around, Rico.”
“You’re right, he is.” Soave furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “Maybe the water shifted him around after he landed.”
“The man’s dry, and there’s no blood anywhere else. He’s lying right where he hit.”
“So he spiraled in the air. That would explain it. The wind can do that.”
“There was no wind last night.”
“What are you saying, Des?”
“That the position of his body is consistent with someone who was standing with his back to the edge of the cliff and then pitched over backwards. Or got pushed.”
He peered at her, his eyes narrowing. “Still can’t get used to the slow lane, can you? You want back in the game.”
“I am totally fine right where I am, Rico. I just thought I’d share my professional concerns with you before you call it. But if you want to blow me off that’s totally fine by me.”
“Come on, don’t get all huffy.”
“I do not get huffy. I get riled. I get pissed. I get-”
“Whoa, I agree with you, okay?” Soave said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “It don’t read right. That makes it a suspicious death. And that’s how we’re going to play it.” He ordered the crime scene technicians to proceed with maximum care, and to relay that up top to Yolie. Then they started their way back up the path toward the gate. It was becoming very hot out. Soave was perspiring heavily. “Good catch, Des,” he said, swiping at his face with a handkerchief. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said crisply.
“You’re in a lousy mood this morning, know that?”
“I don’t mean to be, Rico. These are my people. I know them.”
“There’s going to be a major media feeding frenzy, am I right?” he asked, his voice filling with dread.
“There is,” she said, thinking that this was a new sign of maturity on his part. Earlier in his career, he’d been supremely hyped at the prospect of getting his face on television. But now that he’d gonebefore the bright lights a couple of times, he knew just how hot they could get. And had the burn marks to prove it.
“I’m giving them no labels on this one,” he said, steeling himself out loud. “I don’t say suicide. And I for damned sure don’t say murder. Neither of those words comes out of this man’s hole. Not once. All I say is it’s an unexplained death and that we’re still gathering information.”
“They’ll try to get you to confirm that it’s an ‘apparent’ suicide,” Des said. “You say-”
“I say that nothing is ‘apparent’ at this time.”
“Even though they’ll go right ahead and call it that anyway.”
“Damned straight.”
By the time they got back up to the gate the TV news vans were already stacked ten-deep on the shoulder of the road. Cameramen and reporters had swarmed the entrance to the park, shouting questions and demanding answers. The uniformed troopers could barely hold them back.
“How did they get past that roadblock?” Soave wondered.
“They’re like mice, Rico. All they need is a quarter-inch crack of daylight and they’re in.”
Now they heard a car horn blaring. It was Martine’s VW Beetle convertible. She was trying desperately to get through the horde, but couldn’t. Esme finally leaped out of the car a hundred yards short of the gate and ran barefoot the rest of the way. Chrissie Huberman jumped out in hot pursuit. The press people let out a shout. Their cameras rolled.
“I want to see him!” Esme sobbed as she reached Des, the tears streaming down her porcelain cheeks. “I have to!”
“I really wouldn’t do that, honey,” Des said, as Soave stood there gaping at the beautiful young actress.
“Tito, why did you do this?!” she cried out, her stage-trained voice carrying over the roar of the waterfall. “Tito, where are you? TITO?!…” Esme fell to her knees, sobbing hysterically.
Chrissie knelt beside her, tears streaming down her own face, Des noticed.
And that wasn’t all Des noticed. Something new about Esme’s look caught her eye: The actress was sporting a great big fat swollen lip this morning.
Somebody had recently punched Esme Crockett in the mouth.
“Girl, I heard so much about you when I was coming up,” Yolie Snipes gushed from the seat next to her as Des piloted her cruiser back down the narrow Hopyard Road. “First sister to investigate homicides in state history, cover of Connecticut magazine when you were twenty-three-I can’t believe I’m riding in the same car with you.”
“You’re being too kind,” said Des, who was never comfortable with flattery. “Where’d you grow up, Yolie?”
“The Hollow,” she grunted. Frog Hollow was Hartford’s most burned-out ghetto. It was nowhere. “My mom died of an overdose a year after I was born.”
“And your dad?”
“Never even knew who he was. Everyone I came up with was inmate-bound, me included, but my aunt Celia made sure I got out.”
“AC?” asked Des, referring to the portrait on her arm.
Yolie’s face lit up. “That’s right. She kept me together, body and soul, until I got me my four-year ride to Rutgers.”
“You played ball, am I right?”
“It’s all that,” she acknowledged. “My total dream was to play the point for Coach Geno at Storrs. He scouted me, too, but there was no way I was going to beat out Suzy Bird for playing time. Not in this life. So I moved on down the road to Piscataway, played for Coach Vivian. And we scratched and we clawed and we won us a few. Got my degree in criminal justice. Came back home, took the test, and here I am.”
They passed through the roadblock at Route 82, waving to the trooper who was stationed there, and Des started toward the shore now, cruising among the lush green gentlemen’s farms with their fieldstone walls and two hundred-year-old houses set way back under canopies of maple trees.
“I never worked a town like this before,” Yolie confessed, gazing anxiously out her window at the moneyed countryside.
“You’ll do fine. The people here are no different than people anywhere else. They just have longer driveways and better manners.”
“Can I ask you for some advice, sister to sister? It’s about Soave…”
“What about him?”
“He’s a decent man, but my read on him is he won’t be moving up. What I mean is, he’s got the juice but not the smarts. Am I right about that?”
“He’s a good officer,” Des said tactfully. “Don’t underestimate him.”
“I’m not. I’m just, at this point in my career I’m looking to hook up with people who I can learn from. And I’m thinking I’ve gotten just about all I can out of Soave. I don’t mean to sound cold. Just being honest, know what I’m saying?”
“Sure, I do,” said Des, thinking that Soave would probably be reporting to Yolie Snipes in a couple of years.
“I might put in for a transfer to Narcotics,” she went on. “Or maybe the gangs task force. The street’s where I can do the most damage. I know the street. That sound like a smart move to you?”
“It does. Just bear in mind that he’ll be really insulted. He’s thin-skinned.”
“Who, Soave? Shut up!”
“And he does have the juice, like you said. Trust me, you do not want that little man for an enemy. Those Waterbury boys are strictly about family and we are so not related.”
“You saying he’d trash me?”
“I’m saying be careful,” Des replied as she cruised into Dorset’s business district. Big Brook Road was quiet. The vacationers were still in bed. She turned onto Old Shore at the traffic light and headed for Big Sister.
“This Mitch Berger we’re talking to-he’s your boy, right?”
“That’s right.”
