Night Passage

by Robert B. Parker

  “You’re the homicide commander,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah.”

  Healy’s eyes had the flat look that Jesse had seen before. The eyes had seen everything and believed nothing. There was neither compassion nor anger in Healy’s eyes, just a kind of appraising patience that formed no prejudgments and came to conclusions slowly. Occasionally when Jesse had come unexpectedly upon his reflection in a mirror or a darkened window, he had seen that look in his own eyes.

  “So how come we draw you?” Jesse said.

  Healy shrugged, sipped a small taste of the scotch, held the glass up to the light for a moment, and looked at the color.

  “I used to work up here, Essex County DA’s office. I live in Swampscott. So when the squeal came in I thought I’d swing by myself.”

  “Chance to get out of the office for a while,” Jesse said.

  Healy nodded.

  “Don’t like the office,” he said. “But I like the Captain’s pay. Somebody told me you used to work homicide.”

  “L.A.,” Jesse said. “Downtown.”

  “You know Cronjager out there?”

  “Yep.”

  “So how’d you end up here?”

  “Cronjager fired me. I was drinking on the job. This was the only job I got offered.”

  “How you doing now? Tonight excluded.”

  “I’m not drinking on the job,” Jesse said.

  “It’s a good start,” Healy said. “Heard you used to play ball.”

  “People do talk. Yeah, I was a shortstop. Dodger organization. Tore up my shoulder playing at Pueblo.” Jesse shrugged. “Sayonara.”

  “I was a pitcher,” Healy said. “Phillies signed me.”

  “And?”

  “And the war came and I went. When I came home there was the wife, the kids. I went on the cops.”

  “Miss it?” Jesse said.

  “Every day,” Healy said.

  Jesse nodded. They were both silent for a moment. Healy took another small sip of scotch.

  “So what have we got?” he said.

  “Got her I.D.’d,” Jesse said. “Name’s Tammy Portugal. Twenty-eight years old, divorced, two kids. Lived on the pond, other end of town. Left the kids with her mother yesterday afternoon, her alimony check always arrived on this date and the mother always took the kids, give her daughter a break, let her spend some of the alimony. Tammy was supposed to pick the kids up at noon today.” Jesse glanced at his watch without really seeing it. “Yesterday. When she didn’t show, the mother called us.”

  “Where’s the husband?” Healy said.

  “Don’t know. Mother says he took off two years ago, right after the divorce. Says he always sends his alimony on time. But she doesn’t know where he is.”

  “And the alimony check came today?”

  “Yesterday.” Again Jesse did the automatic glance at his watch. “Day before, actually.”

  “So she must have cashed it before she went out,” Healy said.

  “Yeah, and we could trace it. We’ll check on that in the morning. We didn’t get all of this until the bank closed. Even if she cashed it someplace else,” Jesse said, “it will probably clear through the Paradise Bank, and the president is one of our selectmen.”

  “So he’ll be cooperative.”

  “Probably,” Jesse said.

  Healy looked at him and waited. Jesse didn’t add to the “probably.” Healy let it slide. Jesse saw him let it slide, and also saw him file it away. Stone has some reservations about the bank president.

  “You got her movements established, prior to death?” Healy said.

  “Not yet. Thought the M.E. might help us on that.”

  “He might,” Healy said. “She had drunk a fair amount of alcohol.”

  “I figured. And, single kid, twenty-eight, night out, she probably went to a place where she could meet guys.”

  “Narrows it down,” Healy said.

  “Well, maybe it does,” Jesse said. “I’m guessing she didn’t go clubbing in Boston. Not many people from this town go into Boston.”

  “Christ no,” Healy said. “Must be fifteen miles away.”

  “This is an insular town,” Jesse said. “She went clubbing, I figure she went around here.”

  “Including Route One?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you only got about five hundred clubs to check.”

  “We’re talking to people who knew her. She may have had some favorite places. Most women don’t like to go to a strange place alone. She probably went to the same places or a few of the same places every time.”

