Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  They rated a phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark skeleton highly; a monster with green hair and an enormous wart-encrusted nose won a place in their top five, as did a giant turtle. But the blue ribbon went to a group of seven students, each dressed as a spear of green asparagus, the lot of them bound together around the middle with a blue sash as if contained in a rubber band. Deciding that seven walking spears of asparagus could not be topped, the two headed to Abby’s downtown loft, so that Dart could partake of the scorpions.

  The loft was near the train tracks in a no-man’s-land across the Bulkeley Bridge, an area of town unfamiliar to him. It was a second-story loft, accessed by a clunky old freight elevator that smelled of sawdust and burning electrical motors, and gave Dart the impression of entering an abandoned building. But on the other side of the steel door to the apartment was a world all Abby’s. She had sanded the wood plank floors back to blond, and had hung seven white and green silk parachutes as her ceiling with the fixtures on the other side of the fabric so that the vast open space glowed in a soft, flattering light. White Sheetrock walls defined the kitchen, to the right, and a bath, some partitioned bedrooms, an office, and closet to the left. Directly ahead, a pot-bellied wood stove served as the focal point of lawn furniture with green striped cushions, including two chaise lounges and a quirky chess set that she used as a side table.

  “Do you play?” he asked her as he built a fire at her request.

  “Is that a come-on?” she answered.

  “Chess.”

  “Yes. And bridge and tennis and softball. And volleyball if it’s a sand court. I can’t play indoors anymore.”

  “Where are the kids?”

  “I dumped them off with a friend,” she answered. Then she added, “For the night.” And Dart felt her answer clear down to his toes.

  “That’s where I’m lucky,” she continued. “Being a one-person division, I can pretty much make my own hours.”

  He heard her mixing the drinks. He felt that he had somehow invited himself to stay with her, and that wasn’t his intention-or was it? he wondered. The bottom line was that he felt awkward, stretched out on a chaise lounge beneath a parachute, a fire crackling in front of him and a woman, four or five years older than he, mixing drinks in a kitchen half a block away.

  “You’re going to love this batch,” she announced.

  She had pulled off her sweater and unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt. She had kicked off her shoes so that he could see her toes wiggle nervously as she took the chaise lounge next to him and placed a tray bearing a pitcher of scorpions and their two filled cocktail glasses. The paper napkins had Gary Larson cartoons on them, and the swizzle sticks read: Cactus Pete’s Casino, Jackpot, Nevada. Dart felt outgunned.

  She jumped up and put on a CD-south-of-the-border guitar instrumentals. He sipped the drink-mixed to kill-and felt himself relax.

  “That was nice what you did for Lewellan,” she said, her eyes on the fire. “Arranging with the mother to allow the girl the rabbits. A homicide dick with a heart-now there’s a concept.”

  He felt his face flush hot. “It just seemed to make sense, that’s all.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. I’m not going to rat on you. I think it’s sweet.”

  Trying to steer the topic away from himself, he said, “She’s so … young? I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Innocent?” she asked.

  “That’s what I wanted to say, yes. But she isn’t, is she?”

  “No. Not thanks to Gerry Law.”

  “I couldn’t do your job.”

  “We each find our calling.”

  He wanted to ask her how she had ended up in sex crimes and sex offenses, and then he realized that he didn’t want to know. He admired her. He felt a little intimidated. Could he date a lieutenant? “Packs a punch,” he said of the drink.

  “You can handle it,” she replied, drinking down a liberal amount and wiggling her toes again.

  The music took over, punctuated by sparks from the fire. She topped off his drink. He was well on his way to drunk. “The turtle was pretty good,” she said, recalling the costumes.

  “Um,” Dart answered. “But the asparagus was genius.”

  “Yeah. Incredible. You went kind of weird after our night in the crib,” she said honestly, the booze getting to her. “Was that so bad?” She added, “I thought it was fun.”

  He looked over at her, but she kept her attention on the fire, letting him look. He finally admitted, “I enjoyed it. I guess I felt awkward. I don’t know.”

