Cold Case (17 page)

“Wait a minute. You're basing your theory that Thea's alive on a single poem? One poem? How's this? Thea wrote it a long time ago, thinking about,
imagining
a possible future, a time when walls would be broken, borders eliminated.”

“‘Berlin,
now,'”
he quoted.

“‘Now' is relative,” I replied.

Damn, his eyes were shining again, so blue and clear behind the silver-rimmed bifocals. He'd regained every pinch of quiet confidence he'd shown at our first meeting.

“She's not dead,” he said.

“Tell me another one.”

“She phoned me.”

“And you recognized her voice after twenty-four years.”

“She identified herself. She's coming back. God help her, she's afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” I asked.

“She didn't say.”

“Of course not,” I said disgustedly.

He read the disbelief on my face. I didn't try to hide it.

“Look,” I said. “I've read about her big white funeral. Her father and mother went. Her brother.”

“She said she needs to talk to me, as a friend, and as a doctor. She says she has to see me face-to-face.”

“Well, I'd certainly like to be there,” I said, “but I seem to have a problem.”

“No! You can't be present. She needs to see me alone. At first.”

“No kidding. Well, that's not my problem. My problem is defining my job. You wanted to hire me to find Thea. Now, she's coming for a visit. She's on her way.
She
found
you
. No money for me there. Tessa wants me to prove that the notebook and the poem are forgeries. She donated a good-sized check to the cause.”

“Which Garnet will convince her to void.”

“Either way, it looks like I'm out of this.”

“No,” he said. “Please. Work for Tessa till she pulls the plug. Try to prove the documents false. You won't succeed, but I can't pay you the kind of money Tessa can pay. I've left you something in the backseat of your car, if you can find it in that sty.”

“I don't need more of your money, not to look for a dead girl.”

“Listen to me: Something went wrong, very wrong, a long time ago. I may have been a part of it, unwittingly. I'm an old man. I don't want to die with this on my conscience.”

“With what on your conscience? What changed your mind between the first time you called me and the second? Why have you changed your mind again?”

The waitress interrupted to see if we wanted our empty teapot refilled. I waved her away impatiently.

Manley stared at his empty cup. “The moment Thea gives me permission to tell you, I will.”

“In other words, don't hold your breath.”

“Go to your car, get what I left there. We can discuss it.”

“If it's a check, I'm ripping it up.”

“Fine.” He flagged the waitress. “I'll have more tea while I wait,” he said.

Underneath my raincoat and a lone gym sneaker, I found another manila envelope. I glanced inside just long enough to see that several pages were enclosed, typed this time. Brief statements, underlined, like a bibliography.

In the restaurant, the booth was empty. The waitress told me the old guy had gone to the bathroom. I paid the bill while I waited. After a good twelve minutes, I went to the men's room door and knocked. No response.

I returned to the table. The tiny Chinese girl came to collect her due.

“How much did he give you?” I asked.

“What?”

“To tell me he went to the john?”

She smirked. “Twenty,” she said.

I stiffed her on the tip, drove around Medfield Center for another half hour. The good doctor might have strolled over to the police station, but I didn't think so.

I remembered the envelope, pulled onto the shoulder of the road abruptly enough to earn a honk and an upraised finger. The papers were a bibliography, articles culled from psychiatric journals, the occasional book-length treatment. Loftus, E. F.; Terr, L.; Appelbaum, P. S.; Gutheil, T. G. One hardback was titled
Witness for the Defense
, one
Recovered Memory Syndrome
.

Recovered memory syndrome. Was Manley trying to tell me that Thea suffered from amnesia, that staple of forties Hollywood?

I scanned the bibliography. Another text seemed to be a complex psychiatric and legal document discussing crimes remembered years after the fact, usually under psychiatric counseling, and the admissibility of such remembered evidence in a court of law.

