David Handler: The Cold Blue Blood

“Of course not.”

He raised his chin at her imperiously, looking her up and down. “I shouldn’t think you’d be transmitting. You’d need backup, and if there’s a soul who’s more alone at this moment I can’t imagine it. But if I were you I’d certainly have considered a tape recorder.” She had. “Not that I’d be that stupid.” She wasn’t. “Still, I’m going to have to pat you down, young lady,” he concluded with steely resolve.

“That’s fine, sir.” She removed the lightweight navy blazer she was wearing and held her arms out to her side. “You go right ahead and pat.”

He checked over her blazer first, expertly inspecting the lapels, the pockets and the lining. Then he started in on her, carefully turning back the collar and placket of her blouse, his fingers probing her stomach, her sides, the small of her back, the waistband of her slacks, her thighs, calves, ankles. He searched her scalp and dreadlocks as if he were checking her for head lice-all the while staring deeply and coldly into her eyes. Des stared straight ahead, her gaze neutral. West Point had trained her well for this particular head game. She could tolerate this, although she could barely breathe and her heart was pounding so hard she was positive he could hear it in the sound-proofed silence of the banquet room.

His own eyes were eerily opaque and dead. The superintendent never so much as blinked.

Finding nothing, he handed her back her blazer and said, “You’re running a bluff, Lieutenant. Bliss told you nothing about what happened on Big Sister Island thirty years ago.”

“I wish that were the case, sir. But it’s not.”

He turned a dining chair around and sat down at one of the bare banquet tables, swatting at a scrap of harvest-gold carpet lint on his knee. He took out a pack of Parliaments and lit one with a disposable lighter, inhaling it deeply.

“There’s no smoking in here.” Des motioned to the sign over the door.

“Arrest me, why don’t you.” He glanced around for an ashtray. Finding none, he flicked his ash on the carpet. “Go ahead, then,” he said impatiently. “Say what you came to say.”

Des took a seat. She was not the world’s most gifted natural-born con artist, so she had prepared her pitch carefully. “What Tal Bliss told me,” she began in a low, steady voice, “is that when he arrived at the murder scene, young Dolly Peck was seated on the stairs. She was sobbing uncontrollably. She was incoherent. And she was clutching that shotgun in her own two hands.”

Superintendent Crowther said nothing to this. Merely sat there puffing on his cigarette and watching her, the light from the ballroom’s chandeliers gleaming off his shiny, stay-put hair. His eyes remained utterly expressionless.

Des plunged ahead: “Bliss told me he took the shotgun away from her and positioned it in Roy Weems’s dead hands so it would look like Roy shot himself. Which was exactly how it went down-even though that wasn’t what happened. It was really Dolly who killed Roy. The bastard raped her and she shot him for it, right there in his soiled bed. His wife, Louisa, was working in the main house. She came running when she heard the gunshot. And when she came up those stairs Dolly shot her, too.” Des halted for a reaction out of the superintendent. Still nothing. But he didn’t deny it. Not any of it. “You walked into a real, first-class mess, sir. Dolly should have gone down for their murders. Well, maybe not Roy’s. Maybe that was self-defense. But Louisa? Not a chance. The reality, however, was that Roy and Louisa Weems had no chance. They were yankees. Dolly was an ambassador’s daughter. A rich, troubled girl who was clearly headed for a good long stay at a mental hospital no matter what you did. So you tidied up their mess for them. There was no mention about finding her prints on the gun. No mention of conducting any kind of a test to determine whether she had fired that gun. Even the matter of her rape was kept sealed. You simply let her go, even though you knew she did it. Everyone knew.”

Superintendent Crowther took one last pull on his cigarette before he ground the butt out against the heel of his shoe. He laid it on the table and clasped his hands together in his lap, raising an eyebrow at her. “What do you want from me, Lieutenant?”

“The truth, sir. That’s all.”

He let out a grim laugh. “The truth? I’ve been in law enforcement for thirty-five years, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that the truth is whatever someone wants it to be. O. J. Simpson was telling the truth when he said he was busy practicing chip shots on his front lawn while someone else was cutting up Nicole and Ron. Bill Clinton was telling the truth when he wagged his finger at us and told us he never had sexual relations with that Lewinsky woman. Did Dolly Peck kill Roy and Louisa Weems? You want the truth? Maybe she did. I don’t know. I never knew.”

“You put her back out on the street.”

“I did what I was told to do by the powers that be. I was a scared, confused kid, just like you are at this very minute. I’d just gotten married. I was living from paycheck to paycheck. And that girl was a Peck. I don’t have to tell you that the wealthy elite get treated differently than everyone else. For crying out loud, that’s how they stay the wealthy elite.”

“How tight were you and Tal Bliss?”

He glanced at her curiously now. “Why, what did he say about it?”

“That you weren’t.”

“Then why ask me about it?”

“He became a state trooper when he got back from ‘Nam, that’s why.”

“Well, it wasn’t any kind of a payoff, if that’s where you’re heading,” he said. “Tal was bright and competent and they were happy to have him. I did try to offer him my counsel on occasion. To me, he was wasting his time as a resident trooper. But he ignored me. The job in Dorset was all he ever wanted.”

For the simplest of reasons, Des reflected. So he could look after Dolly.

“Let’s stop dancing around, Lieutenant,” Superintendent Crowther blustered, abruptly seizing back the conversation. “Who else knows about this story Bliss supposedly told you?”

“No one.”

“The Deacon?”

“No one.”

“Internal Affairs?”

“No one.”

“You came right to me?”

“I came right to you.”

“Okay, here’s what I believe, Lieutenant,” he said. “I believe that you’re either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid. Because your handling of this case is presently under investigation by I.A. And one word from me that you’ve shown up here, peppering me with wild accusations, and you will no longer be in the employ of the Connecticut State Police.” He paused, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I like to think I know your father pretty well. And he’s not stupid. So I’m going to give you the benefit of your genes. I’m figuring that you’ve come directly to me because you want to cut a deal. You’re thinking I’ll be grateful to you-so grateful I’ll somehow help you out of this mess that you presently find yourself in. Does that about cover it?”

Des said nothing to that.

Crowther narrowed his eyes at her piercingly. “Then again, this could all be a scam on your part. You climbing way, way out on a shaky limb. And me sitting right here with a chain saw in my hand. Which is it, young lady?”

“I’m trying to find out who killed Torry Mordarski, Niles Seymour and Tuck Weems,” she answered quietly.

“Tal Bliss killed them,” Crowther said easily. “It’s clear. It’s clean. It’s closed. Why can’t you accept it, Lieutenant? I have. Everyone has.”

“I can’t accept it because if Dolly murdered those two people thirty years ago she may have murdered again. And if Tal Bliss knew that, he may have taken his own life to protect hers.”