Death in a Cold Hard Light

by Francine Mathews

  “We didn’t use those in my day. Now let me think. Friday.” He studied the worn braiding of a rag rug at his feet. “This wouldn’t have to do with your interesting theories about the death of that young scalloper?”

  “Ralph—there’s been another murder.”

  He stared at her wordlessly for the space of an indrawn breath. Then he closed his eyes and sighed. “You certainly make it hard on an old man, Meredith. Help is not what you need. You’re asking for betrayal.”

  “I’m trying to save my father,” she said tersely. “He’s so far in, he can’t find his way out.”

  “Out of what? Surely you don’t believe him capable of…”

  “Murder? Of course not. But of covering for the incompetence of a subordinate—yes. Undoubtedly. He’s done it often enough for me.”

  “You were never incompetent, my dear.” Ralph touched her blond head lightly. “Merely unlucky. A state that can descend upon anyone. As it has descended upon your father.”

  “You know what he’s done.” Apprehension tightened her mouth. “He’s told you.”

  “Poor John has never breathed a word. Only come into the house preoccupied and bleak, and left it in much the same fashion. I have never been able to encourage his confidence, Merry. That is one of the sadnesses of our life, lived for so many years in an equable harmony. Something prevents us from opening our minds to each other. The work, perhaps, divides us.”

  “I thought the force was your greatest bond.”

  Ralph shook his head. “I could not wish upon any son the burden of filling his father’s shoes.”

  She had never viewed John Folger in this light—as struggling himself to live up to an elder’s good opinion; and it changed, without warning, Merry’s entire perspective on her history with her father. He was merely repeating a pattern he had himself undergone. He was teaching her as he had been taught. It was for Ralph—long detached from authority and its fears—to offer her unquestioning love. The certainty of acceptance, and forgiveness of her sins. The board of selectmen would never hold him accountable again.

  As they would certainly hold John Folger, when the present tragedy came fully to light. Whether her father feared Ralph’s unspoken judgment more, was a question Merry chose not to ask.

  “I understand,” she said gently. “Forget I even asked. Just look the other way while I ransack the house.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Ralph replied. “He hid them under the bed. In your old room.”

  • • •

  What Merry found, amid the dust bunnies and scraps of paper that invariably collect beneath the best of mattresses, was the entire contents of Bailey’s office filing cabinet. She thrust aside his expense account records, the endless justifications of past investigations bungled, and spared only a moment for his collected correspondence. What she wanted was hidden innocently in a slight folder with the words Tiger Op on its tab.

  Larval tigers, she thought irrelevantly, and settled down cross-legged to read.

  The first piece of paper was a report, dated November 13 of that year, and addressed to the chief of police. It detailed Baileys initiation of an unlooked-for and valuable contact only a few days before. The contact, who remained nameless, was “a college-educated white male working seasonally as a scalloper, who approached this officer to propose the joint incrimination and arrest of a heroin trafficker operating on Nantucket Island.”

  Jay Santorski, almost certainly. Jay had sought out the police, then, rather than the reverse.

  Scribbled at the bottom of Bailey’s initial report were the words Looks good—go ahead. Offer two hundred biweekly for his help, if he’ll take it. And the initials JF.

  There it was, the absolute proof of her father’s complicity in an operation almost certainly gone bad.

  Overcome with defeat and anger, Merry set the file aside. She could not read any further without affording John Folger a final chance. She would go back to the station and confront him in his office. He might, just possibly, tell her the whole story, now that Margot St. John had been murdered, too.

  Murdered, too.

  The girl had died because of John Folger’s cowardice.

  Merry thrust herself to her feet, her face set in the impassive lines of rage; gathered up the file; and left Ralph sitting mournfully, with O’Brian for comfort, in his corner of the shadowed living room.

  • • •

  She found the Chief poised at the foot of the station’s stairs. It was as much as she could do, to approach him as though everything were fine. As though nothing had changed.

