The Cold Blue Blood bam-1

by David Handler

  “You’ll get by.”

  “You’re dreaming. This is real life-not some Robin Williams movie where everybody hugs everybody at the end.”

  Mitch shook his head at her. “If you don’t watch out you are going to make me really angry at you.”

  “Why, are you a big Robin Williams fan?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Lieutenant!”

  Her eyes widened at him in surprise. “You’re totally serious about this, aren’t you?”

  “Totally,” Mitch confirmed. “And unless you’re prepared to be as serious about it as I am I don’t ever want to discuss it with you again.”

  “I don’t take well to bullying,” she warned him.

  “I’m trying to encourage you.”

  “Well, try a different way before that lip of yours suddenly starts bleeding again.” Four helmeted school girls on rollerblades went teetering past them on the sidewalk, giggling. She watched them. She seemed bothered and distracted. “Look, I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I appreciate you saying what you said. I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now, okay? Something I have to do. And I’m not looking forward to it.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She hesitated before she gave him a shake of her head.

  “May I ask you something personal?”

  “What is it?”

  “Why did you draw me?”

  She immediately tensed, clutching her folio tightly. “It was… an attempt to try to understand a certain situation.”

  “What situation?”

  She ducked her head, didn’t answer him. She seemed very uncomfortable.

  “Are you saying that you think I’m dead inside?”

  “No, no,” she said hastily. “Not at all. It was more about me than about you. I-I probably shouldn’t have shown that one to you.” She raised her eyes to his. “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. None at all. You don’t ever have to…” Mitch swallowed, his Adam’s apple suddenly feeling as if it were the size of a musk melon. He gazed at her. She gazed back right at him, her eyes large and lustrous behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “I’m genuinely honored that you chose me to show your work to, Lieutenant,” he said. “It’s an experience that I’ll never forget.” Then Mitch got in his truck, started it up and eased away from the curb, glancing back at her in his rearview mirror.

  She remained there on the curb, watching him pull away. She was still standing there, watching him, when he went around the bend by the public library and was gone.

  CHAPTER 14

  AN ATTEMPT TO TRY to understand a certain situation?!

  Jesus, how could she have said something so stiff, so impersonal, so outright lame? Des could not imagine as she piloted her slicktop up the Post Road toward Uncas Lake. Hell, compared to her the IRS sounded positively warm and fuzzy. What on earth had she been thinking? She’d wanted to tell him she was trying to sort out her feelings, that’s what. But she hadn’t wanted to spring that particular f-word out into the open air and so she got all bollixed up and wham, out came the Notification of Pending Audit.

  I do not know how to talk to a man anymore. I am hopeless.

  Des slowed her cruiser way down as she rolled past the seedy cottage where Tuck Weems had lived. He was scheduled for burial that day, same as Niles Seymour. Same minister. No doubt a lot of the same mourners. Dolly Seymour would be there, for one. That rusty pickup was still up on blocks in his driveway. No other vehicles were parked there. There was no actual sign that anyone was around.

  Des kept on going past more shacks and bungalows, wondering if Mitch Berger were right. Had she wanted to hear that she was no good? She didn’t know. All she knew was that her life was starting to feel as if it were spinning out of control. It was a most unfamiliar feeling. It made her slightly dizzy.

  The road began to climb steeply as it snaked its way around the lake. The resident trooper’s house was perched high on a hill overlooking the water. Tal Bliss had served two tours in the jungle in Vietnam. Sunlight and fresh air were a priority for him now. She deduced this from the way he’d added on a second storey with walls of glass and a wooden deck suspended all the way around. From the road, the place looked like a firefighter’s lookout station in the mountains.

  His bedrooms were downstairs. The kitchen, dining room and living room were up on the second floor, the better to watch over his domain. He kept the house very neat and clean. Particularly his professional kitchen, which gleamed.

  “My one and only indulgence,” he confessed, as he poured Des coffee.

