Ghost Dance (7 page)

‘Hello?’

‘Andie, honey, is that you?’ an elderly female responded. Her voice was as smooth and rich as hot chocolate.

‘Yes, Olga,’ Nightingale said, smiling with relief. ‘It’s me.’

Olga Dawson was Nightingale’s late mother’s best friend, seventy-eight and slowed by three minor strokes in the past eighteen months. Olga lived where she had lived almost her entire life, on a farm at a dead-end spur off the River Road, six and a half miles beyond Nightingale’s home.

‘Someone’s been around the house again,’ the old woman complained.

Nightingale held the phone in the crook of her neck, walked to the alcove where she kept her plants. She inspected the soil around her tomato seedlings, then began transplanting a fuchsia she’d managed to coax through the winter. ‘You think someone’s there now?’

‘A few hours ago, right at last light.’

‘Could I come tomorrow and see?’

‘Oh, that would be so nice, dear,’ Olga replied. ‘You’ll call ahead so I can have something ready for you?’

‘I will,’ Nightingale promised.

‘Maybe it was a bear in the yard, come looking for the new green grass,’ Olga said. She paused. ‘Do you remember the time when we went to the bear cave?’

‘Now, how could I forget that?’ Nightingale replied, laughing. ‘I was seven and you told me the cave up there on Lawton Mountain was the biggest bear cave in the world.’

‘Oh, dear, I forget lots of things.’ Olga sighed. ‘But some memories still burn bright.’

‘Of course they do,’ Nightingale reassured her. ‘Now, no smoking in bed. See you tomorrow around ten?’

‘That would be wonderful. Good night, dear.’

Still smiling thoughtfully, Nightingale rested the phone in its cradle. Olga had been crying wolf about seeing a stranger in her yard once a week now for the past five years; it was her way of telling Nightingale she was lonely. Thoughts of tea and Olga’s homemade apple pie comforted Nightingale as she built a fire in the woodstove to ward off the chill that had accompanied the building storm. But when the fire crackled, she stood and looked at the phone again, sighed, picked it up and punched in a number.

‘Brigid,’ Nightingale began almost before Lieutenant Bowman had said hello, ‘I need to stay on this case.’

‘Why wouldn’t you be?’ Bowman replied perfunctorily.

The lieutenant came from a longtime Vermont Yankee family from Plymouth and operated in a brusque style that bordered on rudeness. Bowman was not only a smart cop, but an agile and ambitious bureaucrat. At thirty-four, she had been named the first female detective in the history of the Vermont State Police. At forty-six, she had become the first woman lieutenant in the prestigious Bureau of Criminal Investigations. Rumor had it she was in line to become a captain.

Nightingale briefed her on the drawing, the note and Gallagher’s explanation of the myth of Charun. After Bowman had her repeat it all twice, there was a protracted silence on the other end of the line. ‘Why didn’t you call me immediately after you found the note and drawing?’

Nightingale twirled the gold stud in her left earlobe and said, ‘Because I wanted to show you I could use the evidence to move the investigation forward, which I did.’

‘By not calling in an evidence team and discussing the letter with a likely suspect?’ Bowman cried. ‘Didn’t you hear this Gallagher say he was an anthropologist, an expert in myths?’

‘Of course,’ Nightingale retorted. ‘But I questioned him at length, and my instincts say he’s not the one. I agree he’s a confused New Yorker, but if that was the sole motivation for this killing, we’d have fifty thousand suspects in Vermont every weekend.’

‘He’s our prime suspect,’ Bowman insisted.

‘I haven’t ruled him out,’ Nightingale allowed. ‘And I sealed off the Potter house and had his wife and children move to her sister’s until after the evidence team is done. They’ll be there first thing in the morning.’

Silence; then Bowman asked, ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Brigid, it’s been two years.’ Nightingale twisted the telephone extension cord into knots.

‘I know, but not calling in something like that note—’

‘I need you to believe I can handle this … like you used to.’

There was a third long silence between them; then Bowman said, ‘We’ll take it day by day.’

‘Thank you, Brigid.’

‘I want your report on my desk first thing tomorrow,’ Bowman said. ‘I want that drawing and that hunting locker gone over for prints and then photographed, and a copy of the whole file sent to the FBI. Clear?’