  “Meredith.” He kept his eyes on a sheaf of paper. It trembled slightly in his hands.

  “Chief. Do you have a minute?”

  “I’ve already sent a preliminary report about the girl over to Dan Peterson,” he said, forestalling her. “I’ll let you know his decision on jurisdiction.”

  As the District Attorney for the Cape and Islands, Dan Peterson disposed of all homicide investigations. He usually preferred to assign them to the three-member state police force resident on-island; but on more than one occasion, Merry had found her way around that preference with surprising agility. This was not one of those occasions.

  “I don’t care about jurisdiction,” she replied. “I want off this case.”

  He looked at her woodenly. “You mean—the drowning?”

  “I mean the homicide. Margot St. John was murdered because she knew Jay Santorski. I’m more certain of that than of anything in my life. Which means neither of them died by accident.”

  “I suppose we’d better talk about this in private.”

  He led her down the short hall to his office without another word, and faced her across the desk, as though its broad, familiar bulk might offer courage. “You’ve made some pretty absolute statements. Before we even discuss your resignation from the investigation, I want to know what you’ve learned.”

  “Nothing you’d probably consider important. Except that I can’t work under these conditions.”

  “Conditions?”

  “This … deliberate obscuring of the truth.” She drew a calming breath. “You need to hand this one to somebody else. Somebody who can investigate it objectively. You should have done that from the beginning.”

  He glanced out the office’s sole window somewhat desperately, as though contemplating flight. “I thought you might be objective, Meredith.”

  “More objective than yourself, at least?”

  “Just tell me what you’ve got.”

  She began to pace in front of his desk, ticking off the facts on shaking fingers.

  “Jay Santorski had a promising future in marine biology. He was liked and respected by most people who knew him. He was infatuated with a young singer named Margot St. John, who may have introduced him to drugs, and who died a brutal death last night.

  “I’ve also learned that Jay was friendly with Matt Bailey, who disappeared the night of Santorski’s death. The last recorded words out of Bailey’s mouth implied that he had been working in Cambridge—where Jay Santorski attended Harvard. The house in which Margot St. John was killed belongs to an off-islander named Catherine Purcell, a resident of Cambridge. Her phone number was written on a matchbook found on Santorski’s corpse, but Catherine denies knowing him. From this I can surmise two possibilities: Catherine is lying; she knew Jay Santorski well, and the two of them arranged for Margot to house-sit on the island; or Margot St. John herself once lived in Cambridge, where she met Catherine, who never heard of Jay in her life. And for some reason Jay intended to call the woman.”

  John opened his mouth to object, but Merry held up her hand. “Please, Dad. You asked for facts. I’m trying to deliver.”

  “Go on.”

  “Matt Bailey, in that odd recorded conversation, was talking to a woman his son, Ryan, has identified as Hannah Moore.”

  This was news to the Chief. He flushed darkly.

  “You will remember Bailey told Hannah point-blank that h
e had discovered something in Cambridge that was damaging to her husband. I know that Charles Moore has roots in that town; Hannah told me so herself, only last night. She met him in Cambridge. Interestingly enough, the dead Jay Santorski also knew Hannah Moore.”

  “Is that all?” her father asked impatiently.

  “Not quite. There’s the part that fits even less neatly into the facts as related. Jay Santorski and Margot St. John were both friendly with a young islander named Paul Winslow. Like Jay, Paul is a scalloper; like Margot, he is a heroin addict. Paul Winslow’s ATM receipt was found at the scene of Margot’s murder. He has disappeared from his group house, and his parents haven’t heard from him. We’ve notified the ferry terminal and the airlines.”

  John threw up his hands. “My God! The part that doesn’t fit neatly! It sounds like the key to the whole case!”

  “If you factor out Bailey. And Hannah Moore. And a tape and hypodermic found on the harbor bottom.”

  Her father still stared out the window, apparently mesmerized by a helmet-haired blonde who stood in animated discussion, a lightship basket over one arm, on the corner of Chestnut and Water Streets. Her beefy, middle-aged conversant in the duck-hunting boots threw back his head and bellowed with laughter.

