The Angel of Knowlton Park (37 page)

"Where did you go for dinner?"

She looked at him coldly, her nose wrinkling like he was a piece of rotten meat. "Detective, we are not the suspects here. If we've done anything wrong, it was ever allowing that child in the house. Now you'll have to excuse me," she said. "I've got to go and change." She fixed him with a fierce gaze, her hands planted on her hips. Her blouse gaped, but there was nothing tantalizing about it. Even in the summer heat, she wore an undershirt.

When he didn't move, she said, "Detective, once again, I'm going to have to be blunt. It shouldn't be necessary, but I see that subtlety doesn't work with you people. I want you to stay away from my son. As I said, this has been very hard for him. I'm afraid it has brought back some terrible things from his own childhood that I hoped he had left behind."

She stepped back into the gloom of the hall and lowered her head, suddenly unwilling to look at him. "Matthew was..." Her voice dropped. "His father..." Her thick throat worked as she forced the words out. "Matthew was sexually abused by his father when he was about Timmy's age. This awful business forces him to remember things he's been trying to forget. It would be unconscionably cruel for you to exacerbate that."

She shut the door with a click, leaving Burgess standing on a doorstep that gave off the pungent odor of pine-scented cleaner, puzzling about a woman so parsimonious with words and emotion, who'd managed to get both unconscionable and exacerbate into the same sentence. After a moment, he bent his reluctant knee and went down the steps. Like it or not, he was going to be talking with her son, even if it did exacerbate the boy's pain. Because the death of Timmy Watts was also unconscionable.

Chapter 28

He'd just gotten in the car when his phone rang. Stan Perry, reporting in. "We got a lot of stuff at Taylor's, Joe, but it doesn't look like our crime scene. But hey, you wanted to know about someone called "The Witch," right? Well, a woman named Julie Gordon just called and gave us a name. I got a location."

"And?"

"Her name's Valerie Lowe, sometime girlfriend of Jason Watts. And she's got a prior for cooking methamphetamine."

Time to hit the road again. The Witch was one of the last people reported to have seen Timmy Watts alive. Burgess wrote down the address. "Kyle with you?" he asked.

"I think he's 10-7. Deputy came by with some legal papers. Kyle went ballistic and stormed out. I haven't been able to raise him since."

"I'll swing by his place, see if he's there. We'll meet you."

He drove too fast through streets that were unusually quiet, his heart sinking when he saw Kyle's car. He parked and hurried up the stairs, banging on the door until he heard stumbling footsteps. "Who is it?" Kyle said.

"It's Burgess. Open the goddamned door."

Stripped to his shorts, Kyle looked like a concentration camp survivor. He held up a nearly full bottle of Jack Daniels. "Caught me before I could do much damage," he said.

"What happened?"

Kyle grabbed a paper off the counter and thrust it at him.

"Got this today." It was a petition to the court for leave to move Kyle's daughters out of state.

"You call your lawyer?"

"He's on vacation until next Monday. His associate doesn't know her ass from a hole in the ground, and the hearing's this Friday. Not to put too fine a point on it, Joe, I'm fucked."

"You can't spit in this state without hitting a lawyer," Burgess said. "We'll find somebody. Now get dressed. We've got places to go and meth chemists to see and no time for getting drunk."

Kyle hugged the bottle protectively against his chest. "You go see people," he said. "You go places. Take Stan the Man, he's dying to take names and bust heads. I'm staying here and getting pissed."

"The woman called The Witch. One with the blue car. Last person anyone saw with Timmy Watts? Her name's Valerie Lowe. And she's got a prior for cooking meth."

Kyle set his bottle on the counter, checking that the top was tight. "Sheesh," he said. "Guess I'd hate to miss this. I'll just get my gun."

"Clothes would be good," Burgess said.

The address was in Westbrook, way out near the Windham line. If he was following protocol, Stan would have notified the Westbrook police of their visit. Depending on what Stan had said, a Westbrook officer might or might not be there to meet them.

"Want me to drive?" Kyle asked, "given your shoulder and all?"

"You've been drinking."

"Not so's you'd notice."

"You can drive home, okay?"

"Why does it take three of us?"

"Probably doesn't," Burgess grunted. "But if I took you, Stan would feel left out, and if I went with Stan, you'd feel left out."

"Before I burned out my brain on alcohol, I used have this thing called instinct. What little is left says you expect to find more than a witness."

"This woman is Jason Martin's girlfriend. According to one witness, she was driving a blue car and talking to Timmy Watts the night he died. People we talk to keep coming back to a blue car. And if she and Jason are any way connected to the meth that was found in Timmy's room, by morning, they will have cleared out."

"Why?"

"Because the department has a leak. The papers know we found meth in Timmy Watts's room and that it disappeared from evidence control. It's going to be broadcast at some point. I'm betting on tomorrow's papers."

"How?" Kyle asked. "Who?"

"Charlene Farrell's the reporter. As for the leak, your guess is as good as mine."

"I need more than one guess?"

Burgess shook his head. "Plus, this is supposedly the residence of one Ricky Martin, career rapist and general bad actor. I'd say we need at least as many players on our team as they have on theirs."

Another day gone, another night coming on. The whole week one hot, humid blur. Darkness brought the fog back, giving lights, structures, and vegetation a surreal quality, as though they were driving through an alien landscape, not on roads they'd traveled hundreds of times. The occasional streetlights loomed like hazy balloons. They passed one of Burgess's favorite signs, "Vanity Pool" and he entertained himself imagining who might be hired from the Vanity Pool, and what they might be good for. Arm candy, maybe? Trophy wives? Maybe even trophy husbands. Maybe he could be a trophy husband. Kept by some woman who wanted him only for his looks and for sex. It had to be easier than this.

