She was leaning forward on the couch, her hands still clasped in her lap. She might have been actually quivering with the intensity of her feeling, or I might have thought she was.
'Mr. Henderson?' He shook his head. 'Your daughter ever go to Taft?' I said.
'No,' Henderson said.
His voice was still reasonable, but it was sounding a little shaky.
'Do you know who her friends were?' I said. 'Her roommate, maybe, at school.'
Mrs. Henderson stood up quite suddenly.
'Get out,' Mrs. Henderson said. 'Get out of my house, you nosy fucking nigger lover.'
Her daughter was too recently dead for me to debate her about race and justice. Or even nosiness. Henderson got to his feet and put a hand on her shoulder, she shrugged away from it. The skin on her face seemed too tight, and the structure of the skull showed beneath it.
'And if you do succeed in getting that son of a bitch out of jail I will find a way to kill him myself,' she said.
'You'd better go,' Henderson said to me. 'We have nothing to say to you.'
'I'm sorry I had to intrude,' I said.
'Just get out of here,' Mrs. Henderson said.
Which is what I did. Driving back to Boston I watched the joggers moving around the reservoir in the bright fall morning. I remembered once again why I had dreaded the parents. I'd been talking to the next of kin of various victims for a long time now and had seen all the grief I ever wanted to. It was hard to rate grief The loss of a mate seemed to elicit as much grief as the loss of a child. But nothing came close to the rage level of grieving parents. Because she had called me a nigger lover didn't mean she would frame a black man. The police chief at Pemberton had called Alves a nigger, too. Didn't mean he would frame a black man either. On the other hand, none of this meant Alves wasn't framed. Be good to find out something that meant something.
At Cleveland Circle I turned left and went up a block to Commonwealth Ave. and headed in town that way. Near State Police Headquarters at 1010 Commonwealth, I found a convenient spot at a bus stop and parked and went in to talk with a cop I knew.
Healy was at his desk in the Criminal Investigation Division, of which he was the commander. He and I had worked on a case up in Smithfield about twenty years ago, and he'd helped me out now and then since. He was gray-haired and wiry, and not as tall as I was, though as far as I could tell it didn't bother him.
'Whaddya need today,' Healy said when I walked in.
'Maybe I'm just stopping in to say hi.'
'Okay,' Healy said, 'hi.'
'And maybe to ask you if you know anything about that murder in Pemberton about eighteen months ago.'
'Maybe that too, huh?' Healy said. 'College kid?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'According to the trial transcript, a State detective named Miller was on it.'
'Yeah, Tommy Miller.'
'You follow the case?'
'Not really. As I remember it, it was pretty open and shut. Two eyewitnesses saw the perp kidnap her, right?'
'So they tell me.'
'So why are you asking about it?' Healy said.
'Had a defense attorney right out of law school, she thinks he was innocent, and she botched the defense.'
'And she hired you to get him off?'
'Sort of. She works for Cone, Oakes now, and she got them to hire me.'
'Must be a nice change of pace for you,' Healy said, 'a client who can pay.'
'Nothing wrong with it,' I said. 'How's Miller?'
'He's all right. Probably a little rough around the edges. Thinks being a State cop makes him important.'
'Tough guy?'
Healy shrugged.
'Compared to who?' he said. 'Compared to some high school kid with a loud mouth and a nose full of dope, he's tougher than scrap iron. Compared to Hawk, say, or me… or you.' Healy shrugged.
'He ambitious?'
'He's an eager beaver,' Healy said. 'Probably want to be CID commander someday.'
'Think he'll make it?'
'Not soon,' Healy said.
'How is he as an investigator?'
'Far as I know he's pretty good. I don't like him. But he clears his cases and mostly they result in convictions
