I began to weep then, flipping through those pages. Nothing terribly emotional, of course-I couldn’t let go that much. But the tears still fell, no less real. I missed Frank, and missing him made me cry. I guess we don’t really cry for the dead, but for the people they leave behind-ourselves.
Somehow, our lives had branched apart. He had married and had kids. I had married and she had died. He’d become a cop and had made captain. I’d become a cop and would become captain over his dead body. And yet he’d gone into that river without a struggle, already conceding death before knowing when it would come. And I had not-and would not. Perhaps in exchange for having lost the standard human goals of life, I felt imbued with a sense of survival, as if I were standing by the side of a road, watching everyone else walk by.
17
The first person I met when I drove into the Municipal Building’s parking lot was Stan Katz. He was standing by the steps, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, a frozen camera around his neck, a cloud of vapor in front of his face. I wondered how many days he’d been waiting.
I had hoped to park quickly and make a run for the side door, but Leo’s taste in automobiles precluded that- Stan saw the car before he realized I was driving it. Like a well-trained factotum, his hand was on the door handle as soon as I cut the engine.
“Is it true you’ve been named acting captain of Support Services?”
“Nice to see you too, Stan.”
“What exactly were the causes of Frank Murphy’s death? Rumors are floating around that there might have been foul play.”
“Did you talk with the Mass State Police?”
“Of course.”
“Well, they’re the guys with the answers. As far as I know, it was an accident.” I gently shoved him out of the way so I could get out.
“The state police mentioned finding a cooler in the back of your car marked Human Remains. Any comment on that?”
“No.”
He stared at me f thergn='leor a second in silence. “What’s the cover-up, Joe? What are you guys hiding?”
“Nothing, Stan. We’re digging. You know how that works.”
“I’m not sure I do this time. We’ve never had a cop murdered before.”
I stopped midway up the steps. “Where’d you get that? Did I say a cop had been murdered?”
“Word’s out it’s a possibility.”
“Word’s out Adolf Hitler lives in Paraguay. Do you believe that?” I opened the side door that led straight into the police department, bypassing the central hall. He called out to me one last time.
“You know, Gunther, if you could hear what I hear, you’d be suspicious as hell. Bodies are piling up out there and you people aren’t coming clean. You know that stinks.”
I had to sympathize with his frustration. We were treading a fine line. I stopped by Max’s cubicle to sign in and to pick up last week’s pile. To my surprise she got up and gave me a hug. “Welcome back.”
I kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks, Max. Nice to be back.”
“The chief ’s waiting for you in his office, by the way. The State’s Attorney is with him.”
I put the paperwork she’d handed me into my box in the patrol room. I had met with Brandt the night before, as soon as I’d gotten back from Thetford, to tell him what Frank and I had found out in Connecticut. I’d also asked him to set up a meeting with James Dunn.
They were both smoking as I entered Brandt’s office-the chief his pipe, Dunn a cigarette. The place looked like a fog bank had rolled in off the ocean.
Brandt stood up and shook my hand. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” I nodded to Dunn, a far frostier fellow. He smiled slightly and nodded back. “Tony’s been telling me about your latest activities. I’m a little disappointed you waited this long to bring me in.”
“I’m sorry about that. Until we met with Dr. Kees, we didn’t really have anything to go on. The whole thing might have died with his findings.”
“The Kimberly Harris aspect of it might have died, but the maniac in the mask is still on the loose. It would have been nice to know they were related. This last week the press has been after me every single day. It’s been relentless.”
“Again, I apologize. But we don’t have anything on Ski Mask either. I don’t really see why they were after you anyway. You don’t have anything to do with this yet.”
He stubbed his cigarette out as if he wished the ashtray were my eye. “I happen to know that. They don’t give a damn. The point is, you people have put the Harris case under a cloud. That, perhaps, is your prerogative, but I damn well expect to be let in on it.”
Brandt shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “I think that’s a legitimate beef. If Joe hadn’t been in a coma the better part of a week, I think things would have been handled wbeeearith a little more grace. So, better later than never. Here we are at last; I’ve told you what we know. What do you think?”
Dunn lit up another one. My eyes were beginning to water. “I think we should bring in the state police. This should have been theirs from the start.” He paused, but neither of us responded. “Look, our two offices work pretty well together, but let’s face it, this is out of your league. We have a murder once or twice every ten years; half the men on your staff have never even seen a corpse. Let’s just pack it in now and hand the thing over.”
I kept a neutral voice. “We haven’t been able to do anything because we didn’t have anything to go on. The state police would have been in the same bind. Now we can start moving.”
“On what? A paper chase after some prescription? From what I was told, you still don’t have much. Have you even thought about who this guy might be?”
“Sure we have, but we don’t have much to go on yet. We checked Davis out-background, friends, family, all that. As far as all this recent shit is concerned, he looks clean. Ski Mask may be Kimberly Harris’s brother or lover or the father of her fetus or maybe a sister who’s undergone a sex-change operation. We’re digging. We’re not pinning it all on finding a prescription.”
“Sounds to me like you’re shoveling smoke. I mean, you’ve got nothing.”
“We don’t have as much as we had to jail the wrong man, that’s true enough.”
Dunn tore the cigarette from his lips. “Wait a damned second. You haven’t one shred of evidence that Davis isn’t exactly where he belongs. You’ve let some homicidal basket case dictate everything from the very start. From what I hear, even your old friend Murphy thought you were way off base on this one.”
“You haven’t the slightest idea what Murphy was thinking.”
“I think,” Brandt interrupted, “we ought to give Joe a few days to see what he can come up with. After all, we have now ruled out everything except the connection between the Phillips killing and the Harris case. We’re no longer chasing every stray possibility; we’re building a case now.”
“Give me a break, Tony. We’re looking at a man with a white cane here-he’s hardly Sherlock Holmes.”
Brandt held up his hand. “Granted. Let’s look at it another way. Right now, Murphy’s death has been ruled an accident-by a state police force, no less-and Ski Mask is laying low. And the press hasn’t made the connection to the Davis jury yet. The selectmen and the town manager are jumping up and down, but they concede it’s still mostly a PR problem. They’re caught between the news boys and the public. If we bring in outside help, all that’s going to blow sky-high.”
“Municipal politics are not my concern.”
“Maybe not. But if the state police do come in, the fact that the Harris case is officially under investigation will come out. You might have to face some embarrassing questions, for which none of us have the answers- yet.”
Dunn crossed his arms and glared out the window. “I stand by my I sve to actions in the Harris case.”
Neither Brandt nor I said a word. In the long silence that settled among us, we could hear the boiler in the basement fire up and the radiators begin to rattle and ping.