  “I can give you some help along Route One,” Healy said.

  “I’ll take it. What else the M.E. say.”

  “Not too much that you couldn’t see looking at her. She’d been raped. She’d been beaten with a blunt instrument, possibly a human fist. Her neck was broken, which is almost certainly the cause of death. She wasn’t killed here. There’s no blood at all at the scene and there would have been. The word ‘slut’ was written on her with lipstick, probably hers, it matches traces found on her lips. You got any thoughts about ‘slut’?”

  “You know it was spray-painted on one of our squad cars, and later the station-house cat was killed and a sign was attached to it that said ‘slut.’ ”

  “Sometimes words have private meanings to the people who use them,” Healy said, “especially if they’re nuts.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “You figure it’s the same person?” Healy said.

  “Be a logical guess, and if it is it may not be about the victims, it may be about us,” Jesse said.

  “Or it’s a copycat who wants you to think that?”

  “You believe that?” Jesse said.

  “I don’t believe anything, but it’s possible.”

  “Yeah, but is it likely? This has got every mark of an unpremeditated act of rage or sadism or insanity or all of the above. It doesn’t have any hint of some kind of calculating smart guy who pretends to be part of the other deal to confuse us.”

  “Unless the guy is even smarter than that and knows you’ll think that way.”

  “How long you been a cop?” Jesse said.

  “Forty-one years,” Healy said.

  “Got me by some, but in forty-one years how many criminal masterminds you run into on a murder case?”

  Healy smiled.

  “About the same number you have,” he said.

  “Which is the same number of big-league at-bats we got between us,” Jesse said.

  “Which is zip,” Healy said.

  They both sipped whiskey in the dim office.

  “You got a suspect?” Healy said.

  “Not based on evidence.”

  “But you got somebody in mind.”

  Jesse shrugged.

  “Got a guy in town with maybe a grudge against the department, or probably, more accurate, a grudge against me.”

  “Not many towns don’t have somebody like that.” Healy said. “Sort of goes with police work.”

  “I know,” Jesse said.

  “And you don’t care to tell me his name, anyway.” Healy said.

  Jesse shrugged.

  “Doesn’t seem right,” he said. “Even to you. I got absolutely nothing to back it up.”

  Healy nodded. “You know the former chief here?”

  “No.”

  “You know he was murdered out in Wyoming?”

  “Boy, you don’t miss much,” Jesse said.

  “I like to read the stuff that comes through,” Healy said.

  “Got blown up,” Jesse said. “On the road to Gillette.”

  “Town like this doesn’t have a murder a decade,” Healy said. “You get two in a month.”

  “Hate coincidence,” Jesse said. “Don’t you?”

  “Yeah. You see any connection?”

  “Not yet,” Jesse said.

  “But you’re looking.”

  “I’m going to.”

  Healy nodded again
.

  “Course sometimes there are coincidences,” he said.

  “We’re keeping it in mind,” Jesse said.

  Healy nodded, finished his drink, refilled Jesse’s glass, and put the bottle in his briefcase.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  Chapter 44

  HASTY HATHAWAY WANDERED into Jesse’s office and closed the door behind him and came and sat with one leg on the corner of Jesse’s desk.

  “What did that state police captain want?” he said.

  “And good morning to you too, Hasty.”

  Hathaway shook his head as if he had water in his ear.

  “What did he want?”

  “His name’s Healy,” Jesse said. “He’s the state homicide commander. He wanted to talk about Tammy Portugal’s murder.”

  Hathaway shook his head again, slowly this time.

  “We don’t want that, Jesse,” he said. “We solve our own problems here.”

  “I haven’t got the forensic resources for a full-fledged homicide investigation, Hasty. He does.”

  Hathaway reached over and gave Jesse a clap on the shoulder.

  “We have every confidence in you and your men, Jesse, we don’t need the state government sticking its nose under the edge of our tent, so to speak.”

  Jesse hated to be touched and he especially hated to be clapped on the shoulder.

