Nantucket Sawbuck

by Steven Axelrod

  “What time was that?”

  “One in the morning, 1:30, I don’t know. Late.”

  “Did anyone see you there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did anyone drive by while you were parked? Anyone you know?”

  “No, nobody.”

  “So no one can verify your whereabouts for the hours in question.”

  “No, but—who’d make up a story like that?”

  “A writer?”

  “Chief—”

  “Let’s finish this with your lawyer in the room, David. I think we’d both be more comfortable.”

  “Listen, I just—”

  “This afternoon if possible. Tomorrow at the latest.”

  I badged myself into the operations room before Trezize could answer. The noise level jumped as I opened the door. Central dispatch was crowded with people waiting to be interviewed. I saw one of the girls on Fiona’s cleaning crew with Haden Krakauer and thought, Fiona. I have to deal with Fiona.

  Upstairs in the conference room, Lonnie Fraker introduced me to Ken Carmichael from the Mass D.A.’s office. Carmichael was tall and scholarly-looking, with glasses and a worn tweed jacket. His jutting nose and bald head gave him a raw, scoured look, like someone who’d just stepped out of a windstorm. But he had a good smile and a firm handshake.

  He introduced himself and said, “I’m running theC-Pac team for the D.A., which is basically by the book for any ‘unattended death.’ That’s how the statute’s written.”

  “I don’t think witnesses are the issue here. With a guy like Lomax, you’d be on the case if they’d whacked him in the Fleet Center during a Celtics game.”

  “Point taken. So you’ll appreciate—this is the top priority team. We have two detectives and a detective lieutenant along with the forensic unit and as many warm bodies as we can scare up to do the footwork. But don’t get me wrong. We’re not here to push anybody around. I mean that. We just want to help.”

  I nodded. “Great, we can use it. Any word on those DNA samples?”

  “Nothing yet. All the labwork should be back by tonight, though. How about you? Anything?”

  “We’re just running down names. Business associates, friends, family. The wife, kids. People at the party, people who worked on the house. A lot of people.”

  We were all silent for a few seconds. The room bustled around us. Someone elbowed past us with a pile of faxes. Someone else was bringing coffee upstairs. Cell phones were ringing with a uniquely modern electronic discord: the Nokia default tones clashing with “Mission Impossible,” rap downloads and “The Blue Danube.”

  Carmichael grabbed a cup of takeout coffee, pulled off the plastic lid, and took a gulp. “You want hot coffee, you gotta make it yourself. I’m getting a pot up here.” He set the coffee down on top of a file cabinet and glanced around the room. “I hate this part, you know? When everything’s out and nothing’s coming back in. It’s all questions and loose ends and unchecked alibis and pissed-off people and nosy reporters—”

  “The reporters are his problem, boss,” Lonnie Fraker grinned. “He only sneaked in here today because they didn’t recognize him. But after the first press conference he’s going to be famous. You’re going to be a star, Kennis. You’re gonna be getting some serious fan mail now. Just be sure you share it around if the girls enclose pictures. Sharing information is vital on a case like this.”

  “Very funny, Fraker,” said Carmichael. “Didn’t you have some depositions to transcribe?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fraker disappeared.

  “Nice trick,” I said. “I have to learn how to do that.”

  “Perk of the job,” Carmichael said, “Anyway. You know what I’m saying. This is the messy part.”

  I saw Haden Krakauer coming up the stairs. “It’s like cleaning a kid’s room, Ken. You make it look worse first, so you can get all the junk organized.”

  “You got kids?”

  “A boy and a girl.”

  “Jesus. What do you tell them about this stuff?”

  “Nothing. They’re too young, they couldn’t care less. My daughter hates the uniform. My son thinks the flasher bar is cool. That’s about it.”

  Haden walked up to us. “Sorry…Chief? You should take a look at this Irish girl’s interview tape. Molly Flanagan her name is. Something’s bugging me but I don’t know what. And Nathan Parrish is downstairs demanding to talk to you.”

  “Demanding?”

