by Jane Haddam
Gregor picked up his cell phone again, went through the contacts directory, and found the number for Howard Androcoelho. He liked this new cell phone better than the old iPhone, which he had never been able to figure out how to use properly. He wasn’t sure he really knew how to use this Propel thing, but at least he could use it as a phone.
There were two numbers for Howard Androcoelho. One of them would be for the office. The other would be for the cell. Gregor had no idea which was which, so he clicked on the first one.
The phone rang and rang, and was picked up by a woman with a nasal voice. “Mattatuck Police Department, central station,” the voice said.
Gregor let that pass—“Central station”?—Who had a central station?—and said, “This is Gregor Demarkian. I’m returning Howard Androcoelho’s call.”
There was a little pause. There was talking in the background. Gregor was surprised he could hear it. One of the things he liked least about cell phones was that it was almost always impossible for him to hear what was going on in the background.
The background noise stopped. The nasal voice said, “I’ll put you through.”
Then Howard Androcoelho was suddenly on the line, sounding agitated. “Mr. Demarkian? Thank you for calling. Are you in town? Did you get here all right? Are you at the Howard Johnson?”
“Yes,” Gregor said, feeling that he needed to be patient to a fault. “I’m at the Howard Johnson. I got your package.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Howard Androcoelho said. “That’s very good. They’re usually really okay over there, but then I got worried that I was wrong about the motel, the hotel, I don’t know what to call anything these days. Do you want to come in to the station? I could set you up with some people, some of us who were here when the disappearance happened, you know, and some of us who caught the stuff last week. I figure, the more people you talk to, the more you know about all this—”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “But there’s something. In the meantime. What do you do for forensics up here?”
“It’s funny you should say ‘up here,’” Howard said. “I always think of us as ‘down.’ You know. Because we’re in the southern part of the state. We’re practically in Pennsylvania. Of corse, they’re a lot more south than us in Westchester, but—”
“Forensics,” Gregor said. “What do you do for forensics?”
“Oh, I told you,” Howard said. “We’ve got a new mobile crime lab. Because of the stimulus money.”
“And you’ve got a medical examiner? A coroner?”
“Oh, yeah, we do. Well, we’ve got somebody on call, if you know what I mean. We don’t have much use for one most of the time. We don’t get a lot of murders. And, you know, things.”
“Is there a state medical examiner you can appeal to?” Gregor asked. “Does the state have something set up where you could send things that are a bit out of the ordinary, just in case? Some states do that, you know—”
“I don’t know,” Howard said. “I—it’s not that. I mean, we don’t have much call for—”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “All right. There are a few things that need checking out. You need to look into the possibility that the state or the county has a professional forensics lab you could use, somebody who’s used to doing autopsies on possible murder victims. There are some things, at least as far as I can tell from the photographs—”
“You mean he didn’t commit suicide?” Howard Androcoelho sounded shocked. “You mean we were wrong all this time? But how could somebody have done something like that in broad daylight in the middle of a busy intersection?”
Gregor tried counting to ten and letting the words flow over him.
“Listen,” he said finally. “It might help if I could see the body. What I think I’m seeing might just be a trick of the photograph. It might not be anything. You do still have the body, don’t you? You haven’t released it to the family?”
“Oh, no, I haven’t released it to the family,” Howard said. “We were waiting for you to get here to do that. We’ve been saying we needed to hold on to it as long as we were doing our investigation, but I didn’t think, none of us thought—”
“None of you thought it was going to be anything but suicide?”
Howard Androcoelho sounded defensive. “You’re wondering why we called you in, if we thought it was suicide all the time. Well, we can’t just go calling it suicide. The family would have a fit, and they’re good at having fits. Especially Charlene. And they’re a big noise up here. And we’ve made enough mistakes with this already. So—”
“Never mind,” Gregor said. “It would really, really, really help if I could see the body. And if I could talk to your medical examiner.”
“Because you don’t think he committed suicide,” Howard said.
“I don’t know if he committed suicide or not,” Gregor said. “I do know he didn’t commit suicide by hanging himself over that billboard. At least, I know that if this photograph is accurate, which I can’t know unless I actually see the body. So if you would—”
“You saw something in a photograph that makes you think Chester didn’t hang himself off that billboard? How could you know that? What could you see?”
Gregor looked down at the photograph. Again. “Well,” he said. “I see a tattoo. On his chest.”
“Chester had a million tattoos. He was decked out better than Lydia the Tattooed Lady.”
“He didn’t have them on his chest,” Gregor said. “He has a very hairy chest, from what I can see. Maybe that was why. But there’s one little tattoo there now, and it’s bright red.”
“So?”
“So it’s next to the holes of a nipple piercing, and the holes are large. Meaning he was used to wearing something in there. But whatever that is, is gone, and the tattoo is bright red.”
“So?” Howard said again.
“I’m going to come over to central station and see you,” Gregor said, “right now. Get something going with the medical examiner or whoever you have to talk to to let me view the body. Because looking at this, I’m willing to bet that this thing was put on the body after it was dead. And I don’t think anybody could have done that hanging off a billboard.”
