sons. Nan taught at the middle school. Did she have a dog? Des couldn’t recall. But there were lights on at her place. The other house, which belonged to an old village handyman named Ray Smith, was dark. And Ray’s truck was gone.
Des came to a halt in the blackness of Rut’s yard, her ears straining. She couldn’t hear Augie’s footsteps now because of that barking dog. Couldn’t make out his silhouette either. Damn, had she lost him? She yanked her Maglite from her belt and flicked it on, its beam pointed downward. Saw a shiver of movement in the thicket of bushes up ahead of her-there-and flicked it off, moving in that direction. Down toward the Lieutenant River. Of course. The river snaked its way through the entire Historic District. Its banks were the Flasher’s own private highway. Mercifully, the barking dog fell silent now. Des could hear Augie moving his way through the brush again. Hear something else, too. A rustle in the brush behind her. Was someone else out there with them in the darkness? The dog? She turned around but saw no one, heard no one.
A car was making its way slowly along Dorset Street. It stopped when it reached Maple Lane, its high beams sweeping across Rut’s yard as it turned in. It was a state police cruiser. It was Oly. He eased his way down to Nan Sidell’s house and came to a stop. Des heard him get out. Right away, the dog started barking again.
Des took off, moving toward the riverbank out beyond Rut’s house. Hoping, praying, she hadn’t lost Augie’s trail. Footsteps. She heard footsteps in the darkness again-someone crashing through the brush right behind her. No, next to her. Wait, no, all around her. She whirled, her flashlight’s beam revealing nothing. Hell, what was… ? So fast now, too fast. Des heard a scuffle, a groan of pain, then a sickening thud. And now somebody was running again. She still couldn’t see a living soul in the dense, overgrown thicket. But she definitely heard somebody and started running hard in that direction-until she tripped over something and fell hard to the ground, her flashlight rolling off into the weeds. Cursing, Des got back up and retrieved it, pointing it down at the object she’d tripped over.
Augie Donatelli lay there in the tall weeds at her feet with the back of his head bashed in.
He had a very surprised look on his face. He wasn’t wearing a ski mask. Des saw no ski mask. He lay in a fetal position, as if he’d crumpled to his knees and then tipped over sideways. There was blood. A lot of it. And brain matter. A lot of it. A wooden baseball bat lay in the grass next to him.
Des sprinted through the brush after his attacker-only to find herself standing out in the middle of Maple Lane. She saw no one. Heard no one. Nothing. Just Oly’s cruiser parked out in front of Nan Sidell’s place. Oly was nowhere in sight. He must have gone inside the house. Nan’s dog was still barking.
Cursing, Des yanked her phone off her belt and called it in.
Dorset Street was no longer quiet. Dozens of Historic District residents were out on the sidewalk, talking and gawking. Maple Lane had been closed off. The Major Crime Squad’s techies were there from Meriden in their cube vans, along with a death investigator from the Medical Examiner’s Office. So were news crews from Connecticut’s four local TV stations, who were always up for a murder-especially when it took place in a ritzy village like Dorset. Rut Peck’s overgrown yard was cordoned off, the crime scene lit up by the high beams of several cruisers. More cruisers were sweeping the neighborhood for anyone who was out on foot. Anyone who’d seen anything. Anything.
It was a 911 call from Nan Sidell that had brought Oly to the scene literally seconds before Augie’s murder went down. Des knew Nan pretty well, having given a talk to the lady’s seventh-grade class about drugs last semester. Nan was a fragile-looking little blue-eyed blonde whose husband had left her a while back for his rather dumpy secretary. Nan’s two little boys were blue-eyed and tow-headed, same as her. Phillip, who was twelve, was lanky and tall for his age. Almost a head taller than his mother. Ten-year-old Peter was considerably shorter and pudgier.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on Rut’s house ever since he moved out,” Nan explained to Des, standing there barefoot in the middle of Maple Lane, her eyes huge with fright. Nan had her big yellow Lab close to her on a leash. Her two boys were right by her side. “Rut still has a lot of his furniture here. His silver, some antiques. I-I thought I heard someone messing around over there.”