Squinting into the fog, he took a right, then his first left. It was supposed to be about four miles. Stan hadn't said, probably hadn't known, that the last two miles were on a pocked and pitted stretch of misery that knocked the hell out of his knee and wounded shoulder and nearly shook his teeth loose. By the time they pulled in behind Stan's car, he was thinking he should have stayed home and sent the kids. But deep down, he felt something significant was about to happen.

Kyle switched off the dome light. Then, quietly opening their doors, they stepped out into the thick, warm night. Burgess checked his gear, heard rustling as Kyle did the same. They walked to Stan's car and got into the back seat. Stan and another man were waiting.

"Officer Ted Bean," the man said, thrusting a hand back. "Westbrook PD."

"Joe Burgess," he said. "Terry Kyle. What have we got, Stan?"

"One blue Dodge Acclaim. One black Toyota pickup. It's not a house; it's a trailer. Not a double-wide. Good sized, rust-blistered piece of shit. Looks like the door opens into the living room, kitchen to the right, bedrooms to the left. I couldn't see in. Lights are on but the shades are down. Someone's been playing the same Indigo Girls song about a million times. There's a dog house but I didn't see a dog. Typical Martin setup. Yard's full of crap. Place smells like a litter box. How you wanna do this?"

"You check the registrations?"

"Yeah. Car's registered to her, Valerie Lowe. Truck belongs to Jason Martin."

"There a back door?"

"Yeah."

"You and Bean take that. Terry and I'll take the front. All I want to do is talk to her. Depending on what she says, what I see, we'll go from there."

"Let's do it," Stan said, opening his door.

"Hold on," Burgess said. "Place that smells like ammonia? Could be they dump their litter box out the door. Could be they're cooking meth. So, anything goes down, don't run in, okay? Let them run to you."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"Someone told you this job was fun?"

"It was on the recruiting poster. I get to serve and protect and have all the hot little honeys who get wet at the sight of a uniform."

"You're a pig, Stan."

"The honey in there," Bean said, "is neither hot nor wet, except maybe in what's left of her cranked up little brain. You see her, you'll understand why they call her The Witch. You go in there, Sergeant, be careful you don't turn your back on her. She's real squirrelly. One of our guys was out a couple weeks ago to serve an eviction notice on 'em... they don't own the place, just rent... and she damned near took his eye out."

"Thanks for the warning. Had any other trouble with them?"

"He shot at a couple hunters, back last fall. I had to come out and talk to him."

"How'd he react?"

"He was real apologetic. Claimed one of them shot first, too close to the house."

"You wearing a vest, Bean?"

"Yes, sir."

"You seen the younger brother, Ricky, around?"

"The rapist? He was living here. Haven't seen him lately. Heard he and Jason had a fight."

The four of them approached the trailer, Perry and Bean slipping around to the back, Burgess and Kyle going to the door. "You want me to come in?" Kyle whispered.

Burgess considered. She might talk to one police officer, if he approached her right, but not to two. "Stay outside, I think, but stay close, okay?"

"Right. I'll just stand here and feed the mosquitoes."

It wasn't a facetious observation. Since they'd left the car, mosquitoes the size of piper cubs had been circling, their whines so loud in the quiet night it surprised him someone from inside hadn't stuck a head out to see what was going on. Perhaps there had been a dog and it had been sucked dry. He pulled bug spray from his pocket and gave it to Kyle.

"Bet you used to be a Boy Scout," Kyle whispered.

Burgess walked to the door, standing to one side as he raised a fist and knocked. He could hear music inside and someone singing off-key. Loud and badly off-key. No one answered. He knocked again. Something crashed. The music was turned down and a raspy voice called, "Who is it?"

"Detective Burgess. Portland Police."

"This ain't Portland."

"Valerie Lowe?" he asked. "I wanted to ask a few questions about Timmy Watts."

"Go away," she said. "It's late. Come back tomorrow."

"I've driven all the way out here in the fog," he said. "It won't take long." She went back to singing. He knocked again. "Please, Ms. Lowe. Open the door."

"I don't have to," she said. "You can't make me."

"I'm not here to give you a hard time," he said. "Just to ask some questions about the boy. About when you last saw him? I was hoping you'd know where he was headed."

"That's all?" There was a crash as something got knocked over. "You just wanna know about Timmy?"

"That's right."

"Hold on."

He heard the snap of locks. The door opened the width of the chain and a woman peered out. "How do I know you're a cop?" she asked.

He pulled out his badge and held it where she could read it. "Joseph Burgess," she said. "Sergeant. No tricks, okay? I know my rights."

They all knew their rights. "No tricks."

"Hold on." She closed the door. He heard her fumbling with the chain, and it opened. She waved a hand toward the room behind her. "Might as well come in. And hurry it up, will ya? Those damned mosquitoes get in here, they'll be at me all night."

The light was poor, but even in a dim room, he could see where she got her nickname. She was gaunt to the point of emaciation, leaving her fleshless face nothing but nose and chin and jutting cheekbones. She wore loose cut-offs, short enough to show a flaccid slice of ass and a tube top. Instead of being sexy, it was pathetic. He could have counted every rib, and what remained of her breasts were two slack sacks under the shiny yellow fabric. Her long, black hair was matted and dull. She prowled restlessly around the room, picking things up and setting them down. Twice, before he asked his first question, she picked up a pack of Camels, shook one out, then shoved it back in the pack.