The Bone Bed ks-20

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Where are you now?”

  “What do you need?”

  I ask him to meet me at Howard Roth’s house as I pull off protective clothing in the anteroom, and the door leading into the corridor opens. Benton is here.

  “Give me about twenty minutes,” I tell Machado. “If you get there first it would be helpful if you wait outside.” I meet Benton’s eyes. “It appears Howard Roth had a visitor right before he died. The check you found in the toolbox? Have you submitted it?”

  “Latents has it,” Machado says. “And by the way, when they fumed the car they got a print from the rearview mirror. And it isn’t Peggy Stanton’s.”

  thirty-two

  BENTON DRIVES MY SUV WEST ALONG THE CHARLES, past the Art Deco former headquarters of Polaroid and the patinated copper-roofed DeWolfe Boathouse. It’s noon, and patchy ice has melted, sunlight sparkling on water and bright on the old Shell sign. We head toward Central Square while I return Ernie’s call.

  “Marine paint,” he says right off. “No big surprise, since the turtle obviously was in the water when he bumped into something or something bumped into him. An antifouling paint loaded with copper to retard the growth of barnacles, mussels, and so on. Also zinc, which would be consistent with primer.”

  “And consistent with the color,” I reply. “That yellowish-green brings to mind a zinc-based primer.”

  “Microscopically, you got more than one color,” he says. “In fact, you got three.”

  We cross Massachusetts Avenue, City Hall up ahead, Romanesque, with a bell tower and stone walls trimmed in granite, and Ernie explains that the traces of paint transferred to the barnacle and also to the broken end of the bamboo pole came from the bottom of a boat. Possibly the prop or an anchor or anchor chain that at one time, he says, probably a number of years ago, was painted black.

  “Often whatever is used to paint the bottom of a boat is also used on other areas that remain submerged when the boat is moored,” he adds.

  “A quick-and-dirty way of doing it,” I reply, as Benton turns at the YMCA. “Use the same paint on everything.”

  “Quick-and-dirty is what a lot of people do, and then there are those who don’t give a damn and are really sloppy and irresponsible,” Ernie says. “Whoever painted the boat you’re looking for falls into that category.”

  It doesn’t fit with what I think of him, a killer tidy and meticulous, who plots and plans in his malignant fantasyland.

  “The zinc-based primer went on top of the old paint, which wasn’t sanded off; someone couldn’t be bothered.” Ernie continues to describe what he found on a swipe of color almost invisible to the unaided eye.

  A boat this person uses for his evil but not for his leisure, not for his pleasure.

  “And over that a deep red coating with copper or cuprous oxide, which is usually used on wood,” he says. “I have a feeling the boat you’re looking for has a lot of chipped, peeled, or damaged red topcoat, some areas of exposed primer. In other words, something not well maintained at all.”

  An old boat in ill repair that probably isn’t registered in his name or docked where he lives or even near there.

  “If it were a prop, wouldn’t you have expected more damage to the turtle?” I ask.

  “If the prop was turning, yes. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the person cut the engine while he did what he did.”

  Did what he did.

  Which was stopping the boat and shutting down the engine so he could push the dog crate, the boat fender, and the body overboard. I try to envision it and can’t imagine hoisting a crate containing more than a hundred and fifty pounds of cat litter, dropping it and a body over a high side rail. A dive platform, a boat with an open transom, I consider. The cut-down transom of lobster boats around here that make it easier to launch pots and buoys, boats that are ubiquitous at all hours and in all types of weather, attracting no attention, and I try to reconstruct it.

  The open transom of an old wooden boat that’s been repainted, and the crate, the fender, the body pushed into the water at the same moment a gigantic leatherback became entangled with fishing tackle, with an old bamboo pole, is there. I see the strike, the encounter, I almost can. The turtle surfacing for air, dragging the fishing gear wound around him, and running into the bottom of a boat, perhaps glancing off its prop, and now he’s dangerously trussed up in yellow nylon buoy line, weighted down, slowing down, pulling his burden until it almost pulls him under.

