The Cold Blue Blood (35 page)

“That’s not why I’m sorry.”

He gazed at her curiously. “Just exactly how often do you get that angry?”

“Never. Well, almost never.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the next time it happens I just might have to kiss you. I really don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself.” He opened his door now, smiling at her brightly. “Good luck, Lieutenant. I hope the superintendent is in a talkative mood today. In fact, I hope he can’t keep his mouth shut.” Then Mitch Berger slammed the car door shut and went gallumphing off down Washington Street in the direction of the wharves.

Des watched him go, feeling as if she’d just been plunged headlong into one of her recurring bad dreams, the one where she suddenly found herself boarding an airplane without any luggage or even any idea where the plane was going or why she was getting on board.

But this was no dream. This was really happening. She and Mitch Berger. The two of them. Even though it made no sense. None.

He was more than three blocks away, nothing more than a distant blob on the sidewalk, before Des was able to stop shaking.

The Doubletree Inn was hunkered at the northernmost tip of Goat Island, the better to see Newport Harbor from. Apart from the awesome view, it was a standard issue convention hotel—fairly new, fairly big and about as charming as a military supply depot.

Des left her slicktop in a loading zone and went inside. The lobby was small and low-ceilinged. There was a piano bar. There was a gift shop. There were potted palms. A long corridor led to the ballrooms. She followed the arrows.

Registration tables were set up in the ballroom foyer, where a couple hundred lab rats from all over New England were milling around with soft drinks in their hands and name tags on their chests. Many of these forensic scientists were shes. The crime lab had long been considered law enforcement’s kitchen—it was okay for women to excel there. Once a year, they got together to network and to attend workshops on subjects like Capillary Electrophoresis Analysis and Headspace Gas Chromatography. Display booths had been set up in one of the ballrooms by the makers of lab microscopes and cameras.

Her timing was good. The annual awards luncheon had just let out.

The man himself was standing in the ballroom doorway in a navy-blue suit and gleaming black wingtips, shaking hands with the commonfolk and being charming. John Crowther was sixty, starched and straight-laced, a family man, a church-going man, a Brylcreem man. He was very good at being charming. He was also good at being open-minded, approachable and caring. In reality, he was none of these things. He was a mean, vindictive son of a bitch, a consummate political in-fighter, a man who was always on his toes, ready to deliver a punishing blow. He was also known to be someone with his eye on the governor’s mansion.

When he spotted Des standing there on the edge of the crowd, he welcomed her warmly. Introduced her around. Then steered her smoothly away from the others and murmured, “I’ve been expecting you, Lieutenant.”

“You have?” she said, surprised. “Why is that?”

“You’re Buck Mitry’s daughter, that’s why,” he replied, the politician’s public smile never leaving his narrow, rather pinched face. “You’ve been knocked off of your horse. You don’t like it. Not one bit. Neither would the Deacon. Although I’d be willing to wager my entire pension plan that he doesn’t know you’re here. And, believe me, I have one helluva pension plan.”

“Sir, the reason I am is that we have to—”

“Not here!” he cautioned her, waving at the conventioneers as he led Des across the foyer and away from them.

The superintendent found the two of them an empty banquet room and shut the door behind him, immediately dropping the smile and the charm. “I know perfectly well why you’re here, Lieutenant,” he said to her brusquely. “And I have nothing to tell you. Not one thing.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything, sir,” Des said. “Tal Bliss did—before he shot himself.”

Superintendent Crowther stared into her eyes, long and hard. “You wouldn’t be wearing a wire, would you?”

“Of course not.”

He raised his chin at her imperiously, looking her up and down. “I shouldn’t think you’d be transmitting. You’d need backup, and if there’s a soul who’s more alone at this moment I can’t imagine it. But if I were you I’d certainly have considered a tape recorder.” She had. “Not that I’d be that stupid.” She wasn’t. “Still, I’m going to have to pat you down, young lady,” he concluded with steely resolve.

“That’s fine, sir.” She removed the lightweight navy blazer she was wearing and held her arms out to her side. “You go right ahead and pat.”

