Death's little helpers

35

One storm was passing, decamping to the east and dissolving at its trailing edge into icy stars and a crescent moon. And another storm was brewing, with Calliope Farms at its swirling center. I sat in the back of a sheriff’s department truck that smelled like old socks, and Jane sat in her Audi, and all around us a carnival had gathered, of big official vehicles, gaudy flashing lights, and bulky uniformed men. The last of my adrenaline was seeping away and I felt vaguely nauseated. I fiddled with my ice pack and my sling, but the pain in my shoulder was relentless.

The two deputies who’d been first on scene were young- no more than twenty-five- and they were sodden despite their rain gear. They’d come into the barn looking irritated and tired, but that had all changed when I told them what was in the car and when Paul Cortese made an incoherent noise and a clumsy lunge for the door.

They’d wrestled Cortese to the ground, and cuffed him, and walked us to their SUVs. I’d seen the Audi on the lawn, and Jane’s tense, pale face in its rain-spattered windshield. I’d waved to her but gotten no response. The deputies told me to keep still and keep quiet, and they’d put Cortese in one truck and me in the other.

I’d watched the vehicles arrive in ones and twos: Lenox PD cruisers, another sheriff’s 4 x 4, a fire truck from Lee, and the Pittsfield EMS. The EMS techs climbed into the back of the sheriff’s car to look at Cortese, who had apparently lapsed into something like a catatonic state. Afterward, a deputy motioned me out of the truck and the techs had looked at me. They’d flashed lights in my eyes, cleaned the cuts on my face, and rigged a sling and an ice pack for my shoulder. Then the deputy put me back into the truck. No one had questioned me beyond name and address and a few other basics. They were waiting for the boss. I hitched up my sling and rearranged the ice pack again, and finally he arrived.

A caravan of cars and SUVs pulled onto the lawn behind the Pittsfield EMS wagon. They were gray and dark blue and bore the seal of the Massachusetts State Police. A heavyset fiftyish guy got out of the first car and came up the small hill toward the house, and a squad of troopers and crime-scene techs followed. The local cops greeted him deferentially.

He huddled for a while with them and with his own people, and he seemed to do more listening than talking. He was about five-ten, with a big head of wavy gray hair that needed cutting. His face was broad, with drooping features, an unkempt gray mustache, and a day’s growth on the jaw. He wore a tan baseball jacket, zipped up, and jeans, and he kept his hands in his pockets as he listened and nodded and occasionally glanced in my direction.

He dispatched one team of troopers and crime-scene guys to the barn and another to the house, and he sent a remaining trooper back down the hill to the cruisers. He stood alone near the farmhouse and looked around at the men and cars and lights until the trooper returned and handed him a large Styrofoam cup. Then he went to the Audi and knocked on the glass.

Jane ran the window down and the man bent his head and offered his hand. They shook and spoke and he proffered the cup. Jane took it and the man climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. I saw Jane sip at what was in the cup and nod her head, but soon the windshield fogged and I could see only shadows. After forty-five minutes, he came to talk to me.

He climbed into the front passenger seat and brought a smell of pipe tobacco with him. He looked at me through the metal grate. His dark eyes were weary, but even so, and even through the grate, he managed an avuncular twinkle.

“Smart lady,” he said. “Very smart. And tough. That was a hell of a blow to go driving in, especially in a wind-up toy like that and on these roads. She must’ve been plenty worried to do that. She must like you.” His voice was deep and intimate, with a distinct Boston accent.

I nodded, and he looked at me silently for a long moment.

“She’s a little shaken up- no surprise- and a little tired, maybe, but even with that she’s real smart. I like smart people. I’m Barrento, by the way- Louis. I run the detective division in Berkshire County.” And then he asked his questions.