  Shouldn’t the tourists have gone home by now? Merry thought irritably.

  “You’d think the tourists would have gone home by now,” her father muttered. Then he turned away from the window and slumped into his chair. He looked older and more hopeless in that moment than Merry had ever seen him. She felt a surge of fear and pity supplant her blinding anger.

  “Tell me about this Hannah Moore,” he said bleakly.

  A concession, of sorts. He had accepted the tie to Bailey. “She runs a lab and shellfish farm out in Pocomo. Her husband is supposed to be a wealthy real estate mogul. Hannah volunteered for an organization founded by Jay Santorski and his scalloping captain, Owen Harley, called Save Our Harbor. There’s some suggestion that Hannah pursued Jay romantically, and was rebuffed.”

  “Then by all means, let’s haul her in!” the Chief retorted bitterly. “Hell hath no fury, and so forth. She probably shot Jay full of his girlfriend’s heroin, and then waited two days to bash the girlfriend on the head.”

  “I didn’t say that, Dad—”

  “Then what are you saying? That she killed them over a disputed point of political activism? The fact that this woman knew Santorski professionally means nothing whatsoever. A lot of people have been interested in scallops throughout the history of this island, Meredith, and they’ve managed to coexist without killing each other.”

  “Hannah’s hard up for funds to continue research,” Merry persisted. “What if her devoted husband found a lucrative sideline?”

  “Dealing heroin?”

  “Why not? Cocaine once looked like an option to a famous car designer who needed cash.”

  “And you think Jay Santorski found out about it, and was going to turn him in?”

  “Maybe Charles Moore’s drugs were destroying Margot, and Jay didn’t like it. He went to Bailey, fingered the heroin dealer, and Bailey went to Cambridge. I’m assuming Moore’s suppliers are there. The information checked out, and Bailey called Hannah Thursday night to warn her. Only something went wrong. Jay was injected with an overdose of heroin, Bailey went underground, and the answering machine tape went into the harbor.”

  “That still makes no sense. All they had to do was erase it.”

  “Agreed,” Merry admitted. “I can’t explain the tape, yet.”

  “You can’t explain a lot of things. How anyone could overpower that athletic young scalloper long enough to get a needle in his veins—”

  “I think he was bound. Wrists and ankles. Pending the autopsy report, of course.”

  Her father was silent a moment. “Pending the autopsy report, why don’t you just accept that he might have shot himself full of his girlfriend’s drugs, and died as a result? It’s the simplest solution.”

  “And the most palatable. Right?”

  He shrugged.

  “At the very least, we ought to check the Moores’ alibis for the night in question.”

  “You never did like Bailey, did you, Meredith?”

  “No. But neither am I responsible for what he’s done in this case. Isn’t it time you told me all about it?”

  For the space of several heartbeats, John Folger said nothing. Merry watched a range of emotions cross his face, and held her breath. Then he shook his head almost imperceptibly, as though he had come to some inward decision.

  “Type up your report, Detective,” he said. “I’ll place it in the file. I’m still not convinced these deaths are related. Jay Santorski ran with a dangerous crowd. He dabbled in risk, and he died. The girl was probably killed for her drugs by that Winslow fellow.”

  “And Matt Bailey?”

  “Will have to explain himself when he finally turns up. As I’m sure he eventually will.”

  Merry thought with pain of Bailey’s operational file, tucked even now into the depths of her purse. She had no choice but to read it. She had offered her father a chance: he had thrown it away.

  “Don’t do this, Dad,” she pleaded.

  He made a show of collecting some errant papers, shuffled them into a neat square. Precision and efficiency; form over substance. “Your resignation from the case is accepted.”

  “What will it take?” Merry burst out. “Matt Bailey’s body on a plate?”

  The furious blue eyes came up to meet her own for the first time in that painful, pointless interview.

