Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (2 page)

Northern police jurisdictions are a patchwork quilt as well. The
state police cover the freeways, and share coverage of the interior with the
sheriff’s departments and the Department of Natural Resources. Murder and mayhem
fall to the North Shore Major Crimes unit based in Valhalla. My unit. As second in
command, I should have been leading this investigation. But there was nothing
ordinary about this case.

It was late October, and a fairy dusting of early
snow was drifting down as I rolled up on the crime scene. A state police cruiser was
pulling out as I pulled over to park on the gravel shoulder. A Vale County sheriff’s
prowlie was blocking the turnout, with a deputy waving gawkers past.
Bergmann.

He shot me with his finger as I trotted past. I didn’t shoot
back.

Zina Redfern was halfway down the embankment, scanning the tire tracks.
Below her, the frame and tires of Sherry’s Mustang were visible above the shallow
creek. State-police evidence techs were searching the banks, though I doubted they’d
find much. Most of the evidence would be in the car.

Zee Redfern glanced up,
saw me coming, then went back to studying the tread marks. We’ve been partners since
she transferred up to the North Shore force from Flint. We’re good friends, a good
team.

Zee’s Native American, Anishnabeg, but she grew up in Gangland, on
Flint’s north side. Doubly tough for a sidewalk Indian girl on her own. I asked her
once how she stayed out of the crews.

“I didn’t. I took Police Science courses
at Mott J.C., became an auxiliary officer, then hired on to the Flint force on my
nineteenth birthday. Cops wear colors, pack iron, and you’re blue till you die.
Sounds like a gang to me.”

A short, squared-off woman with raven hair, she
takes the term “plainclothes officer” seriously. She was wearing her usual Johnny
Cash black, a bulky nylon POLICE parka over black jeans, a black watch cap pulled
down around her ears.

Even her combat boots are the real deal. LawPro Pursuits
with steel toes. She packs a Fairbairn fighting knife strapped to one ankle, a Smith
Airweight .38 on the other. You’d think she’d clank when she walks. She
doesn’t.

She didn’t look surprised to see me, but she wasn’t happy
either.

“Am I going to have a problem with you?” she asked, straightening
up.

“I promised I wouldn’t put you in a situation, and I won’t. But Sherry was
a friend and there’s no way I can just stand aside. So? Let’s trade. Tell me what
you’ve got, I’ll swap you what I know. Then I’ll get out of your hair.”

“You
first.”

“Fine. There’s no way Sherry got run off this turnout accidentally.
She lives in Briarwood a few miles up the road. It’s a gated community, guests have
to sign in and out. This place is a lovers’ lane. Handy if you want to meet somebody
on the quiet.”

“Somebody like you, for instance?”

“We parked here once.
When we broke up. A year ago. Your turn.”

“The car was spotted by a hiker,
upside down in the creek at the bottom of the ravine. It didn’t hit hard, and the
airbags would have absorbed most of the impact. She could have gotten out if she was
conscious. The pathologist’s best guess is, she was already dead when the car went
in.”

“On the phone you mentioned her throat was bruised?”

“It didn’t
look like strangulation, but there was a livid mark and the hyoid was crushed. Maybe
a judo strike to the larynx. You had hand-to-hand training in the service,
right?”

“Along with a million other guys. The same course you had at the
Academy. Was she assaulted?”

“There was no evidence of that, no bruises or
torn clothing. Whose idea was it to break off your
relationship?”

“Mine.”

“Why?”

“That’s . . . a bit
complicated.”

“It always is. Give me a DD-5 version, Dylan.”

I mulled
that over for a moment. How to condense a serious slice of my life into a police
report? Straight up. Tear the damn bandage off.

“My last year in the Air
Force, I came home on leave from Iraq. Sherry interviewed me for the station, a
local interest story.”

“And sparks flew?”

“Something like that. It
started as an overnight fling. But after I went back, we stayed in touch. E-mailed
almost every day, hooked up whenever I could get leave.”

“So the affair was .
. . serious?”

“It was for me. I bought a ring.”

“Wow.” Zee’s eyebrows
went up. “What happened?”

“I got posted T.D.Y. to Barksdale Air Base in
Louisiana—”

“T.D.Y.?”

