Annie Seymour 01-Sacred Cows (2 page)

A few candles were scattered on the coffee table, all in various sizes, their wicks charred. A small pile of books lay like dominoes on a small table next to the couch. There were no strewn newspapers, no dirty laundry, no signs of life.

A galley kitchen was off to the right, the countertops gleaming, the stylish stainless steel dish drainer empty.

They were out on the balcony and in the bedroom. I bumped into Tom as he came down the hall with a pair of jeans in a plastic bag.

“How the hell did you get up here?” But he was distracted. He didn’t focus on me; his eyes were darting around like mine, taking in the scene, wondering what happened to that girl, how did she end up on the pavement.

“Come on, Tom, give me something and I’ll leave. I promise.”

He snorted. “Yeah, right. You never leave.”

When I thought about it, I realized he was right. He was always the one who was gone in the morning, not me. But we were usually at my place.

“Are those hers?” I asked, pointing to the bag in his hands.

He nodded.

“Any ID up here?”

He sighed, biting his lip, and I wished I could bite it for him. “Yeah.”

The wall was up, and I could be any reporter asking the questions. “Come on, can you give me anything?”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said roughly, trying to get past me.

“Any sign of anyone else here?” I was pushing it, and he glared.

“Leave. Now. You know about next of kin notification. Let us do our job.” He gave me a little push toward the door.

“Okay, okay. Don’t have a coronary. I’m gone.”

The cop at the elevator gave me a dirty look but didn’t say anything. I thought about shooting him the finger as the doors closed between us, but I was too tired.

There was no sign of Dick Whitfield when I stepped back outside. The rain settled on my sweatshirt, drops rolling down my neck. The coroner was bent over the body; the flash blinded me as someone took pictures. Cops mingled everywhere, curious people formed a circle outside the yellow tape. It’s funny how a crime scene will attract people at the oddest hours.

“How’d she die?” I yelled over the tape.

The coroner looked up, his mouth twitching with the unpleasantness of his task.

“I’m with the
Herald,
” I offered.

“Call me tomorrow.” He turned back to the body.

I sidled up to another cop, Tim something-or-other. “Anyone else see it?”

He shrugged. “Canvassing now.” He turned away, back to his colleagues.

I couldn’t see what else I could accomplish. It was too late to get a story into the paper, too early to go to work. I could still get a couple hours of sleep. I wondered if Dick Whitfield ever slept.

My car was cold and had barely heated up when I pulled up in front of my brownstone. Once inside, I stripped down to my birthday suit and crawled back under my comforter. Even though I liked Tom in my bed, it was nice to sprawl out in the middle all by myself.

I think I fell asleep in about a minute.

CHAPTER 2

I forgot to set the alarm. Both times I went to bed. The first time, I could see how I’d been forgetful. After all, Tom had been undressing me and I had been undressing him and somehow the clock slipped my mind. The second time, I’d been hungover, and I’d had to deal with Tom in a completely different way, the way I hated.

So it was 8:00
A.M.
and the phone was ringing again. This time, I knew it was Marty, where are you, tell me what’s going on, what happened, how much did you get? I wasn’t in much better shape than I’d been during our first call, but he hadn’t given me a chance to talk then. When I opened my mouth to tell him what I knew, such a sound came out that I was startled. God knows, Marty was speechless.

“What happened to you last night?” he finally asked.

“I had a rough night,” I managed to croak. “Lay off.”

“Dick is already here.”

“Fuck Dick.” I said it before I thought about it.

“He says she was found about three o’clock by that prostitute who hangs out near there.” I was glad he ignored me, but it could come back and bite me on the ass if I wasn’t more careful. “But the cops wouldn’t tell him anything else. You have connections, you get anything?”

I hated it that everyone thought I had “connections” just because I was fucking a detective. We weren’t exactly sharing job-related information during sex.

“She’s a Yale student. Melissa Peabody,” Marty said when I hesitated, his words hanging between us for a few seconds.

“No shit?” This was an interesting twist.

“We should find out if it was her apartment.” Marty’s voice was grim.