He checked over her blazer first, expertly inspecting the lapels, the pockets and the lining. Then he started in on her, carefully turning back the collar and placket of her blouse, his fingers probing her stomach, her sides, the small of her back, the waistband of her slacks, her thighs, calves, ankles. He searched her scalp and dreadlocks as if he were checking her for head lice—all the while staring deeply and coldly into her eyes. Des stared straight ahead, her gaze neutral. West Point had trained her well for this particular head game. She could tolerate this, although she could barely breathe and her heart was pounding so hard she was positive he could hear it in the sound-proofed silence of the banquet room.

His own eyes were eerily opaque and dead. The superintendent never so much as blinked.

Finding nothing, he handed her back her blazer and said, “You’re running a bluff, Lieutenant. Bliss told you nothing about what happened on Big Sister Island thirty years ago.”

“I wish that were the case, sir. But it’s not.”

He turned a dining chair around and sat down at one of the bare banquet tables, swatting at a scrap of harvest-gold carpet lint on his knee. He took out a pack of Parliaments and lit one with a disposable lighter, inhaling it deeply.

“There’s no smoking in here.” Des motioned to the sign over the door.

“Arrest me, why don’t you.” He glanced around for an ashtray. Finding none, he flicked his ash on the carpet. “Go ahead, then,” he said impatiently. “Say what you came to say.”

Des took a seat. She was not the world’s most gifted natural-born con artist, so she had prepared her pitch carefully. “What Tal Bliss told me,” she began in a low, steady voice, “is that when he arrived at the murder scene, young Dolly Peck was seated on the stairs. She was sobbing uncontrollably. She was incoherent. And she was clutching that shotgun in
her own two hands.”

Superintendent Crowther said nothing to this. Merely sat there puffing on his cigarette and watching her, the light from the ballroom’s chandeliers gleaming off his shiny, stay-put hair. His eyes remained utterly expressionless.

Des plunged ahead: “Bliss told me
he
took the shotgun away from her and positioned it in Roy Weems’s dead hands so it would look like Roy shot himself. Which was exactly how it went down—even though that wasn’t what happened. It was really Dolly who killed Roy. The bastard raped her and she shot him for it, right there in his soiled bed. His wife, Louisa, was working in the main house. She came running when she heard the gunshot. And when she came up those stairs Dolly shot her, too.” Des halted for a reaction out of the superintendent. Still nothing. But he didn’t deny it. Not any of it. “You walked into a real, first-class mess, sir. Dolly should have gone down for their murders. Well, maybe not Roy’s. Maybe that was self-defense. But Louisa? Not a chance. The reality, however, was that Roy and Louisa Weems had no chance. They were yankees. Dolly was an ambassador’s daughter. A rich, troubled girl who was clearly headed for a good long stay at a mental hospital no matter what you did. So you tidied up their mess for them. There was no mention about finding her prints on the gun. No mention of conducting any kind of a test to determine whether she had fired that gun. Even the matter of her rape was kept sealed. You simply let her go, even though you knew she did it. Everyone knew.”

Superintendent Crowther took one last pull on his cigarette before he ground the butt out against the heel of his shoe. He laid it on the table and clasped his hands together in his lap, raising an eyebrow at her. “What do you want from me, Lieutenant?”

“The truth, sir. That’s all.”

He let out a grim laugh. “
The truth?
I’ve been in law enforcement for thirty-five years, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that
the
truth
is whatever someone wants it to be. O. J. Simpson was telling
the truth
when he said he was busy practicing chip shots on his front lawn while someone else was cutting up Nicole and Ron. Bill Clinton was telling
the truth
when he wagged his finger at us and told us he never had sexual relations with that Lewinsky woman. Did Dolly Peck kill Roy and Louisa Weems? You want
the truth?
Maybe she did. I don’t know. I never knew.”

“You put her back out on the street.”

“I did what I was told to do by the powers that be. I was a scared, confused kid, just like you are at this very minute. I’d just gotten married. I was living from paycheck to paycheck. And that girl was a
Peck.
I don’t have to tell you that the wealthy elite get treated differently than everyone else. For crying out loud, that’s how they
stay
the wealthy elite.”