  It’s quite likely the killer wasn’t aware of the leatherback, knew nothing of what occurred. For one thing, I suspect it was dark, and I imagine the boat near Logan, where the e-mail was sent from Emma Shubert’s iPhone on Sunday at six-twenty-nine p.m., and then this person waited, possibly for hours, until he was sure no one would see him.

  “What makes you say a number of years ago?” I ask Ernie. “You’re able to date when the hull originally was painted black?”

  “Traces of TBT,” he says.

  The paint contains tributyltin oxide, he explains, an antifouling biocide that has decimated marine life—shellfish, in particular—killing them off, causing them to mutate. TBT is one of the most toxic chemicals ever deliberately released into the world’s water and has been illegal in high-traffic areas such as harbors and bays since the late 1980s. But the ban unfortunately doesn’t include oil tankers and military vessels.

  “So unless the boat in question is military or a tanker, and I seriously doubt it, then the boat you’re looking for could be at least twenty years old,” he adds, as Benton looks for parking on the street near Machado’s Crown Vic.

  Howard Roth has no driveway, his small frame house overtaken by trees and shrubs behind an abandoned factory on Bigelow Street in an area that’s a mixture of historic homes and Harvard apartments and affordable housing. While I can’t see it from where we are, I know that Fayth House is but a few blocks west on Lee Street, an easy walk from here. I continue to wonder if Peggy Stanton might have volunteered there.

  “The important point for your purposes?” Ernie says in my wireless earpiece, as I get out of the SUV. “Whoever repainted the boat to be in compliance didn’t give a shit that there’s a reason for the ban.”

  I get scene cases out of the back.

  “Apparently, the person just slapped coats of primer and red paint on top of original black paint, which doesn’t stop the TBT from continuing to leach out and into the water,” Ernie adds, and I think about what Lucy just told me.

  Channing Lott’s shipping company offers a hundred-thousand-dollar award for solutions that help preserve the environment. I can’t imagine any of his tankers painted with a dangerous biocide or that any boat he might have would be, certainly not his yacht that he sometimes moors in the Boston Harbor.

  “It could be anything,” Benton says, after I tell him, and we’re climbing the weathered wooden front steps of Howard Roth’s three-room frame house, which doesn’t look as uncared for as it simply looks poor. “Any type of vessel or marine object originally painted with the antifouling stuff, from a buoy to a piling to a submarine. Then repainted.”

  “I doubt a submarine would be repainted red.” I notice a coiled garden hose connected to an outside faucet and wonder what Howard Roth used it for.

  There’s no grass, nothing to water, and he didn’t own a car.

  “More likely we’re talking about a boat bottom and maybe its prop that were repainted with primer, and then a red antifouling paint that’s environmentally safe and legal.” We put on gloves and shoe covers, and I open a rusting screen door.

  Sil Machado is waiting on a porch crowded with open black garbage bags overflowing with cans and bottles. Shopping carts are filled with bags, and more of them are stacked in the seats of a metal slat porch glider. I wonder how Howard Roth got his recyclables to a redemption center, and I ask Machado if he knows.

  “Nearest one’s on Webster Ave.” He unlocks the front door with a single key attached to an evidence tag. “I think his buddy from Fa
yth House used to give him rides. Jerry, the maintenance guy who found him.”

  He lets us in and stays outside because I intend to spray for blood if I don’t find any that’s visible, and there’s very little room inside. Machado explains through the open door that Roth’s friend, maybe his only friend, got a DUI and his license was suspended.

  “He told me on Sunday afternoon when I responded to the call that as soon as he got his license back he was going to help Howie haul all this in,” Machado says.

  “When might that have been?” Benton asks, and we’re just inside the door, covering our clothes. “When was he going to get his license reinstated and give him a ride?”

