Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  “Drugs? How the hell would I know? Some pot found in the apartment, it seems to me. Nothing hard core that I heard about.” Kowalski’s expression revealed nothing-no surprise, no panic.

  Don’t trust it, Dart cautioned himself.

  “Let me tell you something, Dartelli. I don’t want no rogue cop prying into my cases, okay? You got problems with the way I’m doing things, you go through IA and we’ll see what they say.”

  “Your buddies at IA, you mean,” Dart said caustically.

  “Fuck off. Are you listening to me?” He stepped forward, an intimidating presence. “What I’m saying is I don’t appreciate your working my files without asking me, okay? Showing up at crime scenes uninvited. What is it with you? You go through channels from now on.”

  Here, Dart realized, was the ultimate in irony: a cop known for his misuse of the system telling Dart that he should play by the rules. The hypocrisy caused Dart to laugh and throw his head back. “You’re too much,” he said.

  Then, in a whisper, as if he believed he might be overheard even on a stopped elevator, Kowalski leaned in closely to Dart and said in his coarse voice, “Listen to me, Dartelli, okay? Let’s say that some white guy did do Lawrence that night-hypothetically speaking. A big white guy on the edge of Bellevue Square at night. Let’s think about this … Now how many candidates do we have for this person? Huh?” He held up his meaty hand and raised a single, chunky finger. “One: A junkie in need of a fix. That would mean Lawrence was a dealer, which we have no proof of. That would also probably mean a struggle of some kind. Okay? So where’s the evidence? Two: What other damn fool would be ballsy enough to visit the square after dark? Who but a junkie goes into that area at night? Not even the fucking cabs, for Chrissakes. There’s only one answer isn’t there, okay?” He glared at Dart; neither man was going to say the word that teased their tongues. “I’m not real upset about some pervert like Lawrence ending up hanging from a wire. And I sure as hell am not going to use some twelve-year-old abused and abandoned nigger girl to rip open an investigation that could lead where we both know it could lead. Okay? What’s the point? Let’s just drop it.”

  Dart shook his head. “We can’t drop it.”

  “Oh, for Chrissakes. Get off of your fucking white horse.”

  “We let it go because he’s a sex offender? Is that it?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Or because it might involve one of us.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Kowalski protested.

  “Sure you did.”

  The control panel buzzed as someone called the stopped elevator.

  Kowalski said, “You think justice is just left to us? That’s bullshit. We’re way the hell down on that food chain.”

  “Justice isn’t up to us-it’s up to the courts.”

  “Oh, come on!” Kowalski protested. “I mean us: human beings. There’s other kinds of justice, you know. There’s laws of the jungle. You stick your dick in a twelve-year-old and shit happens to you-car loses a wheel on the highway. Fucking radio falls into your bathtub. How the fuck do I know?”

  “A cop fakes your suicide,” Dart completed.

  “Maybe. Yeah, just maybe. And who the fuck cares, Dartelli? Are you honestly sorry that this maggot ate shit and died? You crying for this guy? Fuck him. Fuck anyone like him.”

  “David Stapleton, Harold Payne,” Dart said. And then he realized, by Kowalski’s expression, just how thick the man could be. By all appearances, Kowalski had not made the connection until that moment-one hell of a performance, if that’s what it was.

  “Fuck me,” Kowalski said.

  “They probably would have liked to,” Dart answered. But in his heart of hearts, he ached. If Kowalski’s surprise was legitimate, then Dart could remove him from suspicion, which left only one other. On some level he knew that the killer could be any one of hundreds-thousands-of people, but that did not register. One face, one name dominated his thoughts: Walter Zeller. He stepped out of the way of the panel.

  Kowalski got the elevator moving again. The floor bounced. Kowalski cautioned, “You bring that girl into it, and you’re in for some serious trouble. I’m telling ya.”

  Dart nodded. He saw Kowalski, and his possible involvement, in a different light, though he wasn’t sure whether to trust it or not. “Wherever this leads,” Dartelli cautioned, “then that’s the way it is.”