  “I’m a good cop,” Jesse said. “But a good cop is mostly the product of a good support system. We’re not geared for a homicide investigation.”

  “We don’t want that policeman nosing into our business,” Hathaway said. His geniality was dissipating.

  “Well, I’m not sure there’s much to be done about that.” Jesse said. “Even if I didn’t want him, which I do, I got no way to keep him out.”

  Hathaway was silent. One leg slung over the corner of Jesse’s desk, he drummed quietly with the fingers of his right hand on the desktop. His face seemed to have tightened in on itself. The lines had deepened and the pale blue eyes seemed smaller. He looked feral.

  “Jesse, you need to be clear about things,” Hathaway said finally. “You are either with us, or you are not. We value loyalty above all things. It was ultimately Tom Carson’s failure.”

  “Whatever happened to him?” Jesse said.

  Hathaway glanced away from Jesse and stared out the window.

  “We had to ask for Tom’s resignation,” Hathaway said.

  “Because?”

  “Because his loyalty was in question.”

  “Loyalty to who?” Jesse said. His voice was gentle and there was nothing in it other than interest.

  “To us,” Hathaway said. “To the people of this town who matter.”

  “Like you,” Jesse said.

  “Yes. And Lou Burke, and everyone in this town who cares about preserving democracy at the grass roots.” Hathaway’s voice seemed to scrape out of his throat.

  “So where is Carson now?”

  “I have no idea,” Hathaway said.

  “Me either.”

  Hathaway looked hard at Jesse, but there was nothing on his face, nothing in his voice, except the hint of something seething behind the bow tie and glasses.

  “I don’t want to hear that you are opening up to this state policeman in any way,” Hathaway said finally.

  “The surest way to bring them down here in droves.” Jesse said, “is to try and keep them out.”

  “You don’t have to keep them out. But you can stonewall them.”

  “You haven’t had much dealing with people like Healy,” Jesse said. “I have. He’s been in this business forty years. He’s taken guns away from hopheads and children away from molesters. He’s seen every mess, heard every lie. He’s been there and seen it done. You can’t stonewall him any more than you can scare him.”

  “So we throw the town secrets open to him?”

  “No, but we let him help us catch the guy who killed that girl,” Jesse said.

  Hathaway sat silent as a stone on the corner of the desk, shaking his head slowly.

  “A damned divorcee,” he said finally, “out to get laid.”

  “Or the mother of two kids,” Jesse said, “out for the evening. All depends on which truths you tell, I guess.”

  Hathaway continued to sit and shake his head. Then he rose abruptly and walked stiffly out of Jesse’s office. Jesse watched the empty doorway that Hathaway had gone through for a while, his lips pursed slightly. He realized his jaw was clamped very tight and he opened it and worked it back and forth a little to relax it. He breathed in deeply and let it out slowly, listening to his own exhale, easing the tightness along his shoulders, relaxing his back.

  “And Lou Burke,” Jesse said aloud.

  He got up and went to the file cabinet and got out Burke’s personnel file and took it back to his desk and began to thumb through it.

  Chapter 45

  FINDING TAMMY PORTUGAL’S HUSBAND had been easy. The alimony check had been cashed at the Paradise Bank and the address was printed on it. Jesse drove out to Springfield and talked with him at 10:30 a.m. in a coffee shop on Sumner Avenue at an intersection called the X. The restaurant was out of the 1930s. Glass brick, and a jukebox near the kitchen.

  “I’m a loser,” Bobby Portugal said to Jesse. “Tammy thought she was marrying a winner, but that was just my bullshit. I been a loser since I graduated high school.”

  Portugal was medium height and husky. His dark hair was longish and he had a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a Patriots warm-up jacket over a gray tee shirt and jeans.

  “We went together in high school. I was a big jock in high school. Running back, point guard. She thought I was a big deal.”

  The waitress brought an order of English muffins for Jesse and a fried-egg sandwich for Portugal.

