The Angel of Knowlton Park (12 page)

The door burst open, admitting a blitz of speech before the new arrival was even in the room. "Burgess, is that your car with the canoe on top? Do you have any idea how that looks to the public? An official police vehicle, parked in the police garage, with a canoe on top? I want that thing out of here. We've got the media in fifteen minutes."

Paul Cote, unable to let anyone else have the limelight, had returned from vacation to snatch the press conference from Melia. At least he hadn't arrived in time to interrupt their meeting or muck up the crime scene. More than once, Burgess had carefully collected Captain Cote's hair and fibers from his clothes from victim's bodies. Despite their efforts to educate him, Cote steadfastly refused to learn about crime scene investigation. He still had to get in there and contaminate everything he could.

Burgess observed with satisfaction that Captain Cote was getting fat. Fat and bald, and, judging from his red face, choleric. Perhaps a heart attack was in the cards. Or a stroke. It was the only satisfaction he could take from Cote's presence. Working a homicide around Cote was like hiking up a path strewn with boulders, except in Cote's case, every time you stepped around it, the same boulder just moved back into your path.

"You can't feel worse about it than I do, Captain. I
was
on vacation." Emphasizing 'was.' "I've got my suitcase. My fishing poles. Soon as we wrap this up, I'm out of here."

He lifted the ice pack from his knee and hefted himself to his feet. "I'll move the car."

Melia looked like his sandwich didn't agree with him. Cote had an uncanny ability to make healthy people feel unwell. Burgess didn't feel too badly letting Melia handle things. That was what Melia got the big bucks for. He felt worse that Cote would be taking the press conference. Cote thought he was a media darling. His self-perception in this, as in many things, fell far from the mark. He also thought people liked and admired him. Cote wouldn't notice that Burgess was limping, or, if he did, he'd just be annoyed that Burgess looked less professional. A canoe on his car and a gimpy walk. Burgess was offending on several fronts.

"Wrap this thing up?" Cote leaned toward Burgess eagerly. "You're that close?"

"Captain," Burgess said, "we haven't got a fuckin' clue."

Chapter 9

The crime lab staff was busy and Wink said he'd log it in later, so Burgess put the stuff from Timmy Watts's room and the envelope with the hairs from Osborne's place in an evidence locker. Heading for the elevator, he met Andrea Dwyer, the "kiddie cop," coming the other way. In brief nylon shorts and a tank top, she didn't look much like a cop. With her long, tanned limbs, shiny short hair, and an entire 6' 2" of wonderful muscle definition glossed with a sheen of sweat, she looked like her other avatar, the triathlete.

"Joe, I heard about the little boy. I'm so sorry it had to be you." Her voice was husky, her face solemn as she hugged him, surrounding him briefly with a potpourri of shampoo, soap, and deodorant.

The hug and expression of sorrow were more overt, but otherwise she only echoed what he'd been seeing on faces all day, beginning with Melia's apology at pulling him back from vacation. Melia hadn't been apologizing for spoiling the vacation; he'd been apologizing for assigning Burgess another dead child.

"I'd like to help, Joe," she said. "What can I do?"

As a youth officer, she was constantly in contact with Portland's kids. She saw things, heard things, received confidences the rest of them didn't necessarily get. "You coming or going?" he asked.

"Sometimes I wonder. Going. I was just checking on a hunch. It didn't pan out."

"There is something you can do." He pressed the button. "Ride down with me."

"I don't think I've ever been in the elevator," she said as the door rolled open.

"Don't rub it in," he grumbled, stepping in and holding the door for her. "I was once young and beautiful myself." He looked around warily. "No offense or harassment intended. That gonna bring the PC police down on my head?"

"I took it as a compliment," she said, watching him rub his knee. "You okay?"

"My retirement injury," he said. "Three hundred pound grieving mother mowed me down on her way to muck up my crime scene. Soon as I put this one to bed, I'm taking my pension and limping off into the sunset."

"And if I believe that, you've got a bridge to sell me. So, what can I do?"

"There's a guy named Jeffrey Osborne, lives over by Knowlton Park. Got a big mastiff named Rogue." He gave the street address. "Dead boy's family says Osborne tried to put moves on Timmy. Invited him in for pizza and showed him dirty pictures, prequel to posing for same." She nodded, attentive. "Maybe you could ask around, see if anyone's heard about this guy. If any kids have complained, or teachers, or parents. See if there's talk about guys in that neighborhood who like little boys."

"You think this was a sex thing?"

"It's a possibility. Other than their families, why do people usually kill young boys? To keep them from talking about the nasty things the grown-ups did. I'll know more in the morning, after the autopsy. Oh, and the boy's family. Extended family—"

He broke off as the door opened on a lobby crowded with reporters on their way upstairs to hear Cote's golden phrases. Several, recognizing Burgess, shouted questions at him. "Sorry," he said, pushing his way through, "all information about the case will be handled by Captain Cote." One enterprising photographer took a picture of them, which he hoped wouldn't end up in tomorrow's paper. No reason it should—Dwyer wasn't working the case—but in his experience, "newspaper" and "reason" didn't necessarily belong in the same sentence. Burgess in the paper, in any form, and Dwyer, in her abbreviated costume, would both be magnets for Cote's wrath.

They paused outside the door. "About the family?" she said.

"Most of 'em have been involved with us for one thing or another. Rocky can give you the names and the breakdown. I just wonder if there are any rumors out there. Anyone with a Jones for the family who might have taken it out this way."