My mind was clicking now, and my memory. As I recalled, such “recovered” memories had enjoyed a brief vogue. In 1990, a man had been convicted of murdering his daughter's girlfriend twenty years earlier, on the testimony of the daughter, who claimed she'd been present at the crime scene, but had repressed the memory. The case had been appealed, I thought. Reversed. A recovered memory wasn't something a lawyer would be eager to bring to court …

Dammit. Garnet might succeed in convincing his mom to void the contract. I stopped at the bank to deposit Tessa's check as a gesture of good faith, then at home just long enough to rip off the panty hose, change to comfortable clothes. Back in the car, I headed for Area D. Before someone pulled me off this case for good, I was determined to discover exactly what had happened to Dorothy “Thea Janis” Cameron twenty-four years ago. My mind hungered for facts—dates, times, places—clearly written in an orderly form.

I would follow Tessa's mission for the time being. It seemed to me that anyone who knew how to forge Thea's work so well, to imitate her uniquely compelling voice, must have known her, known her intimately, long ago.

I had the feeling I was going to owe Mooney more than lunch before the day was done.

18

Someday police files will exist on-line, uniform print marching across computer screens. No mildewed pages stinking of hamburger grease, blotched with mustard and coffee stains. No stiff brittle paper, no tactile sense of age and wear.

But these are the good old days. Creased yellowing pages rule.

“How'd you find it?” I asked Mooney admiringly.

He wasn't buying my admiration. The expression on his usually mild face was fierce. “Exactly why should I let you see it? Remind me.”

I didn't relish outlining my on-again, off-again relationship with either of my “clients.” Tessa Cameron might have ripped up her contract by now, and I could imagine Mooney's reaction to my three sessions with Drew Manley—two conducted under an alias, one terminating in a walkout.

“Mooney,” I said, “I've got a major gut feeling: Something isn't kosher. Okay?”

“Not enough.”

I breathed in, breathed out. Kept my hands behind my back to keep from snatching the file.

“What's enough?” I asked. “When I worked for you, you trusted my instincts.”

“You don't work for me anymore.”

“You want me to beg? Get down on my knees? Embarrass you in your own office?”

“I'll think it over,” he said like he was truly considering the offer.

My tactics were not having the desired effect.

“Please, Mooney,” I said softly, going for basic politeness. Playing for sympathy, too, I admit.

At the same moment he said, “There
is
something you can do for me.”

I knew it was going to be bad, because he turned away from me as he spoke.

“What?” I clipped the word, short and precise.

“Hire yourself a bodyguard.”

“
What?”
This time I gave the word an elongated vowel and full incredulity.

He faced me. I noticed the skin under his eyes, dark, etched with fine lines. His blue Oxford cloth shirt was starting to fray at the collar. He said, “Did anyone follow you here?”

“Look, Mooney, I don't exactly believe in your Gianelli mob hit fantasy.”

“It's no fantasy.”

“If you hear it from more than one jail-bound punk, I might start to take it seriously.”

“Not good enough,” Moon said.

“I'll watch my back, I promise.”

I made light of the threat, but that didn't mean my neck hadn't prickled the whole drive from Medfield to Southie, didn't mean I hadn't blasted through ambers, then quickly eyeballed the rearview to see whether any vehicle had followed.

A useless exercise in a city where stopping at reds is considered optional.

“Not good enough,” Mooney repeated.

“I'll consider a bodyguard,” I said, not meeting his gaze. It was a lie, but I needed to see what the cops had on paper.

I held my breath. Mooney can usually nail me on a lie.

This time he didn't.

The “Dorothy Cameron aka Thea Janis” file was three inches thick, encompassing several smaller files wrapped in rubber bands, the whole thing weighing in at several pounds. The “aka” gave me pause. “Also known as” usually appears on the rap sheets of career felons who go by different versions of their given name for different occasions: Thomas Jackson on a marriage license, Jack Thomson or Thompson or Thomsen when filing a false insurance claim, T.J. or Jeeter on the street.

“No Xeroxing, no stealing,” Mooney said, as he handed it over, his lips tight and disapproving. “Not a single sheet of paper leaves the building.”

I didn't argue, didn't make a crack about searching me, didn't bother to ask if I could take notes.

At first glance, the file seemed too orderly. Maybe some celebrity bio-hunter had organized it, searching for book fodder. I inquired if that were the case.