  “It was his first offense, so his license was revoked only for a year,” Machado says. “He has three months to go. He said he told Howie to stop collecting before the floor caved in, to hold off until he could drive him. But he went out every day, digging through trash anyway. Not sure what you get for this stuff. Maybe a couple bucks a bag, total? Enough for one quart of the shit he drank.”

  I crouch by an open scene case, getting out the spray bottle of LCV and the camera, scanning my surroundings before I do anything. The living room and kitchen are one open area separated by a Formica countertop, an old TV against one wall, a brown vinyl recliner parked in front of it, and that’s about the only place someone could sit.

  Bags of metal cans and glass and plastic bottles are piled on a sofa, on a small table and on its chairs, and I can understand Machado’s attitude when he first got here after the body was found. I know all too well what it’s like to walk into a death scene that is so overwhelmed by what obsessive unwell people collect or hoard or don’t bother throwing out that it’s like sifting through a landfill.

  “This isn’t just about the money.” Benton stands by the kitchen counter, looking, taking in every detail.

  “It’s sad,” I agree. “Maybe he started out collecting all this for whatever petty cash he could get, but then it became a compulsion.”

  “Another addiction.”

  “Addicted to digging through trash,” I reply, noticing all of the window shades are down, the shapes of bottles and cans showing behind the yellowed fabric as the light shines through.

  I ask Machado if the shades were just like this when he came here the first time. Were they down in every window and he tells me through the open door that they were, and I ask him about lamps or overhead lights. He replies that the only light on was the single lightbulb in the basement, and it’s probably still on, he adds, unless it’s burned out.

  “When you’re done,” he says, “I’m going to dust all the switches, swab them, if need be. I’ll go over anything someone might have touched.”

  “A good idea,” I reply, and I ask if it would be all right to open the shades, to get a little light in here.

  “Help yourself, Doc. I’ve got photographs of the way everything was,” he says. “So no problem if you need to change or move something.”

  The windowsills are lined with vintage bottles and pop-top cans that are collectibles, Coca-Cola, Sun Drop, Dr Pepper, and a mucilage glue and jar of paste that I remember from my childhood. Items tossed when someone cleaned out the attic, and I imagine Howard Roth rescuing them from the trash and placing them on display in his house like trophies, like treasure.

  “What about the TV? On or off when his body was found?” Benton stares into the carpeted hall that leads to the back of the house.

  “It was off when I got here,” Machado says, and I’m interested in the two forty-ounce Steel Reserve 211 malt liquor bottles and three screw caps on the floor by the recliner.

  I wonder how long they’ve been there.

  “What about when his friend got here? What’s his name? Jerry?” Benton opens the bathroom door.

  “According to his version of things? The front door was unlocked, and when Howie didn’t answer, he walked in and called out to him. Says it was about four in the afternoon.”

  “Sunday afternoon?” Benton steps into the doorway that leads to the basement.

  “Right. And I got here about four-fifteen.”

  “Did this guy Jerry have a reason to hurt anyone? Maybe they’re drinking cheap malt liquor together, maybe arguing, maybe something got out of control?”

  “Can’t imagine it,” Machado says from the front doorway. “But I got his prints, swabbed him for DNA. He couldn’t have been more cooperative, says Howie never locked his door. Jerry says he was used to just walking in.”

  The remote is on top of the TV, neatly placed exactly in the middle, and I suggest to Machado we might want to collect it. He sounds dubious but says that’s fine, and I package the remote as evidence and hand it through the doorway to him.

  “I’m just curious why you might think someone touched it,” he says, and Benton has walked down the hallway to the bedroom.

  “He may have been drinking beer in the recliner, in his underwear and socks, possibly with the TV on, and he fell asleep there.” I notice that one of the garbage bags tucked under the counter is twisted shut with a tie but none of the others are. “I’d like to look inside the kitchen cabinets, if you don’t have a problem with it.”

  Under the sink are nine boxes of commercial can liners, a hundred to a carton, heavy-grade and not inexpensive, and I wonder where Roth got them.