“Messing around as in…?”
“Tromping around in the brush. Maybe trying to break in. I didn’t know. And then Josie started barking her fool head off, so I figured I’d better call it in.”
“You figured right, Nan. Did you see anyone fleeing the scene? Anyone at all?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“How about you guys?” Des asked the boys.
Phillip shrugged his narrow shoulders. “We were in bed.”
“Past our bedtime,” Peter chimed in, nodding his head.
“Sure, I get you,” Des said easily. “You’d turned in for the night, lights out. But Josie’s got a mighty big bark. Maybe she woke you up. Did you hear anything? Or maybe go to the window and see somebody?”
The boys exchanged a long, hard look before Phillip said, “No.” His voice was very firm. “Nothing.”
“Nothing,” echoed his younger brother, blue eyes gleaming.
The last to arrive from Meriden was a two-person team of homicide investigators from the Major Crime Squad, led by Lieutenant Rico “Soave” Tedone, who’d been Des’s semibright weasel of a sergeant back in her glory days. Soave was still working on that goatee and shaved-head look. And still not quite making it happen. He was a bulked-up bodybuilder but way short and way, way insecure. Not that he had a thing to worry about. Soave was wired right into the Waterbury Mafia, the tightly knit clan of Italian-American brothers, cousins and in-laws who pretty much ran the Connecticut State Police. Soave’s older brother, Angelo, and Angelo’s brother-in-law, Carl Polito, were high up on the ladder-right there under Deputy Superintendent Buck Mitry.
Des made her way down to the foot of Maple Lane and said, “Evening, Rico. How’s Tawny?”
“Big as an Escalade,” he answered proudly. The man had finally married his girlfriend of nine years and she was currently expecting their first child. Real? Des found it hard to imagine Soave as someone’s, anyone’s, father. But it was going to happen. Life went on. “The baby’s due any day now. I never know from one minute to the next when I’ll be flooring it to the hospital.”
“You’re just lucky you got such quality backup, little man.” His partner, Sergeant Yolanda Snipes, showed Des her huge smile. “Miss Thing, I have been missing you.”
“Back at you, Yolie.”
“What have you got for us, Des?” Soave wanted to know. “No, wait, don’t tell me. It’s Saturday night in quaint, cozy Dorset, where everyone is rich and WASP-y and perfect. So I’m going out on a limb here: It’s whack.”
“It’s all that, Rico. And more.”
“Break it down, will you?”
“Break it down?” Yolie let out a guffaw. “Sorry, is MC Hammer back in the house and no one told me?”
“My bad,” he growled at her. The two of them bickered nonstop. It was how they communicated. “Please run it for us. Yo, is that cool enough for you?”
“Yo, I’m cool twenty-four/seven,” Yolie fired back, her Latina’s liquid brown eyes twinkling at Des. She was a brash, fearless, hard charger with braided hair out of Hartford’s tough Frog Hollow section-half Cuban, half black and all pit bull. Yolie had put on twenty pounds of rock-hard muscle since she’d played the point for Coach Vivian Stringer at Rutgers. Her knit top was cropped at the shoulders, tattoos adorning both of her bulging biceps. Barefoot, she stood five feet nine. In her chunky heels she towered over Soave. Intimidated the hell out of him. Intimidated most of the men in the state police. She was tough, smart and she didn’t do well around fools. “Talk to me, girl-how’s your cute boy Mitch?”
“It’s going great. We’ve never been happier.”
“When are you two getting married?”
“It’s going great. We’ve never been happier.”
“I hear you. Won’t go near there no more.” Yolie heaved a sigh. “Me, I can’t even get a man to ask me out for a cup of coffee. Don’t matter whether he’s black, white or mauve…” She’d had a brief thing with Soave’s cousin Richie back when Richie was on Narcotics, but he was married now. “Is there something wrong with my personal hygiene?”
“Not a thing, Yolie. You’re terrific.”
“Yo, can we talk about the dead guy now?” Soave demanded.
“First I’d better give you a little background, Rico. We have an ongoing situation that began two weekends