“Temporary duty. I was an investigator with the
Air Police. They flew me in to teach a course on crime scenes. The base is just up
the road from New Orleans, and it was Mardi Gras week. Sherry flew down to party. I
planned to pop the question over the weekend.”

“And did you?”

“Not
quite. Three in the morning, we were in a disco in the French Quarter when the DJ
announced the next tune would be topless. Sherry stripped off her blouse and kept
right on dancing with the rest of the wild girls. Half naked in a room full of
strangers and she never missed a step. And every doubt I had about our relationship
came into focus.”

“Just because she flashed for a song?” Zee asked doubtfully.
“Why? You’re no prude.”

“Not a bit. It was Mardi Gras. The whole scene was
totally hot. People were making love in the streets.”

“Then what? It bothered
you that she went overboard?”

“That’s just it, she didn’t. It wasn’t a lapse.
She
needed
to be out there in front of that crowd. That’s what bothered me.
Sherry grew up in the foster-care system, never knew her family. Maybe that’s where
the hunger came from.”

“What hunger?”

“Down deep, Sherry was . . . a
drama queen, I suppose. She came alive in the spotlight. She was desperate to be the
center of attention. All the time. Wanted to be recognized, wanted people to know
her name. And I realized the things she cared the most about meant nothing at all to
me. And the things I care about, my family, living in the north, weren’t important
to her. I could make her smile, we had some great times, but I could never make her
sparkle the way she did in front of a camera.”

“So you ended it?”

“Not
then. Things . . . wound down on their own. Most love affairs have chemistry in the
beginning, but unless there’s more to it, an affair’s all it will ever be. That’s
all it was for us. A month after Mardi Gras, we were over. No Famous Final Scene, no
tears, no hard feelings. I went on the Detroit force after the service and we lost
touch for a while, but when I transferred up here, we hooked up again. Went out a
few times.”

“Rekindling the old flame?”

“More like auld lang syne. We
were over and we both knew it.”

She looked down the ravine. A wrecker was
winching the sedan out of the water. “You said you saw her last week?”

“She
called me. We met for coffee.”

“Why?”

“Just to say hi, touch
base.”

She glanced at me sharply. “You said this was a double homicide. I’m
assuming she was pregnant?”

“We talked about that,” I admitted.

“Was it
yours?”

“No. No chance.”

“Whose then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did
she know?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Did she sleep around?”

“She was
twenty-six and single. She wasn’t a nun. Beyond that, you’re asking the wrong
guy.”

“Who should I be asking?”

I mulled that one over. “She said she
was seeing Rob Gilchrist.”

“I’ve already heard that. Anyone else?”

This
time I didn’t answer. Zee knew I was holding out, but she let me off the hook. For
now.

“Do you have any idea what Sherry was doing out here,
Dylan?”

“Meeting a source? Meeting a lover? Your guess is as good as
mine.”

Which wasn’t quite true. If she’d wanted to have it out with her
married boss, Jack Milano, this might be exactly the place. He couldn’t risk signing
in the gate of her condo or being spotted out on the town. Their involvement would
be a firing offense.

Sherry’d asked me to check Milano out, and I’d taken my
sweet time about it. If I’d been faster, she might not be in a body bag, headed for
Grayling. I’d been too slow. But I was definitely revved up now.

Zee was
staring at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Is there anything else you want to tell
me, Dylan?”

“Not a thing.” I was lying to her face now. She knew it. And
didn’t like it.

“You’d better go home, LaCrosse. If Kaz finds you hanging
around here, we’re gonna have trouble.”

“I’ve already got trouble,” I
said.

 
Even by North Shore standards, Jack Milano’s lakefront home was a
mansion. A Beaux-Arts brick estate with tall, ornately framed windows and multiple
mansard roofs, it was isolated on its own personal peninsula. Definitely pricey. I
guessed five mil, maybe more. Definitely more than a station manager could
afford.

I checked my watch as I trotted up to the front door. It was nearly
eight. Zee would be stuck at the crime scene at least another hour. With luck, I
could ambush Milano before he left for work.

I pressed the buzzer.

No
answer.

I was angry enough to kick the damned door in. I leaned on the buzzer,
holding it down.

An overhead speaker crackled to life. “Who is it?” A woman’s
voice.

