Playing God (49 page)

"A trait you inherited." Kyle was tired. His eyes were drooping. He roused himself, though, to say, "Joe, whatever way you go with this, it's your call."

"Thanks, Terry." He rubbed the back of his neck, which was stiff and sore. "I think we both know where I'm going."

"And the truth shall make you free." Kyle closed his eyes. "'Night, Joe."

Burgess walked down the hall and into the elevator. He watched the doors close and felt himself carried down. They opened again and he walked the familiar corridors, smelled the familiar air, heard the familiar sounds. Passed different, but familiar, sad faces. The faces of worry and grief, tears repressed, fear pressing on the heart and lungs until breath seemed barely possible. He'd probably never come here without feeling it. He walked through the lobby, staring for a moment at the spot where Bailey had cornered him. A piece of work. What came of playing God.

The automatic doors opened, disgorging him into the cold, black night. He stood a moment, inhaling icy air, gathering himself for the tasks ahead. He hoped Kyle was right. He hoped, and felt the first stirrings of belief, that the truth
would
begin to set him free.

Epilogue

Their high-priced lawyers—and they had the finest—did a great job for Ted Shaw and Dr. Kenneth Bailey, but Burgess, having learned his lesson from the Marks case, saw that they didn't walk away unscathed. In his book, someone who delivered a known scumbag to the scene of an attempted rape and then helped him escape again was bad news, rich or not. Those who deliberately ran into one of his officers and then left the scene, who mutilated a corpse and attempted to hide the body, never mind having almost certainly killed the person in the first place, were not going to beat all the raps, even if they did claim they were victims of O'Leary's blackmail and the death was an accident.

With Kristin Marks hovering by his shoulder, and Chris Perlin providing private-duty nursing care, including a variety of soups, warm arms, and one unsuccessful tap dancing lesson, he didn't crash and burn this time. He just plodded along, aided by Kyle and Perry, crossing the "t's" and dotting the "i's" himself, bringing in witnesses and evidence and pulling things together, as relentless as a Mountie.

He found the Fed Ex driver who could put Bailey in the car at the video store. He bothered the arson investigators until the fire at O'Leary's apartment and the video store firebombing were tied to materials in Shaw's garage. He searched whenever he had spare time for the missing Rubbermaid container. It didn't hurt to fuel the legend that Burgess always got his man.

Getting his woman was harder. Kara Allison disappeared as soon as she was released, and no one was able to trace her. The crime scene photographs showed a blurred trail of high-heeled shoes leaving the scene, and no signs of her having been flung down in the snow as she'd claimed. Stan Perry, acting on one of his hunches, re-interviewed the witness who'd seen someone running down the street the night of Pleasant's murder, and gleaned the omitted detail that the runner had fallen and gotten up. The shoes in O'Leary's closet were 12 ½. No Reeboks.

In the interests of closure and calming the public nerves, Cote tentatively attributed the murder to Kevin O'Leary, a convicted felon with a long record of assaults, unfortunately dead of a drug overdose before he could be brought to trial. They never found any traces of him in the car. Without the missing shoes, there was only an unidentified footprint and Kara Allison's statement that he'd been at the scene, but with him firmly tied to Pleasant by witnesses linking him both with pimping and receiving and distributing drugs, that was deemed enough.

Burgess was sure her aunt knew where she'd gone, but he couldn't get her to admit it. Once burned, or in this case, shot, twice shy, he'd sent Perry and made him wear a vest, but not even the threat of arrest moved her. He had better luck finding the missing clothes. Reasoning that a girl who'd spent her formative years in poverty would have a hard time destroying good clothing, he'd gotten cops to search the clothing donation boxes in the area, as well as through what had already been collected. Remy Aucoin, who was taking this personally, found the dress, shoes and coat that she'd been wearing. Lab tests found traces of Pleasant's blood on the coat and dress.

He did find Randy Noyes. Eventually, being a practical and orderly man, Noyes went back to his job, but Burgess had already found him, as he'd predicted, in the cemetery. Carrying a flask of bourbon, he had walked over to where Noyes knelt, laying a fragrant bouquet of fir and red and white carnations by the headstone.

"I hear she was a very special woman," Burgess said. "I admire your devotion."

"It's not much trouble," Noyes said, brushing snow off the letters in the headstone. "I saw this. Thought she'd like it. She was good with plants."

He opened the flask and passed it over. "Joe Burgess, Portland Police."