There were a lot of them, but none that I didn’t expect: who I was; what I did; why I’d come there; what I’d been looking for; how I got into the barn; if I had been in the house; if I had touched anything; who the big crazy guy was; why he was tossing me around like a rag doll; whose car was in the barn; whose body was in the car; what I knew about how it got there. He took me through everything I’d done at Calliope Farms several times, from several angles, and every time I told him nearly all of it, withholding only the actual breaking in and my examination of the red accordion file. He listened and nodded and gave nothing away. And when I thought he was through, he sighed and pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and looked at it.

“I read here you used to be a cop- a sheriff’s deputy over in New York- Burr County.”

I looked at him and said nothing.

“That’s not so far from here- three, four hours maybe. I remember that case from a few years back. I was working out of Springfield then, but I remember it.”

He studied my face and shook his head a little. “So you tell me, back when you were a cop, what would you have done in my shoes? What would you have done with an out-of-state private license you found prancing around a crime scene- a murder scene, no less? One who fed you some bullshit story about doors already open and locks already busted? One who claimed to be so worried about a missing guy thateven though his client had fired him- he had to drive all the way up from goddamn New York City to go looking. But who- even with all this worry- couldn’t be bothered to pick up the fucking phone and give the local cops a heads-up? I mean, hypothetically, what would you have done?”

Barrento didn’t raise his voice and didn’t take his eyes off mine. I sighed and ran my hand down my swollen cheek. “Hypothetically, I guess I’d be pissed,” I said. “But I’d also think about how long it might’ve taken me to find the body, if this private license hadn’t come along, and how long it might’ve taken to grab a suspect. If I thought he’d done me a little good, then, hypothetically, I might cut him a break.”

Barrento pursed his lips and ran a thumb and forefinger over his bushy mustache. “And if the case was a high-profile one? If you knew the press- the national press- would be all over it, along with every boss and politician in the commonwealth? You still think you’d give the guy some slack?”

“I guess I’d want to be sure that he was a right guy,” I said. “But if I was, then- on a high-profile case- I’d be happy not to waste my time on bullshit.”

Barrento smiled a little. “Thanks for the advice,” he said. He settled himself more deeply in the passenger seat and stroked his mustache and looked out the window for a while. Then he turned to me.

“Go sit with her,” he said.

Jane was still holding the white Styrofoam cup when I climbed into the Audi. She looked at me- at my face and my arm in its sling, at my clothes that were sodden and mud-covered- and then she looked away.

“Is it broken?” she asked.

“Dislocated. They can reset it in the ER.”

“Otherwise you’re… okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“That’s good,” she said softly. She was quiet for a while, watching troopers carry things to and from the barn, and then she told me what had happened.

It was a simple story. When she hadn’t heard from me for hours, and couldn’t raise me on the phone, Jane had grown worried and had driven to Calliope Farms. She’d parked on the road, and even through the rain she’d seen lights in the barn and a car- Cortese’s Chryslerin the turnaround, and her worry had grown larger still. And then she’d seen the lights go out and thought she’d heard… something, and she’d dialed 911. The emergency operator had been swamped with calls and skeptical, and it had taken a while for the sheriff’s deputies to roll up. When they did they were a minute behind Jane, who had waited as long as she was able and had driven up the hill with no plan in mind beyond honking her horn. She finished telling it and took a deep breath and drank the chilly dregs that were left in her cup.

Cars and trucks pulled in and out, and uniformed men came and went and milled around in the mud, and Jane and I watched them and were silent. Colored lights washed across the car, and Jane’s hands and face were tinted blue and white and red. The ice pack was spent and the pain in my shoulder was swelling. My stomach was empty and my eyes were gritty and hot. I closed them and kept very still and breathed very little. Thoughts careened in my head for a while, and slid and staggered, and then they stopped altogether.

Barrento rapped on the glass and I jumped. Jane ran the window down.

“You two can go for tonight. But I want you both at the Lee barracks in the morning, for formal statements.” He looked at Jane. “You should be out pretty quick,” he said. He looked at me. “You’ll be longer.”

