Death on the Mississippi (11 page)

“I knew he had all that money, but he told me that he needed cash to pay off that man who called in the night. They'll find out about Katrina and Dalton, won't they?”

“Yes.”

Captain Norbert stalked toward them. He glowered at Lyon. “I understand that you found the body? Let me ask you something, Wentworth. How do you manage to find the time to stumble over half the murder victims in my jurisdiction?”

“I think it has something to do with my karma, Captain.”

“It's because of all the time you have on your hands. Why don't you get a real job like the rest of us?”

“Is this employment counseling time, or are you conducting an investigation?”

“I'll get your statement later.” He shifted his attention to Pan Turman and as he did his manner changed to that of the polite but firm civil servant. “We'd like your permission to search the premises including all the motor vehicles. We could get a court order, but it would save time if you allowed it.”

“Sure,” Pan said as she pointed across the compound. “That cottage over there is where I stayed before I went to the Wentworths'. The one next to it was Katrina's. The cars are all parked up in the lot.”

Captain Norbert gave her a half-salute and walked away to give orders to a phalanx of patrolmen and detectives.

“What in the hell's going on?” Bobby Douglas limped across the grass toward them.

“When did you get back?” Lyon asked.

“I just pulled into the parking lot and a dozen troopers crawled all over me. What happened? Did they find Dalton's body?”

“Kat's been killed,” Pan said. “She was on the beach where someone stabbed her.”

“Katrina dead?” Douglas looked stricken, and as if to punctuate his feelings, ambulance attendants zippered a body bag shut, levered it on a gurney, and pushed it to a waiting ambulance. The vehicle's doors closed and it pulled slowly away from the resort. Douglas sank slowly to a seat on the seawall.

“What were you doing at a marina in Delaware?” Lyon asked.

Douglas looked up at Lyon as the shutters behind his eyes flicked open and shut several times while he decided what to answer. He finally spoke in a hesitant manner with long pauses. “I thought Dalton would be down there. That was sort of the original plan.”

“What plan?” Lyon asked.

“The way he had it set up, I was the one supposed to take the boat, and he was to meet me at the marina. We were to sail south and then make a run for one of the Bahamas.”

“With the cash aboard?”

“He never said exactly, but that's the way I figured it. When he and the boat were gone, I thought it was the same plan in reverse, and that he'd want me to meet him. He never showed. I don't think he made it out of the river.”

“What did Katrina know?”

Douglas shrugged. “Who knows? Kat would tell you what she wanted you to know she knew.”

“You, Douglas.” Captain Norbert was back and held an acetate evidence bag in his hand.

Bobby didn't look up at him. “Yeah.”

“The red eighty-four Ford in the lot yours?”

“Mine and the bank's.”

“This yours?” Norbert shoved the evidence bag at him. “We found it under the seat of your car.” The bag held a yellow spring knife with a narrow, stained blade.

“Looks like one I have.”

“Forensic will tell us for sure, but it looks like we got blood on your knife, boy.”

Douglas shifted uneasily. “I might have cut myself. I eat lots of fruit.”

“During our investigation of Turman's disappearance, we ran a make on you, Douglas. We know you had a drug bust in Florida.”

“For carrying half an ounce of grass, for Chrissake!” Bobby said. “It musta been a slow day for cops that afternoon.”

“Seems there were going to be more slow days for you after your girl ran away with Turman and his money,” Norbert said. “Or did you take care of that little detail too?”

“Wait a goddamn minute!” Douglas took a menacing step toward Norbert until the police officer grasped the butt of the weapon holstered at his waist. “I spent sixty days in the can in Florida, and I won't go through that again.”

“You have the right to remain silent …” Norbert began in a monotone.

“Bullshit!” Douglas ran toward the parking lot. His limping stride slowed him somewhat, but his powerful legs still propelled him rapidly toward the red car at the edge of the lot.

Norbert dropped the evidence bag and held his service revolver in his right hand as his left braced the wrist. He began to lead the barrel after the running man. “Stop! I order you to stop.”

