Cold Case (29 page)

Pitch dark. Unlike its neighbors to either side, I inspected further, shining my flash at the ground.

Just as Manley had said, a narrow unmarked lane ran down one side of the property. I didn't like the look of it. I drove a couple houses down, passing a French château and a haphazard brick pile with ornate windows. Each dwelling extended approximately the length of a city block. I stopped and got out of the cab near a signpost that read “
DESMOULIN LANE
.” It didn't seem much of a lane, more like rough steps hacked into a bluff, but it traveled in the right direction. I decided to follow it, walk along the shore, observe the back of the Cameron estate before declaring my presence. As long as I stayed on the shoreline, I wouldn't even be trespassing.

It seemed safer than the direct approach to the low-lying shack that Manley had described.

As I descended, the surrounding area seemed to fade, its rocky outcroppings blurring into hazy outlines. Damp air floated off the water, changing into a low cloudy mist that shrouded everything in its path.

Fog. Sudden whiteout fog. How frequently did it visit this shore? I walked a hesitant ten paces and could no longer see the bluff, the steps. A distant foghorn keened. Had it called to Thea? Did she step into the mist once too often, hear the ocean sing her name? Had sirens sent fog to envelop her, extending soft welcoming arms to lead her to the waves?

Behind me, an irregular tapping. Hard-soled shoes clambering down the same steps I'd taken? The noise raised hairs at the base of my neck.

The soft sand above the surf line shifted under my sneakers, slowing me, dragging me down. I ran toward the Cameron house. A pinpoint of light shone to one side, partly shaded by an overhanging branch.

Some ramshackle outbuilding. A changing house for midnight bathers? The shack where Manley waited to tell me the truth at last.

A light glimmered at the back of the small wooden hut, none at the front.

Manley?

I listened for a follower. I couldn't hear anything, but I wasn't sure of my senses, didn't trust them with the rhythmic surf and the silence of sand.

Should I call his name? A part of me felt that a cry for Thea, long dead, would be more appropriate. Maybe as likely to be answered.

Stop it, I scolded myself. The misty seascape and eerie foghorn were filling my head with every ghost story I'd ever heard or read.

I imagined my voice ringing out of the fog, telling everyone, anyone, where I was.

No way.

I took stock, breathing deeply, slowing my heart rate, pretending calm to regain calm. Why would Manley lurk in a shack by the water's edge, exposed to cold and rough weather? Why not wait in comfort in the big house? No key, he'd said. If “Thea” were with him, if she'd spent her childhood summers here, surely she'd recall a secret way to enter, an unbarred window, a hidden key.

Things change in twenty-four years.

Thea's dead, the fog whispered. I tried to remember her words: “the mind remembers lonely long after in dark places …”

I crept toward the shack. My nose twitched at the smell.

The interior was brightly lit by a kerosene lantern positioned behind a red motorbike. An aged Honda, its engine cool, leaking oil like life's blood onto sandy floorboards.

34

Wood shavings had been swept into a pile in the corner. Dented, as though someone had slept there. A tramp? A squatter?

With a red motorbike.

Why the lamp? Why advertise someone's presence? I shoved my flashlight in my back pocket, removed a Kleenex which I used to cover my hand before grabbing the metal hoop over the burning kerosene lantern.

One if by land, two if by sea. The jingle every Massachusetts schoolchild learns came to mind. Was the lantern intended as a signal to someone on the water? Manley?

I edged outside and saw what I should have noticed first, before kerosene and motor oil had taken out my sense of smell. The lamp had misdirected me, urged me inside, not out.

The shape in the sand could be a sleeping tramp, I told myself. The dark stain beneath the shape wasn't the right contour for a shadow.

If I'd been a cop I'd have stopped right there, called for backup.

Any move I made might disturb a crime scene. Sand would hold footprints. For how long? Was the sleeper, as I'd dubbed him in my mind, even though I suspected he was dead, lying above the high water mark? Would the sea claim the body if I didn't act?

