’t tell on me if I waived his ticket. I almost called his bluff. He wore a wedding ring. I’d bet he had adult children. Jesus. I couldn’t believe I’d almost fucked this guy.

  I beckoned him near. He leaned forward. I grabbed the ticket from his hand. Tore it in half, and half again. “Happy?” I asked.

  “As a clam.” He looked me up and down. “If you ever want a rain check…”

  I’d rather sleep with Mrs. Dunsmore.

  “Bye,” I said. “Send my eager beaver in, will you?”

  He winked on his way out. I fantasized about blacking that eye.

  Yankowitz came. I told him to close the door and have a seat. He did both at the pace of an injured snail.

  “Tear up that ticket.” I nodded at his booklet, held tightly in his hands.

  His mouth formed a perfect ring. “But why?” He looked down at his booklet like it was his infant child.

  “It’s a freebie,” I said.

  “Freebie?”

  He couldn’t be this naïve. There are all sorts of currency in policing. Internal, like choice car assignments, overtime, sick days when the station knows you’re healthy, lies told by your partner to your wife about your whereabouts. External freebies like not seeing a taillight out or getting information and knocking down a felony to a misdemeanor. Police stations are like prisons. Every interaction is worth something. Even a meter maid like Yankowitz ought to know this.

  “He did me a favor, so I’m doing him one,” I said.

  “But…” he said. He let his thought die, unspoken.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I won’t ask for this kind of thing often.”

  His face was no longer confused. It was disappointed. I nearly threw my stapler at him. How dare he look at me like that? Over a goddamn speeding ticket?

  “Is there anything else?” I asked.

  “No, sir.” His words soft, sad.

  “Okay then. Thank you, Yankowitz.”

  He left my office without further comment.

  I hoped to God Leo Wilton started taking another route, one that skipped Idyll. Or he learned to let up on the gas pedal. I couldn’t keep intervening. I didn’t want to. Once this case was put to bed, I wouldn’t.

  I gathered all my ducklings by the crime board. Billy stood, having no chair. “Your finger’s bleeding,” he said, pointing. Sure enough. Blood dripped down my finger. “First Aid kit is by the coffee. I’ll get it.” He loped away.

  “Watch Hoops go,” Wright said. “Go, Hoops, go.”

  “Your kids learning to read?” Revere asked Wright. Wright had two young kids, one boy, one girl. Their skin was two shades lighter than his, courtesy of his white wife. Milky coffee, that’s what they’d called it back at my old station. Biracial light.

  “How’d you know?” Wright asked Revere, his tone pure suspicion.

  “You sound like a Dick and Jane book,” Revere said. He pointed at Wright’s family photo. “They don’t have different books for your kids?”

  “My kids?” Wright’s voice got lower. “You think they should have some Ebonics version? Learn to read Hustle, Shawanda, Hustle instead?”

  Revere said, “I just meant Dick and Jane is what the Chief read as a kid. I thought maybe your kids had more modern books.”

  “Don’t knock Dick and Jane,” I said. I watched Wright. He looked ready to blow. I didn’t think Revere was racist, but I wasn’t sure Wright
would believe that.

  Billy returned, kit in hand. “Cut yourself?” he asked. The interruption distracted everyone.

  “Thanks. Why don’t we start?” I unwrapped the bloody bandage. “Has anyone heard from the golf-course security guard recently?”

  Billy said, “He called last night. Saw teenagers near the ninth hole.”

  I gave him the bad-dog look. “When were you planning on sharing this information?”

  My cut was inflamed, the skin swollen. Great.

  Billy flushed redder than a baboon’s ass. “Today. Later today.”

  “In the future, when news related to the murder scene, or hey, let’s make it the murder, comes up, find me. Now, what have we got?” I daubed antiseptic on my finger and bandaged it again.

  “That hardly seems relevant,” Revere said. “Thrill-seeking kids.” He stared at me. Boy, he’d picked the wrong man on the wrong day.

  I said, “Kids at the crime scene? They might hang out there often. They might have seen our victim the night she died. Who knows? Maybe one of them owns a gun. Let’s gather information before we exclude it.”

