An Educated Death (51 page)

"Seven months, sir."

"A word of advice," Burgess said. "Don't start cutting corners. It's the quickest way to screw up any investigation..." He held up a hand to ward off the young officer's protest. "I know it's a miserable night. No one wants to get out of the car on a night like this. But the scumbags count on that. We don't wanna be playing the game their way."

Wind-whipped tears had turned to ice in the young cop's mustache. "Keep moving," Burgess said. "It helps. For starters, get me a scraper, okay? And don't make any new tracks." He strode over to the car, sliding on black ice under the powdery snow. The night was empty but not quiet. Wind rustled frantically through a nearby oak and shrieked around the buildings. Ice had re-formed on the window where Aucoin had cleared it. He grabbed the scraper. "Give me a big perimeter, okay? And watch for footprints." Aucoin, hunched and miserable, crunched away.

He scraped the window, then took his flashlight and peered in, running the beam slowly over the still figure. The sharp light distorted the taut face into planes of yellow-white and dark crevasses. Maine wasn't exactly a hotbed of homicide, but Burgess had been a cop a long time, in Vietnam before that. He'd seen his share of ugly bodies but this was a contender. Dr. Pleasant hadn't gone quietly into that good night. Death had left its mark in the wide, horrified eyes, cocked head with straining neck cords, that metal rod protruding between the teeth like a fire-eater whose act has failed.

Early forensic scientists had believed the dying eye recorded the assailant's picture like a photograph and tried to find a method to recover it. Faces like Pleasant's, with the awful anticipation frozen there, had fueled those theories. The seat was pushed away from the steering wheel and half reclined, like a dentist's chair. He could hear his dentist's voice. Open wide.

He wondered if the rod had gone through the victim's neck. What the ME would say about the cause of death, assuming the man was dead. Burgess didn't doubt it, but he had to make sure. As a police officer, he had the authority to declare the man dead. He could confirm, for the record, that the victim had no pulse or respiration, so no extraordinary measures would be taken to save his already lost life and screw up the crime scene.

He raised his flashlight, wincing at the desecration of such an expensive car, broke out enough of the window to slip a hand through, and opened the door. He exchanged leather for latex and touched the victim's bare chest. Despite the heater's best efforts, the car wasn't warm. Pleasant was already cooling, his skin gone a waxy yellow. He had no detectable pulse, wasn't breathing. His pupils were fixed and dilated. The blood which had dripped from the corners of his mouth onto his scarf was still wet and red, but coagulating.

This was when training and experience came together, when keeping an open mind and open eyes were essential. Burgess surveyed the rest of the body and the car's spotless, characterless interior—black leather, gray carpet. No change, phone, CDs, glasses, cups, papers or briefcase. Only a dark overcoat, folded carefully on the rear seat, which the drape suggested was cashmere. The car smelled faintly of pizza.

He noted things for the report, things to be collected, the strange choice of weapon, already framing the pictures, though he no longer took them. Who was this man? Why had he been here? Who had been with him? What had happened in this car? And why?

What would he say to the widow? It was a difficult conversation at the best of times. Getting caught—or killed—with your pants down was hardly that. Mrs. Pleasant—and a wedding ring suggested there was one—wouldn't want to know how her husband's body was found. His shirt unbuttoned and his pants unzipped. He wore no undershirt and there were garish lipstick stains around his nipples. His penis, upright and hard with post-mortem tumescence, still awaited its anticipated release. A party atmosphere despite the lack of decorations. On the passenger's seat were two crumpled twenties and a ten. Party favors? One clenched hand held many strands of long blonde hair. Otherwise there were no marks on the hands. No signs of a struggle.

He was supposed to wait for the ME, the photographer, and the rest of the crime scene team before he touched anything, but any second now, the wind might whip in and snatch those hairs away, hairs that, for all he knew, might be a vital clue. Making a mental note to bag the hands, he pulled out an evidence envelope, untangled some hairs from the clutching fingers, and dropped them in, carefully recording the necessary information.

He backed out of the car, slamming the door, just as the crime scene van, an unobtrusive Taurus full of detectives, and an ambulance pulled up. He hoped they wouldn't have to wait long for someone from the ME's office to arrive and release the scene so they could work it. He wondered whether, having met Pleasant briefly in the past, he ought to let someone else work the case. That was something he and the lieutenant could work out later. He was here, the body was waiting, and it would be a pity to drag anyone else out into this icebox of a night.

He shoved the envelope into his pocket and went to meet them.

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from

 

Steal Away

 

by

 

Katharine Clark

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy!