“Police, ma’am. Sergeant LaCrosse. Is Mr. Milano in?”

A pause.
“Wait, please. I’ll be right down.”

She opened the door a moment later. A
tall, spare woman in an azure dressing gown. Silk, I think. She was fortyish, ash
blond and elegant. And a bit myopic. She peered at me through thick glasses in
designer frames. Ordinarily I would have been in a sport coat and dress shirt over
jeans. North-country business chic. My black leather jacket suited my
mood.

“Did you say police?” she asked.

“Sergeant LaCrosse, ma’am. North
Shore Major Crimes.” I held up my ID folder.

“My husband is in New York, at a
conference,” she said, squinting at my badge. “Perhaps I can help. This is about
Miss Sinclair, isn’t it?”

I stared at her.

“We have constant Internet
contact with the station,” she said, standing aside, waving me in. “Her death is
headline news. I’m having coffee, Sergeant . . . LaCrosse, is it? Join
me.”

She wheeled and stalked off toward the breakfast bar without waiting for
an answer. She was used to being obeyed.

I followed her through the expansive
living room, gleaming hardwood floors, overstuffed leather furnishings. Five
wide-screen TV monitors were stacked in the living room, running live video feeds
from the station. One had a schedule breakdown, a second the current programs on
air. The rest showed breaking stories from the other networks. Sherry’s face stared
out at me from two of them, her smile frozen in place. I looked away.

The
kitchen was worthy of a five-star chef, burnished copper pots suspended over black
granite countertops wide enough to land a plane on. I doubted Mrs. Milano had ever
cooked in her life. The coffee maker was a PrimaDonna 6600. Top of the line. It
hissed as she poured two cups. The aroma was exquisite.

“You said your husband
is in New York?” I asked, taking a stool at the breakfast counter that divided the
kitchen from the dining room. “When did he leave?”

“Jack’s been in the city
all week.” She took the seat facing me across the bar and slid my cup over. “A
conference at corporate headquarters. Meetings all day, every day.”

“Do you
have a number for him there? We really do need to talk to him.”

“It won’t do
you any good,” she said, eyeing me across the brim of her coffee cup. “My husband
fields questions for a living, Sergeant, and I doubt he’ll be cooperative. You won’t
get anything useful from him. Perhaps I can be of more help.”

“How
so?”

“Jack will lie, trying to conceal his affair with Miss Sinclair,” she
said bluntly. “I won’t.”

Surprised, I leaned back in my chair, scanning her
face. It was a good face, fine bones, wide-set eyes. She met my stare straight
on.

“So . . . you knew that Miss Sinclair and your husband were
involved?”

“It’s not the first time this situation has come up. Jack’s an
alpha male, an ambitious and attractive man. That’s why I married him. But—what was
that phrase Hilary Clinton used? He’s always been a hard dog to keep on the porch?
That’s why I insisted on an ironclad pre-nup before we married. My family has
substantial assets. Jack has always worked for wages. It limits his
options.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you, Mrs. Milano.”

“Call me Tess,
please. We
are
discussing dark family secrets. My point is, that Jack’s
affair with Miss Sinclair isn’t a secret, Sergeant, not from me, anyway. I met with
Sherry last week. Frankly, I thought she might be trying to steal my husband. I
intended to warn her off. To have her fired, if necessary.”

“How did it
go?”

“We came to a meeting of the minds,” Tess Milano said drily. “Sherry was
a very ambitious young woman. She said she had a job offer from a bigger station
downstate and that it might be best for all concerned if she simply moved
on.”

“And that was it?”

“Not quite. She did mention that moving is
terribly expensive nowadays.”

“So instead of scaring her off, you wound up
paying her off?”

“It was the simplest solution.”

“Did you tell your
husband about it?”

“Of course. Jack was furious, at first. He probably had
visions of eloping with his latest lady-friend, he often does. But eventually he
faces the reality of living on half his salary in a shrinking job market, and comes
to his senses.”

“And comes back to you?”

“He never actually leaves.” She
sighed. “Girls like Sherry are a recurring fantasy, like running away to join the
circus. I know my husband, Detective, and this may sound odd to you, but in spite of
his faults, I love him dearly. In some ways, he’s like the child we never had. What
do they call that syndrome? Boys who never grow up?”