The Angel of Knowlton Park (23 page)

"No." Louder than he'd meant to be. "We're okay. It's just going to take time. Worst thing we can do is let Cote's impatience infect us. We rush this, we'll get sloppy."

Maybe he was wrong, not wanting more people on it, when Perry should be home nursing a concussion and Kyle was half-dead, but they were the team he wanted. Cut Kyle out of this, after he'd already screwed up once, he'd brood himself into a hospital bed, and Young Stanley liked to play through the pain. Cut him loose, he was apt to do something impulsive, like a half-trained puppy.

Burgess looked at Wink Devlin, calmly eating the last of his fries. "Get anything on those prints off the body?"

"Two different ones. Haven't had time to run them yet."

Two different prints? Did that mean they were looking for two people? "Everyone at the ME's got their prints on file?"

"Yeah," Devlin said.

"The feather?"

"I'm betting on parakeet. Could be pigeon. We'll send it to Quantico, soon as we get everything together. In just six short months, the world's greatest crime solving organization might have an answer for us."

"Can't you dig up an ornithologist at one of the colleges?"

Before he could answer, Kyle returned, face and hair beaded with water, eyelashes wet, white knuckles wrapped around a can of Coke.

"We got two sets of prints off the body," Burgess said. "You want to get the prints from Osborne's arrest in New Jersey?" Kyle nodded. "How soon you think you'll be ready to talk about that canvass?"

"Half hour, forty minutes?"

"Good. Find me then. Stan? Perverts?"

"We're almost there."

"When you're there, grab Rocky, get out there and start asking questions." Rocky nodded, pleased. He loved his computer but sometimes felt a need to get out of the office. "Anyone seen Delinsky?"

"He's been helping me," Kyle said. "I'll send him in."

"Impressions?"

"I still like Dwayne Martin for it," Perry said. "But would he rape his own brother?"

"High on drugs, he might do anything," Melia said.

"That's what his sister says," Burgess agreed. "For now, my money's on Osborne."

Kyle was holding pictures of Timmy wrapped and unwrapped. "This just doesn't make sense," he said.

"No," Burgess agreed, "Unless it's remorse. Let's go," he said. No one wasted a minute getting out of there. The pictures, the time-line on the whiteboard represented a puzzle for which they had too few pieces. Everyone went to find more.

Chapter 17

On top of the flurry of slips on his desk was a message to call Chris. He picked it up, annoyed. He didn't want the world intruding on his focus. Working something like this, the rest of life went on hold. He'd meant it when he'd said he'd be unavailable. Had times like this accelerated Wanda Kyle's spiral into a wallow of bitterness and revenge? How would Chris handle it? She wasn't Wanda, but what she was hadn't been tested yet. Neither had he.

He stood in the busy, noisy room, staring at the mass of paper awaiting his attention, the sea of pink message slips. He wanted some peace and quiet to listen to the inside of his head, to tune in to the faint keening sound lingering there since yesterday. Timmy Watts's call for justice. This case felt like an insistent scream, the slow pace of their progress like an unscratchable itch. Sighing, he reached for the phone.

She answered on the first ring. "I just wanted to tell you Michelle and I are cooking dinner here, in case you guys can get away." When he didn't respond, she said, "You've got to eat, Joe, and this will be a heck of a lot better than McDonald's."

She had that right. "I appreciate it," he said. "I just don't know. I can't promise." He hesitated, wanting to say her name. "Chris. We're swamped."

"If you can," she said, "I wasn't asking for promises." Her voice did that thing where it dropped a register. "I just wanted to hear your voice." She hung up.

He muttered a confused "goddamn" and picked up his messages. One from Andrea Dwyer, asking him to call when he came in. She might have something for him. He scanned the reports. Not a lot of crazies calling up and confessing to this one. Not many people who might have seen anything, either. It was damned depressing that someone could take a child, brutalize him, stab him, and dump him, and no one saw anything. He had a thought, went into Vince's office.

"DPW do the storm drains around there, looking for that knife?"

Melia shook his head and reached for the phone.

He found Stan Perry standing by his desk, looking at the chair as though wondering if he'd been abducted by aliens. Everything about the posture suggested immediacy, news. "What?" he asked, feeling a tiny flutter of hope.

"Kids collecting bottles," Perry said. "Found some clothes in a trash can on the Promenade."

"Think they could be ours?"

Perry shrugged. "Patrol didn't touch them. They're waiting for us."

He got a radio, checked for his gun, and was out of there, glad to be doing something besides shifting papers. Knowing his impatience was a mistake, that if he were giving himself advice, he'd say settle down and focus. He couldn't stay calm with Timmy Watts perched on his shoulder like Tiny Tim. God help us, every one. They stopped at the lab, grabbed Devlin, and were gone.

"Bad news, Joe," Devlin said. "I logged in everything you took from the kid's room. The amphetamine is gone."

"Gone? How could it be gone? Who else touched it?"

"No one else touched it," Devlin said gloomily. "That is, there's no record of anyone touching it."

"Who was on last night?"

"Bascomb."

Burgess gripped the wheel. The amphetamine was their ticket to searching the Watts's house. Maybe a key to this whole thing. Finding it was important, and Bascomb would be less than useless. Fat Wayne Bascomb had carried a Jones for him ever since Burgess had found him sleeping on the job and reported it. Bascomb still gave him dirty looks when Burgess brought things in. Maybe Bascomb was trying a new form of revenge.

Perry might have been reading his thoughts. "You think maybe Bascomb...?"

"Be pretty damned stupid if he did."