I doubted it. It was way too clean for a college student’s apartment. But if not, then whose apartment was it? Who was she with, and why was she there? Another thought leapt across the fog into my brain: Maybe she jumped. Maybe she was one of those kids who just couldn’t hack it. Maybe there was nothing sinister about this.

But she had been naked. If I was going to off myself, I don’t think I’d strip first. The indignity would be a little too much.

Marty’s voice brought me back.

“You know how this screws everything up.” He meant because she was a Yalie. I could feel for him. Our publisher didn’t like bad things to happen at Yale because it meant the prestigious Ivy League institution would have to be slapped across the front page with a 100-point headline about death. Who would want to send their kids there then? New Haven wasn’t exactly standing on its own merits.

Two calls would be made to the publisher: one from the powers that be at the university lambasting us for publicizing something they’d claim was “private business”; the other from City Hall, lambasting us for ruining the city’s “image.” I didn’t envy Marty, having to go upstairs to that office that I’d been in once and explain that the dead girl on the pavement was some rich, smart kid who was only visiting our fair city while she got the best education money could buy.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, thankful that my middle-of-the-night outing had somewhat cleared the hangover web from my brain.

“I need a shower, then I’ll get back out there. Cops are probably still there,” I told Marty.

I heard the phone click, he’d done his job: He’d gotten me out of bed, he’d threatened me with Dick’s presence. I wasn’t sure I cared enough about this job anymore to worry about some asshole moving in on my territory. There were way too many kids at the paper now, not like it had been fifteen years ago when I started. I was the kid then. I’d joined a crack reporting team, but only three of us were left. Others had moved on, to the
Hartford Courant,
the
Chicago Tribune,
the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
I hadn’t updated my résumé since I’d started at the
Herald,
more laziness than anything else. But lately I was getting too cynical, even for me. Maybe it was time for a change. This would be the best time, before I got too old and no one would want me and I’d be stuck at the
New Haven Herald
until I died.

What a pathetic thought.

I stood in the shower for the second time in four hours, washing away the crime scene. I could always go work for my father. He’d said that a million times. He’d give me some cushy job at the casino he managed and I would have weekends and holidays off and probably make a helluva lot more money than I was making now. But could I be a flack in Las Vegas? It’s too hot and dry, lights flashing 24/7, glowing in the sunlight, every shabby facade showing its flaws, like all the old prostitutes who dared to bare it all anytime, anyplace.

When he got the job there, my mother said Vegas was no place to raise a child, so I grew up with a part-time dad. I was in middle school, and my mother and I waited for his weekend visits in our house in Westville, a neighborhood with a large Jewish population, New Haven’s very small-scale Upper West Side with great delis and a synagogue. My mother grew up there in the house we lived in, a big white behemoth that towered over rose gardens and apple trees.

In high school I started rummaging through desks when no one was home and found old black-and-white pictures of my dad with his arm around strangers in suits, ties, and hats, sitting around the table, cocktails in front of them, cigarettes in unsmiling mouths. One woman in a long, sequined dress, her hair falling into her eyes, her hand on her hip, seemed glamorous, but I wasn’t that naive. Dad grew up in New Haven’s Little Naples, now called Little Italy for those tourists who may not know where Naples is, over on the other side of the city, which is known as the safest neighborhood because of its “connections.” That’s where I live now.

My mother endured the long-distance relationship with my dad for several years, but finally divorced him when I went to college.

Technically, I wasn’t really his daughter. My mother divorced my biological father when I was two, and he died a couple of years later, some sort of construction accident. Being a reporter, I could look into it, but my curiosity extends only to those things outside my family. Otherwise I just don’t want to know.

I shook myself out of my ruminations and gazed longingly at my jeans but pulled on a pair of khakis and a white shirt. The paper was cracking down on the dress code. Too many people coming to work like slobs, the memo said, Fridays were dress-down days. But no jeans, even then.

Too many rules.