Lyon glanced at Norbert's aim expecting to see the revolver's barrel pointed high in a warning shot. The captain had assumed a marksman's stance and was still leading the running man with care. It was going to be a carefully aimed, if not fatal, shot.

“No!” Lyon yelled as the palm of one hand lashed out and struck the police officer in the larynx while the other wrenched the pistol from the captain's hand.

Norbert staggered backward clutching his throat. He pointed at the running man and choked out, “Get him!”

On the far side of the seawall, a State Police officer raised the M-16 he had cradled over his arm and took aim as Bobby Douglas reached for his car door.

Lyon fired Norbert's weapon directly at the officer pointing the rifle.

8

Lyon hadn't realized before that most state cops carried blackjacks in their back pockets. His fresh bruises, bloodied nose, and other assorted aches were proof of this new knowledge. The massive shooting pains in his head were of some minor help in that they made him forget lesser pains in other parts of his anatomy.

After he had fired at the officer sighting the rifle, state cops had descended on him from all directions in massive numbers. They might have killed him if Norbert hadn't recovered sufficiently to stop the mayhem. Lyon would always be convinced that the State Police captain let the beating continue for a minute or two longer than necessary.

The small holding cell at the barracks didn't help his disposition. They had laughed when he'd asked for his single phone call, and they hadn't bothered to book, photograph, or fingerprint him. He had been dragged unceremoniously from the cruiser, through the communications room, and dumped on the floor of the cell. The door had slammed with a note of finality.

No one had died, and that was some consolation for the beating. Before he lost consciousness from the attack by the irate troopers, he had seen Douglas taken into custody and the officer he had shot hobble toward a cruiser using his rifle as a crutch. After that, things began to get hazy.

He swung his legs from the bunk and staggered over to a plumbing fixture that contained a toilet, sink, and built-in mirror all in one unit. His face, reflected in the stainless steel, verified visually how he felt physically. The knowledge that he would probably look worse tomorrow didn't help.

All that the narrow cell contained was the plumbing fixture and the bunk. Stools, desks, lamps, and reading matter were evidently not provided to the occupants of holding cells. He assumed that the purpose of this was to make the prisoner contemplate his sins. He flopped back on the bunk and laced his hands behind his head, but even that simple gesture shot tentacles of pain along his arms.

It was time to go to another place. He had an eclectic memory able to transform past experiences and images into a vivid near-reality. It was a question of roaming through memories and selecting. He decided to view a river trip he and his father had taken on his fourteenth birthday. It had been a Technicolor day, with a warm but not burning sun and a moderate breeze from the north. They had launched the twenty-one-foot sailboat into the Connecticut River at East Hartford. Spring freshets had brimmed the river and the current was brisk. Wind stiffened the sails as they turned into the main channel.

He meticulously reconstructed the exact details of the trip downriver. The day's sights were as vivid now as they had been during that day decades ago, but his father's facial features were beginning to blur, and he wondered why that seemed to happen as the years progressed.

They sailed to the sea by following the river's meandering course as it wandered toward the Sound. They passed Middleburg, where years later he would teach at the University. They drifted past the promontory where he now lived, and finally reached the mouth of the river. They slept on the boat that night, and at dawn were under sail again. They wandered in and out of channels that separated the small islands that occasionally clustered near the shore. They tacked by the lee side of Duck Island and ran before a stiff wind that pushed them rapidly past Red Deer Island, which even then was deserted. They slept that night in a safe anchorage protected by the Thimble Islands.

The memory covered nearly the identical area that Lyon had Dorset map with his aerial photographs. The whole shore was more densely populated now, and the configurations of some land had changed due to water erosion or storms. The house on Red Deer Island had been destroyed by a hurricane last year, and Duck Island had completely disappeared underwater.

Lyon's eyes snapped open to immediately destroy the phantom sailing trip. He stared at the ceiling a moment before catapulting from the bunk to grab the bars on the cell door. “Get me out of here!” His voice echoed in the narrow concrete hallway. “Damn it! Let me out of here!”

“Shut up!” a voice from another cell yelled back. “We're trying to sleep.”