My foot hit something that snapped with a thunderous report on the silent beach. I bent, knelt in the sand. My hand reached for them, but I stopped in time, examined the object in situ.

Bifocals. Intact except for the earpiece my sneaker had smashed.
Adam
—no Andrew—Drew Manley's glasses, frames I'd last seen sliding down my former client's nose.

Manley, with his merry blue eyes.

I lifted the lantern high.

He was dead. Lying on Cameron-owned beachfront. The visible side of his face was smashed, dark with coagulated blood. Blood had soaked into the sand, but it no longer seemed to run freely. How long after he'd made his phone call had he died?

If I got close enough to touch him, assure myself of his identity and fate, would I risk obscuring the reason for his death? As a cop, how I'd cursed civilians who'd messed with crime scenes.

Approaching footsteps. Definite this time. The matter-of-fact slap of leather on sand. With nowhere to hide, I slid to the sand, a second sleeper.

“Alonso? You okay?” The voice was childish, high, giggly. “Like what you been using, man? You save some?”

She went to the other sleeper first. I heard her sharp intake of breath. “Oh, man,” she muttered. “Alonso, man, how'd you mess up on me like this? Shit. Alonso? You do this guy or what?” There was fear in her voice. Then she was squatting on the sand, snatching at things, shoving them in her backpack, rifling Manley's pockets unless I missed my guess.

I lifted my weight into a crouch as noiselessly as I could. My knee cracked, gave me away.

She turned immediately. Instinctively let out a yell. I wasn't Alonso, who'd messed up so badly. I'd spooked her.

She ran.

I ran.

She was young, wiry, and scared. I was taller. The length of my stride was almost twice hers. Every time her feet landed in the soft sand, she lost ground. I didn't bother yelling. Waste of breath. I ran till I could launch myself with certainty. My arms circled her legs, yanked them out from under her.

She fell without noise, rolled over. Instead of striking out, she tried to use her hands to protect herself. I grabbed her by both wrists and flipped her. A knee in the small of her back pressed her to the ground.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said shakily. “I guess.”

“Who's Alonso?”

“A guy. You're hurting me. Fuckin' said you wouldn't, but you are.”

“If I let you up, you have to promise not to run.”

She squirmed vigorously. I kneed her harder. Tough kid. I'd seen tougher. Me at her age, for instance.

“Okay, we'll talk down here,” I said.

“I won't run.”

“How can I trust you?”

“Take my word for it.”

“How about if I take your backpack instead? Looks like you lifted a few things off the corpse, huh?”

No response. No movement.

“You know him?” I asked.

“Some guy I never saw before. Honest. Some old guy.”

A Harvard ring, a medical degree, a presumably distinguished career … Manley's death turned him into “some old guy,” muttered by a dirty kid with a mouthful of sand.

I yanked at her backpack and she put up a struggle.

“Dammit,” I said. “Quit wiggling. What the hell did you take from him? A million bucks?”

I decided to concentrate on the pack. If she fought like a demon for it, she wasn't about to leave it. I pinched the clasps and emptied it onto the sand. A hail of bananas, apples, oranges, fruit of every description.

“What the hell?”

She scrambled for the produce. “Why don't you just leave me the fuck alone?”

“Did Alonso kill the old man?”

Falling hard in the sand hadn't made her cry. Fear hadn't made her cry. Alonso's name, linked with a killing, did. She bent her head and howled, sobbed till I thought someone would surely hear us, call the cops.

“Who's Alonso?” I asked again.

“I met him on the road. He's got a bike. He picked me up, like, almost a week ago. He's really nice. He's cool, like, an artist, and stuff.”

“He's been living in the shed?”

“Not for the past couple days. Not since Wednesday. He had stuff to do. He took off, but, like, I thought maybe he'd come back.”

“His bike's there.”

While we spoke my fingers continued to search her pack. What had she stolen? Wallet? That would be most likely. But her hands had darted into the pockets several times. A notebook?

“Does Alonso have a last name?” I asked.

“Forget it. He is, like, totally cool. He calls himself Alonso the Alien sometimes. Guys like him don't need a name.”

