Chain of Evidence

CHAPTER 23

At seven-thirty on a cold November night, an hour and a half after the day shift ended, Dart and Samantha Richardson were out hunting down the registered locations of bald cypresses. Sam took East Hartford, and the greatest concentration-seven-of the trees. Dart took the city.

Residents at the first two of Dart’s four locations politely explained that they had never heard of the species and offered for Dart to look around, which he did. As it turned out, there were no bald cypresses at either location. He reached Sam by cell phone and was told, with reluctance on her part, that the horticultural list had been compiled some seven years earlier. Many of the trees could now be dead, and worse, others might have been planted within the last few years and not be included on the list.

The door of the third location was answered by a matronly woman with bluish hair and substantial girth. Closer to East Hartford, this was a decidedly nicer house than Dart’s first two attempts. There was a small backyard with a bird-bath, but the bald cypress was to be found inside the house, making Dart skeptical about the possibility of this leading him to Payne’s visitor. The futility of this search began to wear on him. He felt depressed and stretched thin-nothing about these cases ever seemed to connect; he worked on hunches, but with so little evidence. Here he was, chasing a tree! He felt like an idiot.

At 9:00 P.M., Dart once again connected by phone with Richardson, who was having equally bad luck, and she informed him that she intended to head home and try again tomorrow. Dart had promised himself one last try, but he too gave it up.

After work the next night, at a few minutes past 7:00 P.M, Dart drove over toward Pope Park South to search the last of his four locations. Although a scant few blocks from the Trinity College enclave, the Hamilton Court address was unfamiliar to him and not the kind of place that Dart felt easy visiting alone at night. It was a tough neighborhood, and the proximity to Pope Park made for some tension as it doubled as a needle park after dark. On the park’s northern boundary, Park Street ran east-west and was the most dangerous of any street in the city at night. Anything and everything was available there, from crack cocaine to teenage boys-the weapons count was astronomical. If a patrol car cruised Park Street, it did so with a team, heavily armed and ever alert.

Hamilton Court turned out to be a filthy, narrow alley less than fifty yards long that bisected a steep hill and connected Hamilton Street with Park Terrace. Dart turned onto the street and kept on driving, reluctant to park or even to slow down. Four decrepit clapboard buildings lined the alley, two on each side, surrounded by broken and decaying chain-link fences.

Driving past, Dart hoped the entrance to these houses might be on Zion, at the top of the hill, but he made a pass through the alley twice and determined that their only access was off Hamilton Court. Number 11 was pale yellow, the windows of the ground floor alit. The rotting wood trim had once been white.

Dart parked and locked the car with the engine running, thankful that he kept two car keys for just this purpose. He removed his police identification card and slung it’s chain around his neck, hopeful that a shooter would think twice before dropping a cop. Cop killers had short lives once inside Hartford jails. He walked over to the sagging stairs and climbed them quickly with sharp, quick movements as he kept an eye on everything around him. Stupid time of night to be here, he thought to himself, heart pounding, his hand ready to draw his weapon. This was a shoot-first-ask-questions-later-neighborhood-a concept that didn’t sit well with Dart, but one he understood.

He knocked sharply and waited. No one answered. Fine with me, he thought as he turned to return to his waiting car.

As he stepped down onto the second step, he heard and felt something crunch beneath his shoe, and the alarm inside his policeman’s brain sounded. He wanted to label it glass, but it didn’t fit. Almost like glass, his senses told him. Don’t stop! the same internal voice warned. But he did. The steps proved too dark and he withdrew his small penlight, condemning himself for being such a Boy Scout, and shined the light onto the step. The cone of light caught tiny white stones, like stars in the night sky. But stones did not pulverize as these had, and so Dart looked closer, still checking over his shoulder for a mugger or a kid with a semiautomatic. Cautiously, he knelt, reached out and carefully pinched some of the material between his fingers. That same alarm sounded with this tactile contact: rock salt!

