The Cold Blue Blood (34 page)
She let out a short, bitter laugh. “Satisfied? That is one strange way of putting it.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll put it to you another way—you don’t believe Tal Bliss did all of this by himself, do you?”
“The case is closed, Mitch.”
“You’re not answering me. What do you
believe?”
“I
believe
in evidence.”
“So do I. That’s why I called. I have a very important question to ask you: Is there any chance that Bliss didn’t shoot himself?”
She fell silent for so long that Mitch said, “Hello … ?”
“What, you mean like was he murdered?” she finally responded. “Not a chance. I got there in two seconds flat. I saw no one leaving the scene. And the coroner found nothing to indicate a struggle. The man’s clothes were clean. The man’s skin was clean—other than the powder burns on his face. The only prints on the gun were his. And the handwriting on the suicide note was his. No, it was suicide. Bank on it.”
Mitch thought this over carefully. Sheila
could
be wrong about that element. But that didn’t necessarily blow his theory out of the water. There was another explanation. An even simpler one.
Now it was Lieutenant Mitry who plunged into the silence. “Exactly where are you going with this, anyway?”
“You said Torry Mordarski registered at the Saybrook Point Inn under an assumed name.”
“Correct. Angela Becker was the name on the driver’s license.”
“Did anyone see Angela Becker and Niles Seymour together?”
“Well, yeah. Bud Havenhurst and Redfield Peck did. And they positively identified Angela as Torry from Torry’s photos. This is old news. You know all of this.”
“No, I mean, did anyone
else
see them together?”
“Such as who?”
“Such as a chambermaid or room service waiter. Another guest in the dining room.”
“I don’t remember. Why, is it important?”
“Ultra.”
“Then let me get my notes, okay?”
Mitch waited anxiously while she fetched them. He could hear her footsteps as she returned. Hear a whole lot of meowing, too.
“I’m showing no other corroborative testimony,” she said, leafing through her notepad. “That’s a no.”
“So Bud and Red are the only ones who saw them together?”
“That’s a yes. What of it?”
“Where are you going to be tomorrow, Lieutenant?”
“I’m driving to Newport in the morning.”
“Pick me up on your way. I’m coming with you.”
“Um, okay, I don’t recall inviting you.”
“But don’t come anywhere near Big Sister. I don’t want people to know we’re still in contact. I’ll be waiting for you in the parking lot of the Super Stop and Shop in Old Saybrook. What are you driving?”
“My usual ride, but—”
“Fine. Shall I look for you around ten?”
“Give me a reason. Give me one good reason.”
“I can give you two. There’s a place in Newport called the Black Pearl that’s supposed to serve the world’s best New England clam chowder. And we have to talk.”
“About what?”
“Not what,” Mitch corrected her. “Who.”
She drew her breath in, exasperated. “Okay,
who?”
“Yogi Berra—as in it ain’t over till it’s over. Good night, Lieutenant.”
Mitch hung up the phone and flicked on his computer. A plan was forming in his mind. One that was ingenious and daring and foolproof. He began to write, setting the wheels of his plan in motion. As his fingers flew over the keyboard he realized he was so excited that he could barely sit still.
It would work. Mitch knew it would work.
He knew it because he had seen this movie before.
MITCH BERGER’S HIGH RIDING, kidney-colored Studebaker pickup truck was not exactly hard to spot in the half-empty Stop & Shop parking lot. The man himself was seated there behind the steering wheel, drumming it nervously with his fingers when Des pulled into the empty space alongside of him.
He climbed out and got in next to her, looking rumpled and unshaven. His hair was uncombed, his sad puppy eyes red and puffy. “Morning, Lieutenant. How’s your cold?”
“It was never a cold. And I feel a whole lot better than you look, if you want to know the truth.”
“I didn’t sleep very well last night.”
“Why all of this secrecy?” she demanded as the two of them sat there in her cruiser, engine idling.
“It’s important that no one on the island see us together.”
“You told me that already. What you didn’t tell me was why.”
“I’ve never been in a police car before,” he spoke up, glancing around at the interior with keen, sudden interest. “You don’t have an on-board computer?”
