A Study in Crimson

by Chris Orcutt

  Taking a final sip of her coffee, she dabbed her mouth with her napkin and stood. We both stared at the battle royal of plates where Kevin had been sitting—the culinary carnage—and looked at each other.

  I shrugged. “I guess the man was hungry.”

  “Hungry?” Svetlana said. “Dakota…I have seen wolves less ravenous.”

  * * *

  When I got to the Boston FBI office in Government Center, I was told that Special Agent Suzuki was in a meeting and I’d have to wait. Initially I waited in the FBI reception area, but the receptionist, a supercilious young man, kept eyeing me. Then, knowing how many cameras were watching me, I became self-conscious. I told him to tell Agent Suzuki that I would be in the lobby, and rode the elevator downstairs.

  Since it was a Saturday, the newsstand and coffee vendor were closed, so I couldn’t get anything to drink, but one of the shoeshine guys was working. When his chair became available, I climbed up, requested a “deluxe” shine, and read my copy of Chandler’s The Little Sister. I must have really gotten into the story. The next thing I knew, the shoeshine guy, an African American man who looked like he’d been doing this for a living since Truman was President, was shaking my leg—hard.

  “Come on, son!” he said. “Time to go!”

  My shoes had never looked better. I put my book away and paid him, adding a nice tip. As I climbed down from the chair, Agent Suzuki emerged from an elevator and scanned the lobby. Spotting me, she walked over.

  “Why don’t you have a cell phone like the rest of the world?” she asked.

  “Haven’t needed one. My pager works fine. Why—have you missed my voice?”

  She sighed and hitched up her purse. “It’s been a long day, Dakota.”

  “Buy you a drink?” I said.

  She hissed through her teeth considering it. I grinned and rubbed her shoulder.

  “Too soon?” I said.

  She smiled. “No, a drink would be nice.”

  “How about that Mexican place over by Faneuil Hall?” I said. “Is it still around?”

  “Which one?” she said. “There are like four.”

  “Let’s walk over and see,” I said. “You can tell me about your day.”

  “Okay.”

  We exited the building through the revolving door and set out across the stark concrete courtyard of Government Center. It was a pleasant evening, still light out, and when I put my arm around Jen, she responded by leaning on my shoulder. As we walked, she described a Charlestown bank robbery case she was working. They knew who the perps were (a local crew), but they couldn’t get any corroborating witnesses. She mentioned a number of other agents by first name and complained about how slowly the wheels of justice turned, and so forth.

  I didn’t listen very closely because I didn’t have to; I’d lived it, so I knew her frustrations. I also knew she just needed to talk, to purge herself of all the negativity she’d absorbed during the day so she didn’t take it home. Finally she achieved catharsis, and when we stepped on the outdoor escalator that led down to Faneuil Hall and Haymarket Square, she held on to me quietly.

  “This is totally unexpected,” she said. “And, according to the girls in D.C., it’s a far cry from your usual M-O.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “This,” she said. “Picking me up after work, letting me talk about my day, taking me out for a drink. Boyfriend stuff. Maybe they’re wrong about you. Maybe you are good for more than a casual hookup.”

  “I like to think I am.”

  As we crossed the street, I was reminded of a bitter fact: Ashley had left me only a few days ago. This snapped me out of the fantasy that I was living in Boston and dating Agent Suzuki. The fact was, I was here on a case, and I’d come to see her this evening not to be a loving boyfriend, but to solicit her help. Plain and simple, I was using her, and I didn’t like it.

  Miraculously, the Mexican restaurant I remembered from my college days still existed. Inside, we were seated in the bar at a window table with a view of the passing tourists. I ordered drinks and tapas, but in the meantime another server brought us a basket of homemade tortilla chips and salsa.

