Short Squeeze (22 page)

“Do you remember Edna Jackery?” I asked.

Winthrop furrowed his brow.

“Jackery. Familiar name.”

“Your family has been burying their family for decades.”

“I wouldn’t have phrased it quite that way, but I understand what you’re saying,” he said. He leaned both elbows on the top of the desk and set his chin on top of his folded hands.

“You probably remember she was killed in a hit-and-run about a year ago,” I said. “Somewhere between the medical examiner’s and here some of Edna got separated from the rest of Edna. Any ideas?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“I know she left the M.E. intact and was cremated by you folks,”
I said. “So I’m wondering why pieces of Edna keep showing up in places where they don’t belong.”

“Curious.”

“Does cremation happen here or off-site somewhere?” I asked.

He looked around as if the crematorium was just outside the door and down the hall.

“Did you say you were an attorney?” he asked me.

I nodded.

“Is the family aware of this situation?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, and they won’t be if I have anything to do with it. This is an entirely private inquiry,” I said.

His silence seemed to say he was weighing his options. I waited him out.

“How do I say this delicately,” he said.

“Not too delicately for my sake, Mr. Winthrop. I’m a lawyer. I’ve heard it all.”

“For certain items, by-products of the embalming process, we have a small furnace at the facility. For total cremation, we have a long-term arrangement with a crematorium service,” said Winthrop. “The deceased from the medical examiner usually come with the family’s instructions. If Mrs. Jackery was cremated, that was her family’s wish. We have no direct involvement in this beyond preparing the proper manifest, picking up the deceased, holding services, then scheduling the cremation. Frankly, this all sounds thoroughly appalling. You are sure that some of Mrs. Jackery became detached in the process?”

“According to the DNA, at least one part we’re sure of,” I said. “Who picked her up at the M.E. and dropped her off at the crematorium?”

“Did you say it was a year ago?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Winthrop rose slowly from his chair and went over to a tall oak
filing cabinet. He flicked his fingers across the file tabs until he reached the right spot. He pulled out a file and opened it, and took a moment to read through the papers. Then he sat back in his chair and put both hands flat on the desk.

“Alden Winthrop the fourth. My son. He’s just breaking into the business, learning the ropes. As I did—start at the bottom and work your way up.”

“Then he’s the one we need to talk to,” I said.

This pained Winthrop, though it was hard to tell why. Unless it was the obvious—that here was this pushy woman, intruding on him and asking unsettling questions. In fact, he had a perfect right to tell me to take a hike. That he hadn’t so far was more likely caution in the face of a threat than professional courtesy.

“I’m beginning to wonder if we should be having this conversation,” said Winthrop. “I don’t wish to be rude, but the irregularities are rather extreme.”

It was too bad that the arms on my big leather chair were broad, solid oak, providing a hard surface for me to tap my fingernails. I realized I was doing it when the sound drew Winthrop’s attention.

“Here’s the thing, Mr. Winthrop,” I said, sitting back on my hands.

“You can call me Alden.”

“Alden. A client of mine was killed recently under what the police consider suspicious circumstances. There’s a connection between his death and Edna Jackery’s remains. That’s all I can tell you and I shouldn’t be telling you that. You’re under absolutely no obligation to talk to me about this, but I’m only a couple steps ahead of the Southampton Police, and with them it’s a different story.”

“In what way?”

“Let’s just say, Alden, you won’t find them as sensitive to your interests as I am,” I said.

Color would have been draining out of his face if there had been any color there in the first place.

“Should I be reaching out to my own attorney?” he asked.

“Not a bad idea,” I said. “But should you need any help from me with the cops, you’ll wait till I talk to your kid.”

I said this as gently as I could, but there was no disguising the implication. After some more silent deliberation, Winthrop picked up his desk phone and dialed.

“Denny, it’s your father,” he said into the receiver. “Are you still in Building Two?”

He listened to the answer.

“I know you said you would be. I was merely asking. There is someone here who wants to talk to you.”

Another pause.

