Lark (10 page)

She nodded and quickly handed the photograph back. “Yeah, that's her.”

“We'll need a positive identification.”

“She wore Bean boots, didn't she?”

“Very narrow ones.”

“That's her. I know my own daughter, you know.”

“It's still necessary that you come with us.”

“She's dead, isn't she?” It was a throwaway line, a question devoid of emotion.

“Yes, she is. Can we call someone for you? A friend, a member of the family, a minister?”

She snorted. “A minister, for Christ's sake? Last time a bible jock was in this dump was a couple of years ago when the youth board found out we'd once been something or other and sent this guy over to talk to me about my misguided kid. After ten minutes I had him ready for a roll in the hay. Woulda had him too, if Vicky hadn't come home from school early.” She walked unsteadily to the hall. “You guys want coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Horse said.

“Call me Elvira; everyone does. Don't worry, boys, I'm not going to pull the grieving-mother bit. Wouldn't fit, you know. I'm making coffee. You can take it or leave it.” She went in the kitchen.

“Working traffic, I don't get to make many of these calls,” Horse said. “I guess you could say I'm inexperienced.”

“She isn't exactly the type of mourner to throw herself wailing into an open grave.”

Elvira Stanton returned and leaned against the door frame, her hips canted to the side in what she must have assumed was a provocative pose. “Takes a few minutes for the water to boil. I only got a hot plate since they cut off my gas last month. Woulda cut me off on the electric if my boyfriend hadn't jumped the box for me. You.” She pointed a finger at Lark. “You're first.”

“What?”

“You like girls, don't you? You like to hump, don't you?”

Lark broke the woman's coquettish pose as he pulled her away from the door. His hands curled over her shoulders as he pulled her gently erect. “Your daughter is dead, Mrs. Stanton. She was murdered.”

“Let go of me!” She broke from his grip. “That's the way I knew it was going to be. It's over. I don't have to worry anymore. I don't have to fight with her no more.”

“Maybe we should get a doctor?” Horse asked.

Elvira Stanton turned to glare at him. “I don't need nothing but maybe a shot of booze.” She whirled to turn the same withering gaze at Lark.

“You will have to go with Officer Najankian and make a formal identification at the medical examiner's office.”

“I got to do nothing but die.”

“You could help us find out who killed her. In almost all cases of this sort, the victim knows the killer.”

She laughed. “Vicky had lots of friends, and most of them were mean.” She went back into the kitchen and returned with a mug of coffee and a pint bottle of peach brandy, from which she poured a large dollop into the mug.

“Tell me about her friends?” Lark asked.

She waved the bottle at them. “You guys want a snort?” They shook their heads. “I don't usually drink in the morning. I mean, I'm not a drunk or nothing.” She laughed in a high falsetto. “I got other vices, but boozing isn't one of them. Not that I don't like to party as much as the next one, but it's got its place, you know.”

“Tell us about Vicky,” Lark pressed.

Elvira Stanton took another swig from the mug. She held the liquid in her mouth a moment before swallowing. “She was a tramp, you know.”

“How do you mean?”

“She's been sleeping around since she was fourteen.” She stared out the window. “The morning after the first night she never came home, we had a big fight. I mean, we slapped each other and the whole bit, but she just kept telling me to fuck off. What can you do?”

Lark considered his own daughter wearing a man's shirt, little else, and her live-in boyfriend standing in the doorway dressed only in briefs. He shook his head. “It's difficult.”

“Damn right it is! Woulda been better if I had a man around the place. Maybe between the two of us we coulda kept her in line.”

“Raising kids is tough,” Horse agreed.

“Yeah. It's not bad when they're small. They take up a lot of time and all, but they don't get smart with you until they're teenagers.”

Horse nodded. “That's the tough time.”

“She'd go out and not come back for a couple of days, and when she did come home, she'd have a new sweater or something. I could always tell because everything I bought her was discount-house stuff, you know.”

“Somebody gave her those L.L. Bean shoes?” Lark said quietly.

“I sure in hell didn't,” Elvira Stanton said. “And she hadn't worked anyplace for a couple of months.”

“Any idea who paid for them?”

“How should I know? She had lots of friends, all bad.”

“The boots were new,” Lark said. “Someone who's been coming around recently probably got them for her.”

“There was a creep who came here on a motorcycle that she'd been seeing the last two months.”

“Do you know his name?” Lark asked.

“Kid never came in the house, just revved that damn motorcycle outside until Vicky ran out and climbed on back.”

“Does he come from around here?”

“I think I saw him working at the Sunoco station a couple of times. That's all I know.”

“What do you suppose Vicky was doing in Middleburg?” Horse asked.

Elvira shrugged. “Who knows? She'd take off for days at a time and end up anywhere. Couple of times I had to drive clear across the state to get her.”

“Do you have any relatives around here?” Horse asked. “Or perhaps Vicky's father could make the identification?”

A laugh. “I got some cousins over in Phillips, but they pretend they don't know me. The kid's father? I haven't seen him since before she was born. Listen, guys, I can't take time off from work. I get paid hourly, you know, and I need the money.”

“There are arrangements to be made,” Lark said.

“I don't want to think about it. Maybe tomorrow or the next day.”

“It has to be today, Mrs. Stanton.” Lark did not raise his voice, but the finality of his tone was obvious.

“Get off my back!”

“Officer Najankian will drive you.”

Horse stood. “You car's still running. I'll shut it off and wait for you in my car.” With a nod toward Lark, he left the small house.

“That's it, huh?” she said.

“Yes. He will drive you and help you in any way he can.”

“That's something, I guess. I'll get my bag.” She left the room and returned a moment later with a worn leather shoulder bag draped over her arm. “All right, let's go. Let's get it over with.”