-Ben jonson, "On My First Son"

 

 

Chapter 1

 

She was going to be late again, Rachel thought, stepping on the gas. She couldn't make peanut butter cookies without peanut butter and brown sugar, and she couldn't be home baking if she was at the store buying supplies. There wasn't even enough time to get the cookies in the oven before David got home. He'd give her one of those looks, both irritated and understanding, that seemed so odd coming from a nine-year-old. Odd unless you knew how much he was like his father. Her husband, Stephen, was always giving her long-suffering looks. A woman who lived on sufferance, that's what she was. Always teetering on the verge of failure, clinging to the cusp of competence.

A shiny red bike lying at the side of the road caught her eye. Someone had a bike just like David's. Some kid biking home from school who'd stopped to explore the woods near the old pine tree. Maybe to climb the pine. It was the kind of tree that invited climbing with its well-spaced, sturdy branches. It took a kind of revenge, though, by daubing climbers generously with pitch. David had ruined more than one good pair of pants that way. Usually when he was with his best friend, Tommy. Tommy was the kind of kid the term "daredevil" was made for.

She snapped on the signal and whisked into the yard, grabbing the grocery bag and running for the door. In the distance, she could hear the muted roar of the bus. She hurried into the kitchen, vaguely aware of how silly she looked in her workout wear. She usually took it off the instant she finished class, but today she hadn't had time. They all dressed like this, the women in the suburbs. She didn't feel like one of them, but she knew she looked the same, a peculiarly gnome-shaped creature, body rounded and squared off by the bulky sweatshirt, perched on skinny little black Lycra legs.

She grabbed a bowl and stuck in the beaters. Threw a stick of margarine into the microwave to soften. Pushed the button and hurried to the window as the bus roared around the curve, passed the driveway without stopping, and disappeared into the trees. "Hey, wait a minute," she said aloud, rushing out the door and down the long driveway. Halfway down, feet churning, the arm that wasn't holding a mixing bowl waving, she remembered. David hadn't taken the bus. He'd gone on his bike. The bike she'd seen lying on the roadside.

Something felt wrong. David had just begun to be allowed to ride his bike to school. He wouldn't stop off without permission. He'd come straight home, then go out again after asking her. He was a cautious, methodical child, not a willful one like Tommy. But he and Tommy had planned to ride together. Maybe Tommy had persuaded him to stop. Only she hadn't seen Tommy's bike, just David's. Unbidden, Rachel's feet were moving faster, carrying her down the driveway. She left the mixing bowl by the mailbox and hurried along the road until she reached the bike.

She cupped her hands and called "David" several times, listening each time for an answer. Waiting without breathing. She walked to the base of the tree, cupped her hands again, and called up. She had a soft voice; she had to work at being loud. She circled the tree, staring up into the dark branches. There was no one there. She walked back into the woods, calling as she went, heedless of the damage she was doing to her pristine white shoes, shoes that normally never touched ground outside the gym itself. A knot of panic grew in her chest and her footsteps got faster as she plunged deeper into the brush.

This was silly. David didn't like the woods. He might go in with Tommy, just to show how brave he was, but the woods scared him. He didn't like small, enclosed spaces, didn't like the feeling of things closing in on him. She hurried back to the street, walked a few hundred feet in either direction, calling. Crawled down the bank and peered into the culvert, shouting his name. Her voice echoed back to her, hollow and metallic over the gurgling of the water, but no voice answered. Heart pounding, she climbed up the bank and looked up and down the empty road.

Maybe she was panicking over nothing. She didn't know that the bike was David's. His helmet wasn't there. Besides, David loved his new bike; it was the pride of his life. He wouldn't leave it lying in the gravel like that. He'd probably stopped off at Tommy's, so excited by being a big boy who could ride his bike that he'd forgotten to ask for permission. She ran home and called Carole.

"Carole," she gasped, cutting off the drawled hello. "It's Rachel. Did David stop off there on his way home?"

"Nope. I meant to call you and apologize. I forgot they were going to ride their bikes today, and I didn't wake Tommy in time. He took the bus. While I've got you on the phone, can I get your recipe for that cucumber salad? We're having some people from—"

"Can I call you back?" Rachel interrupted.

"Is something wrong?"

"David... he didn't come home. I've got to call the school. Talk to you later." Rachel disconnected and called the school. While she fretted on hold, pacing a loop as large as the phone cord would let her, the secretary found a teacher who remembered seeing David set out with all the other riders just before the buses left. "Was he wearing his helmet?" Rachel asked.

"I'll check," the woman said doubtfully, probably immediately consigning Rachel to the realms of the hyperanxious, one of those lunatic mothers who's always calling to keep track of her child's every move.

Rachel waited an eternity before the woman returned and confirmed that David had been wearing his helmet. An eternity during which she began to imagine awful things had happened to him. She thanked the woman, grabbed her keys, and began driving slowly down the street, retracing the route that David would have taken. There was no one. Not a power walker, not a jogger, no in-line skaters swooping gracefully as dragonflies. Where the hell were they? Why wasn't anyone out when she needed to ask if they'd seen David? They were always out when she wanted the road to herself.