Death Angel

TWENTY-THREE

“What do we do with this guy in the meantime?” I asked. “I don’t know if he’s crazy as a fox or telling us the truth.”

Mercer, Mike, and I were in the lobby of the rustic cottage, home to one of the last public marionette companies in the country. The cheerful décor of the children’s theater was a sharp contrast to the serious subjects we’d been discussing.

Verge had gone outside in the company of four of the Park’s anticrime cops who had helped Mercer find him early this afternoon.

“You can’t lock him up, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Mercer said. “Florida’s got no hold on him, and he’s not in any trouble here.”

“But he knew the dead girl and he actually spent time with her. His little carved angel was found not far from her body,” I said, struggling to put all that together. “He’s got no idea where he was when she died.”

“We don’t know when she died, Coop,” Mike said. “How can you expect him to alibi up?”

“The man has no home, his family doesn’t trust him enough to want him. And our girl wasn’t gay, even though she was with Jo and her friends. Let him go, and we’ll never see him again.”

“That’s a little over-the-top,” Mercer said.

“A convicted sex offender with a long history of hitting on teens?”

“A few hours ago you thought he was Angel’s protector, when Jo was talking about him. He’s sixty-three years old. He’s probably aged out of the molesting business, courtesy of Florida’s castration meds.”

I started listing the offenders we’d handled together who had still been sexually violent in their senior years, some of them turning to blunt force or strangulation when they’d been frustrated by an inability to complete the physical act.

“Besides, the parkies who trusted him didn’t realize Verge had a rap sheet, Mercer. But now he knows we know about it.”

“You think the city will put him up for a night or two in a hotel?” Mercer asked.

“We’re not quite at material witness status. I’ll push McKinney to let us do it, if you think he’ll stay.”

“Let me ask him.”

“Ask him about the Dakota Stables, too. Have you ever heard of them, Mike?” I asked.

“Never did. But it’s my next stop.”

“I’m with you.”

We walked out the door of the cottage. Verge was entertaining the plainclothes cops with stories about the Park. He was holding a large object in his hands, but his back was to us and I couldn’t make out what it was.

Mercer called out to him and he turned around.

“What the hell is that?” Mike asked.

“Damn,” I said. “It’s one of the marionettes, from the theater. It was in a box on the floor near the door when we went inside.”

Verge was dangling a puppet that was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. The cops were laughing with him as he made up his own version of the fairy tale, the two-foot-tall doll bouncing from the strands of string that controlled her movement. He was talking about walking her through the desolate Ravine, past the three waterfalls, when she was approached by the wolf.

“Where’d you get that, Verge?” Mercer asked. It seemed as though he didn’t like the fact that the disarming nature of our “simple” friend could be so deceptive.

“I’m telling a story,” the man said. “The police officers are my friends.”

“The doll. The puppet. Where’d you get it?” Mercer knew the answer to my question as well as I did.

“Red Riding Hood? She was a gift to me. The people inside-the people who work the show-one of them gave it to me.”

He was as straight-faced now as he had been when he responded to our questions just minutes ago.

“There’s nobody inside the theater. You’re not telling the truth, Verge,” I said. “Who? Who was it?”

His head was weaving from side to side. “You know I’m not-”

“Good with names,” I said, taking a step closer to him, holding my hands out to ask for the return of the puppet. “That doesn’t work with me.”

He jerked his right arm and Red Riding Hood flew up in the air, missing the side of my head by inches.

“Give it back, Verge,” I said.

He was laughing hard now, spinning the marionette so that the strings became twisted around one another. “She’s mine.”

I turned to reenter the cottage.

“Where are you going?” Mike asked.

“To get someone from the theater. They’ll be missing this doll. If he’s not giving it back to me, there must be someone here who can reclaim it.”

Mercer was trying to keep one eye on Verge Humphrey and follow my activity. “I’ll get it from him, Alex. Don’t knock yourself out.”

“Do you get my point? Do you see that he just told a big fat lie, Mercer? So how can we believe anything he says?”

“He’s mentally challenged, Alex.”

“I can deal with that just fine. But what’s the challenge? That’s the issue. Is Verge just slow, or does he have problems telling the truth? How do we get him evaluated, Mercer? ’Cause he’s useless to me-”

“To all of us.”

“If he’s a pathologic liar. And a serial sex offender.”

“No signs of violence,” Mercer said. “Not recently.”

I went into the cottage, walked through the vestibule past the empty box in which the marionette had been resting when I first arrived. There was a door to the side of the stage, and I knocked on it. A young woman in jeans and a T-shirt, a paintbrush in her hand, opened it and asked what I wanted.

“I’m with the police officers who were just in here,” I said. “One of your puppets was in a crate near the front. I’m just wondering-?”

“Red Riding Hood? She’s fine there, thanks. We’ve got someone from the doll hospital coming to pick her up shortly,” the woman said cheerfully. “She’s got a broken arm, and we need her back for the Saturday matinee. Is she in your way?”

“Not at all. I just wanted to make sure she-uh-that she belonged here. We’re leaving in a few minutes and I didn’t want her unsecured, in case you thought we’d be hanging around.”

“She’s a definite crowd-pleaser. The surgery’s on rush. Thanks for your concern.”

So Verge had a problem with truth telling, perhaps a greater challenge for us than for him, especially since Mercer was in his corner.

I let the door slam behind me as I walked to rejoin the group. Mercer came toward me to cut me off. “Seems he’s rejected your kind offer of a hotel room.”

I tried to look around my friend’s broad shoulders, but it was impossible to see Verge, who was still entertaining the cops and swinging the wooden puppet from side to side.

“That stinks. What’s your plan?”

“These plainclothes guys say they can keep tabs on him for the next few days.”

“24/7?”

“Be reasonable, Alexandra. They’ve got better things to do now.”

“He’s a liar. Flat out. Now, get the puppet back, please. Nobody gave it to him, and she’s got to be picked up for repair.”

“Understood,” Mercer said, keeping himself between the old man and me as he walked over to ask for the marionette.

“C’mon, Verge,” Mercer said, beckoning with his curled-up fingers. “We’ve got to put the doll back where she belongs.”

“Not right yet,” he said, starting to lope down the path leading away from the cottage. He was swinging Red Riding Hood like a cowboy showing off with a lariat. “She belongs to me.”

One of the young cops started after Verge. “Hey, Pops. You gotta give back the doll.”

“She’s got a broken arm,” I called out, thinking he might have a soft spot for the injured doll, like the way Jo described him responding to her friends. “She needs to get fixed before the kids come to the show this weekend.”

“That can happen to little girls that go into the woods,” he said, walking backward as he told the cop to stay away.

His laughter no longer struck me as the humor of a simple man. The tone had become more sinister.

“Stop right there,” Mercer said.

Verge flipped the large doll over his shoulder, and when it landed-as he turned again to walk off-we could all see that she had become completely entangled in the long white strings that were suspended from the hand controls.

There was no point in my opening my mouth again. Mercer was on his way to reclaim the doll.

“Hand it over, will you?”

Verge lifted the marionette as though he was going to return it to Mercer. With a sudden movement he grabbed the doll’s head between his hands and twisted it so hard I could hear the wood crack.

“She’s beyond repair now,” he said, smirking at me. “I think I just broke her neck.”