"Bascomb
is
fuckin' stupid, Joe. That's why he sits on his fat ass and eats candy bars and catches zs while we get our brains beat in. It wouldn't be safe to let him out on the street. He'd stumble into the nearest Dunkin' Donuts and arrest a cruller."

"You kidding?" Devlin said. "Crullers would get together and cuff him to the bakery rack."

The screaming in Burgess's head was getting louder. He did not want to think about Fat Wayne right now. He pulled into the curb behind a patrol car, its light bar flashing, and shut off the engine. "This better be something," he said.

Here by the water, the air was redolent with the stink of lobster bait, fish, and decaying seaweed. Restless waves smacked the shore in a crabby way that echoed his mood. Devlin's news hadn't improved things. He wanted to smack something himself.

The patrol officer had cordoned off a small area around the trash can and stood now, shifting nervously from foot to foot, facing down a small, noisy crowd. "What is this?" Burgess grumbled. "Stan, call and get the guy some help. What was he thinking?" As he watched, two kids tried to sneak under the yellow tape. The officer turned, voice snapping like a whip, and they backed away and faded into the crowd.

"Probably got too excited about maybe finding some evidence." Stan ducked back into the car and called for more officers.

Burgess approached the officer, whose wild eyes and flared nostrils reminded him of a frightened animal. Up close, he realized it was a woman. Short haired, pleasant-faced, the equipment-draped uniform blouse only slightly suggesting breasts. It was the vests that did it. Flatted the breasts and made everyone look like a pigeon. What hair he could see was wet with sweat and curled tightly around her face. "Detective Sergeant Burgess," he said. "Where are the kids who found it?"

The officer, whose nametag said "Beck", looked around, first easily, then nervously, swiveling her head from side to side as she eyeballed the milling crowd. "I don't know, sir. They were here a minute ago." She pointed toward an empty bench. "I told them to sit there and stay there." She swung on another kid who was pulling on the tape. "Hold it right there! You want a free ride in a police car?" The kid hunched his shoulders and slunk away.

Burgess's anger flared. Turning his back on the crowd, so his words were only for her, he snapped, "Jesus Christ, Beck. You didn't call for back-up. You didn't detain the witnesses. You roped off an area the size of a postage stamp. What were you thinking?"

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, her shoulders rigid, eyes straight ahead, only the slightest trembling of her jaw betraying her. "I was about to go on break when I got the call." Two spots of red brightened her cheeks. "I've got my period real bad today, sir. What I was thinking was I wonder if I'm going to be able to get out of here before I bleed right through my clothes. And that was about thirty minutes ago."

He didn't know what to say. He'd dealt with female emergencies before. Cops did, but this, coming as he was about to bite her head off, took the wind out of his sails. "Next time, call your supervisor, explain the situation, get yourself some help. It's nothing he or she's never seen before. Understand?" She nodded, tight-lipped, her eyes fixed on his shoes. "The witnesses," he said, "you get their names and addresses?"

"Yes, sir." Her eyes were teary and there was a defensive hunch to her shoulders.

He had such a salutary effect on people. "Goddammit, Officer Beck, don't you dare cry on me," he said. "Now, I want you to look around carefully, see if you see those kids." Behind him, Perry yelled at the crowd to move. He looked back, saw Perry's fierce, sweeping gestures, watched the people move away, thought how Perry relished being big and mean.

Officer Beck studied the crowd, hopeful but not expectant, then looked the other way, toward the sea. "Down there," she said, pointing to where the land began to drop off. "The taller one's a girl, smaller one's a boy. Brother and sister. Nina and Ned. She calls him Neddy. They were looking for returnable bottles, trying to get enough money to rent a movie. She called it in." She forced herself to look at his face. "When you talk to her, well, you'll see. She's really spooked." She wanted to tell him to go easy on the girl but didn't dare. Fine with him. He didn't need advice from some rookie.

"Thanks," he said, turning abruptly back toward the crowd. She jumped when he moved, telling him he still had her spooked. Every time he thought he'd finally begun to live down his reputation, something like this happened. At crime scenes, he liked it that way. He wanted people to be extra slow and careful to avoid his wrath. But times like this, it pained him. He wasn't mean or irrational, and found it no sin to be demanding. He didn't ask anything of others he wouldn't ask of himself. He'd occasionally bled though his clothes. Didn't think the knowledge would be much comfort to Officer Beck.

He motioned Stan over, pointed toward the water. "I'm going to talk to the kids who found the clothes. Soon as back-up gets here, Officer Beck needs to be relieved." He looked at the trash can, sitting like a dented icon in the middle of the small yellow-taped area. She'd used a bench, a tree, and a lamp post for her corner posts. He could see why she'd chosen such a small area. Otherwise, she would have had to cordon off an enormous square. He would have preferred that.

He tugged on some gloves, slipped under the tape, and lifted the cover on the can, releasing a heat wave of rotten food smells and a noisy swarm of flies. Bending over, he took a pencil from his pocket and teased open the cheesy plastic K-Mart bag. On top, he saw a blue and white tee shirt with a bright, busy pattern, spotted with a blackish substance which could be blood. He replaced the lid, leaving it for Devlin.

He watched two more patrol cars arrive. Nodding to Stan to handle it, he turned and walked toward the water. If not for his cynicism about human nature, he would have been surprised by the crowd. The overcast skies were a reprieve from yesterday's scorching sun, but the hot, stale air made breathing difficult and moving worse. The walk to the two children was perhaps half the length of a football field, but by the time he got there, he'd sweated through another shirt. He checked his watch. Mid-afternoon. The day felt like it was passing in slow motion.