The Ragman's Memory Read online

  “We figure she was killed right about when you last saw her—”

  “I didn’t—” he interrupted.

  I grabbed his arm tightly to shut him up. “But you sure as hell had a grudge against her, Patty, and you’re the one we got. You catch my drift?”

  I could smell the sweat breaking out on him. “You guys are nuts. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even know where the fuck she went. This is crazy.”

  I squeezed his arm harder. “Patty, Patty, listen to me. Maybe you didn’t care about the money, but I bet the people it belonged to cared a lot. Am I right?”

  “Sure. They were pissed. But murder? For a lousy thousand bucks?”

  “People kill for a parking place, Patty. Think about it. You want to keep their names to yourself, it’s up to you. But then we got no one to focus on but you.”

  He nodded jerkily. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you.”

  I pulled back and straightened up. “You have a phone I could use?”

  He pointed across the room. “Next to the sofa.”

  “Thanks. You give my partner those names. I’m calling the State’s Attorney’s office. We’ve got a little paperwork to do. By the way, Shawna didn’t lie to you. She was eighteen.”

  8

  I WAS STRETCHED OUT ON MY OFFICE FLOOR with the lights off when Ron walked in. In the glow from the outer office, I could see he was holding a Dunkin’ Donuts bag in one hand and a folded newspaper in the other. “You sleeping?” he asked doubtfully.

  I sat up, crossing my legs, and reached up for one of the containers of coffee he pulled out of the bag. “Not really. Turn on the desk lamp.”

  It was almost five in the morning. We’d spent most of the night processing Patty Redding and sorting out the details with Carol Green, the unlucky Deputy SA on call. We had gotten a judge out of bed to sign a search warrant and had found enough marijuana and pills squirreled away in Patty’s freezer for a felony charge. We’d also hunted down Francis Bertin—Patty’s host—at his girlfriend’s house, and Robbie Messier, who’d housed Patty and Shawna the previous summer, and had grilled them for a while. Now we had patrol units all over town rounding up the four people who’d financed Patty’s dope deal.

  It had been an active night.

  Ron sat in my chair and handed me the waxy bag. Inside were four creme-filled, sugar-coated donuts, all of which Gail regularly assured me were cooked with animal lard. I sank my teeth into the first one with unrepentant pleasure. A swig of black coffee completed the effect. I groaned with satisfaction.

  Ron smiled and handed me the newspaper. “Hot off the presses.”

  I took it from him and snapped it open. “I’m glad we got to Redding before this did. Made our job a whole lot simpler.”

  The banner headline, however, was not what I’d expected. It read, “Bank Finds White Knight,” and underneath, “B of B saved by local businessman Benjamin Chambers.”

  I scanned the page below the fold and found, “Police Give More Details on Body,” in much smaller print, along with a dark, one-column-wide picture of Shawna.

  The article was short, cold, and to the point. I was surprised by my own disappointment. “Didn’t take ’em long to lose interest.”

  “It’s still front-page,” Ron countered, “and tonight’s activities will keep it hot. But it’s a little rough competing with a fifteen-million-dollar bailout.”

  I looked back to the top of the page. “Is that what happened?”

  “Chambers came out of nowhere and took over Lacaille’s belly-up convention center project. Lot of people’re breathing a whole lot easier today, especially the bank.”

  My mind returned to the night before, when I’d driven by the abandoned construction site on my way to the Reformer, thinking it a monument to the price of greed. So much for my future as an oracle. Benjamin Chambers II, nicknamed Junior, was the semi-reclusive elder of two local brothers who’d inherited millions from their wily, land-rich father—the man most responsible for turning the Putney Road into the commercial wasteland it was. Junior was reported to be a quiet, retiring philanthropist, but so publicity-shy that very few people I knew had ever set eyes on him—no mean feat in a town this small.

  Ron continued, “The article’s pretty sketchy, but it looks like Carroll Construction is staying on the site, picking up where they left off, and that Chambers has assumed all of Gene Lacaille’s debts.”

