Chain of Evidence
Mike Henderson didn’t spend much time in jail.
Billy Delavane posted bail, which Judge Perlman had set at ten thousand dollars. “He’s hardly a flight risk, Mr. Carmichael,” the judge remarked to the state’s attorney at the bail hearing. “If these allegations hold up, Mr. Henderson’s only trip off-island in the last year took place entirely in his imagination. A flight of fancy, at best. You can’t have it both ways.”
Billy caught up to me in the street outside the town building. “Mike’s innocent, Chief. You trust me. I trust Mike.”
I nodded. “I think I do, too. And he can do himself some good now that he’s back on the street. Post a request in the forums at Yack On—maybe someone saw him on the boat. And he could get the mileage off the Levines’ car. They might keep a log, especially when lots of different people are driving the vehicle. If the new mileage matches up with a trip to New York that would help. And get him a decent lawyer. Lester Rowlands is a good guy, but he’s a lazy drunk. There’s two kinds of people in the world—the ones who do the most they can and the ones who do the least they can. Lester is group two all the way.”
Billy nodded. “Anything else?”
“Have your guy check the traffic cams on I-95. If Mike was speeding they may have taken his picture. That would solve the whole problem right there. He told Haden Krakauer he waited for his wife in some coffee shop near the doctor’s office. Those places have regulars. They might remember a stranger. The waiter might recall a guy who came in for breakfast and only ordered coffee.”
“That’s a stretch, Chief.”
“Yeah, well Mike needs a stretch right now. Or a miracle.”
But as it turned out, all Mike really needed was for the NPD to arrest someone else for the murder.
And that happened before the court clerk finished processing the bail papers.
***
It began with a dirty ashtray in Fiona Donovan’s living room.
I was late picking her up for lunch after a morning crowded with impatient reporters and squabbling cops. Lonnie Fraker was just as certain as Billy Delavane that my suspect was innocent. They had played Whalers football together. Haden called Lonnie’s latest new theory the “Lomax Love Nest,” in honor of the various tabloid writers who were covering the story.
In this version of events, Kevin Sloane conspired with Diana Lomax and her daughter to kill the old man so they could live out the rest of their incestuous love triangle on the money he left behind. The only evidence they had for any of this was Diana’s “hinky” demeanor. I told them with a rigorously straight face that city cops just said “suspicious” these days. “Hinky” was so twentieth century. Kevin Sloane’s fingerprints on the headboard fed the in-house frenzy, along with a fervid belief that this was exactly the kind of stuff that rich people were doing all the time.
“These guys watch too much TV,” I told Haden Krakauer.
Haden shook his head. “Not me, but I just read The Wings of the Dove, Chief. And let me tell you—these sleazy shenanigans have Henry James written all over them.”
I wasn’t happy with my own theory either, so I kept quiet. I shrugged at the other cops and said “No comment” to the reporters. The only refuge in my day was lunch with Fiona. We usually ate at the airport. I actually liked Crosswinds, and no one ever thought of looking for me there. The tang of jet fuel, the view of the runways, the sound of planes taking off and the periodic flight announcements all gave me the illusion that I was in transit myself, killing time before a trip to Boston and points east—London, Belgrade, Beijing. I was thinking about the pleasant anonymity of travel, wondering if there was a poem in it, when I walked into Fiona’s house, and everything changed.
I didn’t notice anything at first. I stood waiting for Fiona in the living room—more of a common room really, since the house served as a dormitory for the girls who worked for her—studying the books on the shelves. I had the bad habit of judging people by their books, but I knew that none of these belonged to Fiona. She never read novels. She preferred popular history and science. She had inhaled Nathaniel Philbrick’s complete works, and was currently reading Richard Dawkins, so that she could marshal the necessary arguments to crush and humiliate anyone who argued in favor of “intelligent design”—primarily the members of her own family, good Catholics all. In any case, she never purchased a book. They were nothing but an extravagant source of clutter to her, and a pointless one if there was a decent library available. Ebooks? She liked reading in the bathtub too much. These volumes had to belong to the girls on her cleaning crew. They were all paperback romances and they had the creased and grimy look of the “take it or leave it” shack at the dump.
