Cold Case (36 page)

“But not Thea?”

He stared out at the deep blackness of the ocean, an ocassional whitecap catching starlight. “I told him to say he threw her body into the sea. There, that's what you want to hear, isn't it? She was dead, after all.”

“What makes you so damned sure she killed herself? She could have walked away. People do it all the time.”

“Fifteen-year-old girls? Stark-naked? Those clothes in Marblehead, they were hers, all right.”

It was in the Marblehead file that the erased notation on the margin had first caught my eye.

“I thought the clothes were never physically linked to Thea.”

“Well, you know, they couldn't do then what they do now. Take a strand of hair and DNA-type the root. Who'd even heard of that?”

He was staring hard at the outgoing tide.

“What?” I said.

“There was a ring, a silver band, engraved with her initials. It was there when Franklin Cameron, her dad, came to see the clothing the first time. Gone when he left. And we were told to scrub it off the records.”

That would account for more erasures.

“Now why do you suppose we were told to make that ring disappear, girl?”

I knew the right answer—because the ring confirmed identity, confirmed suicide—but it bothered me all the same. Everything about MacAvoy's confession bothered me. It seemed canned, prepared. I wondered if he'd spoken to any of the Camerons since my first visit.

“Are you Catholic?” he asked suddenly.

“Half,” I said.

“Practicing?”

“No.”

“Me, I was born and bred Catholic. Fed Catholic. You know, the Camerons sent a priest to see me, their family priest, old geezer, must have passed long ago. Father Martin. Yes, Father Martin. He talked to me about sin, venial sin and mortal sin, and what's the age when you're truly responsible for your actions, and he got me so confused that it seemed they were right and I was wrong. I just wanted to do my job, close the case.”

I nodded. “You figure the priest visited the medical examiner, too? He a religious man?”

“All I know is I did the damned Camerons a favor. I encouraged a man to confess to a crime, turn a suicide into murder. And do you think they were grateful to me for it? Treated me like dirt. Sergeant I was then and sergeant I stayed. I never got another promotion after that case. I didn't think it would be like that, sitting in the squad room with the other cops thinking I was bent, when all I'd done was a favor, something a priest practically ordered me to do.”

I pretended to accept his lie.

“And that's why you hate the Camerons,” I said.

“They used me. They'll use you, too, girl. Sorry, sorry. Girl's what I grew up with. It's hard to change.”

I'd have felt better if he hadn't thrown in that last apology. He was damned good, but he was a barefaced liar. Had he concocted the suicide tale himself or had Tessa briefed him? Franklin, before he died? Garnet?

Between them, the Camerons had constructed several lines of defense: First, simplest, innocent Thea was murdered by Albion; second, only if required, Thea killed herself and MacAvoy helped set Albion up to play patsy.

Problem: Neither take seemed worth the kind of money the Camerons had shelled out to MacAvoy.

“There was a funeral,” I said conversationally. “Who's really buried in Thea's grave?”

He shifted, rubbed his knee.

“All I know is she's buried in sanctified ground. There's a tomb, and the case is closed and cold as my bones in January.”

She
, not Thea, not Dorothy.

“So why would someone pretend to be Thea now?”

“Rattle some skeletons in the Cameron closet,” he suggested with satisfaction. “It would have to be someone close to the family.”

“Or someone close to the investigation,” I said.

“Nix that.”

“The other daughter, Beryl, the one ‘headed to the looney bin,' you ever interview her?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I saw enough crazies on the street, thank you. I didn't have to check out the ones in padded cells.”

“You remember her doctor's name?”

“You don't ask much,” he said ruefully. “Why in hell should I?”

“Was it Andrew Manley? Guy who died in Marblehead last night?”

“Sorry,” he said. “That's enough. That's all. I'm a tired old man. Leave me in peace.”

“I could,” I said quietly, “if you'd tell me the truth.”

“I've told the truth.”

“You told me a good story, Mac. Not the truth. There's a difference.”

“Get away from here.”

“I especially like the part about the grieving father removing the silver ring. You make that up yourself?”

“What would you know about any of it?” he asked.

