Pale Kings and Princes

14

Garrett Kingsley called me at seven-ten in the morning.

“Bailey Rogers has been killed,” he said. “We picked it up on the police radio. About fifteen minutes ago.”

“Where,” I said.

“Someplace on Ash Street,” Kingsley said. “You know where that is?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s up past the library.”

“Good, get over there and see what’s going on.”

“Do I get a by-line?” I said.

“We’ve got a reporter and a photographer on the way down there. But it’s got to be connected.”

“To Valdez?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll take a look,” I said. “You know anything else?”

“No. That’s all, just the initial call on the police radio.”

“Who’s the reporter?” I said.

“Kid named Murray Roberts,” Kingsley said. “I don’t know who the photographer will be yet.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”

I was showered and shaved and dressed for running. I took off my sweats and put on my jeans and a pink sweater. I took off my S&W .32 and put on my Colt Python. Leather jacket, sunglasses, and I was ready to solve something.

There were four cruisers, including one from the State Police, at the top of Ash Street. An ambulance was pulled up at a slant on the right-hand side of the road in front of an Olds-mobile Cutlass with a small roof-top antenna. The front door of the Cutlass was open. Two EMT’s were at the door, one had his head inside, one stood behind him leaning on the roof with his left hand. The buzz and chatter of the police radios filled in the background. A yellow plastic police line had been strung around the scene. There were four or five Wheaton cops and one state trooper inside the line, and maybe twenty civilians in various stages of dress from bathrobe to suit and tie outside it. Somebody’s yellow Lab was sniffing the tires of the State Police cruiser. Henry, the pot-bellied Wheaton police captain who had tried to roust me on my first visit to the Wheaton Library, was standing behind the Olds, his arm around Caroline Rogers. He looked uncomfortable.

I parked along the side of the road and got out and walked over toward the Oldsmobile. J.D., the sergeant who’d been with Henry, spotted me.

“What the hell do you want?” he said.

“I understand someone aced the chief,” I said.

“There’s a crime under investigation,” he said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“I figured you’d want to talk with me,” I said.

“About what?”

“Usually cops talk to everybody that was in any way connected to a capital crime,” I said. “Especially a cop killing.”

“We’ll get to you,” J.D. said.

The state cop who had been talking with one of the EMT’s saw me with J.D. and walked over.

“Who’s this?” he said.

“Private cop from Boston,” J.D. said.

The trooper was big, as so many of them are. He had short-cropped blond hair and pink cheeks.

“Boston, huh?” he said. “Know anybody I know?”

“Healy,” I said. “Used to work out of Essex County DA’s office. Now he’s in at 101 °Commonwealth, I think.”

“Homicide commander,” the trooper said. “What are you doing out here?” J.D. had drifted fast away when the trooper spotted me.

“Central Argus hired me to come out and see about what happened to one of their reporters,” I said.

The trooper nodded. “Valdez. Yeah, I looked in on that too. It’s either coke or a jealous husband, or both. We turned up shit on it.”

“That’s what everyone else has turned up,” I said. “Think this is connected?”

The trooper shrugged. “Town like Wheaton? Goes forty years without a killing then there’s two murders in a month? Tough coincidence.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

“Got any thoughts,” the trooper said.

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

The trooper nodded. He took a card from his uniform shirt pocket and gave it to me.

“You come across anything give me a call,” he said. “Where you staying?”

“Reservoir Court Motel.”

“Got a card?” he said. I gave him one.

The trooper grinned. “Enjoy,” he said, and walked on toward the cruiser. Just a big friendly kid in a spiffy uniform. Now he’d get in the cruiser and call in and see what they had on me. And they’d get hold of Healy and see what he could tell them. It had taken him maybe ten seconds to spot me when I showed up. If he hadn’t turned up anything on the Valdez killing, it meant that there wasn’t much to turn up. Or it was buried deeper than he’d had time to dig.

I walked along the edge of the police line. The EMT’s had backed away from the Olds and a police photographer was taking flash pictures.

Caroline Rogers looked up and saw me. She said something to the captain. He looked at me and shook his head. She dipped her head slightly and stepped away from him and walked toward me. The skin on her face looked tight, but her voice was quiet when she said, “Mr. Spenser.”

“Your husband,” I said.

She nodded gravely.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She nodded again. “They’ve killed him,” she said softly.

I waited.

She didn’t say anything else.

“Can I help you?” I said.

She looked at me steadily, her eyes wide and nearly all pupil. Her breathing was quiet. The skin seemed to tighten still more over the bones of her face as I looked at her.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe you can.”

“I’m at the Reservoir Court Motel,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

The state trooper was still sitting in the cruiser talking on the radio. Henry the police captain had walked over and stood outside the car, leaning on the roof with his arms folded, waiting for the trooper to get through.

The photographer got through and the EMT’s started to bundle the corpse out of the front seat and into a body bag. I put my hands on Caroline Rogers’s shoulders and turned her toward me.

“I can look,” she said.

“I’m sure you can,” I said, “but there are probably better ways to remember him.”

She shook her head. “I’ll remember it all,” she said. “I wish to.”

I took my hands off her shoulders and she turned and watched as they zipped her husband up in the bag and put him on the trundle and wheeled him to the ambulance. The legs folded, the trundle slid on into the bed of the ambulance. They closed the two doors, walked around to the driver’s compartment, got in and drove away. The emergency light on the roof was flashing, but they didn’t use the siren. Bailey was in no rush.