‘Yes.’

‘The press is swamping us with calls,’ Bowman informed her. ‘I hope your Mr Gallagher doesn’t go blabbing about the note. That’s how hysteria starts.’

‘I asked him not to talk with anyone about the note or the body,’ Nightingale said. ‘I’d like your permission to keep talking to him. He seems to have insight into the killer’s mind.’

‘Maybe because he’s the killer,’ Bowman said. ‘I want to be there the next time you talk to Mr Gallagher.’

‘Fine,’ Nightingale promised. ‘And, Brigid?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you for this chance. I’ll see you at the autopsy first thing Monday morning.’

Nightingale hung up the phone. She threw her fists up in the air, shook them and did a little victory dance. Almost instantly her elation ebbed. Her palms sweated. Her tongue thickened. Her attention came to rest on the fuchsia, which she went back to quickly. She finished repotting the plant, then sat at her computer and tried to write the report, but an edgy energy got the better of her.

Cook dinner, she told herself. She turned on a boom-box CD player to Sade and heard the singer’s smoky voice fill the room. Nightingale sang along for a minute before her voice trailed off.

She focused on her breathing as she filled a four-quart pot with water and set it on the six-burner stove. From a drawer next to the stove she got out a two-quart pan and put it on a second burner. She poured spaghetti sauce from a Tupperware container she’d laid out to defrost much earlier in the day, then tugged open a cabinet door above the counter to find some garlic powder for garlic bread, since there were no fresh cloves.

Nightingale moved aside vanilla, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, looking for the correct canister. Her hand reached deeper into the cabinet, pulling down colored sprinkles for cakes and a can of baking powder. She halted, transfixed at the sight of a long-forgotten bottle of cooking sherry.

She stood there for almost five minutes, blinking the way Paula Potter had blinked when she had learned of her husband’s murder. Her breath came shallow and staccato before she noticed the garlic powder next to the sherry. She grabbed it, slammed shut the cabinet door and spun in her tracks to face the room.

‘I’m going to be all right,’ she said out loud in a wavering voice.

But in the rain-streaked glass of the bay window across the kitchen, she caught her reflection. Nightingale’s skin was colorless. Her hands shook with fear.

T
HE RAIN FINALLY PETERED
after midnight. The wind stilled, the river settled and the sky turned the shattering blue of a freak, late-season Alberta high-pressure system. By 7.30 a.m., the temperature hovered in the high thirties.

But inside the state medical examiner’s office in Burlington, Chief Mike Kerris was not grousing about the weather. ‘I want to know why I wasn’t told about this letter thirty-six hours ago.’

Lieutenant Bowman, Andie Nightingale and Mel Allen, the state’s assistant medical examiner, sat around a simple conference table. Kerris stood. His gray Lawton sweatshirt looked slept in. His stainless-steel eyes were bloodshot and watery. He had guzzled coffee nonstop during the entire autopsy, which had just concluded.

‘We wanted to make sure the finger paint was Potter’s blood so you didn’t get upset without reason,’ Lieutenant Bowman said. She wore a suit of the palest yellow. ‘Now we’ve confirmed it and told you.’

Beyond a match of Potter’s blood type with that on the note and the bridge, the state’s medical examiner had found little of import during the course of the autopsy.

A careful examination of the wounds about the dentist’s head and upper back had given no distinct picture of the type of weapon they were looking for. This much was clear, however: given Potter’s height and physical stature, as well as the angle and penetration of the blows, the killer stood over six feet tall and was extremely powerful. He had struck from behind, possibly during or after the rape. Allen felt that despite the dilution of evidence caused by the body’s dunking in the river, he had gathered enough seminal fluid for DNA matches should a prime suspect emerge.

At the same time, the evidence technicians had found no strange fingerprints inside Potter’s hunting locker, on or in the ammunition cabinet or on the bridge. The blood had been painted on the illustration with a gloved finger. The drawing ink and the sketch paper were of the highest quality, but the sort available in any reputable arts-supply store.

Nightingale had sent her report to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia, but the profilers were carrying a heavy caseload already. A psychological description of the killer was at least a week or two away. The only other strong physical evidence the crime technicians had discovered was the faint outline of size-thirteen boot tracks in the dirt under the eaves of Potter’s chicken coop.