  Gene Lacaille was the developer who’d been forced to drop the project.

  “Did it say how much Chambers had to pay?” I asked, still skimming the article.

  “Nope. You going to eat all of those?”

  I handed him the bag of donuts and put the newspaper on the floor beside me. “Well, I can see why Shawna got second billing—there’s probably not a Realtor, landowner, politician, or subcontractor in town who doesn’t have a vested interest in this deal.”

  Ron swallowed a mouthful of donut. “You think one of those four guys Patty fingered will fess up to killing her?”

  “For a thousand bucks split four ways? I think Patty was right about that one.” I got up and stretched. “I’m going home for a few hours’ sleep. You going to pack it in?”

  He retrieved his paper and the remaining donuts. “Soon. You want Sammie to hold off interviewing those guys until you get back?”

  “No, she and Willy can have at ’em. They’ll probably just back up Patty’s story. My bet is Shawna got into trouble after she ripped them off. Wilma said she left home in late April. She had her hair cut by Susan Lucey on the twenty-third, checked into Mother Gert’s the same night, and then appeared on Patty’s doorstep shortly thereafter, maybe the twenty-fourth. By his account, she stayed two or three weeks and then disappeared. J.P. thinks she probably died in early June, which leaves about a three-week gap when she had a bundle of hot money in her hand and a strong dislike of being seen in public. But somehow, for some reason, instead of leaving town, she met up with someone who pumped her full of barbiturates, probably killed her, and then dumped her in a field.”

  “Couldn’t Patty have killed her after catching up with her?” Ron asked, turning off my desk lamp and following me into the deserted outer office.

  “If you’re pissed off at somebody for stealing your cash, you beat the shit out of them. Maybe you kill them. But you don’t carefully sedate them for a week. J.P. said it took three doses a day to maintain the drug level they found in her hair—that’s no crime of passion. It had to be someone we don’t know about yet.”

  “Maybe Patty kept her alive because she wouldn’t tell him where the money was,” Ron persisted for argument’s sake.

  “She couldn’t’ve told him much if she was that sedated,” I answered and paused with my hand on the squad room doorknob. “Which tells us maybe she was being held for some reason.”

  “Like a ransom,” Ron murmured.

  “Could be… ” I pressed my palm against my forehead, feeling a growing pain right behind my eyes. “I may be wrong, but I don’t think we’ll find an easy answer to this one.”

  Ron nodded his agreement and put his hand on my shoulder. “Have a nice nap, boss.”

  I waved as I passed through the doorway and then abruptly stopped. “Did one of our guys process a dead bum, night before last?”

  Ron raised his eyebrows. “Yeah—natural causes. It was in the dailies.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Milo Douglas.”

  I turned around, startled. “I knew Milo—I didn’t know he had any medical problems.”

  Ron gave me a blank look. “Beats me. The AME said natural causes. He was found under the Whetstone bridge. George Capullo worked the call—talked to some of the other guys down there. They told him Milo had a fit and died, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “The doc found a bottle of heart meds in his pocket, and George checked it out with the hospital. Milo had come in several times this past year complaining of chest pain. The prescription was legit.”

  “He have a history
of seizures?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Want me to ask George when he comes on?”

  I shook my head and headed back toward the exit. “Don’t worry about it. Just being nosy.”

  I checked my watch as I stepped outside. Despite the hour, it was still as black as night. I knew Gail would be gone by the time I got home—she liked to get a couple of hours in at the office alone, before the phones began ringing. I wondered how long she could keep up this pace. A single all-nighter later, I felt like hell.

  I got into my car, its vinyl seat stiff with cold, and cranked over the sluggish engine. The heater would kick in about the time I pulled into my driveway.

  I sighed and headed out, letting my mind wander. Where it finally snagged, however, wasn’t on Gail, or Shawna Davis, or even on Junior Chambers saving Brattleboro’s fat from the fire.

  What I couldn’t get out of my mind was the death of Milo Douglas.

  · · ·

  Sammie Martens was waiting for me at the Municipal Building’s rear entrance when I returned later that morning. She was so wired up she was shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Why didn’t you call me last night?”