  Revere said, “So we should inform you of all developments, what, every ten minutes?” He leaned against his desk. His posture was casual, but his face was stony. Wright smiled at Revere.

  “I’ll swing by the course tonight after Charlie’s gone,” I said. Claiming it marked it as important. And it avoided Revere’s question. I didn’t want the men to think I loomed. But I didn’t want them excluding me, either.

  “It’s gonna be a snooze,” Finnegan said. “Or were you planning to practice your game?” He swung an imaginary gold club. Good old Finnegan. Quick to keep the peace.

  “The ex-boyfriend is out,” Wright said, plowing ahead. “We’ve got confirmation from a hotel clerk and three folks at the investment firm he visited. He was in London.”

  “No chance he had it done?” Finnegan said.

  Billy said, “He’s a nice guy. I don’t think—”

  I interrupted. “Anybody know nice guys who had people killed?”

  All the men raised their hands. Wright said, “I knew a nice guy who had his wife killed while he was at church with their kids.”

  “I knew a nice guy who had his boss whacked over a measly two hundred bucks,” Finnegan said.

  “Better to say that he doesn’t fit the profile,” Revere told Billy. “‘Nice’ doesn’t cut it.”

  “Listen to the good detective. ‘He doesn’t fit the profile.’ That’s good stuff there. The kind that gets you into the State Police,” I said.

  “Well that and some goooood ass-kissing,” Wright said. If it was time to kick Revere, Wright was first in line.

  “My ass-kissing can’t compare to the Chief’s,” Revere said. “I mean, what does it take to get appointed Police Chief? It probably surpasses kissing ass.”

  I could punch him, or let it go. I counted silently to twenty. “Kissing doesn’t begin to cover what I did for this job.” Finnegan laughed. “Now that we’ve covered the sexual perversions of promotion, does anyone have any other news?”

  Revere said, “I’ve gone through the past twenty years of handgun murders. Four looked similar, but all but one was resolved and the killers are still inside.”

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Finnegan said, sketching a sign of the cross.

  “And the other?” I asked.

  He tapped a folder. “John Murray, age twenty-seven, shot three times in the torso four years ago in Meriden, outside a used-car lot. He made a little book, but nothing major. No solid leads. The case is still open. So far, no connections to our girl.”

  Finnegan tapped Gary Clark’s picture that he’d pinned to the board. “I spoke with Mr. Clark this morning. He works at Liberty Insurance, where he spent a lot of time with our victim. But to hear him tell it, he saw her twice a week, for ten minutes tops. And he kept switching his tune. One minute it was ‘I don’t need help; I’ve been in insurance for years’ and the next it was, ‘Who can understand HR policies? They’re so confusing.’”

  Wright leaned back in his chair and said, “So he was defensive. Man gets nervous when the office girl he’s chatted up is murdered.” So far, Wright was the resident skeptic. Questioning every theory but his own: that wife beater Anthony Fergus had plugged our girl.

  I’d checked on Gary Clark. He had no priors. A couple moving violations. Nothing spectacular. Nothing dodgy. Just a married insurance jockey.

  Finnegan said, “He’s a liar. When I first visited Liberty, his colleague asked if he’d had another car accident. I mentioned it to Clark and he brushed it off. Says it was just a fender bender; the other driver was insured. No biggie.”

  “And?” Revere said.

  “There was no accident. He never filed a report. I talked to the Waterbury cops. They’ve no record of an accident that day until six p.m. Clark said it happened before work, which is why he didn’t show.”

  “So he lies about a car accident. Why?” Revere asked.

  “To get out of work. Guess who called in sick that day?” Finnegan opened a bag of chips. The crinkle activated my salivary glands. I’d missed breakfast and hadn’t eaten lunch yet.

  “Our girl?” Wright said.

  He pointed at Wright. “Give the man a Kewpie doll.”

  “What’s a Kewpie doll?” Billy asked. Revere groaned but didn’t answer.

  I said, “Could be coincidence, but why don’t you check? See if her parents remember her being home sick. Ask if she stayed in all day.” I stuck my hand into Finnegan’s bag of chips.

  “Ta,” I said. He harrumphed. The chips’ saltiness just made me hungrier.

  “There’s also her mobile-phone records,” Revere said, so soft we all leaned in.

