The Hot Pink Farmhouse

CHAPTER 6

It was the smell that got to her.

Des could smell the grilled meat from a half mile away. And what she found when she got to that rural crossroads at Winston Farms was uncommonly grisly. An explosion had flipped the red Porsche directly onto its back over by the feed troughs, where it ignited the poor animals and the bales of feed into a gas-powered fireball that she later learned could be seen twenty miles away in New London.

She was the first officer on the scene. Members of Dorset’s volunteer fire department, with support from volunteer crews from East Haddam and Moodus, were still hosing down the smoldering wreckage with foam. As she got out of her cruiser in the dawn’s gray light, Des could make out bits of charred, twisted auto debris scattered for hundreds of feet around. A dozen or more cows were dead, their body parts mingling with those of the Porsche. It had to be one of the ugliest crime scenes Des had ever seen. But it was the smell of that meat that bothered her more than anything else.

It would be a while before she’d find herself cutting into a steak again.

It was a calm, crisp morning. Glistening frost blanketed the fields, and steam rose off the man-made pond out behind the Winston’s feed trough, where a collection of family members stood in saucer-eyed disbelief. A few horrified neighbors were out watching from across the road as well.

The volunteer firefighters seemed pretty shaken themselves. They were competently trained, but they were still civilians. Many of them were barely out of high school. They’d never seen anything like this.

Des’s contractor, Tim Keefe, was the man in charge. Dorset’s assistant fire chief was a husky, red-faced fellow with a walrus mustache. He was barely thirty, but very steady and mature. In the big city, a lot of men Tim’s age still seemed like boys to her. Here in Dorset, they were middle-aged family men.

“Morning, trooper,” he said to her grimly as he stood there in his firefighter’s gear, clutching a license plate in one hand.

She motioned toward the car. “Is the victim still…?

“What’s left of Takai is still in there,” he affirmed hoarsely. “Poor woman. No one deserves to die like that. I found this across the road.” He held it out to her-it was a personalized plate that read: MYTOY. “It’s hers, all right. I’d know it anywhere. Only new turbo in town. Damned car probably cost her more than my whole house did. We, uh, didn’t attempt to move her yet. Didn’t know what we were dealing with-whether it was a crime scene or whatever.”

“You did right, Tim. What I need you to do now is keep everyone away from this scene until the Emergency Services team gets here. They have to check for undetonated explosives before we attempt to do a thing, okay?”

“Sure thing. I’ll pass it along.”

Des immediately got on her radio and reached out to the Westbrook barracks for Emergency Services, the Bomb Squad and Major Crimes. She also ran a check on the MYTOY license plate. It was Takai’s, all right.

Then she slogged her way through the foam and crouched down for a firsthand look inside the Porsche, her stomach muscles tightening involuntarily. The internal temperature of a vehicle in a gas explosion was generally between eighteen hundred and two thousand degrees. A human being didn’t stay pretty for long in that kind of heat. Takai Frye certainly hadn’t. Not that what was in there even looked like a person now. Her body was nothing more than charred remains. It appeared to be intact, although some of the thinner bones, such as her hands, had turned to ash.

Des stared at it, thinking: I will need crime scene photos. I will need to draw this.

A pair of uniformed troopers pulled up now, the sirens on their cruisers blaring. They immediately got to work cordoning off the area and closing the road to all non-emergency vehicles.

Des strode out into the road to look for skid marks, Tim Keefe tagging along beside her. He seemed to have something more he wanted to tell her. She didn’t see any skids-Takai hadn’t swerved, hadn’t hit her brakes. Whatever happened, it happened without warning. “Was it the farmer who phoned it in?” she asked him.

“No, that was me, actually,” he replied, removing his big yellow firefighter’s hat. He was losing his hair on top, and with his hat off he looked a lot older. “I live just up the road. I was up early, with the new baby and all. Soon as I heard the explosions I jumped in my truck and came flying down here.”

“How many explosions did you hear, Tim?”

“Three. Two real quick ones, followed by a much louder one. I’m guessing the last one was the gas tank. As far as those first two, I never actually heard a car bomb go off. So I wouldn’t know how it would sound…”

“How did these sound?”

“Like shots, to be honest.”

Des raised her eyebrows at him. “A shotgun?”

He nodded. “That was my first thought. The sound sure carried like shotgun fire. It’s duck-hunting season now, so I’ve been hearing it a lot-especially early in the morning.” Tim trailed off, rubbing his high dome of forehead with the palm of his hand. “Except if it was a shotgun, man, it was a real boomer. The mother of all shotguns.”

“Did you know Takai?”

“Everyone knew Takai,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

“I wonder why she was heading out so early.”

“Heading home is more like it,” he suggested, leaving the rest unsaid. “The Fryes live right down Old Ferry Road from here. She’d have made a sharp left here at the crossroads, then taken Old Ferry to Lord’s Cove.” Tim hesitated, clearing his throat. “This may not be the time or the place, but I’ve been meaning to call you about your roof.”