Des shook her head. “Mobile data terminals cost major bucks. And we’re a big public agency. The bigger they are, the slower they are at keeping current. The IRS is still using equipment that’s twenty years out of date.”
“Well, that’s comforting.”
“The only agency using equipment that’s even older is the FAA.”
“Well, that’s not,” Mitch said, his fingers busily probing the dashboard. “What’s this thing?”
“My radio.”
“And what does this do?”
“Stop touching my damned stuff, will you?!”
“Sorry, I’m a little wired this morning,” he said. “Kind of grouchy yourself, aren’t you?”
“I have excellent reason to be,” Des huffed, easing her car out onto Route 1 in the direction of the I-95 on-ramp.
Mostly, she was anxious. When Mitch had said there might be more to the Tal Bliss suicide, she had had to find out what it was. She desperately wanted there to be more—something, anything that would make her feel less responsible for his death. She also knew, down deep inside, that she had agreed to let Mitch tag along because she wanted to see him again. Although now that the man was sitting there next to her she could not imagine why. He was pudgy. He was strange. He dressed like a high school chemistry teacher. Plus he was edgy and annoying and way, way white.
Damn, girl, what were you thinking?
She steered them onto the highway, heading north. Newport was about an hour and a half ride up the coast, much of it through dropdead gorgeous little shoreline towns like Mystic and Stonington and Watch Hill, Rhode Island, which had the distinction of being home to the oldest merry-go-round in America. She settled into the right lane at a comfortable 60, a lengthy procession of cars and trucks falling cautiously into line behind her, and said, “Okay, you’re on. Talk at me.”
“You first,” he insisted. “Why are we going to Newport?”
“
We’re
going because Superintendent Crowther is the lunchtime speaker today at the annual convention of the Northeastern Association of Forensic Scientists. I can buttonhole him afterward. Otherwise, the man’s totally not accessible. Not unless I snag him outside his house, which would not be appropriate. It would be like I’m stalking him.”
“And this isn’t?”
“I have to talk to him,” Des said firmly.
“Why, what does he know?”
“What actually happened to Roy and Louisa Weems. The real story behind their deaths. The real story behind Dolly Peck’s rape.”
“Wait, Dolly was
raped?”
“By Roy,” Des affirmed, glancing sidelong at him. “Tal Bliss found their bodies. Crowther was the investigating officer. His report was full of holes. That’s why I have to see him. I have to find out what he knows.”
“We both do.” Mitch rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Hot damn, my article just got a whole lot better.”
“What article?” she demanded sharply. “You didn’t tell me about any article.”
“I’m writing a piece for my paper’s Sunday magazine.”
“I thought you weren’t that kind of journalist.”
“I’m usually not. But this sort of thing doesn’t usually happen to me. So when they asked me, I said yes. Why, do you have a problem with it?”
“Hell, yes. When I agreed to let you tag along I didn’t realize you were acting as a member of the news media.”
“You’re not going to kick me out of the car now, are you?”
“I’m thinking about it,” she fumed angrily. “I sure as hell am.”
They rode on in charged silence. They were nearing Stonington, the one-time Portuguese fishing village near the Rhode Island state line that was now a yachter’s paradise. Lush green pastures and wetlands surrounded it, the Sound glittering in the distance. There were certainly worse places to be ditched. But it was still a long way from home. And the gentle blue morning sky was streaked with red along the horizon. A storm was due to arrive before nightfall.
“Look, I’ll fill you in on as much as I can,” Des said finally. “But I have to see the man alone. And you are not quoting me as a source on this particular aspect of the case. I am already in enough trouble. Deal?”
“Deal. Only, what makes you think he’ll talk to you?”
“He’ll talk to me.”
“Why, because your father is deputy superintendent?”
“That’s got nothing to do with anything.” She could feel Mitch’s eyes on her.
“How come you didn’t tell me about him?”
“Did you tell me about your people?”
“No,” he conceded. “No, I didn’t.”
“So why should I be telling you about mine? Besides, never mind about me. You’re the one who’s up now. Talk at me.”
“Not a chance,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “If I tell you what I know before you talk to Crowther, then I’m handing you my only leverage. You’ll have zero reason to fill me in.”