  There was a center island with a double sink and well-used copper pots hanging from a wrought-iron holder bolted into the ceiling. The countertops were granite, the cupboards pickled-pine. The range was a stainless-steel Jenn-Air with a down-draft vent, the refrigerator a top-of-the-line Sub-Zero. No walls enclosed Tal Bliss’s kitchen. It opened right out into the sun-drenched living and dining area.

  On the stereo, Miles and Trane were putting the moves on “Kind of Blue,” filling the house with everything that was sweet and pure.

  Dirty Harry, an immense orange-and-white male tabby, was out on the deck applying his death stare to a squirrel in a nearby cedar tree, his body poised, his tail swaying back and forth. The squirrel was chittering at him in derision. Down below, two men in a kayak were making their way slowly across the shimmering blue lake.

  Lunch had been the resident trooper’s idea. When Des had mentioned that they needed to talk he had extended the invite. And she had accepted. When Tal Bliss offered to cook you something you did not say no. He wore a denim apron over a spotless white T-shirt while he was preparing it. Right now, he was finishing a fruit salad, his big tanned hands moving swiftly and expertly as he sectioned a pink grapefruit and halved strawberries. A quiche was baking in the oven, smelling marvelous.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, Lieutenant,” he assured her. “I already had the pie shell on hand. I make a half-dozen of them at a time and freeze them. Just hope you like sage. I’ve fallen in love with it this year and am trying it in everything.” He tossed fresh blackberries and a cup of toasted walnuts into the salad, and began chopping up some mint. “We should really have ourselves a spicy Bloody Mary with this meal. Damned shame we’re on duty.”

  “Damned shame.”

  “Oh, I got a call from Bud Havenhurst,” he mentioned offhandedly. “Regarding what happened yesterday in New York.”

  Somehow, this did not surprise Des.

  “He felt a bit more at ease talking to a man about it, I guess,” he explained. “So I listened.”

  “To what?” Des sipped her coffee.

  “Apparently, Mandy gave Mitch Berger some form of playful shove on the subway platform as a train was pulling in. All in fun, was how Bud described it.”

  “And just exactly what’s so damned fun about it?”

  “Bud said that she considers danger to be a powerful aphrodisiac,” Bliss replied, coloring more than a little. He wasn’t so comfortable talking to a woman about this either. “She feels when someone has been mortally frightened that he or she is more susceptible to achieving a heightened level of sexual arousal. It seems she intended to seduce him later that evening. And this was simply her idea of…”

  “… Foreplay?”

  “According to Bud, she would have pulled Mitch back if there was even a remote chance he might fall.” Bliss had a pained expression on his face. He was hating this. He paused to check on his quiche in the oven. It was done. He removed it and placed it on a rack, fragrant and golden brown. “She was strictly playing a game.”

  Des shook her head at him skeptically. “Are you trying to kid me, Trooper?”

  “Why, no, Lieutenant.”

  “Good, because there is no such thing as playful when it comes to pushing an unsuspecting individual in front of an oncoming train. They teach kindergarteners that. And when an adult in full command of her f
aculties does it, that’s called reckless endangerment. In Mandy Havenhurst’s case it might even qualify as assault with intent. She has a track record for inflicting bodily harm on men. I mean, come on, this is so not sane.”

  “I know, I know,” Bliss agreed quickly. “Believe me, I’m not excusing it. Or condoning it. I’m merely reporting what Bud told me. And you’d better get ready, because there’s more.” He hesitated, clearing his throat. “Bud was there when she hit on Mitch at the apartment.”

  “What do you mean he was there?”

  “I mean he was listening in the bedroom the whole time. Watching, too, I imagine. Another little game they play. It… excites both of them.”

  “They get off on making each other jealous-is that it?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And what does he…?”

  “He tells her he’s still sleeping with Dolly.”

  “Is he?”

  “I’m quite confident he isn’t.” Bliss sighed, puffing out his cheeks. “What can I tell you-it’s not my idea of a healthy, normal relationship. But maybe there is no such thing as a healthy, normal relationship. What do you think, Lieutenant?”