  “Come again?” Wright said. He’d reviewed the phone records.

  “She called one number several times. Here.” Revere pointed to a repeating number he’d highlighted in pink.

  Finnegan took the paper. “Isn’t that the Liberty Insurance number? She called work?” He pulled a mangled calendar forward and paged through its sheets. “Twice on a Saturday? And three times when she was at work? Why not use her office phone?”

  “You think she called Gary Clark,” I said to Revere.

  “Maybe. The main line gets you the company directory. She dials using her mobile phone and her number shows as an outside call. If she uses her office phone, her name appears on the phone display. If she was seeing him, she might prefer to call on her mobile.”

  Wright scowled. This was the second time Revere had shown him up. I also had egg on my face. I’d let Clark off my radar. Shit.

  “And now for the bad news,” Finnegan said. “He has an alibi. Poker game with his buddies. It’s a regular thing.”

  I said, “Right. Check it. Twice. Any matches on the gun? No?”

  “Hey, about that,” Wright said. “The techs were annoyed.”

  “Annoyed?” What had we done to piss them off now?

  “You got the ballistics report from them?” Wright asked.

  “Yes, but the initial ID came from the ME. Why?” My stomach wanted lunch, and I didn’t need the crime-scene techs’ bitching to keep me from it.

  He shrugged. “They were peeved we knew before they did.”

  “Yeah? They should work faster then,” I said. That burger place I kept hearing the guys talk about. Where was it?

  Billy said, “Dr. Saunders? How does he know bullets?”

  “He took a course or makes them on the weekends,” I said. “Does it matter?”

  “I heard he’s a fairy,” Billy said. He waved his hands close to his chest. He looked like a dim-witted T. rex.

  “Saunders?” Wright said. His brows popped up like bread from a toaster.

  “Yeah,” Revere said. He moved some papers, to unfurl a map. “It’s not a secret. He’s openly out.” He looked up at the others, a crease bisecting his forehead.

  Finnegan said, “I’d heard rumors.”


  “I wouldn’t want him handling my body,” Billy said, making a show of shivering.

  “You’d be dead,” I pointed out.

  “Afraid he’d want to play doctor with you?” Finnegan asked. Wright laughed.

  “Damn straight,” Billy said. Finnegan and Wright slapped their knees.

  “Damn straight,” Wright said. “Classic.”

  Billy grinned, delighted to be one of the guys. “Hey, what do you get when you cross an Eskimo with a gay dude?”

  “What?” Wright asked.

  “A snow blower,” Billy said.

  My hunger was gone. The gnawing in my stomach something different now.

  Wright said, “Snow blower. Ha.” He smacked his knee again. “Ha.”

  Finnegan laughed until he coughed a phlegm ball into his food-stained handkerchief.

  My finger throbbed. “Back to work,” I said. I left them to their stupid jokes.

  So Dr. Saunders was gay. And out. Good for him. But then he worked with the dead, and they tend to be more forgiving.

  2235 HOURS

  Pine trees surrounded me at the golf course’s edge. I watched the silent greens, now a monochromatic gray. Bugs hummed and chittered. Every few minutes, I lifted my feet and ran my fingers over my ankles and calves. Checking for bumps. The locals had gleefully shared tales of Lyme disease, and I’d developed a fear. I rubbed my arms, cold. My jacket was still at Suds, being purged of Cecilia North’s blood.

  “I heard he’s a fairy.” Billy’s voice returned. A fairy. Right. All gay men were weak, effeminate. In a fight, I’d whip Billy’s skinny ass from here to Timbuktu.

  But I’d learned to control my temper. My parents, embarrassed by their brute son, sat me down for repeated talks on why we don’t hit and how physical violence solves nothing. “Not true,” I’d said. “Kevin Hurley hasn’t taken lunch money from any of the young kids since I held his head in the toilet and flushed it.” My father wrapped bandages around my knuckles and asked when I’d learn not to be baited. “Tommy, you’ve got to get a thicker skin. This one’s going to be peeled from you if you keep on this way.” But I kept scrapping, until I made it into the police academy. I loved policing and didn’t dare lose it. Fighting could cost me my new career. So I quit, cold turkey.