Jane turned the Audi in a tight circle and headed slowly down the driveway. There were flares at the entrance, and state troopers. There was a van parked by the side of the road, a hundred yards from the signpost. It was white and had a large red number eight on its side and a satellite dish on its roof. There were men near it, with lights and a big video rig that they pointed at us as we drove past. Heavier weather was coming.

The ER at Pittsfield Hospital was clean and pleasant, and its array of vending machines was vast. Jane sipped a Sprite while we waited, and turned the pages of a magazine, and was quiet. I ate a chocolate bar and made phone calls.

My first was to Tom Neary. He listened silently while I told him what I’d found and what had happened afterward, and he sighed heavily when I finished.

“Murder and insider trading,” he said. “It’s a shitstorm all the way around. Unless there’s another war or something, the press will go nuts with this. There are probably cable news guys drinking your health right now. I don’t envy what’s-his-name- Barrento. You think he’s any good?”

“I think he’s plenty good. And he’s been around the block enough times to be expecting the worst on this thing.”

“With something this high profile, he’s right to. Everybody north of him on the food chain will be pushing for a fast close. At least he’s got hold of someone already.” Neary thought for a moment. “Will he and his boys know what to make of Danes’s file?”

“They’ll figure it out eventually, but it might be a while before they get to it. They’ve got to make a formal ID of the body first, and autopsy it, and then they’ve got a mountain of forensics to move.”

“But when they do-”

“Then Marcus Hauck will be scrambling a squadron of lawyers or else taking an extended vacation to points south. And all the folks at Pace-Loyette will be working on their rA©sumA©s.”

Neary laughed grimly. “I’m not sure it’ll sink them, but if it doesn’t they’ll be doing some serious housecleaning- which will no doubt include their security services.”

“Timing is everything,” I said. “I’m a little exposed with this file thing- I told Barrento it was all look-but-don’t-touch with Danes’s car. So you can’t know about the file until Barrento gets around to finding it.”

“Are you kidding? I plan to keep a healthy distance from Pace until this thing breaks. I’ll gladly take their money afterwardassuming there is an afterward- but I’d rather not get splashed with the first wave of sewage. You think Barrento will jam you up?”

“It seems to me he should have a lot of other things to worry about, but you never know.”

“You tell Sachs about this yet?”

“She’s my next call.”

“It’s tough for the kid.”

“Billy. His name’s Billy.”

“Right- Billy. And how are you doing?”

I looked over at the waiting area to where Jane sat with a magazine in her lap, looking at the wall.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m fine.”

I tried Nina Sachs but got only her machine and left no message. Then the man at the desk called my name. I was in and out in fifteen minutes, with my shoulder reset, re-iced, wrapped, and resting in a new sling. Jane was waiting in the car.

The streets of Lenox were quiet when we drove through town, and almost dry. The small parking lot at the Ravenwood Inn was empty. Jane shut the engine down and sat with her hands on the wheel and looked straight ahead. Her cropped black hair was sculpted around her ear, which was small and intricate. Her lower lip was trembling. Muscles flexed in her forearms as she tightened and loosened her grip on the wheel. The ticking of the engine was loud.

“Jane, I…” My throat was tight and I was out of air. I took a deep breath. “I know thank you doesn’t cover it, and neither does I’m sorry-”

Jane cut me off. Her voice was quiet and very steady. “Why are you sorry? It’s not you, right? It was that crazy man. It was just work, right?”

“Right.”

Jane swallowed hard. “Are you in trouble… with the police?”

“I don’t know. It depends on what Barrento wants to do, how big a deal he wants to…”

I stopped and stared at Jane, who had reached under her seat and come up with the Glock. It was matte black and ugly in her lap. She stared at it as if it had just fallen from the sky.

“We shouldn’t leave this here,” she said. “We should remember to take it inside.”

“Jane, what are you-”

“I don’t know why I brought it. I thought you might need it… or that I could-” She made a small gasping laugh. “So… I brought it along.” She turned to me, and her perfect face crumbled and her perfect eyes dissolved in tears.