Caroline watched it pull away. When it rounded the curve and disappeared, she turned back to me and her eyes looked vacant. She seemed aimless, as if now that the event was over there was no place to go and nothing to do.

“The children?” I said.

“There’s only Brett,” she said. “He’s away. He doesn’t know yet.” She seemed to be looking for something to do with her hands. “They never got along,” she said. She clasped her hands in front of her. “Bailey demanded so much of Brett.”

A neat dark-haired woman in a pleated plaid skirt stepped close to us on the other side of the police line.

“Caroline,” she said, “come to the house with us.”

Caroline looked at me a moment. I nodded. She nodded back. Then she turned toward the woman in the plaid skirt.

“Yes,” she said, “maybe some coffee.” She bent and slipped under the yellow plastic ribbon with the black police-line-do-not-cross printing on it and straightened on the other side. The woman in the plaid skirt took her hand and held it and together they walked across the street and into a white frame house with green shutters.

I looked at the trooper’s card: Brian P. Lundquist. I looked at the cruiser. Lundquist had stepped out and was talking with the captain. Then both of them walked over to me.

“Lieutenant Healy says you could probably help on this,” he said. “Says you used to be a police officer.”

“Says they fired your ass, too,” Henry said. Lundquist’s eyes shifted very briefly from me to him and back.

“And it came out here and made captain,” I said.

Lundquist smiled.

Henry didn’t. “This is our business,” he said. “We don’t need a lot of outsiders coming in here telling us what to do.”

Lundquist dropped his head in a polite little bob. “ ’Course you don’t, Cap’n. Your chief gets smoked you want to take care of it yourself. Anyone would.”

“Goddamned right,” Henry said.

“Whyn’t I just take Spenser here over to the cruiser and get a statement while you take care of the important stuff.”

Henry said, “Aw...” and made a quick throwaway gesture with his right hand and walked away toward the Oldsmobile. Lundquist pointed at the State Police cruiser with his thumb cocked as if he were shooting it. We walked over. Lundquist got behind the driver’s seat. I sat on the passenger side. Lundquist took a notebook out from over the sun visor and a pen from his shirt pocket.

“Tell me what you know,” he said.

“I know Valdez was shot,” I said. “I know Rogers told me it was a jealous husband. I know he said there’s no coke trade in Wheaton. I know a DEA guy named Fallon who says it’s the major distribution center in the Northeast. I know Rogers didn’t want me here and the cops followed and harassed me since I’ve been here. I know four guys stopped my car on Quabbin Road one night and attempted to beat me up. I shot one in the left thigh. They burned my car. I know a social worker named Juanita Olmo told me that Esmeralda Esteva had an affair with Valdez. I called on Esmeralda. She denied it. Later her husband and four other guys told me that I should butt out. He said his wife didn’t have an affair with Valdez and that there was no coke business in Wheaton. He said he didn’t send four guys to roust me on Quabbin Road. That part I believe. They weren’t Latins and they weren’t pros. I know that Bailey Rogers’s son drives a truck for Esteva.”

“How come this Juanita told you about Esmeralda Esteva?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “She said she was concerned that we Anglos were discriminating against Hispanics.”

“Yeah?”

“She knew Eric Valdez, she said. Says the police killed him.”

“So why’d she tell you he was getting it on with Esmeralda Esteva?” Lundquist took notes but when he asked questions he never had to look back at the notebook for names.

“I pushed her.”

“Un huh. Any other reasons?”

“If I had to guess, I’d guess there was something jealous in it. Maybe she was taken with Valdez and was mad because Emmy took him away. Maybe she’s warm for Emmy’s husband. Maybe she killed Valdez and wanted to place the blame somewhere else.”

“It’s just the opposite,” Lundquist said. “It calls attention to her.”

“I didn’t say she was smart,” I said.

“Why’d the police kill Valdez, does she say?”

“As far as I could gather it was because he was Hispanic. She says Rogers was an evil man.”

“I don’t know about evil,” Lundquist said. “He was a fair asshole though.”

“Thought he was Wyatt Earp?”

“Seemed to,” Lundquist said. “Spent most of his time making sure you knew what a herd bull he was.”

I nodded.

“You know anything else?” Lundquist said.

“No.”

“Still puts you ahead of us. Why do you suppose cops were on your ass so much when you got here?”

“I don’t know. Rogers said the same kind of stuff that Henry said a minute ago.”

“Who were the guys that burned your car?” Lundquist said.

“My guess is that Rogers sent a few local good old boys. Not cops, when I shot one of them they didn’t know what to do. Not Hispanics.”

“Or Esteva was smart enough to send Anglos,” Lundquist said.

“Possible,” I said. “What happened to Rogers?”

“Shot twice in the head, close range, big-caliber gun. One of the patrol cars found him about six A.M. in his car. Apparently sitting in it when he was shot, probably by someone in the backseat. Rogers’s gun was still on his hip, snap fastened. Blood had dried, and he was starting to rigor, so it had been a while. When I get the coroner’s report I’ll give you a buzz.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You learn anything you give me a buzz,” Lundquist said.

“Instead of the Wheaton police?” I said.

Lundquist shrugged. “Might be nice,” he said.