  “Look, Jen,” I said when the server left, “I did want to see you tonight, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I have to be honest…I didn’t come just to see you. The case with Sally Standish and Dr. Malone has taken a turn, and I need your help.” While Jen ate chips and salsa, I gave her the condensed version of everything Kevin Teller had said earlier. “My instincts tell me there’s a very real case. All I ask is, go interview him and look at the evidence he has. Apparently he’s got a ton of material in his van.”

  “Jesus, Dakota—his van?”

  “Hey, don’t judge the guy,” I said. “He’s been following Malone around the country for months. Yes, he’s living in his van, in the IHOP parking lot. But look at it this way—at least it’s the Cambridge IHOP. It could be ‘Ruh-veeuh.’ ”

  She chuckled, then said, “It’s just…I’m swamped as it is, Dakota, and tomorrow’s Sunday—my only day off, and—”

  “Go over there in the morning. You and agent whatshisname—you can meet Kevin for breakfast. Talk to him for half an hour. Please?”

  “All right. Breakfast.” She dipped a chip in salsa and ate it. “But he’d better not be a kook, Dakota.”

  “He’s not, I promise,” I said. “And one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “Dr. Malone doesn’t work for Harvard. He’s funded by an independent research grant. I need you to find out who finances his Sexual Attraction Study.”

  “I can try,” she said.

  “Thanks. But that’s tomorrow morning.” I reached across the table, took her hand and started massaging it. “As a little thank-you, after drinks and tapas how about I take you home and give you a massage? You know—the all-over, full-body kind?”

  23

  The Suitcase Connected

  When I arrived at her dorm the next morning, Sally was already waiting at the curb with a compact hard-shell suitcase at her feet. She was wearing a bateau-necked, blue-and-white striped French sailor’s shirt with holes that exposed her smooth shoulders. That, and another short skirt. I let out a quavering deep breath and prayed for strength.

  Nineteen-and-a-half years old or not, my client’s daughter or not, the girl had irrepressibly gorgeous gams. Making matters worse—as I parked the Mercedes with the engine running and she approached the door—Sally’s new sophisticated shoulder-length hairdo with the smooth part and wavy styling, her saucy cat-eye glasses, and her winsome smile all bespoke seductive intentions. She seemed to be under the impression that we were going on a sexy getaway together. I got out and went around the car.

  “What’s with the suitcase?” I said as I put it in the back seat. “I wasn’t planning on doing an overnight.”

  “Plans can change,” she said. “But never mind that—aren’t you forgetting something?”

  Standing on her tiptoes with her hands clasped behind her back, she thrust her chest in my direction and swiveled her hips. I couldn’t tell if she was showing off her sailor’s shirt, or her breasts—a pertly tempting eyeful that I’d first admired in the pool the other day.

  “That’s a lovely top, Sally,” I said. “Is it new?”

  “Yes, I got it with the money you gave me,” she said. “But not the top, silly. Me! Aren’t you going to give me a kiss?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  I heaved her off the ground and kissed her. A clique of girls leaving the dorm gawked at us and whispered to each other on their way by. I put Sally down and opened the car door for her, but she enveloped me in a hug before I could put her in the car.

  “We’re going to have so much fun today,” she said.

  “Absolutely,” I said, patting the car roof. “Jump
in, so we can get started.”

  When she was inside, I walked around the car and got behind the wheel.

  “Nice ride,” Sally said. She blew through her lips, imitating the muffler’s flatulence. “Where’d you get it, a junkyard?”

  “No, it was my grandfather’s,” I said. “And be nice. She’s a good old girl.”

  “Sorry.”

  Her skirt had ridden way up her legs.

  “Sally,” I said, averting my eyes, “fix your skirt, please.”

  “Oops.” She giggled and smoothed it down. “Better?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Now, where are we going?”

  “Well, I’ve given it a lot of thought and”—she squeezed my arm—“I want to go to the beach.”

  “The beach?” I said. “It’s late September, Sally. It’ll probably be too cold to swim.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “You said we could go anywhere I want. I haven’t been to the beach in years, and that’s where I want to go.”