  “Made All-North Shore League, junior and senior year, football and basketball. Got a partial scholarship to B.C.”

  Portugal paused while he peeled off the top layer of toast and poured ketchup on the fried egg.

  “And when you got there,” Jesse said, “everybody had made all-league and a lot of the leagues were faster than yours.”

  “You better believe it,” Portugal said.

  He took a bite of his sandwich and put it down while he pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table and wiped ketchup from the corner of his mouth.

  “I lasted six weeks,” he said. “And quit. Went to work for the highway department in town. Thought I was making a ton. Tammy and I were still going out, and she got pregnant, and…” Portugal shrugged and shook his head. He picked up his sandwich and held it for a moment and put it down. His eyes filled and he turned his head away from Jesse.

  “Take your time,” Jesse said.

  Portugal continued to sit with his head turned. Without looking he pushed his plate away from him. Jesse waited. Portugal took in a deep breath and let it out. He did it again. Then he straightened his head and looked at Jesse. His eyes were wet.

  “We got married,” he said. “She still thought I was a big deal. Nineteen, money in my pocket, a star in the Paradise softball league. She was thrilled to be marrying Bobby Portugal.”

  Portugal’s voice was perfectly calm. Remote, Jesse thought, as if he were talking about people he knew casually, and found mildly interesting. Except that he was teary.

  “And then we had the babies and two hundred and fifty bucks a week didn’t look like so much. I tried selling Amway for a while. That was a joke. I tried insurance, got through the training program and got fired. I didn’t earn much money, but I played a lotta ball with the guys and drank a lotta beer. Finally she dumped me. You blame her?”

  “What are you doing out here?” Jesse said.

  “Security guard. Downtown at the big mall. When I get off work, I got a room with a sink in the corner and bathroom down the hall. You ever play ball?”

  “Some,” Jesse said. “Why Springfield?”

  “I had to get away from Paradise,” Portugal
said. “This seemed far enough. Nobody ever heard of me here.”

  “Tell me where you were Tuesday night.”

  “Did my shift at the mall till ten. Had a date. Girl works at the mall. Got home around three-thirty, she spent the night. That when she was killed? Tammy? Tuesday night?”

  “Can I talk with the woman you dated?”

  “You gotta?”

  “Be good to know what you were doing that period of time.”

  “Yeah, if you gotta. But can you be sort of cool about it? Her old man is a long-distance trucker. When he’s out of town we… we got a little arrangement.”

  “I can talk to her at work,” Jesse said.

  “Okay. Her name’s Rosa Rodriguez, she works in the little candy kiosk in the mall.”

  “Can you give me the address of the mall?” Jesse said.

  Portugal told him and Jesse wrote it down.

  “You own a car?”

  “No. With my alimony? Mostly I ride the bus. Buses are pretty good here. I guess there’s no more alimony, is there?”

  “Child support,” Jesse said.

  He nodded.

  “They okay?” he said.

  “Your children?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re with your mother-in-law.”

  Portugal nodded.

  “You wanna give me the name of your supervisor, please?” Jesse said.

  Portugal told him.

  “What time you get to work on Wednesday?”

  “Ten a.m. About five hours’ sleep. Man!” Portugal shook his head. “You think I done it?”

  “Not if your story checks,” Jesse said. “She was out clubbing, probably, Tuesday night, there was alcohol present. You know any of her favorite places?”

  Portugal shook his head.

  “No favorites,” he said. “I know she used to go out once a week, but she’d never go the same place. Didn’t want to get a reputation, you know. Bad for the kids, she said. So she wouldn’t go to any place regular. She’d always go where nobody knew her. She was a good mother, man.”

  “Sorry to have to ask, but did she go to meet men, you think?”

  “Yeah, sure, why wouldn’t she? We was divorced. She was free. She liked sex, I know that. I mean that’s pretty much what we had was sex, and after a while, when I wasn’t working and didn’t do much but play ball and drink with the guys, we didn’t even have that.”