  “You want to play Boy Scout, go join a troop.” Being called a Boy Scout was among a handful of the most derogatory labels used among fellow officers. Kowalski added, “Lawrence got what he deserved.” The car stopped moving and the doors opened. Kowalski took one step toward freedom, reconsidered, and turned to face Dartelli. “No that’s not true. He got off light. If I’d done it,” he said convincingly, “I’d have cut off his cock, shoved it down his throat, and let him choke to death.”

  Dart didn’t move from the elevator car, thinking: If you had done it, we would have caught you.

  Whoever had staged these suicides had done so brilliantly, and again, Dart could think of only one.

  CHAPTER 14

  As difficult as it was for him to face it, Dart realized that he had to locate Walter Zeller and question him. Informally, he convinced himself-at least at first. He would make it appear that he was seeking Zeller’s advice, the protege returning to the feet of the mentor. But he no longer had any doubt. It had to be done. At least three men were dead. Dart believed he knew why they had been selected. It was time to act before there were more.

  For the last few months, the word around the department had been that after a brief stint with a security firm in Hartford, Zeller had been offered a better job in Seattle. Dart had believed all along that, better job or not, it was important for Zeller to move on, preferably as far away from his wife’s murder as possible. Seattle certainly fit that bill.

  But try as he did, Dart failed to raise a Seattle phone number for the former sergeant, either through the personnel office, directory information, or through any of the many friends Zeller had left behind. He was able to obtain a Seattle address for Zeller-a box number on First Avenue-and to determine that Zeller’s pension checks were direct-deposited into a First Interstate Bank account, but beyond that, the trail ended: officials at the bank had the same box number, no residential address, no phone number.

  None of this came as any great surprise to Dart, or put him off his effort. Most police officers, retired or not, protect themselves from possible revenge attacks by maintaining unpublished phone numbers and using post office boxes for mailing addresses. Zeller, whose desire for privacy was legendary and who had put away dozens of killers, could be expected to take such precautions.

  While running an errand on a Tuesday in early November, Dart drove past Sam and Rob’s Smoke Shop on Asylum Street and pulled over a block later. In direct violation of federal import restrictions, Sam and Rob’s sold a variety of Cuban cigars out of their back room to preferred customers. During his twenty years of public service, Walter Zeller had been a regular customer and had developed a friendship with the owners.

  The shop smelled of fresh pipe tobacco.

  Rob, the older of the two proprietors, had died of lung cancer five years earlier. His brother Sam, in his late fifties, was bald with a brown mustache and red cheeks and high cheekbones. He wore a tattered green apron with the name of the shop embroidered in dull red thread. His shirt cuffs were threadbare, and a button had been replaced on one of them. He had a smoker’s voice and a gambler’s nervous eyes.

  He didn’t seem to recognize Dart until the detective mentioned Zeller’s name, at which point an association was made. For years, Dart had wandered the shelves of this outer room, while Zeller had negotiated for the Cubans in the back.

  After the introductions were made, Dart told him that he had a difficult investigation on his hands, and that he had lost track of Zeller. “I thought that he might have had you send him some cigars-that you might have an address or a phone number.”

&nbs
p; “He went to Seattle,” Sam informed him needlessly. “Vancouver gets all the Cuban brands-Canada, you know; no restrictions.”

  “So you haven’t heard from him?”

  “Heard from him?” Sam repeated. “He was in here not three weeks ago. Bought several boxes of-”

  “Here? In the store?”

  “I hadn’t seen him in a couple years. Still too thin. He was complaining about a Dominican he’d been smoking and how they don’t measure up. No question. His cigar has a hint of cocoa in the wrap. You can’t find that in any of the Dominicans. There’s only one cigar for each of us,” he said, like a salesman. “Do you smoke a cigar?”

  “No.”

  “Have you tried it?”

  “No, thanks. Three weeks ago?”

  “Three or four. Yes.”

  “And before that?”

  Sam considered this a moment. “Hadn’t seen him in years.”

  “When he came in here three weeks ago, how much did he buy?” Dart asked.