  “It’ll take proof, Meredith. You’ve given me nothing on which I could base an arrest—and I’ve had enough of your celebrated instincts. We know where they got us last time.”

  The previous night, Merry had contained her rage for the sake of the crime scene crew. She had concentrated on evidence collection, the pathetic tally of death; she had suspended feeling and walked through her appointed role. Today, however, she was alone with the memory of Margot St. John’s untimely end. Her pointless waste.

  She felt herself flush. “I screwed up last spring, Dad. Fine. I won’t deny it. But unlike you, I never did it deliberately. Two people are dead—one of them because of you. Because you knowingly and persistently denied your investigating officer the background to this case.”

  “Remember where you are, Detective. And exactly who you’re talking to.”

  She laughed bitterly, and turned toward the door. “Those are two things I can never forget. You’re the man I’ve looked up to—my entire life—as the embodiment of integrity. As a professional ideal. And in a single weekend, you’ve smashed that god into pieces at my feet. I’ll never regard you in the same way again, Dad. And that’s another kind of death we’ve got to deal with.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Merry left her father sitting morosely behind his desk, and strode out into the chill December day with her purse slung over her shoulder. On the sidewalk, she hesitated; where to read Bailey’s ugly dossier? Her office was out of the question. Lunch somewhere—the casual exposure of the stolen file on a gaily clothed table—was impossible. The mere thought of food set her stomach to churning.

  She began to walk toward the Easy Street Basin. So what if the wind off the water was freezing? It would slap her out of anger. Focus her energy. Sharpen her senses.

  And no one was likely to contest her possession of the Basin on such an untempting day. If Owen Harley turned up in his wet suit and long Johns, so much the better. She was becoming expert, Merry reflected, on the killing of numerous birds with a single deft toss of her stone.

  “Jorie!”

  She stopped short in the parking lot of the high school, her arms full of books. “Paul?”

  He had pulled an old Whalers baseball cap over his shaggy blond head, and his faded blue eyes looked at her warily from under the brim. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his jacket—a Tommy Hilfiger navy and yellow striped windbreaker, too l
ight for the chill air sweeping over the island in the nor’easter’s wake. Jorie remembered when Paul’s father had given him the jacket, which he had desperately wanted, right after the superbowl game he had quarterbacked last December. That was well before the disappointments of April, and his failure to get into Boston College, and the fatal decision to spend his savings on a used scallop boat and assorted controlled substances. Jorie’s throat constricted as she looked at Paul, his shoulders hunched against the wind whistling around the school parking lot. He probably hadn’t eaten or slept in days. He looked, in fact, like the sort of derelict she would normally cross the street to avoid.

  But she remembered who he had been, and made no move to go anywhere. “What are you doing here?”

  Paul took a step toward her, then stopped short. “I wanted to see you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to see you.” She shifted the books to her left hand and gripped her purse strap tightly with her right, as though he might attempt to steal it.

  “You don’t understand,” he said in a rush. “I’ve been trying to quit. That’s why I was so edgy Saturday, why I snapped your head off. And then there’s the whole thing with Jay dying … I haven’t used a thing since Thursday night, and I feel as though there’s a rat in my stomach eating its way out.” He closed his eyes tightly and crouched down all of a sudden, almost falling to his knees. The hands he reached to the damp macadam were shaking.

  Jorie dropped the books and knelt down beside him. “Paul! Should I get a doctor?”

  “No!” He spat out the word and opened his eyes, struggling to focus on her face. “They’ll tell the cops. I know they will. Just get me to my car. It can’t last much longer.”

  “You need help. There are things you could take—things that would—”

  “—Make me think I’m on heroin?” he said bitterly. “Fool me out of being a junkie? That’s the last thing I need. Heroin’s all I can think of, and it’s driving me nuts.”

  “Then let’s get you some help,” she argued.

  For an instant the wild blue eyes managed to fix their gaze. “Don’t,” he said urgently. “I’m afraid.”