  “Have fun, Chief,” Carmichael said. His cell phone was ringing: The worst one yet. A robotic female voice kept repeating “You have an incoming call. You have an incoming call.” He slid his finger across the bottom of the screen. “This is Carmichael,” he said as I headed for the stairs. Haden followed me.

  “Any thoughts?” I asked.

  “Couple. First off, no tradesman did this. The screwdriver thing is cute, but it doesn’t fool me for a second. Scattering a little dog hair around would have been better. None of these guys go anywhere without a dog in the truck. And they wouldn’t leave that kind of money behind, no matter what. They might have thought about it, maybe had a laugh about it later. But no contractor I ever met is gonna leave close to a grand stuffed down some dead guy’s throat. No way.”

  “Unless that’s what he wants us to think,” I said. “It actually sounds fairly cost-effective to me.”

  “Yeah. I guess. Another thing. There was a benefit party the night of the murder, fifty bucks a head. Some plasterer with MS, family’s trying to raise money for the hospital bills.”

  “He wasn’t insured?

  “I guess he never got on board with the personal mandate.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yeah, well. We get our hands on the guest list, that’ll clear some alibis.”

  “Good idea.”

  Fiona was at that party, I remembered now. She had invited me, but I’d had the kids that night. The knowledge gave me an almost physical relief, the way touching your toes could ease a stitch in your side. A clear alibi would save both of us a lot of questions and malicious gossip, a lot of accusations about conflict of interest and impartiality. Investigating my girlfriend was a nightmare I was grateful to avoid.

  Upstairs, Nathan Parrish was pacing the corridor outside my office.

  “Chief Kennis!” he called out. “Chief Kennis!”

  Haden shook his head with his mouth turned down contemptuously: This was the real reason he had never wanted to be chief. He headed downstairs and left me alone to deal with the burly real estate mogul.

  “Mr. Parrish.” We were blocking the corridor. I led him into my office and gestured to the chair facing the desk. I leaned against the edge, the heels of my palms braced against the flat surface. The office was big and lavish, like a corporate executive suite. It still embarrassed me a little. The big windows showed snowy trees across Fairgrounds Road. Parrish took out a cigarette, caught my look and slipped it back into his pocket.

  “What can we do for you, Nathan?”

  Parrish stared at me as he no doubt stared at his own employees when they said something unusually dense. “What can you do for me? You can find out who committed this atrocious crime and bring them to justice! That’s what you can do for me.”

  “Well, we’re working on it.”

  “You’re ‘working on it’? That’s not good enough.”

  I shrugged. “What do you suggest?”

  “Look—sorry. I’m not here to tell you how to do your job. I’m not a policeman. But I want to help. I can contribute if you need to hire temporary personnel, if you need new equipment…just let me know. Preston Lomax was more than a business associate, Chief. He was a friend. Whatever the gossip sheets might say about him and despite his occasional high-handed attitude—I know he could be abrupt sometimes when the world didn’t move as f
ast as he did, you had to run to keep up with him and he didn’t have much patience for laggards. But Preston Lomax was one of the good guys. As everyone seems to know by now, I was about to close a major deal with Preston’s company. That deal may still be salvageable, I don’t know. Frankly, no one even wants to think about it at the moment. But this isn’t about the money or the opportunity I may have lost. It’s about a man who didn’t deserve to die. And it’s about justice. I don’t want to live in a world where people can commit a crime like this and get away with it.”

  “Then you’re living in the wrong world, Mr. Parrish. In this one, more than half of all homicides are never solved.”

  “How do you live with that?”

  Before I could answer, the office door opened and Lonnie Fraker stuck his head in.

  “Got something, Chief.”

  “What?”

  I stood as Lonnie slipped inside and shut the door behind him, closing off the little wedge of noise from the hall. He grinned as the clatter subsided. “Neighbor driving by around midnight. They saw a big van and a gray Ford Escape in the driveway. The guy had never seen those cars before. He thought they were renters, until we talked to him.”

  “What type of van?”