Bragg had connected rock salt to the Payne suicide-to Payne’s possible visitor-and although Dart might have been elated with such a discovery, in this neighborhood, on this street at this time of night, he half wished that his foot had missed that step.

Mac tried to bark from the back of the Volvo, sounding like a vacuum cleaner with its belt out of adjustment. Dart glanced up to see if it was a warning, but decided it was only old Mac longing for company, wanting to go home. Me too, boy.

Dart placed the dust into his palm and shined the light on it. A watery-blue hue-just as Teddy had described it.

In theory, because 11 Hamilton Court was listed as a location of a bald cypress tree, with this discovery Dart had two of the three elements identified by Bragg. The detective in Dart could not ignore this. Like it or not the wretched old house seemed inexorably linked to Harold Payne. He deposited the pinch of rock salt in his top pocket, gathered his courage, and decided to look around back.

A narrow dirt driveway ran alongside the building and accessed a rickety wooden slat fence that had once been painted green. Having no legal right to enter, and keeping in mind that 11 Hamilton Court might prove valuable, Dart elected to stay out, but he found a space in the rundown fence to peer through. Inside this back area, it was dark, and his eyes took a nervous moment to adjust. Along with his anxiety, he felt excitement.

Unable to see, he lifted the penlight and shined it inside, and what he saw caused him to gasp. Once an enclosed garden it was now a place of ruin and neglect. Lying on the ground, the printing wet and faded, the paper burst open like a rotting corpse, a bag of potting soil had spilled its contents across the path to the back stoop. The third element that Bragg had described! To the left of the area stood a scraggly tree, its limbs barren for winter, at the base of which-and, in fact, littered across the entire area including where Dart stood-was a carpet of small needles, some a dull green, others brown and amber. A bald cypress tree, Dart knew, without knowing. He collected some of the fallen needles into his pocket.

He quickly turned off his penlight and glanced up the sheer wall of the worn house, his heart racing, his skin prickling. It seemed so gloomy and desolate, like a haunted house from a film or a nightmare. But this place was real, and the effect on Dart, palpable.

Whoever lived here had been inside Harold Payne’s on the night of the killing-not suicide, but killing. And the cop’s instinct welling up inside of him said that this person had been more than just a visitor.

Dart made for the car, unlocked it, and climbed inside. Mac greeted him with a slobbery kiss. “We’re not going home, boy,” he informed the dog, intending to keep 11 Hamilton Court under surveillance.

Abby reached Dart on his cell phone at eight-fifteen, reminding him that he was forty-five minutes late for dinner. He told her briefly about his find and that he and Mac were keeping an eye on 11 Hamilton Court from up on Zion. Without a bit of annoyance, she announced that two dinners to go were on their way.

Twenty minutes later Abby Lang, in blue jeans and a deerskin jacket, was sitting in the front seat of his Volvo, working on a chicken salad. For Dart, the most difficult part of police work was sitting around waiting for something to happen, which was one reason he had eschewed Narcotics.

“Lewellan’s mother has given her consent for the girl to participate in a lineup,” Abby announced proudly. “If we ever get a suspect.”

“And how did you pull that off?” Dart asked, thrilled that they might have a viable witness but still confused by the face that the girl and Tommy Templeton had created-not Zeller, not Kowalski. He was toying with the idea that Zeller had hired these hits-but kept his own distance in case something went wrong, which, when attempting to stage suicides, seemed inevitable.

“Magic.”

“I’d say so,” Dart replied.

A while later, with two paper coffee cups riding the dashboard, Dart said, “I have a confession to make.”

She rocked her head on the car seat and looked at him. “Okay,” she said.

“It’s not okay.” He hoped that she might pick up on what he meant, but she waited him out. “I’m getting used to this. Comfortable with it. You and me, I’m talking about.”

“I know what you’re talking about.”

“And yet, at the same time, I still think about Ginny.”

