Archer Mayor - The Ragman's memory

She sat back down on the bed and pulled on a pair of thick woolen socks before leaning over and giving me one last kiss. “That useful?”

“Could be. I’ll let you know next time we pass in the night.”

She gave me a dirty laugh. “See you in twenty-four hours then,” and she vanished out the door.

Now the skylight merely looked cold, and I gathered the covers around me. No matter how trivial or common that Satanic symbol might be, I knew it meant trouble. As soon as the press and the politicians got hold of it, the heat on this case would increase-along with the troubles we’d have conducting a nice, quiet investigation.

I have only four people on my detective squad. Last year the town manager chose to treat the homicide of a fifth member as a form of natural attrition, and didn’t replace him. We not only lost a friend and colleague but got saddled with his workload as well.

Besides Sammie Martens and J.P. Tyler, our forensics man, I had Ron Klesczewski and Willy Kunkle. Ron was young, sensitive, dependable, painfully earnest, and a whiz at keeping paperwork organized and flowing-the man to have as coordinator in the middle of a big case. Originally my second-in-command, he was handicapped by enough self-doubt that he’d finally opted to return to the security of the rank and file.

Willy was the exact opposite: arrogant, insubordinate, willful, and, I suspected, physically abusive in the field-although none of his snitches had ever complained and none of us had ever caught him. Willy kept his own hours, only reluctantly attended staff meetings, and made his contempt for most people well known-excluding J.P., whose scientific bent he both respected and depended on. He was, nevertheless, remarkably good at his job. Badly dressed, infrequently shaved, and burdened with a useless, withered left arm-the gift of a sniper years ago-Willy Kunkle lived among the derelicts he occasionally sent to jail. But I trusted what lay underneath his unappealing exterior without reserve. What drove him cut deeper than career, ambition, or even everyday morality. He was fueled by private demons so rooted and complex that I never doubted his steadiness or dependability. I was stuck with Willy for as long as I could stand him.

It was Willy Kunkle I sought out concerning the small bombshell Gail had dropped on me late last night.

The center of the detective squad’s main room is a cluster of four modular cubicles, constructed of head-high, interlocking, sound-absorbent panels. Each detective has space enough for a desk, a chair, and maybe a corner in which to pile paperwork-not an environment conducive to loitering. Predictably, that’s where I found Kunkle, leaning back in his chair, his feet up on an impressively littered desk, holding a mail-order weapons catalogue open before him.

He gave me an instinctively peevish look, which I ignored. “Any Satanists around town?” I asked him, knowing an unusual initial approach was often the best way to catch his interest.

His eyebrows rose. “There are some,” he answered with rare caution.

“You ever seen this symbol before?” I showed him the sketch Gail had used in her research.

He frowned slightly. “This the engraving on the tooth?” Kunkle had not been involved in yesterday’s discovery or subsequent neighborhood canvass, and yet it didn’t surprise me he had the details of the case. Knowing everything that was going on inside the department, regardless of how trivial, was second nature to the man, and a telling facet of his personality.

“If you go to the far side of the playground in Crowell Park,” he said, “there’s a six-foot retaining wall at the top of the drop-off leading down to Beech Street. It’s a good hideout in summer-the condoms, syringes, and beer cans tell you that-but one part of the wall has a ton of this shit spray-painted on it-pentangles, upside-down crosses… This one, too.”

“You know what it means or who put it there?”

He shook his head. “Could’ve been the town treasurer. We got so many wackos in this town-Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, who the fuck knows. The Satanists fit right in. You think the bones were some kind of sacrifice?”

I held up both hands. “Down, boy. I’m just looking for a connection. What kind of things do the Satanists do?”

“Depends-they’re pretty half-assed, like most people around here. There aren’t more than six of ’em anyway. They get together and drink chicken blood or whatever. We’ve found squirrels and shit like that nailed to a front door or two, complete with some weird symbols in chalk. A few cats have disappeared that people claimed were used in rituals. But it’s hard to tell what’s real from what’s paranoia.”

“Are there people you could ask? Find out if they’ve gotten more ambitious all of a sudden?”

He tossed the catalogue onto his desk and sighed. “Jesus, just because of some graffiti on a tooth? Why don’t we wait’n see what the lab says? Save me asking a bunch of stupid questions. These people are just dying for a little attention, you know.”

His reaction didn’t surprise me. “Well-run some names through your head. Think about it for a while. You come up with anything, check it out. Otherwise, we’ll wait.”

I returned to my office, knowing I’d get what I’d asked for, and probably more. As dismissive as Willy Kunkle worked hard to appear, he was a driven man, compulsively nosy. I knew he would make damn sure he wasn’t caught by surprise; he’d have all the names and facts I wanted if and when I needed them. As did many people who’d survived lives of chaos and self-destruction, Willy held dearly to his pride and reputation. That his personality grated on everyone around him was of no consequence-what counted was that he was a cog neither easily overlooked nor replaced.

Still, it was with some relief that I got a phone call from Beverly Hillstrom a half-hour later, giving me-I hoped-more than shadowy Satanists to pursue.

Voices over the phone rarely match their owners’ appearance, something blind dates discover all too often, but Beverly Hillstrom’s brought to mind the exact same tall, patrician coolness that she presented in person. A slim, blonde, immaculate middle-aged woman, her diction was grammatical and precise, her manners distinctly old-world, and her ability to put veteran cops in their place with little effort legendary. And yet there was true warmth in her toward those she trusted and respected, a group of which I thankfully was a part.

There were proprieties to be faithfully observed, however, despite a friendship that stretched back years. We never referred to our private lives, never took liberties with social decorum, and always addressed one another by our respective titles. With anyone else, I would have dismissed such unstated ground rules as snotty affectations. With Beverly Hillstrom, I sensed in them a need for order and courtesy, almost a frailty that required nurturing. It was an enigmatic character trait that allowed me to ponder the personality behind it, and occasionally amuse myself with unfounded wild images of her life away from the office.

“You sound relieved to hear from me, Lieutenant. Are you running out of options on this case?”

“You could say that. I just finished telling one of my men to check out all the local Satanists.”

“Ah-the tooth. Is that what that engraving signifies?”

“Supposedly.”

“Well, the tooth might be helpful, although perhaps not for that reason.”

“X-rays?” I blurted out, instantly regretting that I’d rushed her.

There was a telling pause at the other end of the line. “No,” she answered slowly. “X-rays have been taken, of course, and they’ve revealed a badly decayed, albeit previously treated tooth. But I can’t imagine too many dentists having the time to compare any X-rays we could send them to their patient inventories of five thousand or so cases each. It would be a near hopeless task.