  “Three or four boxes, I think it was.”

  “And how long will that last him?”

  “The sergeant? A while, anyway.” He thought a moment and said, “A month or more.”

  “And it’s been about a month,” Dart said.

  “Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it? Sure, I see what you’re saying. Maybe I can put him in touch with you.”

  Dart thought fast and spoke his mind. “Or better yet,” he said, “I could leave you my number, and if he came in, maybe you could stall him long enough for me to get over here and surprise him.”

  “Call you, ya mean.”

  “Right.”

  “I like that. Sure. I like putting people together. That’s one thing about cigars,” he advised. “They bring people together. After a good meal. A poker game. After a round of golf-it’s a social activity, smoking is.”

  “Staying here, or visiting?” Dart inquired. “Did you get a feel for that?”

  “Visiting, I think. He wasn’t very talkative. Not the same man by any means. But who can blame him? I don’t think any man could recover from losing his wife that way.” Sam’s face tightened, and Dart had the feeling that the loss of his own brother hung over him as well. “It’s not easy,” the man whispered, confirming Dart’s suspicions.

  A feeling of dread swarmed through Dart, like the first hint of the flu. It seemed implausible that Zeller would have visited the city and not looked up a single friend-Dart had touched base with everyone he could think of.

  Dart handed the shopkeeper his business card. “Call me right away, would you please?”

  “I love a good surprise,” the man said.

  “Yeah,” Dart answered. “This will be a hell of a surprise.”

  Walter Zeller was not a rich man, having earned a policeman’s salary for twenty-two years, and so it had confused even his closest friends when he left the city and refused to sell his house-the house where his wife had been raped and murdered. He owned the house free and clear, and it represented his single biggest asset, and yet he had refused to sell, giving no explanation. For Dartelli, no explanation was needed. Perhaps he was the only one of Zeller’s friends to understand that part of the man, that specific quality, that would have made selling the house a further violation of his wife. Lucky Zeller had treasured the house-a rather common tract home in Vernon. The house was a brown ranch at the end of a cul-de-sac in a subdivision that hosted RVs, powerboats, and camper tops for pickup trucks. Dogwood Lane was oil stained from parked cars, its concrete gutters looking like chipped teeth. The limbs of the few mature trees, bare with winter’s approach, reached for a sky of gray cloud and cold wind.

  Dart parked in Zeller’s driveway, wondering if he had quietly moved back from Seattle without telling anyone.

  The building’s brown siding was stained gray where water from lawn sprinklers had soaked it. Dart felt a pang of nostalgia, troubled by the sight of the unattended gardens, and he knew in that instant that Zeller was not living here. The sergeant, renowned for his green thumb, for the endless hours he lavished on his plants and gardens, would never have allowed his beds to go unattended. A four-foot apron of bare earth, choked by clumps of dead weeds, surrounded the house. A few of the flower islands that had been cut into the small lawn by Zeller’s own hands had been covered over with gray gravel. Buried, as Lucky had been, Dart thought, knocking sharply on the front door. There was no answer, no sound of anyone inside. No surprise, he thought as he walked around the house and into the backyard, which flooded him with memories of barbecues, beer, and long discussions of the cases they had worked together.

  He could recall Lucky’s cooking and the sound of her high voice. Despite the passage of time, the image of her bound and gagged corpse called up effortlessly and struck Dart with a pain in the center of his chest and a stinging in his eyes.

  The three years that it had remained vacant had taken its toll. The deck needed painting, as did the trim around the windows. He climbed onto the deck and knocked on the back door, and peered through filthy windows at a kitchen that he had, at one time, considered almost his own.

  Memories continued to plague him, mixing with images of the suicide victims. His police half battled with his friendship half, his suspicions contradicting his faith and trust in Walter Zeller. The similarities between the suicide jumps of the Ice Man and David Stapleton were impossible to overlook: the lack of a suicide note, the computer simulation confirming the bodies had been thrown from the windows. And for the better part of three years, Dart had believed, without knowing, that Walter Zeller was to blame for the Ice Man.