  “I don’t think he bought these.” I reach inside for an open box and pull out green plastic ties exactly like the one twisted around the bag under the counter.

  I suggest to Machado he may want to check with Fayth House and see what brand of industrial waste-can liners they stock. I tell him that a carton this size with bags of this quality can cost thirty or forty dollars, which is considerably more than what Roth was going to get for the recyclables he placed inside them.

  Maybe his buddy Jerry who works maintenance at the nursing home was keeping Roth well stocked, or maybe Roth was taking the bags when he was in and out, still working the occasional odd job there. I remind Machado that we must find out if Peggy Stanton volunteered at Fayth House.

  “A careful, cautious woman who had an alarm system and didn’t want her address and phone number on her checks wasn’t going to let just anybody in her home.” I collect the open carton of liners. “She must have had some connection with him; she must have felt safe with him if she let him do any sort of work inside her house or even on her property.”

  “Unless whoever killed this guy planted the check in his toolbox as an alibi.” Machado takes another evidence bag from me.

  “Why?” I wander back to the TV.

  “We find it and assume Howie killed her. Case solved. Sort of like the way he set up Marino, right? It’s what this son of a bitch does, right?”

  I don’t believe he’s right at all, but I listen to him spin his theory as I let him know I’m untying the garbage bag under the counter because it’s peculiar that it’s the only one closed. All the other ones are open, and maybe Howard Roth left them that way because he rinsed out all the bottles and cans and jars and left the bags open so everything would dry.

  I point out to Machado that there’s a garden hose outside, and most redemption facilities require recyclables to be emptied and rinsed, and I also haven’t noticed any odors. I tell him that if he doesn’t object I’m going to see what’s in this one bag and then I’m going to look for blood.

  “Thing is, we find the check and bingo.” Machado continues to describe what I don’t think is possible. “Some lowlife who killed Peggy Stanton. Her handyman did it and then died in a drunken accident. The killer sets that up and we think case closed.”

  “And where does the killer think we’ll assume Roth kept the body after he supposedly murdered her?” I inquire, as I untwist the tie. “Where might he have kept it long enough for it to begin to mummify? Certainly not in this house over the summer, and are we supposed to believe Howard Roth had a boat or access to one?”

  “Maybe the killer assumed she wouldn’t look mummified,” Machado sa
ys. “Maybe he thought she wouldn’t look dehydrated after she was in the water for a while.”

  “Mummified remains don’t reconstitute like freeze-dried fruit. You can’t add moisture back to a dead body.”

  I open the bag, and the bottle is right on top of other bottles and cans and jars. It’s right there where the monster placed it.

  “But would the average person know that a dried-out body wouldn’t rehydrate?” Machado asks.

  The forty-ounce Steel Reserve 211 bottle is the same as the two empties by the recliner, each with a price sticker from a Shop Quik.

  “I’m not going to do anything with this here,” I say to Machado, as I hold up the bottle in my gloved hands, turning it in sunlight shining through a window. “I see ridge detail, and I see blood.”

  thirty-three

  I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY A KILLER WHO HAS ELABORATE fantasies and premeditates and seems meticulous makes so little effort to hide evidence that matters. In fact, I’m baffled, I tell Benton.

  “You’ve got to focus on his priorities,” he says, as he drives us through mid-Cambridge. “You have to get inside his head and know what he values. Neatness, tidiness, everything exactly the way he likes it. Restoring order after he kills. Showing he’s a nice guy, a decent guy, someone civilized. I’m suspicious the flowers in Peggy Stanton’s house were from him. When he returned her car and entered her house he left flowers to show what a sterling fellow he is.”

  “Any luck finding a record of a delivery?”

  “Not any of the florists in the area. It’s been checked.” He glances at his phone, and he’s been glancing at it a lot. “I think there was no card because there never was one, that he walked in with a spring arrangement like a thoughtful son stopping by to see his mother. It’s very important to this person that what he believes about himself is reasserted after he’s killed. A great guy. A gentleman. Someone capable of meaningful relationships.”