“The Camerons aren't fools. Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars is way too much to pay a cop to turn a suicide into a murder.”

“Six hundred and fifty—what are you saying, girl?”

They must have paid even more, to account for the boat and the Cape properties.

I said, “Of course, it's not too much to pay for a murder. Did Franklin Cameron pay you to kill Thea?”

“Murder? You've lost your senses.”

“You're going to have a hard time explaining away that real estate, Sergeant. On your retirement? You shouldn't be slapping down any twenties on bar tables. The cottage is a good cover, and so's the ‘I hate all Camerons' routine, but it's not enough. The money, and the file erasures, and the simple fact that you got total control of the case all scream cover-up.”

He had a grip on my arm. “Are you saying I killed someone? I never drew my weapon on duty except once, and then I never fired it.”

“Too bad you got greedy.”

“And you're not working for money, I suppose.” He rose to his feet slowly, an old bull elephant, a rogue. He grabbed me by the arm, tried to get a stranglehold on me. I let him walk me a few steps into the tide. I wasn't going to hit him unless I had to. He was an old drunk. His strength had deserted him. His fury I could handle.

“I want the truth,” I said.

“What's truth, anyway? An old whore, there's truth for you.”

“What did the Camerons pay for?”

“Concealing a suicide.”

“The truth, dammit.” I recited the nine-digit number. “What does that mean? Why did you erase it off Thea's file? Why?”

I wasn't sure if it was the number or the tide. MacAvoy took a wavering step and collapsed. Goddamn, I thought, he's having a heart attack! For a moment we both splashed around. I righted myself, turned to find him.

He had a gun pointed at my left eye.

43

Time settled over us like a blanket of dust. I had all eternity to notice that MacAvoy didn't hold a matte black pistol in his two-handed grip. Black, I might not have seen the details. Moonlight glinted off the stainless steel finish of the big SIG-Sauer automatic. Maybe that's how he spent the money, I thought, buying expensive guns.

I smiled at him, my best effort. It must have looked ghastly.

“Your whole career, you never shot anybody,” I said, keeping my voice rock steady. “You're not going to start with me, are you?”

Deliberately, I turned the last sentence into a question. Keep him talking.

“Why'd you have to mess with it? After all these years?” he asked.

“The nine-digit number, the one you erased, what's it mean?”

“Can you swim?”

“No,” I lied, letting my tone and my breathing register panic. “Not well.”

“I'm a crack shot,” he said. “Maybe you oughtta just swim out to sea, keep going till I can't draw a bead on you anymore. Give you, like, a sporting chance.”

“I'd never make it,” I said, hoping he'd give me the opportunity. The water felt cool and murky. I lifted one foot, then the other. My sandals floated free. I took inventory. My clothing was light, nothing that would weigh me down. I'd hate to soak the miniature tape recorder. My S&W 40, at forty-one ounces, was centered in the small of my back.

MacAvoy said, “Too bad this didn't happen twenty-four years ago. Your body could have been mistaken for Thea's. The family wasn't fussy about a likeness.”

As he spoke he waved the gun, motioning me away from shore. The water was up to my rib cage. I wondered how good a swimmer he was. The tide was sucking us both deeper.

He started to laugh, possibly the beer catching up. The gun barrel didn't waver.

“What's funny?” I asked mildly.

“What some people pay for,” he said. “That's funny. The way some people think that more money than a guy ever dreamed of—more than he could even imagine—is peanuts. That's fuckin' funny. People and money.”

He wasn't drunk, but he was happy. He'd flashed the gun, but now that the shock value had worn off, I didn't believe he'd use it. The man acted like he wanted to talk; maybe he needed the weapon in order to feel he was in control of the situation.

I encouraged speech with another question.

“You thought the Camerons offered too much?” I asked.

He was facing the shore. I was staring out to sea, considering the tide, feeling the ocean rhythm, praying for a sudden crashing wave. Undertow. Riptide.

“The damn number you're so interested in,” MacAvoy said teasingly. “It's a cross-reference, to a missing persons file. What do you think about that?”