  “I think that I could be very happy never knowing this stuff about other people.”

  “That makes two of us,” he agreed, smiling at her faintly. He removed his apron and wiped his hands on a towel. The stomach under his T-shirt was flat and hard. He was in excellent shape for a man over fifty. “Shall we eat?”

  They ate out on the deck at a redwood table. The quiche was delicious-its crust flaky, the sage-scented filling of egg, bacon and gruyere rich and savory. And the fruit salad somehow managed to be sweet, tangy and nutty all at the same time. The man was truly gifted. Des told him so.

  She did not tell him that she had almost no appetite.

  Dirty Harry moseyed over and sniffed her ankles desultorily, offering no sign that he recalled it was she who had rescued him from out behind that bar in Ansonia, where drunks were throwing beer bottles at him. She who had nursed him and fed him. She who had given him a loving home for nearly three months until she had placed him with Bliss. Not so much as a hello. Not that Des expected any gratitude. He was, after all, a cat.

  The kayakers were still making their way across the lake. The sound of their carefree laughter carried extraordinarily well off of the water. It seemed as if they were only a few feet away.

  “What can I help you with?” Bliss asked her as he cleaned his own plate.

  “Mitch Berger claims that somebody locked him in his crawl space a few days before he dug up Niles Seymour’s body. To scare him off, possibly.”

  The resident trooper helped himself to some more fruit salad, his solemn face revealing nothing.

  “One of the other islanders recalls seeing your cruiser out there on the afternoon in question. I wondered if you might have observed anything. Seen anyone near his carriage house. Anything like that.”

  Bliss munched on his salad thoughtfully. “Not that I recall.”

  “Mind if I ask what you were doing out there that day?”

  “I’d swung by to look in on Dolly. She wasn’t home, as it turned out.”

  “You often do that?”

  “Drop in on her? Sure. She’s gone through some tough, tough times. And we’re old friends. And she’s…” He trailed off, grimacing slightly. “Oh, hell, there’s no sense in my being cute about it. The truth is that I’ve been carrying a torch for Dolly since we were eight years old.”

  “Does she know that?”

  He let out a dismal laugh. “I think it’s painfully obvious to everyone-including her. Sad to say, I’ve never been much more than good ol’ Tal to her. First, there was Bud. Her class of people, unlike me. Except that he was never worthy of her. Bud Havenhurst’s a weakling. Someone who needs a babysitter.”

  “I’d hardly call Mandy a babysitter,” said Des.

  “I would,” he countered. “To me, she’s a woman who exists solely to feast upon a man’s frailties. Bud’s little more than a blubbering child with her around.” Bliss gazed out at the lake for a moment, his face hardening. “And then Niles Seymour blew into town. A truly low-class individual, if ever I saw one. But a charmer when it came to women. You know how the story goes from there.” His eyes met hers across the table. “We’ve both got a lot of good years left. We could be happy. I could make her happy. But who knows-some things are meant to be, and most things aren’t.” He put down his fork and patted his mouth with his napkin. He was a very tidy eater. “What else can I help you with, Lieutenant?”

  “You told me that Tuck Weems’s parents were killed when you two were serving in ’Nam…”

  “Correct.” His eyes narrowed at her ever so slightly.

  “Only you didn’t tell me that you were actually home on leave when it happened. It was you who found Dolly and the victims in the carriage house. You who phoned it in. I found your name in Crowther’s report.”

  “I know I didn’t,” he conceded. “It’s not something I like to talk about. Or think about. Not if I can help it. I just… What is it you’d like to know?”

  “What you saw.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Bliss gazed at her curiously before he shrugged his broad shoulders and looked down at his hands. “We were supposed to play tennis on their court out there on the island that day,” he began. “Mixed doubles. She and Bud versus me and some girl Dolly was trying to pair me up with. She was constantly fixing me up with her friends. They were always big girls, horsy girls…” He broke off, sighing. “Bud hadn’t gotten there yet. He was late. Or maybe I was just early. I often was. It gave me a chance to be with her. No one else was around. Her parents were in Bermuda.”