  “Didn’t need to. And I wanted you fresh for this morning.”

  “I could’ve done both. You know that.”

  “Yes, and you would’ve been beating the hell out of the coffee machine by noon.” I stopped halfway down the hall and faced her. “Don’t start taking being my number two too seriously, Sammie. You’re still part of a team. Ron was standing around—I used him, and he was all I needed till this morning. Next time, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get no sleep and chase down a bunch of scumbags all night. Okay?”

  She nodded slightly. “You’re right. I was out of line.”

  I smiled at the straight-Army line and continued through the squad room door, pausing at Harriet Fritter’s desk. “Could you get me the file on Milo Douglas?” I asked her. “An untimely death a couple of days ago.”

  Harriet nodded without comment. I continued toward my office, finishing my mini-lecture to Sammie. “You weren’t out of line—you were overly enthusiastic. That’s not bad—it just needs tempering, for your own sake. So how are things with our guests?”

  Sammie outlined the interviews with Patty’s business partners. She also detailed what they’d been able to corroborate of Patty’s story from Robbie Messier, and of Patty’s current habits from Frank Bertin. By the time she’d finished, though, we both knew that apart from a minor drug bust, we still had nothing useful concerning the fate of Shawna Davis.

  “Anyone call in about the ‘do-you-know-this-woman’ article?”

  She shook her head.

  “All right. I guess all we can do for the moment is finish up the paperwork on Patty and hand it over to Jack Derby. But make sure everything’s especially neat and tidy, okay? I don’t want that creep walking because of something we did.”

  Harriet appeared in my doorway as Sammie left and handed me a thin folder. After a few minutes of reading, I picked up the telephone and dialed the hospital’s emergency room, requesting nurse Elizabeth Pace, a friend of several years’ standing.

  “What can I do for you, Joe?” she asked after we’d exchanged greetings.

  “I gather you folks recently treated a bum named Milo Douglas for a heart condition.”

  “That’s right. George Capullo was asking about him. Is there a problem with how he died?”

  “I don’t think so,” I answered honestly. “I just wanted to tie up a couple of loose ends. The doctor’s name on Milo’s pill bottle was Jefferies—is he still on the ER shift?”

  “He’s here right now—want to talk to him?”

  A soft, bland voice came on the line a moment later. “Dr. Jefferies. How may I help you?”

  I identified myself and then asked, “Do you remember a patient named Milo Douglas? He was a bum you prescribed some heart medicine for.”

  There was a slight pause. “Right. Nurse Pace just handed me his chart. Mild supra ventricular arrhythmias. I put him on the smallest dosage of Inderal available—ten milligrams. I see there’s a note he died recently. Is something wrong?”

  I sympathized with his implied misgivings. “Not that I know of. I do have some questions, though. Our witnesses reported he had a seizure just before he collapsed. Would that be consistent with his condition?”

  “A grand mal seizure?”

  I consulted the file before me. “Those words weren’t used, but that’s the implication. The quote here says, ‘He flopped around like crazy.’”

  “What were the Medical Examiner’s conclusions?” Jefferies asked cautiously.

  “He hedged his bets—said ‘natural causes.’”

  Jefferies thought for a few seconds before admitting, “He may be right, given Mr. Douglas’s personal habits. But if you’re asking if death was due to the heart condition I treated him for, then I’d have serious doubts. It wasn’t that severe. And certainly the grand mal seizure would have had nothing to do with it—that had to have been from another cause entirely. Looking at the chart, by the way, I see I did a pretty thorough medical history at the time I examined him. Mr. Douglas was no pillar of sound health, but there’s nothing that would indicate any grand mal seizure activity. It might’ve been alcohol-related, and misinterpreted by your witnesses. I take it they were people who shared his lifestyle?”

  I smiled at the diplomacy. “Yes, they were, and that’s a distinct possibility. They may’ve been more scared than accurate.”