FIVE
1
Althy Michaelman would have listened to all the news about Gregor Demarkian, but by the time she got up that afternoon, the cable had been cut off again. Althy didn’t think it was fair. Back when she was growing up, you didn’t need a cable box and a lot of money to watch the television. There was an antenna on the roof, and that was it. Of course, sometimes the screen was full of snow, and sometimes the signals got so badly crossed you picked up a station in Cleveland, but at least it was free. Althy approved of free. She thought everything should be free.
There was a tear in the white plastic shade that covered the bedroom window. Light came streaming through it and hit Althy in the eyes. She rolled over a little. There were clothes in the bed with her: a pair of Mike’s pants; a sock that smelled odd and not just dirty; a bra. She pushed them aside and sat up a little. Her cigarettes were next to the lamp that was next to the mattress. The lamp was on a popcorn can they’d had popcorn in one Christmas, Althy couldn’t remember when. Christmases tended to come and go. The only good thing about them was that she could almost always get work, and if she did, she knew she wouldn’t get fired until Christmas Eve.
She felt around the base of the lamp and found her Bic lighter. Mike had boosted a dozen of the things from a 7-Eleven just a couple of weeks ago, and come out with a six-pack of Molson’s Ale and forty Slim Jims in the process. Mike was really good at boosting things, and he never got caught. He always looked around until he found a store that was empty and only being looked after by some kid who was on his own. The kids never paid attention to the security cameras.
“Someday I’m just going to go into one of these places and take the money,” he kept saying, but Althy knew this wasn’t true. Mike had already done one two-year jail sentence. He
wasn’t the kind of person to go looking for more.
Althy got the cigarette lit. It was some local bargain brand, and the tobacco was harsh against the inside of her throat. Here was something else she considered completely unfair. Cigarettes used to cost about a dollar, and then they jacked the prices up and now they cost almost ten for a single pack. That was crazy. She had to find somebody going to North Carolina, or buy what she could black market on the street, or give up having a sandwich for lunch just to get something to smoke that they wouldn’t put her in jail for smoking.
Of course, sometimes she smoked the stuff they did put you in jail for smoking, but she didn’t give a rat’s ass about that. She’d stopped it for a while when those people from Children and Family Services—OCFS—were coming around, but they hadn’t been around for years now, and they wouldn’t be back. Haydee was over eighteen.
At the thought of Haydee, Althy thought she ought to get up. She did get up, stepping on even more clothes on the floor, a couple of T-shirts, a couple of pairs of boxer shorts. Mike wore boxer shorts when he wore anything at all. He said the other stuff cramped his balls and made him impotent.
Althy went down the hall into the living room. It was bright daylight out. Haydee would not be home. She would either be at school or working. Althy thought about the night before and then let it go. It wasn’t fair, Haydee living here like this and not contributing anything to the household. That’s all that was about. That’s all any of this was about. Haydee ought to grow up and act like a person one of these days.
The light hurt her eyes. She tried the television set, but there was nothing on it but a blue screen. In the old days, the cable company used to have to come out and shut your cable off at the street. Now everything was “digital,” whatever that was, and they could turn you off with a computer somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.
Althy went to the door and opened it a little. There were a bunch of women out there, standing around and smoking. There was fat old Krystal Holder with her hair in a net. What did the stupid cow need with her hair in a net? There was hardly any of it left, anyway. She’d dyed it so many times it was just falling out of her head.
Althy went out and down the two steps to the dirt, leaving the door swinging open behind her. It wasn’t as if she was going anywhere. It wasn’t as if she had anything to steal. They’d finished all the beer last night, and this was her last pack of cigarettes.
The women were all looking at the other trailer, the empty one that Charlene Morton paid for in case her darling son came home. That was a crock. The darling son had done a nice little disappearing act, and that after twelve years of making them all think he was dead at the bottom of a ditch. Althy should have known. People don’t end up dead at the bottom of ditches unless they deserved to be.
Of course, Chester Morton was dead now. There was that.
Althy went out to the women. They were all smoking, too, and she was willing to bet they were smoking the same kind of bargain brand she was. There was a time when people like them could afford to have Marlboros and Winstons. That was before the prissy-cunts got into the business of telling everybody else how to live.
Krystal Holder was waving her cigarette in the air. The few hairs she had left on her head were bright red.
“I’m just telling you,” she was saying. “It’s been all over the news for days, and I’ve got Dwayne out there at the police department—”
Krystal’s son Dwayne was a janitor at the police department. Krystal thought that was a big deal. Krystal thought any kind of regular job was a big deal. It didn’t matter to her that Dwayne was barely better than a moron.
“I don’t see what they’d want around here,” Patti Floyd said. “I mean, he didn’t die here, did he? He ran away. Not that I blame him. If I had that mother of his, I’d have been in Alaska before I was sixteen.”
