Idyll Hands

by Stephanie Gayle

  “We’re going to dinner. Mulrooney’s. It won’t be crowded, and we can talk there,” he said.

  Mulrooney’s was far enough away to guarantee we wouldn’t run into locals or fellow cops. The food was third-rate, and the service awful. Interesting choice. “I’m not hungry,” I said, a last-ditch effort to convince him to let me stay.

  “We’re not going because you’re hungry,” he said. “We’re going because you shouldn’t be here.”

  CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH

  MONDAY, MAY 17, 1999

  1650 HOURS

  We took a table near the back, where the classic rock couldn’t assault us. Finnegan ordered a beer and a basket of wings. I ordered a soft drink, though I didn’t plan on drinking it. I opened with, “What were you doing back there?”

  “Where?”

  I didn’t answer his dumb-ass question. I was annoyed. Finny wasn’t on shift, and then Billy calls in to tell me he’s at the woods where the bones were found. That he just “showed up.”

  I’d stomped out of my office and gone right for Mrs. Dunsmore, but she’d been surprised, not defiant. No, she hadn’t informed Detective Finnegan of the bone find. No, she didn’t know how he had found out. Maybe I’d be better served yelling at one of the men in the station, as she was busy, and by the way the onions from my sub were a bit strong and did I want a breath mint?

  Back into the fray I yelled until Dix confessed he’d tipped off Finny. No, he hadn’t meant for him to show up at the site. He thought he’d want to know since he found that other bone so many years ago. Yes, he had work to do. Plenty of work. He’d get right back to it. Yes, sir.

  Finny’s dumb act wasn’t bringing my blood pressure down, so I asked again, “What were you doing in the woods?”

  “Observing.”

  “You’re not on duty. You had no business being there. You could get suspended.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I was curious. I didn’t interfere in any way.”

  “You didn’t touch anything?” He shook his head. “Didn’t examine the scene?”

  “Only from a distance.”

  “Didn’t talk to the folks who called it in?”

  He hesitated. “Lewis asked me to take down their contact information.” Well, well. Looked like my other detective would come in for a talk too. “But I didn’t do anything else.”

  “Again, you had no business being there. Weren’t you at your security job?” I asked. He nodded. “I’m assuming you left early?” He nodded. “Right. You’re suspended. Three days without pay.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. You can’t leave your second job to show up to a crime scene on an investigation that you’re not involved in. You spoke to the witnesses. Your name is now included in an active investigation you shouldn’t be part of.”

  “Come on, Chief. Those bones are human. The person in that grave didn’t bury herself. You’re looking at a homicide investigation.”

  “You don’t know it’s a woman in that grave.”

  He flinched, annoyed by my questioning his assumption. He plowed on. “Lewis is busy. He’s going to need help.”

  “Busy?”

  “The clamshell case and …”

  I said, “His wife’s expecting their third child, so he might be distracted.”

  “Says who?” As if he hadn’t been about to spill the beans that she was pregnant.

  The waitress plopped our drinks on the table, hard. Liquid sloshed over the sides of the glasses. “Wings will be out in a minute.”

  “Can’t hardly wait,” I said.

  I wiped up the spilled beer with several napkins. “Wright’s been taking time off. Plus, I overheard him on the phone, talking about an appointment. Obstetrician. I know what that word means. You didn’t know?”

  Finny said, “I knew. He swore me to secrecy. It’s early days for her.”

  “Then it’s unfortunate that the only other detective in the station is suspended, isn’t it?” He moved on his chair seat. His pants squished. He needed to change out of his wet clothes. But I’d let him soak until I got my answers. “You know the Colleen bone belonged at the OCME in Farmington. Why did you keep it? After you had it tested, you didn’t need it.”

  He rubbed the corner of his eye. His jacket dripped fat drops onto the tabletop. He leaned toward me and said, “And I’m pretty sure you know you shouldn’t lie in the midst of an active murder investigation. But that didn’t stop you during the North case. You think I don’t know who the cop at the cabin was? The one who saw the murder victim and who never came forward? And what about interrogating a minor without his parent or lawyer present? Pretty sure you broke that rule.”