I pulled one off the shelf, opened it at random. “Marcella swooned at his touch. Edward pulled her to him roughly, and kissed her as the storm raged on outside and the ocean dashed itself against the cliffs.”
I shook my head, turned the book over and read the blurb on the back. No woman had ever swooned at my touch. But then again, I wasn’t “mysterious” or “sinister” like this Edward guy, and I definitely didn’t own a castle on the Scottish coast. Maybe I should look into that—buy a chunk of craggy real estate, hire a cute governess with father issues, make a few cryptic comments, and let the fur fly. Of course, I’d need a dark secret to be “tormented” by, if the back cover could be trusted. That was a problem. I am strictly a what-you-see-is-what-you-get. My past was as dull as my present, at least from a romance novel point of view. I set the book back on the shelf.
“Broadening your horizons?”
I turned around. Fiona had just walked into the room.
“I’m not sure. How come you never swoon when I kiss you?”
“Low altitude and sobriety. Get me drunk at the Mount Everest base camp and I’ll swoon like a Bronte character.”
“Very romantic.”
“Oh, so it’s romance you’re looking for?”
“You know it is.”
She grabbed my belt and tugged me closer. “Glad to hear it, Chief Kennis. I could use a little myself.”
I kissed her—a long, deep kiss, and when we pulled our mouths apart, I said “Swooning yet?”
“Just the opposite: wide awake like a badger in heat.”
I grinned. “Even better.”
I kissed her again and we wound up wrestling each other’s clothes off and making love on the couch. It was a narrow couch. At some point we fell off and finished on the floor. When we were done, she rolled over and showed me her chafed elbow.
“Rug burns,” she said. “Now that’s romantic.”
“It’s a badge of honor—like a hickey on your neck. We used to flaunt them when I was a kid. Girls would wear open shirts even if it was freezing out.”
“And when I was a girl, we were embarrassed. We’d wear turtlenecks, even if it was the middle of summer.”
“Yeah, I knew some girls like that. Others wore turtlenecks so people would think something had happened. That way they could show off and pretend to be modest at the same time. Which is kind of like my friend Doug in L.A. He drives around in his car with the windows closed so people will think he has air-conditioning.”
Fiona was distracted. She was looking up, over my shoulder across the room.
“What?”
“Damn it. How many times do I have to tell them?”
“Tell them what?”
“I don’t know whether they can’t actually think at all, or they just can’t be bothered.”
I propped myself up on one elbow. “They?”
“The girls. They’ve broken two Baccarat crystal glasses which they were forbidden to use in the first place, and now they’re using my silver bowls as ashtrays. I’ve told them over and over, but it makes no difference. I don’t even like them smoking in here. They’re incorrigible.”
Fiona stood and walked over to the end table next to the corduroy-covered armchair that faced the hearth. I stood and joined her. There was indeed a scattering of ashes and a cigarette butt in the silver bowl next to the lamp.
Fiona was about to pick it up to clean it.
My voice stopped her. “Don’t touch that.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean it, Fi. Just step aside for a second.”
She tilted her head questioningly in that almost canine way she had sometimes, but she took a step toward the fireplace.
I was staring down at the cigarette, the single gold circle above the filter. I was so absorbed by the sight that I started reaching into my pocket for tweezers and an evidence bag before I remembered that I was naked.
Fiona watched quietly while I got dressed. I walked back to the table, picked the butt up delicately with the tweezers and held it out to her.
“Who smokes these?”
“I—”
“Think, Fiona. It’s important. Who was here last night?”
“How should I know? I was with you. You got here before I did today.”
“Sorry. You’re right.”
“What’s going on, Henry?”
“Do any of these kids smoke Camel Lights?”
