Death's little helpers

36

Jane was up before six on Wednesday, and she moved quickly about the room- showering, dressing, packing her bag. I lay in bed, in a half-sleep, and for a while I told myself we were at home and that she was getting ready for work. Then I felt a twinge in my shoulder and the whole of the day before came back to me. I opened my eyes, and Jane was at the end of the bed. She was fully dressed and her bag was on her shoulder. Her car keys were in her hand.

“You all right?” she asked. I nodded. “And you can get to the rent-a-car place okay, and drive with that arm?”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay. Then I’m going to give my statement and get back to the city.”

I sat up but turned wrong and something like a hot wire ran through my shoulder. Jane saw it in my face.

“Don’t,” she said. “Rest more.” She patted my foot.

I looked at her and nodded. “Drive carefully,” I said.

Light was streaming through the big windows, and I heard birds, and a dog bark. In a minute I heard Jane’s car start, and turn in the drive, and pull away. I looked at the ceiling and wrapped the covers around me and thought about going back to sleep, but didn’t.

I got up and worked my left shoulder in tentative circles. It was sore and bruised and still a little swollen, but it was all there. I checked my face in the mirror. The puffiness had gone down, but there was a cut across the bridge of my nose and bruising around my eyes. I picked up the phone and tried Nina Sachs again. This time I didn’t even get her machine.

Lee is next door to Lenox, to the south and east, and the state police barracks there is just off Route 7, in a stolid brick building with white trim, lots of antennae, and, when I pulled up, three TV news vans out front. I went in a side door, and a trooper led me to Barrento’s office.

It was small and square, with a window onto Route 7, a beige metal desk, and the smell of old coffee. Barrento wore a wrinkled green shirt and last night’s jeans. His baseball jacket was collapsed in a corner, and Barrento seemed like he might soon follow. His beard was heavier and his eyes were ravaged, and he looked years older than when I’d seen him last. He had a telephone propped in his ear, and he pointed at one of the plastic chairs in front of his desk. I sat.

The desk was layered in papers, the only clear spots taken by graduation photos of two boys whose square faces and heavy features were younger, less cautious versions of Barrento’s own. Barrento dug with a wooden matchstick at a well-used brown pipe while he listened to the phone, and every now and then he said “Uh-huh.”

He hung up and scanned my face, and my arm in its sling. “Well, at least you got a change of clothes,” he said. “You see the fourth estate out there?” He stifled a yawn and tossed a thumb at the window. “This place is a fucking sieve. And it’ll only get worse when we release the ID. You should figure they’ll get hold of your name. I told your friend the same thing when she was in.”

I nodded. “You made the ID?” I asked.

“Just between us girls, we matched his prints with the ones he gave for his brokerage license. It’s Danes.”

“You have a cause of death too?”

“I don’t have the report, but the bullet hole I saw in what was left of his chest was a clue.”

I thought about that for a while, and Barrento watched me think. “You have a time of death?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Got to wait for the report. It’s weeks, though.”

“Have you spoken with his ex-wife yet?”

“Early this morning. But enough with your questions, let’s do some of mine. You give any thought to what we talked about last night?”

“Some.”

“Any parts of your story you want to change?”

I shook my head.

Barrento’s laugh was deep. “No? That’s a pity. ’Cause I was hoping you could help me account for these.”

He pulled open a file drawer and reached in. He came up with a large plastic evidence bag. My waist pack was inside. The tools clanked when he put it down. He reached into the drawer again and came up with two more bags. My flashlight was in one and my cell phone was in the other. They were caked in mud. My shoulder was throbbing and I rubbed it. Barrento chuckled some more and knocked his pipe on the edge of the desk. Fine ash came out, and he whisked it away with the side of his thick hand.

“I was thinking about what you said last night- about not wasting time on bullshit- and I was thinking that it’s actually good advice. I mean, I’ve got more than enough bullshit in my life right now, you know, and it would be great to get rid of some. Like, for example, your bullshit story about how you got into the house and the barnwhich by the way was even less convincing once I found your burglar’s tools lying around the yard. Then there’s the bullshit I’ll have to go through if you stick to that story- searching for the nonexistent third party who jimmied those locks. And there’s the bullshit any half-bright defense lawyer will sling to take your crappy story and my failure to find this third party and turn it all into reasonable doubt. That’s three big piles of crap I’d really like to get rid of.” Barrento shook his head regretfully. “You see where I’m headed with this, March?”

“More or less.”

Barrento smiled. “And now, would you more or less like to change your story?”

I was quiet and Barrento looked at me some more.

“Nobody around here is looking to make their career with a B and E bust, March. I’m doing you a favor.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t want to waste my time. And maybe I figure you did me a little good yesterday. And maybe a couple of buddies of mine over in New York State said you were a decent cop back when, and a pretty smart guy.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“All night long.”

I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “I appreciate the break.”

“Great. Now you get a chance to show me how much.” Barrento’s smile was tired and disarming, and his dark eyes were as honest and shiny as a spaniel’s. My stomach tightened.

“How?”

“You’ve been working on Danes longer than me. I thought you could give me some background.”

“What kind of background?”

“On his friends, his family, his colleagues, anybody pissed off at him, anybody he was pissed off at- the basic stuff.”

I was quiet for a long while, thinking careful thoughts. Barrento watched me, a tiny smile lurking beneath his mustache. “I thought you had a suspect,” I said finally.

His smile grew. “I do. But you know how it is. You like to be sure, especially when half the world is watching.”

“You’re not sure it was Cortese?”