  My curiosity further stimulated, I hung up on Dr. Jefferies and punched the intercom button. Harriet Fritter picked up immediately. “Which funeral home handled the untimely that George took care of a couple of nights ago?”

  “Guillaume’s,” she answered without hesitation. Harriet was what the computer was supposed to be for our squad—the fastest source of information available. I hadn’t the slightest idea how old she was—although she was a grandmother several times over—but I knew when she left us eventually, it would be the equivalent of a major system meltdown.

  I called Guillaume’s, found out they still had Milo Douglas on the premises, and retrieved my coat.

  In Brattleboro, funeral homes were employed by the town on a rotational basis. The procedure followed clear and simple guidelines—once the funeral home took possession, an extensive search for next of kin was conducted while the death certificate was reviewed by the Medical Examiner’s office in Burlington. Then the body was disposed of in a respectful, inexpensive fashion—all in a few days at most.

  The catch was often in finding the next of kin. The state allocated $850 for the disposal of each body, which for a simple cremation wasn’t too bad. Embalming and burial cost more and took longer, however, and the state insisted that if no relatives were found, this was the route the funeral home had to take. Guillaume’s had informed me on the phone that such was to be Milo’s fate.

  As with many businesses in Brattleboro, Guillaume’s was located in a converted turn-of-the-century residence—this one a true architectural gem, located on one of the town’s main drags. Heavily Victorian, replete with an excess of multihued gingerbread along with the requisite corner turret, the house had long made me ponder the connection between the exterior’s pristine appearance—and the efforts made inside to make its clientele look their best.

  I parked by the side, climbed the broad porch steps, and entered a huge, thick-carpeted entrance hall—dark, wood-paneled, with stained-glass windows and gleaming brass fixtures. I knew it was meant to both comfort and impress, but it just made me feel self-conscious to be alive. I was relieved when a middle-aged man in a dark blue suit appeared almost immediately through a door beneath the sweeping staircase. His name, much to his chagrin, was Conrad Blessing.

  “Joe,” he said with a wide smile. “Good to see you again.” We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries while he led me back the way he had come. His lack of stilted, unctuous manners reminded me that cops weren’t
the only ones instantly stereotyped by their profession.

  “I take it you’re having second thoughts about Mr. Douglas’s demise,” Blessing said, opening the door. The hallway we entered was white-painted, brightly lit, and as functionally stark as the lobby had been theatrically overstuffed.

  “Nothing that solid. I just used to know Milo.”

  Blessing’s voice dropped to a more conciliatory tone. “I’m sorry. Were you friends?”

  I laughed. “Hardly—the man was a pure opportunist. I used him as a source now and then.”

  He led the way to a service elevator. “We’re running a little behind schedule, so we stored him in a tunnel under the driveway. That’s why I didn’t take your coat. It’s pretty cold down there.”

  The elevator sank one story, to a large, cool, dimly lit basement with several empty gurneys stationed along the wall. Blessing crossed over to a broad, closed door on the opposite wall, paused to put on a coat he had hanging from a nearby peg, and swung the door open.

  The column of cold air that hit us was a surprise, even with his warning, and I shivered as we crossed the threshold.

  Blessing closed the door behind us. “Mr. Douglas is down here a ways.”

  I followed him along a semicircular tunnel, lit by naked bulbs strung along a rough cement ceiling. More gurneys lined the uneven walls, a couple of them occupied by long, shapeless, fully bagged bundles. At about the halfway mark, we stopped, and Blessing waved a hand at a gurney topped by a long cardboard box. “Milo Douglas.”

  We both lifted the top off the box. Inside was a zippered black body bag, which Blessing, having donned rubber gloves from his coat pocket, expertly opened and peeled back.

  From within, obliquely lit by one of the overhead bulbs, Milo’s hairy, filthy face grimaced up at us, his one good eye half-closed as in an alcoholic stupor, the other more open—milky, strange, and as sightless as it had been in life. The hair around his mouth was matted and caked with dried saliva. The stench, even in this natural freezer, was overwhelming.

  “You must love these cases,” I said. “This just the way you received him?”