They walked to the front door, where she turned to look up at Lark. “It didn't hurt her, did it?”

“No,” Lark lied. “Death was instantaneous.”

8

Warren had only one Sunoco station and Lark pulled the pickup into the full-service lane and waited for the attendant. To the side, in an otherwise empty service bay, a Kawasaki motorcycle sat in the center of the concrete floor. A chamois cloth was neatly folded on its seat.

The young man in oily jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt shambled from the small office and looked annoyed. “Yeah?”

“Fill her up and check under the hood,” Lark said. He pulled the hood release.

The attendant set the pump nozzle in the gas tank and slouched over to the front of the truck and raised the hood. “Down a quart,” he said.

“Put in the cheapest,” Lark said. “Do you know a girl named Vicky Stanton?”

“I sell oil and gasoline, mister, nothing else.” He inverted an oilcan over the engine block.

Lark left the truck to get a better view of the attendant. His face was pockmarked from old acne scars. He was of medium build with coal-black hair and dark, emotionless eyes. “Vicky Stanton?” Lark repeated.

The attendant slammed the hood and flipped the oilcan into a waste receptacle. “Cash or credit card?”

Lark handed him a twenty-dollar bill and went into the service bay. The attendant returned to the small office, made change, and went into the bay to give Lark the money.

“You didn't answer me,” Lark said. “This your bike?”

“Yeah.”

“You should be more careful with it,” Lark said as his foot lashed out and knocked the motorcycle off its stand and crashed it down into the concrete.

“What's the matter with you?” the attendant screamed. “You crazy or something?” He rushed to lift the cycle and prop it erect.

“You didn't answer me,” Lark said quietly as he kicked the motorcycle over for the second time.

“Hey!” The attendant looked at his fallen machine in horror. “You faggot bastard!” He picked up a tire iron from the floor. “I'm going to break your head.”

Lark took two steps across the bay's apron as the attendant stepped forward with the tire iron raised over his head. The iron swung forward toward Lark's head. Lark stepped into the blow and parried it with an openhanded chop just above the elbow. The tire iron clattered to the floor. Lark continued his forward momentum and used his other hand in another chopping motion to the larynx.

The attendant grasped his neck with both hands as he fell to the floor making heaving, gasping sounds. Lark looked down at him dispassionately and noticed that he wore a male version of the L.L. Bean boots.

“Where'd you get the shoes?” he asked.

The attendant's breathing began to return to normal, but he remained on the floor, as if afraid that if he stood Lark would knock him down again. “From a mail-order house in Maine. You ask crazy questions. What do you want? The money's in the till. I won't give you no trouble.”

“I'm ‘the man' to you, kid. I'm not here to take the money.” He flipped his badge open. “On your feet.”

The attendant scrambled up and stood with his back pressed against the wall. “I got rights, you know.”

“I'll bet you have. What's your name and show me some ID.”

“Lawton. Mike Lawton.” His fingers scratched at his jean's pocket for a wallet and driver's license. “I don't know you. You aren't from Warren.”

Lark flicked his finger toward the small office, and Mike Lawton stumbled into the small, square room and sat down in a worn captain's chair in front of an ancient desk covered with greasy receipts and charge slips.

Lark sat on the edge of the desk. “Vicky Stanton?”

“What about her?”

“My, we have a poor attitude, don't we?”

“What do you want from me, mister? I know her. We went out a couple of times. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know everything, but let's start with those shoes you're wearing; they're like a pair she had on.”

“I got them for her, that's what she wanted. She came by the station one day with this mail-order form and said I was to get her a money order at the supermarket.”

A car beeped on the apron outside. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Saturday. I was working here and she came by to borrow a ten.”

Lark calculated that would have been the day before she died. “What time of day did she come by?”

“I don't know, sometime in the morning, maybe ten or so.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

The impatient customer outside began to honk repeatedly. Mike Lawton squirmed nervously at the desk. “I got to take care of that car.”

“I need more on Vicky.”

“Listen, mister, you can beat on me all you want, but I'm the only one at the station until noon. I got to take care of that customer.”

“Okay, go do it.” Lark followed Mike Lawton outside and watched as the surly young man halfheartedly serviced a Corvette. “I'll be back at noon.”

Lawton mumbled an acknowledgment.

Warren's town green might have been picturesque if the town's fathers had kept their wits about them. Instead, they had allowed local business to take the lure of the dollar, and now the remaining nineteenth-century facades were decaying and the area was sprinkled with fast-food outlets that incongruously dotted the square. Parts of old newspapers blew across the green itself, and the grass covering was scuffed to bare earth in many spots.

Lark located the town's small police station in the rear of the building that housed the library. He parked the pickup in a no-parking zone directly in front of its double glass doors.

He knew that Warren was on the Resident State Trooper Program, and hoped the state cop would be on duty rather than an ill-trained and part-time constable. He knew that the troopers who policed these small towns were well-trained men who received their assignments through competitive examination and considered it good duty.

When Connecticut curtailed most county government functions and severely reduced the police powers of the sheriffs, many small towns and villages were unable to provide adequate, well-trained police services. The Resident Trooper Program filled the void. State cops, with years of experience and advanced training, were assigned to these towns, and in conjunction with the constables, they provided efficient services.

Lark entered the small office and blinked as his eyes refocused from the bright exterior light to the dim interior.

A bulky state trooper sergeant looked up at him, pushed his chair back, and walked forward with balled fists. “Lark, you son of a bitch!” His right hand shot forward into Lark's solar plexus.

Lark's rigid abdominal muscles deflected the blow and he countered with a left to the trooper's midsection. The sergeant reeled back with a deep exhale of breath. His hands tenderly felt his aching stomach.

“What in the hell are you doing here, Black Jack?” Lark asked with a smile. “I thought they'd exiled all you black Irishmen.”