“Nope. Woody MacAvoy didn't do much his last couple years except type and file.” Mooney spoke dismissively, if not derisively. “Neatest paperwork around.”

A cop who quit caring about the street and surrendered to form-filling and filing is the lowest of the low to Mooney. Pure slime. Mooney has more trouble understanding cops than crooks because he cuts them less slack. To Mooney, a cop is a cross between Superman and God, here to mete out justice on earth.

After the two of us indulged in a brief argument concerning confidentiality and breaches of police security, Mooney locked me in an interrogation room with the file, a Styrofoam coffee cup, and three stale doughnuts for company. So much for trust. The windows didn't open and the last person to use the room had neglected to bathe. I didn't care. Touching the file, I felt close to Thea, the same way I'd felt when I read her manuscript. She was “Thea” to me still, not the late Dorothy Cameron. Manley's doglike devotion—and her own words—had brought her to life.

The file dropped me back to earth with a thud, it being filled with words as far from poetic as language gets. Reports, reports, reports. No better way to organize your thoughts, the instructors at the academy had assured us to universal catcalls. Yeah, sure, if your mind ran to items like height, weight, and date of birth, the cornerstones of all police paper.

I unstrapped my wristwatch, set it in front of me to help keep track of time. I flexed my fingers like a pianist doing warm-up exercises, closed my eyes, and scrunched up my face.

Ready.

From my back pocket, I removed a tiny notebook and pencil. A notebook arrives fresh each August from the Harvard Coop Department Store, which is a co-op pronounced like a chicken roost. It's a calendar, a datebook, has space for phone numbers. Its chief virtue is its size. Teamed with a pencil stolen from a miniature golf course, it hardly makes your pocket bulge.

The initial squeal had gone to the Dover police. Thea's parents had reported her missing on April 9, 1971, at 9:02
P
.
M
., after a gap of thirty-six hours. Thursday morning, the eighth, had passed uneventfully
chez
Cameron. After a rushed breakfast—nothing out of the ordinary—Dorothy had packed a small overnight bag, told her father she'd be spending Thursday night at a girlfriend's house—name: Sue Alfred; address: 48 Brattle Street, Cambridge 02138—studying for a Latin exam. She'd called home to verify. When Dorothy didn't come home Friday evening, Franklin Cameron had phoned the “girlfriend,” and learned not only that Thea had never come to visit, she didn't share any of Sue's classes. Sue didn't take Latin.

Franklin Cameron. In my mind, I saw his portrait in the foyer of the Dover house, exerting dominion after all these years. The Dover police hadn't listed his occupation, probably assuming everyone would recognize the name. “Magazine and newspaper magnate,” they could have written. “Three-time candidate for U.S. senator, once coming close enough to demand a recount.”

I took detailed notes. So far, the case was a simple missing persons, most likely a runaway. Nothing hinted at murder. Victims don't arrange alibis for their killers. Thea had something else on her mind; she'd planned to spend Thursday night somewhere, either alone or accompanied. Query: If she were planning to run away, why hadn't she taken advantage of the weekend, made up some mythical school festival, given herself four days instead of two? Query Two: Why hadn't she used a real friend, someone who'd cover for her? Hadn't she made any friends at Avon Hill?

I wrote,
Where did Thea spend Thursday night? With whom?

Once alerted, the Dover cops had jumped into action. Every off-duty officer had been notified and brought up to speed. A search of conservation land, property abutting the Camerons' huge estate, was organized with the help of—I read the sentence again—yes, my eyes were not failing me, with the help of the Myopia Polo Club.

I had a brief vision of hounds, horses, and hunters in red velvet trumpeting through the nearby countryside as though Thea were a fox to be brought to bay. Talley-ho! Break for tea and crumpets at four.

The thought made me hungry and I bit into a doughnut, gingerly, because it was damn near petrified and I no longer have dental insurance.

The FBI was the next agency on the case, which seemed odd to me. Ah. Someone at Cameron central had called a Yalie pal and the specter of kidnapping had been duly raised. No ransom demands forthcoming. The majority of the FBI material was illegible, heavily crossed out.