She winced inwardly. “Now what…?”

“Well, when they stripped the shingles off yesterday, they discovered that those old skylights were leaking. Whoever installed them didn’t properly flash or caulk ’em…” Always, it was a previous workman’s fault, she was discovering. “So there’s water damage underneath. Your studs and sheathing are rotted out. That’s all got to be replaced before the new roof goes on.”

“How long will it take, Tim?”

“Another day or two. But there’s no getting around it, I’m afraid. Your roof’s not something you want to fool around with.”

“Agreed, but let me ask you something straight up, Tim. Am I going to be in before Christmas?”

“Heck, yeah,” he said reassuringly. “It’s all coming together now.”

Which was precisely what he’d told her two weeks ago. But Des didn’t bother to point this fact out to him. She merely thanked him for the update.

Maybe Bella was on to something. Maybe she was a wuss.

The Emergency Services cube vans began arriving now, accompanied by a half dozen more cruisers. As resident trooper, Des’s role was to fill them in and provide backup, if requested. The ES lieutenant, Roger Brunson, was someone she’d worked with often when she was with Major Crimes. He was smart and careful and good. After Des brought him up to speed he asked her to notify the next of kin. Then he and his men got busy looking for explosives.

Des climbed into her cruiser and took Old Ferry Road down to Lord’s Cove Lane, a private bumpy dirt road that snaked its way deep into the woods. The sun’s early-morning rays were just beginning to ignite the reds and oranges of the leaves on the maple trees all around her. When she spotted the totem poles and the giant grasshopper standing guard over the largest private junkyard she’d ever seen, she knew she had arrived.

The house itself was straight out of a postcard for rural New England, aside from its color, which was a shocking shade of pink. Hangtown’s vintage motorcycle with its sidecar was parked out front, alongside an old Land Rover and a pickup truck. Lights were on in several windows.

Des got out, Takai’s license tucked under her arm, and used the big knocker on the front door.

It was Hangtown himself who pulled it slowly open. The old artist was wearing a red flannel nightshirt, wool long johns and moccasins. His hair was uncombed, his gaze somewhat unfocused. He seemed dazed. “My God, girl, I just had a dream about you!” he cried out, peering at Des in astonishment. “You were wearing that very uniform. And I was being very naughty. And now here you are on my doorstep. Come in, come in…!”

She entered the house just as another man, a lean, leathery hard case wearing a moth-eaten Pendleton shirt and rumpled jeans, appeared from the kitchen holding a coffeepot. This one had ex-con written all over him-he immediately froze at the sight of Des’s uniform, his jaw tightening.

“Say hey to Jim Bolan, trooper,” Hangtown said warmly. Mitch’s marijuana grower. That explained it. “Grab her a cup, Big Jim. We’ll have us some coffee by the fire.”

“None for me, thanks.” Des stood there uncomfortably, her big hat in her hands. “I have to talk to you about an official matter, Hangtown…”

“Don’t tell me I’ve pissed off another neighbor with my junk. Want to know what’s wrong with these people, girl? They care more about their resale value than they do about their souls. Come on in and get warm. Jim’s got us a fine fire going.”

She followed them into the living room, noticing the suits of armor and the way that Jim Bolan seemed to hang back in the shadows. There were plenty of shadows. It was a gloomy room, and as cold as the inside of a tomb.

“Don’t ever get old, Des,” Hangtown grumbled as he limped toward one of the two leather chairs that were set before the roaring fire. A big German shepherd lay there on the bare wood floor, dozing. “Mornings are the mm-rr-worst-especially chilly ones.” He eased himself slowly down into the chair, groaning. “Now tell me what I can do for you, girl.”

Des removed the license plate from under her arm and said, “Does your daughter Takai own a red Porsche with the license plate

M-y-t-o-y?”

“Yes, I do,” a curt female voice answered. “Is there a problem?”

Des whirled, stunned, to find a tall, slender young Asian woman standing in the doorway. She wore a silk dressing gown, mules and a highly perturbed expression on her face.

“Why are you asking about my car, officer?” Takai Frye was extremely abrupt. Also haughty, condescending and beautiful. She was everything Des had expected her to be.

Everything except for dead.

Des stared at Takai in dumb silence, her wheels spinning. “I’m sorry to tell you that your Porsche, or what’s left of it, is lying by the feed trough at Winston Farms. It exploded there at about five-twenty this morning.” Des held the license plate out to her.

Takai stared at the plate but didn’t reach for it. “I heard some explosions just before my alarm went off,” she said in a cool, clipped voice. “Thought maybe they were dynamiting ledge up on Sterling City Road for another house.”

“Did you hear anything?” Des asked Hangtown.

The old man shook his huge white head. “Not a thing. But Jim was lighting our fire right about then, weren’t you, Big Jim? The kindling pops and crackles and makes one helluva racket.”

“We heard sirens,” Jim spoke from the shadows in a thin, reedy voice. “Thought maybe there was an accident. Remember, boss?”