‘Let’s not bicker here,’ Allen said. He had licked his finger and was trying to plaster down a wayward eyebrow bristle. ‘Focus on the evidence. He’s a big man. Big as you, Mike.’

‘I don’t give a damn about his shoes,’ Kerris grumbled. He slid his sweatshirt up his sinewy forearms before crossing them. ‘I’m being cut out of the investigation of the most brutal murder in Lawton’s history.’ The chief snapped his fingers and tossed his chin in Nightingale’s direction. ‘Now I get it. You’re trying to do this yourself so people forget—’

Bowman cut him off. ‘That has nothing to do with it, Chief.’

‘Bullshit,’ Kerris replied. ‘And let me tell you something: Mayor Powell’s gonna be pissed when he finds out about this drawing. He’s in the middle of delicate negotiations and he needs to stay on top of this.’

Nightingale snorted. ‘Mike, it doesn’t matter to me whether some developer from New Jersey who’s looking to build a hundred-million-dollar hotel on the mountain continues to think Lawton is a perfect Vermont community. It isn’t. Never has been. And you’d know better than most, wouldn’t you?’

The look Kerris shot Nightingale could have killed.

T
WO HOURS LATER PATRICK
Gallagher refolded the
Rutland Herald
and pushed back his plate at the Miss Lawton Diner, a restored club-car hash joint downtown between the Hard Cider Gifts building and a Ralph Lauren outlet. The booths and the red swivel counter seats were filled with locals: dairy delivery men sat beside lawyers who brushed shoulders with crunchy-granola environmental activists who nodded to country-music singers and bleary-eyed turkey hunters. All of them were either talking in hushed, concerned tones about the murder or reading the coverage in the paper.

The
Herald
’s front page carried a twenty-inch follow-up to Sunday’s story and a piece about the ecological ramifications of the proposed massive hotel-and-condominium development to be built at the base of the small ski area up on Lawton Mountain. Gallagher read the latter article until Mayor Powell was quoted spouting a platitude about the development taking Lawton into the twenty-first century.

The follow-up to the Potter killing was much more interesting and he went over it a second time. The story described the state police evidence team descending on the dentist’s home and property. The article went on to identify a bridge over the Bluekill as the likely site of the killing, but made no mention of the note or the drawing Gallagher had seen two nights before.

Lieutenant Bowman, not Nightingale, had fielded questions about the case. Both she and Chief Kerris had made statements on Sunday about state and local agencies cooperating fully in the investigation. By the second day of the story Gallagher had become an afterthought, referred to as ‘a vacationing New York City angler who had discovered Potter’s body in the Bluekill.’

Gallagher had refused to talk with the young reporter who’d called Sunday afternoon. He knew if he leaked the secret of the note, the police would leave him out of the loop. Ever since he’d seen the drawing, he’d been obsessing about the case. The tenor of his questions had shifted from the philosophical to the practical. Had Hank Potter known his killer? From the tone of the note, revenge did seem part of the killer’s motivation. Revenge on the dentist? Or revenge on Lawton? Or both?

For Gallagher, thinking about the murder was like finally awakening after a long humid sleep in the hot summer sun. He had always been energized by the exploration of new customs and mores. A murder investigation struck Gallagher as a perfect culture in which to nose around. And, he had to admit, a perfect way to avoid nosing around inside himself.

There was also Andie Nightingale. She had been on his mind as often as the details of the murder probe, a fact that he was trying to cast in a positive light. Since Emily left, Gallagher had had little interest in female companionship of any kind. Several times on Sunday, however, he had tried to call Nightingale, as much to hear her voice as to inquire about the course of the investigation. But there was no answer at her house and the dispatcher at the Bethel Barracks of the Vermont State Police said she was in the field.

Gallagher had considered calling Jerry Matthews to try to convince him that a documentary about the effects of homicide on a small New England town was infinitely more interesting than one on an early-twentieth-century priest and the Catholic rites of sainthood.

But he decided not to push his luck. Gallagher had abandoned work on three projects already in the past year in favor of extended fly-fishing expeditions. Announcing that he was quitting the research on Father D’Angelo would likely send Jerry packing and their partnership into bankruptcy and oblivion.