The Angel of Knowlton Park (45 page)

He couldn't keep discouragement out of his voice. His throat was still red-hot, and the pizza hadn't helped. "I don't like to think about what's happening to Iris. About what we may find. You guys got other ideas?"

"We could try the family again," Perry suggested, not sounding optimistic. Nothing about the Martin/Watts family encouraged optimism. "What about McBride's mother?"

"I went by there a while ago," Burgess said. "No one answered. Tried the neighbors. Called her work. Nada," Burgess said. "Work says she's on vacation." He shook his head. "Yesterday, when I interviewed her, she was painting a hardwood floor gray. I thought it was odd. Ugly. I didn't think about covering up blood. She stood there with that goddamned paintbrush in her hand telling me she was an informant, not a suspect, and I didn't make the connection even when I could see she was the queen of heartless bitches."

"We should have someone sitting on the house," Kyle said. He made the call.

They divided up the sheets and went through the printouts. Nothing registered to Ricky Martin, which wasn't a big surprise. A lot of cars in and around Portland registered to people named McBride. Ten were blue. Six were small. Six calls later, they'd come up empty.

Silently, they filed into the living room and put in the tape. Sat on the couch, shoulder to shoulder, watching the whole ugly scene unfold, lacking the will, despite their urgency, to fast forward through Timmy Watts's body. Burgess, sitting on the end, watched Kyle's face, the jaw working, the skin drawn tight. Kyle, who was seeing this for the first time, looked suitably sickened. It would get worse when the body was exposed.

Burgess shifted his eyes back to the screen as they began unwrapping the body. It hit him then with the suddenness of a head-on collision, a thought with sickening implications and the certainty of truth. It explained what had bothered him all along—the disparity between the uncontrolled sexual violence of the killing, and the careful, meticulous disposal of the body. Matty McBride had bought the underpants and the blue blanket, knowing they would be appealing inducements to Timmy Watts. McBride had committed the rape and the murder. Then his loving mother had cleaned up the body, dressed it in the clean underpants, wrapped it in the new blue blanket, and driven it to the park.

The tape rolled on, as they worked the body, as the blue blanket was finally peeled back to reveal the savagery that been inflicted. The tape had been unsparing, capturing them all at their heat-baked worst—Perry, red-faced, with sweat pouring off his shaved skull, Burgess gray and grimacing, even catching Dr. Lee with an uncharacteristically sad expression as he examined the boy's body. It had caught the dryness of the grass, the brightness of the blood, the moving black specks of flies.

Kyle made a gagging sound. "Can we fast-forward to the crowd scenes, please?"

Perry grabbed the remote, hit the pause button. "What's the matta? Too ugly for you? That's what a real murder looks like."

"Up yours," Kyle said, grabbing his head with his hands.

Burgess had the shades down. It was dim in the room. But in the semi-darkness, he could see the faint gleam of tears. Kyle was a father who'd spent part of the afternoon planning a desperate fight to hang on to his own kids. Now he was watching the graphic ugliness of a child's death. The paused image on the screen was a close up of the wounds clustered with flies. Kyle gagged again and left the room.

"What's his problem?" Perry asked.

"Guy's got kids of his own. He's running on bare rims. Cut him some slack, okay."

"If you say so, boss."

"I'm so far from being your boss I'm not even in the picture."

"That's bull. We don't stop being a team because Cote's an asshole."

"Then stop picking on your teammate. Save that for the bad guys... it's not like this doesn't make us all feel mean."

Kyle dropped back into his seat like he'd been flung by a careless hand. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. "God, I feel like shit," he said.

"You and me both," Burgess said. "Only one still standing is young Stanley. Listen, I think I've got some of this figured out." The tape had just come to the crowd scenes. Perry hit pause while Burgess shared his speculation with the others.

"You don't suppose," Kyle said suddenly, "she has a company car to drive? What kind of work does she do?"

"She's an accountant."

"Name of the company?" Kyle had the phone poised.

"Elmer Littlewood Associates."

Kyle stabbed the phone keys as if force could make the numbers travel faster. He spat a bunch of instructions into the phone, gave the number, and punched end. "Joe, have we been stupid about this? Did we screw up somewhere?"

"This is how they go sometimes. We just go out like a bunch of retrievers, keep bringing things back 'til we get the right ones. We're getting the right ones now."

"No thanks to Cote," Perry said. "We gotta call Vince."

"You gonna tell him where you are?"

"He knows where we are," Kyle said.

"He knows?"

"You don't think he believed you'd stay out of it, do you?" Perry said. "We're the best, and we're a team. Vince doesn't care about politics. He wants the guy who did this. He wants the good citizens of Portland to be able to sleep at night and to stop calling him. He wants to go home and hug his twins without wondering if he's got to lock 'em up in a tower somewhere. We said we were coming over here, know what he said?"

"What?"

"He said don't come back 'til we could bring him something. Now we got something."

"Yeah. Maybe a hostage situation. Certainly another person in jeopardy. That ought to make his day."

"Joe," Kyle's voice was slow and soft. "Give yourself some credit. At least we've got a theory of the case. We're moving on this."

Perry hit play and they watched the crowd, unaware they were being filmed, react to the crime scene. It was revolting to watch the curiosity, eagerness, jostling. It could have been a crowd at a sporting event or a parade. "Hold it," Kyle said suddenly. "There!" He crossed to the screen and pointed to two young men in the crowd. Matty McBride and Ricky Martin. Martin's head was flung back, laughing at something. They were holding cups of 7-eleven coffee.