"I'll check it out." She swung onto her bicycle. "See what I can come up with." She paused, a smile playing around her mouth. "I've always wondered, Joe. Is there a female equivalent of 'a Jones'?" She put on her helmet and rode off.

He didn't know. He lumbered into the garage and climbed into his offending automobile. He was tempted to swing by his house and drop off the canoe, but there was no place to put it. He might get lucky and someone would steal it off the car. The East End could be that kind of neighborhood, but then he'd have to put up with complaints from his sister Carla, who'd perfected the art of complaining, until he'd replaced it. He had no more time for that than to return this one.

He left the lot, crossed Franklin, and drove up Munjoy Hill, pulling into the empty space in front of the Watts's house. Funny how, in a crowded neighborhood, these spaces always stayed empty. Just like on a TV cop show—always a place to park right where the officer needed it. Dwayne's truck was in its place, along with another car on the lawn. He observed with satisfaction that the vehicle his car didn't block, Stan Perry's did. He gave it a minute, to see if Dwayne would come out and curse at them again, then got out of the car, and he and Perry climbed the steps and knocked.

This time, Shauna answered. Transformed from the sullen girl in the bedroom, she now had glossy curls, bright make-up, and a tight white dress that showed off her tan and most of the rest of her. Not so much a dress, he decided, watching her step back to let them enter, as the kind of sleeveless tee shirt some guys called a 'wife beater.' Same skinny straps, same rib knit. Just long enough for minimum decency, and short enough to keep someone looking. Fruit-of-the-Loom had never looked better. Terry Kyle would have said, "She cleans up good." She did. And he knew exactly what kind of work she was going to.

Kyle's absence had been lingering in the back of his mind all day, irritating as a splinter. Soon as he got a break, he had a bunch of things to do. Check on Kyle. Call Chris. Return the canoe. Folly to imagine he'd get a break any time soon.

"Darlene come home?" he asked.

"Yeah." She snapped her gum and assessed him the way she'd assess a customer. "She's upstairs feedin' the baby." She shifted her gaze to Perry, lifting her chin and sticking out her chest, making Burgess feel old and invisible. "Want me to get her?"

"We'd appreciate that," he said.

"You wanna sit?" She looked dubiously around the room. The one chair that wasn't heaped with junk was missing the seat. She shrugged. "Guess not, huh?"

Burgess watched Perry's eyes follow her, knowing how much his colleague wanted to go stand at the bottom of the stairs. "Ran into Andrea Dwyer at the station," he said, "in running shorts and a tank top."

"Some people have all the luck," Perry said. "Bet she looked like a million dollars."

"Two million. You should ask her out."

"I did. She said 'In your dreams, Stanley. I'm not interested in being another notch on your belt.'"

Five minutes of waiting in the fetid heat brought another surprise. Darlene Packer, who entered the kitchen carrying a very small baby, was black. Burgess chastised himself for his surprise, for making the assumption that no one in this family could have a black girlfriend because they were the Downeast equivalent of rednecks. He knew better, knew this work was a crazy combination of experience, your gut, and keeping an open mind, yet it was a lesson he forgot and relearned all the time.

In this case, especially, he'd have to watch himself. He didn't want to miss something important because of what he thought he already knew. Cote'd come back from vacation to look over his shoulder, longing, as Cote always did, for Burgess to make the mistake that would finally get him canned. It was that much harder to move forward in a careful, observant way while simultaneously watching his back.

She stopped in the doorway, cocking her hip and giving them a cool nod, "I'm Darlene and this is Kanesha." She was small and wiry, dressed in cut-offs and a tee shirt, her hair in braids. Despite the polished display of attitude, she didn't look a day over twelve. "You're investigating..." She stopped then, not so cool, looking for words to avoid saying "murder" and "death," settled on "...what happened to Timmy?"

"Detective Sergeant Burgess. Detective Perry. Yes, we wanted to ask you some questions about Timmy."

Perry cleared a chair for her, but she shook her head. "Either of you gentlemen like to buy me a cup of coffee?" She managed to make "gentlemen" sound unsavory. "Or maybe you have air-conditioning in your car?"

"Whichever you prefer," Burgess said, stepping to the door and opening it for her, happy for a reason to leave that wretched kitchen.

As they followed her down the steps, she said, "Car'll do fine. Place down the street has good coffee, but I wouldn't want my friends and neighbors to see me talkin' to the police." She put the emphasis on 'po.' A fleeting smile lit her solemn face. "It would ruin my reputation."

Perry unlocked his car and opened the door for her. She climbed into the front seat, Perry started the car to crank up the air, and Burgess got in the back. "That air feels good," she said, looking curiously at all the gadgets. "I can't rightly recall another time when I was in the front of a police car and a cop was in the back. But everything's topsy-turvy today."

Her edgy bravado fell away and Darlene Packer began to cry. "I just can't believe it... not Timmy. He was so sweet." Perry handed her a tissue.

"We have very little information about the boy," Burgess said gently. "We were hoping you could help us."

"You already talked to Mother and Pap," she said. "Didn't they...?" She trailed off, staring out through the windshield. Then she drew her daughter more tightly against her chest. "Nope. I don't suppose they did. Guess I don't have to pretend with you all, do I? I... he... look," Her voice softened, lowered. "I don't know how to do this. Tell you about him. I even say his name and I get this pain," Her thin fingers stroked her throat. "Right in here. Makes it hard to talk, you know."

"We know," Burgess said. "He was a lovely little boy, and we know you cared about him. We wouldn't ask you to do this if it weren't important, but to find Timmy's killer, we need to know him. We need to understand what he was like, what he liked to do. Who he spent his time with. You can help with that."