“Yeah, well, he’s dead now,” Althy said.
“Exactly,” Krystal said. “He’s dead, and it’s been on all the television stations. It’s been on CNN. And they’ve brought this guy in, this consultant. They’re going to want to look at everything. Especially after today.”
“What happened today?” Althy said.
“Shit,” Patti said. “Don’t you ever get up in the morning? You look like crap.”
“I feel like crap,” Althy said.
“Dwayne,” Krystal said, “says the word at the police department is that this guy, the consultant, he figured out that Chester didn’t commit suicide on that billboard like we thought. He was killed someplace else and just hung out there later. So they’re going to want to find where the someplace else is. And that means here.”
“They think he was killed in the trailer?” Kasey Werl sounded like she was going to cry. Kasey always sounded like she was going to cry. Sometimes she sat out on the stoop of her trailer and cried for most of the day. “But he couldn’t have been killed in the trailer. The trailer is right there. It’s right across from me.”
“Yeah, well,” Althy said, “it’s right next to me. I could put my hand out my bathroom window and into the bathroom window over there, if it was open. And it’s not like I’ve been going anywhere. Somebody’d pulled shit like that right next to my head, I’d have heard something.”
“You could have been passed out,” Krystal said.
“Then Haydee would have heard something.”
“They’re going to come and search the trailer,” Krystal said. “That’s what Dwayne heard. They’re going to search the trailer, and then maybe they’re going to search the whole park. And they’re going to get somebody in, some lab people, special ones. The lab people can do a lot these days.”
“Like on CSI,” Patti said.
“They can’t do anything like on CSI,” Althy said. “Somebody told me.”
“If they search the park, they’re going to search the trailers,” Krystal said. “So I just thought. You know. The kind of shit that can come out of that. I don’t want any of that. And sometimes, you know, there are people.”
“Somebody ducking a fucking warrant again?” Althy said.
“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Krystal said. “I don’t mind anybody’s business but my own. I’m just saying.”
“Fuck,” Patti said.
Althy sucked at her cigarette like it was a breath inhaler and she had asthma.
2
There was a point this morning when Penny London thought her head was going to explode. She’d called the automated service line at the bank first at four, then at five, then at six, and all those times there had been nothing. She’d been unhappy about waking up early. It was one of the real drawbacks of living in the car. She’d thought she’d be able to call the bank, and know everything was all right, and go back to sleep again. But everything had not been all right. She had her paychecks deposited directly into her bank by both her schools. The money usually showed up far earlier than four o’clock on the morning of the day. This morning, there had been nothing, and nothing, and nothing again. Penny had found herself sitting bolt upright behind the steering wheel, wondering what she was going to do if there had been some kind of screw up. Pelham University was her worst job as a job, but when they screwed up something like payroll they fixed it on the spot. The money this morning was supposed to come from Mattatuck–Harvey. That was the state of New York. If they’d screwed up, she’d have to wait another two week cycle before she got her money. Then the way the tax formula worked, they’d tax it as if she always made double the amount she usually did.
The money showed up at seven o’clock. Penny called the bank and listened to the run-through with her anxiety running so high, she almost didn’t catch it. She called back and listened again. It was there. It had just shown up like that, out of the blue. She only wished she would get back the ability to breathe. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have had the money to get through the two weeks. She’d been squirreling away money for months, because winter was coming, and winter was no joke in Mattat
uck, New York. She’d never get through it living in her car. She needed enough for the first and last month’s rent on a small apartment somewhere. It would be easier if she could rent the cheapest apartment around. The cheapest apartments were in neighborhoods that wouldn’t have her. She wondered if there was something ironic about that. When she was growing up, the issue was always whether or not black people could rent apartments in white neighborhoods. Now there were black neighborhoods no white person could rent an apartment in, and the landlords didn’t bother to pretend they were doing something other than what they were doing. They weren’t crazy enough to want a dead tenant and a lot of attention from the police.
Since it was seven o’clock, it was all right for her to park at school. She drove in and put her car in the second best space in the Frasier Hall faculty lot. It was always empty when she got there in the mornings. Nobody ever got there earlier.
She got out and carried her tote bag up to the third floor to wash. The building was as close to empty as it ever got. It was more empty than it was at night. At night, it was full of cleaning crews.
She got undressed and washed everything and then washed her hair. It was hard to do with the faucet being this far down over the sink. She got the soap rinsed out only by turning her neck back and forth in a way that made her think she was going to break it. She got clean clothes out of the tote bag and put the dirty ones in the plastic bag she’d been given at the grocery store. She’d have to hit the laundromat this weekend, just to make sure. It was important to keep everything about herself as clean and neat as possible. It was too easy to let everything go, and then what would happen to her?
She left the third-floor bathroom, went down another floor and crossed the enclosed bridge to the Students Building. She had no idea why this was called the Students Building and nothing else was. Wasn’t every building at a college a “students” building? Or most of them? She hadn’t had enough sleep. She was making no sense, even to herself.