“Molly’s boyfriend, Jesse. I bought him a pack last week. I was going to Cumberland Farms and he—”
“Jesse Coleman?”
“That’s right.”
“He’s a cop, Fiona.”
“I know that. Are they not allowed to smoke? I had no idea that there was any—”
“This cigarette may be evidence in a capital murder investigation, as well as a number of grand larceny felony cases. I don’t know how many, yet. But I’m going to find out.”
“I—”
“They told me cops were involved in this. But I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to deal with it. I thought things were different here.”
“Who told you this?”
“Different people. Haden Krakauer. David Trezize over at The Shoals. Even a kid who writes for the goddamn high school newspaper told me. A high school kid. What an idiot I am.”
She put an arm on my shoulder. “You’re not an idiot. You just trust other cops. You want to believe the best about them.”
“Really? Do you really think that? Because as far as I can tell, that completely disqualifies me from doing my job. That’s a firing offense. People want a naive police chief about as much as they want a wise-cracking airline pilot. And they’re right.”
I started for the door. I felt a quick twinge of relief—this was one piece of evidence that didn’t tie in to Mike Henderson. He was an aggressive non-smoker. He’d gone to town meeting to get cigarettes banned on the outside decks of the Steamship Authority ferries.
“Henry, wait a minute.”
I turned back. She was standing in front of me, still naked, pale and beautiful, her body gleaming like a pearl in the early afternoon light, one curling strand of red hair touching her neck. In another world, or some better version of this one, I could take her hand, walk her upstairs to the proper bed in her room, make love all afternoon, and then buy her the steak she’d be craving at Kitty Murtagh’s.
In this world I had to leave. “I’ll call you later,” I said.
But by the time I got around to calling her, I was flat on my back, staring up at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling of Nantucket Cottage Hospital.
I took a long, circuitous route to the emergency room that afternoon. Jesse Coleman was the first step. The kid was furious at being interrogated. “I’m a police officer,” he said. “I deserve some trust. And some respect.”
“Get some perspective, Jesse,” I told him. “You were a rent-a-cop summer special six months ago. Seniority isn’t your strong suit. Punctuality, maybe. I’ll give you that. But getting up on your high horse and saying ‘You can’t do this to me! I’ve shown up mostly on time since September!’ doesn’t really sound that impressive.”
We were sitting in the interrogation room, a stigmatized venue most of the cops called “the hole.” My cell phone rang. I turned it off without checking the number. “My Lieutenant in Los Angeles, a classic tough guy named Chuck Obremski, said something to me at my going away party. He said I was going to have it easy here, because small town crooks were stupid. ‘The smart ones go to the city’. That’s what he told me. Then he winked and added, ‘but so do the smart cops.’ So he’d say we were evenly matched.”
Jesse sat forward, looking even more aggrieved. “Wait a minute, Chief, what exactly are you trying to—”
“It’s just too easy out here, for everyone. Mainland standards don’t apply.”
“What’s this about? The fuck are you saying?”
“Hey! Station house rules, remember? No swearing.” I let Mike Henderson get away with it, but I had different rules for civilians—and friends. “The town doesn’t permit smoking, either.”
“I never smoked in the station.”
I watched him steadily. “No, that’s true. But you do smoke everywhere else. Including the alley outside. And every house you’ve robbed for the last two years.”
“I never robbed anybody.”
I sighed. “At this point I have to Mirandize you, Jesse.”
“What?”
“You know the drill. You have the right to remain silent. If you chose to talk, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to a lawyer. If you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be appointed by the court.”
“Chief, this is crazy. I have no idea—”
“Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”
“Come on.”
“Do you understand your rights?”
We stared at each other. “Okay, yeah fine. Of course I do. Now what the hell are you—”
“Jesse, please. Don’t say anything for a minute. Just listen. Okay? Before you call a lawyer, before I have to book you, before we file on this. Hear me out.”
Jesse nodded.