“How tight were you and Tal Bliss?”

He glanced at her curiously now. “Why, what did he say about it?”

“That you weren’t.”

“Then why ask me about it?”

“He became a state trooper when he got back from ‘Nam, that’s why.”

“Well, it wasn’t any kind of a payoff, if that’s where you’re heading,” he said. “Tal was bright and competent and they were happy to have him. I did try to offer him my counsel on occasion. To me, he was wasting his time as a resident trooper. But he ignored me. The job in Dorset was all he ever wanted.”

For the simplest of reasons, Des reflected. So he could look after Dolly.

“Let’s stop dancing around, Lieutenant,” Superintendent Crowther blustered, abruptly seizing back the conversation. “Who else knows about this story Bliss supposedly told you?”

“No one.”

“The Deacon?”

“No one.”

“Internal Affairs?”

“No one.”

“You came right to me?”

“I came right to you.”

“Okay, here’s what I believe, Lieutenant,” he said. “I believe that you’re either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid. Because your handling of this case is presently under investigation by I.A. And one word from me that you’ve shown up here, peppering me with wild accusations, and you will no longer be in the employ of the Connecticut State Police.” He paused, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I like to think I know your father pretty well. And he’s not stupid. So I’m going to give you the benefit of your genes. I’m figuring that you’ve come directly to me because you want to cut a deal. You’re thinking I’ll be grateful to you—so grateful I’ll somehow help you out of this mess that you presently find yourself in. Does that about cover it?”

Des said nothing to that.

Crowther narrowed his eyes at her piercingly. “Then again, this could all be a scam on your part. You climbing way, way out on a shaky limb. And me sitting right here with a chain saw in my hand. Which is it, young lady?”

“I’m trying to find out who killed Torry Mordarski, Niles Seymour and Tuck Weems,” she answered quietly.

“Tal Bliss killed them,” Crowther said easily. “It’s clear. It’s clean. It’s closed. Why can’t you accept it, Lieutenant? I have. Everyone has.”

“I can’t accept it because if Dolly murdered those two people thirty years ago she may have murdered again. And if Tal Bliss knew that, he may have taken his own life to protect hers.”

“I don’t buy it,” he said dismissively. “That’s too high a price for anyone to pay.”

“He would have paid it. He’d loved Dolly since he was eight years old. If it meant shutting down my investigation, I have no doubt that he would have paid it. None.”

Crowther got up out of his chair and began to pace around the room with his hands in his pockets, distractedly jangling his coins and keys. He finally came to a stop, gazing at her sternly. “Do you want to know what I think?”

“Yessir, I do.”

“I think I’m not going to tell anybody we had this conversation. I think you’re a good officer who got a raw deal. And I think this flap with I.A. will blow over. In fact, I’m prepared to guarantee it will.”

Outwardly, Des’s expression remained guarded and serious. Inwardly, she was doing cartwheels. Because she wasn’t wrong. Not about any of it.

“When it does,” he went on, “I want you reassigned to my team. Politically, it will be good for both of us. I can help your career. And you can help me in the minority community. You come across very well. You’re an extremely telegenic, well-spoken young lady. I especially like your hair.”

“You do?” Des absolutely could not believe they were talking about her hair.

“I do,” he said earnestly. “It conveys that you’re someone who’s new and modern. Someone who understands what’s going on out there.” Now the superintendent smiled at her tightly, as if it were causing him great pain. Possibly, it was. “So you see, Lieutenant, where the rubber hits the road, we both want the same things.”

“Do we?” she asked him challengingly.

He narrowed his eyes at her again. “Don’t we?”

“I really don’t know, sir. Because I don’t believe this case is closed. I believe the murderer’s still out there, walking around. And I believe you know it, too. And that’s the part I will never, ever be able to accept.”

Now Superintendent Crowther glared at her, a vein in his temple beginning to bulge. “Let me spell something out for you, Lieutenant,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “If you’re not my friend you’re my enemy. And you don’t ever want me for an enemy. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly. Thank you for your candor, sir. And your time. Good day.” Des started for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going, young lady? We’re not done talking—!”