I didn’t go to the office, but drove straight down Chapel Street. I found a parking spot near the Yale Art Gallery, but only after I’d driven around the block three times. I slipped my press card onto the dashboard, and I walked the rest of the way down to York.

It always amazed me how on one block, the Gothic buildings of Yale towered over the street, but on the next, the neighborhood started getting seedy; thus the barbed wire that surrounded the apartment building where Melissa Peabody had taken her last breath.

The cops were still there, the yellow crime scene tape damp from the rain. Thank God the sun was shining today.

The TV vans were in full force, reporters from the state’s three major stations jockeying for the best position in front of the apartment building, cameramen doing a balancing act with the equipment, the satellite dishes high above the telephone wires. I snorted as I wove between them. Where were they this morning, when the real news was going on? And where would they be after this? Waiting for the press conferences to get their handouts from the cops, less than a minute on the air to muster up some sympathy and outrage from the public.

The body was gone, but I could see where it had been. My stomach growled, reminding me I could’ve grabbed a coffee and a scone at Atticus, no one would’ve minded. Tom came out of the building, alone. I made my move.

“You’re back,” he said before I thought he even knew I was there.

“Like a bad penny.”

“You have to talk to the chief.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“This one’s a little too sensitive.”

The city police department would get a call from Yale, too, but with a lot more pressure about solving the crime and keeping details out of the press as long as possible.

“Come on, Tom, give me a break. I’ll never get anything but a ‘no comment’ out of the chief.”

He shrugged, his big shoulders moving slowly, his hand running through his blond hair. At least I got some sleep. “I’m not supposed to say anything. If I do, and you write about it, then everyone will know I told you.”

So we haven’t exactly been discreet.

I spotted Dick Whitfield coming toward us on the sidewalk. “If you tell me something, I’ll make sure he gets out of your way.” It sounded like a good deal to me.

“Oh, shit, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s harmless.”

That’s what he thought.

“I really can’t tell you anything, Annie.” I watched him move away from me, but instead of getting mad, I just wanted to jump his bones. Go figure.

I’d just have to use my other sources on this one. But then Dick was next to me.

“They’re being pretty tight-lipped today,” he said jovially, as if we were equals.

“Why are you here again?”

“Marty said I should help you.”

I made a mental note to let Marty have it when I saw him. Marty knows I work alone. Yeah, we’d had the “team player” talk again recently, but I didn’t really think it applied to me. The new kids, well, they didn’t want my help and I certainly couldn’t rely on them. It was a me vs. them situation, but neither side minded. It was only Marty, who somehow thought because of my experience I should be some sort of mentor. He should know better. He’s known me a long time.

Dick stood in front of me, salivating. He was hungry, hungrier than others, but he was such a moron. If he chilled out a little, maybe he wouldn’t be so bad. I needed to give him another job, get him out of my hair.

“Maybe you can find out whose apartment it is.”

I got a blank stare.

“We don’t know if it was her apartment or not,” I continued, wondering if he was even more stupid than I thought.

A grin swept across his face. “Okay. I’ll see what I can find out.”

I didn’t want him nosing around Yale. I wanted to find out about her first, talk to her friends to see if they knew anything. Sure, I wanted to know who owned that apartment and why she was there, but this way he could pick up half the legwork and I could put it together later.

I mulled this over a little. Having a slave might not be too bad.

T
HE REGISTRAR
wasn’t exactly forthcoming when I asked about Melissa Peabody, what class she was in, where she was from, what dorm she lived in.

“I’m not allowed to give out that information.” Her mouth sagged with displeasure, wisps of white curls accentuating her wrinkles. Would I look that old someday? “You have to talk to our public information officer.”

I wouldn’t get shit out of that guy, and she knew it. The school had closed up tighter than a clam.

My stomach was still growling when I got back out on the sidewalk. The image in my head of Melissa Peabody’s naked body faded as I thought about breakfast at Atticus. It’s a small bookstore with a fabulous coffee bar and wonderful muffins and sandwiches. Before I knew it, I was sitting at the counter, nibbling on a blueberry scone, sipping my coffee as if I didn’t have a care in the world.