  “He had no idea. Big. What the hell does a guy like that know about vans?”

  “Okay, good—run the plates of everybody we’re talking to, see who drives an Escape. As to the van …”

  “I know, I know. Every tradesman on the island has one. I’m all over it, Chief. I don’t know what your guys are doing today, aside from the coffee runs. But we’ve got this one all sewn up.”

  “The Escape?”

  He grinned. Parrish sat forward, listening. I had forgotten all about him.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Okay, four gray Escapes. Two off-island, one in the shop.”

  “Who’s left?”

  “Your friend David Trezize. Does he have an alibi?”

  “He says he was ‘driving around’.”

  Lonnie snorted humorlessly; you couldn’t really call it a laugh. “Among other things. You can throw some meat to the dogs out there. We’ll get this little prick into custody. And then we can check out his shoes—see if they match the footprint casts we made in the driveway.”

  “He’s coming in with his lawyer tomorrow. Let’s hold off until then.”

  “What if he runs?”

  “He won’t.”

  “What is that? A feeling?”

  I nodded.

  “Is that what you used in L.A.? Feelings?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes it was.”

  “Right. Well, you play it any way you want. But there’s a guy from the BBC out there now. There’s even some chick from Al Jazeera English. This story is going global, Chief. So don’t choke.”

  “I know that David Trezize person,” Parrish said, jumping to his feet. “He’s been hounding Preston for weeks! He threatened the man’s life two nights ago. The man’s a lunatic.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Parrish. He sounded upset at the party. He’d been drinking. But I know the guy and he’s not dangerous. Anyway, most killers don’t advertise their intentions beforehand.”

  “Well, this one did. You said you don’t want to go press with the story? If you don’t have Trezize in jail this time tomorrow, I’m going to the press myself. Then you’ll be the story, Chief. The cop who let his cronies get away with murder. You’ll never live that one down, believe me. You’ll wish you’d never left Los Angeles.”

  Then he bulled past me and out the door. Lonnie shrugged and followed him. I kicked the door closed and just stood there for a long moment, in the dense comfortable privacy of my oversized office. After a while, I tipped forward until my head touched the cool hard surface of the door.

  It was only nine o’clock. In the morning. I was already exhausted.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The Best Thing Ever

  At that moment, Mike Henderson was sitting in the coffee shop at Eighty-second Street and Madison Avenue, staring out into the final assault of Winter Storm Iago. The snow was blowing horizontal and the wind whined like a tablesaw. He had driven into the city through the storm yesterday, found a parking space down the street from the Levine’s house and gotten a good night’s sleep in their guestroom. But he had woken up anxious at six in the morning.

  Mike sat at the table nursing his coffee, staring out at snow-frosted street. “Clean it up with paint,” his first boss had always said: no scrubbing or sanding, just a heavy layer of latex. “Don’t make it right—make it white.” That’s what the upper East side looked like this morning: dirt and garbage covered over with pristine crystal. The snow itself would be filthy enough soon.

  Mike waved the waiter away. He needed to think about what he was going to say this morning. Everything depended on that. And his mind was a blank.

  How had things gotten this bad? They had wanted a baby for years. Cindy had gotten pregnant two years before, but she had miscarried. That tragedy had revealed every weakness in their marriage. Cindy had been inconsolable and Mike had been shut out completely. It was her tragedy, it had happened inside of her. Mike had nothing to do with it. He could only intrude. When he tried to understand, he was presumptuous. When he tried to cheer her up, he was shallow. When he ignored her, as she seemed to want, he was heartless.

  But it was even worse than that. Over time, she blamed the way they lived. She hated the seasonal panic of housepainting on Nantucket, as everyone scurried around looking for interior work like woodland creatures trying to get inside for the winter, and waited for final payments and groveled to imperious general contractors. The constant stress had killed the baby, that was Cindy’s theory. It infuriated Mike. The doctors had no idea what might have happened, the best minds in modern medicine were baffled, but Cindy knew it was his fault. It was her body. That made her the final authority.