“Psycho time,” another voice added.

The chant repeating Lyon's demand began at the cell at the end of the corridor and was quickly taken up by all the prisoners until the din of “Let us out” became ear shattering.

The single state trooper who entered the hall and growled for quiet was shouted down and soon retreated for reinforcements. Captain Norbert, wearing a bandage around his throat, appeared in the hall flanked by four large troopers. His voice boomed above the din. “Who started this?”

“The guy in the cell at the end,” someone answered.

“Wentworth!” Captain Norbert's voice cracked. “You son of a bitch!”

Rocco Herbert followed the troopers who followed Norbert as he stalked toward Lyon's cell. “Leave him alone, Norbie,” Rocco said.

“Yeah, wait until I finish telling you what this bastard did.” He stopped in front of Lyon and poked an accusing finger through the bars. “Assault, attempted murder, and resisting arrest. And those are just for openers. It's going to be hard time for you, Wentworth.”

Rocco shoved his way to the cell door and looked in at Lyon with horror. “You beat the shit out of him,” he said in a low voice. “You worked him over.”

“Boy, did we,” one of the flanking troopers said. “After he shot MacIntire in the foot, we were all over his ass.”

Rocco's fist tore into the trooper's abdomen. When the patrolman grunted and bent forward, Rocco's knee snapped into his chin and flipped him backward. He grabbed Norbert's uniform lapels with one hand while the other slapped the captain repeatedly across the face.

Another trooper began rapid kidney punches into Rocco's side, while two others struggled in the narrow space to reach their blackjacks.

Based on his own recent experience, Lyon estimated that subduing Rocco was going to be at least a six-man job. The hallway was going to get very crowded.

Bea stood in front of the cell with a police report in her hand. She shook her head as she looked in at the two quiet men locked inside. “You gave Captain Norbert a karate chop to the throat? And what's this larceny charge?”

“I think that's for stealing his pistol,” Lyon said.

“And Rocco assaulted seven state troopers?”

“I swear, Bea, I only counted six.”

She looked at the list again. “Lyon shot a state trooper in the foot? This is ridiculous. There's a combined total of sixteen charges against you two.”

Captain Norbert stood behind Bea and fingered the new bandage on his forehead. “I think we're talking five to seven in max security here. The boys up there hate cops, it's going to be hard time for Rocco.”

“Your sister is going to be very pissed when she finds out you busted me,” Rocco said.

Bea leaned dejectedly against the wall. “This whole matter is most unfortunate for all of us, and means that a great many careers are going down the drain. One of the things I've based my political career on is strict gun-control legislation.” She looked down at the police report. “And yet my husband is arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm and attempted murder. Rocco certainly can't remain police chief when he's in jail for assaulting eight state troopers.”

“Six,” Rocco insisted.

“Seven,” Norbert corrected.

“I'm sure you'll survive somehow, Captain, but the town cops in this state won't be very happy with you for failing to respect a badge, particularly the one worn by the newly elected president of the state's Police Chiefs' Association.”

“I haven't seen you since that election, Rocco,” Norbert said. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

Bea sighed. “As usual, the only one to come out of this mess whole will be Lyon. He can write books anywhere, and the more maximum the security the more time he'll have to write. His publishers will probably ask him to do a well-paid exposé of the state police. Children's-book writers can't go around shooting policemen, but he can use a pseudonym.”

“Who was shot?” Norbert said as he took the report from Bea's hand, ripped it up, and stuffed it into his pocket. He unlocked the cell door. “I want to thank Chief Herbert for coming down here today to give my men a valuable lesson in unarmed combat. He grabbed Lyon's head harshly with both hands and whispered into his ear. “We have a phrase for it, Wentworth. It's called ‘lost in society.' That's for guys like you who we know are bad guys, and who know that we know, but who we got to use for one reason or another. We let them go, like I am today, but you get lost. You don't even spit on the sidewalks. You don't even rip a warning label off a bed mattress. You just disappear. You get lost. And you better not be found around any more dead people unless it's a state funeral.”