"I figured."

"Wondered if we could talk about Kara Allison."

Noyes shrugged. He had big shoulders. Looked strong. "I guess." He tipped up the flask and drank, then passed it back, wiping his mouth with his hand. "Nice," he said.

"You want to talk here or go someplace?"

"I know a bar."

The bar was smoky and noisy, air thick with grease, the vinyl sticky. They took a booth at the back and ordered beer. Burgess could see why Alana had called him handsome. They were only a few years apart in age, but Noyes' hair and beard were still dark and he had lively hazel eyes. Most people reacted to a cop asking about a murder with some level of nervousness, but Noyes was calm, with an ease that was almost contagious. Burgess heard Sarah Merchant's words—Noyes was the best thing that had ever happened to her sister.

"Any idea where Kara's gone?"

Noyes shook his head. "Nah. She didn't tell me. Didn't trust me, probably. Figured you'd come along and I'd tell you. She figured right. I'm not much good at lying."

"The whole thing was her idea?" Noyes nodded. "Why'd you go along with it?"

"Promised her mom I'd look after her."

"Funny way of looking after someone."

"Helping them do something important to them? Is it?"

"Helping someone kill another person. It doesn't sound like something her mother would have wanted."

Noyes narrowed his eyes, something in his face and his voice unyielding and completely certain. "You got that wrong. Her mother hated that son-of-a-bitch. Hell, I hated him, too. He deserved to be hated."

"So you admit you were helping her kill him?"

"You aren't getting me to say that. Kara said she wanted to scare the hell out of him. Wanted him to know how it felt to come face-to-face with death. A big bad practical joke."

"You believed that?"

"You met her?" Burgess nodded. Noyes laughed. "She can be pretty persuasive. It sounded reasonable to me. Why not scare the crap out of that arrogant little prick? Another thing. When I looked at Kara, I was seeing Carman. I would have done anything for Carman. Still would. Always will."

"You hated him, but you didn't kill him?"

"I thought about it, right after she died. I was so mad, so hurt, I couldn't think straight. I didn't know what to do. Kill him? Kill myself?" Noyes drank some beer and set the glass down with a thump, tears in his eyes. "I don't think it's something you can understand if you haven't been there."

Burgess looked away. "You know she didn't just scare him and run away."

"She said someone came and threw her out of the car. Took the weapon away and threw her out of the car. She said she turned and ran and never looked back."

"You didn't believe that."

"Hard to. I was standing beside the car in case she needed me. Then I got cold, and she seemed fine, so I went back and sat in the truck." He cleared his throat. "It bothered me, what she was doing in there. Even if she was going to scare him in the end, she shouldn't have given him no pleasure. He didn't deserve it."

"And you could see what was happening from the truck?"

"Not the inside of the car. The windows got all iced up."

"But the outside?"

"Yup. She got out of the car, ran over to the truck, and we drove away. Fell down once in those stupid shoes."

"There was no big man with tattoos?"

Noyes finished his beer and signaled the waitress for another. "Not unless he came after we left."

The waitress brought another round, gave Noyes a smile. "I'm off in an hour," she said. Noyes just shook his head.

"She tell you what happened?"

"Not exactly." Burgess waited. Noyes hoisted his second beer and drank about a third of it, then lowered the glass, centering it carefully on the soggy napkin. "She said 'Mom would have been proud. I did it, Randy. I did it. I scared that bastard to death.'"

With Sandy's help, he got Alana Black enrolled in a massage program. Things didn't go smoothly, but he and Alana were used to bumpy roads, and she gradually settled down. Stan Perry was still playing the field, but Kyle and Michelle settled into a pretty steady thing, which drove the PMS queen crazy. That was life. You won some, you lost some. Often simultaneously. And he hadn't shot Captain Cote.

Two months later, on one of his weekend reconnaissance missions, Burgess found the missing Rubbermaid container. Inside were Kevin O'Leary's clothes, including his shoes. They didn't match the footprints beside the car. Burgess wasn't surprised. He'd already matched them to a pair of Randy Noyes' shoes.

Burgess was a patient man. Someday he'd find Kara Allison. She'd slip up. Make a mistake. Get her prints into the system again. Or come home. And when she did, he'd be ready for her. Mrs. Burgess's boy tried not to play God, but when it came to the chess game of life, he was good at watching and waiting.

The End

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THE ANGEL AT KNOWLTON PARK

The Joe Burgess Mystery

Book Two