Hangtown nodded, his piercing blue eyes never leaving Des’s face. “You have more to tell us, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid so,” Des acknowledged. “The remains of one unidentified individual were found behind the wheel. Frankly, Miss Frye, I came here to prepare your father for the likelihood that it was you. Do you have any idea who was using your car this morning? Was it stolen? Is that what happened?”

The skin seemed to pull tighter across Takai’s exquisite cheekbones. “Moose,” she said softly. “It’s my sister.”

“Not a chance,” Hangtown protested hoarsely, the color draining from his face. “Moose went to bed right after Mitch left, didn’t she, Big Jim?”

“She did, boss,” Jim Bolan said, fumbling for a cigarette. “Said she was going to take her a hot bath and turn in.”

“She’s still asleep,” Hangtown insisted, his voice quavering. “She’s upstairs in her room.”

“She’s not up there, Father,” Takai said, her eyes fastened on the floor.

“She is so!” Wendell Frye cried out.

“She… she went out after you’d gone to bed,” Takai informed him in a strained, halting voice. “I loaned her my car because her damned Rover wouldn’t start. She knocked on my door and asked me if she could borrow it. I’d just gotten home from a meeting with a client,” she explained to Des.

“What time was this?”

“Twelve. Maybe twelve-thirty.”

“No, she’s upstairs in bed!” Hangtown erupted, his big gnarled fists clenching. “I know she is! Her alarm clock is going to go off any minute now. And she’ll come right down those stairs to make us breakfast. She’s up there!”

“Perhaps you should go take a look,” Des said to him gently.

Jim helped the old man up out of his chair and the two of them went upstairs to find out.

Des stayed behind in the living room with Takai, who was fighting back tears. “I can’t believe this,” she whispered, biting down hard on her lower lip. “I just can’t.”

“Any idea where your sister was going at that time of night?”

“She’d been seeing a man lately. For the past two or three weeks. Always late at night. She’d get home before dawn.”

“Any idea…?”

“Don’t ask me who he is, trooper, because I don’t know. She’s never confided in me that way. Not that there’s ever been much to confide. She’s always been the Frye family good girl. I’m the one who’s the slut. Ask anyone in town. They’ll be happy to tell you all about me. They just love to talk about me…” Takai was starting to run off at the mouth a little. It was her grief pouring out. “I was thrilled for her that she’d found someone. And if she didn’t want to tell me who he was, okay by me. She deserves to be happy. She deserves to-”

An animal roar of pain came from upstairs now.

Des immediately dashed up there, Takai one step behind her, to find Hangtown sobbing uncontrollably in a bedroom doorway, his arms thrown around Jim Bolan.

“No, Jim, no…!” he moaned, tears streaming down his lined face. “No…!”

“C’mon, boss, let’s have you a lie-down in your room,” Jim said, steering the shattered old man slowly down the hall toward his bedroom. “You just take it a step at a time. Big Jim’s right here.”

“She was his little pet,” Takai said to Des in a quiet, bitter voice. “He’s going to have a really, really hard time handling this.”

Moose Frye’s bedroom was small and tidy. There was an old brass bed with a patchwork quilt on it. The bed was still made-it had not been slept in. There was a writing table with schoolbooks and lesson folders stacked neatly upon it. Over the dresser was a bulletin board where she’d pinned some of her students’ artwork-watercolors of bunny rabbits and birds. Also a snapshot of a handsome young man and two little girls standing on a beach.

Takai noticed Des looking at it. “Moose was their au pair one summer, back when she was still in college. She had a mad crush on the father-not that she ever acted on it, of course.”

Des backed slowly out of the room, touching nothing. “I’ll have to ask all of you to stay out of here for the time being.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Any idea why her Land Rover wouldn’t start?”

“Damned thing always gets moody when the weather turns cold. Key’s in the ignition if you want to check it out.”

“Someone from Major Crimes may wish to later on, so please avoid touching the vehicle as well.”

Takai shook her pretty head at Des. “I don’t understand why you’re laying down all of these rules.”

“Miss Frye, we don’t know what we’re dealing with yet,” Des explained. “It may turn out that your sister hit a deer in the road. Or could be there was a gas-line leak.” If so, the medical examiner would find accelerant in her lung tissue. “Could be she lit a cigarette and the car blew.”

“She didn’t smoke,” Takai said. “That’s not what happened.”

“Okay, but until we figure out what did happen we don’t want to compromise anything that might be evidence.”

“You think this is a murder investigation, is that it?”

“I don’t think anything of the sort,” Des responded as they started back downstairs, Takai’s mules clacking on the steps. “I’m just following procedure.”

“Trooper, I really think you are missing the point here.”

“Which is…?”

“It was my goddamned car,” Takai said, her voice rising shrilly. “Whoever killed Moose was after me. I’m the one who everyone hates. I’m the biggest bitch in Dorset. Don’t you get it? They were after me!”