  “You’ve been treating me like I don’t exist.”

  “I felt like I forced you into that.”

  “Into kissing you?” she asked. “Are you kidding?” She enjoyed some more of the drink. “Into taking my clothes off, maybe.” She laughed. “It certainly was an interesting first date.” She rocked her head and looked directly at him. Her eyes were smiling. Glassy. Her lips were a deep red and moist from the drink, and if their chaise lounges had been closer together he would have tried to kiss her. “What are you thinking?” she asked slyly.

  “Nervous,” he confessed.

  “Good.”

  “Why is that good?” he questioned.

  “I have my reasons.” Abby got up and moved the table with the drinks and pushed her chaise lounge closer to his. She teased, “If this bothers you, keep it to yourself. I’m feeling particularly good at the moment, and I can be dangerous when I feel this good.”

  “I like danger,” he answered, reaching out for her hand and taking hers. “Is this all right?” he asked.

  “This is perfect,” she answered, holding a knowing smile on her face. Dart felt suddenly at risk, under her spell-her control, he feared-and it made him uneasy.

  “You’re not going to freak out, are you?” she asked.

  You know me already, he thought.

  She explained, “I like your company. Especially tonight. I make no claim to ownership. I ask nothing more of you than to relax and enjoy yourself. We’re both adults. We’re allowed this now and then.” She squeezed his hand in hers as a signal. “Okay with you?”

  “I needed to hear that.”

  “Good. I needed to say it.”

  “It doesn’t make me any less nervous,” he told her and they both laughed-she confidently; he as a form of release.

  She handed him her drink then, and with his both his hands occupied, she leaned over, her shirt falling away from her, and she kissed him wetly on the lips. She took his breath away, and she bit his lower lip and he felt it to his toes. He returned the kiss, awkwardly juggling the two drinks, and her hand found its way inside his shirt and over his chest and he was immediately aroused. “One thing nice about middle age,” she whispered into his ear in a way that gave him chills, “is that you know what you like … what makes you feel good …”-she stroked his chest-”what turns you on. And even better,” she added, “you aren’t afraid to enjoy yourself.” She helped him set down the drinks, and she climbed over the arms of the chaise lounges and straddled Dart and met eyes with him. “You know?” she inquired.

  “It’s been a long time,” he told her, by way of apology.

  “I’m a very patient woman,” she said, pulling him forward so that he sat up, and tricking the chair into a full recline. Then she eased him back and lay down atop him, and a heat grew where they touched.

  He wrapped his arms around her strongly and held her, and she nuzzled her chin into the crook of his neck, kissed him once lightly, and hummed affectionately. “There’s nothing quite so amazing in this world as a good hug,” she said. “Sex is over before you know it, but the right kind of hug lasts forever.”

  “Is this the right kind?” he asked.

  “You bet,” she answered.

  Thirty minutes later, she took Dart’s hand and pulled him out of the chaise lounge and led him around a Japanese paper screen to a small bedroom that contained a pine chest, two long rows of hanging clothes, and, on the floor, a
futon with a down comforter. She turned and faced him and pulled the shirt over her head. Her bra was translucent, her nipples hard. She undid her jeans and stepped out of them, and Dart was reminded of their night in the crib. She said, “Do me a favor and at least take off your shoes.”

  She slipped under the covers, her back to him. Dart undressed fully and climbed in beside her, pressing to her back like spoons. He reached around her and cupped her breasts and hugged her, and she hummed. The air trapped in the covers smelled of her arousal and penetrated Dart to his core. They remained this way for several long minutes, Dart stroking her breasts lightly, Abby, head bent, kissing his arms and hands. It felt to him that they had been lovers for a very long time and that they knew each other’s secrets and pleasures. His fingers explored her, and she slipped out of her underpants and bra, and she found a condom in a bedside box and said something about safe sex and rolled him over and put it on him. She kissed him then, and rolled them over together so that Dart lay atop her. “Gentle at first,” she requested, taking hold of him and rubbing him against her in a way that offered her pleasure and made her shudder. “Rough at the end.”