  “What about her brother, Redfield?”

  “Red was at the Naval Academy,” he replied. “I’d just gotten out of my car when… It was her screams I heard first. I’d never heard anyone scream like that before. I ran toward the sound. And I found her out there in the carriage house on her hands and knees at the bottom of the stairs, her clothing ripped to shreds, blood all over her-their blood, her own blood. She was scratched up pretty bad. Her nose was broken, shoulder dislocated. And she was in shock. Kept mumbling the same thing over and over again: ‘The mother is hurt. The mother is hurt.’ And I can…” Bliss ran a hand over his face, his chest heaving. “I can remember the sound of the dripping.”

  “What dripping?”

  “The blood from upstairs. It had soaked through the floorboards of the loft and it was dripping right down onto the living room rug. I went up there. Up to the sleeping loft. And I found them up there together. Tuck’s mom was facedown on the bed with one side of her head blown off. Roy was propped up against the headboard next to her, still clutching his shotgun. After he’d shot Louisa he’d fired up through the roof of his own mouth. The wall behind him was covered with his brains and his blood. There was so much blood… I phoned the police from the kitchen. Then I tried to make Dolly comfortable until they arrived. But it was a long, long time before she got over it. In fact

  …” He reached for his coffee mug with an unsteady hand. “I don’t believe she ever has. Not really.”

  “Anything more to it than that?” Des asked.

  The resident trooper was far away for a moment. Lost in the horror. Then he shook himself and said, “Such as what, Lieutenant?”

  “Is it possible that it didn’t go down as you described?”

  “I can’t imagine what you mean.”

  “I mean is there anything that happened that day thirty years ago, anything at all, that could possibly shine a light on what’s happening now?”

  “Louisa Weems walked in on her husband raping Dolly Peck,” Bliss said, a harder edge creeping into his voice. “They fought. He shot her. And then he shot himself.”

  “Okay, but how do you know this? What I mean is, if Mrs. Seymour remembers nothing of that day, if the victims were already dea
d when you got there-how do you know it went down that way?”

  “Because there’s no other way it could have happened. Everyone said so-Crowther, the coroner, the district prosecutor. There was no doubt in anyone’s minds. And no attempt to cover anything up.”

  “I wasn’t saying there was.”

  “You didn’t have to. Your eyes did it for you.” The resident trooper’s own eyes were glaring across the table at her. “Crowther did his job. It was all by the book. And in answer to what is no doubt your next question, the superintendent and I have no relationship whatsoever. He wouldn’t know me from a hole in the ground. There’s nothing there, Lieutenant. Nothing at all.” He abruptly got up and began clearing the table. “Now, is there anything else I can fill you in on?”

  “Yes, there is,” she replied, helping him stack the dishes. “We ran a check at the Dorset Pharmacy to see if anyone filled a prescription in recent weeks for Diprolene, the brand name for betamethasone dipropionate. Your name showed up. Doctor Knudsen of the Shoreline Family Practice wrote you out a prescription for it on April the nineteenth. You filled it that same day. Diprolene is prescribed for patients who’ve suffered a severe allergic reaction to poison ivy.”

  “That’s absolutely right.” Bliss headed back inside with the dishes. Des followed him. “I was hiking in the woods up by the Devil’s Hopyard with the Boy Scouts. Came in contact with it up there. I’m highly susceptible. When I get it, I get it but good-hands, face, everywhere.” He began piling things in the kitchen sink, glancing at her curiously. “Why are you interested in that?”

  Des was not liking this. Tal Bliss had invited her into his home. She had eaten his food. At this particular moment she would have given anything to be somewhere else-such as in her studio with a piece of charcoal in her hand… “You are leading somebody else’s life.”… “The reason I’m interested,” she said slowly, “is that your outbreak occurred the same day Torry Mordarski’s body was found in the woods by Laurel Brook Reservoir. There was some nasty poison ivy at that crime scene. Two tekkies got it bad.”