  Mike didn’t know; maybe she was right. The stress never let up. Even now he could feel it, like pressure on a bruise. Things had been the same two years ago, they’d been going through some other crisis: a lawsuit, a lost job, a late check. They always pulled through, Billy Delavane helped them make it through until the phone call came, and it always did, and he went from no work to hiring extra people overnight. But the constant uncertainty was corrosive. Painters got hypertension and ulcers and colitis from it. They had nervous breakdowns. They became alcoholics. Why not their wives?

  Cindy had held her grudge, clutched it tightly, a little kid holding her bus fare, hurrying through a bad neighborhood. It had helped for a while, but she couldn’t keep it up forever. Something like normal life resumed eventually. The wall stayed up, though. Mike couldn’t reach her. They still talked, but the talk was more and more superficial; they made love, but less and less often. Still, somehow she had gotten pregnant again. It was a small miracle, really. Maybe it was fate.

  Mike had been in her doctor’s office once, when Cindy had come down with stomach flu on a visit to her parents. He remembered sitting for more than an hour in the dark wood paneled waiting room. P.S. 6 got out for the day sometime during the wait. He had listened to the shouts and laughter of the newly liberated kids across the street, loving the sound, wanting kids of his own.

  Well, that’s why he was here today.

  He should order breakfast. But he couldn’t eat. He ordered more coffee instead, checked his watch: ten after eight. Office hours didn’t start until nine.

  The waiter returned with a visible sigh. But the place was still uncrowded, so at least Mike wasn’t taking up a table where real eaters and big tippers might be sitting, not yet. It was warm. He pulled off his coat and took a sip of coffee. It was strong and hot and it went down all right.

  A cab pulled up across the street: the office nurse. The rest of the staff arrived over the next half hour. Mike drank two more
coffees. He was getting wired. He asked for the check. He didn’t want any delays when Cindy finally arrived. He watched the traffic, yellow taxis and buses half obscured by the gusting snow. The windows were steaming over; he’d be lucky to see her at all.

  Finally, he couldn’t sit still anymore. He paid the check, left an extra five dollar tip, and walked out into the blizzard, zipping up his coat.

  Her cab pulled up ten minutes later, just as he was considering going back inside. The light was green but it was about to go red. He sprinted across Madison Avenue. Cindy sensed the bulky figure moving toward her and looked up blankly. He hit a patch of ice on the sidewalk and skidded into her. They grabbed each other to keep from falling, an awkward little dance that ended with him sitting in the snow.

  She helped him up. “Graceful as always.” Her smile softened the words.

  “Thanks.”

  They stood holding each others’ arms lightly, snow blowing between them, traffic coursing through the slush behind them.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  “I have an appointment—”

  “With Doctor Mathias. I know. 47 East 82nd Street.”

  “I don’t understand. How did you—?”

  “I know what’s going on, Cindy. I figured it out. I’m not an idiot. And I know you.”

  “Mike—”

  “Can we go somewhere? Get out of the cold?”

  “Let’s just walk.”

  She stuck her hands in her coat pockets and started across Madison toward Fifth Avenue. Mike followed, looking around him at the heavy green copper-roofed old buildings, the snow gathering on their ornamental stonework. These were think tanks now, embassies, foundation headquarters. But they had been residences once. They had been built when the details of craftsmanship mattered and no expense was spared. The wealth they represented made the Nantucket trophy houses look cheap and suburban by comparison. There were co-op buildings of the same pre-war vintage lining the avenues behind them that would never have let Preston Lomax into their lobbies, much less their owners’ associations. It was a different world, and Mike couldn’t help feeling it was a better one. It was solid at least, rooted in generations of privilege and civic responsibility. But it made him feel like he was trespassing. These old buildings dwarfed him and his proletarian difficulties. But he rebelled against the feeling. He was lucky in a way: he could enjoy the formal elegance of the neighborhood with a comfortable detachment. He let it buoy him up for a moment. It was actually the perfect location for this dispute. It embodied tradition and history. It had its own persuasions.