I took a breath. “I found a Camel Light cigarette butt at Fiona’s house today. She bought you the pack. I found the same type of butt, smoked down to the same point, at the Lattimers’ house in ’Sconset last week. They had some furniture stolen. So did Lomax. And I found another butt on the floor under Lomax’s bed, the morning after he was murdered. Same brand, smoked down to the same point.”
“So what? Camel is the most popular brand in America. Go to Lucky’s and ask them how many packs they sell a week.”
“You’re right. I smoked them myself.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“We have the DNA workups on the first two cigarettes, Jesse. They match. And your butt is being processed right now. The state police are putting a rush on it, through the lab in Fall River. They’ll have the results by tomorrow. But we both know what those results will show. It was you, Jesse. I know it. You know I’m right.”
“That’s bullshit!”
“Cooperate with me. You don’t have to go to jail for this. No one’s accusing you of murder. But you have information we need. The people who did these robberies with you, were they selling drugs? Lomax was a user. He owed them money. They came to collect, things got out of control. You weren’t there but you knew what was supposed to go down that night.”
“I can’t go to jail, Chief. I can’t do that.”
“There’s a way out, Jesse. Just talk to me. Tell me about Ed Delavane.”
Jesse tensed in his chair as if he was thinking of making a run for it. But he didn’t move. He spoke to the arm of his chair.
“I can’t tell you anything about Ed Delavane. I don’t even know the guy.”
“Jesse. Come on.”
“I’ve heard the name, okay? I’m sure I’d know the face. But this is Nantucket, Chief. You can go years before you put the name and the face together.”
“Small town life, right? It makes things difficult sometimes. Like meeting someone for a drink at the Chicken Box every Saturday for six months and trying to keep it secret.”
“Chief—”
“He orders shots and beers. Canadian Club and Bud Light. You pay for them.”
“Not always. Sometimes he…shit.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jesse. Lots of people have seen you there. Haden Krakauer, Dietz. They’re regulars. Copeland and Drake play pool every night. I saw you there myself a few weeks ago. You met your girlfriend there. She works for Fiona Donovan. If you want to keep things private, stay home.”
Jesse slumped in the chair. “Fucking fishbowl.”
“Jesse.”
“Friggin’ fishbowl, okay?”
“Yeah. Except nobody really watches a fishbowl. Nobody cares. Fish are boring.”
“Christ.”
“So is Delavane dealing drugs, or just stealing furniture?”
“I’m not talking about Ed Delavane.”
“Or was it both? That would make sense. One-stop shopping.”
“Maybe it’s time to get a lawyer in here.”
I sat forward. “Give me Delavane and you’ll walk on this. I promise.”
“But I won’t be a cop anymore.”
“Your dad’s a plumber. Get your license and work with him.”
Jesse smiled grimly. “No thanks.”
“It doesn’t matter. Do what you want. Finish college. Study Russian cultural history or marine biology. Put this behind you. Get away from Delavane and—”
“You don’t just ‘get away’ from Ed Delavane.”
“You do if he’s in jail.”
“He has friends. And there’s such a thing as parole.”
“Not for Murder One. Not in this state. Not for a three-time loser. Which he will be.”
“Yeah? Well, people escape. I heard someone busted out of Norfolk a couple of years ago.”
“They were caught in two days.”
Jesse snorted. “Ed Delavane wouldn’t need two days.”
“Jesse, come on.”
“I mean it. You don’t know this guy.”
“Okay, if he’s that bad? All the more reason to put him away.”
“You put him away, then. Just leave me out of it.”
Jesse slouched down in his chair. I took a long breath and blew it out. “Here’s what I’m getting from this conversation. You know Delavane. You worked with him. You sold drugs and ripped people off with him. You were pretty sure he was capable of murder, even before he killed Lomax. And now you’re so scared of him you’d rather spend the rest of your life in jail than wind up on his hit list. But he isn’t going to be hitting anyone when he’s doing solitary in a maximum security cell. In fact if you don’t help us arrest him, he may come looking for you to shut you up in advance. People like that don’t like loose ends. Or witnesses.”