“I’ll let her explain that. She’s on her way over,” he said, then hung up the phone without saying good-bye, as if to thwart the next objection.

“It wouldn’t be a family business if we didn’t work with family, now would it?” said Winthrop, almost to himself, which probably explained something, though I wasn’t sure what.

Building Two looked like a big two-story garage with a row of eight bays. There was a side door at the end of a path. I opened it without knocking. The door led into a small foyer, with another door that led into a large open area, much larger than it looked from the outside. It was brilliantly lit by banks of industrial fluorescent lighting. The floor was painted a spotless dove gray. Parked inside were a pair of hearses, a blue van, a vintage something covered in canvas, and at the far end, a Ford pickup truck, the official vehicle of Eastern Suffolk County. The vehicles that were exposed looked recently detailed, polished to a finish you could use to check your mascara.

The back wall extended well beyond the depth of the garage bays. In one corner was a virtual suite, complete with a single bed—brutally unmade—dresser, fridge, top-loading freezer, sink, and a card table with two chairs. The rest of the space was crammed with folding
chairs, tents, portable pulpits, and PA systems, flower boxes on wheels, easels to hold photo collages of the departed, and other accoutrement you’d expect to be in the service of a funeral home.

Except for the half dozen surfboards, ice hockey sticks, aquarium, kayak, and diving gear.

In the middle of a small open space was a padded thing on skids being kicked and punched by a young man with a long blond ponytail and a tattoo of Groucho Marx on his muscular shoulder.

He treated me to about five minutes of vigorous pummeling of the defenseless equipment, to which he gave a bow before acknowledging me with a wide, humorless smile.

“Once I start a sequence, I have to finish. It’s a discipline,” he said.

He walked briskly across the canvas, slipped through the ropes, and offered me his sweaty, taped-up hand.

“Denny Winthrop.” He held eye contact and my hand longer than necessary in that reflexive way good-looking young guys always do. I knew how to hold back my gratitude.

“Jackie Swaitkowski.”

I pulled back my hand until he relented and let go. He swept a towel off the floor and dabbed his face.

“What’s this about?” he asked. “My old man wouldn’t say.”

“It’s a little complicated,” I said. “Can we sit down?”

“Sure, you can,” said Denny, “but I have to stand. It’s part of the cooldown.”

He used one hand to snap open a folding chair, which he dropped down in front of me. I sat.

I gave Denny the same basic briefing I’d given his father. I watched his face as I talked but saw no change in his confident poise.

“If the old man says I shipped the stiff, I guess I did. A year ago’s a long time. I don’t usually get to know the cargo all that well.”

His smile grew slightly, amused by his own wit.

I asked Denny to describe the body-shipping process. He said he
just pulls the plain blue van up to a loading dock at the M.E.’s, exchanges paperwork with a lab grunt, and takes possession of a fully stocked body bag. After the funeral, he drives the body in a special wooden box to the crematorium in Riverhead. He said it was their job to send the ashes back by UPS.

“I never have to look at them,” he said. “It’s strictly pickup and drop off. Other than that, I don’t do cadaver shit. I made that clear to the old man when I started working here. It totally weirds me out.”

He dropped his hands to his sides and shook out his arms while doing a light aerobic dance on the tips of his toes.

“So where was the drop off?” I asked. “The crematorium?”

Denny continued to bounce around on his toes, puffing out his breath and filling the room with his dank, athletic odor.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, putting the emphasis on “you,” as if anyone else’s inquiry would be more legitimate.

“You might not remember that Edna Jackery was killed in a hit-and-run. This is part of that ongoing investigation,” I said.

“You’re a cop? I thought you were a lawyer.”

“That’s right. An officer of the court.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked.

Damn, I thought. Far brighter people had bought that line, and I’d never had to come up with a reasonable response. So I did the sensible thing and pretended I hadn’t heard what he said.

“There were some irregularities connected to the disposition of Mrs. Jackery’s remains,” I said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

“Really? That’s all?”

“I don’t need you to tell me where the crematorium is,” I said. “I can find out on my own. It would just save me a lot of time if you did.”