  “You mean you used to go to the beach, and you never learned to swim?”

  She frowned and slapped me in the arm. “Are you taking me or not?”

  “Okay, okay, the beach it is.” I played with a lock of her hair. “But no whining. Now, which beach?”

  “How about the Cape?” she said. “Yeah, Provincetown! I’ve never been.”

  “That’s a really long drive, Sally.”

  “Please?”

  “I guess we could take the ferry,” I said. “All right…Provincetown it is.”

  The instant I pulled away, Sally lunged across the gap between our seats and snuggled up against me. I put an arm over her shoulders and steered one-handed. As I turned on to Memorial Drive, I habitually checked the rear-view mirror. A parked white van did a U-turn and slipped into traffic one car behind us—textbook position for tailing someone. There were two men in the van. I crossed the Harvard Bridge and turned on to Soldiers Field Road, heading toward Boston.

  “Dakota,” Sally said, “what’s that smell?”

  “The exhaust,” I said. “Sometimes a little bit leaks into the vents.”

  “We’re not going to die from carbon monoxide, are we?”

  “No. Just crack a window if you’re concerned.”

  I glanced in the rear-view again. The van was still back there.

  “Why don’t you get a real car?” she said.

  “Because I’m a humble academic, sweetheart.”

  “I’m only teasing.” She ran a finger down my cheek. “You’re so handsome, I wouldn’t care if all you had was a bicycle.”

  “Oh...you’re sweet,” I said.

  “I’m bored.” She rapped a knuckle on the stereo. “Can this thing play tunes or what?”

  “Sure. It has a cassette deck.”

  “Cassettes? God, Dakota, nobody listens to those anymore.” She rested her head on my shoulder. “Geoff has a CD player.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but Geoff is also an insecure twerp who makes his girlfriends wear BDSM collars.”

  Sally hitched away from me and sulked against her door.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “You said girlfriends.” She picked at a hole in the seat upholstery. “You think he has other girlfriends besides me?”

  “I’m sure of it,” I said. “Think about it, Sally—the guy’s gone from college to college all across the country. Do you really think you’re the first young woman he’s had a master-slave relationship with?”

  Sally clenched her jaw and huffed. She pounded on the door.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “Look in the glove compartment. I think I have some cassette tapes in there.”

  She opened it and rifled through the contents. “Just two,” she said, pulling them out.

  “What are they?”

  “ ‘Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Hits.’ ”

  “And…?”

  “ ‘The Best of Steve Lawrence,’ ” she said.

  “Yeah, that one.”

  She popped it into the cassette player and turned up the volume. “Who the heck is Steve Lawrence?”

  “Why, he’s only the coolest, swingin’-est lounge singer from the sixties Vegas scene. Come over here and listen.”

  Lawrence’s up-tempo, Latin-lounge arrangement of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” came over the speakers. It was one of my favorites. Hugging Sally with one arm, I steered the wheel with the other and snapped my fingers to the beat. I started swaying and singing along. Soon, Sally began to laugh and sway with me as I slalomed the Mercedes through the thin Sunday morning traffic.

  The van was still behind us in the far left lane, so when the traffic on Storrow Drive slowed for a merge, I swerved to the right and exited at Charlesgate. Skirting the Fenway, I ran a red light and sped the wrong way down a one-way street.

  “Whoa, why’d you do that?” Sally said.

  “There was a slowdown back there. We need to get to the ferry.”

  Despite my swift, evasive driving, somehow the white van had managed to stick with me. There they were—two cars back. Glad for the reassuring heft of the gun under my arm, I resigned myself to their presence and wove through traffic down Boylston Street toward the waterfront. Sitting up on her knees on her seat, Sally sucked my earlobe and acquainted my shoulder with her breasts.

  “Stop it, Sally,” I said. “I’m trying to drive.”

  “I can’t help it, Dakota. You get me so…mmm!”