“You don’t know that, Miss Frye,” Des said to her in a calm, steady voice. “You’re upset, which you have every reason to be. But what you need to do right now is stay cool.” Des made her way toward the front door. “A top team is on its way down from Meriden. I promise you they’ll get to the bottom of this. And if there’s any reason to believe your life is in danger, they will protect you, okay?”

“Is there any chance it’s not her?” Takai wondered, following Des outside in her dressing gown. In her grief, the woman was clinging to her.

“There’s always a chance. But we should be realistic.”

“How can you tell for sure?”

“By taking a DNA sample of the remains. We’ll match it against a blood sample from a member of your family.”

And if Moose’s internal body parts were not totally incinerated they might also be able to get a DNA sample out of the semen residue within her vaginal cavity-leading them to the man she’d been having sex with in the night.

“I was just thinking I may know who he is,” Takai said, as Des opened the door to her cruiser. “The man who Moose was seeing-it could be this guy who lives out on Big Sister named Mitch Berger.”

Des immediately drew back from her, stiffening.

“The two of them really hit it off at dinner,” Takai went on, a mean little glint in her eyes. “Maybe because they’d been seeing each other, and were just keeping it a secret from everyone. Maybe it was him she was with last night. What do you think?”

“I think not,” Des growled at her balefully. Neither of them were women now. They were taut, predatory cats sizing up each other’s underbellies, their ears pinned back, hackles up.

“Well, you would know,” Takai said tartly. She’d done exactly what she’d set out to do-drawn blood. “There is one other thing you could do, trooper…”

“Yes, what is it, Miss Frye?” Des was angry at herself for letting this woman rile her.

“My father hates the media. This is just about his worst nightmare. Can you post someone at the road to keep them away?”

Des promised her she’d get right on it. Then she started up her cruiser and headed back toward the crime scene, watching Takai Frye in the rearview mirror as she sashayed back inside in the house, hips swinging in her slinky dressing gown. Even in her grief she’d had her claws out. Inflicting pain was what she thrived on.

Inflicting pain was Takai Frye’s oxygen.

The Hartford and New Haven television news choppers were circling overhead now as the Emergency Services people combed the scene in their navy-blue windbreakers and baby-blue latex gloves. The Bomb Squad crime scene technicians were on hand, too. There were so many cube vans clustered together out there in the field beyond the feed trough that it looked as if the traveling circus were in town.

As Des pulled her cruiser alongside them, an unmarked slicktop with two plainclothesmen in it drew up next to her-and out popped the absolute last person in the world she wanted to see right now.

Back when she was a lieutenant on the Major Crime Squad, Des had been saddled with a petulant, muscle-bound little weasel of a sergeant named Rico “Soave” Tedone. He’d picked up his nickname from a Latino rap song by Gerardo that had briefly been a hit back when he was in the academy. Soave belonged to the so-called Waterbury Mafia, a tight-knit clan of Italian-American males from the Brass City who formed an elite inner circle within the state police. Most of them were related to one another-Soave was their deputy commander’s kid brother, in fact. And he was, she’d come quickly to realize, someone who was trying desperately to outgrow being that kid brother. He pumped so much iron he looked positively reptilian. Grew a scraggly, see-through mustache that he thought made him look more mature. Dressed in sober black suits to lend himself an air of gravity. But none of it worked. He was a twerp. And their partnership had not been a success. He wasn’t bad at his job, but he was immature and insensitive, not to mention extremely prickly about criticism. He had never reported to a woman before, and he couldn’t deal with it. But he belonged to the Waterbury crew, and Des did not, and when things had gotten tight, he had stabbed her in the front. Now she was here, wearing a uni, and he was the lieutenant in charge of this investigation. And Des was not looking forward to this. No, not at all.

“Morning, Des,” he said to her, sniffing at the air. “Smells like the parking lot at the Sizzler’s out on the Newington Turnpike, am I right, Tommy?”

His sergeant promptly let out a reflexive hunh-hunh-hunh of a laugh. “Dead on, Soave.”

“Nice to see you again, Rico,” Des said politely.

“Back at you,” Soave said, flexing his bulked-up shoulders, which was something he did when he was ill at ease. “Sergeant Tommy Salcineto, give it up for Master Sergeant Des Mitry. Tommy’s my little cousin.” Another Waterbury boy. “Known him since he was, like, three.”

“Glad to know you,” said Tommy, eyeballing her up and down. Clearly, Soave had bragged on her frame in the car on the way down. Tommy was younger, taller and decidedly dimmer than Soave. His eyes, which were just a bit too close together, seemed permanently set in a confused squint. He dressed just like Soave, wore his hair just like Soave and hung on Soave’s every word.

All of which sent the little man off on an ego trip that he clearly relished. Christ, if the kid had breasts, Soave would have married him.

“So what have we got here, Des?” Soave asked her as they made their way across the field toward the wreckage of the Porsche. The all-clear had been issued-there was no evidence of any undetonated devices.