The phone rang. Kyle, expecting dispatch, grabbed it, listened, handed it to Burgess. "A woman," he said. "For you."

Burgess raised the phone. "Detective? It's Mary Turner. I found your card on the coffee table?"

"Neddy didn't give you my message? I came by earlier to show him some pictures, ask him and Nina some questions about the people they saw when they were out looking for bottles. When they found those clothes."

"I see. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Just following a police officer's hunch," he said. "I didn't want to alarm them, but I thought you ought to know that we believe one of the people they saw, that Nina spoke with, might have been involved in Timmy Watts's death." When she didn't respond, he added, "I wanted to suggest you keep them home, keep them in, until we can arrest this man."

Mary Turner dropped the phone. The knife in his stomach twisted as he waited for more bad news. The damned police gut was too often right. "Sorry," she said, "Sorry. I dropped the phone. Oh, Detective, they're not here. Nina and Ned." There was anguish in her voice. "She got a babysitting job, and they let her bring Ned along."

"Someone she regularly sits for? Someone you've met?" The pain sharpened.

"No."

"But you got a phone number where she'll be?"

"Yes."

He picked up on her hesitation. "What is it?"

"I was looking for the baby's favorite toy. I couldn't find it, so I called the number. A man answered. He said it was a phone booth."

Burgess gagged. Another minute, he'd follow Kyle's lead and lose the pizza.

He opened his notebook. "Can you give me that number, please?" He wrote it down. "How long have they been gone?" An hour. "What did she tell you about this job?"

"She said they were a young couple. Friends of some people she has babysat for. She said that's how they got the number. That they had a small baby and knew Nina was good with babies. She said they wouldn't be out late."

"Did she seem nervous when she was telling you this? Either then, or looking back now, do you have the feeling she was lying?"

"Oh, God," Mary Turner said. "Oh my God! What have I done?"

"Please try to stay calm," he said. "Did she tell you anything else?"

"She said the man was picking her up. She was supposed to watch out the window for a blue car."

Pain as sharp as a knife. "Did you see the driver?"

"Not really."

"Could you pick him out from a photograph?"

"No." Her voice was shaking now. "No. I don't think so."

"Did you see the license plate?"

"Only the first three digits. It was a conservation plate."

"What were those numbers, Mrs. Turner?"

"Oh dear. I don't know. I wrote them down here somewhere." He heard her crashing around. A baby crying, another child whining. "Somewhere... I know I... Patrick, be quiet, I'm on the phone. Give the baby one of those cookies. Give it to him!" There was a crash and a wail, and then her shaken voice was back on the line. "Found it." She read the three digits. "Do you think..." She couldn't bring herself to finish.

"Can you call the couple Nina said made the referral and ask if they did give her name to someone? Can you do that now, please, and call me back?"

"Sure. Yes. I'll do it."

"One more thing. What was Nina wearing?"

"The usual. A tank top and shorts."

"Earrings? Lipstick? Like she might have dressed to impress someone?"

Mary Turner sighed again. The sigh of utter failure. She had set out to keep the kids safe, to provide a safe haven in a world that had dealt them so much danger. And let them slip back into it. "I'll make that call," she said.

Kyle and Perry were waiting. "Nina Mallet," he said. "The girl who found Timmy Watts's clothes in the trash can. That was her foster mother. She went out on a babysitting job tonight. The phone number she left was a phone booth." Perry started to speak, but Burgess held up his hand. "There's more. This afternoon her little brother Ned ID'd the photograph of Matty McBride as the guy she was talking to while someone dumped those clothes in the trashcan. A woman, the boy says. And there's one more thing. The little brother also said that Nina sneaked out to meet McBride yesterday afternoon. Met him in the cemetery. And came back with a bruised arm. Here's the kicker. She took her brother along."

"I don't get it," Perry said. "Why sneak out on a date and take your brother along?"

"Easy," Kyle said. "The guy asked you to. And you want to please the guy."

"Fuckin' lambs to the slaughter," Perry said. A cold silence fell on the room.

Chapter 35

Melia had told them to come in, Burgess included. On his way out, Burgess had downed a handful of Tums. They weren't making any difference. No surprise. This pain wasn't about stomach acid. They sat around the table in the close-aired conference room, unwashed, unshaven and un-rested, laying it all out in brusque, staccato bits, interrupting each other, sifting through the stacks of papers, trying with tired minds to muscle what they had into something they could work. From their command center, like a misfiring spinal column, cops across the city spread out, trying to find the blue car or Ricky Martin.

Kyle's hunch had paid off. Regina McBride did have the occasional use of a company car. Her supervisor had confirmed it; given them a license number that matched the three digits they'd gotten from Mary Turner. Otherwise, they had nothing new. Regina McBride hadn't come home. A call to the Watts household had turned up no new information about Ricky or Iris. Kyle had gone over to the jail and tried talking with Dwayne Martin, but all he'd gotten was profanity. Jason Martin had lapsed into a coma. Mary Turner had called back, but only to report, sobbing, that the couple she'd contacted had given Nina's name to no one.

The dirty gray dusk gave way to denser gray evening. Heat lightning crackled, like distant hope, off to the west, but the storm which might have broken the heat's grip on the city trembled like a scared virgin on the horizon. They watched it from the isolation of an air-conditioned room where anxiety and despair weighed as heavily as the outside air. Kyle, red-eyed and intense, shuffled through pictures and papers like a man who believed if he tried hard enough he could read invisible writing. Stan was stomping a wastebasket to death. Burgess put his hands over his ears and tried to screen them out, searching his brain for some connection he might have missed.