My fingers closed on a small Coop book, like my own. My sandy friend probably hadn't attended Harvard.

Manley's appointment book.

What a mess.

I had an obligation to report a crime.

I had a small girl crying her eyes out in the sand over one Alonso. If Alonso were alive, he probably had sufficient street smarts not to come back for his bike.

If he hadn't stayed here the past couple nights, why had he left his bike?

I remembered the pooling oil.

Had someone disabled it?

Why?

For the same reason someone had left the lamp lit? To attract attention to a crime scene? It was only a matter of time before someone called the police.

Hurriedly I opened the notebook, flicked on my flashlight.

Today's page, Friday, the seventeenth, was marked “see A. at C's.” A. for Alonso the Alien? Other dates were sprinkled with initials and shorthand scribbles.

“Come on.” I tugged at the bawling child. She couldn't have been more than twelve.

“I won't go to the cops,” she wailed. “They'll send me home.”

I wanted to reassure her. Tell her there were worse places than home, but in this business I've learned that sometimes there aren't.

“We're not going to the cops.”

“You promise?”

“We'll look for Alonso.”

“Yeah,” she said enthusiastically.

It got her up and moving. If I found this Alonso on the way to the cab so much the better.

I wanted off Marblehead Neck before the cops came.

35

Close up, I thought she might be even younger. Eleven. Scrawny. She didn't question me when I had her lie on the floor of the cab while we made our way back over the causeway.

We hadn't found Alonso.

He had no last name. Neither had “Pix”—a street name if I'd ever heard one. Short for Pixie, which would be an offhand reference to angel dust, or maybe she did pics, as in child porn, to earn her bread. She wasn't parting with her straight name. I'd go through her backpack more carefully when I had time.

I parked the cab near my car, left the keys under the floor mat. I'd call the dispatcher later and apologize for the irregularity, but I couldn't leave Pix alone and I didn't want anyone to see her.

For now the stuff I wanted was spread on my dashboard. Manley's wallet, loaded with cash and credit cards, removing casual robbery as a motive. Manley's Coop book. Manley's watch.

“You gonna call the cops?”

“I am the cops. Private.”

“Shit.” She made a move to unlock her door. I slammed one arm across her.

“No more running,” I said.

“Whatcha gonna do with me?”

“Good question.” It was one of a hundred rolling through my head.

“This is complicated,” I said. “I need to hear about you and Alonso. Like did he send you away tonight because he had to meet a guy?”

“I haven't seen Alonso since Wednesday—”

“Sure.”

“You're thinking drug deal?” she asked. “Forget it.”

“I'm just asking questions. I don't have answers.”

She took her time thinking that over. “Alonso was takin' care of me, like I said, up till a couple nights ago.” Her voice faltered.

“Something go wrong?” I asked.

“None of your fuckin' business.”

“I can make it my business, Pix.”

She swallowed. “Look, he found another girl. ‘A real woman,' is what he said, which, like, means she's older than me. He was always on me about how young I am.”

“And how young is that?”

“None of your—Anyhow, before, when he was with me, I used up a lot of his bread, you know. So I thought I'd go out and earn a little back. Not trickin'. Boosting groceries and shit. I didn't know where to find him so I thought I'd leave the stuff at the shack. I mean, I pay my fuckin' debts, you know?”

I like stories backed by facts. The bananas on the beach were accounted for. Crime scene with bananas. It sounded like one of Roz's paintings. What a mess for the local cops.

“Where did you meet Alonso? Did you go to school with him?”

“Harvard Square,” she said, drop dead cool. “School is for fish.”

“You know your way around Marblehead?”

“Nah. Alonso never was here before either, but like, he had friends.”

“Friends tell him about the shack?”

“I guess. He knew it was there. It was like a really neat squat. I mean, some cities have good squats, and I was in this decent place in Cambridge, but the landlord found out, and then it was DSS, and they totally stink, you know?”

Department of Social Services, and sad to say, they do stink. Underfunded. Overworked.

“Alonso didn't tell you he had a meet with anyone?”