The Accident

THIRTY-NINE

Slocum was coming out of the Connecticut Post Mall, where he’d gone to buy a few things for Emily to try to cheer her up-some markers, a pad, a stuffed dog, and a couple of books by someone named Beverly Cleary that he had no idea whether Emily would like but the lady in the store said they were good for an eight-year-old-when the man called out to him, saying, “Officer Slocum? Do you have a minute?”

He stopped just as he was about to head out into the parking lot and whirled around.

“My name’s Arthur Twain,” he said. “I wonder if you have a moment.”

“No, I don’t.”

“First of all, I’m very sorry to hear about your wife, Mr. Slocum. I need to ask you some questions about her business, the parties she held, where she sold handbags. The company I work for has been engaged to investigate trademark infringement. I suspect you know what I’m talking about.”

Slocum shook his head. “I got nothing to say to you.” He scanned the lot, looking for his pickup. He spotted it and started walking.

Twain followed. “What I’d like to know, Officer, is where you were getting the merchandise. I believe you know a man who goes by the name Sommer?”

Slocum kept on walking.

“Did you know, sir, that Sommer is a suspect in a triple homicide in Manhattan? Are you aware that you and your wife have been doing business with a man with significant criminal connections?”

Slocum hit the button on his remote and opened his door.

“I think it might be in your interest to help me,” Twain said, speaking more quickly now. “You let yourself get in too deep, there’ll be no coming back. If you’d like to talk to me, I’m staying at the Just Inn Time for the next-”

Slocum settled in behind the wheel, closed the door, and keyed the ignition. Twain stood there and watched as he drove away.

Detective Rona Wedmore waited until it was dark before she returned to the harbor for the third time. The temperature had dropped sharply since the sun had gone down. Had to be in the high forties, she figured. Should have worn a scarf and some gloves. As she got out of her unmarked car she pulled her jacket together in front, zipped it up to her neck, stuffed her hands into the pockets.

Not as many boats in the harbor now as there were even a week ago. Many owners had taken them out of the water and put them into storage. It seemed so dead down here this time of year. The place was so full of activity in the summer; now these boats seemed mournful in their abandonment.

The car Ann Slocum had been driving was no longer here, of course. It remained, on Wedmore’s orders, in a police garage.

Those scratches on the trunk lid bothered her a lot. And she’d just learned something else. The flat tire was caused by someone sticking a knife blade into the sidewall, right at the rim’s edge. Ann hadn’t driven over a nail, and it didn’t appear that the tire had been driven on flat. The air had gone out of it after the car had been stopped.

This so-called accident was looking less like one with each new development.

She’d caught Slocum in a lie. He’d denied knowing that Ann had been on the phone prior to the call from Belinda Morton. Wedmore knew, after her talk with Glen Garber, that Slocum was covering up something.

His story about how his wife liked to take a drive in the evening to clear her head was pure fiction. Wedmore wanted to know why a cop, who should be smart enough to spot inconsistencies at a crime scene, was willing to accept his wife died in an accident when so many clues pointed to suspicious circumstances.

Of course, Darren Slocum’s attitude made perfect sense if he was the one who’d killed her.

Wedmore knew the stories about Officer Darren Slocum. The allegations that he’d helped himself to some drug money. Stories of extreme force during arrests. The guy was a loose cannon. Everyone knew his wife ran an off-the-books business, and that he helped her with it.

He could have done it. He had no solid alibi. He could have slipped out of the house while his daughter slept. But suspecting it and proving it were two entirely different things. There were the life insurance policies the two had taken out on each other. That provided a decent motive, especially when they were having financial problems, but it wasn’t enough to nail the guy.

As for Slocum’s first wife, Wedmore had confirmed that she really had died of cancer. Rona kicked herself for that one. She should have known the facts before raising the issue. Felt like a bit of a shit, too.

She stood there in the cold night air, looking out over the Sound, as though the answers to her questions might magically wash ashore. She sighed and was walking back toward her car when she noticed the light.

It was coming from a moored cabin cruiser. She could see shadows moving back and forth behind the windows.