Barrento shrugged. “Probably I’ll feel better when I get more forensics back, and when I can talk to the guy.”

“He’s still out of it?”

“Docs tell me it’ll be a while before the drugs kick in and he can say anything sane. By which time he’ll have a lawyer. The lab work is coming along, but there’s a shitload to process.”

“So- for now- you’re not sure it was Cortese?”

“Are you?” he said, and poked again at the bowl of his pipe. Somewhere I heard the turning of wheels within wheels.

“I think he wrapped Danes in plastic and packed him in the car.”

“Me too,” Barrento said. “Especially since we’re lifting Cortese’s prints from the sheeting and the car and all the crap inside. Though I’ll be damned if I can figure out why he did it.”

He stuck the pipe in his mouth and tested the draw. Something was amiss, and he dug at it some more with the match.

“What do you think about the shooting part?” he asked.

My stomach got tighter, and I answered carefully. “I didn’t see a gun.”

Barrento smiled a little. “Neither have we- not yet, anyway.”

“Not in the house or in Cortese’s car?”

“Nope.”

“Which doesn’t mean much by itself.”

“Not much,” Barrento said. He drew on his pipe some more and then he looked at me. “We think he was killed in the dining room. The floors were cleaned in there, but there was blood in the boards.” Barrento paused and smiled at me. “But you know all that already, don’t you?”

I smiled back and he continued.

“Curtains and a curtain rod were missing from the dining room. We found them in the trunk, with Danes’s blood on them.” Barrento sighed deeply and put his pipe down. He ran his hands over his mustache. “There was quite a collection of stuff in there- a bottle of red wine, two wineglasses… Did you happen to notice the stain on the dining room table? No? It was red wine. Turns out there was some in the floorboards too, mixed in with the blood, and there was even some on the curtains. We think it spilled when Danes was shot.” Barrento’s eyes were on me, and they weren’t tired now.

“Two glasses?” I asked.

He nodded. “You think he and Cortese were having a drink together?”

“Probably not,” I said slowly.

“Probably not. There was other odd stuff in the trunk, toonewspapers, magazines, all kinds of catalogs.”

I nodded vaguely. I was still thinking about the two glasses, and his next question took me by surprise.

“Danes has a kid, right?”

I looked at him for a moment. “A son.”

“He lives with the ex?”

“In Brooklyn.”

“That’s where he goes to school?”

I nodded. “Where are you going with this?”

Barrento shrugged. “The catalogs we found in the trunk, they were from different private schools- boarding schools- most of them up here in New England. That tell you anything?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I said it like I meant it. My shoulder was throbbing again and I was feeling oddly light-headed.

Barrento looked at me and stroked his mustache. He took his time getting to the next question. “You know if Danes was a smoker?”

I shook my head. “He wasn’t.”

“We didn’t think so, and Cortese isn’t either- not according to his car ashtrays anyway. But somebody in that house was. We found a dirty ashtray at the bottom of the trunk and lots of cigarette ash. And we found these.” Barrento reached into his desk drawer. “There are five of them,” he said, and he held up the evidence bag. The cigarette butts were brown and wilted and wet-looking.

He let me look at the bag for a while, and then he called someone on his telephone and a trooper came in and took it away. Barrento leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his solid middle.

“We’ve got a lot of evidence to process still,” he said. “Prints off the wine bottle and the glasses and the ashtray, for instance, and DNA off the cigarette butts- plenty of stuff. And we’ve barely touched Cortese’s car.

“But I took a quick look last night. Seems like the guy was living in there when he wasn’t camping out in kitchen closets. The thing is full of smelly clothes and candy bar wrappers and half-eaten hamburgers. And store receipts. It looks like Cortese saved every goddamn Seven-Eleven sales slip he ever got, and from the stack I saw, it seems like he hit every one between here and Florida in the last few weeks.” Barrento leaned forward and opened his top drawer and took out a brown leather tobacco pouch. It was weathered and soft, and the smell of tobacco filled the room when he opened it.

“Be interesting to take a look at the dates on some of those,” he said, “once we get a time of death for Danes.” We were quiet for a while. Barrento watched me as he packed his pipe. I looked out the window and tried to catch the thoughts that were spinning away from me. The throbbing in my shoulder was worse and the light-headed feeling had become free fall.

“You’re not interested in Cortese,” I said finally.

Barrento smiled. “I feel good about the forensics,” he said. “There’s a lot to process, but there was no master criminal working here; forensics will get me where I want to go. The only problem is, they take time.” He stuck the pipe in his mouth and tested the draw again. “I figure you’ve been traipsing around in Danes’s life the last few weeks- maybe you have some ideas.”

My mind was racing, swirling with all the things I hadn’t seen last night, all the pieces I hadn’t put together while I’d been thinking about Hauck and reading through the red accordion file. I looked at Barrento and shook my head slowly.

His mouth twitched beneath his mustache, and for the first time a note of impatience crept into his voice. “C’mon, March, what did they teach you over in Burr County? Who’s the first person you look at when somebody gets whacked?”

Barrento took my amended statement without comment and walked me to the door. The crowd of press outside had grown larger and more restless.

“You going to give out the ID soon?” I asked.

“Half hour from now. I got some boy genius from the AG’s office coming over, and then the fun really starts.” Barrento put his hand out and we shook, and he locked his tired eyes on mine. There was no twinkle in them. “You stay in touch with me, March,” he said, and he handed me a card. “And if something- anything- occurs to you, you make me your first call.”

I got back in my rental car and put the key in the ignition. I looked at Barrento’s card and closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I let it out very slowly.

“Goddammit,” I said softly.