  Later, they collapsed in a sweaty embrace, out of breath and spent with exhaustion. She kissed his neck lightly and ran her fingers down his back and giggled approvingly. “I knew it,” she said happily, the only words she offered. She held him tightly and wouldn’t let him off of her, even after they slipped apart, lingering in the glow of the moment.

  “Will you stay with me?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh,” he answered, kissing behind her ear, working down her neck, and finding her breast and kissing her there too.

  “Maybe hugging comes in second,” she said a while later, and Dart dozed off with a smile on his face.

  A beeping sound, emanating from Dart’s clothing, awakened them.

  He slipped out of bed.

  “I protest!” she complained. “You traded out,” she reminded him.

  He carried the pager into the light of the other room and read the CAPers phone number off its LCD display. He called in to Jennings Road, speaking with Sergeant Haite. He hung up immediately, sneaked into the room, and collected his things. “Gotta go,” he told her in a whisper, grateful that she, unlike Ginny, would understand such things.

  “Will you come back?” she offered. “Please.”

  “I’ll try. It’s over in West Hartford. I’ll be a couple hours at least.”

  “Why bother with something in West Hartford?” she asked, coming more fully awake. West Hartford was out of their jurisdiction. She answered herself immediately, confirming that even half-asleep she could think faster than most detectives. “Another suicide,” she said.

  “Right.” He clipped the pager to his belt and checked his sidearm and holster. “Another suicide,” he confirmed. “West Hartford asked for our help.” Many of the neighboring towns had little more than patrol squads, using either HPD or the State Police for the bigger investigations.

  “Any record?” she asked, flicking on the bedside light, with no inclination toward modesty. She had long since passed the age of pinup girl, but she had nothing to hide.

  He hesitated, and she asked him a second time.

  “A pornography conviction,” he said.

  “I’m coming with you,” she announced, throwing the covers off.

  Dart knew better than to argue.

  Orchard Road climbed high up a hill, offering a spectacular view of the distant city. This was the high-rent district: half a million dollars and up for a three-bedroom on an acre. Woods. Ponds. Views. Beamers. Rolexes. Divorces. And silicon implants.

  Dart pulled the Volvo into the curving drive and parked alongside an HPD patrol car in front of the brick-and-stone two-story house. Abby yanked the rearview mirror toward her and ran a brush through her hair. They both hung their badges around their necks and entered by the front door.

  “Tuna’s got the wife upstairs,” announced patrolman Benny Webster. Tanya Fische, an HPD patrol officer, referred to as Tuna, was clearly Webster’s patrol partner. “The wife popped a bunch of Valium and is in la-la land. No use to us until morning. We ain’t touched nothing in the study. But it’s a messy one,” he said, eyeing Abby Lang as if she might have trouble stomaching it. “Single shot up through the roof of the mouth. Nine millimeter.”

  “Who’s on it?” Dart asked.

  “Kowalski and-” he answered.

  Dart and Abby met eyes, interrupting the uniformed man.

  “Something wrong?” Webster asked, seeing this.

  “Everything’s just ducky,” Abby answered.

  Webster continued, “And their assistant chief.”

  “West Hartford’s?” Dart clarified. “Nolan?” he said, adding the name.

  “That’s him. Yeah. Only he ain’t here. Showed up, talked to the K,” he said, meaning Kowalski, “and took off. It being a suicide and all, he didn’t seem too bothered.”

  “Wanted to brief his chief and prepare a statement,” came the voice of Roman Kowalski. He looked tired; the buttons on his shirt indicated he had dressed hastily. “What brings you here?” he asked Dart.

  “Sergeant Haite.”

  “And you?” he asked Abby.

  She didn’t want to explain her having been with Dartelli. She said for Kowalski’s benefit, “‘And you, Lieutenant.’ Is that what you meant to say, Detective?”

  Kowalski glared at her. “The wife was out with friends ’til about an hour ago. Comes home, finds the hubby spread all over the study. Calls nine-eleven.” Kowalski eyed Abby again, and Dart realized that maybe he was busy with his arithmetic.