Wedmore strode out onto the dock, the heels of her boots echoing off the wood planks. As she came up alongside the boat she could hear muffled talking inside. She leaned out over the water, rapped on the hull, and called out, “Hello? Hello?”

The talking stopped, and then the door to the cabin opened. A thin man in his late sixties or early seventies, with a neatly trimmed gray beard and reading glasses, emerged.

“Yeah?”

“Hi!” Wedmore called out. She identified herself as a detective with the Milford department. She thought, What’s the phrase? “Permission to come aboard?”

He waved her on, extended a hand to help her but she managed on her own. He invited her into the cabin, where a white-haired woman was seated at a table, sipping on a cup of hot chocolate. The smell of cocoa filled the cabin.

“This is a police detective,” the man said, and the woman brightened, as though this was the most interesting thing that had happened in quite some time.

They introduced themselves as Elliot and Gwyn Teale. When they retired, they sold their house in Stratford and decided to live on their boat full-time.

“Even in the winter?” Wedmore asked.

“Sure,” Elliot said. “We’ve got a heater, we’ve got water, it’s not so hard.”

“I love it,” Gwyn said. “I hated the upkeep with a house. This is so much easier.”

“When we need groceries or to do the laundry, we get a taxi and run our errands,” Elliot said. “It’s close quarters, I’ll give you that, but we have everything we need. And it means when our kids want to come visit, they have to take a hotel. There’s a lot to be said for that.”

Wedmore was impressed. She had no idea anyone could live here year-round, and doubted any officers who’d been down here investigating Ann Slocum’s death would have thought to look for anyone.

“I wanted to ask you about the woman who died here the other night.”

“What woman was that?” Elliot asked.

“Just over there? Friday night? A woman fell off the pier. Struck her head, drowned. Her body was found there later that night when an officer noticed her car sitting there, the door open, the motor running.”

“That’s a new one on us,” Gwyn said. “But we don’t have a TV, or listen to the radio much, and we don’t get a paper. And we sure don’t have a computer here, so we’re not on the Internet. Christ Himself could rent a boat here and we wouldn’t know about it.”

“That’s the truth,” Elliot agreed.

“So you didn’t see the police early Saturday?”

“I did notice a couple of police cars,” Elliot said. “But it didn’t seem to be any of our business, so we stayed on the boat.”

Wedmore sighed. If they hadn’t been curious enough to check out a swarm of police cars, it wasn’t likely they’d noticed much of anything going on around here.

“I don’t suppose you saw anything out of the ordinary late Friday night, early Saturday morning, then?”

The two looked at each other. “Just those cars that drove down, wouldn’t you say, hon?” Gwyn asked Elliot.

“Just that,” he said.

“Cars?” Wedmore asked. “When was this?”

“You see, when anyone drives down that ramp there toward the pier,” Gwyn explained, “their lights flash right into our bedroom.” She smiled, then pointed to the forward hatch, where Wedmore could make out a bed that tapered toward the bow. “It’s not much of a bedroom, but there are some very small windows in there. And I guess it was around ten or eleven, something like that.”

“Did you notice anything else?”

“I got up on my knees and took a peek outside,” Elliot said. “But it must not have been the same thing you’re talking about.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, there were two cars. Not just one car came down. Some woman was getting out of her car just as another one was pulling in right behind her.”

“The first car, it was a BMW?”

Elliot frowned. “Could have been. I don’t pay much attention to makes of cars.”

“And the car that pulled in behind it, can you remember what it looked like?”

“Not really.”

“Would you at least be able to remember whether it was a pickup truck? A red one?”

He shook his head. “Nope, wasn’t a pickup truck. I think I would have noticed that. It would have sat up more, been shaped different. I think it was just a regular kind of car, but that’s about all I could tell ya.”

“Did you see who was in it?”

Another shake. “Couldn’t tell ya. That’s when I dropped back down and went to sleep. I have to tell you, I’ve never slept better than since I started hearing the sound of waves lapping up against the hull at night.” He smiled. “It’s like a lullaby.”