  My spine tingled. Whoa. There was real menace on his face and in his voice. And he was right. I’d broken more than a dozen rules in my investigation of the North murder. I’d lied to him, to Wright, to everyone.

  “Okay. I see how it is.”

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “You want in on the case.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re threatening to rat me out if I don’t include you?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He sipped his beer, winced, and set it down. Pushed it away from him.

  The music got louder. Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” The patrons near the speakers would be hard of hearing soon.

  “You want something. I want something,” I said.

  “What do you want?” He shivered. The restaurant was blasting cold air, and he was soaked through from the rainstorm.

  “Let me look into your sister’s case.”

  “I told you, I’ve looked under every rock. There’s nothing.”

  “Then let me waste my time.” He opened his mouth, but I spoke first. “I’m bored, okay? I’d like to do some investigating. Right now, my biggest problem to solve is how to get our roof repaired within our budget.”

  “Here’s your wings.” The waitress used both hands to set them on the table, as if they were made of tissue-thin china. The chicken wings were coated in bright orange sauce. They smelled like a locker room. Finny’s nose scrunched. He pushed the basket toward me. “Anything else I can get you?” she asked, her eyes on another table.

  “No, thanks,” I said. She left without another word.

  “Look,” Finnegan said, “I get that you’re bored. Most afternoons you’ve got this dazed expression, like you can’t figure out how you got here. But my missing sister doesn’t need your homicide-detective experience, okay?”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You don’t think I investigated it? I’ve spent years, decades, on it.” There was aggression in his voice, and wounded pride.

  “I’m sure you did, but sometimes a pair of fresh eyes is a good thing, yeah? We both know it’s unlikely I’ll find her after all this time, but, then again, who knows?”

  “What if I say no?” he asked.

  “No problem,” I said. “You don’t want my help? I understand.”

  He eyed me like I was a suspect. Trying to figure out my angle. Whether he believed it or not, I’d told him the truth. I was bored. I spent too much time at my desk, where my biggest danger was paper-cuts. I missed crime scenes and bad guys and all the things I’d taken for granted every day I was a detective. “We better get back.” I tossed money on the table.

  “Wait.” His eyes had a speck of gold in them. They were wide now. “You’re not gonna let me work the case if I don’t let you meddle in my family history? You’re going to suspend me?”

  I replaced my wallet and stood. “Someone has to solve the Piper Street clamshell mystery.”

  He cursed me out. He had one hell of a vocabulary. Evidence of a Catholic upbringing. When we reached the car, he said, “Fine. I’ll give you what I’ve got on my sister’s case. You know, I could tell the mayor what you did on the North case. You’d be fired by Fourth of July.”

  I leaned against the driver’s side door and stared up into the cloudless sky. My eyes teared up. Fucking
allergies. “You could, but you won’t. You’re not that kind.”

  “What kind?” he asked, jerking the passenger door open with too much force.

  “The kind that rats out another cop.” I sat in the car.

  He stared at me. Angry enough to steam his own clothes dry. “You better pray that I’m not.”

  I started the engine and said, “I’ll mention it next time I talk to God.”

  CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1999

  2220 HOURS

  The carpet chafed my bare shoulder, so I rolled onto my side. Matt lay on his back, eyes closed. He breathed in short puffs. I reached out and stroked the skin below his rib cage. He yelped and thrashed as if being assaulted by bees. “Ticklish,” I said. He squinted, considering retaliation. He leaned in for a kiss.

  “So, you liked the flowers?” I asked, when I’d gotten my breath back. He must’ve. He hadn’t waited until we reached the bedroom.

  “I had no idea you were such a romantic. I’ll tell you who else was surprised. Agent Waters. I believe her words were, ‘I didn’t know he had it in him.’” Agent Waters worked with Matt and had been in charge of the Cody Forrand kidnapping case. I’d liked her. “What’s with the boxes?” he asked. His fingers skimmed the side of one. It was a miracle we hadn’t knocked them over during our earlier activity.