She told him that the victim was very likely one Mary Susan Frye, age thirty-two. That the car belonged to her sister, Takai. That she had just been to the house and discovered Takai was home and her sister, who had borrowed the car, had been out all night.

“Out where?” Soave demanded gruffly. This was him acting take charge for Tommy’s benefit. He even had his chin stuck out.

“She was visiting a man. Identity unknown.”

“Maybe she ran into one of these cows in the dark,” Tommy said. “You think?”

Soave went around to the front of the car for a look. “I don’t think so, T-man. The front end isn’t crunched. Any skid marks, Des?”

“None,” Des responded. “Assuming the victim was on her way home, she would have come to a stop at the crossroads, then made a left and gone down that road toward the river. The assistant fire chief heard three explosions. He thought the first two might have been gunshots.”

“Tommy, better have some uniforms canvass the neighbors,” Soave ordered him. “Find out what they heard.”

Tommy headed off to take care of it. Up above, the choppers were still circling.

“Anything else I ought to know?” Soave asked her.

“The victim’s father is Wendell Frye, probably the greatest living sculptor in America. Also a major-league recluse.”

Soave considered this, stroking his see-through mustache. “He got deep pockets?”

“I imagine so, yes.”

“Any chance this is a money-related thing? A kidnapping gone bad, say?”

“Nothing should be ruled out at this point.”

“Gee, thanks, I’ll remember that,” Soave said, bristling. Clearly, he felt she was lecturing him.

Des let it slide. “I’ve told the family a DNA test may be necessary to confirm Moose’s identity-that’s what they called her, by the way. If there’s any way I can assist you from the local level, just let me know.”

A photographer was snapping pictures of the remains from as many angles as possible. Until he was done, Moose could not be removed to the medical examiner’s office in Farmington. Des noticed that there was a strange, uncharacteristic hush among the technicians as they worked. It was the smell. It was all of the innocent animals that had died.

Soave was studying her curiously. “You’re not enjoying this, are you?”

“I never enjoy a death, Rico.”

“No, I mean the fact that I’m in charge now.”

She let that slide, too.

“You know what I keep saying to myself?”

“Rico, I honestly can’t imagine.”

“I keep thinking you’re the smartest woman I ever met. But tell me this: If you’re so smart, how come you ended up back in a Smokey hat?”

“Priorities change,” she answered.

He shook his head at her. “I don’t get it.”

“Not many people do.”

“Are you telling me you’re happy here?”

“I am.”

He started flexing his shoulders again. Something was still on his mind. “Look, maybe we better stake out some ground rules-any information you gather on this case I want funneled through me. Are we clear on that?”

“Of course we are, Rico,” responded Des, who knew exactly what was going on. He felt threatened by her presence here. He was, after all, a man. “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do. You want community liaison help, it’s yours. You want a command center at town hall, it’s yours. Otherwise, I’m in my ride and out of here. It’s your case. I’m not looking to climb you.”

He peered at her doubtfully. “You’re not looking to get back in?”

“Not a chance.”

“You’re being incredibly mature about this whole thing, you know that?”

“Yeah, I’m all grown up.” Des glanced at her watch. She was due at Center School for traffic detail. “I’m going to take off now if you don’t need me.”

“Did you check out her gas tank?” he asked offhandedly, stopping her.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Want to have a look?”

She frowned at him. One minute he was creased, the next he was fishing for help. “Do you want me to?”

“Sure, if you’d like.” Again, very offhanded. “I’m just saying I’ve got no problem with that. Unless you’ve got somewhere else you have to be…”

“Okay, let’s have a look,” she said, because the truth was that she was very interested in the condition of the Porsche’s gas tank.

Lab tests would confirm if there had been a bomb-the device would leave nitrate or chlorate residue behind. But Des could tell it with her own two eyes-by the fracture pattern on the gas tank. A bomb explodes outside the tank, setting off a second explosion inside the tank. If, on the other hand, an explosion has been caused by a bullet piercing the gas tank, then it’s the other way around-the tank explodes from the inside out. Entirely different distortion and bending of the metal.

As Des knelt there, examining the Porsche’s gas tank, she had no doubt about what had happened.

Neither did Soave. “I got me a shooter, Des,” he declared, as Tommy rejoined them.

“That you do, Rico,” she agreed, shoving her hornrimmed glasses back up her nose.

He had Tommy round up a dozen men to undertake a search for the spent bullet by fanning out in five-foot intervals around the wreckage. It was slow, painstaking work, but that was how you did things. And they might find it. Not that they’d be able to match it to a specific weapon-it would be too distorted from the explosion to do them much good in terms of ballistics. But maybe they could determine the class of weapon.

“Could be somebody was tailing her, Des,” Soave said. “Got off a couple of pops when she came to a stop here at the crossroads, then hightailed it out of here. You think?”