“Um, okay, our relationship is deteriorating by the second here …”
“We haven’t got a relationship—not when it comes to business. First you talk to Crowther. Then I’ll talk. For now, let’s just enjoy the scenery. Beautiful part of the country, isn’t it?”
Des promptly pulled over onto the shoulder and came to a stop, seething.
“Hey, isn’t this illegal unless it’s an emergency?”
“Oh, it’s an emergency, all right,” she said as they idled there, cars whizzing past them. “I’m about to call nine-one-one to come save your sorry ass.”
He grinned at her maddeningly. “You probably hear this all the time, but you’re really quite lovely when you’re angry.”
“Stop jamming me, doughboy!”
Mitch’s eyes widened.
“Doughboy?
Am I detecting a slight racial subtext here again?”
“What you’re detecting is your face on the verge of coming into full frontal contact with my fist!”
“Lieutenant, I’m just trying to do my job,” he explained patiently. “It’s not a nice job. I know that. Reporters are not nice people. I know that, too. But this story is something I need to do in order to get this horrible nightmare out of my system. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Maybe I can,” Des allowed, studying him. “But I have to tell you—I liked you a whole lot better back when you were … what did you call yourself, mildew?”
“I think the word I used was fungus. And that makes us even.”
“Is that right? How so?”
“I prefer you as a starving artist. So let’s just call it a draw, okay?”
“You can call it whatever you damned please. To me, you’re nothing but a raw dog now—somebody’s who’s strictly out for himself. But I’m fine with it. These eyes are wide open.” She resumed driving, her eyes on the road, back straight, both hands gripping the wheel.
Neither of them spoke for a long while.
It was Mitch who finally broke the quiet. They were in Rhode Island by then. “Okay, maybe I overplayed my hand a little,” he conceded.
“No maybe.”
“Then again, maybe you’re just trying to make me feel guilty so I’ll show you the cards I’m playing.”
She let that one slide on by. Just drove. And waited.
“Allright, I’m playing the Fibonacci Series,” he finally revealed.
Des furrowed her brow at him. “Wait, wait … That was the name of the picture hanging on your wall, wasn’t it? The one with all of those lines.”
He nodded. “My wife’s design plan. It’s a variation of the Golden Section—one of the basic systems of proportion dating back to antiquity.”
“Mitch, why are you talking at me about geometry?”
“I’m not talking at you about geometry, Lieutenant,” he said quietly. “I’m talking at you about people.”
And with that Mitch Berger shut down on her, same as he had the first time she interviewed him in his carriage house. She would get no more out of him. Not now, anyway.
Damn, what was he talking about?
At Hope Valley Des got off I-95 and onto Route 138, a two-lane rural road that snaked its way through low, fertile farm country before it hit Narragansett Bay. A bridge took them over its narrow West Passage to Jamestown, where the tollbooths for the Newport Bridge were. It took them out over the bay’s broad East Passage and into Newport, the scruffy colonial seaport that New York robber barons had turned into their summer playground at the end of the nineteenth century. These days, yachters were drawn to its marinas. Tourists came to gawk at the gargantuan Bellevue Avenue mansions and to stroll the historic waterfront, where the streets were narrow and the traffic impossible.
Des turned right at the bottom of the exit ramp and followed the signs for downtown Newport, passing in between two vast cemeteries before she turned right onto America’s Cup Avenue. Her destination was the Doubletree Inn out on Goat Island, an old naval installation that was situated out in the harbor across from Market Square. The Goat Island connector road was just past Bridge Street. There was a small park at the mouth of the connector road. Benches overlooked the shipyard and the neighboring district of immaculately restored three-hundred-year-old houses that fronted on Washington Street.
Des glanced at her watch. It was just past twelve-thirty.
“I can find the Black Pearl from here on foot,” Mitch said. “I’ll be waiting for you there, spoon in hand.”
She pulled over at the park and rolled down her window. The breeze was cool and tangy with the scent of the bay. Soft gray clouds were beginning to form in the western sky beyond the Rose Island lighthouse.
“Look, I owe you one,” she said. “I’m sorry I called you doughboy.”
“Not to worry, I’m a pro. It won’t affect our negotiations.”