A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard (12 page)

The Dukes County jail is in downtown Edgartown, across the street from Cannonball Park. Unless you're paying attention, you might not even know it's a jail, since it looks pretty much like an ordinary house until you go around back and see the police vehicles and the caged exercise areas.

Inside are a foyer, an office, and several cells, mostly used to house drunks overnight or hold people without bail money until they can go before a judge at the court-house down the street.

For several years now, one of the Vineyard's sustained arguments has been whether or not Dukes County should have a new, modern jail.

Proponents of this idea, led by the sheriff, point out that the current jail is too old and too small and should be more centrally located on the island, out by the airport, for example, so up-island cops could more easily get their prisoners behind bars, and so those sometimes noisy and feisty prisoners would be farther away from the busy streets of Edgartown, thus decreasing the level of danger to the community.

Opponents, led by the sheriff's oldest and most stead-fast political enemy, say the jail isn't too old or too small, and that if a new one is built it will cost a fortune and pretty soon the county will be getting a bunch of imported, off-island jailbirds as prisoners, thus raising the level of danger to the community.

Proponents say this is nonsense. Opponents say it isn't.

So it goes. And probably will keep right on going, since Edgartown, a village dependent on tourists, nevertheless took forty-five years to build public toilets for its tour bus traffic.

Meanwhile, the old jail, built over a hundred years ago, does its duty as best it can. Part of its duty today was keeping Beth Harper locked up until she was either bailed out or otherwise released or sent elsewhere.

I pushed the button at the locked visitors' door and after a bit the buzzer buzzed and Joshua and I went into the little foyer. Clyde Duarte, the ever mild, noncombative jail keeper, was in the doorway of his small office. Behind him were a paper-stocked desk and several TV screens showing various parts of the building. “Hi, J.W.,” said Clyde. “How are things?”

“Things could be worse. I want to talk with Beth Harper.”

Clyde raised a brow. “I heard she tried to take a shot at you. You sure you want to see her?” He looked at Joshua, who was staring around at his very first jail. “Your new boy, eh? Doesn't look a bit like you, I'm glad to say.” He grinned. He had four children at home and another on the way.

How many times was I going to hear how lucky Josh was not to look like me? “Yeah, I want to see her,” I said.

“Well, I'll find out if she wants to see you.” He started toward the cells.

“Tell her I'm considering dropping all charges,” I said.

“That should get her attention,” said Clyde. “I'll be right back.”

There's a room where lawyers can meet privately with their clients. Clyde took me there, then went to get Beth Harper. I took one of the chairs and put Joshua in my lap. Clyde came in with Beth and pointed her to another chair. She sat down.

“You need me, let me know,” he said, and went back to his office.

Beth Harper nervously rubbed her wrists, which possibly had been cuffed not long before. Her face was sullen, and she looked pale in spite of her tan. Her voice was jerky. She spat out short sentences.

“What do you want? I know my rights. I don't have to say anything. My lawyer is on his way.”

I got up. “Okay. See you later. In court.” I went to the door.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait.” I turned and looked at her. Her eyes met mine, then fell away. Her hands rubbed each other. “That man said you might drop all charges.”

“That's right. But it depends on what you tell me.”

“How can I trust you? You killed Larry! Even if I tell you what you want to know, you might not drop the charges at all!”

I went back to my chair and sat down. Joshua stared around the room. I put my eyes on Beth Harper's face.

“The first thing is, I didn't kill Ingalls. I found him already dead.”

“You're lying! You said you'd get even with him! I heard you!”

People often remember what they want to remember or what they think they should have seen or heard, which is why eyewitnesses are often of so little help in criminal cases.

“No,” I said, “you heard him say that to me. There were two other people there, Joe Begay and Drew Mondry. You ask them who started that fight and who threatened who.”

“I don't believe you! You hated him! All you damned fishermen hated him!”

“You don't have to believe me. Talk with Joe Begay and Drew Mondry.”

“How am I going to talk with them? I'm in jail, for God's sake!”

“Your lawyer's coming, remember? You'll be out of here in no time. You can talk with them then.” She stared at the floor.

I tried combining the stick and the carrot. “The second thing is this,” I said. “No one saw Ingalls get killed, but a lot of people saw you point that gun at me. That means that you're the one who's in real trouble. But if I don't press charges, most of that trouble will go away.”

Those hands of hers rubbed each other and massaged her wrists. “What do you want from me?”

“Information. You may know something that will help me find out who really shot your boss.”

“I already know who did that.”

“No, you don't. Why did you decide to kill me?”

She stared at the floor. “It was stupid. I know that.”

“People don't usually go around avenging their bosses.”

Her eyes lifted and flared at me. “We were going to be married! Soon!” She started sobbing.

I waited until it passed. “So you were engaged. I'm sorry. He was quite a bit older than you are, wasn't he?”

“He was forty-five. So what? It didn't make any difference. We loved each other!” More sobs.

I looked down at Joshua, who smiled up at me, unaware of human tragedy. When the sobs stopped, I said, “Where'd you get the gun?”

“It was his. I went up to his house and got it.”

“Why did he have a gun?”

“I don't know. I don't know anything about guns.” And a good thing, too, else I'd probably not be sitting here.

“How'd you know where it was?”

“We were engaged. I've been in his house. He kept it in a drawer by the bed.”

Terrific. The first place a burglar would look. Like most people, Ingalls might have been smart about some things, but he had been dumb about others. Most of us are like that: good and bad, smart and stupid, dark and light.

“Tell me about Ingalls.”

She brushed at her face with her hands. “What do you mean? What about him? What do you want to know?”

I didn't really know what I wanted to know. I said, “He probably got killed by somebody who knew him. Did he have any enemies?”