Denny stopped hopping, apparently having achieved full cooldown.

“We use the regional place in Riverhead,” he said. “Usually twenty-four-hour turnaround. Stiff arrives in the morning, a bag of dust comes
out the next day. We supply the urns or gilded boxes or humidors, or whatever else the family wants. Families buy all kinds of worthless crap for dead people. Seems like a waste of money to me, but the old man says it’s where all the profit is.”

“So you’re learning the family trade,” I said.

“Fuck no. I’m working on my stash. All I need is for my deals to go the way they’re supposed to go and I’m getting as far away from this fucking place as humanly possible.”

“I have a feeling that wouldn’t please your father.”

“I don’t give a crap about pleasing the old man. It’s not my fault he likes hanging around with corpses all day.”

“Who’s this old man you keep talking about?” I asked. “Are you referring to your father?”

“Who do you think I’m talking about?” he said.

“Good. Then start calling him ‘Dad,’ or ‘my father.’ ”

“I’ll call him what I want. What do you care?”

“I don’t like the disrespect. Especially toward your father, who’s only trying to keep you from turning into a worthless piece of crap yourself.”

Denny’s face lit up in a bright blotchy red.

“That’s just rude,” he said.

“You oughta know.”

He stopped dancing and stood flat on his feet, executing a series of shadow punches. Then he began to advance slowly toward me until the punches began to get closer and closer to my head. Eventually, I could feel the breeze from the fists flashing by. I kept my expression in neutral, with my eyes, unimpressed, cast up to his face.

Then I stood, very slowly and carefully, trying hard not to lean outside the vertical plane defined by Denny’s pumping fists. As always, my thoughts were focused on the left side of my face, the slightly numb, nicely reconstructed part. Staying in the chair probably would have kept it safer. But you can’t stand your ground if you aren’t standing up.

I folded my arms, partly to shrink myself down and partly to hide my shaking hands. Denny started circling me, his fists still boxing the air. I could have stayed fixed in position or turned with him. I turned so I could keep my eyes locked on his face, and so I could see the incoming blow should one eventually connect.

“Stop doing this now, and I’ll pretend it didn’t happen,” I said.

He didn’t stop. Instead, he closed his eyes and picked up the pace. My heart lit up in my chest, but I kept my concentration on the rhythm of his jabs, trying to guess the right moment to jump clear.

“If you hurt me, it’ll be an assault charge. I guarantee you,” I said, the timbre of my voice shakier than I wanted it to be.

He stopped abruptly, dropped his hands, opened his eyes, and grinned. Or maybe it was a leer. I was too unnerved to tell.

“Assault? I’m just practicing my patterns. You’re supposed to stay still. Can I help it if you move?”

I kicked the chair I’d been sitting on out of the way. I moved into his personal space, close enough to see the pores on his nose and smell his sweat, perfumed by deodorant, or maybe aftershave.

“That sounded an awful lot like a legal argument. If you think you could sock me and escape the consequences by way of your superior command of the law, go ahead. Give me your best shot.”

The leer was still there, but the confidence behind his eyes wavered just a bit.

“My best shot would put you in one of those,” he said, jerking his head toward the hearse.

I just stared at him, which should have been more fun. He was one of those guys who would have been attractive if you could fit him with a different personality.

“Nothing pulls together cops and lawyers like the murder of one of their own,” I said.

The tension in his frame drained off with some of his overconfidence. The leer turned into some analog of a smile.

“Nobody’s murdering anybody,” he said. “Just goofing around.”

I backed away from him, farther away than necessary. It felt better having a little air between us, though I wasn’t about to turn my back.

“Run through the pickup-and-drop-off sequence again, one more time. And fill in the names of everyone you talked to at both ends,” I said, pulling a pad and pen out of my back pocket.

“You’re kidding.”

I clicked the retractable pen and waited. He went through the process again, this time adding a few details and some additional sarcasm. He claimed not to remember who handed off the corpse at the M.E.’s but named the people at the crematorium. He didn’t add much more to what I already had, but I was more confident in the story’s accuracy.