“Sounds good. You’re very persuasive, Chief. Can I see a lawyer now?”
I sat forward. “Give me something, Jesse. Before the DNA report comes in. Give me a chance to help you. Show me you’re on my side.”
Jesse looked down, away from my stare. He was studying the edge of the desk. “You want something? Talk to Rick Folger. He gave us the keys.”
***
I found Folger in the basement apartment he’d been renting since he left home. It had started raining, and most of the snow was gone, except for a few dirty piles in the back yard. But the wind was wet and stinging. I hunched into the collar of my coat, walked down a short flight of cement stairs and knocked on the door. Folger answered it with a book in his hand. He blinked at me, adjusting his eyes to the sharp glare of daylight.
“Chief? Am I in trouble?”
“I don’t know. Can I come in?”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Do I need one? I don’t want to search your house. I just want to talk to you. I could stay outside, but it’s cold. The wind is really picking up out here.”
Folger shrugged. “Sorry. Come on in.”
I took one more step down into the gloom of the little apartment. The small living room held a corduroy couch and a yard sale armchair with a reading lamp in the angle between them. There was an expensive-looking sound system, but no television. I looked twice as my eyes adjusted. There was a cable wire poking out of the chipped baseboard; Folger chose to ignore it. I liked him for that.
The little room opened onto the kitchen. To the left, an open door led into the bedroom.
“You keep the place neat,” I said.
“It’s like living on a boat,” Folger answered from the kitchen. “You want some coffee? I just made it.”
“Thanks.”
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Just milk.”
There was some noise from the little galley and then Folger emerged with two steaming white mugs. He handed me mine by the rim and we took a sip.
“Starbuck’s,” Folger said. “I hate to admit it, but they make excellent coffee.”
“You hate to admit it?”
“You know—corporate giant, taking over the world, forcing little guys out of business. All that. I was raised to believe a company like that had to suck. Now I don’t know what to think.”
We drank some more coffee. Music filtered down from upstairs, a Bach piano variation. It wasn’t a recording.
“Who’s playing?”
“Old Mrs. Tolliver. My landlady. She’s actually pretty good.”
We listened for a few moments. The music resolved itself, stopped and then started again. I sat down and put my mug on the plank coffee table in front of the couch. Folger sat down on the chair.
“Listen, Rick. Let me tell you what I know and what I need from you. Okay? I know you used your father’s keys for a string of break-ins going back at least two years. You and Jesse Coleman and Ed Delavane. There were a couple of high school kids involved. They sold drugs for you at NHS.”
Folger started to speak, but I held up my hand. “I’ve been thinking about how you could have gotten involved with all this. You were younger. Delavane was cool. You were bragging about the keys at the Chicken Box. You wanted to impress him, but he called you on it. Suddenly you were involved. He scared you and you didn’t see any way out.”
“I got out, Chief. I told him it was over.”
“But he still had the Lomax keys. And now you’re an accessory to murder.”
“I didn’t kill anybody!”
Folger jumped up so fast he spilled his coffee and banged his shins into the edge of the table. “I didn’t know he was going to do that! Lomax owed us a lot of money. I mean…a lot of money, man. You start smoking coke and it adds up fast. I thought they were just going to scare him—maybe steal some stuff, that’s all. If I’d thought that—I mean, I knew he was crazy, but…if I’d known Ed was going to…Jesus, Chief. I’d have gone to the cops myself. I swear.”
“But you didn’t.”
Sleet rattled against the window that looked out on the pavement. The temperature was dropping as the band of storm clouds moved across the island. It was still morning but it felt like late afternoon. Folger sat down heavily and picked up his coffee mug. He stared at it for a second and then put it down again.
“Oh, man, I am so fucked.”
“Maybe not. I can get you immunity. All you have to do is testify against Delavane.”