Des found herself gazing around at the surrounding countryside in search of a shooter’s blind, Soave’s eyes following hers. From the open field where they stood she could make out a spot of high ground in the woods across the road, in the general direction of Wendell Frye’s farm. There was a natural rise there, with an outcropping of bare rock that was partly shielded from the road by trees. “Unless he was waiting up there for her to come home,” she countered. “Less risk that way. If he tailed her, somebody might spot him.”

“Yo, Tom-meeee!” Rico hollered to his cousin, who was helping the uniforms search for the bullet. “Take a couple of men up to that outcropping across the road! See if you find any fresh shoe prints or anything like that. Be ultra careful, okay? The ground’s damp.”

“You got it!” Tommy obediently grabbed two troopers and started off with them across the road.

“What a big doofus,” Soave grumbled sourly. “I have to tell him everything. And then I have to give him a cookie when he does good. He’s not a man, he’s dog. Was I ever that dumb? Wait, don’t answer that… You don’t mind sticking around for a little while, do you?”

“I don’t mind.” Des radioed the barracks to request an available trooper to handle the school traffic. Then she rejoined Soave, who was watching the medical examiner’s men bag and tag Moose’s remains.

Pictures. I will definitely need pictures of this.

“How’s the jungle, Rico?”

“Same.”

“And your girl-what’s her name, Tammy?”

“Close, it’s Tawny.” She was a manicurist in New Britain. Enjoyed an IQ roughly equal to that of a muskmelon. “What about her?”

“How long have you two been seeing each other now?”

“Uh, since high school.”

“Which makes it how many years?”

“Nine, I guess. So what?”

“Damn, Rico, you belong on ‘Jerry Springer’ or something.” One thing hadn’t changed-with Soave, Des grabbed her pleasure where she could. “What is wrong with that girl? Is she a doormat or is she just plain comatose?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said irritably. “What’s the big deal?”

“You ought to be marrying her, that’s what. Settle down and have yourself some little Tedones.”

He made a face. “No offense, Des, but I liked you a whole lot better when you were just trying to stick me with a cat.”

“No offense taken. But, hey, if you’re really in the market for another kitten-”

“I’m not,” he snapped. “Believe me, I’m not.”

“Yo, Swa-vayyyy!” Tommy was calling to him now from the woods across the road, waving both arms excitedly in the air. “Yo! Yo!”

They started across the road toward him, crashing through the fallen leaves as they hiked over the rugged terrain. What they found when they reached the rock outcropping was Tommy and the two uniforms crouched in a semicircle around a spent cartridge. It lay on the ground underneath a mountain laurel.

“Looks like you figured right again, Soave,” Tommy said eagerly. At least Des knew what to get the kid for Christmas now-a nice set of knee pads. “Must be he couldn’t find it in the dark.”

“Didn’t want to risk hanging around,” Soave concurred.

“We’ve got shoe prints, too,” Tommy added. “Also a cigarette butt-the old-fashioned kind, without a filter.”

“Nice going, T-man,” Soave said to him warmly. Cookie time.

As for Des, she found herself puzzled. Because you did not leave a butt behind. Not if you were the least bit careful. She knelt down for a closer look at the cartridge. It was no ordinary one. It was a good six inches long. “Damn, I haven’t seen one of these puppies since Kuwait,” she said, Tommy’s eyes widening at her in surprise. Evidently Soave had neglected to mention that she had game. “This explains what Tim Keefe said to me.”

“Which was what?” Soave growled. Now he was irritated by her presence.

She should just go. So why didn’t she? “That it sounded like the mother of all shotguns,” she replied. “What he heard was a Fifty-Cal Pal.” Formally known as a Barrett. 50-caliber long-range semiautomatic sniper rifle. The Barrett had been designed by the military for taking out enemy tanks and bunkers. It only weighed about thirty pounds, but had staggering power and range-its armor-piercing bullet could go through a manhole cover from a half mile away. “Pretty much weapon of choice among your wackos,” she added, getting up out of her crouch. “Tim McVeigh owned him a pair.”

And someone in bucolic Dorset had one, too. Not that Soave would have an easy time finding out who. It was easier to buy a Barrett at a gun show than it was a handgun. All you had to prove was that you were eighteen and had no felony convictions. There was no waiting period, and nothing to stop you from passing it on to someone else. The ammunition was a bit harder to come by, but not much. All of which was crazy, in her opinion. But this was Soave’s crime scene, and she was not there to offer her opinions. So she kept them to herself as she stood there, inhaling the crisp morning air. It didn’t smell of grilled meat up here.

“He was waiting here for her, Tommy,” Soave said, gazing down at the road from their rocky perch. The view from up here was unobstructed. Also panoramic-the shooter could have seen the red Porsche coming from a mile away. “He planned this whole thing out in advance. Man knows how to shoot, too. What are we talking from here, two hundred yards?”

“Easy,” Tommy said.

“Des, you’d better set up that command center for me at town hall, okay?”

“Be happy to.”

“And I want you with us when we meet the family. Is there any kind of local angle you can give us? Any idea who might have wanted Moose Frye dead?”