  He tried several windows, all locked. He wasn’t about to break in. By the look of the place, Zeller had never returned. Dart knew that the inside had been left exactly as it had been on the night of Lucky’s murder. He had no great urge to visit that nightmare again.

  He walked fully around the house and climbed into his Volvo, and sat parked in the drive for several long minutes contemplating Zeller’s possible involvement. A chill ran through him, head to toe and back to the center of his chest. He loved Walter Zeller like a brother, like a father, in a way that others wouldn’t understand. He didn’t know if he possessed the strength required to do what had to be done. The mere suggestion of Zeller’s culpability seemed itself a crime, certainly something that could not be raised with Sergeant Haite and the powers-that-be without a stack of evidence. Walter Zeller was the closest thing to a true hero that Jennings Road had ever produced. To arrest Walter Zeller on suspicion of murder would crush morale. The brass was certain to resist it without the smoking gun glued into Zeller’s hand and twenty-five nuns as witnesses.

  Dart could think of a dozen reasons to drop this investigation, and very few to continue with it.

  But he backed the Volvo out of the drive, focused on finding Zeller and connecting him to the crimes, his trust and faith converted to anger and resentment.

  CHAPTER 15

  The following day Dart, Abby, and little Lewellan Page made the forty-five-minute drive to Sheffield through a cool but gorgeous afternoon. Mac the Knife patrolled the back of the Volvo, Lewellan offering her hand to lick. The spine of mountains bearing the northern stretch of the Appalachian trail were frosted with the first hints of winter. Lewellan, who had never been out of the Bellevue Square area of north Hartford, sat quietly in the backseat, eyes wide with awe, asking a nonstop stream of questions.

  Tommy Templeton was well into his fifties. Since Dart had seen him last, his hair had gone completely gray. He was a big, solid man, shaped like a barrel with legs. He had rough, hard hands that looked more like a carpenter’s than an artist’s. He had a deep voice, kind eyes, and a small scar below his lip.

  Greeting the three of them at the front door of his hilltop home, he shook hands with Abby and Lewellan and admonished Dart. “Six years I’ve been up here, and you’ve never visited. You’ve called, what, once?” Not allowing Dart the opportunity to respond, he welcomed them into his home, with it
s antique furnishings and spectacular sixty-mile view of the rolling hills of western Connecticut. The ceilings were low and the floors creaked under foot. The living room smelled of woodsmoke and pine needles. “Teddy has made it over to fish a couple times. Doc Ray, too.”

  Dart had heard about those weekends. More drinking than fishing. “Maybe I could make the next one,” Dart lied.

  “What about you, Lewellan?” Templeton asked. “Do you like to fish?”

  “I like fish sticks,” she replied.

  They all laughed. Abby put her arm around the girl and held her closely.

  A people person, Tommy Templeton’s real gift as a police artist had been his ability to make friends quickly and to coax images from the unwilling minds of his witnesses. His was the craft of instant friendships. Since he had been divorced and left the force, six years earlier, Templeton had lived alone, creating commercial art for the tourist shops in southern Maine. He painted seagulls and fishing trawlers, and he drank too much and got out too little. There was no escaping the rumor mill of HPD.

  Despite the view, Tommy Templeton worked in a studio with the shades drawn because sunlight compromised his computer screens. The computer gear-two flatbed scanners, a color laser printer, and a pair of Macintoshes, occupied the tops of three doors supported by rough-wood sawhorses and steel file cabinets. Cables and wires ran between them in a confusing tangle. He had pinned various pieces of computer art, both color and black-and-white, on his walls. There were nudes, landscapes, wildlife, and three self-portraits. The images, some of them vaguely familiar to Dart, were impressive. Like many artists, Templeton carried an aura of eccentricity. There was a duck decoy wearing a pair of reading glasses in the far corner that immediately grabbed Abby’s attention. But it was the full-frontal nude that captured Lewellan’s attention.

  “She’s beautiful,” the young woman said.

  “She’s titled ‘Venus,”’ Tommy Templeton said proudly. “I morphed her.”