  “Cold case I’m looking into.” Finny had stopped by earlier. He’d made me carry all five boxes from his car’s trunk to my living room. A bit of rebellion that I’d allowed.

  “Murder?”

  “Missing person,” I said.

  “Someone local?” He sat up.

  “No, not exactly.”

  “What then?”

  Finnegan had sworn me not to tell others. Matt reached for the cover to the topmost box. “Don’t!” I yelled.

  He dropped it. “What?”

  “I’m not exactly sanctioned to work the case, and the fewer people who know …”

  “Okay. I won’t press it.” He dusted his hands. “But you’ll have to entertain me another way.”

  “Again?” We’d just finished.

  “Not that. Poker lessons.”

  I groaned. He’d been on a poker kick ever since he saw that Matt Damon movie about the poker whiz who takes down a Russian gangster. There was a group at his office that played, Thursday nights. One of the better players, Vic Carson, was a jackass who made racist comments. Matt had decided the best revenge would be to take down Vic at the poker table.

  “Put your clothes back on.” I couldn’t teach him poker in his current state. Couldn’t concentrate. He complied. I got dressed and grabbed the deck, sat down, and said, “Let’s get started. First lesson. Tells and how to spot them. Let’s start with yours. Stop looking at your feet when you have a great hand.”

  “What?”

  “You do it, every single time. Might as well wear a neon sign that says, ‘Full House.’ Vic must have a tell or two. Learn to spot them. I’m going to let you practice by faking a tell. Spot mine within five hands, and I’ll teach you something new. Miss it, and we rewatch Apollo 13.”

  “Again? Some of us aren’t in love with Ed Harris.” He sat on the edge of his chair, eyes bright. I dealt. He watched each card as it hit the table and then scooped up his hand. My fake tell would be sniffing if my hand was good, and looking to the right if it wasn’t. Matt was good; not great, but good, so he picked up on the tells quick enough that he got to the next lesson.

  I considered whether beating Vic at poker would satisfy Matt. Sure, it would make him happy, but it’s not like it would make Vic stop using racist slurs.

  At half past midnight, I called an end to the game and said I was ready for bed. He grabbed his keys. He had an early day out of town tomorrow, and it made sense for him to go home and grab some shut-eye.

  He paused at the door. “Those boxes in your living room,” he said. “They won’t get you into trouble, will they?”

  “Trouble? No.” I waited a moment and then blurted, “I’m sorry. About what happened at Suds.”

  He ran his knuckle along my cheekbone. “I know you are.”

  Despite Matt’s assurances, I didn’t sleep well. Noises kept waking me: a car alarm and then a raccoon or skunk attacking a trash can. Plus, there were the boxes in my living room, calling to me to open them, to see what was inside. At 4:45 a.m. I left the bed and grabbed a pair of sweats. I brewed coffee and took a big mug of it with me to the living room. I sat on the carpet, arranged the boxes chronologically (Finnegan had labeled the sides), and opened each one. The boxes contained interviews, notes, photos, tips, obituaries, and other stray items related to the search for his sister. In one box was a well-rubbed rabbit’s foot, the fur dyed purple. No tag on it. No explanation. I checked the photos first.

  Susan was a teenager with waist-long brown hair and a gap-toothed smile. In a picture with her older sister, Carol, I saw that Carol looked like Finny. The brothers, David and Bobby, looked like carbon copies separated by time. Susan looked like an outsider. Maybe she’d felt it. Maybe that’s why she’d run away. It was clear from the reports that it’s what everyone assumed. She’d done a runner two years prior. Gone four days. Returned home by some Good Samaritan who’d found her on a road in New Hampshire. This time, they’d waited a week before reporting it. Her brother was a cop, and he waited a week to file it?

  The pages in the boxes were yellowed by time and smelled of must. I sorted them into piles and stacks. The missing person posters the Finnegans had made, in the days before copy shops were common, were sad. Worn mimeographed sheets with small blotches in the corners and the text sagging and warped.