“Yes! You and all those fishermen!”

I had to admit that I'd walked into that one. “I mean besides me and all those fishermen. Anyone at work, maybe?”

She lifted her chin. “Larry was very well respected by his colleagues. Everyone admired him.”

That was probably not the case, since no one is immune from the petty and not-so-petty bickerings, envies, and rivalries that occur in almost all organizations. Even Jesus had a betrayer, after all. But Beth Harper, in her grief, probably believed what she was saying.

“Anyone in his family, then, or his social circle?”

Her words came in a rush, like angry water. “How dare you mention his family! They're wonderful people. Larry didn't have to work, you know. He had plenty of money. He worked for the environment because he loved it! He could have stayed up there in Hamilton and played polo like everybody else, but he didn't. And he wasn't just a biologist, you know. He was an Orientalist, too. He could have kept taking those trips to India and Indonesia every year, and been a scholar, but he didn't. Instead, he stopped doing that and stayed right here in Massachusetts, so he could work for the Department of Environmental Protection. He loved this island most of all; that's why he built a house here! Everyone loved him!”

“Not quite everyone.”

“What a filthy thing to say! You're disgusting!”

I felt a little dot of anger. “Keep in mind that I'm also the guy who can drop charges against you. Tell me about his friends. Start with the ones up in Hamilton. That was his hometown, I take it.”

She may have noticed my irritation because she unknotted her fists, took a breath or two, and told me next to nothing about Ingalls's Hamilton friends. They
were polo players, riders to the hounds, yachtsmen, investment brokers, lawyers, the North Shore rich who lived in Hamilton and Wenham, Manchester and Prides Crossing, Beverly Farms and Marblehead.

They were prep school, Ivy League, and old-Boston-firms types; Beth seemed to know that about them and not much more. Ingalls, unlike most of them, had taken a different professional path and gone to work for the DEP.

Lawrence Ingalls, halo wearer.

“How about his Boston friends, then? And the people he worked with there.”

She knew these people better, for his working colleagues were hers as well, and she had come to know his friends.

“I used to see him in his office when I first went to work for the department. He and some of the rest of us would go out to a local pub after work sometimes, and that's where we got to know each other. He split his time between Beacon Hill and the field, and he was good in both places. We were all really focused on our work. It was almost like a revolutionary call. When we joked about it, we called ourselves the Greenies, and said that our plans to seize control were almost complete; that all we needed now was some capital.”

The Greenies.

“And what did all the wives and husbands think about what their spouses were doing? Were there any romances that broke up marriages?”

She brushed back her hair. “Maybe that happened. But I didn't do anything like that, and neither did Larry. He wasn't married, and he didn't have a steady girl.”

“He never put any moves on anyone else's woman?”

“No! He didn't do things like that.”

“Because if he did, the woman's man might hold a grudge. It wouldn't be the first time.”

“There was nothing like that. Larry dated some of the single girls, but he wasn't a womanizer. He was a bachelor,
and work took up all his time. He wore himself out working, in fact, and had to get clear away from it on his vacations, so he could get some rest. He was still taking his holidays in the Far East when I first knew him. Then for a few years he took them down in the Caribbean, and then he built his house in Chilmark and would come down here and not tell anyone where he was. All of the rest of us were in on the conspiracy. None of us would say where he was. When he came back, he'd be full of zip again, and ready to go.

“No, he wasn't involved with any women at work or even in Boston, as far as I know. Until he and I started going out, that is.”

“Had he ever been married?”

She paused. “A long time back, when he was still in college. I think they were both just too young. He never really talked about it.”

“How about his friends here on the island?”

“He had a lot of them. The Marshall Lea Foundation people, your friend Joe Begay, his neighbors. He got a lot of kids interested in the environment. Their parents, too, sometimes . . .”

Tears welled up in her eyes once more. They streamed down her cheeks. She stopped talking and stared through me at some image I could not see.

I put Joshua on my shoulder and got up.

“I'll drop all charges,” I said. “Maybe they'll try to get you on disturbing the peace or something like that, but they can't nail you for heavy-duty stuff unless I go along with them, and I won't.”

She was still looking into space. “I don't know how anyone could have done it,” she said in a watery voice. “Everybody loved him.”

At home, I put Joshua in his crib and told him to go to sleep, and to my surprise, he did. What a guy. Then I called Joe Begay.

“Are you calling from your cell?” he asked. “Is this your one phone call? I heard about what happened to Larry Ingalls.”

I gave him the details.

When I was done, he said, “I can see why the fuzz like you for the job. Opportunity, motive, the works.”

Everybody's a comedian. “Well, I didn't do the job.”

“I believe you. But if you didn't, who did? Besides Zack Delwood and a thousand other people who hated Ingalls's guts, who's as good a suspect as you?”

“I thought I'd better try to find out, just in case the law likes me so much that it doesn't look anywhere else. There's an election coming up next year, and the sheriff is planning on running again. He can use a good conviction.”

“You sound a little cynical, J.W., like you don't have a lot of faith in the judicial system.”

As a matter of fact, while I'd been a cop in Boston I'd seen too many bad guys walk out of too many courtrooms to have total confidence in either cops or courts. Half the time it was the cops' fault that the accused walked. Eager to solve a case, the police would grab the most likely suspect and go for the gold with him rather than pursuing other possible perps. And when the prosecution's case was weak, as it often was, the suspect, almost always “known to the police” but not necessarily guilty of this
particular crime, would be back on the streets almost before the cops were.

The sheriff of Dukes County was not a hanging sheriff by any means, but a conviction in a murder case certainly wouldn't hurt his political cause; and it might do wonders for Olive Otero's career.

I told Begay about my visit with Beth Harper. He listened, then said, “Are you sure you want her out there walking around?”