“All I can tell you is how her sister Takai reads it,” Des replied. “That someone was after her and got Moose by mistake-just Moose’s bad luck that she picked last night to borrow her sister’s car. Takai’s afraid for her life, Rico. She thinks somebody still wants her dead.”

Soave stood there smoothing his see-through mustache. He did that a lot. Tawny must have told him it made him look serious. “Any idea who?”

“Offhand, I’d have to say just about anyone who’s ever met her.”

“Okay, now I’m not following you,” he said, scowling.

Des flashed a mega-wattage smile at him. “Not to worry, wow man. You will.”

Des thought Soave was going to flex himself right into a coma when he got his first look at Takai Frye.

The little man huffed and he puffed as he strutted around the Fryes’s living room, his chest stuck out and his muscles bulging. He was positively desperate to show Takai how in command he was. Takai was exactly the sort of tall, cool rich girl he was always trying to impress. She had put on a pale-green silk dress and high-heeled sandals. Her manner was subdued as she stood before the windows, her slender arms folded before her. She appeared to be in control of her emotions now. She also appeared to be oblivious to Soave and his preening.

The living room remained cold and gloomy, despite the fire roaring in the fireplace. Hangtown, who still wore his nightshirt and long johns, sat slumped in a leather wingback chair, staring with heavy sadness at the flames. The old man seemed to have aged five years in the hour since Des had been there. His eyes were hollow and bloodshot. His vital, madman’s energy seemed to have been snuffed out. Des could not be sure that he even knew they were there.

Jim Bolan sat in the other leather chair, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes and acting very much like someone who needed to find a drink. Or an AA meeting. His hands shook.

Soave had left Tommy behind at the crime scene. The uniformed trooper whom he’d brought along stood there in the living room doorway in stolid silence, hands on his hips, as the little man held forth.

Right now, it was the cartridge that Soave was talking about. “Somebody fired on that Porsche with a Barrett fifty-caliber rifle,” he declared, keeping his voice deep and authoritative. “That’s no Saturday Night Special, folks. Whoever used it knows his way around serious military hardware. If you know of anyone who fits that description-”

“You can pull over right there, boss.” Jim spoke up in a hoarse, quavering voice. “I do. I was a sniper in ’Nam.”

Soave stuck his chin out at him. “You own a gun like that, Jim?”

“I don’t have no use for guns anymore,” Jim replied, tossing his cigarette butt in the fire. “I already did enough killing to last me a lifetime.”

“I see that you’re a smoker, Jim.”

Jim shook another Lucky out of his crumpled pack and lit it. “You going to run me in for that?”

Soave flashed a quick look at Takai to see if she’d reacted to Jim’s crack. She hadn’t. “Smart-mouthing doesn’t go over so good with me, Jim,” he said, moving closer to him. “Somebody comes at me with an attitude, I immediately think he’s hiding something. If I ask you a question, I have a reason for it. Do we understand each other?”

“You’re the man,” Jim said sullenly. “Whatever you say.”

“You got that right,” Soave agreed. “And I say we found an unfiltered butt near that cartridge. Sure looked to me like it could have been a Lucky. What do you think, Des?”

“Could have been,” Des said evenly.

“That’s your brand, am I right, Jim?”

Jim ran a hand through his stringy gray hair. “So what?”

“So things suddenly don’t look so good for you, Jim. We test the saliva on that butt and the DNA matches yours, then I’ve got you at the scene.”

“You’ve got my cigarette, man. Not me.”

Soave went over to inspect one of the suits of armor in the middle of the room. Hangtown stirred slightly when he did that, glancing at the floor under Soave’s feet. Des didn’t know why.

“You’ve been taken down before, am I right, Jim?” Soave demanded gruffly. Des had told him about Jim’s record on the way over.

“I ain’t no drug trafficker,” Jim responded bitterly. “That was all a lie. But it cost me my family’s land, and I sure do regret that.” Jim was looking right at Takai when he said this, Des noticed. Now he turned his gaze back on Soave. “You want to polygraph me, go ahead. You want to test me for gun residue, go ahead. You’re looking at the wrong man. No way I’d do anything to hurt Moose. She was like a sister to me.”

“Are you sure that’s all she was to you?”

Jim started up out of his chair, seething with anger. “You got some nerve, mister, talking like that in front of the old man!”

“Now just relax, Jim,” Des cautioned, stepping between the two of them. Hangtown just continued to sit there, staring into the fire. “The lieutenant’s only trying to get answers.”

“You tell him to watch his mouth,” Jim warned her between gritted teeth.

“I hear she was visiting some guy, Jim,” Soave went on, undeterred. “Maybe you didn’t like her stepping out on you. Maybe you waited at the crossroads for her to come home, shot her and hightailed on foot back here through the woods before anyone was the wiser.”

“Lieutenant, you could not be more wrong,” Takai spoke up in a measured voice. “There was absolutely, positively nothing between my sister and Jim.”