  The neighborhood interviews contained eyewitness reports of Susan’s movements. People from Finny’s neighborhood were talkers. Most of them, anyway. There were a few terse statements from neighbors that said they “hadn’t seen nothing” or “weren’t around.” Finny had added notes to the bottom of these. “Neighborhood enforcer for Dugan. Wouldn’t rat out Jack the Ripper if he was on his pay list.” One statement, from a Jack McGee, read fine. He’d seen Susan the day before her disappearance, walking home from school. But he claimed he’d been working on his car in the driveway when she left home. Finny had scribbled “bullshit” on the back of the report. Under that he’d written “no oil stain on driveway” and “hands clean.” There was something personal there. My nose was tickled by the dust in the box. I sneezed and grabbed a tissue. My foot, numb, was falling asleep. I banged the heel against the carpet, the pins and needles unpleasant, but not enough to make me stop reading.

  Susan’s parents and brother Bobby reported that she’d left the house on Friday, September 22, 1972, at 6:05 p.m. She’d told them she was headed to a double feature with her best friend, Lucy. After leaving the house, she was seen by Mrs. Douglas, walking on Wood Street toward High Street. Miss Rivers saw her head down High Street toward Monument Square, as did Mr. Hertz. And then there was the statement from the Bunker Hill ranger. Finny had written “Bunker Hill in opposite direction from Lucy’s house.” From there, they had three sightings: one on Concord Street and two on Bunker Hill Street. A storeowner, Mr. Burt Ferguson, spotted her at the corner of Bunker Hill and Elm. He’d assumed she was waiting to meet someone. Said she was checking her watch. A few minutes later, he looked up and she was gone. He was the last person who reported that he’d seen her that evening.

  They’d looked into the storeowner, hard. Mr. Ferguson had run his corner store for twelve years. No kids. Single. That raised brows. They’d interviewed him four times. Between the lines, they’d thought maybe he liked young people too much. They asked about him giving free candy to kids after school and helping a neighbor boy with his math homework. He didn’t have a history. No one had ever made a complaint against him. That didn’t matter. They decided they liked him for it. The Boston cops turned his store upside down. Found nothing to show Susan had been there recently. Six months after the disappearance, he’d sold the store and
left the neighborhood. Innocent or not, he’d been the focus of a police investigation. The neighbors had probably stopped sending their kids there to fetch things. Maybe stopped shopping there. He’d been tarred by the police and feathered by neighborhood gossip.

  My throat itched. I should get a glass of water. But the kitchen seemed another world away, and there were more suspects to examine. Next up was Antonio Moretti, known as Andy. Susan had had a crush on him for years, despite her father’s insistence that the Morettis were Italian scum. The crush was unrequited. Finny had noted that Andy was older and liked girls who were faster. There was a picture of him in the file. Nice teeth, good hair, and an outfit best left to the wide-lapel-loving 1970s. Andy had been at his grandmother’s all weekend, gathered with his family for her final days. She’d died Monday night. He’d never been out of his family’s sight long enough to meet Susan that weekend. It was clear the cops didn’t favor him for it. Finny seemed to agree with that conclusion.

  The last suspect was the weakest of all. A simple kid who lived across the street named Levi. He was twenty years old, but his interview responses read like they were spoken by someone half his age. Finny had written “poor Levi” on the back of a transcript. Levi lived with his parents. He worked odd jobs. He loved Susan. He thought she was “super pretty” and “nice.” But Levi loved a lot of girls. Any woman who showed him kindness. He said he’d seen Susan the day she left home, but his mother said he’d been running errands with her. A grocery clerk backed her up. Levi had been acting up in the checkout aisle, asking for a pack of Juicy Fruit. The clerk remembered. Levi was in the clear.

  Foolish to feel disappointed. If there had been a lead, they’d have found her by now. I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. The papers in that box showed careful, diligent police work with no result. That was the worst of it. You could do your best, interview every person, pursue every lead, and still come up short. Hard enough for a detective to swallow, even after years of practice. But a rookie patrol officer whose sister was the missing person? I was surprised Finnegan had stuck with it, had continued being a cop.