  The entrance foyer had a low ceiling with hand-hewn dark timbers and plaster that had pieces of yellow hay stuck into it. To Dart’s left, a gray-carpeted stairway ascended to the second floor. He passed a small stone column supporting a wicker basket filled with trick-or-treat candy and fresh fruit. He thought that on this of all nights, Halloween, there would have been, should have been, potential witnesses around and about.

  “Did she find the house locked or open?” he asked Kowalski.

  “If you want to sit in the fucking bleachers and watch, I got no problem,” Kowalski said. “But if you want to play Twenty Questions, fucking take it somewhere else.”

  “You know what’s amazing about you,” Abby told Kowalski, stepping past him and moving toward the open study door, “is how delicately you handle the language.”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off, raising a finger at him, “And be careful what you say to your superiors, Detective.” With extra venom she added, “’Cause I’ll bust you down to traffic, given half the chance.”

  Dart smiled at Kowalski and raised his eyebrows, taunting him.

  Stepping up to Dartelli, Kowalski said earnestly, “I’m waiting on Buzz before I go in there. Don’t touch a fucking thing.” He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his coat pocket and stuck one in his mouth. “I’ll be outside.”

  The study was the size of Dart’s studio kitchen and sitting area combined. Oriental rugs, dark antiques, a stone-and-brick fireplace with two gargoyles supporting the four-inch thick, burl walnut mantel. A substantial puddle of blood on the rug below the deceased. Splatter pattern on the ceiling consistent with the top of a human head coming off. An oil portrait of a man with a bulbous red nose, who lived back when the river trade kept Hartford prosperous, ruled from above the mantel. Leather-bound books crammed the shelves, looking both untouched and unread. Window dressing. Dart noticed a few spaces between the volumes, like missing teeth.

  The body was a mess, draped over a walnut chair with a needlepoint cushion. What remained of the head was angled back away from the blast and discharge of the weapon. The top half of the man’s clothes was brown with drying blood-buckets of it.

  “Harold C. Payne,” Abby Lang read, fingering a mailing label on a copy of Arts and Antiques left on a cherry side table in the hall. “I didn’t recognize him without his face.”

&nb
sp; “You remember him?”

  “Cyber-porn. Fuck shots and D-cup starlets over the Internet. Mail-order photo-CD-ROM. Digitized pornography. The Feds brought him down, but I was consulted. Yeah, I remember him.”

  “Sounds like a real sweetheart,” Dart said.

  “Piece of work, this one. Hired himself four attorneys and got himself acquitted on all but the mail-order charge, if I’m remembering right.”

  Dart wasn’t about to question her memory.

  She said, “The whole area of pornography over the Internet remains a little fuzzy-you’ll pardon the expression. It’s still being sorted out.”

  “Is there a file on him in Sex Crimes?” Dart questioned.

  She met eyes with him, understanding what he was asking. “No,” she answered simply but delivering the message that she did not appreciate the implications of his question. Her eyes said, No one gets in my files without me knowing about it.

  Attempting to change subjects, Dart pointed out the snifter of cognac on the partner’s desk, a spilled ashtray at the foot of the deceased’s chair, and the butt of a cigar on the rug. It appeared that Payne had poured himself a drink, had a smoke, and then ate a barrel.

  A walnut armoire was wedged into the corner immediately to the left. The rest of that wall was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Four leaded windows occupied most of the wall behind the desk where a computer was set up on a custom-built return.

  Before Bragg and the others arrived, while he still had a moment of peace, Dart studied the crime scene. A husband left alone while the wife went to a party, a glass of cognac, a cigar, and a bullet through the roof of his mouth. The perfect suicide, he thought, believing to his very core that Payne had been murdered. On the edge of the desk he spotted what appeared to be a gun-cleaning kit and what was clearly a box of shells. No suicide note that he could see, but the wife might have found one. The gun hung awkwardly from the dead man’s right thumb; Dart could predict that paraffin tests would confirm that the same hand had fired the weapon, and he wondered how that could have been accomplished.