  One of her hands serpentined down my stomach. Just then, my pager started beeping.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” I said. “You made my beeper go off!”

  She laughed.

  “Slide over and fasten your seat belt, honey,” I said.

  “That’s the first time you’ve called me ‘honey.’ ”

  “Buckle up, Sally.”

  “Okay.” With one last lingering suck on my earlobe, she complied.

  I checked my pager. It looked like Agent Suzuki’s office number. I’d call her back from a pay phone at the ferry terminal.

  I was still on Boylston Street. Glancing in the rear-view mirror again, gauging the van’s distance and speed, I tried to think of a stretch of road where I could lose it. There wasn’t one. I was better off parking somewhere near the waterfront and losing them on foot through the narrow streets. Then I’d buy Sally and myself ferry tickets, and we’d board at the last moment. I had a plan.

  * * *

  When we reached Long Wharf, where the terminal was, a thick fog was rolling in from the harbor. Through the fog drifting across Atlantic Avenue, I glimpsed a parking garage a couple blocks down. While the white van was stuck behind a bus, I sped past the parking garage, turned and circled the building to the rear entrance. There was an empty spot on the second level. I parked and jumped out of the car.

  “Come on, Sally,” I said, “we have to move.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. But we don’t want to miss the next ferry, do we?”

  “I need my suitcase,” she said.

  I grabbed it out of the back seat and hustled us toward the stairwell.

  “When we get in the terminal, I need to make a phone call,” I said.

  She smirked. “Oh…your beeper?”

  “Right.”

  On Sunday mornings in late September, ferry terminals are ghost towns. This is particularly true of foggy Sunday mornings. My and Sally’s footsteps echoed in the empty terminal as we crossed to the ticket booth.

  The clerk was a sullen young man in his twenties with a tiny tuft of black facial hair beneath his lower lip. He was sullen until Sally hugged me, and then he became outright hostile. I bought us tickets for the next ferry, which left in twenty minutes, and asked the clerk where the phone booths were.

  “Phone booths?”
He rolled his eyes at Sally. “Seriously, girl? What are you doing with this fossil?”

  “You know what a phone booth is, right?” I said. “A little box you go into to make a phone call.”

  “Man,” the clerk moaned, “we ain’t had one of those in years.”

  “Great customer service skills, sonny,” I said. “By the way, you’ve got some dirt under your lower lip.”

  He rubbed at the tuft of hair, causing Sally to burst out laughing.

  “That’s my soul patch, you dick,” the clerk said.

  As we walked away from the ticket booth, Sally poked me in the arm with something.

  “Here’s my cell,” she said. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  Consulting my pager, I started dialing the number.

  “Go ahead,” I said, “but the ferry leaves in ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be out in two.” She pointed at the ladies’ room. “Time me.” She put her suitcase handle in my free hand. “Hold this, please?”

  I nodded and watched her enter the ladies’ room. On the phone, the line picked up.

  “Suzuki,” she said.

  “It’s Dakota,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “I have some bad news.”

  She described how she and her partner had arrived at Kevin Teller’s van at eight o’clock this morning, and that he was dead by an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Aside from his body, a Glock 9-millimeter, and a duffel bag of clothing, the van was empty. The only prints in the van and on the gun were Kevin’s. Finally, the boxes of files and other evidence Kevin had alluded to were gone.

  “But Jen,” I said, “there’s no way he killed himself.”

  “We interviewed some of the IHOP staff. They said Teller was depressed and unstable.”

  “Of course he was depressed,” I rejoined. “The guy was living out of a van. Look, Jen…this was a hit. Did you see the file about my predecessor on the Standish case? A PI named Tommy O’Toole was killed in his car while staking out Malone’s apartment.”

  “I’m sorry, Dakota,” she said, “but there’s nothing else I can do.”

  “You could at least inform the Director,” I said. “Sally and some of her classmates might be in a lot of danger.”