“What good would that do? He’s got an alibi. He was in Boston, supposedly. No one else’l1 say shit. You think Jesse Coleman would testify against Ed Delavane? Guess again.”
“I talked to Jesse already. But every little bit helps. This would show where you stand. You feel remorse. You want to make things right. You’re young, you’ve got no record. Judges care about that. And you can place Delavane at three other crime scenes at least. That’s a multiple felony indictment that adds years to his sentence. That’s valuable, Rick. You can bargain with that.”
“And I get what?”
“Five years probation. Maybe only three. If you don’t screw up, you can start over. That sounds good to me.”
He shrugged. He seemed to crumple into the chair. “Yeah, okay, whatever.”
“I’m not sure what that means. Was that a positive statement? Will you do it?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it. But I’m still fucked. I still have my dad to deal with. When this comes out, he’s gonna kill me. I wish he would kill me and get it over with. That would be easier.”
“You’ll work it out with him.”
“Yeah, right.”
Before I could conjure some answer to the bitter despair in the boy’s voice, my cell started ringing again. I winced an unspoken apology and unfolded my little Nokia. Lonnie Fraker was on the line.
“You’re not gonna believe this, Kennis. And you know why? Because it’s goddamn unbelievable, that’s why. This one goes in The Guinness Book of World Records. I just don’t know whether to submit it under suicidal or stupid. Maybe there’s a joint listing, like for Kamikaze pilots who forgot to put gas in the tank.”
“Slow down, Lonnie. What happened?”
“Okay. We get a call from Milo Torrance over at Sun Island. Some guy with a big storage locker over there was six months behind on his rent. So they snap the lock and get ready to empty the place out. That’s the policy, right? But this shed is stuffed floor to ceiling with antiques. It looks like a dealer’s warehouse, but this guy ain’t no antiques dealer, at least not the legal kind. Milo knows him. It’s Ed Delavane, Chief.”
“Ed Delavane.”
“Milo called it in and we came over to check it out.”
“You’re telling me Ed Delavane robs houses, keeps all the stolen property at Sun Island, and then doesn’t pay his rent?”
“He’s high most of the time. He didn’t pay his phone bill either. I called out there. It was disconnected a month ago. But listen—this is the best part. The stuff he stole from Lomax is right in front, just sitting there. That big desk and some other pieces. I checked with the insurance photographs. Anyway, there’s credit card bills and checkbooks in the drawers. Lomax all the way.”
I fought to round up my thoughts. It was like getting a bunch of rowdy kids into a school bus. “This is nuts.”
“Hey, you gotta get a break sometime.”
“Yeah. But this fills our quota for the next ten years, Lonnie. Milo just called you and that was it.”
“Like winning the lottery.”
“But better. When people win the lottery the first thing they say is “I have this lousy job and I’m quitting.” I hear this and I’m thinking to myself, this is the best job in the world and I’m doing it forever.”
“Yeah. It’s been a pretty good day. But it ain’t over yet. I sent a cruiser out to his house. Nobody was home, but we had a warrant, so we searched the place. Guess what we found? Hiking boots with the exact vibram sole footprint we found at the crime scene. And Delavane is heavy enough to leave a deep track.”
“Great work, Lonnie.”
“Wait a second, it gets better. Krakauer talked to Jesse a few minutes ago, just after you left. Nice double-teaming, by the way. Were you the good cop or the bad cop?”
I smiled. “I’m always the good cop, Lonnie.”
“Yeah, right. Anyway, Jesse gave us the word—Delavane’s doing some kind of drug deal out on Hinsdale Lane, out by the airport. We’re setting up a perimeter right now.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes. Keep everybody back. And no sirens.”
I closed the phone.
“Did you catch the guy?” Folger asked.
“No. He caught himself. We just have to bring him in. Thanks for your help, Rick. I’ll be in touch.”
I reached down and shook his hand, then I was out the door and gone.