“I still think about my marriage.”

“I know you do,” he said.

She took a deep breath and said, “There are times when I’m madly in love with you, Joe. Others, when I’m not so sure.”

“I feel that.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I wish it were different. I really do.”

“I’d like to see more of the kids. They’re always going off somewhere just as I arrive.”

“I don’t want to hurt them,” she said. “They’re too young to understand all this.”

The seat cushion crackled as she adjusted herself. He could hear the drone of city life-traffic, mostly. A disturbing silence hung over them.

She added, “Charles and I have planned all along to get together for a week and see if we can’t put it back together. I told you about that,” she said defensively. “I … we … it’s for the kids’ sake.”

“I thought maybe that had changed, given the last month.”

“No,” she said, crushing him, “that hasn’t changed.”

“That’s not fair,” he complained.

She popped open her door and scrambled out of the car. She jumped across an icy puddle and up onto the sidewalk and started away from him at a brisk pace. She was risking both the surveillance and her own safety. He, too, broke the rules. He left the car and chased after her. She heard him coming and increased her stride.

“Abby,” he called after her.

“Don’t!” she objected.

“Come back to the car. It’s my mistake.”

She stopped and turned, and he bumped into her. She pushed him away forcibly and hollered loudly, “You’re damn right it’s your mistake. And a big one. These are my children we’re talking about.”

“I’m sorry,” Dart apologized. He approached her tentatively. She eyed him skeptically, and then the two of them wound together, arm in arm, and she whispered into his ear, “Asshole.”

“Jerk. Let’s drop it, okay?” he asked. “Whatever happens, happens.”

She nodded. Halfway back to the car, she took his hand. Joe Dart laced his fingers with hers and squeezed.

At eleven-thirty the downstairs light at 11 Hamilton Court went dark, followed several minutes later by an upstairs light going on. Dart explained, “An automatic timer.”

“Agreed. Either that or someone has been walking around in the dark for the last five minutes.”

Together, they watched the building until one in the morning, when the upstairs light went off. Dart repositioned the car on Park Terrace, where Abby could keep an eye on him as he crossed and once again knocked on the front door. No answer. He returned to the back of his car, moved a sleeping Mac out of the way, and got into his first-aid kit. Using a piece of white athletic tape, he bridged the hinged side of the house’s front door, placing it at ankle height. If the door were opened, the tape would tear loose from the hinge.

Around back, again with Abby watching, Dart wedged a thin stick into the crack of the only gate in the dilapidated green fence. If the gate door were opened, the stick would fall to the ground. Simple tricks-he and Zeller had used them dozens of times.

He dropped Abby back at her car, hoping she might invite him to her place, but she did not. On the way home, he worried about this, and again when he took Mac for a short walk.

He slept poorly until 3:00 A.M., having no idea what had awakened him-a nightmare? a sound? something out on the street? And then the thoughts cluttered his head like bats trapped in an attic.

He lay awake for hours, spinning, churning-driven by the possibilities that 11 Hamilton Court offered. Confused by Abby’s mixture of hot and cold.

If he was to get a look inside that house, he was going to have to convince Haite to involve the State Police. Haite, in turn, would need to involve Captain Rankin. A real mess.

In the morning, he returned to 11 Hamilton Court. Again, he knocked on the front door, and again no one answered. The piece of white tape remained in place. Disappointed not to find a sign of anyone, he moved around back, his heart busy in his chest, his palms damp and cold. He hated this neighborhood.

He found the stick that he had jammed into the gate’s crack lying in the dirt on the ground. Dart picked it up and held it. In the oozing mud outside the gate, he saw shoe prints coming and going. Shoe prints not his own.

Sometime during the night someone had been inside.

The rock salt and leaves that he had collected the night before were now in separate envelopes on the front seat of his car, marked and labeled. Evidence, he thought.

Perhaps just enough to convince Haite to authorize the raid.