“I appreciate your input, Miss Frye,” Soave said to her, all but tugging at his forelock. “But it’s looking real bad for you, Jim. Worse and worse, you want to know the truth.”

Des knew exactly where her ex-sergeant’s mind was going. He was thinking: I am going to have this buttoned up by lunchtime. She could see him liking Jim for it. There was definitely a circumstantial thread. But if Jim had shot Moose, why was he still hanging around? He’d be halfway across Canada by now, wouldn’t he? Not sitting here in front of the old man’s fire, waiting to get nailed.

“You’re the man,” Jim said to him once again. “You’ll throw down if you want to, and there ain’t nothing I can say or do will change that.”

“You’re going to the School House, Jim,” Soave informed him coldly. The Central District Major Crime Squad headquarters in Meriden had previously been a state-run reform school for boys. Everyone on the job called it the School House. “There’ll be more questions, and a blood test. Have him held until I get there,” he ordered the uniformed trooper.

Hangtown sat up in his chair for the first time since they’d arrived. “Must you take him away, Lieutenant? Must you take my friend?”

“It’s strictly routine questioning, Hangtown,” Des said to him gently.

“Yes, but can’t you do that sort of thing mm-rr-here?” Hangtown pleaded. “Jim is my hands. I can’t work without him. And if I can’t work right now, I-I’ll just… I won’t get through this agony, this

…”

Soave softened in the face of the great artist’s pain. Plus he was anxious to show Takai his caring side. “Give me a good reason why I should trust you, Jim.”

“I’ll never leave the property, sir,” Jim vowed. “Not with all of them reporters trying to jump our fence. I got to watch out for the boss. That’s what I do. So you got no cause to worry. Word of honor.”

“I don’t want to have to come looking for you,” Soave warned him.

“He just gave you his word, Lieutenant,” Hangtown said balefully. “That may not mean much to you, but around here it means everything.”

Soave struck his thoughtful, smoothing-the-mustache pose. “Okay, Mr. Frye. We’ll do it your way. As for you, Miss Frye, rest assured that a state trooper will be on the front gate twenty-four hours a day. Also a man stationed right here in the house. You have no reason to be frightened. But if anything does bother you, anything at all

…” He handed her his card. “You can reach me day or night. Don’t hesitate to call.”

Takai accepted the card, but said nothing in response, which left Soave thrown for words. Hastily, he turned to Des and said, “Did you try starting the victim’s car?”

“No, I didn’t,” Des replied. “Key’s in the ignition.”

“You ever drive that Land Rover, Jim?” Soave asked him.

“We all drive it. Only car we got that can make it down to the plowed road when it snows.” Jim’s eyes narrowed at him. “My prints are all over it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Soave told the uniformed trooper to give it a go. The trooper fetched a pair of protective latex gloves from the trunk of his cruiser and hopped in, Des and Soave watching him from the front doorway of the house.

Moose’s Land Rover kicked over and started without a hitch, clouds of exhaust billowing from its tailpipe.

“I thought she told her sister it was dead,” Soave said, astonished.

“She did,” Des said, the trooper getting out to raise the hood for a look.

“So what do you make of that?”

“I take it you’ve never owned a vintage British automobile, Lieutenant,” Takai said rather archly from the entry hall behind them.

Soave drew back slightly, sensing he was being dissed. “No, I never have, miss. Why does that matter?”

“I’m terrible at jokes, but there’s an old one about the reason why the Brits drink their beer warm. The punch line is that the same outfit that does the wiring on their cars also makes refrigerators. They’re famously unreliable, in other words. Especially when the weather turns cold. You say a prayer that it will start. You tap the dashboard three times for luck. You stroke it. And, above all, you make sure you park it where the morning sunlight will hit its hood.”

Which Moose had done. The Land Rover was sitting directly in the morning sun.

“Doesn’t appear to have been tampered with,” the trooper called to Soave, slamming the hood shut.

“May I drive it, Lieutenant?” Takai asked him. “I’ve lost my own car.”

“I don’t see why not. But you ought to get yourself something you can really count on. If I lived around here I’d buy me a Grand Cherokee.”

“Yes, but you don’t live around here, do you,” she pointed out.

Soave stiffened. Now he knew he was being dissed.

The phone rang in the kitchen. Takai went to answer it.

“Yo, I’m beginning to see what you meant about her,” he muttered at Des.

“Rico, I had me a feeling you would.”

Takai wasn’t gone long. She looked somewhat pale on her return.

“Who was it, girl?” Hangtown asked her, limping his way heavily from the living room toward them.

“No one, Father,” she answered shortly.

“Don’t be coy, damn it!” he thundered at her. “Who was it?”

“It was just the school calling,” Takai said, her voice fading. “About why Moose didn’t come to work this morning. They… they wanted to know whether she’d be back tomorrow.”

The old man let out a sob of pure anguish. “I’m not going to make it,” he cried out. “I will die. Oh, Lord, I will die!”