lived. She got out and tapped at the screen door.
Darleen was watching a soap opera now, a can of Budweiser in her hand, her baby gurgling next to her on the sofa. The redheaded girl’s eyes were puffy from crying. Otherwise, the scene was exactly the same as before- dirty dishes and ashtrays piled on the coffee table, the smell of dirty diapers fouling the air.
“I’m Lieutenant Mitry, Darleen. I was here the other day with Trooper Bliss.”
Darleen’s gaze was somewhat unfocused. Des would likely find the remains of a joint in one of those ashtrays if she cared to look. Which she did not.
“I’m, like, I remember you,” the girl responded, still way more interested in her TV show than she was in Des. “What do you want now?”
“To see how you’re doing.”
“What for?” demanded Darleen, going from zero to ultra-defensive in nothing flat.
“I’m concerned, that’s what for. Do you have any family who can be here for you?”
“Tuck was my family.” Her eyes never leaving the TV.
“That’s what I mean. How will you and your baby get by now?”
“That ain’t none of your business, bitch!” Darleen snarled at her. “And don’t you dare try to take my baby away from me, y’hear? Or I’ll mess you up so bad nobody will ever want you!”
The phone rang. Darleen got up off the sofa and went flouncing off to the kitchen to answer it.
Des stood there a moment in that dingy living room looking down at the baby. More human wreckage that the killer had left behind. First Torry’s little boy, Stevie. Now here were two more children-helpless, clueless, lost. Des took two twenty-dollar bills out of her billfold and tucked them under the beer can Darleen had left on the table. Then she went back outside to her cruiser.
She was just getting in the car when she heard the gunshot.
It came from above the lake.
It came from the direction Des had just come from-Tal Bliss’s house.
She floored it madly back up the hill. She encountered no car on its way down. She saw no one on foot.
His front door was wide open. She slammed on her brakes and jumped out, her eyes zeroing in on the shrubs that surrounded the house. Then flicking across the road at the neighboring houses. Not a leaf stirred. Not a curtain moved. She went in slowly with her Sig drawn and her back to the wall. Her mouth was dry, her heart racing. She called out his name. She got no response. Only silence. The stereo was off now. It was so quiet in there she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. And the house still smelled of the quiche he had baked for them. She called out his name again. No response.
The resident trooper was a very tidy chef. He had put all of their dishes in the dishwasher, refrigerated the leftovers, wiped off the counters, swept up the crumbs. He had written a short, succinct note and left it on the counter under a paperweight of polished stone, his lettering neat and precise: “I did what I thought was right. Just as I am doing now.”
And then Tal Bliss had blown his brains out.
He was seated out on the deck at the redwood table where they had just eaten, weapon still clutched in his hand. It was not his service piece. It was a. 38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. Des had no doubt that it was the same weapon that had killed Torry Mordarski, Niles Seymour and Tuck Weems. None.
Dirty Harry rubbed up against her ankle now, a low yowl of protest coming from his throat. Des gathered him up in her arms and took him downstairs and closed him in one of the bedrooms. Then she went out to her cruiser to phone it in.
Tal Bliss was tidy, all right. Except that he had left his mess behind for her to clean up. Des was so damned mad at him that she could spit.
CHAPTER 15
THE VILLAGE WENT INTO deep, heartfelt mourning over the death of its long-time resident trooper.
Flags were flown at half-staff at town hall and the fire house and the barber shop. Voices at the market were hushed. Tears were shed, hugs exchanged. Tal Bliss, Mitch discovered, had been one of those rare individuals who virtually everyone seemed to look up to. He was a big brother, a father figure, a friend. Above all, he was one of their own.
And everyone had a story to tell about him.
Dennis shared his when Mitch stopped by the hardware store to pick up two quarts of oil for the truck: Back when Dennis had been something of a wild child, Tal had pulled him over one night at three in the morning. Both Dennis and his high-school girlfriend were high on pot-and holding. Instead of busting them, Tal Bliss had escorted them home, confiscated the dope and never said a word about it to their parents. “He knew we were good kids,” Dennis recalled fondly. “He just wanted to make sure we didn’t screw up big-time.”
This, according to Dennis, was Tal Bliss. Not the deranged killer who had taken three lives before he took his own.
The gun he had used on himself turned out to be the same one that had killed Torry Mordarski, Niles Seymour and Tuck Weems. And he had owned a pair of size-twelve Timberland hiking boots that were an exact match for a shoe print that had been found at the Torry Mordarski murder scene. These were proven facts. But beyond that, no one really understood why Bliss had done what he did. All that he’d left behind in the way of explanation was his two-line handwritten suicide note. Everything else died with him. No one knew anything-except that when Lieutenant Mitry had begun to close in on him, Tal Bliss had chosen to take his own life rather than face the music.
A Lieutenant Gianfrido had been put in charge of wrapping up the investigation. Lieutenant Mitry had been placed on paid administrative leave, pending the results of an Internal Affairs investigation to determine whether she had violated correct procedure. The lieutenant took a lot of heat from her own people in the Hartford Courant. Unnamed sources high up in the state police questioned whether she’d been “too eager.” They so much as implied that Tal Bliss would still be alive if she’d waited to question him in official surroundings. Included other officers in the interrogation. Apparently, no one else knew she was meeting with Bliss.
The Courant also dug into her background. This was how Mitch learned that Desiree Mitry was the daughter of Deputy Superintendent Buck Mitry, the highest ranking black officer in the history of the state of Connecticut. Mitch wondered why she hadn’t mentioned this to him. He wondered why she felt it was important not to.
He wondered how she must be feeling.
He wanted to call her up and ask her. But he didn’t. He felt quite certain that he was the last person in the world she’d feel like hearing from right now. He had pointed her in the direction of Bliss. Still, her plight troubled him deeply. The woman’s career was in serious jeopardy. Virtually everyone in Dorset felt she was a cold, heartless glory seeker. And Mitch felt more than a little responsible.
He also found himself thinking about her morning, noon and night.
The tabloid press invaded Big Sister in full battle dress again. The islanders were besieged. Couldn’t leave. Couldn’t answer their phones. Not that they had anything to say to the media. All they wanted them to do was go away. The whole village did. The minister of the Congregational Church spoke for the entire village when he said, “Dorset is a family, and we believe in keeping our troubles within the family.”
As it happened, the only card-carrying member of the working press who had any genuine access to the story was Mitch himself. When he’d first discovered Niles Seymour’s body, Mitch had had zero interest in writing about it. He’d just wanted to forget. But the Tal Bliss suicide changed how he felt. Possibly it was the reaction of the villagers-their homegrown hero’s spectacular fall from grace had left them profoundly confused and shaken, their image of themselves and their serene little world utterly shattered. Mitch likened it to one of those cases when a couple of teenaged kids in a small, stable bible-belt community suddenly show up at school one day with AK-47s and begin wiping out their classmates. People want to know why. They take long looks at themselves in the mirror, wondering whether such shockingly monstrous behavior is inside of them, too.
Mitch noticed it when he went to the grocery store. He could see the self-doubt in their eyes, hear the fear in their voices. He found this response disturbing and fascinating. So when the Sunday magazine editor phoned him, at Lacy’s suggestion, to see if he’d like to do a piece, Mitch reversed himself and said yes.