He sounded so full of himself, so boastful. I thought of all those nights at the bar, when he hadn't been able to one-up his cronies. A rich man, a clever man, a man who had to walk down to the beach to get drunk alone, so he wouldn't spill his secrets.

“I don't understand,” I said.

“I didn't kill anyone. Don't you see? Yeah, I got Albion to confess to another one. Big deal. What did he care? What did it matter, where he was going? For the Camerons, Dorothy's disappearance wasn't such hot stuff either, you know? The big deal for them was this:
Two
people disappeared the same day! Dorothy Cameron and the family gardener, some no-account bum named Alonso Nueves. I was paid for Albion's confession, sure, but mostly I was paid to make damn certain that nobody ever connected those two disappearances. That's the God's truth.”

He started laughing again.

“Better their daughter should be dead, you know? Better a Cameron girl should get
murdered
than to run off with a fuckin' gardener.”

“Put the gun away,” I said. “Mac, face it, you're a cop, not a killer.” I wasn't afraid of him. There's a tension in someone's face, in their arm, in their whole being, before they pull the trigger. MacAvoy wasn't even breathing hard.

The bright light on shore shocked both of us. A deep voice boomed, shouting against the roaring ocean waves. I couldn't understand a single word.

For a moment the ex-sergeant stood frozen. Then he drew the wrong conclusion.

“Goddamn you, you set me up!” he muttered, and all the murderous energy he'd been lacking poured through his body, an almost visible impulse from brain through spine to shoulder, racing down his arm toward his trigger finger.

I filled my lungs and dove to the side, kicking for the sandy bottom. I expected a shot, sudden pain, but none came. I kept moving my arms, kicking my legs until I had to breathe or burst.

When I surfaced, I tried not to gasp for air, to inhale quietly.

I was much farther out to sea than MacAvoy. He'd chosen to target the beacon on the beach, firing round after round. If I could swim nearer … My hand closed on the S&W 40 in my waist clip.

I couldn't swim with the gun in my hand. Its weight unbalanced my stroke. I tucked it back in my clip, slid underwater.

There was no light, no sound. No way to gauge my progress.

This time I surfaced badly, close to MacAvoy, but not close enough to grab him.

“Bitch!” MacAvoy yelled when he saw me.

He gazed at the light on the beach, at the moonlit sky. He didn't point his gun at me. Suddenly he turned, opened his mouth, stuck it in, deep, so that most of the barrel disappeared.

“No,” I screamed. The noise was soft, a gentle pop.

I got the full back-lit effect. The sudden jerk of MacAvoy's head, the recoil that dropped his arm and gun into the sea. The back of his skull opening, leaking blood and coral. I could close my eyes, I thought, and still see it, over and over.

I made a retching noise, grabbed my gun, and aimed at the light. Anger flooded me. Whoever the hell was on shore—the Windbreaker Man, DEA, the police, a mob hit man—had scared MacAvoy into the long silence, and he'd never tell me more about the man who disappeared with Thea Janis.

“Stop,” screamed a voice. “Don't shoot. I'm hit. I'm on your side.”

On my side. Right. So why was I the one who pulled the ex-sergeant's bloody corpse out of the sea? Why was I the one holding a dead man and wishing I could remember the words, the all-important words of my father's religion? All I could mumble was “Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done.” I said it twice, three times, four. It wasn't absolution. I couldn't have granted absolution, but how I wished I could recall the Latin words.

44

Thank God for full moons. I finished dragging MacAvoy's remains onto the sand, fully appreciating the term “dead weight” as I rolled him out of the water. Slowly, I approached the beacon, a huge battery-powered flash, the type used to warn drivers away from major accidents. He was on the ground, moaning: Mr. Windbreaker, Mr. Denim Jacket, leaking blood from a leg wound.

I found that I had MacAvoy's SIG-Sauer in my hand. I didn't remember retrieving it. It felt slightly heavier than my 40. The stainless steel glittered.

What kind of harebrained idiot stands next to a light and yells at an armed man holding a prisoner in the ocean? A sniper lurks in the background, wears black, uses an infrared scope and a target piece. Silence and stealth are his weapons.